Based on an article from the BBC
See also English Translation of Figaro Article

France's anti-terrorism authorities have launched an enquiry into death threats against a philosophy teacher who wrote an article criticising Islam.
Robert Redeker has been forced into hiding after writing about the violence of Islam

Since publishing the article, he has been under police protection and forced to move between safe houses. Redeker says that his personal details and home address are now available on Islamist websites.

His article was entitled "In the face of Islamist intimidation, what is the world to do?" and was written in reaction to Muslim protests following remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI.

In the article, published on 19 September, the French teacher describes the Koran as a "book of extraordinary violence" and Islam as a religion which "exalts violence and hate".

On Friday, the Paris prosecutor's office said it had opened a preliminary investigation into the threats to see if they were linked to terrorist activity.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin described the threats as "intolerable": We are in a democracy, everyone has the right to express his views freely - of course while respecting others.

Redeker says that he fears he will not be able to come out of hiding for the immediate future: The Islamists have succeeded in punishing me on French territory as if I were guilty of a speech crime.

From the Washington Post, By Bashir Goth, the first Somali blogger

Even worse than the official censorship is censorship imposed by the community, which then becomes self-censorship. Friends, colleagues and even ordinary acquaintances all impose strict censorship rules on me under the guise of being concerned about my personal safety or honor. They demand that I tone down my strong views about sensitive issues.

Freedom of the press in the Muslim world cannot be separated from freedom of expression in general. Journalists, due to their conspicuous public role, risk their lives everyday. They have been targeted and killed in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan and other countries. The Muslim world is not a friendly place for freedom of speech at all.

Journalists, creative writers and artists all share the same fate. The writer in a Muslim society is in shackles. Every time I put pen to paper it is a struggle against the tyranny of community-imposed self-censorship. Nowhere is Rousseau's statement that Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains, truer than in the House of Islam.

Everything is a taboo. Whenever a Muslim writer takes up a pen he starts tiptoeing in a minefield. You have to follow the flag signs of religious, cultural and social taboos. You should tread carefully avoid shame, social estrangement or even death.

The beheading of the Sudanese journalist Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed in early September was the latest example of community punishment of a journalist/writer.

Writers have to endure internet blockages and black ink splashed on their art magazines and school textbooks. One of the most bizarre censorship actions I have ever seen was the blotting out of the sexual organs of a historical picture of donkey standing in an old Arabian market.

In the House of Islam, you cannot have a principle other than that of the community. Every thing you do is referred to Islam. The mantra is that's stupid BUT...But we cannot do this because we are Muslims. One hears this expression ad nauseam. In the Islamic world you cease to be a human being. You become only a Muslim, whatever that entails.

You are not allowed to be a person with vices and virtues, you cannot follow your own reasoning, and you cannot be unpopular or defend an unpopular idea. You cannot go out of the circle. To express yourself freely means to risk death. And death indeed if you change your faith. Invention itself is considered as an act of blasphemy.

I am obliged to remind my readers however that Islam had its good days of freedom of speech in the middle ages when the Mutazilites and Asharites debated in public and in the royal courts about sensitive issues such as the creation of the Koran. This golden period has since been buried in the thick dust of history. With the rise of Islamic extremism in the present age, one can only hope for the return of such rationale.

With Somalia now under the grip of extremist Islamists who have already banned all kinds of artistic works and dissenting voices, freedom of press is their last priority.

Censorship in the Islamic world is instilled at childhood. Children are taught that there are two angels sitting on the shoulders of every person entrusted with the task of monitoring every good and bad deed the person does or says. This has prompted me to write in a piece of fiction about the character of a little boy who dived into a pond and vented out his demons under water where no angels or people could censor his words.

To survive in such unfriendly atmosphere like this, journalists in the Muslim world have become like parrots that only echo the official line. Torn between the call of professionalism and that of censorship, they have to always adhere to the call of the latter. If it takes a village to raise a child in Africa, it takes a community to kill a writer, artist and a journalist in the Muslim world.

Therefore, to talk about how to promote freedom of the press in the Muslim world may be a question that could trigger another clash of civilizations.

From The Telegraph

A coroner warned parents of the dangers of letting their children watch adult films yesterday after hearing how an eight-year-old girl hanged herself after seeing a film featuring an identical suicide.

Kyesha Freeman made a makeshift noose from her pyjamas and slung one end over a curtain rail in her bedroom before tightening it round her neck.

Police recovered 18-rated DVDs and videos from her bedroom including the film Girl, Interrupted which is rated 15 by the BBFC.

The 1999 film, which stars Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie and Whoopi Goldberg, is set in a 1960s psychiatric hospital and focuses on a group of disturbed young women. In one sequence, one patient commits suicide by hanging herself. Police believe Kyesha watched the film and may have been trying to imitate the scene in her bedroom.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, Aiden Cotter, the Birmingham coroner, said: I am not even halfway to believing that she intended to take her own life. I don't believe that an eight-year-old - even one described as mature - has sufficient understanding of what death really means. Whether she was playing out something which she had seen on a DVD or whether she was upset and looking for attention, I don't know. What I am sure about is that she could not form necessary intent to take her own life. Every parent should emphasise to children you do not put anything around your neck or anyone else's. Adults ought to be careful what films, DVDs or tapes are available to children because it's easy for a child to see something and imitate it without realising what it is. I hope this will save some other little child or family from such grief.

From the Daily Mail

Germany's conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday led political and arts world uproar at the scrapping of a Mozart opera that features the head of the prophet Mohammed rolling across the stage.

The performances were cancelled amid fears the scene could trigger violence among the nation’s Muslim community.

But Merkel denounced self-censorship out of fear as unacceptable, reflecting a mood of national indignation that was not limited to the arts set but cut right across all social lines.

And last night there were hopes that increased government pressure might get the show put back on.

An "integration" summit between government ministers and leaders of Germany's three million Muslims held yesterday could lead to the production being staged at a later date. Interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said all present had agreed that the shelved opera Idomeneo should go ahead - and they might even all go together to see it.

Hours before Schaeuble’s statement the gulf between western liberalism and Islamic intransigence appeared as wide as ever as the leader of Germany's Islamic Council welcomed the ban, saying a depiction of Mohammed with a severed head could certainly offend Muslims.

From the Daily Mail

An opera company in Berlin has cancelled a Mozart production of his work Idomeneo fearing a scene in which the prophet Mohammed's decapitated head is rolled on stage could trigger an Islamic backlash.

The decision by the Deutsche Oper, one of the world’s most celebrated opera houses, shows how deep-rooted the fears now are in Europe’s artistic community about offending Muslim sensibilities.

It was an incalcuable security risk for the production to be staged at this time, warned city security experts and police and so the show has been pulled from forthcoming productions.

Mohammed is not the only figure to be decapitated in the opera – the heads of Jesus, the Greek God Poseidon and Buddha are also rolled on to the stage. But it is the symbol which city officials fear could trigger rioting and bloodshed.

Police said they could not gurantee the safety of the Deutsche Oper building if it went ahead.

Enthusiasts of the arts said they felt fear of Islam was now restricting the freedoms taken for granted in the west.

Better than being PC whoozies like the Aussies

From The Telegraph

Australian cricket fans will be asked to perform an apparently impossible act of mental gymnastics in the forthcoming Ashes series.

Cricket Australia, the sport's governing body Down Under, has ruled that visiting English fans can be called "Poms" or "Pommies" without fear of breaching the country's strict racism laws.

However, even in the heat of their desire to win back the famous urn, Australian barrackers must avoid linking the Pom-word with anything hurtful. . . racist, offensive or humiliating.

The last time an Englishman inside an Australian cricket ground was called a "Pom" without the addition of a hurtful, racist, offensive or humiliating epithet is lost in the mists of time.

Asked whether a fan who used the word "Pom" in concert with anything hurtful etc would be evicted from the ground, a Cricket Australia spokesman, described the scenario as "hypothetical".

The board's stance is based on a ruling by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commissioner in a 1997 case, Bryant v Queensland Newspapers. It said that calling someone a Pom by itself was not racial harassment, unless said in such a way, or in combination with other acts or comments, that make it so. Phrases such as "filthy Poms" are definitely out, although the position of "whinging" is unclear.

From the Times of India

The The moral police might have pulled the plug on adult programming on television but there is hope yet. The information and broadcasting ministry is likely to allow films with 'A' certificate after 'watershed' timings.

I&B minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi said, I substantially agree with the Censor Board's proposal. Adult films and serials can be shown during late hours.

The ministry's nod gains significance after the recent Bombay High Court order banning all content except that with universal or 'U' certificate from being screened on TV.

Films, serials, advertisements and music videos could soon be shown during the adult viewing time zone (between 11 pm and 4 am). Dasmunsi added a committee had been set up to draft the content code for TV and its recommendations will be made public soon.

The content code is likely to be based on the lines of 'Ofcom' (office of communication) guidelines framed by the UK. Officials said that there would be 'watershed' timings — a window period after 10 or 11 pm for adult programmes — as popular in the West.

Anything before the watershed time (that is 9 pm for UK) should be appropriate for children. At present, there is a general broadcast code in existence that allows only programming with 'universal' tag to be aired.

According to new rules, even advertisements will have to be cleared by the Censor Board before being screened.

From The Telegraph

A Briton who was facing up to two years in a Turkish prison after he produced a collage depicting the country's Muslim prime minister as a dog was freed yesterday after the case against him was dropped.

Michael Dickinson, a teacher who has lived in Turkey for 20 years, was taken into custody 10 days ago after he displayed the picture during a demonstration in support of an anti-Iraq war protester presently on trial in Istanbul.

He was charged with criminal defamation for superimposing the head of Recep Tayyip Erdogan on to the body of a dog with a Stars and Stripes leash.

The artist was released after pressure from British diplomats and an appeal by the Labour MEP Richard Howitt.

From Graham on Backlash

On the 9th October parliament returns from the summer recess. Backlash is asking that anyone who opposes the violent porn proposals writes a blog about this on that date and has it listed on a master list - http://bloggingforbacklash.blogspot.com/

Blogs can and do influence opinions. The Blogging for Backlash day would enable us all to be heard in one concentrated effort. And we could repeat this after the Queen's Speech in November.

If you would like to take part, please go to the Blogging for Backlash blog and add a comment.

A protest song by Ian G. Listen now on mp3 (7 MByte file)

Save us from Politicians and police,
The religious nuts and puritanic freaks.
The people of this nation don't need any more repressive legislation.
We're sick to death of all you mindless creeps.

When ministers give interviews on the news,
You'd think that they'd be mindful to tell the truth.
But it seems one or two just can't do it.
Especially when our opinion of their plans says "Screw it!"

And Mr Beyer says "We don't want sex on telly".
He's wrong because most say "Hell yes, and make it explicit sexually".
And little does he respect what the BBFC were told.
Most people say "Leave our melon farming films alone".

Yeah leave us the hell alone you sad and foolish jerks.
We don't want laws locking us away for viewing people not getting hurt.
How is it you go wage wars and blow women and kids to bits,
But God forbid we see some bruised or bloody 'naughty bits'?

"Now what's all this?" I hear you ask,
"Don't the police already go chasing people with nasty photographs?"
Well yes that's true to some extent but we're not talking porno pics of
kiddies.
Now this bunch want to persecute photos of adult fantasies.

Leave us the hell alone you sad and foolish jerks.
We don't want laws locking us away for viewing people not getting hurt.
How is it you go wage wars and blow women and kids to bits,
But God forbid we see some bruised or bloody 'naughty bits'?

Land of oxymorons,
Political liars and cheats.
We who made thee mighty,
Want you out of those seats.
We who made thee mighty,
Want you out of those seats!

From the BBC

To save its culture from supposed "pernicious modern influences", official action is currently being taken against everything from adultery to video phone calls in Cambodia.

At the turn of the year, a hapless young singer-cum-presenter was forced to make a grovelling apology on live TV after the prime minister announced that she had insulted Cambodian culture.

Her crime? Wearing a backless dress. That incident set the tone for the rest of the year.

Things which have been declared "against the culture" have included mini-skirts, dyed hair, dating agencies, beauty contests and third generation mobile phones (the kind that allow high-speed internet access).

Of course, a lot of people are wondering why on earth all this is happening now. Conspiracy theories abound, but one thing that cannot be discounted is the influence of Prime Minister Hun Sen's wife, Bun Rany. She was certainly instrumental in the rebuke to the TV presenter with the offending dress. And she was the driving force behind a petition against third generation mobile phones.

Along with other powerful Cambodian women, Bun Rany decided that these cutting-edge phones would allow would-be mistresses to bombard rich and influential men with suggestive material, leading them into temptation. We are all very concerned that bad people will use modern communication and information technology in the wrong way, and this will have a serious negative effect on morality and social welfare, said the petition from the group some have called the "Phnom Penh Wives".

Soon after, the prime minister ordered the phone operators to postpone their upgrade plans. He said it might be 10 years before Cambodian society would be sophisticated enough to use the new technology responsibly.

The authorities told Phnom Penh's first and only dating agency that its radical concept of helping women find partners was 50 years ahead of its time. And then the Miss Cambodia pageant got the thumbs down. Not only was the contest offensive to Cambodian culture, the prime minister said, it was also wrong to hold such an event while the country was still recovering from three decades of war.

To top it all off, a couple of weeks ago the National Assembly voted to make adultery a criminal offence. Unfaithful husbands or wives now face up to 12 months in jail.

In fact, many of the people I talk to think there are political reasons for the apparent moral crackdown. A friend who promotes safe sex said that if the government really were on a crusade, they would have shut down the brothels and karaoke joints where sex is sold. In fact those establishments remain in staggering numbers.

From The Times

Senior members of the Royal Academy have complained that the organisers of a new exhibition of works owned by Charles Saatchi had misled them over the nature of “pornographic” items going on show.

The academicians were not told that works to be included in the show, USA Today, which opens on October 6, would be of an explicit sexual nature. They were informed only that some would be “cutting edge”.

Some members of the academy are now demanding that a separate room be set aside for the “adult” works. We gave the show a cautious go-ahead, said Ivor Abrahams, an academician and sculptor, who sits on the exhibitions committee:  Now we find that at least 10 or so of the works might cause offence. It’s schoolboy smut and a cynical ploy to get Saatchi even more noticed. Abrahams now believes that the show should not go ahead. We’ve been hijacked by Saatchi. It is hard to see any merit in this show.

Works going on display include a girl painted by Gerald Davis performing a sex act on a man. Davis, whose other works on show include naked youngsters, penises and a woman defecating, admits that some of his art stems from his own fantasies from when he was 12.

Another artist, Terence Koh, not only states that some of his exhibits incorporate “artist’s piss”, but also admits that they are “decadent and pornographic”. One of them, Untitled (Medusa), shows religious figures, including women, with prominent phalluses.

Tom Phillips, the chairman of the exhibitions committee, said the show was justified: It should be seen in the wider context of American art today. There are more serious and worrying things going on in the world than somebody having oral sex, which you can anyway see all the time on the internet.

From Refused Classification
See also www.ratingsconference2007.com

The (Australian) Classification Board is hosting the International Rating Conference to be held next year in Sydney.

The primary focus for the conference will be to explore the impact of an increasingly global marketplace for film, games and other consumable entertainment media. This will include identification of current and forecast trends in the global marketplace and attempts to define the ongoing business environment. In this context, the place for local systems regulations in a global environment, the nature of community standards in a diverse and increasingly borderless world and classification of new and emerging content formats will also be considered at the conference. You’ll also hear outcomes of the latest research into the area, including impacts of exposure to entertainment content.

If you work in the area of films, computer games and other emerging interactive media formats and have an interest in classification issues then you must attend this landmark event. The conference will be relevant for classification officials, content regulators, film industry representatives, computer game developers and producers, mobile phone content developers and providers, broadcasters, members of community interest groups, academics, social and market researchers, professional bodies and students.

Hopefully the Dangerous Pictures Act can be the first loony legislation to be knocked on the head.

From The Telegraph

Labour is in danger of getting a reputation as a "big brother" Government with a tendency to ban everything and curb individual freedom, Peter Hain says today.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the Northern Ireland Secretary puts restoring the party's traditional defence of civil liberties at the heart of his campaign to become deputy leader.

He calls for a re-balancing" of its attitude to both social policy and law and order to give greater emphasis to the importance of freedom. We have been very tough on security and people want us to be," he says. "But we have to stress that we are a Government that is not about a big brother state; it is about individual liberties as well. We have to get the balance right. I don't think we have worked hard enough to say that if Labour is about anything it is about the fight for individual liberty.

Hain says the "progressive coalition" of core Labour and middle-Britain voters, which swept Blair to power, is in danger of collapsing because of a view that the Government is intent on damaging civil liberties: If the voters think we are about some kind of big-state perspective, then they will turn away from us. If there is a perception that Labour likes to ban everything, we maybe need to re-balance that

From The Nation

A total of 54 radio stations in two northeastern provinces have stopped broadcasting temporarily, following an order by the Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM).

Provincial authorities instructed 53 stations in Roi Et and one in Amnat Charoen to comply with the coup leaders' order.

An official in Roi Et said another 20 unregistered stations in the province had decided to stop broadcasting at the request of a local military office.

Another 100 stations in Khon Kaen are still operating. Chanadda Harris, head of the Khon Kaen Public Relations Office, said the stations were still broadcasting until further notice or a request to stop was made by the Second Army Region, which oversees units in the entire Northeast.

She added that her office was drawing up interim broadcast regulations with the CDRM, which were expected to take effect soon.

From The Times

A Turkish court secured a small victory for freedom of expression yesterday by acquitting the writer Elif Shafak of “insulting Turkishness” through the characters of a novel.

However, the unusually swift outcome to the case elicited only qualified applause from rights campaigners and the European Union, who have urged reform of the laws under which the author was charged.

Hours after Shafak was acquitted Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister who has been criticised for failing to speak out against a tide of similar cases against writers and intellectuals, suggested that the Government might be prepared to revise Article 301 of the penal code, under which they are brought.

Chief judge Irfan Adil Uncu cleared Shafak because of lack of evidence that she had committed an offence. Even the prosecutor, who had originally been obliged to take on the case by a higher court, read out a statement saying that the writer should be acquitted, which she was, with a speed even the most optimistic of her defenders had not expected.

But Richard Howitt, a European Member of Parliament, said: We have been talking to the Turkish Government about this since late 2004. We have prosecutors and lawyers who are wilfully misinterpreting this law, and for this reason it needs to be abolished completely.

From The Register

Google has delisted www.inquisition21.com, the website campaigning against many of the Operation Ore child pornography convictions. The last time the search giant's crawlers checked the site out was on 10 September.

Operation Ore, the UK's largest investigation into online child pornography, was the result of US authorities handing over credit card details on over 7,000 individuals whose details they had found on a porn portal that contained links to child pornography.

Inquisition21 says the database contained a large number of fake credit card numbers, and many card numbers that were being used fraudulently. This, it argues, casts doubt on the safety of some of the convictions in the UK. In addition many of the credit cards were being used to subscribe to legal adult sites without being made aware that illegal sites were available on the same subscription. Inquisition21 is gathering support to mount a legal challenge to some of the convictions.

Brian Rothery, Inquisition 21's editor, says the delisting followed an attack on the site on 8 September. He says the attack, during which quite a large amount of undesirable material was placed on the site with numerous links to it from other sites, came as the site was about to make potentially damaging disclosures about the handling of the investigation.

We asked Google why it had taken the site off its database, and on which grounds it has appointed itself censor, but it refused to comment on the action.

Instead it issued a statement: We cannot tolerate websites trying to manipulate search results as we aim to provide users with the relevant and objective search results. Google may temporarily or permanently ban any site or site authors that engage in tactics designed to distort their rankings or mislead users in order to preserve the accuracy and quality of our search results.

At the time of going to press, the company had not confirmed that the Inquisition21 site had actually breached any of these guidelines

From The Times

Thailand's self-appointed military rulers arrested their opponents, banned political meetings and prohibited television stations from broadcasting viewer opinion yesterday, as the newly formed junta consolidated the success of Tuesday’s lightning coup.

Despite its insistence that it would hand over power to a civilian prime minister within a fortnight, the “Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy” is permitting no expressions of opposition to its authority. By yesterday all media organisations that formerly supported the democratically elected Government of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed Prime Minister, had been suppressed or converted to the junta’s cause.

Broadcasts on foreign satellite television were jammed repeatedly whenever Thaksin appeared in news reports. US diplomats in Bangkok interviewed staff of the BBC and CNN yesterday in preparation for a formal complaint about the interference.

General Sondhi summoned newspaper editors and television managers to spell out the new conditions under which they can operate — reporting of “public opinion” is discouraged, including live interviews, phone ins and text messages from viewers that Thai television stations display in the form of a “ticker” at the bottom of screens.

The council asks for co-operation from all types of media and media operators, as well as reporters, to report their stories accurately and constructively in order swiftly to restore normality to the country, an official announcement said.

At least eight supporters of Thaksin were in detention under martial law ordinances that allow detainees to be held for a week without charge. They include the manager of a pro-Thaksin national television station, an outspoken columnist and the former Deputy Prime Minister, Chitchai Wannasathit, who was described as having accepted an invitation to remain indefinitely inside army headquarters in Bangkok.

The two latest detainees were the Cabinet ministers Newin Chidchob and Yongyuth Tiyapairat, who obeyed a summons to present themselves to the army at noon yesterday, having gone into hiding after the coup 36 hours earlier.

From The Telegraph & The Guardian

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, joined the debate into the state of childhood yesterday. Asked about a ban advertising aimed at the under-12s, such as the one in Sweden, on advertising aimed at under-12s, he said it was "worth a try": There are real issues which the Advertising Standards Authority, as far as I know, are very concerned about it and I have had conversations with them.

Meanwhile Labour must lead the debate on "lost childhood" by proposing a ban on advertising to children under 12, a manifesto prepared by the Compass Group proposes today.

It is the first time the mainstream left has entered the debate, arguing that youngsters are being damaged by commercialisation and education built around exams rather than creativity and play.

The manifesto, prepared with the increasingly influential Compass Group of MPs, claims the government needs to address "a social recession" every bit as alarming as past economic recessions.

From The West

Non-Muslims should practise self censorship to avoid triggering violent reactions, a prominent Perth Muslim says.

In the wake of violent attacks over a speech by Pope Benedict XVI that linked the Prophet Mohammed's teachings to violence, Perth academic Samina Yasmeen said religious and community leaders should stop speaking about Islamic icons to avoid causing offence.

Associate Professor Yasmeen, director of the University of WA's centre for Muslim states and societies, accused the Pope of deliberately provoking the aggression by inviting criticism of Mohammed. She said the Pope and other religious leaders had the same responsibility as Islamic clerics to avoid encouraging violence by followers.

Previous emotive reactions, such as the violence following the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed and Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, should have warned people not to criticise Islam. Professor Yasmeen denied that the first reaction of many Muslims to perceived insults was violence, despite calls by some clerics to kill those who insult Islam and the murder of an Italian nun in Somalia.

I am not supportive of people killing and blowing things up, ...BUT... people need to start looking at self censorship, she said.

From The Register
See also  http://tomlinsonvmi6.blogspot.com/

Sacked spy Richard Tomlinson has defied the UK's secret services by posting the first chapter of his spy novel online.

The ex-MI6 officer was fired in 1995 after four years in the foreign arm of British secret intelligence and spent a year in a maximum security prison for publishing a book about his time in the organisation. But he has fought back against what he claims is intimidation by his old employees with the publication of chapter one of The Golden Chain on his blog.

Tomlinson had his house and boat in France raided earlier this year after MI6 claimed he was responsible for releasing a list of alleged active MI6 agents on the internet. Even though Tomlinson now links to the list from his blog, he swears he wasn't behind the list. Since the raid, he has fought with the UK government, including MI6 and Special Branch, for the return of his possessions, publishing copies of emails and letters sent to him over the matter online.

Recently, the UK authorities confirmed that they were retaining ownership of his possessions because he had made a number of references to writing a novel or book to be based in whole or in part on information falling within the terms of the Order. That order was the terms of Tomlinson's release and he was effectively accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act a second time. Tomlinson's response has been to publish the first chapter of his book on his blog, presumably with the threat of releasing further chapters until his possessions are returned.

The online battle has been going on since March this year, when Tomlinson discovered blogging and set about trying to force MI6 to respond to his endless requests for his sacking to be reviewed by a tribunal.

In August Tomlinson's Typepad blog was shut down at the request of Special Branch. Tomlinson opened up a Blogger account immediately afterwards with the title " Tomlinson v MI6 (it's back!)"

From The Age

The NBC television network in the US is still making up its mind about whether it will allow pop star Madonna to stage a mock crucifixion on its airwaves as part of her upcoming prime-time concert special.

Madonna has made the crucifixion stunt, in which she performs while suspended on a giant cross wearing a crown of thorns, a centrepiece of her global "Confessions" tour.

Executives at NBC will wait for makers of her concert special to submit the production for review before deciding whether to allow the mock crucifixion to air.

In July, when the network first unveiled plans for the Madonna concert special, NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly gave mixed signals about how much artistic freedom Madonna would be given. The mock crucifixion was known then to be a central part of her stage act.

Dangerous Pictures Act and Video Recordings Act are my favourites but there are many more!

Thanks to Paul

I thought this might deserve a wider audience. Inclusion of ID cards suggests that proposed legislation is equaly valid. The abolition of parliament act and the dangerous pictures act should be included as well.

www.libdems.org.uk/campaigns/campaign.html?navPage=campaigns.html&id=16625#topten

The authorities in Northern Ireland do their upmost to ensure that there are minimal ways to buy hardcore porn. Then they go and whinge when people buy it on the black market.

It is the authorities to blame for putting money into the hands of criminals, not the public. They should simply allow sex shops and mail order porn.

From the Belfast Telegraph

Police have seized hardcore pornographic material during a clampdown on counterfeit goods in Newtownards. Detectives confiscated more than £100,000 of illegal goods during the search of a house in Millisle .

Along with a number of computers and other equipment, a substantial amount of DVDs, CDs and computer games were seized.

Chief Inspector David Green of Ards District Command said the find was a blow to criminals. This is a very significant amount of money removed from criminals who are living off the back of the community.

Chief Inspector Greene emphasised that people purchasing counterfeit goods are putting money directly into the pockets of criminals whose activities include distributing pornography.

From The Independent

A great Repeal Act should be passed to slice away a generation of illiberal legislation, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, will declare today.

He will launch a campaign to identify obsolete and unnecessary legislation, pledging that it is time to take our freedom back.

Clegg will highlight the revelation in The Independent that Labour has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences since it our came to power and insist that the days of kneejerk law-making should come to an end.

Clegg will say that legislation alone cannot be used to combat the threat to Britain from international and domestic terrorism.

He will say: Fear cannot be quelled by a torrent of panic legislation, by knee-jerk announcements from one home secretary after another, invariably designed to capture headlines, not to safeguard our security. Yet that is exactly what this government has done. Under New Labour the Home Office has been ... the object of relentless legislative hyperactivity, married to dismal administrative incompetence. This is New Labour in a nutshell, all rhetoric, no results.

He will add: How dare John Reid condemn his officials as 'not fit for purpose' when it is his government's frenzied law-making which has done so much to ... damage the Home Office, erode trust in our criminal justice system and so heighten feelings of fear and insecurity.

Clegg, seen by some as a future party leader, will hit back of critics who claim the party's stance is soft on terrorism and condemn the Government for laws restricting the freedom to protest. He will say: There is nothing more abhorrent to liberals than the violence that springs from warped fundamentalism ... but we are entitled to ask ministers to have the humility to recognise that nobody has a monopoly on truth.

You don't fight terrorism, Dr Reid, by stifling debate at home.

From The Times

Turkey's faltering hopes of European Union membership look set to be dealt a blow this week when Elif Shafak, one of the leading members of a new generation of Turkish female novelists, faces charges under the country’s draconian restrictions on freedom of speech.

Shafak is being tried under article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes it an offence to insult “Turkishness”. Her alleged crime is that a character in her latest bestselling novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, describes the massacres of Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire as a genocide — an interpretation which, although widely accepted internationally, is still vigorously denied by the Turkish state.

Although other Turks have faced charges for referring to the events of 1915-16 as a genocide, Shafak is the first writer to be prosecuted for words spoken by a character in a work of fiction.

From The Times

A newspaper cartoonist has dared to defy a taboo on depictions of China’s leaders — and has had his wrist slapped.

Kuang Biao, who works for the News Express in the southern city of Guangzhou, has been suspended for a month for his cartoon, which showed a weeping Hu Jintao, the Chinese President.

Kuang is allowed to continue to draw — but only under a pseudonym. He told The Times that he always worked under pseudonyms and said he would continue to work at the newspaper as editor of the cartoon page. I will spend a month in self-reflection. I will pay more attention in future, he said. His newspaper seemed to have taken the decision in a move aimed at protecting him from punishment by the powerful propaganda authorities in Beijing. Even though his cartoon was tame by Western standards and made no attempt to caricature the President, who is also the leader of the Communist Party, such depictions are unheard of in China.

His drawing was a far cry from the political satire that permeates cartoons in the West. This is no caricature poking fun. It is a sympathetic portrait of a leader in tears. But it marks an astonishing precedent in China, where cartoons of leaders do not exist.

By my observation practically every murder that makes the headlines is either inspired by religion or else is blamed on the media. Now if we had the choice of eradicating one of these 'causes,' I wonder which would be most effective. And I wonder why politicians, the world over, make the other choice.

From the Daily Mail

The gunman who went on a shooting rampage in a Canadian college said on an internet blog that one of his favourite computer games was about the Columbine high school shootings.

Kimveer Gill opened fire at Montreal's Dawson College near Montreal. He was later shot dead by police. The attack killed one person and wounded 19 others.

A police official said officers had searched Gill's home. In postings on a website called VampireFreaks.com, blogs in Gill's name show more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a rifle and donning a long black trench coat and combat boots.

One photo has a tombstone with his name printed on it - below it the phrase: Lived fast died young. Left a mangled corpse.

He said on the site that he liked to play Super Columbine Massacre, an internet-based computer game that simulated the April 20, 1999, shootings at the Colorado high school.

From ASU Web Devil

With her predatory eyes now set on the pornography industry, the inequity of the American legal system continues to make a mockery of the Supreme Court's promise of "equal protection under law."

The U.S. Justice Department's effort to persecute Mantra Films demonstrates the federal government's interest in using law enforcement as yet another tool to serve certain political interests.

Mantra Films, makers of the Girls Gone Wild series, pleaded guilty to the department's charges and has agreed to pay a staggering $2.1 million in fines and "restitution."

The company was charged with failing to maintain proof of age and identification for the performers in its videos.

Mantra Films was also charged with not properly labeling its products, as required by a new federal law.

The charge against Mantra Films is that they did not maintain the proof and identification of each woman who has made an appearance in one of their many adult-themed films dating from 2002 to 2003.

And though the Justice Department parades Mantra Films' guilty plea as a victory against the exploitation of minors, there is not one single shred of evidence or suggestion that anyone under the age of 18 has appeared in any of the films in question.

All that Mantra Films is guilty of is not keeping sufficiently accurate records on some of the women who appeared in their videos three or four years ago.

In a time when the threats posed to children are sensationalized by those seeking to use these "crises" for their own political gain, the disproportionate attention that government investigators spent on easy targets of our cultural decay is disconcerting.

It is no coincidence that the federal government was able to find that the producers of Girls Gone Wild did not dot all of their I's or cross all of their T's. The law has been written so that it is nearly impossible for these companies to be free of all legal technicalities.

What else could explain the charge that the Girls Gone Wild videos were not "properly labeled" - as if the content of such videos is some sort of secret withheld from helpless consumers?

The moral of this story has nothing to do with the "exploitation" of children. The real lesson to be learned from this story is that if the government doesn't like what you're doing, be prepared for over-regulation and to hand over $2.1 million.

From Turkish Press

The youth chapter of the protestant Dutch party SGP filed a legal complaint against the singer Madonna for blasphemy and insulting a religious group.

The group objected to a mock crucifixion scene featured in Madonna's European tour after the US pop star gave two sell-out concerts in Amsterdam this month.

Chairman Jan Kloosterman said the complaint was supported by 50 different organisations.

From Reporters without Borders

From AVN

Kevin Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said he doesn’t think the agency should regulate Google Video, YouTube or other such online video portals.

Martin said during his re-nomination hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee that he doesn’t believe the FCC has the authority to regulate the Internet like it does with on-air broadcasters, though he preferred it did. He added that he felt that legislators should try to make the Internet a “more decent” place.

From The Guardian

Jimmy Wales challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.

Wikipedia, a hugely popular reference tool in the West, has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia.

Wales said censorship was ' antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there's no one left on the planet who's willing to say "You know what? We're not going to give up."'

Wikipedia's entry on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 includes the government's official claim that 200-300 died and the Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross's estimate of 2,000-3,000 deaths.

Wales said: 'I think it's an interesting question whether they're prepared to understand the difference between advocating one set of figures or another versus simply reporting on what the controversy is. I can understand that they would be upset - although of course I still don't think they have any moral right to ban anything - if we were pushing one set of figures in contrast to their objections, but if we are reporting both, to me that's exactly what an encyclopaedia should do and they should be comfortable with that.'

Wales will meet senior Chinese officials in an attempt to persuade them to allow the website's 1.3 million articles to appear there uncensored.

From the Daily Mail

US President George Bush is to host White House talks on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen creator of Ali G, has infuriated the Kazakhstan government with his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter. And now a movie of Borat's adventures in the US has caused a diplomatic incident.

The opening scene, which shows Borat lustily kissing his sister goodbye and setting off for America in a car pulled by a horse, had audiences in stitches when it was first shown last week.

But the film, which has just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, has prompted a swift reaction from the Kazakhstan government, which is launching a PR blitz in the States. Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to the US to meet President Bush in the coming weeks and on the agenda will be his country's image.

A spokesman for the Kazakhstan Embassy says it is unlikely that President Nazarbayev will find the film funny. Roman Vassilenko said: The Government has expressed its displeasure about Borat's representation of our country. Our opinion of the character has not changed. We understand that the film exposes the hypocrisy that exists both here in the USA and in the UK and understand that Mr Cohen has a right to freedom of speech.

I cannot speak for the president himself, only for the government, but I certainly don't think President Nazarbayev and Mr Bush will share a joke about the film. The bottom line is we want people to know that he does not represent the true people of Kazakhstan."

From The Guardian

A British artist is facing up to three years in prison after he was arrested yesterday and charged with insulting the Turkish prime minister's dignity.

He was protesting outside an Istanbul courthouse about  another freedom of speech trial.

Police detained Michael Dickinson after he refused to put away a poster-sized collage he had made depicting the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as a dog attached to a Stars and Stripes leash.

The day had a feeling of deja-vu for Dickinson, who has been living and working in Istanbul for 20 years. He went to court in the morning in support of a Turkish anti-war campaigner, Erkan Kara, who was charged with insulting behaviour for exhibiting a similar piece of his work depicting President Bush pinning a rosette on to Erdogan at a dog show.

Dickinson insists he hung his collage without the exhibition organisers' knowledge.

In his indictment of Erkan Kara, the prosecutor described Dickinson as "ill-intentioned" but declined to press charges for "lack of evidence". I think he [the prosecutor] was under pressure from the outside, from the government, said Hasan Gungor of Initiative for Freedom of Speech, an Istanbul-based group. Turkey's under big pressure from the European Union over the issue of freedom of speech, and they didn't want the trial to become international news.

Since hitting headlines in March 2005 for suing a cartoonist who portrayed him as a cat tangled up in a ball of wool, Erdogan is believed to have earned at least £115,000 in damages from insult cases. The Turkish press have labelled him "damages-rich".

From Mediawatch-UK

Both Vernon Coaker and myself are deeply offended that the majority disagree with us. We both believe that this deep offence justifies extreme repression

Tougher action needs to be taken to stop sex, violence and swearing appearing on TV screens, according John Beyer, Director of mediawatch-uk, said today, We welcome Ofcom’s latest research, published today by the Media Literacy Team, showing again that widespread offence continues to be caused by portrayals of violence, bad language and sexual content.

Despite the majority expressing satisfaction with present programme information, high levels of offence are still being caused. Ofcom itself knows that this is a problem that has persisted for many years.
 

From Dan

Beyer once again reads an Ofcom report and interprets it as he sees fit.

Our viewers are concerned about sex and violence. Which means they want Ofcom to come down like a ton of bricks on any broadcaster that shows the slightest glimpse of a nipple or drop of blood.

...Er, no they don't

From the BBC

Death of a President has now secured a distribution deal for the US.  The film was sold for $1 million to Newmarket Films. 

The movie’s subject matter has raised protests from conservatives in the US, and director Gabriel Range says he has received five or six death threats. 

From Stuff

Sudan authorities confiscated all copies of the independent al-Sudani newspaper recently, the latest move in a resurgence of censorship since the beheading of a journalist last week.

Mohamed Taha, editor of al-Wifaq newspaper was seized from his home and his decapitated body dumped in a dirt street on Wednesday. Since then, censors have moved into newspapers to restrict the work of journalists, ending months of press freedom in Sudan.

One state security source said the measures were aimed at preventing the publication of articles that would compromise the investigation into Taha's death censorship: The deceased was a journalist. His colleagues will write emotional things that could affect the investigation.

Osman Merghani, a columnist at al-Sudani, said authorities had confiscated all the copies of the paper from the printing presses, waiting until they had been printed: They did not tell us which article they did not like, they just said all the articles are inappropriate.

Newspapers make little money in Sudan and confiscating a paper after being printed hits owners hard.

Based on an article from The Register

Games nutter Jack Thompson believes that last week's school shooting in North Carolina was caused by the teenager involved playing violent video games. Thompson is the lawyer behind a suit against Take Two games over its upcoming title Bully.

Thompson said he believed that teenager Alvaro Castillo was influenced by the games he played: This youth Alvaro Castillo. He's killed his father and he goes to his school and shoots up his school and he's talking at length about the violent entertainment he's been obsessed with since he was eight years of age and I now find from speaking with a family friend that some of the entertainment was violent video games.

Thompson is a veteran campaigner against violence in video games and their sale to young people. He told OUT-LAW that he wants the US to mirror the approach taken in the UK: In the UK, you embody in your laws the notion that there is certain adult entertainment that shouldn't be sold to kids. No one is trying to ban it outright, but as it stands now, regardless of the rating that the game may get, anyone of any age will be able to buy it and that is just very dangerous. America has become the land of the free and the home of the utterly depraved.

Thompson is now suing Take Two games using a different kind of law. He is suing the company over its upcoming controversial title Bully, which is set in schools: In Florida you have what is called a nuisance statute which says that a private citizen can get an injunction to shut down any commercial activity that is dangerous to the public, so I think that the statute is appropriate to apply to this game. So I filed the lawsuit to prevent the sale of the game to school age kids, because this is where the real danger is.

Based on an article from 24 Dash

The previously banned movie I Spit On Your Grave will be premiere on British television this month, as part of Zone Horror's Video Nasty Week.

Director Meir Zarchi's brutal rape-revenge movie was notable as a video nasty. The 1978 film deals with the violent rape of a young woman writer in secluded woods by a group of locals, followed by her bloody revenge.

Adam Robinson, Zone Horror's Head of Programming, said: Meir Zarchi's classic I Spit On Your Grave still stands as one of the most controversial films ever made. It is an uncompromisingly brutal piece of film making and at the same time groundbreaking and original. The film still has the power to shock almost 30 years on. Zone Horror, never one to shy away from film's darker side, will now give television audiences a chance to judge for themselves.

This is one of many standout films to feature on Zone Horror this autumn and is a fantastic highlight of our Video Nasty Week.

The film was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act in 1982 and was on the banned list in this country until February 2002, when the BBFC permitted a cut version to be re-issued on video with 7 minutes of cuts.

Zone Horror's Video Nasty Week features a scandalous selection of films banned in the 1970s and 1980s, including Mother's Day, Night of the Demon, House on Straw Hill (aka Expose), Don't Look In The Basement and Blood Sucking Freaks.

The week runs from Monday 18 to Saturday 23 September, featuring I Spit On Your Grave on 23 September at 11.55pm

From Refused Classification

The censor's office has put an R13 rating on a console game that centres on bullying.

The game Bully, recently re-named Canis Canem Edit, will carry a descriptive note that it contains violence. Canis Canem Edit is the motto of the fictitious school in the game, and means "Dog eat dog" in Latin

The central character, James, is a victim of bullying and must negotiate his way through various high school cliques and overcome the school bullies. He uses low level violence and commits petty crimes, but censor Bill Hastings says Jimmy learns that violence has consequences and that he must take responsibility for his actions.

Hastings says When Jimmy carries out petty acts of delinquency at school he is apprehended by prefects and punished by the school principal. When he misbehaves outside school he is dealt with by the Police. The game cannot be said to promote criminal acts.

From Reuters

China announced new rules requiring foreign media to seek approval from its state news agency to distribute news, pictures and graphics domestically..

The rules, released by Xinhua and with immediate effect, also empowered the news agency to censor news distributed in China by foreign media and delete contents deemed forbidden.

The rules said foreign news, pictures and graphics can be sold in China only through agents approved by Xinhua. Xinhua will conduct annual reviews to decide whether to renew business licenses of foreign media. Violations can elicit warnings or a grace period to correct mistakes. Business licenses of foreign news agencies can be suspended or revoked if they break the rules such as publishing objectionable news or directly developing clients.

The rules said foreign news agencies should not carry reports that endanger national security, fan ethnic hatred and racial discrimination or promote cults and superstition. News that violates national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity will also elicit punishment.

The regulations, which also apply to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan news agencies.

From Computer World

The government of Sudan started seizing and quarantining laptop computers for inspection last week, ostensibly to stem the import of pornography and seditious material. Official assurances that the inspection of each laptop will take no more than 24 hours have done little to assuage fears of foreign visitors. Many are understandably reluctant to hand over collections of business and personal information for Sudanese officials to pore over in search of hostile or titillating tidbits.

The immediate effect of the quarantines and data inspections is sure to be a dampening of business interest in an already risk-fraught environment. Over the long term, however, silly rules regarding technology tend to be corrected by individuals' use of even more advanced technology. Governments rarely win this sort of oneupsmanship.

From Niagara Gazette

Lou Ye said he plans to defy a government order banning him from making films for five years, a ruling prompted by his decision to screen a movie at the Cannes Film Festival before it cleared censors in China.

I won't stop making films. I will definitely continue to make films. The ban is unreasonable. This is my personal right. As the film regulator for a region, you can ban my film from being shown in that area, but you don't have the right to stop a certain director from working. That is ridiculous, Lou said.

Lou said he already is preparing for his next film. He declined to give details.

From the BBC

The government should make it illegal for internet sites to incite or advise people on how to commit suicide, an organisation says. Papyrus, set up to tackle young suicide, said the risk posed by pro-suicide websites was not being taken seriously enough.

The organisation said the 1961 Suicide Act should be amended to make it illegal to publish such material on the web.

The government said it was looking at how rules could be tightened. At the moment, the law says it is illegal to aid, abet, counsel, procure or incite someone to commit suicide, but to be successfully prosecuted the individual has to have knowledge and participated in the suicide. It is a very complex issue as many of these sites are hosted abroad and UK law won't apply there. The Department of Health added: Ministers are working closely with the Samaritans and the Internet Service Providers Association to look at ways of supporting vulnerable people who may be accessing these sites.

Papyrus said typing "I want to kill myself" into an internet search engine offers access to 5m sites, many of which give information on how to commit suicide or were chat-rooms where techniques are discussed.

A spokeswoman added: The sites take no responsibility for the advice they give, do not identify themselves and generally create an atmosphere where suicide is normal, acceptable and to be encouraged.

The charity said as well as changing the law, the Department of Health's National Suicide Strategy needed to be amended to include reference to the dangers of the internet. It also wants to see computer manufacturers and retailers include leaflets the charity has produced warning of the dangers of the internet when they sell products.

From CBC.ca

Prosecutors in the Netherlands say a priest has confessed to phoning in a fake bomb threat to a Madonna concert in Amsterdam to try to prevent the singer from performing her crucifixion act.

Meulenbroek said the priest was arrested almost immediately after making the threats on Sunday. From his home, he phoned the emergency services number where the call was traced right away.

The priest appeared before a judge Friday and has been released pending judgment.

We take bomb threats seriously, but in this case, it was clear very quickly it was not real, said Meulenbroek, who said prosecutors would likely ask for a punishment of community service because it was the priest's first offence.

From the Times of India

The TV viewing need not be sanitised completely. The government is likely to review the ban on adult films on television and give those with explicit language and material a late night time slot.

A suggestion to this effect has been mooted by Censor Board chief Sharmila Tagore, and information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi has said the government is ready to consider it.

In an interview to a TV channel, Tagore had said she she was opposed to the blanket ban on showing adult films on TV and said there should be a specified time slot for telecasting such movies.

Tagore said the board was planning to go back to the I&B ministry and ask it for a review of the decision to ban adult movies on TV.

She said the films could be safely shown between 11 pm and 4 am and also revealed that the I&B ministry was thinking of creating an adult viewing time zone on TV.

In the interview, Tagore also suggested that instead of censoring movies, ‘A+’ or ‘X’ rating could be given to those meant for adult audiences.

From Asian Sirens

Chinese internet users are miffed about a blog apparently penned by a British teacher in which he recounts his sexual exploits among Shanghai women. The English-language bog, called "Sex and Shanghai" has been shut down because it has sparked online vigilante behaviour from Chinese males who were indignant at the content.

Apparently written by a bloke called Chinabounder, the bog has been subjected to attack by no less than Zhang Jiehai, a professor of psychology at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Zhang says on his own Chinese language site "we need to find this foreign filth and kick him out of China."

Ironically, the bog is a hoax. Chinabounder was written by a British man, an Australian woman, two Chinese men and a Japanese woman who for some reason have never walked into a pub.

The authors have decided to close the blog down because they are frightened for the safety of expatriates in Shanghai.

Thanks to Shane

ITV 4 have shown an uncut episode of Miami Vice on Tues 4th Sept which is rated an 18 cert on DVD and was previously cut by the BBFC in 1986 by 5 seconds to secure a 15 rating. The offending cut was a fight scene between two characters were a rather hard ear slap was issued by both hands ouch!

The interesting thing it was shown at 6pm have checked it against my dvd release and it was completely uncut as have many of the episodes they have shown at 6 & 7pm which are rated 12 and 15 certs by the BBFC. Drug dealing, shoot outs & ear slaps are the norm at 6pm on ITV 4.

Remembering the fuss over ear slaps, I guess they were just dinking Tango when that one got passed,

From Press Gazette

ITV News and GMTV have introduced a new policy on the use of footage depicting violent scenes after viewers complained to Ofcom over the broadcasters' use of CCTV images showing a knife attack on two students, in which one of the victims died.

Six viewers complained to Ofcom about ITV1, the BBC, Sky News and GMTV, whose news bulletins broadcast the images in June, on the day that the attackers were sentenced.

Ofcom said in a report: We welcome the assurances that tighter editorial control has been introduced over the use of violent images in pre-watershed news bulletins.

ITV defended its decision to use the CCTV images, as the issue of knife crime was high on the public agenda when the story was broadcast. In addition, both the police and the victims' families made it clear that they wanted the media to air the images to demonstrate how dangerous the results can be when young men carry knives.

Ofcom said that while it welcomed GMTV's assurances that lessons had been learned and the procedures had been changes, the particular handling of this story, within the regional news opt-out, was especially inappropriate and unsuitable, and therefore in breach of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

Based on an article from ic Wales

Christian nutters say cinematic versions of a series of what they were anti-religious novels will prove as controversial among churchgoers as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.

Philip Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, which went into film production recently, has prompted outrage among religious nutters, who dismissed it as blasphemous anti-Christian propaganda.

The Catholic Herald condemned his work as "fit for the bonfire", while Rupert Kaye, chief executive of the Association of Christian Teachers, has said Pullman's "blasphemy is shameless".

Simon Jenkins, editor of the online Christian newsletter Ship of Fools, says the film version of His Dark Materials has the potential to prove every bit as offensive to some religious groups. But Jenkins said he believes those opposed to Pullman's books should use them as a platform for a debate about faith instead of dismissing the work as heresy.

Work on filming the first of the three novels began at Shepperton Studios and the production will star Nicole Kidman as Mrs Coulter, Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel and the unknown Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra.

The Hollywood film will be titled The Golden Compass, which was the US name chosen for the first novel in the trilogy - it was known as Northern Lights here. It is being directed by Chris Weitz, who made About a Boy and Antz.

Jenkins said, I'm sure this new film will launch 100 anti-film and anti-book websites going through all the detailed reasons why they are wrong and why they are dangerous and pose a threat to civilisation as we know it. But that's not my view of it. I think that is counter-productive. I think it's better to engage with the books on all the issues.

Pullman agreed the books had upset some Christians, but said he was unconcerned about the prospect of the films doing the same.

If the books become three separate films, then Christians will be far less offended by the first instalment than the following two - The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, he said.

Kaye said it's only in the final novel in the trilogy that Pullman's blasphemy is unfurled for all to see. Pullman uses the names many people will recognise as referring to the God of the Christians and Jews, like Yahweh, the Almighty, and then goes on to say that the same God is not the creator of the universe and hence a liar.

From Ofcom
See full paper [pdf] at current attitudes and behaviours towards programme information

Ofcom commissioned research in order to understand the extent to which viewers utilise the current provision of content information at the point of consumption, and whether these methods of informing viewers will remain viable in the future in their ability to protect people from potentially harmful or offensive material.

The research was quantitative in nature with a multi-phased methodology that was designed to mirror the consideration process that takes place when viewers think about these issues.

• Printed material dominates as an information source, weekly television listing magazines, weekly or daily newspapers.
• Use of the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) and flicking through channels in multichannel households is as frequently cited as printed material.

The first phase of the research asked for viewer's initial thoughts on a number of questions related to programme information

• Over half of people feel there is currently sufficient programme information and a majority of these are largely satisfied.
• However, just over a third of adults claim they would like more information on programme content prior to viewing, with more people wanting 'a little more'rather than 'a lot more'.
• There were no major differences by platform user type (terrestrial versus multichannel versus Personal Video Recorder (PVR) versus Video On Demand (VOD)), suggesting that perceived needs do not change with time-shifted viewing.
• However, there is a stronger desire for more information about content on the smaller cable and satellite channels.

• When asked directly, half of adult television viewers expressed some level of concern regarding what is shown on television these days.
  • The older the viewer, the more concerned they were.
  • Female viewers were more likely to be offended than their male counterparts.
• Those in terrestrial households were more likely to be concerned than those in multichannel homes, however as the former tended to comprise older viewers, this could be an age-related finding, not a platform finding.
• Violence, bad language and sexual content were the issues most likely to offend.
• A third of people claimed to be offended at least once a month, 1 in 5 claimed to be offended less than every 6 months, and a further 1 in 5 claimed to be never offended by what they see on television.

• Over half of all adult television viewers claimed that pre-transmission information helped to reduce potential offence.
• Programme information's ability to mitigate offence was felt more strongly by parents and those in multichannel households.

• Parents claimed they would like more programme information when considering viewing decision made for their children. However, they still showed high levels of satisfaction with current information.
• Parents were more aware of content control measures such as the 9.00pm watershed and age classification for films, than non-parents.
• Around half of parents spontaneously claimed they had some concerns regarding television content when considering their child's viewing habits. This rose to three quarters when prompted.
• The same issues that offend them as adults, offend them as parents.
• Parents were likely to send their children out of the room if something they considered harmful or offensive was on television.

Once respondents had considered the issues in more depth they were again asked for their views.

• There was an increase in dissatisfaction with existing programme information post deliberation.
• Perceptions of programme information’s ability to mitigate offence increased significantly after the consideration period.

• Viewers were presented with the options of text based information, symbols, age ratings or the existing EPG information.
• On balance respondents preferred the on-screen text based information option shown to them, both before the deliberation period and after it.
• Text was thought to give more detail as to the nature of the programme content.
• The vast majority of viewers would also prefer all channels to use the same information system.

From International Herald Tribune

The chief editor of a Sudanese independent daily who provoked a furor by publishing an article denounced as blasphemous was found dead a day after being abducted by unknown gunmen.

A group of masked gunmen abducted Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, the editor-in-chief of Al-Wifaq, from his home in the east of Khartoum late Tuesday.

His body was found in another part of the city a day later, an Interior Ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Several suspects were arrested for alleged involvement in the crime.

Reporters Without Borders condemned the kidnapping and killing of Ahmed: We express our solidarity with our colleagues in Khartoum, for whom this cowardly murder is a harsh ordeal, They urged Sudanese authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In May 2005, scores of Sudanese gathered in front of the capital's courthouse demanding a death sentence for Ahmed for insulting Islam's prophet, by republishing an article from the Internet that questioned the parentage of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Al-Wifaq daily was fined 8,000,000 Sudanese pounds (about US$3,200) for the outcry it prompted in this conservative African Muslim nation. Ahmed refuted the blasphemy charges and apologized in a letter to the press saying he did not intend to insult the prophet.

Blasphemy and insulting Islam can bring the death penalty in Sudan, which has been governed by strict Islamic Sharia law since 1983.

From Oh My News

The government of Pakistan has recently created an Internet monitoring body within the Ministry of Information that is being tasked with placing all Web sites carrying objectionable content, including anti-state Web sites, on the blacklist of the Pakistan Internet Exchange Gateway, hence preventing their access to Internet users in Pakistan.

The committee will also entertain public requests for objectionable Web sites and decide in light of the Telecom Act of 2006 if a particular Web site can be placed on the blocked list on a case-by-case basis.

The blocking of offensive and objectionable Web sites started back in February 2006, when the Supreme Court ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to block twelve specific Web sites that were accused of having hosted a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.

In response to the Supreme Court's decision, the PTA has since blocked those twelve Web sites, including the entire Blogspot domain.

To protest these censorship attempts, a number of action groups have joined with passionate activists willing to fight for the cause in the shape of Don't Block the Blog and a Google Groups mailing list titled Society Against Internet Censorship in Pakistan.

From Kevin Kirk on Inquistion21

Law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. - Thomas Jefferson

You can always tell when the UK’s New Labour government is in trouble; because they always trot out yet another law further restricting sexual freedom. At present there is a fierce debate going on about the unprecedented number of immigrants into the UK (estimated at over 600,000 in the last year). The people are becoming increasingly unhappy, not because we are all a bunch of closet racists, as the government implied, but because the infrastructure, already creaky, is close to meltdown. The government believes that they need a huge wave of immigration to help keep wages down and to keep the economy ticking along despite their disastrous meddling. So they have a dichotomy: on the one hand they need the immigrants and the other they need the voters – at least until after next May’s Scottish elections.

So in true Labour style they’ve come up with a ‘third way’, which in this case involves taking everybody’s mind off of the trouble we’re in by trotting out yet another sex law. Hence the dodgy used car salesman doppelganger at the Home Office, Vernon Coaker, announcing out of the blue (because it hasn’t even been given parliamentary time yet) that the government is going to introduce the law banning