Category: abuse of free speech
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Autumn UK 2016
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Today our skies evicted the swallow and the swift was banished weeks ago and in Dorset the house martin whose tiny mud globes once crammed the eaves was simply absent all year. And last week Putin, unrestrained, bombed hospitals in Aleppo and Trump continued his debasing of America and Theresa May declared the…
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Sayings
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Reaching for words is like searching the earth for stones and then shaping them one after another into a path. Your words took my breath away. They killed me with their song. They made my womb turn over. Sing to me again. The words I must speak will sentence me to death.…
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Post “Brexit” Blues and Bubbling Ferments
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Here I have collated various addresses I have come across or been sent during the past few weeks. They link to various initiatives and/or reflections which I find interesting and helpful, following the referendum decision and the course – “Brexit means Brexit” – which appears to have been set for our unknown destination on the…
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Democracy & the Lie: do they go hand in hand ?
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During July, two articles by Andreas Whittam Smith appeared in The Independent newspaper on successive days. Here are the links to them: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/broken-democracy-spin-doctors-destroyed-uk-politics-theresa-may-repair-it-a7135146.html ; http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/fix-broken-democracy-smash-political-class-two-simple-things-a7137131.html Whittam Smith co-founded The Independent and his two pieces are worth reading. They explore the Brexit campaign’s “victory” and contain proposals for starting a process of renewal of the UK’s…
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Six Truth Works Three Tattoos
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Here in the UK, recent elections and this Summer’s cataclysmic EU referendum have been opportunities for liars, demagogues and PR specialists to practice their skills on the population, in order to sway it to their will. The phenomenon is not unique to the UK, nor of course is it unprecedented. But the pervasive dishonesty, recklessness…
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“The People” is Sovereign. To defraud the sovereign is a capital offence.
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In the UK following its EU referendum, “the People’s Will” is a phrase now often being quoted with reverence as something unarguable, final, almost sacred, however uncomfortable. The phrase is being quoted most often and with greatest reverence by the public figures who helped to secure the Brexit vote by whatever means they could –…
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How can we Defend Free Speech from the Lie ?
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This piece follows the recent UK referendum on our membership of the EU. Both the quality of the debate and the “decision” that came out of it have left many millions of people reeling and horrified. But how was that decision arrived at ? Why do so many of us find it impossible to accept…