Tag: united kingdom

Army Veteran Arrested by ‘Politicised Police’ for Posting LGBT Pride Flag Meme on Facebook

In scenes akin to those traditionally associated with authoritarian regimes, police in Britain were filmed arresting a military veteran for posting a meme critical of woke gender ideology on Facebook.

“Is this the Gestapo? What has gone wrong in our country?” the veteran questioned as he was being placed in handcuffs by three officers in broad daylight outside of his suburban home.

The incident was captured live on video on Thursday by Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox, who chastised the Hampshire Constabulary officers for acting as an “anti-British politicised police force.”

“They serve a protected ideology… if you criticise the new woke ideology, you criticise the Pride movement, you end up in cuffs, whether you have served this country and have long medals for distinction and good service, you will end up in cuffs for expressing a perfectly legal view,” he told the live audience on social media.

The veteran, at the time left unidentified for privacy purposes, was apparently arrested for reposting a satirical meme from Fox of four Progress Pride flags together to form a swastika.

The meme, which resulted in a Twitter suspension and calls for police investigations against the actor turned anti-woke campaigner last month, was described by Fox as a commentary on how Pride Month is “enforced with a sense of hectoring authoritarianism”.

Despite the veteran saying that he had reposted the meme from Fox, the police chose not to arrest the Reclaim Party leader for the same post.

In the footage, one officer was heard justifying the arrest by saying that “somebody has taken offence” to the “homophobic” post shared on Facebook.

The arrest comes less than a week after the College of Policing issued national guidance telling officers to focus on actual crimes rather than intervening in “debates on Twitter”.

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Brits could lose passports for using drugs

Recreational drug users in the UK could soon be stripped of their passports or driving licenses under a series of new laws proposed by the Home Office on Monday.

In the document titled ‘SWIFT, CERTAIN, TOUGH New consequences for drug possession,’ the Home Office proposes introducing three tiers of punishments for possession of illegal drugs such as cocaine and cannabis. 

The penalties vary from being forced to pay for a drug awareness course to being issued with a hefty fine, and could even result in the loss of an offender’s passport and driving license.

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UK lawmaker John Penrose proposes dystopian idea to give citizens a truth score on social media

British Conservative Party lawmaker John Penrose, has proposed an addition to the UK’s controversial internet censorship bill, dubbed “The Online Safety Bill,” which continues to get even more Orwellian with each new proposed amendment.

Like something out of dystopian fiction, Penrose, the MP for Weston-super-Mare, has proposed that the government forces online platforms to maintain a score of how truthful a person is, determined by their past statements.

“The purpose of this section is to reduce the risk of harm to users of regulated services caused my (sic) disinformation or misinformation,” the proposal states, with a typo that shows just how much care goes into the wording of legislation that wipes away citizens’ freedoms.

The proposal says that every user that produces online content, including “comments and reviews” and who receives a certain number of online views, which is to be determined by the UK communications regulator, should have their content indexed and assigned a truth score.

The person’s speech is then to be “displayed in a way which allows any user easily to reach an informed view of the likely factual accuracy of the content at the same time as they encounter it.”

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UK communications regulator tells tech platforms to prepare for online censorship bill before it’s even passed

The Office of Communications (Ofcom), UK’s broadcasting and telecommunications authority, has issued a roadmap for tech companies to start preparing to implement the Online Safety Bill.

That’s despite the fact that the bill is still in parliamentary procedure and is yet to pass.

In fact, Ofcom refers to this democratic procedure, the outcome of which should be unknown until MPs vote on the proposal, as a mere technicality: “A countdown to a safer life online.”

Ofcom announced the roadmap document on Twitter, saying that it has presented its plans for the first 100 days of acting as online safety regulator – for when it starts overseeing the implementation of a law that does not yet exist.

And many civil and digital rights advocates are adamant that it should not exist, referring sometimes to the bill as “a censor’s charter.”

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BRITISH “WATCHDOG” JOURNALISTS UNMASKED AS LAP DOGS FOR THE SECURITY STATE

Events of the past few days suggest British journalism – the so-called Fourth Estate – is not what it purports to be: a watchdog monitoring the centers of state power. It is quite the opposite.

The pretensions of the establishment media took a severe battering this month as the defamation trial of Guardian columnist Carole Cadwalladr reached its conclusion and the hacked emails of Paul Mason, a long-time stalwart of the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian, were published online.

Both of these celebrated journalists have found themselves outed as recruits – in their differing ways – to a covert information war being waged by Western intelligence agencies.

Had they been honest about it, that collusion might not matter so much. After all, few journalists are as neutral or as dispassionate as the profession likes to pretend. But as have many of their colleagues, Cadwalladr and Mason have broken what should be a core principle of journalism: transparency.

The role of serious journalists is to bring matters of import into the public space for debate and scrutiny. Journalists thinking critically aspire to hold those who wield power – primarily state agencies – to account on the principle that, without scrutiny, power quickly corrupts.

The purpose of real journalism – as opposed to the gossip, entertainment and national-security stenography that usually passes for journalism – is to hit up, not down.

And yet, each of these journalists, we now know, was actively colluding, or seeking to collude, with state actors who prefer to operate in the shadows, out of sight. Both journalists were coopted to advance the aims of the intelligence services.

And worse, each of them either sought to become a conduit for, or actively assist in, covert smear campaigns run by Western intelligence services against other journalists.

What they were doing – along with so many other establishment journalists – is the very antithesis of journalism. They were helping to conceal the operation of power to make it harder to scrutinize. And not only that. In the process, they were trying to weaken already marginalized journalists fighting to hold state power to account.

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High-ranking Nigerian politician Ike Ekweremadu, 60, and his academic wife, 55, are charged with plotting to bring a child from Nigeria to the UK for organ harvesting

The Nigerian couple arrested on suspicion of plotting to harvest the organs of a child in the UK are one of the west African nation’s most high profile politicians and his wife, MailOnline can reveal today. 

Ike Ekweremadu, 60, a People’s Democratic Party politician for 19 years who was once Deputy President of the nation’s senate, was held with Nwanneka Ekweremadu, 55, in Britain this month.

Mr Ekweremadu has been an elected senator at the Abuja-based parliament since 2003 after moving into politics after years as a lawyer. His wife, five years his junior, is an academic and doctor and also a major public figure in Nigeria. They are believed to have four adult children.

They are both charged with conspiracy to arrange or facilitate travel of another person with a view to exploitation, namely organ harvesting. The have been remanded in custody and will appear at Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court today.

The Metropolitan Police has said the child, who is under the age of 18, at the centre of the alleged plot is in care. Organ harvesting involves removing parts of the body, often for cash and against the victim’s will.

Scotland Yard has not given the gender or the age of the child – or the location of the arrests. But given the suspects are appearing in court in Uxbridge, it is likely they were held at the nearby Heathrow Airport. 

Ekweremadu has been in the UK for at least the past fortnight having met with members of the Nigerian community in Britain in Lincoln around ten days ago. 

He tweeted: ‘It was a pleasure and an honour to receive a letter of appointment by the University of Lincoln, UK, as Visiting Professor of Corporate and International Linkages. I also got a highly treasured gift – a copy of the Magna Carta. It was created in 1215, about 807 years ago’.

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British security state collaborator Paul Mason’s war on ‘rogue academics’ exposed

In his covert assault on antiwar scholars, “left-wing” journalist and security state collaborator Paul Mason enlisted an academic snitch who knew his targets well.

In the latest installment of The Grayzone’s ongoing investigation into the anti-democratic, security state-influenced activities of Paul Mason, we look at how one of Britain’s most prominent alleged left-wing journalists and an ever-expanding cast of covert helpers targeted scholars who dared challenge establishment narratives on the conflict in Ukraine.

Amidst his campaign to neutralize the UK antiwar left, Paul Mason declared in an email to several academics willing to inform on and undermine their own colleagues: “the far left rogue academics is who I’m after… The important task is to quarantine their ‘soft’ influencers and expose/stigmatise the hard ideologists.”

Mason’s fishing expedition was conducted in apparent coordination with Andy Pryce, a senior British intelligence official involved in a series of malign information warfare and censorship initiatives.

The journalist’s key academic enabler, self-styled counter-disinformation researcher Emma Briant, not only helped further his campaign to target antiwar figures, but furnished bogus claims about one individual which appears to have inspired a BBC smear piece on academic critics of the established narrative about killings of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. Many of those she snitched on considered her a colleague and even a comrade.

Rather than own up to the activities exposed by the leaked emails, Briant has engaged in lawfare, threatening The Grayzone with a formal “cease and desist” demand. Sent by her lawyer on June 10th, the filing falsely charged that Kit Klarenberg, one of the authors of this article, played a direct role in the “misappropriation” of private communications.

Briant’s legal counsel went on to threaten that his client would seek a “prohibitory injunction” to prevent further reporting on the leaked material, if not launch a claim for compensation due to “damage to her career and reputation,” if this outlet failed to comply with the demand.

Briant’s attempt to muzzle The Grayzone is understandable, for as we will see, she has a lot to hide. 

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UK takes next step towards jailing people for thought crime

The excuse that “it was only a joke” will no longer fly in British courtrooms. On Tuesday, a former member of West Mercia Police was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison for sharing memes mocking the death of George Floyd.

The memes, which were shared in a private WhatsApp group with his friends, included pictures depicting George Floyd’s death, such as one featuring him as George of the Jungle, and another with a Muslim kneeling on him where a prayer mat ought to be, according to Sky News.

Former constable James Watts, who pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sending a grossly offensive or menacing message by public communication network, was initially ordered to pay measly compensation of £75 to the complainant, alongside a victim surcharge and a small court fee. However, the presiding judge, Tanveer Ikram, took it upon himself to make an example of Watts.

In delivering the 20-week prison sentence, Ikram declared that the former police officer “undermined confidence the public has in the police,” and that his behavior brought the organization into disrepute.

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Fired art teacher defends allowing girls as young as 15 to model topless, strike ‘simulated masturbation’ pose

A British high school art teacher was fired after allowing female students to pose topless for an art project. However, the teacher has defended her actions, and said that the class was done in the name of art.

Emma Wright, 41, had been working as an art teacher at Huxlow Science College in Northamptonshire, England, since 2004. In 2017, she permitted a lewd photoshoot to happen in her classroom.

A probe was launched in December 2017, after her school’s head of design discovered one student’s art portfolio containing the topless photos.

The investigation found that Wright had invited a photographer who specialized in “suggestive poses” to speak to her students. During the session, the school girls – some as young as 15 – reportedly disrobed.

“The pictures showed teenage girls posing only in their underwear, while holding cigarettes and booze containers, with their hands, bottles or cans covering otherwise naked breasts,” The Sun reported.

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Google Accused of Manipulating UK News Results With ‘Anti-Conservative Bias’: Whistleblower

A Google whistleblower told The Epoch Times that the Internet giant has an “anti-conservative bias” and search results are “reconfigured to what the establishment thinks.”

He added that “we have to use whatever democracy we have left to stop this.”

It follows allegations from a Daily Mail study that articles from mostly left-wing outlets were returned among the most searched terms on Google about UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, prompting the country’s culture secretary to say that it “tells us what many have suspected all along.”

On June 10, the Daily Mail showed that searching for Johnson on Google presented far more results from news sites hostile to him. The Guardian came up 38 times, The Independent was cited 14 times, and BBC News came up 24 times. More conservative-leaning outlets such as The Daily Telegraph came up four times, the Daily Express three times, and MailOnline twice.

The response was noted by UK Culture Secretary Nadine Dorres, who is setting up the Digital Markets Unit (DMU) that will oversee a new regulatory regime, and who is currently looking at various platforms to understand how algorithms can impact users’ online experiences.

“I have raised the issue of bias and algorithms distorting democratic content and opinion with Google,” Dorres told the Daily Mail. “They have promised to revert to me with evidence that this is not the case which I have yet to receive.”

“This evidence published by the Mail is fairly conclusive and tells us what many have suspected all along. We are looking at how we can address unfair bias and distortion in the forthcoming Digital Competition Bill,” she told the publication.

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