Paris Terrorist Outrage

(Please see UPDATE at end)



An attack on well-known satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has killed at least 12 people, including the editor and 3 other cartoonists and 2 police officers, with at least 4 seriously and a number of others less-gravely injured. It has been reported that two (later amended to three) gunmen used assault-rifles to kill those in the office before engaging in a gunfight with police outside and using a vehicle to escape, later found abandoned in a northern Paris street. The magazine obviously lampoons many targets, but it seems clear that its satirical cartoons mocking Moslem extremists have provoked this latest awful outrage. Free speech must be defended and maintained and terrorists not permitted to prevail!

Fuller details may be read in the BBC website here, with a regularly updated news and comment feed here.

I have added this awful outrage to the permanent memorial page in my personal website; the list of crimes marked there grows ever longer unfortunately.

UPDATE (Sunday 11JAN2014 14.15 GMT) Events moved swiftly after the first killings on 7th January, so this update attempts to summarise concisely the events of the next two days until resolution of the initial and later outrages was achieved. Summary - death toll in 4 separate locations; 17 victims and 3 of the terrorists. It began on 7th January with an attack on well-known satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were killed, including the editor and 3 other cartoonists and 2 police officers, with a further 11 injured. The attack was carried out by two Moslem extremist gunmen and after a hide-and-seek operation across a wide area north-east of Paris, two were cornered in a printing works in Dammartin-en-Göele (Seine-et-Marne) and very close to the main Paris airport of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle two days later; they were killed by police when they exited the building firing weapons. On 8th January a police officer was shot dead in the Paris suburb of Montrouge by one or two terrorists. On 9th January, two different terrorists took hostages in a Kosher (i.e. Jewish) grocery store, resulting in the deaths of 4 of the hostages. One of these two terrorists was shot dead, the other has escaped and is being searched for although various reports indicate she may already have left France and perhaps have travelled to Syria. Free speech must be defended and maintained and terrorists not permitted to prevail by intimidating us into silence!

Why I will never give up completely on traditional SW/LW/MW radios

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking increasingly about this arcane subject, having first begun to think about it seriously a few years ago. Like many people I have at least one ordinary radio in every room in my home (including bathrooms), with all of them capable of receiving long wave (LW), medium wave (MW) and frequency modulation (FM) transmissions; I also have several radios capable of receiving short wave (SW) transmissions - one of these is a pretty sophisticated multi-band short wave radio although it is very large and heavy, so I rarely use it nowadays and indeed it generally lurks on a bookcase shelf in my garage. Obviously I also have a radio in my car, able to receive LW/MW/FM transmissions.

About 4 or so years ago I got my first digital radio, also capable of receiving FM analogue broadcasts and a couple of years ago a second digital radio, also with FM analogue capability.

A year or so ago I got my first internet radio and it can be plugged into a broadband router or connected to it wirelessly; this allows easy radio reception from more or less every country on the planet with a huge range of stations available from most countries with very high quality audio; obviously a broadband internet connection is required to make this work. I now have two of these radios.

Long wave transmissions have been broadcast for many decades, although are much less used nowadays, but they have a quite big reception radius (for example I used to listen to BBC Radio 4 LW when I lived in Paris and know that signals can be picked up as far away as northern Spain with adequate clarity under most weather conditions; the number of separate stations that can be fitted into this broadcast spectrum is quite limited though so there is great risk of interference if too many stations try to broadcast on similar frequencies because of the long reception range. Medium wave has a smaller, but still quite large, reception radius, whereas FM has a smaller reception range still, but provided a decent quality signal is available and the aerial is angled correctly, can provide much better quality reception that is hiss- and crackle-free. Short wave broadcasts can be picked up world-wide, but are very dependent on atmospheric conditions and time of day, with different short wave bands being used at different times of day when signals are being beamed to particular parts of the world.

Digital radio is a definite 'advance' (in some respects) on MW/FM broadcasts in particular; the reception is generally crystal-clear, but only domestic broadcasts can be listened to and only those which are carried on the digital platform and this is by no means all of them. I did take one of my digital radios to Spain a few years ago, but the digital receiver did not work there (I understand the technical specifications for digital broadcasts for different countries are different), although I was able to use it for FM broadcast reception, but because of the lack of digital reception capability there I brought it back to the UK to use it to its fullest extent.

Internet radio is mostly a marvellous advance - a huge range of domestic and worldwide broadcasts can be picked up easily - and the sound is of [equally] high quality whether one is listening to voice radio from the UK (such as BBC Radio 4) or similar kinds of domestic and international broadcasts from places such as New Zealand, Australia or Canada; the same is true of other kinds of broadcast such as classical music for example. Without an internet broadband connection however it will not work.

So why am I writing this article, specially with the title I have chosen? I certainly recognise the advantages of both digital and internet radio broadcasts - high quality audio with both and with the latter the capability of easy reception of broadcasts from all over the world. However, digital radio does require a decent signal and I have occasionally experienced signal break-up under certain atmospheric conditions, specially during the summer (I did query this a few years ago with the BBC technical people and was told that atmospheric conditions should not affect reception quality, but in my experience this is simply not true; to digress for a moment this signal fall-off also occurs in summer on Freeview TV reception). I live within line of sight of the broadcast transmitters for both radio and TV and it is not very many miles away, across water, so the signal strength is generally excellent. As for internet radio, it is excellent most of the time, but occasionally reception will break-up, even though there is a broadband signal and occasionally too a broadcast will not be available for "legal reasons" - this happens from time to time on BBC Radio 4 'Today' and whether I happen to be listening on my internet radio here in the UK or the similar radio I have at my home in Spain.

This last point brings me to the crux of my whole article:
- Digital radio is suitable only for listening to domestic broadcasts and not all domestic broadcasts are carried on this platform. We live in the UK in a pretty liberal democracy; the same is true of [most of] Europe and a number of other countries and regions (which I generally classify as North America, Australasia [Australia and New Zealand] and Japan/South Korea/Taiwan/India, plus perhaps a few others, for example parts of South America), but there is no getting away from the fact that one is with digital radio only able to listen to what the licensing authority in one's country chooses to allow one to listen to. The increase in reception quality that digital radio undoubtedly makes possible is at the price of being limited to only domestic broadcasts and only some of those;
- Internet radio is generally wonderful, except when one's internet connection is interrupted, which also of course means when the electricity supply is interrupted (which doesn't happen often either here in the UK or Spain, but it does occasionally), because although the radio itself can work for many hours on its rechargeable lithium battery, the broadband router cannot. Internet radio is also dependent on the proper functioning of the internet, which occasionally suffers technical problems resulting in a temporary interruption of connectivity, but is [more than] theoretically subject to political or perhaps commercial interference here or elsewhere.

Of course conventional radio broadcasts (SW/LW/MW) are also subject to some of these same problems as signals can be "jammed" more or less effectively by governments who do not wish their citizens to listen to certain (usually foreign) broadcasts, often in time of war, but also during peacetime or periods of "cold war". But generally speaking these methods of broadcasting are less-dependent on the full functioning of an advanced technological society and less subject to efforts to stop one listening to them for whatever reason, benign or not. So whilst I make full use of digital and internet radio, I never want to lose my ability to make use of less advanced technology - one never knows when this might become crucial, as people in some countries where governments block some of the internet already know all too well. Whenever there are breaks in my internet radio reception of BBC Radio 4 'Today' (referred to above) for 'legal reasons', I can easily switch to my digital or FM radios, but that may not always be possible under all circumstances. I prefer to retain my freedom to circumvent whatever controls may sometimes be placed on these more advanced broadcasting technologies. My motto is always to be as prepared as possible and not to become complacent - recent events around the world have only hardened this determination on my part.

Hong Kong government scraps Chinese patriotism classes

It is a salutary reminder that democracy, even in the limited version permitted in Hong Kong (both before it was handed back to China in 1997, but even more since then), is only possible and indeed sustainable with the active support of local people. The latest 'spat' involves plans to introduce from 2016 at the latest a mandatory [Beijing-sponsored] curriculum to be taught in all primary and secondary schools, designed it would seem to inculcate (aka 'brainwash') what is being described, probably completely accurately, as naked Communist Party propaganda. [Beijing-appointed] Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying had earlier rejected pleas to meet with protestors opposing the policy, but in an abrupt volte face has scrapped the mandatory aspect of the policy:

"The amendment of this policy means that we are giving the authority to the schools. "The schools are given the authority to decide when and how they would like to introduce the moral and national education."

I note the qualification "if" relating to the introduction of this policy is absent. Whilst it is pleasing that the pressure of public opinion has forced the Hong Kong government to reverse (or at least delay or weaken) its earlier stance, dictated by a largely pro-Beijing elite in the Hong Kong SAR which had supported the election of Mr Leung to his post in March this year, it is clear that it will require continuing vigilance on the part of brave citizens there to ensure that the existing semi-autonomy of Hong Kong is assured in the future.

(As a former resident of Hong Kong I retain a keen interest in developments there.)

Twitter joke trial - conviction quashed in High Court

The origins of this case go back 2 1/2 years when a man, Paul Chambers, posted a message on Twitter which read: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!!" in relation to the closure of Robin Hood Airport in January 2010 because of adverse weather conditions. Paul Chambers had been intending to fly to Northern Ireland to meet someone he had earlier 'met' through exchanges on Twitter. No-one amongst followers who read the message soon after it was posted seems to have found the message alarming in any way, they treated it as a joke. This happened on 6th January 2010; five days later on 11th January an off-duty security employee of the airport was apparently searching at home for any mention of 'Robin Hood Airport' on Twitter and came across the 'offending' tweet and although he thought it was just a joke he reported it to his 'line manager' who thought likewise, but 'in accordance with procedure' reported it to the airport police who thought likewise also, again 'in accordance with procedure' reported it to South Yorkshire Police who, on balance, thought likewise (that it was a joke and not a credible threat, just to drive the point home), after however arresting Mr Chambers and interrogating him. Next the matter was referred by South Yorkshire Police to the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) who decided there was a case to answer. As a result Mr Chambers was charged, prosecuted and convicted at a Magistrates Court with the conviction later upheld on appeal before Doncaster Crown Court in March 2011.

The High Court has now overturned the conviction (read the full judgement of the High Court here (.pdf file)), basically because there was no criminal intention or act - in other words it was a joke.

I remember hearing about this case soon after Mr Chambers was arrested in January 2010 and thought the whole idea of him being arrested was completely ridiculous and indeed a 'joke', although of course no joke for Mr Chambers who lost his job and effectively became unemployable.

No-one involved in investigating this case, at whatever level, seems seriously to have believed that the offending tweet was anything but a joke, perhaps in poor taste, but a joke nonetheless. Nevertheless the jobsworth mentality involved in following processes dictated by 'in accordance with procedure' meant that in order for those involved to protect their own backs (read the linked article on 'jobsworth' for more on this) they had to report it on up the chain, even though none of them thought there was any credible threat or risk. Indeed in the High Court deliberations the point was made that even after the relevant tweet was noticed by the off-duty airport security employee there was no evidence of any increase in the 'threat alert' at the airport or indeed that any other action was taken at the airport as a result of the tweet. So, all these jobsworths did what the rules said they had to do, this includes the CPS, just in case, one supposes, anything untoward did occur they could not later be held to have overlooked their duties.

Until of course the High Court comes along and, rightly, concludes that Mr Chambers had contravened no law so had no case to answer.

I'm afraid I must also introduce an element of raw partisan politics into this murky affair, because this touches directly upon the freedom of expression of all of us - as is pointed out here, a climate of fear grew up (and was actively fostered by the Labour government by their deeds and actions, as exemplified by the reference to Home Office advice in the linked article, not to mention the Labour supporter being physically ejected from a Labour Party conference for heckling, which I wrote about here) which led many people to worry unnecessarily about saying what is in their minds - not just the usual and sensible prohibition on shouting "Fire!" in a crowded public place when there is not in fact a fire (or saying at the airport check-in "I have a bomb in my bag" for a joke, as another example). The quashing of Mr Chambers' conviction goes a little way toward re-establishing freedom of expression in this country! And perhaps will allow Mr Chambers to get a job, too.

What we're not supposed to mention in the UK ...

Injunction, smimjunction - visit here if you care to.

Or indeed:
- here (Telegraph); or
- here (Daily/Sunday Mail); or
- here (Times); or
- here (Financial Times);
- and many hundreds of other articles all around the planet.

The best a man can get?



- The AP news agency reports on what a major sponsor is doing to distance itself from this ongoing disaster. Like many millions of men around the world I use Gillette products on a daily basis; none of this 'brouhaha' is likely to affect my habits in any way, of course. And why should it?

British (English) law is, once again, made to look like a complete ass in a matter that really has little or nothing to do with the UK, with our complaisant legal system being used by a foreigner who doesn't reside here to pursue ends in a foreign country which few in that foreign country or anywhere else are likely to pay much attention to.

But I'm apparently not supposed to talk about it. As Manuel from Fawlty Towers might have said "I know nothing"!

Truly, truly bizarre ...

The destruction of the Berlin Wall twenty years on

Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall was opened and East and West Berliners could mingle with each other freely for the first time in very many years. Although most people in the capital of the now-defunct East Germany welcomed the new freedom it gave them, not everyone there was so sanguine, as the linked article mentions; whether that nostalgia for a failed systen is simply viewing history through rose-tinted spectacles is perhaps not for me to judge (although I do think it completely idiotic). Undoubtedly, though, many former East Germans have suffered economic hardship, even with the support provided by the newly-unified Federal Republic, but I surmise that the greatest damage remains pyschological - however bad the old Communist regime was, it provided a framework (or a prison) for life and there was certainty of a kind; I accept that the self-esteem of many people there took a severe hit in the aftermath of the disappearance of a State many of them will have been born into. All that, and secure (if badly-paid) employment, disappeared. However I confess I cannot work up much sympathy for the man in the linked story whose firm was acquired by a West German company which asked him to move 120 Km - he preferred to lose his job; well tough, that's life, get used to it! If Angela Merkel (a former East German citizen, too) had adopted that attitude she certainly wouldn't be Chancellor of Germany today. The initial doubts that many East Germans expressed about the possibility of re-uniting the two parts of the country soon evapaorated, and their desire to retain a 'socialist' system (which is what they had been brought up to consider as the norm) soon disappeared, when they became accustomed to the practical benefits which their new political freedoms allowed them to aspire to .

I don't imagine that even President Reagan could have imagined that his 1987 speech in West Berlin, against the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate, could have brought about the end of the discredited East German puppet regime so rapidly and that it would be followed only a couple of years later by the break-up of the Soviet Union itself:

US President Ronald Reagan:
"Mr Gorbachev. Tear down this wall!"


- Helmut Kohl, West German Chancellor at the time, beams and claps in approval.

Naturally a lot of people have been drawn to Berlin in the days, weeks, months and years since those heady days 20 years ago (I was in Dubai/Abu Dhabi at the time - I travelled frequently between the two and lived in both then, but have not been to Berlin so far), and apart from Berliners there were obviously a lot of others there at the time I suppose and not just foreign journalists, but it seems that [now President] Nicolas Sarkozy wasn't amongst their number for the 'big event' as his 'Facebook' entry apparently said he had been, although he may well have been there a day or two later; no doubt the memory plays tricks [ahem!] after so many years.

During the roughly 28 years of the wall's existence most people were trying to get out of East Germany, but just a very few were headed in the other direction, including this British person [and Communist 'fellow-traveller']. Having joined the British Communnist Party on his 18th birthday in 1948 and working as a Party organiser for 18 years, he moved to East Germany in 1976, where he acted as a Stasi (secret police) informer on British citizens there. John Tarver, who is now 79, says he regrets supporting Communism with such zeal [and I suppose it is good that he has learned this lesson at long last], but his explanation that as a person brought up in the Catholic faith he needed "a strong belief system" is a poor kind of excuse. Apparently he has now gone back to his Catholic roots. Good luck to him and I hope he lives out his days peacefully; it is just a pity that his personal 'crisis of faith' caused him to live his life so despicably for so many years by making life unbearable for those whom he chose to inform on. But that is 'socialists' for you, full of excuses and self-justification for their outrageous behaviour! If anyone is offended by my blanket categorisation of all 'socialists' and 'socialism' as odious, I really don't care - they can get lost(!), so far as I am concerned.

To end this article on a more cordial note, I look back on today twenty years ago as a very positive development, not just for Germany, but for the whole of Europe.

Is freedom of speech only for those people one happens to agree with?

Or is freedom of speech for everyone?

Like a lot of people I was shocked and angry, and more pertinently fearful, at the election of two British National Party candidates as MEPs during last week's European Parliament elections. I loathe and abhor everytthing about the BNP, but it is a legal political party. I've written here before (here in May 2007 and here in July 2004) denouncing the misguided prohibition on BNP members being employed in various types of employment such as the police.

Similarly, I think the actions of some opponents of the BNP in making it physically impossible for newly-elected BNP MEPs to hold a 'press conference' (aka 'publicity stunt') in London yesterday was completely misguided and quite possibly counter-productive; people receptive to the filth that the BNP promulgates are likely only to see such actions as 'proof' that they are as disriminated against as they claim. The same anti-democratic antics were apparently on display again today in Manchester from people opposed to allowing BNP MEPs to speak. Personally I believe in confronting odious views with debate and discussion - I have sufficient confidence in the strength and validity of my beliefs to be willing to argue against views I dislike, but some people obviouusly don't share this view. They think it satisfactory simply to prevent people speaking with whom they disagree. Whatever this is it is most certainly not 'democracy'.

If the government or anyone else in authority wants to make it impossible for members of odious organisations like the BNP to have a political platform then they should declare it an illegal organisation and have done with it! I do NOT advocate this as a 'solution', because it would not solve anything, merely drive 'underground' people who support BNP ideas. I don't like having to defend the right of odious people such as Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons to speak in public, but defend it I must. Democracy and freedom of speech is not just for 'nice' people, it's for everyone or it has no value - and the police should have been on hand yesterday to defend the right of legally-elected politicians to speak. But the police were curiously-absent in this video report or an event taking place in Parliament Square, which must be in one of the most heavily-policed parts of London. Why? I would hate to think it is because the Metropolitan Police and/or the Labour Government had asked the police not to intervene because it was politically expedient (as Labour had suffered most at the European Parliament elections), but I'm afraid I am forced to consider it as a possibility. Would a violent demonstration like that yesterday have been permitted for a cause with which the Labour Government had no sympathy? That's a hard question, but I'm afraid it HAS to be asked! Specially when one recalls scenes of an elderly Labour Party member who heckled in a pretty restrained manner Jack Straw (then Home Secretary) at a Labour Party conference being forcibly removed from the hall, or the lady who wished merely to recite the names of British military personnel killed in Iraq since 2003 whilst standing near the Cenotaph in London being bundled away by the police and having her DNA samples taken as well as being found guilty of breaching Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act(!), or this sad incident during another Labour Conference.

What this seems to illustrate, no let me be less mealy-mouthed about it, what it DOES illustrate is that under this present Labour Government, policing and justice depends upon whether views held are 'approved' by Labour. Those who hold views that Labour disagrees with can expect harrassment, whether direct or indirect (by permitting hooligans to shout down views the Government happens not to like).

To summarise, I may loathe and despise everything that the BNP stands for, but whilst it remains a legal organisation their right to express their views within the law must be defended.

The UN and 'freedom of expression'

Do these folks have any clue what it means?

TV crew expelled from UN meeting on freedom of expression
- and the crew expelled were from the very 'high brow' Franco-German cultural channel ARTE, not some tabloid trashy sensationalist outfit. I've watched a few programmes on that channel in my time and have always found it to be impeccable in its standards, if a little self-consciously 'intellectual'.

Three member states (United States, Canada and Israel) have already stated they will not attend the forthcoming conference in Durban during April, for which the Geneva meeting was a prelude, whereas three EU member states (the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands) are only threatening to boycott the conference if the resolution proposed by various of the world's tyrannies is accepted. On the other hand I observe that Israel has prevented western news media from entering Gaza of late, so its presence among the 'boycotters' seems, frankly, somewhat hypocritical.