Gary Monro’s blog

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has accused Yahoo! of acting as police informant for the Chinese authorities - the result of which earned a Chinese journalist a 10-year prison sentence for ‘divulging state secrets abroad’.

“We already knew that Yahoo ! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,” the press freedom organisation said.

“Yahoo ! obviously complied with requests from the Chinese authorities to furnish information regarding an IP address that linked Shi Tao to materials posted online, and the company will yet again simply state that they just conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate,” the organisation said. “But does the fact that this corporation operates under Chinese law free it from all ethical considerations ? How far will it go to please Beijing ?”

Yahoo! isn’t the only organisation displeasing Reporters Without Borders.

Reporters Without Borders said it was disgusted to find that Microsoft was censoring the Chinese version of its blog tool, MSN spaces, the system automatically rejecting words including “democracy” and “Dalai Lama”.

RWB’s objections appear to be that foreign operators are obeying the laws of the land they operate in when they should, according to RWB, “respect certain basic ethical principles, in whatever country they are operating.” It’s an understandable - but highly dubious - claim.

Reporters Without Borders has been able to check that, as reported by several news agencies, when a Chinese blogger attempts to post a message containing terms such as “democracy”, “Dalai Lama”, “Falungong”, “4 June” (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), “China + corruption”, or “human rights”, a warning displays saying, “This message contains a banned expression, please delete this expression.”

RWB say Google will also be offering a censored search engine service in China.

Iraq’s President, the unfortunately named Jalal Talabani, believes Saddam Hussein had confessed to war crimes.

According to The Times the President said:

… an investigating judge had been “able to extract confessions from Saddam’s mouth” about a series of massacres and war crimes committed by his regime.

President Talabani’s more interesting quote was this one:

“I met the investigator who questioned Saddam,” said Mr Talabani said in an interview on state television. “He said he had extracted important confessions from Saddam Hussein and he signed them… There are 100 reasons to sentence Saddam to death.”

If Saddam is sentenced to death where will Britain stand on this? According to EU law we are not allowed to deport even terrorists to countries where they may be executed so I doubt our involvement in a coalition that is facilitating the death penalty will endear us to our masters in Europe. Will our government seek to over-rule the death penalty for Saddam?

Bit of a spam problem at the moment.

Have changed settings so that, if you’ve never posted before, your comments will need approving first. Once you are approved then your future comments will publish without me having to approve.

Sorry about this. I will check my approvals queue every 15 minutes or so which will hopefully mean comments will be posted fairly quickly.

Thanks…

Our Ken has confirmed in today’s Daily Telegraph that he believes power is more important than ideology.

“If the party believes that it has to choose a leader because of his views on the single currency, then in my opinion the party is beginning to lose touch with reality and will deserve to be in opposition for quite a long time,” he says.

Leaving aside Mr Clarke’s deliberate over-simplification of the issue - what’s at stake is the freedom of our country; the currency is just a physical manifestation of the loss of that freedom - does Mr Clarke really think his about-turn on Europe has closed the subject and put it out of harm’s way? Does he assume his new tune will not be used against him at the next election? Does he believe the government will refrain from taunting him over his apparent change of heart?

They will rip him to shreds over it, gleefully accusing him of opportunism and cynically exploiting the free-born Englishman’s disdain of foreign control of his own country. At every parliamentary debate they will question him, goad him to reveal his true feelings about Europe.

And, in so doing, the European wound will re-open, reminding the electorate that they face a choice which is no choice. Both parties will, on this issue, look exactly the same except one will be known to have been consistent on its view while the other will be exposed as having first checked which way the wind was blowing before deciding what it ‘believed’ in.

The question of British sovereignty must be decided now. Conservatives need a party that actually believes in such a thing and it must elect a leader who will fight for it. For all his many attractive traits Mr Clarke will not defend British sovereignty and therefore should not be leader of our party.

The Times:

A Christian joke fest, designed to determine what will fall foul of the government’s thought-crime bill takes place today at the Greenbelt Christian arts festival at Cheltenham racecourse.

In “The Laugh Judgment” competition, more than 4,000 people voted on 700 religious jokes sent in to the satirical Christian website ShipofFools.

The ten most offensive jokes were about Christianity.

The jokes voted the funniest were mainly about Christianity although other religions were mentioned in some.

The contest was started to highlight potential problems with the Government’s new religious hatred legislation.

Religious leaders as well as secularists oppose the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill which recommends a maximum seven-year jail sentence for anyone convicted of intending to stir up religious hatred.

Simon Jenkins, the editor of ShipofFools, said: “There is a lot of talk about religious offence but not enough specific discussion on the boundaries. Ridiculing some religious beliefs, criticising absurd religious practices and offending religious people was a way of life for Old Testament prophets. It’s not a freedom so much as a responsibility.”

Here’s one of the jokes:

JESUS came upon a small crowd who had surrounded a young woman they believed to be an adulteress. They were preparing to stone her to death. Jesus said: “Whoever is without sin among you, let them cast the first stone.”

An old lady at the back of the crowd picked up a huge rock and lobbed it at the young woman, scoring a direct hit on her head. The young lady collapsed dead.

Jesus looked over towards the old lady and said: “Do you know, mother, sometimes you really p*** me off.”