Monday, 12 January 2015

An apology




On Saturday 10th of January I received a message saying that my Facebook page was going to be shut down because of (unspecified) violations of Facebook Terms and Conditions.

Obviously I was extremely worried because I've worked incredibly hard to build up an audience of over 130,000 followers, so I followed the instructions on how to appeal against the decision.

I notified my followers that I'd received this threat and the response was overwhelming. Thousands of people followed my backup page and my Twitter account, and dozens of people sent me personal messages of support. Several people contacted Facebook directly to plead for my page not to be removed.

I went to bed on Saturday night extremely worried that all of my hard work on my Another Angry Voice Facebook page was going to be destroyed, and when I woke up on Sunday morning and found that I'd been locked out of my page, I thought that my fears had come true.

When I logged into my Facebook account again I was confronted with a Facebook notification that an unusual effort to log into my account had been registered in Kosovo, and I immediately realised that I'd been scammed by a Facebook page theft operation.

The appeals page I had responded to was an elaborate phishing scam, which appeared like an authentic Facebook page by making it appear as if I had to log onto Facebook again, exactly as has happened when Facebook have notified me that I've supposedly violated (unspecified) Terms and Conditions on previous occasions.

The "appeals page" looked particularly convincing because it was done using a Facebook app, meaning that the internet address of this fake appeal page was hosted on Facebook.

Once I realised that I had been scammed I contacted Facebook straight away to provide details (the url of the page theft app, screen shots, and the identity of the "Get Verified" page that was running the scam), Facebook then acted swiftly to shut them down.
               
One of the tricks this "Get Verified" page had used to avoid getting shut down was having no cover photo, meaning that it's impossible to report the page to Facebook by following their instructions (click the cover photo, then select "report page"). 

This page theft operation had been around since mid-2013, so who knows how many other pages they had caught out with this kind of scam before I got their page shut down.
     
One of the most recent statuses on their page was a boast in Albanian about how they would never be banned from Facebook, so I'm delighted that I've got them shut down and shown their hubris for what it was.
   
Why did I fall for this scam?

Obviously I feel like an idiot for falling for a phishing scam like this, and I've been asking myself how a supposedly smart guy like me could fall for a scam like this ever since. Here are some of my answers:

1. Time pressure

The idea that my page was to be deleted within a day unless I followed the appeals process made me act really quickly, without the care and consideration I would probably have used under normal circumstances. When I looked at the phishing app more carefully after I had realised that it was a scam, I noticed a really obvious spelling mistake. Had it not have been for the stress of the time pressure, I'm pretty sure that (even as a mild dyslexia sufferer) I would have noticed the spelling error and realised that it was a scam.

2. Realism

The scam was very realistic in the way that it mimicked the terminology and processes of Facebook notifications. Given that this page theft operation had been in existence for over 18 months, I hate to imagine how many pages had fallen for their scam and had their pages taken over and deleted by them.

3. Regularity of threats

One of the things that made this supposed threat from Facebook seem so realistic in my mind is the regularity of threats made against my page. I've received countless threats from right-wing groups, political parties and individuals all promising to get my page deleted from Facebook; I've got a few disturbingly fixated cyber-stalkers who regularly cause trouble; I've got right-wing groups using their Facebook pages to launch personal attacks against me; and I recently had one of my images mass reported, resulting in it getting removed by Facebook.

The culmination of all of this is that I found it easy to believe the idea that an orchestrated campaign by some extreme-right group or other had succeeded in getting Facebook to take action against me.
Apology

By making a public announcement saying that Facebook had threatened to remove my page I made a big mistake, for which I feel the need to apologise.

Firstly I would like to apologise for all of the worry and stress caused to the people who follow my page that I caused by falling for this scam. I'd especially like to apologise to people who took the time to contact Facebook to plead on my behalf, and those who spent their time raising awareness. I'm sorry that I fell for this scam, and I'm really sorry that I wasted your time as a result.

I'd also like to apologise to Facebook. The accusation that they were threatening to censor me was made in good faith (I genuinely believed that it came from Facebook when I said it), but now that I know that I was mistaken, it is my obligation to apologise to them too.

I'd also like to note that it was Facebook's security procedures that saved my page from being taken over. Had Facebook not locked down my account when an unexpected Kosovan IP address tried to log onto it, who knows what might have happened?

I'd also like to thank the guy I contacted at Facebook for ensuring that this "Get Verified" scam page was shut down as soon as possible.

Conclusion


I was brought up by my parents to believe that it takes bravery for a person to admit to their mistakes and apologise for them. I hope that by publishing this article I have set the record straight, and that people will forgive me for my mistake.
 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
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Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 19:05 0 comments
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The best of #FoxNewsFacts


In early January 2015 Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel ran a bizarre fearmongering interview with a so-called terrorism expert called Steve Emerson, who made a series of increasingly bizarre and misleading statements including the claims that the city of Birmingham is 100% Muslim and that London has special Muslim dress code police who attack people who refuse to wear Islamic attire.

The embedded video below is the specific 30 second segment that triggered the #FoxNewsFacts Twitter storm, but the full five minute clip is actually much more disturbing because this supposed "expert" (who has apparently contributed to at least seven congressional committees) made a load of other fearmongering claims like "Europe is finished" with the presenter fueling the fire by harping on about how European countries like France, Belgium and Germany are "metastasizing" with "caliphates". You can see the full clip here.



#FoxNewsFacts

The reaction to this story on Twitter was absolutely brilliant, with thousands of British people mocking Fox News with made up facts of their own using the hashtag #FoxNewsFacts. 
Here is a selection of my favourites.











I couldn't resist having a go myself:
Some people couldn't resist spoiling the party by using the hashtag to present actual facts about Birmingham though!

Even after Steve Emerson apologised for having completely made up his claims about Birmingham the ridicule kept coming.


Conclusion

On the down side it is alarming that inaccurate fearmongering gibberish like that is being presented as "news" in the United States by a channel that is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is a guy who Tweeted that the Charlie Hebdo atrocity was the collective responsibility of all Muslims (Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Ahmadiyya, Ibadi ... who cares? They're all the same right?).

On a more positive note, #FoxNewsFacts is a demonstration that when people make inaccurate or insulting comments about the British, we take the piss, and once we get going there's no stopping us. The fact that #FoxNewsFacts has been trending ever since this fearmongering rubbish was broadcast demonstrates that a significant percentage of Brits now see Murdoch's Fox News channel as a byword for inaccurate and misleading journalism, and little more than a target for satire.
 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website that accepts no donations from big business, political parties or governments. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
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Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 13:57 0 comments
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Saturday, 10 January 2015

We need to talk about cyber-bullying


With my Facebook posts reaching an average of about 2 million Facebook news feeds per week these days, you can imagine that I'm beginning to get quite a few instances of negative feedback.

Of course people are free to disagree with me. As much as I appreciate all of the messages of support I get, one of the great joys is debating with people who can explain differing viewpoints without lacing their comments with personal attacks and obvious logical fallacies (as rare as these people seem to be on the right-wing-authoritarian segment of the political compass).

Discourse and debate are hugely valuable and worthwhile activities if conducted in a mutually respectful manner.

 As a result of my commitment to open discourse I hardly ever delete comments or ban people from my page because I so firmly believe that free debate is vital to a functioning democracy. Once we begin deleting points of view that we disagree with, we're just constructing hollow echo chambers for the repetition of our own ideas. 

                   
"You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits."

One of the most hilarious criticisms I've ever received came from a guy who posted a comment directly onto my wall saying nothing more than "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits".

 The more I repeated this phrase in my head, the funnier it seemed. It's hilarious that someone typed such a grammatically flawed and entirely self-defeating statement. Then I thought of someone actually saying those words to my face, which made me laugh even more.

I was chuckling to myself as I wrote my riposte, which in retrospect was a bit glib and not all that funny. The important thing is that I wasn't angry, I was retorting in jest at such an audacious display of incoherence, and doing it with a smile on my face.

After writing my reply I thought no more of it and went off to chat to a friend on Skype for an hour or so before returning to my computer.
                       
Consequences

To continue the story I have to explain how Facebook works for a moment, apologies if this bit is boringly familiar, but let's assume that there are some who don't know this. As the owner of a popular page with 100,000+ followers, if I reply to a comment that someone else has posted on my Facebook wall, that story immediately jumps from complete obscurity into thousands of people's news feeds.

So that's exactly what happened to "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits.". Suddenly more people had seen that post, than the overwhelming majority of the other Facebook interactions the guy who wrote it had ever made in his life.

While I was chatting to my friend on Skype, loads of other people were commenting on the "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits" thread. At first the comments from other people were lighthearted, but it soon descended in tone dramatically with someone claiming that the guy looked like a paedophile, and others browsing through his Facebook profile and making remarks about the shitness of the contents. Throughout all of this, the guy didn't respond or interact in any way. He wasn't defending himself, and he certainly wasn't saying anything else rude or obnoxious to wind people up.
     
A bit further down the thread someone had drawn attention to the guy's contact details and his employer details. This made me very uneasy indeed. If someone writes something totally outrageous like declaring murderous intentions, appealing for ethnic genocide or calling someone a paedophile without the remotest shred of evidence, I can see the justification for considering whether to inform their employers or the police. If they've written "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits" and nothing else, then I can see no justification at all. 
     
Someone else sneered that despite being very right-wing and confused, the guy had once had Nelson Mandela as his profile picture. As far as I'm concerned, some kind of tribute to Mandela isn't something to be sneered at, it's actually a sign that behind the obvious cloud of angry right-wing confusion that he occupies, this guy actually empathises with a man who spent 27 years in prison to achieve more black equality in South Africa. It's a sign that if we were nice to him, we could probably convince him about the value of social justice, and the importance of rejecting right-wing economic apartheid.

     
My response

I was horrified when I came back to find this had happened because when I wrote "Sentence a form can at coherent least I. [rearrange to win a prize]" in reply to "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits", I only meant it as a joke, I certainly didn't mean to trigger a nasty spate of cyber-bullying.

I deleted the "he looks like a paedophile" comment as soon as I saw it and wrote a comment expressing my opposition to cyber-bullying, pointing out that it was completely unacceptable to compare someone to a paedophile, and totally out of order to threaten the guy's livelihood by bringing his employer into the situation. I also noted that I'd deleted a comment because I always notify when I delete anything in order to maintain transparency. 

That the guy was dealt a load of nastiness as a consequence of me making a light-hearted joke saddened me because I remember what it was like to suffer bullying as a child, and the self-esteem and social confidence problems those experiences triggered in me.

Setting off a spate of malicious cyber-bullying by responding in jest to a comment that was definitely hilarious enough to deserve one has made me think about cyber-bullying and my responsibilities as a guy with an almost unbreakable no-censorship policy.

If replying to someone writing "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits" on my Facebook wall triggers cyber-bullying, then it seems like a moral obligation to simply ignore "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits" type comments in future rather than risk inadvertently triggering another parade of unacceptable nastiness, some of which needs deleting.
                   
I would be saddened if further spates of bullying convince me of this obligation to ignore most of the comments on my wall, because "You are a bit much of liberal fuck wits" is genuinely one of the funniest things I've read in ages, so funny it thoroughly deserved a response.
   
Where is the line?

This is an important question for all of us to consider. I think that a bit of ridicule is fine, as long as it's not done in a spiteful manner. If you ever see me reply in a manner that you consider spiteful, please flag it up and I'll reconsider my tone.

The same goes for people who comment on my page. You guys need to consider your tone as well, because I don't want to end up in a position where I have to self-censor in order to avoid triggering remarks that will make me have to delete comments, which I hate having to do.

It is sometimes difficult to know where to draw the line, but one of the most important considerations is "fightback". If the person you are criticising or lightly ridiculing fights back by writing more bizarre and outrageous things, then it's not really so out of order to retort in kind. They're obviously "up for it" if they argue back. We just have to be careful never to lower the tone more than they do themselves.

If we look at where their line appears to be, then endeavour to toe a more reasonable and respectful one, there is still plenty of scope to be funnier, more knowledgeable, more logical or simply more coherent than they are.

If they throw a load of below-the-belt punches, it's hardly out of order to come back with a factual body blow, a logical uppercut or a witty sucker-punch. If they don't fight back at all it's a completely different matter, and it's really important to be careful what is said because they may be taking their punches very badly indeed for all we know.*

Be cool to one another

     
The Internet is like a playground full of children at different levels of development. It's up to the more sensible kids on the playground to teach the annoying ones how to behave in a more appropriate manner. The best way to do this is to lead by example.

If the older and smarter children question, criticise or lightly ridicule the annoying smaller children for their outrageous behaviour, that's good because the badly behaved kids might learn to behave more appropriately.

If the older children resort to bullying the little ones, that achieves nothing positive at all.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
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* = Apologies for the extended boxing analogy in that paragraph, I rarely watch the sport, but it seemed apt.
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Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 15:46 0 comments
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David Cameron's unexpected Green Party ultimatum



In January 2015 David Cameron announced that he would not participate in the pre-election leaders' debates unless the mainstream media decision to exclude the Green Party is reversed.

At first it might seem a little odd that David Cameron would be speaking up for a party that are on the opposite end of the political spectrum to his own, especially given that the polls show that a majority of Tory supporters don't want the Green Party included in the debates. However it doesn't take a great deal of political knowledge to understand why he's taken this stance.

UKIP are already posing a serious threat to David Cameron's Tory party, especially in marginal constituencies, and the decision to invite Nigel Farage to the pre-election leaders' debates has only upped the pressure further. If Farage does well in the debates, which seems likely given that he's a far more competent orator than the other three, the Tories look set to lose an awful lot of votes to UKIP, and any chance of forming the next government.

David Cameron is clearly trying to offset the threat posed to his party by UKIP by forcing the invitation of the Green Party, who would clearly stand to gain votes from Labour and the Liberal Democrats rather than the Tories, should Natalie Bennett do well.

The other consideration is that if the mainstream media stand their ground against Cameron, and against public opinion, and maintain their exclusion of the Green Party, then the debates couldn't go ahead, which is an even better scenario for Cameron than the inclusion of the Green Party. After all, it seems highly likely that Cameron would get mauled by Farage whether Natalie Bennett were there or not (unless Farage has one of those weird off-days that result in stuff like that infamous LBC "car crash" interview last year).

This demand for Green Party inclusion is actually a very smart tactical ploy from Cameron and the Conservatives, because it's a win-win situation for them. If the Green Party are included, the pressure on Labour and the Lib-Dems will be increased, and if they are not, Cameron can avoid the debate altogether.

It is very rare indeed that I agree with anything David Cameron does, but in this instance I think he's actually doing the right thing in calling for the Green Party to be included in the debates.

What makes this stance even better from my perspective is that it is transparently clear to everyone that Cameron is doing the right thing for the entirely wrong reasons. He doesn't give a damn that the Green Party surge has made them a much stronger political force, nor about the promotion of political diversity, nor about fairer media coverage for the biggest anti-austerity party. It's absolutely clear that Cameron has only taken this position out of pure self-interested opportunism. So not only is Cameron supporting a cause I believe in, he's demonstrating once again, that Tories are essentially only driven by pure self-interest.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
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Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 00:07 0 comments
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Thursday, 8 January 2015

Different reactions to the Charlie Hebdo assassinations


On the first Wednesday of 2015 the world witnessed the boldest display of Islamist barbarity in the history of the French nation, in which 12 people were killed by masked gunmen with parts of the assault caught on CCTV cameras and broadcast across the world.

The target of the attacks was the office of a Paris based magazine called Charlie Hebdo that few outside of France had ever even heard of. The magazine staff were murdered in cold blood for the supposed "crime" of committing satire. For those who don't know, Charlie Hebdo is a satirical left-wing anti-religious newspaper featuring comment and cartoons (a little bit like a cross between Viz and Private Eye). The reason they were attacked by Islamist fanatics is that they had published several satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

Aside from eight members of the magazine staff, two police officers, a guy who was in the building to do some maintenance work and a visitor to the office were also gunned down in cold blood and a mother and five year old child were held at gunpoint in order to elicit the security code for the building.

My reaction

Regular readers will already be familiar with my advocacy of non-violence, my strong opposition to all forms of absolutism and my tendency toward moderation rather than extremism, but to spell it out in the clearest terms possible for the avoidance of doubt I'll say this: The perpetrators of this barbaric attack are evil fanatics who have done a huge amount of damage to the freedoms that Europeans hold dear, because this attack on freedom of speech is not only an attack on freedom within itself, it's also yet more ammunition for right-wing authoritarians like Theresa May and her Tory party colleagues, who delight in using the actions of deranged fanatics like these to undermine and dismantle the freedoms and liberties that so many of our ancestors fought to achieve and died to maintain.

 The target of these Islamist fanatics may have been the freedom of expression that Europeans hold so dear, but these deranged extremists have clearly done far more damage to the Islamic faith (that they falsely claim to represent) than they have to the rights of Europeans to express ourselves. Every time an Islamist fanatic commits an atrocity like this, they severely damage Islam because they foster ever more hostility towards Islam and Muslims from people who are unwilling or unable to differentiate between the actions of a minority of dangerous Islamist fanatics, and the entire concept of Islam.

Muslim reactions

European Muslims have been vociferous in their condemnation of this atrocity. The Union des Organisations Islamiques de France were unequivocal in their condemnation of the attack calling it "barbarous" and "unacceptable". They called for French Muslims to demonstrate their solidarity with the victims by attending memorial events and protests against Islamist extremism.

The Muslim Council of Britain were also swift to condemn the attacks with a clear and concise statement that "The Muslim Council of Britain condemns this attack. Whomever the attackers are, and whatever the cause may be, nothing justifies the taking of life".
    
Al-Azhar University (which is the most importance centre for Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in the world) released a statement criticising the Paris attack as un-Islamic and denouncing the use of violence.

The Arab League condemned the attacks, as did many specific Islamic states including Saudi Arabia. When even the brutal totalitarian Saudi regime is criticising their barbarity, it's absolutely clear that these fanatics are at the very edge of the violent extremist fringe.

Islamist reactions

Whilst the vast majority of Muslims condemn this kind of atrocity because it goes against the teachings of the Qar'an (which prohibits murder, the killing of non-combatants and sneak attacks), a few Islamist extremists celebrated the attack as if it was some kind of triumphant victory, rather than a bunch of heavily armed cowards wearing masks to hide their identities as they assassinated unarmed civilians in cold blood.

The gloating and jeering of Islamist extremists on Twitter is absolutely disgusting, and those joyfully declaring that "Europeans will never live in safety again" because of this are both delusional and un-Islamic. They're delusional because they seem totally unaware that France (and most of mainland Europe) survived, and recovered from, years of Nazi occupation (which was far worse than anything a bunch of Islamist extremists could ever dream of inflicting), and they're un-Islamic because the Qar'an repeatedly instructs Muslims to live in peace, and not to go around killing innocent people and trying to make people live in fear.

The "leftie-liberal media"

Many on the extreme right try to paint "lefties" and "liberals" as the culprits for acts of Islamist barbarism, because, according to extreme-right doctrine, the liberal left and the Islamist fanatics love each other unconditionally. The sheer idiocy of this stance is illustrated by the fact that Charlie Hebdo is an unashamedly left-wing and liberal publication, making them a very odd choice of target if the extreme-right orthodoxy is to be believed, and an odd choice of publication for the extreme-right to suddenly begin championing too.

In my view the "leftie-liberal media" (as embodied in the UK by the Guardian) did a pretty good job of covering the story. I agree with the idea that we should not give in to fear, and should continue to satirise the Islamist extremists, and I also agree that it is vitally important to draw a clear line between the disgusting fanatics who committed this atrocity and the billion plus innocent and peaceful Muslims in the world.

Satirists

For me the most moving tributes to the victims of this atrocity came from satirists and cartoonists across the world.

I was particularly moved by images from the Australian cartoonist David Pope and the Brazilian cartoonist Latuff (see image).

As a left-wing writer who has tried his hand at satire on occasion, I'm not going to let the actions of these evil fanatics intimidate me, and it fills me with inspiration to see countless other much more high profile writers and cartoonists bravely standing in solidarity with the victims and refusing to be intimidated too. 

Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins was quick to use this barbaric attack as an excuse to attack the whole of Islam as inherently more violent than other religions. It's bad enough that he uses his massive media profile to spread the work of extreme-right Islamophobes like Geert Wilders and Pat Condell, but opportunistically jumping on this tragedy in order to spread his own hatred of Islam is shameless stuff indeed.

Nigel Farage

Like Dawkins, Nigel Farage also took the opportunistic approach to the Charlie Hebdo assassinations by using the atrocity to wheel out a fearmongering "clash of civilisations" narrative in which he appeared to describe Muslims living in Europe as a "fifth column", openly blamed "multiculturalism" for the attacks and then went on a prolonged tangential rant about the free movement of people within the European Union.

To my ears, the using of this tragedy to harp on about his opposition to the European Union was a shockingly insensitive piece of political opportunism, but I'm sure that tribalist Ukippers will have literally lapped it up because he threw in plenty of the buzzwords and phrases they love to hear like blaming "multiculturalism" for absolutely everything and harping on endlessly about "immigration".

Britain First

If you think that the reactions of Richard Dawkins and Nigel Farage were brazenly opportunistic, you won't believe the disgusting opportunism of Britain First. This extreme-right BNP splinter group are such a revoltingly opportunistic bunch that they used a video clip of the cold blooded murder of the French policeman Ahmed Merabet as an advert for their online shop!

Not only did they try to cash in on the tragedy by using this harrowing murder video as an advert for their extreme-right tat shop, they also pinned the advert to the top of their Facebook page too.

If the general public thought that Sainsbury's using a dramatisation of the the 1914 WWI Christmas football match to advertise their shop was in bad taste, what must ordinary people think of the use of a graphic video clip of an actual murder to raise funds for an extreme-right hate group?

Theresa May

The Home Secretary Theresa May has yet to make a public statement on the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, but it seems only a matter of time before she begins using this horrific incident as further justification for her plans to further undermine our freedoms and liberties.

The plans she announced at the Tory conference in 2014 include a scheme to revoke freedom of speech and freedom of assembly from people who have committed no crime whatever, the legislation of "thought crime" into British law, further attacks on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" and even plans to compel nursery schools to spy on the toddlers they care for in order to make sure they're not potential terrorists!

The people who committed this attack are murderous extremists, but I refuse to be afraid of them, because if we give in to their violence, then we're letting them win. The extremists I'm really afraid of are powerful people like Theresa May and her right-wing authoritarian Tory colleagues, who are desperate to use terrorist attacks like this one to justify their agenda of undermining and destroying the legal rights and protections that our ancestors fought so hard to achieve.

If we allow Theresa May and her ilk to use terrorist atrocities like this as an excuse to revoke our historic rights and liberties, and to force nursery staff and hospital workers to work as spies for the state like some kind of East German nightmare, then we'd be letting the terrorists win by default wouldn't we?

Rupert Murdoch

One of the most outlandish responses to the atrocity was Rupert Murdoch's Twitter declaration that all Muslims, even peaceful ones should be "held responsible" for the killings.

The hypocrisy of this stance is incredible. Here's a man who has flatly refused to take responsibility for the widespread criminality at his newspapers that included bribing the police and hacking into the mobile phone of a dead school girl to spy on her messages, saying that every single Muslim in the world (Shia, Sunni, Sufi, Ahmadiyya, Ibadi, whichever denomination) should be held accountable for the actions of these crazed gunmen.

By Rupert Murdoch's twisted logic, adherents of all Christian sects (Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, Quaker, Orthodox, etc) should have been held collectively accountable for the actions of Anders Breivik (a Christian who killed 77 people in Norway) and Timothy McVeigh (a Christian who killed 168 people in Oklahoma City).

This comment was particularly concerning because it's obvious that the concept of collective responsibility is only a tiny step away from collective punishment. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website that accepts no donations from big business, political parties or governments. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Flattr this
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Who are the real extremists?
       
The pre-election contract the Tories want you to forget all about
                             
Richard Dawkins and the extreme-right Islamophobes
                                         
Britain First and their exceptionally ignorant brand of British nationalism
                          
The shooting of Malala Yousufzai
                
What is ... a closed ideology echo chamber?
                      



Posted by Thomas G. Clark at 17:01 0 comments
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