Wardman Wire Magazine UK Edition

Campaigns

I’ve held this over from last Friday. Last week we had some more people posting the SPCK case, and also the Trustees who resigned from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great in October 2007.

Follow these links to get up to speed quickly:

• Quick Intro for Press - effectively a FAQ.
• Introductory Guide to the Dave Walker Case

The best posts in the British blogosphere have been rounded up by Mr Eugenides this week.

Featured posts include this Sino-Sceptic Beau Bo D’Or cartoon and a report on the 437 BBC personnel visiting Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, which compares with 300 British Competitors and “several” politicians and their retinue. Oh - and 39 policemen.

There are one million on the USA Terorist Watch List.

One million was also the USA prison population in 1990. It became 2 million in 2002.

Meanwhile, back in Blighty

One million was the number on the UK Police’s DNA Database in March 2003 was 2 million. By 2005 that figure was 3.4 million - 1 in 20 people.

Perversely, our Home Office seem to view that as a matter for pride. We have a Bigger Brother than anybody else, and should pat them on the head for a job well done. Hmmm.

The UK’s database is the largest of any country: 5.2% of the UK population is on the database compared with 0.5% in the USA. The database has expanded significantly over the last five years. By the end of 2005 over 3.4 million DNA profiles were held on the database – the profiles of the majority of the known active offender population.

There’s a nasty little trolling campaign going on against Pippa Wagstaff, of Miss Wagstaff presents. That’s the second contributor here coming under different attacks in about 3 weeks from completely different sources - hence my decision to comment here.

These trolls are always ironic; this one meets their own charges far better than Miss W. But it raises two questions:

1. What should our attitude be to people who don’t reveal their full identity on their blog?
2. How do libel laws apply to blogs?

My view of Anonymity

My position on pseudonymity in blogs is this:

1. Exactly the same standards should apply in the blogosphere as elsewhere in the media.
2. There are certain reasonable grounds for anonymity.
3. It is perfectly possible to maintain a consistent pseudonymous identity, using tools such as OpenID logins that cannot be easily faked by third parties. That is sufficient to present and maintain a coherent and consistent argument.
4. If anonymity in the blogosphere is to be removed, then the same must be done across the media.

These posts are weekly roundups of the latest developments from the campaign to make sure that the debacle of the management of the SPCK Chain of Bookshops is scrutinised properly.

I also support Cartoonist Dave Walker who received a Cease and Desist letter from J Mark Brewer who runs the SPCK Chain of bookshops about 75 posts on his Cartoon Church blog reporting the developing situation over an 18 month period.

Statistics

• Currently the Facebook Group has 418 members since it was set up on 22 July, two and a half weeks ago).
• There are 79 sites posting in support of Dave Walker and at least 8 reporting on the situation.
• Employment Tribunals submitted against Brewer organisations / SSG: 30.
• Downloads of the Dave Walker Reposts PDF from the Wardman Wire: 800 since August 1st.
• The Wardman Wire
• Reads on Wardman Wire of articles about the SPCK shops saga since July 22nd: approx 40,000.

Miss Wagstaff, who does the Senedd Circular reports for this site, blog is not accessible from within the Welsh Assembly Government, has decided to bite back in blog fashion - that is, humourously.

Bearing in mind how many projects are labelled “supported by the Welsh Assembly Government”, we spent half an hour on chat designing this blog button:

The cork, by the way, is one from a bottle of champagne. As Rhodri Morgan said way back when:

We’ve got to uncork the Welsh champagne bottle and let it fizz.

I say let’s do the same thing with blogs. Uncork them all.

A quick announcement.

It looks as though the work that has been going on to highlight the Dave Walker case is shifting to the SPCK/SSG Group blog over the next few days.

The need to scrutinise the management of the SPCK chain, and especially of the attempt to move for bankruptcy in the USA, is going to be a long term exercise, and best done through a single hub site.

I’ll still be carrying occasional - perhaps weekly - reports here, however.

Words of J Mark Brewer

‘Mark Brewer is a proven leader who is fighting for the Constitution!’

(Mark Brewer Platform 2000)

Yay !

More people taking an interest

I’ve updated the “who’s posting” list again, with another dozen sites covering the story. And I aleady have a further batch that are for the next update.

This week I’ll be looking at some aspects of Cease and Desist Letters, and why they are - to a large extent - paper tigers, and are tools of intimidation or shadow boxing.

In the UK at least, I think we have far too much respect for lawyers writing letters about material on internet sites - I would term it the Privatisation of Censorship. This is a really serious problem, so I’ll start with this area.

Note: This article does not comprise legal advice.

There have been a few posts in a few places over the week about the Dave Walker situation. I thought it would be a good time to remember the objectives as I wrote them down on 25th July:

1 - We wish to make it very clear to Mark Brewer and everybody else that trying to shut down comment, critique and reporting in the way he has is not acceptable, and just will not work. We aim to ensure he gets more publicity than he ever had before this point.

2 - We want to make sure that the material Dave Walker published remains in the public domain, to help address the SPCK case.

3 - We want to try and make sure that the SPCK case is properly documented and investigated.

4 - We wish to strengthen the movement to reform the UK Libel Laws.

I have 2 thoughts for a Sunday morning:

• What is the difference between a Flash Mob and a Lynch Mob?
• Q: What sort of “free, democratic” country is it where political websites (including this one) are hosted abroad - not because that releases us personally from any legal actions (it doesn’t), but because it keeps non-defamatory material available to the public when webhosts in this country may well pre-emptively remove it to “play safe”, just because someone pays a lawyer to write a letter containing an allegation?

  A: One that has become a little tarnished at the edges.

What do you think?