STATEMENT: "We will not be gagged" #cablegate #censorship

Following the detention of Wikileaks founder and (cont)

Chloe Moretz's hit-girl has inadvertently dispatched our last big expletive. There's more than one reason why we shouldn't be pleasedWarning: this blog contains quotes that employ very explicit language
In Kick-Ass, an 11-year-old girl calls a roomful of grown-ups "cunts". And nobody gives a damn. The film has managed to evoke a half-hearted whimper from the Mail, while the Australian Family Association has deemed its language "offensive". Protest-wise, that's pretty much it. A sorry milestone has been passed. The c-word has become acceptable parlance for children in mainstream movies. We'll be the poorer for it.
One by one, the words with which we used to abuse our fellows have been gradually decommissioned. It's been a long time since you could successfully vent your wrath by calling some pain-in-the-neck a bugger or a bastard. Nowadays, it wouldn't be worth wasting the breath required. Employ the c-word, however, and you could still conceivably feel you'd made a point. Until now. Chloe Moretz's hit-girl has offed it too, without a thought for the consequences. Henceforth, road-hogs, round-dodgers and purblind refs will all get a verbal free pass.
A noble history has been brought to a close. What had been merely the label for a body part blossomed into an obscenity in the late middle ages. By 1785, the Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue felt obliged to list it as "C**t". During the 1960s, however, the word's profanity began to fade. In 1970, it took its first bow on British television, courtesy of The Frost Programme. Two years later, the OED gave it an unveiled listing for the first time. As decontamination gathered pace, cinema was quick to pitch in.
The first mainstream movie to unleash the c-word seems to have been Carnal Knowledge. Back in 1971, Jack Nicholson's Jonathan saw fit to inquire: "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch." Four years later, when Nicholson's R P McMurphy opined of Nurse Ratched, "she's somethin' of a cunt, ain't she?" the shock was already wearing off. By 1991, Multiple Miggs was able to allude both lewdly and bluntly to Agent Starling's genitalia, while the Brits took things even further with Trainspotting in 1995 and then Ben Kingsley's c-word-fixated Don Logan in 2001. Thus was the puissance of anathema incontinently squandered. Nonetheless, until now, all wasn't totally lost. On the big screen, the c-word may have been uncaged, but it was only out on licence. Censors continued to treat it with impressive deference, thereby helping to sustain its waning import. For decades, use of this one word was in itself sufficient to earn a film an adults-only rating. Thus, even in 2002, the 20-odd appearances of the word "cunt" in Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen were sufficient to secure it an 18 certificate, thereby ensuring that the kind of people depicted in the film wouldn't be able to see it.
It's in this respect that the Kick-Ass case is particularly disgraceful. According to the BBFC's guidelines, the word is acceptable in a 15-rated film only "if justified by the context". That might just cover Shaun of the Dead, which crawled under the wire in 2004 in spite of the line, "Can I get any of you cunts a drink?" Surely, however, an otherwise politely-spoken pre-teen could have perpetrated her bloodbath without involving this vulnerable malediction. The word wasn't even in the Kick-Ass script. It was added on set, apparently at the suggestion of Chloe's mum.
Yet Kick-Ass rejoices in a 15 certificate. The BBFC says the comic ambience makes everything OK, though true devotees of the c-word may think this makes things worse. Grave execrations are not to be trifled with. In America, the film has been rated R, so no one under 17 will be able to see it without an accompanying adult. Ireland's given it a 16, Canada an 18A and New Zealand an R18, all of which imply marginally more respect for our sadly doomed expletive than the film's country of origin has managed to stump up.
It's a sorry business. All in all, our film censors, Chloe Moretz's mother and the rest of the Kick-Ass crowd are a complete bunch of utter … what, exactly, can we term them now?
Jane GoldmanComicsCensorshipDavid Coxguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

There’s been quite a discussion going on in my personal blog about the fact that all of WordPress.com has been blocked by Turkey.

Lots of people, including us, are confused and indignant about this wholesale censorship. Last night we received a letter from the person claiming to be responsible for the block, which in the interest of the community I’m going to publish in its entirety here:

Dear Sir,

We have applied to you to remove the unlawful statements regarding my client Mr. Adnan Oktar (who is the author of the books written under the pen name Harun Yahya) in your blogs. The number of our attempts to inform and warn you regarding these defamation blogs must have been at least twenty, many times through your support page, a couple of times to your legal department and we even sent a regular mail to Mr. Matt Mullenweg. Most of our attempts were unanswered.

These defamation blogs contained slanders to some of my client’s friends as well. They also applied Wordpress.com support with their official ID cards and a representative directed them to write to the legal department. So they did but again no response from legal.

So we have become obliged to apply to Turkish judicial courts to stop this defamation executed through your services. By the decision of Fatih 2nd Civil Court of First Instance, number 2007/195, access to Wordpress.com has been blocked in Turkey.

The organization, which is led by Edip Yuksel, responsible for these defamation blogs in question are currently up for crimes such as “building an organization to commit crime” in Turkey. The sites of Edip Yuksel, www.yahyaharun.com, www.19.org, www.calinmisgenclik.com and also the blog under your site with the user name http://adnanoktar.wordpress.com have been blocked by Turkish judicial courts in Turkey before(by Gaziosmanpasa Civil Court of First Instance, dated 06.04.2007 and decision number 2007/130 D. Is) . We have also sent you the official documents on this judicial decision in one of our applications to you.

Since Edip Yuksel and his crime organization could easily start new blogs in your site, they had even launched a campaign in opening defamation blogs regarding my client and had explicitly expressed this organized endeavor in his defamation blogs:

“In order to make people hear our voice, let everyone start new blogs from websites such as http://blogcu.com or http://wordpress.com and let them copy the posts on those blogs and paste them to their own. You can start several at once, if possible. Please remember that the name you will give to the blogs, should be related to Adnan Oktar or Harun Yahya in order to find them quickly through Google search. If the names are already taken, you can solve this problem by using characters such as “_” (Adnan_Oktar) or numbers such as AdnanOktar100, Adnan_Oktar_50.”

The aim of all of these blogs that he and his organization starts, was to insult my client. All of them were completely full of slanderous statements. There are still some sites left open -not accessible from Turkey, but still accessible abroad - :

http://adnanoktar.wordpress.com
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://fitikado.wordpress.com

http://oktarbabuna.wordpress.com
http://adnancilar.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktarveislam.wordpress.com/
http://whoisharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://adnanoktargercekleri.wordpress.com/
http://quiestharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://harunyahyaarabic.wordpress.com/
http://safsataciharunyahya.wordpress.com/
http://savsatalaracevap.wordpress.com/

The below are taken but still empty:

http://adnanzedeler.wordpress.com/
http://kodadiabi.wordpress.com/

As we have requested before:

WE DEMAND YOU TO REMOVE AND PROHIBIT ANY BLOGS IN YOUR SITE THAT CONTAIN MY CLIENT’S NAME ADNAN OKTAR OR HIS PEN NAME HARUN YAHYA OR VARIOUS COMBINATION OF THESE 4 NAMES.

Yours sincerely,

Attorneys of Mr. Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya)
Atty. Kerim Kalkan / Atty. Ceyhun Gökdoğan (Istanbul Barr register number:
27405)

Address: Darulaceze caddesi, Bilal Is Merkezi, A Blok, D:5. Okmeydani Sisli
Istanbul
Telephone: 90 212 220 31 20
Fax: 90 212 220 74 21
E-mail: rotahukuk@rotahukuk.com
ceyhungokdogan@istanbulbarosu.org.tr

So there you have it.

I’m curious, particularly amoung our Turkish community, what do you think we should do about this? How should we respond?

Update: I have some new info from the offending lawyers on my blog.

Google is following a court order that has instructed them to print the full ruling of the Google News case on the Google homepage else Google would have to pay half a million Euros per day.

Après l'audience du 5 Septembre 2006, le Tribunal de Première Instance de Bruxelles a publié le jugement suivant.

The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.