Search engines bow to censorship

Google and Microsoft have agreed to block images of child sexual abuse. Is this welcome news, or the start of a very slippery slope?

Hothead Jack Ruby pulls a gun as Lee Harvey Oswald is being transferred to the county jail from the basement of Dallas Police Department. Although Ruby kills Oswald, this act gives birth to the conspiracy industry that thrives to this very day.

The late Chris Tame used to say that when they talk about protecting your children, what they really mean is destroying your rights. Back in the 1980s and 90s, Mrs Mary Whitehouse employed the disingenuous technique of talking about pornography, bringing in child pornography, and then talking about the two as though they were one.

Today’s loony feminists don’t bother with such sophisticated dishonesty, they claim simply and equally disingenuously that even looking at a woman’s breasts amounts to something called objectification and harassment, if not actual rape.

Now the child abuse gambit has been played again, and this time it appears to have succeeded. Yesterday morning, a so-called child protection expert appeared on the BBC’s Breakfast news programme where she gave the dire warning that if you look at child abuse images, you are a sex offender. And if you watch a beheading video? So let’s look at the bigger picture. Recently, Facebook was involved in a controversy over this latter; as it is a social media site, and beheading anyone is hardly a social act, there is an argument that such images and videos should not be allowed. Whatever, the final decision is up to Facebook, and if its users don’t like that decision, whatever it is, they are free to vote with their feet.

Other websites, be they specifically social media or not so are performing a public service by displaying atrocities and abuses for all the world to see. You think not? Think again.

Be warned: the following are graphic indeed.

This short video was posted by the Swiss Animal Protection League. *

This short clip is one of the most infamous amateur videos in history; it shows the murder of the President of the United States by Lee Harvey Oswald. Here is some professional footage, this time it shows Oswald himself being murdered, including a slow motion replay.

One more will suffice. You know what this is, and you know it ain’t Hollywood.

This one looks and is spectacular, but it doesn’t look the slightest bit horrific, until you stop and think that what you just witnessed was the cold-blooded murder of hundreds of men and women. Does anyone think that should be censored? It is graphic, disturbing but extremely important footage, because it reminds us that there are people out there who would do that to us without a second’s hesitation if they had the chance. Now let us return to child sexual abuse.

It is said that now as many as 100,000 search terms have been altered so they will return no “illegal material”. Already we are on dubious ground because what is illegal in one country is not necessarily illegal in another. Think Saudi Arabia, for example. In spite of the constant alarmist propaganda, the full extent of the problem remains unclear, indeed it is by no means certain there is a problem at all because it is not the images themselves that need to be blocked but the people who took the photographs in the first place who need to be tracked down and held to account. Can this really be so difficult in view of the Snowden revelations?

Can anyone see where the current course of actions may lead us? Think Julia Somerville. Alternatively, if for any reason you are not au fait with the cultural reference, enter the search term “naked babies” on Google, and watch what comes up. Ten years, five years or less down the line and we will see all manner of ordinary people arrested in dawn raids, thrown in gaol and families split up because they have been so foolish as to post family photographs on-line.

Make no mistake about this, what we are seeing here is the beginning of a new wave of modern day witchcraft hysteria. One parting thought, check out this animated cartoon that was produced by ChildLine, * and ask yourself if it doesn’t depict child sexual abuse in a fairly graphic way. What’s that you say, it’s only a cartoon? Think again!

[The above article was published originally November 19, 2013.

A few points, the video said to have been posted (ie uploaded) by the Swiss Animal Protection League appears to have been uploaded by a private individual but was apparently filmed by this organisation, apparently in conjuction with other parties. I have also added three videos to this article lifted from YouTube rather than simply link to them on the site: they are the infamous Zapruder film (or part of it); footage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald; and footage of the second plane hitting the Twin Towers the day the world changed. * This article was added to this site on July 27, 2014 with three video clips. A video about the fur industry in China was linked from YouTube as was the ChildLine video. When I edited this page on July 14, 2022, I noticed both these videos had been removed from YouTube. The Chinese fur video was replaced with a longer one or a longer edit of the same one from the same source, PETA. The ChildLine animated video is the same one but a different upload.]


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