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New laws to tackle religious hatred and bigotry related to football have been passed by the Scottish Parliament, despite a lack of opposition support.

The new Act aims to tackle the issue with jail terms of up to five years for behaviour which could cause public disorder in and around matches.

But Labour, the Tories, Lib Dems and the Scottish Greens said the bill was "railroaded" through by the SNP.

They said it was "bad law which risks doing more harm than good".

Despite opposition, the majority SNP government's Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill was passed by 64 votes to 57.

The legislation, which has won backing from police and prosecutors, aims to stamp out abusive behaviour, whether fans are watching matches in a stadium, in the pub or commenting online.

What does the bill do?

It creates two new offences - one dealing with offensive behaviour relating to football games, and a second on threatening communications.

Penalties range from a £40 fixed fine to a maximum of five years in prison and an unlimited fine.

The first offence deals with sectarian and other offensive chanting and behaviour likely to cause public disorder.

It covers conduct around football matches, inside grounds, and those travelling to and from stadiums - as well as fans watching games elsewhere, for example in pubs or on big screens outdoors.

In law, the legislation aims to take into account "expressing or inciting religious, racial or other forms of hatred" and "threatening behaviour or behaviour which would be offensive to any reasonable person".

It also creates potential for the imposition of football banning orders in every case.

The second offence deals with serious threats - including murder - made on the internet and elsewhere, and threats intended to incite religious hatred.

That would take in posts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as specific websites, and actions such as sending bullets or images depicting serious harm in the post.

Scottish ministers say the legislation will not stop peaceful preaching or artistic performance, nor will it criminalise satirical jokes about religion or non-religious belief.

They also insist it will not stop peoples' right to criticise religion or non-religious beliefs, "even in harsh terms".

Decisions on sentencing in each case are a matter for the courts.
Source: Scottish government
Earlier, about 20 football supporters wearing t-shirts bearing the slogan "fans not criminals" were excluded from the Holyrood chamber after parliament bosses told them they were only allowed in if they took them off.

The legislation will create two new offences relating to behaviour deemed to "incite religious, racial or other forms of hatred".

Community Safety Minister Roseanna Cunningham said she was pleased the legislation would soon become law.

She said: "This bill sends out an important message about the kind of Scotland we want to live in, because the vast majority of people in this country have no time whatsoever for the kind of mindless bigotry that has attached itself to the small minority who only damage and undermine our beautiful game - or those who peddle hatred by sitting behind a computer screen posting threats of harm on the internet.

"This is the 21st century, and this kind of behaviour is simply not acceptable, so action had to be taken.

"The passing of these important new laws sends out a powerful message to the bigots that this behaviour will not be tolerated in a modern Scotland."

Ms Cunningham added: "There has been a lot of debate in recent months about this legislation, but we've listened, we've acted, and the experts are firmly behind it.

"Scotland has shown the courage of its convictions and has taken the action needed."

The bill was brought forward in the wake of several high-profile football-related incidents, including trouble at Rangers and Celtic games.

All four opposition parties at Holyrood and independent MSP Margo MacDonald released a joint statement.

It said: "Members of all political parties are determined to wipe the blight of sectarianism from Scottish society.

"It is of real regret that the first piece of legislation passed by this new parliament has been railroaded through by the SNP.

"The SNP has used its majority to force through bad law that risks doing more harm than good. It sets a worrying precedent for this parliament."

The opposition statement added: "The SNP has failed to make the case for the legislation both in parliament and out - with football fans, religious organisations, anti-sectarianism organisations, children's charities, the Law Society, the Human Rights Commission, the Scottish Justices Association all raising genuine concerns with the SNP legislation.

"We believe a far more effective response is to focus on education and young people, working with the churches and football authorities on positive, practical, evidence-based measures that tackle the root causes of sectarianism as well robust application of existing laws."

Dave Scott, campaign director of anti-bigotry pressure group Nil By Mouth, said: "The debate around this bill has polarised the political parties but it has now become law and only time will tell how effective and enforceable it proves to be.

"However sectarianism goes far beyond football and facebook."

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New laws to tackle religious hatred and bigotry related to football have been passed by the Scottish Parliament, despite a lack of opposition support. The new Act aims to tackle the issue with jail terms of up to five years for behaviour which could cause public disorder in and around matches.

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Robin Thicke 's track 'Blurred Lines' has been banned by The University of Leeds' student union, making it the second university in the UK the song is now blacklisted by.

I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two" has been branded by critics as sexist, with allegations that it promotes non-consensual sex with the chorus " I hate these blurred lines". Earlier this month the song was outlawed in student buildings at the University of Edinburgh.

Alice Smart, an officer at Leeds' student union, told The Independent that the song is no longer able to play in any of the three campus nightclubs and two bars operated by the union as it "undermines and degrades women. The reaction has been mainly positive," she adds. "A few students are asking why if we have banned this song, we aren't banning everything, but we've chosen this one as an example, because it's so popular."

The Edinburgh ban on the chart-topping hit is part of the University Students' Association policy 'End Rape Culture and Lad Banter on Campus', which as student newspaper The Tab reports, aims to shut down the "myths and stereotypes around sexual violence" and prevent the sexual objectification of female students.

Thicke recently claimed that the song's lyrics were a "feminist movement within itself". He said: "It's supposed to stir conversation, it's supposed to make us talk about what's important and what the relationship between men and women is, but if you listen to the lyrics it says ' That man is not your maker ' - it's actually a feminist movement within itself."

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Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' banned by Leeds University - NME

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Robin Thicke 's track 'Blurred Lines' has been banned by The University of Leeds' student union, making it the second university in the UK the song is now blacklisted by. I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two" has been branded by critics as sexist, with allegations that it promotes non-consensual sex with the chorus " I hate these blurred lines".

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Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed.

Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.

Senior district judge Howard Riddle jailed Sorley for 12 weeks and Nimmo for eight weeks as well as ordering them to pay £400 compensation to each victim.

Earlier this month the pair pleaded guilty to sending the menacing tweets, admitting they were among the users of 86 separate Twitter accounts from which Ms Criado-Perez had received abusive messages.

Passing sentence at Westminster Magistrates Court, Judge Riddle said that both victims had suffered substantially as a result of the abuse.

He said Ms Criado-Perez had faced "panic, fear and horror" adding that she feared the "abusers would find her and carry out the threats. She felt hunted."

She responded to the sentencing on Twitter, saying: "I feel immensely relieved that the judge clearly has understood the severity of the impact this abuse has had on me." She said the compensation would be given to charity.

Of Ms Creasy the judge said: "She became concerned for her safety to the extent that she had to alter her behaviour. She had a panic button installed in her home."

As he passed sentence Sorley shook her head and looked to the floor while Nimmo stared straight ahead, showing no emotion.

Sean Caulfield, defending Sorley, told the court his client was "articulate and intelligent" and there was "disconnect" between her and the person that sent the messages.

He said they were sent in a half-hour window between 2.25am and 2.55am last July 30 when she was under the influence of alcohol and she was "horrified and appalled" at what she had done.

The court also heard how she had 25 previous convictions, mostly for being drunk and disorderly but she had also been convicted twice of assaulting police.

At the time of the Twitter abuse last summer Ms Criado-Perez was leading an ultimately successful campaign to have women featured on British banknotes.

Police launched an investigation after both she and Walthamstow MP Ms Creasy complained about the vile tweets.

Sorley used Twitter to tell Ms Criado-Perez to "f*** off and die you worthless piece of crap", "go kill yourself" and "rape is the last of your worries".

She also deluged Ms Criado-Perez with menacing messages claiming that she had just been released from prison, writing: "I will find you and you don't want to know what I will do when I do, you're pathetic, kill yourself before I do."

Sorley, from Newcastle upon Tyne, has a 2:1 degree in creative advertising from Leeds College of Art and was working in an Asda supermarket in Newcastle at the time. She has since lost her job.

Unemployed Nimmo told Ms Criado-Perez to "shut up bitch" and "Ya not that gd looking to rape u be fine" followed by "I will find you (smiley face)".

In an attack on Ms Creasy, Nimmo, from South Shields, said:"The things I cud do to u (smiley face)", calling her "Dumb blond bitch."

Ms Creasy responded to Nimmo's message of "Dumb blonde bitch" with the message "That's dumb Dr blonde bitch to you".

"Love it at least u can have a laugh," Nimmo responded, to which Ms Creasy said: "I'm not having a laugh, I'm cataloguing your vile conduct #takebacktwitter".

In court his solicitor Paul Kennedy described him as a "recluse and sad individual" adding that he had no previous convictions and was sorry for what he did.

Sorley's brother, who was in court with two holdalls carrying her belongings in the hope his sister would not be jailed, left without making any comment.

Before the early hearing, Sorley posted a picture of herself on her Twitter page posing outside Buckingham Palace with the message "just chilling at the queens".
:: Watch Sky News live on television, on Sky channel 501, Virgin Media channel 602, Freeview channel 82 and Freesat channel 202.

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Twitter Trolls Jailed For Sending Abusive Tweets

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Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed. Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.

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These three documents, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.

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These three documents, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.

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These three documents, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.

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These three documents, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.

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A phone call on February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, altered Salman Rushdie's life forever. He was told that Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa calling for his death for allegedly insulting the Prophet and the Quran in The Satanic Verses. His recently launched memoir Joseph Anton is a transfixing account of the nine years spent in hiding that is at once overtly political and deeply personal.

Religion and secularism, truth and falsity, friendship and enmity, hope and despair, bravery and cowardice, love and betrayal, collide in the pages to form a highly-charged battleground of ideas about a world poised for an uncertain future.

In this phone interview, Salman Rushdie talks about the novel that robbed him of a decade and the lessons it has taught him about free speech, religious fundamentalism and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.

It is a coincidence that Joseph Anton is being launched at a time when there is a storm over the "Innocence of Muslims" film and the caricatures in a French newspaper. But since the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, there has been a virtual explosion in what novelist Monica Ali called 'the marketplace of outrage' - this phenomenon of people, not necessarily Muslim, being offended and sometimes violently so. In retrospect, do you see The Satanic Verses as the forerunner of this narrative of blasphemy, insult, indignation and violence?

Yes, of course I do. In fact, I explicitly state in the book that I see this as a prologue rather than an isolated event. In the years that followed, there were attacks across the Muslim world on other writers and intellectuals who were accused of exactly the same crimes - these medieval crimes of heresy and apostasy in a language that, in a way, one hadn't heard since the Spanish Inquisition.

For example, the Turkish journalist Ug˘ur Mumcu was killed by Islamic fundamentalists. In Egypt, the philosopher Farag Foda was killed and Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck. In Algeria, the novelist Tahar Djaout was murdered by Islamic fundamentalists and so on. This has been a broadening attack and the combination of fanaticism and this outrage industry has become a very powerful force in our times.

You have used the expression 'manufactured' to describe this outrage, which you now refer to as industry. This is accurate inasmuch as the protests are usually carefully planned and coordinated. But do you think this ignores the fact that people could also be genuinely upset or hurt by what they construe as religious insult?

That's their problem. The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try and burn the planet down.

There is no right in the world not to be offended. That right simply doesn't exist. In a free society, an open society, people have strong opinions, and these opinions very often clash. In a democracy, we have to learn to deal with this. And this is true about novels, it's true about cartoons, it's true about all these products.

A question I have often asked is, 'What would an inoffensive political cartoon look like?' What would a respectful cartoon look like? The form requires disrespect and so if we are going to have in the world things like cartoons and satire, we just have to accept it as part of the price of freedom.

One of the parallels one notices between the nature of the responses to The Satanic Verses and the rage today is the random pattern of the attacks. The U.S. cultural center was attacked in Islamabad back then.....

Which had absolutely nothing to do with the book.

Exactly. And the U.S. consulates have been under attack recently thanks to the controversial film. Is there a larger theme running here, something that emerges from a climate of hostility and distrust of the West, particularly America?

I think you could say that some of it is caused by a particular kind of anti-Americanism, which might well be fuelled by recent American military excursions. You could say that some of it is out of a kind of economic despair, where you have a body of young men whose own prospects are very slim and whose hopes of making a good life are very small. And that engenders all kinds of disappointments and anger which can be channelled in this direction. There is a whole series of causes and they are not the same in every place. In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.

Of course there are geopolitical reasons. But I think there are educational reasons as well. The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world's oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam. This very minor extremist cult, Wahhabism, was suddenly propagated across the Muslim world through madrassas and has created generations now who are steeped in this harsher, more paranoid, more confrontational version of Islam.

The book shows you were opposed, or at least left unsupported, not merely by radical Islamists but also those who would regard themselves as liberal, a number of who were on the Left. What was the main reason for this - this opposition, as it were, from within?

I was always bewildered by it. I confess I am still a little bewildered by it.

Could it be because they felt you brought it on yourself? This idea that you knew exactly what you were doing when you wrote The Satanic Verses, or at least the Mahound chapter?

It is a number of things. I think partly, and I think I say this somewhere in the book, it is this kind of reflex of the old Left that the people can't be wrong. If a large number of people of any community object to a certain person, that person must be in the wrong. It's not possible that there can be an erroneous mass response to an event.

Or was it also because Left-Liberal opinion has become more and more influenced by a moral and cultural relativism? Have we taken respect for other people's beliefs and feelings too far?

Of course, that's true. Moral and cultural relativism is a very dangerous phenomenon. What you routinely hear from some extremist Muslim pundits, whether religious or political, is a discourse that is anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic. The same Leftists would not tolerate that coming from any other group. But somehow people turn a blind eye to it because it is coming from this group.

The book reveals that many people in Britain openly called for the implementation of the fatwa. I was really surprised to read that this included Cat Stevens [aka Yusuf Islam]. I mean this was the man who sang of dreaming of the world as one and invited us to glide on his peace train.....

Yes, the peace train, I know...well, I guess the peace train didn't travel to this particular station ( laughs).

But isn't exhorting people to kill another person a clear incitement to violence? Isn't this an offence under British law? Why weren't people who did this prosecuted?

Not one single person in England was prosecuted for any offence even though thousands upon thousands were demanding my death and standing up in mosques every Friday and saying they were ready to do it. I did ask myself, supposing this had been not me but some other figure in Britain, suppose it was the Queen, for instance. It is impossible to think people would not have been arrested and prosecuted if they were standing up in their thousands and saying 'We will kill the Queen.'

I am only saying the Queen to dramatise my point. But you see what I mean? It seemed very odd that this particular person could be threatened in that way, whereas other people would never have been allowed to have been.

By 'this particular person', you mean a 'mere writer?'

Or this mere writer. Maybe another writer would have elicited another response.

Hmmmm...

Not a brown-skinned writer.

Ah, I was trying to tease that out of you.

( Laughs)

Joseph Anton reads in parts like a thank you work - a way of acknowledging the bravery and loyalty of the few who stood by you in those years of darkness.

Well, I certainly think that one of the big subjects in the book is the opposition between hatred and love, between friendship and hostility. And I certainly think I was fortunate in my friends, who both publicly and privately, gave me an astonishing degree of support. We have all sat on these secrets for more than 20 years. And it has been a pleasure to say, here is what people did, here is how it was done.

Even the British police came to really admire my circle of friends because they saw how determined they were to keep secrets, to be totally dependable.

Your son Zafar recently told the Evening Standard that he "had no wish that it (the fatwa) hadn't happened" because it made him who he is - underlining that it taught him to deal with adversity. I am sure it taught you to do so as well, but do you still find yourself wishing it never happened even today? Or do you not think about it at all?

Obviously, given a choice, I would be better off if it hadn't happened. I would have had a much more pleasant ten years. I was in a very good place in 1988, after the publication of Midnight's Children and Shame. It would have been much more pleasant to have continued an ordinary literary life and bring up my child in an ordinary way.

Absolutely. But my question was whether you still think about it and wish it had never happened.

You can't regret your life in the end. And that is what Zafar is essentially saying in that interview as well. What happened is what happened and everybody has learnt from it and moved on. One of the reasons for waiting this long to write the book is that I didn't want to be affected by ideas of 'What if'. I didn't want to be excessively possessed by anger, resentment, whatever. I felt I should wait until I was in a calmer and more peaceful place so that I could look back on this period of my life with tranquillity and objectivity and tell the story as truthfully as possible.

You are pretty hard on yourself about that period when you caved in, apologised and declared you were a good Muslim...

Well, it's important in an autobiography that the author is self-critical. Because, otherwise, it reads like an excuse, an apology, or a self-justification. The reader needs to feel that the person writing the story has a pretty clear or unvarnished idea of himself. I wanted to make it clear that I know there are all kinds of things I wished I hadn't done, or should have done differently, or better. And that there are a few things that I am proud of having done. But I think you need to present this just in the same way as you are creating a fictional character. You have to present a three-dimensional character.

You describe yourself as having been stupid in your 'Why I am a Muslim' phase. How much of this was a result of sheer despair, of being not in the right mental state? And how much of it was cold calculation - the hope of a deal that would end the torment of hiding?

I will tell you what it was. Reading my journals of this period, it was quite clear the person writing them was in a very low state of mind - something very like despair. So, there was that internal contradiction. But also externally, there was an enormous amount of pressure on me in those days from the media, from politicians and even from opinion polls being taken in Europe.

The general attitude was that this was my fault and I was the one who needed to find a resolution to it - that I broke it, so I should fix it. And when I tried to argue that this was not the case, this was called arrogance. My refusal to withdraw my book was proof of not only my arrogance but also my financial greed. Nobody would see there was a principled reason for doing this.

All of this, over the course of two years, wore me down to a point to which I clutched at a straw. I thought maybe this is a way of breaking the logjam. But of course, this was dishonest, I am not a religious person, and I shouldn't have said I was. I immediately felt dreadful about it and understood it was a kind of self-betrayal.

But in retrospect, it was a clarifying moment, it made me understand that it was a mistake to go down that road of appeasement. It made me clearer - no more apologies, no more excuses, no more appeasements, no more compromises. I am just going to say my piece, argue my corner, and try and stand up for what I believe in. And if people don't like it, tough.

That moment of failure turned me into a much clearer, much stronger person.

The book reveals how much of your novels - the people, the places, the events - have been drawn or loosely based on real people, places and events. The novels of imagination are also novels of experience.

If you read the work of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, James Joyce or Marcel Proust, you will probably find there is an enormous amount of personal experience as source material. Now somebody will say I am comparing myself to those writers, but I am not. I am talking of writers I admire.

But the act of writing a novel is a journey. And the beginning of the journey can often be personal experience. The end product is something else. That journey from personal experience to finished book is the imaginative leap. That is the act of writing.

I thought it would be interesting for people to get a sense of how my writing moved from personal experience to finished work. The grandparents in Midnight's Children are not like my grandparents, but they had things in common. They didn't look through a hole in a sheet.

You are pretty critical about some people in your book you don't like. One of them is Marianne [Wiggins, Rushdie's second wife], who is portrayed as almost delusional. I know she has said and written damaging stuff about you. But don't you think people like her are likely to be hurt by some of the things you said in the book? Does this bother you?

What bothered me most was to tell the truth. The things that Marianne said about me were extremely unpleasant and characterised by blatant untruth, including allegations that I was interested to have a meeting with Muammar Qadhafi, which is a ludicrous kind of escalation of untruth.

I think you just have to decide when reading the book whether you feel you are reading the truth or not. In my view, I am telling not just the exact truth, but truth for which there are many witnesses.

This is how she behaved and this is the reason why our marriage ended. It was something that made my life extraordinarily difficult.

The purpose of writing a book like this is to say what happened. I am not fantasising, not fictionalising, I am actually toning it down. What really happened was even worse than that.

Did you show any of the parts to people you were once close to? Padma [Lakshmi, his fourth wife] doesn't get very good press either.

She knows what is in the book. I rewrote a couple of passages that she asked me to. I think I have tried to show there was a long period in which we were in love. And that it was a good relationship for a time. But I said to her, I am talking about the end of the marriage - and it was not my choice to end. So you are going to get that perspective on it.

There are some satirical passages about her having left you for someone with more money.

Yes, I think that was perfectly reasonable. After she talked to me every day for eight years about how I was too old for her, she left for somebody at least a decade older. So you can draw your own conclusions, as I do.

What next?

Truthfully, I don't know. Obviously, we still have work to do to launch this book for the next couple of months. There is also the movie of Midnight's Children, which is just about coming out now. I've got this TV project, a 60-minute drama series, an idea that I have been developing in America with Showtime Networks called The Next People, which is a kind of political science fiction.

I have some ideas for novels. But truthfully I don't know whether any of them are any good.

mukund.p@thehindu.co.in

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A phone call on February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, altered Salman Rushdie's life forever. He was told that Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa calling for his death for allegedly insulting the Prophet and the Quran in The Satanic Verses.

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Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse | Legifrance

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Vous êtes dans : Accueil> Les autres textes législatifs et réglementaires> Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse

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Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse | Legifrance

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A soldier who wrote of murdering immigrants and who praised Adolf Hitler has been jailed for two years after building a viable nailbomb packed with 181 pieces of shrapnel to maximise the carnage it would cause.

Ryan McGee, 20, described by his defence team as "a bit of a loner", wrote in a journal: "I vow to drag every last immigrant into the fires of hell with me."

He downloaded a video of two bound and gagged men beneath a swastika flag, one being beheaded and the other killed by a gunshot to the head and went online to tell people to do something if they hated immigration. He supported the English Defence League, Ku Klux Klan and praised then British National party leader Nick Griffin.

A nailbomb and cache of weapons including an imitation firearm, an air pistol, axes and knives were found in the bedroom of his family home in Eccles, Salford, and he had researched buying guns on the web. McGee also posted several pictures of himself in EDL and Ku Klux Klan clothing and standing next to EDL flags.

When he was interviewed by police, McGee said he made the bomb while on leave "out of boredom" and he was interested in rightwing politics because he did not like mass immigration.

He came from a family, the court heard, with far-rightwing views. He had attended an EDL rally and had a "No Surrender" EDL flag and an EDL T-shirt and jumper - all bought for him by his mother for his 18th birthday.

Prosecutor Roger Smart accepted McGee was not a terrorist but an immature teenager. He kept a journal called Ryan's Story with Scooby Doo stickers on the front, and inside drawings of guns, machetes, knuckledusters and knives. He was jailed for 24 months after admitting that between 1 and 3 September 2013 at Salford he made an explosive device.

But after the sentencing, critics argued that a Muslim convicted of the same offence would have faced a longer jail term.

Imran Khan, solicitor for Mohommod Nawaz, jailed for four and a half years for travelling to a terrorist training camp in Syria, said: "It seems that if you are a Muslim, justice is not blind.

"Such decisions bring the system into disrepute and steps must be taken to remedy it. Most significantly, if the government, police and the courts wanted to send a message out to those British Muslims who have gone to Syria to come back then I fear that this has hampered that cause greatly."

The bomb and far-right material was uncovered when Greater Manchester police searched the home where he lived with his mother Vera and two brothers in an unconnected investigation on 28 November last year.

When an officer found a "suspicious device" in a bedroom, bomb disposal experts were called in and counter-terrorism police launched an investigation. McGee also pleaded guilty to possessing a document, namely the Anarchist Cookbook, containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

The CPS said it had decided not to prosecute McGee as a terrorist because "it was never McGee's intention to use the device for any terrorist or violent purpose, and that he had no firm intention to activate the device. That's why he was prosecuted under the Explosive Substance Act."

Before his sentencing McGee was released on bail, having pleaded to the offences.

After sentencing, Recorder of London Brian Barker told McGee: "What you have lost is your reputation and your future but I hope in due course you can make amends for that."

Detective Superintendent Simon Barraclough, of the north-west counter-terrorism unit, said of McGee's extremism: "It mirrors to some extent what we are seeing from the Islamic fundamentalist point of view from the other end of the spectrum. He has effectively self-radicalised himself and he has done that through the internet through his own devices rather than working with others."DS Barraclough added: "McGee had in his possession a viable improvised device and the material and knowledge of how to make it. He clearly set out to make the device, which could have seriously injured or possibly killed members of the public.

"There is no evidence of planning or intended targets but we do not underestimate the impact that McGee's actions and extremist beliefs may have had on communities across the country."
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Soldier jailed for making nailbomb avoids terror charge

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A soldier who wrote of murdering immigrants and who praised Adolf Hitler has been jailed for two years after building a viable nailbomb packed with 181 pieces of shrapnel to maximise the carnage it would cause.

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Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe | Legifrance

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Vous êtes dans : Accueil> Les autres textes législatifs et réglementaires> Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe

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Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of French extreme-right group the National Front, has been fined €5,000 for suggesting Romanians were "naturally" inclined to steal.

Speaking at a rally in September last year, he said that Romanians "are like birds... they fly ( voler) naturally," French newspaper Libération reported.

The French verb " voler " means both to fly and to steal.

A Paris court ruled that the 85-year-old politician, who is also the founder of the National Front, was guilty of publicly insulting a group of people based on their ethnicity. The prosecution had requested a two year suspended sentence for Le Pen, who recently announced he is running in France's upcoming municipal elections.

Bernadette Hétier, the co-president of anti-racism group Mrap, told Libération that the verdict "was in favour of Romanian dignity," and was thankful Le Pen's conviction "created as much publicity as his remarks when they were made, deeply unfortunately, in 2012."

Le Pen's lawyer Wallerand de St Just had argued that the remarks were made as a joke. The French politician has repeatedly been convicted under France's racial hatred laws, as well as for Holocaust denial after he described the Nazi gas chambers as a "small detail" of World World Two in a BBC Hardtalk interview.

It is the latest in a spate of controversies surrounding the National Front, who have enjoyed a surge of popularity in France due to its stance on immigration. Le Pen's daughter Marine, who is currently the party's leader, recently lost her parliamentary immunity after comparing Muslim prayers in the street to the Nazi occupation. She is reportedly facing charges of inciting racial hatred.

"For those who like to talk about World War Two, to talk about occupation, we could talk about, for once, the occupation of our territory. There are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation all the same, and it weighs on people," she said at a 2010 party rally.

The President of France's Union of Jewish Students Jonathan Hayoun said the verdict revealed how "one of the National Front's leaders continues to hold racist views."

"We ask Marine Le Pen: When will she expel [her father] from the party, considering she has committed herself to excluding all candidates who hold racist views and who are convicted by the justice system?" he added.

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French far-right politician Jean Marie Le Pen fined for racist Roma

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Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of French extreme-right group the National Front, has been fined €5,000 for suggesting Romanians were "naturally" inclined to steal. Speaking at a rally in September last year, he said that Romanians "are like birds... they fly ( voler) naturally," French newspaper Libération reported.

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On the importance of the right to offend

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On the importance of the right to offend

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ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RIGHT TO OFFEND

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'Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch'. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about the Jesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for...

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Simplified Version
This simplified version of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been created especially for young people.

4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.

15. Right to a Nationality. We all have the right to belong to a country.

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United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Summary: Youth For Human Rights Video

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Simplified Version This simplified version of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been created especially for young people. 4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave. 15. Right to a Nationality.

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Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist who now campaigns against extremism as the executive director of the Quilliam Foundation. He is also a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate. Three weeks ago, he appeared on the BBC's religious debate programme, The Big Questions. On that show, two atheist students wore T-shirts featuring cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed. Nawaz declared that he was not upset by the images. After the show, he tweeted one of the cartoons, declaring that his God was greater than to feel threatened by it. And then everything went mad.

Nawaz has faced an appalling string of death threats. About 22,000 people have signed a petition calling for his deselection. Thousands more have leapt to his defence. Last week, Nick Clegg promised that he would not be deselected. But as various media outlets have reported on the subject, they, too, have faced criticism for their squeamishness: no one has shown uncensored the cartoon at the centre of the storm.

There is so much to unpack here. Where to begin? Well, how about, for the record, a simple declaration: Maajid Nawaz has an absolute right to tweet a picture of the Prophet Mohamed. I would not vote for any political party that dismissed him for doing so. But actually, this is the least interesting, least fruitful aspect of the whole discussion. This is primary school stuff.

Practical freedom of speech, graduate-level freedom of speech, is not a black-and-white issue, not just a matter of misquoting Voltaire; it is a subtly calibrated scale. It involves questions about social context, and discretion. And, if you look closely at what happened with Maajid Nawaz, those complexities become inescapable.

The first step in the process that culminated in threats to Maajid Nawaz's life was an email from an audience researcher at Mentorn, an independent production company, to two LSE students, Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis. They are members of the LSE's Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society and, last October, they were threatened with removal from the university's freshers' fair for wearing T-shirts that featured images from Jesus and Mo, an online comic with an enthusiastic atheist following.

Ultimately, the university apologised, but the pot had been stirred, and in January the company behind The Big Questions got in touch about participating. The question to be debated was: "Should human rights always outweigh religious rights?" According to Chris Moos, the two students had not intended to wear the T-shirts, but the production company researcher gave them a nudge. "If you wanted to wear your T-shirts on the show, that is fine - however, we would ask that you wear a shirt over the top that could be unbuttoned," he wrote. "If Nicky would like to see the shirts, he can ask you to unbutton your shirt to show it and we can do a close-up and therefore promote discussion."

"I was quite surprised," says Moos. However, Mentorn insist that the idea of wearing the T-shirts was the students' own; they go as far as to say that "any suggestion that the students were encouraged to wear the T-shirts is entirely unfounded", which seems a bit odd, when you reread that email. Either way, towards the end of the show, their moment came.

"You guys wore some T-shirts?" said Campbell.

Moos nodded. "Would you like to see them?" he asked. "Well, I mean, if you - yeah," said Campbell, who certainly didn't seem to know about his agreement with the researcher. (Mentorn says that neither he nor his editor were expecting the T-shirts; certainly it seems more like a cock-up than a conspiracy.) The two unzipped. Phadnis and Moos were not filmed in close-up, and the camera did not linger on them. But the cartoons were visible from an oblique angle.

It has been reported that both men's tops featured the image that Maajid Nawaz later tweeted: a simple cartoon in which Jesus says, "Hey", and Mohamed, "How ya doin?" In fact, though, that's not quite the whole story. That was one of the T-shirts, but the other featured the two figures holding a banner demanding: "STOP DRAWING HOLY PROPHETS IN A DISRESPECTFUL MANNER NOW!" "If this doesn't work," Mohamed says, "I say we start burning stuff."

This still seems wholly innocuous to me. But Sahar al-Faifi didn't find it funny. She was one of two Muslim women sitting next to Moos and Phadnis. Because she was wearing a niqab, you could only see her eyes, but it was obvious that she was dismayed. "It was really surprising," al-Faifi, a molecular biologist and activist, says. "No one told us it would happen. The Prophet Mohammed is very dear to us as Muslims. It felt hurtful, very unfortunate."

When I told her that the production company had known that the students were going to wear the shirts, she was taken aback. "If that's true, that is shocking," she said. "I mean, if they want to encourage them, that's fine, but they should at least tell the other panellists about it."

In the heated debate that followed, no one thought to ask al-Faifi the really important question: not whether she found the T-shirt offensive, but whether she would ban it. "No, I wouldn't go that far," she says now. "I would rather work on promoting respect and tolerance." She, at least, is innocent of any free speech violation; all she was doing was expressing her own disgust. And doing so is just as valid an expression of free speech as the image that precipitated it.

The MP David Lammy, also taking part, tried to find a middle ground. He remains a little agonised now. "I certainly didn't take offence myself," he says. "Part of living in a liberal democracy is understanding that people have the right to express their feelings. But at moments like this, members of minorities can feel incredibly isolated."

That term "offence" is a curious one. It describes an emotional state, and it ought to line up with words like "hurt", or "insulted". But it is often used in a thoughtless way, as if "offence" were a persistent and predictable state, like a broken limb, or a demolished house. We place it with words such as "assaulted", or "threatened", or "molested". We let it seem to mean an indisputable violation, instead of a subjective matter of culture and disposition.

If we could agree an amnesty on "offence", and talk instead about, for example, "distress", we might have a clearer view of things. Those who wear the T-shirts might recognise it is possible to maintain a right without exercising it, and that to do so can be a simple act of kindness; those who wish they wouldn't might recall more readily that their feelings are, ultimately, a private matter.

I can see why someone like Chris Moos would find that an objectionable idea, though. "I'm not the one who makes a confrontation," he points out. "Offence is taken, not created. Just to say that some people might be offended - it's not an argument that people can demand that you not exercise your basic right."

Maajid Nawaz took roughly the same view. "I'm a Muslim," he said. "That T-shirt doesn't threaten me whatsoever." But while his declaration on air didn't draw much bile, his subsequent tweet certainly did.

If there are any villains in the piece, you might argue that those who orchestrated that outrage have a claim on the title. They might not have called for legal sanction against Nawaz, but to demand his deselection is a step further than mere anger: it is an attempt at political intervention, and one with the obvious potential to have a chilling effect.

There's Muhammad Shafiq, the activist who organised the petition and called Nawaz "Ghustaki Rasool", Urdu for "defamer of the Prophet" - a plainly incendiary label. There's George Galloway, who called Nawaz "rancid". And then there's Mohammed "Mo" Ansar, a self-styled community leader without quite enough evidence that the community in question agrees.

He, too, has been one of the most prominent of Nawaz's critics. But Ansar has history with Nawaz, who stole his thunder by orchestrating the announcement of Tommy Robinson's departure from the English Defence League when Ansar had just spent 18 months making a documentary with him. Did that history play a part? Who knows. It is, at the very least, worth bearing in mind.

The subject has stayed on the news agenda. And this has raised a whole new set of questions over freedom of speech. Channel 4 News showed the cartoon, but blacked out the image of Mohammed. Newsnight didn't show it at all.

The cartoonist behind Jesus and Mo - who stays anonymous for his own safety - was interviewed by both programmes, and was infuriated by the absence of the image. "It's a very innocent picture!" he said. "He's just saying, 'How ya doin'?' I was very disappointed."

Ian Katz, the editor of Newsnight, took to Twitter to defend his decision; one of his more vigorous critics, David Aaronovitch, said that he had "bottled it, like everyone else". And at Newsnight or at Channel 4 News or at any newspaper - none of the printed press ran it, either - it's true that it's hard to discount the possibility that caution plays a part. Then again, it is relatively easy to be fearless when your own life is the only one at stake, rather harder when you work at an organisation that employs journalists in Pakistan.

In any case, that is not Katz's argument. "There is an obvious issue around offence ... one of the problems is that it has been represented as an extremist view," he says. "But I know from the soundings I have taken that it's a mainstream Muslim position to think it's offensive."

There are limits to this; whether a position is reasonable surely must be defined by a more abstract standard than how many people think it. But it is true to say if so many people will be upset, and in particular if those people already have a justified sense of alienation, you better have a very good reason for defying their sensibilities. The upset is not just some abstract concern about blasphemy; it is about the sense that their norms are fodder for point-scoring ridicule by the majority.

To Aaronovitch and Moos and the cartoonist, the protection of freedom of speech requires that you exercise it. But they would, presumably, say that Nick Griffin's rights can be protected without repeating his views ad infinitum. Everyone draws a line somewhere. And, in this case, the image is so simple that to see it adds nothing to the viewer's understanding of the issues in play. Says Katz: "A lot of the people disappointed with us for not using it really wanted a demonstration of liberal virility rather than more informative journalism."

It will not have escaped you that this piece is also unaccompanied by the cartoon - the editor's decision, but one I agree with. When I told the cartoonist, he was disappointed.

"Either way, you're taking sides," he said. "You have a difficult decision to make. But I think we lose more, in this case, by not showing it."

The LSE students shared that view. "The editors of Newsnight and Channel 4 News have bought into the fiction that censoring the cartoon is the neutral position," Abhishek Phadnis said by email. "It is not. It is perhaps unique to free-speech issues that those who report on them become part of the story themselves ... To show the cartoons is, in fact, the neutral position - in that it can be done without implying support for either side."

It is hard not to admire Phadnis's passion. It is hard to resist the urge to stick two fingers up at the kind of people who would send death threats to a man for saying that his God was too great to be disturbed by a mere cartoon and those who would silence him must be resisted.

The thing is, real life does not allow us to leave it at that. If the intricacies of this story tell us anything, it is that the freedom of speech is not a static concept; its exercise plays out differently at a freshers' fair and in a public debate and on Twitter and in the news. It is easy to say: I defend to the death your right to say it. It is harder to ask the question that follows: how are we going to make this work?

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Freedom of speech: Is it my right to offend you?

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Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist who now campaigns against extremism as the executive director of the Quilliam Foundation. He is also a Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate. Three weeks ago, he appeared on the BBC's religious debate programme, The Big Questions. On that show, two atheist students wore T-shirts featuring cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed.

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A phone call on February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, altered Salman Rushdie's life forever. He was told that Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa calling for his death for allegedly insulting the Prophet and the Quran in The Satanic Verses. His recently launched memoir Joseph Anton is a transfixing account of the nine years spent in hiding that is at once overtly political and deeply personal.

Religion and secularism, truth and falsity, friendship and enmity, hope and despair, bravery and cowardice, love and betrayal, collide in the pages to form a highly-charged battleground of ideas about a world poised for an uncertain future.

In this phone interview, Salman Rushdie talks about the novel that robbed him of a decade and the lessons it has taught him about free speech, religious fundamentalism and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.

It is a coincidence that Joseph Anton is being launched at a time when there is a storm over the "Innocence of Muslims" film and the caricatures in a French newspaper. But since the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988, there has been a virtual explosion in what novelist Monica Ali called 'the marketplace of outrage' - this phenomenon of people, not necessarily Muslim, being offended and sometimes violently so. In retrospect, do you see The Satanic Verses as the forerunner of this narrative of blasphemy, insult, indignation and violence?

Yes, of course I do. In fact, I explicitly state in the book that I see this as a prologue rather than an isolated event. In the years that followed, there were attacks across the Muslim world on other writers and intellectuals who were accused of exactly the same crimes - these medieval crimes of heresy and apostasy in a language that, in a way, one hadn't heard since the Spanish Inquisition.

For example, the Turkish journalist Ug˘ur Mumcu was killed by Islamic fundamentalists. In Egypt, the philosopher Farag Foda was killed and Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck. In Algeria, the novelist Tahar Djaout was murdered by Islamic fundamentalists and so on. This has been a broadening attack and the combination of fanaticism and this outrage industry has become a very powerful force in our times.

You have used the expression 'manufactured' to describe this outrage, which you now refer to as industry. This is accurate inasmuch as the protests are usually carefully planned and coordinated. But do you think this ignores the fact that people could also be genuinely upset or hurt by what they construe as religious insult?

That's their problem. The world is full of things that upset people. But most of us deal with it and move on and don't try and burn the planet down.

There is no right in the world not to be offended. That right simply doesn't exist. In a free society, an open society, people have strong opinions, and these opinions very often clash. In a democracy, we have to learn to deal with this. And this is true about novels, it's true about cartoons, it's true about all these products.

A question I have often asked is, 'What would an inoffensive political cartoon look like?' What would a respectful cartoon look like? The form requires disrespect and so if we are going to have in the world things like cartoons and satire, we just have to accept it as part of the price of freedom.

One of the parallels one notices between the nature of the responses to The Satanic Verses and the rage today is the random pattern of the attacks. The U.S. cultural center was attacked in Islamabad back then.....

Which had absolutely nothing to do with the book.

Exactly. And the U.S. consulates have been under attack recently thanks to the controversial film. Is there a larger theme running here, something that emerges from a climate of hostility and distrust of the West, particularly America?

I think you could say that some of it is caused by a particular kind of anti-Americanism, which might well be fuelled by recent American military excursions. You could say that some of it is out of a kind of economic despair, where you have a body of young men whose own prospects are very slim and whose hopes of making a good life are very small. And that engenders all kinds of disappointments and anger which can be channelled in this direction. There is a whole series of causes and they are not the same in every place. In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.

Of course there are geopolitical reasons. But I think there are educational reasons as well. The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world's oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam. This very minor extremist cult, Wahhabism, was suddenly propagated across the Muslim world through madrassas and has created generations now who are steeped in this harsher, more paranoid, more confrontational version of Islam.

The book shows you were opposed, or at least left unsupported, not merely by radical Islamists but also those who would regard themselves as liberal, a number of who were on the Left. What was the main reason for this - this opposition, as it were, from within?

I was always bewildered by it. I confess I am still a little bewildered by it.

Could it be because they felt you brought it on yourself? This idea that you knew exactly what you were doing when you wrote The Satanic Verses, or at least the Mahound chapter?

It is a number of things. I think partly, and I think I say this somewhere in the book, it is this kind of reflex of the old Left that the people can't be wrong. If a large number of people of any community object to a certain person, that person must be in the wrong. It's not possible that there can be an erroneous mass response to an event.

Or was it also because Left-Liberal opinion has become more and more influenced by a moral and cultural relativism? Have we taken respect for other people's beliefs and feelings too far?

Of course, that's true. Moral and cultural relativism is a very dangerous phenomenon. What you routinely hear from some extremist Muslim pundits, whether religious or political, is a discourse that is anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynistic. The same Leftists would not tolerate that coming from any other group. But somehow people turn a blind eye to it because it is coming from this group.

The book reveals that many people in Britain openly called for the implementation of the fatwa. I was really surprised to read that this included Cat Stevens [aka Yusuf Islam]. I mean this was the man who sang of dreaming of the world as one and invited us to glide on his peace train.....

Yes, the peace train, I know...well, I guess the peace train didn't travel to this particular station ( laughs).

But isn't exhorting people to kill another person a clear incitement to violence? Isn't this an offence under British law? Why weren't people who did this prosecuted?

Not one single person in England was prosecuted for any offence even though thousands upon thousands were demanding my death and standing up in mosques every Friday and saying they were ready to do it. I did ask myself, supposing this had been not me but some other figure in Britain, suppose it was the Queen, for instance. It is impossible to think people would not have been arrested and prosecuted if they were standing up in their thousands and saying 'We will kill the Queen.'

I am only saying the Queen to dramatise my point. But you see what I mean? It seemed very odd that this particular person could be threatened in that way, whereas other people would never have been allowed to have been.

By 'this particular person', you mean a 'mere writer?'

Or this mere writer. Maybe another writer would have elicited another response.

Hmmmm...

Not a brown-skinned writer.

Ah, I was trying to tease that out of you.

( Laughs)

Joseph Anton reads in parts like a thank you work - a way of acknowledging the bravery and loyalty of the few who stood by you in those years of darkness.

Well, I certainly think that one of the big subjects in the book is the opposition between hatred and love, between friendship and hostility. And I certainly think I was fortunate in my friends, who both publicly and privately, gave me an astonishing degree of support. We have all sat on these secrets for more than 20 years. And it has been a pleasure to say, here is what people did, here is how it was done.

Even the British police came to really admire my circle of friends because they saw how determined they were to keep secrets, to be totally dependable.

Your son Zafar recently told the Evening Standard that he "had no wish that it (the fatwa) hadn't happened" because it made him who he is - underlining that it taught him to deal with adversity. I am sure it taught you to do so as well, but do you still find yourself wishing it never happened even today? Or do you not think about it at all?

Obviously, given a choice, I would be better off if it hadn't happened. I would have had a much more pleasant ten years. I was in a very good place in 1988, after the publication of Midnight's Children and Shame. It would have been much more pleasant to have continued an ordinary literary life and bring up my child in an ordinary way.

Absolutely. But my question was whether you still think about it and wish it had never happened.

You can't regret your life in the end. And that is what Zafar is essentially saying in that interview as well. What happened is what happened and everybody has learnt from it and moved on. One of the reasons for waiting this long to write the book is that I didn't want to be affected by ideas of 'What if'. I didn't want to be excessively possessed by anger, resentment, whatever. I felt I should wait until I was in a calmer and more peaceful place so that I could look back on this period of my life with tranquillity and objectivity and tell the story as truthfully as possible.

You are pretty hard on yourself about that period when you caved in, apologised and declared you were a good Muslim...

Well, it's important in an autobiography that the author is self-critical. Because, otherwise, it reads like an excuse, an apology, or a self-justification. The reader needs to feel that the person writing the story has a pretty clear or unvarnished idea of himself. I wanted to make it clear that I know there are all kinds of things I wished I hadn't done, or should have done differently, or better. And that there are a few things that I am proud of having done. But I think you need to present this just in the same way as you are creating a fictional character. You have to present a three-dimensional character.

You describe yourself as having been stupid in your 'Why I am a Muslim' phase. How much of this was a result of sheer despair, of being not in the right mental state? And how much of it was cold calculation - the hope of a deal that would end the torment of hiding?

I will tell you what it was. Reading my journals of this period, it was quite clear the person writing them was in a very low state of mind - something very like despair. So, there was that internal contradiction. But also externally, there was an enormous amount of pressure on me in those days from the media, from politicians and even from opinion polls being taken in Europe.

The general attitude was that this was my fault and I was the one who needed to find a resolution to it - that I broke it, so I should fix it. And when I tried to argue that this was not the case, this was called arrogance. My refusal to withdraw my book was proof of not only my arrogance but also my financial greed. Nobody would see there was a principled reason for doing this.

All of this, over the course of two years, wore me down to a point to which I clutched at a straw. I thought maybe this is a way of breaking the logjam. But of course, this was dishonest, I am not a religious person, and I shouldn't have said I was. I immediately felt dreadful about it and understood it was a kind of self-betrayal.

But in retrospect, it was a clarifying moment, it made me understand that it was a mistake to go down that road of appeasement. It made me clearer - no more apologies, no more excuses, no more appeasements, no more compromises. I am just going to say my piece, argue my corner, and try and stand up for what I believe in. And if people don't like it, tough.

That moment of failure turned me into a much clearer, much stronger person.

The book reveals how much of your novels - the people, the places, the events - have been drawn or loosely based on real people, places and events. The novels of imagination are also novels of experience.

If you read the work of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, James Joyce or Marcel Proust, you will probably find there is an enormous amount of personal experience as source material. Now somebody will say I am comparing myself to those writers, but I am not. I am talking of writers I admire.

But the act of writing a novel is a journey. And the beginning of the journey can often be personal experience. The end product is something else. That journey from personal experience to finished book is the imaginative leap. That is the act of writing.

I thought it would be interesting for people to get a sense of how my writing moved from personal experience to finished work. The grandparents in Midnight's Children are not like my grandparents, but they had things in common. They didn't look through a hole in a sheet.

You are pretty critical about some people in your book you don't like. One of them is Marianne [Wiggins, Rushdie's second wife], who is portrayed as almost delusional. I know she has said and written damaging stuff about you. But don't you think people like her are likely to be hurt by some of the things you said in the book? Does this bother you?

What bothered me most was to tell the truth. The things that Marianne said about me were extremely unpleasant and characterised by blatant untruth, including allegations that I was interested to have a meeting with Muammar Qadhafi, which is a ludicrous kind of escalation of untruth.

I think you just have to decide when reading the book whether you feel you are reading the truth or not. In my view, I am telling not just the exact truth, but truth for which there are many witnesses.

This is how she behaved and this is the reason why our marriage ended. It was something that made my life extraordinarily difficult.

The purpose of writing a book like this is to say what happened. I am not fantasising, not fictionalising, I am actually toning it down. What really happened was even worse than that.

Did you show any of the parts to people you were once close to? Padma [Lakshmi, his fourth wife] doesn't get very good press either.

She knows what is in the book. I rewrote a couple of passages that she asked me to. I think I have tried to show there was a long period in which we were in love. And that it was a good relationship for a time. But I said to her, I am talking about the end of the marriage - and it was not my choice to end. So you are going to get that perspective on it.

There are some satirical passages about her having left you for someone with more money.

Yes, I think that was perfectly reasonable. After she talked to me every day for eight years about how I was too old for her, she left for somebody at least a decade older. So you can draw your own conclusions, as I do.

What next?

Truthfully, I don't know. Obviously, we still have work to do to launch this book for the next couple of months. There is also the movie of Midnight's Children, which is just about coming out now. I've got this TV project, a 60-minute drama series, an idea that I have been developing in America with Showtime Networks called The Next People, which is a kind of political science fiction.

I have some ideas for novels. But truthfully I don't know whether any of them are any good.

mukund.p@thehindu.co.in

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A phone call on February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, altered Salman Rushdie's life forever. He was told that Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa calling for his death for allegedly insulting the Prophet and the Quran in The Satanic Verses.

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Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of French extreme-right group the National Front, has been fined €5,000 for suggesting Romanians were "naturally" inclined to steal.

Speaking at a rally in September last year, he said that Romanians "are like birds... they fly ( voler) naturally," French newspaper Libération reported.

The French verb " voler " means both to fly and to steal.

A Paris court ruled that the 85-year-old politician, who is also the founder of the National Front, was guilty of publicly insulting a group of people based on their ethnicity. The prosecution had requested a two year suspended sentence for Le Pen, who recently announced he is running in France's upcoming municipal elections.

Bernadette Hétier, the co-president of anti-racism group Mrap, told Libération that the verdict "was in favour of Romanian dignity," and was thankful Le Pen's conviction "created as much publicity as his remarks when they were made, deeply unfortunately, in 2012."

Le Pen's lawyer Wallerand de St Just had argued that the remarks were made as a joke. The French politician has repeatedly been convicted under France's racial hatred laws, as well as for Holocaust denial after he described the Nazi gas chambers as a "small detail" of World World Two in a BBC Hardtalk interview.

It is the latest in a spate of controversies surrounding the National Front, who have enjoyed a surge of popularity in France due to its stance on immigration. Le Pen's daughter Marine, who is currently the party's leader, recently lost her parliamentary immunity after comparing Muslim prayers in the street to the Nazi occupation. She is reportedly facing charges of inciting racial hatred.

"For those who like to talk about World War Two, to talk about occupation, we could talk about, for once, the occupation of our territory. There are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation all the same, and it weighs on people," she said at a 2010 party rally.

The President of France's Union of Jewish Students Jonathan Hayoun said the verdict revealed how "one of the National Front's leaders continues to hold racist views."

"We ask Marine Le Pen: When will she expel [her father] from the party, considering she has committed herself to excluding all candidates who hold racist views and who are convicted by the justice system?" he added.

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French far-right politician Jean Marie Le Pen fined for racist Roma

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Jean Marie Le Pen, the former leader of French extreme-right group the National Front, has been fined €5,000 for suggesting Romanians were "naturally" inclined to steal. Speaking at a rally in September last year, he said that Romanians "are like birds... they fly ( voler) naturally," French newspaper Libération reported.

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Robin Thicke's song banned by some schools

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Robin Thicke's song banned by some schools

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Robin Thicke 's track 'Blurred Lines' has been banned by The University of Leeds' student union, making it the second university in the UK the song is now blacklisted by.

I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two" has been branded by critics as sexist, with allegations that it promotes non-consensual sex with the chorus " I hate these blurred lines". Earlier this month the song was outlawed in student buildings at the University of Edinburgh.

Alice Smart, an officer at Leeds' student union, told The Independent that the song is no longer able to play in any of the three campus nightclubs and two bars operated by the union as it "undermines and degrades women. The reaction has been mainly positive," she adds. "A few students are asking why if we have banned this song, we aren't banning everything, but we've chosen this one as an example, because it's so popular."

The Edinburgh ban on the chart-topping hit is part of the University Students' Association policy 'End Rape Culture and Lad Banter on Campus', which as student newspaper The Tab reports, aims to shut down the "myths and stereotypes around sexual violence" and prevent the sexual objectification of female students.

Thicke recently claimed that the song's lyrics were a "feminist movement within itself". He said: "It's supposed to stir conversation, it's supposed to make us talk about what's important and what the relationship between men and women is, but if you listen to the lyrics it says ' That man is not your maker ' - it's actually a feminist movement within itself."

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Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' banned by Leeds University - NME

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Robin Thicke 's track 'Blurred Lines' has been banned by The University of Leeds' student union, making it the second university in the UK the song is now blacklisted by. I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two" has been branded by critics as sexist, with allegations that it promotes non-consensual sex with the chorus " I hate these blurred lines".

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The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, intervened to prevent a Christian advertising campaign from promoting the idea that gay people can be converted to heterosexuality.

Just days before the posters were due to appear on buses in the capital, Johnson ordered his transport chiefs to pull the adverts booked by two conservative Anglican groups following outrage among gay campaigners and politicians saying that they were homophobic. The adverts were booked on behalf of the Core Issues Trust whose leader, Mike Davidson, believes "homoerotic behaviour is sinful".

His charity funds "reparative therapy" for gay Christians, which it claims can "develop their heterosexual potential". The campaign was also backed by Anglican Mainstream, a worldwide orthodox Anglican group whose supporters have equated homosexuality with alcoholism. The advert was due to say: "Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!"

Johnson, who contacted the Guardian to announce he was stopping the adverts within two hours of their contents becoming public, said: "London is one of the most tolerant cities in the world and intolerant of intolerance. It is clearly offensive to suggest that being gay is an illness that someone recovers from and I am not prepared to have that suggestion driven around London on our buses."

His main rival in next month's mayoral election, Ken Livingstone, said Johnson should never have allowed the adverts to be booked. "London is going backwards under a Tory leadership that should have made these advertisements impossible.

"They promote a falsehood, the homophobic idea of 'therapy' to change the sexual orientation of lesbians and gay men."

The Christian groups insisted the advert had been cleared with Transport for London (TfL), which is chaired by the mayor. Davidson said: "I didn't realise censorship was in place. We went through the correct channels and we were encouraged by the bus company to go through their procedures. They okayed it and now it has been pulled."

CBS Outdoor, the media company that sells the bus advertising sites, said the ad had been passed for display by the Committee of Advertising Practice. It is understood TfL was due to make around £10,000 for allowing the adverts to run on about two dozen buses across five routes.

The campaign was an explicit attempt to hit back at the gay rights group Stonewall, which as part of its lobbying for the extension of marriage to gay couples is running its own bus adverts saying: "Some people are gay. Get over it." The Christian groups used the same black, red and white colour scheme as Stonewall and in a statement announcing the campaign accused it of promoting the "false idea that there is indisputable scientific evidence that people are born gay".

The gay ex-vicar, Labour MP and former minister Chris Bryant, said the advert was cruel for promoting the idea that you could become "ex-gay" and he said it would particularly hurt teenagers struggling to come to terms with their sexuality.

"The emotional damage that is done to the individuals who try to suppress their sexuality, the women they marry and the children they might have is immeasurable," he said. "Most sane Christians believe that homosexuality is not a lifestyle or a choice but is a fact to be discovered or not. The pretence that homosexuality is something you can be weaned off in some way is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of creation."

Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Stonewall, said the adverts were "clearly homophobic" and added: "The only reason some gay people might want to stop being gay is because of the prejudice of the people who are publishing the ad.

"The promotion of this voodoo therapy is hugely irresponsible given the damage that it appears to do to some people."

Both men said the advert should not be banned, however, because they believed in freedom of speech.

Attempts to "treat" or alter sexual orientation have been strongly condemned by leading medical organisations. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has warned that "so-called treatments of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish" and concluded in 2010: "There is no sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed."

The British Medical Association has also attacked "conversion therapy", a related field to reparation therapy, passing a motion asserting that it is "discredited and harmful to those 'treated' ".

The Rev Lynda Rose, a spokesperson for the UK branch of Anglican Mainstream, said her group adhered to scripture that all fornication outside marriage is prohibited and believed that homosexuals were "not being fully the people God intended us to be". She said therapies endorsed by Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues were not coercive and were appropriate for people who wanted to change their sexual attractions, for example if they were married and worried about the impact of a "gay lifestyle" on their children.

The decision to pull the adverts is being seen as a potential boost for conservative Christian organisations attempting to become more politically active in the UK. "Banning this is usually a fairly good way to encourage a sense that people are being marginalised and persecuted," said Simon Barrow, co-founder of the Ekklesia thinktank which has tracked the progress of what it calls aggressive conservative Christianity. "It could be part of a developing tactic to draw attention to themselves and a way of using victimhood to galvanise sympathy and support."

Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate, said: "From personal experience as a gay Christian, I can tell you that it's much better to be out than in. We should be celebrating the diversity for which London is known, not denigrating it.

Revelations about the adverts came as Johnson was due to appear at a hustings organised by Stonewall on Saturday.

* The original version of this article stated that 'the ad had been passed for display by the Committee of Advertising Practice and it complied with Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) guidelines'.

In fact the ASA does not pre-clear adverts and had nothing to do with the decision to pass the advert. The article has been amended to reflect this and to also remove a subsequent quote misattributed to the ASA.
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Anti-gay adverts pulled from bus campaign by Boris Johnson

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The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, intervened to prevent a Christian advertising campaign from promoting the idea that gay people can be converted to heterosexuality. Just days before the posters were due to appear on buses in the capital, Johnson ordered his transport chiefs to pull the adverts booked by two conservative Anglican groups following outrage among gay campaigners and politicians saying that they were homophobic.

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A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days.

Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie at Tottenham.

A district judge in Swansea called the comments "vile and abhorrent".

Muamba, 23, who suffered a cardiac arrest, is still in intensive care.

Sentencing Stacey at Swansea Magistrates' Court, District Judge John Charles told him: "In my view, there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence.

"It was not the football world who was praying for [Muamba].... everybody was praying for his life."

Stacey broke down in tears as he was led away to begin his jail term.

As he passed the public gallery, he was briefly embraced by friends and his parents.

A second year biology student at Swansea, Stacey was arrested after his comments on the social networking site were reported by other users.

A number of people challenged Stacey on Twitter following his first comment, and he responded with a number of offensive posts aimed at other Twitter users.

Last week the court heard how Stacey posted the offensive comments shortly after the former England Under-21 star collapsed during the FA Cup quarter-final at White Hart Lane on 17 March.

Magistrates were told police forces across Britain received complaints following the comments.
'Disciplinary'
Stacey tried to "distance himself" from the tweets by claiming his account had been hacked, the court was told.

He later tried to delete his page but was arrested the following day at his student house in Swansea.

When interviewed by police, Stacey said he had been drinking since lunchtime on Saturday and was drunk when he made the comments.

Stacey was initially released on bail pending sentence and was ordered not to use Twitter and other social networking sites.

Jim Brisbane, chief crown prosecutor for CPS Cymru-Wales, said: "Racist language is inappropriate in any setting and through any media.

"We hope this case will serve as a warning to anyone who may think that comments made online are somehow beyond the law."

A Swansea University spokesperson said: "The student remains suspended from the university pending the conclusion of our disciplinary proceedings."

Stacey has also been de-registered as a player with Treorchy rugby club, where he has turned out for the second team on occasions.

Club chairman Andrew Jones said: "We haven't met as a committee yet but we recognise the need to respond at the earliest possible opportunity and we've taken the decision to de-register him as a player at Treorchy Rugby Football Club as of today."

He added: "Like other members of the public, we as a club in no way support the comments made and the last thing we would want would be to associate ourselves with them.

"I sincerely hope he takes time to reflect on his actions."

The sentencing has sparked rigorous debate on internet forums and social network sites debating the sentence comments that are made online.

Writing on Twitter, Lord Sugar - former Spurs chairman - saying "Be warned idiots!," while Gary Lineker posted "Let it be a warning to all you immature souls. #thinkbeforeyoutweet".

Also on Twitter, Mervyn Barrett of crime reduction charity Nacro said he could not help but think the sentence was "manifestly excessive".

Meanwhile, Muamba remains in intensive care in a London hospital where his condition is described as serious but stable.

Bolton and Tottenham played their re-arranged FA Cup fixture on Tuesday evening, with a minute's applause before kick-off.

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A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days. Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie at Tottenham.

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Man jailed for sending an antisemitic tweet

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Man jailed for sending an antisemitic tweet

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An internet troll accused of sending an antisemitic message to Labour MP Luciana Berger has been sentenced to four weeks in prison at Merseyside magistrates court.

Garron Helm, 21, from Litherland, north of Liverpool, tweeted a picture of the MP with a Holocaust yellow star superimposed on her forehead, with the hashtag "Hitler was right". The tweet, which referred to Berger as a ''communist jewess", read: "You can always trust a Jew to show their true colours eventually."

Helm send the tweet in the early hours of the morning on 7 August and claimed to have sent it in a state of anger and frustration. He pleaded guilty to sending an offensive, indecent or obscene message.

Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said she hoped the jail term would deter would-be trolls. "This sentence sends a clear message that hate crime is not tolerated in our country," she said. "I hope this case serves as an encouragement to others to report hate crime whenever it rears its ugly head."

When police searched Helm's home they found Nazi memorabilia including an SS flag and flags from the British neo-Nazi group National Action. Helm's twitter account, called "Æthelwulf" - Old English for Noble Wolf - links to the National Action website, which promotes a "free, white Britain".

The account includes a tweet that refers to David Cameron and Ed Miliband as "Jews masquerading as Englishmen" and many references to far-right politics.

Recent high-profile victims of trolling have included campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, politician Stella Creasy and Chloe Madeley, daughter of TV presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan.
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Man jailed for antisemitic tweet to Labour MP

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An internet troll accused of sending an antisemitic message to Labour MP Luciana Berger has been sentenced to four weeks in prison at Merseyside magistrates court. Garron Helm, 21, from Litherland, north of Liverpool, tweeted a picture of the MP with a Holocaust yellow star superimposed on her forehead, with the hashtag "Hitler was right".

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Soldier jailed for making a bomb to murder immigrants

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Soldier jailed for making a bomb to murder immigrants

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A soldier who wrote of murdering immigrants and who praised Adolf Hitler has been jailed for two years after building a viable nailbomb packed with 181 pieces of shrapnel to maximise the carnage it would cause.

Ryan McGee, 20, described by his defence team as "a bit of a loner", wrote in a journal: "I vow to drag every last immigrant into the fires of hell with me."

He downloaded a video of two bound and gagged men beneath a swastika flag, one being beheaded and the other killed by a gunshot to the head and went online to tell people to do something if they hated immigration. He supported the English Defence League, Ku Klux Klan and praised then British National party leader Nick Griffin.

A nailbomb and cache of weapons including an imitation firearm, an air pistol, axes and knives were found in the bedroom of his family home in Eccles, Salford, and he had researched buying guns on the web. McGee also posted several pictures of himself in EDL and Ku Klux Klan clothing and standing next to EDL flags.

When he was interviewed by police, McGee said he made the bomb while on leave "out of boredom" and he was interested in rightwing politics because he did not like mass immigration.

He came from a family, the court heard, with far-rightwing views. He had attended an EDL rally and had a "No Surrender" EDL flag and an EDL T-shirt and jumper - all bought for him by his mother for his 18th birthday.

Prosecutor Roger Smart accepted McGee was not a terrorist but an immature teenager. He kept a journal called Ryan's Story with Scooby Doo stickers on the front, and inside drawings of guns, machetes, knuckledusters and knives. He was jailed for 24 months after admitting that between 1 and 3 September 2013 at Salford he made an explosive device.

But after the sentencing, critics argued that a Muslim convicted of the same offence would have faced a longer jail term.

Imran Khan, solicitor for Mohommod Nawaz, jailed for four and a half years for travelling to a terrorist training camp in Syria, said: "It seems that if you are a Muslim, justice is not blind.

"Such decisions bring the system into disrepute and steps must be taken to remedy it. Most significantly, if the government, police and the courts wanted to send a message out to those British Muslims who have gone to Syria to come back then I fear that this has hampered that cause greatly."

The bomb and far-right material was uncovered when Greater Manchester police searched the home where he lived with his mother Vera and two brothers in an unconnected investigation on 28 November last year.

When an officer found a "suspicious device" in a bedroom, bomb disposal experts were called in and counter-terrorism police launched an investigation. McGee also pleaded guilty to possessing a document, namely the Anarchist Cookbook, containing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

The CPS said it had decided not to prosecute McGee as a terrorist because "it was never McGee's intention to use the device for any terrorist or violent purpose, and that he had no firm intention to activate the device. That's why he was prosecuted under the Explosive Substance Act."

Before his sentencing McGee was released on bail, having pleaded to the offences.

After sentencing, Recorder of London Brian Barker told McGee: "What you have lost is your reputation and your future but I hope in due course you can make amends for that."

Detective Superintendent Simon Barraclough, of the north-west counter-terrorism unit, said of McGee's extremism: "It mirrors to some extent what we are seeing from the Islamic fundamentalist point of view from the other end of the spectrum. He has effectively self-radicalised himself and he has done that through the internet through his own devices rather than working with others."DS Barraclough added: "McGee had in his possession a viable improvised device and the material and knowledge of how to make it. He clearly set out to make the device, which could have seriously injured or possibly killed members of the public.

"There is no evidence of planning or intended targets but we do not underestimate the impact that McGee's actions and extremist beliefs may have had on communities across the country."
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Soldier jailed for making nailbomb avoids terror charge

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A soldier who wrote of murdering immigrants and who praised Adolf Hitler has been jailed for two years after building a viable nailbomb packed with 181 pieces of shrapnel to maximise the carnage it would cause.

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Trolls jailed for sending abusive tweets

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Trolls jailed for sending abusive tweets

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Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed.

Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.

Senior district judge Howard Riddle jailed Sorley for 12 weeks and Nimmo for eight weeks as well as ordering them to pay £400 compensation to each victim.

Earlier this month the pair pleaded guilty to sending the menacing tweets, admitting they were among the users of 86 separate Twitter accounts from which Ms Criado-Perez had received abusive messages.

Passing sentence at Westminster Magistrates Court, Judge Riddle said that both victims had suffered substantially as a result of the abuse.

He said Ms Criado-Perez had faced "panic, fear and horror" adding that she feared the "abusers would find her and carry out the threats. She felt hunted."

She responded to the sentencing on Twitter, saying: "I feel immensely relieved that the judge clearly has understood the severity of the impact this abuse has had on me." She said the compensation would be given to charity.

Of Ms Creasy the judge said: "She became concerned for her safety to the extent that she had to alter her behaviour. She had a panic button installed in her home."

As he passed sentence Sorley shook her head and looked to the floor while Nimmo stared straight ahead, showing no emotion.

Sean Caulfield, defending Sorley, told the court his client was "articulate and intelligent" and there was "disconnect" between her and the person that sent the messages.

He said they were sent in a half-hour window between 2.25am and 2.55am last July 30 when she was under the influence of alcohol and she was "horrified and appalled" at what she had done.

The court also heard how she had 25 previous convictions, mostly for being drunk and disorderly but she had also been convicted twice of assaulting police.

At the time of the Twitter abuse last summer Ms Criado-Perez was leading an ultimately successful campaign to have women featured on British banknotes.

Police launched an investigation after both she and Walthamstow MP Ms Creasy complained about the vile tweets.

Sorley used Twitter to tell Ms Criado-Perez to "f*** off and die you worthless piece of crap", "go kill yourself" and "rape is the last of your worries".

She also deluged Ms Criado-Perez with menacing messages claiming that she had just been released from prison, writing: "I will find you and you don't want to know what I will do when I do, you're pathetic, kill yourself before I do."

Sorley, from Newcastle upon Tyne, has a 2:1 degree in creative advertising from Leeds College of Art and was working in an Asda supermarket in Newcastle at the time. She has since lost her job.

Unemployed Nimmo told Ms Criado-Perez to "shut up bitch" and "Ya not that gd looking to rape u be fine" followed by "I will find you (smiley face)".

In an attack on Ms Creasy, Nimmo, from South Shields, said:"The things I cud do to u (smiley face)", calling her "Dumb blond bitch."

Ms Creasy responded to Nimmo's message of "Dumb blonde bitch" with the message "That's dumb Dr blonde bitch to you".

"Love it at least u can have a laugh," Nimmo responded, to which Ms Creasy said: "I'm not having a laugh, I'm cataloguing your vile conduct #takebacktwitter".

In court his solicitor Paul Kennedy described him as a "recluse and sad individual" adding that he had no previous convictions and was sorry for what he did.

Sorley's brother, who was in court with two holdalls carrying her belongings in the hope his sister would not be jailed, left without making any comment.

Before the early hearing, Sorley posted a picture of herself on her Twitter page posing outside Buckingham Palace with the message "just chilling at the queens".
:: Watch Sky News live on television, on Sky channel 501, Virgin Media channel 602, Freeview channel 82 and Freesat channel 202.

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Twitter Trolls Jailed For Sending Abusive Tweets

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Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed. Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.

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Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.

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Fabrice Muamba: Racist Twitter user jailed for 56 days

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Fabrice Muamba: Racist Twitter user jailed for 56 days

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A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days.

Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie at Tottenham.

A district judge in Swansea called the comments "vile and abhorrent".

Muamba, 23, who suffered a cardiac arrest, is still in intensive care.

Sentencing Stacey at Swansea Magistrates' Court, District Judge John Charles told him: "In my view, there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence.

"It was not the football world who was praying for [Muamba].... everybody was praying for his life."

Stacey broke down in tears as he was led away to begin his jail term.

As he passed the public gallery, he was briefly embraced by friends and his parents.

A second year biology student at Swansea, Stacey was arrested after his comments on the social networking site were reported by other users.

A number of people challenged Stacey on Twitter following his first comment, and he responded with a number of offensive posts aimed at other Twitter users.

Last week the court heard how Stacey posted the offensive comments shortly after the former England Under-21 star collapsed during the FA Cup quarter-final at White Hart Lane on 17 March.

Magistrates were told police forces across Britain received complaints following the comments.
'Disciplinary'
Stacey tried to "distance himself" from the tweets by claiming his account had been hacked, the court was told.

He later tried to delete his page but was arrested the following day at his student house in Swansea.

When interviewed by police, Stacey said he had been drinking since lunchtime on Saturday and was drunk when he made the comments.

Stacey was initially released on bail pending sentence and was ordered not to use Twitter and other social networking sites.

Jim Brisbane, chief crown prosecutor for CPS Cymru-Wales, said: "Racist language is inappropriate in any setting and through any media.

"We hope this case will serve as a warning to anyone who may think that comments made online are somehow beyond the law."

A Swansea University spokesperson said: "The student remains suspended from the university pending the conclusion of our disciplinary proceedings."

Stacey has also been de-registered as a player with Treorchy rugby club, where he has turned out for the second team on occasions.

Club chairman Andrew Jones said: "We haven't met as a committee yet but we recognise the need to respond at the earliest possible opportunity and we've taken the decision to de-register him as a player at Treorchy Rugby Football Club as of today."

He added: "Like other members of the public, we as a club in no way support the comments made and the last thing we would want would be to associate ourselves with them.

"I sincerely hope he takes time to reflect on his actions."

The sentencing has sparked rigorous debate on internet forums and social network sites debating the sentence comments that are made online.

Writing on Twitter, Lord Sugar - former Spurs chairman - saying "Be warned idiots!," while Gary Lineker posted "Let it be a warning to all you immature souls. #thinkbeforeyoutweet".

Also on Twitter, Mervyn Barrett of crime reduction charity Nacro said he could not help but think the sentence was "manifestly excessive".

Meanwhile, Muamba remains in intensive care in a London hospital where his condition is described as serious but stable.

Bolton and Tottenham played their re-arranged FA Cup fixture on Tuesday evening, with a minute's applause before kick-off.

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A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days. Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie at Tottenham.

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Simplified Version
This simplified version of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been created especially for young people.

4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.

15. Right to a Nationality. We all have the right to belong to a country.

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United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights Summary: Youth For Human Rights Video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Simplified Version This simplified version of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been created especially for young people. 4. No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave. 15. Right to a Nationality.

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Man jailed for antisemitic tweet to Labour MP

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Man jailed for antisemitic tweet to Labour MP

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An internet troll accused of sending an antisemitic message to Labour MP Luciana Berger has been sentenced to four weeks in prison at Merseyside magistrates court.

Garron Helm, 21, from Litherland, north of Liverpool, tweeted a picture of the MP with a Holocaust yellow star superimposed on her forehead, with the hashtag "Hitler was right". The tweet, which referred to Berger as a ''communist jewess", read: "You can always trust a Jew to show their true colours eventually."

Helm send the tweet in the early hours of the morning on 7 August and claimed to have sent it in a state of anger and frustration. He pleaded guilty to sending an offensive, indecent or obscene message.

Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said she hoped the jail term would deter would-be trolls. "This sentence sends a clear message that hate crime is not tolerated in our country," she said. "I hope this case serves as an encouragement to others to report hate crime whenever it rears its ugly head."

When police searched Helm's home they found Nazi memorabilia including an SS flag and flags from the British neo-Nazi group National Action. Helm's twitter account, called "Æthelwulf" - Old English for Noble Wolf - links to the National Action website, which promotes a "free, white Britain".

The account includes a tweet that refers to David Cameron and Ed Miliband as "Jews masquerading as Englishmen" and many references to far-right politics.

Recent high-profile victims of trolling have included campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, politician Stella Creasy and Chloe Madeley, daughter of TV presenters Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan.
Topics

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Man jailed for antisemitic tweet to Labour MP

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An internet troll accused of sending an antisemitic message to Labour MP Luciana Berger has been sentenced to four weeks in prison at Merseyside magistrates court. Garron Helm, 21, from Litherland, north of Liverpool, tweeted a picture of the MP with a Holocaust yellow star superimposed on her forehead, with the hashtag "Hitler was right".

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Anti-bigot laws passed by the Scottish Parliament

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Anti-bigot laws passed by the Scottish Parliament

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New laws to tackle religious hatred and bigotry related to football have been passed by the Scottish Parliament, despite a lack of opposition support.

The new Act aims to tackle the issue with jail terms of up to five years for behaviour which could cause public disorder in and around matches.

But Labour, the Tories, Lib Dems and the Scottish Greens said the bill was "railroaded" through by the SNP.

They said it was "bad law which risks doing more harm than good".

Despite opposition, the majority SNP government's Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill was passed by 64 votes to 57.

The legislation, which has won backing from police and prosecutors, aims to stamp out abusive behaviour, whether fans are watching matches in a stadium, in the pub or commenting online.

What does the bill do?

It creates two new offences - one dealing with offensive behaviour relating to football games, and a second on threatening communications.

Penalties range from a £40 fixed fine to a maximum of five years in prison and an unlimited fine.

The first offence deals with sectarian and other offensive chanting and behaviour likely to cause public disorder.

It covers conduct around football matches, inside grounds, and those travelling to and from stadiums - as well as fans watching games elsewhere, for example in pubs or on big screens outdoors.

In law, the legislation aims to take into account "expressing or inciting religious, racial or other forms of hatred" and "threatening behaviour or behaviour which would be offensive to any reasonable person".

It also creates potential for the imposition of football banning orders in every case.

The second offence deals with serious threats - including murder - made on the internet and elsewhere, and threats intended to incite religious hatred.

That would take in posts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as specific websites, and actions such as sending bullets or images depicting serious harm in the post.

Scottish ministers say the legislation will not stop peaceful preaching or artistic performance, nor will it criminalise satirical jokes about religion or non-religious belief.

They also insist it will not stop peoples' right to criticise religion or non-religious beliefs, "even in harsh terms".

Decisions on sentencing in each case are a matter for the courts.
Source: Scottish government
Earlier, about 20 football supporters wearing t-shirts bearing the slogan "fans not criminals" were excluded from the Holyrood chamber after parliament bosses told them they were only allowed in if they took them off.

The legislation will create two new offences relating to behaviour deemed to "incite religious, racial or other forms of hatred".

Community Safety Minister Roseanna Cunningham said she was pleased the legislation would soon become law.

She said: "This bill sends out an important message about the kind of Scotland we want to live in, because the vast majority of people in this country have no time whatsoever for the kind of mindless bigotry that has attached itself to the small minority who only damage and undermine our beautiful game - or those who peddle hatred by sitting behind a computer screen posting threats of harm on the internet.

"This is the 21st century, and this kind of behaviour is simply not acceptable, so action had to be taken.

"The passing of these important new laws sends out a powerful message to the bigots that this behaviour will not be tolerated in a modern Scotland."

Ms Cunningham added: "There has been a lot of debate in recent months about this legislation, but we've listened, we've acted, and the experts are firmly behind it.

"Scotland has shown the courage of its convictions and has taken the action needed."

The bill was brought forward in the wake of several high-profile football-related incidents, including trouble at Rangers and Celtic games.

All four opposition parties at Holyrood and independent MSP Margo MacDonald released a joint statement.

It said: "Members of all political parties are determined to wipe the blight of sectarianism from Scottish society.

"It is of real regret that the first piece of legislation passed by this new parliament has been railroaded through by the SNP.

"The SNP has used its majority to force through bad law that risks doing more harm than good. It sets a worrying precedent for this parliament."

The opposition statement added: "The SNP has failed to make the case for the legislation both in parliament and out - with football fans, religious organisations, anti-sectarianism organisations, children's charities, the Law Society, the Human Rights Commission, the Scottish Justices Association all raising genuine concerns with the SNP legislation.

"We believe a far more effective response is to focus on education and young people, working with the churches and football authorities on positive, practical, evidence-based measures that tackle the root causes of sectarianism as well robust application of existing laws."

Dave Scott, campaign director of anti-bigotry pressure group Nil By Mouth, said: "The debate around this bill has polarised the political parties but it has now become law and only time will tell how effective and enforceable it proves to be.

"However sectarianism goes far beyond football and facebook."

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New laws to tackle religious hatred and bigotry related to football have been passed by the Scottish Parliament, despite a lack of opposition support. The new Act aims to tackle the issue with jail terms of up to five years for behaviour which could cause public disorder in and around matches.

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I know from firsthand experience how important human rights are, having served in countries where there was little respect for these liberties. That is why, today, the day the world celebrates International Human Rights Day, holds special significance for me. This year's recognition is particularly poignant, coinciding with the memorial service for Nelson Mandela. The world has paused to reflect on the great legacy of this leader, who fought for human rights for all people within his nation and in doing so, inspired the world.

Today is the anniversary of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The Declaration is vitally important to all of us. It embodies the ideal that all human beings are born free and the principles embodied in the Magna Carta and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

Human rights and poverty reduction will always be at the core of the British government's foreign policy. Belief in political and economic freedom, in human rights and in the rule of law, are part of our national DNA.

Across the globe, my colleagues work tirelessly to make criminal justice systems fairer; promote the abolition of the death penalty; support freedom of expression, religion and belief; and defend the rights of women and the LGBT community. In September, the UK became the first government to publish a national action plan on business and human rights, outlining our commitments to encourage good business practice by UK companies both domestically and internationally.

The UK is leading efforts to end sexual violence in conflict, generating a new willingness from governments to take a stand on the issue. At the UN General Assembly this year we put forward a new Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, endorsed by 137 countries. And next June, we will host the largest summit ever staged on this issue, aiming to create irreversible momentum towards ending warzone rape and sexual violence worldwide.

Global problems cannot be solved by any one country alone. They require a collective effort. That is why the UK and U.S. work so closely together to promote basic human rights around the world. In the Middle East, our two countries continue to raise serious concerns about the flagrant violations of human rights in countries like Syria and Iran. And we continue to work with the U.S., EU and with our international partners in international organizations such as the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to address human rights violations.

The UK is delighted to join the HRC again in 2014, along with the U.S., where we will continue to promote and defend the ideals embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today at Mandela's memorial service, more than 90 heads of state and government will gather. President Obama described Mandela as having "bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice." I hope his legacy serves as an inspiration for all world leaders, and to each of us, to strive to bend that arc further.

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I know from firsthand experience how important human rights are, having served in countries where there was little respect for these liberties. That is why, today, the day the world celebrates International Human Rights Day, holds special significance for me. This year's recognition is particularly poignant, coinciding with the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

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Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' banned by Leeds University

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Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' banned by Leeds University

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Robin Thicke 's track 'Blurred Lines' has been banned by The University of Leeds' student union, making it the second university in the UK the song is now blacklisted by.

I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two" has been branded by critics as sexist, with allegations that it promotes non-consensual sex with the chorus " I hate these blurred lines". Earlier this month the song was outlawed in student buildings at the University of Edinburgh.

Alice Smart, an officer at Leeds' student union, told The Independent that the song is no longer able to play in any of the three campus nightclubs and two bars operated by the union as it "undermines and degrades women. The reaction has been mainly positive," she adds. "A few students are asking why if we have banned this song, we aren't banning everything, but we've chosen this one as an example, because it's so popular."

The Edinburgh ban on the chart-topping hit is part of the University Students' Association policy 'End Rape Culture and Lad Banter on Campus', which as student newspaper The Tab reports, aims to shut down the "myths and stereotypes around sexual violence" and prevent the sexual objectification of female students.

Thicke recently claimed that the song's lyrics were a "feminist movement within itself". He said: "It's supposed to stir conversation, it's supposed to make us talk about what's important and what the relationship between men and women is, but if you listen to the lyrics it says ' That man is not your maker ' - it's actually a feminist movement within itself."

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Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' banned by Leeds University - NME

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Robin Thicke 's track 'Blurred Lines' has been banned by The University of Leeds' student union, making it the second university in the UK the song is now blacklisted by. I'll give you something big enough to tear your ass in two" has been branded by critics as sexist, with allegations that it promotes non-consensual sex with the chorus " I hate these blurred lines".

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Twitter Trolls Jailed For Sending Abusive Tweets

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Twitter Trolls Jailed For Sending Abusive Tweets

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Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed.

Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.

Senior district judge Howard Riddle jailed Sorley for 12 weeks and Nimmo for eight weeks as well as ordering them to pay £400 compensation to each victim.

Earlier this month the pair pleaded guilty to sending the menacing tweets, admitting they were among the users of 86 separate Twitter accounts from which Ms Criado-Perez had received abusive messages.

Passing sentence at Westminster Magistrates Court, Judge Riddle said that both victims had suffered substantially as a result of the abuse.

He said Ms Criado-Perez had faced "panic, fear and horror" adding that she feared the "abusers would find her and carry out the threats. She felt hunted."

She responded to the sentencing on Twitter, saying: "I feel immensely relieved that the judge clearly has understood the severity of the impact this abuse has had on me." She said the compensation would be given to charity.

Of Ms Creasy the judge said: "She became concerned for her safety to the extent that she had to alter her behaviour. She had a panic button installed in her home."

As he passed sentence Sorley shook her head and looked to the floor while Nimmo stared straight ahead, showing no emotion.

Sean Caulfield, defending Sorley, told the court his client was "articulate and intelligent" and there was "disconnect" between her and the person that sent the messages.

He said they were sent in a half-hour window between 2.25am and 2.55am last July 30 when she was under the influence of alcohol and she was "horrified and appalled" at what she had done.

The court also heard how she had 25 previous convictions, mostly for being drunk and disorderly but she had also been convicted twice of assaulting police.

At the time of the Twitter abuse last summer Ms Criado-Perez was leading an ultimately successful campaign to have women featured on British banknotes.

Police launched an investigation after both she and Walthamstow MP Ms Creasy complained about the vile tweets.

Sorley used Twitter to tell Ms Criado-Perez to "f*** off and die you worthless piece of crap", "go kill yourself" and "rape is the last of your worries".

She also deluged Ms Criado-Perez with menacing messages claiming that she had just been released from prison, writing: "I will find you and you don't want to know what I will do when I do, you're pathetic, kill yourself before I do."

Sorley, from Newcastle upon Tyne, has a 2:1 degree in creative advertising from Leeds College of Art and was working in an Asda supermarket in Newcastle at the time. She has since lost her job.

Unemployed Nimmo told Ms Criado-Perez to "shut up bitch" and "Ya not that gd looking to rape u be fine" followed by "I will find you (smiley face)".

In an attack on Ms Creasy, Nimmo, from South Shields, said:"The things I cud do to u (smiley face)", calling her "Dumb blond bitch."

Ms Creasy responded to Nimmo's message of "Dumb blonde bitch" with the message "That's dumb Dr blonde bitch to you".

"Love it at least u can have a laugh," Nimmo responded, to which Ms Creasy said: "I'm not having a laugh, I'm cataloguing your vile conduct #takebacktwitter".

In court his solicitor Paul Kennedy described him as a "recluse and sad individual" adding that he had no previous convictions and was sorry for what he did.

Sorley's brother, who was in court with two holdalls carrying her belongings in the hope his sister would not be jailed, left without making any comment.

Before the early hearing, Sorley posted a picture of herself on her Twitter page posing outside Buckingham Palace with the message "just chilling at the queens".
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Twitter Trolls Jailed For Sending Abusive Tweets

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Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed. Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.

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In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like. Here's why that's disastrous for education-and mental health.

Andrew B. Myers / The Atlantic

Something strange is happening at America's colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law-or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in "that violates the law") lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia-and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she'd sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. "I'm a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me," the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan's article in this month's issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can't take a joke.

Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone.
Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American "Where were you born?," because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might "trigger" a recurrence of past trauma.

Read Follow-Up
Some recent campus actions border on the surreal. In April, at Brandeis University, the Asian American student association sought to raise awareness of microaggressions against Asians through an installation on the steps of an academic hall. The installation gave examples of microaggressions such as "Aren't you supposed to be good at math?" and "I'm colorblind! I don't see race." But a backlash arose among other Asian American students, who felt that the display itself was a microaggression. The association removed the installation, and its president wrote an e-mail to the entire student body apologizing to anyone who was "triggered or hurt by the content of the microaggressions."

This new climate is slowly being institutionalized, and is affecting what can be said in the classroom, even as a basis for discussion. During the 2014-15 school year, for instance, the deans and department chairs at the 10 University of California system schools were presented by administrators at faculty leader-training sessions with examples of microaggressions. The list of offensive statements included: "America is the land of opportunity" and "I believe the most qualified person should get the job."
Notes
The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That's partly right, although there are important differences between what's happening now and what happened in the 1980s and '90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives. The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into "safe spaces" where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

We have been studying this development for a while now, with rising alarm. (Greg Lukianoff is a constitutional lawyer and the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends free speech and academic freedom on campus, and has advocated for students and faculty involved in many of the incidents this article describes; Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist who studies the American culture wars. The stories of how we each came to this subject can be read here.) The dangers that these trends pose to scholarship and to the quality of American universities are significant; we could write a whole essay detailing them. But in this essay we focus on a different question: What are the effects of this new protectiveness on the students themselves? Does it benefit the people it is supposed to help? What exactly are students learning when they spend four years or more in a community that polices unintentional slights, places warning labels on works of classic literature, and in many other ways conveys the sense that words can be forms of violence that require strict control by campus authorities, who are expected to act as both protectors and prosecutors?

Power, identity, and speech in the new American university
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There's a saying common in education circles: Don't teach students what to think; teach them how to think. The idea goes back at least as far as Socrates. Today, what we call the Socratic method is a way of teaching that fosters critical thinking, in part by encouraging students to question their own unexamined beliefs, as well as the received wisdom of those around them. Such questioning sometimes leads to discomfort, and even to anger, on the way to understanding.

But vindictive protectiveness teaches students to think in a very different way. It prepares them poorly for professional life, which often demands intellectual engagement with people and ideas one might find uncongenial or wrong. The harm may be more immediate, too. A campus culture devoted to policing speech and punishing speakers is likely to engender patterns of thought that are surprisingly similar to those long identified by cognitive behavioral therapists as causes of depression and anxiety. The new protectiveness may be teaching students to think pathologically.

How Did We Get Here?

It's difficult to know exactly why vindictive protectiveness has burst forth so powerfully in the past few years. The phenomenon may be related to recent changes in the interpretation of federal antidiscrimination statutes (about which more later). But the answer probably involves generational shifts as well. Childhood itself has changed greatly during the past generation. Many Baby Boomers and Gen Xers can remember riding their bicycles around their hometowns, unchaperoned by adults, by the time they were 8 or 9 years old. In the hours after school, kids were expected to occupy themselves, getting into minor scrapes and learning from their experiences. But "free range" childhood became less common in the 1980s. The surge in crime from the '60s through the early '90s made Baby Boomer parents more protective than their own parents had been. Stories of abducted children appeared more frequently in the news, and in 1984, images of them began showing up on milk cartons. In response, many parents pulled in the reins and worked harder to keep their children safe.

The flight to safety also happened at school. Dangerous play structures were removed from playgrounds; peanut butter was banned from student lunches. After the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, many schools cracked down on bullying, implementing "zero tolerance" policies. In a variety of ways, children born after 1980-the Millennials-got a consistent message from adults: life is dangerous, but adults will do everything in their power to protect you from harm, not just from strangers but from one another as well.

These same children grew up in a culture that was (and still is) becoming more politically polarized. Republicans and Democrats have never particularly liked each other, but survey data going back to the 1970s show that on average, their mutual dislike used to be surprisingly mild. Negative feelings have grown steadily stronger, however, particularly since the early 2000s. Political scientists call this process "affective partisan polarization," and it is a very serious problem for any democracy. As each side increasingly demonizes the other, compromise becomes more difficult. A recent study shows that implicit or unconscious biases are now at least as strong across political parties as they are across races.

So it's not hard to imagine why students arriving on campus today might be more desirous of protection and more hostile toward ideological opponents than in generations past. This hostility, and the self-righteousness fueled by strong partisan emotions, can be expected to add force to any moral crusade. A principle of moral psychology is that "morality binds and blinds." Part of what we do when we make moral judgments is express allegiance to a team. But that can interfere with our ability to think critically. Acknowledging that the other side's viewpoint has any merit is risky-your teammates may see you as a traitor.

Social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors. Facebook was founded in 2004, and since 2006 it has allowed children as young as 13 to join. This means that the first wave of students who spent all their teen years using Facebook reached college in 2011, and graduated from college only this year.

Andrew B. Myers

These first true "social-media natives" may be different from members of previous generations in how they go about sharing their moral judgments and supporting one another in moral campaigns and conflicts. We find much to like about these trends; young people today are engaged with one another, with news stories, and with prosocial endeavors to a greater degree than when the dominant technology was television. But social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them.

We do not mean to imply simple causation, but rates of mental illness in young adults have been rising, both on campus and off, in recent decades. Some portion of the increase is surely due to better diagnosis and greater willingness to seek help, but most experts seem to agree that some portion of the trend is real. Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools. The rate of emotional distress reported by students themselves is also high, and rising. In a 2014 survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students surveyed said that they had "felt overwhelming anxiety" in the past 12 months, up from 49 percent in the same survey just five years earlier. Students seem to be reporting more emotional crises; many seem fragile, and this has surely changed the way university faculty and administrators interact with them. The question is whether some of those changes might be doing more harm than good.

The Thinking Cure

For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don't see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, "Our life is the creation of our mind." Marcus Aurelius said, "Life itself is but what you deem it." The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a modern embodiment of this ancient wisdom. It is the most extensively studied nonpharmaceutical treatment of mental illness, and is used widely to treat depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addiction. It can even be of help to schizophrenics. No other form of psychotherapy has been shown to work for a broader range of problems. Studies have generally found that it is as effective as antidepressant drugs (such as Prozac) in the treatment of anxiety and depression. The therapy is relatively quick and easy to learn; after a few months of training, many patients can do it on their own. Unlike drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy keeps working long after treatment is stopped, because it teaches thinking skills that people can continue to use.

The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. You start by learning the names of the dozen or so most common cognitive distortions (such as overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning; see the list at the bottom of this article). Each time you notice yourself falling prey to one of them, you name it, describe the facts of the situation, consider alternative interpretations, and then choose an interpretation of events more in line with those facts. Your emotions follow your new interpretation. In time, this process becomes automatic. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way-when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness-they become less depressed, anxious, and angry.

The parallel to formal education is clear: cognitive behavioral therapy teaches good critical-thinking skills, the sort that educators have striven for so long to impart. By almost any definition, critical thinking requires grounding one's beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one's initial hypothesis. But does campus life today foster critical thinking? Or does it coax students to think in more-distorted ways?

Let's look at recent trends in higher education in light of the distortions that cognitive behavioral therapy identifies. We will draw the names and descriptions of these distortions from David D. Burns's popular book Feeling Good, as well as from the second edition of Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, by Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn.

Higher Education's Embrace of "Emotional Reasoning"

Burns defines emotional reasoning as assuming "that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: 'I feel it, therefore it must be true.' " Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as letting "your feelings guide your interpretation of reality." But, of course, subjective feelings are not always trustworthy guides; unrestrained, they can cause people to lash out at others who have done nothing wrong. Therapy often involves talking yourself down from the idea that each of your emotional responses represents something true or important.

Emotional reasoning dominates many campus debates and discussions. A claim that someone's words are "offensive" is not just an expression of one's own subjective feeling of offendedness. It is, rather, a public charge that the speaker has done something objectively wrong. It is a demand that the speaker apologize or be punished by some authority for committing an offense.

There have always been some people who believe they have a right not to be offended. Yet throughout American history-from the Victorian era to the free-speech activism of the 1960s and '70s-radicals have pushed boundaries and mocked prevailing sensibilities. Sometime in the 1980s, however, college campuses began to focus on preventing offensive speech, especially speech that might be hurtful to women or minority groups. The sentiment underpinning this goal was laudable, but it quickly produced some absurd results.

Among the most famous early examples was the so-called water-buffalo incident at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1993, the university charged an Israeli-born student with racial harassment after he yelled "Shut up, you water buffalo!" to a crowd of black sorority women that was making noise at night outside his dorm-room window. Many scholars and pundits at the time could not see how the term water buffalo (a rough translation of a Hebrew insult for a thoughtless or rowdy person) was a racial slur against African Americans, and as a result, the case became international news.

Claims of a right not to be offended have continued to arise since then, and universities have continued to privilege them. In a particularly egregious 2008 case, for instance, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis found a white student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan. The book honored student opposition to the Ku Klux Klan when it marched on Notre Dame in 1924. Nonetheless, the picture of a Klan rally on the book's cover offended at least one of the student's co-workers (he was a janitor as well as a student), and that was enough for a guilty finding by the university's Affirmative Action Office.

These examples may seem extreme, but the reasoning behind them has become more commonplace on campus in recent years. Last year, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, an event called Hump Day, which would have allowed people to pet a camel, was abruptly canceled. Students had created a Facebook group where they protested the event for animal cruelty, for being a waste of money, and for being insensitive to people from the Middle East. The inspiration for the camel had almost certainly come from a popular TV commercial in which a camel saunters around an office on a Wednesday, celebrating "hump day"; it was devoid of any reference to Middle Eastern peoples. Nevertheless, the group organizing the event announced on its Facebook page that the event would be canceled because the "program [was] dividing people and would make for an uncomfortable and possibly unsafe environment."

Because there is a broad ban in academic circles on "blaming the victim," it is generally considered unacceptable to question the reasonableness (let alone the sincerity) of someone's emotional state, particularly if those emotions are linked to one's group identity. The thin argument "I'm offended" becomes an unbeatable trump card. This leads to what Jonathan Rauch, a contributing editor at this magazine, calls the "offendedness sweepstakes," in which opposing parties use claims of offense as cudgels. In the process, the bar for what we consider unacceptable speech is lowered further and further.

Since 2013, new pressure from the federal government has reinforced this trend. Federal antidiscrimination statutes regulate on-campus harassment and unequal treatment based on sex, race, religion, and national origin. Until recently, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights acknowledged that speech must be "objectively offensive" before it could be deemed actionable as sexual harassment-it would have to pass the "reasonable person" test. To be prohibited, the office wrote in 2003, allegedly harassing speech would have to go "beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive."

But in 2013, the Departments of Justice and Education greatly broadened the definition of sexual harassment to include verbal conduct that is simply "unwelcome." Out of fear of federal investigations, universities are now applying that standard-defining unwelcome speech as harassment-not just to sex, but to race, religion, and veteran status as well. Everyone is supposed to rely upon his or her own subjective feelings to decide whether a comment by a professor or a fellow student is unwelcome, and therefore grounds for a harassment claim. Emotional reasoning is now accepted as evidence.

If our universities are teaching students that their emotions can be used effectively as weapons-or at least as evidence in administrative proceedings-then they are teaching students to nurture a kind of hypersensitivity that will lead them into countless drawn-out conflicts in college and beyond. Schools may be training students in thinking styles that will damage their careers and friendships, along with their mental health.

Fortune-Telling and Trigger Warnings

Burns defines fortune-telling as "anticipat[ing] that things will turn out badly" and feeling "convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact." Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as "predict[ing] the future negatively" or seeing potential danger in an everyday situation. The recent spread of demands for trigger warnings on reading assignments with provocative content is an example of fortune-telling.

The idea that words (or smells or any sensory input) can trigger searing memories of past trauma-and intense fear that it may be repeated-has been around at least since World War I, when psychiatrists began treating soldiers for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. But explicit trigger warnings are believed to have originated much more recently, on message boards in the early days of the Internet. Trigger warnings became particularly prevalent in self-help and feminist forums, where they allowed readers who had suffered from traumatic events like sexual assault to avoid graphic content that might trigger flashbacks or panic attacks. Search-engine trends indicate that the phrase broke into mainstream use online around 2011, spiked in 2014, and reached an all-time high in 2015. The use of trigger warnings on campus appears to have followed a similar trajectory; seemingly overnight, students at universities across the country have begun demanding that their professors issue warnings before covering material that might evoke a negative emotional response.

In 2013, a task force composed of administrators, students, recent alumni, and one faculty member at Oberlin College, in Ohio, released an online resource guide for faculty (subsequently retracted in the face of faculty pushback) that included a list of topics warranting trigger warnings. These topics included classism and privilege, among many others. The task force recommended that materials that might trigger negative reactions among students be avoided altogether unless they "contribute directly" to course goals, and suggested that works that were "too important to avoid" be made optional.

It's hard to imagine how novels illustrating classism and privilege could provoke or reactivate the kind of terror that is typically implicated in PTSD. Rather, trigger warnings are sometimes demanded for a long list of ideas and attitudes that some students find politically offensive, in the name of preventing other students from being harmed. This is an example of what psychologists call "motivated reasoning"-we spontaneously generate arguments for conclusions we want to support. Once you find something hateful, it is easy to argue that exposure to the hateful thing could traumatize some other people. You believe that you know how others will react, and that their reaction could be devastating. Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community. Books for which students have called publicly for trigger warnings within the past couple of years include Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (at Rutgers, for "suicidal inclinations") and Ovid's Metamorphoses (at Columbia, for sexual assault).

Jeannie Suk's New Yorker essay described the difficulties of teaching rape law in the age of trigger warnings. Some students, she wrote, have pressured their professors to avoid teaching the subject in order to protect themselves and their classmates from potential distress. Suk compares this to trying to teach "a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he'll become distressed if he sees or handles blood."

However, there is a deeper problem with trigger warnings. According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.

But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance-standing in a building lobby, perhaps-until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she's standing in the lobby-if the fear is not "reinforced"-then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.

Students who call for trigger warnings may be correct that some of their peers are harboring memories of trauma that could be reactivated by course readings. But they are wrong to try to prevent such reactivations. Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities for habituation. Classroom discussions are safe places to be exposed to incidental reminders of trauma (such as the word violate). A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they'd better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.

The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous-elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism-then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. "One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings," Roff wrote, "is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history."

In an article published last year by Inside Higher Ed, seven humanities professors wrote that the trigger-warning movement was "already having a chilling effect on [their] teaching and pedagogy." They reported their colleagues' receiving "phone calls from deans and other administrators investigating student complaints that they have included 'triggering' material in their courses, with or without warnings." A trigger warning, they wrote, "serves as a guarantee that students will not experience unexpected discomfort and implies that if they do, a contract has been broken." When students come to expect trigger warnings for any material that makes them uncomfortable, the easiest way for faculty to stay out of trouble is to avoid material that might upset the most sensitive student in the class.

Magnification, Labeling, and Microaggressions

Burns defines magnification as "exaggerat[ing] the importance of things," and Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define labeling as "assign[ing] global negative traits to yourself and others." The recent collegiate trend of uncovering allegedly racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise discriminatory microaggressions doesn't incidentally teach students to focus on small or accidental slights. Its purpose is to get students to focus on them and then relabel the people who have made such remarks as aggressors.

The term microaggression originated in the 1970s and referred to subtle, often unconscious racist affronts. The definition has expanded in recent years to include anything that can be perceived as discriminatory on virtually any basis. For example, in 2013, a student group at UCLA staged a sit-in during a class taught by Val Rust, an education professor. The group read a letter aloud expressing their concerns about the campus's hostility toward students of color. Although Rust was not explicitly named, the group quite clearly criticized his teaching as microaggressive. In the course of correcting his students' grammar and spelling, Rust had noted that a student had wrongly capitalized the first letter of the word indigenous. Lowercasing the capital I was an insult to the student and her ideology, the group claimed.

Even joking about microaggressions can be seen as an aggression, warranting punishment. Last fall, Omar Mahmood, a student at the University of Michigan, wrote a satirical column for a conservative student publication, The Michigan Review, poking fun at what he saw as a campus tendency to perceive microaggressions in just about anything. Mahmood was also employed at the campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily. The Daily's editors said that the way Mahmood had "satirically mocked the experiences of fellow Daily contributors and minority communities on campus ... created a conflict of interest." The Daily terminated Mahmood after he described the incident to two Web sites, The College Fix and The Daily Caller. A group of women later vandalized Mahmood's doorway with eggs, hot dogs, gum, and notes with messages such as "Everyone hates you, you violent prick." When speech comes to be seen as a form of violence, vindictive protectiveness can justify a hostile, and perhaps even violent, response.

In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against "oppressors" engaged in belittling speech. One of the sponsors of the program said that while "not ... every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment," she wanted the program to be "record-keeping but with impact."

Surely people make subtle or thinly veiled racist or sexist remarks on college campuses, and it is right for students to raise questions and initiate discussions about such cases. But the increased focus on microaggressions coupled with the endorsement of emotional reasoning is a formula for a constant state of outrage, even toward well-meaning speakers trying to engage in genuine discussion.

What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?

Teaching Students to Catastrophize and Have Zero Tolerance

Burns defines catastrophizing as a kind of magnification that turns "commonplace negative events into nightmarish monsters." Leahy, Holland, and McGinn define it as believing "that what has happened or will happen" is "so awful and unbearable that you won't be able to stand it." Requests for trigger warnings involve catastrophizing, but this way of thinking colors other areas of campus thought as well.

Catastrophizing rhetoric about physical danger is employed by campus administrators more commonly than you might think-sometimes, it seems, with cynical ends in mind. For instance, last year administrators at Bergen Community College, in New Jersey, suspended Francis Schmidt, a professor, after he posted a picture of his daughter on his Google+ account. The photo showed her in a yoga pose, wearing a T-shirt that read I will take what is mine with fire & blood, a quote from the HBO show Game of Thrones. Schmidt had filed a grievance against the school about two months earlier after being passed over for a sabbatical. The quote was interpreted as a threat by a campus administrator, who received a notification after Schmidt posted the picture; it had been sent, automatically, to a whole group of contacts. According to Schmidt, a Bergen security official present at a subsequent meeting between administrators and Schmidt thought the word fire could refer to AK-47s.

Then there is the eight-year legal saga at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, where a student was expelled for protesting the construction of a parking garage by posting an allegedly "threatening" collage on Facebook. The collage described the proposed structure as a "memorial" parking garage-a joke referring to a claim by the university president that the garage would be part of his legacy. The president interpreted the collage as a threat against his life.

It should be no surprise that students are exhibiting similar sensitivity. At the University of Central Florida in 2013, for example, Hyung-il Jung, an accounting instructor, was suspended after a student reported that Jung had made a threatening comment during a review session. Jung explained to the Orlando Sentinel that the material he was reviewing was difficult, and he'd noticed the pained look on students' faces, so he made a joke. "It looks like you guys are being slowly suffocated by these questions," he recalled saying. "Am I on a killing spree or what?"

After the student reported Jung's comment, a group of nearly 20 others e-mailed the UCF administration explaining that the comment had clearly been made in jest. Nevertheless, UCF suspended Jung from all university duties and demanded that he obtain written certification from a mental-health professional that he was "not a threat to [himself] or to the university community" before he would be allowed to return to campus.

All of these actions teach a common lesson: smart people do, in fact, overreact to innocuous speech, make mountains out of molehills, and seek punishment for anyone whose words make anyone else feel uncomfortable.

Mental Filtering and Disinvitation Season

As Burns defines it, mental filtering is "pick[ing] out a negative detail in any situation and dwell[ing] on it exclusively, thus perceiving that the whole situation is negative." Leahy, Holland, and McGinn refer to this as "negative filtering," which they define as "focus[ing] almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notic[ing] the positives." When applied to campus life, mental filtering allows for simpleminded demonization.

Students and faculty members in large numbers modeled this cognitive distortion during 2014's "disinvitation season." That's the time of year-usually early spring-when commencement speakers are announced and when students and professors demand that some of those speakers be disinvited because of things they have said or done. According to data compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, since 2000, at least 240 campaigns have been launched at U.S. universities to prevent public figures from appearing at campus events; most of them have occurred since 2009.

Consider two of the most prominent disinvitation targets of 2014: former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the International Monetary Fund's managing director, Christine Lagarde. Rice was the first black female secretary of state; Lagarde was the first woman to become finance minister of a G8 country and the first female head of the IMF. Both speakers could have been seen as highly successful role models for female students, and Rice for minority students as well. But the critics, in effect, discounted any possibility of something positive coming from those speeches.

Members of an academic community should of course be free to raise questions about Rice's role in the Iraq War or to look skeptically at the IMF's policies. But should dislike of part of a person's record disqualify her altogether from sharing her perspectives?

If campus culture conveys the idea that visitors must be pure, with résumés that never offend generally left-leaning campus sensibilities, then higher education will have taken a further step toward intellectual homogeneity and the creation of an environment in which students rarely encounter diverse viewpoints. And universities will have reinforced the belief that it's okay to filter out the positive. If students graduate believing that they can learn nothing from people they dislike or from those with whom they disagree, we will have done them a great intellectual disservice.

What Can We Do Now?

Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.

Rather than trying to protect students from words and ideas that they will inevitably encounter, colleges should do all they can to equip students to thrive in a world full of words and ideas that they cannot control. One of the great truths taught by Buddhism (and Stoicism, Hinduism, and many other traditions) is that you can never achieve happiness by making the world conform to your desires. But you can master your desires and habits of thought. This, of course, is the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy. With this in mind, here are some steps that might help reverse the tide of bad thinking on campus.

The biggest single step in the right direction does not involve faculty or university administrators, but rather the federal government, which should release universities from their fear of unreasonable investigation and sanctions by the Department of Education. Congress should define peer-on-peer harassment according to the Supreme Court's definition in the 1999 case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The Davis standard holds that a single comment or thoughtless remark by a student does not equal harassment; harassment requires a pattern of objectively offensive behavior by one student that interferes with another student's access to education. Establishing the Davis standard would help eliminate universities' impulse to police their students' speech so carefully.

Universities themselves should try to raise consciousness about the need to balance freedom of speech with the need to make all students feel welcome. Talking openly about such conflicting but important values is just the sort of challenging exercise that any diverse but tolerant community must learn to do. Restrictive speech codes should be abandoned.

Universities should also officially and strongly discourage trigger warnings. They should endorse the American Association of University Professors' report on these warnings, which notes, "The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual." Professors should be free to use trigger warnings if they choose to do so, but by explicitly discouraging the practice, universities would help fortify the faculty against student requests for such warnings.

Finally, universities should rethink the skills and values they most want to impart to their incoming students. At present, many freshman-orientation programs try to raise student sensitivity to a nearly impossible level. Teaching students to avoid giving unintentional offense is a worthy goal, especially when the students come from many different cultural backgrounds. But students should also be taught how to live in a world full of potential offenses. Why not teach incoming students how to practice cognitive behavioral therapy? Given high and rising rates of mental illness, this simple step would be among the most humane and supportive things a university could do. The cost and time commitment could be kept low: a few group training sessions could be supplemented by Web sites or apps. But the outcome could pay dividends in many ways. For example, a shared vocabulary about reasoning, common distortions, and the appropriate use of evidence to draw conclusions would facilitate critical thinking and real debate. It would also tone down the perpetual state of outrage that seems to engulf some colleges these days, allowing students' minds to open more widely to new ideas and new people. A greater commitment to formal, public debate on campus-and to the assembly of a more politically diverse faculty-would further serve that goal.

Thomas Jefferson, upon founding the University of Virginia, said:

This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

We believe that this is still-and will always be-the best attitude for American universities. Faculty, administrators, students, and the federal government all have a role to play in restoring universities to their historic mission.

Common Cognitive Distortions

A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn's Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012).

1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. "He thinks I'm a loser."

2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. "I'll fail that exam," or "I won't get the job."

3. Catastrophizing. You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won't be able to stand it. "It would be terrible if I failed."

4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. "I'm undesirable," or "He's a rotten person."

5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. "That's what wives are supposed to do-so it doesn't count when she's nice to me," or "Those successes were easy, so they don't matter."

6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. "Look at all of the people who don't like me."

7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. "This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things."

8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. "I get rejected by everyone," or "It was a complete waste of time."

9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. "She's to blame for the way I feel now," or "My parents caused all my problems."

10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about "what if" something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. "Yeah, but what if I get anxious?," or "What if I can't catch my breath?"

11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. "I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out."

12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I'm unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. "That's not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors."

Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the author of Unlearning Liberty. He is the the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, which originatedas a September 2015 Atlantic story.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, which originatedas a September 2015 Atlantic story.

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How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus

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In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don't like. Here's why that's disastrous for education-and mental health. Something strange is happening at America's colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.

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French dissenters jailed after crackdown on speech that glorifies terrorism

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French dissenters jailed after crackdown on speech that glorifies terrorism

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Lawyers and human rights groups have raised concerns over the French government's crackdown on speech that glorifies terrorism after a series of cases rushed through the courts resulted in heavy prison sentences, including for people who had drunkenly insulted police officers.

The debate intensified this week after it emerged that an eight-year-old boy was questioned by police for saying at school "I am with the terrorists," later admitting he didn't know what terrorism meant.

The French justice ministry said that, between 7 January and 29 January, there had been 486 legal cases linked to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Of these, 257 were cases of people accused of condoning or provoking terrorism. Around 41 of those cases had been instantly rushed through the courts and 18 people had been given prison sentences.

A new anti-terrorism bill which came into force last year has allowed a number of these cases to be accelerated through the courts, resulting in immediate prison sentences for the crime of " apologie du terrorisme " - in other words defending, condoning or provoking terrorism.

Amnesty International has raised concerns about some of these cases, including a man arrested for drunk-driving in the north of France who shouted at police officers: "There should be more Kouachis [the name of the gunmen brothers behind the Charlie Hebdo attack]. I hope that you'll be next." He was immediately brought before judges and sentenced to four years in prison.

Another man had shouted in the street, "I don't like Charlie, they were right to do that." A 21-year-old arrested on a tram for travelling without a ticket told the ticket inspectors: "The Kouachi brothers were just the start. I wish I'd been with them to kill more." He was sentenced to ten months in prison.

Amnesty International warned against acting in haste and against free speech and urged "measures that protect everyone's rights".

The media has highlighted several cases, including a man in Isère, who a psychiatric report found had slight learning difficulties. He was sentenced to six months in prison after drunkenly shouting at police officers in the street: "They killed Charlie, I laughed."

A 14-year-old girl from Nantes was placed under investigation for defending terrorism after she threatened ticket inspectors she would "get out the kalashnikovs" if they asked for her ticket on public transport. A 28-year-old man was sentenced to six months in prison after he shouted his support of the Charlie Hebdo attackers while passing a police station in eastern France.

The Paris barrister and influential legal blogger, Maître Eolas, detailed in a post the court appearance of a 21-year-old man with no criminal record who had been arrested on suspicion of trying to steal a car. Those charges were dropped but the man, who was drunk, had resisted arrest. He said he had been wrestled to the ground by police. While begging them to stop hurting him, he had allegedly shouted a torrent of insults including: "You'll see, the jihadis will put a bullet in your head. Look at the damage they've done. My cousin Coulibaly [the gunman who killed a police officer then four people at a kosher supermarket] didn't kill enough of you." The man, immediately called before judges, denied having said it. He was sentenced to eight months in prison plus eight months' suspended sentence for glorifying terrorism.

"Not only is this repression absurd and useless, but it is dangerous," Eolas said. "It's the defeat of reason. And we can't allow it to happen."

After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the French justice minister Christiane Taubira specifically urged prosecutors to take tough action against those who condoned terrorism, as well as clamping down on racist or anti-Semitic acts. The law on glorifying terrorism, intended to crack down on online incitement to terrorism, means that comments that constitute defending, condoning or provoking terrorism are now punishable by up to five years in prison, or seven years if made while communicating with the public online.

Michel Tubiana, a lawyer from the French human rights group, La Ligue des Droits de l'Homme, said that where drunk people were being given heavy prison sentences for verbally insulting police there was a risk of the law being used to simply to set an example, which he deemed a kind of madness that had nothing to do with condoning terrorism and risked emptying the law of all sense.

"It's a serious infringement which risks not just the unjustified pursuit of people but also risks self-censorship in the media and in public debate." He said the European court of human rights could be asked to pronounce on certain of the judgements.

The left-leaning magistrates' union, Syndicat de la Magistrature, has warned the justice system must take its time over cases and resist the "wave of emotion".

The notorious French comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala is under investigation for being an apologist for terrorism after writing on Facebook that he "felt like Charlie Coulibaly" a reference to both Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket gunman, Amédy Coulibaly.
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French dissenters jailed after crackdown on speech that glorifies terrorism

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Lawyers and human rights groups have raised concerns over the French government's crackdown on speech that glorifies terrorism after a series of cases rushed through the courts resulted in heavy prison sentences, including for people who had drunkenly insulted police officers.

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convention européenne des droits de l'homme

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convention européenne des droits de l'homme

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Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe | Legifrance

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Vous êtes dans : Accueil> Les autres textes législatifs et réglementaires> Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe

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These three documents, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.

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These three documents, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.

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Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen

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Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen

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Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen - Wikisource

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Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe

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Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe

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Loi n° 90-615 du 13 juillet 1990 tendant à réprimer tout acte raciste, antisémite ou xénophobe | Legifrance

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Hate speech laws in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

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Hate speech laws in England and Wales are found in several statutes. This does not necessarily mean they apply throughout the United Kingdom, given that both Scotland and Northern Ireland have different legal systems. Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation is forbidden.

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Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme

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Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme

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Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de presse

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Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de presse

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Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse | Legifrance

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Vous êtes dans : Accueil> Les autres textes législatifs et réglementaires> Loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la liberté de la presse