Or possibly the Times dropped it because it reads like the work of a 15 year old SWPer who has just bought his first Rage Against The Machine album.

The media can never self censor anything ever published on the net. Google’s cache may have been scrubbed, but the article is still widely available if searched for, including on modern liberty’s own site where it should have had far greater prominence:

http://www.modernliberty.net/2009/philip-pullman-voices-his-thoughts
http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/i-didnt-know-philip-pullman-was-this-good-a-writer-about-liberty/
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/007091.html
http://www.anonymong.org/2009/02/27/malevolent-voices-that-despise-our-freedoms/
http://theskinner.blogspot.com/2009/02/philip-pullman-article-in-full.html

Amongst many others.

What a silly comment, Piggy!

I agree with the basic sentiment of the article but I must also agree with piggy. It made me cringe to read it and one presumes that The Times didn’t want their readers to see what tat they were paying people to produce for them, particularly in these cash-conscious days.

Unease about ‘the police state’ and erosion of civil liberties has been growing for decades and yet, although each new proposal for legislation is met by a small storm of protest, the process steam-rollers onwards. At the end of his article, Pullman states, “Freedom is too hard for you”. Well, it certainly seems to be so for many people. How & why this came to be, and why people are seemingly so acquiescent, might have made an interesting article, not an afterthought towards the end.

Have to agree with the above, good sentiment, read like it was written by a teenager…

If they didn’t like it, why run it in the first instance?

I think the message is great. As for it being childish, I think such a charge indicates how our language has been so corrupted that one cannot face the state head-on in true horror and without cynicism, without also attracting accusations of ‘immaturity’.

Our regime constitutes this sort of argument as ‘mature’: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/nov/07/comment.politics2

So, by definition, what Pullman says must be immature. We should all emulate his immaturity.

Yeah, I was shocked that Pullman writes so badly, too.

It is worrisome that they pulled the article. There is a basic truth that citizens in democratic states need to appreciate. Namely, that governments are enormously more dangerous than terrorists.

For more see:

http://www.sindark.com/2005/12/23/the-lesson-of-the-tallinn-occupation-museum/

I think the Times did him a favour by not publishing it, frankly. If that’s his normal standard of writing then whoever edited the Northern Lights trilogy (this is the same Philip Pullman we’re talking about, right?) deserves a medal.

It’s a hard truth but it was probably pulled because it was poor.

George Orwell did not feel the need to interrupt 1984 with an itemised list of the follies of communism.

I think piggy’s opinion is a little harsh. It comes across as the work of at least a 17-year-old.

(I wonder if the Times printed a first draft by mistake??)

An article by David Aaronovitch, telling us how we should all love Big Brother and how the Modern Liberty people were an unholy alliance of Little Englanders and Castroist fellow travellers, was also absent from the website. For balance?

Does anyone know if the Pullman piece appeared in print? According to Wikipedia it did, but it wasn’t in my copy.

Aaronvitch typical ex marxist establishment stooge. I agree with the fact that Pullman’s stiuff reads a little “Teenage” – he is a writer of “Teenage” fiction though and the treat to liberties are all too real.

It appears to have been reinstated -

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5811412.ece

Since both the Pullman piece (agree with its sentiments, felt it didn’t read well) and the Aaronovitch piece (complacent as ever :so long as he’s comfortable everyone else can go hang) ‘vanished’, I think it may have more to do with The Times’ nose being out of joint at the role in Guardian in the Convention.

[troll]
During the Geert Wilders / Lord Ahmed House of Lords non-debate,there were quiet a few Left,Liberal,Fabian,Infidels..that completely forgot the issue of freedom of speech,one law for all,womens rights. and condemnation of Koranic inspired hate speech.
And once again with knee-jerk precision, had the old ” racist” mantra,cast around,as it is these days, with the happy abandon of a kinder garden snowball fight,because some of the religio-fascist are not wearing swastikas and jack-boots.
I don,t know if anybody down at Liberal Conspiracy has noticed.but the newspaper comments column on the Liberty/ LIberals Convention contained refferences to Geert Wilders again.
The left wing establshment in general is going to just have to accept that when you willingly or unwittingly accomodate a religion, that is in direct opposition to everything the Left claims to stand for, what goes around—comes around,and some one ends up getting a taste of their own medicine.
Free speech for me ,but not for those I disagree with.
The unwashed indigenous masses so dispised by the “better informed ” wine-bar intelligencia,
are wondering where the mass demonstrations are against “creeping Sharia Law”.
The imposition of Saudi Arabian speech restrictions upon our parliamentary institutions.
And the blatantly evident totalitarian unelected private industrialists club,known as the “European Council , that succeded so well in dupping the Left,with an internationalist socialist “narrative”,
of a nationalist-free,race-free,borderless,Mahdi-gra,multicultural carnival,utopia.
” Denial in the face of unpleasant facts is follly”
The Left ,Liberal,Progressives have brought this upon themselves.
Maybe that Times article was withdrawn on the same gounds that Geert Widlers was denied entry to Britain……..” In the interest of preserving cutural harmony and public order”.

It reads a lot like Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech.

Maybe it should be read aloud, clicking your fingers like a beatnik.

I have just looked at my own comment above @journeyman and it appears to have been scrambled.
If this is deletion by the staff at liberal conspiracy It would be fair to be told why.

It appears you’ve been disemvoweled.

Ouch. That must have hurt.

To @Aaron
Now why do I have the sneaky feeling that Aaron knows more than he is letting on.
Or is that just my paranoia.
I think the part where i connected the general Left Establishment support for Geert Wilders expulsion to the pulling of Pullmans article must have hit a raw nerve.

” in the interest of community harmony and public securty”

No, it was just because it was off-topic rubbish. Please take your rantings somewhere else.

Thanks for you message @Aaron Yes , I am now wiser as to disemvoweling by editors.
As an 57 year old Ex-pat Brit,1968 college,antri-establishment / anti-vietnam / anti-everything / hippy.
The scrambling of the comment above is that which I have come to expect from my own tribe.
I should have remebered to write “no I am not a member of the B.N.P
The one thing my own tribe has always been very good at is stiffling dissent or debate,because theres a Right Wing Neo.Con, Racist Sub Human behind every tree.
Oh one more time,No I am not amember of the B.N.P
Please unscramble my comment or debate it.
Regards

Is the Aaronovitch piece stll visible anywhere?

To all those who feel the need to blame the quality, or ‘lack’ thereof, of Pullman’s writing for it not going to press, you seem to be confusing grating self-indulgence with humour.
Pullman is a hugely famous and widely respected (whether justified or not) author, the likes of whom, you would assume, The Times would be only too happy to have writing for them. And as for Piggy’s comment at the top, I would much rather listen to the musings of a 15yr old ‘Rage Against The Machine’ fan than the insipid ramblings of some self-satisfied web-dweller who spends their nights stirring up ‘controversy’ with such comments as that. Perhaps Pullman didn’t feel the need to fly straight over the heads of the majority with views he felt needed to be heard/read by more than just those of such vast intellectual capacity as your self.

But Pullman’s article is massively self-indulgent, unclear and almost unreadable. It’s incredibly inaccessible. I don’t think anyone’s criticising it for not being intellectual enough, it’s just terrible writing. It’s like trying to read an OT prophet in some archaic translation of the bible. You have to actually decipher the thing, and if you bother to do so you realise it’s just a series of barely connected platitudes.

I accept your premise, self-indulgent maybe, even a touch naive, but unreadable? Please. His point is clear, and one that many of The Times’ audience would deserve and benefit from hearing.

Actually, I felt that the piece read as a nicely considered, fairly competent piece of creative writing. ‘Platitudes’ aside, from a literary standpoint, the characterisation of the state as insidious, through the use of a series of disconnected statements rendered in italics, is pretty effective.

Regardless of the piece’s literary merit, surely the most important thing is that we should have adequate representation of those critical of encroachments made against personal freedoms and civil liberties. And, when an article of this nature is pulled from a national paper without explanation, it is vital that we notice that it has been done, and ask the question, why?

I think it’s the lack of sentence structure and punctuation that made it unreadable for me. I missed out sentences and whole paragraphs easily as I read it, and as the position of the narrator changes that made it incredibly confusing. So for example at first I thought he was saying “Sleep you scum” himself. Normally if something is going to take that much effort to read I would at least expect the writing to be rich, or profound or have some special reason for having to take the extra effort. In this case I think he could’ve made his point clearly in a single paragraph and we’d all be better off for it.

Well said Melchizedek.

as to why, I genuinely think it’s because the writing is so terrible. It’s not as if the points he’s making are especially controversial or haven’t been expressed in the same newspaper by other people. And as for why without explanation, that’s simple. It’s incredibly embarrassing to have to tell a world-renowned author that you’re not including his article because it’s badly written.

To say that this article is incomprehensible shows more about the reader than it does the author. The use of multiple narrators is not a new or difficult concept, but rather a way of personalising the State throughout the article. Through the use of “we want….etc” it makes the arguments more persuasive to those who do not feel any connection to academic arguments, which unfortunately is a rather large swathe of our present society. By making the article personal Pullman is surely trying to attempt to create an emotional reaction within the reader rather than appealing to logic. Whether or not you feel that this way of wrting is the best way to espouse his beliefs on a particular the article it has obviously had a positive effect on certain readers and therefore should be celebrated. We have to rememer that Pullman is not an academic writer but a writer of fiction, and as such his approach to this topic was always going to be different.

If they really pulled the article because it was badly written then why the hell did they publish it in the first place? The fact they published it suggests to me this is not the real reason that it was pulled

I think its self-indulgent toss – and I say that as a fan of Pullman’s work who agrees with his sentiments entirely.

I used to write like that when I was stoned.

“I would much rather listen to the musings of a 15yr old ‘Rage Against The Machine’ fan than the insipid ramblings of some self-satisfied web-dweller who spends their nights stirring up ‘controversy’”

Get you.

Kids, this really is a frightfully dull non-story which can be summed up in two salient points.

1) The idea that the article was pulled as an act of deference to Teh ZaNuLiarbor Police State really is such patent nonsense that I kind of assumed the initial post was a piss take. Given that during the period it was ‘censored’ the Times was still carrying a bucketload of “erosion of civil liberties” type articles (including one which extensively quoted Pullman), and also considering that its now back up, do you not think technical error is a more likely explanation?

2) It’s a shit article. Srsly.

I always dislike reading poetry on the web. It does not seem to flow – maybee it’s because you can just scroll down and look at something else.

While I’m not too keen on the style, I will pick this out, from near the end, as a good characterisation of the senior Labour attitude:

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

This is very reminiscent of the speech by Philip Gould, Blair’s pollster, and associate of Lord Mandelson, in 2005 in the House of Lords, about identity cards:

Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl’s father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.

Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:

“I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?”.

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords’ views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.