Index on Censorship magazine: Talking fashion and freedom

10 Jan 2017 | News and features, Volume 45.04 Winter 2016 Extras

[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” full_height=”yes” css=”.vc_custom_1484056734087{background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: contain !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The winter edition of Index on Censorship magazine 2016 looks at the theme of Fashion and freedom of expression. We have called it Fashion Rules and examine why dress codes and freedom clash.

Talking about how they have broken fashion rules and how they have seen others break the rules we talk in this podcast to three writers from different parts of the world.  Model and journalist Wana Udobang tells us how fashion rules in Nigeria today often go unquestioned. Novelist Eliza Vitri Handayani, an Indonesian writer is fascinated by the continuing subculture of punk in her country, while editor of British Elle, Maggie Alderson, talks about being arrested as a punk rocker in the UK in the 1970s,

You can read articles from these three writers in the magazine, as well others including by Bangladeshi fashion designer Bibi Russell on how women in her country are changing what they wear; Natasha Joseph on a crackdown on miniskirts in Uganda and Jemimah Steinfeld on designers in China.

Print copies of the magazine are available here, or you can take out a digital subscription via Exact Editions. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), Home (Manchester) and on Amazon. Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”top”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Fashion Rules” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2016%2F12%2Ffashion-rules%2F|||”][vc_column_text]The winter 2016 issue of Index on Censorship magazine looks at fashion and how people both express freedom through what they wear.

In the issue: interviews with Lily Cole, Paulo Scott and Daphne Selfe, articles by novelists Linda Grant and Maggie Alderson plus Eliza Vitri Handayani on why punks are persecuted in Indonesia.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”82377″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/12/fashion-rules/”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1481888488328{padding-bottom: 50px !important;}”][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.

Subscription options from £18.

Every subscriber helps support Index on Censorship’s projects around the world.

SUBSCRIBE NOW[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

20 Nov: The cost of free information (BBC Radio 3)

12 Nov 2014 | Events

download-1

In the 1980s, Stewart Brand declared that “information wants to be free”.  The phrase became a slogan for technology activists, who argued that tech can liberate information from expensive patents and help further the ever expanding limits of human knowledge. As a part of the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival, Rana Mitter tests the promises of the internet to spread ideas quickly and democratically. Catch up online with this event featuring:

  • Dr Rufus Pollock (Founding President of the Open Knowledge, an international non-profit organisation that promotes making data and information accessible)
  • Jodie Ginsberg (Chief Executive of Index on Censorship)

WHERE: BBC Radio 3
WHEN: Thursday 20 November 2014, 10:00pm (then on iPlayer)
TICKETS: Listen live here

Sir Keir Starmer: “You can’t have a law-free zone”

25 Mar 2014 | Magazine, Volume 43.01 Spring 2014

Sir Keir Starmer QC (Image: Chatham House)

Sir Keir Starmer QC
(Image: Chatham House)

Since becoming a barrister in 1987, Sir Keir Starmer has made headlines for offering free legal counsel during the McLibel trial, won awards as a leading human rights QC, and set precedents as director of public prosecutions (DPP) in England and Wales. During the five-year post as DPP, he took on prosecution guidelines for the abuse of women and sexual abuse of children. He also tackled the as yet largely unchartered territory of cases involving social media and is mooted as a Labour candidate in the UK’s 2015 general election.

In this Index podcast Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine, speaks to the newly knighted former DPP about his time overseeing the prosecution service, plus the right to offend, whistleblowing and legal challenges for social media.

On online abuse: “We haven’t got a law that has been designed to deal with this. We are falling back on the Communications Act, which was designed for abusive messages on telephones in the 1930s that might have been listened to by exchange staff.”

On the web: “You can’t have a law-free zone. If you simply say it doesn’t matter that the court order is breached because you are using social media, you undermine the entire criminal justice system and you remove all the protection that’s intended for very vulnerable victims.”

On whistleblowing: “It is important that legal protection is there and that everyone appreciates it. A lot of people labour under the misrepresentation that if you whistleblow you are necessarily engaging in wrongdoing and it is something you can’t do. There is still a great fear.”

Read the full interview in the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine. This issue’s writers include Lyse Doucet, David Aaronovitch and Julian Baggini. You can buy it, or take out a subscription here.

Listen below: