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Film-makers including Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Peter Kosminsky have called on the Curzon and Odeon cinema chains and Bafta to drop screenings for an Israeli film festival opening this week.

Seret 2015 , the London Israeli film and television festival opens at Bafta followed by screenings at cinemas including Curzon Soho and Odeon Swiss Cottage in London.

In a letter to the Guardian, more than 40 artists and film-makers express sadness and disappointment that the festival has been given a berth. It says the Israeli state is promoting this festival and supporting it financially.

By hosting it, these cinemas are ignoring the 2004 call by Palestinian civil society for sanctions against Israel until Israel abides by international law and ends its illegal displacement of Palestinians, discrimination against them, and occupation of their land.

So in a week where the police ARE threatening to jail innocent kids for sexting, they are asking parents not to teach their kids that the police will take them away if they are naughty.

Many an exasperated parent has told their misbehaving child to be good or the police will put them in prison. But now one police force has issued a poster urging adults not to use this common threat. The poster from Durham Constabulary reads:

Parents. Please don't tell your children that we will take them off to jail if they are bad. We want them to run to us if they are scared, not be scared of us. Thank You.

However the kids would be better advised to keep clear of the police lest they get locked up for sexting, bad taste jokes, or even just insulting posts on Twitter or Facebook.

For example jailing them for internet insults

25th May 2015. See article from dailymail.co.uk

The number of prosecutions of internet trolls has soared eightfold in the last 10 years, according to new figures. More than 1,200 people were found guilty of offences under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 last year compared with 143 in 2004.

The law states it is illegal to send by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other material that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character .

Statistics released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) show that 1,501 defendants were prosecuted under the law last year - including 70 juveniles - while another 685 were cautioned.

Of those convicted, 155 were jailed - compared with just seven a decade before- and the average custodial sentence was 2.2 months.

In 2013, Newport City Council, faced with the problem of an indoor market which has been central to Newport life for nearly 150 years, with traders leaving due to lack of trade, decided to allow artists free use of the upstairs space for studio, gallery and workshop space on the proviso that they do not sell from there. Now known as the UpMarket Galleries , it has been popular and successful, increasing footfall in Newport City Indoor Market and helping traders downstairs, as well as providing valuable studio space to those who cannot afford to rent spaces elsewhere.

Local artist Jonathan Sherwood (better known as Jonny), chair of Artopsy (a not-for-profit organisation aiming to provide artists with free/affordable spaces in which to produce and display their work, to engage with the community as a whole and to encourage upcycling/environmental issues) has been working there since the onset of the project. He has rarely taken a day off apart from when he has been ill. He is friendly and out-going and has many visitors regularly dropping by to see what he is working on. Jonny is one of Newport's most well-known artists locally and a documentary film entitled Jonny: Shaman of Rust has been made about him by Italian film-maker and director Massimo Salvato.

Jonny was invited by the committee running the UpMarket Galleries to exhibit a series of paintings in the central space. They are life-sized paintings on large sheets of paper depicting mainly nude people. The artist used nude images to show vulnerability. Indeed, one of the paintings depicts a man cleaning his disabled wife because she can't do it herself. The paintings deal with sensitive subjects and are not in any way sexual.

Jonathan's work was judged by the Market Manager to be obscene , which it certainly is not. It was forcibly removed and suffered damage and he has subsequently received a letter telling him that he has to vacate his space by 30th May. What qualifies the Market Manager to censor art? Simple signs at the bottom of the stairs and in the lift saying that if images of nudity offend you, then don't come up while this exhibition is on would have sufficed and there would not have been a problem.

We cannot allow unqualified people to censor our art.

Please sign the petition and share with your friends!

A concert pianist has won a legal battle to publish an autobiographical book giving details of sexual abuse he experienced as a child.

James Rhodes, persuaded Supreme Court justices to lift an injunction that had barred its publication.

The Court of Appeal granted a temporary injunction in October, blocking parts of the memoir, entitled Instrumental. This was after Mr Rhodes's ex-wife raised fears it would cause their 12-year-old son serious harm .

The judgement was given jointly by Lady Hale and Lord Toulson, in which they said:

The only proper conclusion is that there is every justification for the publication.

A person who has suffered in the way that the appellant has suffered, and has struggled to cope with the consequences of his suffering in the way that he has struggled, has the right to tell the world about it.

And there is a corresponding public interest in others being able to listen to his life story in all its searing detail.

Rhodes' book, titled Instrumental, is now due to be released next week. It includes accounts of physical and sexual abuse and rape inflicted on him from the age of six by the boxing coach at his school. The alleged abuser was prosecuted but died before he could face trial.

Speaking outside the court, Rhodes said the ruling was a victory for freedom of speech :

If this had been allowed to continue anyone could have used this to ban any book. We do not ban books in this country.

A senior UKIP member in Bristol who has a sideline as a porn movie producer has been suspended from his post in the party amid a row over the morality of one of his adult films.

John Langley, stage name Johnny Rockard, was asked to resign as vice chairman of the Bristol party after committee members were told of a video posted on the internet in which he is involved in a porn scene filmed in Castle Park.

Langley, who stood as a UKIP candidate for Stockwood in the local elections, refused to resign which has led to him being suspended. A report is now being sent to the UKIP's head office which will decide whether to expel Langley from the party. Langley said in a blog post:

Such is the fast pace and reality of politics that the excrement has yet again hit the fan in Bristol UKIP because I refuse point blank to resign from my post of branch VC, and as a result of my refusal I have now been suspended.

Let's be very clear on where the law stands in this instance. No criminal act was committed because no criminal act was reported, and furthermore I have neither been arrested or charged with a criminal act. So therefore no criminal act has taken place. It was accepted both locally and nationally by UKIP that I make adult movies when I joined the party and therefore taken as read that I would continue to do so. Which I have, and totally within the framework of the law.

Steve Wood, chairman of Bristol UKIP told the Post:

You have to bear in mind that we always knew what John was doing and he was completely upfront about it and we stood by him ...BUT... there is a big difference between what somebody does in the privacy of their own home or even a studio and what they do in public.

Mr Wood said he believed that what Mr Langley did was an indecent act and therefore liable to criminal proceedings: We cannot have that kind of thing in the party and therefore we asked him to resign.

A politically charged moral panic over young people's attitudes to sexuality is leading to Internet censorship and the labelling of ordinary young people as sex offenders, civil liberties campaign Backlash warns today.

Backlash will campaign for a change in the law so that prosecutions intended to halt child abuse are not used to instigate the abuse of children through the criminal justice system.

Backlash Action

Backlash is extending its remit to provide legal advice for young people who are threatened with criminal prosecution for possessing sexually explicit images of themselves and shared consensually on digital media.

The campaign will help fund effective defences when support available under legal aid is inadequate, and develop arguments for a judicial review of existing legislation.

Backlash will also disseminate a growing body of robust academic research evidence to policymakers, challenging the current legislative process, which is dominated by a climate of ignorance and hysteria regarding young people's attitudes to sexual relationships.

This campaign is spearheaded by obscenity law expert and Backlash's legal adviser, Myles Jackman.

Sexting -- criminalising ordinary young people

Millions of young people exchange explicit texts and images with each other over the Internet. For the most part this is equivalent to the flirting and sexual exploration typical of adolescence in the pre-digital age. There is no evidence that these activities are intrinsically harmful. However, a flaw in existing legislation means that possession of all sexually explicit images of people under 18 is classified as indecent . This means that people from the age of 16 to 18 are able to consent to sex, but are unable to possess images of their own lawful sexual activities.

A 16 to 18 year old that creates a nude picture of themselves using a camera-phone is, under current law, guilty of the serious offence of creating child pornography , even though their actions do not plausibly justify such a label.

When the authorities detect these images, teenagers themselves become subject to laws originally aimed at stopping child abuse, even though no abuse has taken place. These prosecutions cause immense mental distress and disruption to education. A prosecution, regardless of the sentencing outcome, severely harms the future life prospects of young people. For example, ordinary teenagers, who pose no harm to those around them, can still be forced to sign the sex offenders' register and prevented from participating in a broad range of employment, civic and personal activities years after the offence has been recorded.

Inappropriate criminalisation is a significant danger for ordinary young people growing up in the digital age, made worse by the fact that the source of the danger is the criminal justice system.

Porn panic -- a cross-party delusion

Instead of tackling this flawed legislation to focus on acts of abuse, major political parties have been caught in an arms race towards more criminalisation and censorship of people's sexuality. This process has been fostered by knee-jerk responses to pressure groups that ignore academic research evidence into young people's sexuality and use of sexually explicit media.

An NSPCC survey claimed, earlier this month, that a tenth of twelve to thirteen year olds had reported the fear that they were addicted to pornography. The survey has since been exposed as unreliable, as it was a developed by a marketing company that offers to produce survey outcomes based on pre-defined conclusions.

Nevertheless, the Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, pronounced that the Conservatives would impose age-restrictions to protect our children from harmful material . This pledge was almost immediately matched by the Labour Party. Such an approach ignores alternative approaches, including providing effective sex education to young people.

Myles Jackman commented:

By criminalising young people between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, our political and justice systems show how disconnected they are from technological change and social values, which is especially worrying so close to an election where politicians have been exploiting selfie culture.