Some say opinions are like arseholes, everyone has got one. Nevertheless without arseholes, we would be all full of shit. So for once, at great risk of causing division and some passionate reaction, I will give my opinion. Perception is a very subjective matter, and that is why, to attempt objectivity, I strongly believe in the Dialectic, which requires Free Speech, without censorship. In other words, there are at least two sides to every story and we cannot see or hear both sides, with censorship, which prevents informed debate, which is an essential element of fascism, and an enemy of freedom and Free Speech, the fundamental of any Republic.
As an example, let's take the town of Newry, which traditionally has had, up to eighty percent unemployment because of Stormont. Perception causes great division in the struggle for liberation in this town. Wholesale intergenerational unemployment, was calculatedly caused by the Orange Statelet, and replicated all across the north of Ireland, in nationalist towns. Stormont built excellent infrastructure, with funding from British taxpayers, across the north of Ireland, but excluded towns like the Newry. They made certain an excellent motorway in the north, extended past Banbridge, but considerably short of Newry, to ensure that no international entrepreneurs, would ever build factories in places like Newry, with a large nationalist population. The Provo junta in the Stormont Agreement with the Tories and the Orange Order, have just signed up for savage cuts, to be implemented, after the next election, the extent of which is censored from the public, which will decimate living standards in that part of Ireland. The only nationalist people, who could traditionally make a living in the area, were the smugglers in south Armagh and the privileged Orange Order.This is just one example of cultivated divisions in Ireland.
Now a free liberated people, should not be fighting among themselves over scraps, they would be self-supporting and have control over their own resources. However human nature being what it is, it is difficult to blame the thousands in Newry, without a pot to piss in, from being jealous of the many strong farmers in south Armagh, with thoroughbreds cantering in their fields, while the Orange Order and the Tories sit back laughing at local squabbles. The liberation struggle in Newry split between the Workers Party and the Provos. As both elements decided to change from revolution to electoral-reformism, the careerists started to join both parties and out-numbered the original revolutionaries. The orifice lickers, with their manipulative skills, climbed to the top, resulting in Eamon Gilmore who also, once called himself a republican, becoming deputy Prime Minister, with the fascist Blueshirts in the south, while the local Provos, are well on their way, to replace the soon to be vacated seat, of Martin McGuinness, when he joins the House of Lords or some other Pie in the Sky, while the poor people of Newry, still haven't a pot to piss in.
Now-of-course, this is great craic for the Provo/Orange Order junta in Stormont, with big expense accounts and even fatter bank accounts, inspired by the Queen's shilling. The perverse irony of all of this is, that the "Remarkable Agreement", of post-election cuts of savagery, that McGuinness boasted about recently, under the structure of Lord Craigavon at the entrance to Stormont, was the culmination of two parties, originally campaigning on a platform of smashing the traditional Unionist Stormont. What was actually remarkable, was the Chuckle brothers of Provo/DUP fought a bloody duel for decades, using their volunteers as cannon fodder, in willing partnership, with Britain's ongoing test laboratory of ongoing Dirty War in Ireland, without any lessons being learned by the suffering people of no property.
The current fascist, Provo/Orange Order junta maintain their contrived monopoly, enabling the low-intensity British Dirty War, as it perverts the course of justice, in secret courts, that maintains a conveyor belt system, that interns without a proper trial or by remand, any uppity Taig or odd Flegger, that wants to organize any 'no property' protest, about all of this. This is the pig in the poke, sold as a peace process, which serves British Imperial interests so well, in Ireland, which will become evident, after both elections in Ireland in the near future, with a Provo/Blueshirt junta also established in the south, to do the same. This has already been well choreographed by the British secret state, under the cover of censorship, prejudice, bigotry, keeping the natives, dumb, hungry and squabbling among themselves, as the Piss-pot Process of ruling by fooling continues. As the Provos follow, Her Majesty's gravy trail today, they collaborate in the same torture of Irish POWs, meted out by the same sectarian thugs in riot gear, to the ten Hunger Strikers, by sectarian British riot squads in captivity. Even British Sinn Fein's neanderthal political cousins, the fascist Blueshirts, treat Irish POWs better.
The Provos in Stormont are old wine in new bottles, that you will find in the dregs of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Labour in the south, whose pockets, have been well lined by the corporate lobbyists round Leinster House. In all probability, they have already cut a deal with the international banksters, and in all likelihood, will go into Coalition, with their political cousins the Blueshirts, with whom they have more in common, rather than Fianna Fail. Tweedledee, Tweedledum, funded by the National Australia Bank and organized by Britain's secret state.
Cometh the Censor
By Fred Reed
February 15, 2015 "ICH" - I see with no surprise that Washington is stepping up its campaign to censor the internet. It had to come, and will succeed. It will put paid forever to America’s flirtation with freedom.
The country was never really a democracy, meaning a polity in which final power rested with the people. The voters have always been too remote from the levers of power to have much influence. Yet for a brief window of time there actually was freedom of a sort. With the censorship of the net—it will be called “regulation”—the last hope of retaining former liberty will expire.
Over the years freedom has declined in inverse proportion to the reach of the central government. (Robert E. Lee: “I consider the constitutional power of the General Government as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” Yep.)
Through most of the country’s history, Washington lacked the ability to meddle, control, micromanage, and punish. In 1850, it had precious little knowledge of events in lands such as Wyoming, Tennessee, or West Virginia, no capacity to do much about them, and not a great deal of interest. People on remote farms and in small towns governed themselves as they chose, not always well but without rule by distant bureaucracies and moneyed interests.
For a sunny few years, local freedom rested substantially on principle, a notion inconceivable now. The Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, and Robert E. Lees genuinely believed in freedom, and worried about the coming of tyranny. Justices of the Supreme Court often upheld the tenets of the Bill of Rights. As human affairs go—poorly, as a rule—it was impressive.
As time went by, however, it became clear that incapacity, not principle, was the only reliable brake on the rise of dictatorship. In 1950, the government could put a mail cover on anyone, quite possibly illegally if the FBI were involved, but steaming envelopes open required time, effort, and manpower. Mass surveillance was impossible, and so didn’t happen. Without surveillance, there can be no control.
Fora long time it was due to principle that freedom of the press remained, no matter how much the government hated it. During the war in Vietnam, “underground” papers, which of course published openly, were virulently critical of the government. The mainstream media of the time published shocking photographs of the war, much to the fury of the Pentagon. The courts allowed it.
Today, that has changed. Washington has learned to avoid dissent from its wars by using a volunteer army of men about whom no one of influence cares. The use of “drones” further reduces public interest, and today the major media, owned by corporations aligned with arms manufacturers and manned by intimidated reporters, hide the results on the battlefield. For practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.
The old checks and balances, however modest in their effects, have withered. The Supreme Court is now a branch office of Madame Tussaud’s, Congress a two-headed corpse, the Constitution a scrap of moldering parchment remembered only by hopeless romantics, and Washington a sandbox of unaccountable hacks inbred to the point of hemophilia. Obama has discovered that he can do almost anything, calling it an executive order, and no one will dare challenge him.
In its rare waking moments, the Supreme Court has shown little inclination to protect the Bill of Rights, which Washington regards as quaint at best and, usually, an annoyance to be overcome by executive order and judicial somnolence. The obvious reality that having the government read every email, record every telephone conversation, monitor every financial transaction and so on is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment bothers neither the Supremes nor, heaven knows, the President. It is clearly unconstitutional, but we do not live in constitutional times. Governments aggregate power. They do not relinquish it, short of revolution.
Today the internet is the only free press we have, all that stands against total control of information. Consider how relentlessly the media impose political correctness, how the slightest offense to the protected groups—we all know who they are—or to sacred policies leads to firing of reporters and groveling by politicians. The wars are buried and serious criticism of Washington suppressed. That leaves the net, only the net, without which we would know nothing.
Which is why it must be and will be censored, sooner if Washington can get away with it and later if not. The tactics are predictable. First, “hate speech” will be banned. The government will tell us whom we can hate and whom we cannot. “Hatred” will be vaguely defined so that one will never be sure when one is engaging in it and, since it will be prosecutable, one will have to be very careful. Disapproval of favored groups, or of their behavior, will be defined as hatred. National security will be invoked, silencing whistle-blowers or, eventually, anything that might make the public uneasy with Washington’s wars.
The next step probably will be to block links to foreign sites deemed to transgress. China is good at this. The most likely avenue will be executive orders of increasingly Draconian nature, about which Congress and the Dead—the Supreme Court, I meant to say—will do nothing.
At that point, coming soon to a theater near you, the United States as it was intended to be, and to an extent was, will be over. Our increasingly characterless young, raised to ignorance and Appropriate Thought by government schools, will question nothing. They will have no way of knowing that there is anything to question.
I suppose it can be debated whether the current enstupidation of the rising generations is deliberate or merely the consequence of a return to peasantry inescapable in a democracy. The petulance and immaturity running through so much of society may be inevitable in a spoiled people who have never had to do anything and have never been told “no.” Certainly things today resemble the end games of other once-dominant cultures.
Mental darkness facilitates authoritarianism, and darkness we have. Many college graduates can barely read. Their ignorance of history, politics, and geography (and practically everything else) is profound, and they see no reason why they should know anything. They seem not to suspect that there might be things worth knowing.
I am hard pressed to think of a society in such internal decline that has turned itself around, and I cannot imagine how ours might do so. One sure thing is that, once the internet is gelded, there will be no hope at all. And the assault has begun.
Cometh the Censor
By Fred Reed
February 15, 2015 "ICH" - I see with no surprise that Washington is stepping up its campaign to censor the internet. It had to come, and will succeed. It will put paid forever to America’s flirtation with freedom.
The country was never really a democracy, meaning a polity in which final power rested with the people. The voters have always been too remote from the levers of power to have much influence. Yet for a brief window of time there actually was freedom of a sort. With the censorship of the net—it will be called “regulation”—the last hope of retaining former liberty will expire.
Over the years freedom has declined in inverse proportion to the reach of the central government. (Robert E. Lee: “I consider the constitutional power of the General Government as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” Yep.)
Through most of the country’s history, Washington lacked the ability to meddle, control, micromanage, and punish. In 1850, it had precious little knowledge of events in lands such as Wyoming, Tennessee, or West Virginia, no capacity to do much about them, and not a great deal of interest. People on remote farms and in small towns governed themselves as they chose, not always well but without rule by distant bureaucracies and moneyed interests.
For a sunny few years, local freedom rested substantially on principle, a notion inconceivable now. The Thomas Jeffersons, George Washingtons, and Robert E. Lees genuinely believed in freedom, and worried about the coming of tyranny. Justices of the Supreme Court often upheld the tenets of the Bill of Rights. As human affairs go—poorly, as a rule—it was impressive.
As time went by, however, it became clear that incapacity, not principle, was the only reliable brake on the rise of dictatorship. In 1950, the government could put a mail cover on anyone, quite possibly illegally if the FBI were involved, but steaming envelopes open required time, effort, and manpower. Mass surveillance was impossible, and so didn’t happen. Without surveillance, there can be no control.
Fora long time it was due to principle that freedom of the press remained, no matter how much the government hated it. During the war in Vietnam, “underground” papers, which of course published openly, were virulently critical of the government. The mainstream media of the time published shocking photographs of the war, much to the fury of the Pentagon. The courts allowed it.
Today, that has changed. Washington has learned to avoid dissent from its wars by using a volunteer army of men about whom no one of influence cares. The use of “drones” further reduces public interest, and today the major media, owned by corporations aligned with arms manufacturers and manned by intimidated reporters, hide the results on the battlefield. For practical purposes, today’s press is an arm of government.
The old checks and balances, however modest in their effects, have withered. The Supreme Court is now a branch office of Madame Tussaud’s, Congress a two-headed corpse, the Constitution a scrap of moldering parchment remembered only by hopeless romantics, and Washington a sandbox of unaccountable hacks inbred to the point of hemophilia. Obama has discovered that he can do almost anything, calling it an executive order, and no one will dare challenge him.
In its rare waking moments, the Supreme Court has shown little inclination to protect the Bill of Rights, which Washington regards as quaint at best and, usually, an annoyance to be overcome by executive order and judicial somnolence. The obvious reality that having the government read every email, record every telephone conversation, monitor every financial transaction and so on is a gross violation of the Fourth Amendment bothers neither the Supremes nor, heaven knows, the President. It is clearly unconstitutional, but we do not live in constitutional times. Governments aggregate power. They do not relinquish it, short of revolution.
Today the internet is the only free press we have, all that stands against total control of information. Consider how relentlessly the media impose political correctness, how the slightest offense to the protected groups—we all know who they are—or to sacred policies leads to firing of reporters and groveling by politicians. The wars are buried and serious criticism of Washington suppressed. That leaves the net, only the net, without which we would know nothing.
Which is why it must be and will be censored, sooner if Washington can get away with it and later if not. The tactics are predictable. First, “hate speech” will be banned. The government will tell us whom we can hate and whom we cannot. “Hatred” will be vaguely defined so that one will never be sure when one is engaging in it and, since it will be prosecutable, one will have to be very careful. Disapproval of favored groups, or of their behavior, will be defined as hatred. National security will be invoked, silencing whistle-blowers or, eventually, anything that might make the public uneasy with Washington’s wars.
The next step probably will be to block links to foreign sites deemed to transgress. China is good at this. The most likely avenue will be executive orders of increasingly Draconian nature, about which Congress and the Dead—the Supreme Court, I meant to say—will do nothing.
At that point, coming soon to a theater near you, the United States as it was intended to be, and to an extent was, will be over. Our increasingly characterless young, raised to ignorance and Appropriate Thought by government schools, will question nothing. They will have no way of knowing that there is anything to question.
I suppose it can be debated whether the current enstupidation of the rising generations is deliberate or merely the consequence of a return to peasantry inescapable in a democracy. The petulance and immaturity running through so much of society may be inevitable in a spoiled people who have never had to do anything and have never been told “no.” Certainly things today resemble the end games of other once-dominant cultures.
Mental darkness facilitates authoritarianism, and darkness we have. Many college graduates can barely read. Their ignorance of history, politics, and geography (and practically everything else) is profound, and they see no reason why they should know anything. They seem not to suspect that there might be things worth knowing.
I am hard pressed to think of a society in such internal decline that has turned itself around, and I cannot imagine how ours might do so. One sure thing is that, once the internet is gelded, there will be no hope at all. And the assault has begun.
Fred's Biography - As He Tells It
Fred, a keyboard mercenary with a disorganized past, has worked on staff for Army Times, The Washingtonian, Soldier of Fortune, Federal Computer Week, and The Washington Times. http://www.fredoneverything.net
No comments:
Post a Comment