[patriots] Re: FW: Cometh the Censor - Fred Reed On Everything
- From: "Chris Pead" <cpead@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <judith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <patriots@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 22:14:20 -0000
Yes Judith, people are already planning for such a contingency - plans are
well advanced - Chris
From: patriots-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:patriots-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Judith Longman
Sent: 18 February 2015 15:22
To: patriots@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [patriots] Re: FW: Cometh the Censor - Fred Reed On Everything
Necessity is the mother of invention and I know that we shall find an
alternative to the present internet.
I believe in the creativity of our people and that an electronic curtain
will not come down rather it will be a springboard
to create something better and totally private.
Judith
On 18/02/15 14:13, Chris Pead wrote:
From: Mathieu Steffelaar
Subject: Cometh the Censor - Fred Reed On Everything
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 03:33:07 -0600
Cometh the Censor
Birth of What Will Prove a Short Siege
February 15, 2015
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.
Philip Francis Stanley and Grotesque Ophthalmological Malpractice
<http://fredoneverything.net/Stanley-home1.shtml>
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