For those of you not paying attention, the BBC have followed last weeks inhospitable reception to a blog post by BBC World's head of news, Richard Porter, with a further unpopular posting by the same gentleman.
In the previous article, Mr. Porter propounded what one reader referred to as an "oops my dog ate my homework" argument, in which he claimed, that the BBC had lost all of its transmission tapes of the televised news output from the BBC World channel for the date September 11th 2001. This unfortunate "error" was compounded, when clips of that same output magically appeared all over the web. These clips, showed the BBC reporting the collapse of the Salomon Brothers building (WTC7) some twenty-four minutes before the actual event occurred.
So far, so bizarre. We have the BBC engaging in a seeming act of news clairvoyance, followed by one of archiving incompetence, both of which seem to require some considerable further explanation. Cue blog post number two, courtesy of Mr. Porters latest article, the unimaginatively titled, 'Part of the Conspiracy? (2).'
This time Mr. Porter lays out a further response, in which the collapse of Building 7 (due to fire) is portrayed as an inevitable event and the BBC (and other news organisations) early reporting of this fact, merely one in which they jumped the proverbial gun after being reliably informed of the soon to occur event. However, Mr. Porter somehow fails to specify who the source of this advance information about the buildings imminent collapse was.
Equally, he does not bother (in the interests of objectivity) to mention the mound of evidence, first-responder and eyewitness testimony from the day of September 11th, which others claim leads to the conclusion that WTC7 did not collapse as a result of fire, but was instead brought down by a controlled demolition. I invite you to study this video as merely one example supporting those particular viewpoints.
Mr. Porter refers to those questioning the official version of events on 9/11 as "fantasists". An assertion which might not appear so disingenuous, if it were not seen to be coming from the editor of a news channel, that has just demonstrated itself to have a somewhat less than straightforward ability to report the 'facts' as they occurred on the day of September 11th 2001.
The story itself is still non-existent within the mainstream news media, but continues to bubble away online, attracting a range of strong (mostly anti-BBC) opinion. This particular story comes after many in the 9/11 truth movement have claimed that the BBC's recent 9/11 documentary was heavily
slanted in favour of the offical narrative and portrayed those
expounding alternative theories as delusional.
Comment
Personally, I don't pretend to have a conclusive list of ingredients in what looks like an increasingly murky informational soup, nor do I pretend to know who is actually cooking the dish. At this point however, it does seem, that what we are being fed, does NOT taste like the truth!
Something just isn't right with this particular heady brew which sees the BBC implicated by some, in producing a series of biased and slanted reports on the events of September 11th and the 9/11 truth movement denounced as crackpots, lunatics, nuts and liars by others. Then again, something has been terribly wrong with the world for a long time, September 11th was merely the day that fact became tragically apparent to the world in general.
Some forum sources are now speculating that the parties responsible for 'breaking' this particular 'news story' are themselves part of a wider disinformation campaign; responsible for throwing false bait out to the truth-seeking masses, diverting investigation off on wild tangents that will only help reinforce negative conclusions and generally reinforcing the cultivated prejudice of many in the middle-ground of public opinion that the "tin-foil hat brigade" are simply not to be trusted.
Others wonder, whether the whole 9/11 event is not designed to serve a much darker purpose. Even darker than that of dragging us all into a prolonged, increasingly bloody and borderless war, where totalitarian measures predominate, morally blurred methods of coercion and torture prosper and only endless erosions of civil-liberties can guarantee our safety.
In this scenario, 9/11 is an intentional planned misdeed, an informational and cultural cancer, with an aggressive growth rate and an exposure date timed in. It is an information virus, gradually dispersing throughout the body politic of society; spreading distrust and suspicion into all areas of civil and social life; eroding confidence in the survival of the existing social order, leading to widespread psychological and social pathology, conflict, division and ultimately, a desire to radically reform the existing world order altogether.
This in itself an interesting theory, yet appears far outside the comprehension range of the average person attempting to pick through the maze of information and disinformation still swirling around the smoke-filled psychological and physical ruins of that day. What can conclusively be said about this particular news story right now, or indeed about 9/11 in general? What is in fact provable, to the satisfaction of the vast majority of people, in such a way that few are left in doubt as to the veracity of the truth presented before them?
Nothing that's what, absolutely ground zero...
9/11 is a moral maze. Everything that has arisen from it has only deepened the sense of division, suspicion and speculation. Wherever it is leading, whoever is behind it, 9/11 is proving to be a continuing malignancy, a parasite poisoning the host body of the culture in which it lives and one in which the cure, may very well prove almost impossible to facilitate without the death or dismemberment of the patient.
The above video, in which BBC reporter Jane Standley is seen and heard reporting on the collapse of Word Trade Centre building 7 (WTC7) whilst it is apparently still standing behind her, is leading to a wave of derisory comment and reaction amongst the 9/11 truth movement.
The BBC editors blog has so far failed to receive any favorable comment after posting a general rebuttal. Equally, the Digg article - where users comment upon the original story, has failed to elicit much in the way of pro-BBC debunking.
What is the BBC doing to explain this bizarre inconsistency - in which one of its reporters appears on screen confirming the collapse of building 7 before the actual event occurs? So far, the answer appears to be very little. Apart from producing Richard Porter, Head of News for BBC World, to claim that the organisation has lost all of its original footage of the days events!
We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another.
This is simply not a plausible response from the (supposedly) premiere news organisation on the planet. So far the best response Mr Porter and the BBC have produced is contained in the following quote taken from the same article.
If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that. As one of the comments on You Tube says today "so the guy in the studio didn't quite know what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy...
It seems unbelievable that an organisation of the calibre of the BBC should be resorting to quoting a You-Tube comment in order to support its version of events - because the actual story, is far more significant than this trite and silly response suggests.
If that is WTC7 in the background, it suggests that the source of the inaccurate information provided to the BBC had foreknowledge that the building was about to be demolished. Which begs the question, who was that source and how could they have known that this random and unpredictable building collapse was about to occur? If as the BBC claim the early report of the buildings collapse was simply "an error" why was it not subsequently corrected?
This "error" and the subsequent explanations issued by the BBC, do little to increase faith in the accuracy and quality of its journalism. An organisation that reports the collapse of a building before it actually topples; fails to correct the mistake; then claims to have lost the original recordings of the event, is barely believable, let alone reliable. The story also raises questions about what other errors may have found their way into the BBC's 9/11 coverage and its recent documentary. It raises far more questions than it answers not the least of which is wether the BBC can really be relied upon to provide accurate and reliable coverage of news events.
Some very interesting statements popping up on the web this week regarding climate change. First up, the President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus, quoted on Physicist Lubos Motl's website the reference frame saying the following in an interview with Hospodarska Niny, a Czech Republic economics newspaper,
Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment.
Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" and "if's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses. This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should.
Next up, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who is feeling the political heat after it emerged that he had remarked in a 2002 fundraising letter that the Kyoto Protocol was "a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations." This is interesting, because back in April 2006 60 scientists signed a letter sent to the Canadian Prime Minister in which they stated,
Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada's climate policies are based.
"Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise."
In 2005, one of the 60 scientists who signed the letter, paleoclimatologist Dr. R. Timothy Patterson, professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences at Carleton University, testified before the Canadian Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development that,
There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.
There are many more scientists making public statements to the effect that they do not support the scientific conclusions being presented to the public. Now that the label "climate change sceptic" is being attached to anyone who does so, it will be interesting to see if these 'maverick scientists' continue to speak out against what they see as false and misleading science. Whatever the truth, it is a 'science' that is being used to justify a radical restructuring of the world economy and one which will continue to affect all our lives.
Sometimes, it seems that the actions of those who debate the important issues of the day in our nations parliament building, resemble a 'Punch and Judy' puppet show more than they do any serious kind of political theatre.
Many of the most important questions are never addressed and when they do appear, they often wear the superficial clothing of scripted soundbites, or else are garbed in obscure linguistic technicalities. These serve only to obscure the shape and form of the issues they are supposed to uncover. In this matter, the government and the opposition parties often act in collusion; both concealing more than the reveal and both appearing to be party to private agendas that are never disclosed, and which remain largely incomprehensible to the general public.
Many of the most powerful lobbys funding and informing the policy development of political party agendas are not visibly apparent. They are rarely discussed openly. Where government itself is concerned, it is only as its period in office unfolds that the vested interests lying below the carefully cultivated propoganda surface begin to become visible.
When they do appear, it is often in a manner which tends to obscure their real significance and importance. This concealment, is further aided by the actions and statements of ministers and politicians themselves, who either have much to lose, or a great deal to gain in the overall equation.
Thus it is that our 'honorable members' often seem content to focus the discussion on those areas of policy (and upon those issues) which serve to direct the course of investigation and the parameters of political debate into channels which can be easily controlled.
Indeed it is rare to see any politician appear in the House of Commons, who seems able to transcend the carefully contrived limitations placed upon them by the personnel managers of the party whip. Even rarer, the sight of one making a bold and brave defense of genuine principle, or pointing out the obvious underlying similarities, in the supposedly opposing positions of the political opponents facing each other across the parliamentary floor.
Against this backdrop, it seems pertinent to ask if the British parliamentary system is in fact merely an elaborately staged political puppet show, where our most prominent politicians act out the scripted agendas crafted for them by a group of largely unseen puppeteers; all the time cheered and jeered by an enthusiastic (though largely irrelevant) parliamentary audience of backbenchers and career politicians.
Is it possible, that some members of the current British government are now serving out their term of office, in the fore-knowledge that (barring some unforeseen circumstance), they will not be re-elected to serve a fourth term in government? Have certain powerful controlling interests privately concluded that the shelf life of this current administration is nearing its sell by date?
As strange as such questions may sound to someone who believes that the visible faces of our government are the real ruling heads of the political body we call the state; they do appear to be consistent with the evidence provided by this current governments recent behavior. Certainly the Labour leadership is demonstrating an amazing tendency to shoot itself in the foot of late and is doing so with an increasingly ridiculous (and barely believable) frequency.
Some will argue that it is the British people who decide who governs them and that they do so at the ballot box. The myth of our egalitarian parliamentary democracy (if in fact it is a myth) is the most important and powerful controlling paradigm of our culture. Yet it must be noted, that even in a supposed political democracy, the political good sense of the people can be hijacked and manipulated by unscrupulous interests.
The will of a people to make informed decisions about the men who govern on their behalf, is largely dependent on what they actually know about them. Leaders do not govern in a vacumn, nor do they rise to prominence solely by virtue of their own efforts. Such men (and women) are promoted to power by virtue of the association and support of others, who both sponsor their political careers and help to build and craft the image which is presented to the public.
Information of that kind is very powerful and can make or break a political career. The asscociations and special interests which underly a politicians rise to prominence are not generally broadcast very widely. In addition much of the most vital and secret information in our society is not in the hands of politicians themselves, but is instead likely to be provided to them piecemeal by those in a position to bestow it. It will be given at a price, that being, a degree of loyalty or allegiance to the agenda of the provider of that information.
Politicians are only human-beings and as such, are liable to be influenced, controlled, or even blackmailed by those with the will and power to do so. It is naive to imagine that the political surface is all that it appears to be, or that we the people are truly informed of what manner and type of person or organisation may wield unseen influence over the people we elect to be our spokesmen.
Perhaps where this current government is concerned, it is simply a case of long-term arrogance breeding complacent incompetence. Regardless of the visible or invisible truth, with every day that passes, it is looking ever more likely that the Conservative party led (but perhaps not controlled by) by Mr David Cameron, will be forming the next visible leadership front to be presented to the British public. That he will be doing so on behalf of a power that sits concealed behind the spin, rhetroric and theatrics of the parliamentary puppet show,is a fact in doubt only to those who have not observed the hidden hands so obviously pulling the strings.
Continuing a week of dispiriting behavior by television networks in the UK, the Guardian is reporting on a decision by the BBC to drop a drama it was making about the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005.
The paper quotes the drama's producer Katy Jones as saying,
I am extraordinarily disappointed, more than anything for the family. It was devastating for them. We had been told by the BBC it was the most important television commission of the year.
In a statement, the BBC cites 'timing and the mix of programmes' as the apparent reason why this (and a further sensitive docu-drama dealing with the lives of the 7/7 bombers) has now vanished from its schedule.
Comment
Apparently the most 'important television commission of the year', was unable to withstand whatever pressure was exerted from within the BBC's leadership, to ensure that it was never brought to air. The BBC claim that dramatic accounts are 'not the best way' to deal with these 'complicated' subjects.
Why then did they originally commission it to be made?
What is it exactly, that is so 'complicated' about producing a drama covering as accurately as possible, the fact that 18 months ago an innocent 27 year old man, was shot at least 7 times in the head by unknown members of an armed team, acting we are told on the authority of Scotland Yard?
It might also be asked, what message we are sending to ourselves, when such a crime can be committed in our midst, then summarily dismissed from our collective consciousness? Surely in such circumstances, those with the power and the mandate to facilitate public scrutiny should be making all available efforts to do so? Is it not important that we are able determine what happened that day?
Apparently not.
It is surely a prerequisite of a just society, that Justice is seen to be done in it. It can hardly be argued that it has been thus far. Unless we are to consider that the execution of Mr de Menezes constitutes a necessary price in the war on terror. One which, despite his death, requires no further investigation or effort on the part of the establishment or ourselves to explain.
Accusations that UN personnel in Southern Sudan have been involved in the raping and abusing of young children have been published this week in the Daily Telegraph.
The paper has gathered 20 accounts from victims claiming that children displaced by the civil war and sleeping rough on the streets of the capital, have been targeted by UN peacekeeping and civilian staff who pick them up in UN vehicles and force them to have sex.
Despite verbal testimony given by children, the British regional coordinator James Ellery has refuted all allegations, citing a lack of evidence and blaming the accusations on 'misunderstandings' and the local peoples illiteracy. He referred to the allegations as 'rumors'. An internal UNICEF report for the Sudanese government and a report from an unnamed NGO both appeared to substantiate the claims, but as yet, no cases have come to court.
The story follows a spate of similar allegations that have emerged in recent years. A BBC investigation in November 2006 detailed numerous allegations of rape and prostitution connected to UN forces in Haiti and Liberia. The report highlighted the fact the UN appeared both disinterested and ineffective in responding to allegations of the rape and sexual abuse of young women and children and was unable or unwilling to police the widespread use of prostitutes by it's personnel in the region.
A spate of stories emerged from the UN presence in Congo when in October 2005, both ABC and Fox news reported the story of Didier Bourget, a senior UN official from France, who videotaped himself having sex with young Congolese girls and was said to be running an internet pedophile ring in the region. Police investigating Bourget stated that his bedroom was covered with mirrors and he had set up a a series of remote controlled cameras around the room. The sting operation that captured him, allegedly found him preparing to rape a 12-year-old girl.
Following this, a further ABC News investigation published details of Aimme Tsesi, a 15 year old deaf-mute Congolese girl raped and impregnated by a Uruguayan UN solider, who was turned away from the gates of the UN camp when she went there for assistance. These cases were amongst an estimated 150 allegations of sexual exploitation and rape in the region that were highlighted in the ABC program "20/20" which aired in February 2005.
A Times investigation in December 2004, turned up allegations that two Russian pilots based in Mbandaka, paid young girls with jars of mayonnaise and jam to have sex with them. They filmed the sex acts and then apparently sent the tapes to Russia. The men were tipped off when the story was about to become public and left the area, escaping prosecution.
In 2001 former U.N. human rights investigator Kathryn Bolkovac sued the defense contractor DynCorp, (who administered the contract to provide police officers for the 2,100-member UN international police task force) on charges of wrongful dismissal, sexual discrimination and violation of Britain's whistle-blower laws. Bolkovac stated that the company dismissed her because she reported in an email that Dyncorp police trainers officers were availing themselves of services offered by young women forced into prostitution and were complicit in sexual trafficking.
The email alleged that U.N. officers visited Bosnian sex clubs where girls as young as 15 were beaten, raped, refused food, and locked away for days or weeks if they refused to dance naked on tables and consort with paying customers. She stated that the women were told they would be arrested by the local police if they tried to contact them for help. She also said that officials were involved in helping local police to sell women into the sex-trade.
The British tribunal found unanimously in favor of Bolkovac and stated that Michael Stiers, the deputy commissioner of the mission in Bosnia who dismissed Bolkovac, for allegedly falsifying her time-sheet, "had his knife in her and was determined that she should be removed from her role as a gender monitor with IPTF." Despite this decision and the fact the many Dyncorp official resigned under a cloud of suspicion, they enjoyed immunity from prosecution in Bosnia and were therefore never charged.
A similar lawsuit occurred earlier in 2001 when a former DynCorp aircraft mechanic Ben Johnston went public with allegations that during 1999 senior Dyncorp employees were "engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior." Amongst the many allegations were those of middle-aged men having sex with 12 year-olds, involvement with the Serbian Mafia, a DynCorp supervisor videotaping himself having sex with two females despite the fact that one of the women on the video was repeatedly heard saying "no" and the charge that many DynCorp employees bragged about purchasing women from Russia, Romania and other places for use as sex-slaves in Bosnia, and then sold them before returning home.
Comment
There is a sense in which the United Nation's efforts to stem a tide of corrupt practice and moral degeneracy by it's troops and employees is at best negligent and at worst makes it appear criminally complicit in the actions it says it is trying to prevent.
Spokesmen for the UN continue to mouth a combination of platitudes and excuses, denying knowledge, citing insignificant evidence, or else attempting to shift the blame for actions committed by UN forces onto other groups and peoples.
Perhaps it is not surprising though, that an organization which spends such a great deal of time and energy telling other people how they ought to live and portraying itself as a beacon of light and freedom to poor and oppressed people everywhere, should be found at heart to be capable of both high level political corruption and a degree of moral bankruptcy that if maintained, will only lead to it losing further credibility. But then again, perhaps that's the whole point...
The following is an interview with 25 year old Chilean student Juan Manosalva, in which he discusses his own reaction and that of his fellow Chileans to the death of General Augusto Pinochet.
Q: How did you and your immediate friends and family react to the news of Pinochet's death?
A: My first reacting was one of surprise because I thought Pinochet was going to get over that heart attack and everything was going to be as before. Many people had the feeling that the heart attack was another of his tricks to cheat justice, so it didn't look that bad at first. But when the news of his death came it was surprising and particularly shocking the reaction of people, it was like something they were long time waiting for, and then overnight celebrations and weeping made up all the TV content in all the channels.
About my friends reactions the first thing I have to say is that young people are not really paying much attention to this, they understand that this is a very important episode of our history but that's it. The ones who are really concerned and preoccupied are the older ones, the ones who lived in fear under the oppression of the regime and weren't allowed to speak their minds, or had to remain hidden for fear of being murdered or tortured.
I'm 25 and my friends are of similar ages, so we were kids when all this was going on, so we don't feel it as something to be fighting for on the streets showing placards or celebrating. On the other hand the older members of my family and elder relatives are the ones who are more affected by the news, for instance what my mother feels is great disappointment because Pinochet didn't stand trial and didn't show any hint of repentance for what he did to a part of our countrymen. Some relatives hope that after his death we could finally find reconciliation between ourselves.
Q: What are people saying about this?
Not much really, we are a rather conservative society and it is not our custom to show our political preferences, if it is not during an elections time. If we do show them it is with respect and with an understanding of others' right of think freely. The ones who are talking more about this are the extremes minorities, by this I mean: the extreme left and the extreme right, but for them to become reconciled we will have to wait.
Q: What is the general feeling in Chile regarding this man?
A: The general feeling in Chile is one of a profound division amongst the older generation and a sense of shame amongst the rest.
Q: How do you expect this man will be remembered?
A: As the symbol of what we will never allow ourselves to undergo again in this land, and a symbol of the harm that the US government can inflict on Latin America or any other part of the world; we were very close to becoming a developed country before all this happened but the US screwed us, we had an excellent country and were rather unified, but they made our parents fight and kill each other. That's part of our history and we have learned our lesson, we are now mature and aware.
The Washington Post is today carrying a story containing a statement of denial from the NSA that it ever targeted Princess Diana's communications. The statement reads,
The 39 NSA-originated and NSA-controlled documents referenced in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 1998 only contained references to the Princess, and she was never the communicant.
NSA did not target Princess Diana's communications. Furthermore, NSA has cooperated with the investigations into this tragic incident to the full extent of the law."
This is strange, because the agency admitted to holding at least 1056 pages of classified data about Diana back in 1998. The communications were said to need classification in order to protect "sources and methods" of US Intelligence gathering. It was widely reported back then, that such intelligence was gathered using the highly secretive Echelon eavesdropping system.
The official report, due for publication on Thursday, is likely to confirm the original story that her death was an accident.
In yet another twist, in an ever twisting maze of a story, the Observer newspaper yesterday published an article claiming that the US Secret Service were bugging Princess Diana's telephone conversations on the night before she died.
This revelation will do little to dampen a widely held feeling amongst the British public, that all was very much not as it seemed where the death of the Princess of Wales was concerned.
This has been a long running saga in the British tabloid press. On various occasions it has shown signs of emerging from the heavily veiled shadows it has been cloaked in, only to be re-veiled, or re-obscured, by varying interpretations and misdirections folded into the narrative threads presented to the public.
For example, it has been revealed that the driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, was an asset of the French Secret Service and that £100,000 had been transfered into various French bank accounts owned by him, in the months before Diana's death.
Alongside this, there have been claims that the autopsy of the Princess was deliberately botched and that Henri Paul's blood samples were tampered with to make it appear that he was drunk on the night of the crash. The notorious white Fiat Uno, which has been linked by some to Diana paprazzo James Andanson, and which left paint traces on the body of the crashed Mercedes, has never been properly identified. Andanson eventually turned up dead, having apparently commited suicide, when his burnt remains were found in French woodland in May 2000.
Then of course there was the letter written by Diana 10 months before her death, in which she claimed that someone, who has yet to be named for 'legal reasons' was,
planning an ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head
injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry".
This latest twist, only confirms what has already become obvious from previous stories of phone tapping and intelligence agency involvement. Princess Diana's private affairs in the weeks and months leading up to her death were indeed considered of very great interest to certain people. The kind of people who are well known for having both very secret and potentially very lethal agendas.
For anyone interested in getting an unusual and fairly comprehensive overview of current incidents connected to terrorism, Global Incident is providing an open source, constantly updated and navigable visual map. Using Google mapping, satellite imagery and news feeds to source its information, it presents a detailed and unsettling picture of the fractious and fear-filled world we currently live in.
Police are to demand new powers to arrest protesters for causing offence through the words they chant and the slogans on their placards and even the headbands they wear.
The country's biggest force, the Metropolitan police, is to lobby the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, because officers believe that large sections of the population have become increasingly politicised, and there is a growing sense that the current restrictions on demonstrations are too light.
Are our political leaders now seeking to deny freedom of expression to those they disagree with through forcible means? Have they become so afraid of their own "politicised' people, that the only way they can control them, is to create a society where anyone can be arrested for the slightest unlicensed expression of dissent?
Of course the arguments for such proposals will be crafted in such a way, that they appear to be directed at restricting the freedom of those people who express views that the majority of decent people find repugnant.
Indeed it would not be surprising, if the weeks and months ahead managed to produce a number of high-profile examples of these kinds of views being aired, (to great annoyance and discomfort) in public places.
This will ensure that the widest possible chorus of consent can be obtained for what is essentially a law that would censor the public voice still further. However, having placed such a power upon the statute books, there are strong precedents to indicate that these same powers will end up being used in a far more expansive and sinister way at a future date.
We are heading ever nearer the perilous rocks of dictatorship and totalitarianism in this country. Only the fact that so many of us are asleep at our watch enables this suicidal course to continue unchecked and unopposed.
On Thursday the 23rd of November 2006, Brian Haw will have been living and demonstrating outside Parliament for 2000 days. On November the 19th, Dissident Vox visited Parliament Square and handed him a microphone.
Listen to the voice of one of this countries great Britain's, as he talks about his protest, the actions of the state he is standing up against, and why it is more important than ever to stand together for freedom and peace.
So once again the pendulum has swung in American political life. Where exactly it will end, now that it has begun swinging, is anybodies guess. Given the severity of the last decade under President George Walker Bush, the reaction unleashed by the momentum of the swing is likely to be severe. The sad fact is that this does not bode well, for the American people, or for the world in general.
It may seem for a while, to those enthused by the prospect of getting rid of an odious dictatorial regime, that the coming change's can only be positive. Before anybody gets too excited though, lets wait and see exactly what's coming the round the corner.
The balance between governements, and the people they claim to represent is wildly out of whack, not just in America, but in the world in general. This lack of balance, will only continue to serve those who understand how to manipulate the swinging ebb and flow of political and social life.
