After a relaxing weekend I am recharged and ready for another week of the stuff that dreams (nightmares) are made of…….
You see on many blogs and other such sites about the 1st amendment….everyone is concerned that it is being slowly eaten away…..and in my opinion it is…..but we have NO one to blame but ourselves. Our fear has allowed the control of our information……
We are allowing the government too much control over our thoughts all in the name of national security….we want freedom to say or write what we want….but not so much from others that may not agree with our twisted little beliefs.
It is not just in the US but rather the world over….in a age when “democracy” is the coming thing…..how can the censorship of information fit into that paradigm?
It is bad now….but it seems to be getting worse with each passing week…..
A leading journalism advocacy group says media freedom experienced a sharp decline around the world over the past year, citing increasing government restrictions in places like Turkey, Poland, Tajikistan, and Egypt.
In its 2016 World Press Freedom Index released on April 20, Reporters Without Borders said that there had been a “deep and disturbing” decline in freedom of information in many places around the world.
Source: Press Freedom in ‘Deep And Disturbing’ Decline in New Age of Propaganda | Informed Comment
Control the news and you control the population…..a good look around in this country and one can see, if one wants to see, that that statement is more accurate today than it was last year.
And people that “1984” was fiction….HA!
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
As always I appreciate the help….chuq
“A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.”
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing…
Nicked from, the oh, so,dubious one..
grin
I raise my glass to the Heretics.
😉
“I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.”
— John le Carré
1984 wasn’t fiction, it was a “manual for the future”. The future is a bleak place.
Government secrecy (and outright lies) is running wild and the press has been doing a lot of self-muzzling on anything involving the MISC Industries, corporate malfeasance, or anything The Powers That Be don’t want out there.
From what I understand, Russia’s press isn’t much more free than the Soviet Union’s was. Following the Silvio Berlusconi model in Italy, Putinites now control the airwaves. Any reporter crossing the line gets a “polonium sandwich”.
Meanwhile, over here, the idea the US can’t even crack the Top20 in press freedom is deeply concerning, but totally expected. Canuckistan ain’t much better. Herr Harper did everything but whip journalists.
There are other effects at work. Mass Media oligopoly both reduces the number of voices & turns the news into a profit/loss driven proposition. Profit seeking kills quality. What’s left is mostly entertainment driven and the biggest mouths draw the biggest audiences.
The New Media was supposed to open the door to more voices, but many of those voices are “sock-puppets”, the voices of the Old Media pretending to be new. While the door has opened, most of these new voices are talking to themselves, or people with identical opinions. That leads to “echo chambers”, if not outright Propagandhi…er…propaganda. (Damn punks strike again!) Even the best stuff is really only useful to those already inside the bubbles & echo-chambers. Very little disseminates into the Gen-Pop.
But the vast majority of these new voices have nothing of value to say beyond “Look at me! Look at me! Here’s my favourite band. Here’s a picture of my sandwich. Here’s all the kewl things I own.” They’re so busy talking about themselves, they hardly hear anything else.
So, the media landscape is dismal all-around.
Fear and national security have taken away all hope of a “free” press…..you are right 1984 was prophetic just like most of Philip K. Dick…..no way out….we will continue down this teisty road until it runs out then BAM!
Well, then you’ll be thrilled to read this section of the report on Canuckistan’s press. I’m so glad this asshole is finally gone.
https://rsf.org/en/news/harper-years-tough-times-reporters-canada
It seems the whole “free” world is having a problem with the truth, huh?
For sure. But Harper didn’t just have trouble with the truth, he had trouble with people even asking questions! Harper barely spoke to the press, even at his press conferences. When he did, it was only a couple of questions from journos he pre-selected based entirely on their friendliness to him. His cabinet members all had ball-gags in their mouths. Speak out of turn, deviate from the script, even once…& off to the political smokehouse with you!
Canuckistan has never seen anything like this before. What was always a pretty friendly press environment got as hostile as things get in Canuckistan…outside a hockey rink.
I hope you read the entire link because it very nicely summarized how press freedom (& personal freedoms) just instantly evaporated in Canuckistan. But here’s my favourite “highlights”:
1) Bill C-51 adopted in June 2015…includes prison terms of up to 5 years for “advocating” or “promoting” terrorism in general, including “reckless” statements. It also gives authorities the power to take down online content deemed “terrorist propaganda.” It also allowed CSIS/RCMP to comb through everyone’s shit without warrants and collect info from other gov’t departments (taxes, Medicare, etc)
It all highly reminiscent of ex-CIA Jeffery Sterling’s “Meta-data trial” for the crime of “speaking to a reporter” who was arrested in June 2015. Speech not condoned by the government is now a crime.
Your blog, & maybe even you, could get disappeared for promoting harm to institutions and/or individuals in Canada. For example, saying “Steven Harper deserves to be ass raped by a syphilitic donkey for passing C-51.” could actually earn me 5 years in Gitmo North. It’s all up to CSIS & the government of the day.
This kind of thing is particularly dicey in Canada, because Quebec has a long history of trying to leave Canada. Most is electoral politics, but there were a few acts of actual terrorism. You can see how even peaceful avocation of separation could easily get caught up in this.
And apparently, “advocating” or “condoning” terror also includes historical & theoretical actions. So, no praising the 13 Colonies’ terrorist rebellion that killed thousands of fellow Brits!!!
2) The Toronto G20 summit in 2010 aka The moment Canada became a fascist state.
With an official security budget of $1 billion, you knew shit was going down. Laws were passed in secret. People were surveilled months in advance, if not arrested in advance. Police were everywhere and on their VERY worst behaviour. Police infiltrators were everywhere and behind what little violence there was. Thousands of people were rounded up, beaten, arrested & held without charge in small cages with minimal access to food & water. NO lawyers allowed. All but a handful of the 1,100 who eventually got charged actually went to court. All but 2-3 of the 50-ish “guilty” verdicts were the result of plea deals designed to make it all go away. (20 hrs community service etc)
Members of the press were abused (& detained) with just as much fervour as protesters, 99.9% of whom were just standing around being polite little Canucks. Most even said “excuse me” when the cops knocked them to ground.
Wow. That was about 10X longer than I intended.
Sometimes when the words start they gush…LOL
Aye, indeed it is getting bad… for most… but, until they DO have control of encryption online, there is hope, for they cannot, and, have not shut down any information yet there, to any appreciable degree. For now, the truth can still be found…
As I do know something about computers, I will say also, there are those who know much more than I, and I would wager they have already made plans on how to subvert any such attempt at total control. After all, if necessary, there ARE hackers out there who can, and would, hack into the satellite systems, thus assuming control of all the government computer systems, without them even knowing…
I also know, for a fact, there is already at least one piece of code, planted somewhere on a server somewhere in the world, that would, if issued as a command, with one simple stroke, bring down every computer in the world, at the instant it hit the internet. Every computer connected would receive the command, which would, in essence, turn them all into paperweights…. At the level of control computers now have over our other aspects of technology, such as the power system, water systems, etc., much of civilization could, and would, be reduced to pre-electricity days, at least for a time….
So, don’t worry about the information… Human ingenuity can, and, I think, will, get around every kind of ultimate control that can be assumed, just as it always has…. How successful has the world been at getting rid of ANY criminal activity? They always find a new way to beat whatever happens…
My only question is whether it will be necessary to get tough, or will all of it be too late, in the face of the environmental damage we have caused, which can kill us all before we figure out whether or not to kill ourselves….? Still too complex to call with any degree of accuracy….
gigoid, the dubious