Xanthippa's Chamberpot

For years, on and off, I have brrm ranting about the need to create an internet-type thing which would be outside the grasp and control of the powers that be – be they governments or large corporate interests (though, the lines between them have been so blurred lately, it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins).

And, no, I am not a complete conspiracy nut.

I have just ben paying attention – with all the ‘bailouts’, so many governments now have a physical stake in various corporations, it would be foolish to deny that the separation between our law-makers and the largest corporate ‘players’ has been eroding quite a lot.  To put it mildly…

That is never a good thing!

It is an especially bad thing when it comes to communications:  that is why I keep going on about the importance of free speech.  And, I also keep going on about the dual dangers to free speech:  government censorship AND corporate censorship.

Because BOTH of these are extremely dangerous to freedom of speech – and to the ability of regular, non-privileged citizens like you and I, to communicate with each other, to exchange information, to compare thoughts….

Without the ability to find out what is truly happening in the world around us – and without being able to discuss it amongst ourselves – we will be divided and powerless.

Isolated.

Easy to control…

This is well understood by those who would like to be rulers, everywhere.

That is why governments try to control media.

In the West, where people believe they have freedom of speech and where we would protest direct censorship of the media, more devious tools, like ‘political corectness’, are used to filter, distort and, yes, censor information that reaches the populace.  It is ‘censorsip by sneak’. so to speak.

It is also understood by the corporatists: hence the repression of all the freedoms we hold near and dear in, say, large areas around the spot where The Olympic Games are held, and so on.  (I have long held that the fascism inherrent in corporatism – the collusion between government-corporations-labour unions necessary to make this system function – is an incarnation of evil much worse than most others, because it pretends that it looks after ‘everyone’ and, if some person does not like it, there must be something wrong with them.  It thus oppresses both the body and the soul…)

But, I am rambling…..

Time has come for us, the ‘unwashed masses’, us, the rabble, to start taking things into our own hands.

Taking to the streets with pitchforks – except, I suspect we will be uch more effective if we can figure out an electronic equivalent to a pitchfork and take to the electronic equivalents of the streets and village squares.

First, of course, we have to build these electronic equivalents.

There are some who have started.

Please, read the following two links – they say it better than I could and are well documented and chock full of links with good info.

• Dateline Zero

• Hacker News

Both of these have come about because of what has happened in Egypt – and what could easily happen here.  (And, do not kid yourself – the groundwork has been laid for it….)

H/T: Tyr