Here is AlpineKat with her newest video, Black Hole Rap:
Some people wonder why should we do ‘research for the point of research’: can the cost be justified?
In my never-humble-opinion, yes!
My hubby phrased it well: if you only do research on how to improve candles, you will develop the best candles ever….but you’ll never invent the light-bulb!
Today, this came via email:
As you probably know, Big Internet Service Providers (Bell, Rogers, Shaw, etc.) are trying to take control of how we use the Internet. BUT Industry Minister Tony Clement can put a stop to this. So let’s send him a Christmas card asking him to give Canadians the gift of the Open Internet this holiday season!
Sign the card through Twitter.
Sign the card through Facebook.
Sign it on our site.
Tell Minister Clement to be our Open Internet Santa!
Thousands of people have already told Minister Clement to stop Big Telecom from taking control of our Internet use. Considering we’ve successfully pushed the CRTC to develop open Internet guidelines and convinced the two major political parties to support Net Neutrality, we can win this if we send the minister enough letters. If you haven’t already done so, please take a few seconds to send Tony Clement a letter.
If you’ve already taken action, tell all your friends.
Stay in the loop at SaveOurNet.ca and be sure to check out videos of our Open Internet Town Hall Events.
Thank you.
The SaveOurNet.ca team
My son told me I had to read this guy’s essays – they were brilliant!
I have barely ‘scratched the surface’ – but I do agree with him. His ‘news’ feed is also interesting.
Enjoy!
Recently, I found out that a lot of people are not aware that unless a vaccine actually made you sick, it did not work!
This is due to great sloppiness: among the media, who report on ‘medical stuff’ without bothering to inform themselves on even the bare basics of the topic they are ‘reporting on’, among the educators (including Medical-school level), many of whom do not bother to actually understand the very things they are supposed to teach (or pretend not to, because of funding), and especially among the practicing medical professionals, who seem to think we are all so stupid that it is necessary for them to manipulate the information they permit us to have, so that we’ll make ‘the right choice’!
This is right out of several ‘pages’ of my ‘pet obsessive peeves’ book: the ‘misrepresentation of science’ book, ‘bad/ignorant reporting’ book, ‘dumbed down education’ book, ‘state fascism’ – and a few more. And, it makes me very, very angry. Sorry if I am ranting too much…. So, what is the cause of my rant?
Recently, many Western news outlets (MSM, of course) carried the story that giving babies Tylenol (or, indeed, any other fever-reducing/anti-inflammatory medication) right before/after they get a vaccine greatly reduces the vaccine’s effectiveness.
OF COURSE!!! THAT IS THEIR FUNCTION!!!
Why in the world would medical professionals – the very people who ‘cracked’ this amazing and life-saving process called ‘vaccination’ – need a study on something as obvious as this? If you understand the process of how vaccines work, it is clear that taking analgesics and anti-infammatories will necessarily interfere with the very way vaccines work!
Doctors don’t know this?!?!? D-ughh!!!
At this point, I am shaking my head and wondering where to start….
Let me walk you through the steps in process through which vaccines are supposed to work:
1. ‘Controlled Infection’
A dead or weakened version of the virus (or viruses, in case of vaccines which protect against multiple pathogens) is introduced into the body of a healthy person. This is usually done by directly injecting the vaccine into the body or by applying them to the mucuous membranes and allowing them to permeate through there.
2. Immune system response
The immune system finds the ‘intruders’ and begins to fight them. The methods our immune system employs in this include fever (most viruses do not reproduce effectively at higher temperatures – hence, fever is a potent weapon our immune system uses), hot-cold spells/chills (most viruses cannot handle sudden temperature changes, which is why our immune system uses this weapon to kill them…actually, this is also how the whole sauna/steam-room thing works, if performed properly: people go get hot, then cool off extremely suddenly by rolling in snow or swimming in freezing water – and repeat this process 3x or more times within one hour: most germs will not survive these sudden temperature changes), inflammation (among other reactions, mucuous membranes try to trap germs, so this form of immune system defense may involve significant mucus generation), and so on. In other words, the immune system will evoke all the symptoms we associate with ‘being sick’ in order to ‘learn’ this ‘germ’.
3. ‘Creating a memory’
The immune system, during this fight, ‘takes notes’, so to speak. It creates an ‘entry’ in its ‘dangerous thingies memory bank’, where it records everything it has learned about each germ: how to identify it (by the pattern of proteins on its ‘skin’) and how best to fight it (this may include specific antibodies the immune system ‘learned’ to produce, and the ‘systemic symptoms’ like fever, which are unpleasant but kill the germ way faster than they kill us, and so on).
4. Future protection
A healthy immune system will keep this ‘record’ for many years, sometimes up to three decades: the more dangerous the immune system judges the germ to be, the ‘deeper’ the ‘entry’ and the longer it will ‘remember it’ and recognize the germ, should it ever infect the body again. This is important: the germs which attack us will reproduce inside our body at an exponential rate. If the immune system ‘recognizes’ the germ, it does not have to spend valuable time (sometimes days) trying to figure out how to fight it – time the germs would use to increase their number and, perhaps, overwhelm the immune system. Instead, it can compare the ‘germ’ to its ‘database’, retrieve the information about what destroys ‘this germ’ most effectively and start fighting it very shortly after the germ first enters the body. This means the germ does not have time to produce millions of copies of itself before the immune system effectively destroys it – and the person is protected from a serious infection.
5. The Trick!
Because the pathogen which was introduced through the vaccine was weakened or killed, it is not capable of reproducing (or, reproducing effectively) in the host (you). That means that it cannot overcome your immune system while the immune system is trying to figure out how to fight it.
To sum it up:
The pathogens in the vaccine must be strong enough to make our immune systems ‘take them seriously’ and fight them (and thus ‘learn’ how to fight the full-strength germ, if it ever infects that person), but harmless enough so that they cannot overcome the immune system while it is trying to figure out what works against this germ.
This means that a vaccine which does not make your immune system go into high gear (make you ‘sick’) has not given you any protection!
So, if you get a flu shot – and you do not get ‘mild flu-like symptoms’ – the vaccine did not work!
And, if you take medication which suppresses fever, and so on, you will be directly interfering with the immune system’s ‘learning process’. As in, the immune system will mistake the reaction to the pill for the reaction to the last thing it did to try to fight that germ!
Is it any surprise, then, that it does not ‘learn’ how to fight this pathogen effectively?
Doctors are said to still be taking the Hippocratic Oath: ‘Do no harm’. In a person with a healthy immune system, a vaccine will produce the symptoms of the harmful illness it is to prevent, but prevent the ‘harm’ that an actual full-strength infection would cause.
Vaccination is an important weapon in fighting disease.
But, like everything else, it can do more damage than good if it is not used properly. If it is misrepresented and misunderstood, then people may sabotage the very process the vaccine is inducing, without knowing it. Then, thinking they are protected, they will not act as cautiously as they might otherwise…
And that, in my never-humble-opinion, is a bad thing.
OK, I do not usually just point to another story….
But this one is just SOOO bizzare!
Apparently, someone has seriously proposed that the best way to power a new generation of military robots is to have them search their environment for ‘biomass’ which they would then collect and use as fuel. This ‘biomass’ would include human flesh…
The name?
h/t: Dvorak Uncensored
Update: ‘Switched’ has a good article on this – with a diagram and lots of links….so this is looking less and less like just a bad joke! And just in case you wondered: ‘EATR’ stands for the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot…
Tim Denton, the CRTC commissioner, has recently made the following statement:
‘The rights of Canadians to talk and communicate across the Internet are vastly too important to be subjected to a scheme of government licensing. If more Canadians were aware how close their communications have come to being regulated by this Commission, not by our will but because we administer an obsolete statute, they would be rightly concerned. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and the evidence for intervention was not yet present. But this confluence of facts may not always be there. Thus the call for a government review of a digital transition strategy is both wise and opportune. Let us fix this problem.’
And while I do not believe that the CRTC has the right to control our wavelengths, the reality is that they do. And, to their credit, they have (as Michael Geist’s post puts it so eloquently), decided to keep their hands off the internet – for now.
But, they will go on to develop a new comprehensive national digital strategy…
All of our voices should be heard, to help ensure that the net truly remains neutral – or, at least as neutral as possible. This is important: still, most of us are not sure how to best be heard…
Which is why I am going to quote the following text from Campaign for Democratic Media almost in its entirety:
Citizens from coast to coast are expected to engage in Canada’s first-ever online LIVE video-streamed national conversation about the future of broadband in this country.
During Town Hall meetings in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, viewers can take part in the confab through live, real-time online chat available at theREALnews.com, rabble.ca, TheTyee, Beyond Robson, SaveOurNet.ca and other participating websites.
The first of these innovative town hall meetings takes place in Toronto on Monday, June 8. The participating websites will start streaming video at 7:30 p.m.
The town hall events will bring together web innovators, entrepreneurs, social change leaders, cultural workers and citizens to discuss the future of the Internet in Canada. The sessions will be recorded and will form part of the citizen testimony that SaveOurNet.ca’s Steve Anderson will use to guide his presentation to the CRTC at the July 6 traffic management hearing.
SaveOurNet.ca is encouraging people who live within commuting distance to attend the town hall sessions to meet and mingle with fellow Netizens who want a say in Canada’s future Internet.
Here are the details, along with some updated information:
TORONTO • June 8 • 7 p.m.
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. West
Speakers include:
Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation
Olivia Chow, NDP Member of Parliament
Steve Anderson, co-founder, SaveOurNet.ca
Rocky Gaudrault, CEO, Teksavvy Solutions Inc.
Derek Blackadder, National Representative with CUPE
Special guests:
Jesse Brown, Search Engine
David Skinner, Communications Professor, York University
Kim Elliot, Rabble.ca
Mark Kuznicki, remarkk consultant
Dan O’Brien, ACTRA
Ben Lewis, Canadian Federation of Students
Wayne Mcphail, w8nc
REGISTER TO RESERVE A SEAT: http://saveournet.ca/toronto
OTTAWA • June 10 • 7 p.m.
Ottawa Public Library Main Branch, 120 Metcalfe St.
Speakers include:
Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa, blogger
Charlie Angus, NDP MP, Heritage and Culture critic
Rocky Gaudrault, CEO, Teksavvy Solutions Inc.
Bill St. Arnaud, Chief Research Officer for CANARIE Inc.
Introduction by Steve Anderson, co-founder, SaveOurNet.ca
Discussion Facilitator: Marita Moll, TeleCommunities Canada
Special guests:
Mike Gifford, founder of Open Concept Consulting Inc. Leslie Regan Shade, Communications Professor, Concordia University Graham Cox, Canadian Federation of Students
REGISTER TO RESERVE A SEAT: http://saveournet.ca/ottawa
VANCOUVER • June 20 • (time to be determined)
Vancouver ChangeCamp, BCIT, downtown campus, 555 Seymour St.
Speakers include:
Rocky Gaudrault, CEO, Teksavvy Solutions Inc.
Steve Anderson, co-founder, SaveOurNet.ca
(More to come)
REGISTER TO RESERVE A SEAT: http://vanchangecamp.eventbrite.com/
Canada’s FIRST live INTERNET DANCE PARTY will hit Vancouver on Saturday, June 20! This is a fundraiser for host SaveOurNet.ca as well as the official after party for VanChangeCamp.
6 to 8 p.m. – Social & Film Screening
8 p.m. to 2 a.m. – Internet Dance Party
Gallery Gachet
Special Guests:
Quest Poetics feat: Mello Black, Mario Vaira, & DJ Hayze
More guests to be announced soon!
RESERVE A SPOT: http://internetdanceparty.eventbrite.com/
Join the Facebook group of your local Town Hall:
http://saveournet.ca/content/town-hall-facebook-groups
Organizing these events would not be possible without your contributions. Please donate today:
http://saveournet.ca/donateIf you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Campaign for Democratic Media.
This is for our US cousins – and, if anyone knows the law in Canada and other Western countries on this, I would appreciate the info:
Apparently, the FCC has the right to enter and search/inspect – without a warrant – any private home where RF devices are in use.
You know, like radio, garage-door openers, wireless router for your internet…even cordless phones, burglar alarms or baby monitors…
‘It would appear that a never-challenged, little known law from 1934…You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.’
…
‘The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts.’
…
‘But refusing the FCC admittance can carry a harsh financial penalty. In a 2007 case, a Corpus Christi, Texas, man got a visit from the FCC’s direction-finders after rebroadcasting an AM radio station through a CB radio in his home. An FCC agent tracked the signal to his house and asked to see the equipment; Donald Winton refused to let him in, but did turn off the radio. Winton was later fined $7,000 for refusing entry to the officer.’
…
‘But if inspectors should notice evidence of unrelated criminal behavior — say, a marijuana plant or stolen property — a Supreme Court decision suggests the search can be used against the resident.’
So, let’s get this straight…
Ah!
So, the US is not becoming a ‘police state’ – it is much too sophisticated for that! Instead, the police use minions and sidekicks to do their ‘dirty work’ and remain beyond criticism…
Sweet!
Hat tip: Dvorak Uncensored
One of the best things about life is that as long as we are breathing, we can continue to learn!
One of the best things about blogging is that the comments I receive are often insightful, well thought out and I can learn from them. Usually, these just point out the ‘holes’ in my education/knowledge base: something I appreciate because it points me in the direction of things I need to learn.
Yet, every now and then, there are comments which are an education in themselves! Below is an excerpt (!) from one such comment: I thought it so important and informative that I wanted to share it with everyone. And, having received permission from the author, here is the answer to my question ‘What is ‘Cultural Marxism’?’:
CodeSlinger says:
Cultural Marxism is not Marxism-Leninism (which we usually just call Communism).
Marxism-Leninism is a system of political economics, which results from applying the so-called Marxist dialectic, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in a process called critical analysis, which uses it to deconstruct Western democracy and capitalism, and to rewrite history in terms of economic class struggle (and we all saw how that turned out).
In the 1920’s, Antonio Gramsci and György Lukács adapted the methods of the Marxist dialectic and critical analysis to the cultural sphere and applied it to the task of undermining Western science, philosophy, religion, art, education, and so on. The result is called the quiet revolution, the revolution from within, the revolution that cannot be resisted by force. This is cultural Marxism.
Now, that was quite bad enough, but then along came a group of sociologists and psychologists — chief among whom being Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jürgen Habermas — and they combined the Marxist dialectic with Freudian psychology to produce an exceptionally corrosive concoction called Critical Theory, which they use to deconstruct Western culture and values, and to rewrite history in terms of sexual and racial power struggles (and we can all see how that is turning out).
Collectively, these guys are called the Frankfurt School, because they originally got together under Horkheimer at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), which was domiciled in a little brick building belonging to the University of Frankfurt am Main in the early 1930’s. They all published their work in the Journal for Social Research (Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung), edited by none other than Horkheimer himself.
Then Hitler consolidated his control of Nazi Germany, so, seeing as they were all Jewish, they fled to the USA, more or less as a group, in 1934. In America, they affiliated themselves with Columbia and Princeton Universities. The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung was renamed Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, and they really got down to business.
Horkheimer’s key idea was that Critical Theory could be used actively, to change society, in contrast to the traditionally passive role of sociology, which had been merely to understand society. These guys were not your typical academics, whose main interest is the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary, these guys pursued an agenda: they wanted to find out why the Marxist revolution had failed in the West, and they wanted to remedy that situation. To that end, the group’s research addressed what to attack, how to structure the attack, how to deliver the attack, and how to measure the results of the attack.
Thus, for example, Adorno joined up with Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia, and began studying the effect of mass media on the population, and how to measure it. Starting in 1937, they collaborated on the Radio Project (bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation) which, among other things, produced the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast so they could measure its effects, and the Little Annie Project, which pioneered methods that quickly evolved into the Nielsen Ratings and the Gallup Polls.
Another example is the concept of intersubjective rationality, developed by Habermas, which replaces the individual process of reaching a conclusion based on the objective criterion that it follows from valid reasoning and known facts, on the one hand, with the social process of establishing a consensus supported by the subjective criterion that the group feels good about it, on the other hand. In today’s schools, those who do the former are maligned for being judgmental and demanding, while those who do the latter are praised for being good team players.
But, rather than go into pages and pages of detail right here and now, I’ll just list the titles of some of the major works of the Frankfurt School. Given the context, this combination of titles will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck:
Authority and the Family, Horkheimer, 1936
Escape from Freedom&, Fromm, 1941
Sex and Character, Fromm, 1943
The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno et al., 1950
Eros and Civilization, Marcuse, 1955
Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse, 1965
Communication and the Evolution of Society, Habermas, 1976
These are just a few of the core works; some are papers, some are books. The total volume of work by these guys, and their followers, is huge. The combined result, as I outlined in my very first post on this blog*, is something like the following:
It includes not only censorship of various kinds, but also the erosion of privacy, the debasement of the schools and the neutralization of the church. It includes the destruction of the family by setting wives against husbands and children against parents. It includes the disarmament of the public, the invalidation of self-defence and the incitement of fear. It includes the promulgation of the culture of victimhood, the promotion of immaturity and the reduction of society to a mob of narcissistic adult children. It includes the dogmatization of the universities. It includes the concentration of wealth, the concentration of ownership of corporations and the concentration of control of the media.
In sum, your description of all this as a descent into a new dark age** is exactly correct. And since you put it in those terms, I highly recommend an article by Michael J. Minnicino, called The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness. It speaks your language, and it will make the big picture very much clearer! Another good place to start is The Origins of Political Correctness, which is a transcript of a talk given by Bill Lind at the Accuracy in Academia Conference in 2000.
Update: The reference list above has been updated to also include the following: Escape from Freedom, Fromm, 1941
Xanthippa’s footnotes:
* ‘first post on this blog’= ‘first comment’… on my post ‘Limiting our freedoms – making sense of the ‘big picture’‘
** reference to my post: ‘Fight the ‘Forces of Darkness’!‘
What is a ‘failed state’?
A ‘failed state’ is a state which has completely failed to function. The exact definition is debated by the experts, but, a ‘failed state’ is often described as having the following characteristics:
Now, a ‘failing state’ has not quite become a ‘failed state’ – yet – but is certainly heading in that direction. Some suggest that a failing state may attempt to assert totalitarian-type control over its populace in its last attempts at remaining in control…
Yes, I know, my definitions are not perfect – I don’t have the technical lingo down pat. Yet, from the little bit of reading I have done, this seems to be the ‘rough’ idea behind the concept.
Britain is not a failed state – yet! My question is, just how far on the road to becoming one is it?
Let us look at the major characteristics of a ‘failed state’, as per my definition, and see if they are applicable to Britain:
1. Inability to maintain territorial integrity
This is a tough one: Britain has bartered away the control over immigration to Britain in a series of treaties with the EU:
‘It is therefore actually both impossible and illegal for British immigration officers to obtain hard facts on why people are entering Britain, because an EU passport gives someone from Poland or France as much right to enter this country as I do – no questions asked.’
All right – it is not a ‘failure’ in the ‘classical sense’, but rather the surrendering of responsibility for its territorial integrity to a supranational legal structure. Yet, it also means that the British government has, in a very real sense, lost the control over maintaining its territorial integrity…
2. Loss of monopoly on policing and judiciary
Last year, it was revealed that a parallel legal system, based on Sharia law and in no way answerable to the state, had been operating and deeply entrenched in Britain. In September 2008, acknowledging that they cannot control or abolish this parallel legal system, the British government formally recognized its legitimacy.
Even though this parallel legal system is not based on British laws or traditions, and is completely outside the control of the British government, it is fully functioning and its authority is officially recognized by the British government.
In other words, the British government has failed to maintain a monopoly on its judiciary.
Of course, many people would argue that Britain has also lost its ability to police its society… or even the ability to understand their basic role to charge those who disrupt peace, not those who protest the disruption. That is not functional policing…
3. Failed social structures
When a state begins to issue civil court orders known as ASBO (anti-social behaviour order) against toddlers, it is a rather unequivocal sign that its social structures are failing.
How is an ASBO issued against a person?
Well, according to Wikipedia, the accuser brigns their complaint against the defendant in front of a magistrate (my emphasis):
‘Applications for ASBOs are heard by Magistrates sitting in their civil capacity. Although the proceedings are civil, the court must apply a heightened civil standard of proof. This standard is virtually indistinguishable from the criminal standard. The applicant must prove that the defendant has acted in such a manner beyond all reasonable doubt.’
OK, you might say, so what is the problem? I know lots of toddlers who display ‘anti-social behaviour’! Beyond all reasonable doubt, most toddlers DO engage in ‘anti-social behaviour’… After all, they ARE toddlers.
Yeah, right… But ASBO is usually issued against ‘football hooligans’ and unruly youths and so on, forbidding specific behaviours. If the order is broken, and the individual engages in the behaviour prohibited by the order, that individual is subject to arrest. In other words, it’s sort of a ‘probation’ thingy for specific behaviours.
So, could an ASBO ever be issued to a two-year-old boy? In England, apparently, it could… and against his sisters, aged 4 and 5 (one of whom is autistic). From Dvorak Uncensored:
‘A boy aged two has become the youngest Briton ever to be threatened with an Asbo.
Lennon Poyser received the warning along with his sisters Olivia, five, and four-year-old Megan, after neighbours complained about their behaviour.’
And, yes, the kids had been told they could be arrested if they continued in their anti-social behaviour. While the whole thing had eventually been cleared up as a ‘mistake’, the fact is that such a complaint did go before a judge, been proven to be true ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ to a standard which ‘is virtually indistinguishable from the criminal standard’ and the order was issued and delivered – ALL IN ERROR?!?!?
Sounds to me like things are seriously breaking down in England…
While all this is going on, what are the local councils worried about? Are they addressing the breakdown of their society? Are they working hard to plug the holes in their governance structures, so 2-year olds won’t get tossed into jail for kicking a football?
Well, not so much…there is no time for that, because they are busy banning apostrophe’s from public signs and Latin phrases from daily speech!
Of course, these are not the only examples – there are too many to fit into an itty-bitty blog post… One would need a few volumes to even scratch the surface! And, if THIS is how the local councils are attempting to fix their failing social structures, then, in my never-humble-opinion, England is doomed.
4. Corruption of its governance structures
Britain is the cradle of our modern-day democracy: the home of the Magna Carta (or is calling it by its Latin name no longer legal in England?) Its parliamentary system is designed with checks and balances. It ought to work!
But, when one unelected parliamentarian can assert his will by threats of terrorism – and do so openly, with impunity, and which no consequences – it is unequivocal that the British government has failed in its function. It has become corrupted and dysfunctional.
And, if this letter can be interpreted as anything other than a threat of increased domestic terrorism should the British government not submit its foreign policy to the will of the Islamist lobby, then I don’t know what it could possibly be.
So far, I think it has been demonstrated that Britain is slowly but surely advancing on the road towards becoming a ‘failed state’. Are there any signs that it is behaving according to the patterns of such states? Is it beginning to attempt to impose some totalitarian, oppressive policies it its desperate attempt to stay in control?
Well, perhaps admitting that the state is unable to keep peace after dark is the reason for the imposition of a curfew which bans all teens from being out at night. And the populace’s response? They are squabbling about the ‘how’, not the ‘what’ of the order…
Or, how about this? The British government not allowed – by EU treaties – to control its immigration, so they are going all out to ‘big brother’ every Briton’s travel plans?
That does not even scratch the surface of the British censoring, choking and monitoring of all internet traffic…some of the blarmiest laws about the internet ever!
If THAT were not enough, now the British government is actively encouraging its citizens to go through each other’s garbage in order to report ‘anything suspicious‘…. and attempting to villify anyone who does not approve of being monitored by cameras 100% of the time!
Having considered the above – how far along the road to ‘failed state’ do you think Britain is?
Over the last little while, I have been ranting about the ever-increasing legislation to censor our communication.
Let’s not kid ourselves: governments today are opposed to information being freely available to their citizens. ‘Regulating’ things gives governments power over its citizens and collecting fees for ‘regulating’ is an important source of revenue for them. From UN on, the aim of governments is to ‘regulate’: it gives them both power and money.
It is only when we, the ‘unwashed masses’, show up – wielding pitchforks – and threaten to our legislators with defenestration* that they will unwillingly and grudgingly step back and allow us to keep some of our inherent rights and freedoms!
Still, when we do, we can make a difference: the New Zealand government is backing off implementing its controversial ‘Section 92A’ of their copyright law, which would force all ISPs to cut off internet access to anyone even accused of copyright violation! It looks like the internet petition, protests from all sides (except the movie and music industry) and the loud, loud outcry which echoed worldwide did have some effect: the government will send that section ‘back to committee’ for re-drafting! But, the fact that they are re-considering it does not mean they will come to a different conclusion… and passing it quietly, once the fuss had died down.
The fact of the matter is that governments will censor and restrict (sorry, they prefer the term ‘regulate’) as much as we, the citizens, will allow them to! Once something becomes ‘accepted practice’, there is grounds for it to become part of our laws, whether we like it or not.
What I’m about to write next is a little bit of ‘reductio ad absurdum’ argument, and I freely admit that. Yet, it does illustrate what I think is an important principle which we ought not loose sight of…
All around the world, we have accepted that governments have the right to regulate ‘the airwaves’. Of course, the word ‘airwaves’ is a misnomer: what is mean by this is the transmission of information using electromagnetic radiation (waves) which travel through the air. Whether it is the US FCC, Canada’s CRTC, Ofcom in Britain, ARCEP in France or any other nation’s body – the common thread here is that EVERY governments has established that IT has the RIGHT to regulate the transmission of information vie EM waves through the air.
It is on this basis that it licenses – and censors – radio and television stations. It regulates who is allowed to access which wavelengths, and when, and how.
Most of us have come to accept this as their ‘right’ – if not their outright role, and therefore DUTY.
We seem to have simply ‘accepted’ the premise that governments HAVE the right to regulate the transmission of information using EM radiation. And, undoing such an assumption will be difficult!
Now, I would like to remind everyone of my first law of human-dynamics: if a law can be abused, it will be!
How often have our legislators (or the bureaucrats who actually control the implementation of any government policy) passed a law, only to later expand its application in ways the populace never dreamed of – and would not have approved, had they understood just how twisted this law can be? (If you can’t remember, here is an example from Australia…)
Back to my main point: how does fMRI work?
Well, in layman’s terms, it is a medical imaging device which measures the EM transmissions of our brain as we think.
As in,when we think, our brain actually converts our thoughts (or, perhaps, makes our thoughts) as a form of EM radiation, which it then transmits these waves outside our brain… where this nifty machine can detect them.
But, did we not just accept that our governments have the right to regulate these???
Please, think about it!
Note: *defenestration – when talking about ‘open-source code’, the word ‘defenestration’ (meaning, ‘out of windows’) becomes a bit of a pun…
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 