1984 is a cautionary tale, not policy guidance

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

If George Orwell would be able to do so we can be certain that he would be warning the powers-that-be in that way, for more and more authorities seem to have adapted the material in his book as policy guidance.

Everywhere we look we see that George Orwell's book seems to be used as policy guidance to repress the people and to invent more and more restrictions to the freedoms once enjoyed by everyone.

The European Union appears to be, together with Britain and the USA, in the forefront of applying the ideas of “1984” in the real world.

Then again, those ideas have been well tried in one of the countries of what is the European Union today already in the 1930s and 1940s and found to be working, and later, in a similar vein, under Stalinism in the countries behind the so-called Iron Curtain.

If the people are not careful we will see a repetition of the Nazi and Stalinist repressions and worse and in more countries than we could imagine. Canada and others too appear to be looking at using “1984” as some kind of policy guidance to repress the will of the people and this is more than worrying.

CCTV cameras, some with audio capability, are springing up even in the remotest corners of, for instance, Britain and that means even in small villages, and not just the centers of cities and towns.

Unfortunately it is the public, so we are told, who demand that the authorities put up more and more of those surveillance devices to make people feel safe.

However, the question must be asked as to whether the public, that the authorities are referring to, really are (1) representative and (2) know in fact what they are asking for and (3) aware of the fact that, even according to some senior police officers and ministers, CCTV and such measures do little to nothing to actually solve crime and neither do they deter crime.

The truth appears to be that the powers-that-be use suggestive methods to have people clamor for such surveillance devices because they are made to believe that those devices make them safer. And the reason for this is because the powers-that-be wish to implement “1984” ideas of people control.

It is all about people control and has little or nothing to do with crime and disorder prevention and the solving of crimes and it is time that everyone realized that and the fact that the governments, or better the powers-that-be, aim to incrementally remove all the freedoms that were so hard fought for.

Our safety and security first and foremost is down to each and every one of us ourselves and we must get that message across to the governments also and we must take responsibility for it (and be allowed to do so).

People, however, have abdicated their own responsibilities to the government, local and central, and ask for more and more liberties to be taken away from them so that they can feel safer.

Crime prevention is the job of each and every one of us and should not be farmed out to some agency. It used to be that way. The law and its enforcers should only come in as a last resort.

That means that we must deny any potential thief or burglar the opportunity to commit a crime against us and the same goes as far as attacks, such as robberies and muggings are concerned.

The same goes for “terrorism” and the clamor by the authorities to be given more and more tools to watch every one of us just in case that will prevent “terrorism”. They know themselves that that will not but it will have us all treated as potential terrorists and many legal protests and actions are now categorized as “domestic terrorism” already, including anti-war, anti-pipeline, and other such demonstrations.

We, the people, have to remind our governments that George Orwell's book “1984” was and is a cautionary tale of what could happen if we, the people, do not keep control of our governments, and not a policy guideline document.

© 2013

We don't spy on Americans, just anti-government Americans

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

We don't spy on Americans, just anti-government Americans, stated the Director of the Fusion Center, Richard Davis, in support of the CCTV cameras, drones and other spying operations of the US government on home soil.

It would appear that Mr. Davis either lives in a fantasy world or, and that is more like it, he believes that the people are stupid and believe everything that they are being told.

Those cameras and other surveillance measures, in the same way as in Britain, in Germany, and elsewhere, are watching everyone and they do not make a distinction between good guy and bad guy.

But, as the authorities have said in Britain, and also in Germany when the Federal Trojan was being introduced to spy on people's PCs from within their PCs, you don't have to worry about anything if you have nothing to hide and are not breaking the law.

This surveillance state has nothing to do, despite what we are being told, as we can see from the statement by Mr. Davis, with fighting crime but everything to do with powers-that-be fearful of its citizenry because the government no longer serves the people, as it should do, but only itself and the powers-that-be.

It is all about people control, in the way envisioned by George Orwell in his novel “1984” only much more sophisticated and much subtler than in that book. In fact the powers-that-be have, in many cases, got the people to demand the CCTV surveillance and other other measures that they, the powers-that-be wanted, under the guise of that it is protecting the people and especially that it is protecting the children.

The mantra with regards of protecting the children is being used time and again and has been used. Restricting access to Internet sites, filtering content and all that was also “to protect the children”. However, it is not the governments' job to do that but that of the parents.

Other excuse was the “war on terror”. Sorry, but who is the real terrorist, namely our very governments, who insist, such as does the USA, to use killer drones to attack the wrong target and kill children in Afghanistan and Pakistan and who support rogues states such as the Zionist entity in Palestine.

CCTV cameras neither deter nor prevent nor help solve crimes, a fact admitted even by senior police officers in public, and neither do they do any thing to lessen any possible terrorist attacks.

The US Supreme Court has rules that it is no longer the job of the police to protect the citizens but that it their job, and only job, is to enforce the law.

All the surveillance methods that are being employed, from “simple” CCTV to monitoring telephone, Internet and the rest, are aimed at doing but one thing and that is to control the people and to enable the authorities to act against those that think along lines that run counter to what the powers-that-be want people to think.

They spy on all of us, not just on the criminals and terrorists and when Mr. Davis says that they are only spying on anti-government Americans he is saying that they are after everyone who does not agree with the policies of the government and who wish to live differently.

Whatever happened to the land of the brave and the home of the free. The free definitely are no longer free as they are not allowed to be free. And they call it a democracy, not that the United States were ever meant to be one; they were, in fact, meant to be a Constitutional Republic.

But leaving that factor aside we are all facing this same threat from our very governments, namely to have our liberties and our privacy infringed upon further and further until such a time, no doubt, that Orwell's “1984” looks more like a child's comic than reality for reality will be far worse and the Gestapo and the Stasi will look like schoolboys in comparison.

The worst part of it is going to be, however, that the majority of the people will have given their consent to this by clamoring for more and more security, not being prepared to do their own bit in that department.

The people have abdicate their own power and responsibility to others who have assumed control and claim that because they were elected to office they have the right to implement all those restrictive measures and more. They see being elected to office meaning that they have the right and authority to make decisions on behalf of the people and tell them what to do as they see the people as nothing more than naughty children. This is not representative government, that is dictatorship and a dictator can be a single man or a parliament. It makes no difference to the outcome.

We will never be free (again) until we make the changes necessary to change the system. We do not need a new government, we need a new system; one without a government.

© 2013