The Deafening Silence....

'Knowledge is power'...or so the saying goes. One of the most liberating, uplifting aspects of modernity (or post modernity depending on your viewpoint) - is the way knowledge circulates, and of course the advent of the internet in its own way empowers us all. There are threats to the 'knowledge' available on the internet however and they have been well documented and raged against. President Obama doesn't just have his finger ever close to a 'red button of death' - it's only a reach away to the proposed internet 'kill switch'. To be honest, he doesn't need any new legislative power to kill the internet in the USA - it already exists. The Communications Act of 1934 gives him all the power he needs to stop you and I chatting should he get fed up with us;

“Upon proclamation by the President that there exists war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States, the President, if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense, may suspend or amend, for such time as he may see fit, the rules and regulations applicable to any or all stations or devices capable of emitting electromagnetic radiations within the jurisdiction of the United States”

But there's an even greater danger in my opinion. Our knowledge is fed to us via the media (and shaped by the media too) - but even they can only feed us media pies made from the 'raw meat' they source. Much of what we need to know to survive on this god-forsaken planet emanates from science and scientists. What if you could 'shut them down? Silence them?' What if that very 'meaty' finding a scientist wants to feed everyone is devoured by the Government without us ever even getting a whiff of it? In very large part it is already happening.

The Government of Canada has been quite intentionally suppressing scientists and the important findings they have come up with for years now. It's shocking, unacceptable. How on earth this piece of 'policy' slipped through the Canadian system I do not know as I have always found Canadians to be fiercely libertarian. We've been Muzzled  

Ok, so one country keeping their scientist's quiet doesn't quite warrant a 'the global sky is falling' conspiracy theory from me - but it's not just the Canadians. Only two years ago the British Government 'dismissed' neutral scientists from their drug advisory boards because they did not return findings which sat nicely with the Governments own 'policy' view on certain drugs (This in its own way also impacts upon research funding). So outraged were the scientists that their research was being ignored that mass resignations followed - did it matter to the British Government? Apart from some short term embarrassment, no, not really. It was business as usual. Of course there are deeper and murkier scientific tales of woe - The eminent British Biological Warfare Scientist Dr David Kelly dared to question Britain's dossier on Iraq's 'weapons of mass destruction' - then after 'going missing' for a while, turns up dead in a field by means of suicide - that's possibly understandable - the 'Public Inquiry' into his death will bring things to light we all thought - 'Oh yeah - in an unprecedented move the Government decided the 'Public Inquiry' findings were to remain secret for 70 years'. Fortunately, public outrage and pressure has finally had the findings released - and they raise more questions than they answer.

And today in steps the NSABB - The who? The US National Security Advisory Board for Biotechnology. So where do they fit in? Well, once again it seems, they want scientists and science to 'shut up'. They don't want anyone knowing about 'Bird Flu' - they don't want the finer details published by scientists, discussed publicly by scientists and God forbid that we, the great unwashed, should ever understand what the scientists are talking about - we might just engage in biological terrorism if we understood it all... It's just the flu

I sincerely hope David Shukman, the Science editor over at the BBC doesn't mind me quoting sections of what he had to say here - but I thought he summed it up succinctly...

These talks go to the heart of a fundamental debate over whether scientists should operate openly and publish all their findings - which is a basic principle of modern research - or whether some subjects are so sensitive that some key details should only be available to a carefully vetted audience.
The researchers passionately believe that the best way to tackle the threat of a pandemic is to understand how the virus can mutate, and that only by releasing their results in scientific journals will progress be made.
Ranged against them are experts in security who argue that too much information in the public domain will create another weapon for terrorists.
It's a highly sensitive dispute - the scientists fear that any kind of censorship will set a precedent of government control over their work.

You know, there was a time when any scientist who knew how to make a nuclear weapon would be shadowed by the Secret Service in whichever country they lived in. Now so many people know how to make a nuclear bomb it's impossible to devote that kind of manpower to protecting or watching them. But I can't for the life of me remember when the last 'rogue' nuclear device went off...let me think....oh yeah...never.

When the open dissemination of academic findings is stifled, stilted or silenced - then we have truly entered the era of fascism.

This isn't about protecting us from 'terrorism' or harm - it's more shots in the war for control of our minds and our view of reality.

(Tomorrow if I blog about what a great family game 'Twister' is, or that kittens are cuddly - you'll know they got to me.)

Rory

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Comes a Time...I am NOT TROY DAVIS

There will come a time when we are all called to account. Whether it is in this life or another - somewhere down the road we all have to meet up with justice - it's a belief I hold fervently to without having to appeal to the existence of a God. But when that reckoning comes, be it from Gods, Angels, Politicians or Policemen I want the world to know that I was unafraid to say this...

I AM NOT TROY DAVIS

Image Courtesy of 'The Blue Gal'

Rory

And we walked off... to look for America.

Warning: Political Post Ahead.

I saw an image of graffiti on a blog I follow yesterday. It couldn't have been more appropriate. "Speak the truth, even though your voice trembles"

My voice doth tremble. But sometimes maintaining silence is simply no longer possible.

I am about to speak the truth as perceived by me. This blog post will undoubtedly cost me followers, I don't set out to be malicious, vindictive or spiteful, and this is certainly no knee-jerk reaction, it's a post I've had 10 years to think about. What I say below is out of concern and love for a people and nation I adore.

When I was 12 years old I was in awe of America - a land where you could find liberty, democracy, freedom, justice and equality - there really was nowhere on the face of this earth that came close to the United States of America. I wished I was an American. In my desire to realise that wish I sent off a hand scribbled letter to the state of New York asking how I could become an American and then become a Police Officer there. Several months later, my local postie handed me an envelope with an American postmark. Inside, the letter explained what I had to do to become an American and further explained what I had to do to become a Police Officer. But what really caught my eye was the big bold lettering at the top "We are an Equal Opportunities Employer". Through my 12 year old eyes, here was a nation with no class system, no differentiation based upon religion, gender, race or starting point in life. Here was a nation which had realised, the physical and political embodiment of centuries of struggle and philosophy. It starkly contrasted with my own nation, riddled as it was by a pernicious class system, and sectarianism.

By the time the Americans caught up with me at 18 years old, I had already become a Police Officer in Scotland and so I then politely declined their formal invitation to go through the application process.

And so it was that my future developed in Scotland and England but being a keen political activist and observer, America was never far from my thoughts.

Then in 2001, the world changed.

Four aeroplanes were hijacked and the terror and grief unleashed on 911 reverberated around the world. As I watched the twin towers crumble, I realised my heart was doing likewise and so too would billions of others across the planet.  A plethora of new legislation was introduced, most notably the Patriot Act. As ever, my own nation followed suit acting like the USA's shadow.

Allied forces then attacked Afghanistan before moving into Iraq, both these actions were questionable and problematic but it's not the resultant foreign policy I wish to discuss here. It's domestic policy.

I remember watching a Democratic Presidential candidate debate which included Barack Obama but the individual who caught my eye was Dennis Kucinich, why? He was being berated for being the only politician there who voted against the Patriot act. I was impressed by his response, "I voted against it because I'm the only one here who actually read it and knows what's in it."

Today I watch in shock and disbelief as four and five year old boys and girls are pulled aside at airports in the USA and have the contents of their underwear examined. I see former breast cancer sufferers being asked to remove their prosthetic breast in the most humiliating of circumstances so that they can be examined for possible terrorist equipment. I read of the demands of the United States that an autistic young man from Britain be extradited to the USA for possible "terrorist" offences (he found his way into a military computer whilst looking for information on ' aliens '). I read of right-wing commentators demanding that Julian Assange be executed. I read today of a woman, a US citizen, being taken handcuffed from an aeroplane in Detroit by officers wielding machine guns and then being subjected to interrogation and a full strip search. Her crime?
"She looked suspicious" (for the full shocking account of her ordeal please read her own words at this link). I read of Internet hackers whose misguided behaviour in interrupting the flow of communications between corporations leaves them not with a slap on the head or six months in the slammer - they face possible terrorism charges formulated under the Patriot Act. I read of ordinary men and women who simply happened to have a camera handy when something unusual was going down on the street outside and who now face 20 years in prison for having the audacity to film what was happening. Making images of something unfolding in public is not ordinarily a crime (although I now believe seven differing states have made it so if you photograph or film an officer of the law performing their duty). Why has photography in public suddenly become a criminal act? Officers of the law are public servants, it is your tax dollars employing them. In fact the vast majority of police officers in the performance of their duty are filming you with cameras mounted in their vehicles.

You know, my understanding, my experience of the United States of America has largely been gleaned through movies,  music, novels and documentaries. They probably represent the United States of America's biggest and best, most important export.  In those movies, in that music, in those novels and documentaries there was a freedom, particularly of young people,  which was so appealing, so charming, so desirable. A month or so ago  I watched a video of two young sisters neither over 12 years old, who wanted to make some extra pocket money so that they could both go to a funfair. They did what I believe is a tradition in some parts of the United States - they made lemonade to sell to passers-by from the lawn outside their home. Until the police moved in that is - it seems in this day and age kids can't even sell lemonade without some kind of retail license, or health and hygiene license. The screw is being tightened but not on terrorists!

Why?

Have anti-terrorism laws been formulated as a means of social control knowing the economic bubble would burst eventually?

Just yesterday I was horrified to read that there are now more Americans living in poverty than have been since the 1950s. I looked in disbelief at images of tented villages springing up in woodland all over the USA, where the poor live beneath tarpaulins and this wasn't just out in Hicksville - this was in New Jersey! In this particular community in New Jersey to protect themselves from a harsh winter, they had erected three or four wooden structures including a little church - however the ' authorities ' felt this was in contravention of planning law and so demolished all of them, even though this endangers their lives. They now have to have open fires inside their cloth covered, plastic tarpaulin roofed hovels.

Something is wrong in America, something is fundamentally wrong and ordinary men and women all across that great land are suffering as a consequence. It's more than an economic malaise, there is a wedge being driven between those who have and those who do not, between those at the top and those at the bottom, between those who can purchase protection from the law and those who are open to exploitation by it, between those whom the powers that be deem fit to protect and those they don't.

Was my America mythical? Did it ever really exist? I believe it did, so where did it go?

On 11 September 2001, it wasn't only four aeroplanes which were hijacked; it seems to me, it was the United States of America.

Rory