Tag: George Orwell

We are here because of the path that lies behind us

by rev0107, posted in Newell News International

Conference season is all but over and the battle lines have been drawn for the run-in to the 2015 General Election. The papers today say too that the election campaign begins, but where are we?

David Cameron made a rousing speech fit for a Nuremberg rally as he followed on from Theresa May, outlining his intentions to dismantle the Human Rights Act, save the NHS and be the ‘trade union’ for hardworking people. This would be funny if it was not so serious and frankly disgusting. This is the man whose party smashed hardworking, trade union families in the 1980’s and who want to all but revoke a workers right to withdraw their labour and raise the threshold for ballots so high, that neither Boris Johnson, nor the Coalition government would have taken office with the same stipulations. This is the man who has seen thousands of people die after their benefits were cut by the cut throat, unqualified and inept assassins at ATOS and has overseen a cost in living crisis leaving 1 in 4 families described as ‘working poor’, over 1 million children in poverty and the resurgence of Victorian diseases such as rickets. It is quite literally banquets for the rich and food banks for the poor.

I think he meant what he said when he said we were the people that he and his party resented.

Further to this, the Tory party have continued unabated in the mass sell off of our NHS, built and paid for by us, our parents and grandparents, after first Labour opened the gateway with PFI contracts in their previous disastrous term in office. The NHS is safe in no ones hands but our own. If we leave it to these vultures we will face yearly prices hikes the same as we already do with the rail and energy firms. Families would soon be priced out of basic health care, a fundamental human right for all. Do not be persuaded or convinced that charging immigrants for use of the NHS is anything other than to get us used to the idea of getting our plastic friends out to pay for care. It is a classic tale of divide and rule.

Which brings me to the threat posed to human rights.

Time and again Theresa May, Cameron, Hague, whomever, tell us it is because of the threat posed to us by terrorists, hate preachers and other so-called undesirables that they wish to extradite but by whose definition will be determining the terrorists? In May’s speech she has outlined a vision of such Orwellian proportions, it left many aghast at how it could even be implemented. May’s vision is one of national censorship of extremists who use social media, yet when they have over 9000 domestic extremists on their list, people who make it their civic and moral duty to stand up to police and political corruption, fracking, TTIP, arms fairs, illegal Israeli state expansion, many without a criminal record. You can only begin to imagine just how dangerous things are getting for people who speak truth. The establishment at all levels have a very genuine fear of the social media, it used to be that we saw something on the social media and went to the mainstream news networks to confirm it, now we see something on the mainstream news and take to social media to disprove it. It is instant, live and connects us, for better or worse, in a way that they cannot abide. It is for these reasons that we are seeing clumsy and draconian attempts to break people’s faith in using it, for fear of ending up on the scrap heap or worse, in some form of censorship or detention. In the future only outlaws will be free.

The Sun manifesto Cameron

In the meantime The Sun takes credit for the potential abolishment of our human rights act and generally people don’t even bat an eyelid. A mate said to me yesterday (I am sure he won’t mind) that we could all already do what the Human Rights Act is supposed to guarantee for us long before they existed (such as the right to assembly, marry, practice religion, freedom of speech etc), but were we?

One example could be gay people’s right to marry the person they love, until recently it was still debated only getting as far as civil partnership, only with ‘gay marriage’ coming in the last 12 months. It is called ‘gay marriage’ or ‘same-sex marriage’, rather than as I call it – ‘marriage’, because to many it is still taboo. And they still face serious issues regards access to equal pension rights for their partners in the event something happens to one of them, parity with a ‘normal’ married couple is still beyond the law and that is just one example of how our so-called ‘civilised’ society doesn’t get it right even with a Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a foundation. What chance justice with a watered down bill of rights drafted by this inept bunch because they convinced us terrorists are on every street corner?

Taken from an article featured in The Telegraph, Tory plans will involve some of the following ideas:

  • Extremists will have to get posts on Facebook and Twitter approved in advance by the police under sweeping rules planned by the Conservatives.
  • They will also be barred from speaking at public events if they represent a threat to “the functioning of democracy”, under the new Extremist Disruption Orders.
  • Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will lay out plans to allow judges to ban people from broadcasting or protesting in certain places, as well as associating with specific people.
  • The plans — to be brought in if the Conservatives win the election in May — are part of a wide-ranging set of rules to strengthen the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy.

Universal…That word, universal, for all, because after two world wars in 30 years they realised the need for something resolute to hold tyranny to account and at bay, if 100 years more global war has taught us anything, is that human rights needs reinforcing, not disbanding. 

Remember nothing was given to us because we deserved it, it was given to us because we fought for it for generations. Ask yourself why they would really want to take something as precious as this away from us? Remember that we are not here because of the path that lies before us, but because of the path that lies behind us. 

‘Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people’ – Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1984 George Orwell

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Freedom to speech, preach and disagree

by rev0107, posted in Newell News International

The thing about free speech is that it comes with opinions and it is a fact that everybody has one and expresses it through that basic human right.

Orwell freedom is slavery

People like to point to poppy burning, hate speech and ‘no white areas’ and, more recently, the sudden rise of ISIS as fundamental breaches and dangers of our way of life and slur on the sacrifice made by so many over two wars and the countless others fought in the past 100 years. The same people do not however, extend that reasoning to the overt and blatant erosion of our rights to privacy and free speech through legislation. Legislation that has been passed in the past decade as a result of the supposed war on terror (exacerbated by the religious doctrines and foreign policy of successive governments, both sides of the Atlantic) such as Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM), Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill (DRIP), Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT ACT), Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), and the Crime and Anti Social Behaviour Bills have done far greater damage to the pillars and belief we entrust into our freedom, right to assembly, right to speak and express our views etc, but has gone largely unnoticed with the majority remaining silent. They cite things such as ‘I have nothing to hide, so why not’ as the reason that they allow our governments to continue to unravel the fabric of our existence under our very noses and these liberties float away to the sounds of rapturous applause in the Houses of Scoundrels. Charlie Brooker wrote an excellent article in the Guardian yesterday in his usual satirical nature.

In an unsurprising, but no less despicable move, the latest piece of legislation to be rushed through in the UK pulling the carpet from under us (DRIP) was pushed through whilst committed and caring people were involved in the recent public sector strike. Not unlike Obama rushing though RIPA on New Years Eve whilst the rest of the US partied the night away. A piece of legislation agreed and ratified by all three party leaders, whilst the public sector was on strike and many rallies and marches around the UK were being addressed by Labour MP’s, councillors or perspective or otherwise, beg-friending us to vote for them in 2015 as if they will offer us any real alternative to what we already have. According to the record, only 51 MP’s voted against the bill, with 438 voting in favour. A breakdown can be found here.

Many people like to call for the banning of marches, rallies, and certain types of speech, and others recently have asked me whether or not some individuals should refrain from posting on social media certain views for the fear of offending someone or other, but for me this is setting dangerous precedents. If we ban one type of speech over another, who is left to make the call what is acceptable over the other, when we have already seen a heinous list of legislation passed that has already clamped down on our rights, whether we realise yet or not? what causes offence is subjective from one individual to another and if we believe in the right to freedom of speech and expression, we have to take it warts and all. If however we do not like certain speech that is being expressed we have choices (supposedly) and options at our disposal, one answer is to have a better argument, not to report or arbitrarily ban what you don’t like to hear. If it offends you that much your choices are; un-friend, mute, ignore, exclude those individuals talking shit you don’t like and otherwise remove them from your social circle, OR you can face up and engage in a debate, exchanging opinions and views until you either have a sea change from one side or the other in opinions, or you agree to disagree.

If neither of those options work for you, you could always try North Korea.

WE-ARE-ALL-PATS

 

http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2014/07/10/act-now-uk-govt-to-pass-police-state-bill-to-record-all-your-calls-texts-and-internet-use/

Anti human spikes: Humans, the great pest.

by rev0107, posted in Newell News International

A row has erupted this week after images of floor spikes outside Southwark housing development spread across social media sites. Housing developers and corporations started the deployment of anti-human spikes in an effort to deter homeless people from sleeping in their doorways.

Floor spikes

Not only do homeless people (who are victims of a wide-ranging list of social ills) have to deal with inner demons and the general ill feelings towards them by the wider society, they now have to face the obvious fact that sections of our society now view them as pests, as vermin, no different to a pigeon or any other unwanted animal. The news has spread quickly through the social media, with local residents going to check for themselves whether or not these reports are accurate. Russia Today has done a good piece collating some of the many comments on this latest phenomena.

The real question is who, how and why did this come to be seen as a good idea for developing and implementing and why did builders complete the work? Time and again I have referenced the fact that ‘following orders’ has been ruled as being unjustifiable. Men and women of good concise cannot and must not blindly follow orders. Every law and policy instigated by our governments and employers are set only to deal with symptoms and do nothing to address root causes of issues. I cannot really begin to articulate the scope of my disdain for these anti-human devices, but would like to think that it is something that is shared by the majority and not the minority. The way our system is currently set up, defaults and bankruptcy are built into it as a matter of course and, with the continuous bombardment and controlled demolition of the welfare state, eviction and homeless are now a large feature too.

Bench ahd

Anti human devices are not a new craze by any means, anyone who has missed their spot on a park bench and ended up with a handle jammed in their rectum will attest to that, but the spikes being used by billion pound corporations represent a shift in the way in which we are viewed as people. This situation is rife across corporations and political parties on both sides of the political spectrum. We should be asking ourselves why, in the 21st century as the 6th richest nation in the world, do we have people sleeping rough, when we have over 600,000 empty houses according to Homes from Empty Homes statistics from 2013? We should be asking why 3.5 million children in the UK face being in ‘absolute poverty’ by the year 2020? This is a figure that changes repeatedly in the mainstream media according to the government spin of the day, it is almost reminiscent of George Orwell’s classic 1984, whereby news is edited and re-edited to fit the argument that day.

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 14.02.02

There are no official figures of course for the number of homeless people in the UK because they are not able to be officially recorded, but it would not be too much a stretch to presume that the number is below that of the number of empty premises we have, including industrial units, throughout the country. Perhaps a solution to the ‘blight’ of homeless people on the door fronts of Tesco etc could be for them to use some of those billion pounds of profit that they earn every year from the public being put to use on building shelters for these people to go and providing them with treatment and rehabilitation, rather than invest in anti-human devices? The Customer Care department for Tesco contacted me on a social media platform to say that the anti homeless spikes were being used to deter people from sitting, smoking and drinking outside their premises and to prevent them from intimidating their customers as they entered. Surely that is what the security they employ and the local police service is for? Similarly, what is to deter theses ‘vagrants’ from doing the same whilst standing?

I’m calling bullshit on the official stories for why these anti human devices are springing up, the simple matter is that we are being labelled as vermin and treated as such. A great British Value.