Friday, July 29, 2011

Oncoming oppression II...


"Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper." [George Orwell]. I must admit that IMHO the hacking scandal in the UK is getting a bit tiresome: a while back when the Guardian had their 2nd or 3rd attempt to 'get Coulson' I seriously suspected the government (New Labour and then Coalition) and the police were covering it up because they used the same hackers. I thought the same again today when reading about the latest (lop-sided?) coverage and - moreso - Big Brother Watch's post on recently extended powers under the Patriot Act in the USA for - amongst other things - 'roving wiretaps' allowing authorities to monitor mobile devices of a 'person of interest': [edited 14:46]
"In the political climate today, fear of terror threats runs deep and members of the public should be protected. There is, however, a duty to protect the rights of law abiding citizens against intrusion and to protect their rights. This uncontrolled use of surveillance laws by the US government is shameful and a gross misinterpretations of the powers of government."
BBW add a nice quote: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” [Benjamin Franklin]

Now, off on a tangent but loosely connected in a way to this quote, was the reaction to the Olso Massacres: the Norwegian PM stating last friday that "the answer to violence is even more democracy" and indeed this week that more democracy was the answer. I get the nasty feeling that what he means is what all politicians mean when they talk about democracy; and that it will mean less liberty.
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions. [Friedrich Nietzsche]
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2 comments:

Paul said...

Ben Franklin, my favourite go-to Amercian politician for quotes.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the traditional left and right will try and exert the same amount of control over its citizens but the right will do it in the name of libertarianism (and spell it correctly) whilst the left will see it as a way of increasing personal freedom within a clearly defined set of parameters.

Span Ows said...

Hundreds of quotes...what a guy! ;-)

"libertarianism (and spell it correctly)"...that's the 2nd time you've posted that, what for? Is there a general mispelling of it?

Re L/R I read a comment the other day that made me laugh at the understatement:

"The Left gets very angry when people do not respond as expected to its very reasonable social modifications, and so resorts to coercion to make them respond properly. It never ends well." jejeje