Comments on Obsolete: The impossibility of freedom of speech.

Although one of my 'neighbours' when I sta...

2010-01-15T04:56:16.871+00:00

Although one of my 'neighbours' when I started blogging was a woman who had been detained on what sounded like specious grounds by the hounds of U.K. 'Security' due to the 'terrorism' bullshite, I have never equated the U.S.A. with superior freedom to the U.K.
Rather I have always thought the poor S.O.D.'s do not recognize the magnitude of the brainwashing inflicted upon their psyches : most never having heard of Orwell. The homeland of Hollywood has taken the honoured British tradition of informational suicide and spun it to ever more extreme levels : not realizing that in so doing they are making the overarching power of media control too obvious for the pretense of freedom.
I keep an open file of related finds http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/perception-alteration.html
As for rape,etc....there is this
http://www.religioustolerance.org/war_rape.htm

(1) There is a long and unpleasant association bet...

2010-01-12T11:48:09.611+00:00

(1) There is a long and unpleasant association between war, soldiers and rape: cf. Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller (1975) - dated, but its central analysis stands.

(2) If someone had approached the Luton demonstrators, and said, "Rapists? Where's your evidence?" - that would have been democracy and reason in action. These convictions further diminish the likelihood of nutters being confronted with what ought to be the far more damning weapons of facts and genuine arguments. That facts and arguments are not seen as powerful weapons is perhaps an issue which our society needs to urgently address.

I don't remember anyone in the army raping any...

2010-01-12T01:54:53.460+00:00

I don't remember anyone in the army raping anyone (there was sexual abuse in Basra, but I don't think rape), so I suppose it's possible that that would come under slander (assuming you can slander the British army generally, and not just specific soldiers). But then slander would be dealt with under the civil law, not the criminal law, as lying during a protest doesn't affect your right to protest.

As for "murderers" and "baby killers", well that's crass and over-emotive, but unfortunately true, and anyone who thinks otherwise, quite clearly hasn't come to terms with the realities of war. Innocent people die during war.

Dying for your country takes courage, and I couldn't do it. Killing for your country takes something else entirely. Particularly when you're killing whoever the State tells you to, without regard to whether it's right or not. That means that one day you may be killing Nazis, and the next killing Iraqi soldiers. "Our boys" aren't always the good guys (like in Iraq), and terrible, regrettable things happen even when going to war was right (think Dresden), and it's time people learnt that.