Sunday, January 06, 2008

More attacks on free speech

The latest from Baron Bodissey: Defaming Islam is proposed as a new crime by the huddled masses at the UN.

The UN pumps out propaganda to suggest that it is out to protect Universal Human Rights. But when it comes to doing anything to enforce those rights, the oppressed masses of the world generally wait in vain, under the thumb of tyrannical governments that sit in council at the UN. The Gays of Iran, for example. A short answer for why this is so is that the UN, being ruled by the ideology of White Guilt, actually works to erode the power of sovereign and free nation states which might actually do something to advance their self-interest, not to forget the larger human interest, by insuring other nations become more free and democratically transparent so as to be more trustworthy as a negotiating parties, than is your average tyranny.

In the UN, the US and Israel are the perennial bad guys. A UN in which a quarter of the members are Islamic states, and many more are sympathizers with the Islamic claims to act as the head of the anti-American, anti-Jew forces, in opposition to the Yankee-Zionist conspiracy that supposedly controls the global economy and politics, is quick to pass motions trying to outlaw the "defamation of Islam". But the tyrannies that get together to pass such motions are places where Muslims and others are daily oppressed. Thus we get a lot of talk about human rights, while the only large political forces that might plausibly defend them in a sustained way - the free, Western-oriented, nations - are the perennial target of scapegoating from the world's disenfranchised, and the source of much guilt from their own citizens.

The UN needs to be replaced by a council of free nations as the leading forum for international affairs. When freedom is insured for all, few will pay Islam much attention in order to defame it. But until that happens, free bloggers and others will feel an obligation to keep putting up stories to suggest that Islam, and the tribal culture of which it is presently an integral part, can kill, and can threaten the freedom of those who want to talk about why.

11 comments:

Dag said...

As soon as I'm able I'll leave some comments I got from our friend John O'Connor on Lionheart.

Anonymous said...

The Mohammedan bloc has never accepted the Western definition of human rights, so their mouthing of human rights platitude is nothing but a cynical propaganda ploy to play the victim and appeal to the ignoramuses in the West.

Rob Misek said...

Our current media situation is more appalling than amusing beacause liberal brainwashing is no accident.

It is perpetrated by the Media who are anything but impartial. Why would they be? They are not bound by any laws to be, yet too many Canadians believe what they read, hear or see in the news is the impartial truth.

The Media isn't concerned with journalism or the truth, they are in business to sell a product, information, to the highest bidder and they are in an excellent position to reap the rewards of all forms of corruption.

Look at jail-bird "Lord" Black. Lord my ass.

It is no coincidence that the corrupt media supports the corrupt liberals by brainwashing Canadians.

truepeers said...

rob,

Can the media ever be impartial? How could you bind them by law to be? How would that possibly work?

The problem, it seems to me, is the myth of impartiality, one that sets up an elite which gets to decide what and who is and isn't mainstream, an elite that is anything but impartial in its liberalism. The myth of impartiality serves the interests of such a class, and it serves the interests of media owners who can appeal to all advertisers that they are speaking to the mainstream.

Newspapers used to be openly partisan. That was a more honest culture, but it ended with consolidations in the daily newspaper market in each city. If media admitted to their political and other interests, then the market of readers, viewers, etc. could truly reward them for sharing their interests or for showing a high degree of fair-mindedness and intellectual inquiry notwithstanding the official political stance of the paper, etc.

Dag said...

After many years of brushing my teeth with Coca Cola, tea, or coffee and years of wearing sandals in the shower (if there is one) and washing my clothes with a rock and sand I have developed perhaps an eccentric liking for household cleaning products. Given that, if I could I'd definitely get into brainwashing. You and I might not ever need to wash our brains but nevertheless, having done it once or twice it might seem refreshing. just for the sake of the novelty. Me? Well, yes, I long for a shower to clean my brain of the years. I get sick just thinking with this thing. It could use a good scrub. But who is really smart enough to get in there and wash my brain for me? Journalists? I fear I must laugh so I don't rupture my kidneys.

It's an unfortunate metaphor. We aren't born with tablua rasas, we can't go to one from wiping endlessly. Even the worst fanatic must choose constantly to reinforce his fanaticism. And when he changes from it he would no doubt become a fanatic in some other direction. Most though just go along with the prevailing trends for social reasons, to be liked and perhaps loved. Yes, even becoming, for however briefly, a suicide bomber is social. People do what people do around them, including carry popular ideas for a while and not much longer. Except in the world of Islam.

Brainwashing? I think it should be baptism. Journalists? Not a chance.

Rob Misek said...

Good Point.

There are probably several ways to reduce the effect of unfair bias in the media.

One would require the media to include approved statements from opposing sides in any controversial article. Failure to do so would require a penalty, revoking of license etc.

Another would be to expand the use of public internet communication. Allowing all citizens to post uncensored comments to all on-line media articles. Language laws and prohibiting internet anonymity would be required. Failure to comply would revoke the media internet license.

There would be far less internet crime if every user was traceable. I am proudly accountable for my statements.

I would avoid encouraging stubborn partisanship in favor of enlightened knowledge through communication.

Brainwashing is a dirty job.

maccusgermanis said...

Well since rob misek is in favor of strict licensing requirements in order to keep speech free, perhaps he might consider calling his new ministry the Speech and Truth Freedom Union. At least dissenters could get a chuckle from having their media licenses revoked by the STFU.

Dag said...

Among his numerous valid points over the years here, Peers brings up the idea of Gnostic grand theories of the End of History as detrimental to our collective freedoms, that a clique of "experts" know some secret knowledge forbidden to the ordinary man like me and you, and that only the Gnostic can solve problems rightly for all of us, we being to stupid or falsely conscious to do so for ourselves, our self-interest being selfish, theirs being noble, and so on; and Peers also writes often of our collective need to renew our covenants, to restore and repair and remake on a continuous basis our freedoms. Together we can see the pull of the Gnostics of our freedoms and the pull of our own interests, which, if we lapse, we will lose. There is and will always be ('always'to my mind being my lifetime and perhaps that of younger people whom I know,)those who wish to crowd out the individual in favor of the collective while ruling as a sole power or one of an oligarchy or such, and thus the continuous struggle of individuals to maintain freedom through continuous struggle to maintain what we have and to further it even against the wishes and powers of those who are indeed more powerful than we as individuals might be. There is no final intellectual solution, as I understand Peers' idea. If is an endless struggle to renew the old, in the same way one would maintain anything of value, and then to improve upon it and perhaps spread it to others who might benefit from it. And then there is the idea Peers promotes that we cannot know what conditions might be in the future for those we cannot see as yet: perhaps things we impose too rigidly will be harmful to those yet to come, meaning we should bind our realities as loosely as possible to give freedom of action and thought to those to come so they too can deal effectively rather than merely efficiently with the conditions they find themselves in.

Peers' ideas seem to me to be effected deeply by our recent Cold War experiences, of the all-knowing Party and the slave masses being both rooted in dystopian rigidities that harmed even generations yet to come. In that, I am sympathetic.

However, caution is also a rigidity, and we must be flexible enough to know when to run and when to stand and fight. We must know the difference between one kind of fight and another, which weapons are of use and who is an ally today but who is not one tomorrow. In this game of power that we must play to win, we must play to win, evolving strategies and tactics to deal with things on a minute by minute schedule while keeping the long-term goal in mind.

Elaborate Germanic theories are often a delight to read, but no, they are not so fun to live. Nor is it of much use to debate the merits of Germanic theories with armed men. The Cold War ended with proxies doing much of our work for us; and now we suffer from it. In our struggle against Arab imperialism and Islamic triumphalism we can and I suggest must take up our own defense and our own imperialism in turn, making ourselves rulers of the world that we can pass on to those we do not know. Thus I argue that war for its own sake is not such but is war for the sake of our own visceral knowledge of our power and our Melian Right in the natural world: The we will become who we are at heart by acting in good faith by going to war as war to learn of our war-like selves as is. We can look upon the weak and know them as weak by beating them in perhaps even gratuitous war, learning from their defeats our strength. And when faced with a serious enemy we will rise to the occasion and win against them as well, furthering our knowledge of our power and gaining further our strength.

Agonistic approaches to psychoogy won't endear me at this time to any large group but that hardly matters. Our time will show, I suspect, that we will rise militarily against our current tormentors and that we will crush them, learning of our power and in so doing falling in love with it. It's a danger we must face clear-eyed lest we fall from our own hubris.

It is our manifest destiny to Americanize the world, even if my only source of authority for writing such is a message from outer space. Clearly, a nation with our power is destined to thrive at the expense of all others. It is merely Human to act in our own best interests, and that, according to Humanness, is to conquer and rule, regardless of the desires of others.

No, we cannot know the future, but we can act in our time for the benefit of the future; and if we fail to act rightly, though we do so in good faith, we can leave it to those who follow to make it right for themselves. If our America is not good, then it will have been bad for us as it would be bad for the future; but if it is as good for us as we must believe it to be, then we owe it to the world unseen to complete our destiny by conquering those who are not yet America so they can in future decide for themselves what to make of the world we leave them.

No law, but the rule of law; no system but the system of a system; and so on. And by warring for our own values and imposing them on the unwilling, we give to them whether their oligarchs like it or not, freeing those who can fight to renew whatever they choose later in their time.

We can look at Indians in America and ask if we should have come from all parts of the world to create America here; and we might think we should have stayed at home; or we can look at Indians and allow them to make the best of what they might take advantage of now that they can. So it could be for the world at large. And in doing so we will be acting in good faith that our state is superior to all others at this time if not the future as well. Analogously, we might destroy the last of smallpox, only to discover later it has a benefit. Too bad. We might then recreate something synthetic to replace it. And if it turns out that destroying a culture and leaving our own medical good in its place is to have destroyed something good, then they who so choose can recreate it if they will. Meanwhile, the struggle to learn to control small pox turns out to be good for us all in that we learn not only how to create in medicine, we also learn we can do great things medically in general. So with our triumph in war.

Who? We are so few. I argue that it takes only a few to do some great thing such as destroying tyranny and imposing order of our choosing on those who would have otherwise continued with the norm. /Some few with energy can do much. And it could well be righter than doing little in the concern that it could be wrong.Let the future take care of itself if we believe in ourselves as did our fathers.

truepeers said...

Thanks for the kind words, Dag.

I can't agree with everything you say. I think you're right that conflict is a given in the human condition, and it needs to be taken seriously, instead of denied in Gnostic Utopian fantasies, so that it may be used productively in various ways, instead of engendering the endless meaningless violence that comes from denying conflict via World Peace fantasies. But to love war for its own sake, which some might take your discourse to imply, strikes me as wrong. One should not wish it on anyone. And to write of war as if nothing has changed since 1945 in this nuclear-tipped world is not going to win many pragmatic minds to a cause, it seems to me. *How* and when can war be part of a productive approach to transcending deadly conflict in this day and age? It's a serious question needing more thought.

Dag said...

Regarding war,it's another example of "brain detached from fingers."

I don't look on what passes for war these days as war as I understand it; though I'm not the one to define war, of course. I mean war as battle, not exactly or always physical. Mind, if I mean war in some metaphorical sense I should make that plain from the outset, which I might have to rethink to figure if it's what I mean at all.

Always more to write after thinking about anything you write.

Rob Misek said...

I agree that world peace is a fantastic idea.

We are all capable of seeing the pain and suffering ocurring all over the world.

The capability to visualize and desire a better life is what differentiates forward thinking people from all others.

What you contribute defines you.

A picture is worth a thousand words.