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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 794, October 26, 2014 Governments on this planet are operated solely by the most evil, stupid, and insane among us, That's the final sad result, the last, ironic reward, of democracy, plain and simple.
Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise It's extremely important to know who your real enemies are. They are not always who or what you think they are. Not knowing can get you killed—or worse, enslaved. For example, in the '60s, the American nation-state was involved in a war against the government and the people of Vietnam. The whys and wherefores of that war, its historical roots and its legalities became the subject of many an all-night teach-in. But the fundamentals were always clear to me: United States President Lyndon Baines Johnson was much more likely to do me harm than the Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh. He could force me into a uniform, send me to jail, require me to shoot and be shot at, despatch me to my death in the swamps, jungles, or mountains of Southeast Asia. so I did my utmost to stop his war and together, the refusniks of my generation slowly, painfully, brought it to a halt.
According to a Steve Watson article in PrisonPlanet,com, via Freedom's Phoenix, in phrases that were, by turns, snarlingly threatening and whimperingly pathetic, Lobban made his churning, bitter hatred of individual liberty dramatically clear, he said the Internet is home to the "worst aspects of human nature," and that spies should have unfettered power to govern it, to weed out "plotters, proliferators and paedophiles." Now the last time we looked, "plotting" falls under the protection of guarantees of free speech and freedom of association which any civilized society provides its people. "Proliferators" begs the question "proliferators of what, the truth about 9/11 and other embarrassments to the state?" And we are all too aware that paedophile has become a word, like racist, that the state uses to defame its enemies and justify their destruction. Government invented kiddyporn, and if there have been those misfits afterward who fell prey to whatever allures it may hold, their trangressions are the fault of government temptation and encouragement. What this two-for-a-penny would-be succesor to Anthony Comstock (look him up) really desires is clear. He desires what every other dictator desires: contol over every single aspect of everybody else's lives. What he doesn't know, but what drives him crazier than the bedbug he morally resembles, is that the Age of Authority is over. Nobody likes the Bosses any more or has an ounce or a picosecond of patience or respect for them after an unbroken century of lies and betrayals, hundreds of millions of deaths. Politics is a tragic filter: governments on this planet are operated solely by the most evil, stupid, and insane among us, That's the final sad result, the last, ironic reward, of democracy, plain and simple. He focuses his infantile rage and destructive energies on the Internet, because it's the sharpest manifestation of the close of the Age of Authority. For uncounted centuries, "communication" has meant one-way vertical issuance of orders from the top, decrees, edicts, proclamations. You can't argue with a drum, a church bell, the radio (talk radio is a trap; somebody else holds the shut-up button.), the television. You received your orders and either obeyed them, or faced the consequences. Top-down. Hold your tongues, peasants. In a farewell speech at the Churchill War Rooms in Whitehall, Lobban said GCHQ needs the power to "access the Internet at scale" and "dissect it with surgical precision", whatever he means by that, that a surveillance-free internet, a totally ungoverned space, is nothing but ' flawed utopian dream, and that spies need to be given unfettered power to govern it. He also whines (or, being British, whinges) that GCHQ employees—those who spy on the communications of everyday people in today's more-than-a-little communist "Great" Britain—have been "insulted time and again" by claims that they are implementing a mass surveillance police state. Therefore, in the words of Mr. Watson, the British spy chief calls for crackdown On internet freedom. In short, What he advocates is a mass surveillance police state. Boring on and on about his pet fascinaions, terrorists (and what hasn't been rationalized these days in their name?) and paedophiles (doth he protest too much, methinks?), Lobban proved beyond all doubt the he has no idea what's really going on. It is this: the once-vertical, once one-way architecture of human communications has, for the first time in 10,000 years, been toppled sideways on the Internet. People may freely talk to one another for the first time in history. Authority doesn't count: the son of a secretary and an airplane mechanic can tell this highly-placed government office bully to fribble off. Of course, he can tell me to fribble off, too, or more likely with politicians, pretend he doesn't hear me. And neither one of us can initiate force against one another—on the Internet. What a terrible place is this Internet, where one is judged only by indiviuduals, and only by their estimate of the value of one's words. In the end, having nothing else, he has to drag out the soggy handkerchief. His minions, he complains tearfully, are compelled to look at terrible, life-draining things (naked pictures of Hillary Clinton?) and even have "mechanisms"—the implication is counselling of some kind—to help them unlook at what they've looked at. Unspy on what they've spied on. Boo-hoo, Iain Lobban. Bring on your beheadings and your child molestation. You and your lace panties minions are vastly worse than anything you claim to protect us from (especially without asking us). You have molested an entire civilization, founded on the very principles of liberty you oppose. Your legacy will be that of any oppressor, death and destruction. That is what you will be remembered for. Spy on that, asshole.
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Some people think that it's only in fiction—and bad fiction, at
that—that villains make speeches and declare themselves openly to
be the villains that they are. I have long known that isn't true, Men
and women have a need to justify and validate themselves that will not
be denied. We have been presented with a perfect example of all this
in the person of one Sir Iain Lobban, the outgoing head of something
called the GCHQ, which is said to be the British equivalent of
America's NSA.