Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
December 20, 2010
First the British government floated the idea of banning protests. Now they are talking about censoring the internet.
The UK government has announced it is discussing a plan that would automatically block all pornographic websites. It is said the effort is designed to protect children.
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| Draconian efforts to limit the free choices of individuals are often sold to citizens as a way to protect children. | |
According to NewsCore, the biggest broadband providers in the UK, including BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk, are being ordered to a meeting next month by Ed Vaizey, the communications minister, and will be instructed to block content.
In the past, people decided what to view on the internet. It was their responsibility to monitor what content their children viewed. Now the British nanny state will take over that job.
Draconian efforts to limit the free choices of individuals are often sold to citizens as a way to protect children. Far too many parents defer to the state and surrender control of their children to faceless bureaucrats and cops.
“This is a very serious matter. I think it is very important that it’s the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children,” declared bureaucrat Vaizey.
“There is this very uneasy sense for parents of children that we do not have to tolerate this Wild West approach,” said Claire Perry, the Tory MP for Devizes who is described as a “keen lobbyist for more restrictions,” in other words an advocate for more state power over the individual. “We are not coming at this from an anti-porn perspective. We just want to make sure our children aren’t stumbling across things we don’t want them to see.”
The totalitarian state of China also decides what people will see over the internet. China’s focus is not on porno per se, but protest against its authoritarian rule. It has cracked down on instant messaging, chatrooms, text messages, and blogs because the technology was successfully used to organize demonstrations against the government.
China’s move to censor the internet began with regulations. It soon introduced measures to prevent citizens from “defaming” the government and ultimately moved to institute what has become known as the Great Firewall of China. All internet traffic is routed through proxy servers and gateways controlled by the government.
The effort to block content from Britons began with child pornography. It will now include adult pornography. No telling what sites will be next. Maybe political sites disapproved by the government. If the British government can shut down political protest in the street, it can likewise shut it down over the internet, especially when the example of violent jihadist websites is used to scare people into submission.
Earlier this month, after students protested the government’s plan to double college tuition, Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said he wouldn’t “rule out” shutting down the civil liberties of Britons. “It is one of the tactics we will look at and something we will keep under review, and if we think it is the right thing to do then we will do it,” he said.
The decision to deny citizens the right to protest grievances came after the building housing Tory HQ in Millbank was severely damaged, violence occurred in Parliament Square, mass arrests were conducted in Trafalgar Square, and and a car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla was attacked.
The media in Britain raised the specter of violence against the royal couple. It also mentioned the 1974 kidnap attempt on Princess Anne.
The riots followed a predictable pattern. As thousands of students and others protested the tuition increase, the usual “anarchist” subjects attacked Millbank and assaulted police. Cameras captured the violence and put the appropriate spin on the events in the lead-up to Stephenson’s announcement.
In 2008, firebrand MP George Galloway accused the London cops of engaging in “a deliberate conspiracy to bring about scenes of violent disorder” during Bush’s visit to the UK in 2008. Agents provocateurs — otherwise known as anarchists – attacked banks on Victoria Street in London during the G20, providing the cops with an excuse to arrest activists and even kill a man.
During the Olympics in Vancouver earlier this year, activists accused the police of dispatching agents provocateurs. During the G20 in September, 2009, undercover cops infiltrated a March Against Police Brutality at the University of Pittsburgh.
From FBI “stings” of clueless patsies to cops pretending to be activists in Greece and Canada and beyond, government is in the business of creating violence and chaos – and some would say pornography – in order to propose, enact, and enforce draconian laws that rob the average person of his or her liberties in order to make the claim they are protecting them.
