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Censored
Posted Mar 22, 2009
This elegant and powerful prose has now been removed from the 'Times online website'.
It has also been 'scrubbed' from Google Cache
I reproduce it here protected under Article 10(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1953 as incorporated under section 1(1)(a) Human Rights Act 1998.
Those who care about these things might like to copy it and email it to everyone in their address book with a request that it be similarly passed on. It is generally polite to attribute the work to the author.
THE MALEVOLENT WHISPERS THAT DESPISE OUR FREEDOM
by
Phillip Pullman
"Are such things done on Albion’s shore?
The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.
We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.
We are so fast asleep that we don’t know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?
The new laws whisper:
You don’t know who you are
You’re mistaken about yourself
We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless
We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you
And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised
The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:
Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity
Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them
So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are
And we do not want to hear you arguing about it
So hold your tongue and forget about protesting
What we want from you is acquiescence
The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.
You are not to be trusted with laws
So we shall put ourselves out of your reach
We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition
You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them
You do not need to hold us to account
You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?
Who do you think you are?
What sort of fools do you think we are?
The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.
And the new laws whisper:
We do not want to hear you talking about truth
Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours
We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on
We do not want to hear you talking about innocence
Innocent means guilty of things not yet done
We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence
You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt
We do not want to hear you talking about justice
Justice is whatever we want to do to you
And nothing else
Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.
We want to watch you day and night
We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you
We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people
We can see you have abandoned modesty
Some of our friends have seen to that
They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible
In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide
We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural
We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things
One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:
We know who our friends are
And when our friends want to have words with one of you
We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need
It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law
It is for us to know what your offence is
Angering our friends is an offence
It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as:
the Protection from Harassment Act (1997),
the Crime and Disorder Act (1998),
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000),
the Terrorism Act (2000),
the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001),
the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001),
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002),
the Criminal Justice Act (2003),
the Extradition Act (2003),
the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003),
the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004),
the Civil Contingencies Act (2004),
the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005),
the Inquiries Act (2005),
the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005),
not to mention a host of pending legislation such as
the Identity Cards Bill,
the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the
Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.
Inconceivable.
And those laws say:
Sleep, you stinking cowards
Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms
Freedom is too hard for you
We shall decide what freedom is
Sleep, you vermin
Sleep, you scum
Discuss this Journal entry [21]
Latest reply: Mar 22, 2009
Half Trained
Posted Mar 2, 2009
Well, I'm half way through my training as a volunteer for Victim Support. Very interesting it is too. The facts and figures are one thing, but it's the anecdotal stories told by the staff that are a real eye-opener. Some would break your heart whilst others opened my eyes to issues I hadn't even considered.
There was one part of the training I found quite funny. Split into groups, we were given an envelope with slips of paper in. Each slip of paper detailed an issue or made a provocative statement and the challenge was to achieve a consensus through persuasion & debate. Out of about a dozen pieces of paper, I think we've debated about 10/11 of them here on H2G2 extensively over the years and the experience was invaluable. Part of the fun in holding a contrary opinion on the threads here is seeing not just one, but various different arguments used to prove me wrong. It's fantastic for developing a wider understanding of the issues and also for refining and defining my own position. I'm sometimes wrong, but I'm more often right - just not for the reasons I thought I was. So when these pieces of paper were pulled out, I was able to give a clear and concise opinion that won the day most of the time. All credit to H2G2.
So the training will be over in a few weeks and I'll be let loose to do my worst. Interesting times.
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Mar 2, 2009
Gaza Zoo
Posted Feb 17, 2009
The recent conflict in Gaza may have been a subject of much internet discussion, but it left me pretty much unmoved. The propaganda from both sides and the absolute hatred displayed by the participants and their supporters meant that every story had to be taken with a huge grain of salt. When a picture becomes so confused that every facet is passed through a distorting lens, I think there's a tendency to just look away. Is it wrong to refuse to take sides when the truth is so hard to find?
Time and again the question of innocence or guilt is raised and it's hard to settle the conflicting claims in my mind. I'm not there. I can't put myself in the shoes of Israelis or Gazans as their world is so alien to mine. My life is not full of the visceral hate these people seem to feed on. Call me callous, but when I see pictures of dead children I think back to previous conflicts in the area when, after the dust had settled, it became clear that some such images were false and manipulated.
But the story of the slaughter in Gaza Zoo makes me sick. It's impossible for me to find any justification for the act of shooting zoo animals in their cages at point blank range. The images are horrific and it takes little imagination to envisage the scene as men opened fire. A pregnant camel has a huge hole in her back from a missile. Foxes were driven mad by the noise and ate each other. The monkeys tried to hide; a female and her infant are found dead, shot as they cowered in a clay pot.
The claim is the Israeli army did this. No doubt this will lead to denials and rebuttals but it doesn't matter who did it. The very fact that it happened at all should be enough for us to cry "Enough".
Why does this instil such revulsion and anger in me? Perhaps because there can be no question that these animals were not innocent. Caged as they were, it is inconceivable that they could have presented a threat to anybody. This was truly an act of wickedness. No amount of apologies or attempted excuses can ever change the horror of Gaza's Zoo.
In the aftermath, animal charities in Israel rushed to help. Lorryloads of straw and feed were filled and vets prepared for the short drive from Israel to Gaza. In a final insult, the Israeli Government are demanding a fee of between $170 - $300 for each lorry to be allowed across the border.
In all the years of the Middle East conflicts, I've felt there were rights and wrongs on both sides and that provided a reason for me not to take sides. To be honest, I don't care about who owns what piece of land or any of the other issues. But this one incident has convinced me more than ever that the violence must be stopped. I feel sick right now, ashamed to be human.
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Feb 17, 2009
Twitterbooking in my space
Posted Feb 15, 2009
Recently a few members of message boards I visit have been extolling the virtues of Twitter, Facebook and the like. "This is great" they say. "So and so just acknowledged my joke." So and so is a vaguely remembered singer from a 1970s band. On Twitter, people "follow" celebrities as they record the minutiae of their daily lives. Now, I can understand celebrities doing this, it's a symptom of the fame illness that they have to believe that an invisible mass of people finds them to be Very Important. Twitter lets them quantify the invisible mass I suppose. With Facebook, the number of "friends" you have is the be all and end all. I watched one person who I'd always regarded as a sane, grounded, intelligent woman as she detailed her progress on Facebook by the number of friends she'd accrued. "Whoo-hoo. Two hours and I've got four" was her first post. A few hours later the number had risen to 17, helped I imagine by her posting her excitement on messageboards and encouraging others. It was a bizarre competition.
The whole online phenomena is changing. Over the last ten years, message boards, chatrooms and RPG games have allowed people an escape from daily life, a chance to be someone else. People adopt a persona with a different name, sometimes a signature that shows people how wise & wonderful they are and often an avatar that they feel somehow reflects how they want to be viewed by others. RPG games and environments like Second Life take it further with fantasy avatars that the owner can alter the appearance of and live their online time through. The female characters are always impossibly beautiful and unfeasibly proportioned whilst the males are always ruggedly handsome. It's a fantasy of course and one that would probably be a psychologists pension plan.
But Facebook and the others are different. People post actual photographs of themselves and record the most boring inanities about their lives. Are people really so interested that a housewife from Sidcup has just bought new curtains? Judging by the "Woo-hoos" and other messages of support, it would appear so. Or are they? It seems to me that everybody just goes around in a grand circle, backslapping each other. Every little post has to be acknowledged. It all seems a little false. I'm reminded of the politician's story of how, when he first arrived in the House of Commons, he was chosen by lot to make the first speech after the Queen opened Parliament. This is quite an honour granted to new MPs and can be a nerve-wracking experience but, no matter the quality of the speech, all the other MPs line up to cogratulate the speaker afterwards. Anyway, this chap did his speech, was congratulated by all and sundry and when he returned to his office it was to be greeted by a cascade of faxes saying "Well done". One was particularly effusive and the new MP was quite touched because it came from a respected politician from another party. It used phrases like "resounding success", "impressive rhetoric", "witty repartee" etc. But his heart sank when he looked at the time stamp on the fax and realised it had been sent the night before.
How much of the Facebook Twittering is similarly empty and false?
Discuss this Journal entry [23]
Latest reply: Feb 15, 2009
Santa, Religion & Nurofen
Posted Dec 14, 2008
For the last week I've been suffering with awful toothache which has involved visits to the dentist and popping pills. As usual, I was taking Nurofen - an ibuprofen based painkiller which I've always found effective. In fact, I swear by it & use it for headaches, backaches, toothache and the days when my knees just sit there screaming at me. Subconsciously I think I knew it couldn't work on so many things but I convinced myself that Nurofen was the magic pill for pain. And it worked. But I was with a customer the other day and he saw me popping a couple with a cup of coffee. "Ah" he said, "You don't want to use them, you want to use these". He then went on to explain that ibuprofen works by reducing inflammation. It doesn't actually work on pain centres the way that paracetamol does. He reckoned I was wasting my time using it for toothache. Well, I nodded politely and took them anyway. An hour later and the toothache was still there. Bugger. The belief I'd had in Nurofen had been shaken, the spell was broken and the magic was gone.
Now, what did it matter to that guy what painkiller I took? It worked for me but he had to try and prove how clever he was.
The other day there was a story in the news about a teacher who'd told a class of 7 year olds that Santa didn't exist. Of course the kids got upset, as did the parents. But it's surprising the amount of support there was in newspapers and on message boards for the teacher. Yes, we know Santa doesn't exist and technically a teacher's job is to educate but what harm was Santa doing? Has there ever been someone psychologically damaged when they learned the truth? It's one of those nice wee stories we tell our kids and which kids actually keep going long after they rumble it. What's wrong with the magic of suspending dibelief for a while? Of course there's always the spotty wee Herbert who delights in telling the younger kids Santa doesn't exist and he's just exhibiting the same smug one-upmanship that my customer showed with the Nurofen.
When the truth hurts, is it better to keep quiet if no harm is being done?
Which made me think of Richard Dawkins, the arch-atheist who's made a career out of telling people what they knew but were ignoring anyway. The thing is, the vast majority of religious people don't give a lot of thought to their religion. It's enough to think that there is a God, someone's watching them and life has a purpose. Now Dawkins and his acolytes would argue that religion does do harm, that people use religion to discriminate and vilify others. Well, I don't think that's really true. I think the people that hate poofs or object to abortion would use any excuse to hang their views on and religion is just handy. Similarly, the religious leaders who spout guff would spout guff no matter what. It's not the religion, it's the people. When Dawkins attacks the existence of a God, he's missing the point. It's not God, Santa or Nurofen that's the problem it's the people who use these things to hurt others that are the problem. The people who say Santa won't come to bad girls or the people who say my God tells me to hate you.
The smug sods that think they know better, even when they do, should just learn to shut up & mind their own business.
My tooth still hurts.
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Dec 14, 2008
swl
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