Virtual Borders & Censorship

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Some governments no longer content with good old fashion book burning and mass censorship of traditional media content such as television programming and newpapers have turned their ever-growing 'wisdom' to the internet, because as we all know, people elect their government because they're too stupid to make their own rational decision and rely on an elected official to do the thinking for them.

"Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so that we don't have to think." ~ Homer Simpson

Sure it's a sufficient opiate for the mindless masses who refuse to use what intelligence 'God' has given them - Intelligent Design indeed! This is a fine argument against ID, but, that isn't the topic here, but, it was still a necessary evil to blast with the logic canon.

Censorship is a means of crippling the masses, bringing them to their knees through the use of government sanctioned ignorance and stupidity. An exemplary historic example comes from Nazi Germany, where the great minds were persecuted by the state for preaching 'UnGerman' ideas. Books were burned, intellectualism was curbed, and education as an academic pursuit was frowned upon.

Sure Nazi Germany produced one heck of a viable fighting force worthy of Spartan standards, but at a severe cost to their nation's future. When the allies arrived in Berlin in 1945, they had a generation of physically conditioned men and homely women who could survive on their wits, but they were intellectually bankrupt due to years of censorship and the mass exodus by academic professors.

This is from the same war that witnessed the development of technology, providing the gateway for the technological boom experienced less than fifty years later.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The Japanese weren't giving up, so we invited the nuclear bomb.

We needed to decipher the German code, so we got the first computers, though rudimentary in their abilities, could perform basic tasks, which justified their existence.

No one could've phantom the computer's incredible evolution to the point of a simple desktop being available in many households and a laptop at the disposal of many young folks and in the hands of affluent businesspersons. But, the sheer numbers isn't enough to justify ownership, nor is the abilities of these machines a driving factor in ownership, but rather a virtual feature one can't touch - the internet.

The internet - a vast resource of knowledge databases, social gatherings, gaming options to escape reality and other endeavors to appease the diminutive attention span of the average human being.

The knowledge databases stem from the most basic of user-made pages on a topic they feel they are an expert in to the revered academic pages of the universities who have provided their academic theories for the betterment of the world. It includes and isn't limited to, news...

News sites like the BBC, CBC...

The BBC is one of the most popular and impartial new sources available on the internet. It isn't just news; it's more. It's a vast database of history, contemporary and academic information, intellectual discussions between readers, programmes and language options.

It has increased its longevity by providing services in a multitude of languages, including Persian, the language of Iran and surrounding regions.

But, this doesn't help. In fact, the Iranian government has decided on an arbitrary clamp down.

Iran blocks BBC Persian website

Objective? State imposed and sanctioned ignorance allows for the cruel and the extreme fundamentalists to rule with an ironfist because the hunger for knowledge on the part of the masses has been satiated by censorship under the guise of being liberal.

By shrouding the eyes of millions, you can lead them to believe what you do. Ignorance makes minds soft and malleable. These minds are clouded by naïveté rivalling that of an innocent child. The minds of children are 'pure' from influence and easy to mould into what is desired by parents and educators. Such objectives can be obtained with adults through censorship and propoganda.

The Chinese 'communist' government can espouse this. After all, democracy is affront to their manifesto and everything Chairman Mao fought diligently for, SARS (yeah, it happened, but it really didn't happen like that...) and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is an exaggeration by western powers.

For thsi reason, they have barred the liberal search engine Google from supplying their citizenry with knowledge because it would be contrary to what they have been preaching all these years and it may expose their ignorance and shortcomings.

Google moves 'black day' for China.

Its e-mail, chat room and blogging services will not be available because of concerns the government could demand users' personal information.

The company argues it can play a more useful role in China by participating than by boycotting it, despite the compromises involved.

Even if they did give into censorship, they are providing a level of privacy that is consistent with their current policies that have stemmed from their fight against the US Department of 'Justice', headed by Alberto Gonzales (another right-wing prat without an ounze of common sense; his morality could fill a thimble).

Google defies US over search data

Conclusion? Governments are a waste of time; Anarchy and Libertarianism are looking more and more attractive these days as a viable complimentary alternative to my socialist views.