Friday 19 November 2010

words

this blog has been rated U, by the writer himself.
suitable for everyone.

the nazis were great censors. they successfully managed to censor anything they liked, on whim. books, newspapers, music, jokes. did you know jazz was illegal in nazi germany? if you listened to it, you could be arrested, beaten and sent to a concentration camp. or worse. if there is anything worse.

instead of reading work by brecht or listening to mahler, the nazi police made sure that your creative influences were limited to a strict list of pro-nazi, pro-hitler, pro-racist gumpf. like mein gumpf. they decided what was good for you, and they made damn sure you didn't get much say in it.

censorship is power over people. power over the way they think or feel. power over their pool of resources. it is the restriction of liberties. none of this paragraph is particularly groundbreaking; suggesting censorship is a way of strangling the people you're oppressing is almost as obvious as saying 'royal blue' is one of the colours you could categorise under the title: 'shades of blue'.

the russians have been pretty good at censoring stuff over the years too. throughout history they've been in and out of censorship laws, making sure that you didn't get to reap the diverse culture that the world has created, in favour of government-chosen material that encouraged you to believe the government were ace. if one were to write "i don't think the government are doing a particularly good job" in something, it would be an automatic banishment to the depths of a secret library a thousand miles below moscow. imagine if we had that now, we wouldn't have any newspapers except The Daily Telegraph. yoik.

the chinese officials are well known for their stance on censorship; they love it. they love deciding what can and can't be read by the 'free' people of the people's republic of china. you've heard of the Great Firewall of China, i'm sure. ask a chinese teenager about the disaster at tianmenman square and they'll look at you blankly, or think you're talking about the colour of the flagstones or something. instead of the truth, they get a rewritten history that is as irrelevant as it is misleading.

iran! there's a good one. iran's regime is one rife with censorship, and if i'd written this blog within their walls i should expect to be whisked away, twatted in the face with the butt-of-a-gun and hidden evermore in an underground room with limited access to comfort or vitamin D.

iran loves a bit of internet censorship, particularly. they even have restrictions on broadband speeds, supposedly so that if you did somehow manage to get into a site that was deemed inappropriate, you'd get bored of waiting for it to load way before the pictures of boobies appeared.

iran officials also think it's okay to chuck stones at a woman until she dies, which does make me question their judgement as to whether something is suitable for general consumption or not. also they eat carrot jam and make gravestones that look like cocks. irany?

thankfully, we live in a country where we have free access to all the creative exploits of humans throughout history. we live in a country of free speech and free media. what a joy it is that we don't have to worry about whether what we're reading is indeed the full story. we can even read mein gumpf if we want; without fear that someone will batter down our front door and punch us in the face.
and we are allowed to say what we want, as long as it's not with the objective of inciting violence (fair enough, that's just rude).
thankfully we can be sure that our voice is heard, even if it is not listened to (this blog for example). it's a basic human right and we get it, so that's nice. support your local library.

so what about this?
... what's that for?

in a really backwards way, some MPs are trying to get a bill to stand against the idea that internet service providers are allowed to decide what we can and can't have free access to. rather than ISPs asking for the right to censor material, and being told by our democracy, "no, fuck off," our representatives (heh) in parliament are having to fight it. having to fight, for example, sky broadband deciding what news websites appear on our google search.

have you ever watched sky news? it's like the sun is having a posh wank on camera. and then vomiting. when i type "news" into google, i don't want sky news to be my option, i want real news, not this grubby nonsense.
fuck me, it's hard siding with peter andre. that poor, simple man.

hm.

sky is also a business. it is run by executives. therefore it's motivations are finally financial. i think it's safe to assume, then, that if sky broadband get to decide where your internet fun is heading they'll probably lean towards the places that result in a bit of cash in their pockets. or lining the fuel tanks of their aston martins.

what if there was a story about a Sky executive committing fraud or having an illegitimate child. of course, people in powerful positions never ever do anything untoward, but what if...? does Sky then have the right to restrict the news and prevent as many people as possible finding out? where would that right stop?

and i don't want to read fucking sky news.

even if you did want to read sky news (i'll just pause for my prejudices to take root........ there we are) the decision whether you can or can't should absolutely lay with you. i may not agree with your beliefs, but i will fight to my death for your right to believe them. for internet companies to be granted the right to point our thoughts in certain directions, we are one step closer to the censorship in iran. and one step away from the freedom of the speech.

so watch out for that.

----

next on my list of things to do is send a very slightly edited version of this to my MP (basically i'll remove the video of peter andre). my local MP is a human rights lawyer in the labour party, so he might be able to read some of the longer words.
feel free to copy and paste anything you want in a letter to yours too.

1 comment:

OnTheSUbETha said...

Speaking of censorship... I cant watch the video because of international copyright constraints...