"WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world.

Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television, and the technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end.

Originally posted by magma

Originally posted by nimbinned

Originally posted by magma
As long as it stops my family being put at risk from extreme groups of people who aim to kill and injure innocent people, then I vote yes!

I say no to scrotum groping though. But some will like it.

Was your first paragraph sarcasm ? I hope so for your benefit.

If you are for real then I am gobsmacked. Did you register here accidentally instead of facebook ?

Do some research please on this issue and get back to me. I would be happy to debate this subject with you then.

Peace Out

If you have nothing to hide you also have nothing to fear

One of the most haunting impressions of my Soviet childhood was stories my grandparents told about the Black Raven. As a small boy, I was terrified of this polished and poised creature of the night, usually sighted as it crouched to swoop upon an unsuspecting victim and carry him away, never to be seen again.

The Black Raven, however, was no avian figment of the human mind. Rather, this secret-police sedan — named for the Russian symbol of death — was a very real fixture of life in the Soviet Union of the 1930s.

Those who saw the Raven stop outside their building of communal flats contemplated last words to families as they waited tensely for the dreaded knock. Its reverberations from another door brought a macabre sense of relief, lasting only until the Raven’s next appearance. Such was the abject terror of living in the claws of despotism. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t tempered by that infamous platitude: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

How very different from a life in America, secured from fear by the assurances of individual liberty.

But in the 17 years since I became an American, we’ve been averting our gaze as these sacred assurances slowly waned. With enactment of the 2012 defense authorization bill, we look away again as Congress exposes Americans to the specter of prison without charge or trial and smothers that basic right of free citizens to invoke the law against their government.