new dark age

Around 1930, some prescient souls warned the Germans that Hitler wasn't just a hot-head. That is, the coming holocaust was foretold. But most good Germans said it was rubbish, things like that just don't happen in a cultured nation like Germany.

It did. And now we have to wonder about the future for Australia, even if Australia with its easy-going attitude seems like the very last place this sort of evil might take hold. A major national newspaper—not some peripheral extremist rag—published this cartoon:

Let's be very clear about what we see here. That isn't a depiction of any actual Jewish leader against whom some accusation is being levelled. It isn't the group of Jewish youth on a hill who, some say, were cheering the bombing of the Hamas rocket launchers that had been pounding the Jewish homes. I'll tell you exactly what that hook-nosed fellow in the armchair is.

I came across an interesting article from invisibleserfscollar.com on the theory behind modern education practices. It should have been obvious to anyone not in a coma that children are taught the ideological views of their teachers. But the educational theories and the policies that follow, being enforced as part of the curriculum, takes this danger that has always been with us to a new height. In essence, education is no longer developing an individual (ability to think, knowledge, ability to learn, literacy, etc.). No, now it is:

“In the socio-cultural perspective, learning takes place as individuals participate in the practices of a community, using the tools, language, and other cultural artifacts of the community.”

Ah, that word "community"! Every good and positive word in the language has been corrupted, but few so much as this one. "But surely being part of the community is good!" you might say. My answer: only when it can be a free choice. The difference between a good community and a bad one is that good ones are optional - we join them because they nurture us and give us an opportunity to nurture others. Bad ones, like the ones all our children will soon be subjected to, are compulsory. Fall in love with an unapproved man in the middle east? You get murdered. Now, want to be a rugged individualist in the 'enlightened' west? You become stigmatised as a sociopath who won't cooperate and "participate in the practices of a community." Over-dramatic? Don't laugh. That just demonstrates you haven't paid the least attention to what is going on around you.

Regular readers of this blog will know that we are committed to the Principle of Goodness as a critical necessity for getting out of our current morass of bad policies and directions. I'll point out one critical reason why the Principle would hinder this totalitarian socialisation of children: there is a gap, a space, between being good and being evil.

As I've said before, one of the most worrying circumstances in our time is the obvious danger that the entire planet is steadily sliding into a new dark age. Things that used to be obvious - the need to truth and integrity in scientific debate, for example - are not only being forgotten, but the exact opposite (deceit, dirty tricks, falsifying evidence) is now being lauded by scientists, ethicists, journalists, and many others.

In this vein, one of the most dangerous and irresponsible documents ever produced on Australians' taxpayer dollars has appeared. Its purpose seems to be to establish what used to be called a Star Chamber - unelected, unaccountable, secret - to remove from the media anything that said star chamber finds objectionable. And who can say what that might be?

This is the new report, commissioned by the Gillard government, to 'solve' the problem of - well, it isn't exactly clear what the problem was, as I'll show in a minute. But first, Tim Andrews summarises the problem:

Mr. Ray Finkelstein QC, a left-wing former Federal Court Judge with no media experience, at the request of the Gillard Government, issued a 400 page report which calls for a Big Brother Super-Regulator to 'regulate' political speech and - among other things - impose new laws with the power to stop climate change realists from speaking up. 

Its “recommendations” will sicken every single Australian: They actually call for a Big Brother Super-Regulator to censor not just the newspapers and TV, but websites, personal blogs, and even what you say on Twitter!

Future generations will certainly think people of today have gone cold stark raving loony. "Nature" used to be a highly respected scientific journal. Their recent behaviour in the "climate change" arena has trashed their reputation, possibly for good.

Wattsupwiththat brings us the news that Nature is about to put out a special journal to be called "Nature Climate Change". About the list of climate blogs Nature acknowledges, Anthony Watts writes:

I note RealClimate, Climate Progress, Stoat (William Connolley of Wiki fame), and even the paid Hoggan public relations firm “DeSmog Blog” are listed.

I reckon that skeptical sites like WUWT don’t rate with Nature, even though we have more traffic and reach than those blogs. I suppose that speaks to the tone of this new journal before it is even published.

What caught my notice, though, was this little gem in "Nature's" instructions to authors:

This is the most disgraceful piece I have yet seen from global warming alarmists. The site 10:10 has made (and very quickly withdrawn) a supposedly comic video that should tell anyone with sufficient wisdom just where we are headed by supporting this anti-scientific hoax. Here it is, please don't watch it with children around.

In the face of immediate condemnation this has hastily been defended as quirky British humour. Sorry. That excuse won't wash. Let’s try to analyse the comedic logic of this video.

This story is being widely reported around the media, but it needs reporting some more. Everyone's future happiness and freedom depends on taking a lesson from this disgrace.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America have published a "refereed" "paper" whose sole purpose is to assassinate the reputations of scientists who do not agree wholeheartedly with the alarmist global warming position. As Anthony Watts puts it:

It doesn’t get much uglier than this. A stasi-esque master list of skeptical scientists and bloggers, with ratings put together by a “scientist” that rants against the very people he rates on his blog. Meet the author, Jim Prall here. And he uses this for a peer reviewed paper. What next? Will we have to wear yellow badges to climate science conferences?

I don't think the average person is yet aware that the era of freedom, the era of being able to do anything reasonable and say anything short of "fire" in a crowded theatre, is drawing to a close.

The Internet is arguably the greatest invention in the history of humanity, as it transcends the limitations of individual human minds and allows instant access to the thoughts (even the very recent thoughts, even the very sublime or the very base thoughts) of billions of other human beings. An era in which the world as a whole can start to think with the effective IQ of millions of minds reinforcing each other could be about to dawn.

But it will not, unless all freedom lovers do something about the totalitarians who now are on the verge of throwing the planet into a new dark age of secret control and knowledge restricted to the elites. From http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/329888/australian_federal_govern...

The Federal Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block Refused Classification (RC)-rated material hosted on overseas servers.

I have written to the federal minister Stephen Conroy under the title "You are either stupid or a tyrant":