Ignorance is bliss …
Without a Free Press we don’t have a proper democracy. In addition, Freedom of Speech is the lifeblood of a democracy. One other point often overlooked is that one can have neither without Freedom of Information.
More and more of us have watched, aghast, how Freedom of Speech and a Free Press have been trashed during the covid months. However, Lockdown has given many of us time to do our own research, time to use the facilities of the internet, simply because we quickly realised that there was no such thing as a Free Press because government paid the MSM to publish government covid propaganda. Then we learned that the entity known as “NHS”, the top employer of ‘health workers’, forbade any of their frontline staff to speak about what happened in their hospitals. Thus Freedom of Speech was cut off at the knees. How can a citizenry freely inform themselves when information is cut off at the source, when a ‘Free Press’ has become the government propaganda arm?
In self-defence more and more of us spent more and more time on doing our own research, visiting the sites of alternative media. More and more of us tried to do what a Free Press should have been doing: looking for information. Some professional journalists took action, setting up sites such as Lockdown Sceptics. At the same time, more and more citizens set up their own video channels and, documented for example by the proliferation of links in the comment posts here on this site, more and more of us peasants are disseminating this information. It’s become a huge enterprise, so it’s no wonder that the coivd government, not content with ‘observing’, is actively countering the efforts of people, from eminent scientists all the way down to us mushrooms. Last year, we read that:
“GCHQ has contributed to the fight against coronavirus in other ways. Earlier this month it was reported the agency had already started a campaign to tackle anti-vaccination conspiracy theories being spread on social media. A government source told the Times: ‘GCHQ has been told to take out antivaxers online and on social media. There are ways they have used to monitor and disrupt terrorist propaganda.” (link)
We watched with growing disbelief how the Big Tech companies who run the ever more pernicious anti-social media, did precisely the same. Any citizen who dug up information critical of government covid policies had their accounts taken down. After all, didn’t Ofcom here in the UK demand that no criticism of government and WHO covid policies were to be published?
So far so very evident. However, there’s one more piece in this puzzle of how we citizens are being kept in the dark, on purpose. It’s not just that, because of lockdowns, we were forbidden to meet, to talk freely, to freely exchange information. It’s not just that the MSM, paid by government with our money and supported by ‘gifts’ from vested interests such as that Foundation run by one of the richest man on the planet, have abandoned their duty to keep us informed. Their daily performances of ‘playing opposition’ at the covid press conferences were not meant to inform us but to show how clever they all were.
The puzzle piece which completes the image of how to keep us uninformed, needing to rely on the bought, the unfree MSM, is that we have to pay, more and more, for access to vital information. We need to dig around for raw information ourselves because we’ve learned not to trust the MSM to give us the whole picture. We used to pay for ‘good journalism’ when we bought our daily papers in the times before the internet. Now we pay for online access – fair enough. But why are those papers who have privileged access to information not informing us properly?
We must rely on experts, we’ve been told, and not listen to all those single blog owners, video makers and podcast providers. Any critical voices heard or read on those sites are suspect, trolls even, and must be disregarded. We must only believe the government ‘experts’, as provided to us by the MSM. We are dependent on the whims of editors. If one of us wants to find out how badly we’re being lied to by checking out sources ourselves, it turns out we’ll have to pay for that privilege.
The latest example is the information dump by Dominic Cummings (link). Yes, you can read some of his stuff online, but if you want more then you have to subscribe and pay. In other words, only those with well-filled wallets will get access to extra information – information which they then can distort or disregard but which is out of reach for most of us.
He’s not alone. Scientific journals are also guilty. They ‘permit’ some articles in their online editions to be read ‘for free’, others are paywalled. There’s also a publication reporting on news inside the NHS called HSJ, ‘Health Service Journal’. It has lots of important information, their site looks great – but you cannot read any of it without paying. I’ve often wondered why it is that their reports never make it into the MSM – is it too expensive e.g. for The Times to pay a subscription? In any case, we peasants won’t ever know what is going on in that monolith because the ‘Free Press’, the MSM, aren’t reporting. It makes one wonder what else they are not reporting. We will never know because we’d have to pay through the nose for access to ‘privileged’ information.
The 16 months of covid have resulted in yet another class divide: the divide between uninformed people who have to swallow government propaganda and the privileged few who can pay for access to information which thus becomes ‘secret’. It’s not about ‘state secrets’, protected by GCHQ from ‘foreign powers’. It’s about a concerted effort by government and vested interests to keep us uninformed while spouting propaganda. We’re not even able to scrutinise and criticise our own representatives.
In that context, it’s no surprise that the ‘woke cancel culture’ is attacking GB News, just launched. Not only are hard-left activists – do read this article in the DM! – complaining to Ofcom, they’ve ‘advised’ businesses like IKEA to withdraw their adverts (see here, paywalled here and here). Clearly, those vested interests driving the covid government are doing everything to keep us in the dark. They are helped, on purpose or inadvertently, by those who are putting their vital information behind paywalls. I don’t mean the MSM: many still pay the telly tax, many pay for reading their papers. I mean those like Cummings who demand cash for unfiltered information.
Since the MSM are not doing their duty to keep us informed, that leaves a society where we, the citizens, are kept in the dark while those with money and thus access to ‘privileged’ information can do as they like. Why else would 71% be happy with this latest lockdown when only now, after the fact, reports appear in the MSM that this decision was based on ‘out-of-date’ data (e.g. paywalled link)? Do we really believe this was unknown before yesterday afternoon?
What else are they not telling us? How can we know when access to critical information is only there for the moneyed, privileged few? Even more pernicious is the damage to Freedom of Speech. It is so easy for the covid government, Ofcom, GCHQ, to label us ‘trolls’ when we open our mouths: thanks to them we are bereft of important information, our criticism can be denounced because we don’t have vital knowledge which is denied us by all those who hide it behind ever higher paywalls. Thus we can be denounced as ignorant plebs, as thick peasants who must listen to ‘experts’.
I leave you with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Let’s face it: we’re being kept ignorant, on purpose; we’re certainly no longer free and I’m no longer sure that we’re still in a state of civilisation.
KBO!
Photo by Chi sin Gweilo 
it is wise to be a cynic in these troubled times even if you don’t openly admit to being one… Sadly there are still too many who believe the government lies.
Has Jacob Rees-Mogg finally lost the plot I wonder. He gets up in parliament and bends over backwards in his praise for the resident clown in Downing Street and his fellow clown Matt Hancock who he said was a ‘genius’. Come again….that is taking things far too far. Then I I heard a speech by Sir Desmond Swayne in parliament who literally tore into the government’s policy of extending Covid restriction to at least the 19th July with special reference to SAGE and Johnson. It was a rip roaring speech delivered with great passion, which in my opinion was very Churchill like in intonation and gestures. He emphasised the fact that the government does not trust the public which it rules over, and when all is said and done and the pandemic is finally over, there would be much to reflect on in terms of how the government has handled the pandemic and the effect it has had on the economy and civil liberties and freedoms. Up to now I had never heard of Sir Desmond Swayne, but I have looked him up and he was a member of Leave means Leave and a ‘Leaver’. Well done that man, and I hope to hear more from him on this and other issues including the worse than useless EU Trade Deal. Could he provide the much needed salvation from the Johnson/Hancock dictatorial regime that presently governs this country?
I remember back in the day when I admired Jacob R-M and Boris Johnson – how long ago it seems. Then they both voted for May’s Withdrawal Agreement, and for me that was it. I went right off them. I didn’t vote for this government, I’m pleased to say, because I no longer trusted Johnson.
I’ve also noticed that almost all alternative sources of information demand payment.
No Parliamentary opposition. No Press scrutiny. Broadcast media which display their prejudgement so blatantly that no one takes them seriously even if they have a point.
What could possibly go wrong?
JF
“But why are those papers who have privileged access to information not informing us properly?”
Despite any perceived initial good intentions, the real purpose of a newspaper is to make money, not dispense truth. And we know that the love of money is the root of all evil, don’t we?
This is a bit tangential to topic but important.
If you don’t want your GP to hand over your private medical records to NHS Digital, it is almost too late.
You have until June 23rd to opt out.
This has not been publicised; no need to wonder why.
Sure as eggs is eggs, this has been in preparation for a long time and despite assurances as water-tight as any Boris promise, say, your records will be linked to your digital passport at some stage. Total control.
For once, Wegotaproblem has managed an entire video without even mild bad language.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bTw0J9G-_ww/
You can download the opt-out form from the link below the video, but you have little time.
Did it last week, but thanks for the reminder
This is supposed to have been delayed until September.
I may be wrong but I thought I read somewhere on a government website that if you opted out in 2014 then this status still remains. Just to be sure I have printed off the opt out and will submit another to my health centre.
Thanks for the reminder Phil O’. I handed in my form to my surgery a few weeks’ ago, but have had no confirmation. Have just requested co formation of action.
A friend of mine living in Wales tells me that the opt-out is not available in Wales. Anyone got any more information to add?
The Achilles heel in the great control plan is that the web is so difficult to control. It’s whackamole short of banning near everything. Alternative media has flourished recently.
DT reports that the first night of broadcast GB News had more viewers than BBC news!! Very encouraging but not enough to get the MSM establishment on the run.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jun/14/gb-news-launch-gains-more-viewers-than-bbc-or-sky-news-channels
If we are to get ahead of the liberal metropolitan elites gameplan then we must open a second effective front against them – encourage everyone to stop paying their BBC licence. We need to take a big scalp. The message should be that those paying their TV licence are funding the liberal Left assault on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
I wouldnt put it past them to make a cyber attack though ( then blame it on the Russians of course!). They will stop at nothing.
……..and therefore we should stop at nothing either Mary!!! Fight fire with fire!.
Jake……….get you Bryant and May’s out then……………
There is a rumour that there will be a major internet outage during July. Recently we have had the gasoline pipeline hack in the US, another on the world’s largest meat supplier, and that outage that hit government websites, the BBC and others. These are put down to Ransomware or foreign cyber hackers. If I was a cynic I might imagine, say, that that is deliberate misdirection and the evil powers that be are testing their capabilities a bit at a time, ready for a final push.
Meanwhile, what a pleasure it is to see the boot on the other foot over at GB News. We had come to accept that media panels and discussions would have no centrist, let alone rightist, or perhaps just the one to be pilloried. Now we can enjoy the odd loony lefty looking like a fish out of water, not pilloried of course, but being surrounded and civilly educated by normal people.