Cut the silly jargon

Remember in George Orwell’s "1984" how Big Brother banned certain words from use? Well in a strange twist British bureaucrats have been warned to “lay off buzz words”. A list of 100 “non-words” were circulated. But unlike the Orwellian tale where the words are banned because of their potential to make people think—and entice rebellion—these “non-words”, often used at the level of local government, are banned because they confuse people.

Looking at the list I’ve come to the conclusion that the words were not chosen really too confuse, but rather to impress. They want to make it sound that what they are doing is more important than it really is.

The Collapse of Sweden’s Freedom

What on earth happened to Sweden?! This is a Big Brother nightmare! And the worst thing about it is that it happened so silently that most of the international community is still oblivious to such dreadful violations on liberty.

A lawhas been passed that allows the tapping of all international communication (including email correspondences).

As one blogger lists, the Swedes can now look forward to the following intrusions:

• the FRA will NOT be required to obtain a court order to undertake surveillance of citizens’ communications.
• the FRA will be at liberty to snoop: read emails, eavesdrop on phone conversations, investigate what websites citizens are visiting, create sociograms to map out a citizen’s social network/linkages with friends
• the creation of a society in which innocent people will be fearful of what they can say and who might be listening in
• despite saying that only cross-border communications will be monitored, some internet servers are located abroad and the FRA one presumes would check all communications to establish whether they have “crossed the border”. Let’s be honest here: there are no clear borders when it comes to a global communications network. So if a Swedish citizen let’s say emails someone in Denmark, then the Danish citizen becomes trapped in the FRA dragnet surveillance. Sweden is a member of the EU and EU values (to some extent) privacy - will the EU be happy to be dragged into Sweden’s attack on privacy? Already questions are being asked. Benoît Hamon, a member of the European Parliament from France, has a whole list of questions the Swedes might wish to answer. Go here to the European Parliament site to access Hamon’s question on the remit of the FRA.
• all telephone and internet operators will be required to attach a cable to the FRA’s supercomputer so that there will be a record of ALL emails, conversations, sms, faxes, internet searches conducted by Swedes.
• EVERY Swedish citizen will be caught in this general snooping - not just suspected terrorists or criminals
• 20 hubs will apparently be installed across Sweden by the FRA to help collect communications data for this massive snooping and data-mining project. The FRA is saying it will only monitor international traffic against 250,000 criteria and that it will filter out domestic stuff - yeah, right.

The FRA, by the way, is a private organisation – which in itself is a scary thought.

Once while standing in a bookshop someone asked me out of the blue if I think George Orwell’s book “1984” is still relevant. My quick answer was, yes, look at the USA and North Korea.

And now, look at Sweden. . .

True friend of Israel...

“She’s a true friend of Israel.”* I heard this said yesterday by someone on a radio news report about Hillary Clinton.

Why should her “true friend[ship]” even be an issue?

Unfortunately, in U.S. politics it is very important, and I think for all the wrong reasons. There is a large pro-Israel movement in the U.S., backed mostly by Religious Right voters. Clinton is trying to get the backing of these Republican voters.

But here is my real issue and concern.

These Religious Right have been brain washed to believe some silly apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo. According to many Evangelical movements, after the Secret Rapture (which is not a sound Biblical doctrine) Israel will become the ruling state of the world – a peaceful reign for a thousand years!

These Evangelicals believe that their loyalties should lie with Israel, since Israel is the blessed nation of God.

What surprise me is that these people clearly do not study their Bibles. Israel has stopped being pivotal when the Gospel was sent to all nations. Paul makes it clear that the Church is spiritually part of the Jewish nation (Romans 2:29). The promises are to spiritual Israel, not literal Israel. The conditional prophecies of the Old Testament towards Israel and the Jews were revoked because they refused the Messiah. There will never be a grand Israel state controlling the world.

What doesn’t surprise me is that politicians would suck up for any vote. My concern is how strong the “religious”-vote is. How is it possible that a nation founded on the importance of Separation of Church and State could have turned blind so quickly? Haven’t they learned from the past?! Also, the Jewish-American economy is extremely strong so she is probably begging for some financial support for her campaign.

…ooOoo…

* The expression “…true friend of Israel” was first used by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert towards prior British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2007.