Did you hear the one about the House of Lor...

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Thought police muscle up in Britain

Hal G. P. Colebatch | April 21, 2009

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian 
state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, 
I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police 
with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, 
and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks 
was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a 
campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is 
under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise
politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven 
years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, 
but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously 
called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage 
of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white 
males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to 
subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race 
were "potentially very aggressive".

[...]

Full article at "The Australian"
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25361297-7583,00.html


Cheers, Steve..

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