ruffashlar
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Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
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Post by ruffashlar on May 14, 2005 21:01:08 GMT
How quickly people forget: only four years ago, a handful of individuals changed the course of history with a few boxcutter knives.
There was a lesson for the learning that day: one human being is the most powerful, the most dangerous thing in the world. One human being can direct a cell of linked individuals like himself. Each cell can be one raindrop in a storm. Power and authority are twin engines driving that storm.
The power is the acceptance that one is able to do absolutely anything. The authority comes from a construction of ideas variously justified which the affected individual computes to be defensible. From these two sources derive the will to exercise the threat of violence and even the action itself.
And inasmuch as one individual will thus be motivated to serve al-Qaeda, another in a different place will be moved to make Falun Gong his cause. That is why now, but so subtly, do America and China sing from the same hymn sheet.
Both of them know that individual freedoms must be crushed if the status quo is to be preserved.
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ruffashlar
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Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on May 14, 2005 21:24:20 GMT
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Post by taylorsman on May 15, 2005 1:03:01 GMT
Ruff, I did respond to this on the new thread Giovanni started but would agree. The problem for the Democracies is that they lack the will to use the Power they have, not an obstacle as you say for those who DO have that drive, be they zealots and fanatics such as the two organisations you mentioned or Dictatorships backed by a military-economic power bloc such as those of Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, etc.
In a normal situation however an ordinary individual is often impotent. Even one who is well known and has financial backing can achieve little. In our recent Election Kilroy-Silk was well know to say the least, far more so than many of the successful candidates of the main Parties but in the end it was a nonentity called Liz Blackman who comfortably held the seat for Labour with a majority of 2.4 times that of Kilroy -Silk's vote. She may well be forgotten outside of her Erewash constituency and he will be remembered but she has more power as an MP. Likewise in 1997, Sir James Goldsmith spent a fortune on his Referendum Party but failed to gain a seat, and is now dead and a footnote to history.
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Post by a on May 15, 2005 8:16:16 GMT
That is why now, but so subtly, do America and China sing from the same hymn sheet. Both of them know that individual freedoms must be crushed if the status quo is to be preserved. That is one of the beauties of the United Kingdom, you have the individual Freedom to do as you please, within the law of course. Take me as an example. I am doing what little that I can to ensure that Freemasonry regains the respect that it has lost in the in the wider world. In many countries (and at points in history) I would imagine that my activities would have me imprisoned and tortured as a political prisoner. But fortunately here in England, I am able to follow my heart. Which is a good thing, for a more respected Freemasonry could in time produce all sorts of benefits for our Country, and indeed our world, in addition to the benefits that would clearly accrue to Freemasonry and Freemasons. But I accept that in many other parts of the world I would either be keeping my mouth shut or be experiencing more of the negative side of human nature.
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Post by taylorsman on May 15, 2005 10:43:27 GMT
Pity I missed you both yesterday but with a splitting headache I would have been poor company.
Yes, we do enjoy quite a bit of Freedom here in the UK, but not as much as say 35 years or so ago as "The Powers that be" are now able to monitor the activities of the Private Citizen by phone taps, far easier now with electronic exchanges instead of the old electro-mechanical ones of yesteryear, CCTV cameras all over most towns, tracking one's position via mobile phones, which most people have about them these days, and even when one uses an ATM, if needs be. In modern Britain you can run but you can't hide.
You are right though that although a lot of what you keep harping one about regarding how you could "fix" Freemasonry, (whether it needs or wants your fix), might pi55 some of us off, you won't be getting the 3 o clock knock at Didcot nor be the star attraction at an "Auto da Fe" at Oxford for Heresy as might have been the case in bygone times. The worst fate you will suffer is to be ignored or laughed at.
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ruffashlar
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Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
Posts: 2,184
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Post by ruffashlar on May 16, 2005 4:19:24 GMT
"we do enjoy quite a bit of Freedom here in the UK, but not as much as say 35 years or so ago"
That is an illusion. 35 years ago it was only 30 years since the end of the Second World War, a time when the police presence in mainland Britain was stultifyingly ubiquitous. America's European spy network, most of whom were drawn originally from German intelligence, had manufactured the phantom threat of a Cold War. Meanwhile the State was still engrossed in tracking down its homosexuals (no-one had read the 1967 Sex Offences Act, apparently) with a vigour which would be admirable among those hunting al-Qaeda terrorists. Perhaps it should have tried the washroom at MI5.
There were fewer crimes being committed, it is true, but only because the Old Bill were everywhere, and the double oppression of Church and Police in every parish restricted such crimes which were being committed to those profitable ones in which they themselves took a cut; and the invisible crimes, such as wife-beating, child abuse and racism, which went on virtually unchallenged on practically every road, somewhere.
Neither was it a good time to be Black or Irish or gay or Catholic or Jewish or any number of things if the Police just didn't like your face. These were the high times of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad, remember, those stalwart hearts of oak who disposed of so many backlogged cases by the splendid expedient of framing completely innocent people. We know a few of our mother's sons - fatherless in both senses of the word - have to take the blame for that, a very murky chapter in our history.
And it was a time when what we nowadays laughingly refer to as police brutality was widely considered an essential part of police procedure.
So don't get too misty-eyed with nostalgia for the wonderful days of Soul and sideburns when all you could see were tanktops, platforms, Irn Bru and Red Devils, and girls who wore tartan weren't all lesbians - just yet.
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Post by taylorsman on May 17, 2005 16:33:31 GMT
Well on this we will have to differ, Mr "Ashlar". I was born in 1953, not with a silver spoon in my mouth but to Working Class parents in a tenement house in Govan , Glasgow. Times were not opulent but there were not the assaults on the elderly and vulnerable that are commonplace today. Murder was still a sensational event and attracted the only fitting penalty , their own Death , for those found guilty, and the birch was there for those who committed acts of physical violence. Teachers were treated with respect, not openly abused and assaulted by pupils as is too often the case these days. One could walk the streets, even in a tough area such as Govan and not fear attack or "mugging". It was also a time when it was considered fitting to take pride in one's country, to be Patriotic.
One did have Freedom of Expression in those days before the cancer of PC bowderised our Language, and as I have said we were free from the intrusive monitoring by all sorts of Official Busybodies that is all too evident now and will get far more intense as time goes by. We were far less regulated than we are now.
No, you can keep what I refer to as "Weimar Britain ". The past had its faults, but apart from our technological advantages I would rather have the situation we had 52 years ago when I was born and for the first 10 years of my life than what we now have these days in the 8th year of the reign of Tony the Terrible.
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ruffashlar
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Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
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Post by ruffashlar on May 18, 2005 1:45:58 GMT
"Times were not opulent but there were not the assaults on the elderly and vulnerable that are commonplace today. Murder was still a sensational event and attracted the only fitting penalty , their own Death , for those found guilty, and the birch was there for those who committed acts of physical violence."
Crime was also notably under control during the Apartheid days of South Africa. When the overwhelming presence of the Police State was lifted from a society which all through the reign of the National Party was a society riven with class and racial divisions, OF COURSE the crime rate shot up. The fact that the police were no longer free to shoot and baton people in the street at will obviously had a lot to do with that.
Do you think a society which regulates its subjects with violence and the threat of violence is more desirable to live in than one which does not?
"Teachers were treated with respect, not openly abused and assaulted by pupils as is too often the case these days."
Teachers were almost universally reviled, and their teaching standards were dreadful - Dickensian even. If you were a bright pupil but not from a moneyed background, you might try for a scholarship; but if you were thick, or even just dyslexic (a condition which had already been identified by that stage), you could forget it as far as getting an education was concerned. They maintained discipline with a cane or a tawse, often for minor or even non-existent infractions. Some pupils were consistently victimised by particular teachers. And who would even take such an ill-paid, ill-regarded job but someone with a heartfelt vocation to educate; or, commonly, someone with third-rate academic qualifications, a drink problem, a love of bullying, or even a disgusting carnal interest in their pupils. These things were hugely common, vastly underreported. If the day-schools were this bad, pity those who attended boarding-schools and orphanages.
"One could walk the streets, even in a tough area such as Govan and not fear attack or 'mugging.'"
1953 was the heyday of the Glasgow Gangs, as you seem to have forgotten. You could not walk into a street from outside for fear of these immaculately-dressed thugs in Crombie overcoats whose weapons of choice were the bicycle chain, the flick-knife and the malkie (Malky [Malcolm] Fraser = razor), barbers' open razors with blade-edges finer than a hairsbreadth. Some of these gangs were just rabbles of snotty-nosed, foul-mouthed kids. But some of them were Gangsters in a very real sense. No petty crime was allowed to happen inside their jurisdictions, or these swine would rip people's throats open. One such piece of excrement was Jimmy Boyle, now a reformed character, a sculptor, an a thoroughly decent bloke. Apparently.
"It was also a time when it was considered fitting to take pride in one's country, to be Patriotic."
It was also considered perfectly acceptable to disadvantage people who took pride in their family's Old Country. To deprive them of jobs, and decent housing, and a decent education.
"One did have Freedom of Expression in those days"
So long as one didn't preach sedition, of course.
"before the cancer of PC bowderised our Language"
PC is not a bowdlerising cancer: it is the misuse of that principle which is to blame. No-one ever seriously suggested words like blackboard should be phased out by chalkboard, because we all know it won't happen. Language is fluid, fluent and common property. But it doesn't mean that good manners can't be used to stop offending people.
For example, you won't ever use the word nigger. It doesn't bother me, but then I'm not, nor will I ever be, using it in its original context and with its original intent: to dishonour and offend black people. Do you know why you won't ever use this word? Because it's not good manners, plain and simple. And if Catholics stop calling Protestants Proddy Dogs, and Protestants stop calling Catholics Fenian Bastards, it'll only be because good manners has won the day, nothing else. "The past had its faults, but apart from our technological advantages I would rather have the situation we had 52 years ago when I was born and for the first 10 years of my life"
There you have it: nostalgia. Or as Alasdair Gray calls it in Lanark, Glasgow. It is a city visited in dreams, a Venice shimmering above rain-sheeted cobbles in the light of a long-dead sun.
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Post by taylorsman on May 18, 2005 4:46:45 GMT
I have actually HEARD the word "Chalkboard" used several times at Business and Political Meetings etc rather than "Blackboard", and there was the famous case of a Local Council in London which issued Grey rubbish sacks instead of black to avoid some imaginary insult to Negros. We have the cacaphonic expressions "Spokesperson" and the rather silly "Chair" , and the hijacking of the word "Gay" by a sexual minority, all of which terminology I refuse to use. I have no time for so-called "inclusive" language. No I would not use the word Nigger in respect of a Black, as I have no wish to insult someone unless they insult me nor would I wish in turn to be called a Honkey or "White Trash". The banning of such words however does not prevent them from being used in "speakeasy" situations away from official snoppers etc and certainly does not stop people from thinking of such groups in such adverse ways should that be their opinion. Indeed many interesting and ingenious words and expressions have arisen to replace the banned words but which if recognised contain the same implied dislike of the subject. For example, in South Africa some whites refer to Blacks as "affirmatives" an allusion to "Affirmative Action". As has often been said, you can't legislate people to love each other and the truth will always out. Indeed, as with Affirmative Action and Positive Discrimination such banning of words can increase the hatred between groups rather than diminish it. Yes the razor gangs were violent but robust action was taken by the Police (whom you seem to dislike) and the Judiciary. All I can say is that I often went to the rougher areas of Glasgow as a youth, Govan, Castlemilk, Pollok, the Gorbals, and never encountered any violence. In the 1960s the gangs did make a re-appearance and vandalism was on the increase but the casual, commonplace, and nowadays unremarkable assaults on the person as typified by the current craze of "Happy Slapping" , the theft of cars , not for gain or even to travel to some place, but for joyriding and their subsequent burning was also a rarity not par for the course. Glasgow of course is not unique, other large towns and cities in the UK suffer from these crimes. We have our faults both past and present here in the Uk but I for one am still Proud to be British and respect my Flag and My Queen. It is ironic that the various minority nationalities and races are free to celebrate their history and culture not only without condemnation but with active encouragement by the PC Brigade but let a White Briton fly the Union Jack or an English Resident the St George's Cross and they same lot brand him as a jingoistic racist. Again the formation and continued existence of a "Black Police Officers Association" is encouraged, to me an overtly Racist body by its very name and nature, but were any White Copper to even suggest a counterpart White Police Association he would be slung out on his ear, even prosecuted. Double standards in my opinion. I'm sure you will tell me if I am wrong, but whereas you would feel that British Society has improved in the last 30 years, apart from the material aspects, I feel we have seriously declined and continue to do so.
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ruffashlar
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Lodge Milncroft No. 1515 (GLoS), Govanhill Royal Arch Chapter 523 (S.G.R.A.C.S.)
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Post by ruffashlar on May 18, 2005 5:51:05 GMT
You can't expect me to believe you're serious about needing a white policeman's association. The police are a white policeman's association. That's the whole point: black and other ethnic minority policemen are by far the exception, and what numbers there are, that's fine by the majority, so long as they agree to swallow insults and take what racist attitudes they encounter on the chin. But God help any of them if they take that force to ask to expose the institutionalised racism they face every day. The police are ruthless at punishing disloyalty.
I don't admit to the charge of disliking the Police. There are plenty of former and serving policemen whom I know through either Craft or Royal Arch, or whom I've met in the course of other things. Earlier this month I met an Asian policeman who liaises, or attempts to liaise, between the Police and various groups with whom they typically have had unhelpful attitude problems coming from both sides. He was perfectly candid that police training is so inadequate that they often only get one day's relevant training a year per liaison group. Even then, that day's training is usually about an hour in length. And whether people actually pay attention, when they're re-reading Xeroxed copies of what they read last year, (and arguably didn't take in then, either) is anyone's guess.
However, being repulsed by the actions of the police in the past is not the same thing at all as hating them all.
"I have actually HEARD the word 'Chalkboard' used several times at Business and Political Meetings etc rather than 'Blackboard' [...] I have no time for so-called "inclusive" language."
And I have even seen an internal university memo recommending "top copy" instead of "master copy" - its writer obviously blissfully unaware that "top" is American BDSM slang for "master", but with considerably more potentially offensive connotations.
We've seen this kind of stupidspeak before: in Victorian England, piano legs had to wear vertical doilies, and the word "legs" was actually considered such a four-lettered word that they came to be called "understandings".
It's really no different now. Sex used to be unmentionable, now it's difficult to keep off the subject, and it's offensive language itself which is unmentionable. In the 18th Century, sex was on everyone's (ahem) lips, it was Politics which were unspeakable. Are we headed that way once more? Even in the Land of the Free Refill, it seems like it.
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