The World Has Gone Mad

news.bbc.co.uk...

We've had it. This surveillance society has got completely out of hand. Everything is a source for surveillence, monitoring, conditioning and propaganda.

TV has been infiltrated with sensationalist news that is designed to instill fear in us, so that we gladly welcome the CCTV, microchips and loss of personal freedom.

Reality TV causes us to scrutinise each other as we do the sorry souls on TV, checking whether we match up to the 'ideals' that are presented to us on an hourly basis, or whether we 'fail' the 'normal' test.

Newspapers encourage spying, 'exposing' celebrities using hidden cameras in cars and houses, and making unwitting every -day folk into celebrities without their say so- for example the 'Girl in the Mask after the 7/7 bomb, or the unfortunate individuals who end up being ridiculed on the Internet, then in the paper. The celebrity sections - ridiculously large - have a 'surveillence' section (it is even called that in 'The Mirror.')where celebs are spyed on: 'Keira Knightly seen picking her arse in Knightsbridge'

Women's Weeklies - patronising in the extreme- are filled with 'real life stories' most of which are about the death, infidelity, pain and misery of real life people, "Just like me and you"- let's nosy behind their curtains and see what sordid things we can find. They exploit Womens' fears about the safety of their children, creating a 'Mums Army' (Take a Break magazine) to help usher in the surveillence society required to implement Tony Blair's aims. (Hmmm, I wonder what they could be....)

And now this. The out and out 'Recruitment' of Web users as spies and informants.

The World has gone mad. Seriously, can someone stop it, cause I really want to get off.





[edit on 22-6-2006 by Delta Alter]

First off, I think you're seriouslly overreacting and need to look at situation from another angle. You seem to be talking about the United Kingdom (I'm guessing by reality TV, you're on the subject of Big Brother UK. The housemates signed up for this, and are free to walk whenever they wish). This article is about the US.

I fail to see how monitoring your nations border for illegal immigrants counts as spying. You're hardly invading peoples personal lives; Illegal immigrants are people illegally entering a country by jumping the border. As soon as they've jumped the border, you can hardly blame people for not wanting to allow them to jump the border in peace. They're being watched - Its part of keeping a nation secure. So how does this idea (quite a good one in my opinion) suggest the world has gone surveillance mad?

Stop the World, I want to get off???

I know what you mean. This is progressing on a daily basis into an Orwellian nation and there's plenty of sheep willing to do their bidding.

So AGAIN, the US is an Evil Police State for wanting to find a way to secure our borders. I guess Vicente Fox was right and Mexicans DO have a god given right to come to the US. Let's just open the borders and say "Welcome to the US, please feel free to just walk in."

It might be in America, but anyone Worldwide can watch a Webcam.

You think it is a good idea for everyday people to sit looking at the Internet, trying to catch someone out trying to slip over the border? Is that a regular thing for you to spend your time doing?

If someone from Mexico wants to illegally enter Texas, seriously, it's not my issue. Why would I want to involve myself in that? And why is the Government encouraging me to do just that?

Its just a barrage of ways in which to make us distrustful, suspicious and wary of each other.

Whatever happened to the days when you just worried about your own life, and left others to it?

Originally posted by Zaphod58
So AGAIN, the US is an Evil Police State for wanting to find a way to secure our borders. I guess Vicente Fox was right and Mexicans DO have a god given right to come to the US. Let's just open the borders and say "Welcome to the US, please feel free to just walk in."

My post wasn't discussing the border. It was criticising the use of web users as the new 'Immigration Control Police'

And the biggest reason for that, as stated in your article, is an attempt to secure the US borders.

And you feel so strongly about that, are you ready and willing to sit at your computer to 'Do your bit?'

Go ahead, let's all usher in the New World Order together and have a big party while we are at it.

Why is is so damn EVIL of the US to want to find any way to secure the borders? SO WHAT if web users are willing to sit and stare at a webcam looking at the border for hours at a time?! Looking at the border for illegal immigrants is NOT "ushering in the NWO", it's securing our freaking borders. Like I said earlier, I guess it's better to just open the country and let anyone that wants to be here in.

Correction - the World hasn't gone mad the people who inhabit the world most certainly have. Then again as they say - you get what you deserve so perhaps there is a message or lesson in there for us.

What do you think?

Originally posted by Zaphod58
SO WHAT if web users are willing to sit and stare at a webcam looking at the border for hours at a time?! Looking at the border for illegal immigrants is NOT "ushering in the NWO", it's securing our freaking borders.

But why is it OUR job to secure the 'freakin' borders??

It's all part of the conditioning process, and judging by your replies, it's working.

.
The thing to remember is: the world's gone mad a thousand times before; has been in constant insane state from the outset, by the sound of it. Yet humankind's survived it all; albeit in depleted form, usually.

Remember the Spanish Inquisition? And all those bloodthirsty 'historical' movies showing thousands of heads rotting on spikes above blood-soaked battlefields. Ghengis Khan, Alexander, Napoleon, the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, Viet Nam, Korea ... and these are in the past couple of hundred years alone.

Millions have survived misery that makes our problems look miniscule. Small comfort from where we stand, but it's helpful to keep things in perspective. That way we can calm ourselves and our neighbours and calm heads function best.

Of course people are going to want to live where the living appears better than what they have. And we're paying for all those Brady Bunch type shows we beamed into third world nations. They see us throwing away more food than their entire town could produce in a year. We have it good in Western nations. We drive big cars, we fly around on shiny planes, we sit in deep cushioned arm-chairs, we have cushy jobs, we have plenty to eat and water to spare. We live in heaven, in the eyes of those who're compelled to walk three miles in order to scrape watery mud into a can for their children to drink. We have massive combine-harvesters roaming through fields thick with crops. We laugh a lot. We're so well-off that on a whim, we can arrange to have our faces painlessly made more attractive. If you were starving in a cardboard hut without water or electricity -- wouldn't you want your children to have a better chance?

So they're going to come to our lands of plenty, even if they have to crawl naked over broken glass with their children on their back. They're going to walk in, crawl in, sneak in, buy their way in, fly in, jump in, pogo-stick in. And they'll keep trying, no matter how many times they're turned away. Because we have so much, compared to them. And they all want a bit of it. Who can blame them?

It's all happened a thousand times before. Will happen a thousand times more if we don't totally wipe this planet off the map with our tinkering and poisons and stupidity and greed.

Only way to deal with it, practically speaking, is to either share what we have or kill them or walk away from what we have and let them have it. Maybe we won't even have a choice.

Or maybe we could do an even swap: let them have our polluted mess and we could go to theirs and build that up to something worth having. I dunno.

Unfortunately, Dock6, your compassionate view is not shared by many - this crazy surveillence tactic only serves to repel people further and further from the plight of others.

It's getting ordinary people on the side of the Government -"We are the Good Guys, they are the Bad Guys, help us keep the scrounging ##'s out of our country."

a person pointing a camera at a section of US-Mexico border
doesn't ammount to anything more than entertainment...

just because that camera is streaming the image on the internet
doesn't make the project anything more than amusement...

spying, & having a controlled-(recognized by the law)-image capture
has a lot of regulations, protocols & such...which the example you've cited
is certainly Not a regulated, certified source for surveillance data.

Originally posted by St Udio
a person pointing a camera at a section of US-Mexico border
doesn't ammount to anything more than entertainment...

just because that camera is streaming the image on the internet
doesn't make the project anything more than amusement...

spying, & having a controlled-(recognized by the law)-image capture
has a lot of regulations, protocols & such...which the example you've cited
is certainly Not a regulated, certified source for surveillance data.

Evidently you haven't read the full article. Web users are being encouraged to call a freephone number to report anyone they see crossing the border.

I suppose some people WOULD find that quite amusing, however...

The world has not just recently gone mad.

The world has been mad for the past 6000 years, since the dawn of civilization.

but regarding this subject. it is putting a band-aid on a gaping chest wound.

heres a better idea. Lets gather up all our dear soldiers from around the world and have THEM watch the border instead of civilians. After all, its the soldier's job to protect the borders of his nation, and im sure many soldiers would rather be doing that than being sent world wide to either babysit morons who cant behave or invade countries at the behest of their corrupt leaders.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
heres a better idea. Lets gather up all our dear soldiers from around the world and have THEM watch the border instead of civilians. After all, its the soldier's job to protect the borders of his nation, and im sure many soldiers would rather be doing that than being sent world wide to either babysit morons who cant behave or invade countries at the behest of their corrupt leaders.

Well said, Skadi.

Yes the World has aways been mad, but I'm only 29 and feeling wearier and wearier about our current situation. People are accepting madness like this as the Norm, and I can't deal with that.

Originally posted by Delta Alter

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
heres a better idea. Lets gather up all our dear soldiers from around the world and have THEM watch the border instead of civilians. After all, its the soldier's job to protect the borders of his nation, and im sure many soldiers would rather be doing that than being sent world wide to either babysit morons who cant behave or invade countries at the behest of their corrupt leaders.

Well said, Skadi.

Yes the World has aways been mad, but I'm only 29 and feeling wearier and wearier about our current situation. People are accepting madness like this as the Norm, and I can't deal with that.

On the subject of the government asking civilians to watch the border over webcam (I assume in an attempt to increase military concentration in other, more important areas), there is one key word. CHOICE. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to.

And in reply to Skadi_The_Evil_Elf's comment on soldiers 'babysitting morons'... I absolutly believe this outlook is one of the most ignorant I've ever heard on ATS on this subject. You do realise this world is now globalised? We do not sit in our own countries letting other countries rot away. Luckily, the leaders of the Western (and in many cases, Eastern) world don't share this aged outlook, and this world may eventually advance in terms of global freedom and quality of life.

it probaly seems to be worse today, because we are more a collective than ever. we have access to vast amounts of info, not just from the government but from individuals spinning your reason on the world.

people used to have it far more stable, people knew who they were, what roles males and females play in society. we have gay marriage.

so many of the things we know are wrong deep inside us, are being projected at us so we accept them. borders are breaking down, we are loosing our identities as from the countries we are born in, are merging into this nwo cr*p.

also the fact that material possessions are far more important today than ever, we have gone away from what is human, which many call dehumanisation.

all these things and more are making us all feel uncomfortable, and we know things are not going to get better any time soon. how we are told that some of the whacky stuff going on today, is ok, is beyond me, and with conditioning everyone gets beaten into submission in the end.

man what is humanity going to be like in 100 years. we will all have lost any sort of morals, and it seems that the state will be the most important thing in peoples lifes.

Originally posted by Delta Alter
The out and out 'Recruitment' of Web users as spies and informants.

NewsFlash - Americans keeping an eye on their own borders to stop ILLEGALs
from crossing over is not 'spying'. It is lawful surveillance. This is a matter of
national security and if citizens wish to step up to the job and protect their country
in this manner ... then good for them.

BTW - these 'informants' are people who tell law enforcement officials about
ILLEGAL activities. So again, if people wish to inform law enforcement about
ILLEGAL activities ... good for them (and good for all of us).

Another NewsFlash - I highly doubt you'll find many people sitting on their
computers looking into a computer screen searching for illegals. Most people
have other things to do.

The World has gone mad. Seriously, can someone stop it, cause I really want to get off.

Seriously, I'd love to stop the world for you to get off. If you are that upset
over the prospect of Americans securing their own borders from ILLEGALS
then you need a vacation. Mars perhaps?