#BonfireNight, #GuyFawkes, #Anonymous, #MaskedMarch Against #Injustice
Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I see of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
This British event was the prevention of Guy Fawkes from blowing up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. He was caught (red handed apparently) under the cellars of the Houses of Parliament on the 5th of November. He was one of the most famous terrorists in British history. As I spoke about in an earlier article on Halloween, this was an attempted shift in the systems of control that governed England. Well, he tried to kill the king and most of parliament. He was trying to vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous, as V said in the movie V for Vendetta.
At the end scene of the movie (sorry if you haven’t seen it) crowds of concerned supporters of freedom of information and of life, come to the streets wearing Guy Fawkes masks. They come to the Houses of Parliament to protest the injustice, oppression and discrimination that’s occurred. This mass anonymous march idea has been adopted by many political challenge groups. One in particular is called #Anonymous (great name born out of people’s desire to comment without being identified), who’ve been using social media to co-ordinate masked marches in hundreds of cities across the globe. They’re protesting freedom and privacy of information. There is of course another paradox here – wanting freedom of information about the activities of the government (just people) at the same time as fighting for privacy).
This is what Bonfire night is all about. Actually the powers that created Bonfire night wanted us to use Guy Fawkes as an example as to what we do when someone challenges the system. However, we’ve moved on from that outlook and now are using him as a kind of heroic symbol of the fight against repression and oppression. We’re living in a digital era and time where government groups like the NSA and MI5 track every email, every phone call and use facial recognition software to identify who and where you are at all times. They say it’s for your own good, ‘for your own protection’. Isn’t that what Hitler said? It’s for you own safety that we must know exactly where you are, what you’re doing and what you’re thinking!
At a time when Tesco (a large UK supermarket chain) not only want to get involved with the education system but have also announced they want to use facial recognition software to identify customers as they enter the store. This is a slippery slow to the removal of all our freedoms, all our privacy.
Today also saw the death (reported suicide) of a 22 year old social entrepreneur networking pioneer Ilya Zhitomirskiy in San Francisco. #Zhitomirskiy was one of the founders of social media site #Diaspora which was aimed at pulling people away from Facebook, Google and Twitter as a way of protecting their content and privacy. Mark Zuckerberg (facebook founder) had praised Diaspora and even donated funds to their set up, even though they were working to remove business from him. In the UK this we see the continued trial of Rebekah #Brooks a news paper editor accused of hacking phones. In Egypt we see the rising of the people to take charge against fundamentalist oppressive idea and in Saudi Arabia oppression of the freedom of women to drive and the right to freedom of speech.
Mere coincidence?
“I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence” Another quote from V for Vendetta.
We’re being tracked and what’s more we’re helping them do it. We tag photos of ourselves in locations with others. Now the argument is, well if you’ve nothing to hide there is no problem. No you’re right, but lets say a fascist dictatorship came to power in the UK and once again wanted to round up all the Jews, blacks and non-whites for execution. Sure it’s an extreme example but it makes the point. It’s not knowledge that is evil but what one chooses to do with it. Just like the splitting of the atom was not an evil discovery, but in the wrong hands could be used for evil.
So too we find ourselves on the edge of surrendering our civil liberties, our freedoms, our control over our own lives. Russell Brand is still pushing forward the same take back control revolution agenda, giving interview after interview. He’s using comedy to highlight the stupidity and ignorance of everyday people and the propaganda we’ve been fed. These politicians that seem so different and against each other are social friends, they hang out at the same parties, they are funded by the same groups, they are the Eton, Cambridge, Oxford group. The ‘in’ group that have been carefully selected by…..wait for it….not YOU!
We will ever find ourselves in a society where we can trust the people who are maintained in the top 1% wealth bracket by the very system. It would be like asking the tobacco industry to do health studies on the effects of smoking or for the pharmaceutical industry to pay for all the medical trials – oh that last one happens all over the world. In case you were wondering it is quite tragic that the results of any privately funded trial (in other words 98% of all trials) doesn’t ever have to be published. Think about that. The pharmaceutical company might well find a one pill cure for say something like AIDS and legally are allowed to bury it! Why would they do such a thing? You might ask, well because they can make far more money off all the drugs they give someone with AIDS than they ever could off one cure all pill. Just think about it. We have the wrong people in charge of the system – they’re people with a vested interest in maintaining the divide between rich and poor.
So when you’re watching the fireworks, today or on #thanksgiving, just remember the explosions are freedom, they are creative bursts of consciousness that were once held inside a little tube. The fuse is lite, you are the gun powder, be creative, be beautiful, be heard!
Check out the #Anonymous #MaskedMarch in the cities around you, repost and inform people , they are the power. We demand control over our data.
as Guy Fawkes said