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I’ve been accosted by several people in the 24 hours or so since I wrote ‘No forced labour please, we’re British’ – all of them determined to make me believe that any stand against government injustice is doomed to failure and I shouldn’t try to support it.
What a bunch of craven cowards.
If these people had their way, everyone in the UK would be a slave. If the religion they preach was true, all of our ancestors would have been slaves as well – to the biggest bullies with the nastiest weapons, all the way back down through time.
None of the great changes, emancipations, freedoms that were ever gained in history would have taken place.
Well, I’m here to tell you that we are not slaves; those changes did take place, and they happened because people like you and I made them happen.
The writer J Michael Straczynski, creator of the cult SF TV show Babylon 5, put it very well a few years ago, so I’ll hand the rest of this article over to him:
“Let me tell you about a little psychological trick called conditioned helplessness.
“When our world and our choices are restricted over a sufficiently long period of time, we come to believe that we cannot snap our bonds, cannot choose anything other than what we have, even though those bonds are often as sheer as gossamer.
“And it’s when we are in that state of conditioned helplessness that we are truly at our most dangerous, to ourselves as we fall into despair or poor decisions, and to others when the weight of the perceived chain becomes too much, and like enraged elephants we go mad… and make those around us pay the price for our confinement.
“It is in the vested interests of any society, any form of government, any hierarchical system to make you believe that you have no power, that you have no choices, that you cannot fight City Hall or Parliament or the Party or the Committee. We are told to play nice, to behave, to get along, that the human being singular can’t really change anything, can’t affect anything. Leave it to the rest, to the authorities, to those qualified to deal with the problem. They want you to go to sleep, to believe that there is nothing you can do.
“They are, of course, quite wrong. And when they tell you you cannot do anything, that you do not have a choice, they are lying to you. Nothing more, nothing less.
“History was changed by one assassin in Sarajevo, whose bullet set off a chain reaction that led to World War I and by default to World War II and much of the Cold War history thereafter.
“One man with a bullet can change the world. We’ve seen it. We know it’s true.
“How much more can one man or one woman with one idea change the world? Ask Mahatma Ghandi, Mother Theresa, John Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Aquinas.
“And while you’re at it… ask yourself.”
JMS is appealing to us to see “hope, and optimism, and our capacity to build a better world if we are willing to fight for the future, to seize it for ourselves and make of it what we want, because if we don’t then someone else will make it for us, and it may not be the best possible future, or the one we most desire. It is about the nobler aspects of our humanity, those elements which call us together in a common cause, not the differences that pull us apart… In the final analysis, whatever we may have been taught to the contrary, we are more alike than we are different.”
There is something we can do. And we should praise those who do it.
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Mike Sivier's blog 
It’s nice to get praise from your idols, especially in support of something you’re trying to achieve.
So it was a genuine pleasure to receive this tweet from J Michael Straczynski, the author of much of what appears in the article above.
It reads: “Well done and well said (apart from the bits by me, which can always be improved) Keep fighting the good fight.”
Thanks!
We really do need to fight back. The thing is, they have two advantages: They have the law and media at their beck and call, and they will fight dirty. I say we start fighting dirty as well, beat them at their own game and throw them out. It’ll take nothing short of an uprising to make the changes we need to save ourselves. I look forward to that day when it finally comes.
I don’t think anyone here will blame you for feeling that way.
There`s a lot of meat on the bones of this piece which gives rise to several issues.Thankfully as always,it is so well put together that all these issues integrate into the one issue of freedom. It`s true that a revolution or an uprising is needed, but the problem with this is that people get hurt or even killed, so they feel the need to accept the status quo as the only alternative. There is another way of attacking the system which is a lot more logical, and it is peaceful. For starters do we buy a TV licence, or pay our council tax? There is not a law in the land that tells us we must do these things. Have we de-registered our motor vehicles with the DVLA so that we become travellers instead of drivers, hence exempting us from all tolls, fines levies and taxes? The sky is the limit and we are as free as we want to be. Who knows, we may even ask the question: “What can a politician do for me, that i can`t do for myself?”
That’s all fine until you get arrested and imprisoned for non-payment of council tax etc.
I risk all because I am on Benifits as a Disabled person, I have been through Cancer of the Lung and I am far from being out of the woods. I keep Emailing the PM and tell him the damage he is doing to us as a Nation.
I email anyone that does something stupid, so IDS gets a lot from me. Labour aren’t safe either. I was appalled at the business with Dennis Skinner and told them so.
I am 63 and the young generation are apethetic to what’s going on around them.
Like Mike I research everything I do to get my facts straight and then get my guns out.
They can stop my benefits and I will fight; if they try to shut me up I will get louder; if it means that I go to prison so be it, but they will not beat me in the long run.
I write to the Queen, bless her, and just inform her – never command her – just keep her in the picture. Whether she gets to read them I do not know. I write to anyone, nobody is safe as they all go the loo like me and no one is above me (bar the wife).
Keep at it I am 120 per cent behind you and other like minded people.
John (wocky for my pics)