Hyviä ideoita suomalaisille sensorifasisteille “vapaiden ja urheiden maasta”

Tässä taas karua kuvausta Bushin aloittaman ja Obaman jatkaman Muutoksen vääjäämättömästä etenemisestä. Suomessa internetin sensuroimista ja väärän ajattelun kieltämistä vaativat virkamiehet ja poliitikot ovat tapansa mukaan suoraan ajan hermolla. Oppi tulee Lännestä:

In a 2008 academic paper, President Barack Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated “cognitive infiltration” of groups that advocate “conspiracy theories” like the ones surrounding 9/11.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine” those groups.

As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs,” according to the White House Web site.

Sunstein’s article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that “our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a ‘crippled epistemology,’ in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources.”

By “crippled epistemology” Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust. Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public—the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated

Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government “enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts.” [1]

Harvardin korkeasti oppinut lakiherra Sunstein kannattaa tsaarin Ohranan koeteltujen metodien kokonaisvaltaista hyödyntämistä:

Sunstein argued that “government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories.” He suggested that “government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”

“We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI,” Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that “a high-level presidential advisor” would support such a strategy.

Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of “extremist” groups so that it undermines the groups' confidence to the extent that “new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides.”

Sunstein has been the target of numerous “conspiracy theories” himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting “a second Bill of Rights” that would do away with the Second Amendment. Sunstein's recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as “a blueprint for online censorship.”

Sunstein “wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading ‘rumors,’” wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker. [2]

Terrorismi ei uhkaa valtaa, vaan antaa sille tilaisuuden kiristää otettaan ihmisistä. Itsenäinen ajattelu sen sijaan on uhka aina. Se on “ekstremismiä” jota vastaan pitää taistella kaikin käytettävissä olevin keinoin. Postmodernissa fasismissa todellisuutta ei ole emmekä voi tutkia sitä tai edes väittää sen olevan olemassa, mutta on kognitiivisesti tervettä ja sairasta ajattelua ja niiden määrittelemisestä pitävät asiantuntijat huolen.

__________________________________________________________
[1] Daniel Tencer, “Obama staffer wants ‘cognitive infiltration’ of 9/11 conspiracy groups”, The Raw Story, 13.1.2010
[2] ibid.

Tähän halpaan menivätkin sitten KAIKKI, ja tietysti suomalaiset etunenässä

On tultu siihen pisteeseen, missä mikä tahansa suomalaisten viranomaisten määrätietoinen toimenpide jonkin uhan torjumiseksi tai ongelman ratkaisemiseksi herättää allekirjoittaneessa välittömästi ennakkoaavistuksen siitä, että taas suomalaisia viedään kuin pässiä narusta—keidenköhän narusta tällä kertaa?

The Council of Europe is set to investigate the World Health Organization’s swine flu campaign this month over allegations of improper influence from pharmaceutical companies in declaring the H1N1 “pandemic” and the promotion of “inefficient” and potentially dangerous vaccination strategies. The resolution to launch the emergency inquiry was approved by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and passed through the health committee unanimously. It states in part that “in order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies influenced scientists and official agencies responsible for public health standards to alarm governments worldwide and make them squander tight health resources for inefficient vaccine strategies, and needlessly expose millions of healthy people to the risk of an unknown amount of side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.”

“The ‘birds-flu’-campaign (2005/06) combined with the ‘swine-flu’-campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health-budgets, but to the credibility and accountability of important international health-agencies,” noted the resolution. “The Council of Europe and its member-states should ask for immediate investigations and consequences on their national levels as well as on the international level. The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers.”

Leading the charge for the probe is German epidemiologist Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, the chairman of the PACE health committee and a medical doctor specializing in lung disease. “The victims among millions of needlessly vaccinated people must be protected by their states and independent scientific clarification should provide evidence and transparency for national and—if necessary—European courts,” Wodarg said in a statement.

Wodarg called the “false pandemic” one of the greatest medical scandals of the last century and said that pharmaceutical companies influenced the whole process and needed to be held accountable. They were willing to “inflict bodily harm in their pursuit of profits,” he said. Articles in the European press, starting in Denmark and spreading, have repeatedly called into question the myriad ties between vaccine manufacturers and decision makers in the United Nations' global health body.

Earlier this year the WHO redefined the term pandemic, lowering the threshold for an emergency declaration by removing the requirement of an “enormous” number of deaths. The WHO estimated that by the end of 2009, around 10,000 people had died from swine flu-linked complications. Seasonal influenza kills between 250,000 and 500,000 per year on average, according to the organization.

News reports earlier this year, citing the UN, warned of millions of deaths around the world unless nations promptly proceeded with the controversial vaccination schemes being promoted by the WHO—along with forking over billions of dollars. Since then, the disease has proved relatively mild despite the wild fearmongering campaigns waged by governments, such as the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that warned that 90,000 Americans could die from the H1N1 virus.

The incident has reminded people of the avian flu scare. In September of 2005, the chief of the UN’s bird flu preparations estimated that the epidemic could cause up to 150 million human deaths. So far, the WHO has confirmed slightly more than 250. The bird flu propaganda campaign will also be investigated by the “urgent” inquiry.

National governments should be ashamed of themselves for squandering billions of taxpayer dollars on an untested, unpopular vaccine for a virus that so far has been extremely mild compared to even the seasonal influenza. Governments are currently trying to get rid of the vaccine supplies. Global health authorities must be held accountable, though it’s unfortunate that the charge is being led by a European supranational body instead of national legislatures. [1]

En luota tippaakaan tämän maan päättäjien kykyyn selviytyä mistään oikeasta kriisitilanteesta. Maassahan on huonoin hallitus sitten Cajanderin surkean sakin. Sanotaan Jumalan suojelevan hulluja, juoppoja ja Amerikan Yhdysvaltoja. Kyllä tässä on kohta meidänkin käännyttävä Korkeimman puoleen—ei tätä propagandavaltiota muukaan mahti taloudelliselta ja yhteiskunnalliselta konkurssilta pysty pelastamaan. Henkinen konkurssi on tapahtunut jo aiemmin ja viimeiset kulttuurihenkilöiksi luokiteltavat ihmiset joko poistuneet keskuudestamme taikka vanhuudenheikkoja ja kuolemansairaita niin kuin koko maakin. Kuten koko belgialaisten valloittaman Euroopan kohdalla, vain letkujen irti vetämistähän tässä odotellaan. Mutta yhä voi kuunnella 1700-luvun iloisten musikanttien (Couperin, Scarlatti, Rameau) säveliä paremmilta ajoilta ja juoda viiniä, kuvitella itsensä jonnekin muualle. Loppu ei tule vielä tänä iltana.

__________________________________________________________
[1] Alex Newman, “Europe to Investigate WHO ‘False Pandemic’ Scandal”, The New American, 5.1.2009

"Cool Britanniassa", missäpä muuallakaan: 14 vuotta koulussa jotta ei opittaisi mitään

Never in history have politicians talked more about the importance of education. Never has it been more generally agreed that the modern world is a “knowledge economy”. The famous Clause Four of the Labour Party’s constitution referred to securing for “workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry”. Everyone realises that nowadays brain usually secures fuller fruits than hand.

And yet, does the average pupil end up knowing more or knowing things more deeply than, say, 50 years ago? Could the average pupil of today do long division, or speak French, or write an English paragraph, or explain the Great Reform Bill, or find Valparaiso on a map, or operate the laws of thermo-dynamics better than his or her equivalent half a century ago?

Perhaps not, the defenders of current education would say, but modern pupils know much more about saving the planet, safe sex, Eid, and challenging racism, not to mention things not even thought of in the 1950s, such as the internet. They learn more that is “relevant”. They also, modern educationalists argue, acquire more “skills”. Instead of being crammed with sterile facts, they know how to engage with a subject. They learn less mere “what”, but more “why” and “how to”.

This is not all rubbish. Looking back on my own (mostly good) education, both state and private, in the 1960s, I can see some of its deficiencies. We were not taught where history came from. It was just a series of facts and stories: no one taught me the idea of sources and evidence until I was about 15.

We learnt grammar – both Latin and English – well, but we never quite knew what grammar was. Grammar was considered so important that it gave its name to the best state schools in the country, but why was it considered so important? We were not really told. The aim of modern education to teach children to ask more questions, and not simply to stuff them with information, is surely right.

But that promise has been broken. We seem to have devised a system of curriculum and examination which pulls off the incredible double of being very hard work but very low quality. There are endless projects and modules, and endless ways of re-marking to upgrade one’s results, but no definite test of what is known and understood.

In this process, a strange thing has happened. For all the patter about diversity, education has become more hostile to things that are outside the immediate experience of the pupil. Much less pre-20th-century history or literature is taught. Fewer pupils learn foreign languages, let alone dead ones. Individual sciences have been conflated into the easier “dual science” paper. We heard this week that a quarter of primary schools never teach pupils the Lord’s Prayer, partly (presumably) because the words of a Jew who has been dead for 2,000 years are considered out of date.

Because of my current war against Andrew Marr’s TV history of The Making of Modern Britain, I went on the Today programme yesterday to argue with the historian Tristram Hunt. He said that 14-year-old London pupils who had watched Marr had pronounced it boring because, despite all Marr’s costume capers and silly accents, it was not relevant enough to them. Hunt wanted Marrxism squared – yet more japes to get the wandering teenage attention.

In the end, though, how can anything be taught if the test is whether pupils who know very little find it boring? One of the worst things about being badly educated is that you are easily bored. If somebody asks, “How could Jane Austen/Plato/Mozart/William the Conqueror/Einstein or whoever be relevant to inner-city kids?”, the answer is surely that it is the kids, not Jane Austen etc, who have the problem. It is the job of teachers to help them out of it.

There is a nice bit in Boswell’s Life of Johnson when Dr Johnson stops a poor boy and says, “What would you give, my lad, to know about the Argonauts?” “Sir, I would give everything I had,” the boy replies. But we have given up teaching poor boys about the Argonauts. We have despaired of the transformation which education can bring about.

Schooling is now effectively compulsory from the age of four to 18. But too often, the people who emerge from those long years have not learnt the “what” or the “how to” or the “why”.

You can see this in the practical things of daily life. Huge numbers of drugs, it turns out, are wrongly administered in hospital because nurses have not followed the instructions precisely. No one taught them the habit of accuracy.

How many people can draft, unaided, a letter or email that coherently makes an argument? How many people can calculate their own tax, or work out whether they are choosing the right pension? How many people can begin to understand the legal system or argue successfully with a bureaucrat or comprehend with any accuracy what their doctor is telling them?

More important still, how can people enjoy the richness of our civilisation if no one has introduced them to its glories? It is possible to go to school now without ever learning why those large buildings in every town have plus signs on them, or to look at a pound coin and not to know why it says “D.G.REG.F.D” on it, or to catch a train at Waterloo station without knowing why it is so called.

(Charles Moore, "Children have never worked so hard and learnt so little", Telegraph, 11.12.2009)

Kansainvälinen jet set saapuu ilmastokokoukseen yksityisillä suihkukoneilla ja limusiineilla

Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

(Telegraph, 5.12.2009)

Taistelivatko "tommyt" 1939-1945, jotta "Cool Britannia" voisi joskus olla totta?

Sarah Robinson was just a teenager when World War II broke out.

She endured the Blitz, watching for fires during Luftwaffe air raids armed with a bucket of sand.

Often she would walk ten miles home from work in the blackout, with bombs falling around her.

Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation's sense of service and sacrifice.

Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No.

They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It's not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger.

Sarah harks back to the days when 'people kept the laws and were polite and courteous. We didn't have much money, but we were contented and happy.

'People whistled and sang. There was still the United Kingdom, our country, which we had fought for, our freedom, democracy. But where is it now?!'

The feelings of Sarah and others from this most selfless generation about the modern world have been recorded by a Tyneside writer, 33-year-old Nicholas Pringle.

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

There is the occasional bright spot - one veteran describes Britain as 'still the best country in the world' - but the overall tone is one of profound disillusionment.

'I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,' wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East, 'and I wonder why I ever tried.'

'My patriotism has gone out of the window,' said another ex-serviceman.

In the Mail this week, Gordon Brown wrote about 'our debt of dignity to the war generation'.

But the truth that emerges from these letters is that the survivors of that war generation have nothing but contempt for his government.

They feel, in a word that leaps out time and time again, 'betrayed'.

New Labour, said one ex-commando who took part in the disastrous Dieppe raid in which 4,000 men were lost, was 'more of a shambles than some of the actions I was in during the war, and that's saying something!'

He added: 'Those comrades of mine who never made it back would be appalled if they could see the world as it is today.

'They would wonder what happened to the Brave New World they fought so damned hard for.'

Nor can David Cameron take any comfort from the elderly.

His 'hug a hoodie' advice was scorned by a generation of brave men and women now too scared, they say, to leave their homes at night.

Immigration tops the list of complaints.

'People come here, get everything they ask, for free, laughing at our expense,' was a typical observation.

'We old people struggle on pensions, not knowing how to make ends meet. If I had my time again, would we fight as before? Need you ask?'

Many writers are bewildered and overwhelmed by a multicultural Britain that, they say bitterly, they were never consulted about nor feel comfortable with.

'Our country has been given away to foreigners while we, the generation who fought for freedom, are having to sell our homes for care and are being refused medical services because incomers come first.'

Her words may be offensive to many - and rightly so - but Sarah Robinson defiantly states: 'We are affronted by the appearance of Muslim and Sikh costumes on our streets.'

But then political correctness is another thing they take strong issue with, along with politicians generally - 'liars, incompetents and self-aggrandising charlatans' (with the revealing exception of Enoch Powell).

The loss of British sovereignty to the European Union caused almost as much distress. 'Nearly all veterans want Britain to leave the EU,' wrote one.

Frank, a merchant navy sailor, thought of those who gave their lives 'for King and country', only for Britain to become 'an offshore island of a Europe where France and Germany hold sway. Ironic, isn't it?'

As a group, they feel furious at not being able to speak their minds.

They see the lack of debate and the damning of dissenters as racists or Little Englanders as deeply upsetting affronts to freedom of speech.

'Our British culture is draining away at an ever increasing pace,' wrote an ex-Durham Light Infantryman, 'and we are almost forbidden to make any comment.'

A widow from Solihull blamed the Thatcher years 'when we started to lose all our industry and profit became the only aim in life'.

Her husband, a veteran of Dunkirk and Burma, died a disappointed man, believing that his seven years in the Army were wasted.

'It is 18 years since I lost him and as I look around parts of Birmingham today you would never know you were in England,' she wrote.

'He would have hated it. He also disliked the immoral way things are going. I don't think people are really happy now, for all the modern, easy-living conveniences.

'I disagree with same-sex marriages, schoolgirl mothers, rubbish TV programmes, so-called celebrities and, most of all, unlimited immigration.

'I am very unhappy about the way this country is being transformed. I go nowhere after dark. I don't even answer my doorbell then.'

A Desert Rat who battled his way through El Alamein, Sicily, Italy and Greece was in despair.

'This is not the country I fought for. Political correctness, lack of discipline, compensation madness, uncontrolled immigration - the "do-gooders" have a lot to answer for.

'If you see youngsters doing something they shouldn't and you say anything, you just get a mouthful of foul language.'

Undoubtedly, some of the complaints are 'grumpy old man' gripes, as the veterans themselves recognise - from chewing gum on pavements and motorists using mobile phones to the march of computerisation ('why can't I just go to the station and buy a railway ticket?') and the dearth of pop music tunes you can hum.

But it is the fundamental change in society's values which they find hardest to come to terms with.

Bring back birching and hanging, the sanctions they grew up with, they say. Put more bobbies back on the beat.

'We were rigidly taught good manners and respect for older people,' said a wartime WAAF, 'but the nanny state has ruined all that. Television programmes are full of violence and obscene language.

This Land of Hope and Glory is in reality a land of yobs, drug addicts, drunkard youths and teenage mothers who think they are owed all for nothing.'

Aged 85, she has little wish to go on living.

For others, the strength of character that got them through the war is still helping them to survive the disappointments of peacetime.

A crofter's son from Scotland who served on the Arctic convoys taking supplies to Russia found the immediate post-war years hard.

'In those days we had no welfare support from any source. It was as though we had served our country to the full and were then forgotten.

'However, we were very resilient and determined to make a go of it, and many of us, including myself, succeeded.

'How times have changed now, with the countless many clamouring to get welfare benefits for the asking.'

A medic who made it through Dunkirk and D-Day thought the fallen would be appalled by the lack of manners in modern life and the worship of celebrities, plus 'the patent dishonesty of politicians'.

Another common issue was their bemusement at the idea anyone could live in constant debt.

'We were brought up to believe that if you hadn't the money, you waited till you had!' one wrote.

(Tony Rennell, "'This isn't the Britain we fought for,' say the 'unknown warriors' of WWII", Mail Online, 21.11.2009)

Miten nykyinen angloamerikkalainen historiaton barbarismi tuhoaa opettamisen ja kasvattamisen edellytykset

In virtually every Western society, education is in trouble. Unfortunately, however, policymakers tend to obsess only about the symptoms of the problem – unsatisfactory standards in core subjects, growth of a cohort of poorly schooled underachievers or erosion of classroom discipline – and not the cause.

Yet the main reason education often is not educating is because it finds it difficult to give meaning to human experience. Time and again, curriculum specialists inform us that because we live in a world of rapid change, the conventions and practices of the past have become outmoded, outdated or irrelevant. Present educational fads are based on the premise that because we live in a new, digitally driven society, the intellectual legacy of the past and the experience of grown-ups have little significance for the schooling of children.

The implicit assumption that adults have little to teach children is rarely made explicit. But there is a growing tendency to flatter children through suggesting that their values are more enlightened than those of their elders because they are more tuned in to the present. So children are often represented as digital natives who are way ahead of their text-bound and backward-looking parents.

Although education is celebrated as one of the most important institutions of society, there is a casual disrespect for the content of what children are taught. Curriculum engineers often display indifference, if not contempt, for abstract thought and the knowledge developed in the past. Both are criticised for being irrelevant or outdated; only new information that can be applied and acted on is seen as suitable for the training – and it is training and not teaching – of digital natives.

In policy deliberations about education, the acquisition of subject-based knowledge is often dismissed as old-fashioned. Typically, an emphasis on the intellectual content of classroom subjects is labelled an outdated form of scholasticism that has little significance in our era. Policymakers often represent change as an omnipotent force that renders prevailing forms of knowledge and schooling redundant. In such circumstances, education must transform itself to keep up with the times. From this perspective, educational policies can be justified only if they can adapt to change.

Since they are likely to be overtaken by events, classroom innovations by definition have a short-term and provisional status. The instability that afflicts the education system is turned into the normal state of an institution that needs to be responsive to the uncertain flow of events. Although fads come and go, the constant feature of today’s throwaway pedagogy is a deep-seated hostility to teaching academic subjects to young people, especially to those who come from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. So-called modernisers regard the subject-based curriculum as far too rigid for a school system that must adapt to a constantly changing world. The dramatisation of change in Anglo-American education-speak renders the past irrelevant. If indeed we continually move from one new age to another, then the practices of the past have little relevance for today.

Sadly, the ceaseless repetition of the idea that the past is irrelevant desensitises people from understanding the influence of the legacy of human development on their lives. The constant talk of ceaseless change tends to naturalise it and turn it into an omnipotent autonomous force that subjects human beings to its will. This is a force that annihilates the past and demands that people learn to adapt and readapt to new experiences. From this standpoint, humans do not so much determine their future as adapt to forces beyond their control.

In the worldview of the educational establishment change has acquired a sacred character that determines what is taught. It creates new requirements and introduces new ideas about learning. And it encourages the mass production of a disposable pedagogy. Educationalists adopt the rhetoric of ‘breaks’ and ‘ruptures’ and maintain that nothing is as it was and that the present has been decoupled from the past. Their outlook is shaped by an imagination that is so overwhelmed by the displacement of the old by the new that it often overlooks historical experience that may continue to be relevant.

The discussion of the relationship between education and change is frequently overwhelmed by the fad of the moment and with the relatively superficial symptoms of new developments. It is often distracted from acknowledging the fact the fundamental educational needs of students do not alter every time a new technology influences people’s lives. And certainly the questions raised by Greek philosophy, Renaissance poetry, Enlightenment science or the novels of George Eliot continue to be relevant for students in our time and not just to the period that preceded the digital age.

Often change and social transformation are represented as if they are unique to our time. Innovation guru Bill Law makes this pronouncement: ‘We may not know precisely what shape the future will take but we do know that the futures of our current students will not much resemble those of our past ones.’ But when did we last think the future of our children would resemble our own? Not in 1969, or in 1939 or even 1909.

The idea that we live in a qualitatively different world serves as a premise for the claim that the knowledge and insights of the past have only minor historical significance. In education it is claimed that old ways of teaching are outdated precisely because they are old. Knowledge itself is called into question because in a world of constant flux it must be continually overtaken by events. Policy has become so focused on keeping up with change that it has become distracted from the task of giving meaning to education.

The fetishisation of change is symptomatic of a mood of intellectual malaise, where notions of truth, knowledge and meaning have acquired a provisional character. Perversely, the transformation of change into a metaphysical force haunting humanity actually desensitises society from distinguishing between a passing novelty and qualitative change. That is why lessons learned through the experience of the past are so important for helping society face the future. When change is objectified, it turns into spectacle that distracts society from valuing the truths and insights it has acquired throughout the best moments of human history. Yet these are truths that have emerged through attempts to find answers to the deepest and most durable questions facing us, and the more the world changes the more we need to draw on our cultural and intellectual inheritance.

If the legacy of past achievements has ceased to have relevance for the schooling of young people, what can education mean?

(Frank Furedi, "Let’s give children the ‘store of human knowledge’", Spiked, 18.11.2009)

Iso-Britanniassa tapahtuvat jengiraiskaukset ovatkin "useamman tekijän raiskauksia" - no eivät ne siitä vähene

Politically correct Scotland Yard chiefs have stopped using the term 'gang rape' because it is too 'emotive', the Mail can reveal.

Instead officers have been advised to use the long-winded phrase 'multi-perpetrator rape' when describing sex attacks involving three or more culprits.

Critics branded the move by the Metropolitan Police an 'affront' to the victims of appalling sex crimes and are preparing to launch a campaign on the issue.

Six years ago the Met was at the centre of a similar row over its choice of language to describe 'gang rapes' after a senior officer referred to them as 'group rapes' during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Some community activists had previously suggested the phrase 'gang rape' had racist connotations.

Details of the latest police terminology are contained in an official Scotland Yard report which reveals a sharp increase in the number of gang rapes in the capital.

New figures revealed there were 93 gang sex attacks in the financial year 2008-9, compared with 71 in 2003-2004.

Meanwhile the age of victims has fallen with 64% aged 19 or younger in the last financial year compared with 48% in 1998-9.

(Mail Online, 9.11.2009)

Tieto, tiedonvälitys, tiede, valta, valheet ja politiikka "tietoyhteiskunnassa"

Hakkerit ovat tunkeutuneet maailman johtavan ilmastotutkimuslaitoksen työntekijöiden sähköposteihin.

Iso-Britanniassa sijaitsevan East Anglian yliopiston ilmastontutkimusyksikön (CRU) tutkijoiden henkilökohtaiset sähköpostit ilmestyivät internetiin eilen. Tänään yliopiston edustaja vahvisti, että tiedot hakkeroinnista pitävät paikkansa.

- Materiaalin runsaan määrän vuoksi emme voi kuitenkaan sanoa varmasti, onko kaikki internetissä oleva materiaali aitoa, edustaja korosti.

Tapauksen poliisitutkinta on kesken, kertoo Britannian yleisradioyhtiö BBC verkkosivuillaan.

CRU on yksi maailman johtavista ilmastonmuutoksen tutkimuslaitoksista. Sen erityisalaa on ihmisen vaikutus ilmaston lämpenemiseen, ja sillä on ollut suuri rooli esimerkiksi kansainvälisen ilmastopaneelin (IPCC) raporteissa.

Asiantuntijoiden mukaan joulukuinen Kööpenhaminan ilmastokokous lisää myös hakkereiden kiinnostusta ilmastoasioihin. Myös CRU:n asiantuntijarooli kasvaa kokouksen lähestyessä.

Internetin keskusteluryhmissä sähköposteja on puitu kiivaasti. Monessa keskustelussa väitetään, että sähköposteissa tutkijat pohtivat avoimesti moraalisia ja juridisia ongelmia, joita syntyy heidän tieteellisten havaintojen muokkaamisesta sopivammaksi nykyiseen poliittiseen ilmapiiriin. Tämä tarkoittaa siis uhkakuvien korostamista.

(MTV3.fi, 20.11.2009)

"Cool Britannia" ei edusta "paluuta" barbarismiin, koska näin barbaarista Britanniassa ei ole ollut koskaan

Teenage girls wanting to join violent male gangs are being forced into having sex and ferrying guns, knives and drugs, police and charities have found.

The girls, some as young as 13, want to join gangs to raise their own profile or to seek protection. Often they are swayed by the status given to the senior members of the gang.

When they first join they are told they must have sex with one member of the gang — and then find several of the gang waiting for them.

What has shocked welfare workers is that the girls accept the situation as normal and do not appreciate that they are being violated.

The girls are also being asked to store and transport guns, knives and drugs for the male members of the gang and police have evidence that girls are taking guns direct to killers and then disposing of the weapons once someone has been shot.

The problem has been growing over the past couple of years, with charities getting ever more girls coming to them with tales of gang rapes, and yet reluctant to press charges.

Teresa Pointing, chief executive of In-volve, a charity helping young people drawn into violent situations, said: “These girls have no rights within these gangs, which are primitive in the way they operate.”

“The girls think they are going to be protected by the gang if they have sex with one person but then they find there are more boys there.”

(The Times, 26.10.2009)