Quotations are a bit eye-catching on this site aren't they? Sorry about that Hobo. As you suggest I'll stick to 'reply' where I can in future.

Regarding security I'm only surprised you're surprised. Very shortly we'll all be enemies of the state, make no mistake about it, though I don't think people will complain even then. People are scared. Deep down they know something is amiss. In such circumstances ignorance - wilful ignorance - is a pretty attractive option.

Talk to anyone of the lengths to which the shadow government will go to exercise control and, for the most part anyway, they won't want to know. They like the version of history television gives them, which conveys the reassuring idea that people act randomly and are, for the most part anyway, free.

This comforting view is regulary reinforced, needless to say, not least when it comes to the 'sixties. The official line on the 'sixties is that all the sloganizing, all the left-wing political agitation, all the 'love and peace' hedonism just happened, that it arose organically out of youthful disillusion with the standards of an earlier generation that had brought about two world wars. It's a romantic tale, one designed to appeal to the vanity of adolescence, needless to say, since young people always like to see themselves as agents of change.

The truth, unfortunately, is quite different. The 'sixties, or at least those events and cultural elements we have come to think of as characteristic of the 'sixties, were enginered. The purpose behind all the chaos and rebellion, just as with the introduction beat music, was to generate cultural schism by driving a wedge between the generations. Think about it. Cultures survive by being passed on from father to son, mother to daughter. Sever those connections, ennoble the principle of self-absorption in law with talk of natural rights, and you're halfway there.

I wonder how many who enjoyed the stories of 'revolutionary' hippies in San Francisco were also aware that Haight Ashbury had been carefully selected by the security services for LSD experiments, or that counter-culture heroes like Ken Kesey (author of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest') were in fact CIA operatives? Peopl are so dumb it makes you laugh.

The truth, if they knew it, would leave them in shock, so they'd rather not know the truth at all. And if you think all this a million miles away from the subject of file-sharing, it isn't. Technology doesn't just happen along. It is developed, withheld (possible for decades), then released when true Masters of the Universe, the real players in world affairs (politicans are just bought-and-paid-for-puppets), feel it can be exploited to good effect. Conversely anything they don't control, no matter how potentially beneficial to mankind, will be ruthlessly suppressed. Consider what happened to Nikola Tesla if you don't believe me.

In the same way the ideology of the internet, that of a potent weapon in the battle against political coercion, should not be accepted at face value. Instead weigh it against the fact that improved communications between politically 'unacceptable' elements actually plays right into hands of those busy planning our enslavement. Consider that it would be easy enough to track and bust the pornographers they complain about all the time if that is what they really wanted, and could easily run terrorists off the internet if at any stage that had been part of the plan. Why did they choose not to when they had the means?

I believe the answer lies in a long game, a game of strategy. Remember, the best prisons are those where the inmates don't see the bars. Remember too that subversive behaviour adds to public disquiet. Public disquiet erodes resistance to the idea of surrendering ourselves to the state, the same state that is gradually withdrawing police protection in order to create the conditions it plans to profit from, and which will then proceed to offer what it should have provided all along, but on harsher terms and at far greater personal cost.

Sorry to bang on chaps! I'll be good in future, I promise.