”FBI! Drop that Keyboard!!”
Vol: 124 Issue: 21 Saturday, January 21, 2012
The massive protests across the Internet by pretty much everybody that knows anything at all about cyberspace forced Congress to indefinitely postpone pending legislation known by their acronyms of SOPA and PIPA.
The very next day, the United States Justice Department moved against a major file-sharing privacy site called “Megaupload.” It would appear that if ever there was a site that was deliberately and openly pirating copyrighted material, it would be this one.
The website was structured and designed to reward people for illegally uploading copyrighted material by giving such uploaders access to other copyrighted material already on site. But we aren’t talking about the accidental or inadvertent upload of a news photo or an interesting news report.
Megaupload was designed specifically for the purpose of uploading copyrighted music and movies in violation of those “FBI Warning” screens that come on every time you play a DVD.
“The site of the Hong Kong-based company was shut down, and the founder and three employees were arrested in New Zealand on U.S. accusations that they facilitated millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content, costing copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. New Zealand police raided homes and businesses linked to the founder, Kim Dotcom, on Friday and seized guns, millions of dollars and nearly $5 million in luxury cars, officials there said.”
All that seems well and good. If it is illegal in the United States to share copies of a movie or music file, then it is illegal. That is what the FBI was created for. To enforce federal law without regard to state boundaries.
But, without expressing an iota of sympathy for the defendants, this is different. And scary.
The site’s founder, known as Kim Dotcom, is a citizen of Norway whose business was located in Hong Kong. He was arrested in New Zealand based on a US warrant. The other defendants were also citizens of various countries, not including the US, Hong Kong or New Zealand.
Before going forward, let me say that I am all for law enforcement. It is a good thing. But even a good thing can be used for bad purposes. Power granted is never rescinded and how it is used depends entirely upon who is in power.
If a Norwegian can be arrested in New Zealand by the FBI because his file servers in Hong Kong violated domestic US copyright law, it gives one pause.
Today it is copyright law. Tomorrow, it could be hate speech.
Assessment:
Gradualism: The belief in, or the policy of, advancing towards a goal by gradual, often slow steps.
Bible prophecy depicts society under the antichrist not too much differently than George Orwell depicted his fictional society under Big Brother.
My own suspicion is that George Orwell, a celebrated atheist, simply ripped off the plot from Revelation and then renamed and fleshed out some of the leading players.
In both stories, society is centrally-controlled by a single, all-powerful authority figure who controlled every aspect of an individual’s life. Orwell’s famous 1948 novel “1984” envisioned a near-future America run by an ubiquitous national leader called ‘Big Brother’.
In his book, “double speak” is the expression of two contrary ideas — one a lie, the other true — being simultaneously and equally accepted by the mind.
In its modern, post-1984 incarnation, ‘doublespeak’ has become synonymous with ‘propaganda’ although its primary application is generally known as ‘political correctness’ — which is another extreme example of double-speak in action.
Politics’ as used as a verb, means, “Political attitudes and positions.” How can something be defined as ‘politically correct’ when the very definition of politics means what is ‘correct’ to one person is the EXACT OPPOSITE to another?
Roe v. Wade was the judicial fiction that brought the Constitution to life, and through its supporters, created the monster that the Constitution has become.
It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that the ‘living document’ fiction was clearly articulated as a political reality by one of the great political fiction writers of our time, Al Gore.
During his failed 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore admitted that,
“I would look for justices of the Supreme Court who understand that our Constitution is a living and breathing document, that it was intended by our founders to be interpreted in the light of the constantly evolving experience of the American people.”
By this time, ‘doublespeak’ had become so much a part of the fabric of American society that Al Gore could chant ‘every vote should count’, while simultaneously battling in the courts to suppress votes he didn’t think would count for HIM, and do so with a straight face.
“Copyright” noun: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work)
(We’ll get back to that later.)
If the ‘right to abortion’ were put through the amendment process, the polls all say it would most certainly fail. Hence, the ‘living document’ doctrine replaces the Constitutional process and the impartial judiciary becomes as mythical as the Constitutional rights guaranteed by a politically incorrect and therefore non-existent Creator.
The same applies to the newly-discovered Constitutional ‘right’ to ‘marriage’. A Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage would mirror the Congressional-mandated ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ — which has also been passed by the legislatures of enough states to guarantee passage of a Constitutional amendment forever banning gay marriage.
The newly-discovered Constitutional ‘right’ to freedom FROM religion, banning any mention of God, the Bible, or such ‘religious indoctrination materials’ as the Ten Commandments, prohibits the 74% or so of Americans who claim to be Christians from exercising the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religious expression.
The criminalization of civil copyright laws means that the government can shut down or stifle any website, without due process, effectively controlling internet speech, shredding the guarantees granted by the Fourth Amendment.
Gradually, our God-given rights are being scaled back whenever they interfere with the government-granted rights of others. And gradually, we are learning to accept it as ok.
A copyright is a legal right granted by civil law. The government has gradually come to believe that enforcing civil law supersedes the individual, God-given right to privacy and due process. And just as gradually, we have come to agree with it.
The government has shredded parts of the Constitution in its global war on terror, going so far as to claim the right to kill American citizens without due process. But that was war and many Americans are willing to overlook government excesses in the effort to protect its citizens.
In my mind’s eye, I always pictured the world under antichrist as a little like life in Nazi Germany, with people afraid to speak truth to power, kids informing on their parents at school, the masses being indoctrinated by government-sponsored propaganda, etc.
But I could never make that picture work when I tried to picture it in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Gradually, one baby step at a time, the barriers that protected us from such a fate have been quietly removed.
In studying the prophecies of the last days, we find national representatives of Israel, national representatives of the Gentile world, national representatives of the Islamic world, (Gog-Magog Alliance, for example) but no existing national representatives of Christianity.
And no suggestion of a national superpower resembling America.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about what he called a ‘mystery’. In Scripture, a ‘mystery’ is a new revelation from God.
In arguing against the heresy that there is no resurrection from the dead, Paul writes;
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53)
In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul explained that the Church was to; “wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the WRATH TO COME.” (1 Thessalonians 1:10)
“For this we say unto you BY THE WORD OF THE LORD, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)
Following Jesus’ Seven Letters to the Seven Churches in the first three chapters of the Book of the Revelation, beginning in Revelation 4:1 we read;
“After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, COME UP HITHER, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.”
The Church is never again mentioned. Christians from that point forward are ‘Tribulation Saints’ — all of whom, it seems, are martyred.
Something has to explain the absence of the United States as a major player from the final hours of human history.
At this point in history, there are dozens of ways one can reasonably guess America could collapse as a global power, from America’s spiritual civil war to Islamic terrorism to economic implosion and absorption by the coming global government.
Or we could simply hear “Come up hither!”
Omegaletter 