The PR Blog

When I was a lad, life was simpler, harder yet straightforward and honest. As the world is flooded with newfangled gadgetry and newfangled woke spoke, I find myself looking back on the post war years with a strange regret. Life is so newfangled that it is a complex place of ever-increasing innovation, and gratitude for the simple things in life is a far distant memory. We should consider how imprisoned we have become in this newfangled world which has rewarded us with so much and yet taken even more by stealth.

As our freedom of movement, speech and even thought is being slowly but surely stolen from us, I feel as though we are under some kind of intoxicating drug of newfangledness imposed by the nerds at the behest of their hidden masters, and I fear that this stupour which has overtaken us, may lead us to craving its comforting numbness,  and to forgetting what we had in times gone by before we woke up into perpetual slumber.

When nations all over the world are being led by idiots, fools and people in ivory towers, laws enforced by over zealous generals and troops all too eager to do the government's bidding.......  it seems timely to look at what went wrong and consider a bit of deja vu. 

People Power. Being slowly destroyed by governments all over the world. The right and ability to fight back. 

It was the militia who won the American Revolutionary War ...... no wonder the American government wants to get rid of the guns and the right to form a militia. And it is a tragedy that in so many Nations they have already succeeded. 

Without the right to form a militia, the people have a very reduced power to fight back against a " perceived"  government overbearance.... 

How many of you have visited a cemetery lately? Wandered among the graves of people long past and long forgotten? The tombstones crumbling and the weeds sprouting up in a place that looks neglected, unloved and of no matter? 

After watching the presidential debate in America, I have to feel that we are witnessing the fight between the War Graves and the Civilian Graves throughout the world: except, we have one candidate who wants to keep everything from yesterday well tended and cared for, and another who is happy to see us all sink into neglect, decay and misery. 

In my opinion, President Trump is all for taking care of things. President Biden is all for letting the grave robbers in. For myself, I am no fan of grave robbers who seek to hijack our past in order to import people who have no love for our nations so that our "leaders "  can get votes. It somehow seems ghoulish to me. 

We have seen the return of Julian Assange to his land of birth. the conversation here is divided.... hero or traitor?  And it got me thinking about people who have done things and how history will remember them.  For myself, I believe that Julian Assange is not and never was a traitor.  He was a truth teller, who, unfortunately, ruffled the wrong feathers along the way. 

We may never know the full truth, but one thing is certain: a coerced guilty plea is no different to a coerced vaccine.  No one made you take it. Yes, sure..... unless you wanted to keep your job, your home and feed your family. 

In my opinion, his plea of guilty is no more than a tired and lonely man who was offered an opportunity to join his wife and children, be reunited with his father and all he did was agree to something, anything, in order to be free. 

Today, I want to look at what a traitor is and highlight how easily we can leap to conclusions ...........................

Vietnam is proof that Adam Smith had the formula right: free markets are the key to defeating poverty.

Phung Xuan Vu was just eight years old when he accompanied his brother to the food distribution center. His belly hurt from hunger, and he was anxious—filled with worry that he would lose his food voucher or be chastened by the officials distributing food.

“The officials were not friendly. They were bossy and had power,” Vu recalled decades later. “We felt that we had to beg for food that was rightfully ours.”

Vu’s family was poor, but not by local standards. They owned a bicycle, something not all families in Vietnam could say. Yet waiting for hours for food was difficult.

In the book The Bridge Generation of Viet Nam: Spanning Wartime to Boomtime, Vu recalled how schoolchildren, weak and thirsty, would wait hours on end in the heat for food rations only to get cheated by officials, who would mix rocks in with the rice to fool the scales.

“That made us angry, but we could not fight or argue with the officials,” Vu told authors Nancy Napier and Dau Thuy Ha. “What could we do, as children?”

WikiLeaks released a statement which said Assange was en route to Australia.

"Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there," the statement published to X on Tuesday morning (Australian time) said.

"He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK."

About bloody time! 

One thing that I am wondering however, is the timing. Why now? just before the British elections? Before the first presidential debate? Just when Australian Labor is in its death throes? Call me cynical but I feel that this is a political move.

But I am sure that when he touches down in Australia, he will kiss the tarmac. But so much to ask and so much to understand. And what was the plea deal about? Keep quiet and you can be free?  If that was " the deal ", who could blame him? 

Think on this: " ... once telling the truth has become a crime, we will all be living in tyranny.”