Sad, on this day, when we celebrate (or mourn, depending on your frame of reference) the death of a humble carpenter who also came into conflict with the authorities.
Lyra McKee shot dead on Good Friday
Irish investigative journalist Lyra McKee was shot dead today, Good Friday, 2019. She was named Sky News Young Journalist of the Year in 2006. Her last message to the world before being murdered was a tweet describing the local Derry rioting as "absolute madness."
Police believe dissident right-wing group the New NRA are responsible for her death. Another disheartening sign of the times, hot on the heals of Julian Assange's forcible arrest from the Ecuadorian Embassy. Facebook has also been observed deleting hundreds of alternative news accounts who were engaging in "inauthentic behavior" in the last year.
Once freedom of speech is gone, all other freedoms are soon gone with it. Most people in the west take freedom of speech for granted, believing we cannot lose these freedoms once they are entrenched in society. Meanwhile, all digital communication is recorded and archived for perusal by a multitude of intelligence agencies and whoever else has access.
Sad, on this day, when we celebrate (or mourn, depending on your frame of reference) the death of a humble carpenter who also came into conflict with the authorities for his sharp denunciation of their political and religious policies. Dissidence has it's price.
As Voltaire is quoted as saying, "To know who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." In the days of Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish religious leaders guarded their power fiercely, controlling the people with draconian religious rituals and ceremoniousness.
In our day and age, the control freaks in power use technology and media to obscure, deflect, manipulate and confuse the issues until it's often impossible to know what's really going on. All you have to do to control a population is to control the debate...what we discuss is steered by the media every day.
Joshua ben Joseph taught another way of life that supersedes the controllers. Men may crush you and take away your freedoms but the true freedom is found in the life in the spirit. Following the eternal impulse, the still small voice, allows the things of this life to grow strangely dim. Seek first the family of heaven and all other things necessary will be found within the quest.
Lyra did a TED talk in which she addressed young LGBTQ people. “It gets better,” she says. “It gets better for those of us who live long enough to see it get better.”
**update - UK police have arrested two teenage men in connection with the shooting.
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