🚀 go-pugleaf

>Shutting up the religious crackpots is a great idea. Merkins shouldn't be
>preaching anti-censorship to the rest of us, seeing it was Exon and the CDA
>that has allowed this obscenity to get off the ground in so many countries.
   You know that's not true.  What got it started is that *all*
governments exercise as much control as possible over the political
discussions that people are exposed to, so as to keep them ignorant and
compliant.  This was absolutely inevitable as the Internet increased in
size, much as the Tiananmen massacre became inevitable when the Chinese
working people, rather than just students, began to listen to what the
demonstrators were saying.  What *all* governments want is for you to
only hear the television version of the news --- not the news as seen by
those who might want (for instance) to *legalize* rather than to
*decriminalize* drugs, or indeed, who want anything outside the very
narrow set of issues upon which debate occurs in the legislative bodies.
   The very practice of government is fundamentally based on force and
deception and ignorance; and censorship is a deceiving method of forcing
people to remain ignorant.

>>   However, I continue to take issue with the notion that children are
>>best kept ignorant.  Maybe it would be easier to swallow if the stuff
>>they censored was stuff like war footage and Holocaust films. 
>What a load of rubbish. That's the sort of censorship that will lead to
>another war and another Holocaust. How stupid can you get?
   You're misunderstanding.  I would agree with you on that --- but what
I'm saying is that there is material, like films of concentration camps,
that a child cannot possibly be prepared for in advance, because he is
simply not capable of imagining anything so horrible.  A child should
certainly have support from his parents when first finding out about this
stuff.  But we can live with them being legal, and the fact that other,
much less traumatic things, are to be subjected to sanctions, should be
the proof that the governments care NOTHING about your child, and
*everything* about simply grabbing as many hand-holds as they can find
whilst trying to get their hands around Internet's neck and strangle it
to death before it can kill them.

>So why is the religious right banning the teaching of evolution in merka, 
>*again*?
   They don't do it very effectively, but presumably it's a publicity
stunt.  Hell, it's just as well... can you imagine what a fundamentalist
christian would like to do in terms of designing drug-resistant HIV
strains?  KEEP them working in the convenience stores.  (no, maybe I
don't really mean this, but a person can get infuriated...)

>Not so. They are using the 'protect the kids' slogan as a way to stop anything
>*they* don't want. Wake up!
Geeez Louuiiise people start flaming people who agree with them
sometimes...

>You sound like a minor, who is lashing out at us, for what the CDA is doing
>to you. If that is the case, get into some of the anti-CDA groups, and
>do something constructive. Oz-bashing is *not* constructive, and can be
>extremely counter-productive.
   Believe it or not, I was NOT Oz-bashing, except in making a crack
concerning your lack of a free speech amendment.  On the other hand, the
U.S. lacks a free speech amendment; I mean, we have one, but in 1917 the
Supreme Court added "... except in the case of a compelling state
interest."  at the end of it, and now it's pretty much up to their sense
of humor which way any given ruling goes.
   As for saying that I'm a minor because I believe in a minor's right to
free speech, well, I've seen that said before of me, with "minor"
replaced by "bestialist", "THIEF", "pedophile", "drug addict", and
"terrorist".  It's not a very convincing argument (though somehow a comic
strip based on the exploits of a drug-addicted 10-year-old "pedophile"
(oooh she's only 16!) thief who goes around committing acts of terror and
seducing German shepherds could actually be pretty funny!)
   Is it childish to be angered by censorship, and unwilling to let some
committee decide what people ought to be allowed to see?  Maybe.  There
are qualities of childishness, like ignorance and inability to explain
oneself, that are negative, and others, like not being addicted to
smoking or alcohol, and being negative for HIV and herpes, that are
positive.  The acceptance of censorious control over one's speech and
inquiry is an example of something like a disease, that is negative in
character.  To be "childish" and demand ALL rights to free speech for
everyone, is simply the uninfected condition.  It must be preserved, and
where it has been lost, it must be restored.

>Are you *trying* to divide the Net community here, or is that just a bonus?
   It's just a bonus.  It is, however, inevitable:  in every movement
toward freedom or to preserve it, there are always moderates and
radicals, and it is always a challenge to maintain a balance between
allowing the moderates to give away everything without seeming to have
the slightest clue of what it means, and getting into such a fight with
them that it decreases the effectiveness of the movement.  I apologize if
anything that I've said has brought us near that second division; I
reserve, however, the right to advocate unlimited free speech for
everyone, about everything, in every forum.