athloi writes "A report entitled 'Governing the Internet,' was issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The document, which highlights the increasing environment of internet 'policing' around the world, characterized the practice as 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes -- democracies and dictatorships alike -- seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.' From the article: 'The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era "spy mania," and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online. Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of "dirt" and "lies."'"
Technorati simply banned my site. Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog, and when that wasn't enough, they simply had Blogger delete the blog.
No kiddie porn, no copyright violations, not even libel. Critical of America over the war on drugs and Israel over the war on terror though? You bet.
The posts that triggered this orgy of censorship saw me positing the likelihood that Israel had nuclear weapons forward-deployed in other nations. Shortly after the second post in the series, Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who blew the whistle on their nuke program, got arrested again. It would seem as though there are some subjects Israel would rather we didn't discuss. I guess I can understand that, but since when does Israel get to control what I can or can't say?
They want to pretend censorship like this is only taking place in places like China. That's bullshit. It's happening here in America and with ever increasing frequency.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- Johnn F. Kennedy
The important difference here is that google and technorati aren't governments, nor were their actions mandated by the government. I mean, it sucks for you that google doesn't like you, but it isn't the government's fault.
In the age where the constitution was drafted corporations were like little fluffy chivavas compared to the mountainlike power of the government. In today's age megacorporations bear a lot of power. Technically it is not a violation of the constitution* if a corporation picks and chooses content and exercises censorship, but it is censorship nonetheless, just _legal_ one.
*Didn't want an argument sidetracked by a lengthy definition, by violation of the constitution I mean the US constitution, and similar d
The difficulty is that different corporations wield a lot of power in different ways. No one is complaining that 3M is censoring people, but Google and other media and/or advertising companies are going to come up against that accusation a great deal. We need to be able, for reasons of oversight and policy, to better define corporations and what they are and are not allowed to do. If we see it as necessary to prevent broadcast companies from portraying images of naked people, or not have audible swear words
To extend parent's point: Yell "Bomb" in an airport, "Shooter" at a presidential speech, or "Fire" in a theater and see how far the first amendment gets you.
you are entitled to your opinion, but there is a line, that once crossed puts you in dangerous waters. -nB
The thing about free speech, as protected by the US Constitution, is that it only protects you against the government (not private or public businesses) and it doesn't guarantee you a forum. If the US government chose to censor your blog, that's against the constitution. If Google decided that they don't want your blog on their Blogger service, that's completely within their rights to do and is not a violation of free speech. Without knowing why Google decided to remove your blog (did the Israeli government really pressure them?), there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
That said, you can still say what you want. You just need to find another forum. Find a web hoster that's sympathetic to your cause (meaning they won't drop you) and host your blog there.
The thing about free speech, as protected by the US Constitution, is that it only protects you against the government
Actually, it only stops congress from passing laws against free speech. The constitution doesn't say anything about law enforcement officials enforcing laws not passed by congress - hello Gonzales loophole!
Why not host your own blog on your own server? I mean sure, you're still subject to the possibility that your ISP may block your server if you get labeled as a "terrorist" or "dissident", but you'd likely have more control over your site (even in terms of what ads, if any, you wanted to serve on your site). Pick up a second-hand computer, install your favorite distro and have a go. If you do, try Thingamablog [sourceforge.net], I love it.
That reminds me of the infamous Bonsai Kitten Website fiasco where a university student did a farcical Website "selling" Bonsai Kitten paraphernalia. The site got banned from just about every hosting company that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) found out about, and the FBI even investigated the site and the people behind it. PETA actually wanted the people behind the site arrested.
It doesn't really matter what you publish; if it is popular enough and there is an Interest Group that doesn't like it then it will likely be censored. If a Website author is rich, then there will be more options, but most people would likely just give up. And if the site was political and controversial, then there may be government "hate crimes" to deal with, blocking from censorware, etc. There is no easy solution to dealing with censorship. If Google just decides it's easier for them to not list the site in their search engine then they will not list it, which makes the site unavailable to those who are not already aware of it.
One solution would be Freenet, but that too is only available to those who know about it and make the effort to install the software and find the proper "keys" to access the site. Freenet too can also be hampered by legislation in Western countries. The same with Tor and the Onion Network. Tor is rather easy to censor since the IP addresses of the proxies are easily available http://proxy.org/faq.shtml [proxy.org].
And there are always the un-brave who just give up trying to say anything in the first place. When one has to worry about SLAPP (unjustified lawsuits to silence people), Law Enforcement (the war on terror, drugs, think-of-the-children, think-of-the-pets), Special Interest Groups, the PC (Politically Correct) crowd, employers data-mining their employees (or potential employees), even DDoS and "hackers" / crackers; self-censorship is probably more prevalent than people realize. Words, ideas, pictures, humour, and just about every form of communication can be seen as dangerous. The Internet was once a relatively easy way to express oneself, but it is getting harder all the time. ISPs are even finding ways to censor P2P traffic that is designed to obfuscate itself.
The only real solution to censorship is to change the attitudes of the people who have the authority and control to influence the Tubes. Since these people are mainly politicians (like Ted Stevens) who are largely ignorant of the technology they legislate and who could care less about the social dynamics of freedom (beyond their own narrow paradigms), the future does not look bright for an unbridled flow of (uncensored) information.
Technorati simply banned my site. Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog, and when that wasn't enough, they simply had Blogger delete the blog.
Could you post the relevant content here, so we could look at it ourselves? Given the OP, I don't think it would be off-topic.
OK. The formatting is going to suck though... M.A.D. R.I.P.
(If you haven't already done so, please read the Iranian nuke vs. Israeli nuke post [blogspot.com], you can consider this post to be a continuation and/or expansion of the points made therein.)
M.A.D. of course stands for Mutual Assured Destruction. It is what passes for sanity these days in international affairs. That said, it is also enjoying over a half-century of success. M.A.D. is the policy that justifies the nuclear arsenals bein
Please don't mod the parent post down -- I asked him to post his content here so we could take a look at it and better evaluate his claims. I actually disagree with his claims and his viewpoint, but he shouldn't be penalized for what I asked him to do.
It would probably help if you didn't say things like "The racist Jews at The New York Times simply desire to preserve what little credibility they have remaining..." (Ironically, your blog is still cached [72.14.253.104] by Google.)
You come very close to stepping over the line from "anti-Zionist" to fundamentalist racist in that sentence.
You come very close to stepping over the line from "anti-Zionist" to fundamentalist racist in that sentence.
I suppost a construct like fundamentalist racist could mean something, but the closest I've come up with is in the present context is that it refers to someone who is an American Protestant belonging to one of the more vocal denominations drawing unfair distinctions of Africans who have converted to Judaism.
As for the line, I don't know where yours is drawn, but mine is drawn at the intersection betwe
As for the line, I don't know where yours is drawn, but mine is drawn at the intersection between words meaning something, and the use of slogans, catchprases, propaganda and cliches.
Attacking my ideas is one thing. Attacking my vocabulary is another... usually means someone has no argument to present.
Let me do some dictionary work for you. From the OED [oed.com]:
fundamentalism ...
b. In other religions, esp. Islam, a strict adherence to ancient or fundamental doctrines, with no concessions to modern developments in thought or customs.
So fundamentalist, an adherent of fundamentalism; also, an economic or political doctrinaire...
Also from the OED:
doctrinaire, n. (a.) ...
2.... One who holds some doctrine or theory which he tries to apply without sufficient regard to practical considerations; a pedantic theorist.
It would probably help if you didn't say things like "The racist Jews at The New York Times simply desire to preserve what little credibility they have remaining..."
It is not racist to claim that a group of people not primarily selected by their race, is racist as you imply. If a high-profile paper in Sweden claimed that Sweden was the homeland for the aryans, then that would be racist. It would select one race (or ethnicity) -- indegenous, non-Saami, blue-eyed blonde Swedes -- and exclude other ethnicit
They want to pretend censorship like this is only taking place in places like China. That's bullshit. It's happening here in America and with ever increasing frequency.
I'm glad, your Israel-bashing was bashed back into whence it came from (more detailed anatomy would be off-topic). This censorship does not bother me at all — and not because I support Israel's right to exist, but because the policy of censorship itself can be discussed freely.
On contrast, Chinese censorship is self-perpetuating (or
It's possible that your blog was deleted because it was viewed by blogger as promoting "racial hatred". You many many references to the "racist Jews at The New York Times", and you claim that Technocrati blocked you because the founder and CEO is jewish, and it's all part of some zionist plot against you. Don't get me wrong. I think it's ridiculous that they would delete your blog too, but you shouldn't say that the reason they did it was because you took a hard and verbal stance against the war on drugs/t
Umm...? Actually that's not at all oxymoronic, even in spirit. I don't tihnk "oxymoronic" means what you think it means. One can certainly have good intentions and perform an ultimately "bad" act.
Censorship is not bad per se. There are already laws against child porn, bomb-making instructions and nuclear launch codes being shared with the world.
So censorship can indeed me good, as long as we save it for only the absolutely-worst things.
If only there were a report that warned against "well-meaning" acts to force people to do (or not do) things against their will in general. That would be cool.
Forcing people to act against their own interests is bad in general. Especially when it's sold as "well-meaning". Censorship is no exception.
you can't entirely shield people from themselves (ie, the thoughts of their fellow citizens). the internet is just a powerful way to do what people do anyways whenever and whereever they congregate: gossip and pass rumors therefore, it would be more cost effective to censor nothing on the internet, and merely coopt it for your own purposes. pump out your own rumors and lies anonymously, effectively swamping out any anonymous sources of the "truth" with too much noise to get a good signal. people won't know w
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 27 2007, @02:52PM (#20015403)
...and all those other supposedly good things you want without getting the bad interference and ubiqitious filtering, you are fooling yourself.
The internet was much better when it was the wild west. If fact, it is over. We are getting the do-gooders and know-betters running the show, and it is game over, either with dems or reps in charge (excluding Ron Paul who won't win). Our internet will be turned into a PC, child-safe surburb unless we move on to some new dark network.
No, HTTP is over. Maybe even SMTP and POP. But I can guarantee that if I (or anyone else) popularizes MUPOTDP (My Ubiquitous Protocol Of The Day Protocol) and there's an Apache module and a client app ("browser") for it, the party is back on. And when the nannies find it, we'll just define YAANP (Yet Another Anti-Nanny Protocol) and an Apache module and a client and all is well and good.
The nannyists are driving the world toward protocol-spam. Sooner or later, they will have to concede defeat, as a means wil
I think it is interesting how there is no mention of western european censorship: Hate speach (France etc...), Holocaust Denial (Germany etc...) We may not like what people say, and may even wish they couldn't say it, but censoring it is wrong. If this commision isn't equally as worried about that, then they are really just trying to look good by identifying the faults of others, rather than effecting change.
I work with an international governance watchdog, Global Integrity ( http://www.globalintegrity.org/ [globalintegrity.org] ), and anecdotally we're seeing a marked increase in online censorship being reported, under democracies and dictators both, even since we started looking at this in 2004. It's like the anti-democracy elements of the world just now figured out how to do this in earnest. We've just begun tracking the issue rigorously this year - we'll let Slashdot know when that report comes out.
A criminal bureaucracy will just harass you until they get what they want -- your money generally. Once they have your money and you're broke, they'll just make sure you toe the line, but otherwise they'll let you be because they recon they cannot get blood from a turnip. It's called a kleptocracy and it's very common now and in History. You are more than welcome to practice warfare against them because it's fair game to try to throw down a dictatorship of thugs.
But the absolute worst nightmare is a bureaucracy of well-meaning weenies, always concerned about your own well-being, sometimes genuinely. Those won't stop harassing you, ever. They know what's good for you. They know you're too dumb to survive without them. And they know that they need to constantly babysit you from cradle to grave. There is no way to get them to stop. You cannot throw money at them to have them leave you alone, because they want you to be happy. Of course, they'll make you miserable. They are the nannycrats.
We are clearly in that case here. And you know the cinch? When nannycrats get ousted, they are surprised, nay, shocked that people don't want their overbearing, crushing attention.
Beware of people who want to make you happy in spite of yourself. Gimme a thug anytime over a nannycrat.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-C.S. Lewis
..about the secret blocklists that are in use in at least Sweden and Finland. In Finland it is to be used against child porn and everyone swore that the lists would not be used for anything else.. until suddenly someone wanted to block out foreign poker sites. Sigh... Atleast in Kazahstan you know.
And this may be obvious to others but it just occurred to me. Hasn't most trouble, pain, and suffering in the world been caused by movements which "have vowed to purge"?
I'm an athiest, and I used to think that it was religion that caused most of the trouble, pain, and suffering. But I have to admit that athiest regimes have just as much blood on their hands. Then I started chalking it up to human nature (which it may be) but that's not a very useful distinction, what with not being a distinction at all. Recently I've started thinking that it is the idea that we must "cleanse" or "fix" things that is the cause of most evil. The idea that if we could only rid the world of a certain type of person or activity then we'd be much better off. I think that is the flag that indicates trouble. And people of all beliefs and political positions can get into this mindset.
Of course, I have to watch myself as it becomes easy to want to rid the world of people who "vow to purge", which makes me another monster. Instead I try to remind myself I can stand up in opposition to such a thing without trying to purge it. I don't want to kill or dethrone the leader of Kazakhstan, I just don't want him to go after people or their expression in attempt to cleanse things. All things have muddy gray edges, and there are cases where I'm sure this yardstick won't work perfectly. But whenever I find myself saying "the world would be a better place if we could only rid the world of these people..." I stop and check myself.
Anyways, just thought I'd mention it. I think that the ideal world is achieved by not worrying so much about trying to make the ideal world, and just doing your best and enjoying life and letting others do the same.
Lots of this going around (Score:4, Interesting)
No kiddie porn, no copyright violations, not even libel. Critical of America over the war on drugs and Israel over the war on terror though? You bet.
The posts that triggered this orgy of censorship saw me positing the likelihood that Israel had nuclear weapons forward-deployed in other nations. Shortly after the second post in the series, Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who blew the whistle on their nuke program, got arrested again. It would seem as though there are some subjects Israel would rather we didn't discuss. I guess I can understand that, but since when does Israel get to control what I can or can't say?
They want to pretend censorship like this is only taking place in places like China. That's bullshit. It's happening here in America and with ever increasing frequency.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- Johnn F. Kennedy
--
Censored [blogspot.com] by [blogspot.com] Technorati [blogspot.com] and now, Blogger too! [blogspot.com]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
We certainly know they censor content when China asks them to.
Why wouldn't they do the same when the U.S. Government asks the same?
--
Censored [blogspot.com] by [blogspot.com] Technorati [blogspot.com] and now, Blogger too! [blogspot.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My money's on the secret Hawaiian Kingship and their plans to expand over the USA
-nB
Re: (Score:2)
*Didn't want an argument sidetracked by a lengthy definition, by violation of the constitution I mean the US constitution, and similar d
Oversight and Categorization (Score:2, Insightful)
The difficulty is that different corporations wield a lot of power in different ways. No one is complaining that 3M is censoring people, but Google and other media and/or advertising companies are going to come up against that accusation a great deal. We need to be able, for reasons of oversight and policy, to better define corporations and what they are and are not allowed to do. If we see it as necessary to prevent broadcast companies from portraying images of naked people, or not have audible swear words
Re: (Score:2)
Yell "Bomb" in an airport, "Shooter" at a presidential speech, or "Fire" in a theater and see how far the first amendment gets you.
you are entitled to your opinion, but there is a line, that once crossed puts you in dangerous waters.
-nB
Re:Lots of this going around (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about free speech, as protected by the US Constitution, is that it only protects you against the government (not private or public businesses) and it doesn't guarantee you a forum. If the US government chose to censor your blog, that's against the constitution. If Google decided that they don't want your blog on their Blogger service, that's completely within their rights to do and is not a violation of free speech. Without knowing why Google decided to remove your blog (did the Israeli government really pressure them?), there's not a whole lot you can do about it.
That said, you can still say what you want. You just need to find another forum. Find a web hoster that's sympathetic to your cause (meaning they won't drop you) and host your blog there.
Parent
Re:Lots of this going around (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it only stops congress from passing laws against free speech. The constitution doesn't say anything about law enforcement officials enforcing laws not passed by congress - hello Gonzales loophole!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Lots of this going around (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me of the infamous Bonsai Kitten Website fiasco where a university student did a farcical Website "selling" Bonsai Kitten paraphernalia. The site got banned from just about every hosting company that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) found out about, and the FBI even investigated the site and the people behind it. PETA actually wanted the people behind the site arrested.
It doesn't really matter what you publish; if it is popular enough and there is an Interest Group that doesn't like it then it will likely be censored. If a Website author is rich, then there will be more options, but most people would likely just give up. And if the site was political and controversial, then there may be government "hate crimes" to deal with, blocking from censorware, etc. There is no easy solution to dealing with censorship. If Google just decides it's easier for them to not list the site in their search engine then they will not list it, which makes the site unavailable to those who are not already aware of it.
One solution would be Freenet, but that too is only available to those who know about it and make the effort to install the software and find the proper "keys" to access the site. Freenet too can also be hampered by legislation in Western countries. The same with Tor and the Onion Network. Tor is rather easy to censor since the IP addresses of the proxies are easily available http://proxy.org/faq.shtml [proxy.org].
And there are always the un-brave who just give up trying to say anything in the first place. When one has to worry about SLAPP (unjustified lawsuits to silence people), Law Enforcement (the war on terror, drugs, think-of-the-children, think-of-the-pets), Special Interest Groups, the PC (Politically Correct) crowd, employers data-mining their employees (or potential employees), even DDoS and "hackers" / crackers; self-censorship is probably more prevalent than people realize. Words, ideas, pictures, humour, and just about every form of communication can be seen as dangerous. The Internet was once a relatively easy way to express oneself, but it is getting harder all the time. ISPs are even finding ways to censor P2P traffic that is designed to obfuscate itself.
The only real solution to censorship is to change the attitudes of the people who have the authority and control to influence the Tubes. Since these people are mainly politicians (like Ted Stevens) who are largely ignorant of the technology they legislate and who could care less about the social dynamics of freedom (beyond their own narrow paradigms), the future does not look bright for an unbridled flow of (uncensored) information.
References:
http://www.shorty.com/bonsaikitten/bkgallery.html [shorty.com] (Bonsai Kitten mirror)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten [wikipedia.org]
http://freenetproject.org/ [freenetproject.org]
http://tor.eff.org/ [eff.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Better act now (Score:4, Funny)
...
Yet.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Could you post the relevant content here, so we could look at it ourselves? Given the OP, I don't think it would be off-topic.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
M.A.D. R.I.P.
(If you haven't already done so, please read the Iranian nuke vs. Israeli nuke post [blogspot.com], you can consider this post to be a continuation and/or expansion of the points made therein.)
M.A.D. of course stands for Mutual Assured Destruction.
It is what passes for sanity these days in international affairs. That
said, it is also enjoying over a half-century of success. M.A.D. is the
policy that justifies the nuclear arsenals bein
Re: (Score:2)
Signed: the world.
Please don't mod parent down (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
war on terror, well... the day might come where it's really going to
suck to be you.
Read the rest of this comment...
The REST? DAMN, DUDE - you weren't censored for political incorrectness, they removed you for filling up all the disks on their servers!
Re:Lots of this going around (Score:5, Insightful)
You come very close to stepping over the line from "anti-Zionist" to fundamentalist racist in that sentence.
Parent
Re:Lots of this going around (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Lots of this going around (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I suppost a construct like fundamentalist racist could mean something, but the closest I've come up with is in the present context is that it refers to someone who is an American Protestant belonging to one of the more vocal denominations drawing unfair distinctions of Africans who have converted to Judaism.
As for the line, I don't know where yours is drawn, but mine is drawn at the intersection betwe
Re: (Score:2)
Attacking my ideas is one thing. Attacking my vocabulary is another... usually means someone has no argument to present.
Let me do some dictionary work for you. From the OED [oed.com]:
fundamentalism
...
b. In other religions, esp. Islam, a strict adherence to ancient or fundamental doctrines, with no concessions to modern developments in thought or customs.
So fundamentalist, an adherent of fundamentalism; also, an economic or political doctrinaire...
Also from the OED:
doctrinaire, n. (a.)
... ... One who holds some doctrine or theory which he tries to apply without sufficient regard to practical considerations; a pedantic theorist.
2.
I'm sure you know what a racist is.
Re: (Score:2)
It is not racist to claim that a group of people not primarily selected by their race, is racist as you imply. If a high-profile paper in Sweden claimed that Sweden was the homeland for the aryans, then that would be racist. It would select one race (or ethnicity) -- indegenous, non-Saami, blue-eyed blonde Swedes -- and exclude other ethnicit
Re: (Score:2)
Could you elaborate on what you mean by Google "truncating links"?
Important difference in censorship (Score:2)
I'm glad, your Israel-bashing was bashed back into whence it came from (more detailed anatomy would be off-topic). This censorship does not bother me at all — and not because I support Israel's right to exist, but because the policy of censorship itself can be discussed freely.
On contrast, Chinese censorship is self-perpetuating (or
Re: (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong. I think it's ridiculous that they would delete your blog too, but you shouldn't say that the reason they did it was because you took a hard and verbal stance against the war on drugs/t
"Well-Meaning" Net Censorship? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So censorship can indeed me good, as long as we save it for only the absolutely-worst things.
Too specific (Score:5, Insightful)
Forcing people to act against their own interests is bad in general. Especially when it's sold as "well-meaning". Censorship is no exception.
Kazakhstan censoring negative reports (Score:4, Funny)
there's a machiavellian answer (Score:2)
therefore, it would be more cost effective to censor nothing on the internet, and merely coopt it for your own purposes. pump out your own rumors and lies anonymously, effectively swamping out any anonymous sources of the "truth" with too much noise to get a good signal. people won't know w
You think you get can-spam, net neturality... (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet was much better when it was the wild west. If fact, it is over. We are getting the do-gooders and know-betters running the show, and it is game over, either with dems or reps in charge (excluding Ron Paul who won't win). Our internet will be turned into a PC, child-safe surburb unless we move on to some new dark network.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But I can guarantee that if I (or anyone else) popularizes MUPOTDP (My Ubiquitous Protocol Of The Day Protocol) and there's an Apache module and a client app ("browser") for it, the party is back on. And when the nannies find it, we'll just define YAANP (Yet Another Anti-Nanny Protocol) and an Apache module and a client and all is well and good.
The nannyists are driving the world toward protocol-spam. Sooner or later, they will have to concede defeat, as a means wil
As proverb would have it... (Score:2)
This got me thinking. (Score:2)
Keep in mind (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Western Europe (Score:3, Interesting)
Increasingly common restrictions. (Score:3, Interesting)
Gimme a thug rather than well-meaning Big Brothers (Score:3, Insightful)
But the absolute worst nightmare is a bureaucracy of well-meaning weenies, always concerned about your own well-being, sometimes genuinely. Those won't stop harassing you, ever. They know what's good for you. They know you're too dumb to survive without them. And they know that they need to constantly babysit you from cradle to grave. There is no way to get them to stop. You cannot throw money at them to have them leave you alone, because they want you to be happy. Of course, they'll make you miserable. They are the nannycrats.
We are clearly in that case here. And you know the cinch? When nannycrats get ousted, they are surprised, nay, shocked that people don't want their overbearing, crushing attention.
Beware of people who want to make you happy in spite of yourself. Gimme a thug anytime over a nannycrat.
Tyranny (Score:3, Insightful)
More worried... (Score:2)
I've been thinking... (Score:3)
I'm an athiest, and I used to think that it was religion that caused most of the trouble, pain, and suffering. But I have to admit that athiest regimes have just as much blood on their hands. Then I started chalking it up to human nature (which it may be) but that's not a very useful distinction, what with not being a distinction at all. Recently I've started thinking that it is the idea that we must "cleanse" or "fix" things that is the cause of most evil. The idea that if we could only rid the world of a certain type of person or activity then we'd be much better off. I think that is the flag that indicates trouble. And people of all beliefs and political positions can get into this mindset.
Of course, I have to watch myself as it becomes easy to want to rid the world of people who "vow to purge", which makes me another monster. Instead I try to remind myself I can stand up in opposition to such a thing without trying to purge it. I don't want to kill or dethrone the leader of Kazakhstan, I just don't want him to go after people or their expression in attempt to cleanse things. All things have muddy gray edges, and there are cases where I'm sure this yardstick won't work perfectly. But whenever I find myself saying "the world would be a better place if we could only rid the world of these people..." I stop and check myself.
Anyways, just thought I'd mention it. I think that the ideal world is achieved by not worrying so much about trying to make the ideal world, and just doing your best and enjoying life and letting others do the same.
Cheers.
ALL censorship is "well-meaning" (Score:2)
It is not like the the censors are sitting somewhere rubbing their hands thinking, Ok, who am I gonna stick it to today...
They all mean well...
Re: (Score:2)