Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 1997 03:16:00 -0800
> From: Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
> 
> Jim Choate wrote:
> > 'We' shouldn't, it is their own country and it is up to their populace to
> > stop it. Do you really want Singapore or China having a say in how we run
> > our web? I certainly don't, and won't support any move to force any
> > particular view on them.
> 
>   And Germany was Hitler and the Nazi Party's own country.

And your point is? Are you equating a specific individual or organization
with Hitler or the National Socialist?

>   Do you really want Clinton and GingWretch having a say in how we run
> our

No, and I have a vote to express that sentiment with and a 'press' (ssz.com)
by which I may express my views irrelevant of how that vote may resolve
itself. If the people in those counties want to give away their freedom that
is their business (and right), not mine, yours, or this countries unless
there is evidence they are trying to take their views and impose them here.

Do you have said evidence? In reference to Hitler, had he stayed in his own 
country WWII and the ensuing half century of conflict would most likely not
have occured.

I say, let them filter themselves into economic collapse, intellectual
nihilism, and political suicide. Suicide, assissted or otherwise, is a right
any and all individuals have whether acting as individuals or as groups.
Remember Masada!

Never forget, a tree can exist without a forest but a forest can not exist
without trees. It is a one way street however much some people may want to
convince us otherwise.

>   It may be 'their' country ('their' being the government), but it is 
> 'their' world ('their' being the people).

A goverment is people. This reminds me of the argument of the sanctity of
law that so many people have. It is only ink on paper that people agree to
go along with until they get their fill. Consider, history is full of
examples of this process and with California and Massachusettes move on
legalizing medical marijuana we may be seeing the first move of a return to
states being much more adament on what they can and can't do (per the 9th and
10th).

> There was a reason that the 
> Western powers didn't return East Germans who broke the laws of their
> country by climbing over the wall and running for freedom.
>   Making information available does not 'force' a view on anyone.

If those people agree to support a system that limits or controls what
information they get to see that is their choice. It didn't work in Russia
and it won't work in Singapore or China any better. If the US were to
continue to press forward on oppressive legislation and the people don't do
anything actively to fight it the same thing will happen here, economic
collapse which forces a political collapse. However, we won't get there
because the more the government employees and officials 'crack down' the
more resistance they will get. You can fool most of the people some of the
time, some of the people most of the time, but you can't fool all the people
all the time.

The key to democratic success is not compromise but rather the unwillingness
to compromise.

> > Bull, the web was conceived so physicist and other researchers could share
> > data in a easily digestible format. 
> 
>   No. The internet was conceived so that the DOD could monitor the
> communications
> of physicists and researchers who thought it was awfully nice of the
> government
> to provide this wonderful method of sharing data and information.

The Web does not equal the Internet, straw man argument. The original goal
of the Internet was to allow computers to be connected in a nuclear conflict
and the period afterward when communications would be most critical. How
people may have bastardized it since then does not change the original
reasons (unless you accept revisionist history as a valid endeavour, I don't).

One of the biggest problems this country has right now is the inability of
people like yourself to differentiate the difference between the ideals of
the country and the people who impliment it. The problem is not the
government or the ideals it was founded on but rather the way we impliment
it. Our government is people, who put their pants on the same way you or I
do (assuming you wear pants that is). They are not inherently some mineon of
Hell, they are people who in general either don't give a damn and it's just
a job or else they really believe what they are doing. Our government is NOT
some ideal or non-real entity, despite how many citizens may rail about it in 
that manner. It just don't make it so.

Accept and deal with your schizophrenic tendencies and help solve this
national problem we face. Let's try to solve it now so that our
grandchildren won't have to fight this fight again.


                                                      Jim Choate
                                                      CyberTects
                                                      ravage@ssz.com

Jim Choate wrote:
> > Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)

> > > 'We' shouldn't, it is their own country and it is up to their populace to
> > > stop it.
> >   And Germany was Hitler and the Nazi Party's own country.
> And your point is? Are you equating a specific individual or organization
> with Hitler or the National Socialist?

  Sorry, I forgot that people who work well with numbers often aren't as
good at working with concepts.  I'll write slowly.
  I'm equating 'any' country where individuals take and keep power over 
it's citizen by illicit and/or dehumanizing means with Nazism and 
Fascism.

> If the people in those counties want to give away their freedom that
> is their business (and right), not mine, yours, or this countries unless
> there is evidence they are trying to take their views and impose them here.

  Right. And if someone 'chooses' to give their money to a thief with
a gun, then it is not the business of other people, or the police.
  I would hate to interfere with someones 'right' to get robbed,
raped, or murdered.
  
> In reference to Hitler, had he stayed in his own
> country WWII and the ensuing half century of conflict would most likely not
> have occured.

  But according to your viewpoint, countries he had not invaded had no
right to 'help' those he conquered.
  Perhaps Hitler was merely the Dr. Vulis of isolationism.  The 
isolationists' claims that the affairs of other countries were not
our affairs changed rather rapidly when it became apparent that they
had better either get their heads out of their butts, or learn to
speak German.

> I say, let them filter themselves into economic collapse, intellectual
> nihilism, and political suicide. Suicide, assissted or otherwise, is a right
> any and all individuals have whether acting as individuals or as groups.

  It seems that several million Jews got 'filtered' into 'nihilism'
during the Second World War while the isolationists were busy not
interfering with the rights of individuals in other nations to
commit 'suicide' at the hands of the Nazis.

> Never forget, a tree can exist without a forest but a forest can not exist
> without trees. It is a one way street however much some people may want to
> convince us otherwise.

  Never forget.  A forest can apparently exist without Jewish trees. 

> If those people agree to support a system that limits or controls what
> information they get to see that is their choice. It didn't work in Russia
> and it won't work in Singapore or China any better.

  There are a lot of people lying in graves around the world who might
suggest that perhaps they didn't support the system that limited,
controlled, and murdered them. They might also argue that it 'did'
work in many countries, for many years.

> >   No. The internet was conceived so that the DOD could monitor the
> > communications
> > of physicists and researchers who thought it was awfully nice of the
> > government
> > to provide this wonderful method of sharing data and information.
> 
> The original goal
> of the Internet was to allow computers to be connected in a nuclear conflict
> and the period afterward when communications would be most critical.

  I believe you mean the 'stated' original goal of the InterNet.
(Similar
to the 'stated' goal of crypto regulations.)
  A series of manuscripts entitled "The True Story of the InterNet"
expose
the shadowy faces behind the facade of the InterNet, and the plans,
during
its very inception, for it to become part of the underlying fabric of 
everyday life, internationally. They were almost considered to be
sci-fiction at the time they were written, because the InterNet, at the
time was just a smallish, specialized, technical entity at the time.
  The claims they made for the InterNet being foreordained to become 
almost exactly what it is now becoming were written off as ludicrous.

 
> One of the biggest problems this country has right now is the inability of
> people like yourself to differentiate the difference between the ideals of
> the country and the people who impliment it.

  You seem to have very strong feelings about people who think
differently
from yourself being a 'big problem'. 

> The problem is not the
> government or the ideals it was founded on but rather the way we impliment
> it.

  The battle cry of every apologist for every corrupt or jackboot regime 
that has ever existed on earth.
  Why do I never hear this view from anyone who is being censored,
persecuted,
or who can hear the jackboots thumping against their own door or their 
neighbor's door?  It always seems to come from someone who is getting
their
piece of the pie and is worried that it might end.

> Our government is people, who put their pants on the same way you or I
> do (assuming you wear pants that is). They are not inherently some mineon of
> Hell, they are people who in general either don't give a damn and it's just
> a job or else they really believe what they are doing.

  You might try reading something other than 'Life' magazines from the
1950's
if you want to get a little better picture of how our government really
operates.

> Accept and deal with your schizophrenic tendencies and help solve this
> national problem we face. Let's try to solve it now so that our
> grandchildren won't have to fight this fight again.

  I'm already working toward solving the problems that I see, in other 
countries as well as this one.  The people behind the Iron Curtain have
never seemed to have any problem with me risking my life and liberty 
making prohibited information available to them.


   "I can hear the rumbling of the trucks as they come up the street, 
and soon I will be hearing the thumping of the jackboots storming up 
the staircase, as I have heard them so many times before.  But I 
suspect that, this time, the sound will be different, that it will 
have an ethereal quality about it, one which conveys greater personal 
meaning than it did when I heard it on previous occasions.
   "This time, they are coming for me."

   "My only hope, is that I can find the strength of character somewhere 
inside myself to ask the question which lies at the heart of why there 
is a 'they' to come for me at all...why, in the end, it has finally 
come to this for me, as for countless others.
   "The question is, in retrospect, as simple and basic as it is 
essential for any who still espouse the concepts of freedom and 
liberty to ask themselves upon finding themselves marveling at 
the outrageousness being perpetrated upon their neighbors by 
'them'...by 'others'...by 'Friends of the Destroyer.'
   "The question is...'Why didn't "I" do something?'"

      A quote from the personal diary of Vice-Admiral B. D'Shauneaux,
      from the Prologue to Part II of 'The True Story of the InterNet'

Toto