Amnesty International vs. Internet Censorship

An anonymous reader writes "Amnesty International has a new online campaign against governments which censor websites, monitor online communications, and persecute citizens who express dissent in blogs, emails, or chat-rooms. The website, Irrepressible.info contains a web-based petition (to be presented at a UN conference in November 2006) and also a downloadable web gadget which displays random excerpts of censored material on your own website."

Comments

Petition vs. Solution

[crhylove]

What we need isn't a petition that corporations and governments will ignore. What we need is a working FreeNet, and not in java, but in some truly open source language.

Everyone pray to the FOSS infrastructure gods! That'll more likely help than any petition ever will.

rhY

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[packetmon]

By now most people should know what will end up happening with this "Free(dumb)Network". Governments will disallow under harsh penalties usage of such a network. They will all claim security takes precedence over privacy. The problems with this current infrastructure aren't the lack of available tools to ensure privacy (PGP, SSL, S/MIME, VPN, etc), the problem is with the people who 1) don't understand the underlying need for privacy, 2) lack of standardization in implementing these tools. How niche would it be to create a "Secure ISP" based service where everything was encrypted on the wire before it left your network? Wouldn't be all that difficult but most common people wouldn't understand the need for it if it slapped them in the face.

Outside of that, what would end up happening with a "niche provider" would be the interaction with a "non niche" provider who wasn't providing security. They overlap and that will forever be a problem. Here in the US as we all have seen, what will likely happen in one of these Free(dumb)Networks is, the gov will spew the catch phrase Osama and all things terror and knock this notion down the drain. I'm a huge privacy advocate and believe in security to the fullest, but even I feel there is no need for an all inclusive "SecureNet". The typical network transaction does not warrant the network and application overhead needed. I do know however that when I need something said securely, processed securely, transacted securely, I don't rely on any protocol, person or program. Rather I rely on myself which is the main and most fundamental point on the security food chain.

As for the notion of a petition, it will go nowhere with this crapaganda of things terror related. To an extent I agree with some portions of governments pickings when it comes to security and privacy, but I also know governments' current actions are likely to create smarter criminals. This is evident in the computer security industry where viruses are now utilizing encryption schemes to hide themselves and their actions... Imagine clusters of terrorists doing the same... So to a degree I empathize with governments... They just don't have a clue, but at the same time their actions will be their stepping blocks.

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[Pxtl]

You've got it mixed up. The boogeymen of the internet are the paedophiles. Terrorists are the boogeymen of the airports and courts.

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[SanityInAnarchy]

The problems with this current infrastructure aren't the lack of available tools to ensure privacy (PGP, SSL, S/MIME, VPN, etc),

How do these protect against an oppressive government?

As far as I know, Freenet is the only way to publish something, and for everyone else to view that something, without the government being able to tell who published it and who's viewing it.

2) lack of standardization in implementing these tools.

And then you complain that Freenet is too standard?

How niche would it be to create a "Secure ISP" based service where everything was encrypted on the wire before it left your network?

And then decrypted at the ISP before it leaves their network? Seriously, what does that buy you? And why couldn't the government come in and demand the ISP's records?

The point of Freenet is, unless the government comes out and says you can't do it, no one can control it. Once it's widely implemented, the ISP is literally unable to turn over records of your activity to the government.

the gov will spew the catch phrase Osama and all things terror and knock this notion down the drain.

I don't think they could. Most of the population wouldn't buy it -- we don't like wiretapping, either. All we need is enough content on the network that most people want to use it, and that could be much more successfully bootstrapped if it weren't for the performance issues -- Freenet sucks down as much bandwidth and CPU as you throw at it, and is still much slower than browsing the web over VNC on half-speed dialup.

Now, it may prevent other countries from adopting it so quickly, but imagine if the US, Canada, and Europe put so much content on Freenet that it essentially became The Internet. China would have to let it through or effectively be cutting their country off from any Western content at all.

The typical network transaction does not warrant the network and application overhead needed.

That's the point. So, when the vast majority of freenet traffic is "typical", it's that much more impossible to find the atypical.

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

We have all the tools we need. Check out OpenVPN http://openvpn.net/ Plus, a VPN network _does_ infact exist. It's called anoNet (which I have posted about before on this article, but is more appropriate in this thread). You can find all the details at http://anonet.org/ Plus, Freenet tends to be laggy from my experience. :(

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[DigiShaman]

What's sad however is that the aforementioned "boogeymen" have cause harm at the locations you've stated. So yes, we have history to back up this threat. To what degree however, will always be the controversy that dictates politics...or is it the other way around? Hmmm

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[tubapro12]

this is more reason for the geeks and FOSS community to sit and wait for our oppurtunity to revolt and for our own government.

Re:Petition vs. Solution

[crhylove]

Agreed!

Hope they stop insanity

[kanzels]

I hope somebody can stop insanity like tracking all e-mails or even paying taxes per e-mail as suggested in EU.

Re:Hope they stop insanity

[arivanov]

Well...

I would actually like to be able to read the headers of emails I get. So will quite a few other people. Helps weed out at least some minor fraudsters out there.

Similarly, I do not see anything wrong with paying for bandwidth, services, etc on a per item or per Kb basis.

After all, let's get real. Internet is now a utility. We are reaching the point where governments are contemplating to make broadband access an essential service which is a right and Telcos are supposed to guarantee that 100% of the population is covered. Essentially it is on its way to become an essential service like phone or electricity.

A connection to any other utility carries with it responsibilities. If the water pipe between the street and your house bursts you have to pay for the repairs and any damage to other properties. If you have a broken appliance which uses electricity without your knowledge, you pay per KW/h used. If you use a phone you pay for any premium services you have used. So on, so fourth.

Frankly I do not see why Internet is supposed to be any different. I personally do not mind paying for my connection on a per Kb basis. Neither will 99% of the consumers if they are provided with clear, well defined and understandable billing criteria and billing information.

Re:Hope they stop insanity

[Znork]

"I personally do not mind paying for my connection on a per Kb basis."

You will when someone decides to dump a few thousand dollars worth of unasked for traffic your way.

Re:Hope they stop insanity

[diablomonic]

you dont seem to understand the actual situation (assuming the following situation is what you are talking about, I could be entirely wrong).

ISP's (at least here in australia) charge end users either set fee's for supposedly unlimited access at a maximum data rate, or fees based on how much they download. big wensites like google pay other isp's (or set up their own equipment) fees based on how much bandwidth is used by the website. in this setup, it should be obvious that any costs for users bandwidth should be covered by the fees charged them, NO MATTER THE CONTENT BEING VIEWED (its all just bits to an ISP), and beyond paying the bandwidth costs incured by its webhosting company (plus extra for profit of course), a website should not have to pay any other isp for data transfered through that isp's net:

They are ALREADY being payed for it by the end user downloading said data.

any arguments of "unexpectedly heavy bandwidth use" are rediculous, implying(and this is in fact generally true) that the ISP is engaging in a kind of false advertising, whereby you pay for an "unlimited download x mb/s connection" but are infact recieving an "x mb/s maximum, not garaunteed, download limited depending on how other people are downloading/ how overloaded our pipe is/ any other reason we pullout our &%$&.

The situation is analogous to signing a contract for unlimited electricity usage at a maximum 4 KW with a power company (no i've never heard of such a contract either), only to find that your entire street of 20 houses (on similar contract) only has a 6KW powerline supplying it, so if you and your neighbours both try to run a 4KW airconditioner your screwed. the power company then wants the airconditioner manufacturer to pay them as well for using too much power. Its rediculous, any costs incurred in supplying the electricity should be covered by the contract, and if they arent, thats the power companys (or ISP's in the real world) own bad luck for bad business planning (and signing a contract they never inteded to honour).

I have no problem with the isp charging users a cost per kb, if thats the obvious upfront deal (and if they can get users to sign up) but this cost and this alone should cover the isps costs for supplying this user. They should not expect a webservice provider not directly connected to them to pay them simply because the data travels over their net, THATS WHAT THE END USER IS PAYING THEM FOR!.

anyway apologies if this is not what you were talking about.

Re:Hope they stop insanity

[arivanov]

First, only to find that your entire street of 20 houses (on similar contract) only has a 6KW powerline supplying it, so if you and your neighbours both try to run a 4KW airconditioner your screwed

That is indeed the case. Been there, seen that. California saw it several times over the last 5 years. Italy saw it last year. Bulgaria saw it in 1984-1987. I Can go on with about 20-30 more examples. So, would you mind to get real and snap out of the dream please?.

The electricity, water, telephone companies use contention as well.. It is not 50:1 like a residential ISP, but it is contended none the less. Different in each area.

Re:Hope they stop insanity

[diablomonic]

and why do you think people are suing the power companies in those places then?. Now I'm not suggesting those blackouts where any one persons fault, a number of factors contributed, but those power companies failed to meet their contracted obligations and are being sued for reasons related to the blackouts. (also they never made unlimited power contracts with customers, it was always charge by the killowatt). Contention is not the problem I AM FINE WITH A COMPANY USING CONTENTION if and only if:

customers are aware of its existance, not through fine print but obvious notices (especially if the ratio is bad enough that it effects them noticeably, eg, most isp's), i.e. no false advertising unlimited when it's not (if it has never affected any users noticeably, ie the ratio is good enough it doesnt matter, then maybe they can get around this one, although it would still be technically false advertising to claim unlimited), secondly :

The company using contention doesnt whinge about users using too much bandwidth/power/water/whatever and try to fudge the cost onto google/airconditioner company/shower head maker/etc When coming up with the contention enabled download plans, users who actually utilise their connections to the full extent they paid for should be included in the cost estimates. If they cant cover them, they shouldnt advertise the plan, they should raise the price, or put some sort of obvious download limit on the plan.

Re:official?

[OverlordQ]

Tell me, why I can't find any mention of this in Amnesty International's campaign list? Suspicious... also, why .info?

You mean besides the:

Stop internet repression

Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for posting or sharing information. The internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments, with the help of some of the world's biggest IT companies, are cracking down on freedom of expression. Join the irrepressible.info campaign to show that the human voice and human rights cannot be repressed.

Right smack dab in the middle of their homepage?

Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

"Amnesty International has a new online campaign against governments which censor websites

So, are they also going after all those "enlightened" governments that censor "hate speech" and neo-Nazi crap, or are they selectively enforcing their policy?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Guuge]

I have a feeling that they won't be defending anyone's "right" to post death threats online. Hypocritical or not, that's actually a good thing. They ought to be going after those who censor political speech on a large scale.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sticks and Stones.."

If you are looking for intolerance you just have to look at mainstream media corporations who have a predominant web presence. The influence of neo-nazi web sites on average surfer is next to nil. People who are willing to buy into white supremacy crap will probably not need a web site to sway them one way or the other. Sorry.. i just don't feel the "nazi threat".. mainstream media has much more of a dangerous influence on public opinion. Should we censor them too?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[kfg]

Our bias is your thought crime.

KFG

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

First they defined hate speech as "posting death threats online," and I did not speak up because I didn't post death threats online. Then, they defined hate speech as "racist material" and I did not speak up because I wasn't a racist. Then, they defined hate speech as "Islamophobia," and I did not speak up because I wasn't against Islam. Then, they defined hate speech as "anti-Christian material," and even though I really hated Christians, I did not speak out because I knew the consequences. Finally, they defined hate speech as "not swearing complete and utter loyalty to the current ruling class," and there was nothing that could be done as the entire apparatus of speech and thought suppression was already well established.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey we can all play this! First they defined murder as premdeditated killing and I did not speak up because I don't plan out my killings. Then they defined murder as being really really mean to people and I didn't speak out because I hate those mean people. Then they defined murder as eating fried bananas. Moral: It shouldn't be illegal to kill people because if it is then something else might be made illegal later!

Oh wait, I've just realised, this whole line of reasoning is totally fucking stupid.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[giorgiofr]

By now, you should have realized that society at large is not ready for a "personal responsibility" framework. I have found that people will go to great lengths (in both denial and self-harm) in order to ignore the possibility of there being such a thing as responsibility for what you do.
Until this changes, they will be more than happy to sponsor censorship-happy governments. The more the gov't handles, the less responsible they will be. Then, when something bad happens, they just wish to fix it with extreme prejudice, lock it away, try to forget about it, and pass more legislation: apparently we're not forbidding enough things.
And why the hell are you a nazi anyway? Why do you support pro-nazi speech? Don't you think of the children? ;)

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[penguin-collective]

If the world really were that black and white, things would be a lot simpler.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[giorgiofr]

Actually, you just said a great truth.
Because of the slippery slope that you despise so much, they have recently jailed a guy in my city who shot and killed in self defence, with a legitimately owned and registered gun, during a robbery where he and his fathers were attacked.
The reasons why he was jailed are, of course, political. I'm not entering the details because they are not relevant now. But it goes to show that "this whole line of reasoning is totally fucking" APPROPRIATE.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Per Abrahamsen]

True, but being a "non-violent bigot" is also not the same as being a "neo-nazi".

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Demerara]

Could you be more specific? Which countries and which hate-speech and neo-nazi crap are being repressed. If you can give examples, we can determine whether AI are active or not.

If they're not, then your rhetorical question is answered.If they are, well...

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[jasonditz]

Depends on the circle you're in. Opposing the expansion of settlements in the West Bank is the same as being a "neo-nazi" to some people.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[jasonditz]

I have a feeling that they won't be defending anyone's "right" to (post death threats, oppose the war, blaspheme, defame democracy, aid the terrorists) online. Hypocritical or not, that's actually a good thing. They ought to be going after those who censor political speech on a large scale.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[KDR_11k]

Pretty much the entire EU.

From the german constitution:

Article 18 (Forfeiture of basic rights).

Whoever abuses freedom of opinion, in particular freedom of the press (Article 5, paragraph 1) freedom of teaching (Article 5, paragraph 3), freedom of assembly (Article 8), freedom of association (Article 9), the secrecy of mail posts and telecommunications (Article 10),property (Article 14), or the right of asylum (Article 16, paragraph 2) in order to attack the free democratic basic order, forfeits these basic rights. The forfeiture and its extent are pronounced by the Federal Constitutional Court.

[...]

Article 26 (Ban on preparing a war of aggression)

(1) Activities tending and undertaken with the intent to disturb peaceful relations between nations, especially to prepare for aggressive war, are unconstitutional. They shall be made a punishable offense.

This is interpreted by the courts to apply to Nazi propaganda or other speech that is meant to raise aggression against a minority or majority. Preaching that it is just to kill infidels falls under this.

translation taken from http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/germ/ggeng.ht ml

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[foreverdisillusioned]

As the other guy said, it depends where you live. Denying the holocaust can land you a jail sentence in many western European countries, and the European Court of Human Rights has upheld such convictions despite the free speech provisions found in Article 10. This issue goes far beyond violent neo-Nazis. Certain historical theories, however stupid or silly they may be, are illegal to speak of. With discussion of certain events essentially banned, who knows whether any legitimate theories are being suppressed? It can also be quite dangerous to criticize Jewish religion or Jewish culture. Don't get me wrong, I think Jews catch way too much flak when compared to Christians, but that doesn't mean that there aren't perfectly valid reasons to attack their beliefs and their customs--e.g., I think that circumcision performed on any child not old enough to decide for himself is barbaric (other than for medical reasons. Long-term medical reasons such as very slightly lower STD transmission and penile cancer rates are not not valid because by the time he's old enough to worry about such things, he's old enough to make the decision himself.), the foundation of Israel was one of the all-time stupidest fucking ideas ever conceived and western nations should not support their holy war (even if they weren't the ones who started it), their dietary restrictions are dumb, their culture is too male-centric, power-centric and money-centric, and (like most other Abrahamic religions) observant Jews tend to be arrogant, ignorant, deluded, and bigoted.

I can say all of that without thinking twice because the one freedom America hasn't completely sold out is the freedom to criticize or insult whomever you wish. If I were in France (or Germany or Switzerland or Poland or Belgium or Austria), I would think very long and hard before I said anything like that in public. If it was a very public statement, such as a speech or academic paper, likely I'd have to consult a lawyer first and he'd probably tell me to tone down my language.

Simply put, that's fucked up... and it's doubly fucked up for an allegedly free western democratic nation. The USA certainly has its share of freedom-stomping, un-democratic laws on the books, but I certainly do hope Amnesty International doesn't neglect to go after oppressive and unproductive "hate crime" laws in western Europe.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

A casual look at their web site makes it look like they're more concerned about governments that engage in hate speech than about governments who censor it. For example, part of the runup to the Yugoslav civil war was official propaganda pandering to and inflaming ethnic hatred. If you have a strong stomach, look up what Zimbabwe's government is saying about gay people.

Hypocrisy, or sensible priorities?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Neoprofin]

Austria does it as well. There was just a British historian sentenced there for deny that the holocaust ever happened.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[BinBoy]

From an Amnesty International press release: "Amnesty International does not adopt persons who are imprisoned for 'hate speech' as prisoners of conscience." In other words, speech should be free unless it skewers their particular sacred cow.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Concerned Onlooker]

It sounds like you're lobbying for the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded movie house. Do you think that if the hate speech propagated by the radio personalities in Rwanda had been halted there would still have been a massacre of 800,000 people?

Even here in the U.S. where we have pretty liberal laws regarding free speech it is still recognized that you are not allowed to incite people to violence. That inciting to violence is what AI opposes.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Concerned Onlooker]

No. In other words speech should be free until it incites violence against others. Perhaps that is a difficult concept to grasp as so many here have failed to understand that. Would you defend my right to try to convince people that you should be dragged into the street and shot?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[demachina]

The mere fact that a government is seeking to engineer how people think, speak and dress when it comes to Nazism is a Fascist tendency in its own right. Fascism operates under the tenant that people can't be trusted to think for themselves so the government has to regulate how they think and act for the good of the state.

The irony of rabid suppresion of Nazis is that many governments are leaning if not out right rushing to Fascism today. China, U.S., U.K., Australia, Russia and Israel are on the top of the Fascism scale in my book. Are they Nazi Germany, obviously not though China is pretty close with internal policy. Fortunately China at present seems to have no interest in aggressive warfare, a Fascist trademark, they are so busy just getting rich the old fashioned way. The U.S. has a superficially freer society though its getting less free every day, but its makes up for it on the Fascism scale with rampant militarism and advocacy of aggressive, preemptive war making.

Its my suspicion the world's governments need to suppress Nazi sympathizers because they want to return to Fascism as the world's dominant form of government, but to do that they need to erase the association between Fascism and the extreme turn it took in the 1930's and 1940's. If they outlaw and suppress the most notorious and superficial symbols of Fascism then OBVIOUSLY they must not be Fascist and Fascism must not exist today. If you make the false assertion that to be a Fascist you must wear a Swastika, and you outlaw the Swastika so no one wears them, then it follows there must not be any Fascists, right? It is an interesting con game.

The world's governments and media are in complete denial that Fascism could ever flourish again when in fact it is flourishing, its just no one will speak the name and on the Internet Godwin's law will be invoked, Godwin's law being the ultimate weapon to prevent anyone calling a spade a spade on the Internet.

The only time you hear anyone being called Fascist lately, is the Bush administration seems to have settled on Islamo-Fascist as their new buzz word since they've completely worn out the 'T' and 'R' keys on their keyboards using the word "Terrorist" a hundred times in EVERY speech and press release for the last 5 years, to refer to EVERYONE who is not "with them" in the "either you are with us or you are against us" equation. I would say there is another pretty heavy dose of smoke screen in their recent use of Fascist in describing their enemy. If there enemy is Fascist then that MUST mean that they are not, though in fact they are at least leaning that way.

Israel is another interesting case study. It was a state born out of the crucible of Fascism, but they treat Palestinians as sub human and with such contempt that it must ring a bell with Jews who lived in Europe in the 1930's. Just last week Israel's Supreme court affirmed a law effectively banning a Palestinian from marrying an Israeli citizen, a law so much like the Nazi prohibition of intermarriage with Jews. The law is not exactly predicated on race since its real motive is to prevent Palestinians from ever becoming the majority withing Israel. You see Palestinian are reproducing at a higher rate than Israel's Jews, especially if you count the occupied territories. so there is an imminent danger they will become the majority. Since Israel wants to maintain the facade it is a representative democracy it must do everything in its power to prevent Palestinians from becoming the majority, because when they are either Jews surrender power at the polls or for all practical purposes Israel is an apartheid state, which is pretty much already is, with a minority controlling power through non Democratic means and ethnic "cleansing". This is a key motivator from the withdrawl from Gaza. Through withdrawl Israel can claim that all the Palestinians there are no longer a part of Israel while Israel still maintains a choke hold on every aspect of their day to day lives.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[hunterx11]

There is a fundamental difference between banning speech which directly incites violence and banning speech because it is distasteful. You can have a perfectly dystopian society where every person lives in total slavery and still claim to support the common good. The whole point of protection freedom of speech is to protect unpopular speech--popular speech, after all, doesn't need as much protection. A just government does not abrogate individual rights in the favor of some nebulous social good. I'm not claiming that the U.S. is the best example of free speech, because it isn't. But governments that ban distasteful speech ought to be condemned for doing so.

Homeopathy does not work. A tiny bit of fascism is not the way to prevent a lot of fascism.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[lysergic.acid]

Are you serious? So you think that because the law was incorrectly enforced in one case that murder should be legalized? Well, let's legalize robbery and rape as well then since I'm sure just as many individuals have been wrongfully imprisoned for those crimes also.

Or maybe the more rational approach would be to address what actually went wrong in that situation: incorrect interepretation/enforcement of the law. Instead of legalizing murder (do I even need to explain why this is a stupid idea?), maybe the decision should be appealed and the judge who passed that decision should be investigated for incompetence--if what you claimed to have happen is in fact accurate.

In most countries there's a difference between murder, manslaughter, and justifiable homicide. These legal definitions are put in place so that the law can't be interpreted askewed and enforced differently from their original intent. So there's no reason to legalize murder just because one judge--supposedly--mistook justifiable homicide for murder.

Also, you don't seem to understand the meaning of the original quote, which was a statement about persecution. The original quote meant that in a society that doesn't stand up to the persecution of targeted minorities by an oppressive regime, no one is safe. Protecting society from murderers is not a form of persecution, nor is it a characteristic of an oppressive regime. Protecting society from murderers isn't an injustice that will snowball if let to persist. The logic simply doesn't work applied in the context you're using it in. If you're going to use a quote to demonstrate a point, atleast try to understand its meaning.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

No. In other words speech should be free until it incites violence against others. Perhaps that is a difficult concept to grasp as so many here have failed to understand that.
Good job. You've just outlawed verbal support for the colonials that wanted to rebel against the British Crown (ever heard of the American revolution?) including the founding fathers. You've just outlawed every other revolutionary movement (including anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and pro-democratic movements) as well. You've outlawed verbal support for communism, which depends on the proles rising up and violently beating the crap out of "the rich." You've also outlawed verbal support for socialism, which is dependent upon involuntary taxation, which is possible only when violence can be used to coerce people to pay their taxes (e.g. if you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will come to your house, and take you to jail; if you resist, they'll beat the crap out of you). Just the other day, there was a Slashdot thread where people were seriously discussing violently overthrowing the American government; I guess Slashdot can be banned now as well, and all those people can go strait to jail. We can go on, and on.

Would you defend my right to try to convince people that you should be dragged into the street and shot?
I'd give you a microphone so that the whole world can be exposed to your "extraordinary" logic.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

It sounds like you're lobbying for the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded movie house.
Ah, that old argument. I'm lobbying that people be treated as adults, instead of as children who constantly need to be looked after by Big Brother so that they do not go astray.

Do you think that if the hate speech propagated by the radio personalities in Rwanda had been halted there would still have been a massacre of 800,000 people? [If we don't censor speech, bad things will happen.]
But what if neo-Nazis use the postal service to spread their message of hate and discuss their vile ideology? We need the government to read everyone's mail now so that no pro-Nazi mail is ever sent! But what if they use email? Oh noes, we need the government to read all of that too. What if they get together in their houses and discuss their vile ideology? OMG, we need to the government to install video cameras in every house to make sure that does not happen! But what if they go into the wilderness to discuss their vile ideology? We need to install sub-dermal implants in all citizens so that the government can make sure that people don't say pro-Nazi things in the wilderness. But what if they use sign language in the wilderness? We need the government to install ocular implants in all citizens to make sure that that does not happen! What if they communicate using more code by tapping each other's stomachs while looking away! Oh noes, now were really doomed because I can't think of a way that the government can prevent that! I guess it's time that the government just placed everyone in solitary confinement to prevent that. It's the only way!

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

Oops. s/more code/Morse code

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Concerned Onlooker]

Just the other day, there was a Slashdot thread where people were seriously discussing violently overthrowing the American government; I guess Slashdot can be banned now as well, and all those people can go strait to jail.

I didn't see that discussion. It's probably not as you described, but discussing the violent overthrow of the government is not the same as inciting.

And no, I didn't outlaw verbal support for socialism, communism or even capitalism (which is the most violent of all). I merely stated that actually inciting violence may not be protected.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

I didn't see that discussion. It's probably not as you described,
Here you go. I suggest that you read it at -1 for full effect (as I do due to not wanting others to censor my information for me). If you read slowly, you can start here. Please come back and tell me how it is not as I described.

discussing the violent overthrow of the government is not the same as inciting.
Personally, I felt quite incited. Perhaps in the future, you could support your assertions with arguments (and no, saying "no it isn't" is not a good supporting argument.

I didn't outlaw verbal support for socialism, communism or even capitalism (which is the most violent of all). I merely stated that actually inciting violence may not be protected.
There you go again, supporting your assertions with such well thought out and strong arguments (you: No it isn't!; me: Well, ok. Your strong rebuttal has convinced me).

P.S. Aside to crafting an actual rebuttal, you still have to attempt to address the points I made in response to your other post.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Olix]

On the other hand, the US has created people such as these, by not having these laws. While hate speech laws are dangerous, it seems to me that a lack of some provision to stop people forgetting the past is also important - as [reference goes here] said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

In modern Japan, there are no laws to prevent the country from forgetting the actions of that county in WW2, and we can see this has an effect - Japan has sour relations with China and Korea because the majority of the populous do not acknowledge that the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan (which were in some cases of a similar magnitude to Nazi war crimes) ever happened. Likewise, there are many hyper-nationalist movements in the country, because people have forgotten the events of the war. While the speech laws in parts of Europe are a little suspect in places, you can be sure there is no significant groups of people advocating a return to a wartime society!

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Qa1]

Just last week Israel's Supreme court affirmed a law effectively banning a Palestinian from marrying an Israeli citizen, a law so much like the Nazi prohibition of intermarriage with Jews.

This is, quite simply, false. The law you're refering to does not prevent anyone from marrying anyone.

What that law does state is that Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens would not be automatically granted Israeli citizenship.

So first of all, that's hardly a human-rights violation; it's a rule about who can and cannot become an Israeli citizen, and how. Japan, for instance, does not grant a man citizenship if he marries a Japanese woman. Every country has the right to determine who can and cannot gain citizenship, and many do enforce strict laws.

Moreover, you can hardly call that rule unreasonable. The Palestinians are currently at war with Israel. Many of them state their commitment to wiping us out of the face of the Earth. Are we out of line by denying them the ability to become citizens of our country? Can a country not prevent its enemies from gaining its citizenship? I think the answer to these questions is obvious.

And one other important fact. That rule was only established recently. After 5 years of intense conflict, during which 25 Palestinians who gained Israeli citizenship by marriage were involved in suicide bombings againt Israeli population. Each such bombing causes on average 10-30 casualties, and the order of 50-300 wounded. I believe the Israeli people have the right to defend themselves.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[alienmole]

I'm not the person you were talking to, but it seems to me that the thread you referenced is much more of a discussion of violent overthrow than an incitement to overthrow. It started by someone essentially paraphrasing the U.S. Constitution, and many people pointed out that a reliance on guns was no longer good enough. The urban terrorism practiced by the IRA was mentioned, and roadside bombs were mentioned as an effective alternative to guns in the context of Iraq. But nowhere was anyone saying "let's take up arms against our government" or "let's assassinate Mayor Bloomberg to send a message". That would be a pretty extreme response that would say more about the reader than about the discussion. Which particular messages made you feel incited?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Qa1]

Since Israel wants to maintain the facade it is a representative democracy it must do everything in its power to prevent Palestinians from becoming the majority, because when they are either Jews surrender power at the polls or for all practical purposes Israel is an apartheid state, which is pretty much already is, with a minority controlling power through non Democratic means and ethnic "cleansing".

This part is so objectively wrong, it has to be motivated by extreme ignorance, extreme bias, or both.

In an apartheid state racial segregation is upheld by law. How can Israel be "an apartheid state... for all practical cases" when it has strict, explicit laws (yes, enforced ones) against such segregation? Please give one example of a segregation act upheld in Israeli court. Until you do, I'd have to call your statements baseless, biased propaganda.

You're in fact contradicting yourself. Since if Israel is "an apartheid state", and of course in such a state minorities don't have real voting rights, why should it worry (as you claim) about Palestinians becoming a political majority?

The simple fact is that Israeli Palestinians have the exact same voting rights as any Israeli. They are well represented in the Israeli parlament, and they have every right that any Israeli citizen has. Again, feel free to provide any facts to the contrary. But I don't think you'll find any. Especially considering such claims like the one about "minority controlling power through non Democratic means". Which minority are you speaking of, exactly? The Jewish population is a majority in Israel itself, and it has a (very Democratic, elected) majority in the Israeli Parliament. I'm sorry, but some of your statments simply don't make any sense.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[demachina]

"In an apartheid state racial segregation is upheld by law. How can Israel be "an apartheid state... for all practical cases" when it has strict, explicit laws (yes, enforced ones) against such segregation?"

You are conveniently differentiating between Israel Palestinians and Palestinians in the occupied lands, land occupied for 40 years now. The Palestinians in the occupied land have no representation and no rights. The Palestinians in parliament as I said are being carefully engineered in to a minority which will never have any real power.

The Israelis are building a giant wall that is cutting Palestinians off from their work, farms, each other. They are building walled ghettos. Olmert recently said he is probably going to unilaterally draw the borders for their new state and take all of Jerusalem and several important big Jewish settlements in the West bank in violation of all previous negotiations.

The Israelis are collecting taxes at the borders of those ghettos that are supposed to go the Palestinians but since Hamas won a democratic election, and Israel and the U.S. didn't like how Democracy worked there, that money is being kept by the Israelis, along with most other aid. With no chance for a functional economy because Israel controlls the walls, cuts off traffic through the border at a whim the Israelis are today suffocating the Palestinians today more than they ever have. Its no secret if you are Palestinian the Israeli security forces are routinely humiliating you, arbitrarily arresting, routinely stopping you at blockades so you cant get to work.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Qa1]

You are conveniently differentiating between Israel Palestinians and Palestinians in the occupied lands

The Palestinians living outside the state of Israel are - obviously - not Israelis. They are not Israeli citizens. They should not have voting rights in Israel, not any more than Americans should have voting rights in Canada. Claiming I'm "conveniently differentiating" between people who are full citizens of Israel (though happen to be of Palestinian decent) and people who are not Israeli citizens is like claiming to "conveniently differentiate" between Americans and Canadians on the issue of voting rights in Canada.

I'm not sure how to tackle the rest of your comment, since you're leaving off (should I say "conveniently"?) the factual domain of human-rights laws in Israel, and moving into the subjective field of theorizing about what Israel and the PA should or shouldn't do to resolve the current conflict.

I think I should say this: look at the results of the elections for the past 15 years. If you actually do that, you won't be able to escape one blatant conclusion: the Israeli public is consistently voting for the candidates who promise to do everything for fair peace with the Palestinians.

It began in 1990 with the loss of the Likud party (after more than 10 years of winning every election!) because it was perceived as reluctant to go to every reasonable compromise to establish peace. From then on, only candidates who promised to make every effort for just peace got elected.

I wish I could say the same for our Palestinian neighbors. You mentioned Hamas being elected recently by the vast majority of the Palestinian public. Hamas is a party which organized hundreds of suicide bombings against Israeli population through the 90s. Hamas is openly anti-semithic (read its object statment), it rejects peace, or any acknoledgment of Israel and its right to exist. Hamas stated ideology is to eliminate Israel and its Jewish population by any means necessary. Israel and most of the reasonable world (not including, e.g., China or Russia) insist that Hamas change those views before it is granted cooperation. So far, Hamas is holding on to its murderous, militant views.

It's easy to perceive Israel as being the more militant and aggressive party in this conflict, simply because it is militarilly stronger. However, it is a cognitive error, stemming from a falliable heuristic.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Concerned Onlooker]

Thank you for clarifying my post. That is indeed what I intended but somehow the meaning was missed.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[demachina]

"What that law does state is that Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens would not be automatically granted Israeli citizenship."

And it also means the Palestinian spouse can't move to Israel to live together as man and wife. I don't think an Israeli citizen can easily move to the West Bank to live with their spouse either. The Israeli military restricts who can move to the West bank, apparently favoring to only allow Jews to move their to create "illegal" settlements secretly blessed by the Israeli government. Yes I think you can get married but you probably wont be able to live together and any children you have will be in legal limbo.

Contrast this with any non Palestinian who can marry an Israeli and get citizenship with no problem. Any Jew from anywhere in the world can easily move to Israel and get citizenship and in fact many American Jews have duel citizenship where they are given an Israeli passport merely because they are Jewish. I think Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the disaster in Iraq, carries
dual citizenship and duel alegience which is bad for a key decision maker in the Pentagon.

You can try to rationalize it anyway you like but in its current form it is a racist, apartheid policy designed to cement Israel as a Jewish state. It is a hard and fast rule a Jew from anywhere can get citizenship in a heart beat and its nearly impossible for Palestinians to even return to what was their home for centuries until they were driven out, often by threat of violence like the massacre at Deir Yassin.

"The Palestinians are currently at war with Israel."

Yes and likewise the Israelis have been at war with the Palestinians since they pushed them out of the homes 60 years ago. You act like its only the Palestinians who are at war. Far more of them die at the hands of the Israelis than the other way around. Its also unlikely there will ever be any real peace short of the Palestinians completely capitulating and accepting life in walled ghettos in Gaza and the West Bank for the rest of time, most probably in eternal povery since the occupied territories are economically unviable inside an Israeli noose.

If you had been driven out of your home and in to refugee camps for 60 years I'm pretty sure you would be doing the same things the Palestinians are doing.

Onealternative viewpoint to consider and .

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[demachina]

"They are not Israeli citizens. They should not have voting rights in Israel, not any more than Americans should have voting rights in Canada."

They are however living under Israeli occupation and have been since 1967, thats 40 years. Now if the people living on the West Bank were voting in Jordanian elections you might have an analogy but Israeli border guards are for some reason not letting them be part of Jordan. Sure they can vote in Palestinian elections for a sham government that has no sovereign power, and if they vote for anyone Israel or the U.S. doesn't approve of Israel can, will and is strangling them. So yea I guess they can vote as long as they vote for whomever Israel and the U.S. tells them to.

You see there is a big difference, Canadians live in a sovereign nation so their vote counts for something, the Palestinians are living under permanent occupation, no end in sight, and don't have any rights other than those of people in occupied territories under international law, which Israel routinely ignores. The Israeli military can close their borders at their discretion, their military can enter any part of the occupied territories with tanks and bulldozers, arrest anyone they chose and hold them indefinitely and routinely bulldoze farms and homes, often with people still in them. They still routinely evict Palestinians from homes, farms and businesses to make way for Jewish settlements and for their wall which is create one big ghetto, both of which are completely illegal but sanctioned by the Israeli government and the rest of the world endorses them or looks the other way.

" Hamas is a party which organized hundreds of suicide bombings against Israeli population through the 90s."

Yes and the Israeli military has killed thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians during the same period, Sabra and Shatila being one of the darker stains on Israel's credibility. Both side's hands are equally bloody. Its pretty disingenuous of you to pretend the Palestinians are the only ones that are killing civilians there. Just because the Israeli's have F-16, Apache helicopters, bulldozers and tanks to do the killing doesn't make them any more in the right.

"it rejects peace, or any acknoledgment of Israel and its right to exist"

Granted Hamas has somewhat extremes views. So would you if you had been ejected from your home and homeland and spent the last 60 years in impoverished refugee camps as a stateless person with no hope for a better life.

The demands the west makes of Hamas to even negotiate are ridiculous and unreasonable. They are basically demanding they completely capitulate to a bitter foe and disarm before the negotiations even begin. If they do then they can have the scraps the world feels like giving them since at that point they have nothing to bargin with. It appears at the moment, based on things Olmert recently said those scrap would mean living in the parts of the West Bank and Gaza Israel doesn't want inside a walled ghetto in borders unilaterally drawn up by Israel, and most probably with borders still routinely violated by Israel at their whim. To be honest I see why they don't capitulate and why in a free election Palestinians voted them in to office over the completely corrupt Fatah that is mostly capitulating and getting nothing in return for anyone except the graft for themselves.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Distinguished Hero]

Finally someone coherent with whom I can argue. :)

Your summary of the thread is more or less accurate; however, a summary cannot convey the nuance of the conversation, and much of the context is lost. Allow me to illustrate my point through a parallel: imagine a group of people with a well known dislike of Jews (parallel to the well-known dislike for "The Administration" present amongst most slashdot posters). Now imagine if these people were having a "civil" discussion as to the merits of the Holocaust as a solution to "The Jewish Question," and whether such a solution was still relevant and efficient in addressing "the contemporary Jewish Question." Certainly none of them needs to come out and bluntly decry "let's burn the Jews" for us to understand the purpose and undertone of the conversation. Allow me to continue in a similar direction: let us now consider "Mein Kampf" (which granted I have never read). Assuming "Mein Kampf" (which I believe is banned as "hate speech" in a lot of places) says more than: "let's kill the Jews" (which is a valid assumption in my mind, as otherwise it would be a rather short book), "Mein Kampf" would be considered (as you would put it) "much more of a discussion of [genocide] than an incitement to [genocide]." In a similar vein, I think you'll find most "hate speech" to be "much more of a discussion of x than an incitement to y."

It has been a pleasure conversing with you. I only wish our topic was a bit less morbid.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[demachina]

"why did they have to dismantle the settlements in the Gaza strip before the Palestinian Authority took over?"

Not sure I exactly follow your question or assertion. Israel unilaterally abandoned Gaza and they stripped everything of value out of Jewish settlements there so the Palestinians would get nothing of economic value during the transfer.

The Jewish settlements there were ridiculously hard and expensive to defend and the Israeli government was mostly glad to be rid of them. Gaza is a giant impoverished refugee camp about to explode and having illegal Jewish settlements in the middle of it was simply impractical.

By "abandoning" it Israel can pretend that it is not responsible for the miserable conditions there. It is not an economically viable state and its going to stay permanently impoverished especially with Israel dominating and controlling its borders and sending in tanks whenever it feels like it. By cutting it loose, Israel can pretend its not their fault, though 60 years of history says it is.

It also helps to reduce the count of Arabs living under Israeli control. Israel wants to insure that Arabs are never in the majority and if you count the occupied territories Arabs will soon eclipse Jews as the majority. By casting a million plus Arabs in Gaza to the wind they insure Jews are in the majority for a while longer.

Bottomline is there was nothing of value in Gaza for Israel and lot of liabilities. They gave up nothing in doing what they did, other than angering the hardline settlers there whose settlements were illegal by every definition. The settlers do have a right to be angry at the Israeli government since the government probably endorsed and encouraged them to settle there, under the table, as part of claiming greater Israel.

They might do the same for a few settlements in the West Bank that are high liability and low return but I really doubt Israel will give up any of the illegal settlements in the West Bank that it values, and based on Olmert's recent statements they are most probably going to seize East Jerusalem and cleanse it of Arabs.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[alienmole]

I understand what you're getting at, but usually, the term "incite" implies a much more direct call to action than is present in that thread. At best, that thread could be said to be "fomenting" something. Perhaps for homework, we should both read Mein Kampf - my guess is that it's nowhere near as neutral as the thread we're discussing.

Legal definitions of "incite" are pretty explicit about this, e.g. U.S. Criminal Code (Title 18) defines inciting a riot as "Urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts." Without actual advocacy of some violent act (e.g. "let's kill..."), it's not incitement.

Of course, legal definitions and English definitions aren't the same thing. The m-w.com definition says that incite "stresses a stirring up and urging on, and may or may not imply initiating". Arguing about whether that precise definition applies to the thread in question won't get us far. But at least we know that none of the participants in that thread can be arrested for incitement under U.S. law. Viva la Revolucion! ;)

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Qa1]

Now if the people living on the West Bank were voting in Jordanian elections you might have an analogy but Israeli border guards are for some reason not letting them be part of Jordan.

It's the Jordanian border guards who are preventing tht. Please familiarize yourself with the facts about Jordanian policy towards the Palestinian people and refugess. The events of Black September are a good place to start. I promise you: you'll be very surprised.

Sure they can vote in Palestinian elections for a sham government that has no sovereign power

The Palestinian elections would be a sham even if Israel and the US wouldn't have existed. They basically have a choice between openly corrupt officials and militant Islamic fundamentalists, both of which about as democratic as Mao Tse-Tung. Like the vast majority of Arab people, the Palestinians have a lot of internal work to do before real democracy emerges. And there are a lot of strong powers working against such maturation processes.

They still routinely evict Palestinians from homes, farms and businesses to make way for Jewish settlements

No, they don't. Things like that were generally never done.

and for their wall which is create one big ghetto

The decision to build the wall came at a time Israel suffered 3 Palestinian suicide bomber attacks per day (!). Its purpose is to protect Israeli men, women and children against Palestinian terrorist who bomb them alive (those you claim have "somewhat extreme" views). I know, it's easy to bash the wall, since we all know walls are Wrong. Just like we know the strong party is always the aggressor.

both of which are completely illegal but sanctioned by the Israeli government and the rest of the world endorses them or looks the other way.

Again, familiarize yourself with the facts. Illegal settlements are harshly evacuated by Israeli armed forces. Just look at the recent Atzmona evacuation.

If protecting Israeli lives is illegal, then the wall is illegal. But I find your mention of the world "looking the other way" interesitng. I don't think the world "looks the other way" very much when it comes to Israeli acts. Our enemies wouldn't allow it. The world does, however, do nothing against much worse attrocities, for example to occupation of Tibet by China. You know, China, the country from which came the chairman of the Hague court which ruled the Israeli defensive wall to be "an illegal act of occupation".

The whole world rises against us when we accidentally kill a single Palestinian child. But nobody cares when hundreds of thousands of civilians are massacred by the government of Sudan. It's politics, man, not justice. Don't delude yourself that you are upholding moral. You're just dancing to the rhythm of the huge propaganda machine Israel's enemies have erected against it.

And oh, look who's blaming us for "violating human rights"! Countries like Saudi-Arabia where you can be thrown in jail without trial for condoning democracy. Countries like Iran, where non-submissive women are routinely wounded or killed. And do I really have to list the attrocities done by countries like Syria or Sudan? Maybe I do, after all, they're not Israel.

Yes and the Israeli military has killed thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians during the same period, Sabra and Shatila being one of the darker stains on Israel's credibility.

Total and complete bullshit. I'm sorry, do you even read the links you paste? Here's the beginning of the text you just linked:

The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre) was carried out in September 1982 by Lebanese Maronite Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila ( ) refugee camps.

Israel's "crime" in that case (f

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[BinBoy]

Ernst Zundel and David Irving are in jail for speech crimes and they've never called for violence against anyone.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[BgJonson79]

>>Yes and likewise the Israelis have been at war with the Palestinians since they pushed them out of the homes 60 years ago

You mean, pushed them out of the Turks' homes. After all, wasn't most of the land owned by absentee landlords in Turkey? If I sell an apartment building I own that you live in, how are you possibly losing land YOU NEVER HAD?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Guuge]

One thing you quickly realize with regard to human rights is that *everyone* is in violation. You have to prioritize. But then you're open to accusations of hypocrisy because your priorities aren't perfect. I'm sure China would love to point out all the transgressions of Europe and the US, but that should not distract attention from what we perceive as *worse* problems in China. This reminds one of the Bush supporters that find stupid things that Democrats have done and attempt to use them to mask worse things that Republicans have done. Once the really nasty political censorship has been dealt with, maybe Amnesty will have the luxury of concentrating on lightweight issues like excessively broad definitions of hate speech.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[dajak]

In an apartheid state racial segregation is upheld by law. How can Israel be "an apartheid state... for all practical cases" when it has strict, explicit laws (yes, enforced ones) against such segregation?

You are making a straw man out of "apartheid". It is not merely the continuation of British imperialist racism, but a political system separate from racism. From the apartheid Wikipedia entry:

"Apartheid ideologues argued that once apartheid had been implemented, blacks would no longer be citizens of South Africa; rather, they would become citizens of the independent "homelands". In terms of this model, blacks became (foreign) "guest laborers" who merely worked in South Africa as the holders of temporary work permits."

Israel makes the exact same convenient distinction in order to guarantee a loyal majority in Israel proper. I don't question the democratic character of the Israeli government in relation to the "demos" it selects for itself, but a government that "secedes" from a part of the population in its territories can only regain its claim to being democratic by at least giving these people complete sovereignty and a viable territory of their own.

Of course the Palestinian population in the occupied territories is a danger to Israel proper, but this was also true of Zulus, Xsosas, and other Bantu tribes as far as South-Africans were concerned when they created the apartheid system in South-Africa. I will admit Arafat was never a credible Mandela.

Of course the Israelis and Palestinians both claim the same lands on historical grounds, but so do the whites and blacks in South-Africa: the South-African Dutch and Bantu population are both late arrivers -- marginalizing the indigenous Khoi-San gatherers -- who ran into eachother.

If the homelands for the various tribes in South-africa would have been actually economically viable and pleasant to live in, and racism less obvious in daily live, we might have mistaken it for enlightened policy towards national minorities. The same thing is wrong in the occupied territories: allowing the prisoners to elect the chief of the ghetto police is not democracy. Without sovereignty, there cannot be democracy.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Amnesty International, like the ACLU, has been consistent about protecting speech and other freedoms, even where they detest the message or the people they're protecting. Accusing them of selective political enforcement is unfair and unfounded. They've been big believers in free speech being allowed to expose truth and debate ideas, rather than censoring idiots who write revisionist histories.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[dajak]

Good job. You've just outlawed verbal support for the colonials that wanted to rebel against the British Crown (ever heard of the American revolution?) including the founding fathers.

This type of thing is now indeed illegal in the EU. Take the EU's Council Framework Decision 2002/475/JHA on the definition of terrorism as an example: violent acts aimed at seriously intimidating a population, or unduly compelling a government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act, or seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or an international organisation. I assume this is the basis for the definition of terrorism in recent anti-terrorism legislation in EU member states, and abetting terrorism will also usually be illegal.

Here in the Netherlands, widely misunderstood as a very liberal state, the state recently locked up 6 people for promoting terrorism. Promoting terrorism in this case consisted of having muslim fundamentalist documents available. Charges were also brought for "threatening a member of parliament" even though the only audience present to the threat was the Dutch secret service officer listening to the bugs built into the walls of the house of one of the suspects (the American Jason Walters) before he moved in, but considering this a "threat" fortunately went too far for the court.

Oddly, the EU definition of terrorism does not cover conservative violent acts directed at preserving or stabilising the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country. The definition is inherently political: most EU member states were themselves established by terrorist organizations by the EU's definition. This is why the EU Committee on Petitions was petitioned to legalize terrorism again by a concerned Dutch citizen in 2002, but the EU hasn't answered yet.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[iminplaya]

Fortunately China at present seems to have no interest in aggressive warfare, a Fascist trademark, they are so busy just getting rich the old fashioned way.

But aggressive warfare is the old fashioned way.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[iminplaya]

I love all this talk about "incitement". The whole concept just demonstrates the admission that humans don't have a free will any more than a chimp. To rip off another poster in another thread. Speech is not action. It's that simple. It does not incite action. The actor made a free choice (if you believe in that) to act. I don't care what provokes him. Ultimately, he provoked his own self. And that's that.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[ArghBlarg]

If the people who aren't really Christians are so damn successful at making everyone think they're Christians, then what difference does it make if we're against "them"? The label they operate under isn't what people are fighting against; it's what they're doing. If they've completely co-opted a movement, then being against that movement is not materially different from being against the infiltrators.

Some would argue that we are better off without organized religion, due to its ready-made infrastructure of intolerance, dogma and authority hierarchies which are ripe to be taken over by just the sort of people you describe. It's like people advocating against Windows, because it's a haven for malware, spyware and worms. Sometimes an environment that fosters bad things, while itself neutral, must be rejected due to the high level of abuse.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[demachina]

"It's the Jordanian border guards who are preventing tht."

I think you misunderstood what I said. I wasn't saying the Palestinians should move to Jordan, I was saying they ARE living in Jordan, occupied Jordan. Thanks to Israel's seizure of their homes and homeland they are stateless refugees in occupied territory. No one wants them so they are sentenced to an eternity living under Israeli occupation mostly in abject poverty. And you wonder why they are so mad. They are enduring the same fate Jews did when they were scattered to the wind. You would think Jews of all people would have some empathy for this and not do the same thing to another people that was done to them.

"Oh, intentionally blowing up young children, and taking pride in it, constitutes "somewhat extreme views" in your opinion...?"

Uh, Israel's military kills young children too. A 13 year old girl shot multiple times by an Israeli officer in cold blood for example. U.S. Marines murdered young children in Haditha Iraq, for example they executed a one year old girl. Thats what happens in bloody insurgencies stoked by mutual hatred and fear. You see you want to forget Israel and the U.S. kill children and only remember Palestinian suicide bombers kill children. I'm a little more intellectually honest and recognize Hamas is not particularly different from the U.S. or Israel in this regard. U.S. strategic bombing campaigns in Vietnam and World War II killed millions of civilians. Palestinian suicide bombers aren't even in the same ballpark if you want to talk about mass murder.

"is that it failed to prevent those acts"

Don't want to debate the subject since its impossible to sort out exactly what happened in those camps, but Israel invaded Lebanon pretty much in violation of international law, those camps were under Israeli military control, they let Christian militias who they knew had a blood feud with them, go in and slaughter unarmed refugees and did nothing in spite of hours of gunfire. Maybe Sharon and his officers were just ignorant or maybe they wanted the Palestinians slaughtered, we will really never know. There are plenty of other case studies of the Israeli military intentionally killing civilians but you are in denial on the subject so I'm not gonna waste the time recounting them as you rationalize that somehow you are somehow inherently better than your foe. I know full well you think you are inherently superior to Palestinians. They are always wrong and you are always in the right, right? That is in the nature of apartheid states.

" Illegal settlements are harshly evacuated by Israeli armed forces."

Dude all settlements in occupied territories are illegal, its just most of them were given under the table blessing of hard liners in the Israeli government. When you build settlements in occupied territories the only way you can do it is by seizing the land of the people that lived there before the occupation. It is against international law to seize the property of people in occupied territories. It is basically ethnic cleansing since you are ejecting the people who lived there to replace them with people of your race.

"But deciding to commit mass-murder"

Take off the blinders friend. There is no difference between a suicide bomb or an F-16 dropping a 1000 pound bomb in an apartment complex full of innocent women and children to assassinate one Palestinian leader. Again you are claiming some morale superiority that simply isn't there. The women and children end up just as dead in both cases. Your problem is you've rationalized that the two acts are inherently different when they are not.

"No one is asking Hamas to "disarm"."

Well at this point you seem to have no clue what you are talking about. EVERYONE is demanding Hamas disarm and recognize Israel's right to exist as a precondition of even entering negot

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Qa1]

I'm not an expert on South-African apartheid regime. But your quote implies the victims of it were South-African citizens before apartheid was implemented, or in any case were virtually citizens or at least entitled to be such.

This is really not the case for Israeli vs. Palestinians. The Palestinians outside the borders of Israel were never Israeli citizens. They are in no way entitiled to become Israeli citizens, not any more than Mexicans are "entitled" to become American citizens just because they perceive the States to be a better place to live in.

Moreover, to judge by the recent elections, most Palestinians in fact do not want to become Israeli citizens. Hamas's platform clearly states its objection to Israel's existence in any shape or form. It does not wish to become a part of Israel. The explicit goals of Hamas are to drive away - preferably kill - the entire Jewish population of Israel. Then take the land were Israel formerly was, and establish a fundamentalist Islamic state there.

The Palestinians define themselves as our enemy. They do not wish to become Israeli citizens, but rather to eliminate Israel and its entire Jewish population. They act upon those wishes every day, killing several Israeli Jews every day. Before we erected our "racist" wall of defence, they killed about 30 Israeli Jews every week. I think any comparison to the situation in South Africa is frankly, ridiculous.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[shilly]

"It can also be quite dangerous to criticize Jewish religion or Jewish culture... their culture is too male-centric, power-centric and money-centric...If I were in France (or Germany or Switzerland or Poland or Belgium or Austria), I would think very long and hard before I said anything like that in public."

Dangerous? Do you really mean dangerous? Do you think that you would be in danger if you said any of this? That someone would physically attack you? Or that the government would lock you up?

If you are free to make ridiculous assertions about Jews, Jews and others are free to employ social censure, debate and similar methods of speech to counter you.

I'm not a huge fan of the fact that laws may allow the government to act against you if you say those things in some countries, but given that continental Europe saw the systematic attempt to wipe out its Jewish population, along with other minorities, two generations ago, government are a bit more cautious than the US in regard to free speech. You tend to think differently about these things when you live in a charnel house.

Finally, your assertion that Jewish culture is too money-centric is one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever heard: while Jewish culture isn't homogenous, one of the core tenets of Jewish religious practice and teaching, no matter whether liberal or Orthodox, is the importance of tzedakah -- which is translated as charity, but actually means justice. Of course, western obsession with the idea of Jewish avarice has a lengthy and ignoble history, borne out of vicious bigotry and hypocrisy.

Do you care to proffer any evidence to substantiate your claim that Jewish culture is money-obsessed? Any texts you'd like to quote? Or are you just going to point to lots of rich Jews and say "See! Rich Jews. Therefore Jews are obsessed with money"?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Grab]

Excuse me, did I miss something there? "I have a perfect example of why I'm right, but the details aren't relevant" - WTF?!

You haven't shown FA - all you've done is given us a bunch of assertions, any or all of which could be complete fiction. You could be telling god's honest truth, or you could be a lying unscrupulous piece of weasel shite, and there's no way for us to know. Personally I've found it's fairly safe to assume that "slippery-slope" advocates are in the weasel category until proven otherwise, but I'm willing to be proved wrong.

Grab.

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[giorgiofr]

Well, even if I told you all the details there would be no way for you to check. So please be happy, everything is fine, everybody who disagrees with you is a piece of shite and you're always right.
Must be so easy to live in the world where all the communists apparently hang out together. No questions, no thinking, a few easy targets, well defined enemies... what's more to ask?

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[dajak]

I'm not an expert on South-African apartheid regime. But your quote implies the victims of it were South-African citizens before apartheid was implemented, or in any case were virtually citizens or at least entitled to be such.

In the sense that South Africa inherited the lands of several tribes subjected by the British Empire that were 'virtually' within its borders. I agree. The South-Africans that founded the independent South-Africa never asked for these people, or the marginal lands they lived on for that matter.

I would never accuse the polity of Israel (as distinguished from certain unpleasant political fringe parties in it) of being racist, as there are objective grounds for discriminating against potentially very dangerous subjects, but its policies do implement "apartheid" (separation) in its original, limited sense. For me, as a Dutchman (and apartheid being a Dutch political concept), "apartheid" has no necessary connection to racism. In the Netherlands we used to have a similar way of dealing with hostile protestants and catholics. Apartheid in South-Africa was based as much in fear of the uncouth and hostile democratic majority as in real racism. South-Africa nearly fell apart in small, hostile (i.a. white and Zulu) states when the apartheid regime stepped down. Only Mandela's (a Xhosa) generosity and the assertiveness of the South-African Defence Forces prevented it.

I personally never understood why the international community is often so intolerant to spontaneous ethnic secession movements, while it doesn't seem to have much problems organizing secessions (Yugoslavia, East Timor) themselves. The leading principle is apparently that only the West is qualified to decide where borders are.

This is really not the case for Israeli vs. Palestinians. The Palestinians outside the borders of Israel were never Israeli citizens. They are in no way entitiled to become Israeli citizens, not any more than Mexicans are "entitled" to become American citizens just because they perceive the States to be a better place to live in.

A fundamental principle of the current international order is that states cannot make their subjects effectively stateless. Another sovereign state first has to accept them within its territories and issue them passports, they must voluntarily accept the passports, and then Israel is formally free of its special responsibilities towards those people. Mexicans do have a land to call their own. In the case of the Palestines the principle distinguishes the Palestines in the occupied territories, who are a formal responsibility of Israel, from Palestines naturalized and living in nearby countries, who are not in my opinion. The occupied territories are not sovereign, as the frequent incursions of the Israeli army prove. With regards to the citizenship issue, and only that issue, the comparison with the apartheid regime is appropriate in my opinion.

Moreover, to judge by the recent elections, most Palestinians in fact do not want to become Israeli citizens.

Many members of the Scottish National Party do not want to be British citizens. This does not mean you can make them stateless in retaliation. Creating a sovereign Scotland is acceptable, just like the status quo solution of just treating them as citizens exercising their freedom of opinion.

Most of Israel's Palestinian subjects are not just hostile to Israel, but also positively dangerous. This creates a civil war situation, but you cannot allow this situation to last for decades even though you are clearly militarily superior. A secession and equitable settlement is obviously called for.

Before we erected our "racist" wall of defence, they killed about 30 Israeli Jews every week.

In my opinion creating a static defence line against enemies is a perfectly proportional solution. Nobody

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[Qa1]

A fundamental principle of the current international order is that states cannot make their subjects effectively stateless.

Generally, Israel hasn't made any of its Palestinians subject "effectively stateless". There are three major groups of Palestinians today:

1. Those living in various other Arab countries - obviously, Israel is not obliged in any way to give them citizenship.
2. Those living inside the state of Israel - except for very few exceptions, those have full Israeli citizenship. One of the reasons I'm outraged by comparisons of Israel to South-Africa is how tolerant Israel actually is. Note that many of these full citizens are actively supporting the Palestinian "cause" - more bluntly: Palestinian terror - against Jews on the land that gave them full citizenship. I suspect many other countries, if not the vast majority of them, would reserve quite a different treatment to a minority supporting the enemy at the time of war, even less bloody then the one (with thousands of casualties) we're having with the Palestinians now. Yet we, who grant them such status, are condemned by countries like Syria (directly involved in numerous massacres of its racial minorities) with the cooperation not only of villains like China but also much of the western world. Appearantly, Jews can never do anything right.
3. The Palestinians who were outside the borders of Israel since its inception - to whom I really don't see why Israel should grant citizenship. Even if they weren't actively involved in attempts to harm Israel as a state in the lives of its inhabitants, no moral obligation stemming from reason or the internation laws which you quoted, obliges Israel to grant them citizenship. Even the original UN decisions recognized that the rights of the Jewish people to self-expression, and indeed the very lives of its members, would be threatened by forcing it to "assimilate" hostile Palestinians population. The decision called for two states - Israel, and Palestine. The Palestinians objected to this. Not that they wanted a state or anything like that - there hasn't been a soverign state in the land of Israel for hundreds of years before modern Zionism emerged. They just didn't like the Jews. Their plan was generally to massacre the most they can, which would cause the survivors to escape and the "problem" to go away. It's amazing how little the Palestinian approach has changed: the above is explicitly endoresed by Hamas today.

In my opinion creating a static defence line against enemies is a perfectly proportional solution. Nobody ever questioned the existence of Hadrian's wall, the Great Wall of China, or the Maginot line. Unfortunately it is in a provocative place. This is more a pragmatic than a principled judgment. I don't believe for a minute that all Palestinians are going to be happy and satisfied if they get a sovereign state along the 1967 borders, but at least it creates a situation where Israel can wash its hands in innocence when further violence occurs.

Unfortunately, the Israeli experience indicates that we can never "wash our hands in innocence", not as far as the world's opinion (not to mention the Arab world) is concerned. Israel is always painted by the Arabs as an unlawful aggressor. And this caricature is usually accepted, pretty much as delivered, on other parts of the world.

Whenever Israel makes a concession, it is always - always! presented as:

1. A proof Israel has been doing wrong all along, and frequently a proof of Israel's "crimes", whichever they might be.

2. "Too little, too late". Generally, there's always something wrong with Israeli concessions. Our Arab enemies never accept concessions as they are, always use them as basis for further demands. This is especially true with the Palestinians. When we withdrew to the internationally recognized borders in Lebanon, Hizbullah suddently decided that they have a right to Mount Dov and the Shaba Ranches as well, so the

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[foreverdisillusioned]

Do you care to proffer any evidence to substantiate your claim that Jewish culture is money-obsessed? Any texts you'd like to quote?

Not really, just personal experience. The Jews I've met tend to be a little too rich and stingy for my tastes. It's a completely nonscientific (and very possibly erroneous) observation, but that's kinda the point. I shouldn't be threatened with jail time for espousing an opinion, no matter how ill-conceived it may be.

I'm not a huge fan of the fact that laws may allow the government to act against you if you say those things in some countries, but given that continental Europe saw the systematic attempt to wipe out its Jewish population, along with other minorities, two generations ago, government are a bit more cautious than the US in regard to free speech.

If enough people were willing to support Hitler 2.0, it would happen regardless whether or not it was illegal to speak of. Outlawing speech only strengthens their cause. They should not be able to (quite rightly) complain about persecution--they should be attacked (scientifically and socially) and mocked and belittled in every way possible until their ideologies are driven virtually extinct. Outlawing ideology, no matter how fucked up that ideology is, will always be counterproductive. I've been to Germany and I've seen quite a few swastikas spraypainted on walls...

Re:Are they genuine or hypocritical?

[dajak]

The issue of statelessness of course referred to the occupied territories. The simple fact of the occupation creates second-class subjects of Israel. I completely agree that it is unrealistic, and not morally imperative, to make those people citizens. This leaves the second option to normalize the situation: formally ending occupation. It is of course possible to argue that the occupied territories are outside Israel, in which case Israel should end the frequent incursions in foreign territory and stop pretending that a crime committed by a Palestinian against Israelis is an act of war by a pretense Palestinian state. Retreat, build a wall, build a good missile defense along the wall, and wait to see if they offer a normal war.

The reference to colonialism is appropriate, but selective. The motives of the US, in the 19th century and now, are not very different from the motives of other colonial powers in the past. Sometimes you interfere by conquering because some asshole ruler endangers your trade interests, at other times you just decide you need a base somewhere for vague strategic reasons, or you just happen to appoint a gouvernor somewhere who thinks he is Alexander the Great and conquers a weak neighbouring territory that has internal troubles for no reason at all. All the time you are saving suffering populations or bringing the light of civilization to them as far as the home front is concerned. The white man's burden. And when the decolonization comes, the end of the occupation, there is always tragedy: you hate the murderous regime that is going to replace you(r murderous regime), you leave behind loyal servants and they are going to suffer the revenge of the people they oppressed in your name, or you take them with you and they are going to resent you for giving away their country.

South Africa's white population is one of those messy problems that the colonial powers left, and Israel is another, even more tragic, one. The British gave away something that didn't belong to them in the first place, and the survivors of one tragedy walk right into the next one. The situation cannot be undone, and after a few generations the Israelis have acquired an absolute right to be there simply because most of them are born there.

Europeans and Americans are not very different in outlook, except that in some cases the sizes of the ideological groups are different and the US and Europe tend to misrepresent eachother and rewrite eachother's history. Israel has many religious Christian supporters in the US and Europe, and these people are questionable allies since they lead you straight to Armageddon. Anti-colonialists have a tendency to side with the Palestinians, and/or with international law. The few talking about the powerful "Jewish lobby" should ask themselves whom this "Jewish lobby" is lobbying: Israel is not the one running the show. Antisemites do exist, but they don't side with Arabs (although they may occasionally applaud Arabs and Jews killing eachother). The majority sides with whoever has the most convincing story, and there are huge swings in opinion about the conflict depending on what happened last. Gaining more support of the anti-colonialists is a good thing for Israel if it wants to be less dependant on allies that think of Israel as a religiously significant battlefield. Europe helped supply Israel in 67 and 73, and we will help fight if it ever becomes the underdog as far as I am concerned.

Supporters of Hamas, Ahmadinejad, etc. are the muslim mirror image of certain Christians on the other side, and Israel is caught in the middle. These people have learnt their history the wrong way around: because they side with the Palestinians now, they take the side of Hitler in the past when he takes revenge for the Palestinians. It is also a new phenomenon, and not one directly following from the motive they had to cheer on a faraway Nazi power against their colonial ruler. That is a story the victorious allies don't like to hear: they didn't start out WWII as the good guys for much of the world.

From the summary :

[KitesWorld]

"Amnesty International has a new online campaign against governments which censor websites, monitor online communications, and persecute citizens who express dissent in blogs, emails, or chat-rooms."

Emphasis mine. Every government does that, and it's unlikely that any petition will end that. Why? Because not all of that monitoring is done with 'Evil Intent'. I'm not going to complain because the police are watching IRC rooms as part of operation Avalanche or whatever. I'm not going to complain when they shut down some idiots website telling someone to go poison the water supply.

This may not be a popular view with the yanks, but not all censorship or eavesdropping is inherently bad. The problem is making sure there are controls in place, so that that power can't be abused. The other problem is trust.

Re:From the summary :

[mobby_6kl]

>Because not all of that monitoring is done with 'Evil Intent'.

Not all serial killers are actually killing with 'Evil Intent'.

Re:From the summary :

[Distinguished Hero]

Every government does that, and it's unlikely that any petition will end that.
For at least one government, however, it is actually illegal to censor websites due to their constitution. If you have any proof of them doing so, you can sue them.

This may not be a popular view with the yanks, but not all censorship or eavesdropping is inherently bad. The problem is making sure there are controls in place, so that that power can't be abused. The other problem is trust.
Great, another "enlightened" "nuanced" individual. We can argue about eavesdropping as eavesdropping can be framed as a method of information aggregation which does not suppress information dissemination. Censorship, on the other hand, purposely suppresses the dissemination of information. You're right about one thing, it is a matter of trust, and if you, as an adult (I assume), are willing to let bureaucrats and politicians, each with their own personal bias and agenda, control what you see, hear, or read, you are being quite "trustworthy."

Re:From the summary :

[Distinguished Hero]

Censorship is not a liberal vs. conservative thing. It's a authoritarian vs. libertarian (or classical liberal) thing. It's also a big government vs. small government thing (not that you, as an alleged "conservative" would know anything about that).

Re:From the summary :

[HairyCanary]

Thank you for providing an example of doublethink. Now go back to 1984 please.

If the government wants to censor child pornogrophy, terrorist websites, and related things, it's fine with me.

So tell me who gets to define "child pornogrophy [sic]" and "terrorist websites" for the purposes of this censorship that is fine with you. Is Slashdot a terrorist website because of all the free thinking liberals that post here?

Re:From the summary :

[BakaHoushi]

You're making the assumption that we who don't believe in Internet censorship all believe there should be child porn on the web. Not true at all.

Child pornography is a crime. It is illegal in every industrialized society that I know of, and shutting down these websites is merely an extension of the enforcement of said laws. Similarly, a website clearly made to recruit terrorists is in violation of International Law. Again, shutting down this website is merely enforcing a law already in place. No one sane is going to complain when a website for black market goods is shut down.

But when they shut down a website that merely criticizes a government, posts unpoplar opinions, or some other legal content, that is when a problem arises.

Re:From the summary :

[BakaHoushi]

P.S. I hate to respond to my own topic, but I needed to add, as the poster above me stated, How do we define said websites? Suppose someone takes a picture of their newborn baby which is, naturally, naked? Is that child porn? What about tasteful nudes of children, or children from a country where nudity isn't an issue at all? Is this porn? What about a website that says "I disagree with Al Qaeda's methods, but I do think they have a legitimate reason to be angry?" Is this a terrorist sponsoring site?

Re:From the summary :

[Anonymous Coward]

free thinking liberals

don't you mean "thinking-free liberals"?

-john

Re:From the summary :

[Anonymous Coward]

It is against Chinese law to criticize the government. Shutting down these websites is merely an extension of the enforcement of said law. So it seems your alalogy falls apart. The real issue is that we don't like their laws.

Re:From the summary :

[Cal Paterson]

don't you mean "thinking-free liberals"?

You're a funny guy.

Re:From the summary :

[philmck]

"not all censorship or eavesdropping is inherently bad..."

Granted, and of course fomenting dissent that might bring down a government and destabilise a country may not be a good thing, even if the government is evil.

However, Amnesty are quite specifically targetting censorship that almost everyone except the perpetrators would agree is 'bad' - censorship that protects a few powerful individuals against the interests of the majority. You have to start somewhere. I think this could be an effective way of raising awareness and I've added the box to my own homepage.

Re:From the summary :

[mrogers]

...governments which censor websites, monitor online communications, and persecute citizens who express dissent...

Emphasis mine.

Re:From the summary :

[mrogers]

As long as there are controls to make sure they don't take it too far, I'll support it.

And how will you know when they've taken it too far? How will you find out what's been hidden from you 'for your own protection'?

Censors can't be made accountable to the electorate, because revealing what was censored would mean it was no longer censored. Maybe censors could be monitored by another government body, but then that body couldn't be made accountable to the electorate, because revealing what was censored would mean it was no longer censored.

As far as I can see, censorship is not compatible with truly democratic government.

Re:From the summary :

[vertinox]

This may not be a popular view with the yanks, but not all censorship or eavesdropping is inherently bad. The problem is making sure there are controls in place, so that that power can't be abused. The other problem is trust.

Maybe as a Yank, I have problems with eavesdropping.

For one... It is just inconsiderate. Secondly, it implies guilt. Lastly, it gives government too much power.

I'd rather have an ineffective and idiotic government than one that is strong and all knowing.

I don't care if it for "good", because we might have good people in office, but one day those tempted by power and greed might happen to be in a position of authority because all that power of the state is quite a target by those who would commit evil.

Keep the government weak and ineffective and those people will stick to running corporations or just doing evil on a local scale.

Crime can be prevented by local means and without using eavesdropping or monitoring. If they have a good reason, they can get a warrant and target specific suspects. Otherwise... They need to not be monitoring.

Re:From the summary :

[Voltageaav]

Well, there is a certain amount of trust involved of course. We can't know about every classified mission or program, but we have to trust our elected officials to act in our best interest. If you don't think they are, elect someone else. However, if things start going overboard, it will leak out. The media, word of mouth, whatever. If it was major, it would become an election issue. Censorship is needed to a point. We have it already. Really, I think we have more to worry about with the media and special interests spining information to their favour. If everything you have access to says it's true, how will you know otherwise? I'd like to see legislation on misleading news reports, advertising, statements in interviews and things along those lines.

Re:From the summary :

[liangzai]

Child porn used to be legal in Japan, before the entire Western powerhouse, led by the self-proclaimed "moral" leader of the world, the land of the free, stepped in and more or less forced the Western human rights onto the Japanese.

Before anyone wrongly believes I am in favor of child porn (which I am not), I would like to point out that what is considered child porn varies from nation to nation. Typical limits are 18 in the US and the Western world, and 14 in China. In my native Sweden, it used to be a matter of maturity in the actor/actress, which is why Traci Lord movies that were banned in the US were allowed in Sweden (good stuff, btw). Now Sweden has also jumped onto the US bandwagon, as in so many other issues, and I am the first to be sorry for that.

There is still a popular lolita culture in Japan, despite the ban on real child porn. The actresses are 18 or over, but they dress as if they were 14, in school uniforms and so on.

Anyway, what Americans don't understand and will never understand is that the UN decaration of human rights was created by Westerners to be imposed onto the rest of the world. In essence, other people should not only have the freedoms we have, but they should also not have any other freedoms.

Therefore, this campaign stinks of the usual cultural imperialism that has plagued us recently, the kind of American world view that is shoved down our throats.

The page links to some country reports, for instance http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/ on China. As I have done a similar report (in China), I can only say that it is exaggerated, and its purpose is to demonize China to the maximum extent. It doesn't put things in a cultural context, and doesn't honor the changes that have taken place for the better.

The conclusion, "While there can be legitimate debates about whether democratization and liberalization are taking place in China's economy and government, there is no doubt that neither is taking place in China's Internet environment today" is completely wrong.

Re:From the summary :

[Shelled]

"As long as there are controls to make sure they don't take it too far..."

Great idea. And let's keep the government doing the censoring in charge of the controls as well. While we're at it, make the Administrative branch responsible for pushing these laws and appointing the Legislative gatekeepers who determine if it's constitutional. It's worked so damn well up to now, that is once those gatekeepers decide if it's in the Admin's powers to spy on any American citizen they want, whenever they want without oversight.

BTW, you wrote 'liberal' but I'm pretty sure the concept you were grasping for is 'pre-Enlightenment'. The position you advocate is after all closer to monarchy than democratic republic.

Re:From the summary :

[Distinguished Hero]

While we're at it, make the Administrative branch responsible for pushing these laws and appointing the Legislative gatekeepers who determine if it's constitutional.
Let me introduce you to the British-inspired parliamentary system in the liberal utopia of Canada (similar to other Commonwealth countries, but Canada is the Commonwealth country idealized most by a lot of Americans so I shall focus upon it), where the cabinet (Executive branch) is made up of the party which won the largest number of votes (even if that is 5% due to there being a lot of parties) in the Legislative chamber (House of Commons). The Prime Minister (leader of the largest party) gets to appoint the Supreme Court judges and Senators (second Legislative chamber) with no oversight. If you have a majority government (50% of members in House of Commons), the Prime Minister has complete control over the legislature (especially through The Whip and "party-loyalty," complete executive power, and he/she/it appoints the Supreme Court justices and the members of the Senate.

Re:From the summary :

[colinrichardday]

Shouldn't that be monitor private online communications? Is Amnesty International saying that government officials can't read Slashdot?

Re:From the summary :

[BakaHoushi]

Thank you for the reasonible response. The other responses have not been so friendly... (This is what happens when I forget to add "IANAL")

At first I did fall victim to the rationalization that Child porn is easily defined, which it is not. I have seen lolita manga in Japan, and it is often debated if it should be counted as child porn. (It's clearly sexual in nature against people far below most age-of-consent laws in just about every country I know. Though on the other hand, it's also entirely fictional (which is why, IMHO, it shouldn't be illegal because no actual crime has taken place)

I still hold to the idea that if a website (let's assume it's based in the US to avoid difficult International laws) clearly showing homemade movies of a 7 year old girl being sexually assaulted, I would expect that the police can shut it down and hopefully use some info on the site to locate and arresst the owner. But I admit, there is so much gray in the situation that rarely is it that simple. But as much as I detest censorship, I believe websites which promote DIRECT, PHYSICAL harm to individuals can and should be shut down (as an example, a site on how to build a bomb is fine, as it has other purposes, but a site about sodomizing extremely young kids or a site about stolen, black market goods are quite clearly illegal and I'd expect to react to it as if they found a poster advertising such services.)

In cases where such cut and dry, I'd expect debate to occur, and hope the government wouldn't abuse its power.... But giving a government too much power is like asking the fox to guard the proverbial chicken coop. It feels like real lose/lose situation.

Re:From the summary :

[BakaHoushi]

I know that that would not traditionally be considered child porn, but rationality and reason are not two words that come to mind when I think of censors and law-makers. It is nudity, and it is on a child. Remember, there are crazy people in this world that assume nudity = sexual. Therefore, a pedophile COULD, theoretically, get off to the picture of a newborn baby. It doesn't matter if one will or will not, just that one has the possibility to. I don't find this reasoning sound (Because fetishes can be so strange I'm sure you can find at least one person to get off to just about anything), but I think it is very probable that some would follow it.

And remember, if you question the motives of politicians trying to get rid of anything even remotely similar to child porn, you're against the children!

Re:From the summary :

[SlimFastForYou]

I see no reason to trust the government. They don't need it. Trust is a very interesting word. From the Trusted Computing FAQ.

24. So why is this called `Trusted Computing'? I don't see why I should trust it at all!

It's almost an in-joke. In the US Department of Defense, a `trusted system or component' is defined as `one which can break the security policy'. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but just stop to think about it. The mail guard or firewall that stands between a Secret and a Top Secret system can - if it fails - break the security policy that mail should only ever flow from Secret to Top Secret, but never in the other direction. It is therefore trusted to enforce the information flow policy.

Or take a civilian example: suppose you trust your doctor to keep your medical records private. This means that he has access to your records, so he could leak them to the press if he were careless or malicious. You don't trust me to keep your medical records, because I don't have them; regardless of whether I like you or hate you, I can't do anything to affect your policy that your medical records should be confidential. Your doctor can, though; and the fact that he is in a position to harm you is really what is meant (at a system level) when you say that you trust him. You may have a warm feeling about him, or you may just have to trust him because he is the only doctor on the island where you live; no matter, the DoD definition strips away these fuzzy, emotional aspects of `trust' (that can confuse people).

During the late 1990s, as people debated government control over cryptography, Al Gore proposed a `Trusted Third Party' - a service that would keep a copy of your decryption key safe, just in case you (or the FBI, or the NSA) ever needed it. The name was derided as the sort of marketing exercise that saw the Russian colony of East Germany called the `German Democratic Republic'. But it really does chime with DoD thinking. A Trusted Third Party is a third party that can break your security policy.

Evesdropping on private communication without warrants is a far cry from joining public chat rooms and bringing in a pediophile who initiates contact and sets up a meeting. Pro-censorship arguments have yet to convince me that having a system capable of silencing political opinion without oversight that warrants give is a good thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is the US already has the controls, and they are working fine as-is. The US government should respect its own laws. As for governments such as PRC, Amnesty International has good reason for concern.

Re:From the summary :

[killjoe]

Wow the liberals are against government intrusion into private behavior and the conservatives are for a crackdown.

How quickly the right abandoned all their principles.

Re:From the summary :

[808140]

Man, you know things have changed big time when being against government censorship is a trait associated with democrats, of all things. When I was a kid, the democrats were the feel-good party that was associated with increased government spending and a liberal (no pun intended) interpretation of the constitution's restriction of allowable government powers. Heck, as long as you weren't arguing the constitutionality of Roe vs. Wade, they were all for making things like hate speech illegal and pushing the PC agenda.

But now, in this weird alternate reality Bush and Co. have foistered upon us, so-called republicans, once the party of civil liberties, gun ownership, and small government, are saying things like "I'm all for government censorship" and "Let's spend more money! The more the better!" And when you say something like "censorship is wrong and I'm not going to stand for anyone interpreting the first amendment in any way but literally" you're a liberal, a democrat! I can hear the twilight zone music playing!

It's like the democrats and the republicans have completely switched roles, except for the Roe vs. Wade and anti-gay agendas, that's still republican territory.

I'm so confused ...

Luckily I've never been too attached to a party, but rather to the things I believe in. So if being against censorship in its myriad forms makes me a democrat, well then, chalk me up as one. Jesus.

Re:From the summary :

[mabinogi]

So therefore the two are automatically exactly the same.

Brillant! Why didn't I notice that before!

Technically useless.

[user24]

I must say, I admire their motives, copying censored content all over the web to make it effectively impossible to censor. But their implementation is totally flawed; From the site:
"If you have a website, myspace page or blog, help us spread the word and undermine unwarranted censorship by publishing censored material from our database directly onto your site."

.. but then they invite you to include a javascript file from a central server - what happens when that server gets blocked by a censoring country? All the copies go offline.
Great, amnesty, really great. The cynic in me just wants to say that all amnesty want is to have people "spread the word and undermine unwarranted censorship by driving more people to our website, not by publishing censored material"...

Re:Technically useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they want people directed to their site; why is it cynical to suggest that? Amnesty's purpose in life is to make a noise for those who can't. The point of the campaign is to spread awareness of the extent to which censorship is still going on. The publication of these random excerpts is symbolic: a show of solidarity and, yes, an attention-grabber; it's not an attempt to actually circumvent censorship. Anyone trying that would probably be a little more covert about it.

Amnesty's ultimate goal is to stop the censorship, not help people get around it.

Re:Technically useless.

[EvilCrony]

The purpose of this website is to raise awareness about internet censorship and get people to act upon it. Adding the javascript to your website is all about directing people to Amnesty's for more information. Amnesty is not trying to hide that fact. I don't think that's cynical at all.

Re:Technically useless.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I wonder if someone could run this on the server side... Anyway, it doesn't help at all, because the government could just as easily block specific words or phrases.

Re:Technically useless.

[wilfie]

You could always proxy it off your own site, but their implementation isn't exactly friendly. e.g. in apache ProxyPass /data/current http://fragments.irrepressible.info/data/current ProxyPass /images http://fragments.irrepressible.info/images ProxyPass /js http://fragments.irrepressible.info/js The use of an iframe makes it tricky to put onto a Wordpress blog front page too.

Re:Technically useless.

[wilfie]

Eeew! I meant:

ProxyPass /data/current http://fragments.irrepressible.info/data/current
ProxyPass /images http://fragments.irrepressible.info/images
ProxyP ass /js http://fragments.irrepressible.info/js

Re:Technically useless.

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Is anything using the Apache webserver technically friendly?

For example, setting virtual hosts working on Apache is not easy.

Re:official?

[Medieval_Gnome]

Feel free to call me blind, but all I see in the middle of their homepage is a purple box talking about the state of the world's human rights. And searching on their page for the phrase "Search engines restricted." [from your quote of them] doesn't return any results.

If you could give us the URL where you saw that, I (along with many others) would greatly appreciate it!

Wow - it's getting serious then...

[tyroneking]

... if an organisation like Amnesty is getting involved in this way then internet censorship is a real threat that we should all be concerned with.
Amnesty really is the hardcore of moral activism.
From blood diamonds to the arms trade, from violence against women to the death penalty, and not forgetting the letter writing campaigns, Amnesty doesn't concern itself with minor issues like Microsoft vs Linux or Google taking over the world.
I think I might actualy do something to contribute this time ...

Re:Wow - it's getting serious then...

[kaufmanmoore]

Especially when you involve 2 of the most ineffective forms of bringing change: web petitions and the UN

Needs more blantant anti-US content

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on people.

We all know that the US is the worst when it comes to censorship and human rights violations.

So why, when I visit that site, do I see a quote from a Syrian site?

Come on people, prioritize.

-john

Re:Needs more blantant anti-US content

[FusionDragon2099]

Not worst does not necessarily mean best.

Re:Needs more blantant anti-US content

[MrCoke]

The random generator is liberal, thus biased.

Re:Needs more blantant anti-US content

[dajak]

Come on people.

We all know that the US is the worst when it comes to censorship and human rights violations.

So why, when I visit that site, do I see a quote from a Syrian site?

Come on people, prioritize.

Is this whining veiled in sarcasm? I often handle small problems that I can solve before big problems that I can't. For instance today I am writing a comment about the whining about who gets criticized most, while I (again) postpone the problem of bringing everlasting world peace to tomorrow even though I think that is the bigger problem. NGOs usually take the same approach: they give priority to criticizing the countries that actually care and may be shamed into changing their behaviour.

Re:official?

[user24]

additionally, a search on amnestry.org for "irrepressible" returns 0 documents.

Re:official?

[user24]

found it: http://www.amnesty.org.uk/

Paranoia

[packetmon]

Why don't you just call Amnesty's Mel Herdon and ask him yourself? I don't get your post
<ecode>Registrant Name:Mel Herdon
Registrant Organization:Amnesty International UK
Registrant Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:London
Registrant State/Province:
Registrant Postal Code:EC2A3EA
Registrant Country:GB
Registrant Phone:+44.2070331642
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:mel.herdon@amnesty.org.uk
Admin ID:tuX9qGlGSJx5L46v
Admin Name:Mel Herdon
Admin Organization:Amnesty International UK
Admin Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:London
Admin State/Province:
Admin Postal Code:EC2A3EA
Admin Country:GB
Admin Phone:+44.2070331642
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:mel.herdon@amnesty.org.uk
Billing ID:tuX9qGlGSJx5L46v
Billing Name:Mel Herdon
Billing Organization:Amnesty International UK
Billing Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard
Billing Street2:
Billing Street3:
Billing City:London
Billing State/Province:
Billing Postal Code:EC2A3EA
Billing Country:GB
Billing Phone:+44.2070331642
Billing Phone Ext.:
Billing FAX:
Billing FAX Ext.:
Billing Email:mel.herdon@amnesty.org.uk
Tech ID:tuX9qGlGSJx5L46v
Tech Name:Mel Herdon
Tech Organization:Amnesty International UK
Tech Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:London
Tech State/Province:
Tech Postal Code:EC2A3EA
Tech Country:GB
Tech Phone:+44.2070331642
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:mel.herdon@amnesty.org.uk
</ecode>

Re:official?

[MysteriousPreacher]

The whois record for the site seems legit.

Domain ID:D13225976-LRMS
Domain Name:IRREPRESSIBLE.INFO
Registrant Name:Mel Herdon
Registrant Organization:Amnesty International UK
Registrant Street1:17-25 New Inn Yard

Also, the IP address is owned by Soda Creative - the company mentioned on the site so I think it's safe enough to remove the foil hat and sign the pledge.

Re:official?

[Aperculum]

hmm, great good. I was wrong for once. I was watching .org site instead of .org.uk

Re:official?

[emmadw]

I think that's because it was launched in the UK this morning; it's certainly only the UK Amnesty site; the launch article was in today's Observer (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/amnesty/story/0,,1 784721,00.html and other articles). I didn't know this before reading that article, but Amnesty was originally founded after an article in the Observer in 1961, discussing some Portuguese students that had been arrested for raising a toast to freedom. Given the international nature of the Internet, you'd have thought that the US based site for Amnesty would have at least had a link to the UK site & its campaign, but they probably didn't think about it! While I see that others have commented that online campaigns don't always have much of an impact, I suspect that they are using the online as a start; and hoping that people will get more involved locally, with letter campaigns etc. As to the "why info", I was going to guess that irrepressible.org was already taken, but it doesn't seem to be. So, not sure why they've gone for info - unless it's because they really just want to have info there & then get people to their local Amnesty.org sites to do something other than provide information to them. Dunno!

Useless

[umbrellasd]

Oh, yes. Let's just forward that petition straight to China.

UN: Please don't censor your people, China.
China: We have nuclear weapons, stupid.
UN: Oh, damn.
UN: Hey, Iran. Please don't censor your...
Iran: Uranium, uranium, uranium. Stick it up uranium, UN.

Re:Useless

[Idiomatick]

China is going to bomb the internet? Because i'm sure that'd work REAAAL well.

Re:Useless

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

They already bomb it with spam, viruses and other malware.

Re:official?

[onemillionbricks]

So, not sure why they've gone for info - unless it's because they really just want to have info there & then get people to their local Amnesty.org sites to do something other than provide information to them. Dunno!

But where's your poet? Read the url out loud: "irrepressible info". That's what the site's about. I think it's kinda perfect.

But it's not censorship!

[MikeRT]

In China, it's state security and public stability. In the EU it's anti-racism, who can oppose that? And in the United States it's nothing short of making America safe for democracy through "campaign finance reform." What kind of commie bastard opposes public safety, supports racism and is in favor of letting others (special interests) run our government?

Re:But it's not censorship!

[giorgiofr]

The kind of commie bastard who wrote in my country's constitution that it's forbidden to be or simply to promote fascism.
The kind of commie bastard who is so against racism that he has anti-white laws passed. But hey that's not racism because I'm white and I'm supposed to suck it up and die.
That kind. Satisfied, you commie bastard?

Slashdot?

[Kangie]

And if Slashdot were to be censored, how many of you would then be concerned?

Re:Slashdot?

[BakaHoushi]

First, they came for Fark, and I said nothing because I wasn't a Fark-er. Then, they came for SomethingAwful, and I said nothing because I wasn't a goon. Then they came for Gamespot, and I said nothing because I wasn't a Gamespotter. And at last they came for /. and there was no one left to help me.

Re:Slashdot?

[BrokenHalo]

And if Slashdot were to be censored, how many of you would then be concerned?

If that were to happen, my useful productivity would probably increase dramatically. ;-)

Re:Slashdot?

[Rude Turnip]

That's OK...it looks like you still have Digg.com left.

Re:official?

[suv4x4]

I've inspected the web gadget, it seems useless. To see the quotes try this:

fragments.irrepressible.info/data/current/*-180.ht ml

where "*" is from 0 to 70.

It includes some quotes, but they are just few words, taken out of context, no author or place of origin is given, basically makes no sense. Some of them are Arabic as well.

Let's hope it's not some scam, otherwise you can expect those quotes to turn into cheap C1aL1s offers and affordable mortgage deals when they gain some mass ;)

Re:official?

[Tim C]

also, why .info?

Irrepressible.info -> "irrepressible information" -> "information [that] [cannot|should not] be repressed" (or similar).

Besides that, given that it's the website for a campaign, rather than an organisation or similar, what domain fits better?

Re:official?

[Demerara]

This campaign is out of Amnesty's UK branch. If you visit www.amnesty.org.uk, you'll see the Irrepresible campaign highly featured. Each country (indeed each Local) Amnesty is free to start campaigns. As AI was founded in the UK, it is hardly surprising that the UK AI is the biggest and most active.

And perhaps the AI Worldwide webmaster is based in the US and therefore on a long weekend? Occams Razor?

MySpace

[ThomS]

Despite claiming to work on myspace, the increasingly more stringent myspace html control doesnt allow the content to be added, censoring if you will the information boxes.

No need for Nukes

[linumax]

Dunno about China but Iranian gov't does not need nukes to protect itself against human rights violation accusations. Iran has OIL!
We (Iranians) have beed silenced long before Iran started its nuke program

Re:No need for Nukes

[geobeck]

Unfortunately, that oil is proving to be more of a vulnerability than a strength with the current US administration. Any country that supplies a lot of oil to the US...

(Reads a top-15 US oil importers statistic)...

...um, maybe I should load up on supplies and move to the back woods of Manitoba before Dubya realizes who is really buttering his bread. I'll be sure to stock up on Canadian Bacon.

Being selective is *not* hypocritical!

[Per Abrahamsen]

A non-government lobbyist organization has no obligation to being fair, just to effective. Being effective means taking up the most popular cases. If they start defending the right to publish pedophile fantasies, to take a non-political example, that will be used against them and make the entire campaign inefficient.

Re:Being selective is *not* hypocritical!

[donscarletti]

A non-government lobbyist organization that claims to be fair has an obligation to be fair though.

Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we like

[Cal Paterson]

Oh thank god. Amnesty International involved! Great, now the anti-censorship lobby will have childish name-calling, double standards on freedom of speech, and glossy leaflets on their side. How I have waited for this day.

I'm a supporter of the anti-censorship side of this debate, but having an organisation that believes in censorship of opinions they dislike really means little. I know this is going to stir people up, but consider this quote (from Wikipedia);

However, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute -- neither for the creators of material nor their critics. It carries responsibilities and it may, therefore, be subject to restrictions in the name of safeguarding the rights of others. In particular, any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence cannot be considered legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Under international standards, such "hate speech" should be prohibited by law.

Now, as much as nationalists, racists and religious extremists are scum, the fact of the matter is that they all have the right to a voice, just like everyone else. One shouldn't ban political opinions you dislike. When people use bigotry as an excuse to commit force or fraud, it is the act itself which is the crime, and deserves punishment, not the motive behind it.

Good luck with that UN thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

During the last UN conference on the internet, held in Tunisia, Robert Mugabe, dictator of Zimbabwe, got up and said, "There is too much freedom of speech on the internet" and received huge applause from the assembled thugs and potentates.

The UN has a lot of evil members. Don't forget that.

Re:Good luck with that UN thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

abc.net.au:

John Bolton: There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States. When it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along. The United States makes the U.N. work when it wants to work, and that is exactly the way it should be, because the only question, the only question for the United States is what's in our national interest. And if you don't like that, I'm sorry, but that is the fact.

Stan Correy: John Bolton is now the US Ambassador to the United Nations, an organisation he's publicly disdained for almost 30 years.

Download Audio - 21052006 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/bbing_20060 521.mp3

John R Bolton may be called 'the ugly American' and be widely disliked, yet his pivotal role as US Ambassador to the UN makes him extraordinarily powerful and important in world affairs. Obsequious, arrogant, doctrinaire and above all, Americanist - but no fool, neocons hope he may save the Bush administration.

Show transcript http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/storie s/2006/1639578.htm#

Ok, then...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Who watches the watchers?

Re:Ok, then...

[mrogers]

The National Watcher-Watching Agency (and its regulatory body, the National National Watcher-Watching Agency-Watching Committee).

fine, but...

[whathappenedtomonday]

didn't they notice that the German Democratic Republic from the country list doesn't exist anymore?!

Re:fine, but...

[vertinox]

I think they were being semantic. East Germany (the region that is) has more problems with rascist attacks than the West German territories. Even though they are one state now, they still have quite a difference socially and economically.

Re:fine, but...

[whathappenedtomonday]

Even though they are one state now, they still have quite a difference socially and economically.

Yes indeed, but there's no such thing as the "GDR" anymore, so semantically, it is plain wrong to list it. By your reasoning, shouldn't they list Switzerland three times, once for each language spoken there?

They just used a ~20 year old list of countries in the "Sign this pledge" form, that's it.

Hey ;)

[Headcase88]

I found a good site on Amnesty International's campaign. Check it out here.

Does Amnesty go after the Wikipedia?

[blair1q]

Does Amnesty International include the Wikipedia in its list of those censoring dissenters?

Because I and others have been prevented from telling the truth there several times.

AI ain't what it use to be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Silent about genocide, subjugated poverty and terror; up to and including denial of distribution of UN medicine to children resulting in the deaths of 100K+ under 18 because of political alliances.

Should really clean house before going abroad.

Re:AI ain't what it use to be.

[Concerned Onlooker]

Could you explain/elaborate on that? Are you talking about Amnesty International? Amnesty International is all about the abolition of torture and the promotion of human rights. AI has no ability or desire to deny distribution of medicine to anyone. AI has always maintained a politics neutral standpoint with regard to torture.

Goals of Amnesty (from the wikipedia entry):

• Free all Prisoners of Conscience (a "POC" is a person imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their beliefs, which differs somewhat from the typical use of the term political prisoner).
• Ensure fair and prompt trials.
• Abolish all forms of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, including the use of the death penalty.
• End state-sanctioned terrorism, killings, and disappearances.
• Assist political asylum-seekers.
• End all forms of violence against women
• Co-operate with organizations that seek to put an end to human rights abuses.
• Raise awareness about human rights abuses around the world.

Should really clean house before going abroad.

Not really sure what you mean by this. Did you miss the "international" in Amnesty International?

Re:AI ain't what it use to be.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Hahaha...AI is a neutral organization? Please tell me you're not that naive. They spend most of their time denouncing the USA and have little time left to denounce the Darfur genocide, for instance.

Re:AI ain't what it use to be.

[katharsis83]

That's fucking bullshit. The only reason you think that is because domestic news sources give it more publicity when it condemns the US for "War on Terror" tactics, rather than when it does something boring like talking about massacres in South America or the Darfur conflict.

Have you even looked at the Amnesty International website? Here let me show you a quote from their 2006 annual report that describes, "...widespread rape and killings continued - most shockingly in Darfur - against a background of poverty and disease." Source: http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/globaloverview-e ng

Yes, the website does go on to criticize the US for one full sentence, and it also makes damn sure that China's rural policies, torture by Middle-Eastern governments, and incredibly poverty in Africa are mentioned as well.

Also, do you know WHY America gets criticzed for even (relatively, compared to the Darfur genocide) slips in human rights records? This is because Americans - me included - consider their country to be a role model for the rest of the world. We obviously aren't as bad as China when it comes to censorship or Syria when it comes to torture, but why are we even comparing ourselves to that? Does it really feel that good to say, "well, at least we aren't as bad as the Darfur Janjaweed militia?" We hold ourselves to a higher moral standard, and I see nothing wrong when international human rights organizations call us out when we lapse from that standard. If we consider ourselves a symbol of freedom and democracy in the world, we better be able to take flak when we deviate in any way from those principles.

Re:AI ain't what it use to be.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Also, do you know WHY America gets criticzed for even (relatively, compared to the Darfur genocide) slips in human rights records?

Because AI is a biased organization that lives and breathes anti-Americanism?

Check out their annual report - it begins with a letter from Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan. The letter opens with the events of August 19, 2003, when the United Nations envoy to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was killed in an attack on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Khan wonders why the "legitimacy and credibility of the UN could have eroded to such a fatal degree," noting that the UN was marginalized by America's march to war. That is supposed to explain the bombing of UN headquarters in Iraq? This peculiar bit of reasoning defies logic. Later on in the letter, Khan condemns "unequivocally" the actions of terrorist groups. But this hardly makes up for her earlier implication that America's rocky relationship with the UN somehow led to the August 19 attacks.

Khan worries that Washington is trampling on human rights in its search for security, and muses about lost opportunities to correct social injustice and inequality as increased funding goes to the Pentagon's budget rather than to poverty-alleviation programs. While condemning "armed groups and individuals," she doesn't delve into much detail about the enormous harm wrought on the lives and rights of untold millions living under the intolerant tenets of religious extremism.

The United States is named five times in her opening letter, and indirectly alluded to on several other occasions. No other country merits such sustained criticism. Certainly not the government of Sudan, which is guilty of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in what is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. As many as a million Sudanese in the Darfur region have been driven from their homes and tens of thousands have been slaughtered by militias loyal to the government. Khan does not mention the government of North Korea, which keeps a population of 25 million living in abject poverty and isolation, with more than 6 million Koreans depending on international handouts to avoid starvation while the regime spends scarce resources to build nuclear weapons. Khan mentions only in passing the human rights problems in the Congo, where more than 3 million people have died in a war nobody pays much attention to. Egypt merits a brief mention, but Khan does not bother criticizing Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, or any of the other Arab countries where jails are filled with political prisoners who often linger behind bars even after their sentences are completed. The millions of Burmese living under the heel of military dictatorship also fail to garner a mention in Khan's letter, as do the populations of increasingly repressive Central Asia regimes. And, of course, Khan declined to write about the travesty of the UN Human Rights Commission, which has lost all credibility by counting among its members some of the world's worst human rights violators.

Yes, the details of each country's abuses appear inside the report. But the overarching views and priorities of Amnesty International take shape in Khan's introductory letter and in the press release. After all, those are the sections of the report that most readers are likely to see.

And Amnesty's bias isn't just reflected in who it condemns; it's also revealed in where it directs praise. Amid the desolate landscape allegedly created by Washington, Amnesty takes solace in the emergence of what it calls a "global justice movement"--comprising the millions who, according to Amnesty, "took to the streets around the world in solidarity with the Iraqi people." That's an amazingly simplistic characterization of anti-war marches--it's not clear how a movement that urges the abandonment of Iraq stands in "solidarity with the Iraqi people"--and one that makes Amnesty sound more like a left-wing activist group than the rational, analytical organization it claims to be. Human rights are indeed under attack, and victims of abuse need staunch--and serious--defenders more than ever. Amnesty International could be at the forefront of this work, if it weren't so busy carrying out a narrow political agenda.

Re:AI ain't what it use to be.

[wilec]

At least they have the courage to call it as they see it. The current crop of political "leaders" holding the executive and majority control in both houses of the US legislature have not only damaged the nations economic stability and endangered the liberty of its people, they have also soiled its ethical standing. Not that it has not happened before, but it is really atrocious how the arrogantly self righteous this bunch is. Do YOU like the way things are being ran, or are you just afraid to say otherwise. At least AI is willing to stand up and declare the emperor naked. For my part, I will add not only is the emperor butt naked he's damn ugly as well.

Matthew

"German Democratic Republic"?

[magerquark.de]

When trying to sign their "pledge", I discovered that they allow me to select the "German Democratic Republic" (GDR for short) as a country.

The GDR was merged 1990 with Western Germany.

Where is AI they buying their country- and address lists from?

Re:"German Democratic Republic"?

[dapyx]

They have Yugoslavia, too.

Re:official?

[Dasch]

You must be new here. I'm Daniel.

Re:official?

[nevernamed]

I think that the focus of our comments should be on the governments that blatantly restrict human rights. If you think about it it isn't so different from what the Bush Administration is doing right now. I think that people should be worried about the way that American Civil Rights are going. What can we do about it? We can write letters to congress and senators, and tell the Bush White House that they have to obey the law too. Every American deserves their rights. They cannot be taken away for they are in the Constitution. Make yourself heard, write.

Re:Rating service

[giorgiofr]

Uhm. The episode did not take place in America. The details are not relevant unless you are both well-versed and interested in contemporary Italian politics, which I deem less than 0.001% of /. can be. I don't know about the hero's tastes wrt food, so no comment on the banana bit. Overall, you score 0 in commeting skills and 100 in idiocy. Nice work!

Sign the damn thing!

[wandm]

I can't believe this. Amnesty, a major human right organisation with lots of members, money and influence takes up internet freedom as a campaining topic and what do slashdotters do? Moan, complain and try to rip jokes out of it.

Believe me, Amnesty has been able to change pretty many things in this world, and for better. Now they are taking up the case of Shi Tao, who got 10 years in China for advancing freedom. Now sign the damn petition, it takes a freaking 10 seconds! Would be great to have 100.000 names on it. Slashdotters could and should help.

http://irrepressible.info/

Re:Sign the damn thing!

[liangzai]

No, Shi Tao was not imprisoned for advocating freedom. He could have done that, and nothing would have happened to him (fuck, I do it everyday, and I am still alive!).

Shi Tao received classified information from his employer, a newspaper. He was told it was classified, and he was also told not to take notes of what was said (he did anyway). He was completely aware of the consequences of disseminating the information.

He spread the information from his workplace, the newspaper, using the newspaper's computer. By Chinese law, he committed a crime. By Chinese law, he deserves to be in prison, and by Chinese law, the punishment was accurate.

Therefore, the petition will not free Shi Tao.

On a more personal note I would like to say that I have never heard of such a stupid dissident before. Not only did he openly take notes, ignoring his bosses, but he also used his employers equipment, using an emial address with the account name huoyan1989 (1989 flame), sending the info unencrypted to foreign addresses that were sure to be monitored by the shield.

That stupidity alone should give him ten years.

Re:Sign the damn thing!

[dkf]

I can't believe this. Amnesty, a major human right organisation with lots of members, money and influence takes up internet freedom as a campaining topic and what do slashdotters do? Moan, complain and try to rip jokes out of it.

You'd better believe it. It's the traditional slashdot response to everything. If they're making jokes (in poor taste, natch) about massive natural disasters and ongoing wars, why would you have any sort of reasonable expectation that an NGO like Amnesty would have some kind of exemption? Come off it!

How about porn?

[houghi]

Will they fight governements that make it their job to make it difficult to put porn online?

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[siriuskase]

You forgot to reference your quote which happens to be an opinion, not a fact. Whether or not you or I agree with it, it does seem to be a reasonable opinion, but it would help to know whose it is.

Whether or not you like AI and it's methods, they do attract the attention of quite a few people. It helps to have them on our side of this issue. If only /. type people were concerned about censorship, we wouldn't stand a chance.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[Cal Paterson]

I didn't make it clear enough; that was a quote from Amnesty themselves; at least according to Wikipedia

Not a short term solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I am interested in seeing what will happen in November. But for the time being there is a faster solution. anoNet is a VPN network which operates just like the Internet but without the influence of the government. All communications are encrypted and uncensored. People are free to say whatever they want to without fear of persecution. We use the 1.0.0.0/8 IP range, so it is impossible to geographically identify a user based on their IP. It is 100% anonymous. Interested? Visit http://anonet.org/ for details.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[Tonytheloony]

"When people use bigotry as an excuse to commit force or fraud, it is the act itself which is the crime, and deserves punishment, not the motive behind it."

And that is your opinion, but not how the law works in most western european countries.

Pr0n?

[Frightening]

"and also a downloadable web gadget which displays random excerpts of censored material on your own website"

Dear Amnesty,

First: what is a web gadget?

Second: why does amnesty international want to put porn on my website?

Cheers

I refuse to sign

[takeya]

I agree 100%.

I am not going to sign this petition. I don't want governments to force more regulations on privately owned telecoms. And the LAST, the very last thing I want to see, is an "international government" doing anything except ceasing to exist. Not proposing treaties, not controlling guns, not levying international taxes, not taking 50 fucking billion dollars a year from US Taxpayers and then attempting to claim control over our nation.

Re:Rating service

[giorgiofr]

We are not putting the freaking guy under trial, the judge has already done his work... Even if he were a serial kiler the point stands that saying "murder is always wrong" is completely false because there can be instances when it's OK to go on and kill. In order to make my point clearer, I made an example, but the details would have been tedious. That's why I left them out. Anyway, if you are curious, it went like this: criminal breaks into the shop using a mace to shatter the security window, proceeds to threaten father &son, etc etc. F&S are bloody angry because it's the third time they are robbed already and choose not to give him anything. Instead, they pick their guns and open fire, killing the intruder while his friend who was waiting outside run away. Are you happy now?
Besides, I don't understand what's wrong with taking down people who threaten your self or your house. Who cares if the burglar is 16yo? Oh, the poor guy was so stupid that he managed not to find anything to steal and so was running away already... so let's just let him go? What a load of crap.

"monitor online communications"

[garry_g]

Hm ... so AI will be campaining against most of the "free world" pretty soon, judging from new laws in Europe and developments in the U.S.

Explaining censorship

[alienmole]

Hard to tell if this is supposed to be a joke - if so, I didn't even hear the WHOOSH. But in case you really did miss the point, the kind of censorship that Amnesty cares about is government censorship. Your issues with Wikipedia are easily resolved: post your material somewhere else, start a competing site, whatever. "Freedom of speech" doesn't translate to a right to have others publish your speech, or agree with it, or take it seriously.

The sort of "censorship" that Wikipedia does happens all the time in even the most free societies: some ideas won't be popular, or will be ignored, or actively suppressed, for whatever reasons. For example, Slashdot quite effectively censors unwanted material via its moderation system. The reasons for such censorship are often benign, e.g. designed to improve the quality of discussion; or they may be less benign, in the case of the kind of "groupthink" which can be quite repressive for members of the affected group. But even when good intentions fail, or in cases which are deliberately not benign, the fact that the censorship is not enforced by a government backed up by the power of weapons and imprisonment means that the victims have alternatives.

For example, if you're a Scientologist or an Opus Dei member who's being repressed within those organizations, you can still publish whatever you want to say about the offending organization, and in free countries the law will protect your right to do so. You may have to deal with thugs who try to make you regret your choice (especially in the case of Scientology) -- speech which is critical of others still carries risks. But as long as your government isn't helping to suppress your free speech, and will help protect you against illegal attacks on your reputation or person that result from your reasonable free speech, then things are working pretty much the way they should.

Serious, hard-to-fix problems begin when governments turn against their citizens and impose unreasonable constraints on their speech. That's when things start to go badly wrong for citizens, and those are the cases that Amnesty cares about.

Re:Explaining censorship

[blair1q]

If you don't think Wikipedia's admin corps sees itself as a government, or if you think that there is anywhere else that gets the visibility and fallacy-based respect that Wikipedia does, you're very much mistaken.

The Internet is very fluid. Anyone wishing to get out from under a government-imposed block merely needs to change their domain name, or post on a site the government wouldn't dare block. So your analogy defeats itself.

My problems with Wikipedia aren't with unpopular stances, they're with telling the truth when a few people with admin power don't want that truth told. There are a couple of thousand of them, and it only takes a couple to collude to totally shut you out of all communication with absolutely no way to get your story to people who might help.

In any case, it's not worth a month of arguing with them or trying to make Jimbo Wales realize he's created a system of self-serving bureaucrats. The Wikipedia is famous for its errors, and if Wales doesn't want to improve it, that's his business.

It's no less censorship.

Re:No Censorship On Slashdot? Ha Ha Ha

[alienmole]

What you're describing is a form of social censorship, which is a normal and natural part of human interaction - it happens all the time. It's very different from the government censorship that Amnesty is concerned with. I replied to someone else about this here.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[zippthorne]

Is/ought. AI should be arguing for "ought" not "is." When discussing what ought to be, what is is hardly relevant.

Bullshit

[katharsis83]

"Silent about genocide, subjugated poverty and terror; up to and including denial of distribution of UN medicine to children resulting in the deaths of 100K+ under 18 because of political alliances."

I'm sorry, but that's complete bullshit.

Silent about genocide? From their on website (http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/globaloverview- eng), "In Africa, the number of armed conflicts declined following several peace agreements in 2005. But widespread rape and killings continued - most shockingly in Darfur - against a background of poverty and disease." Their worldwide report condens mass killings in numerous other countries as well.

Here's a full link to the Amnesty website disucssing the Darfur genocide in depth as well as other African issues: http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/2af-summary-eng.

In addition to that, I've seen numerous speakers from AI giving lectures/talks about the Darfur genocide. Your comment isn't just offensive because it's a lie, but because you're slandering one of the few organizations that's exerting public pressure to relieve the plight of the Darfur people.

I'm afraid I couldn't find a single source for Amnesty International causing deaths by denying children medicine; please feel free to post a news link from a credible source. Also, I'm curious, how does an NGO, primarily funded by private donations, have the power and reach to deny "100k+ under 18" kids medicine?

Re:official?

[uhoreg]

The "web gadget" isn't just the text. It is also a link that takes you to the irrepressible.info page that will give you more information on the text, including where it came from, and where it is being censored.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[colinrichardday]

And what is law but legislated opinion?

Re:official?

[trewornan]

Curious though that a "whois" lookup gives the company registration as 1051861 but charitiesdirect.com says Amnesty International UK Section has registration number 3139939. Although that may just mean it's another "Section" I suppose.

Re:Rating service

[trewornan]

This "running away" thing was a classic smear by the authorities. The fact that they guy had his back to Tony Martin at the precise moment the gun was fired does not necessarily mean he was "running away". Tony Martin's mistake was not killing Fearon as well, thus allowing Fearon to testify against him. Naturally Fearon's testimony was damning of Martin - you'd hope the jury wouldn't have put too much reliance on it though, considering he's an admitted felon and convicted heroin dealer with 30+ previous (and some subsequent) convictions

For those who don't know

[Trogre]

Amnesty International has recently adopted a policy where abortion is considered a human right.

What do people here think about this? Is it over-stepping their mark?

Re:For those who don't know

[bjprice]

I'm guessing you're American - most of Europe, and indeed the rest of the "first world", wouldn't have even noticed that - it's taken as read...

Re:For those who don't know

[Trogre]

Wrong, guess again.

By the way a lot of Britain and Europe aren't happy with this either.

Re:For those who don't know

[bjprice]

Irish then? :)

Certainly it only seems to be an issue in largely religious countries. I don't know anyone in the UK (or other European countries outside Catholic Ireland and maybe the Vatican :-) who's as fiercely "pro-life" as the Americans...

Surprisingly somewhat genuine

[Quila]

They list France for the Yahoo Nazi paraphernalia problem, and the German government getting ISPs to filter "hate sites."

I'm surprised. Most organizations like this don't think silencing Nazis is censorship.

Cannot use their javascript in Blogger

[rduke15]

Looks like you cannot use their javascript code in Blogger:

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed:

I guess the forbidden javascript will also be cut out of this Blogger error message quote.

Talk about censorship... :-)

But in fact, if you click the check box to ignore HTML errors, it posts alright.

He's not alone

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Robet Mugabe is not the only leader of a UN member state who believes there should be limits to freedom on the Internet.

The Double Edged Oil Field

[umbrellasd]

All too true. Oil is more of a big "Kick some ass here" sign than anything. But if they have oil and weapons grade uranium! Now that would be something. Maybe they could combine the two: one uranium fission bomb in an oil canister for each thousand barrels of oil. "Without the proper disarming codes, the stolen fission canister will detonate X hours after leaving Iranian territory. Have a nice day, infidels."

That sounds incendiary, but I find myself on the side of Iran. I can't help but have this feeling that our government manipulates the press so that it can justify plundering the resources of other countries in the name of democracy and the fight against "terror". Sure, the terror of the #1 fossil fuel economy running out of oil. Rather than accept responsibility for our own energy consumption, we use military force to control the supplier.

It's not hard to see the perspective of people outside the U.S. that think the U.S. is an evil oppressor. Geez, I walk down the street and see families living in palatial houses with huge gas guzzling cars (several of them) and very expensive lifestyles. Then you flip on the tube and see abject poverty and starvation all over the world. Oops, end of rant...

Re:The Double Edged Oil Field

[geobeck]

But if they have oil and weapons grade uranium! Now that would be something.

The world's number one uranium producer. Okay, it's not weapons-grade, but it's next-door to the country with the most enriching facilities.

I'll just go buy that bunker in Brochet now...

Re:Rating service

[trewornan]

He had his back turned to the guy with the gun,

Irrelevant.

he was unarmed

As Tony Martin was supposed to know at night in an unlit room with a torch shining in his face

had already set his dogs on the intruders

No the dogs were in another area with no access to the farmhouse

In what possible way could the guy with the gun have been in danger

Lets see . . . in a farmhouse, miles from other habitation with two burglers both of them having a string of convictions for violent assualts . . . hmmmm, I don't know, you tell me.

How on earth could it be self-defence?

Pretty easily - but I think the truth is, you don't care if it was.

Not knowing what we can't know

[AgentWinter]

In Australia we are not even allowed to know what is being censored/filtered. The ISP's are given a list and they are not allowed to release it.

This url refers to newsgroups that are blocked: http://www.internode.on.net/content/premium-news/# Are_there_any_newsgroups_you_blo

Re:Rating service

[TapeCutter]

"Oh, the poor guy was so stupid that he managed not to find anything to steal and so was running away already... so let's just let him go?"

If he was running away how can the F&S possibly claim self defense? Running away is not "threatening" behaviour, it sounds very much like F&S were motivated by revenge and are therefore guilty of murder or at least manslaughter.

Re:Rating service

[trewornan]

Was he running away? Through a brick wall apparently since that and the window were the only exits. Even his accomplice admitted that he only started to flee the scene after at least one shot had already been fired. Tony Martin (from less than 5 meters) managed to put two shots into the legs of the burglars - which suggests to me he was deliberately aiming low.

Incidentally, the burglars were not father & son - just accomplices.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[pNutz]

They don't advocate banning political desicions they don't like. They advocate banning hate speech. Conservatism and libertarianism are not hate speech, if you're worried. That definition is about the same as the EU's.

When people use bigotry as an excuse to commit lynchings, terrorism, and genocide, stopping the proponents of these ideas is better than waiting for these kind of crimes to happen. AI is an international organization, and some places in the world do have bigger problems than frivolous lawsuits from people exploiting hate crime laws. When the man on the radio is shouting for all the 's slaughter, and people are starting to pick up machetes, it's best not to wait until the crime occurs to shut down the radio station. His speech should not be protected.

only 7627?

[DiniZuli]

Why, after being a topic on /. one of the webs most visited sites, have only 7627 people signed the pledge? Doesn't /. readers care? I mean there have been several cases of internet censorship presented here on /. - it even has it's own topic here. It clearly shows that there's need for campaigns like this - so why not support it? It's so easy.

Re:Blindness for what's really happening

[Qa1]

Your unconditional support of Israel and what it stands for is just sickening.

I find any support or "understanding" for heinous attacks on civilian women and children to be much more sickening.

Don't you realize that suicide bombing is a sympton of desperation?

I wish it was. However, facts point in the opposite direction. Take the 9/11 bombers for instance. They were anything but "desperate", living normal (in fact, better than normal) lives in U.S., the country which they bombed. Take Bin-Laden, born to one of the richest families in the world (!), born into every comfort and luxury in the world - yet decided to embark on a path of global religious war and murderous terror.

Contrast that with many millions of people in Africa, compared to which even the poorest Palestinians are living like kings (how many Palestinians die of hunger or thirst annually? As the "inhumane" Olmert said a few days ago, 'we would not allow a single Palestinian child to die of hunger'). Yet you won't see those trully poor people commit mass-murder through systematic bombing of civilian population.

The current wave of terroristic mass-murder is fueled not by economic "desperation", but by extreme religious hate and idealogy condoning - nay, glorifying! - mass-murder. Most of the terrorists have an average (or not much below) quality of life. Quite a few had much better. Try reading the fundamentalistic Islamic propaganda suicide bombers (and non-suicidal terrorists) subscribe to. Learn about the concept of Jihad, and its current application. I believe you'll gain quite a few new insights into the nature of the conflict between Middle Eastern Muslims and Israel, and the rest of the modern western world.

Re:Rating service

[giorgiofr]

Congratulations! Thanks to your idiocy, now I can: break down your door, enter your house, steal everything I can and walk out, all without you having any right to stop me, because I am not pointing a gun at you. You must be really loved by criminals.

Re:Rating service

[TapeCutter]

Tad parinoid aren't we? Just because I think it is manslaughter/murder to kill a fleeing theif does not mean I am giving aid and comfort to theives. There are other ways to live and still keep law and order, hiding behind a gun beacuse of an irrational fear is statistically the most dangerous for your family and the general public at large.

I don't for a second think I can change your mind but here in Australia self defense is not a valid reason for having a weapon of any description, hand guns are rare and carry strict licensing conditions, semi-auto's banned, serious hunters and target shooters are well catered for. Violent home invasions do occur but are also rare enough to be national front page news, even in the roughest of suburbs the doors have not been kicked down, in fact in many places they are not even locked!

But the real proof that thieves don't run amok in a society with such alien gun laws is the price of insurance. I pay ~$250AU for house + contents insurance that I have never used in the 25yrs I have had it. How much do you pay, and what will your attitude cost you if you shoot someone fleeing with your $50 DVD player?

Why yes, I have donated to ammnesty's campaing against the samll arms trade and yes you have the right to support the small arms trade through membership of the NRA.

Pay attention to the sig, there are many forms of cages, fear is the darkest.

Re:Rating service

[giorgiofr]

You misunderstood my "I want to be able to defend myself and my stuff" for "OMG crime is rampant whatamigonnado i need bigger gunz LOLBBQ!!!one".
It's true that I don't have my door kicked down every day and to be honest I have witnessed violent crimes only VERY rarely (that's because in my country there is a *sane* crime rate). That does not mean that it never happens: over the course of my life my house was robbed twice, and twice did someone enter it with the intention to steal but was driven away (once by my raging dog, once by the fact that they themselves were not really convinced they wanted to steal...)
Still, you point out that "hiding behind a gun beacuse of an irrational fear is statistically the most dangerous"; well, call me stupid but fear DOES come from weakness and I am weak when confronted with some armed thug, if all I have are my hands. So, having a gun is dangerous - well duh, it was meant to be a weapon, you kill people with it - but I don't see you proposing a novel way to face crime and at the same time avoid any and all dangers. The police are useless (when they are not downright criminal) and I am vulnerable - yet you want to prevent me access to weapons. How about you come up with a solution?
In the meantime I am getting a gun. They are difficult to have in my country, but it's possible. When you can guarantee that noone on earth can harm me, I will give up my weapons. Oh and if you could do that without turning the world into a police state, that would be great.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[Cal Paterson]

You've read my post, but you haven't really understood it.

The speech should not be classified along with the act of violence. If the person is clearly intending to be violent, then you use existing laws.

Restricting speech you don't like ("hate speech" as AI calls it) hass nothing to do with violence - violence is illegal through existing laws. It just curtails freedom of speech.

The fact or not that other countries have different problems from us makes no difference: everyone should have the same human rights and situations, such as war, are no excuse to take away freedom of speech.

Re:Blindness for what's really happening

[dajak]

I wish it was. However, facts point in the opposite direction. Take the 9/11 bombers for instance. They were anything but "desperate", living normal (in fact, better than normal) lives in U.S., the country which they bombed. Take Bin-Laden, born to one of the richest families in the world (!), born into every comfort and luxury in the world - yet decided to embark on a path of global religious war and murderous terror.

Contrast that with many millions of people in Africa, compared to which even the poorest Palestinians are living like kings (how many Palestinians die of hunger or thirst annually? As the "inhumane" Olmert said a few days ago, 'we would not allow a single Palestinian child to die of hunger'). Yet you won't see those trully poor people commit mass-murder through systematic bombing of civilian population.

The great spokesmen for the poor and oppressed usually come from a privileged background themselves, and kindly volunteer to explain to the discontent the root causes of their situation. Frances Gouda's 'Poverty and Political Culture' is the book to read on this subject. Much of recent political history can be interpreted as a conflict between religions and political ideologies about who controls the violent discontent mob. This conflict is less about how much misery there is, than it is about who is responsible for it. Trying to address the misery itself has historically proven more effective as an antidote to political violence than explaining away the relation between misery and political violence. Just because you seriously tried you prove your innocence. You don't respond with "realism" to a moral challenge: it is impolite and politically ineffective.

Organizations like Al-Qaeda and Hamas are new players in this game, and they are fueled by misery in the same way as socialism is fueled by working class poverty, even though Marx was never poor and socialist movements of the past often had foreign paymasters. Most supporters of political violence are motivated by little more than the hope that a new order will turn out better for them than the existing one. Again: the support does not depend primarily on how miserable they are in an objective sense, but on whether they accept the account of the causes of their misery. Whether Al-Qaeda or Hamas also have an effective solution is less relevant, just like in normal politics: to spend taxpayer's money you have to convince taxpayers that there is a big problem, not that there is an effective solution.

Re:Rating service

[TapeCutter]

"When you can guarantee that noone on earth can harm me, I will give up my weapons. Oh and if you could do that without turning the world into a police state, that would be great. "

Grow up, life dosen't come with guarantees. You fear a "police state", yet you are advocating the "shoot first ask later" rule, it's a rule entrenched in totalitarian ideology that has nothing to do with policing or justice.

Re:Rating service

[giorgiofr]

It's a rule entrenched in total freedom and it has everything to do with justice - you attack me, I kill you.
And exactly because life does not come with guarantees, I will do *my* best to ensure myself a safe life - which include safety from lowlife and sticking to my guns... literally.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[iminplaya]

When people use bigotry as an excuse to commit force or fraud, it is the act itself which is the crime, and deserves punishment, not the motive behind it.

That statement is even more correct if you leave out everything before that first comma. It is, without exception, the act itself which is the crime.

Re:Anti-censorship...as long as you say what we li

[Cal Paterson]

Hmmm...agreed.

Re:Rating service

[TapeCutter]

"you attack me, I kill you."

Nobody is disputing that, but a fleeing thief can not be considered an "attack". If you want to feel "safe", why not just kill everyone?

Re:Blindness for what's really happening

[Qa1]

The great spokesmen for the poor and oppressed usually come from a privileged background themselves

I regret to see you alluding to murderous criminals like the 9/11 kidnappers as "great spokesmen".

Such people are not "spokesmen". They are filthy murderers.

Your other arguments are interesting. I think this whole process became, in a sense, so self-aware that it sprung another degree of agency. The terrorists are not spokesmen, though they perceive or represent themselves as such. The actual spokesmen are now the western liberal thikers, who retroactively construe the acts of those terrorists according to their favorite world view. E.g. socialist thinkers construe the terrorist acts as social protests.

This might be clearer if you notice that the "violent mob" element of the equation has changed. Technology has rendered obsolete the large group of unqualified, under-equipped commiters of violence. There is no "violent mob" today. The small group of terrorist replaced the large "violent mob" of the past. While the real "violent mob" was taken out of the equation, and reduced to a supporting role at most. The 9/11 terrorists are not the spokesmen of some "violent mob" - they constitute it.

Re:Blindness for what's really happening

[Qa1]

I'm pretty sure that if you equiped the Jews and Palestinians with the same weapons, you wouldn't have seen suicide bombings.

So the Palestinians' acts of intentional mass-murder of innocent civilians is justified because you speculate Israelis would do the same?

You judge people on the acts they actually commit, not on what others might have done in their place. The Palestinian people (like quite a lot of the Arab world these days) chose the path of murder. Justifications for their bad choice, like the ones you are trying to make, don't mitigate their responsibility for their crimes.

The only thing that could stop the blood shed is their realization and taking of responsibility over what they do. Any status-quo in which Israeli Jews are routinely being killed is simply not acceptable. And I cannot help but view proponents of such status quo as deeply anti-semithic. There are quite a few such proponents out there, but since less than 60 years ago a third of our people were massacred, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The Jews have many enemies.

So, things like this, isn't glorifying mass-murder?

Free speech allows the expression of dissenting views in the western world. But please don't compare a few negligble western extremists to the mainstream idealogies and leaders of the Arab world. Some posting on some website by someone ostensibly American isn't remotely equivalent to the president of Iran congratulating in front of cheering crowds acts of terror in which westerns were killed. When was the last time President Bush (frequent target of attack now days for his "extreme" views) expressed his happiness with the killing of any foreigner, much less a civilian one? Yet congratulations upon the killing of Israeli Jewish civilians appear in Arab newspapers every day. Condoning racist murders occur in the most negliglbe, extreme fringes of western idealogies; it is the mainstream in many Arab countries today.

What happened in New York on September 11 was a cowardice act, but it was an act of desperation.

Killing out of desperation is justified when your back is to the wall and its either you or your victims. Surely you do not claim that was the situation for the WTC attackers. In fact they led quite comfortable lives. If they wanted to promote prosperity on their homelands, they had many ways to do so. Choosing to be murderous was their decision. I can't see any sense in which they were "desperate", but they might have convinced themselves they are. That doesn't mitigate their crime.

Whoever you are, wherever you are... live in peace. Take care.

Thanks you. You too.

Re:Blindness for what's really happening

[dajak]

I regret to see you alluding to murderous criminals like the 9/11 kidnappers as "great spokesmen".

I have people like Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Sheikh Yassin in mind. People like this never commit the violent act themselves: they only encourage others. These people convince millions of their case, and among those millions a few hundred willing executioners are found.

The actual spokesmen are now the western liberal thikers, who retroactively construe the acts of those terrorists according to their favorite world view. E.g. socialist thinkers construe the terrorist acts as social protests.

Osama bin Laden is a spokesman for a protest movement, and an eloquent one (when properly translated). His Western interpreters however don't actually want to know what he has to say. Not entering a dialog is not wrong as such, since the policy should be to take the initiative away from Osama bin Laden and reframe the dialog between "us" and the "protest movement" in our favour. What is wrong is that you are condemned to lose if you are unwilling to objectively evaluate your enemies.

This might be clearer if you notice that the "violent mob" element of the equation has changed. Technology has rendered obsolete the large group of unqualified, under-equipped commiters of violence. There is no "violent mob" today. The small group of terrorist replaced the large "violent mob" of the past. While the real "violent mob" was taken out of the equation, and reduced to a supporting role at most. The 9/11 terrorists are not the spokesmen of some "violent mob" - they constitute it.

I agree with the general point. People's individual capacity for destruction increases with technological progress, and this increases the potential danger the antisocial individual in society poses to the whole and the required violent mob becomes smaller.

Capital-intensive technology like nuclear weapons also upsets the traditional dictum that people get the government they deserve, since it makes it possible for 1% to oppress 99% without challenge. I often pointed out in discussions that Saddam's ambivalence about his WMD probably means that he needed the mere idea of the existence of WMD to remain in power. Is a 21st century Battle of the Golden Spurs, where militia defeats an armoured warrior class, still possible? In this sense you are right: the "violent mob" is probably becoming less and less relevant as an agent of change in history.

The existence of "cheap" options for mass destruction (like hijacking and crashing a plane) is superficially good for the balance of power between "the people" (read: the violent mob mobilized by good guys) and government, but it also increases the total amount of political violence. Pandora's box is open and cannot be closed again: everything short of a poor man's nuclear bomb is not good enough. In this case they don't use specific technology to destroy, but the increased vulnerability caused by increased dependence on technology. Since this requires suicide, people with a death wish must be specifically selected from a much bigger loyal "violent mob" reserve. The ideological basis of the movement is however still important: the suicide killer needs (the idea of) an admiring audience and a justification for his act. People love being heroes. Socially isolated nihilist suicide killers are extremely rare. We still live in an exceptionally save world.

Amnesty International's Solution Won't Work.

[burningion]

Amnesty International's solution won't work.

Putting up some censored text does nothing to stop snooping and web tracking. This is a more important problem we have facing the global society.

Between the US and China there has been a rediculous number of infringements on human privacy and freedom of speech. I think the best way to stop the NSA and China's insistence on snooping and restricting is for as many people as possible to start participating in an anonymizing service, like the EFF's TOR Project. It wraps every web request in encryption and then routes it through other servers so noone can tell what the other person is looking for. I wrote a tutorial on putting this anonymizing software on a hidden volume in a USB key for those people who want to be able to surf the web, without big brother tracking them. Make your own DemocraKey, and let's take away every government's ability to regulate thought.

Re:Rating service

[trewornan]

Get your story straight. Was the burglar's back turned, or was he shining a torch in the farmer's face?

Barras (the younger one) had his back turned, Fearon (the older one) was shining his torch at Martin - not complicated, and not disuputed in court.

Let's see... he had a shotgun pointed at them

A shotgun is only a defence if you're prepared to use it. If you're not prepared to use it, two violent criminals are liable to take it off you.

And to use your own logic... how would the farmer know about the string of convictions

He wouldn't: the string of convictions merely shows that Martin's assessment of the two as dangerous violent criminals was *very* correct.

And incidentally, Barras was unarmed, Fearon wasn't.

the facts simply aren't able to support self-defence - something that the jury agreed with

*Some* of the jury agreed, also members of the jury subsequently complained about pressure and intimidation during the case - there was even an enquiry about it, although nothing could be proved.

you think shooting burglars is okay

Here you've finally got something right.

from this you decide that it must be self-defence because otherwise the farmer who did the right thing would go to jail. Common-sense be damned

This is a bit confused but from what I understand you seem to be claiming I'm forcing the fact to fit my preconceptions. Odd then, that you have such a firm opinion when you seem to actually know very little about the facts of the case - look to yourself.