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German Member of Parliament Joins Pirate Party
Political Observer writes "Jörg Tauss, a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag), left the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is part of the coalition government, and announced that he is joining the German Pirate Party (Google translation; original German article). Tauss resigned from the SPD after all but four of the party's members voted for a new censorship law, which passed the parliament on Thursday. The law, which aims at reducing child pornography, introduces an infrastructure for DNS-based content blocking and is the subject of major criticism from Internet users. In March 2009 Tauss became the subject of investigations by the German police for possession of child pornographic material. He said he had this material only for research as part of his role as a member of parliament. Investigations are still continuing."
Well, although it does seem far fetched it legitimately could be used for research in the fact that he could either use it to convince people that certain parts of the law as unreasonable (such as, this counts as child porn, however as you can plainly see it is not).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
His membership got accepted by the Pirate Party!
We now have an active Pirate in the parliament.
I wonder how the next Bundestag elections will end. I have the feeling, that this is the start of something big!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Because people have a natural instinct to protect their children, which causes them to be on lookout for potential dangers for them. This, in turn, causes slight anxiety, which is preyed on by the cynical politicians who are drawn to psychological weaknesses like sharks to blood.
It's the same thing as with terrorism: politicians and others who want power strive to fan people's fears into full-blown panic, so they are no longer thinking rationally, and can be manipulated easily. Pedophiles are even better boogeymen than terrorists, because the guy who points out he has better chances of being struck by lightning than dying in a terror attack seems brave while a guy - or better yet, a mother - who points out that her children are more likely to be run over by a car than get molested by a stranger can be branded a bad parent.
Hysteria and lack of rational thinking are considered virtuous when dealing with children, and calm use of reason is seen as callous and irresponsible. The end result is, of course, the same as it's always been: a police state build on the pretext of eradicating witches/jews/communists/terrorists/pedophiles.
Preventing child abuse is not the point of these policies. Enabling censorship and getting votes for it because "it's for the children" is. If anything, increased abuse would be beneficial for the politicians, since it would be something for them to point to and pretend to be fighting against.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.