To describe Catholicism as a "totalitarian anti-democratic organisation" and thereby making a direct comparison to Scientology is simply doing your own intelligence and critical thinking skills a disservice.
Crap. I was brought up in the theocracy that was the Republic of Ireland, and "totalitarian" and "anti-democratic" are accurate adjectives. It's totalitarian because the Church sought to regulat every part of your life, including your thoughts ('thought crime' is a very familiar term to survivors of Catholicism like myself). It's anti-democratic because religion is, by its very nature, anti-democratic - scripture's scripture, and you have to follow it. The Catholic Church is run by an old man in an Italian city-state with a hierarchy of other old men who give orders and are completely unaccountable to their victims (sorry, 'parishioners').
Catholicism is far, far worse than Scientology, at least in Ireland were it's State-backed and obligatory, and its ordinances reach even unto non-believers (hence all the women who travel to the UK for abortions because the misogynist pricks that run the Church have banned it). At least you've a choice whether or not to be a Scientologist, and if you so choose then more bloody fool you.
If you're a Catholic, no-one's going to try and make your life a living hell if you want to stop coming to church.
That's complete bollox, that is. If you were a Catholic in Eire and you didn't come to Mass, the local priest would be calling at your door wanting to know why you weren't there, and he could and would give you serious grief if you didn't turn up next Sunday. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Pleasingly, the Church in Ireland is having done to it what it's done to all those kids over the decades: being fucked up the arse. The days when you'd have to bow and scrape to your local priest because he had an almost literal power of life and death over you are now over - now he's just a weirdo in a black dress who can't have sex like normal folk (and as a result is seriously fucked-up in the head).
The article doesn't seem to make any mention of removing that information when they become adults.
I can see where this is going... get a database of them now, when less people are likely to complain, and then you still have the info when they are adults.
Instant (well sorta) database of all your citizens.
Yep, that's about the size of it. The State is playing a long game here. Everything, but everything about children gets stored in the database, including their DNA profiles. The scheme has been highly controversial over here, but in time the fuss will die over and it'll just become an accepted part of life. The next generation is going to have an awful shock waiting for it when it reaches adulthood and becomes uppity and rebellious.
The 'rationales' for the scheme chime with public and media 'concerns', with cases of child abuse (Baby P) and abductions (Maddy) making the front pages every other week, and South Park slogan 'think of the children!' being public policy. How can a right-minded person possibly oppose a scheme that will, or so the State says, 'safeguard' children throughout their lives? The perfect smokescreen, carefully constructed over a decade of media manipulation.
The definition of child porn is so slippery that any site/newsgroup where there are images of underage persons could be so defined, even when the people are clothed. If they're considered to be 'posing lewdly' (dancing to a Beyonce number, say) that counts as CP, which includes pix teens take of each other. When I was a teen we took 'lewd' pix of ourselves in photobooths and passed them around - these days teens use phone cams and post pix to mySpace, and indeed some have been arrested for CP for posting 'lewd' pix of themselves and have ended up on the Sex Offender's Register, which is positively Kafkaesque. The problem lies in the central principle of CP, which is that it's not the content of the pic which is at issue but what effect that pic might have in a pedo's mind, which effectively means that what pedos might get turned on by determines what's legal and not. By focussing on intentions rather than consequences CP is effectively a thought crime.
One side-effect (or maybe even primary purpose) of site blocking is that sexual information sites and fora for teens will be caught up in the net. Teens love to talk about sex and sexuality, and are desperate to a) get frank information and b) read other's experiences - the Net is an absolute boon for them. Because CP has such a wide definition, and is based on what a pedo might be turned on by, info and discussion sites will be classed as CP, blocked by ISPs, and the site admins arrested. This would suit many moral conservatives who think that "children" should remain forever innocent, and teens should be shielded from sexuality or penalised if they do actually get up to any 'unpleasantness'. 'For the sake of the children' is just a figleaf for sexual repression, for such moralists, and you can be sure their mucky paws are all over these recent measures.
Funny, I'm sure that I remember using images to hyperlink back in 1993, and that this was a feature of the Mosaic browser. I guess that I must have been hallucinating if this Singaporean corporation is correct...
The "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" mantra is endlessly repeated by governments so as to demonize liberty and privacy campaigners, as you rightly say. I think ordinary folk are aware of privacy issuess, both in terms of their personal identities and finances, and in terms of the powers of the State which now far exceed what George Orwell described in 1984. And, sadly, many accept being surveilled 24/7 from cradle to grave, because the State and media have succeeded in scaring the almighty shit out of them about terrorism. It's an age-old State formula - if you want to increase your powers, scare the people and start a war into the bargain. Ideally, one that can never end, such as the 'war on terror' [TM]. And, in the short to medium term, it works.
All I can advise the original poster is to tell his friend to read history. What States are doing now is much the same as they've done in the past, but with far greater firepower and technology. The simple question his friend has to ask her/himself is: do I trust the State, or not? If yes, then 'total information awareness' is fine; if no, then it should be opposed at every stage. That's all it comes down to.
My, what a heart you have, O Ubermensch. A nice illustration of how you have to be really intelligent to be really stupid. Not to mention uncaring, antisocial, selfish, self-centred, and callous.
Ok, bud, you go hole yourself away in Montana with the rest of the "I'm all right, Jack, fuck you" automatons, and the rest of us will get on with being human. You know, sometimes smart, sometimes stupid, often neither, just bumbling along and getting along. Oh, and believing in concepts such as empathy and solidarity.
"2. There were minor protests before the war in Afghanistan and serious protests leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond."
Really? I must have missed that in the papers, then, because my strong impression was that there were consistently 90% pollings in favour of invading Iraq, that the Congress voted almost unanimously for war, other than one very brave senator who was subjected to abuse and death threats afterwards, and that there was toss-all public protest. Maybe there were mass demos, write-ins, and other protests, but they certainly weren't reported over this side of the Pond. Maybe you could give us Eurotrash a few details?
"4. Take a moment and look across the channel at the United Kingdom. They ain't exactly having a civil-liberties hoe-down in England these days. "
True enough, but then we are the 51st state of the USA and when the master says bark the poodle goes woof. Of course, the crackdown on freedom here under the pretext of a manufactured terrorist threat is not unrelated to the war in Iraq...
"Treating Americans as a unitary group is just as stupid as it would be for people of any other nationality."
True, but I think you can fairly interpret the "you" in the poster's original allegation about "you" failing to impeach Bush et al for, well, just about everything (treason, mass murder, corruption, destruction of the Constitution, to mention but a few), as meaning "you" the USA, or at least that bit of the US that's capable of impeachment - media, government, chattering classes.
The criticism that Clinton was nearly brought down over sexual shenanigans yet the unholy trinity of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, and their acolytes such as Perle and Wolfowitz, will escape scot-free for serious crimes against humanity within and outwith the US, is valid. That is a scandal, that the architects of a war that has killed 00s of 000s of Iraqi people will go into comfortable retirement and be lauded as 'world statesmen' when they finally publish their memoirs, as happened with Kissinger and even Tricky Dicky Nixon himself.
Well, you're using the word "transition" as a verb rather than a noun, so you've plainly go the hang of Suitspeak already. Boost your buzzword vocabulary a bit more and you'll go far. Remember that the trick is to sound cool and keep the information/talk ratio low...
Slashdot Mirror
To describe Catholicism as a "totalitarian anti-democratic organisation" and thereby making a direct comparison to Scientology is simply doing your own intelligence and critical thinking skills a disservice.
Crap. I was brought up in the theocracy that was the Republic of Ireland, and "totalitarian" and "anti-democratic" are accurate adjectives. It's totalitarian because the Church sought to regulat every part of your life, including your thoughts ('thought crime' is a very familiar term to survivors of Catholicism like myself). It's anti-democratic because religion is, by its very nature, anti-democratic - scripture's scripture, and you have to follow it. The Catholic Church is run by an old man in an Italian city-state with a hierarchy of other old men who give orders and are completely unaccountable to their victims (sorry, 'parishioners'). Catholicism is far, far worse than Scientology, at least in Ireland were it's State-backed and obligatory, and its ordinances reach even unto non-believers (hence all the women who travel to the UK for abortions because the misogynist pricks that run the Church have banned it). At least you've a choice whether or not to be a Scientologist, and if you so choose then more bloody fool you.
If you're a Catholic, no-one's going to try and make your life a living hell if you want to stop coming to church.
That's complete bollox, that is. If you were a Catholic in Eire and you didn't come to Mass, the local priest would be calling at your door wanting to know why you weren't there, and he could and would give you serious grief if you didn't turn up next Sunday. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Pleasingly, the Church in Ireland is having done to it what it's done to all those kids over the decades: being fucked up the arse. The days when you'd have to bow and scrape to your local priest because he had an almost literal power of life and death over you are now over - now he's just a weirdo in a black dress who can't have sex like normal folk (and as a result is seriously fucked-up in the head).
The article doesn't seem to make any mention of removing that information when they become adults. I can see where this is going... get a database of them now, when less people are likely to complain, and then you still have the info when they are adults. Instant (well sorta) database of all your citizens.
Yep, that's about the size of it. The State is playing a long game here. Everything, but everything about children gets stored in the database, including their DNA profiles. The scheme has been highly controversial over here, but in time the fuss will die over and it'll just become an accepted part of life. The next generation is going to have an awful shock waiting for it when it reaches adulthood and becomes uppity and rebellious. The 'rationales' for the scheme chime with public and media 'concerns', with cases of child abuse (Baby P) and abductions (Maddy) making the front pages every other week, and South Park slogan 'think of the children!' being public policy. How can a right-minded person possibly oppose a scheme that will, or so the State says, 'safeguard' children throughout their lives? The perfect smokescreen, carefully constructed over a decade of media manipulation.
The definition of child porn is so slippery that any site/newsgroup where there are images of underage persons could be so defined, even when the people are clothed. If they're considered to be 'posing lewdly' (dancing to a Beyonce number, say) that counts as CP, which includes pix teens take of each other. When I was a teen we took 'lewd' pix of ourselves in photobooths and passed them around - these days teens use phone cams and post pix to mySpace, and indeed some have been arrested for CP for posting 'lewd' pix of themselves and have ended up on the Sex Offender's Register, which is positively Kafkaesque. The problem lies in the central principle of CP, which is that it's not the content of the pic which is at issue but what effect that pic might have in a pedo's mind, which effectively means that what pedos might get turned on by determines what's legal and not. By focussing on intentions rather than consequences CP is effectively a thought crime.
One side-effect (or maybe even primary purpose) of site blocking is that sexual information sites and fora for teens will be caught up in the net. Teens love to talk about sex and sexuality, and are desperate to a) get frank information and b) read other's experiences - the Net is an absolute boon for them. Because CP has such a wide definition, and is based on what a pedo might be turned on by, info and discussion sites will be classed as CP, blocked by ISPs, and the site admins arrested. This would suit many moral conservatives who think that "children" should remain forever innocent, and teens should be shielded from sexuality or penalised if they do actually get up to any 'unpleasantness'. 'For the sake of the children' is just a figleaf for sexual repression, for such moralists, and you can be sure their mucky paws are all over these recent measures.
Yep, it was in Mosaic, and that was Mosaic's big plus point - not just hypertext, but hypermedia.
Funny, I'm sure that I remember using images to hyperlink back in 1993, and that this was a feature of the Mosaic browser. I guess that I must have been hallucinating if this Singaporean corporation is correct...
The "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" mantra is endlessly repeated by governments so as to demonize liberty and privacy campaigners, as you rightly say. I think ordinary folk are aware of privacy issuess, both in terms of their personal identities and finances, and in terms of the powers of the State which now far exceed what George Orwell described in 1984. And, sadly, many accept being surveilled 24/7 from cradle to grave, because the State and media have succeeded in scaring the almighty shit out of them about terrorism. It's an age-old State formula - if you want to increase your powers, scare the people and start a war into the bargain. Ideally, one that can never end, such as the 'war on terror' [TM]. And, in the short to medium term, it works. All I can advise the original poster is to tell his friend to read history. What States are doing now is much the same as they've done in the past, but with far greater firepower and technology. The simple question his friend has to ask her/himself is: do I trust the State, or not? If yes, then 'total information awareness' is fine; if no, then it should be opposed at every stage. That's all it comes down to.
My, what a heart you have, O Ubermensch. A nice illustration of how you have to be really intelligent to be really stupid. Not to mention uncaring, antisocial, selfish, self-centred, and callous. Ok, bud, you go hole yourself away in Montana with the rest of the "I'm all right, Jack, fuck you" automatons, and the rest of us will get on with being human. You know, sometimes smart, sometimes stupid, often neither, just bumbling along and getting along. Oh, and believing in concepts such as empathy and solidarity.
"2. There were minor protests before the war in Afghanistan and serious protests leading up to the war in Iraq and beyond."
Really? I must have missed that in the papers, then, because my strong impression was that there were consistently 90% pollings in favour of invading Iraq, that the Congress voted almost unanimously for war, other than one very brave senator who was subjected to abuse and death threats afterwards, and that there was toss-all public protest. Maybe there were mass demos, write-ins, and other protests, but they certainly weren't reported over this side of the Pond. Maybe you could give us Eurotrash a few details?
"4. Take a moment and look across the channel at the United Kingdom. They ain't exactly having a civil-liberties hoe-down in England these days. "
True enough, but then we are the 51st state of the USA and when the master says bark the poodle goes woof. Of course, the crackdown on freedom here under the pretext of a manufactured terrorist threat is not unrelated to the war in Iraq...
"Treating Americans as a unitary group is just as stupid as it would be for people of any other nationality."
True, but I think you can fairly interpret the "you" in the poster's original allegation about "you" failing to impeach Bush et al for, well, just about everything (treason, mass murder, corruption, destruction of the Constitution, to mention but a few), as meaning "you" the USA, or at least that bit of the US that's capable of impeachment - media, government, chattering classes.
The criticism that Clinton was nearly brought down over sexual shenanigans yet the unholy trinity of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, and their acolytes such as Perle and Wolfowitz, will escape scot-free for serious crimes against humanity within and outwith the US, is valid. That is a scandal, that the architects of a war that has killed 00s of 000s of Iraqi people will go into comfortable retirement and be lauded as 'world statesmen' when they finally publish their memoirs, as happened with Kissinger and even Tricky Dicky Nixon himself.
Gerry
Well, you're using the word "transition" as a verb rather than a noun, so you've plainly go the hang of Suitspeak already. Boost your buzzword vocabulary a bit more and you'll go far. Remember that the trick is to sound cool and keep the information/talk ratio low...