Of course the U.S. government doesn't lock up the crazies. Their "tolerance" for people that no one would ever believe is their evidence that nothing is wrong and all is right in the world.
If you look into the FBI going to Mexico to arrest Jon Schillaci you will believe differently. First, note that he was named one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted because he was accused, years ago, of touching a boy's penis. Never mind that there were no accusations of rape or any kind of force, just an unreliable allegation that he touched a boy's penis. Regardless of how wrong you might think that may be, how does it justify putting a man on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and featuring him on the "America's Most Wanted" TV show? Aren't there enough murderers, bank robbers, thieves, and actual rapists (you know - the kind who used force) to lead that list?
Of course, Jon Schillaci was also the webmaster for a leading site where posters presented a view that contradicted the State's official teachings. In other words, he was a heretic against the State. All of a sudden it makes sense why the government targeted him and put him in jail. Modern tyrannies don't say they are censoring dissidents. They always give some plausible reason why they arrest those who challenge them.
Alternately, consider the case of Jack McClellan, a girl lover whom the State of California issued a restraining order against because he openly advocated for the rights of pedophiles. This restraining order was so broad that it essentially required Jack to leave California even though he was never convicted, or even seriously accused, of any crime.
These are only two of the more prominent cases.
No, the United States doesn't suppress dissent. No, the United States doesn't put people in jail for expressing opinions. They always find another excuse - except when they don't.
I beg leave to go diverge from the subject at hand for a bit, but I think it is relevant. Although we all know China censors the internet, our greater concern is that all the other nations of the world will follow - or are already following - China's example.
These leaks have proven that all our "democratic" governments routinely lie to their employers (the people). Naturally this should cause us to ask what else our governments have lied about.
Of personal concern to me are the lies told about pedophilia and child abuse: specifically, the truth - from many sources - is that non-pedophiles are more likely to abuse children than pedophiles, that females are more likely to abuse children than males, and that parents are more likely to abuse children than non-parents.
So who do the government and their media accomplices target while claiming to protect children? Non-parent male pedophiles. "Stranger danger" and all that.
I suspect that the government believes that pedophiles, by offering children freedom and affection, are a threat to the power of the state, because they offer a compelling alternative narrative to that which the state force feeds its charges during 12 years of compulsory indoctrination - which is, of course, that they must obey the state at all times, no matter what the state might do to them.
I am looking forward to the day that WikiLeaks receives some inside information from the National Center for Misusing and Exploiting Children.
I say that this is of personal concern to me, but it should also be of great concern to the entire public. Our western governments routinely use the fear of pedophiles to justify the apparatus of censorship. Why should the government be allowed the capability to censor websites? Because they might contain images of naked children, naturally. Why should the government have the right to snoop on our emails? Well, how else are we going to stop those evil pedophiles - you know, those male, non-related people who aren't abusing children? The people of the Western world will never be able to challenge the installation and use of the apparatus of censorship until the demonization of pedophiles and the legal discrimination against pedophiles and children ceases.
It remains to be seen whether the public will be able to let go of their prejudices long enough to save themselves.
Certainly the OP shouldn't be making a shrine to his children's mother, and require them to make daily devotions to her . . .
But memory is also how some of us honor those who came before us, and remember all that they did for us to make us who we are. I am in a rare condition of having video of relatives who died 70 years ago. Perhaps it is best that it is just a short clip showing them as living, breathing human beings, but I am glad to have it.
I *do* agree with those who think that too much video is just a distraction. My general belief is that video memories should be restricted to one hour per year. Even so, no one will want to look at 90 hours of video of themselves when they are 90.
There may be some exceptions for special events, and written memories are far more valuable as they take the least time to review. Stories about the past are best written down, with a few audio or video samples to go with them.
When I saw the original article this was my thought too - the many stories my grandparents and parents have told me about their childhoods - or even *their* parents' childhoods - give me a sense of continuity that pictures alone cannot give.
Simple text files can capture many of these, especially if your wife does well with writing, and having it directly from the source instead of half-remembered memories is invaluable. Memory is notoriously unreliable, after all - especially memories of what someone else told you.
Likewise, any information about family and ancestry - now is the time to pass that information down, and while you're at it go ahead and record your own information - various little stories from your life, and your parents and grandparents too. Maybe a few on video, but written form is even better for compactness and usability.
"the pornstar in question showed up at his trial and testified that she was 25 at the time the movie was made. People in the comments section of the article were universally of the opinion that he got off on a technicality."
Ah! Technicality! So THAT'S what they're calling 25yo porn stars these days.
Just one other little point that is usually overlooked: Most child abusers, sexual or otherwise, are NOT pedophiles. That is, they are NOT primarily attracted to children. They have other motives for their crime, or often are under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.
At least, that's what the data from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies shows.
According to a document posted by Wikileaks, a company from eastern Europe that sold subscriptions to child erotica (nudity, but no sex) around 2003 was getting 15 million unique visitors to its main page per month.
It is hard to know the actual numbers, as research in this area is suppressed, but it would appear that among men:
90% are sometimes attracted to prepubescent girls.
20% to 30% are attracted to girls at least as much as to women.
3% to 10% are exclusively attracted to girls.
Figuring approximately 300 million in the USA, and roughly 50% male, this means:
120 million sometimes attracted to girls.
30 million to 45 million attracted to girls as much as or more than to women.
4.5 million to 15 million are exclusively attracted to girls.
This does not include boy lovers or female pedophiles, so the true numbers are larger.
You've got to stop believing the media and the government. They lie.
You're not sick. Little girls are HOT! Women are . . . not.
Studies show that 90+% of men are sometimes attracted to prepubescent girls, 20-30% find girls at least as attractive as women (or moreso), and a guesstimate for exclusive attraction to girls is maybe 3 to 10%.
Let's turn those into numbers, using a figure of 300 million Americans, half of whom are male:
That would be at least 120 million who sometimes like little girls, at least 30 million who find girls at least as sexy as women, and at least 9 million (more than the population of New York City) who are exclusively attracted to little girls.
Plus there are the boy lovers and female peds. We are not a small community, despite what our enemies would have you believe.
And looking around, I believe I see some signs of change. We will not be silent much longer.
I am not opposed to child pornography. It is ludicrous to believe that possession of a photo inherently causes harm. We used to laugh at people who objected to being photographed because it stole their soul - now we jail not only the photographer but anyone who can be proven to have seen the image.
That said, I wonder how these guys got work in Security. I mean, everyone knows that the paysites are mostly FBI honeypots, and - incidentally - the FBI has even put new child porn into general distribution via these sites, so I wonder about the intelligence and judgement of those who paid for cp. Likewise, why on earth were they using government computers for this? They must be reckless idiots.
Anyone with even a modest understanding of security would at least be using TOR or a proxy, and only accessing this material from a non-monitored computer, preferably one with no personally identifiable information on it. The lack of even these simple steps suggests that these people are unsuited to their profession.
Of course, these are only the ones that got caught. Other evidence from a decade ago suggests that ten years ago perhaps 10 million Americans were accessing child pornography, and the true number is probably much higher - especially if one includes pictures of 16 and 17 year olds. At some point we will have to come to realize that we can't put everyone in jail for violating someone else's sensibilities.
"Child porn is defined by what it is, not who has it."
Er, no.
Some years ago, in Pennsylvania (the same state as this case), a man was successfully charged with possession of child pornography because he owned a cheerleading video that was completely legal for others to own. He was successfully prosecuted because he admitted to being turned on by the cheerleaders.
More of a child pornography ring than most reported cases.
The typical widespread child pornography ring you hear about consists of three people, and is only "widespread" because one of the guys sometimes visits his native Bulgaria.
"Psychologically, I say this is the extreme conversatives who would really like to outlaw nudity, masturbation and while we're at it, even thinking about sex."
That's only half of it. The liberals are also idiots, especially the feminist faction.
There have been at least two cases where women have been put in prison for being raped by teenage boys. Yes, you read that correctly, they were put in prison for being the victims of actual, honest-to-god, forcible rape. Because their rapists were less than 18 years old, the victims were convicted of statutory rape of a minor. Unlike Saudi Arabia, where the public was outraged when a woman was convicted for being a rape victim, nobody cared much. And where did this happen, some conservative bastion in the backcountry? No. It happened in Madison, Wisconsin - a famously "liberal" enclave.
This idiocy is coming at us from right and left, and frankly I think the feminists on the left are worse. The conservatives at least have some moderating influences like a belief in the power of forgiveness and millennia of history.
This has been happening for a while now, with or without pictures.
In one case, one poor girl got put on the sex offenders registry for playing doctor. She was TEN at the time. She was playing doctor with her step-siblings, their biological father found out and decided to punish his ex-wife by taking it out on the girl. She's a woman now, and can't get a job because she's a registered sex offender.
But the pictures thing has been happening too, in a number of jurisdictions. Seems like I hear of a case every few weeks. There's no end to the stupidity. Kids are too young to consent to sex, but old enough to be held criminally accountable for the rest of their life if they TRY to consent to sex.
"these are not adults making a rational decision about these pictures"
When I saw this, my first thought was "Yes, that principle and the prosecutors obviously are not adults, and are obviously not making a rational decision about these pictures.
The United States has been heading this way for a long while now, at least since Anita Bryant started her "Save Our Children" campaign, when she was under the impression that homosexuals could only increase their number by "recruiting" innocent children. Then John Walsh turned his personal tragedy into a national, and now a global tragedy with his movement that deceived the nation into believing that the thousands of children who run away from abusive homes each year were in fact millions of children who were being raped and murdered by strangers each year. (The quasi-governmental organization Walsh founded, the National Center for Misusing and Exploiting Children, is the king of dubious statistics - at one point they were telling Americans that over a million kids went missing annually. More recently they have been claiming that the non-existent child porn industry is larger than the legal pornography industry and Hollywood, combined.) What started out as an anti-homosexual movement has turned into an anti-child and anti-man movement, and in fact an anti-everything-good-about-the-world movement.
(As a curious aside: Anita Bryant made a name for herself as a singer, and one of her hits was a tune from the 1950's musical "The Music Man", which was set in the early 1900s. "The Music Man" was about a charlatan who deceived parents into believing their children were in danger so that he could sell them the cure. Sound familiar?)
So now we have reached the point where we are putting children who are "doing what comes naturally" in jail, or blacklisting them for life, in the name of "protecting them". Protecting them from what, exactly, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain, but protect them we will, by God, if we have to kill every last one of them!
I feel for both the boys and girls who have been caught up in this situation, in which the only real crimes were those committed by the principal who violated their right to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure and those committed by the police and prosecutors who pursued charges.
When combined with such things as The Drug War, it is getting harder and harder every day to do anything but laugh at the notion that the United States is home to the free or the brave.
"And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the fear and the home of the slave!"
Parent post is a good one, but just to inform the engineers on this board . . . plenty of people think you're pretty stupid. As tradesmen would say, "book smart" but not practical.
As it happens, I can stroke your ego a bit and say that on average engineers are a good deal smarter than the average tradesman - but the religious belief in the stupidity of engineers is not entirely without merit. Frequently engineers may know how things physically work, but are not familiar with things beyond their narrow specialty - so, for example, a civil engineer may not realize that their perfect design has just violated the fire code, the building code, and the electrical code. Naturally, this can delay things and cause accusations of stupidity all around.
That said, I am heartened by the general tone of the conversation here, and the realization that all of us are idiots to some degree. I would only add that average news reporters, psychologists, and sociologists really are a bit more idiotic than the rest of us. Oh, and a recent survey in the U.S. found that U.S. lawmakers are significantly below average (for the entire population) in their understanding of the law.
(1) You mischaracterize the site. You obviously did not look at it. All your arguments are based on false premises.
(2) As multiple studies have affirmed, most child abuse, sexual or otherwise, is NOT committed by pedophiles, even on a per capita basis. Also, there is no good evidence for the "progression" scenario, and in fact there is more evidence that pornography - child or otherwise - actually reduces sexual assaults when it is legal and easily available. Again, all your arguments are based on false premises.
So, you fail.
It's about what we expect from antis, however. We get this sort of nonsense all the time.
How would 90% of the people know whether this site crosses any lines, if their searches - which they believe are exhaustive - simply skip over relevant matter?
Why doesn't google censor white supremacy - or even black supremacy - sites? 90% of Americans would probably think that those sites cross a line, too, but fortunately most would oppose de-listing these sites, because they want people to see these people as the slime they are.
There's no need to censor unattractive ideologies. The best response to white supremacy speech or Neo-Nazi speech is to tell the truth about these ideologies and let everyone see it and its consequences. I think there are a lot of people who want to censor sites like annabelleigh.net because they know that if the public ever learned the truth, they would realize that they have been lied to by government and the media and a good deal of "charitable" organizations - all out to make a buck. The child abuse industry makes its money off the misery of children by selling unnecessary psychological counseling, by getting government funding for more police and social workers to either return child refugees to harmful home environments or to kidnap children from loving homes, gets government or "charitable" funding to relocate children - who often don't want to be relocated - to group homes or "boot camps" or into any number of torture regimes, and of course gets government funding for more prisons and prison guards. There are a LOT of people with financial interests in making sure that the truth is not known, and in repressing child lovers who are actually interested in what children want, rather than in imposing their will on children.
The "guardians" don't have to censor bad ideas - better to let them disintegrate in the sunlight. They only need to censor good ideas that threaten their own grip on power. That's what is happening here.
Re:They blacklist sites without checking the reaso
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Google's Gatekeepers
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Thanks for the comment. As a long-time poster at GC and at/. (under another name) I'm glad to see this here.
Legally, if Google wants to censor the internet, that's fine. But ethically, this is a problem because Google bills itself as an ethical company, and simply de-listing sites like annabelleigh.com and gc.glgarden.com (as are currently de-listed), and http://www.inquisition21.com/ (as it did for about a year) is rather problematic for a company whose motto is "Don't be evil."
While it is Google's right to be evil as long as it is lawfully evil, it is important that the broader public should be aware that Google is censoring what they see of the world. Regardless of whether you support or oppose us in our struggle for basic civil rights, you should be quite upset that Google is restricting your ability to discover the facts for yourselves, by presenting you with only one side (the bigoted side, as it happens) of the argument. What should also concern you is that you don't know what ELSE Google might be censoring. I don't know either.
I have taken lately to using several search engines, whereas previously I had pretty much just used Google. Google used to have a good product, but now they've gone the way of Micro$oft.
Typical - an inmate convicted of a non-crime (ooh! he had scary pictures!). So the authorities treat him like shit, and he finds a way to strike back. Bully for him! Best of luck in the future!
In the modern age, shouldn't access to the internet be a right of every prisoner? It is just too important to modern life to cut off access. Some restrictions may be in order, but cutting off access entirely is just going too far. Let's not forget that most prisoners will be leaving prison some day. Preventing them from keeping up with what is going on in the world is an unnecessarily cruel punishment in a world in which we all have to keep updated just to keep from being overwhelmed.
Of course, a bigger problem is all the people in prison who shouldn't be there. America keeps 1% of adults in prison, and still pretends to be a "free" country. Most of the people in prison are there because of non-crimes like possession of drugs or pornography. Aren't we past that kind of moralistic bullshit? When will America grow up?
agreed. I'm surprised that the Scilons got him, but apparently they have a better security apparatus than the U.S. gov't.
But Scientology is also just as corrupt as the U.S. gov't, and I wonder if judicial corruption fed into this sentence, which is longer than I believe is justified.
Certainly, the government doesn't seem to care about DDOS attacks against other, legitimate minorities, so at the very least the Co$ has hired some competent lawyers.
Over the past century, more people have been killed by their own governments than by ordinary murderers, foreign governments, and terrorists combined.
So do I trust ANY government? No. And especially not the American government and the British government, both of which are proud to have targeted me for genocide.
Go South, young man, ALL the way South, and perhaps you can escape the wrath of the fornication of the Great Whore of Babylon!
(Hmmm. Is that over the top? Sadly, probably not.)
Slashdot Mirror
Of course the U.S. government doesn't lock up the crazies. Their "tolerance" for people that no one would ever believe is their evidence that nothing is wrong and all is right in the world.
If you look into the FBI going to Mexico to arrest Jon Schillaci you will believe differently. First, note that he was named one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted because he was accused, years ago, of touching a boy's penis. Never mind that there were no accusations of rape or any kind of force, just an unreliable allegation that he touched a boy's penis. Regardless of how wrong you might think that may be, how does it justify putting a man on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list and featuring him on the "America's Most Wanted" TV show? Aren't there enough murderers, bank robbers, thieves, and actual rapists (you know - the kind who used force) to lead that list?
Of course, Jon Schillaci was also the webmaster for a leading site where posters presented a view that contradicted the State's official teachings. In other words, he was a heretic against the State. All of a sudden it makes sense why the government targeted him and put him in jail. Modern tyrannies don't say they are censoring dissidents. They always give some plausible reason why they arrest those who challenge them.
Alternately, consider the case of Jack McClellan, a girl lover whom the State of California issued a restraining order against because he openly advocated for the rights of pedophiles. This restraining order was so broad that it essentially required Jack to leave California even though he was never convicted, or even seriously accused, of any crime.
These are only two of the more prominent cases.
No, the United States doesn't suppress dissent. No, the United States doesn't put people in jail for expressing opinions. They always find another excuse - except when they don't.
I beg leave to go diverge from the subject at hand for a bit, but I think it is relevant. Although we all know China censors the internet, our greater concern is that all the other nations of the world will follow - or are already following - China's example.
These leaks have proven that all our "democratic" governments routinely lie to their employers (the people). Naturally this should cause us to ask what else our governments have lied about.
Of personal concern to me are the lies told about pedophilia and child abuse: specifically, the truth - from many sources - is that non-pedophiles are more likely to abuse children than pedophiles, that females are more likely to abuse children than males, and that parents are more likely to abuse children than non-parents.
So who do the government and their media accomplices target while claiming to protect children? Non-parent male pedophiles. "Stranger danger" and all that.
I suspect that the government believes that pedophiles, by offering children freedom and affection, are a threat to the power of the state, because they offer a compelling alternative narrative to that which the state force feeds its charges during 12 years of compulsory indoctrination - which is, of course, that they must obey the state at all times, no matter what the state might do to them.
I am looking forward to the day that WikiLeaks receives some inside information from the National Center for Misusing and Exploiting Children.
I say that this is of personal concern to me, but it should also be of great concern to the entire public. Our western governments routinely use the fear of pedophiles to justify the apparatus of censorship. Why should the government be allowed the capability to censor websites? Because they might contain images of naked children, naturally. Why should the government have the right to snoop on our emails? Well, how else are we going to stop those evil pedophiles - you know, those male, non-related people who aren't abusing children? The people of the Western world will never be able to challenge the installation and use of the apparatus of censorship until the demonization of pedophiles and the legal discrimination against pedophiles and children ceases.
It remains to be seen whether the public will be able to let go of their prejudices long enough to save themselves.
Certainly the OP shouldn't be making a shrine to his children's mother, and require them to make daily devotions to her . . .
But memory is also how some of us honor those who came before us, and remember all that they did for us to make us who we are. I am in a rare condition of having video of relatives who died 70 years ago. Perhaps it is best that it is just a short clip showing them as living, breathing human beings, but I am glad to have it.
I *do* agree with those who think that too much video is just a distraction. My general belief is that video memories should be restricted to one hour per year. Even so, no one will want to look at 90 hours of video of themselves when they are 90.
There may be some exceptions for special events, and written memories are far more valuable as they take the least time to review. Stories about the past are best written down, with a few audio or video samples to go with them.
When I saw the original article this was my thought too - the many stories my grandparents and parents have told me about their childhoods - or even *their* parents' childhoods - give me a sense of continuity that pictures alone cannot give.
Simple text files can capture many of these, especially if your wife does well with writing, and having it directly from the source instead of half-remembered memories is invaluable. Memory is notoriously unreliable, after all - especially memories of what someone else told you.
Likewise, any information about family and ancestry - now is the time to pass that information down, and while you're at it go ahead and record your own information - various little stories from your life, and your parents and grandparents too. Maybe a few on video, but written form is even better for compactness and usability.
All the best to you and your family.
"the pornstar in question showed up at his trial and testified that she was 25 at the time the movie was made. People in the comments section of the article were universally of the opinion that he got off on a technicality." Ah! Technicality! So THAT'S what they're calling 25yo porn stars these days.
Just one other little point that is usually overlooked: Most child abusers, sexual or otherwise, are NOT pedophiles. That is, they are NOT primarily attracted to children. They have other motives for their crime, or often are under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.
At least, that's what the data from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies shows.
According to a document posted by Wikileaks, a company from eastern Europe that sold subscriptions to child erotica (nudity, but no sex) around 2003 was getting 15 million unique visitors to its main page per month.
It is hard to know the actual numbers, as research in this area is suppressed, but it would appear that among men:
90% are sometimes attracted to prepubescent girls.
20% to 30% are attracted to girls at least as much as to women.
3% to 10% are exclusively attracted to girls.
Figuring approximately 300 million in the USA, and roughly 50% male, this means:
120 million sometimes attracted to girls.
30 million to 45 million attracted to girls as much as or more than to women.
4.5 million to 15 million are exclusively attracted to girls.
This does not include boy lovers or female pedophiles, so the true numbers are larger.
You've got to stop believing the media and the government. They lie.
You're not sick. Little girls are HOT! Women are . . . not.
Studies show that 90+% of men are sometimes attracted to prepubescent girls, 20-30% find girls at least as attractive as women (or moreso), and a guesstimate for exclusive attraction to girls is maybe 3 to 10%.
Let's turn those into numbers, using a figure of 300 million Americans, half of whom are male:
That would be at least 120 million who sometimes like little girls, at least 30 million who find girls at least as sexy as women, and at least 9 million (more than the population of New York City) who are exclusively attracted to little girls.
Plus there are the boy lovers and female peds. We are not a small community, despite what our enemies would have you believe.
And looking around, I believe I see some signs of change. We will not be silent much longer.
I am not opposed to child pornography. It is ludicrous to believe that possession of a photo inherently causes harm. We used to laugh at people who objected to being photographed because it stole their soul - now we jail not only the photographer but anyone who can be proven to have seen the image.
That said, I wonder how these guys got work in Security. I mean, everyone knows that the paysites are mostly FBI honeypots, and - incidentally - the FBI has even put new child porn into general distribution via these sites, so I wonder about the intelligence and judgement of those who paid for cp. Likewise, why on earth were they using government computers for this? They must be reckless idiots.
Anyone with even a modest understanding of security would at least be using TOR or a proxy, and only accessing this material from a non-monitored computer, preferably one with no personally identifiable information on it. The lack of even these simple steps suggests that these people are unsuited to their profession.
Of course, these are only the ones that got caught. Other evidence from a decade ago suggests that ten years ago perhaps 10 million Americans were accessing child pornography, and the true number is probably much higher - especially if one includes pictures of 16 and 17 year olds. At some point we will have to come to realize that we can't put everyone in jail for violating someone else's sensibilities.
"Child porn is defined by what it is, not who has it."
Er, no.
Some years ago, in Pennsylvania (the same state as this case), a man was successfully charged with possession of child pornography because he owned a cheerleading video that was completely legal for others to own. He was successfully prosecuted because he admitted to being turned on by the cheerleaders.
More of a child pornography ring than most reported cases.
The typical widespread child pornography ring you hear about consists of three people, and is only "widespread" because one of the guys sometimes visits his native Bulgaria.
"Psychologically, I say this is the extreme conversatives who would really like to outlaw nudity, masturbation and while we're at it, even thinking about sex."
That's only half of it. The liberals are also idiots, especially the feminist faction.
There have been at least two cases where women have been put in prison for being raped by teenage boys. Yes, you read that correctly, they were put in prison for being the victims of actual, honest-to-god, forcible rape. Because their rapists were less than 18 years old, the victims were convicted of statutory rape of a minor. Unlike Saudi Arabia, where the public was outraged when a woman was convicted for being a rape victim, nobody cared much. And where did this happen, some conservative bastion in the backcountry? No. It happened in Madison, Wisconsin - a famously "liberal" enclave.
This idiocy is coming at us from right and left, and frankly I think the feminists on the left are worse. The conservatives at least have some moderating influences like a belief in the power of forgiveness and millennia of history.
How the hell did we both end up on the same side?
This has been happening for a while now, with or without pictures.
In one case, one poor girl got put on the sex offenders registry for playing doctor. She was TEN at the time. She was playing doctor with her step-siblings, their biological father found out and decided to punish his ex-wife by taking it out on the girl. She's a woman now, and can't get a job because she's a registered sex offender.
But the pictures thing has been happening too, in a number of jurisdictions. Seems like I hear of a case every few weeks. There's no end to the stupidity. Kids are too young to consent to sex, but old enough to be held criminally accountable for the rest of their life if they TRY to consent to sex.
"these are not adults making a rational decision about these pictures"
When I saw this, my first thought was "Yes, that principle and the prosecutors obviously are not adults, and are obviously not making a rational decision about these pictures.
Then I realised you were talking about the teens.
The United States has been heading this way for a long while now, at least since Anita Bryant started her "Save Our Children" campaign, when she was under the impression that homosexuals could only increase their number by "recruiting" innocent children. Then John Walsh turned his personal tragedy into a national, and now a global tragedy with his movement that deceived the nation into believing that the thousands of children who run away from abusive homes each year were in fact millions of children who were being raped and murdered by strangers each year. (The quasi-governmental organization Walsh founded, the National Center for Misusing and Exploiting Children, is the king of dubious statistics - at one point they were telling Americans that over a million kids went missing annually. More recently they have been claiming that the non-existent child porn industry is larger than the legal pornography industry and Hollywood, combined.) What started out as an anti-homosexual movement has turned into an anti-child and anti-man movement, and in fact an anti-everything-good-about-the-world movement.
(As a curious aside: Anita Bryant made a name for herself as a singer, and one of her hits was a tune from the 1950's musical "The Music Man", which was set in the early 1900s. "The Music Man" was about a charlatan who deceived parents into believing their children were in danger so that he could sell them the cure. Sound familiar?)
So now we have reached the point where we are putting children who are "doing what comes naturally" in jail, or blacklisting them for life, in the name of "protecting them". Protecting them from what, exactly, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain, but protect them we will, by God, if we have to kill every last one of them!
I feel for both the boys and girls who have been caught up in this situation, in which the only real crimes were those committed by the principal who violated their right to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure and those committed by the police and prosecutors who pursued charges.
When combined with such things as The Drug War, it is getting harder and harder every day to do anything but laugh at the notion that the United States is home to the free or the brave.
"And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the fear and the home of the slave!"
Play ball!
Parent post is a good one, but just to inform the engineers on this board . . . plenty of people think you're pretty stupid. As tradesmen would say, "book smart" but not practical.
As it happens, I can stroke your ego a bit and say that on average engineers are a good deal smarter than the average tradesman - but the religious belief in the stupidity of engineers is not entirely without merit. Frequently engineers may know how things physically work, but are not familiar with things beyond their narrow specialty - so, for example, a civil engineer may not realize that their perfect design has just violated the fire code, the building code, and the electrical code. Naturally, this can delay things and cause accusations of stupidity all around.
That said, I am heartened by the general tone of the conversation here, and the realization that all of us are idiots to some degree. I would only add that average news reporters, psychologists, and sociologists really are a bit more idiotic than the rest of us. Oh, and a recent survey in the U.S. found that U.S. lawmakers are significantly below average (for the entire population) in their understanding of the law.
Mama said, don't be afraid
Go out there and find your way
Take what you get and make the best of it
That's the secret
Papa told me, you live you learn
You play with fire, you might get burned
But what doesn't break you only makes you strong
That's the secret
So live every moment like it's your last
You wanna never say never
You walk through the wilderness with a laugh
A smile makes everything better
Life's what you make it
Life's what you make it
Go ahead, spread your wings
But don't forget the little things
Cause happiness is where you look for it
That's the secret
Hit or miss, that's what it is
Grab the fun and run with it
Don't blow them golden opportunities
That's the secret
So live every moment like it's your last
You wanna never say never
You walk through the wilderness with a laugh
A smile makes everything better
Life's what you make it
Life's what you make it
Gotta roll with the punches
Follow all your hunches
Go for what you know is right
The world is for your taking
You make your own breaks and
Baby that's a given gift
What you make it
Life's what you make it
So live every moment like it's your last
You wanna never say never
You walk through the wilderness with a laugh
A smile makes everything better
Life's what you make it
Life's what you make it
- lyrics to "Life's what you make it", Amy Diamond.
Good guess. It's no secret.
(1) You mischaracterize the site. You obviously did not look at it. All your arguments are based on false premises.
(2) As multiple studies have affirmed, most child abuse, sexual or otherwise, is NOT committed by pedophiles, even on a per capita basis. Also, there is no good evidence for the "progression" scenario, and in fact there is more evidence that pornography - child or otherwise - actually reduces sexual assaults when it is legal and easily available. Again, all your arguments are based on false premises.
So, you fail.
It's about what we expect from antis, however. We get this sort of nonsense all the time.
How would 90% of the people know whether this site crosses any lines, if their searches - which they believe are exhaustive - simply skip over relevant matter?
Why doesn't google censor white supremacy - or even black supremacy - sites? 90% of Americans would probably think that those sites cross a line, too, but fortunately most would oppose de-listing these sites, because they want people to see these people as the slime they are.
There's no need to censor unattractive ideologies. The best response to white supremacy speech or Neo-Nazi speech is to tell the truth about these ideologies and let everyone see it and its consequences. I think there are a lot of people who want to censor sites like annabelleigh.net because they know that if the public ever learned the truth, they would realize that they have been lied to by government and the media and a good deal of "charitable" organizations - all out to make a buck. The child abuse industry makes its money off the misery of children by selling unnecessary psychological counseling, by getting government funding for more police and social workers to either return child refugees to harmful home environments or to kidnap children from loving homes, gets government or "charitable" funding to relocate children - who often don't want to be relocated - to group homes or "boot camps" or into any number of torture regimes, and of course gets government funding for more prisons and prison guards. There are a LOT of people with financial interests in making sure that the truth is not known, and in repressing child lovers who are actually interested in what children want, rather than in imposing their will on children.
The "guardians" don't have to censor bad ideas - better to let them disintegrate in the sunlight. They only need to censor good ideas that threaten their own grip on power. That's what is happening here.
Thanks for the comment. As a long-time poster at GC and at /. (under another name) I'm glad to see this here.
Legally, if Google wants to censor the internet, that's fine. But ethically, this is a problem because Google bills itself as an ethical company, and simply de-listing sites like annabelleigh.com and gc.glgarden.com (as are currently de-listed), and http://www.inquisition21.com/ (as it did for about a year) is rather problematic for a company whose motto is "Don't be evil."
While it is Google's right to be evil as long as it is lawfully evil, it is important that the broader public should be aware that Google is censoring what they see of the world. Regardless of whether you support or oppose us in our struggle for basic civil rights, you should be quite upset that Google is restricting your ability to discover the facts for yourselves, by presenting you with only one side (the bigoted side, as it happens) of the argument. What should also concern you is that you don't know what ELSE Google might be censoring. I don't know either.
I have taken lately to using several search engines, whereas previously I had pretty much just used Google. Google used to have a good product, but now they've gone the way of Micro$oft.
Typical - an inmate convicted of a non-crime (ooh! he had scary pictures!). So the authorities treat him like shit, and he finds a way to strike back. Bully for him! Best of luck in the future!
In the modern age, shouldn't access to the internet be a right of every prisoner? It is just too important to modern life to cut off access. Some restrictions may be in order, but cutting off access entirely is just going too far. Let's not forget that most prisoners will be leaving prison some day. Preventing them from keeping up with what is going on in the world is an unnecessarily cruel punishment in a world in which we all have to keep updated just to keep from being overwhelmed.
Of course, a bigger problem is all the people in prison who shouldn't be there. America keeps 1% of adults in prison, and still pretends to be a "free" country. Most of the people in prison are there because of non-crimes like possession of drugs or pornography. Aren't we past that kind of moralistic bullshit? When will America grow up?
agreed. I'm surprised that the Scilons got him, but apparently they have a better security apparatus than the U.S. gov't.
But Scientology is also just as corrupt as the U.S. gov't, and I wonder if judicial corruption fed into this sentence, which is longer than I believe is justified.
Certainly, the government doesn't seem to care about DDOS attacks against other, legitimate minorities, so at the very least the Co$ has hired some competent lawyers.
Over the past century, more people have been killed by their own governments than by ordinary murderers, foreign governments, and terrorists combined.
So do I trust ANY government? No. And especially not the American government and the British government, both of which are proud to have targeted me for genocide.
Go South, young man, ALL the way South, and perhaps you can escape the wrath of the fornication of the Great Whore of Babylon!
(Hmmm. Is that over the top? Sadly, probably not.)