While reading news on the Net for the daily things that make me go "ROFL," I came across this piece by Brock Meeks on MSN singing the praises of Network Vigilante Mike Echols, and peeing in his bathwater over the fact that federal child porn laws haven't yet criminalized pictures of kids being beaten. http://www.msnbc.com/news/580416.asp Echols you may recall, operates BAM, a Web site devoted to harrassing people, including myself, who are critical of sex and censorship laws. He solicits others to send him personal information on such people, and he posts it on his web site, calling them "Internet Child Sex Predators and Child Pornographers," with the intent of inciting violence against them, and intimidating them into not exercising their First Amendment right to express opinions which differ from his. Echols is a case study in anger management problems who is currently on probation for making terrorist threats against California transit officials. He has a rap sheet a long as your arm, which includes breaking and entering, interstate flight to avoid prosecution, and child battery. Whenever Echols' big mouth and temper get him into trouble, he attempts to hide behind his child advocacy scam, and mitigate the force of the law by suggesting that he is a great crusader against "pedophiles." In reality, his so-called child advocacy activities are shameless attempts at self-promotion and boosting the sales of his sleezy soft-core true crime books, and he was once quoted telling a fellow con man that it was "about time" someone made some money off "kids getting fucked." Well then, you can imagine how hard I laughed when I saw this Brock Meeks Character, who is apparently some sort of Bureau Chief at MSNBC, singing the praises of Mike Echols and his libelous Web site, which has been kicked off almost every Web provider in the known universe, and currently shares a box with "Praise the Lord Golf" on some minor ISP in Arkansas. Opines Brock: <<MIKE ECHOLS is a one-man child porn wrecking crew. He founded a non-profit organization called "Better a Millstone" dedicated to hunting down and making life miserable for child pornographers. He also makes life miserable for law enforcement agencies that don't take his efforts seriously.>> Given the amount of time Echols has spent behind bars in his life, I strongly think that it is law enforcement agencies that are making life miserable for Mr. Echols, and not the other way around. Brock claims to have been "alerted" by Echols to a couple of spanking fetish sites on Valueweb, which feature pictures of kids getting hit, which because they do not overtly depict genitals and sexual activity, do not fall under current child porn laws. Now, I've been pointing out for years how absurd it is that child protection laws criminalize all sorts of things as "child sex pornography," including even legitimate art and photography, while "child beating pornography" remains perfectly legal. This is no doubt because almost all American parents hit their kids, and it would be only a tiny step from saying that images of such acts depict physical child abuse, and embolden perpetrators, to passing laws which punish that abuse directly. And goodness we can't have that in a Christian Nation where the standard for criminal child assault is that the beating must leave "seriously permanent physical injury," and a majority of states still permit kids to be beaten in school. Brock conveniently dismisses the corporal punishment issue in one sentence, and moves swiftly onto the real reason he, and his good friend Echols, have suffered severe panty bunching over the child beating pictures. It is that "PERVERTS" are getting "SEXUAL GRATIFICATION" by looking at the pictures. Which brings me to the next thing which really pisses me off. As a person who has advocated basic human rights for kids for many decades, it seems that a whole lot of what is passing for "child advocacy" these days, has to do with neurotic people who can't stand that idea that someone, somewhere, that they call a "pervert," might be getting that thing they call "sexual gratification" in some way they don't approve of. You know, you can browse so-called Internet Child Advocacy pages, like those of Mike Echols, for days on end, and find nary a thing about helping kids. But you can find a whole lot about hurting "perverts." Cheering over "perverts" being arrested, beaten up by their neighbors, getting raped in prison, etc... Graphic description of their "filthy" sexual organs. Calls for burning them at the stake. You can also find insulting dismissive characterizations of kids by the boatload. In fact, the vast majority of self-declared child advocacy on the Internet is authoritarian anti-youth-rights family values dogma with religious overtones, which has as its driving force not the bettering of the lives of kids, but the scapegoating and persecution of people the leaders consider "perverts." Perhaps Brock Meeks should evolve to the point where he is no longer a shill of Mike Echols, and a mouthpiece for the Sex Abuse Agenda, and start feeling some of that "wrenching feeling" in the "pit of his stomach" for the mistreated kids themselves, and concentrate a little bit less on whether anyone is getting a bulge in their trousers over it. Just my opinion, of course. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
