On Fri, Apr 20, 2001 at 03:21:17AM +1200, David McNab wrote:
> From: "Sam Joseph" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > ... I still won't want to run a Freenet node for fear of being party to
> > distributing child porn, and I think there are a lot of people like me,
> > maybe not on this mailing list, but they are out there, and busily
> > not using Freenet nodes for just this reason.
>
> We see here the power of 'spin'.
> Such rhetoric could earn a nice fee from a news publisher as the basis of a
> sensational story.
>
> Most average people consuming such spin, especially if they haven't yet
> heard of Freenet, will immediately form the prejudice that Freenet and its
> supporters are dedicated to protecting child pornographers.
> Such could carve deep inroads towards global bans on all encrypted
> non-standard internet protocols, and lead to proliferation of police powers
> such as now exist in "Airstrip One" (UK, to those who haven't read 1984).
>
> This spin is powerfully effective because it triggers such strong emotional
> reaction as to completely eliminate the sense that there may be another side
> to the story.
The corporate media is merely the propaganda arm of the system. It
should not be regarded as any more or less. It should always be
considered an enemy - it will always be biased against anyone which
the establishment and the system is against. People say that one
should not act as to provide something that the media can use as a
weapon, an excuse - but remember that the media will always find ways
to attack enemies of the system and support the system. Trying to
pander to the media is a futile task, and causes one to become a
passive sign-waver.
> butchered each year under totalitarian dictators such as Saddam, Milosevec,
> Tito, Suharto et al. Think of the countless masses in Tibet who are
> routinely tortured and executed by the Chinese. Think of how much suffering
> could have been avoided if Freenet had been functional, say, since the first
> explosion of the Internet circa 1995. Especially Freenet with an optional
> 'stealth' mode - steganography via 'legitimate' traffic. For instance, a
> Milosevec aide could have worked with NATO to bring down that butcher
> faster.
A typically liberal capitalist statement. Of course, this ignores the
fact that the system that you implicitly support is based on two
things: domination and exploitation. Anyone who sincerely thinks that
the US (or any other western capitalist nation, or even a socialist
state) is free is quite ignorant of what really goes on (there is
plenty of stuff that happens which is not reported in the newspaper or
on TV news) and doesn't have a clue about the true nature of authority
and hierarchy. Go read up on anarchism (or libertarian socialism
(which today is primarily comprised of anarchism but also includes
things such as situationism and council communism), *NOT*
libertarianism or the "anarcho"capitalism). For starters, go to
http://infoshop.org/ and http://anarchismfaq.org/
> That someone can even suggest that a human being lacks the right to
> communicate and express freely, and choose his/her level of identity
> disclosure, troubles me. Such attitude is a vital prerequisite to such
> totalitarianism mentioned above. A greater danger in such an attitude is the
> premiss that human beings are inherently flawed and need outside regulation.
> Children who are repeatedly fed such a line act it out as a self-fulfilling
> prophecy. *That* is also child abuse. The vicious cycle of crime and
> punishment ensues.
This is something that I and most if not all anarchists would agree
with.
> To me, the crime is not that Freenet is advancing towards mass usage, the
> crime is that the mainstream community have been so slow to come in and
> support the project - whether financially, technically, or as advocates in
> other ways - and that Freenet's development has been delayed as a result.
Well, I would really like to see Freenet get widespread usage, but at
the present it seems that Freenet could be a bit more reliable - it is
hard to use something if all the files seem to be only intermittently
available.
--
Yes, I know my enemies.
They're the teachers who tell me to fight me.
Compromise, conformity, assimilation, submission, ignorance,
hypocrisy, brutality, the elite.
All of which are American dreams.
- Rage Against The Machine
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