for the List [was neo-Nazis on the Net]

[Vaska]

Alan Westrop writes:

>Ah yes, the poisoning of minds:  A capital offense, for which Zundel has
>earned the gallows!  And then to hunt down the other Great Poisoner, the
>blaspheming infidel Rushdie!
>
>Seriously, I think there's quite a difference between posting to
>alt.baseball groups that "Marge Schott should be shot!" and shooting
>her.  I have no problem with Zundel's thugs posting their idiocies to
>Usenet; I will likewise have no problem with shooting them if they try
>to put their goals into practice.

Alan, why on earth do you equate Rushdie, who as far as I know has never
encouraged or *incited* enyone to go out and take out a few people of
"wrong" colour or religion, with Zundel and his buddies who have?  Are you
really incapable of seeing that there is a world of difference between the two?

You quote bits of my post strategically, to get a cheap little sneer out of
the phrase "poisoning people's minds", but as I did point out, people have
been acting out, murderously, on neo-Nazi incitements to violence.  

BEFORE our courts issued an injunction against the use of Canada Post for
the spreading of hate-propaganda, Zundel and his brethren had been using the
postal system for two years to develop a little network of friends in the US
and Germany.  Once a series of racial murders committed by newly recruited
neo-Nazis had taken place in Germany, and once the police found that those
particular groups were closely connected to the neo-Nazi guys in Canada and
the States [the material evidence was there and no one has come forward to
deny it], Canadian courts stepped in to prevent further use of the postal
system as a means of spreading crime-inciting hate-propaganda.  

You may have no problem with shooting these white-supremacist guys once
they've killed some innocent foax here and there, and been caught for it: I
have no problem with using my vote to stop them from getting others to
commit those very same murders in the first place.

I guess that's where the difference lies.

>Ah Canada!  Ah irony!  Freedom of Speech for the Politically Correct,.
>Denial of Postal Service for the rest.  I believe a simultaneous Burning
>of the Hate-Literature in Berlin and Toronto is in order, accompanied by
>rallies and torchlight parades, broadcast on CNN.  

Ah, the joys of pseudo-liberal smugness!  So uplifting being holier than the
Pope, isn't it?  And so much more self-gratifying than to think about all
those black churches burned down in the South just over the last year or so.
Let alone doing something to prevent it.
 
>Internet is immune to such statist attempts at censorship, whether
>by the U.S. Congress or the Iranian Parliament.  

This is an Internet users' referendum, a form of grass-roots democracy at work.

>If their newsgroup vote
>fails (and I hope it does), they'll start a mailing list, web site, or
>whatever, maintained someplace like Anguilla if necessary.  (The
>transnational nature of this list is instructive.)

And why do you hope it fails, as you keep your hands clean of what you so
derisively call "political correctness" while gleefully smearing those who
will try to make it fail with fascist shit?  And why do you think this by no
means stupid lot of people are so eager to get control over a rec.music
usenet group of all things? Too dumb to create a web-site or start a mailing
list?  You must be joking.

>If they are, it's only because you let them:  a lot of people have gone to
>a helluva lot of work to bring free, easy-to-use, military-strength
>encryption to anyone who takes the trouble to use it.  Check out www.pgp.com
>and www.ifi.uio.no/pgp, or visit the privacy links on my web site.

Military-strength, you say?  Fifteen-year olds can crack those codes before
breakfast, and a few of them have done so a number of times already.  Get
serious, please. 

Vaska