Re: DON'T Nuke Singapore Back into the Stone Age

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:35 AM 8/31/96, Arun Mehta wrote:

>There are two sides to this: after all, it is the Singaporeans who finally
>have to sort out this problem with their government, and denying them
>the Usenet platform for discussion would only hinder that process.

The point is to make clear to them that the Usenet and similar Web sites
are global in nature, not subject to censorship without a very high local
cost. If discussions of Lee Kwan Yew's dynasty are considered illegal, then
Singaporans will have to choose not to carry the various newsgroups into
which *I* post such messages!

(This was done by many of us during the Karla Homulka and Teale trial in
Canada a couple of years ago: Canada imposed press restrictions on
discussion of the trial and the grisly evidence...and then was chagrinned
to find that the global Net did not adhere to their notions of what should
and could be discussed. They even seized copies of "Wired" at the border,
very much akin to Singapore's stone age policies.)

>Then again, inappropriate postings are the bane of the Internet: the consensus
>on which the Net functions relies heavily on people not posting
>inappropriately.

This works imperfectly, as all long-time surfers of the Usenet will attest!
And _never_ has it involved determinations of "inappropriate" by
_governments_!

Our point in protesting Singapore's actions (and Germany's, France's,
America's, India's, etc., in other cases) is to technologically subvert
their notions that their politicians can determine what the Net, Web, and
Usenet carry.

To be blunt, if Singapore wants to stop me from discussing the dictator Yew
and his feeble son, they can't. Except by pulling the plugs on forums in
which my posts are carried. I consider this a Good Thing (that politicians
in Country A generally have no power to tell citizen-units in Country B
what they can say and what they can't).

The point of being sometimes "impolite" (*) is to "force their hand."

(* I find it Orwellian that being "polite" is taken to mean not saying
anything controversial. It was impolite for Salman Rushdie to write "The
Satanic Verses," is was impolite for people to mention Karla Homulka in
talk.politics.canada, it was impolite to point out that the prime minister
of India drinks a glass of his own urine every day, it was impolite to
refer to Bill Clinton's dalliances with Paula Jones, and so on. In a free
society, all things are discussable. That various countries want to make
the Net less free is not something we should support, even if it is more
"polite" to accede to the wishes of their dictators, secret policemen,
demagogues, preachers, and henchmen.)

--Tim May


--
[This Bible excerpt awaiting review under the U.S. Communications Decency
Act of 1996]
And then Lot said, "I have some mighty fine young virgin daughters. Why
don't you boys just come on in and fuck them right here in my house - I'll
just watch!"....Later, up in the mountains, the younger daughter said:
"Dad's getting old. I say we should fuck him before he's too old to fuck."
So the two daughters got him drunk and screwed him all that night. Sure
enough, Dad got them pregnant, and had an incestuous bastard son....Onan
really hated the idea of doing his brother's wife and getting her pregnant
while his brother got all the credit, so he pulled out before he
came....Remember, it's not a good idea to have sex with your sister, your
brother, your parents, your pet dog, or the farm animals, unless of course
God tells you to. [excerpts from the Old Testament, Modern Vernacular
Translation, TCM, 1996]