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On Wed, 12 Apr 1995, Paul Jones wrote:

> I hope you heard the irresponsible NPR piece on "White Supremists and the 
> Internet" this morning. Basically they interviewed a Neo-Nazi with a BBS 

This is supposed to be NEWS!!!??

I remember getting into some interesting dialogues with a guy named Don
Black (dblack@dec.com) who had very right wing views.  He also happened to
be the Grand Wazier of the Klu Klux Klan.  It was always fun to watch him
shift smoothly from "Focus On the Family" and "Family Values" into
"Concentration camps for unwed mothers and their unadoptable children",
another contributor was Oded Feingold (oded@???) who was a leader in the
antidefamation league.  We'd chatter on talk.politics, talk.religeon, and
soc.women.  In any other forum, such extremes in viewpoints would
degenerated into warfare, or discontinued communication.  On the internet
we could actually find common ground, concensus, and even the foundation
for sane national policy. 

It was always funny, as we reached consensus on the net, we would be 
amused by which polititians adopted the policies.  Jack Kemp would 
champion the liberal proposals of Oded, and Ted Kennedy would be 
sponsoring concepts originally proposed by Don Black.  I'm sure some 
congressional aides got a good laugh at it too.

> and then said "White Supremists and Internet Civil Libertarians agree 
> that the Internet should not be restricted, but the Simon W. Center and 
> the Senate support restrictions etc etc and have plans to protect us from 
> pictures of neeked peeples blah blah" The real problems were the constant 

I remember when Meese commission was formed and conducting it's 
"investigation".  Originally, they were chartered to investigate "felony 
flicks" such as "snuff films", child pornography, and other films of 
actual feloneous assults and to come up with appropriate proposals.  They 
ignored evidence, dredged up from the internet, showing correlations 
between films depicting "gang violence" (insurance claims following the 
film  "Warriors").  They claimed that 70% of those in Psych Wards read 
Pornography (an internet contributor pointed out that 90% were avid Bible 
Readers).  The result was that bondage films which also showed female 
orgasm were banned, and Gang Violence has doubled every 3 years.

Had the dialogue that had been conducted on the internet been made widely 
available to the general public, the Meese Commision would never have 
been able to use this.

Internet contributors have lost their jobs, have been prosecuted, or been 
audited by the IRS as a result of their "contriversial" views on the 
internet.  The spectere of criminal penalties for something that an 
articulate poster to talk.politics posted in alt.sex.bondage and was 
picked up by a minor child "guided" by a parent with the intent of 
silencing political dissidents is just too -- unthinkable.

NCPs could be jailed because they asked for a date on alt.sex.personals.
Every right wing fundamentalist would become a vigilante, looking for 
"porno postings" to leave where his/her minor children would "innocently 
read pornographic liturature".

We're talking about organizations who would burn Catcher on the Rye, and 
disfigure the Venus de Milo and the statue of David in the name of morality.
To give them access to criminal prosecution would be like giving a 5 year 
old a loaded gun on a playground and telling him to go out and play.

> yoking of WS and Civil Libertarians, the total ignorance of First 
> Amendment protections, the complete ignorance of the technology.

The internet has long been self-governing.  This is a moderated list.  If 
Steve wanted to stop distributing my postings, a "Kill File" would 
silence me on this list.  If you dont want to read my postings, add 
"allard" to the kill file and watch the postings shrink. (I've been told 
several times that my postings are archived).

The internet give me the opportunity to learn about an entire spectrum of 
viewpoints, ranging from Right Wing Neo-Nazi KKK to 
Anarchist/Libertarian.  There are even those who want to go back to the 
"good old days" of "The INQUISITION" where "when we're ready for your 
confession, we'll beat it out of you", and the group who think that's an 
invitation a terrific party. :-)

> Paul Jones  Paul_Jones@unc.edu  NEW voice:(919) 962-5643  fax:(919) 962-5664

Rex Ballard


From rballard@cnj.digex.net Wed Apr 19 18:36:00 1995
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