Warp wrote:
>   Yeah, I see how history books advocate nazism and thus should be banned.
> Very rational.

I think everyone involved realized that it wasn't intended to apply in 
that situation, no.  I'm saying "it's rational to ban advocating it." 
They just did a poor job of defining "advocating", and wound up 
including "displaying or distributing nazi symbols" without thinking 
about things like historical photos.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Warp wrote:
>   Ok, there is a difference: China has some kind of excuse.

Yep yep.  Also, having been there and having relatives there, I think 
the amount of repression is vastly overblown. It seems to be a 
benevolent dictatorship (so far), and most of the people really 
appreciate what the government is doing for them. I wouldn't be 
surprised if the Chinese government is better for their people than many 
western governments were (say) 100 or 200 years ago. Certainly the 
French wouldn't have felt the need to create a machine to more 
efficiently behead their politicians if their government wasn't pretty 
abusive at the time. :-)

Sure, when the police and the army are the same group, you get things 
like tanks being brought in to suppress what's seen as a revolution. And 
now that there's actual live international news broadcasts, you see that 
stuff. But the US has done some pretty awful stuff not too different 
from that in fairly recent history too.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:01:34 -0500, Warp wrote:

>> I'm just speechless, Warp - that you'd equate protecting copyrights to
>> the Tienemen Square massacre....well, like I said, I'm at a loss for
>> words.
> 
>   I was not talking about copyrights.

That's how it looked to me - you started with a topic about how not being 
allowed to post materials you don't have rights to is "censorship" and 
then said "before you know it, you won't be able to criticize your 
government".  Now you tell me how the former is not about copyrights.

Jim

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Yep yep.  Also, having been there and having relatives there, I think 
> the amount of repression is vastly overblown. It seems to be a 
> benevolent dictatorship (so far), and most of the people really 
> appreciate what the government is doing for them.

  What I really don't understand is that China is *supposed* to have some
kind of communist (or similar) government, yet you couldn't see that there
*at all*.

  I have absolutely no experience nor sure knowledge about how life was
in the Soviet Union when it was still fully communist, but if I'm not
completely mistaken, it at least worked at some level, in that the vast
majority of people had a home and some kind of living (and, on the other
hand, there were no rich snobs). The same is probably even truer for Cuba
(at least deducing from their health care and schooling system).

  In China, however, the difference between poor and rich was extremely
glaring. On one hand there were people with brand new expensive Mercedes
cars, cellphones and all that crap, and at the same time there were
enormous amounts of beggars living in underway passages (literally!) which
didn't look like they owned anything else than the rags they were wearing.

  If China is supposed to be some kind of communist nation, from what
I saw it doesn't work at all.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> That's how it looked to me - you started with a topic about how not being 
> allowed to post materials you don't have rights to is "censorship"

  I must have early dementia because I don't remember that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:17:13 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> That's how it looked to me - you started with a topic about how not
>> being allowed to post materials you don't have rights to is
>> "censorship"
> 
>   I must have early dementia because I don't remember that.

Just go back and read the earlier parts of the thread, that's what I did.

Jim

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Warp wrote:
>   What I really don't understand is that China is *supposed* to have some
> kind of communist (or similar) government, yet you couldn't see that there
> *at all*.

Well, they went from feudalism to communism. They no longer bind women's 
feet, nor do they disallow women from learning to read. Taxi drivers all 
have little statues of Mao where Americans would be putting St Christopher.

> enormous amounts of beggars living in underway passages (literally!) which
> didn't look like they owned anything else than the rags they were wearing.

I didn't see any of that in the cities. Indeed, I noticed that there 
were *no* homeless or beggars.  (I lie. I think I was once in six weeks 
asked for some money by a little old lady outside a temple in center 
city.)  Out of curiousity, where and when was this that you saw it?

A fair amount of poverty, and a large number of people fighting to make 
enough money at what I'd call menial jobs (selling produce in the open 
markets, etc), but I didn't see anyone that looked like they had no 
place to call home.

I saw a number of communities where jobs consisted of (for example) 
picking the usable bricks out of a demolished building's rubble, or 
washing clothes on rocks, while the city a couple miles away had a 
half-billion-dollar tourist attraction being built (which one could 
argue is a good allocation of funds, anyway). A few places where the 
people didn't have glass in the windows.  So yeah, there's still a lot 
of poverty around outside the cities.

I'm pretty sure I heard the government goes out of its way to make sure 
everyone has a home. You might wind up in a city you didn't want to be 
in, but you'll have a roof over your head. Again, whether it's true or 
not, successful or not, I couldn't say.

>   If China is supposed to be some kind of communist nation, from what
> I saw it doesn't work at all.

My understanding is that it's vastly superior to what it was (say) 75 
years ago, and steadily improving. Whether the people I know who live 
there really have a 100% grasp on this, given the government control of 
the media, is another question. It certainly seems like the government 
is trying to do a good job, unlike some of the other places where it's 
clear the government couldn't care less if everyone died, as long as the 
cronies get theirs.

Of course, the problem with a benevolent dictatorship is that it turns 
into the other type all too easily, and then you're pretty well screwed. :-)

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > enormous amounts of beggars living in underway passages (literally!) which
> > didn't look like they owned anything else than the rags they were wearing.

> I didn't see any of that in the cities. Indeed, I noticed that there 
> were *no* homeless or beggars.

  It seemed to depend on which part of the city you were. Beggars seemed
to frequent only some parts of the city.

> Out of curiousity, where and when was this that you saw it?

  A couple of years ago we went to Beijing. There were many places which
were full of beggars who were very persistent and wouldn't leave you alone.
For example outside the gates of the Forbidden City was one such place
(although not the worst).

  But there were people living in underway passages etc.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   It seemed to depend on which part of the city you were. Beggars seemed
> to frequent only some parts of the city.

I can believe that. Maybe they get in more trouble if they hang out 
where the tourists are, which is usually where the beggars get more 
money in this country.

>   A couple of years ago we went to Beijing. There were many places which
> were full of beggars who were very persistent and wouldn't leave you alone.

Huh. I was there for a couple weeks, including all around center city, 
and I didn't see anything like that. Mind, I wouldn't be surprised if 
they were arrested and taken somewhere else so they'd stop bothering the 
tourists. :-)

I'll ask relatives if they run into such.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Am Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:23:12 -0800 schrieb Darren New:

> scott wrote:
>>>> Publishing derogatory comments, especially when generalising about a
>>>> certain group of people is a very dangerous thing to do,
>>>
>>> No it's not.  It's *words*.
>> 
>> Try telling that to a newspaper editor!  They can't go publishing
>> things like I suggested without risking being sued or having some fine.
> 
> Well, if you lie about someone in a way that damages their reputation,
> yes. But that's not we're talking about. Certainly newspaper editors can
> (for example)
> 
> In theory, you're allowed to say anything that's true. "It's my opinion
> that ..." is true, since you've stated it as your opinion. Even if it's
> "It's my opinion fascism is good" or "it's my opinion that God hates
> you" or "I don't believe the holocaust ever happened." Which is some of
> the stuff that (for example) Germany and France don't like to hear.

Just to clarify a bit. The law in this case (§130 StGB) is against 
"Volksverhetzung" and the paragraph relating to that is:

 (3) Mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe wird 
bestraft, wer eine unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus begangene 
Handlung der in § 6 Abs. 1 des Völkerstrafgesetzbuches bezeichneten Art 
in einer Weise, die geeignet ist, den öffentlichen Frieden zu stören, 
öffentlich oder in einer Versammlung billigt, leugnet oder verharmlost. 

which translates to

(3) One will be put in jail for up to five years or get some fine if one 
publicaly or on a convention approves, denies or plays down a crime 
commited during the national socialism according to §6, 1 of the 
Völkerstrafgesetzbuch in a way, which is likely to disturb the public 
peace.

So it has to be public *and* it has to be dangerous to the public peace. 
While this may sound quite arbitrary I'm sure all terms are well (and 
probably reasonable) defined in lawyers terms.

The intention of the law is to prevent someone like Hitler ever gaining 
power again in germany by extremists positions (remember, he was 
elected). That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

> 
> The problem with suppressing such things is that people wind up not
> being able to discuss it in public, and in private people use the
> censorship as an argument that they're right.

While it is true, that Germans in generally don't like to hear it, it is 
certainly possible to state the most ridicoulus positions, if you word 
them carefully. In fact, that's what the right extremists parties (which 
are thankfully not in power) in Germany do.

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