Nympho, with all due respect, that is just your opinion, and I think we should remain open to people who have different opinions. Also isn't your statement a contradiction in terms. The soldiers in the video are combatants in a war zone, and killing and being killed is the horrific product of war. I agree the killing is senseless because the war is senseless, but that is what soldiers do, and today, and I do mean this day we're going to kill some more. Just because the majority of people on this forum, including me, doesn't want to watch it, it does not mean they are not going to die.

And I repeat my major concern here is what I see as an increased tendency to censor or ban people because we don't like what they have to say. I have been an opponent of censorship my entire life and won't back away from that belief just because the going got tough on this one.

 

I think you're going to have to show me Fanfiction where I am twisting your words and ignoring your main points because I don't see that. Please just point the oversights out to me and I will apologize and stand corrected.Otherwise I going to call a bullshit on you here and now.

I've reviewed my posts and think they are obviously concerned with censoring opposing views and in this case it turns out to be a war. It appears to me you are just wallowing in your own self righthous moral indignation and bullshitting at that pardner.

Let's look at one of your last statements:
You will soon find the original video files if you WANT to see extreme, illegal violence the equal or WORSE than any child porn, (bullshit there is nothing illegal about this violence. These are soliders in a war zone and killing and being killed is what they are being paid to do. I happen to believe this war should be illegal but the president, congress and courts don't agree with me. I've already seen dozens of dead and dieing Iraqis this morning on the mainstream news. And I guess I wouldn't know how soilders being killed in a war zone compares to child porn because I've never watched it. Maybe you could enlighten me on that also, but otherwise it appears to me you're advocating just allowing one side the story to be told). which although it shows young American VICTIMS, killed like pigs and their images used without their permissions(bullshit again first these people are being killed like soldiers in a war zone. It may be ugly, shooting people is, but again that's what war is all about. As far as using their images without their premission, get real here FF. First according to our supreme court these soliders are military equipment and have no rights. Secondly they are participants in a very public event. And finally I'm real sure no one's getting premission slips signed by the hundreds and thousands of images of dead and dieing Iraqis I'm seeing on the mainstream news). by men that WANT you to hate and spread that hate,(You are obviously one of those men that is trying spread hate in this instance but apparently think that's just fine because you're sure you're on the popular side of the argument at least Stumbler will feel much better, since justice as HE sees it is being served.(bullshit again there FF. The injustice as I see it is our rush to censor or ban forum members who want to express controversial or unpopular views). So remember that gift of hate and revolution is partially from Stumbler to you. (and bullshit again FF your the one spreading hate and carring on king with this hypebole. You're the one in my opinion using these soldiers deaths to try and promote yourself).

And Fanfiction I would much prefer to be the king of free speech than the King of Drama.

PS Fanfiction did you get Kimiko's premission to use her name in your signature?

 

These are your opinions jimfox and by the words you choose to describe them they appear to be biased to me and that's fine. What I am arguing here is that we have the same amount of respect and tolerance for people who have opposite and equally biased opinions.

And I think there is ample evidence that no one, including Fanfiction, are saying the same thing about the horrors of this war on the other side. The evidence I would submit is the hundreds of dead Iraqis I'm seeing on the mainstream news and the two posts of Saddam's hanging that did not draw a single protest from Fanfiction or anyone else.

 

is there a war in Iraq?

 

Stumbler,

It appears Voltaire never said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” It was first attributed to him in "The Friends of Voltaire", 1906, by S. G. Tallentyre. It maybe that it was paraphrased from “Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” which he wrote in a letter to M. le Riche, February 6, 1770.

I think it is a pretty decent paraphrase and the meaning is intact, but interesting that its original intent was to defend the written word.

Another point he did make In a letter to Le Comte d'Argental, August 28, 1760 and that applies more than ever in today’s world of 24 hour news channels is “When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.”

Also although he was a great advocate of freedom of communication he deplored propaganda and damned it with phrases like “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

 

Thanks MusicMachine, I'm not really all that well versed in Voltaire and didn't even know he may have originated the quote I paraphrased. Also I don't know anything about the quote attributed to Voltaire that I used. I just like the sentiment.

I also share Voltaire's deploring of propaganda, but as I look around these days I agree more with Bob Dylan:
"Preach false morals insult and stare—obscenity who really cares—money doesn’t talk it swears—propaganda all is phony.

But you could help educate me a little further. When you say Voltaire deplored propaganda did he also say it should be censored?

 

No, I think he did not, but others may read him differently, I take his statement “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” as a warning to be discerning in what you believe, not as a statement supporting censorship although I have seen it quoted in that context. I believe he put the responsibility on the individual to find the truth. In his Essay on Tolerance he wrote “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” He was also known to condemn doubletalk, in his Dialogue, XIV, "Le Chapon et la Poularde" (1766) he wrote “There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.”

Some more of his words that you might like:

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Prejudice is opinion without judgement.
This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

 

Thanks MM I think I'm getting to like Voltaire more all the time.

 

A few more but unsourced.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

 

I really liked all of these too but I absolutly loved the last one.

 

Hmmm. Is "I don't know" an answer? If it is them I'm very proud of my ignorance.

 

A few more unsourced Voltaire quotes

“Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road”

“The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.”

“If Christians want us to believe in a Redeemer, let them act redeemed”

“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”

“There are men who can think no deeper than a fact”

“To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters”

 

Supplementary to my previous answer I have just found his direct condemnation of censorship.

“If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.”

 

I sincerely thank you for these posts MusicMachine, and in honor of your efforts I will copy these insights on Voltaire, commit them to memory, and essentially steal them pretending to others I am very familar with Voltaire, just like I knew it all along.

In all honesty I do thank you for educating me on things that to me are very worth knowing. I do owe you a debt of gratitude.

ou

 

My pleasure, I particularly enjoyed taking this thread and derailing it with something worthwhile....... he has the right to post it.....but I have the right to derail it.

It was fun reminding myself that the shit we see today is the same shit people have seen since people have seen.

 

I'll not repeat myself. What I have said is here for those that have interest.

And since I fancy myself every bit the hero you do, (Voltaire, indeed.) I'll say this:

Stumbler. If someone in your family is ever shot, or murdered etc as an unwilling victim. Then the perpetrator uses that death to ridicule YOUR loved one, without their consent or yours etc. and makes them the star of what I find unacceptable obscenity based on that alone.

And they post links to those movies here. (especially unlabeled)

I SWEAR I will also oppose it's publication on the basis of what I said, despite your boast you want to allow those people the right to post it.

 

FF I have watched this discussion with great confusion, I have read countless posts by you on the topic of censorship vis a vis beast writing. I understand your emotions, I share them, but I also have to rationalise them. The post was horrible but it was labled, I think you missed it, go back and see it is still there. "This footage presents just a small part of the sniping operations occurred in this year, since the last Juba's documentary release Juba killed 668 U.S soldiers with his [Dragunov] Sniper Rifle"

Yes it is sick and horrible, so was the vid of Saddams execution. and so may some say are my stories or yours.

I know my view that this should not be censored is unpopular but to quote Friedrich Nietzsche, The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

 

Then lets have the child porn movies here then?

 

Oh for God's sake Fanfiction do you have anything besides this over dramatized clap trap that doesn't even make sense. Really I expected you to at least back up your claims that I twisted your words or neglected your main points. And instead there you are trying to bullshit some more that the post was not clearly labeled when it obviously was. And do you really think your high minded reasons you belatedly came up with erases all the hate and self righteous indignation you spewed out in the beginning of this thread. No I don't believe this shit not for an inch. And you so conveniently just side step all the major issues here sticking instead to your overblown prose appealing to nothing more than soft hearted emotions.

And I’ll say this, if to use your over dramatized example of one of my loved ones being killed and someone wanted to post it here I would say let them. I doubt I would look at it but I would not oppose their right to express their views. The issue of censorship is bigger than the individual or individual feelings. And far to important of a concept to be reduced to emotion based arguments.

And all say again. You either oppose censorship or you support it. I choose to oppose it and refuse to be a hypocrite just because the choices get hard sometimes. And I have no need to be a hero or even popular. All I have to do is be able to face myself and my motives and that is very easy at this moment.

 

I will NOT be moved from previous statements as to my feelings on illicit activities (snuff and KP) and there right to publication.