"Tinfoil hatters who tape over webcams when they aren't in use"
Or sensible people who have webcams with a manual shutter that's only opened when they're actually using the webcam...
6899 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2007
I like saying "Does your mother know what you do for a living? Do you say 'Hi, mum, I've got a job as a scammer and a thief and I like to con people out of money'? Do you think she'll be proud of you and say to her friends 'My child is a crook!'? Hello...? Helloooo.....!" :-)'
Presuming that answer above was addressed to me, the problem with your "screed" is that you are arguing that *everyone* should be treated as a potential sexual offender and considered guilty unless they can prove their innocence. Therefore you fail by reversing the principles of Justice in this country and on the grounds of using the Precautionary Principle to demand that the government control what others can see based on the (alleged) threat posed by a tiny minority.
I note, by the way, the weasel words in your comments "The literature on paedophilia is very suggestive". So you fail on that as well because this is not conclusive, nor scientifically proven. And you also fail by appearing to assert the "gateway theory" that seeing this sort of thing will make them "move from one type of offence to another" with the implication that it causes people to abuse children. How many children have been abused by people who have *not* looked at child abuse images, let alone drawings from Manga etc? For that matter, how many people have seen the (now illegal) drawings which have been classed as "child pornography" and have *not* gone on to abuse children?
As for your anecdote about "one even set me up for assault", so what? Was that simply because he was a paedophile and didn't like you enforcing the rules? Is that sort of behaviour *exclusive* to paedophiles? I don't think so.
Finally you again use weasel words such as "excuse", "wriggle out", "barrack room lawyers" when you go back to your argument of Presumed Guilty by saying "there is always a matter of doubt amongst the barrack room lawyers". Well, yes, that's because that matter of doubt is the foundation of our entire Legal System, apart from child porn, it seems where an accusation is enough to cause people like you to assume guilt!
Yes, people who abuse children should be prosecuted. Yes, people who take photos or own photos of that abuse should be prosecuted. But we should *not* fall for the mentality that our Tabloid Media's agenda pushes whereby anything that looks even *vaguely* suspect in their entirely subjective opinion should be considered prima facie evidence that the possessor is a potential child abuser and therefore anything they don't like (even if it's an entirely fictional drawing) needs to be banned.
I did not say that he didn't have images of penetrative sex, but if you'd actually bothered to *read* what had been written, instead of just letting your knee jerk, you'd have seen that I was responding to DrXym when he said "If you're caught with kiddy porn it should be a mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years."
I pointed out that *drawings* were also classed as "kiddy porn" which, even though they are completely ficitious, would mean that someone who has such an image (or possibly even of the London Olympics 2012 logo which we all know shows Lisa Simpson giving Bart a blowjob!) would get his "mandatory minimum sentence of 5 years".
Fail yourself.
>> "Define "kiddy porn"."
> I don't need to, the law does
Yes, like the law that gave use the "Dangerous Cartoons Act"
"From April 6th 2010 it will be illegal to possess ‘non-photographic visual depictions of child sexual abuse’ in England and Wales. Thousands of fans of Japanese anime, hentai and graphic novels face a maximum three years imprisonment and a place on the Sex Offenders Register for possessing sexually themed cartoons."
http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/wp/?page_id=547
NB This is *not* talking about how paedophiles used to trace over photographs of child abuse and then dispose of the original photo, thus claiming they were "only drawings" because that loophole was closed in the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
This is talking about entirely artificial and fictitious images, eg drawn or created with 3D modelling programs, which have never featured a real child or any actual abuse, but which are now illegal because "well it looks like a child and that's good enough for us".
In the USA and, increasingly, it seems, in the UK, many politicians (especially those at the top) are now bought and paid for by wealthy vested interests, either through campaign contributions or offering lucrative directorships to "help them decide" which way they and their party will vote.
The idea that casting a ballot once every few years gives you some influence on the process is, regrettably, laughable.
We did have the opportunity a couple of years ago to at least improve the system, but, once again, the wealthy vested interests came down on one side and decided that they didn't want us to have it, so we got a a referendum on a system that wasn't great (instead of a *choice* of what system to use) and one party that opposed, whilst another party simply wouldn't support it and we, the electorate, got screwed.
You mean when the TSA [They Steal Anything] decide to crowbar it open to have a rummage through it and see if you have any valuables in there?
Or, like happened to a guy I know whose backpack, with easily opened spring clips, arrived at the destination with the fastening straps cut because someone from the TSA was too stupid or lazy to figure out how to open the clips...
What is "harmful content on the internet"? What is "illegal pornographic content"?
Well thanks to Blair's Government, we have the Dangerous Pictures Act (aka Extreme Pornography legislation) which says that material which is legal in the rest of Europe and the USA, for example, is illegal in Britain because we are so weak-willed and lacking in conscience that we simply cannot be allowed to even see this material since we can't be trusted not to go out and do something nasty if we do!
So google et al are going to be required to implement the Great Firewall of Britain to block this stuff from anyone with a UK IP address according to a list which, presumably, our Mary Whitehouse Brigade gives to them, based on the MWB's criteria of "We don't like this, so *you* aren't allowed to see it!"
Won't someone think of the children (or should that be "won't someone treat the adults as children")!
As has already been seen with other filtering systems and the Australian Great Firewall, who will decide what should or shouldn't be blocked?
How is a legitimate business like mine (selling affordable Leather Products and BDSM equipment to consenting adults) going to be classified? I already have Adults Only on the front and links to various filtering services, will that be enough or am I going to find it on someone's centralised block list and suddenly see my customer base plummet (meanwhile my potential customers will simply switch to the ones which aren't filtered).
And what happens when the puritains start deciding that *other* services or websites are "morally unacceptable" to them? Will the list of blocked sites be publicly available? What methods of appeal will available? How much will they cost and how long will they take?
Cui bono?
... we need TPTB in the Mental Health community to start listening.
There is a group called Revise F65 whose aim is to "get sexual sadism, masochism, fetishism and transvestic fetishism abolished from the World Health Organization's list of psychiatric diagnoses, ICD."
These are archaic and obsolete definitions based on attitudes from the last century, yet, at the moment, these are what are used to define us and, worse, victimise us, for instance there are divorce custody cases where one (vanilla) partner uses the other's preferences to claim that they are not fit to care for the child because they are "mentally ill".
Speaking as someone who runs a business making Affordable Leather Products, supplying BDSM gear to consenting adults, and who has been involved in the Fetish Community for 20 years, it is easy to see that there are fewer fundamentally fucked-up people involved, not least because they are *happy* with their interests and preferences and they have learned to ignore society's ignorant prejudices that what they are doing is wrong/ bad/ sinful/ harmful etc
The real problem is the people who say "We don't like this, so *you* should not be allowed to see it because we don't trust you to act responsibly if you do."
The real solution is to *educate* not legislate.
Passing laws banning stuff never works. Ban alcohol? You get speakeasies. Ban drugs? You fund the illegal trade. Ban the possession of "extreme porn"? Just stream it off the web. Etc, etc etc.
Take responsibility for your offspring and teach your children that there's more to sex than porn. Educating them about relationships and responsibility and respect will do more to solve the problem than all the laws you can pass.
"I am sick of the liberal left wing nonsense that the EDL is a far right organisation, what exactly makes it far right"
Umm, how about all those pictures of EDL members giving Fascist salutes for one thing!
"when you look at Islam it ticks all the boxes to be classed as far right"
That's because you're only looking at the extreme end of Islam and trying to claim that it is representative of the whole religion. I have a Muslim family living next to me but, curiously, I'm not worried about one of them leaping over the garden wall yelling "Allahu Akbar!" (it's usually their kids saying "can we get our ball back?"
But, of course, you don't want to hear this, you only want to hear things which agree with your biased views and pander to your entirely irrational and ill-informed opinion of Islam.
... tell them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine! (Or, rather, don't even bother to start engaging with them)
Penalty Charge Notices are legally enforceable, Parking Charge Notices, even when tricked up to *look like* they are official fines are nothing more than a scam designed to make you think they are legitimate.
See http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/private-parking-tickets for more details.
Jolly Roger Icon because these scammers are a bunch of pirates...
I'll answer that as soon as you tell me on what scale this is any form of news at all.
Despite the best efforts of some sub-editor to make this sound exciting ("quell", "furious", "barney", "gatecrash" and even "tense-stand off"!), this is a complete non-story and again I point out that had it not been for the "geeks in funny costumes" aspect it most likely would never have seen the light of day.
This story was on the BBC news site yesterday and it's a total storm-in-a-teacup piece of nonsense.
Would it have got any coverage if it was one of the many incidents such as in pubs where a couple of voices get raised and the Police come along and say "ok, just calm down" and nothing more comes of it? No, probaly not, but because it's "oh look, let's laugh at the geeks who dress up in the funny outfits", suddenly it's worth a few column inches.
Big deal.
Am I supposed to be impressed by more of your pontification? Let alone your arguments ad hominem?
You accuse me of confusion, but that confusion only exists because of the completely erroneous assumptions you make all through your diatribe, assigning motivations and beliefs to me that I do not hold and have never held.
You claim I fail to recognise the difference between correlation and causation, yet a look back through my posts in El Reg would reveal that this something which I have often commented upon, so how can I get it right all those times, yet suddenly get it wrong now? Or perhaps the error is not mine.
Equally, the assumption of "an ideal human breeding habit" is yours, not mine. I have not said, nor would I that this is "ideal", merely that it is better than the situation that exists where poor education standards are shown to correlate with higher birth rates.
And, yes, I most certainly do, with entire validity, accuse you of using Straw Man arguments. Perhaps you would care to now actually address the points I make, rather than the ones you wish to think I have made?
Or would you prefer to simply attempt to denigrate my intelligence whilst actually revealing your own failings in this area? If so, I'll leave the last word to you.
I almost missed your remarks to me since they were below the "expand comment" and it was only that I happened to spot my surname (why only my surname "Em"?) that caused me to read the rest of your post after a lot of tedious and irrelevant pontification about the use of English.
In any case, in response to your remark "You imply causation where none is known to exist", a simple search on the "relationship between education and birth rate" would have shown you that causation is most certainly known to exist, for instance: "A women's educational level is the best predictor of how many children she will have, according to a new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study, based on an analysis of 1994 birth certificates, found a direct relationship between years of education and birth rates, with the highest birth rates among women with the lowest educational attainment."
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm
(There are plenty more references below that one, too.)
As for your claim that I am a eugenecist of *any* type, let alone that of RonWheeler, you show yourself to be equally lacking in knowledge on this subject.
Eugenics, from the Greek word eu (good or well) and the suffix -genēs (born), stems from a desire to "improve" the human race either by weeding out the "unfit" or encouraging the "best" to reproduce, neither of which I have supported, do support or ever will support.
Reducing the birth rate by improving education has *nothing* to do with Eugenics and if you think that increased education is only available to affluent societies or that it is some how "dis-privilegeing" societies you simply demonstrate even more ignorance of the subjects under discussion.
Ironically it was RonWheeler who accused *me* of using Straw Man arguments...
"No I wasn't. Go build another straw man."
A Straw Man argument involves exaggerating or misrepresenting someone else's argument. Since your entire argument so far appears to be "start treating breeders like the ignorant selfish people that they are" without any more details, there isn't anything there *to* misrepresent other than a vague statement, hence why I expressed an opinion about what *appears* to be your position.
If you would actually care to clarify your statement instead of just accusing others of "ignoring facts", it might help me to counter it.
Most people don't know and, if you told them, would wish you hadn't told them!
So why this assumption that, as happens with some countries in Asia etc, we'd actually be eating the insects with legs and wings and everything else intact?
Why not just grow them, farm them, then mince and pulp them before re-constituing them in a more palatable and pleasing-to-the-eye form, so it's no longer "a bug", but simply another form of protein?