[ga] Choose your own

["Roberto Gaetano" <ploki_xyz@hotmail.com>]

Hi.
I´m catching up with email, and when I saw the huge backlog piled up in few 
days I thought that something really serious had happened.
What a relief to see it was only the periodic remake of the "censorhip is 
good/bad" movie.
I´m cumulating the answers, not necessarily in priority nor in chronological 
order.

Richard Henderson:
>  I suspect that the German sense of humour is the problem here.

Yuo´re right, but it´s probably the European sense of humour, more than the 
German alone. Although we (Italians) mostly make fun of the German sense of 
humour, I have to admit my solidarity with the Germans here.
You quote sketches I unfortunately did not see, neither I´m aware of, so I 
might be off mark, but I don´t underestimate the sensitivity to a tragedy 
that has hit a great part (if not even the vast majority) of Europeans. We 
also have sketches on TV, but we take personal offense to be compared to 
people, like the fascists and the nazists, who have caused several millions 
deaths. The size of few thousands twin towers blowups. In fact, there are 
lots of similarities. First of all, the victims were innocent. Their fault, 
in the case of AlQaida´, to be there. In the case of fascists and nazists, 
to be of a certain race or religion, or to have certain sexual inclination, 
or other factors that you cannot easily control (and for which you should 
not be discriminated in first place).
Try to think of thousands of 9/11 over few years, affecting most of the 
families in a country, and you will realize how the sense of humour might be 
affected for generations. Of course, Europeans have to get out of it, but 
please understand that it is not easy.

To the general issue of "censorship":
Well, I am *not* against censorship, but I do believe that it is justified 
only in extereme circumstances, and under the control of an appropriate body 
who applies rules decided *before* the event. As an example, I do believe 
that (please forgive methe abused example) screaming "Fire" in an 
overcrowded theatre is not expression of free speech, that journalists on 
the front in case of war cannot divulgate any piece of information they 
have, and so on.
So I agree with the principle of censorship (under extreme and controlled 
circumstances) but I disagree on how it was applied here.
I personally know how INEGroup grows only through the replies of other 
participants of this list. I firmly believe that those who are annoyed by 
Jeff Williams posts have long ago learned how to deal with this. Those who 
think that INEGroup is a legitimate stakeholder of this process, are going 
only to be confirmed that there is an international plot against the 
legitimate interests of the cowboys of Grapewine. Everybody will keep 
his/her/its opinion regardless any action. In real life, there are many Jeff 
Williams. You cannot shut up them. You shall not shut up them. You must only 
prevent DoS attacks. Which is not the case. On the contrary, stopping Jeff, 
who is a benign contributor, might only trigger other less benign 
contributors to take different actions, that might be a real DoS.
Incidentally, I remember years ago, before the GA (even before ICANN), I was 
surprised by Jeff wishing Happy Thanksgiving to everybody on the list we 
happened to participate. You´ll never know. Well, I don´t know. The 
wonderful sentence by Jon Postel about being conservative in writing and 
liberal in reading might be appropriate. Anybody here can quote it exactly?

To Leah:
>As for the word fascist, the dictionary says this:
>
>   1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as 
>that   of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the 
>individual   and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed 
>by a   dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and 
>forcible   suppression of opposition
>   2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or   
>dictatorial control

Fine.
But I do believe that "your dictionary" only tells the Anglo-Saxon 
interpretation of the word "fascist".
Unfortunately, we Italians have the privilege to be the authority about the 
meaning, :<( so may I quote one of the authorities (IMHO, *THE* authority, 
your mileage may vary) [Gabrielli (1989), Mondadori, page 1449], whose only 
non-historical quote is "arrogant, tyrannical, violent person" (remark: 
Incidentally, the example happens to say "With this fascist you cannot even 
discuss").


About the Vittorio Bertola story:
I know personally Vittorio, and I can say not only that he is in good faith, 
but also that he puts his extra personal engagement for moving things 
forward. Incidentally, I am saying this against my personal interests, 
because Vittorio has run against me (and beaten me) for offices, and will 
probably do so in the future.
It is very easy to find things that people do wrong, except when people do 
nothing. By extension, we can say that the more people do, the more they 
will do wrong. What is the measure of things? Your mistakes? Or your 
successes?
I am frankly appalled by the many who only complain, judge, spit sentences 
(as we say in Italian), and never get their hands durty.

To Stéphane Bortzmeyer:
I followed the discussion on poisson (I also reported there on the situation 
in the GA), but I do believe they happen in two different contexts. The 
population of the poisson list is different from the GA list, and the people 
that contribute to the two pretend to speak for different communities. 
Rose´s draft fits there, I doubt it does hes here. Of course, I´d be 
delighted to be wrong.

Bottom line, anybody?
I´ll try one. Or two.
Do we really need to shutup a voice to make the information flow better?
Is censorship the favourite subject because we have little to say on ohters?

Regards
Roberto

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