With all of the recent developments, including the comments against censorship and in favor of measures to route around censorship, and the charges of pro-Nazi sentiment, let me state some of my beliefs: * I strongly believe, to the point of certainty, that the events described variously as "the Holocaust" and "the gassing of Jews" occurred. I first encountered photos in "Life" magazine, circa 1966, and nothing I have seen since then has even slightly shaken my belief that Hitler and his government oversaw the extermination in the most barbaric manner of several millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, cripples, etc. * However, I am very fond of German culture in general. Though my ancestry is essentially Scandinavian (Denmark, Norway) and Anglo-Saxon (Scotland, England), I have felt more affinity for things Germanic than for things French, Italian, Spanish, etc. Perhaps it was my interest in science, where Einstein, Heisenberg, Schodinger, etc., reigned supreme (though Darwin and Newton were no slouches!), but I felt an affinity for Germany that I did not feel for, say, France (though I lived for a year in the south of France, near Nice, as a child). * By "German culture" I mean: Einstein, the Rhine, beer, Beethoven, Mozart, castles, the Alps, Salzburg, Goethe, Heidelberg, and of course, the language (which is a root language of English, naturlich, and part of the "Indo-Germanisches," or "Indo-European" family of languages...proto-IE goes back a lot further than either Greek or Latin, which are just variants of PIE). * Nothing about the Third Reich appeals to me, excpept that they had some pretty good scientists. (And I believe that Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and others dragged their feet on alerting Hitler and his advisors to the real prospects for atomic bombs...in a way that Einstein, Bohr, Fermi, Szilard, and dozens of others in the U.S. at that time did not.) As one opposed to the excesses of government power, I view the excesses of the Third Reich as an object lesson about the dangers of totalitarianism. * I believe that much of "Jewish culture" is, for historical reasons, closely related to German culture. It is understandable that so many Jews hate Germans and German culture, but also sad. (I don't mean the newer Israeli/Hebrew culture, but the Yiddish/German culture, which was so shaken by the Holocaust that, sadly in my opinion, it cannot acknowledte its essential Germanness.) * As far as racial or ethnic differences go, I believe the so-called races are essentially indistinguishable, except for superficial differences in appearance, stature, pigmentation, etc. (And a comparison between Watusis and pygmies will reveal that "Negroids" are as varied in stature--and basketball skill--as any differences between Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.) That all the races and sub-races, from Australian Aboriginal to European to Asian to American Indian can interbreed with identical fertility rates suggests no genomic differences. In fact, it strongly suggest that evolution as we normally think of it essentially stopped some tens of thousands of years ago, which makes a lot of sense. And there you have it. Let no one call me a Nazi. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."