Singers jailed for lyrics

[Bill Stewart]

At 07:48 PM 12/26/2003 -0500, Michael Kalus wrote:
> >> Certain symbols (e.g. Swastika) are forbidden as well.
> > Are there exceptions for Buddhists and Amerinds?  Moron.
>All symbols that are related to Nazism.  One of the reasons
>(if not the reason) why they banned "Wolfenstein 3D".

As Tim pointed out, the Swastika symbol had long use before the
Nazis picked it up.  I remember going into a temple in Guangzhou China
which had three large Buddha statues with it on their chests,
and some of the Native American cultures prominently weave it
into baskets.  In Asia it tends to be a sun symbol,
or sometimes a moon symbol depending on which way it's pointing;
in the Americas it tends to be a whirlwind symbol.

If you can drag somebody into court for six months because
you don't like their speech, that's a problem too.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't happen here in the US too,
though more often for speech involving sex than violence,
and certainly our new Attorney General John Ashcroft
has no particular love for free speech.
But you can only throw someone in jail by threatening violence,
so it's hypocritical to say you're doing so to eliminate violent speech.

A friend of mine was on the city council in a Southern California town
where some Ku Klux Klan racist wanted to hold a march.
He wasn't from around there, and didn't really have any local support -
what he really wanted was for the town to ban his group from marching,
so he could sue the town for violating his right to free speech.
The town let him march, and had to bring out the police to make sure
that nobody attacked him or his five or ten friends while they marched.
It was the right thing to do, though she found it very frustrating.
Sometimes you just have to let people be [pick an insult here...]