Thursday, September 13, 2007

More EU freedom in action?

EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said that Internet searches for bomb-making instructions should be blocked across the European Union.

I guess Mr. Frattini has never heard about libraries, bookstores, or chemistry lessons in schools and even universities. Maybe we should tell him... On the second thought, better not.

But wait, this gets better:

"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector ... on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism," Frattini told Reuters.

Well, this would at least certainly solve the problem that some schools in the highly peaceful areas have now: mentioning the Holocaust offends the students and conflicts with the information that they receive from religious leaders of their communities. Just ban mentioning the word or searching on it, and here you have the final solution, so to say, of the Holocaust problem. Also of the Armenian genocide problem, and many others.

Does the current young generation of genocidal maniacs really google for instructions? Damn, the young people nowadays... How did Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot manage without Google? I bet even the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide have somehow managed without the benefit of too many internet searches. "Take a big knife, slash your neighbor's neck, repeat until you run out of neighbors." If you are too dumb to come up with these instructions on your own, you are probably too dumb to figure out how to plug the computer into the wall as opposed to into your own ass anyway.

And what about citizens like myself, who like to be informed on terrorism and know what kind of peace strategy Al-Qaeda is up to and what, if anything, our governments are doing to protect us? I guess we shouldn't worry about it, Frattini will tell us everything we need to know. Without using the word "terrorism", of course, of "bomb" or "kill". "Yesterday four militants have detonated improvised explosive devices in Dumbfuckistan. Three police officers and fifteen civilians perished in the attack." Hmm, this sounds pretty much like the actual news articles they have nowadays.

As to bomb instructions on the Net: when my grandfather was in the army during WWII, they were not allowed to use any words meaning ammunition in their radio communications, and were told to talk about vegetables instead. Their conversations went along the lines of "We need 50 cucumbers, quick!" - "OK, what caliber?" This complicated code might not have fooled any Russian-speaking Germans listening in on the radio communications, but it sure would fool Frattini et al.

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