Re:perspective (Score 1)

> Every body knows about David Koresh. The
> Heavens Gate... When there is a problem, if
> nothing is done, people die!!!

Religions thrive on martyrdom: it's the entire principle upon which Christianity, Islam, and -- to some degree -- Judaism are built upon. Even polytheistic religions have elements -- such as the Prometheus and Huitzilapochtli myths (and the 'nine million martyrs' Wiccan myth) -- that promote martyrdom. The harder you crack down on a religion, the more the *religion itself* is going to be seen as a martyr.

It worked for Christianity.

It held the generally fractuous Jews together through millenia of exile.

It caused David Koresh to commit suicide with all his followers.

In short, cracking down on a religion is the worst possible thing you could do to 'fix' the problem of a deviant religion. Further, remember that 'deviant' religions with many members have a tendency to move towards the norm; for instance, Mormonism -- which supported the formation of the nation of Deseret within the borders of the United States -- quickly moved in line with other 'mainstream' religions.

Second: you cannot argue 'information needs to be free' out of one side of your mouth and 'stupid information needs to be controlled by the Firm Hand of Government' out of the other. Excactly how is the moderation of information (in this case, *religious* information) different between the cases you present in the two paragraphs I've commented upon?

> If you naively look at the situation, and
> simply assume its another oddity of Chinese
> government, then you need to look beyond
> American media. If you've been any where in the
> world outside of the US, you'll know that the
> US main stream media is the LEAST FREE--Even
> compared to China.

Here's where my 'BS Detector' light goes off.

Right.

The politics of propaganda go like this: when your government is doing something you prefer the people not know about, you cut off access to alternate viewpoints, ergo restricting the 'info-flow' to a single stream. The Chinese government does this very effectively: they've stifled the underground press, limited 'net access, and even controlled the flow of information by phone. Most of their 'press releases' consist of fabricated stories, spin doctoring, and out of context information.

Further, the Chinese press is composed of Party officials trained to take the Party Line(tm). They do so in every possible circumstance.

The United States does not have the fairest media. Our treatment of the Kosovo situation was egregiously unfair to both the Kosovar, the Serbs, and what was going on. Our treatment of the Air Force incident in Italy glossed over the entire situation. Our press does its best to portray the American viewpoint as the right one, especially within the arena of American foreign policy.

However: there is no such thing as the 'American Media'. A good portion of the information we chalk up to 'America' is actually coming from Canada and the UK -- and, recently, we've been getting a lot of translated articles from Germany. In a worldwide marketplace of information, the 'propaganda' you accuse the government of *cannot* work.

The only place where it becomes sticky is within the arena of American politics, which is largely irrelevant on a large scale. However -- within this arena -- the tenor of articles is generally determined by the political disposition at the time of writing. If that falls along Republican and Democrat party lines, then that's just the opinion of Joe Average.

Anyway.

I've rambled on.

-- Dr. Benway