Posted on 12/20/2001 3:26:40 PM PST by backhoe
Thank yer lucky stars, boyo...
Why would a poster have to "offer" people the "opportunity" to do what they are always free to do? Are posters supposed to wait for FReepers to send them "flag list subscription requests" ("Please, please, flag me, whenever you post something!") before the posters may flag anyone? I see that you have been a FReeper a long time, but if more FReepers shared your attitude, FR would have shut down years ago.
Fancy running into you here...hehehe.
NOT!
I disagree and in fact, I'd say that if everyone who posted suddenly ended up on a multitude of individual mailing lists and began receiving large numbers of "flags" from folks that then FR would have ceased to exist.
I am quite capable of reviewing Articles and Comments without assistance. I have no problem with flags addressed to one or two individuals on topics in which the recipient has expressed an interest, but I object to "spam" lists and feel that when someone puts me (or anyone else for that matter ) on a mailing list they ought to offer to delete them if requested.
It is just common coutesy.
It was tragically ironic that the government had sold this whole disarmament program to us with the promise that: "We're here to help you, and this is for your own good and safety."
It was neither "tragic" nor was it "ironic." Try, "deliberate." See under, "Zimbabwe." In fact, change a few words, and it could be a report on Zimbabwe.
Reading the article reminded me of a Jamaican security guard with whom I'd been quite close in New York. Close, as in, he had told me about tragic personal events, and I had told him about my personal business. He had come north ca. 1970, having been a bricklayer and a policeman in Kingston.
The man used to be very open about race: although he was much more conservative than me, he admitted he was voting for black socialist David Dinkins for mayor for purely racial reasons. But then I told him about incidents in which I had had to fight off racist blacks. For a time, he never semed to have time to talk. Finally, one night he told me I was just mad because I'd gotten beaten up by blacks.
This was odd for two reasons. First, I hadn't told him I'd simply taken beatings. He knew that I'd fought back, and exacted some pretty good pain with various weapons (wooden club, mace). Second, what if I had gotten my "@ss kicked" by black thugs? He wouldn't have denied a black man the right to complain about racist, white attackers. He had once mentioned genocidal, Jamaican-born, black supremacist, Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) in a positive sense; that mention took on new meaning.
At the risk of being accused of hyperbole, cities like New York, in which gun control is wed to racial apartheid, are not so different than Jamaica. In a city in which only police and criminals carry guns, "liberal" writers such as Queens College political scientist, Andrew Hacker, promote black-on-white violence as a form of racial revenge. Meanwhile, whites who defend themselves against racist violence are arrested and prosecuted (I have been three times, even when a witness supported my account), while racist black attackers are often given "get-out-of-jail-free" cards by prosecutors who themselves travel only in taxi cabs (as two confessed to me in rare moments of candor) at night.
(Note that it is almost eighteen years since a white New Yorker -- Bernard Goetz -- who defended himself with a gun against four black would-be muggers, was described by the New York media and academics, as a "vigilante," and "subway gunman." One of the thugs brandished a screw driver, as he demanded Goetz give him money. Yet the media and academics always reported that the mugger "requested" that Goetz give him money. And racial attitudes have in the meantime become much more "liberal.")
Not that everything is so "black-and-white," if you'll pardon the pun. Crimes against wealthy white folks are prosecuted, though not as racial attacks. The trick is, either the crime victim has to have a lawyer to defend his rights (as a black, former New Yorker once explained to me), or the crime has to have involved a gun. Violent black-on-white crimes not involving a gun are often "disappeared."
White elites apparently believe that having 24-hour security in their apartment buildings, traveling at night (many do so, even during the day!) in taxicabs, and acting obsequiously towards racist blacks, will innoculate them from attack.
Again, why should someone have to offer to delete someone's name from a mailing list, as opposed to simply deleting the name if the person in question requests it? You seem to be demanding that posters actively solicit rejection.
Common courtesy you twit. Being added to someones flag list is analagous to telemarketing calls and junk mail......
The long & sorry history of tyrannical governments shows that they always silence & disarm opposition-- always!
when it is done occasionally, about a subject in which I have a particularl interst, it's fine; or when it's just a few people; but the bump lists are getting out of hand, and in many cases, I cannot even see my handle. They are getting out of hand and when that happens, they become junk mail.
Remember, one man's nugget of knowledge, is another's junk mail.
It always starts with ridiculing, hectoring, and then silencing a group.... I've lost track of how many times I have labeled "racist" ( altho I grew up around black people & have a black family living across the street from me... ), "homophobic" ( have gay neighbors, friends, and relatives! ), and, well, you name it. It gets old fast!
My nieces will tell me,
"Thanks, Uncle John, but I'll get my own news...."
and get on the 'net and do their own research-- and I am well content with that.
At least they are seeing things the News Jackals on TV will never, ever discuss, and if they reach conclusions different from mine, that's fine- at least they are thinking for themselves!
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