Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I wish that Congressman Ted Poe had stopped to consider his words more carefully before he spoke this week in an angry speech denouncing Islam. Poe said of the Cordoba House, a Muslim community center with Christian, Jewish and Muslim worship spaces and a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001:

“That piece of land in New York City took on a whole new meaning. Ground Zero is no longer just a location in New York. It is a symbol of America as powerful as the stars and stripes. It is hallowed ground of the victims who were victimized because of hate.”

A hallowed ground of hate? Is that really what Ted Poe wants to establish in New York City? Does he really mean to say that hate has the power to make ground religiously sacred?

Congressman Ted Poe is suggesting that we give terrorists the power to create religious shrines in the United States through their violent acts. I can’t think of a better way than that to encourage more terrorism in the future.

Network Solutions is a company of wimps.

A web site, fitnathemovie.com, was registered through Network Solutions, but Network Solutions blocked access to the web site before there could even be a real web site uploaded onto the net. Why? Network Solutions apparently has a group of employees who are in the position of guessing what a web site might say in the future, and then recommending censorship of the site if they suspect that this future content might cause “unrest”.

The idea is that because fitnathemovie.com had the potential, in the future, to publish anti-Islam material, it would be best just to not allow anybody anywhere in the world to see the site, out of fear that Muslims somewhere, sometime, might get offended, and then might be unrestful.

According to the Washington Post, “a company spokeswoman said Sunday evening that Network Solutions decided to pull the plug on it due to the potential unrest that could follow if Wilders followed through on his pledge to post his film on the site.”

COULD lead to POTENTIAL unrest? Oh, what a low standard for running and hiding under the table! What a sad decline there has been in Silicon Valley culture, now that Internet companies are wetting their pants in fear over the possibility that people speaking their minds on the Internet might lead to unrest.

They’re worries about potential unrest? Since when is the Internet for resting? Last I checked, AfternoonNap.com is not the most popular web site around.

What’s next? Is Network Solutions going to start refusing to host anti-Christian web sites? Refuse to allow anti-Buddhist domain names to be registered? Block WhoIs information for anti-Hindu sites?

Oh, look! At Metro, there’s an article that claims that Jesus Christ has indeed risen again… with his head reincarnated as a dog’s anus. Come on, Network Solutions! Aren’t you going to censor that? Aren’t you going to smack that down?

Why stop at religion, Network Solutions? Why not ban web sites critical of John McCain? Political arguments can lead to unrest, right? Well, if potential unrest is now the criterion for censorship by Network Solutions, then all political web sites must go!

The action of Network Solutions reminds me of nothing so much as the action of the government of China to refuse access to the web sites that have content it doesn’t approve of.

I hereby call upon Network Solutions to change the title of W. Roy Dunbar, its CEO, to General Secretary.

Censor THIS, Network Solutions.

I don’t know if I support the ideas that the people behind fitnathemovie.com were planning on publishing. But then, I can’t know that, given that those ideas were never allowed to get online.