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Re: Know your enemy & Nuff said on Pete: who was harmed? & Pissed at Pete Too !!!! & Woke up Free but Branded by his Fans Too?
Source? The only place I've seen reference to this was one mention in The
Sun: ""But by the time Townshend was arrested he had got rid of the
computer he used when he paid to access the depraved images in 1999. "
Destroying" isn't the same as "Getting rid of" at all, and sounds a lot
more guilty, IMO. For example, he could simply have sold it. We don't
know, at least from this mention
If they even know what they're talking about. If no sign of child porn pics
were found at all on Pete's computers, it may be that they didn't get the
one he used to access the site. I'm under the impression they leave a track
that forensic investigation can find. However, this is conjecture. If The
Sun has reached this conclusion, or if someone has told them this, then they
should come clean about it. Maybe I'll email them again.
I would like to mention that drug laws are considerably
more reasonable than they were at one time, and that drug enforcement used
to rely on heavy penalties for users. There was also strong moral
condemnation for drug users, and some folks still hold on to these
attitudes even when they have proved unreasonable.
I'm somewhat gap-jawed at this. Can you explain in a couple lines what
you're referring to? Last I heard, draconian mandatory penalties were
still in effect for everything from possessing tiny amounts of pot on up,
and it's a great majority of people who morally condemn drug users, at
least judging by the lack of sympathy I get when I advocate legalizing
drugs.
Okay, now I've been called on this. As usual, I'm pretty vague on it, as
I've not really followed the War on Drugs that closely--plus, it's going
back a lot of years. Here's a little research. What I'm remembering is
when the penalties were reduced in the Sixties and Seventies. However, it
looks like penalties increased again in the Eighties. At least now there's
no federal death penalty associated with marijuana dealing.
http://www.wikman.com/eric/marijuana.html
"Penalties for marijuana use fluctuated with popular belief regarding its
level of danger. If people believed the effects were particularly bad, the
penalties were stiff, but during some decades public attitudes were more
lenient, therefore penalties were reduced. Drug use declined, fear
increased, and so did penalties throughout the 1950s. One of the first
federal mandatory prison sentences was established at that time: 10 years
minimum for marijuana possession, and a mandatory death sentence for selling
marijuana to a minor (Musto, 1991, p.46). During the 1960s and 70s,
penalties declined as use increased, with eleven states decriminalizing
possession for personal use (Thies and Register, 1993, p.389). Then, in the
1980s, drug use declined and penalties rose. The "three strike" program was
established, under which a mandatory life sentence without parole must be
given for third-time offenders. Judges no longer have the power to use their
own discretion in sentencing, but are required to base their punishment on
the "most serious readily provable charge" (Schlosser, 1994, p.93)-including
a mandatory death sentence for anyone found guilty of managing a major
marijuana plantation of 60,000 plants (ibid., p.89)."
As far as attitudes go, some decades have produced a sizable population like
Kevin, who feels there is no social sitgma associated with pot, and some
have produced much more conservative opinions. As others have pointed out,
it's an extememly violent and shady business, something that casual users
wold like to foget. For the record, I'm with you, Alan. I think drugs
should all be legalized and then taxed, like cigarettes and alcohol.
Pete's 1/11/03 statement says, "On one occasion I used a credit card to
enter a site advertising child-porn. " Where did he say he didn't
specifically pay for any child porn? This seems an important point since
as a condition of his caution he admitted to paying (at least, according to
The Sun).
This may be the statement I'm thinking about. As I recall, he says
somewhere that he only looked at the sites inside the gateway from the
outside and didn't download anything, or maybe I'm mixing statements, and he
just said he didn't download anything. Whatever, as I understand it, these
sites inside the gateway were separate businesses, and did not offer free
downloads. If he didn't download anything, he didn't pay for actual porn.
The gateway business accumulated a number of sites under their subscription
umbrella. I think I read that you could pay a low price for a single entry
(that's where I'm getting the $5.95 idea), but then the price structure made
it cheaper to buy the subscription if you meant to come back often. As I
recall, the article on this back in the winter speculated that Pete had paid
the one-time entry fee, and not the more expensive subscription. Of course,
I may be wrong about this, or the article may have been wrong. There have
been hundreds of articles under the bridge since then, and I've been known
to misunderstand or misremember things. However, I have tried to get things
straight on this. As you say, it's an important point.
keets
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