CJ said:

"However, I think it's an abuse of that aspect of freedom of speech when people hide behind pseudonyms in order to promulgate hatred and division, or in order to defame others."

CJ.. character assasination is 'defaming'....if you look at Ginx, Bugsy, Fractelle and Foxy's posts in this and other threads.. and yours in many.. you will look into the mirror of 'defaming'

On the day when you raise your contribution level from the cesspool of adhominems and personal abuse, to actually critically evaluating material presented, then on that day you will have a tiny bit of respect from me. (not that the absense of it matters to you :)

In my case, the nature of material presented is at times 'divisive' and at times it is even 'hate filled' but the hate.. is not for individuals it is for beliefs.

For the record:... I hate:

-Doctrinally based domestic violence
-Doctrinally permitted child abuse.
-Doctrinally supported sexual abuse of captive women.
-Men who use supposed revelation to provide themselves with abundant sexual privilege they deny to their followers.
-Men who gather a band of thugs and beseige cities (Ta'if) while calling them to embrace a faith which means believing in the man beseiging them.
-Doctrinally based eternal violent war against non 'them'.

And.. I also hate:

Drug barrons who murder people who oppose them.(Even though these barrons build hospitals, churches and other 'humanitarian' stuff)

Most of what I present is along those lines..and I feel I have 'right' on my side....even God... yes.. now.. there are only 2 ways you can respond to this:

1/ Your conclusions are wrong based on the evidence you claim.
2/ I (CJ) support all those things listed, and thats why I attack you for raising them.

There is no in between CJ. You either support those things, or.. you must take issue with the evidence on which my efforts are based.

IF...."I'm wrong" then.. we can have a 'burn BD at the stake' day.

Dear BOAZ_David
You know that I disagree with your ideas but I fully support your right to express and promote your ideas. On this thread we do not speak for your ideas or my ideas but for your right, for my right, for our rights to express freely our ideas, opinions, dreams. We make a big mistake when instead to try to protect the freedom of speech we find the opportunity to attack individuals because we disagree we their ideas. We must separate the ideas of each person from his right to express them.
The truth is that I found my self many times to make big mistakes and make times I called my self --Idiot Antonios what did you say?--
We need to show a little bit understanding and forgiveness if we want to create a better world. There are few limits in the freedom of speech which we must respect.
BOAZ_David
I use your name because I want to sent the message that we can be friends even when we have totally different ideas.
If we can not separate a person from his ideas then the freedom of speech is fake, then we can understand why so many people avoid and do not use their real name in the forum.But if really happened this our civilization, our democratic system is not enough mature to accept the freedom of speech. The best way to train our society to respect the freedom of speech is if every one from us use his/her real name in the forum and if we support any person who has problems because it expressed his ideas.
If many people do it soon, very soon our society will accept it. It is a shame when people avoid to use their real name because our society is not enough mature to accept different ideas. The shame is not for the persons who avoid to use their name but for our society, for our civilization which is champion one more time in hypocrisy.
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelade

At the end of the day?

Everybody here's expressing their opinions. Nobody has been silenced - if they have, they've been in breach of the forum rules, which I think have quiet a lot of leeway and are pretty damn reasonable.

When people call for people to be silenced, it can be ignored. Nobody here except Mr Young can silence a poster, and as I said, he's got a pretty light touch.
I disagree with many posters on a frequent basis, but like Col Rouge, I believe the best way to show up an argument is to refute it, instead of silencing it.

I don't see many examples of censorship. I do see a variety of people exercising freedom of speech - and plenty of disagreement, which actually stands as evidence that we do have quite a lot of freedom of speech here.

Boazy: "CJ.. character assasination is 'defaming'....if you look at Ginx, Bugsy, Fractelle and Foxy's posts in this and other threads.. and yours in many.. you will look into the mirror of 'defaming'"

"Character assassination" is a little bit melodramatic and just a tad hypocritical, don't you think? I mean, in the context of Boazy's endless posts that vilify followers of Islam, homosexuals, Greens etc etc.

Something about people who live in glass houses comes to mind. If you think that anything I've written here is personally defamatory to whoever BOAZ_David is in real life, you are perfectly at liberty to take action. But we all know you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Now I'm confused. I'd been under the impression that the PALEIF account was operated primarily by Antje but now it appears that Antje is using the Macropod Whisperer account (or did I misread that).

PALEIF has refused previous requests that some kind of alias be used by those operating that account so that the rest of us had some kind of idea who was addressing us. As I've stated previously no need for real names, just some way of telling one user from another.

For someone who is so adamant that ID be provided to other users whoever is currently operating the PALEIF account is somewhat elusive about their own identity on this thread so far (unless I've missed a post).

R0bert

Robert,

As far as I am aware Antje is not using the PALE account anymore. It is my understanding that Wendy is using PALE and no-one else.

Can we all move on?