It makes me vomit, I?m not going to comment on this.
Actual quotes on the net:
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In the interests of setting people as straight as they can possibly be set on this matter, here are some excerpts from an email Dave Marsh circulated to his mailing list. I respectfully request that no journalist quote from this without obtaining consent from Pete Townshend.
Subj: Pete Townshend
Date: 1/12/03 12:34:16 PM Eastern Standard Time
When my friend Scott Pellegrino sent me this last summer, I couldn't figure out quite why I decided to save it. As it turns out, Pete was then forced to take the essay off his website for legal reasons. And now he is in a jam with the cops because of just what he is honestly discussing below.
The story here is NOT whether Pete Townshend is a pedophile, which is an asinine accusation. It is whether the American and British police have the right to defile the name of someone, without stepping forward with so much as a charge against him, just through slander and innuendo and filth.
It is about whether we live in a police state. I can think of about 1000 more important examples of the fact that we do. I can't think of a single clearer one.
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Excerpts from a writing by Pete Townshend contained in this email are below:
...There is hardly a man I know who uses computers who will not admit to surfing casually sometimes to find pornography. I have done it. Certainly, one expects only to find what is available on the top shelf at the news agents.
I make no argument here for or against 'hard' or 'soft' pornography. What is certain is that providers of porn feel the need to constantly 'refresh' their supply. So new 'victims' are drawn in every day -- customers and subjects. This is just as true on the Internet as it is in the world of magazines and video. However, what many people fail to realise is how -- by visiting their websites -- we directly and effectively subsidise pornographers. This is true whether we do so unwittingly or deliberately, out of curiosity or a vigilante spirit...
...The Guardian newspaper revealed that
www.uksearchterms.com listed 'lolita' high on the list of the most searched words in the UK ('sex' is often No.1). It seemed to me that there was some hypocrisy going on.
Who were all these people typing 'lolita' into their browsers? They were surely not all paedophiles. Perhaps they were simply curious of what they might find.
The terrible part is that what they found on the Internet will almost have certainly found them by return. It is not to suggest that every one of them was 'hooked' as soon as they found a porn site professing to display underage subjects, it is to say that because their visit was undoubtedly recorded by the site or sites in question, the pornographers who run those sites would have found validation and commercial promise for their activity. They would then have redoubled their efforts in that area.
Many porn sites use software triggers so that when a visitor tries to leave a site upon which they may have unwittingly stumbled, another similar -- or worse -- site immediately pops up. When they try to shut that site, another pops up, then another, then another, the content getting more and more extreme until their browser is solid with pornography and eventually will seize up as though choking on some vapid manifestation of evil itself. Thus it is that the pornographer's 'validation' is spawned at the same time. One site opened triggers another dozen or more -- all of which has been unwillingly 'visited.' If the visitor so much as click on a newly displayed page they may supply a record of their computer's unique address.
'Lolita' is obviously not a word to use carelessly when searching the Internet -- even if one happened to be studying Nabokov for a literature degree. In any case, the word itself is not of special significance: I had my first encounter with Internet paedophilia by mistake...
..., a film director friend, had made an extremely moving documentary about an American couple who adopted a Russian boy. As a charity fund-raiser (and, I suppose, vulnerable philanthropist to boot) I wanted to support the work of such orphanages and decided to see if I could-via the Internet -- find legitimate contacts to help. (I had tried many other methods and failed). The various words I used included 'Russia' and 'orphanages'. I used no words that could usually be taken to be sexual or lascivious, except -- perhaps ill-advisedly -- the word 'boys'.
Within about ten minutes of entering my search words I was confronted with a 'free' image of a male infant of about two years old being buggered by an unseen man. The blazer on the page claimed that sex with children is 'not illegal in Russia.' This was not smut. It was a depiction of a real rape. The victim, if the infant boy survived,...would probably one day take his own life. The awful reality hit me of the self-propelling, self-spawning mechanism of the Internet.
I reached for the phone, I intended to call the police and take them through the process I had stumbled upon-and bring the pornographers involved to book. Then I thought twice about it. I knew I must NOT download anything I saw. That would be illegal. I spoke off-the-record to a lawyer. He advised me that I most certainly should not download the image as 'evidence.' So I did nothing.
I mentioned this shocking Internet experience to a few people close to me. It became clear very quickly that some people I spoke to thought that if I had searched using the right words, my exposure to that terrible image would not have occurred. It might be strange to hear that I was glad I found it. Until then, like my ostrich-like friends, I imagined that only those who communicated on the Internet using secret codes, private chat-rooms and encrypted files would ever be exposed to this kind of image. But I learned through this accident that such images are 'freely' available through the machinery of common search engines and User-Groups, and are openly available for sale through subscription via credit card. I was then concerned that there would be those 'provider's of paedophilic porn who felt the need to regularly 'refresh' their supply of images, as is the pornographic 'norm.' It is a chilling thought isn't it?...
...On the Internet, vigilante groups and individuals work obsessively both to trace and block certain porn sites and to offer -- through 12 Step programmes for sex-addiction-probably the only way out for some ensnared by addiction to what the Internet has to offer.
Undermining all this good work, the ISP I use allows access to User Groups by using the term 'alt' as a prefix. In '*******' (a popular search engine) it is possible to reach a questionable array of offered sex sites with very few keystrokes, and without actually typing a single word. The pathway to 'free' paedophilic imagery is -- as it were -- laid out like a free line of cocaine at a decadent cocktail party. Only the strong willed or terminally uncurious can resist. Those vigilantes who research these pathways must open themselves up to Internet 'snoops'. Many are obviously willing to take the risk. They believe the pathways themselves must be closed.
Offending sites must be totally and completely eradicated from the Internet. If that is not possible, they must be openly policed by active and obstructive vigilantes -- not just 'snooped' by government agencies and police...
...What is certain is that the Internet has brought the sexual abuse of children into the open. It is not 'respectable' or 'acceptable' at any level of society. It is simply in the open...
...Booze and drugs are here to stay. But it must be time to do something more concrete to stop the proliferation of questionable pornography that seems so readily and openly facilitated by the Internet.
Another danger is this: I think it must be obvious that many children are becoming inured to pornography much too early and -as I have demonstrated -- the Internet provides a very short route indeed to some of the most evil and shocking images of rape and abuse.
The subconscious mind is deeply damaged and indelibly scarred by the sight of such images. I can assure everyone reading this that if they go off in pursuit of images of rape they will find them. I urge them not to try. I pray too that they don't happen upon such images as did I, by accident. If they do they may like me become so enraged and disturbed that their dreams are forever haunted."
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Arrested and charged with suspicion of MAKING images, possessing them and enticing to distribute.
He's fucked.
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This is gonna get ugly.
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following quote from
www.thesun.co.uk
Cops can come and get me
By DOMINIC MOHAN
Showbiz Editor
Townshend said he had received support from star pals
including David Bowie, Jerry Hall, Bob Geldof and
Bono.