possible interesting link: Pulling FBI's Nose Out of Your Books

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it,
unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

The Great Buddha couldn't have said it any better.

When a colleague at work gave me the link to truthout.org I wasn't sure what to expect. According to him this website showed the 'real' news of the world, and the not the news the papers and tv-channels would have us believe.
An amazing website with the harsh cold truth of our world as it is today.

Are we all going crazy over supposed terrorist movements that we (read: the governments of some/most 'western/civilised' countries) should be guarded against the reading material out there?

When I was growing up, my parents would let me read anything I wanted, and if I didn't understand some things, they would do their best to explain them. Whether it was about sex, politics or history. I've always found that reading about something, possibly even from a point of view not my own, I was another step closer to understanding.

I read because I love reading

I read because it helps me try to understand people

I read because of the escape

and I read because it increases my knowledge.

Not very unusual for someone who's blog is called Mind of Knowledge.

Reading about a certain topic (alright, let's call it the Islam* because that is what people seem to fear at the moment) will only increase your understanding of the followers of that topic.

That doesn't mean you agree with their ideas (another link: Christianity*), but it does mean you have taken the effort to try to come to grips with people's points of view.

Tracking the 'reading-habbits' of people, which the USA is doing right now - under the guise of a 'law', will not help you stop terrorism. It will only add fear where it is not supposed to grow.
Not to mention the fact that you take people's universal rights away.

I'm mad.

Mad at the world we have created for ourselves.

And mad at the people in power who make it worse, instead of making it better.

* link is for the Encyclopeadia of Islam and the Encyclopeadia of Christianity - amazing works of academic expertise which is published by Academic Publishers Brill, where I happen to work

more on McCarthyism
(since I haven't looked at the site in great detail, I do not know their point of view, and by posting this link, I do not automatically agree with them -- just more info)