And at www.haeusler.co.nz......

As posted from http://haeusler.co.nz/?p=16...... and CYFSWATCH


CYFS and Censorship

Time to get a bit political now, I didn’t really want to have too much political stuff on this blog, but this should be fine.

There is a government department Children, Youth and Family Services, or CYFS, that have been caught out acting in a fairly incompetent fashion, time after time again. A blog has started up with the goal of reporting their activity by naming and shaming those responsible, which is something I think the web is perfect for.

It exposes some fundamental issues that the department needs to address, and the responsible thing to do would be to take some action to improve their services, and the way they do them. Well they have taken action all right, not to try and improve themselves, but by devoting all their (tax-payer funded) resources to shutting down the blog instead! This would be fairly normal for North Korea, China or the US or somewhere, but for a New Zealand government to try and do this is unbelievable and embarrasing.

I am a firm believer in protecting the right of free speech, regardless of whether I agree with it or not, so in this case I am 100% behind the free speech rights of the blog (but not necessarily 100% in agreement with whatever they say) and 100% opposed to the CYFS reaction in this matter.

I guess CYFS are one of those people who believe free speech should have limits. Those people are among those whom I despise the most. Free Speech as a right exists fundamentally to protect ideas that are somewhat removed from the mainstream. Any reason someone can think of for limiting free speech, I say thats the very reason why it needs to be protected so vigorously. This quote I found on another forum says it rather well:

“The right to offend ought be understood as the essence of free speech rather than an exception to it.It’s hard to imagine Free speech, as a principle, arising from a need to protect safe, bland, orthodox, or popular speech.We ought be mindful, too, that freedom of opinion and expression ought entail the right to be and express that you are offended.”

Anyway the blog is here. Aardvark has also been following the case recently.