After one of the most fervent pilgrimages in Arès, without any trace of it in the papers, I am set on by news thick and fast like by fleas from the black dog (Rev of Ares XLIII/11, XLV/1):
In the Near East, as no basic problem is solved or about to be so, it's just a truce; well, that's something anyway. Mother Violence hates being bored, so it moves to Colombo, Sri Lanka; a mammoth brawl "for some unclear reason" between protesters for peace and Buddhistic monks; ragged yellow gowns; hundreds of people bashed up taken to the hospital. Qumran (where the Dead Sea biblical scrolls were found) was not an essenian or protochristian monastery, but an ancient tile factory or a public dump, quite simply. Right on the middle of the Pacific three castaways are found, Mexican fishermen who were drifting for months, their engine out of order, living on rain water and raw fish; it seems as if no one had given a damn about them, their disappearance had never been reported. A miracle at the chocolate shop Angiono, Fountain Valley, California: A "chocolate holy Mary" has miraculously formed under a cocoa vat; "That's just like the virgin of Lourdes", they say (see picture). Detroit, Michigan, a federal judge rules that phone-tapping ordered by President Bush is illegal even on antiterrorism grounds. London, the exact opposite of the previous piece of news: Interior ministers gather together to discuss nothing less than the blocking of "all of the websites favorable to terrorism."
I push the papers aside and close my eyes. It's clear to me that, just as all powers from time immemorial have controlled ideas and information, current politicians see terrorism as the excuse to screen the internet with a view to deleting from it whatever displeases them.
Five minutes ago my darn stupid old jeering humor, I admit, came back to the fore when I read the story of the chocolate virgin, but now that I read news of politicians being discussing repressive censorship of the web my lips freeze. How about that somewhat silly chocolate virgin turning into a martyr to liberty? If, as it has already occurred in history, some movement of opposition to the world's powers adopted Mary as an emblem? That chocolate Mary might be considered as dangerous and banned from the web. As the politicians in London state that "apart from any support for terrorism, no standard expression of conscience is to be banned on-line," but do not specify what they mean by that, you never know.
Ever since the internet started I have expected it to be censored. People used to tell me, "On the web it is technically impossible to take control of the spread of ideas. The spread of ideas is to stay forever free." I used to reply, "The powers have continously striven to control man's conscience. They will likewise be striving to control it on the internet. On this basic points just as on other basic points our mission is important. We have to show the paths to salvation and happiness through penitence and at the same time we have to remind men of the impossibility of reaching absolute good without first gaining absolutely free expression of conscience, which has to be set free from the harnesses that the system has always put on it (Rev of Ares 10/10).