by Ralph Rewes

Everybody knows that censorship is the opposite of freedom, particularly freedom of expression. But few realize that censorship takes subtle guises, hides behind pretty masks, rides the horses of demagoguery and cheats the naive by erroding the bases of a chosen enemy. When censorship degrades upheld group values, it becomes the most damaging manifestation against human freedom.

Censorship may show as self-righteous chants against groups with different religious or non-religious ideas, pagan religions, cults, atheists, liberals (I mean real liberals, not phony communistoids who hide behind an assumed label of "liberal"), agnostics, etc.

Censorship may show an ugly face through self-appointed defenders of rigid morality against vulnerable segments of society like people with different sexual orientation, natural religious worshippers, nudists, those who view sex as a natural non sinful manifestation of man, etc.

Censorship à la Karl Marx, automatically discredit enemies by the repeated use and abuse of clichés and insults, like 'reactionary, left and extreme right, imperialist, people (meaning the party, or the state), workers (meaning political commissars), propaganda (as a derogatory term, meaning anything their enemy say), propaganda (as a 'revolutionary' weapon, meaning state clichés).'

Censorship hides behind phony political "correctness" to twist around the truth, as in the case of some international news agencies, biased in their reports with retorted semantics.

Censorship is AP calling "rebels" to the terrorists who assaulted the Japanese Embassy in Lima and held innocent hostages at gun point, threatening to kill them all and constantly submitting them to psychological and physical terror!

Censorship in action is a tacit agreement by some organized religions to keep pagan religions, cults, athesits, liberals (do not confuse with the phony US liberal who, in reality, are Leftist, pushers of totalitarianism) and agnostics out of the media.

Censorship is the creation of laws partial to religious fanatics who believe they have the right to impose their rigid morality codes upon others, like the recent 'Decency Law' to censor INTERNET.

Censorship is when Castro's defenders defend a philosophy that survives because it brutally applies a tight, ruthless censorship of any thought.

Censorship is justifying that regime that blasted out of existence 4 civil unarmed pilots, because they dropped copies of this Declaration of Human Rights on Havana (ironically this declaration was presented to the United Nations by Cuba, back in the 40s.)

Censorship is the policy of Canada, Mexico and some European countries, by ignoring the attrocities of the Cuban Ruling Maffia and condoning its most brutal actions, in order to protect their dirty dealings with stolen properties.

Censorship may be media-controlled by choosing what to publish and what not to publish and by omitting or equivocating facts.