[conspire] New laws in 2016, cont'd.

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Tue, 2016-01-05 at 21:16 -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
> Back in Cold War days, one big, clear moral difference between Warsaw
> Pact countries and the West is that former tended to treat its
> citizens
> like prisoners; the latter didn't.  The Berlin Wall and the minefields
> between Czechoslovakia and Austria/Germany existed to keep Warsaw Pact
> citizens from leaving.  If, like Lee Harvey Oswald, you decided you
> suddenly wanted to live in Russia rather than here, our attitude was 
> 'Bye, have a great time.'

I would like to draw a parallel to RMS rejecting the idea that if you do
not have the freedom to give up your freedom, then you are not free. The
idea he is thereby rejecting is the very policy you summarized above.
Free-only distributions such as Trisquel are the same kind of prisons
that you warn about with regard to the new passport-forfeiture law.