Gary Burton Improvisation Class
And for another flavor of improvisation
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Answer to an E-mail
Well, some people figure that toodeling around and over a back beat - oh so often on a pentatonic skeleton - is improvising. But here's a masterful lecture about real improvisation by the man who is reported to have said, "Don't ever play a back beat to my music again."
Gary Burton Improvisation Class
And for another flavor of improvisation
Gary Burton Improvisation Class
And for another flavor of improvisation
Lying on Blogs Petty and Otherwise
A lie is often a minor detail to most people except the one who the lie is told about. It's easy for other people to discount their importance but, when it's not them, that's easy for them to say. I've collected a number of examples of lies or distortions and harassment concerning named individuals of the kind that I talked about yesterday. Of course if I posted those here it would risk giving the lie feet so I can't do that. So, I'll use one told just the other day about me. But, first, and most importantly in this, "Moonbtootica" is an innocent bystander and I am not implying that she had any part in lying about me, she's not the one who accused me of approving of the assassination of a Canadian politician who, probably unknown to the liar, I'd seem to share a number of ideas with, including the independence of Canada.
the
only British PM to ever be assassinated was Spencer Perceval in 1812
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D'Arcy McGee was the only one here. 1868.anthony thoug ht it was a good thing
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I could go into detail about that including charges that in addition to the posthumous approval of the assassination -allegedly by Catholic nationalists but there are those who suspect it may have been members or allies of the Orange Order who killed Thomas D'arcy McGee, and the man hanged for it, Patrick Wheelan, was certainly railroaded - but I won't; Freki has also turned that comment into claims of my approval of the killing of the race horse Shergar - who was indisputably stolen and killed by members of the IRA, a group I've never considered anything but organized criminals. I will point out that I've been a vegetarian my entire adult life in favor of animals rights while Freki is an enthusiastic carnivore. Though until she brought the horse up, I'd never so much as typed the name.
But you really, really don't want me to go into the details. Just let me say it's been an ongoing thing for years on Eschaton. Which may seem petty unless you happen to be the one being repeatedly lied about. Worse lies have been told and, apparently, believed by a number of Eschatonians but I'm not interested in giving those an extended life, either. Needless to say, others at Eschaton, not to mention other popular and influential blogs, are indifferent to such things. A few even manage to stay above that kind of thing, to tell the truth of it. But that kind of thing, unsurprisingly, has brought down the tone considerably.
If lying is considered unimportant or, idiotically, granted the status of a right by the Supreme Court, people who get lied about are frequently going to pay some price which can look insignificant to casual or indifferent onlookers but which cumulatively can ruin someone's reputation. It also empowers liars. If the pretensions of the blogger are that they are an alternative to the corporate media, on even a small scale, but their content is as reflective of reality as the check-out stand tabloids or low grade radio call-in shows, then they are really no different from them. Bloggers who don't go to the bother of attempting to remove Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them on their blogs when those are pointed out shouldn't be surprised when people point that out as well, those lied about having the largest stake in that exposure. Tabloids at least make an attempt at the appearance of editing.
Update: They Write Snark.
OK, you think I'm being really mean to Eschaton, Eschatonians and the blog's owner and petty as well. Here's an example of what Atrios was writing in his early days as Atrios, The Hunting of the Snitch. Instead of a complete analysis in relation to this post, I'll point out two passages.
- Snitch turned to the crowd, “Don’t worry, it’s a private feud…”
- Did I get my man? I will give you a hint – he told me to “Get a life.” Remember that. It is important.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said that at Eschaton, I could have made a bid for The Washington Post.
See Also: "An MWO Reader tries to bring down The Nation (sort of) By Atrios".
I remember that Atrios, I read THotS on Media Whores Online. I really liked that Atrios, even if I had a bit of a problem when he went after Pollitt instead of the idiotic publishers who hired Hitchens - who I thought was a total jerk from the first time his "Minority Report" appeared in The Nation (I'd subscribed for decades). I was never a Hitchens fan. Where did Atrios go?
Update 2: You do understand the incident Atrios was writing about back then, don't you? How he came to call Christopher Hitchens "Snitchens"? It was when Hitchens lied about his, about to become former, friend Sidney Blumenthal, ruining his reputation and causing him all kinds of other trouble as well. Hitchens' lies had all kinds of support too. You see, getting lied about in public sort of puts an end to a friendship. So does being told to get over being lied about. Take my word for it.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
When The "Convene A Blogger Ethics Panel" Schtick Gets Really Old and Tedious
I don't remember once calling the owner of Eschaton by his name before last weekend. Though he'd been outed, largely through his own efforts, for almost a decade, I'd always respected his privacy to the extent that he was always "Atrios" when I talked about him. And, also, for most of that time I avoided public criticism of him. He'd hosted my comments on his blog, after all. You don't just ignore that someone has hosted you.
I have also made it a point to not know much about him, not even reading his Wiki bio (assuming he cares enough about that to insure its accuracy) before last Friday. It seemed like a violation of his privacy. On his blog, he revealed some things about himself and his educational and historical history but everything else was conjecture. Was he the trust-fund-baby that some of his critics alleged? I don't know. Was he one of those very rare bloggers who managed to make a living off of it during the brief period when that seemed to be a possibility? I don't know. It's obvious that he makes money from it, he's always had advertising, a donations system, fund raising periods and an Amazon Wish List. And, on occasion, he used to post thanks to people who bought stuff for him. It would seem to be a justified conclusion that, for him, Eschaton was a cash cow for most if not all of its history.
While the Supreme Court would seem to have protected bloggers from legal responsibility for things posted by their commentators, mere invulnerability to legal and civil risk doesn't seem to be an especially high standard, considering the pretensions of bloggers. What responsibility does a blogger have for allowing definitely untrue statements about named people to remain on their comment threads? Is the length of those and the tedium of monitoring them an excuse? How about a reluctance to ban people from their comments when they're documented as doing that? As I pointed out, Duncan Black has banned people from his blog, I know that I wasn't banned for lying about people. As far as chronology seems to indicate, I was banned for saying that Penn Jillette's stupidly disgusting movie The Aristocrats was stupid and disgusting and boring. For which I was declared to be boring by his commentators. Perhaps in his set an accusation of being boooorrrrringg! is the ultimate slander, being booorrrinng, the ultimate offense. Perhaps if I'd left it at calling Jillette and his movie stupid and disgusting it wouldn't have offended.
What legal obligations or liabilities come with even that minimal level of moderation of blog comments, I don't know. But I'm interested in something beyond mere legalities.
One of Duncan Black's standing jokes on Eschaton has been his periodic declarations that it was time to "Convene A Blogger Ethics Panel." Which, apparently, is a real hoot if you haven't been being lied about on his comment threads and had reports posted on it bragging that you were trolled on other blogs by his regulars.
But, just maybe, it's time for him to explain just what ethics he operates under, what ethical considerations he follows in what he hosts as content on his blog. He has removed comments, I am almost certain, and he has banned people so he does have some limits on content. Does he do that according to some unstated ethical consideration or on the basis of whimsy? If he doesn't have any ethical standards regarding the honesty of the content he hosts, on what basis does he criticize the corporate media? That, as another commentator here the other day, seems to have been the original motivation of his blogging, it was what he was writing about even before he started Eschaton, his famous "Hunting of the Snitch" series at Media Whores Online.
Back when he wrote full length posts for his blog about public policy and the such, the excuse that he didn't have time to monitor the content threads might have had at least an understandable reason. But he doesn't do anything like that these days and hasn't for a good long time. From reports going back years he's derived a not inconsiderable income from his blogging, if he's got a real job doesn't seem to be at issue, considering the posting schedule. How long does he get to benefit by being given some slack in the matter of the basic honesty of his content - for years now, most of that has been provided on his comment threads.
If blogging was supposed to develop into a more honest, more dependable form of media with more integrity than the corporate media, what does it say that one of its most prominent professionals not only rejects ethical standards but mocks the concept? From what I've observed over more than a decade is that blogging can be a real source of reliable information free from corrupt motives but not if there is no hard ethical standard followed. Though, usually, it's on small, obscure blogs that that is kept up. It's devolved into talk radio in pixels in too many cases, the hate-talk blogs seem to be the most successful ones. It's looking more like the deregulated radio market. Perhaps that Duncan Black is reported to be an opponent of the Fairness Doctrine and other requirements for pubic service by broadcasters reveals more than his generally libertarian tendencies in media matters. Perhaps more about media matters in a later post.
I have also made it a point to not know much about him, not even reading his Wiki bio (assuming he cares enough about that to insure its accuracy) before last Friday. It seemed like a violation of his privacy. On his blog, he revealed some things about himself and his educational and historical history but everything else was conjecture. Was he the trust-fund-baby that some of his critics alleged? I don't know. Was he one of those very rare bloggers who managed to make a living off of it during the brief period when that seemed to be a possibility? I don't know. It's obvious that he makes money from it, he's always had advertising, a donations system, fund raising periods and an Amazon Wish List. And, on occasion, he used to post thanks to people who bought stuff for him. It would seem to be a justified conclusion that, for him, Eschaton was a cash cow for most if not all of its history.
While the Supreme Court would seem to have protected bloggers from legal responsibility for things posted by their commentators, mere invulnerability to legal and civil risk doesn't seem to be an especially high standard, considering the pretensions of bloggers. What responsibility does a blogger have for allowing definitely untrue statements about named people to remain on their comment threads? Is the length of those and the tedium of monitoring them an excuse? How about a reluctance to ban people from their comments when they're documented as doing that? As I pointed out, Duncan Black has banned people from his blog, I know that I wasn't banned for lying about people. As far as chronology seems to indicate, I was banned for saying that Penn Jillette's stupidly disgusting movie The Aristocrats was stupid and disgusting and boring. For which I was declared to be boring by his commentators. Perhaps in his set an accusation of being boooorrrrringg! is the ultimate slander, being booorrrinng, the ultimate offense. Perhaps if I'd left it at calling Jillette and his movie stupid and disgusting it wouldn't have offended.
What legal obligations or liabilities come with even that minimal level of moderation of blog comments, I don't know. But I'm interested in something beyond mere legalities.
One of Duncan Black's standing jokes on Eschaton has been his periodic declarations that it was time to "Convene A Blogger Ethics Panel." Which, apparently, is a real hoot if you haven't been being lied about on his comment threads and had reports posted on it bragging that you were trolled on other blogs by his regulars.
But, just maybe, it's time for him to explain just what ethics he operates under, what ethical considerations he follows in what he hosts as content on his blog. He has removed comments, I am almost certain, and he has banned people so he does have some limits on content. Does he do that according to some unstated ethical consideration or on the basis of whimsy? If he doesn't have any ethical standards regarding the honesty of the content he hosts, on what basis does he criticize the corporate media? That, as another commentator here the other day, seems to have been the original motivation of his blogging, it was what he was writing about even before he started Eschaton, his famous "Hunting of the Snitch" series at Media Whores Online.
Back when he wrote full length posts for his blog about public policy and the such, the excuse that he didn't have time to monitor the content threads might have had at least an understandable reason. But he doesn't do anything like that these days and hasn't for a good long time. From reports going back years he's derived a not inconsiderable income from his blogging, if he's got a real job doesn't seem to be at issue, considering the posting schedule. How long does he get to benefit by being given some slack in the matter of the basic honesty of his content - for years now, most of that has been provided on his comment threads.
If blogging was supposed to develop into a more honest, more dependable form of media with more integrity than the corporate media, what does it say that one of its most prominent professionals not only rejects ethical standards but mocks the concept? From what I've observed over more than a decade is that blogging can be a real source of reliable information free from corrupt motives but not if there is no hard ethical standard followed. Though, usually, it's on small, obscure blogs that that is kept up. It's devolved into talk radio in pixels in too many cases, the hate-talk blogs seem to be the most successful ones. It's looking more like the deregulated radio market. Perhaps that Duncan Black is reported to be an opponent of the Fairness Doctrine and other requirements for pubic service by broadcasters reveals more than his generally libertarian tendencies in media matters. Perhaps more about media matters in a later post.
You Want An Important Cause That Could Really Save Democracy in the United States ?
De-Nazification of domestic police agencies could be a good place to start. From Digby:
Taking down and killing a 95-year-old WWII veteran USING A WALKER and, apparently, lying about him having a kitchen knife to cover it up.
Also from Digby, a storm trooper style SWAT assault on a humane society animal shelter to kill a contraband deer fawn.
The police in the United States have been militarized and are acting like para-military storm troopers. The style of policing practiced in countries where The People are seen as the enemy of the government and the oligarchs it exists to serve. FOX TV shows about cops have certainly not helped.
Taking down and killing a 95-year-old WWII veteran USING A WALKER and, apparently, lying about him having a kitchen knife to cover it up.
Also from Digby, a storm trooper style SWAT assault on a humane society animal shelter to kill a contraband deer fawn.
The police in the United States have been militarized and are acting like para-military storm troopers. The style of policing practiced in countries where The People are seen as the enemy of the government and the oligarchs it exists to serve. FOX TV shows about cops have certainly not helped.
Answer to an Unpublished Comment
My points in my post aren't Yeah NSA and Down with Glenn Greenwald, they are:
1. There is no such a thing as a guarantee of privacy online
Even if the United States government wasn't collecting any of the information that it has been exposed as collecting, THOSE ARE COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES AND OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES, MANY OF THOSE TO COUNTRIES WITHOUT ANY SUPPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION OF PRIVACY AT ALL. It is The World Wide Web, your messages are already going through countries in which governments practice a far more extensive level of direct spying on people who live in those countries. THOSE GOVERNMENTS COULD DIRECTLY COLLECT YOUR E-MAIL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS AND GLENN, THE GUARDIAN AND THE ENTIRE COMBINED PRO-SNOWDEN TWITTERSPHERE-BLOGOSPHERE-U.S. MEDIA AIN'T ABOUT TO STOP THEM OR EVEN SLOW THEM DOWN.
If you believe that the 4th and 5th and every other amendment in the United States Constitution, applied in a way that would make the shade of Louis Brandeis smile, is possible with online communication you are living in a fools paradise.
Ironically, the one venue of remote communication that is as fully protected as possible is THE U. S. MAIL as long as it stays within the United States. Good old, union member handled, in many cases union member delivered, snail mail has as full protection as you're going to get anywhere. Of course it's not anywhere near as fast and easy and convenient but it's not going to be ROUTINELY ROUTED THROUGH OTHER COUNTRIES LIKE THE ONES THAT EDWARD SNOWDEN SOUGHT SANCTUARY FROM THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IN WHICH NO ONE HAS ANY REAL LEGAL GUARANTEES OF PRIVACY TO SPEAK OF. And even the U.S. Mail isn't an absolute guarantee of privacy.
Geesh, all of these so, so, sophisticated tech-age people so naive about these things. You'd probably have a better chance of stumbling across security if you scribbled your information on the wall of a men's toilet in a sleazy bar.
2. Edward Snowden's fleeing to two very far from democratic countries with both a vital interest in the information that he took with him and the technical ability to take it from him, frankly, STINKS.
Especially considering the guy was working for A SPY AGENCY CONTRACTOR. Why two of the countries with the greatest interest and that technical and legal ability to get it from him as he slept? Pure stupidity and coincidence would be hard put to get him to those two particular places. And why, if he were really interested in not being detected, did he do everything he could to not only be detected but to be presented in the media as a hero to the people who have become sort of a Snowden cult.
If there's one thing that I'm relatively certain of, if he'd requested it and gradually leaked information to him from a far more out of the way venue in another country LIKE BRAZIL WHERE GREENWALD LIVES, SNOWDEN COULD HAVE DEPENDED ON GLENN GREENWALD TO PROTECT HIS PRIVACY IF HE HAD INSISTED ON IT. It is one of the most bizarre features of this that, by his own course of conduct and that of the journalist he leaked it to, Snowden freely and, it seems to me, eagerly gave up his own privacy for the purpose of becoming an international celebrity. If he valued it so much, you'd think he would have done more to keep it. All of which makes his decision to go to Hong Kong and then Moscow not only incomprehensible as a planned getaway but peculiarly like what I can understand as a sort of sales trip itinerary, given what he took with him on it.
I began entirely on the Snowden-Greenwald side of this, thinking of it as another Bradley Manning case but as their behavior and claims have developed, it's looked like something very different to me. Manning is a far more heroic figure. He was truly tortured by the deaths he was witnessing which he knew were being covered up. His big mistake was that he gave the information to a source that didn't do much to protect him. How Julian Assange handled it did a lot to lose him my respect.
These two incidents have really put me off the celebrity leaker phenomenon, about the only person who seems to deserve the most respect is the one whose ass is in the most serious sling. Manning has my complete sympathy and support, others involved, not so much. I'm not opposed to forcing the NSA to operate more openly and with more protection than the current FISA process. For a start I'd like better judges involved with FISA because I don't trust the reported identity of the current judges involved. But this argument, based in its breathtaking naivety and the dodgy conduct of Snowden and the less than stellar journalism of Greenwald, isn't going to do it.
I'd like to review Greenwald's archive to see what he might have said about the Judith Miller case. In her case I held that she was the witness to a crime, in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by members of the Bush II regime and that even journalists have no protection that allows them to conceal crimes. If Greenwald was in another country when he received the leaks, that makes it somewhat different in terms of legality but I don't really see the act as being all that different, though the motives could have been. I don't know what else Snowden might have on those hard drives he's got with him that even Greenwald might not know about and which could, conceivably be sold for a large price. Does Greenwald have that much faith in his source that he believes he has everything Snowden has?
AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED THOSE POINTS ABOUT INFORMATION COLLECTING AND SELLING BY PRIVATE CORPORATIONS A LOT OF THAT FREELY THOUGH UNKNOWINGLY SURRENDERED BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE IN A DAILY SWIVET OVER THESE ISSUES. You've almost certainly done that if you are reading this. If you didn't, I for one would like to know how you protected your privacy because I'd like to be able to do that.
I ALSO HAVEN'T GOTTEN INTO HOW MUCH IT STINKS THAT PRIVATE CONTRACTORS HIRING PEOPLE WITH SNOWDEN'S CV TO HANDLE THE MOST SENSITIVE LEVEL OF U.S. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION HAVE BECOME THE NORM BECAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN'S FETISH FOR PRIVATIZATION AND FEEDING OFF OF THAT ENORMOUS RESOURCE THEY CREATED ONCE THEY'VE LEFT "PUBLIC SERVICE". As far as I'm concerned, that should constitute treason if anything in this case should.
Update: I didn't say Snowden's travels and conduct made sense as a sales trip as planned by a genius. If there's one thing that is obvious, Edward Snowdon isn't the brightest pebble on the beach.
Update 2: If you want more about the myth of online privacy and what you could do to obtain real privacy, here's something you should listen to. Though real privacy isn't EZ convenient and as fast as photons in ultra-fast connections. And if you want your leak of information or just plain information to be as private as possible, here's an even better how-to do it.
1. There is no such a thing as a guarantee of privacy online
Even if the United States government wasn't collecting any of the information that it has been exposed as collecting, THOSE ARE COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES AND OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES, MANY OF THOSE TO COUNTRIES WITHOUT ANY SUPPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION OF PRIVACY AT ALL. It is The World Wide Web, your messages are already going through countries in which governments practice a far more extensive level of direct spying on people who live in those countries. THOSE GOVERNMENTS COULD DIRECTLY COLLECT YOUR E-MAIL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS AND GLENN, THE GUARDIAN AND THE ENTIRE COMBINED PRO-SNOWDEN TWITTERSPHERE-BLOGOSPHERE-U.S. MEDIA AIN'T ABOUT TO STOP THEM OR EVEN SLOW THEM DOWN.
If you believe that the 4th and 5th and every other amendment in the United States Constitution, applied in a way that would make the shade of Louis Brandeis smile, is possible with online communication you are living in a fools paradise.
Ironically, the one venue of remote communication that is as fully protected as possible is THE U. S. MAIL as long as it stays within the United States. Good old, union member handled, in many cases union member delivered, snail mail has as full protection as you're going to get anywhere. Of course it's not anywhere near as fast and easy and convenient but it's not going to be ROUTINELY ROUTED THROUGH OTHER COUNTRIES LIKE THE ONES THAT EDWARD SNOWDEN SOUGHT SANCTUARY FROM THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IN WHICH NO ONE HAS ANY REAL LEGAL GUARANTEES OF PRIVACY TO SPEAK OF. And even the U.S. Mail isn't an absolute guarantee of privacy.
Geesh, all of these so, so, sophisticated tech-age people so naive about these things. You'd probably have a better chance of stumbling across security if you scribbled your information on the wall of a men's toilet in a sleazy bar.
2. Edward Snowden's fleeing to two very far from democratic countries with both a vital interest in the information that he took with him and the technical ability to take it from him, frankly, STINKS.
Especially considering the guy was working for A SPY AGENCY CONTRACTOR. Why two of the countries with the greatest interest and that technical and legal ability to get it from him as he slept? Pure stupidity and coincidence would be hard put to get him to those two particular places. And why, if he were really interested in not being detected, did he do everything he could to not only be detected but to be presented in the media as a hero to the people who have become sort of a Snowden cult.
If there's one thing that I'm relatively certain of, if he'd requested it and gradually leaked information to him from a far more out of the way venue in another country LIKE BRAZIL WHERE GREENWALD LIVES, SNOWDEN COULD HAVE DEPENDED ON GLENN GREENWALD TO PROTECT HIS PRIVACY IF HE HAD INSISTED ON IT. It is one of the most bizarre features of this that, by his own course of conduct and that of the journalist he leaked it to, Snowden freely and, it seems to me, eagerly gave up his own privacy for the purpose of becoming an international celebrity. If he valued it so much, you'd think he would have done more to keep it. All of which makes his decision to go to Hong Kong and then Moscow not only incomprehensible as a planned getaway but peculiarly like what I can understand as a sort of sales trip itinerary, given what he took with him on it.
I began entirely on the Snowden-Greenwald side of this, thinking of it as another Bradley Manning case but as their behavior and claims have developed, it's looked like something very different to me. Manning is a far more heroic figure. He was truly tortured by the deaths he was witnessing which he knew were being covered up. His big mistake was that he gave the information to a source that didn't do much to protect him. How Julian Assange handled it did a lot to lose him my respect.
These two incidents have really put me off the celebrity leaker phenomenon, about the only person who seems to deserve the most respect is the one whose ass is in the most serious sling. Manning has my complete sympathy and support, others involved, not so much. I'm not opposed to forcing the NSA to operate more openly and with more protection than the current FISA process. For a start I'd like better judges involved with FISA because I don't trust the reported identity of the current judges involved. But this argument, based in its breathtaking naivety and the dodgy conduct of Snowden and the less than stellar journalism of Greenwald, isn't going to do it.
I'd like to review Greenwald's archive to see what he might have said about the Judith Miller case. In her case I held that she was the witness to a crime, in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by members of the Bush II regime and that even journalists have no protection that allows them to conceal crimes. If Greenwald was in another country when he received the leaks, that makes it somewhat different in terms of legality but I don't really see the act as being all that different, though the motives could have been. I don't know what else Snowden might have on those hard drives he's got with him that even Greenwald might not know about and which could, conceivably be sold for a large price. Does Greenwald have that much faith in his source that he believes he has everything Snowden has?
AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED THOSE POINTS ABOUT INFORMATION COLLECTING AND SELLING BY PRIVATE CORPORATIONS A LOT OF THAT FREELY THOUGH UNKNOWINGLY SURRENDERED BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE IN A DAILY SWIVET OVER THESE ISSUES. You've almost certainly done that if you are reading this. If you didn't, I for one would like to know how you protected your privacy because I'd like to be able to do that.
I ALSO HAVEN'T GOTTEN INTO HOW MUCH IT STINKS THAT PRIVATE CONTRACTORS HIRING PEOPLE WITH SNOWDEN'S CV TO HANDLE THE MOST SENSITIVE LEVEL OF U.S. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION HAVE BECOME THE NORM BECAUSE OF THE REPUBLICAN'S FETISH FOR PRIVATIZATION AND FEEDING OFF OF THAT ENORMOUS RESOURCE THEY CREATED ONCE THEY'VE LEFT "PUBLIC SERVICE". As far as I'm concerned, that should constitute treason if anything in this case should.
Update: I didn't say Snowden's travels and conduct made sense as a sales trip as planned by a genius. If there's one thing that is obvious, Edward Snowdon isn't the brightest pebble on the beach.
Update 2: If you want more about the myth of online privacy and what you could do to obtain real privacy, here's something you should listen to. Though real privacy isn't EZ convenient and as fast as photons in ultra-fast connections. And if you want your leak of information or just plain information to be as private as possible, here's an even better how-to do it.
Monday, August 5, 2013
This is something I'd like to play some day. One of the wildest development sections in a sonata of that period. Smetana was a far better composer than he's generally credited as having been, especially his piano music.
Smetana: Sonata for 2 Pianos in 8 Hands
Smetana: Sonata for 2 Pianos in 8 Hands
Some Questions About Snowden Greenwald and the Myth of Online Security
1. How does Glenn Greenwald get his columns from Brazil to The Guardian? Some super-secure internet channel that he imagines no government in the world could hack? What e-mail accounts does he use? Something as plebeian as G-Mail? Some other industrial source that requires signing away far more privacy than even he has implied the NSA has taken with the permission of the FISA oversight process (Note: NOT that I trust the FISA process, it should be totally overhauled). How many of his fans who are going into spasmodic knee jerk whenever Greenwald crooks his little finger have breezily and routinely signed away access to their communications far surpassing what even he has revealed the NSA to be doing? ON THE BASIS OF CONTRACTS THAT EVEN COURTS WOULD SAY LEAVE THEM WITH NO PROTECTION? I've got the impression that a lot of them are doing so on blogs, with browsers, linked to e-mail accounts that combine all of those into one identifiable person (linked to their real names and addresses) making that available to whoever pays them for the information. I mean, haven't you noticed that your e-mail topics are often reflected in the ads you see on the side panel? Does Greenwald really trust the Brazilian government and.... wait, I'll have more of that in the fullness of time.
2. How stupid can Edward Snowden be to take it on the lam to Hong Kong, you know, controlled by that well known champion of freedom justice and personal privacy, the Chinese government and to then go to that other well known locus of the same, Russia? I mean take it on the lam WITH A LAPTOP WITH ALL OF HIS PURLOINED NSA GOODIES. Oh, yes, protected by "encryption", of whatever allegedly unbreakable character which Snowden is staking his faith in.
Let me ask you, would you like your most personal and imitate e-mails of interest to those governments sitting on a laptop in the airport limbo Snowden was in desperately waiting for some way to get out of it? You want your personal information dependent on the wiles of the waking Snowden to keep Russian (or Chinese) intelligence agencies from sneaking a download from it? Never mind the less than superhuman sleeping Snowden? You think he's more than a match for Russian intelligence which has access to everything he drinks and eats? And, don't forget, the only thing that kept the Russians from handing him over to the U.S. government was whatever the Russians saw in it for themselves. You think they wouldn't have used the information he had on his laptop as a bargaining chip with the guy who seems to have never known much in the way of personal discomfort before this caper, using the prospect of handing him over to the feds for indictment? If the Russians (or the Chinese) governments didn't have a vital interest in that information do you really believe it was secure on Snowden's laptop under those scenarios dependent on his wits, integrity and willingness to suffer whatever means the various governments he's placed himself in the hands of to force him to give them the key?
3. Did you really believe that your online communications were secure from, not only the United States goverenments but whatever governments through which that information has passed and been stored? I mean IT'S CALLED "THE WORLD WIDE WEB" FOR A REASON!
The information you put online goes all over creation, stored in servers and collected all over the place, THE PLACE BEING THE WORLD, most of which has no 4th Amendment or Bill of Rights
and even if they did have the equivalent no one in the world is going to make them really comply with it. ONLINE PRIVACY IS A MYTH, IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN, IT ALWAYS WILL BE. IF YOU DON'T WANT SOMEONE TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING AND DOING DON'T PUT IT ONLINE IN ANY FORM "ENCRYPTED" OR OTHERWISE.
Do I think Greenwald should be prosecuted for publishing the leaks Snowden gave him? Of course not. Do I think Snowden should be prosecuted for treason? Of course not. Whatever else he may be found guilty of in a court of law, he's not guilty of treason. If he broke the law or violated anything he signed is for courts and judges to decide and I'm not a lawyer. Do I think he's some kind of hero? No, I think he's an irresponsible jerk. I think he's jealous of Bradley Manning, someone for whom I have far more sympathy who exposed some actually important information, revealing war crimes. I'd sign a free Bradley Manning petition interrupting my writing right now to do that. I would have to have a much better case made to me for Snowden than the one I've seen so far before I'd consider it.
Oh, and, just for the record, NO I'M NOT HAPPY THAT GOVERNMENTS VIOLATE PERSONAL PRIVACY BUT I'M NOT NAIVE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT THEY DON'T ALL DO IT ALL OF THE TIME AND SO DO CORPORATIONS SUCH AS THE ONES I SIGNED AWAY PRIVACY RIGHTS TO SO I CAN GET ONLINE AND POST THIS MESSAGE. I FIGURE KNOWING ABOUT THESE THINGS IS PART OF BEING A GROWN UP IN THE INTERNET ERA.
2. How stupid can Edward Snowden be to take it on the lam to Hong Kong, you know, controlled by that well known champion of freedom justice and personal privacy, the Chinese government and to then go to that other well known locus of the same, Russia? I mean take it on the lam WITH A LAPTOP WITH ALL OF HIS PURLOINED NSA GOODIES. Oh, yes, protected by "encryption", of whatever allegedly unbreakable character which Snowden is staking his faith in.
Let me ask you, would you like your most personal and imitate e-mails of interest to those governments sitting on a laptop in the airport limbo Snowden was in desperately waiting for some way to get out of it? You want your personal information dependent on the wiles of the waking Snowden to keep Russian (or Chinese) intelligence agencies from sneaking a download from it? Never mind the less than superhuman sleeping Snowden? You think he's more than a match for Russian intelligence which has access to everything he drinks and eats? And, don't forget, the only thing that kept the Russians from handing him over to the U.S. government was whatever the Russians saw in it for themselves. You think they wouldn't have used the information he had on his laptop as a bargaining chip with the guy who seems to have never known much in the way of personal discomfort before this caper, using the prospect of handing him over to the feds for indictment? If the Russians (or the Chinese) governments didn't have a vital interest in that information do you really believe it was secure on Snowden's laptop under those scenarios dependent on his wits, integrity and willingness to suffer whatever means the various governments he's placed himself in the hands of to force him to give them the key?
3. Did you really believe that your online communications were secure from, not only the United States goverenments but whatever governments through which that information has passed and been stored? I mean IT'S CALLED "THE WORLD WIDE WEB" FOR A REASON!
The information you put online goes all over creation, stored in servers and collected all over the place, THE PLACE BEING THE WORLD, most of which has no 4th Amendment or Bill of Rights
and even if they did have the equivalent no one in the world is going to make them really comply with it. ONLINE PRIVACY IS A MYTH, IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN, IT ALWAYS WILL BE. IF YOU DON'T WANT SOMEONE TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU'RE SAYING AND DOING DON'T PUT IT ONLINE IN ANY FORM "ENCRYPTED" OR OTHERWISE.
Do I think Greenwald should be prosecuted for publishing the leaks Snowden gave him? Of course not. Do I think Snowden should be prosecuted for treason? Of course not. Whatever else he may be found guilty of in a court of law, he's not guilty of treason. If he broke the law or violated anything he signed is for courts and judges to decide and I'm not a lawyer. Do I think he's some kind of hero? No, I think he's an irresponsible jerk. I think he's jealous of Bradley Manning, someone for whom I have far more sympathy who exposed some actually important information, revealing war crimes. I'd sign a free Bradley Manning petition interrupting my writing right now to do that. I would have to have a much better case made to me for Snowden than the one I've seen so far before I'd consider it.
Oh, and, just for the record, NO I'M NOT HAPPY THAT GOVERNMENTS VIOLATE PERSONAL PRIVACY BUT I'M NOT NAIVE ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THAT THEY DON'T ALL DO IT ALL OF THE TIME AND SO DO CORPORATIONS SUCH AS THE ONES I SIGNED AWAY PRIVACY RIGHTS TO SO I CAN GET ONLINE AND POST THIS MESSAGE. I FIGURE KNOWING ABOUT THESE THINGS IS PART OF BEING A GROWN UP IN THE INTERNET ERA.
Links
Note: Someone told me something I'd never realized before, the color I'd chosen for links doesn't show up very well on some browsers, they'd not realized I'd placed links to sources of what I'd said. So, I've changed to a brighter shade of red. Let me know if it helps.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Once In About Every Five Years Or So I Have a Yen To Hear Jimmy Dorsey Play So Rare
Am I the last person to have yens?
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Duncan's Ménage à Trolls
Updates below:
This is a blog post that I would never have written without repeated provocation.
Eschaton is a blog were I used to be a regular commentator, I thought it was a blog worth going to and participating in, with potential to help move American politics to the left. I don't think that anymore.
Over the years many of its most active commentators have left. Some of those who left regularly had more interesting things to say than what was said in the ever diminishing posts written by Duncan Black, Atrios, the owner of the blog. These days he hardly writes anything for the blog, which I'll document in a later post.
Some of those who left provided Eschaton with its most original and interesting material. Some, such as the well established Eschaton institution, "Holden Caulfield," ('Holden's ponies") started or increased their writing for their own blogs and either decreased their participation or left, entirely. "Athenae" is arguably another of those, though she posts comments once in a great while at Eschaton. Some, such as one of the most original and informed of former Eschatonians, "Phila," seem to have become discouraged and given up on blogging altogether.
Others left for other reasons. In one case, that of "Woody Guthrie's Guitar," it was reported that Atrios banned him in 2007 for being overly rude to the dead Jerry Falwell. It was also reported that another participant I'd always found interesting and informed, Tena, left as a result of his banning.
The next year, I took about six months off during the 2008 elections due to the flood of sexist comments made against Hillary Clinton and her supporters from those who supported Barack Obama for the nomination. Also, and to a far lesser extent, due to racial comments made about Obama, though as I recall those were almost always made under extreme provocation from the boys who unloaded mounds of sexist vitriol there. I didn't think there was anything good in those comments. Writing for another blog, Echidne of the Snakes, I thought it would be irresponsible to join in the potential of dividing the left and, so remained uncommitted to either, both in my writing and in reality. I didn't vote in the Democratic caucus that year, the only one uncommitted in my town's record breaking Democratic caucus of 2008.
Eschaton and alleged leftists elsewhere were aiding the Republican party during the period when it was possible to end the most corrupt, the most criminal and the most indifferently incompetent administration in the history of the country.
I made it a point to not take sides but said, repeatedly, that I'd support which ever of the candidates won the nomination. But that wasn't the POV expressed on Eschaton comment threads. They were an example of what was bound to be counterproductive. Those things being said on what was presented as a major new voice on the left, by Atrios, other leftish bloggers and in the self-congratulatory comments on Eschaton, had enormous potential to damage the efforts to keep Republicans from continuing on the crime wave of the Bush II regime. What reportedly got Woody banned didn't have that potential. It was merely rude and in arguably bad taste. That demonstration of irresponsibility in allegedly liberal-leftist blogging and commentary had a profound and decisive effect on my political thinking and action. But that isn't something I really understood , myself, until 2011.
-------
When I went back after the 2008 election I noticed a definite change as many of those who had been valued members of the commenting community had also left, especially those who were angered and disgusted with the tidal wave of sexism that the boys of Eschaton had unleashed on Clinton and her supporters. A few of those gradually trickling back, but it had changed.
Increasingly, a clique more interested in imposing ideological speech and thought codes than pushing political progress seemed to have taken over. Turning what had seemed, before the 2008 campaign, to have so much potential for positive change, into something that seemed all too familiar to me, the same kind of thing that had stalled out the progress of the early to middle-1960s. I should have realized that it wasn't what I'd assumed it was in the preceding years. But I held out hope for a lot longer than I should have that it could return to what it had seemed to be*.
Another thing that happened in 2008, another regular commentator who would also leave, NTodd, documented that some of the supposedly right-wing trolls who had annoyed and harassed the commentators over the previous years, were actually members of the Eschaton community using assumed identities to attack other regulars. He made quite a convincing case and there were a few angry deniers whose too-much protests seemed to me to rather confirm his point.
Trolls had been a regular and annoying presence at Eschaton, I was one of those who took the time to counterattack, writing derisive limericks and verses in the form of Burma Shave signs as well as refutations. I also came to believe, along with many of the other regulars, that some of the trolling was organized and, we speculated, funded for the purpose of disrupting what might have developed into an important political force for the left. On one occasion, by the merest of chances, Pheonix Woman outed one of the trolls and associated it with a name I just happened to know, between us and with the help of others tracing him to a frat house at The University of Southern Maine, more or less proving that some of the trolling was, in fact, organized.
If Atrios did anything about that, other than to strike a libertarian pose - one he had certainly not taken in the case of Woody - and protesting that he didn't have time to police the comment threads of HIS blog, I didn't see any evidence of it. I don't know exactly when NTodd stopped commenting at Eschaton but, eventually, I noticed his absence. Those who left seem to have left a hole in Eschaton that would be filled. Those who NTodd exposed weren't among those who left.
-------
One of the regulars who stayed past the 2008 election went by the name "Rootless". Over the next few years, as the inevitable happened and Obama fell short of hopes and expectations, the former supporters of Barack Obama, those who had slammed Hillary Clinton in the most sexist terms, turned on him, sometimes making racially tinged comments against him. I was also very disappointed, though I'd known all along I would be. Considering the investment we had in him and the enormous effort it had taken to defeat the Republicans, I was willing to give Obama 2009 to see if he would turn out to be a better Democrat and more politically skilled and imaginative than he turned out to be. I never turned on him the way many at Eschaton did, though I lost any expectation that he'd return the country to the road Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson took in domestic policy.
Rootless, however, remained something of a true believer, increasingly at odds with the commenting community, increasingly harassed and increasingly targeted for trolling on other blogs by other regulars. At least one of those who had been exposed as a sock puppeteer, Steve Simels, made reports of his trolling of Rootless a regular feature at Eschaton, to the delight of some and the tut-tutting of others, Though the disapproval of his doing to others what we'd all protested when it was done at Eschaton, didn't go far. In looking at the Eschaton blog threads to research this post, I saw he was doing it within the past few days to the approval of ql, someone who had agreed with NTodd's condemnation of it in 2008. Indeed, things are different at Eschaton.
I'd have happily gone on ignoring my former regular blog, Eschaton, except for the trolling of my blog and my comments by people who still go there, such as Steve Simels, and who regularly report distorted versions of things I wrote to the remaining Eschatonians, obviously eliciting their derision of things they haven't read and apparently don't intend to read. I'm far from the only former Eschaton community member who is being trolled and harassed in that way on their own blogs and in comment threads of other blogs.
Last week it was called to my attention that one of the formerly most popular members of the community in my time, GWPDA, was being harassed at TBogg, by cahuenga, another Eschaton regular who, as GWPDA showed in her later comments, had declared his intention at Eschaton of harassing both TBogg (I seem to remember him as a former regular at Eschaton) and GWPDA at TBogg's blog.
Postlude
As I said, I'm one of those who left a couple of times before I left the last time, for good. After I wrote a couple of blog posts critical of the commenting community and, by implication, Atrios, he apparently banned me from commenting. It took me a while to find out because I'd decided to stop commenting there and had so stated, at Eschaton, earlier that day.
When it was pointed out to me that some of his regulars, especially Steve Simels, were lying about what I had said in recent posts on my blog at Eschaton, a blog that still has some influence and many hits, I was unable to refute what was said due to being blocked. I could do what the real trolls did and use various subterfuges to get by the blocking but I'm not interested in that.
Now it's personal, Duncan Black. Your blog is a safe harbor for trolls at least one of whom is indisputably trolling me and has been for years, now, crowing about it at your blog. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for you to ban the people who are using your blog for what you used to decry when it was done to your blog and your commenting community. But, then, you didn't do anything about it when they were exposed five years ago, either.
* The pubic face of the occupy movement seems to have had a similar history, anyone who had nothing to say insisted on time-wasting theatrics and ideological snarking turning it into an assertion of their personality and anyone who had anything of value went in other directions. It's happened often enough to the left that studying that has also had a major effect on my own thinking in the past two years. Liberals need to stop wasting their time and too few resources on what turn out to be platforms for jerks, grandstanders and pseudo-liberal-leftist ideologues who will only drag us down with them.
Update: I'm busy with a family situation that suddenly came up, until Wednesday, so I'm going to leave this at the top of the page for a while. I will have more to say about Eschaton, its owner and commenting community soon. UPDATE TO THIS UPDATE: My sister got Monday off to help so I'll be posting today, after all.
Update 2. Answers to e-mails. 1. It would be rather difficult for me to say at Eschaton what I've said here as I was apparently blocked from commenting. 2. If you are going to express bafflement as to why I've said what I have, maybe you should try reading what I said instead of what the people I've criticized have said about it. But, then, you probably don't even know I've written this answer because you didn't read the post before flaming me. Typical Eschatonian behavior these days, apparently.
This is a blog post that I would never have written without repeated provocation.
Eschaton is a blog were I used to be a regular commentator, I thought it was a blog worth going to and participating in, with potential to help move American politics to the left. I don't think that anymore.
Over the years many of its most active commentators have left. Some of those who left regularly had more interesting things to say than what was said in the ever diminishing posts written by Duncan Black, Atrios, the owner of the blog. These days he hardly writes anything for the blog, which I'll document in a later post.
Some of those who left provided Eschaton with its most original and interesting material. Some, such as the well established Eschaton institution, "Holden Caulfield," ('Holden's ponies") started or increased their writing for their own blogs and either decreased their participation or left, entirely. "Athenae" is arguably another of those, though she posts comments once in a great while at Eschaton. Some, such as one of the most original and informed of former Eschatonians, "Phila," seem to have become discouraged and given up on blogging altogether.
Others left for other reasons. In one case, that of "Woody Guthrie's Guitar," it was reported that Atrios banned him in 2007 for being overly rude to the dead Jerry Falwell. It was also reported that another participant I'd always found interesting and informed, Tena, left as a result of his banning.
The next year, I took about six months off during the 2008 elections due to the flood of sexist comments made against Hillary Clinton and her supporters from those who supported Barack Obama for the nomination. Also, and to a far lesser extent, due to racial comments made about Obama, though as I recall those were almost always made under extreme provocation from the boys who unloaded mounds of sexist vitriol there. I didn't think there was anything good in those comments. Writing for another blog, Echidne of the Snakes, I thought it would be irresponsible to join in the potential of dividing the left and, so remained uncommitted to either, both in my writing and in reality. I didn't vote in the Democratic caucus that year, the only one uncommitted in my town's record breaking Democratic caucus of 2008.
Eschaton and alleged leftists elsewhere were aiding the Republican party during the period when it was possible to end the most corrupt, the most criminal and the most indifferently incompetent administration in the history of the country.
I made it a point to not take sides but said, repeatedly, that I'd support which ever of the candidates won the nomination. But that wasn't the POV expressed on Eschaton comment threads. They were an example of what was bound to be counterproductive. Those things being said on what was presented as a major new voice on the left, by Atrios, other leftish bloggers and in the self-congratulatory comments on Eschaton, had enormous potential to damage the efforts to keep Republicans from continuing on the crime wave of the Bush II regime. What reportedly got Woody banned didn't have that potential. It was merely rude and in arguably bad taste. That demonstration of irresponsibility in allegedly liberal-leftist blogging and commentary had a profound and decisive effect on my political thinking and action. But that isn't something I really understood , myself, until 2011.
-------
When I went back after the 2008 election I noticed a definite change as many of those who had been valued members of the commenting community had also left, especially those who were angered and disgusted with the tidal wave of sexism that the boys of Eschaton had unleashed on Clinton and her supporters. A few of those gradually trickling back, but it had changed.
Increasingly, a clique more interested in imposing ideological speech and thought codes than pushing political progress seemed to have taken over. Turning what had seemed, before the 2008 campaign, to have so much potential for positive change, into something that seemed all too familiar to me, the same kind of thing that had stalled out the progress of the early to middle-1960s. I should have realized that it wasn't what I'd assumed it was in the preceding years. But I held out hope for a lot longer than I should have that it could return to what it had seemed to be*.
Another thing that happened in 2008, another regular commentator who would also leave, NTodd, documented that some of the supposedly right-wing trolls who had annoyed and harassed the commentators over the previous years, were actually members of the Eschaton community using assumed identities to attack other regulars. He made quite a convincing case and there were a few angry deniers whose too-much protests seemed to me to rather confirm his point.
Trolls had been a regular and annoying presence at Eschaton, I was one of those who took the time to counterattack, writing derisive limericks and verses in the form of Burma Shave signs as well as refutations. I also came to believe, along with many of the other regulars, that some of the trolling was organized and, we speculated, funded for the purpose of disrupting what might have developed into an important political force for the left. On one occasion, by the merest of chances, Pheonix Woman outed one of the trolls and associated it with a name I just happened to know, between us and with the help of others tracing him to a frat house at The University of Southern Maine, more or less proving that some of the trolling was, in fact, organized.
If Atrios did anything about that, other than to strike a libertarian pose - one he had certainly not taken in the case of Woody - and protesting that he didn't have time to police the comment threads of HIS blog, I didn't see any evidence of it. I don't know exactly when NTodd stopped commenting at Eschaton but, eventually, I noticed his absence. Those who left seem to have left a hole in Eschaton that would be filled. Those who NTodd exposed weren't among those who left.
-------
One of the regulars who stayed past the 2008 election went by the name "Rootless". Over the next few years, as the inevitable happened and Obama fell short of hopes and expectations, the former supporters of Barack Obama, those who had slammed Hillary Clinton in the most sexist terms, turned on him, sometimes making racially tinged comments against him. I was also very disappointed, though I'd known all along I would be. Considering the investment we had in him and the enormous effort it had taken to defeat the Republicans, I was willing to give Obama 2009 to see if he would turn out to be a better Democrat and more politically skilled and imaginative than he turned out to be. I never turned on him the way many at Eschaton did, though I lost any expectation that he'd return the country to the road Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson took in domestic policy.
Rootless, however, remained something of a true believer, increasingly at odds with the commenting community, increasingly harassed and increasingly targeted for trolling on other blogs by other regulars. At least one of those who had been exposed as a sock puppeteer, Steve Simels, made reports of his trolling of Rootless a regular feature at Eschaton, to the delight of some and the tut-tutting of others, Though the disapproval of his doing to others what we'd all protested when it was done at Eschaton, didn't go far. In looking at the Eschaton blog threads to research this post, I saw he was doing it within the past few days to the approval of ql, someone who had agreed with NTodd's condemnation of it in 2008. Indeed, things are different at Eschaton.
I'd have happily gone on ignoring my former regular blog, Eschaton, except for the trolling of my blog and my comments by people who still go there, such as Steve Simels, and who regularly report distorted versions of things I wrote to the remaining Eschatonians, obviously eliciting their derision of things they haven't read and apparently don't intend to read. I'm far from the only former Eschaton community member who is being trolled and harassed in that way on their own blogs and in comment threads of other blogs.
Last week it was called to my attention that one of the formerly most popular members of the community in my time, GWPDA, was being harassed at TBogg, by cahuenga, another Eschaton regular who, as GWPDA showed in her later comments, had declared his intention at Eschaton of harassing both TBogg (I seem to remember him as a former regular at Eschaton) and GWPDA at TBogg's blog.
Postlude
As I said, I'm one of those who left a couple of times before I left the last time, for good. After I wrote a couple of blog posts critical of the commenting community and, by implication, Atrios, he apparently banned me from commenting. It took me a while to find out because I'd decided to stop commenting there and had so stated, at Eschaton, earlier that day.
When it was pointed out to me that some of his regulars, especially Steve Simels, were lying about what I had said in recent posts on my blog at Eschaton, a blog that still has some influence and many hits, I was unable to refute what was said due to being blocked. I could do what the real trolls did and use various subterfuges to get by the blocking but I'm not interested in that.
Now it's personal, Duncan Black. Your blog is a safe harbor for trolls at least one of whom is indisputably trolling me and has been for years, now, crowing about it at your blog. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for you to ban the people who are using your blog for what you used to decry when it was done to your blog and your commenting community. But, then, you didn't do anything about it when they were exposed five years ago, either.
* The pubic face of the occupy movement seems to have had a similar history, anyone who had nothing to say insisted on time-wasting theatrics and ideological snarking turning it into an assertion of their personality and anyone who had anything of value went in other directions. It's happened often enough to the left that studying that has also had a major effect on my own thinking in the past two years. Liberals need to stop wasting their time and too few resources on what turn out to be platforms for jerks, grandstanders and pseudo-liberal-leftist ideologues who will only drag us down with them.
Update: I'm busy with a family situation that suddenly came up, until Wednesday, so I'm going to leave this at the top of the page for a while. I will have more to say about Eschaton, its owner and commenting community soon. UPDATE TO THIS UPDATE: My sister got Monday off to help so I'll be posting today, after all.
Update 2. Answers to e-mails. 1. It would be rather difficult for me to say at Eschaton what I've said here as I was apparently blocked from commenting. 2. If you are going to express bafflement as to why I've said what I have, maybe you should try reading what I said instead of what the people I've criticized have said about it. But, then, you probably don't even know I've written this answer because you didn't read the post before flaming me. Typical Eschatonian behavior these days, apparently.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Linked Index of Anti-Pornography Posts
A reader has asked me to put up a linked index to the critique of pornography. It includes other posts I've written on the topic here and at Echidne of the Snakes where I used to write. My approach to the issue is one that takes the values of liberalism seriously enough to use those to make some pretty difficult distinctions that couldn't be less fashionable but, as the Ariel Castro case shows, are avoided at the costs of the victims of pornography.
The Never To Be Met Demand for "PROOF" That Porn is Harmful or How the Pro-Porn Pseudo-liberals are like the Zimmerman Jury
..."Addicted to Pornography" Ariel Castro and Where He Learned To Do What He Did
The widespread, though highly selective, use of psychological explanation as an excuse for crime doesn't do a thing to make the crime disappear from history. When it is a crime like Ariel Castro's, nothing can make the fact of what he did go away nor does understanding its motivations do anything to absolve him from his selfish, sadistic choices. Even understanding everything about that doesn't change the fact that he was the one choosing to abduct women, keep them in a sadistic sexual bondage, torturing and terrorizing them, objectifying them, depriving them of their rights and in doing the same to the child produced by his rape of one of them. The whole catalog of his crimes against those women, the child, the families of the women and the community that were also harmed and terrorized lies at the feet of Ariel Castro. Each and every second of the eleven years of those crimes was an opportunity for him to stop being a selfish, entitled male and for each and every second of those years he failed to stop being evil.
Yesterday, as he was being sentenced and knew he would be spending the rest of his life in prison, as he knew that his name and his person would always be defined by his crimes, he demonstrated one of the more repulsive aspects of the field of psychology, its use to deny moral responsibility for someone who is obviously mentally equipped to practice moral choices. There is nothing in any of Castro's history outside of his crime to demonstrate that he wasn't so equipped. But after a century and a quarter of Freudian and other schools of psychology giving people such as him the vocabulary of denial of personal responsibility, of the out of claiming an uncontrollable compulsion, a selfish man such as he will use that language to game things for his benefit, or at least to avoid having to face his own guilt, himself. Perhaps a good cut off point in those who are truly unable to stop themselves and those who could is having the ability to make the argument that "I am sick" to a judge who is about to sentence them. It's the moral dilemma presented to the court of criminals who tried the child murderer in Fritz Lange's movie "M". But more on that in a minute.
Of course, Castro having claimed to not be responsible due to his addiction to porn and with what I've been writing about for the previous week, I need to address it.
When Castro used pornography as an excuse for what he did, he could have been using the truth to a dishonest end. I didn't follow the case to know if the police found that he had pornography in his house or on his computer but that would certainly be worth knowing and could be. As in the case of Clarence Thomas, it was possible to link what he had said as sexual harassment to specific pornographic material, it is quite possible that there is a direct link to be made in this case. And the opposite is true, crimes are often the source of inspiration of pornography. One of the disgusting genres of porn is inspired by the pedophile priest scandals. I wouldn't be surprised if some totally degenerate group of porn producers isn't using the description of Castro's crimes as inspiration of pornography even as this is being written. As I noted the other day, exactly what Ariel Castro did he could easily have found in an enormous percentage of pornography. The abduction, imprisonment, binding, rape, torture, degradation, terrorizing of women is mainstream in the pornography that the free-speech industry, the media, the judiciary up to the Supreme Court and, of course, alleged liberals hold has no danger to society. Ariel Castro could have done everything he did on the suggestion of pornography, if he says that's where he learned to do what he did, that is certainly not implausible. His saying that is what inspired him, the gravity of his crimes and the known content of pornography makes it impossible to ignore those issues. That what he very well may have used as inspiration has the full approval of the Supreme Court and a sizable percentage of those who substitute supposed "First Amendment" advocacy for a religious code of conduct. For many, especially those who have rejected other sources of morality, that advocacy is often the extent of their moral imagination.
To champion the free distribution of pornography of even the most depraved content - something which the internet makes an every day reality for even the youngest of children - is to champion the pornography that teaches Castro's behavior, making its lessons as attractive as sexual gratification especially through the aggrandizement of male supremacy. Which is what the subjugation of women is motivated by, at its foundation. It is to advocate beliefs and attitudes that are indivisibly bound to the the most extreme subjugation of women by men under fundamentalist religion that those same champions may feel very gratified in condemning in other cultures removed from their own with other alleged motivations. But, as in the use of psychological excuses, those motives do not change the nature of that subjugation, it doesn't diminish the crime, it does nothing to change the fact that women's rights are harmed and destroyed, the rights to entire and complete equality is attacked for some alleged higher purpose. "Honor" in one case, "freedom" in the other. But it is the "honor" and the "freedom" of men, in the end. It is domination, dehumanizing and, in fact, destruction of those who are dominated. And, as can be seen in so much of gay porn, that can be turned on men in the context of physical strength or other factors.
In the movie, "M" once his crimes are laid out to him, undeniably, Peter Lorre's character makes a similar plea, that he is compelled to murder little girls. The mobster judge says that he has just given the reason that he has to be killed, that he will be a danger to children as long as he lives. Lorre's advocate points out that the very mobsters who have put him on trial have also murdered people and that they didn't do it out of psychological compulsion. The very same people who are, rightly, disgusted with what Ariel Castro did who are sickened by the details of his crimes, the very same judicial system that has, rightly, condemned him to life in prison, are also those who, when it is a matter of pornography that even he admits inspired him, give his inspiration their blessing. That, dear readers, is a problem. I will almost guarantee you that even as we are disgusted by what he did there are those who are so self-centered, so gratified by those things he did, that without something to restrain them, they will use his case as a learning opportunity on how to do it more effectively without being caught. If you don't think that taking whatever means can be taken to express the deepest level of disapproval is worth the slight risk to other discourse, you've said that the past eleven years of torture and violence inflicted on those women, on women unknown to us, children and men held under similar conditions, is a price worth paying for what is certainly not a necessity of life. That is the bottom line of this issue. Who pays a price for pornography with their life? How many women, children, men, are successfully given life imprisonment by those Ariel Castros who don't get caught, who get to play out the perverted porn scenarios to the conclusion favored by their creators and consumers?
Yesterday, as he was being sentenced and knew he would be spending the rest of his life in prison, as he knew that his name and his person would always be defined by his crimes, he demonstrated one of the more repulsive aspects of the field of psychology, its use to deny moral responsibility for someone who is obviously mentally equipped to practice moral choices. There is nothing in any of Castro's history outside of his crime to demonstrate that he wasn't so equipped. But after a century and a quarter of Freudian and other schools of psychology giving people such as him the vocabulary of denial of personal responsibility, of the out of claiming an uncontrollable compulsion, a selfish man such as he will use that language to game things for his benefit, or at least to avoid having to face his own guilt, himself. Perhaps a good cut off point in those who are truly unable to stop themselves and those who could is having the ability to make the argument that "I am sick" to a judge who is about to sentence them. It's the moral dilemma presented to the court of criminals who tried the child murderer in Fritz Lange's movie "M". But more on that in a minute.
Of course, Castro having claimed to not be responsible due to his addiction to porn and with what I've been writing about for the previous week, I need to address it.
When Castro used pornography as an excuse for what he did, he could have been using the truth to a dishonest end. I didn't follow the case to know if the police found that he had pornography in his house or on his computer but that would certainly be worth knowing and could be. As in the case of Clarence Thomas, it was possible to link what he had said as sexual harassment to specific pornographic material, it is quite possible that there is a direct link to be made in this case. And the opposite is true, crimes are often the source of inspiration of pornography. One of the disgusting genres of porn is inspired by the pedophile priest scandals. I wouldn't be surprised if some totally degenerate group of porn producers isn't using the description of Castro's crimes as inspiration of pornography even as this is being written. As I noted the other day, exactly what Ariel Castro did he could easily have found in an enormous percentage of pornography. The abduction, imprisonment, binding, rape, torture, degradation, terrorizing of women is mainstream in the pornography that the free-speech industry, the media, the judiciary up to the Supreme Court and, of course, alleged liberals hold has no danger to society. Ariel Castro could have done everything he did on the suggestion of pornography, if he says that's where he learned to do what he did, that is certainly not implausible. His saying that is what inspired him, the gravity of his crimes and the known content of pornography makes it impossible to ignore those issues. That what he very well may have used as inspiration has the full approval of the Supreme Court and a sizable percentage of those who substitute supposed "First Amendment" advocacy for a religious code of conduct. For many, especially those who have rejected other sources of morality, that advocacy is often the extent of their moral imagination.
To champion the free distribution of pornography of even the most depraved content - something which the internet makes an every day reality for even the youngest of children - is to champion the pornography that teaches Castro's behavior, making its lessons as attractive as sexual gratification especially through the aggrandizement of male supremacy. Which is what the subjugation of women is motivated by, at its foundation. It is to advocate beliefs and attitudes that are indivisibly bound to the the most extreme subjugation of women by men under fundamentalist religion that those same champions may feel very gratified in condemning in other cultures removed from their own with other alleged motivations. But, as in the use of psychological excuses, those motives do not change the nature of that subjugation, it doesn't diminish the crime, it does nothing to change the fact that women's rights are harmed and destroyed, the rights to entire and complete equality is attacked for some alleged higher purpose. "Honor" in one case, "freedom" in the other. But it is the "honor" and the "freedom" of men, in the end. It is domination, dehumanizing and, in fact, destruction of those who are dominated. And, as can be seen in so much of gay porn, that can be turned on men in the context of physical strength or other factors.
In the movie, "M" once his crimes are laid out to him, undeniably, Peter Lorre's character makes a similar plea, that he is compelled to murder little girls. The mobster judge says that he has just given the reason that he has to be killed, that he will be a danger to children as long as he lives. Lorre's advocate points out that the very mobsters who have put him on trial have also murdered people and that they didn't do it out of psychological compulsion. The very same people who are, rightly, disgusted with what Ariel Castro did who are sickened by the details of his crimes, the very same judicial system that has, rightly, condemned him to life in prison, are also those who, when it is a matter of pornography that even he admits inspired him, give his inspiration their blessing. That, dear readers, is a problem. I will almost guarantee you that even as we are disgusted by what he did there are those who are so self-centered, so gratified by those things he did, that without something to restrain them, they will use his case as a learning opportunity on how to do it more effectively without being caught. If you don't think that taking whatever means can be taken to express the deepest level of disapproval is worth the slight risk to other discourse, you've said that the past eleven years of torture and violence inflicted on those women, on women unknown to us, children and men held under similar conditions, is a price worth paying for what is certainly not a necessity of life. That is the bottom line of this issue. Who pays a price for pornography with their life? How many women, children, men, are successfully given life imprisonment by those Ariel Castros who don't get caught, who get to play out the perverted porn scenarios to the conclusion favored by their creators and consumers?
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Katherine Anne Porter Interview With James Day
I've loved Katherine Anne Porter's stories and her massive novel, Ship of Fools, for decades. Finding this interview with her, listening to it, I was surprised at the sound of her voice, never having heard it before. Nothing like it sounded during my reading of her. . She was quite old during the interview. At first I was a bit disappointed but with her telling the story of what years later would be called, I suppose, her near death experience I realized how she sounded like a character in one of her stories, which, as she kind of points out, is only natural. It's a wonderful music, her speaking, her entirely natural, not affected charm is wonderful and her constant revelation of her thought and art even during the interview shows that her stories are just a fixed form of her constant telling of experience and thought and observed truth.
Here it is, also a memory of a time when public broadcasting in the United States had such programs on, a lost world, it would seem.
I'll be going back to re-read all of Pale Horse Pale Rider, which I don't think I've read again since near death experiences came to be talked about, thirty or so years back. Maybe there will be more to say about that
Here it is, also a memory of a time when public broadcasting in the United States had such programs on, a lost world, it would seem.
I'll be going back to re-read all of Pale Horse Pale Rider, which I don't think I've read again since near death experiences came to be talked about, thirty or so years back. Maybe there will be more to say about that
"We Had To Be Smarty" Dorothy Parker
One of the most effective means of suppression of real liberalism as opposed to pseudo-liberalism is the peer coercion that enforces a code of expression, of preventing anyone from violating the kind of middle-brow idea of something called "modernism". Or, more often, the something being violated isn't actually there but is some vaguely sensed notion of What's Unacceptable To Those Cooler Than You. Often that takes the form of associating the person who violates being up-to-date with dreadful people or some region of the country. I suspect some of that comes from those nervous provincials who, intellectually able but very unsure of themselves, try to fit in to some self-defined sophisticated scene in New York or some other Big City. The price for violation of their code is deadly, to be shunned as a hick.
Hilariously, for me in the past weeks pornography discussion, that has taken the form that I was, "Like a gay Clarence Thomas." Oh, yes. The entire world must have seen the similarity between my arguments against pornography as inevitably objectifying women, men, children, violating their rights, their dignity, their safety and lives and one of the most infamous porn consumers and sexual harassers in recent American history - "a pubic hair in my Coke can" "The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama" - and who, for the record, is a reliable vote in favor of porn on the Supreme Court. There were other equally absurd comparisons. I only pointed that one out because it was so hilariously clueless.
Those attempts to give someone who violates the pseudo-liberal code of thought cooties give rise to all kinds of hilarious and silly statements made with the brainless self-assurance of someone who knows they're upholding a conventional point of view but who doesn't know much more than that. The way to free yourself from them and their index of prohibited thought is to go right ahead not caring about them. They're not the world, they're certainly not worth losing your soul over. We're online now, it's a big internet.
---------
But I'm going to start somewhere else with an excerpt from an interview that Dorothy Parker gave late in her life, when she was sadder but wiser but still paying a huge price for her former days.
INTERVIEWER
It’s a popular supposition that there was much more communication between writers in the twenties. The Round Table discussions in the Algonquin, for example.
PARKER
I wasn't there very often—it cost too much. Others went. Kaufman was there. I guess he was sort of funny. Mr. Benchley and Mr. Sherwood went when they had a nickel. Franklin P. Adams, whose column was widely read by people who wanted to write, would sit in occasionally. And Harold Ross, the New Yorker editor. He was a professional lunatic, but I don’t know if he was a great man. He had a profound ignorance. On one of Mr. Benchley’s manuscripts he wrote in the margin opposite “Andromache,” “Who he?” Mr. Benchley wrote back, “You keep out of this.” The only one with stature who came to the Round Table was Heywood Broun.
INTERVIEWER
What was it about the twenties that inspired people like yourself and Broun?
PARKER
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, “You’re all a lost generation.” That got around to certain people and we all said, Whee! We’re lost. Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren't. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.
INTERVIEWER
Did the “lost generation” attitude you speak of have a detrimental effect on your own work?
PARKER
Silly of me to blame it on dates, but so it happened to be. Dammit, it was the twenties and we had to be smarty. I wanted to be cute. That’s the terrible thing. I should have had more sense....
... INTERVIEWER
You have an extensive reputation as a wit. Has this interfered, do you think, with your acceptance as a serious writer?
PARKER
I don’t want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A “smartcracker” they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. I didn't mind so much when they were good, but for a long time anything that was called a crack was attributed to me—and then they got the shaggy dogs.
INTERVIEWER
How about satire?
PARKER
Ah, satire. That’s another matter. They’re the big boys. If I’d been called a satirist there’d be no living with me. But by satirist I mean those boys in the other centuries. The people we call satirists now are those who make cracks at topical topics and consider themselves satirists—creatures like George S. Kaufman and such who don’t even know what satire is. Lord knows, a writer should show his times, but not show them in wisecracks. Their stuff is not satire; it’s as dull as yesterday’s newspaper. Successful satire has got to be pretty good the day after tomorrow.
INTERVIEWER
And how about contemporary humorists? Do you feel about them as you do about satirists?
PARKER
You get to a certain age and only the tired writers are funny. I read my verses now and I ain't funny. I haven’t been funny for twenty years. But anyway there aren't any humorists anymore, except for Perelman. There’s no need for them. Perelman must be very lonely.
INTERVIEWER
Why is there no need for the humorist?
PARKER
It’s a question of supply and demand. If we needed them, we’d have them. The new crop of would-be humorists doesn't count. They’re like the would-be satirists. They write about topical topics. Not like Thurber and Mr. Benchley. Those two were damn well-read and, though I hate the word, they were cultured. What sets them apart is that they both had a point of view to express. That is important to all good writing. It’s the difference between Paddy Chayefsky, who just puts down lines, and Clifford Odets, who in his early plays not only sees but has a point of view. The writer must be aware of life around him. Carson McCullers is good, or she used to be, but now she’s withdrawn from life and writes about freaks. Her characters are grotesques.
Dorothy Parker, The Art of Fiction No. 13
Interviewed by Marion Capron
---------
If Dorothy Parker had talked like that on online comment threads she'd have been told she sounded just like some right wing Republican hack and told to "lighten up" or something. She left her entire estate to The Reverend Martin Luther King, jr. I remember some people were stunned that she had a serious idea in her head, never mind a moral and spiritual center. She paid an enormous price for being part of that famous Round Table.
Update: I just noticed that I neglected to indicate the ellipsis, where I left out material from the interview that didn't address my point. I hope the link provided to the complete interview prevented possible misunderstanding.
Hilariously, for me in the past weeks pornography discussion, that has taken the form that I was, "Like a gay Clarence Thomas." Oh, yes. The entire world must have seen the similarity between my arguments against pornography as inevitably objectifying women, men, children, violating their rights, their dignity, their safety and lives and one of the most infamous porn consumers and sexual harassers in recent American history - "a pubic hair in my Coke can" "The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama" - and who, for the record, is a reliable vote in favor of porn on the Supreme Court. There were other equally absurd comparisons. I only pointed that one out because it was so hilariously clueless.
Those attempts to give someone who violates the pseudo-liberal code of thought cooties give rise to all kinds of hilarious and silly statements made with the brainless self-assurance of someone who knows they're upholding a conventional point of view but who doesn't know much more than that. The way to free yourself from them and their index of prohibited thought is to go right ahead not caring about them. They're not the world, they're certainly not worth losing your soul over. We're online now, it's a big internet.
---------
But I'm going to start somewhere else with an excerpt from an interview that Dorothy Parker gave late in her life, when she was sadder but wiser but still paying a huge price for her former days.
INTERVIEWER
It’s a popular supposition that there was much more communication between writers in the twenties. The Round Table discussions in the Algonquin, for example.
PARKER
I wasn't there very often—it cost too much. Others went. Kaufman was there. I guess he was sort of funny. Mr. Benchley and Mr. Sherwood went when they had a nickel. Franklin P. Adams, whose column was widely read by people who wanted to write, would sit in occasionally. And Harold Ross, the New Yorker editor. He was a professional lunatic, but I don’t know if he was a great man. He had a profound ignorance. On one of Mr. Benchley’s manuscripts he wrote in the margin opposite “Andromache,” “Who he?” Mr. Benchley wrote back, “You keep out of this.” The only one with stature who came to the Round Table was Heywood Broun.
INTERVIEWER
What was it about the twenties that inspired people like yourself and Broun?
PARKER
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, “You’re all a lost generation.” That got around to certain people and we all said, Whee! We’re lost. Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren't. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.
INTERVIEWER
Did the “lost generation” attitude you speak of have a detrimental effect on your own work?
PARKER
Silly of me to blame it on dates, but so it happened to be. Dammit, it was the twenties and we had to be smarty. I wanted to be cute. That’s the terrible thing. I should have had more sense....
... INTERVIEWER
You have an extensive reputation as a wit. Has this interfered, do you think, with your acceptance as a serious writer?
PARKER
I don’t want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A “smartcracker” they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. I didn't mind so much when they were good, but for a long time anything that was called a crack was attributed to me—and then they got the shaggy dogs.
INTERVIEWER
How about satire?
PARKER
Ah, satire. That’s another matter. They’re the big boys. If I’d been called a satirist there’d be no living with me. But by satirist I mean those boys in the other centuries. The people we call satirists now are those who make cracks at topical topics and consider themselves satirists—creatures like George S. Kaufman and such who don’t even know what satire is. Lord knows, a writer should show his times, but not show them in wisecracks. Their stuff is not satire; it’s as dull as yesterday’s newspaper. Successful satire has got to be pretty good the day after tomorrow.
INTERVIEWER
And how about contemporary humorists? Do you feel about them as you do about satirists?
PARKER
You get to a certain age and only the tired writers are funny. I read my verses now and I ain't funny. I haven’t been funny for twenty years. But anyway there aren't any humorists anymore, except for Perelman. There’s no need for them. Perelman must be very lonely.
INTERVIEWER
Why is there no need for the humorist?
PARKER
It’s a question of supply and demand. If we needed them, we’d have them. The new crop of would-be humorists doesn't count. They’re like the would-be satirists. They write about topical topics. Not like Thurber and Mr. Benchley. Those two were damn well-read and, though I hate the word, they were cultured. What sets them apart is that they both had a point of view to express. That is important to all good writing. It’s the difference between Paddy Chayefsky, who just puts down lines, and Clifford Odets, who in his early plays not only sees but has a point of view. The writer must be aware of life around him. Carson McCullers is good, or she used to be, but now she’s withdrawn from life and writes about freaks. Her characters are grotesques.
Dorothy Parker, The Art of Fiction No. 13
Interviewed by Marion Capron
---------
If Dorothy Parker had talked like that on online comment threads she'd have been told she sounded just like some right wing Republican hack and told to "lighten up" or something. She left her entire estate to The Reverend Martin Luther King, jr. I remember some people were stunned that she had a serious idea in her head, never mind a moral and spiritual center. She paid an enormous price for being part of that famous Round Table.
Update: I just noticed that I neglected to indicate the ellipsis, where I left out material from the interview that didn't address my point. I hope the link provided to the complete interview prevented possible misunderstanding.
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