Tuesday, April 30, 2013
"The Proles" (inspired by Army Basic in 1968) preceded "The Manifesto"
I’ve been preparing a “DADT III” manuscript (first
draft – see Books blog Oct. 1, 2011), for official publication as an e-Book and
print this summer, and in the course of doing so, I’ve reviewed my old
manuscript for the novel “The Proles” that I sketched when I was in the Army
(by hand in the barracks, 1969) and had typed up by 1972.
The novel has a detailed autobiographical account of
my time in Basic Combat Training in early 1968. I streamlined the account and
smoothed out the coarse language in my 1997 book, but I now think that the original chapter
(about 48 double-spaced pages), with all its graphic, self-effacing detail and
crude language common at that time in that environment, would be quite telling
now.
The chapter presents me as a sheltered, spoiled,. “over-educated”
yuppie, who doesn’t carry his weight and who could be perceived as a parasite
on those who do. In today’s world, such
a self-assessment sounds like Maoism. If
everyone is brought equally low, no one can mooch on anyone else. Isn’t that what authoritarianism exploits?
But, of course, I wonder how many of my problems, of
being “physically non-competitive” as a male, were the result of an inborn
biological problem (genetic or epigenetic, perhaps neurological [mild autism or Asperger's]or maybe
circulatory), and how much of it was moral – a physically lazy
disposition? Actually, I didn’t lack energy
– I was underweight, not fat. And, in Basic Training, I did get somewhat better after being recycled through Special Training Company for about four extra weeks, being able to pass the PCPT with reasonable scores after about eight weeks in the Army.
A key point is that I was not aware of my
underdevelopment until others forced me to see it. And it seemed to have to do more with what
others wanted to demand from me, not from what I really needed to take care of
myself, excel in school, earn a living. After
all, young men are required to offer themselves to defend the country, right?
When I subbed, I noticed that some students in
special education probably perceived things this way. They didn’t know why the outside world needed
to demand so much from them.
In the novel, there is a preceding chapter where I
finish graduate school – stumbling on my orals on an important theorem
(Liouville’s). In Basic, an officer
trips me with a question on whether drawing two points on a line always results
in a triangle. Maybe I had been mediocre
as a grad student. I also gave a final
to my “remedial” (or slow-track) freshman Algebra test and graded the finals on
the bus on the way to Denver to spend semester break with a grad student friend
before entering the Army. I was a kind
of “visiting team”, batting first, and then having to defend my right to
survive in the Army. Yet I prevailed. I would be sheltered away in a non-combatant
MOS (“Mathematician”) and let others (bigger and stronger) do the fighting.
The moral implications of all this are still quite
troubling to me, even if younger generations of upper middle class kids have
barely seen this. Churches try – with exercises
like 30-hour fasts.
The novel itself may seem nihilistic, although no
more so that a Lars Van Trier film (like “Melancholia”, which after all brings
the end of the world). In the book, a character based on me (named John
Maurcek), a natural hero-worshipper, comes into contact with some young men who
seem to be trying to bring about a “Second Coming”, as evidenced by a sequence
of violent events and local signs. They
seem to have invented a battlefield weapon that can make an enemy soldier (or
anyone) dematerialize, and be digitally encoded. The person can be brought back to life
multiple times, like incarnations, in which he will not recall other resurrections. (All of this is a bit of a stretch of physics, but even during my late 60s Arrmy service, I heard mention of scary weapons like flux guns, now the nightmare of conservative "doomsday preppers"). After Army service, Bill gets led on a
treasure hunt, and awakens to find himself living in a world of post-nuclear
apocalypse. People try to get life going again in little communities, but all
the “undeserving” will get their specialized comeuppance, sometimes dispatched
with a machete. I can see that, in my
late twenties, I was capable of holding some people in particularly low
regard. Old “Army buddies” (like ‘Rado Suhl” -- "collect on delivery") at Fort
Eustis will remember me (“Chicken Man”) for this.
I think I’ll include this original chapter about
Basic Training in my DADT III book as an “appendix” (perhaps ruptured).
By the way, one of the first songs I ever heard in a gay bar (Julisus's, in NYC) was "Bugler Boy", from WWII, with the words "You're in the Army now."
Sunday, April 28, 2013
"The Manifesto", revisited
One moment that comes to mind crystal clear is my
boarding a taxi on Broadway, suitcase in hand, around 6 PM on January 5, 1979,
saying goodbye to my apartment in the Cast Iron Building and quickly flying
away to a new life in Dallas, where I would spend over nine very interesting
years.
I did not have a compelling reason to leave my
job. True, the new one offered slightly
more pay in a new city with lower taxes and living costs, and probably an
opportunity for “prosperity”. But the
driving force was personal. In 1978, as
eventful as it had been, I had been given reason to contemplate whether I could
stay in a relationship if something “happened” to the other person to affect
his “attractiveness”. Details don’t
matter right here. But some irony
does. The circumstances had given me a
forewarning of what might happen to the community a few years later.
In Dallas, the epidemic (HIV-AIDS) arrived full force maybe about two years after
it stormed through New York. That was
enough time for me to adjust my “behavior” and probably save my own life. As far as I know, I never got infected. The “gay community” in Texas would have to
survive a ferocious political threat from the religious right, which tried to
ban gays from almost all occupations. In
retrospect, it seemed surprising to me that ten years later we really could
focus on the “right” to serve in the military.
I had come from much more menacing lands.
I am going to review, in this “manifesto” posting,
what I am getting at with these blogs, books, and screenplays. But I want to backtrack to what I
“accomplished” with my first “Do Ask Do Tell” book in 1997, and then show how
things have evolved and flipped since then.
Bill Clinton’s campaign promise (in 1992) to lift
the ban on gays in the military would have surprised me, were it not for the
stories of people like Keith Meinhold and Joseph Steffan that had surfaced the summer before
his election. And the counter arguments
in 1993, stressing “privacy” and then “unit cohesion”, seemed to have an ironic
parallel with my own civilian expulsion from William and Mary in 1961 (I would
get drafted anyway in 1968). But what
struck me the most, given my own coming of age, was the way the military
encapsulated so many of the values that seemed to trap and threaten those of us
who were “different”, like me, and how it had, until the collapse of the
Vietnam war, been presumed that young men owed their country the capacity to
defend it physically, risking not only life but being maimed or disfigured, and
still needing to depend on the love (even sexual) of others. Likewise similar
activity is often of young men (today more often of women, too, than before) in
various civilian counterparts, such as police and volunteer fire
departments. The public used to believe
that the “possibility” of homosexuality would undermine the ability of men to
bond to defend women and children in a family, tribe, community, or
country. We all know from the history of
“don’t ask don’t tell” that this turned out to be a bit of a canard. But it was a perception a half century ago,
when I was a young man. And the “don’t
ask don’t tell” policy was law for seventeen contentious years.
My 1997 book focused on libertarian approaches to
individual rights, with the idea that the legal code and, largely speaking, the
community moral code ought to focus on (Southpark-like) “personal responsibility”
rather than collective purposes and trying to right aggregate differential
outcomes (and “victimization”). But I
already had a sense of why “private choices” do matter to the larger
community. This notion seemed to apply
way beyond to area of gay rights to most people who were in any significant way
“different” (maybe to a lot more heterosexuals than homosexuals).
In the ensuing years, three major things
changed. One was that the separation of
“private life” from “public” tended to melt away in the age of the Internet and
social media. Personal rights tended to
focus more on public self-expression (and sometimes self-promotion) than on
“private lives”. Double lives became
untenable. More recently, energy level
has risen in the right to self-defense, too.
Another (second) way was that my perception of “common good”
became less a matter just of of economic fairness (seen as the way issues
ranging from gay marriage to family leave are debated) and “equality” as to a
more personal concern about the way we form and keep relationships. People seemed to have widely varying stakes
in responsibility for others, and this created a lot of intractable social
tension. This understanding grew with me
during my long spell of eldercare for my mother, as well as work as a
substitute teacher.
But the “third thing,” building on the first two,
has to do with sustainability of our pluralistic, free, “global” way of
life. We all know the range of
concerns: environmental (climate change,
even space weather), security (terrorism, particularly asymmetric and unconventional),
and demographics (longer life spams and lower birth rates). There are some things that have to happen
“collectively” or “in significant volume” for our way of life to continue. One of the most striking new moral
expectations is “generativity” – the idea that every individual (even those
without their own children) should have a real personal stake – skin in the
game – in the people who will follow them.
Add to this is the idea that we want to value all human life, at a time
when technology challenges us to make the personal commitments (like to prolonging the lives of parents) that
doing so would take, without inviting more government. That is a curious irony.
That brings me my “main course” (at least the meat
course, after the fish). I want to focus on the question as to how those of us
who are “different” and perhaps less socially connected to others should be
expected to behave. The question matters
in almost any society or political culture. It is equivalent to a person’s own
moral character.
I’m trying to stay away ideology for its own sake,
whether religious (scriptural) or political.
But it’s true, many religions and many authoritarian political systems
seem to get a lot of mileage out of containing those who are “different” and
proposing that they can bring danger to everyone. That plays out in different ways. In small tribal societies, sometimes you
really have to count on everyone when there is an enemy or threat. In a large pluralistic society, asymmetry
(the Internet and low barriers to entry) creates its own tensions and risks. And we’ve all seem that homophobia seems to
work this way.
Why isn’t this kind of thinking seen as
self-effacing? I think there is a
natural tendency for people to be willing to make sacrifices for others when
they think everyone else will. But
moreover, I think there is a question of “meaning”. People sometimes find the emotional
commitments they make (especially in the areas of marriage and family)
meaningful because they think there are certain “natural” ways that things are “supposed
to be”; if the self-discipline required is “meaningful” then it can generate
long-term reward and pleasure.
Indeed, I am a bit of an aesthetic
“fundamentalist”. I like people and
things that look or sound “good” for their own sake. That is, I tend to like what I perceive as
natural “virtue” for its own sake. I
detect in myself a dislike of seeing some aspects of that virtue challenged too
publicly. Think, after all, about why
societies usually have laws against too much public nudity. They want to protect the “meaning” for
private intimate settings.
Having migrated to libertarianism in the 1990s, I
don’t like to see the government regulate “private choices”. But it makes sense to talk about some
behavioral choices as ethical matters when they are likely to compromise the
ability of others to make choices needed for the “common good”.
“Not all art is autobiographical”, but when I look
at the narrative in my first two books, and imagine continuing it to the
present (as in film or video), I see a lot of things that people could expect
of me. But what does it add up to?
All this
takes me back to those main areas of concern that are particularly striking to
me.
Let’s return to the narrative stream with which I
started. Although there was no
“marriage” broken up in the events I mentioned – that wasn’t expected much in
the gay community in the 1970s – the implication is clear. Couples have to remain interested in one
another if something happens to one of them.
(That’s what a marriage vow says.)
That would apply to gay marriage now.
But it has always applied to traditional marriage. Wives have to deal with husbands maimed in
wars overseas (or the reverse). But all
kinds of bad things can happen here, too, ranging from the actions of others
(negligence or crime) to, of course, the more familiar medical scenarios –
which are more testing now because people can survive things and live longer if
they have someone to love them, than they could in past generations. The cohesion and sustainability of society
could depend in part on this human resource.
That can provide one reason why people (roommates,
therapists, NIH, etc.) were so bemused by first my social indifference and then
my fantasy material (based on “virtue”, as noted above) back in the early
1960s. At least, it could prove
distracting to the values (“meaning”) for others in my environment if public
and persistent enough, leading to a sense of unmet sacrifice. Call it a minor amount of subversiveness.
This observation links over to a second major area
of concern: that is, how we respond to adversity, most of all when imposed on
us by those who decide we are their enemies.
Adversity comes from many places, especially as we live longer. But particularly glaring is the blatant,
brazen nature of much of the violence today against ordinary middle class
people. Although the recent terror
attack in Boston and several shooting rampages get the most attention (from
politicians, especially), the practical concern seems to be the street
violence, related to gangs, domestic situations, drugs, and poverty, menacing
the safety of almost everyone with potentially existential threats, often displaying a "feudal" culture based on social combat or bullying. Sometimes this seems to be not just crime as
we used to think about it, but a kind of warfare, almost as Marx could have
described it. Perpetrators often live
outside the system if finance and “law and order” as we usually perceive it,
because they (so they feel) were failed by it.
Right and wrong don’t come just with individual actions, but from
hierarchal relationships (the gang model – but is also applies to warlords and
feudalism). In this mindset (or “revolution”, "expropriation", or “purification”, as I’ve heard some "radical" people say), a victim is a deserving “casualty”
because he or she is the “enemy” (even if a child). In a sense, such a system of values goes
along with extreme tribalism, often under religious control. (see my note on "non-combatants" at the end.)
I saw this kind of thinking when I “spied” on the
Far Left in 1972, in the months before I “came out” a second time. The degree of indignation against salaried
middle class professional people (like me) as “parasites” on “working people”
was shocking at the time. But I really
had found the same attitude in Army Basic Training back in 1968, when we had a
system “corrupted” by student deferments that left the less academically gifted
as potential “cannon fodder” for Vietnam. I’ve had to fight this off verbally
in person earlier in my life.
I am nearing 70 years old and don’t make any
predictions, but the possibility that I could encounter violence myself is
probably greater than it used to be, for any time since the 1960s. I would find it difficult to accept “dependency”
on others if something bad happened like this, and hope that if it did, I would
be gone quickly. I would have been
“taken”. If some calamity (like hostile EMP) suddenly destroys our way of life (something that "Doomsday Preppers" seem to want, throwing people onto depending onto their own guns), the world would have no further use for someone like me (partly because of the recalcitrance toward intimacy as I've already noted). In a sense, in my own mind,
there is no such thing as a “victim”, and I am very uncomfortable with the way
the media sprays and personalizes the “word”.
There is only reality, justice, forgiveness, and Grace. Without some of the last two of these, one
winds up paying for the sins of others as part of his karma (at least, for depending
on others in ways he did not face up to). I could escape this possibility only by
“changing” and giving of myself in a personal manner that would be very
painful. As a policy matter, I do feel that Congress
should take care of the medical and rehabilitation expenses of anyone injured
in a foreign-inspired attack – because the people affected were “conscripted”
into combat. But as a personal matter, I have a hard time addressing the needs
of any particular person affected (and not previously in my orbit) unless I am
somehow prepared for it.
The “adversity” issue of course embraces many
possible threats, many (but not all) of them natural, a few of them potentially
catastrophic for our way of life. They
could include not only nuclear weapons but also electromagnetic pulse
devices. Fortunately, these seem to be
much more difficult to deploy than some right-wing literature suggests. But the significance of them is obvious. Someone like me is of no use in the world
that is left. I have no
generativity. And I have no ability to
find normal layered social interactions work. Social conservatives can claim
that a pluralistic society that has lost most of its ability to maintain social
structures is a particularly inviting target for enemies. But our Society in America has much more
cohesion than many would think. Despite
the supposed decline of “social capital” many families are strong and
volunteerism is common.
So, if I (like the Star Trek Spock character) don't like to be asked to "feel" for others caught by adversity, I have to admit that it can happen to me, either naturally or because of hostility, either randomly or in targeted fashion.
So, if I (like the Star Trek Spock character) don't like to be asked to "feel" for others caught by adversity, I have to admit that it can happen to me, either naturally or because of hostility, either randomly or in targeted fashion.
The third major area that is striking to me is the
way we look at risk and the “morality” of risk taking has changed. In my own experience, this may well start
with my own experience with the military draft in the Vietnam era. I have a detailed manuscript on it (part of
an unpublished novel called “The Proles” that I started in the Army). My account is quite graphic, and it is
apparent that despite my rarified “book smarts”, I couldn’t deal with the
physical reality of a dangerous world around me. Is this disability (a kind of autism, or
perhaps neurological in some other way), aloofness, or just plain cowardice? In
this era, it was seen just in moral terms; if someone like me didn’t do my
part, the risk passed on to others.
We see this carry on in other areas. For example, after the West, Texas explosion
recently, townspeople noted that most smaller towns rely on volunteer fire
departments.
The “risk” and “burden” concept carries over into
“family values” and this point was apparent in my 1997 book. I spent a lot of space on the idea that
having a children greatly reduces discretionary income to spend on one’s own
expressiveness, and a willingness to pass on one’s mojo to progeny. Do people “sacrifice” when they have
families? That seems to depend on how
you perceive “desire”. But it is
apparent that in higher income families, fewer people (both men and women) want
kids, and this certainly has demographic and sustainability consequences. Likewise,
as more families depend on two incomes, one-breadwinner families get “priced
out”, and a whole set of cultural incentives for “socializing” men die out.
The opportunities of the Internet also complicate
the tasks of families. The practical
reality is that social media has forced many people to live “publicly” whether
they want to or not. While for someone like me, the Web has provided a “second
life” after retirement, that facilitation means that kids, at least of less
tech-savvy or less educated parents, are put at various kinds of risk. This loops back to the basic question about
the willingness to channel one’s life for the benefit of others and take risks
for future generations.
I gradually developed a catch-phrase for this set of
issues, which I call “pay your dues”.
What would really change (and this becomes the
“Fourth Thing”) in my perception of
“fairness” is how personal it can get.
Both the eldercare experience with my mother and my substitute teaching
job faced me with unwanted invitations to become more involved in tender
mercies with others. This is a
development that I didn’t see coming.
But it makes a certain sense. I had put myself out as a public pundit, not
requiring that I prove that my self-expression could actually provide for
myself, let alone other people. That
sort of thinking had gotten in the way of a music career earlier in my life –
it wasn’t an easy thing for a young man to go into, given the “Cold War”. But now I had put myself out there, and
suddenly people would challenge me to prove I could take care of others, that I
could grow my own skin to put in the game (at the risk of losing it). Sometimes these would come un unsolicited
calls for interviews for sales (even “fundraising” or huckster) jobs of a
personal nature that were totally alien to me.
Sometimes they came from pressure from service providers to try harder
to “sell” and monetize what I had when I didn’t need to yet or when it didn’t
make sense – because others with “real families” needed to make profits off me
from commissions.
Eldercare, which has some aspects of being legally
driven (filial responsibility laws) certainly compounds the issue of “family
responsibility”. During the “Me
Generation” (since the 1970s), we’ve gotten used to the perception that
“family” is optional – you need to make it on your own first, anyway. Don’t
have kids too early, or have them at all, if you want to be an “influential” or
“powerful” individual. But that
obviously generates a “flip side” when you have to take care of family anyway,
raising questions about what marriage is for after all.
I could say that this extra intimacy would be
welcome only if I had “generated” my own family – married and had kids. Them I would have my own domain, my own
stake. But that presents the classic
“chicken and egg” question. Isn’t there a problem that I didn’t find any
“meaning” in extending myself to someone who really “needs” me – not in the
sense of surplus, but in the sense of making it at all? I would have thought that extending myself to
someone “like that” had no “meaning”.
I indeed stayed socially isolated (some call it
“schizoid”, some call it Asperger’s), created my own world, and had some
partial success publicizing it. I did
not become socially engaged because I could not compete socially or
physically. I found conventional paths
of socialization humiliating. So I went my own way and, it turned out, became
productive as an individual contributor.
But I can see how it could have gone wrong, and in many ways I was
“lucky” or “fortunate”. During most of my adult years, the social and political
culture gradually accepted the primacy of “individual sovereignty” or “personal
autonomy”, sometimes to the point of hyper-individualism, which I don’t think
is wise to take for granted.
Had I been more “competitive” I do believe I would
have married and had children. But
there’s a good question as to whether I could have remained committed in
marriage for life. So is it better that
I didn’t? It’s a question that has a two-sided answer.
I do have a sense of what should have been expected
(and often definitely was) of “someone like me”. Part of the moral expectation has to do with
readiness to “step up” in some situations where courage (physical, emotional,
or both) is required. These situations
may not occur frequently (maybe they are years apart) but when they occur you
know it, even if you can’t define it in advance. To not do so is what we used to mean by
“cowardice” (a word we don’t use today the way we did when I was drafted). If you don’t, there are consequences. Some things follow on to this. One is a certain openness to serving the
needs of others in a succession of cohorts – starting with family, and moving
out – even if it means some sacrifice of one’s own intended purposes. It’s hard to say when this kicks in, but you
know it when you see it. There is a
certain belief (especially among social conservatives) that the inclination to
date, marry, and raise another generation (in one lifelong relationship,
carried out with some passion based on complementarity) naturally follows this
kind of socialization. (Having children, or else at least being ready to help raise other people's children in a pinch, is a prerequisite for a place at the table, in this line of moral thinking.) Science may not
support such a belief. Instead, it may support a more generalized idea of
polarity, and character specialization – but these require some surplus and
genuine opportunity beyond meeting adaptive needs, for self or others. There’s another irony: you can’t enforce a
system like this on others (me), without becoming a hypocrite. But you can regulate “the privilege of being
listened to”.
Related posts: On International Issues blog (discussion of non-combatants) and GLBT Issues blog (both April 26, 2013).
Labels:
personal ethics,
radical hospitality,
screed-book
Friday, April 26, 2013
Internet sales tax meets the expected "libertarian" resistance
Is the proposed Internet sales tax, held up in the
Senate but likely to pass very soon, unconstitutional?
Is it bad policy?
A typical recent story is on Yahoo!, here. The bill would allow all states to
collect sales taxes from their own residents on online purchases.
Fox has a similar story here.
Senators from states that do not have sales taxes
(like New Hampshire, Delaware) resist the idea of being required to collect
sales taxes for those that do. It’s seen
as a violation of “states’ rights”. But
it may be more like “Full Faith and Credit”, an issue we’ve seen recently in
debates of gay marriage and DOMA.
Right now, states can collect sales taxes only from
companies that have a physical presence in the state, which gives many states
an incentive not to employ people in a particular state. The current policy might not be good for
employment.
Many states, including Virginia, stipulate that
taxpayers report online purchases with uncollected taxes, but almost no one
does.
An Internet sales tax might help “bricks and mortars”
stores, especially book and music stores, retain more market share of retail
business.
Would bitcoin transactions (on mobile devices) be subject to the tax?
Smaller companies that don’t outsource their sales
operations (as to Amazon) could have great difficulty complying.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Can government "compel speech" for political purposes as a condition of funding? Take it personally
Can the federal government require an organization
(or a person) espouse a particular position on an issue before receiving
funds? I hope not.
But, according to an editorial in the New York Times
on Tuesday, April 23, 2013, that seems to be the case. The piece, on p. A20, is
titled “Free Speech and the Anti-Prostitution Pledge: The government cannot
compel organizations to espouse its views in exchange for financing”, link
here.
At issue is the 2003 “United States
Leadership Against HIV/AIDSS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act. The act requires
recipients of aid to have a “policy explicitly opposing prostitution”.
The Second Circuit had ruled in 2011 that the
provision requiring proactive advocacy actually compels or coerces speech. At the same time, the Supreme Court has
argued that federal fund recipients can be prevented from making certain arguments,
as with abortion.
The case is “Agency for International Development et
al” v. “Alliance for Open Society International”, with oral argument transcript
from April 22 here.
On a personal level, it seems like pressure to join
someone else’s cause and speak for them is often rather high, and it is
objectionable.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Search engines: how to they handle misspellings?
What happens with misspelled words or typos on
websites? My own experience is that
usually they don’t get indexed, but sometimes they do. With a large volume of
blogs, some unnoticed typos seem inevitable.
Sometimes they creep into posting titles. When caught, the title is corrected, but the
posting name is stored in a search engine with an incorrect spelling, which
could make some visitors suspicions. But
this is just a “typing” and timing problem.
I found an old article by Christopher Weng on the
spelling issue and how to address it. Don’t
depend on meta-tags (search engines today don’t pay much attention to them, I
don’t even think they did as long ago as the year 2000), and don’t hide with
color schemes (or CSS coding), which search engines may consider deceptive. Here’s the (wesbite url) link.
Here’s a
newer article from 2009 on “Nine by Blue”, link.
Search engines do massage misspellings by users even
when they don’t do the same for websites.
Webmasters may sometimes misspell names out of a bit
of dyslexia, particularly with hard-to-pronounce words, or foreign names (with
unusual use of letters not common in English or closely related languages like
French, Spanish, or German). The eye tends to correct misspellings when
proofing them and not catching them (note how hard the correct acronym for “CISPA”
is to pronounce). But too many
misspellings (or variations of one word)
may make a search engine suspicious of spam intentions. Here’s a little advice from “Search Engine
Genie” (link).
Monday, April 22, 2013
"Libertarian" Koch Brothers move into journalism (and blogging next?)
It’s with some interest that I noticed a New York
Times story Sunday, by Amy Chozick, “Conservative Koch Brothers Turning Focus
to Newspapers,” link here.
Koch is looking at the Tribune company, with
papers in Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando, and Fort Lauderdale.
This story caught my own roving or hypnotic eye because I’ve covered a couple
of documentary films about Koch companies (in energy) on my Movies blog (March
8, 2013, September 20 and 26, 2012).
There is certainly a lot of reporting out there that the company
manipulates the system for its own business.
Yet, for much of my “writing” career I’ve preferred “laissez-faire”
ideas myself. My questions are: Can we
sustain our way of life, and can we take care of everyone the way a society
that values human life should? That puts
a lot of personal obligation on every one of us.
Update: April 23
Career Cast published the worst and best jobs in the world, and ranked newspaper reporter as the worst!, link here. It's true, as documented in the book "Trading Secrets" by R. Foster Winans (1989), that newspaper reporters work under tremendous time and accuracy pressures, with a conventional job market that his shrunk. I remember that journalism used to be a big undergrad major (like at the University of Missouri). Who wouldn't be envious, though, of Anderson Cooper's job? He paid his dues.
Update: April 23
Career Cast published the worst and best jobs in the world, and ranked newspaper reporter as the worst!, link here. It's true, as documented in the book "Trading Secrets" by R. Foster Winans (1989), that newspaper reporters work under tremendous time and accuracy pressures, with a conventional job market that his shrunk. I remember that journalism used to be a big undergrad major (like at the University of Missouri). Who wouldn't be envious, though, of Anderson Cooper's job? He paid his dues.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
CISPA passes House; activists propose Internet blackout for April 22
The group Anonymous has called for an “Internet”
blackout on Monday April 22, since the
House of Representatives passed (248-268) a rewritten CISPA (The Cyber-Intelligence
Sharing and Protection Act, HR 3523 in 2012, reintroduced as HR 624 in 2013, the 113th Congress, here) Thursday, April 18, 2013. (The “S” is
before the “P”, making it harder to pronounce.)
The Huffington Post has a story, by Alexis Kleinman, about the proposed blackout here. It’s not clear that very many major websites
will join the blackout. (Yes, I love the
line in ABC’s defunct series “Flash Forward”, “There’s going to be another
blackout”.)
Remember that Wikipedia was blacked out for one day
to protest SOPA in January 2012. Wikipedia has a detailed explanation of the
law, rather up to date, here.
“Matt Larson 10” put up this YouTube video:
According to "activists", there are a couple of amendments: Number 6 adds
provisions specifying applicability regarding “cyber-security crime”, “protection
of adults”, and “protection of children”.
That is, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply online (according to some
observers). The government could use the
info for “anything”.
Another amendment (actually "good news") says that mere TOS violations don’t
constitute a violation of law.
The YouTube video above says that most people value
their First Amendment rights more than Second Amendment.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Washington columnist notes background checks for "speaking out"
First, I have to note how foolish the Senate looks,
having turned down improved background checks for gun purchasers this week, two
days before Boston was locked down to apprehend one lone gunman. But it’s also
apparent that the gun control legislation before Congress is at best a partial
measure for protecting the public, and cannot be easily enacted without raising
the “slippery slope” arguments on other liberties. There are other weapons that private individuals
might acquire that present a far more existential threat to the public that
even assault rifles or the components of IED’s (basically 1940s technology)
used this week in Boston to horrific effect.
Petula Dvorak wrote an interesting column for the
Washington Post on Thursday, “After Senate collapse, a background check for
speaking out, but not for buying a gun”, link here.
She writes about Lori Haas, whose daughter was
wounded in the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, and about her “protesting”
before the Senate and then being escorted out of the Senate chamber by Capitol
Police – and subjected to a “background check”.
That’s at least tangential, maybe a but
coincidental, to concerns that unsupervised speech on the Internet makes it
easier for terrorists to make weapons to carry out attacks (posting on
Tuesday).
Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney in Boston, will probably handle the prosecution after the terror attack, but she was also criticized for her "overzealousness" with Aaron Swartz. Her response to this appeared on Cnet here . The Boston Clobe had written a perspective on her in February here.
Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney in Boston, will probably handle the prosecution after the terror attack, but she was also criticized for her "overzealousness" with Aaron Swartz. Her response to this appeared on Cnet here . The Boston Clobe had written a perspective on her in February here.
Friday, April 19, 2013
More developments in "porn troll" copyright case
There’s more in the news about copyright
trolls. Salon recently reported the
libel lawsuit by Prenda Law against a site called “Die Troll Die”, here, with a
lot of the text of the complaint reproduced, here.
“Die Troll Die” has its own account on its own site with materials about the case here, including an account of an invalid subpoena sent to Wordpress.
Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting that it
has moved to top a subpoena to identify the blogger(s) on the site Die Troll
Die, here. The article is long and gives a lot of
supporting detail. Apparently another troll criticism site, “Fight Copyright
Trolls”, link here seems also to be named.
Again, this "copyright troll" case touches several major parts of Internet law: adult entertainment, copyright (including the "troll" problem, as seen before with Righthaven), and libel.
Again, this "copyright troll" case touches several major parts of Internet law: adult entertainment, copyright (including the "troll" problem, as seen before with Righthaven), and libel.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
After a tragic event, let's remember that First Amendment and Second Amendment rights are linked
It is very early in the investigation of the
terrible event at the Boston Marathon Monday, but the earliest evidence tends
to suggest relatively amateurish, homemade devices (the "pressure cooker" according to recent reports), possibly by a small group
or even one individual, possibly domestic and not foreign-sponsored.
Already, a few reporters have noted that directions
for making such devices are available on the Internet, as would be devices
making more powerful or dangerous devices such as those often speculated about
in the media since 9/11. CNN discusses the articles based on AQAP ("Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula") in conjunction with "lone wolf" activity here.
There could occur a natural parallel to the gun
debate, that the facility to post “dangerous” speech is a hazard to others and
should be curtailed, just as in the gun control debate there is a philosophical
divide over whether or how we should all become our “brother’s keepers”. I had touched on this point as a moral issue
on a Dec, 18, 2012 posting about a sermon given here in Arlington VA at a local Presbyterian church.
But of course, much of this information is available
overseas anyway, and much of it is passed among extremist groups and militia “hand to mouth”, so it is quite
questionable how much role the Internet plays in abetting incidents like
these. They have always occurred. Posting such details would probably violate
the TOS of most mainstream ISP’s and service providers.
In fact, in the normal process of education, people
come into potentially “dangerous” information as a matter of course. Information you learn in high school
chemistry (and have to know to pass the SOL’s in Virginia, at least) could be
misused. In the Army, people learn to
use weapons. In Army Basic, I learned
how to take apart, clean, and reassemble an M-14, and even for someone as
clumsy as me, it wasn’t hard. This information
and know-how is ubiquitous.
CNN, on AC360 Wednesday, offered a counter to this insinuation, suggesting that investigators should use "crowd sourcing" of user-generated videos and images to help catch perpetrators.
CNN, on AC360 Wednesday, offered a counter to this insinuation, suggesting that investigators should use "crowd sourcing" of user-generated videos and images to help catch perpetrators.
I can remember right after 9/11 that authorities
expressed concern over the possibility that amateur websites (well before the
age of social media and blogs as we know them today) could be hijacked by
terrorists for the purpose of planting “steganographic” cues for further
action. But this plausible development
did not actually occur as far as I know.
However, one posting on another site of mine in which I talked about the
nuclear threat was hacked in April 2002, but no such other incident occurred
thereafter.
On Saturday, April 13, I reviewed a book by Michael
Maloof (“A Nation Forsaken”) in which the author mentions the idea that
directions for terrible weapons like RF or flux devices can be found on the
Internet and even mentions examples. I
have known about the possibility of such devices being made or used ever since
I was in the Army (in 1969), and have the long-held impression that (fortunately) making or deploying them is
much more difficult than some writers and publications have suggested. The mainstream press has not discussed these very much (focusing mainly on nuclear and radioactive devices). Nevertheless, as someone who inherited some
utility stocks, I may be in a position to investigate myself, with some
objectivity, how well prepared the power grid and Internet is to defend itself against
what sound like (as discussed in some publications) existential threats.
Picture: Near GWU in Washington DC as I returned to the Metro some time after learning of the event on the cell phone. The robin on the brick stump looked right at me and wouldn't budge.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Libel lawsuit against Watchdog by GreenTech is troubling; does a harsh statement about a business model "defame" a company that uses it?
There is a disturbing libel case in a state court
right now, against an “activist” (not quite “whistleblower”) website. Perhaps it amounts to a SLAPP lawsuit, but it
is the legal principle underneath that is disturbing.
The Washington Post reported Saturday, April 13,
2013, about a lawsuit by GreenTech
Automotive against a website called “Watchdog”, filed April 8 in Mississippi,
over articles published there on April 1 and 3.
It also reports that the democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate
Terry McAuliffe had founded the company but resigned in December and had withdrawn
from involvement with the company.
The Post story is by Frederick Kunkle and has link
here.
Green Tech Automotive has employees in Tysons Corner,
Va and Mississippi and has link here.
One of the Watchdog articles was critical of the way
the business model for Green Tech allegedly uses the EB-5 investment program,
in which the federal government allows more visas to well-educated immigrants
who invest in particular US industries, such as “green” energy and
transportation. One of the articles
apparently used some inappropriate language.
But Watchdog maintains it was critical of the abstract business model
(used my many companies), not of Green Tech itself. EB-5 has come under scrutiny by state
regulators in Illinois and now Virginia, and probably other states. On the other hand, many policymakers consider
it a good idea, and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook wrote about the concept
favorably in a recent Washington Post op-ed.
Watchdog maintains that it is not libel to report unfavorable on a
business strategy or government policy that supports the strategy, and it
certainly sounds like it is not. It
would be a serious matter for all small websites reporting on public policy if
this could be “libel”. (In another
recent story Monday morning, Congress is reportedly considering a “point system”
in immigration policy that includes both family dependencies and education, and
probably stricter oversight.)
Apparently there was also some controversy over a
report involving the company’s handling of property taxes. In fairness, it should be noted that many
businesses and individuals question property taxes carefully before paying
them.
Green Tech maintains that the Watchdog articles made
investors skittish quickly, and is claiming $85 million in damages. However, it is plausible that the criticism
of a business model in a visible website or even blog could get around to
investors and hamper funding.
Watchdog’s account of the lawsuit is here. Watchdog has an eight-article series on
McAuliffe and his business connections.
The consequences are political as much as they are financial.
This whole story brings up an “Imagine Me Naked”
scenario. Suppose I was trying to get
funding for my movie. A defamatory story
about me in a blog or even on Facebook could hamper investors (or even
Kickstarter). But suppose the criticism
was more abstract, about the fact I had inherited money rather than earned
it. (That is, as an Army buddy said, “Put
it in “The Proles’!”) It could be
harmful and unpleasant but it is not defamatory. Or maybe someone doesn’t like something about
the whole business arrangement – although the SEC would regulate that. The business metaphor implied by Dylan’s spirited comic song from “Modern Family” seems
to apply. You can’t “fake it”.
Of course, another angle for the case would be “truth”. Even if the criticisms were specific to the
company, “truth is an absolute defense to libel’. In the United States, that is. (According to Kitty Kelly [“The Royals”] that
isn’t so in Britain.)
The following video ("Free Advice Law") explains some of the important concepts. There is also an "Opinion Rule", which would seem to apply to abstract statements about how a company or person operates. It means "Imagine Me Fully Dressed". The lack of a formal subjunctive mood in the English language by verb conjugation (compared to other languages like French) makes it more likely that a reader (or potential plaintiff) can misinterpret a conjectural assertion as if it were intended to be viewed as fact.
The following video ("Free Advice Law") explains some of the important concepts. There is also an "Opinion Rule", which would seem to apply to abstract statements about how a company or person operates. It means "Imagine Me Fully Dressed". The lack of a formal subjunctive mood in the English language by verb conjugation (compared to other languages like French) makes it more likely that a reader (or potential plaintiff) can misinterpret a conjectural assertion as if it were intended to be viewed as fact.
In any cases, businesses may be quick to jump
against websites that they believe may cause them do lose funding (perhaps lose
a public filing) or even suffer securities price loss. It’s the old SLAPP problem, smaller
publishers don’t have the pockets to defend themselves against even
questionable allegations.
Picture: Mississippi Gulf Coast, near Bay St. Louis, after Katrina (my picture, Feb. 2006)
Sunday, April 14, 2013
"Inactive Account Manager" offered by Google to help members plan their digital estates
The service provider industry is coming around to
address the issue of digital afterlife.
Google has announced a feature, called the “Inactive
Account Manager”, available to account holders which allow users to supply
friends or family members who would have access after their passing to various
services and also to supply their wishes as to how long to wait to have
accounts deleted, if at all. The service
will remind you when your account hasn’t been used in certain timeframes. This sounds like an idea that could be useful
for people who travel on foreign trips away from Google access (to China),
people in the hospital, on long sequestered jury duty, and the like.
The link for Google’s announcement is here.
I have not
tried this yet, but it appears that the members does not have to secure the
permission of the family member or friend to be listed.
The Washington Post reported on the matter Saturday,
here.
ABC News gave a more detailed report, and compared
it to Facebook’s policy, here. States are beginning to pass laws giving more
powers to executors, viewing digital and intellectual property as part of the estate.
I will soon be making decisions on what should
happen to my own blogs and websites and social media accounts after I am
gone. I do not think that they can
simply stay up forever. In fact,
conventional sites will not because the space is paid for, as is the space for
Picasa pictures. There is a tremendous
library in my postings since 2006 on many policy issues, as well as many
reviews of books and movies, crossed referenced in many ways. I would hope there would be a way to make the
material available to researchers of the history of such issues as COPA, “Don’t
Ask Don’t Tell”, censorship, liability, Section 230, SOPA, and the like. Perhaps there could develop a way to work
with Wikipedia.
I suspect that I will “know” from the “real”
afterlife, but not be able to do anything about it, until starting over with
another incarnation. But that might be
light years away, on another planet.
Will Google and Facebook transcend the speed of light and propagate to
other solar systems? (After all, there is a Youtube video somewhere claiming that Mark Zuckerberg is an extraterrestrial alien, like Clark Kent in "Smallville".)
By the way, the idea of a “digital afterlife” may
not be facetious. In the mid 1990s, the
now defunct Omni magazine published an article about the idea of downloading
someone’s soul onto a harddrive before death (rather like in the movie “Cold
Souls”, where Paul Giamatti’s fit into a chickpea).
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Can a mere hyperlink lead to a defamation lawsuit? It may be "safer" in Canada than in the US
Can a blogger or social media user be held
responsible for libel for merely a hyperlink to defamatory content posted by
someone else?
It seems that he or she can, and perhaps more so in
the US than in Canada. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation page on libel and defamation never quite gets around to
this exact point. It does say that republication of defamatory content may be
actionable as defamation. The basic EFF link is here. It does go on to mention Section 230
protection for hosts of forums or for bloggers who allow comments.
The question is different from those issues concerning hyperlinks and copyright (March 31, 2013).
On October 2011, the Canadian Supreme Court had ruled that “Internet links are not libel”, as in a
CBC story by Megan Fitzpatrick (website url) here.
Search engines refer repeatedly to the Canadian
decision but give little guidance for the US.
There is a “single publication rule” which may prove
applicable, as explained in this Wiki.
There is a paper on HKLaw by Drew Shenkman in June
2010 (link) which goes on to discuss
some cases in New Jersey and California and suggests that the “single
publication rule” is likely to reduce liability exposure to "linkers”, with
the source here (the article is called "Defamation by Click").
On the other hand, there is this stern warning from Oracle (and Burleson Consulting) on the matter, an article that
appears older, link here.
It would seem that a blog posting, tweet or Facebook
posting that merely reproduce a link to a defamatory article without providing
any additional context could present
some risk. So would intentionally
providing more links in order to cause search engine results to present a “defamatory
impression” and harm “online reputation”.
It would seem that the issue could also invite SLAPP
lawsuits in some states. A plaintiff
could try to intimidate an amateur publisher, claiming that the extra article
was gratuitous and therefore intended only to harm (although the single
publication rule could help here, as could the “street smarts” notion that “the
damage to reputation was already done” by first publication. One problem is that frivolous suits can be
brought for anything. Without further legal
protection, plaintiffs are limited only by the notion that courts could
censure or penalize their attorneys for
bringing frivolous suits in bad faith.
Don't "Blame Canada"!
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