The Internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
- John Gilmore, 1993

It’s now just after midnight on the East Coast, and Websites around the Internet are returning from a self-imposed blackout in protest of two nominally anti-piracy bills which are currently in both houses of Congress.  It appears to have been a successful protest which has caused a number of supporters to re-think their opinion on the bills.  The White House had previously voiced concern over the bills as well.  It’s a welcome trend against two bills which are very poorly crafted.

The protest also placed the subject first and foremost in the awareness of netizens, such that there is no need to conduct any substantive review of the points of the debate here; however, there are more things which must be borne in mind by those who are heeding the suggestions of the tech companies which stand in opposition to the bills.

The first is to remember that while Google, Facebook, and the other giants of the Internet stand behind the people in opposition to this bill, it is not for altruistic reasons.  They are (rightfully) afraid that they may be sued, perhaps out of existence, because of the provisions of the bill which would require U.S. companies to police content which their users and clients are linking to from overseas (the so-called “rogue sites” mentioned by sponsors like the otherwise intelligent and generally true to principles Sen. Patrick Leahy).  This is unlikely to happen to the large firms, which is why companies like GoDaddy were in favor of this bill until overwhelming protests by their customer base forced them to reconsider; however, it would still result in substantial cash outlays and would threaten some of the smaller players in the industry itself.  (As companies which work on a shared resource – the Internet – many computer and technical firms have a more developed sense of cooperation and fair play in business practices.)

Thus, they are against, in this case.  But these same firms would think nothing of bills which would rob you of your privacy or your right to software that is free from excessive monitoring or spying…so long as they were able to benefit from them.  “Enhanced market research” which would track your movements around the Internet and report back to their companies would be just fine with them.

This segues into the second point: the Congressional showdown over these bills is not some sort of movie serial clash between the mustachioed villains, come to censor your Internet, nyah-hah-hah, and the white-hatted heroes of free speech.  This is the proxy battle between those Congresscreatures who are bought by Hollywood, and those who are bought by Silicon Valley.  That the citizenry have become engaged is more a testimony to the business of the latter group; they’re communications companies, after all.  The entertainment industry unwisely picked its battle with those who have the metaphorical bucket of ink.

This of course means that the Congress is bought and paid for – not in a cool-thing-to-say-at-the-lunch-counter way,  that makes the truck driver next to you murmur, “Damn straight,” and lift his coffee to his lips for a disgusted-but-resigned pull, but in a very real sense, and it appears to be disproportionate to the Democratic Party.  The aforementioned Senator Leahy is one unfortunate illustrative example; the much more egregious one is the incredibly slimy Christopher Dodd, a former Presidential candidate who is now the head guy for Hollywood’s version of the Ministry of Truth.  It is worth mentioning that this is business as usual for the “Democratic” Party, as similar actions in other industries and on other subjects have shown, though it is by no means restricted to them.  It’s worth saying that there’s a simple, three-word explanation for why prostitution is still illegal: Congress hates competition.

Finally, as we are, for the most part, the “99%” in this matter and many others, not just in terms of our financial situations, I would urge everyone, as a technical professional of some ability, to act in order to protect your free access to information and to protect your privacy in viewing and using that information.  Professor and author on cooperative telecommunications Clay Shirky gave a talk this month on the bills and what citizens may do about them, and it was excellent and informative – but I would suggest further action is necessary.  Along the same lines as a Christian would “trust in God, but lock [their] car”, we must treat ourselves as denizens of China, Syria, or any other oppressive regime now.  SOPA may or may not pass, but it will not be the final blow in their attempt to pummel us back into being mindless, ignorant, passive consumers of their information, and when they return, the government will not merely be complicit, as they are now, but will likely aid and abet the effort.

Educate yourself as to what is at stake.  Use technology and subterfuge to circumvent their censorship and protect your privacy.  Know who is with you, and understand who is against you.

It’s going to get a lot darker from here on out.  Start lighting your own candle.

Lost in all of this, or perhaps not explicitly spoken about, is the role of the two-party system in crushing the spirit of dissent.  In a way that is evident to most (including Standard & Poor’s, apparently), both parties are compromised by their obedience to corporate rule.  It’s clear that neither is standing for any meaningful change for, nor any real representation of about 99% of Americans; the argument between the two has little to do with that vast majority of the people of the country.  However, they have conspired to deny any real alternatives…thus, like a car stuck sideways in an alley, the American people go out at election time and throw the car into “R” or “D”, and hit a wall every time.  It’s only when this cycle is broken that any real change will happen.

Anyway, as I wax political here on the blog…how would everyone feel if I were to do my podcast again?  Were there things that you liked about it, things that you disliked?  Anyone?  Bueller…?

* I hope I got the article right on that one.  No speak-a the Dutch.

** coughcoughyeahright.  Perhaps the idea that I wasn’t being passed to after giving away the ball so much should give me a more realistic assessment of my ability.

I’m no longer on the social network/goal-tracking site 43 Things, thanks to dissatisfaction with their version of customer support.  This was a difficult choice, because against my expectations, and seemingly against the wishes of the Robot Co-op – the amusingly named techno-hipster tank which runs the site, based in (where else?) Seattle – 43 Things became a truly social place, where interacting with my long-distance friends became more important than actually tracking what I was doing with my life’s goals.  I suppose in looking back at it, it’s inevitable that sharing one’s life ambitions in black and white every day with folks who were baring their souls in a similar fashion would create some intimate relationships, even over the ‘Net.  It was really surprising, though; I found lasting friendships and even love on that site, so it wasn’t something that I took lightly in leaving.  I’ll discuss details of why I did so later in subsequent posts, but for now, if you are joining this blog from 43 Things, welcome.

I’ve also ceased doing my podcast for the time being.  The Secret Frequency’s Web site is no more, and my past episodes are down.  (I suppose someone should update my Wikipedia page.)  I began the podcast as a way to influence things politically after my term as a co-Chair of the Green Party came to an end, and for a while it looked like it might do exactly that…however, I ran into some difficulties with the hosting service, Liberated Syndication.  Libsyn produced a new interface in 2010 which a) was harder to navigate, b) was less reliable, resulting in more upload attempts, incomplete and incorrect episodes, and the like, and c) came with a new (yet undocumented) way of figuring stats, such that my previous audience of what I thought was 50 or 60 separate listeners was down to single digits without an explanation.  Since I had no way of determining who was listening to the damn thing, I did a quick survey of my friends and found that the newer stat was probably closer to the truth.  That meant that rather than maintaining some political service to the public, my podcast was basically a very personal hobby which I was doing for my own edification.  Thus, when things got tricky in my life – which was and is inevitable – the podcast was the first thing to be abandoned.  I still haven’t entirely ruled out doing it again, and I hope to talk to someone about it soon, but I will certainly do it differently if I do.

Now to get back into the swing of semi-regular updates…of the sort that I used to provide to LiveJournal and 43 Things.  (And even here, once upon a time…)

Recently, I was asked about my opinion of my country’s assassination of Osama bin Laden.

I don’t exult in the assassination of anyone.  Killing one’s enemy is never a path to true superiority.  This doesn’t mean that I had any tears at all for this twisted and murderous soul.  He didn’t hesitate to kill either, and his perversion of a religion noted for its enlightenment and peace-seeking is a true blasphemy.  Whatever fate he now endures is likely too lenient.

Nonetheless, I’ll admit that when I heard the news, I had pretty much no reaction whatsoever.  I think it was a reaction borne of cynicism about my country’s leaders and their motives, a deep-seated disgust at al-Qaeda and their actions, and mostly a sadness that peace in the world seems so elusive.

I do not believe in the wilder conspiracy theories regarding the attacks on my country on 11 Sept 2001.  It was obviously a conspiracy, but one perpetrated by Osama bin Laden’s organization of criminal fanatics, not American government officials.  I do, however, believe that those government officials were both extremely lax in the defense of this country, and extremely quick to take full advantage of the attack to further their own extremist agenda, which involved hegemony over the Middle East to secure its resources, and a global expression of military force; a sort of “perpetual” war.  This doesn’t involve much conjecture on my part; this is stated outright in position statements by these politicians drafted well before the attack.

As a Green, I didn’t think, as so many of my countrymen did, that the election of a Democratic President would change that much, but I did hold out some hope that there may be a marginal improvement over George W. Bush.  There has been some slight improvement in some areas; this definitely isn’t one of them.

I think this was the principal cause of the despair and the numb reaction.  Will we cease being a nation which assassinates and tortures as a matter of affairs of state?  Will we pull our troops out of Afghanistan, where there is no clear motive for our fighting?  Will we be safer, here or abroad?  Will the government return to us our civil liberties which they have stripped since 2001 with an un-Constitutional “PATRIOT Act”, and will they rescind other actions that have marched us toward a police state?  Will we have accountability for the decisions made in this so-called “War on Terror”?  Will the “military-industrial complex” — that war machine that President Eisenhower warned us of so long ago — ever grind to a halt?  Will anything really change?

I fear I know the answer to these questions, and that’s why I didn’t react too much to the death of Osama bin Laden.

It would be nice if our government were able to do those same things, but as Obama, the latest Republocrat, has proven, the policy is to go with the devil you know rather than the democracy you don’t.  The United States, you see, is the world’s leading exporter of democracy – but that doesn’t mean we just have to go around granting it to everyone, willy-nilly.  Some are more equal than others, and those in North Africa or the Middle East or elsewhere living on exploitation wages or under oppression in the shadows of modern opulence just have to realize that we can’t allow folks to vote for the wrong guys.  And if the powers-that-be just happen to sell us oil or bomb the right people…well, hey, those folks will just have to understand that democracy ain’t that important.

So it fell to the people of Egypt, just as the people of Tunisia had done only days earlier, to hit the streets and get their democracy the old-fashioned way – albeit with some new-fangled help.  The Series of Tubes conveyed emails, tweets, YouTube videos, and other info without intervening American media gatekeepers, who were busily being schooled in the art of actual journalism by al-Jazeera.  These same tubes had recently carried leaked U.S. diplomatic cables which helped spread some actual truth, or at the absolute least removed the usual amount of varnish from it at a time when it was desperately needed.  (Interestingly, the “public sector” objected to the release of its “private” information, and if you see no problems with the construction of that clause, then you, too, have a career waiting for you in government intelligence.)

Given their experience, I can’t help but wonder if once the various countries are finished, they might not consider coming to this country and teaching us how to do it.

I was a Statis-Pro Baseball guy.  I would stage numerous games on my bed with my cards all laid out, under the close supervision of my otherwise-complete-antisocial cat, who no doubt looked upon this activity as good reason that he should continue shunning most of humanity.  There were some leagues back then, too, including the 1982 Ocean City Surf, a sorry team of losers that I entered into a league run by my journalism teacher and track coach.  I was forced to recruit the Surf from the pool of leftovers after missing the draft due to misremembering the date of our family trip to Ocean City.  The rest of my friends nicknamed them “the Smurfs”…just another of those lovely humiliating episodes of my high school career.

The trouble with APBA, Statis-Pro, Pursue the Pennant, and the numerous similar tabletop games was that they simulated baseball one solitary game at a time, and a baseball season is 162 games long.  The companies involves always used to tout that you could play out an entire season, which you theoretically could do — but given that there were 26 teams back then, that would require 2106 different games to play, so that particular bit of ad copy always struck me as somewhat disingenuous.

As a result, one of my favorite solo exercises with Statis-Pro was to put together a completely made-up team composed of my friends and a few made-up or TV character names and players and “barnstorm” them against Major League teams.  Basically I’d take the kids I knew on the sandlot and just exaggerate their abilities to the point that they were competant major leaguers.  There was also a little bit of dramatic license involved, of course – or, in my case, a huge mucking dollop of dramatic license; as much as I love it, I was and am still a pretty dismal ballplayer, but I made a pretty good base-stealing .300-hitting second baseman for my local barnstormers.

Fast forward to the modern day, however, and well, we have computers to do all that now.  Games like EA Sports Baseball, Out of the Park, and my personal fave, Baseball Mogul, are designed to simulate an entire season with a few mouse clicks if so desired, and the potential for customization is much greater.  It would be possible to recreate my barnstorming team of my youth if I had the time and inclination to piece it together from memory (as I have done with the ’82 Surf, which became an interesting creative writing project which I’ve been promising myself I would return to some day).

Of course, doing so involves facing a depressing reality: if I were to input myself as a player at this point, given all of that great detail built in, I would have to also enter my age.  This would result in the simulation immediately causing my player to retire and likely seek a job as a bench coach.  This is more reality than I wish to deal with.  And yes, Jamie Moyer is the exception that pretty much proves the rule.

Part of the problem is that what I have to report on is fairly well-known stuff, but the way I’m looking at it doesn’t necessarily conform with the received wisdom on each topic.  There’s a great deal of extra information and consideration that I feel I must bring to the table in order to be understood in my opinions.  People who feel the need to do so are usually visionary or mad.  I’m well aware that no one thinks that they themselves are mad, at least not initially, and I’m not conceited enough to believe that I’m a visionary…so I’ll just say that you have been warned.  At the same time, though, I’m thinking that perhaps if I just write something, get it out there, then maybe some of that pressure might be relieved.

As an example, right now, there is a…conflagration of some kind – it’s difficult to describe it – going on between Wikileaks, Wired, the U.S. Army, the State Department, a schlub named Adrian Lamo, and a previously unknown private by the name of Bradley Manning.  It has the potential, I believe, to drastically change the way that the U.S. government prosecutes wars and retains “state secrets” – which of course would explain why it is so vastly underreported.  I reported on it in my last podcast, and I would encourange everyone to sit down and read several articles about the story; the upshot, if I can condense something this bulky, is that Manning, while working for Army intelligence in some capacity in the Middle East, blew the whistle on what he felt to be unethical actions by his government, including the attack by an Army helicopter on obvious civilian targets in Iraq.  Manning leaked a video taken by the pilots of that helicopter to Wikileaks, who released them.  Later, he spoke about this – it’s still unclear how or for what reason – to a “reformed” felon cracker, Adrian Lamo, who not only spilled the beans to his friend, fellow ex-cracker-turned-journalist and something of a personal chronicler of Lamo’s adventures, Kevin Poulsen, but also to the Feds.

It’s clear that Lamo, from his actions and his flimsy and hollow-sounding “patriotic” excuses for his actions, is a douche, but there’s also the intriguing possibility that he’s a Federal agent, perhaps after an earlier deal cut with the Feds during his time in custody.  (He had a somewhat unusual and brief “bout” with mental illness during that period, during which he was treated in an equally unusual fashion by law enforcement, i.e., one is not usually institutionalized for ADD.)

The government responded not only by arresting Lamo, but also “declaring war”, in a sense, on Wikileaks.  Granted, a more ethical organization than the U.S. Government might be more concerned that we were treating the “lighting up” of civilians from attack helicopters like it was World of Warcraft, but apparently, this isn’t the case, which goes a long way toward justifying and legitimizing Wikileaks’ admittedly somewhat controversial stance.  Wired, through their “Threat Level” column, has meanwhile undertaken a Fox News-esque campaign to screw Wikileaks, the ferocity and nonsensicality of which leads me to believe that Poulsen and Lamo may still be doing some work for some undisclosed benefactors (particularly given that “Threat Level” is usually not that kind to the Government or any large and controlling system).  It’s difficult to tell precisely what’s going on, which should concern everyone – as the government which we elected, ostensibly to rid ourselves of war and creeping unwarranted secrecy, is prosecuting this and deliberately confusing the details to avoid accountability.

Annnnnnd just received a phone call and must go out to pick up meds for a family member.  Yep, getting a full post out just doesn’t look like it’s going to be possible for a while.

More later, I do hope.

My last post here ended with a note about me doing better at keeping in touch.   As that was posted almost a year ago, you can see how well I did with it.

Just answered the door to a couple of Mormon Missionaries.  They asked me if I was religious, and had trouble processing the negative response.  Asked (quite politely) if I wanted to talk, and had no trouble processing the negative response.  Asked if I wanted a card for their website (which I took), and explained that we all have questions, and the website has answers.

The questions are:

• What is the true nature of God?
• Can families be forever together?
• Where do we go after this life?

Dude, these questions are so far from being universal, they don’t even make sense unless you’re religious in the first place.  Honestly, if you’re going to try to convince me you have the answers, at least do me the courtesy of answering the questions I actually ask.  Make it a discussion, not a sales job.

It’s frustrating, because there are plenty of spiritual questions which are relevant to me.

• Is there a purpose to life?
• Is there a purpose to my life, beyond that which I assign to it?
• Is it even possible to experience ‘objective’ events, or is constant confabulation an inherent part of human consciousness?
• Is purpose itself a result of that confabulation?

and so on.  You get the picture.

Speaking of pictures, thinking of starting a photography project, just taking pictures (or movies) of police officers, in public places, doing their jobs.  After all, when I personally observe them they generally are doing their jobs, and they do deserve recognition for that.  Of course, if I were to observe a police officer NOT doing his/her job I’d want to give him/her recognition for that as well.

It’s more relevant than you might think, according to this recent story from WJZ news, which was also discusssed in Gizmodo.  Theoretically, if I do this I’m risking (false) arrest and imprisonment, but I’m doubtful that’s how it would play out.

I started this morning deep in dream-shadow.  I woke up trying to detangle the last shreds of REM-sleep from reality.  In the dream I was describing my family to someone.  I had gotten to my uncle, and described him as having four sons.  I named his second oldest grandchild as his oldest, and put her age as significantly lower than it is, and woke up with a strong sense of wrongness.

My first thought was “That’s not right!  George doesn’t have four sons, he has two!”

In reality, George has three.

Dreams do that to me sometimes.

Trying to regain my online presence (obviously I’ve fallen off the net somewhat).  I’m going to make more of an effort to at least occasionally read LJ, and am considering starting a Facebook account, because I’ve been getting lots of invites recently from people I haven’t seen in ages.  I’m weeks behind in e-mail.  If you REALLY need to get hold of me, phone.   If you really need to get hold of me and don’t have my number, either of the other authors on this blog can ‘ping’ me for you.

Will try to do better at being in touch.

Most are saying that both parties overreacted, which seems safe enough to say.  The thing that I’m not hearing from anyone is that of course, parties to such emotionally loaded situations do overreact – they’re just human beings, after all, and they have human feelings.  It’s natural for a police officer investigating a possible burglary to be on edge; it’s natural for a homeowner to feel anger and fear when challenged as a suspect in his own home.  And because these situations do happen, and because it’s not reasonable to expect people in those situations to deal with it as if they were emotionless aliens from the planet Vulcan, we have rules and laws to govern such interactions.

Let’s assume for the moment that the officer was correct when he said that Dr. Gates was unreasonable, unwilling to listen, and creating a disturbance of some variety when he mouthed off.  On that basis, the officer charged Dr. Gates with disorderly conduct; that is the law that was applied in this case.

A quick perusal of the definition of disorderly conduct shows that the law is pretty much a catch-all, designed to allow a police officer to put an end to a disturbance of the peace by making an arrest.  It’s ill-defined, but considered a part of the police officer’s arsenal of options that’s beyond reproach; it’s practically never challenged on a per se basis.  It is, however, limited in all cases, and one of the more common limits is that practically every single written application of the law contains the phrases “in public” or “upon the property of another”.  In other words, it can’t be used on you in your own home (unless you are creating enough of a disturbance that it’s affecting the public, which has never been alleged in this case, to my knowledge).

Now let’s keep something in mind.  Dr. Gates had already produced identification proving that this was his house.  At that point, there’s no burglary.  (Officer Crowley, I believe his name is, at one point in an interview claimed that he had no reason to believe that others may not have been in the house at the time committing a burglary, but somehow he forgot about “the burglars” after arresting Dr. Gates, so it’s not likely this was a serious concern on his part.)  The officer has no reason to stay.  And yet, something happened in between the time that the identity was established and the arrest was made that, in the opinion of Officer Crowley, caused a law to be broken – a law that was pretty much written not to be applied in that situation.

For some reason, that question has not been put to the officer, nor has his description of events covered it.  It wasn’t assault, because Dr. Gates wasn’t charged with that.  The officer hasn’t said he felt threatened.  Dr. Gates recounted specific things that he said, including asking for the officer’s name and badge number, and asking if he was being interrogated because he was a “black man in America”.  No one has disputed either of these things, and a quick perusal of the books doesn’t reveal those specific statements as crimes.  The main problem seems to be that Dr. Gates was yelling at Officer Crowley – and Officer Crowley just didn’t like it very much.  The arrest was made on that basis.

Was it because Dr. Gates is a “black man in America”, and Officer Crowley is white?  Did that have something to do with it?  It’s not at all clear.  It can’t be proven or disproven at this point.

There are a few personal observations which I can bring into it, however.

I’ve heard at least two people claim that Dr. Gates was in the wrong.  One of them, a white man, began by describing the black Harvard professor as “uppity”.  People like that should be called on their bullshit before any serious debate is attempted.  A second, a black man, explained it away simply as this: if you yell at a cop, he’s going to arrest you – period.  That’s a valid point.  Unfortunately, the point may be that we are already living in a police state – a state where disagreement with a police officer, regardless of any other details involved, may be punished as a crime.

I have been in situations where police willfully disregarded laws to get people off the street – namely, anti-war marches.  The strategy is known: corral known figures in the movement early on, before the march starts; charge them with anything that’s remotely close.  If you can’t stretch the law that far, use moles and provocateurs.  When they insist on showing up to march anyway, arrest everyone in a radius for “disturbing the peace” or “resisting arrest” or “disorderly”.  The charges won’t stick, but they aren’t meant to – they’re just meant to detain you and keep you from doing what you came for.  The City Council will call the Police Chief to the floor in about three weeks and tell him how naughty he is for doing that, and he goes back to his office, and he does it again the next time.  It’s a known and accepted practice in practically every city police department around the globe.

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that’s what happened here: Officer Crowley just reached into the books, plunked his finger down, and figured Dr. Gates was guilty of that just to get him to shut up.  That’s illegal, by the way, just as much as it is when they do it to peaceful protesters…but of course, if your basis for what’s illegal is defined as “disagreeing with me”, then there’s little you don’t feel empowered to do.

Dr. Gates does have one other point: in the past, and to this day in some areas, tactics such as these were employed disproportionately against blacks, particularly black men, to reinforce their “place” in white-led society.  It was, and is, profiling.  Yes, I’m aware that everyone profiles, and I’m aware that much of modern law enforcement relies on it.  There is a right way to do it and a wrong way.  The way it has been done against black men in the past is the wrong way, and if it was done here, that is also wrong.

I will say I used to have a great deal of respect for the police, and still do – for certain examples of the breed.  For the most part, I don’t usually trust them; I don’t think they necessarily have the interests of all the public in mind as an organization.  As a member of the public, I’ve seen too many examples to the contrary, up to and including those who are simply criminals with badges so they can’t be (easily) arrested.

I’m aware they have a difficult job and are underpaid – frankly, I think one way to change things would be to increase the pay of police officers across the board.  Make the job attract the best and brightest, who’ll have a better idea how to handle the public.  (I’ve seen first-hand examples of those who’ve joined that are far below this standard; many failed in other jobs before joining.)

Whatever the deal, we need to be clear that the standard being applied in this case – directly, by the officer and by other officers around the country – cannot stand.  Law officers must carry out the law – not a code of vendetta underscored by a thin blue line.