The Immorality of voting...and more
A fundraiser for this site and for ifeminists: the audio of the 46-minute lecture "The Immorality of Voting" (mp3) given at the University of Wisconsin at Madison last month. The talk also covers practical and political reasons that underlie nonvoting. If you enjoy or benefit from the presentation, please make a paypal donation at the button on the upper left-hand corner of this site. Permission is not granted to reproduce any of the material in any manner; should you wish to do so, please contact wendy AT wendymcelroy DOT com. Similarly, should you wish to donate by mail, please email.
Friday 09 May 2008
Heads-up on Bureaucrash.com
Scott M. passes on the following heads-up to readers of this blog (thanks Scott!):
I was surprised this morning to receive from bureaucrash.com what claimed to be an update bulletin for their subscribers, in the in-box of the email account I use mainly for on-line commerce (so that any spam that results from a jerk who sells my address gets concentrated there, and not sent to any account I use for other correspondence). My surprise was because I haven't visited bureaucrash (which iirc is a spin-off of sorts from the old freemarket.net organization) in years, and to my best recall, I have never subscribed to any mailings from it, nor have I ever received such a bulletin previously. So, out of 'satiable curiosity, I clicked on a link (all of the links in this bulletin were crafted to look like legitimate topics on the subject of freedom and liberty) and visited the site. The article linked to was nothing but the typical brain-dead spammy posting of the type with which all of us are too familiar - more-or-less nonsense prose with links to commercial content more-or-less randomly interspersed. In this case the content seemed to be links to commercial gay porn. I clicked on several other bulletin links, and all seemed to be the same (all were by an author who identified himself as "josh"). Thinking that someone had impersonated the bureaucrash brand, I did a whois on that domain name and some close variants. Bureaucrash.org does not exist. Bureaucrash.com and .net are registered through godaddy to "The Bureaucrash Foundation" and those registrations have been continuous from 2000 to date. Googling on that name in turn produces hits that refer to thebureaucrashfoundation.net, however, there is no page at that site and a whois seems to come up empty. It appears that a rogue impersonation of the brand is ruled out. I do not know whether Bureaucrash has been bought and converted to yet another source of imbecilic and worthless content or not (nor do I much care - I won't be visiting them again). I do know that I regard the kind of unsolicited mailing and (especially) misrepresentation of content to be reprehensible and insulting. I thought that you might want to pass this along so that your readers know what to expect from this organization currently.
Update from Brad: it's not clear from this whether the domain has been hijacked, or if it's just that someone has been forging emails using bureaucrash.com as the return address. The latter is trivially easy to do, and I've seen a sudden upsurge in this in just the last two weeks. Suddenly we began getting a tremendous number of email bounces returned to my ifeminists.net address, because this was listed as the "From:" address in the spam. Anyone can do this to any email, and no one has come up with a practical way to prevent it. Unless you examine the headers of the email, there's no way to know if this was actually sent from a bureaucrash account, or just from some low-life spammer who has trolled the Internet for "live" email addresses he can use as his phony identity.
Today's featured addition to the site returns me to the rollicking days of political activism in Los Angeles when John Dentinger and I partnered up to battle a pro-censorship, anti-pornography ordinance and to deflate (sometimes through open mockery) the arguments used to advance the measure: Is Censorship a Civil Right? As a companion piece to John's commentary, I recommend my book review of In Harm's Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings ed. by Catharine A. MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin. The review offers my view of the same event described by John (the first L.A. County anti-porn hearing) as well as the perspective of MacKinnon and Dworkin. Quite a contrast.
For readers who are unfamiliar with my friend...John Dentinger was a libertarian and gay rights activist with the most cutting sense of humor I've ever encountered. On March 19, 1992, John Dentinger died of AIDS at the age of 39...and I still miss him. Some years ago I established a website (johndentinger.com) to preserve some of his writings; unfortunately, many of them addressed current events in a specific city or county and, so, had limited time value. I highly recommend his memoirs, written as he was dying: Dancing on a Cliff: Memoirs and Memories
Oh...apropos his cutting sense of humor, you will find that John's style in describing his opponents is quite different than my own. For example consider the following excerpts from the featured article: For some years now, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, the Laurel and Hardy of the feminist left, have been pushing the oxymoron of a "civil rights anti-pornography" ordinance. Dworkin has also written that it is acceptable for women to have sex with men as long as the man's penis isn't erect -- this although, given her unkemptness and corpulence, her only chance of impalement by anything long and hard would be in an encounter with the harpoon of a nearsighted Eskimo. Just as a conversational opener [with MacKinnon], I commented that if she were looking for a zingy legal issue, how about educational malpractice? Certainly there were precedents to be made there. She did not warm to the subject. Perhaps she supposed it might apply to professors of constitutional law whose ordinances ran afoul of the First Amendment -- though heaven knows why she might read that into my innocent comment.
Many of the commentators I read have been pointing out for years that the government fudges their reported numbers -- inflation, unemployment, GDP -- to make the economy look better. Now it seems the "major" media are finally catching on, as indicated by this newspaper article:
Ever since the 1960s, Washington has gulled its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics, the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured.
...The truth, though it would not exactly set Americans free, would at least open a window to wider economic and political understanding. Readers should ask themselves how much angrier the electorate might be if the media, over the past five years, had been citing 8 percent unemployment (instead of 5 percent), 5 percent inflation (instead of 2 percent), and average annual growth in the 1 percent range (instead of the 3-4 percent range).
If you want to see how, bit by little bit, all of these statistics got corrupted -- a phenomenon which has now been dubbed "Pollyanna Creep" -- you'll want to read the whole article.
Good Thursday morning! Today's featured additions to this site are both from the category "Individualist Anarchism -- History". Click on articles in the toolbar at the top of the page or click on the following links to access the additions. (BTW, these are far from the only new arrivals; they are merely the ones I am featuring. So...explore!)
2) Partial autobiography of Benjamin Tucker. The Life of Benjamin R. Tucker, Disclosed by Himself In the Principality of Monaco At the age of 74. I transcribed the following from a microfilm of pages that were handwritten by Tucker and which now reside in the archives of the New York Public Library. My apology for spelling or transcription errors that occurred because of my inability to discern a particular word. Unfortunately, the autobiography was never finished (by Tucker) and it ends abruptly just at the point when his political radicallism was being born -- that is, around the time when I was chomping at the bit for more. Also...the following transcript is a labor of love, done in stolen spare hours, and made available for free. As a form of payment, however, I do ask that you credit this site if/when you distribute the autobiography. Enjoy!
Despite releasing a few more facts on Friday about a controversial new tool for police officers, Microsoft has now vowed to stay mum on the "exact methods" used by COFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor), as well as about what kinds of passwords -- OS or network, for example -- COFEE might be able to crack.
Microsoft isn't saying what forensic tools are included in COFEE, if any of those tools are availble elsewhere, or if any of them exploit "backdoors" in Windows. All we know is it's designed to "access information on a live Windows system" and it's been distributed (so far) to 2,000 police around the globe.
(A hat tip to some friends who would probably prefer to remain anonymous.)
I was pleasantly surprised to read this post on O'Reilly Media's blog. One author had expressed concern about an electronic copy of his book appearing on peer-to-peer file-sharing sites, and he got these replies:
Fantastic! There's absolutely nothing you can do about it, and unless you see sales dipping off then I don't think there's anything you *should* do about it. [The books in question] work really well as books, so at best the torrents act as advertisements for the superior print product (not often you can say that with a straight face). At worst most of your downloads are going to people who wouldn't have bought the book at cover price and who will, if they enjoy it, rave about it to others.
...
Yup - seeing your books / magazines on Pirate Bay is always a good thing - You're current, you're interesting, if you're lucky your content transforms in to advertising for other things - for Make, the magazines become a campaign for our kits and events.
I can attest to this. When I was trying to find a copy of the out-of-print Absolute OpenBSD, I was greatly relieved to find a site where I could download it in PDF form. But I kept searching, and eventually I found a bookseller who could sell me a hardcopy. (I found it new through chapters.ca, but had that failed I would have searched abebooks.com.)
And recently I had to undertake a Tcl project on short notice. It would be a two-hour drive to the nearest bookstore that might have a book on Tcl, so I searched on-line to find a book I could download. Having done so -- and having learned enough about Tcl to know that it met my needs -- I then proceeded to order a printed Tcl book. (O'Reilly's Tcl/Tk in a Nutshell, I'm happy to report.)
Books which are out of print, books which can't be delivered quickly, books which need to be "test driven" before purchase -- there are lots of good reasons to download a book, and many of them do not impact sales. Sure, there are a few "freeloaders" out there who will never pay a dime. But most of us prefer the convenience or feel of a paper book, to the nuisance of a video display that somehow never quite fits a page in the screen while still showing a readable font.
Today's featured addition to the site: click on articles on the toolbar up top. A menu will pop down and, then, click on "Book and Movie Reviews". Or cheat...and just click on this link to go directly to the category. Of the dozen or so reviews within this archive-in-process, my favorite one is of the German movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days; the most controversial one is probably of the book "Civilizing Women"; and the one I had the most fun writing was a review of the movie The Incredibles.
Good discussion, Wendy.Brings to mind this from Lysander Spooner -
The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes- a large class, no doubt--each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is a “free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,” and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.
I am tackling the task of archiving my work...finally!. You will find my writing (archive-in-progress) by clicking on the articles button in the top tool bar of the site. A menu will drop down from which you can choose the area that interests you. Every day, I will feature a category or an article that has been added. Today...I direct you to the category "Individualist Anarchism -- History" in which two items are currently posted: a lengthy essay on William Lloyd Garrison and the Anti-Slavery Movement; and, an article about 19th century libertarianism's attitude toward labor entitled "In Praise of the Working Man." Thanks for your interest.
Funny that I should mention the RIAA, and the next day this appears on UserFriendly. (Details here.)
Ted Rall's take on Domestic Violence is something you'll want to keep in mind as you head to the voting booth. If in fact a vote is held; Hillary-math may make it irrelevant.
In his book "Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents" (1770), the British philosopher Edmund Burke wrote, "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one…" This sentiment has survived as "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
Why do good men do nothing in the face of evil, especially when evil aggressively invades their lives?
Some of you may still be using old bookmarks for this site, with the "zetetics.com/mac" domain name. Please change those to "wendymcelroy.com". We are closing the "zetetics" domain name, and while that domain will be redirected to this one for a while, it may disappear without notice.
Apologies to those who attempted to use the old domain name this weekend. I made a small change which broke the redirection. It should be fixed now.
A reader from South Africa asks, Why don't you allow readers to comment on your blog? I enjoyed reading this article (The post "I Miss Prostitutes" below.) and I would have been interested to read people's reactions to it. I certainly support your views about authority.
I've used illegal substances in the past and luckily managed to never get caught with anything incriminating on me, but I've had a number of close shaves that could have seriously ruined my life if I had been caught. Otherwise there is nothing wrong with me or what I'm doing. I'm not a criminal in any shape or form, except for those times that I have been in possession. Despite having used crack cocaine, I've never participated in the crime that so many people believe is an inevitable consequence of using crack. I've never mugged anyone, even when I've had no money to buy my drugs. When I did not have the means, I did something else with myself. I didn't live solely for the pleasure of using drugs.
I've debated whether to allow comments and I'm not ruling out that option. Frankly, I value feedback, even negative comments, as long as they are civil. The decision to turn comments OFF was made solely because of the severe and constant harassment I was receiving from some of men's rights activists from one specific forum. BTW, as a general statement the men's rights movement deserves praise and encouragement, not blame. But perhaps the harassment is in the past...and the past is not a structure in which I wish to dwell. Brad and I will talk today about whether to turn comments ON or not.
UPDATE: The answer is NOT. The main reason: another site with which Brad is affiliated was recently deluged by spam comments -- e.g. ads for Viagra and porn links -- which means turning comments on here might well require daily diligence to keep clean. Neither of us have the time. As an alternative, I am going to start cross-posting the potentially controversial items on the forum that is associated with this blog and, then, Ill post a link here to point to where discussion/comments can occur. (Note: forum membership is required to participate.) The BB is far easier to monitor for spam or other abuse; moreover, Brad is doing so already and, so, it doesn't add to his load.
Click here to discuss "I Miss Prostitutes" and/or the reader's comment.
Because I read the news voraciously, I often come across 'local' items like the following which never receive national exposure. In isolation, the stories have little importance but when I encounter the same basic story over and over again, I begin to view each one as a microcosm of a widespread phenomenon. The following item is part of the rot, of the corruption that happens in cities and counties across North America. ABC 13 out of Reno, Nevada reports,
A nonprofit agency that trains juvenile and family court judges has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a complaint by the U.S. Department of Justice that it fraudulently obtained grants and used the money to hire ghost workers and employees' spouses. Under the settlement, the Reno-based National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges does not admit wrongdoing. In a related matter, Serena Hulbert, a special projects manager at the council who was fired after questioning the group's billing practices, filed a separate lawsuit last week saying she was wrongfully terminated for questioning the bogus grant transactions. The council based on the University of Nevada, Reno campus was founded in 1937 by a group of judges who wanted to improve the nation's juvenile and family courts.
The Reno Gazette Journal provides additional detail,
The organization did not admit wrongdoing. However, the settlement leaves open the possibility of criminal action. Natalie Collins, spokeswoman for the Nevada U.S. attorney's office, declined to say whether criminal charges would be sought. Hulbert's lawyer, Mark Thierman, said although the organization was ordered to pay $300,000, the government investigation found $2.4 million in misused funds. He said he hoped federal prosecutors would follow-up with a criminal case.
Whatever the intentions of those who created the family court system, the institution has become a cash-cow bureaucracy that harms children/families and rewards corruption. It is rotted to the core and should be dismantled with a sledge hammer.
I had to laugh at this photo, showing the laptop that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used to make a presentation. At least he hid it behind a big "Microsoft" sign.
(In fairness, it's possible that the laptop was provided by the venue. In which case I admire them for their chutzpah.)
