May

17

On a message board recently, actually on a couple of them, I have seen threads about (US) border guards doing things like downloading content from peoples’ computers.

The posts have been running generally against this, with people citing all kinds of things about legalities and the constitution, some even suggesting that the population should resist this.

An article on a popular blog is waggishly critical of government review of private emails - yours, mine and everybody’s - and again, the comments run almost unanimously against.

What makes this interesting is that for the most part, these appear to be comments made by Americans.

But what does it mean, really? Do I, does anyone, really take as an indication that the American public is on the verge of rising up and exercising their right to change their government? Or, more aptly in the current situation, establish one?

Frankly, no. The message boards in question are inhabited almost exclusively by hard-core nerds, not at all representative of the population as a whole, and while this is a population sector almost certainly more “educated” and “informed” than the average American, in this case that average American, about whom we are always reading studies that show that he can’t find the United States on a blank map, much less any of the countries the United States is currently invading and occupying, might be a little better informed than the nerd elite on the implications and certainly the cultural realities of certain issues.

That “average American” is much more likely than his elite computer nerd brother to argue that anybody who is so anxious to keep secrets from the government in the name of privacy must have something to hide, and that he does not have anything to hide, and is glad that his leaders are protecting him and his family from all the people who hate Americans, and proud to be able to do his part by giving Uncle Sam carte blanche to view, even confiscate anything on his laptop or in his home, because there is a lot of anti-American sentiment out there, and the US is at war on terror.

While there may have been some discussion in the UN on just what “terrorism” means, it is pretty well established, both in the mind of our average American and in actual Washington-mandated practice, that “terrorism” is defined as opposition or resistance to US policies.

So when I read all these passionate declarations of opposition and language that could be interpreted as encouraging - or, as it would be called by Washington - “inciting” people to “resist” an element of America’s “war on terror,” while I am always glad to see people engaging in independent thought, my overriding reaction is not to leap up and shout “Yes! Revolution is just around the corner!”

Rather, I am plagued with a low-grade, vague uneasiness, worried that one of these sincere and independent-thinking folks might actually do it - might actually stand there at some airport and tell the operative that no, he may not download the contents of his computer, at least not without due process, and keep on citing those laws and consitutution bits all the way to his indefinite detention cell.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts that few, if any of the people who express opposition to the “government” in Washington reading the emails they send to their sweethearts, or downloading whatever private information and binary property may reside on the hard drives of their laptops, would profess to oppose the war on terror. I bet most of them “support the troops” even if they don’t “support the war” and I would probably be surprised to learn how many of them do “support the war.”

It is almost certain that none of them considers him or herself to be “on the side of the terrorists,” most of them probably believe the Legend of Osama with the same conviction that they believe the names on their own birth certificates, many of them have probably either “served their country” or are very proud of family members who have participated or are currently part of, US invasions of this or that far-flung land.

But the dudes working that airport gig are not, I don’t think, going to take all that into consideration. Nor are the dudes in Washington, one or more of whom will almost certainly be contacted at some point, if and when family and friends are ever apprised of their loved ones detention.

In all the discussions, only a few messages expressed support for Washington’s decrees. And one did not really express either support or opposition, but stated briefly that it would be prudent to think carefully before positioning oneself as an opponent of the war on terror - especially those who have children that they would not wish to see interrogated.

That reminded me of a post on another blog, a few years ago, about the seizure and interrogation by the CIA or some Washington-based alphabet soup of the seven and nine year old sons of a foreign national that the US considered to be an enemy of the war on terror.

To this day, no one knows what ever happened to whatever may have been left of those two little boys. While bits of the story did leak into some US media, it was not the kind of story that the average American really wants to hear more about, not the kind of story that advertisers and sponsors are really eager to see more of, and if you asked most of those average Americans today, they will tell you that none of that ever really happened, that it was all just terrorist propaganda, and even if it were true, the only reason that whichever media outlet mentioned it only did so because they wanted to make America look bad.

Some non-US media covered the story in more detail. The father was shown videos of his children being “interrogated,” and suffered a heart attack. The physicians who are charged with the duty of keeping “detainees” alive for further interrogation were unable, in this case, to obtain success, and the father perished. The little boys, no one knows.

Naturally, as far as the average American, and I would speculate, the vast majority of those computer geeks who advocate resisting the seizure of the contents of their hard drives and the reading of their emails, that or anything else that appears in non-US media is “not reliable,” because only US media can be counted on to tell the truth, especially when it comes to stories about things like that, because there is so much anti-American sentiment out there.

That incident is certainly not unique, the practice of “interrogating” family members, especially children, has been popular for millennia. The Romans did it, the Mongols did it, so did the Persians and so do the Americans.

The purpose of “interrogation” is not to obtain information. Removing for a moment, any and all questions of morality, every study ever done on the subject has consistently proven that any “information” thus obtained is worthless, as people will say absolutely anything if they believe that it will cause the “interrogation” of themselves or a loved one to cease.

And of course in the case of the “war on terror,” there is no “information,” at least in the sense that the popular TV shows and politicians would use the term, but that is irrelevant.

The real purpose is to send a message to those who stand outside the “facility,” and in that regard, it is most effective.

The reason that the message has not reached those computer nerds has to do, in my opinion, with the fact that most of those who have been seized since the US began its war on terror, are not of the US mainstream demographic.

And even among those sectors among whom it is impossible to find anyone who does not know of someone who was either detained, or simply disappeared one day, it is not a frequent topic of conversation.

Because the message has reached those folks. And they are not about to engage with you in small talk about their neighbor or their cousin having been decreed to be an opponent of the war on terror, because how do they know whether you might be trying to obtain some information from them about the whereabouts of his loved ones? Or whether you might be one of those loved ones, someone the detainee would not want to see interrogated, someone who might help get the message out - the message that opposing or resisting the “war on terror” is not without its consequences.

So while on the one hand, I applaud the feisty spirit of those internet posters who are outraged at this or that regime decree, I would also counsel them to think carefully, very carefully, about what they are saying, and how well it fits in with their larger belief system.

Are they really intending to cast their lot with the Resistance? Have they thought it all out, made their decision with eyes wide open, aware of all the implicatons thereof, aligned themselves with other like-minded individuals, made plans to provide for the safety of their dependents?

I am certain that none of them has done any of those things, because if they had, it is very unlikely that they would be posting on message boards that other impressionable and passionate young people should “resist” having their emails read or the contents of their computers downloaded at airports.

May

16

With the whole “Lauren, Lo and Audrina get a house” storyline, either the producers totally dropped the ball or they have decided, probably wisely, to abandon even the pretense of illusion that this show is anything but “scripted.”

First we have the scene in the restaurant, when Lauren and Lo are talking about it all, then Audrina shows up, and is invited to join them as a matter of course. No indication that Lo is anything but fine with that.

But then for some mysterious reason that is never explained, Audrina is ensconced into the guest house - even though there are 3 bedrooms in the main house. Why? (Several episodes later, Audrina does say some things about being a very private person, but this is after all the drama has already started, and where was all this private personhood when she lived with Lauren?)

Lo, who has coexisted peacefully with Audrina just fine all this time, and we supposed considered her a friend, as soon as they get into the house, starts treating Audrina like a chunk of putrid roadkill. But we are not shown any events that would have caused Lo to be mad at Audrina, nor does she ever say she is. The most popular view I see expressed on the internets is that Lo feels somehow “threatened” by Lauren’s friendship with Audrina. Um, since when?

Lauren and Lo have been friends since they were what, two or twelve or something, and it is only NOW that Lo all of a sudden feels threatened? By a girl Lauren has known for a year or two?

In fact, the whole Lo character appears to have undergone a major rewrite.

YesterLo was this bright, sunny presence, this whimsical and friendly girl who sometimes made you wonder why in the world the show was not about her instead of Lauren, whose totality and essence was best summed up by a young man named Gawin, writing about his experience playing a one-time “bit part” on the show: “She was odorless.”
Technically, he was responding to a question about how Lauren smelled, but seldom has a three-word sentence said so much so well.

This whole “girls get a house” thing is just so glaringly obviously (if ineptly) constructed to launch a whole new drama source - Lo versus Audrina!

There are so many thousands of reasons why this is stupid, even I am not going to enumerate them all, but let’s just start with this.

If Lauren really were put in a position where she had to “choose between Lo and Audrina,” well, that is sort of a non-starter. Obviously Lo is like her oldest and dearest childhood friend, and Audrina is a girl to whom she was first introduced after she had left Laguna and moved to L.A. And just as an added fillip, it was the Evil Heidi who introduced them!

Next, we can move on to the fact that it is extremely unlikely that anybody’s oldest and dearest childhood friend - yours, mine or Lauren’s, is going to put you in that kind of position, ask you to “choose.” People who do things like that are not your friends. They are Spencer Pratt.

So essentially the producers are now asking us to believe that Lo has swallowed some sort of personality-altering potion, which has made her not only insecure, but mean and nasty and a practitioner of the SpencerPratterian doctrine of friendship.

Interestingly, Lauren’s complete and unquestioning acceptance of Lo’s transformation, and her utter inability to address the tension and issues arising therefrom with even the aplomb and people skills one would expect from a sixteen year old is met with complete and unquestioning acceptance by us.

THAT is most sadly totally in character for the odorless Lauren, who continues to dwell in a sort of fog of generalized vagueness that some of the more naive among us mistakenly mistook for thoughtfulness in the first season or two of Laguna.

And as I posted in a comment somewhere under some nick or other, it is not surprising that someone whose key adolescent-to-young adult years have been spent followed around by a camera crew is going to have some developmental impact, and we all hope that is the worst of it. Lauren has, for all intents and purposes, been raised in a 21st century Skinner box. She is an experiment, a “poor hamster,” a term coined by a poster whose name nor location I cannot recall as an appellation for any and all “reality show participants.”

I’m ashamed I can’t give props to the originator, it is brilliant, and immediately became part of my everyday vocabulary, and you will probably see it used here with regularity.

I guess that what with the Speidi juggernaut changing the face of American pop culture, not to mention the talk show circuit - and even the fancy soirees of political bosses - the Hills producers have been obliged to confront the awful possibility that Heidi might not re-up when contract negotiation day rolls around (and when that might be, I have no idea) or even what would have been unthinkable and beyond absurd just a year or two ago - that some entity or other might even be willing to put up the bucks to BUY the rest of whatever time she has left, and the poor Hills would be bereft of its reliable old dramafest standby: the Heidi-Lauren feud.

I am speculating on this only because it just seems to smack of a fit of crazed desperation on the part of some functionary somewhere, the idea that this whole “Lo versus Audrina” house thing could possibly take the place of Speidi.

And I can’t help but feel sorry for the thousands of young girls who Believe, for whom Lauren and the other Hills tribeswomen really are role models, and for whom the show really does represent a slice of reality as lived by everyday girls just like them who happen to be lucky enough to reside in the SoCal enclaves.

At least the ordinariness is real. But that will be a whole nother post!

May

14

It would be hard for me to add much to Lucinda’s famous piece, aside from thanking her for writing it, for saying it, and empowering me, and I suspect, others, to say it.

I do not support the troops, either, Lucinda. I support the Iraqi Resistance.

I can’t match her eloquence, but I can say that the reason I do not support the troops because I do not support invasion, occupation, crimes against humanity, atrocities, or human rights violations in any way, shape or form, which doesn’t sound like such a controversial opinion until you make it clear that you do not support these things no matter who does them. And “no matter who” includes the United States and Israel.

That is the kind of thing that, while it may not be technically illegal to say in the United States - well, let me qualify that. I am sure that there are legal experts who could argue that expressing such a view would be protected under the First Amendment, and those who would argue that it would not.

But the constitution has, in reality, become more of an historic statement of ideals than a legal operating system, and there are plenty of folks being “interrogated” in various US “facilities” here and there around the world, to remind us of that.

And then there is the Patriot Act, which pretty much trumps the constitution anyway.

It is not likely that even the long, long arm of the Washington regime is going to spend the resources to come and seize a blogger who engages in a verbal violation of the Patriot Act, but it would still be a bit sketchy, I think, to express some views on a US server, especially an ad-supported one, because there you get into the business of business, which, in the US, trumps everything.

The people who own the blogging service might even, in their hearts, agree with you, but they also have to make a living, so it is more of a courtesy issue, in my view, to commit one’s Patriot Act violations on servers that reside outside the US.

Why should you put the blog server owner in the position of having to spend time calming down his advertisers, possibly even feeling bad about having to scrap your blog, whether he agrees with you or not.

But back to the main issue. Although I try to avoid offline discussions of politics, as a matter of courtesy as well as security, sometimes it’s impossible not to, and one of the things most often gasped at someone who does not “support the troops” is “but they are AMERICANS!”

Yes, and there are thousands of rapists, murderers, and child predators who are also Americans, and I do not support them either.

The idea of opposition to an action, to a behavior, is, in American culture, and possibly in some others, very deeply tied to the actor.

Selective enforcement of laws ranging from ordinances pertaining to vagrancy to assault to drunk driving has traditionally been condoned, expected, even seen as desirable by the mainstream demographic, and I think that has just sort of ballooned out and blossomed into a cultural norm that fails to see the inconsistency in supporting individuals who choose to participate in the invasion of another country, and individuals who choose to participate in the invasion of a lovely suburban home.

Lucinda does a great job of articulating this unintended failure to accord these “troops” even the most basic level of respect as human beings, when she makes reference to the arguments that they are manipulated by recruiters, or are unsophisticated and callow youths who wish to be able to purchase health care, or attend a technical school.

They are still human beings, still able to make their own choices, based on their own moral standards, their own ideas of right and wrong, and to imply that they are some sort of sub-species devoid of free will, would not, if it were true, be especially comforting to those who do believe that they are “over there defending our freedom.”

Which brings me to the subject of belief. I try to respect all beliefs, even those I don’t share, but I do object to ways of expressing those beliefs that do harm to others.

For example, someone may believe that a particular ethnic group is in whatever way undesirable, and I would be opposed to obliging that person to go and visit people of that group, or invite them to their parties.

However, my respect for their belief would not extend to agreement with their going up to people from that group and punching them in the nose. That was in essence the purpose of the Civil Rights Act in the US, which made some dramatic cosmetic changes to racial apartheid, and has even, in some cases, been instrumental in more substantial ways.

Hey, can I digress, or what?

For many people, I think that “defending our freedom” belief is more than just being a sheeple. To NOT believe that would be devastating. It would mean that much that they have been taught is a lie. That is a whole handful of bitter pills to swallow, for people who are not really evil, nor are they stupid.

Stupidity and ignorance are very different things, and going back again to US culture, ignorance of certain things is a point of pride.

The result is millions of people who have never studied either history or current events from a non-US perspective, non-US sources, and most will tell you that this is because the American newspapers, the American textbooks, are better. That, they believe is where truth can be found. Foreign books, foreign news outlets, are not to be trusted. Some of them are, they will tell you with all sincerity, are “anti-American.”

Everyone should, they will go on to tell you, support the troops because they are in danger. They are away from home, in a place where a lot of people are anti-American. To turn the idea around, and imagine how it would be if another country invaded the US, is just not something they can do.

No one would invade the US, they will chuckle, because that country would be destroyed. The US has the best weaponry in the world and more of it! They perceive this as a good thing, as something that protects them from all that anti-American sentiment.

If you persist in trying to have your conversation, it will be kind of like trying to explain the internet to someone from a small isolated Central American village that does not now and has never had electricity. There is just no hook there to hang the concept!

To sum up, if, like me, you do not support the troops, my advice is that you do not attempt to persuade your friends and family to change their views.

You will create situations that are beyond unpleasant, and you could put yourself, even them, in danger. While it is not exactly accurate to call it a “war,” since that term would imply at least something resembling parity, you are, like me, nevertheless on the “other side,” just as you would be in the case of a home invasion by a gang of local street criminals, should you take the part of the homeowners.

Start a blog here on Baywords. And you are more than welcome to come comment here.

And whatever offline activities find you, and they will, keep online and offline 100% and totally unconnectible and separate.

May

13

Well that was quick! Obviously, I should have thought this through a bit more, but here I am, gazing into that unforgiving abyss that is The Blank Page, and not even the tiniest scrap of Something Prepared.

First posts are so important, too. Like first impressions. Actually, they are first impressions. And we should always try our best to make a good first impression. Best foot forward and all. Preparation is key.

So there it goes, off into the wind like a stray duck feather in the spring breeze. My one shot at impressing you.

Which is sort of reassuring, when I think about it. Now I don’t have to worry about impressing you. I can just enjoy this generous gift bestowed upon me by the nice Baywords people, and just share my thoughts.

Hmm, let’s see. Thoughts.

Naturally, whenever the subject of thoughts comes up, the first thing I think of is Heidi and Spencer. Or Speidi, since I used “is.” I think of Speidi, because what better represents the state of thoughts in the US today?

And it occurred to me, and I probably posted something to this effect on someboard somewhere, with a nick I have already forgotten, which is something I tend to do, in the interest of full disclosure, but anyway, it occurred to me, that Speidi owes all its fame and fortune to Lauren’s willful and deliberate failure to produce a sex tape.

Think about this with me. If there really were a sex tape, would Speidi’s name be known? Would MSNBC and ilk be inviting them to the most prestigious and trashiest politician soirees? Would they now walk the golden trail that is the talk show circuit?

No, of course not, because if there were a sex tape, then the public’s attention would be firmly riveted to IT! That would be the Big Story, and nobody except avid viewers of that insipid re-enacted hybrid of reality TV and the Tropical Fish Channel would have the slightest idea who Heidi or Spencer are, Speidi is, whatever, nor would they care.

So all the hoopla, every carriage ride and trip to Kitson, every aspect of the Speidi-infested world in which we live and struggle daily to watch television, is Lauren’s fault.

Lauren did this to us on purpose.



 

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