the NED and the Cooties Effect, Part 2: the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and the Albert Einstein Institute

In November, I linked to The Cooties Effect by Stephen Zunes. He wrote about the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) being accused of working with the CIA. The Albert Einstein Institute faced similar charges in George Ciccariello-Maher's Einstein Turns in His Grave. Zunes refuted them in Attacks on Gene Sharp and Albert Einstein Institution Unwarranted, and concluded:

Activists from groups ranging from the Fellowship of Reconciliation to Code Pink to the Brown Berets – as well as such radical scholars as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Paul Ortiz – are signing onto an open letter in support of Gene Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution.

That's at Open Letter in Support of Gene Sharp and Strategic Nonviolent Action, which includes:

As with similar false charges which have recently appeared regarding the work of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), the Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), and similar groups, critics confuse the Albert Einstein Institution’s willingness to provide generic information on the history and dynamics of strategic nonviolent action with nefarious efforts by the U.S. government to undermine foreign governments critical of U.S. hegemonic goals and neo-liberal economic policies.

I'm glad that ICNC and the Albert Einstein Institute appear to be what they seem to be. I admire their supporters greatly. I want to say, "Case closed." And yet, a few things still nag at me. From a response to Zunes, Debate on the Albert Einstein Institution and its Involvement in Venezuela:

How, we might ask, did it come to pass that the AEI consulted only with the anti-Chávez opposition, which has historically been on the side of violent coups and massacres? How could the institution have judged so erroneously the “distribution of rights and wrongs” in Venezuela, in violation of its own consultation policy?

Maybe that was just bad luck. Coincidences happen. Yet this is true:

...the AEI fits perfectly into the new imperial strategy of the US, perhaps best summarized in the much-vaunted revision by General Petraeus of the US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which argues pointedly that “some of the best weapons… do not shoot” (1-27). As a result, it should be of no surprise that violent organizations like the Venezuelan exile group ORVEX--who have in the past called for Chávez’s assassination and advocated bombing the Caracas Metro--are now advocating a “nonviolent” strategy and celebrating the work of Gene Sharp.

I'm glad to give AEI and ICNC the benefit of the doubt, but I can't eliminate the doubt yet because of something Zunes wrote in Attacks on Gene Sharp and Albert Einstein Institution Unwarranted:

This racist attitude that the peoples of non-Western societies are incapable of deciding on their own to resist illegitimate authority without some Western scholar telling them to do so has been most dramatically highlighted by French Marxist Thierry Meyssan. In his article “The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA,” he insists that Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution were personally responsible for the 1991 Lithuanian independence struggle against the Soviet Union; the 2000 student-led pro-democracy movement that ousted Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia; the 2003 Rose Revolution that forced out Georgian leader Eduard Shevardnadze; and, the 2004 Orange Revolution that forced the revote on the rigged national election in Ukraine. He also credits (or, more accurately, blames) Gene Sharp for personally playing a key role in uniting the Tibetan opposition under the Dalai Lama, as well as forming the Burmese Democratic Alliance, the Taiwanese Progressive Democratic Party, and a dissident wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization that Sharp supposedly trained secretly in the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.

I've come to be suspicious whenever anyone says "racist." In this case, Zunes is ignoring something he should be the first to admit: The CIA's successes in places like Guatemala and Iran came from a combination of propaganda and selective funding designed to direct "peoples of non-Western societies." When it comes to playing on poverty and ignorance, no one is better than the CIA and the NED. Zunes has to know that. He also must know that no matter how innocent Gene Sharp or AEI or ICNC or he, himself, may be, the CIA and the NED would gladly use them all in the Great Game. When the only goal is to win, whether you win with allies or dupes is irrelevant.

From the comments on this post at its original location:

Jack DuVall	Submitted on 2009/03/31 at 9:27pm I’m glad to be able to add a few words here, in reply to Will’s lingering concern about my organization’s role in transferring knowledge about nonviolent struggle to activists in countries around the world (Venezuela being one of about 70 such countries). On another page on this blog, Will quotes Thomas Paine: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” As a collateral descendant of Thomas Paine, I am happy to embrace that sentiment as my own. Any good that the ICNC does is confined to the content of the documentaries, books, articles, and workshop curricula that we have disseminated, because sharing that content is all we do. (You can ask for and we will send you any or all of these materials.) We don’t take money or guidance and have never met with anyone from the CIA, and all our money comes from a single family foundation, as our internet-posted IRS returns attest. I can’t speak for AEI, but just as we’ve been criticized by supporters of Hugo Chavez for sending our materials to Venezuelan activists in response to their requests, we’ve been criticized from the other side of the ideological spectrum for having transferred knowledge to Palestinian, Sahrawi and Egyptian activists resisting governments supported by the U.S. For us, it’s simple: We want to universalize easy access to the best ideas and strategic practices from all the nonviolent movements and campaigns of the past, because what Gandhi did, what the people power movement did in the Philippines, what Czechs and Slovaks did in the Velvet Revolution, and what African-Americans, Poles, South Africans, Salvadorans, Mongolians, Serbs and scores of other peoples have done to liberate themselves really must be shared with the entire world. My own view is that once this knowledge is everywhere, the days of oppression, injustice and political violence anywhere will be numbered. I'm glad to be able to add a few words here, in reply to Will's lingering concern about my organization's role in transferring knowledge about nonviolent struggle to activists in countries around the world (Venezuela being one of about 70 such countries). On another page on this blog, Will quotes Thomas Paine: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.” As a collateral descendant of Thomas Paine, I am happy to embrace that sentiment as my own. Any good that the ICNC does is confined to the content of the documentaries, books, articles, and workshop curricula that we have disseminated, because sharing that content is all we do. (You can ask for and we will send you any or all of these materials.) We don't take money or guidance and have never met with anyone from the CIA, and all our money comes from a single family foundation, as our internet-posted IRS returns attest. I can't speak for AEI, but just as we've been criticized by supporters of Hugo Chavez for sending our materials to Venezuelan activists in response to their requests, we've been criticized from the other side of the ideological spectrum for having transferred knowledge to Palestinian, Sahrawi and Egyptian activists resisting governments supported by the U.S. For us, it's simple: We want to universalize easy access to the best ideas and strategic practices from all the nonviolent movements and campaigns of the past, because what Gandhi did, what the people power movement did in the Philippines, what Czechs and Slovaks did in the Velvet Revolution, and what African-Americans, Poles, South Africans, Salvadorans, Mongolians, Serbs and scores of other peoples have done to liberate themselves really must be shared with the entire world. My own view is that once this knowledge is everywhere, the days of oppression, injustice and political violence anywhere will be numbered. Jack DuVall http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org
Will Shetterly	Submitted on 2009/03/31 at 10:44pm Jack, I admire everything you say there. I will learn more about your work. Thanks for the note! Jack, I admire everything you say there. I will learn more about your work. Thanks for the note! Will Shetterly
Stephen Zunes	Submitted on 2009/04/06 at 1:48am My doctoral dissertation actually looked into the Guatemalan and Iranian cases of U.S. intervention in some detail, and I can assure you that these interventions involved the winning over of elite groups which were predisposed to support such an alliance with U.S. imperialism in the first place. This is very different than winning over the large coalitions of political groups and the hundreds of thousands of individuals necessary to bring down a government in a nonviolent pro-democracy revolution. Of course, U.S. interests will try to take advantage of whoever and whatever they can. But this idea that somehow Burmese or Serbs or Tibetans or Ukrainians are so incapapable of organizing themselves that they will only rebel if some Americans tell them to — a line advanced by both the right and some elements of the far left — is indeed, in my view, racist. My doctoral dissertation actually looked into the Guatemalan and Iranian cases of U.S. intervention in some detail, and I can assure you that these interventions involved the winning over of elite groups which were predisposed to support such an alliance with U.S. imperialism in the first place. This is very different than winning over the large coalitions of political groups and the hundreds of thousands of individuals necessary to bring down a government in a nonviolent pro-democracy revolution. Of course, U.S. interests will try to take advantage of whoever and whatever they can. But this idea that somehow Burmese or Serbs or Tibetans or Ukrainians are so incapapable of organizing themselves that they will only rebel if some Americans tell them to -- a line advanced by both the right and some elements of the far left -- is indeed, in my view, racist. Stephen Zunes http://www.stephenzunes.org
Will Shetterly	Submitted on 2009/04/10 at 2:30am Stephen, I should’ve remembered the US appeal was to the elite–my bad. On the other hand, the US has a history of appealing to elites and pretending they’ve approached the masses. I haven’t researched this, but I think Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’: Made in America? raises some good questions about who has the resources to twit. I agree that the idea that a people are “so incapapable of organizing themselves that they will only rebel if some Americans tell them to” is racist. But I haven’t encountered anyone saying that. The real question is whether outsiders with wealth can manipulate people in a poor country, and that was answered long ago. I don’t mean to sound like I’m taking the other side here. I’m just saying that intervention can be subtle. I need to do more research.

"Chav chic, and respect the poor" by Walter Benn Michaels

Chav chic, and respect the poor - Le Monde diplomatique - English edition:

...at a time when class difference in the US is as high as it’s been in the last hundred years, we’re being urged not to talk about what we never talk about (the inequalities produced by capitalism) and to talk lots more about what we always talk about (the inequalities produced by racism). Why?

Well, one answer, of course, is the absolutely central role race and racism have played in our history. But it’s not a very good answer. The extraordinary inequalities of the last 30 years were not caused by racism and the catastrophic consequences of the current crash will not be alleviated by anti-racism. Indeed, these days anti-racism is as much a part of the problem as it is the solution. In every neoliberal society, the response to more inequality has been a call for more diversity because the core commitment of neoliberalism is that the only inequalities we need to do anything about are the ones produced by prejudice.

Also, a podcast that I haven't listened to yet: Walter Benn Michaels: diversity is insufficient.

(Thanks, B!)

Happy Serf Emancipation Day!

(I'm reposting this from my old blog because I want all of my Tibet information on one site.)

Tibet's Serf Emancipation Day may become their Juneteenth, a day to celebrate the end of slavery, but the people on the payroll of the CIA and the NED are doing their best to control the framing. To be fair, so is China, but when I look at the evidence, China's spin seems more honest: focusing on the worst aspects of slavery is far more forgivable than pretending everyone was happy.

Now, several people I'm very fond of consider the Dalai Lama their spiritual leader. Other people I'm fond of look to the Pope. I respect taking inspiration from the best that people say and do, but respecting the best should not include hiding harder truths.

Because USans tend to assume Chinese sources are propaganda, I'll stick to capitalist ones. Follow the links to see what else they say.

From Tibet serf debate shadows China's emancipation day | International | Reuters

Lots of salty yak butter tea and an end to harsh beatings marked the start of the 1960s for farmer Kigya, who grew up shackled to the estate of a local nobleman by the inherited ties that once bound most Tibetans.

That world vanished overnight when Chinese troops flooded the Himalayan plateau in 1959 to quell an uprising, took direct control of government in Lhasa and rolled out radical changes.

..."The serfs and slaves, making up over 95 percent of the total population, suffered destitution, cruel oppression and exploitation and possessed no means of production or personal freedom whatsoever," a recent government white paper declared.

Few serious scholars contest that most Tibetans were bound by birth to estates held by nobles, monasteries or officials.

"The key characteristic of the system was that individuals did not have the right to opt out. They could not give back their land to the estate and live as free peasants," said Melvyn Goldstein, at Ohio University's Center for Research on Tibet.

...Peasants who ran away often were not brought back, and although trading of serfs happened, it was not widespread. Others rented their freedom on a yearly basis with a "human lease."

Some "serfs" were also wealthy landowners in their own right, with serf-servants of their own, making a more complex social picture than is reflected in Beijing's official line.

Managers could be brutal, and whips were still used in 1959.

"The owners always wanted more and one way of getting more is doing hard physical punishment and setting an example for the others, and that was common," said Dawa Tsering, from the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences in Lhasa, who studied under Goldstein.

"The extreme was that they may beat you to death."

But many Chinese accounts of cruelty mix details of extreme and disused punishments from centuries-old legal codes with actual practice in the 1950s, like a recent exhibition in Beijing where an "eye-gouging stone" was placed next to whips.

The last official blinding was in 1934, of a nobleman convicted of treason. By then, no living member of the caste who performed mutilations had ever done it, or even seen it carried out, Goldstein recounted in his "History of Modern China."

They had to rely on stories of the technique passed down from their parents and bungled the operation horribly, he wrote.

from AFP: Beijing puts Tibet's Panchen Lama on show:

Although both the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama belong to the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, differences between them have existed historically and the communists are not the first to try to take advantage of this, Karmay said.

In the 19th century, the Qing Dynasty tried to play on the antagonism by attempting to make the Panchen Lama an ally.

In a tactic that may have been taken straight from the heirs of Dixie's plantations, the children of the Tibetans who tried to restore slavery in 1959, then fled into exile, want to turn freedom into a joke: Tibet Custom - Tibetan News & Culture - Tomorrow is "Smurf Emancipation Day" in UK

Also of interest: France 24 | The Dalai Lama's demons | France 24
FACTBOX-Historical ties between China and Tibet | Reuters

Okay, one Chinese source that's quite accurate, based on what I've read elsewhere: Why Dalai Lama can't represent all Tibetans: scholar_English_Xinhua

ETA:

student protest is not what it used to be, and not in a good way, I think

How a Fringe Group at NYU Went From Being Disliked to Loathed - The Story of the TBNYU! Kimmel Occupation | NYU Local

The saddest part of this protest? I did a couple of minutes of looking into the story, and I got bored and quit looking before I found out what they're protesting.

But the video is fascinating.

Also via Gawker:

Shut Up, College: University of Minnesota Dance Program Devastatingly Exposed as 'Privileged'

Maybe they'll all do better next time.

ETA: The most interesting part of the dance protest, to me, is this, from Anonymous protest attacks "institutional racism and white privilege" at U of M dance program | Twin Cities Daily Planet | Minneapolis - St. Paul:

Jesse Mandell McClinton, a monitor (of African and European descent) at the Barker, said “I never thought a passive approach toward race accomplishes much.”

Carl Flink said he wasn’t sure when the exhibit will be taken down, or archived. “We’re really working hard to have a conversation about this,” he said. “But there’s never been a list of wants given. One of the challenge points that we have is how do we respond if we don’t know what is asked for?” Flink said that the department is thinking about having a series of dialogues. “One thing I can really say is that the faculty of the dance program all have intense experiences with social justice and antiracism; when something like this comes up, we take it very seriously.”

From the comments at this post's original site:

RN Lee wrote:

My favorite part, when I went to their site to read their account, is the complaint about how the adminstration got some of them to come out to negotiate, then suspended them and wouldn’t let them back into the dance.

Uh, yeah, if you’re occupying a space in protest, and the owners come and say “Hey, come outside and we’ll talk” and you do it, you’ve pretty much forfeited any right to complain about the obvious result.

I always wonder what “Take Back XXX” even means. You had it, once? Whom are you taking back from, exactly? Like “Take Back the Night,” which isn’t a movement I can really oppose for any reason (except when it branches way out from making women safer from rape and turns into censoring crap), but the name implies that at some point night time wasn’t scarier and more dangerous than day, and we can bring that golden age back. Which makes no sense.

RN Lee wrote:

Oh my god, now I’m watching the video at Gawker. “We’re using democratic process, here. I’m not sure if you know what that is?” “You have to let those people back in because we’re using consensus decision making and we can’t make a decision if they’re not here.”

What a bunch of dorks.

RAB wrote:

I live literally one block away from the building that was occupied. Often when people say “literally” they mean “figuratively” and when people say “one block away” they mean “within a short walking distance, perhaps five minutes or so away.” But in this case, I mean I walk to the intersection and cross it and I am at that building.

Bearing that in mind: it didn’t look any more impressive up close. I was watching it all happen in real time and I still don’t know what they thought they were doing. The general impression in the aftermath was of a bunch of attention-seekers who did no planning, organizing, or groundwork and who had no clear strategy or any clear message to convey. It seemed like they had no real goal other than to play-act at being radicals.

Saul Alinksy would have been disgusted.

Will Shetterly wrote:

I think the funniest part of the dance folks’ statement is “To those who see our anonymity as cowardice…” I’m trying to imagine Rosa Parks or Angela Davis being anonymous, or even pseudonymous. Instant brain pain.

And should anyone suggest Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz were pseudonyms, just go home. The important part of “pseudonym” is “pseudo.” When he made a new identity, he made it part of his whole life.

CJ wrote:

In the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, Democracy is messy.

serialbabbler wrote:

“We cannot have productive discussions about racism when you have a need to assure everyone that their voices are equally important.”

*insert hysterical laughter here*

A Farewell to RaceFail

There are things that cannot be said too strongly or too often:

• Racism exists.
• Racism should be opposed.
• Popular culture is usually racist.

And there are things that should be said far more strongly and far more often:

• Classism exists.
• Classism should be opposed.
• Popular culture is usually classist.
• Classism is the framework for racism.

All of my heroes who opposed racism opposed classism:

Martin Luther King said, "The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism."

Gandhi said, “All amassing of wealth or hoarding of wealth above and beyond one’s legitimate needs is theft.”

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) said, "I believe there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those doing the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin." (Capitalist anti-racists claim Malcom X as their own, but they ignore his rejection of capitalism and sayings like “I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red.” Given their fondness for white women's tears, they also have to ignore his story about the white coed, which is nicely summarized here.)

Capitalist anti-racists are so reluctant to address class issues that "class issue" is a square on the racist bingo card to identify racists. They avoid the subject for at least two reasons:

1. Well-meaning white liberals think in terms of race rather than class. When middle and upper class "people of color" use non-dictionary definitions to accuse them of racism, they're too croggled to understand how they're being manipulated. (Thandeka explains this well in Why Anti-Racism Will Fail.)

2. Poor blacks see right through the "people of color" versus "whites" story. See Blacks divide along class lines and Growing class gap divides black Americans.

I can't make a conclusion about RaceFail, but I can simply let it go, so I'm done with this now. I'll write what I'll write as well as I can. What you make of it is up to you. That's just how art works.

The comments on the original post are here.

reclaiming my dictionary

Dictionaries can't carry every meaning of a word or keep up with the evolution of words, but no one gets to say, "The dictionary meaning is irrelevant. You have to use mine."

Yes, definitions evolve, but the motives of those who reject dictionary definitions should always be questioned. Like the Bush regime claiming something is “extreme interrogation” and not torture, anti-racists claim people of color can't be racist, a rhetorical device as sophisticated as "I'm rubber, you're glue." If you make assumptions about other people because of their race, you're racist.

That's twice as true if you assume people are racist because of their race.

If you doubt me, look up the word. If I'm wrong, show me your source. I like the OED and the American Heritage, but I'm open to others.

Oh, one more thing: if you think people get to make up definitions, then you don't get to say any word that anyone else uses is racist. If you can make up definitions, so can they. If you won't let them because of their race, we're right back to you being a racist.

Now do you see why dictionaries are useful?

The original comments on this post are here.

The Lightness of Critical Race Theory

Understanding anti-racism requires understanding its greater context, Whiteness studies, "a reading of history and its effects on the present, inspired by postmodernism and historicism, in which the very concept of race is said to have been socially constructed in order to justify discrimination against non-whites." That reading is my reading, and Thandeka's reading, and the reading of every opponent of racism who is alive today.

But the anti-racists take that in their own direction, inspired by Critical Race Theory, an approach to law that "emphasizes the socially constructed and discursive nature of race, considers judicial conclusions to be the result of the workings of the intersection of race with other social phenomena but sees race as a primary factor."

CRT's thinkers include Derrick Bell, author of Space Traders. Alex Kozinski, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, wrote:

The radical multiculturalists' views raise insuperable barriers to mutual understanding. Consider the ''Space Traders'' story. How does one have a meaningful dialogue with Derrick Bell? Because his thesis is utterly untestable, one quickly reaches a dead end after either accepting or rejecting his assertion that white Americans would cheerfully sell all blacks to the aliens. The story is also a poke in the eye of American Jews, particularly those who risked life and limb by actively participating in the civil rights protests of the 1960's. Bell clearly implies that this was done out of tawdry self-interest. Perhaps most galling is Bell's insensitivity in making the symbol of Jewish hypocrisy the little girl who perished in the Holocaust -- as close to a saint as Jews have. A Jewish professor who invoked the name of Rosa Parks so derisively would be bitterly condemned -- and rightly so.

Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr.'s The Lightness of Critical Race Theory tackles CRT with some great bits:

One of the quirks in history is that blacks who attended elite schools in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s were few but they were more likely to be at the top of their class than blacks in the affirmative action generation. Why is that? Ralph Bunche was first in his class at UCLA in 1927. William T. Coleman, Jr. was first in his class at Harvard Law School in 1946. Theodore McMillian was first in his class at St. Louis University Law School in 1949. Barack Obama’s father was first in his class at the University of Hawaii in the 1960s. And even Hastie, namesake of the fellowship held by Crenshaw, was first in his class at Amherst in 1925.

...I can think of many stories from my Black experience that would be censored by the Critical Race Theory club. For example, the narrative of a white-appearing ancestor who steals a large sum of money from his white father and parlays that sum into a 400-acre grubstake for the security of his descendants. There is the tale of an Uncle who through frugality and hard work becomes one of the wealthiest African-Americans in terms of net worth, only to have his estate stolen by a nephew from the sole heir with a forged will. What about the account of a slave who buys his freedom only to become a slave owner himself in Georgetown, South Carolina? These are stories as well. And they really happened. But they do not fit within the philosophical box of Critical Race Theory. The narratives of real Black people controlling their destinies in the past are censored. Space traders from outer space are more appealing.

...Out of tens of thousands of federal cases at every level -- U.S. Supreme Court to the lowest federal district court -- only one judge has ever cited to “Critical Race Theory.” And that lonely cite was in one obscure case involving a challenge to New York City’s termination of fire and police employees for participating in a parade. Locur v. Giulani, 269 F. Supp. 2d 368, S.D. N.Y. (2003). For all intents and purposes, Critical Race Theory is a non-issue in the real world.

defining a cult

If you think your group's solution is the only solution? You're probably in a cult.

Original comments on this post are here.

Walter Benn Michaels on anti-racism and diversity

From The Trouble With Diversity:

We would much rather get rid of racism than get rid of poverty. And we would much rather celebrate cultural diversity than seek to establish economic equality.

Indeed, diversity has become virtually a sacred concept in American life today. No one's really against it; people tend instead to differ only in their degrees of enthusiasm for it and their ingenuity in pursuing it.

From his book, The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality:

There’s no reason why people with a certain set of genes ought to be reading a certain set of books and thinking of those books as part of their heritage, or why, when they read some other set of books, they should think of them as part of someone else’s heritage. There are just the things we learn and the things we don’t learn, the things we do and the things we don’t do.

From a pay-to-read site, The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The argument is that anti-racism today performs at least one of the same functions that racism used to — it gives us a vision of our society as organized racially instead of economically — while adding another function — it insists that racism is the great enemy to be overcome. But all the anti-racism in the world won't take any money away from the rich and won't give any of it to the poor.

the cult of RaceFail '09

This post isn't meant to address everyone who identifies as anti-racist. It's about the core group of RaceFail '09. Cults usually occur within greater movements, and no cult invalidates a movement. While this one has articles of faith like only whites can be racist, it should be counted among the non-religous cults. If the anti-racists had not claimed the term, I would identify as anti-racist. But my opposition to racism is like that of Thandeka and other thinkers who the anti-racists reject.

I was thinking about the cult-like behavior of the RaceFail '09 antiracists, specifically:

• Their demand that dictionary definitions be discarded in favor of their definitions.
• Their demand that people who disagree with their approach to opposing racism be denounced and shunned by friends and lovers, who risk being shunned and denounced in turn.
• Their practice of ignoring their logical opponents, people whose work is extremely "white", and targeting opponents of racism whose opposition is like Thandeka's rather than theirs.

Whether The Culture of Cults is an accurate description of cults in general, I don't know, but it has many bits which describe LiveJournal's antiracists. It identifies their kind of cult:

...therapy cults, promote a secular type of belief system, based on quasi-scientific or quasi-psychological principles.

Their approach to discourse:

Actions which, to an outsider, might seem devious or immoral, may, in the mind of a believer, seem perfectly just and ethical.

And this, from Dr. R. J. Lifton, explains their all whites are racist version of "original sin":

'The Demand for Purity: The creation of a guilt and shame milieu by holding up standards of perfection that no human being can accomplish. People are punished and learn to punish themselves for not living up to the group's ideals.'

Its list of traits of cult belief systems fits antiracists well:

Independent and non-accountable - believers follow their own self-justifying moral codes: e.g. a Moonie may, in their own mind, justify deceptive recruiting as 'deceiving evil into goodness'.
Aspirational - they appeal to ambitious, idealistic people. The assumption that only weak, gullible people join cults is not necessarily true.
Personal and experiential - it is not possible to exercise informed free choice in advance, about whether the belief system is valid or not, or about the benefits of following the study and training opportunities offered by the group. The benefits, if any, of group involvement can only be evaluated after a suitable period of time spent with the group. How long a suitable period of time might be, depends on the individual, and cannot be determined in advance.
Hierarchical and dualistic - cult belief systems revolve around ideas about higher and lower levels of understanding. There is a hierarchy of awareness, and a path from lower to higher levels. Believers tend to divide the world into the saved and the fallen, the awakened and the deluded, etc.
Bi-polar - believers experience alternating episodes of faith and doubt, confidence and anxiety, self-righteousness and guilt, depending how well or how badly they feel they are progressing along the path.
Addictive - believers may become intoxicated with the ideals of the belief system, and feel a vicarious pride in being associated with these ideals. Cults tend to be cliquey and elitist, and believers can become dependent on the approval of the group's elite to maintain their own self-esteem...
Non-falsifiable - a cult belief system can never be shown to be invalid or wrong. This is partly why critics have low credibility, and why it can be difficult to warn people of the dangers of a cult.

Because you just can't talk about group dynamics without mentioning The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment:

In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.

Recommended reading on anti-racism:
Race, class, and "whiteness theory" by Sharon Smith
The Trouble With Diversity by Walter Benn Michaels
Why Anti-Racism Will Fail by Thandeka
Why Anti-Racism Will Fail: A Response by David E. Bumbaugh

ETA: See also Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

The second basic pattern that Bion detailed: The identification and vilification of external enemies.

...even if someone isn't really your enemy, identifying them as an enemy can cause a pleasant sense of group cohesion. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.

The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that's beyond critique.

The original comments on this post are here.

Why Anti-Racism Will Fail: A Response, by Rev. David E. Bumbaugh

Another UU response, from What's Wrong with Anti-Racism:

Thandeka has helped me put into sharper focus the essentially narcissistic nature of the "anti-racism agenda." Because it helps us avoid the topic we are most uncomfortable addressing, the question of class, it relieves us of responsibility for a world going to hell in a hand-basket. We delude ourselves into believing that if we can become "anti-racist" and create an "anti-racist UUA" -- though no one has explained to me what such an eventuality might look like -- that somehow the world be a better place. All the while, power continues to concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer people, the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich goes on unabated, beneath a façade of prosperity the social safety net is shredded and in tatters, and the spoliation of the earth continues apace. It is unclear to me how an "anti-racist" Unitarian Universalist Association, even if we could achieve it, would make the larger world significantly or measurably better, fairer, more just or more merciful. I fear that our inward-directed "anti-racist agenda" is but an indication that, to misquote the prophet, we "have sold the poor for an eased conscience and the needy for an empty slogan."

Dear blogosphere, an apology

To anyone who thought I wasn’t a troll: I’m very sorry. I don’t mean to be a troll, but I suspect few trolls do. There should be a name for my subset of trolldom, the people whose friends say, “They’re fine offline, but they shouldn’t be allowed on the net.” Perhaps there’s already a name for it in the categories of personality disorder.

From now on, if I do anything that appears to be descending into contention for contention’s sake, anyone should feel free to say, “Release, Will.” Things that make me laugh always free me. It’s why I love the Will Shetterly bingo card. Nothing’s better than the truth when it’s funny.

A friend has threatened to take away my computer and buy me a typewriter. If I fall into a grudge match again, I’ll accept his offer.

ETA: One contender for the name: Internet OCD.

The relevant XKCD cartoon:



ETA 2: I'm thinking Grey, in the comments below, has the name of the disorder: SIWOTI.

The original comments are here.

“Why Anti-Racism Will Fail” by Thandeka

The Reverend Thandeka, author of Learning to Be White, wrote in "Why Anti-Racism Will Fail":

I learned three things:

• One: All whites in America are racists.
• Two: No blacks in American are racist. They're prejudiced just like everybody else, but they lack the power of institutional resources to force other racial groups to submit to their will. Thus they can't be racist because racism in this conceptual scheme is defined as prejudice + power.
• Three: Whites must be shown that they are racists and confess their racism.

Based on my experiences of the training and on my work with some of the anti-racism advocates at the UUA on a racial and cultural diversity task force, I concluded that the anti-racist strategies have three basic problems:

• First: They violate the first principle of our UU covenant together to actively affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Second: They make an erroneous assumption about the nature and structure of power in America;
• Third: They misinterpret actions resulting from feelings of shame and powerlessness as evidence of white racism.

She's addressing Unitarian Universalists, but you can read it pretending she's addressing middle class liberals; it works. I can't remember if I read this in '99. It's startling how it hasn't dated. I want to quote all of it. Her analysis of how the antiracism movement works is brilliant.

Here's a choice bit:

The anti-racist charge of white racism gives persons like Dan a way of addressing their moral failure of nerve without having to face a harder truth that they acted in racist ways not because they were racist but because they were afraid of being rejected. The charge of racism does not heal this condition or even describe it. It simply punishes a person for being broken.

If you want to find more of her work on the web: The Latest Form of Infidelity :: Rounding Up Thandeka on the Web :: January :: 2009. Sadly, the Tikkun links are broken.

To read the original comments on this post, go here.

what I want

From Notes from the Labyrinth.

I personally do not want science fiction/fantasy/horror to be a white-only domain.

I personally do not want people of color to feel unwelcome, excluded, alienated, or silenced, and I am sorry as all hell that they are being made to feel that way. I know that my comments have been construed as attempts to silence people of color; all I can say is, no. That is never what I want.

That goes for me, too.

The original comments on this post are here.

the pseudo-pseudonymity of Micole Sudberg, aka Coffeeandink

See also:
the racefail 09 flamewar
my response to "Will Shetterly: Do Not Engage".

The quick take:

For years, Micole Sudberg used used her full legal name in public posts on her  Coffeeandink LiveJournal so anyone could easily find her online or at conventions. Her LJ profile name was Micole, which she admits is her "very identifiable first name". Jace said, "The issue isn’t whether or not she wanted to establish a pseudonymous identity online, it’s that she went about doing it so badly she has no right to complain when it failed." If metaphors should not be used lightly, saying anyone "outed" her is an insult to every gay person who has been outed.

The Internet Archive had two examples of her casual use of her name. I'm including them here because Tempest Bradford says screencaps are important to preserve the historical record (click for larger images):

During Racefail 09, on March 2, 2009, she announced that she had been outed, told her readers that she wished to be pseudonymous, and said it's fine to call her Mely or Micole.

Five days later, on March 7, she wrote, "I may change my userprofile name to "Mely" again." That's the day she mentioned her "very identifiable first name":

Please also explain how I was hiding my identity from you ... with a user profile that lists my very identifiable first name, in a post that is signed with my very identifiable first name.

On March 9, a week after she claimed she had been outed, she wrote, "I have locked down or edited some posts with identifying information in them." If she truly believed she had been pseudonymous, why did she hide those posts?

She's quite right when she says her first name is "very identifiable". PokeMyName says:

We couldn't find name MICOLE in our database which has 74,738 names that are compiled from 702,203 Americans. Have you spelled it correctly? If you spelled it correctly but we couldn't find this means that there were not even one person with name MICOLE in our database. But if this is your name, we still poke it and give you a report below so keep reading.

First some popularity statistics: Regarding there were not even a single person with this name, popularity of MICOLE should be less than per million. According to this calculation, we can estimate that as of December.21.2010 14:37 there are less than 443 people named as MICOLE in the United States and the number of MICOLE's should not be increasing more than 4 people per year.

The long version:

For the first International Pixel-Stained Techno-Peasant Day, she shared on her LJ a story published under her legal name.

From 2007 to 2009, K. Tempest Bradford hot-linked Coffeeandink's legal name to her LJ on two pages at Fantasy Magazine. Sierrawyndsong observes:

The article titled Fantasy Roundtable: People of Color in Fantasy Literature, written by K. Tempest Bradford and published by Dark Fantasy, links an author's name to their LJ account. (It is my opinion that if the article published the identity and link without the author's permission, then Dark Fantasy and Bradford owe the author an apology and a retraction.) This same article has been used very often in numerous blogs concerning race issues in SciFi genre and has always contained the link. So, not just there, but in many, many posts, this article has made it very public who that author is in real life. Therefore, it is a MATTER OF PUBLIC RECORD.

At Aqueduct Press, where Coffeeandink's full legal name appears in several posts, her "very identifiable first name" is in the sidebar under Contributors. It's linked to a profile page, which has a "My Web Page" link to her LJ.

This is why, at the start of the RaceFail flamewar, anyone who googled any part of her identity saw the rest among the first five choices. (To understand Google ranking, see this.)

In 2009, when I responded to “Will Shetterly – do not engage”, I couldn’t remember how to spell her last name, so I googled "Micole coffeeandink". Her last name was the third or fourth choice. When she told me she meant to be pseudonymous. I thought that was hilarious given how very "out" she had been for years, but I removed her last name from my blogs.

But that did not satisfy her. On March 2, she blogged about people posting her last name without mentioning we had acted in ignorance. She claimed, "He posted my full name and LJ on his blog, even though I deliberately do not list my last name on my LJ." Her readers began attacking people for "outing" her.

That pissed me off so much I posted her name deliberately. My reasoning: if anyone should be recorded in the history of Racefail 09, everyone should be recorded. When friends convinced me that I'd over-reacted, I scrubbed her name from my blog. A week or more after accusing people of "outing" her,  she changed her LJ user profile Mely and removed her last name from the public pages of her LJ.

After that, her legal identity slowly sank in the search engines. But a page of mine would not disappear from Google's cache. I tried deleting it. I tried restoring it and changing it. The damn thing would not go away. I felt like the Ancient Blogger, and it was my albatross. So I made an archival copy of WordPress.com blog and deleted it, figuring I could recreate it on Blogger without the offending page. But my copy of my blog was unusable. I've restored as much of it as I can here, but some posts are missing and others have lost their comments.

Ah, well. Maybe that's my karma for getting into a flamewar. In most cases, losing posts doesn't bother me. It's often good to start again.

ETA: When and why did Coffeeandink decide she was pseudonymous? (from LiveJournal (7/9/11)


From 2006 to 2009, coffeeandink used her legal name in public posts on her LiveJournal so search engines could easily find her. On March 2, 2009, she announced that she had always been pseudonymous and I was "outing" her. On March 9, a full week after claiming she had been outed, she began hiding her history, altering some public posts and making others "friends only." If she had truly been pseudonymous, why did she make any changes at all?


The Internet Archive saved two examples of how very "out" she was. Those examples are no longer at the Internet Archive because, just this week, Micole asked to have them taken down, but any honest reader of her LJ will confirm her longtime habit. This post from 2006 (now "friends only") may have been the first example. The last was almost certainly on March 1, the day before she announced her pseudonymity. It's now "friends only". When it was public, it told which conventions she would be at, should anyone wish to find her.


She did not claim to be pseudonymous until well into Racefail 09, when she and her friends began making one-sided histories, recording the legal identities of authors and editors they attacked while shielding coffeeandink . I had thought her assertion of pseudonymity was purely a tactical move: if she could not win with reason, she would win by discrediting her opponents. It turns out I was wrong.


When she made her announcement, she gave a long list of very good reasons why someone would choose to be pseudonymous.


But she left out two things:


1. She did not note that to be pseudonymous, you have to stop using your legal name in the places where you wish to be pseudonymous.


2. She did not give her own reason for being pseudonymous.


When she began hiding her history, she said:

At this point, I am mostly just fighting a losing battle to prevent my mother from finding my LJ via Google.

Clue for anyone who hasn't figured this out yet: If you don't want your mama to find you via Google, don't put your legal name in public posts on your LJ.


I must admit, I can't believe her mother didn't know how to type her daughter's name into Google, but if that's Micole's story, I'll respect it a little bit longer.


If her mother had typed Micole's name into Google, she would've found coffeeandink  in the first hits. Micole has a remarkably uncommon first and last name, and Google noticed. On March 5, after she claimed I had outed her, I did an Advanced Google Search of her site and found that her name appeared 162 times. Now, that would not be 162 unique times, because Google counts unique pages and pages in various combinations; only Micole can say exactly how many pages she had to alter to defend her retroactive pseudonymity. Most of those pages were about Wiscon, but some, like this one, were about her published work.


The original comments on this post are here.

goodbye, LiveJournal!

I'm deleting my LiveJournal now.

ETA: Most posts at my LJ were copies of posts here, so if you're searching for one, it should have the same title here.

Original comments on this post are here.

Power in Emma Bull's Territory

I'm going to do the husband thang and speak up for my wife's book. It's cool to disagree in the comments. No book is perfect, and most of us separate the person from the work.

Spoilers are fine in the comments here, but I'll leave them out of this post.

Referring to a Chinese character, someone said, “The white hero takes on his magic.” That’s not how magic works in Territory. Power comes from the earth, from territory itself.

And: “...it’s still all about the white people.” An interesting discussion could be had about whether a Jewish woman in that time was “white.”

No one in the discussion brought up China Mary. Hello! Race/class/gender issues, and historically accurate besides!

Nor did anyone discuss the second major Asian character, whose class, race, and gender issues are far more complex than the powerful male who gets all the attention at the Fantasy Roundtable.

Somewhere, I saw a quibble about pidgin in Territory, so I’ll address that, too: People spoke pidgin then and now. It’s a form of English that's as valid as any other. Anyone who cares about black dialects, for example, should grant the authenticity of pidgin. Having Chinese immigrants speaking Standard American English in Territory would make it a farce.

P.S. There’s nothing significant about the China Mary link. It was just the first one I found after discovering Wikipedia doesn’t have one.

UPDATE: One reader thought stories about Jewish characters should be about antisemitism. The story of Jews in the west is fascinating and complex, as a little research will tell you. Some places were welcoming, some were tolerant, and some were hostile. As a rule, the frontier was more liberal than the East: many of the early advances for US women happened in the American West.

UPDATE 2: An old related post: more on the multicultural CSA.

UPDATE 3: Another point: When discussing this book, remember that Jesse and Mildred get equal time.

The original comments on this post are here.

a final word about the Recent Unpleasantness

Now that my internet vacation is over, my LiveJournal is back on, without commenting enabled. I'll turn it off forever tomorrow. You'll find the reasons via the link above.

I'll gratefully correct any documented errors of fact there. You may post what you like about it—I don't ban, delete, or disemvowel so long as people are on-topic—but I won't engage in that discussion. I have one thing left to do, and then I'm done with this:

I am very sorry that I got so mad at the hypocrisy in and around the RaceFail wiki that I outed M. It was wrong. I own that shit. I'm sorry that Emma and the good folks at Shadow Unit are taking abuse from people who can't separate what I say and do as an individual from the things I'm associated with professionally.

I left Shadow Unit immediately and voluntarily when people began threatening to punish the other writers and the project for what I'd done as an individual. I won't be returning to Shadow Unit. It'll continue as Emma's baby.

She and I are always surprised when people expect us to have identical interests. The overlap of our interests is large, but Shadow Unit really is hers. (If it was mine, there'd be a team of anarchists out to expose the things that Shadow Unit helps hide.) Withdrawing from it is no hardship if that improves the odds I'll be able to keep reading it.

Henceforth, my blogging will be at it's all one thing. What it'll be about, I dunno. (What's that, Lassie? Class issues? Sure, I could take on some of those, I suppose.) All I know is what it won't be about—this latest fracas.

ETA: In the comments, some people misunderstood my intention with this post, but Guy Shalev got it. Thanks, Guy!

The original comments on this post are here.

a reply to Coffeeandink

The following is my reply to this post by Coffeeandink.

Coffeeandink says, “You seem to have difficulty with reading comprehension.”

True. Reading How the internet is rewiring our brains, I thought, “Yep. Uh, huh. That’s me. Damn. I need to work on this.” But there’s been a lot of reading fail on both sides. I’m still getting charged with crap I never said.

She says, ” You encouraged your commenters to seek out my name…”

Where did I do that?

She says “You posted my full name again and took it down again several times.”

To give her the benefit of the doubt, having information on two blogs makes correcting them in both confusing. This has created problems before: Teresa Nielsen Hayden once charged me with doing something I hadn’t because she confused my LJ with my main blog. Serious advice to anyone thinking about having more than one blog: Don’t. Anyway, Mely may be confused here, or I might be. Really. Don’t keep two blogs.

She says, “You claimed I had suggested a boycott of Tor.”

I claimed that her last name was relevant to the wiki because Tor was cited in RaceFail and people in RaceFail had discussed a boycott. I never claimed Coffeeandink suggested it.

She says, “[you] encouraged many of your commenters to believe I had suggested or encouraged that you be forced to leave Shadow Unit, even though I had never commented on it.”

Leaving Shadow Unit was entirely my idea. I do not let friends suffer for my shit. I walked away.

She says “You tried to out me once again on the feministsf wiki, based on the argument that no one on the antiracist “side” was “forced” to reveal their full name…”

My belief all along: Either all legal names should be on the wiki to have an accurate account, or anyone mentioned there should be able to delete any information they wish. I don’t care that some people on her side are willing to own their shit. When they mock people on the other side for deleting information from the web and shield people on their side, they are simple hypocrites.

Which is their right, of course.

She says, “You outed me having been warned it could expose me to physical violence, sexual abuse, personal harassment, and professional and personal hardship.”

She never warned me of anything. Had she done so, I would never have made my mistake—but I would’ve wondered why her name and her LiveJournal were so high in the Google rankings, and why she used her uncommon first name on her LiveJournal instead of a handle.

She says, “You have offered several different explanations…”

True. I have more than one, and I don’t always cite all of them. If anyone has a full list of my quotes, I’ll own all of them.

The original comments on this post are here.

about "outing" coffeeandink or anyone

This keeps coming up, so I'm interrupting my internet holiday:

She says here that she briefly outed two fans, then took the information off the public web. I "outed" her briefly, then took the information off my sites entirely. It's not in a "friends only" area. It's gone. She is as safe from me now as those two fans are from her. I will not "out" her or anyone again. Everyone's shit is theirs to live with.

ETA: I've been informed that she hadn't known her brief outing was an outing. Apologies for making it seem like that was my point: my point is that she is just as safe as those two fans are now. She will not be outed. Nor will anyone else.

The original comments on this post are here.

I'm leaving Shadow Unit

Someone expressed doubts about supporting Shadow Unit because of my involvement. My creative role has been slight; people who disapprove of me can simply skip my story in Season One. (People who really disapprove of me should ignore Brady, who has more of me than any other character.) Shadow Unit is much more Emma's and Bear's baby, with enormous help from an amazingly talented group of writers. It'll be fun for me to approach it purely as a reader.

I have been concerned that this would happen. Some writers have conventional approaches to life, and some subordinate their beliefs in order to keep a broad audience. I fear I don't fit in either camp. The Shadow Unit writers are having a wonderful time, and I do not want them to take a hit for me, so it's easy to step down.

Go, team, go!

The original comments on this post are here.

is a nickname a pseudonym?

I'm failing at answering no comments, but I'm trying to stay ahead by making new posts to positions that more than one person brings up. I agree that there's a difference between being anonymous and pseudonymous.

But that distinction has limits in both directions.

On the anonymity side: sockpuppets game the gray area by using several pseudonyms to be more effectively anonymous.

On the pseudonymity side: a pseudonym is only an identity that can be put on and taken off with ease. Con artists love pseudonyms.

In the world Behind The Keyboard, nicknames are connected to faces or voices or mailing addresses—they're ultimately legally verifiable, though you may need detectives if someone you only know by a nickname shafts you.

But in Life Online? A pseudonym is just a pseudonym, not a nickname. Log out of gmail, make a new account, and you're a new person, walking free from all the shit you've made. It's tempting to want that freedom.

But real freedom calls for owning your identity everywhere you go. No matter how bad the shit behind you is, find a way to carry it or correct it or simply admit that you're done with it. That's how humans grow. I'm not proud of my online shit, but I made a decision when I went online decades ago that I was going own my shit—especially when I hate having to own it.

The original comments on this post are here.

which is worse, banning or anonymity?

Another painful moment of self-awareness: I usually figure that if you're not an asshole, you're welcome to be anonymous—a handle is a nickname. But I don't much like anyone who bans. Ban others and demand anonymity while you libel folks who are up front about who they are online and off? That's the complete coward's way. Kathryn Cramer and I disagree sometimes—dear God, who don't I disagree with sometimes?—but she knows a basic truth: if you're going to talk the talk, you sure as shit should walk the walk.

The original comments on this post are here.

is hypocrisy in fashion now?

I'm being croggled by the people who defend M's position. I've heard, for example, the stock argument that coffeeandink is a valid identity, so what she does under that name isn't acting anonymously. I suppose by this argument, Superman and the Green Goblin aren't anonymous, either. But would you defend a Klansman's anonymity?

Integrity usually calls for paying a price. That doesn't mean you should be afraid to admit who you are. Make your mistakes in public, apologize for them in public, and keep trying to do your best in public. The coward's way will kill your soul.

As St. Bob Dylan said, "To live outside the law you must be honest."

The original comments on this post are here.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Fine. Let hypocrites hide while they attack others. I’m deleting Ms. X’s last name from my site. Life’s too short to be lectured by people who want to protect cowards.

Own your shit!

Note: I made an enormous mistake with this post: Because Micole had publicly used her full legal name on her LJ for years, I thought people would know I was using "out" sarcastically. Really, do not use "out" sarcastically on the web.


Micole Sudberg is coffeeandink.

Here's why I'm outing her. I originally hadn't known Micole was hiding her last name, because she uses her first at coffeeandink. Last week, I got an email from her asking me to delete her last name from my posts. I thought it was funny that she would ask me to shield her while she attacked me, but I did. What can I say? I guess I'm a bit sexist: I usually protect women when they ask me.

You can read about that at well, I think it's funny.

This morning, I heard about people attacking Kathryn Cramer because she had revealed Micole's last name at the wiki entry for the Great Silliness, aka RaceFail09. So I went to that site, and my hypocrisy circuits overloaded. If the point of the wiki is to preserve the record of who said what, it should record the facts without favoritism.

So I restored Micole Sudberg's name there. I left this note on the Talk page: When someone hides Micole's identity again, I won't correct it. I won't begin a wiki war, and I respect the right of site owners to do what they please. But just for the record: If the point of this wiki is to share information, don't censor the truth. Revise it when you have more information, delete what no longer seems pertinent, sure, but feminists should especially know that double standards stink.

I should've expected this. The editor's response was typical of their side of the Silliness: Hi Will. You sure won't start a wiki war here, because I just banned you.

Hypocrites love to ban and censor and disemvowel. They fear opposing views, so they silence them. Free speech is not for cowards.

And now there are a flurry of LJ posts about what an asshole I am for outing Micole at the wiki. I'll own that: I'm an asshole for truth, justice, and the egalitarian way.

If you haven't already, check out the XKCD cartoon I posted the other day, or visit it here. It's got my new motto.

And now I'm done with this group of hypocrites. There are greater ones to worry about.

ETA: I'm turning off the comments on this post. Life is too short. Don't waste time on silly shit.

ETA 2: On second thought, I'll turn the comments on, and I'll read them, and, as always, I'll ban no one who's on-topic. But unless you somehow manage to change my mind, I won't reply.

ETA 3: I got email from someone who thought by turning off comments, I was doing what I was complaining about. I don't mind if people turn off comments on a post; it's legit to share something you don't want to talk about. But hypocrites make public posts, then ban dissenters while welcoming supporters.

ETA 4: Please read my later posts today. I've tried to deal with some repeated issues in them, rather than answer folks one-on-one.

The original comments on this post are here.