Censorship and Speech

I had composed a pretty good (if I may say so myself; at any rate it took some effort) entry for my first post after what I think has been my longest hiatus from this platform since I began, in recognition of Day 101 of the current presidential administration.  It covered some of the events since the election, including national and international reactions, and wrapped with a parallel to Orwell’s Room 101.   But that batch of writing and linking was lost to the vagaries of the internets.  And so it goes.

Rather than try to recreate that, what I’m posting today is a set of two different perspectives on free speech and restrictions to speech published recently in the Times. 

From the first piece, by insistent dissident Ai Weiwei

The most elegant way to adjust to censorship is to engage in self-censorship. It is the perfect method for allying with power and setting the stage for the mutual exchange of benefit. The act of kowtowing to power in order to receive small pleasures may seem minor; but without it, the brutal assault of the censorship system would not be possible. 

For people who accept this passive position toward authority, “getting by” becomes the supreme value. They smile, bow and nod their heads, and such behavior usually leads to lifestyles that are comfortable, trouble free and even cushy. This attitude is essentially defensive on their part. It is obvious that in any dispute, if one side is silenced, the words of the other side will go unquestioned.

And from the second, by Ulrich Baer, vice provost at New York University. 

What is under severe attack, in the name of an absolute notion of free speech, are the rights, both legal and cultural, of minorities to participate in public discourse. The snowflakes sensed, a good year before the election of (the president), that insults and direct threats could once again become sanctioned by the most powerful office in the land. They grasped that racial and sexual equality is not so deep in the DNA of the American public that even some of its legal safeguards could not be undone. 

The issues to which the students are so sensitive might be benign when they occur within the ivory tower. Coming from the campaign trail and now the White House, the threats are not meant to merely offend. Like (the president's) attacks on the liberal media as the “enemies of the American people,” his insults are meant to discredit and delegitimize whole groups as less worthy of participation in the public exchange of ideas.

Both are worth a full read.  I have tended to be something of a free speech absolutist, though maybe not exactly the variety branded by Baer; however, Baer's points (or more accurately, points he distills from decades’ worth of writing and public discussion on the topic) are valid, and essential to consider when forming opinions - and policies - concerning, for example, speaking events on campuses. Baer hosted a fascinating panel at the NYU Law School “In Defense of Truth” a couple weeks ago, concerning the concept of truth - not least, the durability of ideas that feel true, across any spectrum you care to name - as seen through the lenses of art, journalism, and the law. 

For now, I'll leave you with a few more images touching on surveillance, education, infrastructure, and public protections from the Ai Weiwei show we saw at the Tate Modern a while back.

Selfie

Uncopyrightable Macaque selfie, or, me on a Monday like this...

The link takes you to an article (one of many) about the intellectual property legal questions surrounding photos taken by animals (non-human animals, I mean) no matter how human-trained.  I do feel bad for David Slater, who is losing out on the money from these images, but have hopes he'll strike gold on another project.  Meanwhile, come on - those photos!!!!

We Are All Bradley Manning

Daniel Ellsberg

I was the Bradley Manning of my day. In 1971 I too faced life (115 years) in prison for exposing classified government lies and crimes. President Obama says “the Ellsberg material was classified on a different basis.” True. The Pentagon Papers were not Secret like the Wikileaks revelations, they were all marked Top Secret—Sensitive.

Ultimately all charges in my case were dropped because of criminal governmental misconduct toward me during my proceedings. Exactly the same outcome should occur now, in light of the criminal conditions of Manning’s confinement for the last six months.

From: I Am Bradley Manning

Today

Happening now, after work, and, well, as long as it needs to.

So... what makes this ok?

Credit my friend Joe for drawing my attention to the current Administration's "expanded interpretation" of the Public Safety Exception to Miranda Rights, the guidelines of which are being kept from the public.

The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.

But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an "internal document." So we don't know the administration's exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.

All I'm going to add right now is: if the President's last name was Bush, a lot of the people whose opinions I share would be going nuts and raising the roof in protest. I'm wondering what sort of fervor they'll whip up now?

America (as seen in court)

1944: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Igor Stravinsky.

Well, almost: Stravinsky was not arrested in Boston for writing an unconventional arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner, as online mythology would have it. However, his version of the National Anthem was Banned in Boston on the logic that he was "tampering with public property."





This mugshot, often conflated with the Anthem incident, would seem actually to be from some kind of visa application process. How he got banged up? That's a story I don't know, but would love to hear...

Zooming By

Time is kind of whizzing along. Not necessarily a bad thing - it's just the way life is, especially when I'm in a show (Two more weeks! I am steadfast in my attempt to prove that there is no such thing as a small part...) and the dayjob is off-the-hook busy.

On the other hand, I get more than a little miffed at myself when I realize that I have missed pretty amazing things like the Undead Jazzfest without even registering that it was happening until it already happened. Many slaps on my wrist! Much mortification of my flesh with a barbed lash!

Sigh...

In other news, here's an article about Charlie Sheen's work release program. While I'm the first to assert that theater does in fact serve the community, it strikes me as rather odd that a celebrity can beat his wife and be sentenced to... regional theater. There is humor in this, of a bleak sort. It has been mentioned that this simply reflects his individual skill set; it certainly can be interpreted as adding value to the theater company and its education program (though by the same token there are those whose eyebrows are raised at the notion of being assigned to teach children as part of release for domestic abuse); and the case has been made that it's not all that different from, say, a lawyer doing pro-bono work as a condition of a plea agreement. Discuss.

The Governator

Alright, this is sort of another political entry, but this info is straight outa Comedy Central, so... not really.

Here's the memo that Governor Schwarzenegger sent to accompany his veto of a bill unanimously passed by the California Assembly having to do with allocating funds for the Port of San Francisco. See if you can catch his secret message...



Thanks to Think Progress for pointing out this little Da Villain Code.

Ok, he's vetoing a rather straightforward finance bill that's actually pretty good as far as I can tell. And he's doing it by means of a clever (by Dan Brown standards) but petulant tantrum over the Assembly having skipped over legislation he'd rather be signing, and a dig at bill sponsor and sometime nemesis Tom Ammiano (who recently bellowed a Wilsonesque "You lie!" at Arnold and told him to "kiss my gay ass") . I mean, it's petulant even if you believe his staff's contention that it was a "strange concidence." Which, if you do believe that, I have a stadium in the Bronx to sell you. So why am I still laughing at Governor True Liar?

Because it's funny, that's why. Even if it's cheap. And, without meaning to deride the sanctity of the Legislative Process (heaven forfend!) I should think it's fairly harmless: of course the California Assembly has recourse to veto override, which, I hope, should be easy enough to effect in the case of a unanimous vote.

If they don't override it (and maybe get in a few digs of their own), shame on them.

Assuming they do... hehehe.

More Texas

But then there's this, which would seem to be an improbably forward-thinking decision, and reason for (very) cautious optimism. Even in Texas.

I don't understand anything.

Texas

Once again, injustice has been taken to a level that defies my comprehension.

I really feel like I don't know how to live in the world sometimes.

Sigh...

There has been a certain amount of attention focused on some attacks being made on Barack Obama by the Right Wing punditry of late. I'm referring of course to this "birther" notion, espoused by Lou Dobbs, among others, that Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii, or in the U.S. at all. That he was actually born in, umm, maybe Kenya or something.

And naturally, I'm also referring to the proposition put forth by Glenn Beck, that Obama is a racist. Yes, a racist with a "deep seated hatred for white people." This because the President suggested that it was "stupid" for Cambridge police to arrest Henry Louis Gates for breaking and entering his own home. Ok, the arrest was actually for disorderly conduct, "after exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior" after the cops came in to his house and asked for ID, and Obama called it stupid (then backtracked on that language the next day.) And for that Glenn Beck says he's racist. Or it might be because he (the President) invited the participants in that arrest debacle to the White House for a beer to talk things out. I'm not sure.

And I'm not sure it matters. Here's the thing: I don't think these guys necessarily mean what they say. Is there any chance that Obama was not born in the U.S.? Not really, no. I mean, strictly speaking, sure - anything is possible. (including that some invisible being created the universe 6,000 years ago and that all evidence to the contrary is the work of some other, EVIL, invisible being) But - really? No more than there is a chance that Obama is a racist. Again, sure there's a chance that this man, whose mother (did you hear that? his MOTHER) is white, has some deep seated hatred for "the white culture."

But, I put it to you once again: really?? No, of course not.

So what's the deal? I'll tell you what - and it's surprisingly simple, and you probably already know it, though I think people lose sight of it all the time.

Here it is:

Television News is Show Business.

See? That's it. It's that simple. TV News is not all that brilliant in the way of sharing knowledge, or even information, and most of it isn't even pretending very hard to be. I mean, yes, of course, there are some very important exceptions once in a while, but even those exceptions fall into the category of "we need to make people watch us or our ratings slip and then we lose our jobs."

And - just as important, and even easier to lose sight of - it's true for the people we agree with too! Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, for instance: they too are there to sell soap.

You may be tempted to sputter "but Maddow and Olbermann are brilliant! They're not evil and devious and subjective the way Glenn Beck is!" I agree, part way: they are brilliant; they are not evil; they aren't that devious; but they are pretty much just as subjective and snarky in their presentation as Beck and Dobbs.

In the case of Olbermann and Maddow, I agree with much of the stuff they say. Beck and Dobbs don't say things that I agree with very often at all. See how that works? There are all kinds of levels of ideology working out there, no matter how 'objective' one tries to be. Even in (gasp!) newspapers.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't resist the Becks and Dobbses of the world. On the contrary, I think you should. Just be careful how much credit you give them.

And I am DEFINITELY NOT saying that those clowns are just as viable as Olbermann and Maddow, or that there is ANY credibility whatsoever to this notion, seemingly in common currency, that making whacked out statements that fit with your ideology 'balances' out contrary statements (no matter how accurate those contrary statements are), or that repeating those assertions over and over and over again makes them true.

What I am saying is: do your homework when it comes to gathering information. Use some critical thinking when you turn that information into knowledge in pursuit of the Truth. (Oh my, I'm trafficking in lofty themes today.) And make a very clear distinction for yourself between publicity and policy. Dobbs can say any wacky thing about Obama's birth. Beck can say what he wants about Obama's 'racist' attitudes. Representative Broun can go on about how health care reform will kill old people. Vice President Cheney can say any reprehensible thing about how useful, heroic and necessary 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were and are.

WHOA. Wait a minute... those last couple are a little different, aren't they? Broun and Cheney have (or should have) a different kind of responsibility, because they fall into the category of policy-maker, and elected ones at that.

These guys can say what they want (it's one of their most fundamental rights) and you can react how you want, but the question you need to be asking is - what is going to happen as a result? As a result of their statements? As a result of your reaction? There is a difference between media reaction, popular reaction and legal (re)action. And there is a big, huge, gigantic difference between calling someone names, and derailing a plan that might help to save the health care system of a nation; or getting off the hook for ordering your citizen soldiers to torture their prisoners, discrediting those who oppose this practice for being unserious about defending the nation, and in the process doing intense damage to that nation's standing, and making it impossible to prosecute those prisoners who were actually guilty of something. Just as an example.

New Mexico Repeals Death Penalty

Governor Bill Richardson today signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in New Mexico. This is good news for Human Rights and the groups that work to defend them, and more evidence for people who are seeing a sea change in American public opinion regarding this subject.

Wrong

With a capital W.

...Judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

And people say Amy Goodman is a wacko alarmist for referring to the Prison Industrial Complex. Yes, ok - I realize this is an extreme example (though I don't think it's unwarranted, if you'll pardon the pun, to ask how many cases like this there are where the creeps responsible just haven't been caught), but it's also a symptom of a society in which Private Security is one of the fastest growing industries.

Epic fail, people. Epic. Fail.

Are You Kidding Me?

Because I just read this, about a California court ruling that a school can expel students for being lesbians (or rather, get this, for having "a bond of intimacy" that is "characteristic of a lesbian relationship") and it's all just peachy.  I can't even deal with it.  It's wrong on so many levels.  

California: when did you become the poster child for intolerance?  Do you guys sit up at night thinking of ways to ruin people's lives?  Innocent, underage Lutheran School students?  Just for kicks?

Slight Return...

...to one of the themes in my Something Bad entry of a few days ago. (Bonus Smartypants Points, by the way, if you know to what I was referring in the title and first line of that post)

A source familiar with the Times' editorial decisions informs us that the article about the Supreme Court decision regarding the Exclusionary Rule written by Adam Liptak is considered by the Times to be an update of the story written by David Stout - i.e. a later version of the same story - so it replaced the earlier one rather than appearing in addition to it. Since to the best of my knowledge the Stout story never appeared in the print edition of the Times, it is now lost in the folds of the internets.

One might say 'good riddance to bad garbage;' one might surmise as to the thinking behind that unusually sweeping editorial choice, or the immediate feedback that led to it; one might marvel at something being removed from the record in our so-called 'Newspaper of Record.' But there it is: just one of the innumerable quirky publishing details that happen every day, perhaps remarkable only in that it was noticed by a handful of alert citizens.

The Lonesome Death of...

William Zantzinger. Who served six months and paid a $500 fine for killing a black maid who didn't serve him a drink fast enough. In Maryland, in 1963, that was a different kind of possible.

Even today, if you poke around the news reports of his life and death, you'll find different tones depending on where you look.

This can't count as "good" news, because that would be morbid and wrong. And of course it turned out that the details of the case were not as cut and dried as the way Dylan painted them.



Still, one line keeps coming back to me:

She never done nothin' to William Zanzinger

I always found it interesting that Dylan took the 't' out of his name for the song, calling him 'Zanzinger.' Some kind of very subtle nod to the notion that the song's power comes from the Truth of the story itself, not its factual basis?

Something Bad Is Happening

Something very Bad is happening.

Maybe there is something lunar going on. Just too much is too weird for this all to be ok.

The Zipper Factory Theater closed suddenly, and without warning. Such a good space with good adventurous shows. Very sad.

For Round Two: the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt a dirty blow to due process, by cutting off the Exclusionary Rule, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, at the knees. An odd addendum here is that the first article I saw on this in the Times was by David Stout and had a very glib tone - making it seem that this ruling was a-ok if you prefer not to see the bad guys get off on technicalities. But then on Thursday the Times had this article, by Adam Liptak, which is much better and more circumspect, and looks into the ramifications more. And - this is the weird part - that first article is now nowhere to be found. I'll print it at the bottom of this entry, because I think it's important to acknowledge these sorts of media events, especially in publications as influential as the Times. Not to be all conspiracy theory about it, but - what do you suppose is going on there?

No matter how you slice it, the ruling is bad news. And the fact that it's not being treated as BIG news is a little scary.

Next, we have the Metropolitan Opera facing huge cuts. Check out some of the specifics there: their endowment has dropped by a third, to the tune of $100 million dollars. That's 100 million dollars less than they had a couple years ago. This kind of detail is what causes me to go nuts at the notion of it being some big 'victory' when NEA funding increases by 20 or 50 million bucks. It's just not to scale with the problems, and shows that the arts are literally devalued. Or, if you prefer, undervalued. In any case, it seems to me that our policy-makers are missing the point in a fundamental, not incremental, way.

It's an old and well-worn point, but by way of comparison, bear in mind that NEA budget was $144.4 million in 2008 (and the Bush administration even tried to cut that); and the budget for U.S. Military Bands was $168 million - in 1997. They stopped releasing those numbers (as people started noticing things like this?), but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they haven't gone down.

And then - why should those things be enough? - a plane crashes in the Hudson River.

What the heck is going on, people?

But there was a seriously sunny side in the fact that no one died or was even too badly hurt in that crash. SO - soon I'll be posting an entry with some things that feel more like good news.

Meanwhile, here's that first article I saw about Wednesday's Supreme Court Ruling, which appears to have been pulled by the Times.

By DAVID STOUT

Published: January 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of an Alabama man on drug and weapons charges, emphasizing that the exclusionary rule, which generally bars prosecutors from using evidence obtained by the police through improper searches, is far from absolute.

In a 5-to-4 opinion, the court upheld the federal conviction of Bennie Dean Herring, who from the court records appears to have been very unlucky as well as felonious in his conduct. In upholding the conviction, the court’s majority came to a conclusion that will most likely please those who complain about criminals going free on “technicalities” and alarm those who fear that the high court is looking for ways to narrow the reach of the exclusionary rule.

Mr. Herring had gone to the Coffee County, Ala., sheriff’s department on July 7, 2004, to retrieve something from his truck, which had been impounded. “Herring was no stranger to law enforcement,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. observed dryly in his opinion for the court.

And he was no stranger to Mark Anderson, an investigator for the sheriff’s department, who asked a Coffee County clerk if there were any outstanding warrants for Mr. Herring.

No, Mr. Anderson was told. So he asked the clerk to check with her counterpart in neighboring Dale County, who turned up a warrant against Mr. Herring for failing to appear in court on a felony charge.

Mr. Anderson and a deputy following Mr. Herring as he left the impound lot pulled him over and arrested him. A search turned up methamphetamine in his pocket and a pistol, which Mr. Herring could not legally possess because of an earlier felony conviction, in his truck.

Within minutes, however, the Dale County clerk discovered that the warrant against Mr. Herring had been withdrawn five months earlier and had been left in the computer system by mistake. The clerk immediately called Mr. Anderson, but Mr. Herring had already been taken into custody.

Was Mr. Herring entitled to go free because the officers lacked probable cause and there was no dispute that both the arrest and subsequent search were unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment? No, the Supreme Court ruled.

“When police mistakes leading to an unlawful search are the result of isolated negligence attenuated from the search, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements, the exclusionary rule does not apply,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in an opinion joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“We do not suggest that all recordkeeping errors by the police are immune from the exclusionary rule,” the majority noted. But the justices said the official errors in the Herring case do not compare with the kind of egregious and deliberate police misconduct that gave rise to the exclusionary rule in the first place.

Deciding when to throw out evidence under the exclusionary rule is a balancing act, the majority said. Is the official misconduct serious enough that the evidence should be disallowed to deter future misconduct, even if criminals sometimes go free?

Not in Mr. Herring’s case, the majority ruled, upholding findings by a federal district court and the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. “In my view, the court’s opinion underestimates the need for a forceful exclusionary rule and the gravity of recordkeeping errors in the law enforcement,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

But in the majority opinion, the chief justice wrote that the exclusionary rule “is not an individual right and applies only where its deterrent effect outweighs the substantial cost of letting guilty
and possibly dangerous defendants go free.”

At another point, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “the very phrase ‘probable cause’ confirms that the Fourth Amendment does not demand all possible precision.”

The dissenters were unpersuaded, however. “Negligent recordkeeping errors by law enforcement threaten individual liberty, are susceptible to deterrence by the exclusionary rule, and cannot be remedied effectively through other means,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

Hooray 21st Amendment!

Did you know that it's Repeal Day? Well, it is.

I recommend you make some kind of toast to it with a friend, or even just someone you meet in a bar.

Texas Justice

Once again, we get some disturbing news from the Lone Star State.

Carter Albrecht, erstwhile of (Edie Brickell and) the New Bohemians and a mainstay of the Dallas indie rock, had one hell of a freakout the other night. Had a few drinks, and had been on Chantix, an anti-smoking drug with notoriously unpredictable side effects, for a few days, and he went nuts in the middle of the night, hit his girlfriend repeatedly and went on a screaming fit (which everyone including the girlfriend says was extremely atypical behavior for him), then ran out into the hall, and after some more yelling banged on a neighbor's door. One person who lived there told him to stop, but he didn't. Another person demanded he stop, but he kept yelling and banging on the door.

So the person inside shot him.

To death.

Yes, he claimed it was a 'warning shot.' Delivered through the closed and locked door at face level. Hit Albrecht in the head and killed him.

And, this being Texas, he was 'protecting his property' and thus committed no crime.

You can read about it in this New York Times analysis, where they go over the facts of the case and end up condemning... the anti-smoking drug.

Ok, ok - I'm not saying that the drug company is off the hook. If their product has the potential to make a kind, charming, brilliant and affectionate guy fly into a rage, then yes, that should be dealt with immediately and directly. But are we thinking it's a good idea to let the guy who pulled the trigger off the hook? And this is the 'liberal' New York Times. (In fairness, yesterday they published an article that took a longer look at Texas's Castle Doctrine "self defense" law)

Sorry guys, and I know that dude must have been scared, but this ain't ok.



Carter in happier days