I have to confess, there is one group of people for whom I do harbor a pure and unmitigated hate. I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily want to live next to the mentally unstable or have dinner at a cannibal’s house, and while the only pagan religious ceremony I’ve attended was disappointingly tame, I am a little too well-read in history to be entirely at my ease among pagans. One always finds oneself on edge against the possibility that they will castrate themselves without warning and cast their liberated testicles at your feet.
But I don’t mind any of them per se. What I hate is golf spectators. Peter King, though shaky on many subjects sporting and political, is surprisingly sound on the monsters:
Not a big golf watcher, truth be told. But I watched some over the break, and I really need to figure one thing out: What is it with screaming “GET IN THE HOOOOOLLLLE!!!!!” after every tee shot? It was cute when Bill Murray did it, dweebs. It’s dweebish when you do it on every tee shot.
Dweebish? The term hardly does them justice. When we lived in Ponte Vedra, we were about a decent tee drive from Sawgrass. Although we were of the Church of Tennis – you have to pick one there when you arrive, Golf or Tennis, it’s the law – we did attend The Players Championship with a friend who worked for the PGA Tour. It wasn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon, strolling around the course with a drink in your hand, even if you have zero interest in golf.
But I have never seen a more perfectly annoying group of dorks in my life. Over the course of the tournament, I gradually went from mild bemusement to moderate annoyance to full blown hatred for them. As near as I could tell, they count coup by being the first to announce that the ball is going to go into the hole. But, (and this is the challenge), it is deemed shameful to yell that the ball is going to go in if it does not, in fact, go into the hole. I don’t know what the penalty is, but apparently it is severe.
You understand the dilemma. If one waits until the ball is obviously going to go in the hole, someone else will beat one to it. If one jumps the gun, one will look like an ass. Or, rather, even more of an ass than one already does, being the sort of gentleman who follows a grown man around as if he was the mama duck and one was one of her ducklings.
I suspect I may have witnessed the birth of the phenomenon Peter King describes with such fitting distaste. One well-lubricated gentleman was loudly pondering the conundrum of when to announce the imminent falling of the ball into the hole as John Daley was preparing to make an approach shot towards the green where we were standing when a brilliant thought struck him.
“I know, I know, I know,” he told his friend excitedly. “Once the ball gets onto the green, I’m going to yell, ‘get in the hole, Big John’!”
He was roundly congratulated for the perspicacity of his brainstorm, leading me to do some pondering of my own concerning the likelihood that the local home for differently abled adults had been given free tickets to the tournament. I rejected that on the grounds that the Daley enthusiasts were sporting both Florida Casual and expensive watches, and contented myself with watching to see how the grand experiment would proceed.
The ball had no sooner bounced on the green when the innovator shouted, as promised, “Get in the hole, Big John!” He was clearly the first to raise his voice, as it was at least two seconds before a second shout was heard, declaring, with some degree of certainty, that the ball was indeed on a trajectory that would cause it to fall into the hole. The ball did go into the hole, to general approval, and the gentleman who had been the first to raise his voice was enthusiastically congratulated by his friends, with considerable high-fiving and back-pounding.
I did not see the man who was robbed of his boldly declarative statement by this cunning maneuver, but I have no doubt that he and his friends stood in slack-jawed awe, wondering how they had been so cleverly bested. Later that day, I heard the call resound from hole after hole. “Get in the hole, Tiger!” “Get in the hole, Lefty!” “Get in the hole, Big John!”
Apparently, over time, they have dropped the name, seeing as how everyone understands to whom the ball belongs. Now, you can say that their pastime is harmless. I won’t disagree. You can assert that they aren’t hurting anyone. I can’t argue with that. You can quite reasonably claim that it isn’t anyone’s business but theirs how and when they cheer. I will not dispute that.
And yet, my loathing for them still burns every bit as pure and as hot as it did on that first sunny Florida afternoon.
One of Steve Sailer’s readers makes a perceptive observation concerning the media’s behavior in the Trayvon affair:
Has anyone outside the Steve-o-Sphere noticed that, in typical fashion, the grounds for outrage keep subtly shifting?
Month 1- “A crazed white vigilante murdered an innocent, angelic boy!”. Then it turned out that Martin wasn’t so innocent or angelic, and was for all practical purposes a man, not a boy. Zimmerman was also revealed to be not so crazed and not so white. So that angle was dropped.
Later- “It’s those awful ‘Stand your Ground’ laws, that’s what’s wrong!”. But the defense didn’t even need to mention that law at trial, because was totally irrelevant to the case….
This kind of “outrage distillation” is common when the press push a bull***t narrative and then discover that they were mostly wrong. The can’t continue lying, but they can focus the same amount of anger and opprobrium onto smaller and smaller sins.
The anger remains the same, it’s the justification for it that remains a moving target. That process does sound rather familiar, for some reason. I can’t quite seem to place it, though.
I find it fascinating how the ideological Left is far more concerned about slavery that ended nearly 150 years ago than slavery that is taking place today. It appears that if they can’t blame something on white people, they’re just not interested in it:
From the West Coast of Africa to the deserts of Sinai, Bedouin tribes are conducting a human trafficking trade on a massive scale… This man is just one victim of this widespread modern-day slavery, kidnapping, and torture trade in the Sinai desert. There are many pictures and videos of this horrible practice on the Internet. For this story, this Christian man from the African country of Eritrea is going by “Philip,” but that’s not his real name. CBN News covered his identity for his protection.
“In some cases, we were tortured simply because we were Christians,” he told us, his chest trembling slightly as he spoke. “Sinai was always a place for human smuggling, but since around two years ago — even a bit more — it started also to be a place of human torture,” Shahar Shoham, director of Physicians for Human Rights, told CBN News.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it is readily apparent that everything, including the truth, is nothing more than a useful weapon to the Left. With a few noble exceptions, for whom I harbor an amount of respect, they just don’t appear to have any genuine principles beyond whatever they find useful at the moment.
This is true of some who are nominally on the right, of course. You don’t need to remind me, I was acquainted with Ken Lay and some members of Bush the Elder’s “Houston Mafia”. But it appears to be true of nearly everyone, especially at the grass roots, on the Left.
In Section B.2, Matthew Johnson appears to reveal the real source of the SFWA’s institutional fury, which is the fact that I have drawn attention to the organization’s increasingly shabby reputation and nonexistent integrity. It is a little ironic, as again, there is nothing that I could do as a single member that could possibly be more damaging to the organization than its selective prosecution of me for a one-time action that several dozen members, including its current president, have provably committed.
And, as you’ll see, once again the Canadian Regional Director shows himself to be guilty of doing what he falsely claims I have done.
2. Attacks on the reputation and integrity of the organization
Mr. Beale has made statements on numerous platforms, including but not limited to his blog, that can be seen as attacks on the reputation and integrity of SFWA. This report does not consider the question of whether Mr. Beale’s statements meet the legal tests for defamation in any jurisdiction. Instead, it examines more broadly whether these comments were intentionally harmful to the reputation and integrity of SFWA and, if so, whether or not they were made as criticisms in the spirit of good faith. General evidence on whether or not Mr. Beale has been acting in good faith towards the organization is found in Section C.
However, there are specific questions which must be considered in asking whether Mr. Beale’s accusations were made in good faith:
Were the accusations either openly stated or clearly implied?
Did Mr. Beale present evidence to support his accusations?
Did Mr. Beale believe that evidence to be accurate and relevant?
Accusations of corruption and unfair business practices
Most of the statements made by Mr. Beale that can be seen as attacks on the reputation and integrity of SFWA relate to accusations of corruption and unfair business practices. For instance, he has described SFWA of being “the very people who have created a global cottage industry out of thinly disguised necrophilia and bestiality” (see Fig B.18) and accused SFWA of acting as a monopoly:
Comment from demonl: It’s amazing to contrast the online interactions of fantasy/sci fi writers with the online social interactions of model ship builders.
Comment from VD [Beale]: The difference is that one group of model ship builders isn’t actively trying to prevent another group of them from being able to build model ships. (See Fig B.19)
The majority of Beale’s accusations of corruption relate to the Nebula Awards and are found in two posts on his blog and one at the online magazine Black Gate. In his first post on the topic, “Amazon, the SFWA and authorial corruption” (December 27 2012) he states that “corruption… is absolutely rife within SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Organization” (see Fig B.20). While he avoided making the accusation openly in the title of the blog post, he was less circumspect in his tweet of the blog, which read “How SFWA corruption proves Amazon is right to limit author-written reviews” (see Fig B.21).
As noted above, there is an important distinction between genuine criticism of the organization and attacks on its reputation. There is nothing that inherently prevents an accusation of corruption from being genuine criticism so long as it is supported by evidence and done in good faith. The original “Amazon, the SFWA and authorial corruption” post offers no evidence, instead inviting readers to find it in his post at Black Gate. The title of that post, “SF/F Corruption: Part I”, avoids making direct accusations against SFWA in the title, but within the text says “the Nebula Award is, first and foremost, a means for various small groups of people to shamelessly and dishonestly promote the works of themselves and their friends.”
Note that he does not frame this in terms of these individuals misusing or gaming the system, but in terms of the Nebula system – and by extension SFWA – being itself corrupt. (See Fig B.22) No evidence is provided for this beyond the actual Nebula results and Beale’s personal opinion of the aesthetic merits of various books that won or did not win awards. In the comments, Beale also implies further corruption in SFWA, saying “the Nebulas are the least of it” (see Fig B.23) and openly states that “Corruption in SFWA is a documented and easily proven fact” (see Fig B.24). In this comment, and another where he is challenged to substantiate his accusations, Beale says that “this is merely Part I” (ibid.) and “Did you miss the part about Part I?” (see Fig B.25)
So far as I am able to determine, however, no sequel to this post ever appeared at Black Gate, and his post at his own blog titled “SF/F Corruption: Part II” also provides no evidence, instead saying “I had intended to continue on the SFWA theme with which I began the Corruption in Science Fiction series, but a pair of articles concerning the legitimacy of the bestseller lists caught my attention” and then focusing on whether publishers are gaming bestseller lists (see Fig B.26)
In an edit to the original post on his blog, however, Beale did present what he claimed was direct evidence, and it’s worth looking at that in detail. In an edit to the original “SF/F Corruption: Part I” post, Beale added:
UPDATE: An SFWA insider confirms my observations: “[Vox] is correct when it comes to the inbred logrolling. As SFWA Bulletin editor from 1999-2002 I can attest to this first hand. A small clique and their “in” friends control quite a bit of what goes on in SFWA (at least it did back then and I have no reason to doubt that things have changed).” (See Fig B.27)
The phrase “An SFWA insider confirms my observations,” provided as it is without elaboration or context, would seem to imply two things: first, that the source is a member of SFWA; second, that the source agrees with Beale’s accusations of corruption in this post. Neither, however, is true. The quote is taken from commenter “Dave T.” in response to Beale’s Black Gate post, and the text is quoted accurately (see Fig B.28). Later posts by the same commenter, however, show that he had not been a member of SFWA since roughly 2003, or nine years before the post (see Fig B.29), and also that he did not agree with Beale’s overall point about the Nebula process (and by extension SFWA) being corrupt (see Fig B.30). Moreover, it is clear that Beale knew both of these facts, because he participated actively in the comment thread following the article and actually responded to Dave T’s second comment (see Fig B.31).
Therefore, it would seem that Beale knowingly misrepresented someone as a current member of SFWA who was not, misrepresented him as an authoritative source of evidence for Beale’s accusation (since the accusations related directly to the 2012 Nebulas, and Dave T. said he had not been a member since 2003) and misrepresented Dave T’s comments in order to provide support for an otherwise unsubstantiated attack on the reputation and integrity of SFWA.
As a result, it is my conclusion that Mr. Beale made open accusations harmful to the reputation and integrity of SFWA, provided no supporting evidence that would show that he was making an honest criticism in good faith, and furthermore knowingly distorted evidence in support of those accusations.
It is true that I have openly questioned the integrity of the organization’s award process as well as the competence of past and present officers. The lack of authorial integrity with regards to awards and reviews is a real problem, as evidenced by Amazon’s decision to bar authors from reviewing books on its site. But let’s consider the opinions of some other SFWA members, including a few who have openly called for my expulsion.
“Funny thing is, the Hugos are the cleanest major award in American SF. The Nebs are dreadful.” – Teresa Nielsen Hayden, March 11, 2005
“The Nebulas are one of the two major awards in literary science fiction, but their luster has dimmed over the last several years; they are no longer the equal to the Hugos in terms of relevance and timeliness, and their nomination process leaves them open to accusations of nomination via logrolling rather than literary quality.” – John Scalzi, former SFWA president, 2007 platform
“Getting back to the nebulas: log-rolling is indeed a problem. In fact, it’s encouraged by the structure of the nebula process. The only excuse for the process that I can see is that too much eligible fiction is published in any given year for the jury to read it all, so some sort of pre-filtering is necessary, and the way the pre-filtering evolved within the nebula process just happened to end up FUBARed beyond all recursive acronymisation.” – Charles Stross, SFWA member, November 30, 2007
“For the 2009 ballot, SFWA members could see how many nominations each story received in the lead-up to the ballot selection. I really liked this because it allowed members to know which stories were gaining attention. If a story was surging in the tally, many members would go out of their way to read and consider it. However, there was a downside to having a public tally–logrolling. People could see who supported each story. Because of this, it was claimed some SFWA members pledged to vote for different people’s stories if those people voted for their own tales. Now, I personally thought this practice was rarer than people stated, but it was still a concern.” – Jason Sanford, SFWA member, February 20, 2012
“I have served on Neb juries too. And the Election Committee. I used to be a member of SFWA. Trust me on this, I have never been as pressured and log-rolled for a nomination as I have been by male authors. Right down to almost in person physical arm twisting. Women hardly did anything at all, other than send their works to me. And everyone does it.” – C. Foxessa, ex-SFWA member, December 29, 2012
“I thought SFWA would be my ‘union’ capable of enhancing or protecting my interests. It’s not really been so. At least in my very limited experience. Especially not when I stumbled across an e-mail exchange between several SFWA members who were essentially discussing ways to turf my chances on the Nebula, Hugo, and Campbell ballots in 2012. Why should I pay money to remain a member of an organization that seems (too often?) to be infested with personalities who explicitly want to hurt my career? Or at least want to blunt my opportunities?” – Brad Torgerson, SFWA member, July 9, 2013
“Remember kids, SFWA aren’t just clueless and sexist, they’re also a great platform for log-rolling piss weak fiction into award season glory.” – Jonathan McCalmont, SF critic, June 13, 2013
I note that one need not present any evidence at all for one to express one’s opinion in good faith. None of the SFWA members quoted here presented any, and yet they are not being prosecuted by the SFWA Board for their very similar opinions concerning the “dreadful” nature of the SFWA’s awards. Because I am no longer blogging at Black Gate, I don’t write much about the business of science fiction and fantasy anymore; it being an area of less interest to the readers of VP and AG than those of Black Gate. So, I haven’t gotten around to finishing the series on corruption in SF/F. I may never finish it. But the fact that I haven’t publicly presented my evidence yet doesn’t mean that it does not exist, nor do I face any obligation to present it to anyone.
Now let’s look at Matthew Johnson’s accusation that I thrice misrepresented DaveT’s comments and “knowingly distorted evidence in support of those accusations.” Mark his weasely “it would seem” which suggests that the SFWA Board member knows he is playing fast and loose with the facts here. And keep in mind that this is the SFWA Board member accusing me of harming SFWA’s precious “integrity” in his official SFWA capacity. There are three components to his accusation.
1. The first charge of misrepresentation is false. I did not misrepresent anyone as a current member of SFWA who was not a current member. I didn’t say anything at all about DaveT’s membership status as of December 2012, and I even provided a link to the comment where he made it clear that he quit the organization sometime around 2003. It would have been more precise to describe him as “a former SFWA Bulletin editor who quit the organization” than “an SFWA insider”, but it is hardly misrepresenting him to describe him as precisely what he was, an SFWA insider who edited the official SFWA magazine for three years and knows considerably more about the organization than most of its members.
2. The second charge of misrepresentation is false. I did not misrepresent DaveT as an authoritative source of evidence for my accusation. Johnson is straight out lying here. He claims: “(since the accusations related directly to the 2012 Nebulas, and Dave T. said he had not been a member since 2003)”. However, the greater part of my accusation and the subsequent discussion concerned the 2002 Best Novel award given to Catharine Asaro for The Quantum Rose; in addition to the post concerned prominently featuring the cover of that novel, there is even a debate about the connection of that award and her popularity which led to her being elected to SFWA office around the same time
I also denied making any accusations about the 2012 Nebulas in the very comment thread quoted by Mr. Johnson.
Jo Walton: “I am not a member of SFWA and never have been. I think that disposes of your accusations of my logrolling for a Nebula.”
Theo: “I never made any such accusation.”
More importantly, Johnson ignores the way I specifically stated that my accusations primarily relate to the period between 2000 and 2010 in my original post, the very time period during which DaveT was the editor of the Bulletin.
“One of the things that rapidly became obvious to anyone who attempted to participate honestly in the system between 2000 and 2010 was that the Nebula Award is, first and foremost, a means for various small groups of people to shamelessly and dishonestly promote the works of themselves and their friends.”
3. The third charge of misrepresentation is false. I did not “misrepresent Dave T’s comments in order to provide support for an otherwise unsubstantiated attack on the reputation and integrity of SFWA.” Here is where Johnson’s blatant dishonesty becomes impossible to deny. He knowingly misrepresents DaveT’s reminder about the possibility of a simple statistical explanation for Tor’s many awards as a disagreement with my overall point. Johnson writes of DaveT:
“he did not agree with Beale’s overall point about the Nebula process (and by extension SFWA) being corrupt….”
That is totally false, as DaveT clearly did agree with and substantiate my overall point:
“I have merely concurred with Theo that there are shenanigans going on re the Nebs voting process that I think are deplorable. There are cliques who stick together (as in most organizations), and some of them even go so far as to purposely avoid voting for certain types of SF they don’t like (i.e. the perceived Analog _stereotypical_ story, for but one example)…. I personally got fed up with the cliques, in-fighting, nastiness, politics, and all the rest of it, which is why I resigned my Bulletin editorship in 2002 and let my membership lapse a year or so later.” [Emphasis added]
What was Johnson’s basis for claiming DaveT disagreed with me? Fig. B.30, which is below, next to the text from DaveT’s comment.
“If nearly 25% of all Nebs recs since 1986 were from Tor, then this means that just over 75% of the Nebs recs since 1986 were not from Tor. Now, take into account that Tor is the largest SF book publisher in the United States and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that a fair number of their books might just earn a Neb rec. I bought a red car some years ago. A friend was quick to point out that statistics showed that more red cars get into accidents than any other color. To which I replied, “Maybe there are just more red cars on the road.” To wit, maybe there’s just more Tor books to nominate from, and they must be doing something right re quality and sales for them to be the leading SF book publisher in the country (if not the world). Just a thought.”
It’s just a thought. It is obviously not proof of DaveT failing to agree with my overall point. In fact, it’s not even a disagreement with me! I myself brought up the possibility that Tor is simply a very good publisher, in addition to some observations, such as:
“the unusually heavy involvement of its authors in the awards process”
“their representation in the organization’s offices”
“the confirmed logrolling in the recent past”
“how many of those award-winning books neither seem to sell particularly well nor be especially well-regarded by Amazon reviewers”
In fact, our only area of potential disagreement on the subject was that DaveT believes Tor is not cheating, but merely “has an active and successful marketing and networking strategy”, whereas, on the basis of my experience in the music industry, I am less certain that Tor Books has never gamed various awards and bestseller lists. Tomato, Tomahto.
The only person who “knowingly distorted evidence in support of… accusations” here is Matthew Johnson. By now, it should be abundantly clear that with his intentional misrepresentations and false accusations, Matthew Johnson, the current Canadian Regional Director and SFWA Board member, is considerably more harmful to SFWA’s reputation and integrity than I am. And we’ve only reached page 21 of 34.
But since we’re on the subject of the Nebulas and the SFWA Board, I’ve heard there was a bit of disappointment at the SFWA’s secret headquarters following the 2012 Awards.
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Yesterday, you reported some more details from these documents that Snowden has been sharing, including the fact that “Microsoft has helped NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be able to intercept web chats.” I’m quoting directly from the story. So it’s not just that NSA is intercepting emails and data, but there’s actually more and more proof that these companies have been working hand-in-hand with the NSA.
Right. The relationship between the private telecoms and Internet companies and the NSA is one of the crucial components of this entire story. The NSA really can’t do that much spying domestically or internationally without the ongoing cooperation of these private corporations. So with the revelations that we’ve published in the past week and a half – with Laura Poitras reporting in Der Spiegel about mass spying in Germany, in Europe, and the reporting that I did with O Globo in Brazil about a similar collection of communications in Brazil and Latin America, more broadly – the linchpin of all of this is that there’s some large telecommunication company, an American company, exploiting their partnership with foreign telecommunications companies to use their access to those countries’ systems to direct traffic back to NSA repositories. Domestically, the same thing is happening. All these companies like to say they only cooperate with the bare minimum way under the law with the NSA, but what the documents we published yesterday and reported on demonstrate is that Microsoft has continuous and ongoing meetings with the NSA about how to build and construct new methods for enabling unfettered access to the calls and emails and Internet communications that the NSA specifies that they want, and the technicians at Microsoft work hand-in-hand with the technicians at NSA to enable that, and that is really at odds with the public statements Microsoft and Skype and Outlook have made to their users about what they’re doing to protect their privacy. Are these actions technically legal? What’s the implication that we should be walking away with? That there was “just” hand-in-hand cooperation, or that there was something illegal that’s being done?
Well, first of all, hovering over everything is always the Fourth Amendment, regardless of what Congress says is legal. The Fourth Amendment constrains what Congress and the government are permitted to do. One of the arguments from privacy activists and the ACLU and other groups has always been that the new FISA law, which was passed in 2008 with the support of all parties in Congress including President Obama, which was designed essentially to legalize the illegal Bush-Cheney warrantless eavesdropping program, is unconstitutional. And there have been all sorts of lawsuits brought to argue that this law that Congress passed is unconstitutional, and yet no court has been able to rule on the merits of it, because the Obama administration has gone into court repeatedly and said two things: Number 1: All this is too secret to allow courts to rule on, and Number 2: Because we keep everything so secret, nobody can prove that they’ve been subjected to this spying, and therefore nobody has standing to contest the constitutionality of it. So there’s this huge argument out there, which is that all of this is illegal because it’s a violation of the Constitution, that the Obama DOJ has succeeded in preventing a judicial answer to.
Secondly, under the law, the U.S. government is free to intercept the communications of anybody they believe with 51 percent probability is not a U.S. citizen and is not on U.S. soil. So they’re free to go to any of these Internet companies or just simply take off the cables and fiber-optic wires that they have access to, whatever communications they want of anybody outside the United States who’s not a U.S. person, and oftentimes those people are speaking to American citizens. The NSA is free to invade those communications without having to go into a FISA court and get a specific warrant, which is why when President Obama said nobody’s listening to your calls without a warrant, he was simply not telling the truth. That was completely false and deceitful, what he said, because even under the law, the NSA is allowed to intercept communications with American citizens without getting a warrant. The only time they need a warrant is when they’re specifically targeting a U.S. person, an American citizen or somebody on U.S. soil. So it’s a scandal in that – not just that they’re violating the Constitution, but also what the law allows, because of the level of abuse that it entails.
As you’ve pointed out in the last few weeks as well, this is about American citizens, but it’s also about non-American citizens, right? It’s about world citizens. A number of people have written stories about how it really tends to affect those who are much more vulnerable under American foreign policy and domestic policy – Muslims of various backgrounds. But it also affects Brazilians, the French, the Germans, and so it’s an international scandal. What has been happening in Brazil with regards to these revelations?
Right, so let me just say one quick thing about domestic versus international. Even domestically, there are indications that the law has been violated. I mean, the bulk collection of telephone records of all Americans, for example, has been done under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which even the Republican author of that [Jim Sensenbrenner] has said they never imagined it would enable bulk collection of records. It was only supposed to lower the threshold to be able to get specific records of people who were targeted with investigations.
But internationally, the response is so much different than it is in the U.S., you know in the U.S. there’s this obsession with what are Edward Snowden’s personality flaws: Why is he choosing the countries that he seems to be wanting to seek asylum from? Should the journalists involved in reporting these stories be arrested?
Everywhere else in the world, the focus is on the actual substance of the revelations, which is why should we allow the U.S. and its allied governments to construct a ubiquitous spying system that basically destroys privacy globally for everyone on the planet who uses electronic means to communicate. And in Brazil, ever since we published these stories last weekend about mass spying on Brazilians by the millions, in terms of emails and phone calls, it has completely dominated the news cycle of the political class. Not just in Brazil, but in Latin America generally there are formal criminal investigations underway to determine the culpability of Brazilian telecoms, to find out the identity of the U.S. telecom who enabled all this mass access into the telecommunication systems of Latin America. There’s real indignation and a genuine debate over privacy that is taking place throughout the world, much, much more serious and more substantive and profound than the one that has been led by American journalists inside the U.S.
I noticed the president and other high-level political officials in Brazil said that there were chills running down their spines when they were reading that Brazilians were being spied on [note: Actually, it was stated by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner]. Presumably the French government and the German government were also startled about it, but they don’t seem to have had as strong a reaction. Do you think that there’s a definite difference in degree or quality of response from the Brazilian government versus some of the Europeans, or that it’s pretty much on the same level?
I think that a lot of the indignation expressed by European governments is completely artificial and manipulative, designed to show their populations that they’re angry about this, when in reality they’re not. In part because they participate in many of these U.S. spying programs, and in part because Eur opean governments are incredibly and completely subservient to the dictates of the U.S. So, we saw that very vividly, when the French and the other EU states spent a week, you know, parading around, showing how angry they were at what the U.S. had done, but then immediately obeyed American orders to deny airspace rights to a plane that they thought was carrying the person who had allowed them to learn about this—Edward Snowden. And they did it by taking the very extreme step of denying airspace rights to a plane carrying the president of a sovereign state, Bolivia, and sparking anger in the continent, over what felt to them — Latin Americans — like the standard type of racism, colonialism and imperialism that they have been subjected to by the U.S. and its Western allies for… for centuries. And so, I think that the true colors of the E.U. states with regard to all of these issues was revealed very clearly in that incident, although the populations of the E.U. are genuinely angry. The contrast of Latin American governments is very stark. They are genuinely angry, because they weren’t aware of any of this; they weren’t participating in it, and often they were the targets of it. And so I think the repercussions of these stories is going to be very long term, and still has yet to be really appreciated, just in terms of the wedge that it has placed between the U.S. and these governments, and the change in how populations around the world think of the U.S. government.
So, Microsoft is still evil. Okay, that’s not so much news. It is interesting to learn that the reason Skype sucks so much worse is, in part, due to ensuring that every call is a conference call with the NSA. Greenwald deserves a Pulitzer Prize, at the very least.
I wrote up a review on SE+ at Amazon (the first associated with the hardcover). It should be posted within 48 hours of my submission. While it isn’t as flowing as your prose, I just wanted you to know that your writing is just flat out awesome. My first exposure to your writing was ATOB and then I recently just finished SE+. Now I am anxiously awaiting Arts of Dark and Light Book 2….
So many cultures, points of view.. and they all feel real. I am just floored by each character I read. None seems out of place. Each culture fits. Each character acts realistically. I loved how you even showed the POV of characters like Speer and Bextor and …ugh I can’t remember the Chui’s name….but the “enemy” cultures. I think that made your world feel all the more real. Anyway, thanks for the wonderful escapes into the world of Selenoth.
This is intended mostly for the serious fans of Selenoth who want the hardcover, as there is nothing in it that isn’t contained in the four ebooks: Summa Elvetica, A Magic Broken, The Wardog’s Coin, and The Last Witchking. The general consensus is that the hardcover is pretty and makes a suitable companion for A Throne of Bones until such time that Book Two is available.
I’m pleased that many of you are eagerly anticipating Book Two, but it’s going to take a while. In the meantime, for those of you who haven’t read through what is available to date, there are now 1,436 pages of Selenoth to keep you occupied.
In section B.1, Matthew Johnson plumbs new depths, as he attempts to frame my oft-satirical responses to repeated attacks on me by former SFWA President John Scalzi, current SFWA Board member (who has not recused herself from the process) Lee Martindale, SFWA Associate Member Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and others over the last eight years as “attacks on members”.
1. Attacks on members
Attacks on members which occurred through SFWA channels or in SFWA-controlled spaces are addressed in part A. The following looks at attacks and threats which were made in his blog and other public space. Personal attacks
Beale has made numerous attacks on fellow SFWA members which may be seen as going outside the bounds of professional conduct. The best-known and most consistent is likely his use of derogatory nicknames, such as “McRapey” for John Scalzi and “McRacist” for N.K. Jemisin (see Fig B.1). He has also compared Amal el-Mohtar to an Egyptian cleric who has, according to Beale, called for the ethnic cleansing of Egypt (Fig B.2); accused James Enge of “despicable behavior” (see Fig B.3); accused Ms. Jemisin of plagiarism (see Fig B.4); and has published a blog comment claiming that Teresa Nielsen Hayden has herpes. (See Appendix I for the question of whether and why to consider blog comments. In this case, though, Beale actually reprinted the comment in one of his own blog posts, making him more clearly the publisher of the comment: see Fig B.5)
Threats by commenters
Beale has permitted and, arguably, encouraged threats of violence against SFWA members on his blogs and elsewhere. (See Appendix I for the question of whether and why to consider blog comments.) As we have seen, Beale allowed one threat of rape against Ms. Jemisin to remain in the post that was published through the SFWAAuthors Twitter feed; a similar threat was made in the June 13 post “SFWA Forum: the moderated posts”:
“Jemisin libeled him. the SFWA is aiding and abetting her in this libel. come get some, bitch.” (See Fig B.6)
On June 18 an implicit threat was made by a commenter against member Aliette de Bodard: “Didn’t we used to drop bombs on Europeans who were fascinated by racial literature? Eventually people like de Bodard will need the air raid sirens.” (See Fig B.7)
Another series of threats was made against Lee Martindale following a comment she made on Jim Hines’ blog (see Fig B.8) to which Beale took offense (see Fig B.9). Commenters to Beale’s blog post posted threats such as suggestions that she should commit suicide (see Fig B.10), statements that “she needs to get punched or laid… or maybe both in quick succession” (see Fig B.11), requests to “Post her home address, I dare you…” (see Fig B.12) and detailed descriptions of her murder: I’m pretty sure that Bane [a former commenter] would have had a long, eloquent post about seeing an eye through a scope and then the brilliant crimson & grey spatter when he caressed the trigger, or maybe something about the slippery, warm feel of entrails spilling over his hand. (See Fig B.13. Note that Beale ended this post with “This post is dedicated to the memory of Bane”; see Fig B.14]
One comment provided instructions on how to “SWAT” her (send a police SWAT team to her house): “If you want to SWAT at the gnatstys [Internet spelling of “nasties”], you could use skype from a café and call into the police phone number local to the threat, impersonating the threat and saying something like you’ve just killed your family, are going to blow up a school, etc. and watch the militarized blue-coats go after them.” (see Fig B.15)
A few notes may be valuable in providing context. First, the suggestion that Beale should provide Martindale’s home address was not an idle one: on at least one prior occasion Beale has posted the home address of a reviewer (not an SFWA member) he felt had not read his book before reviewing it (see Fig B.16. for the post in which this happened. Although the full address was removed by the time that screenshot was taken, the comment seen in Fig B.17 shows that it had been posted.)
Finally, on June 15 2013 (two days after Beale’s attack on Ms. Jemisin went out via the SFWAAuthors Twitter feed) Martindale also received a threat by e-mail which, while it cannot be traced directly to Beale, echoes threats made against her, and the specific language used in them, on his blogs:
“Keep on doing what you do, keep on following the same routine, you will be located, and you will be dealt with just like you deserve to be. My friends are starting a bail fund for me. See, you’re not the only one who can make veiled threats of violence, you fat, stinking, ugly cunt. Kill yourself now and save someone else the trouble you rotten, repulsive piece of human trash.”
With regards to my “attacks on fellow SFWA members”, I will simply note the following:
1. John Scalzi, the former SFWA president to whom I refer by the derogatory nickname “McRapey” has publicly referred to me in the following ways since 2005:
the lunatic fringe
a jackass, and a fairly ignorant jackass at that
your head is pretty far up your ass
there’s a definite head-ass conjunction on his part
his sphincto-cranial position
stupid and sexist
a sexist pig
he deserves a thumping, and a thumping is what he’s getting
Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit
sociopathic assbag
that pathetic ball of issues
There are hundreds of references on Mr. Scalzi’s blog and several other SFWA member blogs such as Electrolite referring to me as either “Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit” or “RSHD”. It would be informative to learn if the SFWA Board considers that to be inside “the bounds of professional conduct”. Mr. Scalzi has also referred to the readers of my blog as:
VD’s tribe of sexist assbags
your own pit of manstink
the gibbering follow monkeys of that Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit who has an adorable mancrush on me
his clutch of equally insecure racist sexist homophobic dipshit admirers
gibbering monkey followers
dipshits
Note that in addition to demonstrating that the “derogatory nickname” I use for John Scalzi is well within the bounds of professional conduct as demonstrated by the SFWA president’s own example, this would appear to indicate that it is John Scalzi who is truly the racist, as I am a Writer of Color and I have a large number of black and Hispanic readers to whom the presumably white Mr. Scalzi openly refers as “monkeys”.
Moreover, given that Mr. Scalzi has openly, (however satirically), written “I’m a rapist. I’m one of those men who likes to force myself on women without their consent or desire and then batter them sexually” and was recorded stating “John Scalzi is a rapist” on Canadian radio, it can hardly be deemed outrageous to satirize him as “McRapey”.
2. The comment “claiming that Teresa Nielsen Hayden has herpes” was clearly satirical, considering that it was written from the perspective of a Sonoran Desert Toad. As in, the warty little frog-like animal that hops. The full quote was: “I would point out that licking *me* brings on a state of euphoria and a series of pleasant hallucinations, while licking Ms. Nielson would cause spastic uncontrolled vomiting and give you herpes.”
Moreover, Ms Nielsen Hayden has addressed me in the following professional manner since 2005:
It’s really, really obvious that VD is not acquainted with actual women. (2005)
he’s had little or no social interaction of any sort (2005)
VD fears and dislikes women (2005)
a third-rate intellect (2005)
a tad unbalanced (2005)
a generally unpleasant fellow (2005)
He is a wuss. (2007)
You’re also a singularly inept sockpuppet, O Bane/Vox/Theeeeeodore. (2007)
Vox Day’s true opinion of women has always been clear to me: he’s terrified of them. (2007)
out-of-the-closet racist (2008)
obviously unbalanced (2008)
been known to put in a good word for the Nazis (2008)
3. In the interest of keeping this less than entirely tedious, I will address the other accusations in my actual response to the Board. In the meantime, I will simply point out that my “attacks” have almost always been responses to the attacks of others.
With regards to the various statements made by commenters, both here and at other blogs, I will simply point out that I maintain a very light moderation policy with rules that are clearly posted, which is one reason why my blogs are among the most popular in the SFWA, with 1,170,000 pageviews last month alone. I find it strange to have to point out to a professional writer’s organization that I am obviously not responsible, in any way, for anyone’s words or actions besides my own. Nor have I ever incited anyone to do anything; quite to the contrary, I have actively dissuaded my readers from responding to various forms of attacks in kind.
I have already shown in my response to section A.3 that Mr. Johnson’s assertion of a previous “rape threat” to Ms Jemisin was, in fact, not a threat at all, and the following three comments, all of which still remain on this blog in addition to many other similar comments, should suffice to demonstrate that my failure to delete a comment does not indicate either permission for, encouragement of, or agreement with the comment, its sentiments, or the commenter.
“You sad, silly little fuck. Your father really screwed you over for life, didn’t he?” (Phoenician February 04, 2013 4:16 PM)
“I own your mental space. First Scalzi made you his little bitch. And now I’ve made you my little bitch. You’ll have to face up to the fact that this isn’t a coincidence. It seems to be in your nature to seek out a dominant male and make him treat you like a bottom.” (Pheonician February 09, 2013 8:53 PM)
“What a strange, depressing man you are. And how fearful and strange and depressing many of the folks in the comments are. This post is full of logical fallacies that sort of laugh in the face of psychology and history, but . . . it’s not even worth getting into them with you. If you’ve ignored facts up to this point in your life, there’s no real any evidence that you’d start taking them into consideration now.” (Maggie Stiefvater June 14, 2013 3:14 PM )
Of the 136,270 comments presently available on this blog, a statistically significant percentage of them contain sentiments of which I do not approve, assertions with which I disagree, and claims which I believe to be false. I am not responsible for any of them. And I am most certainly not responsible for any threats made here or elsewhere to others by others.
Unlike many members of the SFWA, I believe in unmitigated free speech and free expression. Calling speech “hate speech” does not justify limiting it any more than calling it “blasphemy” or “uppity negro speech” does. I find it absolutely and utterly reprehensible that the SFWA Board has abandoned the organization’s formerly strong position on free speech and is not only prosecuting a member for his own free speech, but for permitting others free speech as well.
Stephen Brust might be thinking to mock the critics of SFWA with his “Anthem of the SFWA Fascists, but the simple fact is that the SFWA Board is acting as if it wears “rainbow-colored jackboots” as it actively attempts to limit the ability of its members to freely express their opinions in a hypocritical and one-sided manner. And I find it extremely amusing to observe that Mr. Brust has turned off comments for the video.
§ 107 . Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
“A lot has been made of the fact that there are six women on the Zimmerman jury. My expectation is that he will be found not guilty, less because he isn’t actually guilty of anything but self-defense, but because there is a Hispanic woman on the jury. On matters of race, Hispanics not only tend to stick together, but more importantly, tend to be considerably less guiltable, for lack of a better expression, than whites.”
I wrote that last night but didn’t post it because I was intending to write more and didn’t get around to finishing it. As it happens, the post was overtaken by events, because last night the jury rightly found George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin:
George Zimmerman never denied shooting Trayvon Martin, but he said he did so in self defense. Late Saturday night, a Florida jury found him not guilty in the teenager’s death. The verdict caps a case that has inflamed passions for well over a year, much of it focused on race and gun rights. The six jurors — all of them women — deliberated for 16½ hours. Five of the women are white; one is a minority.
I tend to doubt there will be any massive riots; it’s been pretty clear that the prosecution completely failed to make any coherent case against Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. Also, unlike Rodney King, this wasn’t an official cop thing and the black community in America knows very well that it is getting its clock cleaned by the Hispanic community everywhere from Compton to Miami.
This tweet sums it all up: “So a Hispanic shoots a black and is acquitted by women, but it’s still white men’s fault.”
Voting for the five finalists for the Clive Staples Award is now live until July 17th. After the five finalists are selected, another round of voting will determine the winner. If you are interested in voting, you can do so here.
“Many were wounded in the attack, local tribesman Kaleemullah Dawar said, but rescuers delayed for fear of falling victim to a second attack, a common tactic with drone strikes.“
That tactic is known as the “double tap,” which bombs multiple targets in relatively quick succession — meaning that the second strike often hits first responders. In 2007 the FBI said the tactic as commonly used by terrorist organizations such as Hamas.
Last year a study by the NYU School of Law and Stanford Law School detailed the U.S. use of the double tap, providing first-hand accounts of its devastating effect on rescuers and humanitarian workers.
In other words, the USG is using a terror tactic against non-terrorists in the War on Terror. Brilliant. Even Rumsfeld understood that the key to winning this sort of amorphous war was to avoid making more terrorists than were killed. Which is impossible if you’re going to make your own soldiers into terrorists.
