Just a brief one, and definitely no pictures.
Blogger's owners Google has announced that sexually explicit blogs will be forcibly made 'private' - available only to individuals the author personally invites to view.
As you may have noticed, Plashing Vole largely eschews sexual material you're one of those discerning souls who flushes at the thought of a well-applied preposition or a neatly-turned phrase. You I welcome. In short, there's nothing 'blue' to be seen here, though a look through the search terms used by people who land on Vole implies that a lot of people are a) sick and b) very disappointed quite quickly.
As perhaps the least sexy author and blog in cyberspace, I protest. Google, Apple (another deeply prudish company) and various other tech corporations are happy to spy on us, spy on us for governments, avoid their taxes, promote a politics which disempowers the citizen in favour of oppressive states and oppressive, unaccountable corporations, and yet they fear the expression of sexual appetites. Reaching back to my days reading Freudian literary theory, I seem to remember an argument that the exchange of money is a fetishised transference of the exchange of libidinal energy – if that's true, Google is the horniest beast in existence.
I don't view pornography for a range of reasons personal, political, social and sensible (for a start, I only use the web at work, and shared offices aren't the ideal setting for a session with the Kleenex; besides, I like my job). But I do want to stick up for my invisible comrades in the blogosphere. Firstly, explicit material is not necessarily pornographic. There are millions of people out there discussing their sexual development and appetites in constructive ways. Human sexuality is a wondrous (bonkers) landscape and take it from this ex-Catholic: not talking about it produces damaged people and societies. I want the gay Saudi or Nebraskan kid to find out that there are people like her or him, and that anyone who feels a bit odd at home has a community of people exploring the same feeling.
Not all sex blogging is pornographic. A large amount of it, frankly, is. I'm largely opposed to pornography but accept that there's at least the potential for 'ethical' porn. My guess is that it's more likely to be found on blogs than on the corporate pages of commercial producers. I'd far rather hear about Hilda and Cyril's wife-swapping parties in Tunbridge Wells than some violent rape-fantasy produced by the Gb in Los Angeles in conveyor-belt fashion. Artistically, too, let's hear it for awful mobile-phone footage and the glories of DIY home decor and (don't blame me; Boing Boing thinks it's cool) Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn (link is harmless but please, people, shut your bedroom door).
Most of all, I'm bothered that Google is going to be the ultimate arbiter of what's unacceptable. A tiny elite group of mostly-white, mostly-male, mostly-heterosexual elitists is now going to decide what can and can't be written about and shown in one of the few uncommercialised spaces on the web. Yes, you might say, Blogger is a commercial service, freely available on the understanding that content and metadata become Google's profit-making data. It's a pseudo-public space rather than a public one, and it has the right to dictate what goes on under its roof. I suspect Google will claim that this is an issue of public protection, but it doesn't stand up. A Tory MP last year appealed to the Prime Minister to ensure that children are prevented from seeing sexual material. From the party which hates the Nanny State, this is a bit cheeky: how about he do some actual parenting? I don't think children are going to read blogs about shoe fetishes. They'll google the obvious things or view stuff their mates pass on.
I don't think this washes any more. There is no public equivalent of the blogosphere for those who don't have the resources to host their own sites, and without the visibility the comes from being on a major site, you may as well not exist. Yes, there are compromises (WordPress even tracks bloggers through a hidden feature in the typeface) but we should demand at least a clear and accountable process for determining what is and isn't acceptable. My guess is that the ideological and cultural position occupied by Google's censors will disproportionately hit blogs dealing with homosexuality, trans-gender sexualities and other 'minority' positions on the sexual continuum.
I have a sneaking suspicion that big-boobed-babes of the kind purveyed for heterosexual men by Playboy and its multiple imitators will somehow remain visible (bloggers making money from erotic material are banned: you can find corporate porn via Google any time you like).
I don't mind my government passing laws about this stuff even when they're wrong, because I can vote them out if enough people agree with me, but Google et al. are informed by only two things: profit and their own private perspectives on what's 'icky'. That's not good enough when their service is fast becoming a utility.
The old saw about 'first they came for X, and I said nothing because I was not X' applies here. However disgusting you might find them, it's time to stand up for the perverts, not only because someday Google might decide that you're one too, but as a matter of principle.
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Tuesday, 24 February 2015
Friday, 11 July 2014
You shouldn't be allowed to see what it is yet!
So this was in the local rag recently:
The 'anger', it turns out, is entirely felt by one man who feels so strongly about it that he wishes to remain anonymous, presumably worried that the region's roving bands of violent paedophile cartoonists will visit vengeance upon him.
He feels very deeply that the complete works of Rolf Harris should be withdrawn from the public domain:
Why am I bothered? Because I came into the office at 7 a.m. this morning to do a live radio interview on the BBC's WM station with this chap and the presenter, and I spent yesterday thinking about how I feel. Sadly, our defender of public morality either didn't wake up or thought better of making a public stand: he didn't answer, and then switched off, his phone. We were going to talk about censorship, the nature of offence, the history of book-banning and whether art and artists can and should be treated distinctly.
Rather than let good material go to waste, you can have my take on the Filthy Books Furore. I guess that you won't be surprised that I'm against censoring books by bad people. I tend to believe that reading Rolf's book on art won't make you a bad person, it'll make you a bad artist. His books aren't offensive: he is. There's a difference. If you don't want Rolf to make 6p in royalties, don't take out his book.
I'd probably yank biographies of Savile and Harris from the shelves on the grounds that they're out of date, but keep the autobiographies. I strongly believe that a society that wants to understand itself shouldn't sweep material under the carpet but examine it. Savile's autobiography was astonishingly candid: perhaps closer reading would have caught him while he yet lived.
I just don't think that art should be judged by the standards of the artist's morality. Rolf's art was always bad art, whatever we did or didn't know about him. Caravaggio was a murderer: should we take his paintings down? The case I know most about is one I was going to mention on air because it's directly relevant to the BBC. Eric Gill was a talent sculptor, typographer and artist - one of the most fascinating characters of the twentieth-century. You've seen his work millions of times, because he designed Gill Sans, a beautiful typeface:
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As well as typography, he carved the astonishing Prospero and Ariel figures on the BBC's Broadcasting House, and the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral:
I tell my Media Ethics students about Eric Gill. I show them the artwork. Then I tell them about his sex life. He had affairs with his sisters (usually no reaction). He had sex with his daughters (some disquiet). He had sex with his dog (utter horror: I usually tease them for their moral hierarchies by observing that it's probably less cruel to have sex with an animal than to kill it, and ask what they had for lunch).
Does this catalogue of horrors mean that Gill's artwork is tainted? I don't think it does. Gill painted and sculpted eroticised images of his daughters and sister Gladys. Knowing this adds a degree of horror, but if I'd never know who the models were, or what their relationship was, I don't think anything intrinsic in the artwork would have communicated abuse or taboo. In many ways, knowing the background to some of the art makes it more complex and intense. I wouldn't hide them away because I don't think there's a magical connection between an artist's morality and his or her work. There are exceptions: I do think Graham Ovenden's art was explicitly paedophilic and don't believe his exquisite technique entitles him to a free pass.
Jimmy Savile recorded a series of road safety adverts, like this one:
Should this be banned? I think not. The message is unaffected by what we now know about Savile. In its time and context, it was perfectly reasonable, and retrospective horror about what Savile was up to in other situations doesn't taint the purpose and content of this text.
Books and pictures don't commit crimes. Writers, artists and photographers do. I agree with the ban on paedophilic photography and film because it requires the abuse of real people in its production. I agree with the ban on the circulation of such material because it stimulates the further abuse of real people. I disagree with the ban on fictional representations of illegal acts however. I don't think the imagination can be legislated against, however vile the products of that imagination are. I don't think fiction creates real victims. I think we should ban the execution of actual crimes, not potential ones.
Secondly, a blanket ban on the discussion or representation of illegal acts prevents understanding them. Book Ban Man explicitly says he's happy for people to read about 'horrific crimes'. He clearly doesn't think that reading about murder or sexual violence leads to more murder or sexual violence - so why does he think that a criminal's thoughts on felt-tip line drawing is 'offensive'? Though if he feels that no books by criminals should be allowed on the shelves, I'm tempted to agree: let's rid public libraries of the complete works of Jeffrey Archer!
Let's talk about Nabokov. Lolita is one of the vilest books I've ever read. As you probably know, it's an exploration of a much older man's sexual obsession with a very young girl. I do actually think that it's paedophilic, and that fascination with young girls pervades much of Nabokov's work. I still wouldn't ban Lolita nor do I think even great literature, let alone Rolf Harris's books should be totemised as magical objects with the power to turn ordinary people into slavering perverted beasts. Texts are framed and contextualised in particular ways: while I find Lolita creepy and unpleasant, I don't think it's an advert for an act society has deemed beyond the Pale. Additionally, texts don't exist in a vacuum. They aren't magic: readers create texts by reading from their own unique perspectives. I'm sure a determined paedophile could manage to turn Lolita into simplistic one-handed entertainment, and perhaps even Rolf on Art, but the problem is with the reader: s/he's the paedophile, not the book. S/he still would be even if the book had never been read. There's only a social and legal problem if the reader commissions or commits a paedophilic act.
Away from the sphere of illegal acts, I'm generally against censorship of other material. Too many texts have been banned because some politician or campaigner sees temporary, local advantage in it. I'm sure Evelyn Waugh had Ulysses in mind when he lampooned the government in the first chapter of Vile Bodies, in which poor Adam has his autobiographical manuscript confiscated by customs.
Oscar Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Joyce, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter…all have been subject to bans for offending someone (well-meaning liberals don't like To Kill… being used in classrooms because it uses authentic but now-offensive racial epithets, while evangelists in the US condemn Rowling for promoting witchcraft). Social mores are complex and fluid: banning texts often seems very silly in a short space of time. It really bothers me that those with the loudest voices or cultural capital get to decide what gets banned. This isn't mature, democratic debate. It's the morality of the lynch mob.
It's impossible to ban books or anything else anyway. The Spycatcher case established that national boundaries had become meaningless: the book was banned in the UK but published overseas, and a judge ruled that as overseas publication had put any sensitive material in the public domain, British publication may as well go ahead. And this is before the internet, of course. Despite the spirited efforts of every government, material can't be buried for long. If all the libraries removed Rolf Harris's books from the shelves, anyone determined to learn how to draw anthropomorphic kangaroos could locate a copy on the web in seconds.
No, physical interdiction and legal intervention aren't any good when we're talking about ideas. I'm perfectly happy to ban the circulation of material depicting illegal acts, but it's far more important to discuss why we have taboos, and educate people so that they either don't feel or don't act on desires we collectively and calmly decide are damaging.
So anyway, that's what I'd have said in my 2 and a half minutes on local radio. And then the local paper would have led a violent mob to my front door.
Oh, and a final word of advice to libraries and readers. Don't buy books because they're (ghost)-written by celebrities. Buy books on the basis of quality.
The 'anger', it turns out, is entirely felt by one man who feels so strongly about it that he wishes to remain anonymous, presumably worried that the region's roving bands of violent paedophile cartoonists will visit vengeance upon him.
He feels very deeply that the complete works of Rolf Harris should be withdrawn from the public domain:
I can understand books being written about people who committed horrific crimes, but this is something he has written himself…I think it’s disgusting this sort of offensive material is on show for anyone to see.So, to sum up: he's quite happy for anyone to see and read books about 'horrific crimes' but thinks that books like A Pet For You: Animal Hospital with Rolf Harris, Can You Tell What It Is Yet? and Rolf On Art: My Approach from First Steps to Finished Paintings are 'offensive'. They also found an 'outraged' user who did give his name and felt that The Best of Rolf CD should be banned too. The council isn't withdrawing the books for adults or the CD, but is taking away a book for children by Harris, as though there's something inherently paedophilic and contagious in the book, which completely baffles me. It's way beyond logic and rationality.
Why am I bothered? Because I came into the office at 7 a.m. this morning to do a live radio interview on the BBC's WM station with this chap and the presenter, and I spent yesterday thinking about how I feel. Sadly, our defender of public morality either didn't wake up or thought better of making a public stand: he didn't answer, and then switched off, his phone. We were going to talk about censorship, the nature of offence, the history of book-banning and whether art and artists can and should be treated distinctly.
Rather than let good material go to waste, you can have my take on the Filthy Books Furore. I guess that you won't be surprised that I'm against censoring books by bad people. I tend to believe that reading Rolf's book on art won't make you a bad person, it'll make you a bad artist. His books aren't offensive: he is. There's a difference. If you don't want Rolf to make 6p in royalties, don't take out his book.
I'd probably yank biographies of Savile and Harris from the shelves on the grounds that they're out of date, but keep the autobiographies. I strongly believe that a society that wants to understand itself shouldn't sweep material under the carpet but examine it. Savile's autobiography was astonishingly candid: perhaps closer reading would have caught him while he yet lived.
I just don't think that art should be judged by the standards of the artist's morality. Rolf's art was always bad art, whatever we did or didn't know about him. Caravaggio was a murderer: should we take his paintings down? The case I know most about is one I was going to mention on air because it's directly relevant to the BBC. Eric Gill was a talent sculptor, typographer and artist - one of the most fascinating characters of the twentieth-century. You've seen his work millions of times, because he designed Gill Sans, a beautiful typeface:
 |
| Eric Gill: Ariel Between Wisdom and Gaiety |
Does this catalogue of horrors mean that Gill's artwork is tainted? I don't think it does. Gill painted and sculpted eroticised images of his daughters and sister Gladys. Knowing this adds a degree of horror, but if I'd never know who the models were, or what their relationship was, I don't think anything intrinsic in the artwork would have communicated abuse or taboo. In many ways, knowing the background to some of the art makes it more complex and intense. I wouldn't hide them away because I don't think there's a magical connection between an artist's morality and his or her work. There are exceptions: I do think Graham Ovenden's art was explicitly paedophilic and don't believe his exquisite technique entitles him to a free pass.
Jimmy Savile recorded a series of road safety adverts, like this one:
Should this be banned? I think not. The message is unaffected by what we now know about Savile. In its time and context, it was perfectly reasonable, and retrospective horror about what Savile was up to in other situations doesn't taint the purpose and content of this text.
Books and pictures don't commit crimes. Writers, artists and photographers do. I agree with the ban on paedophilic photography and film because it requires the abuse of real people in its production. I agree with the ban on the circulation of such material because it stimulates the further abuse of real people. I disagree with the ban on fictional representations of illegal acts however. I don't think the imagination can be legislated against, however vile the products of that imagination are. I don't think fiction creates real victims. I think we should ban the execution of actual crimes, not potential ones.
Secondly, a blanket ban on the discussion or representation of illegal acts prevents understanding them. Book Ban Man explicitly says he's happy for people to read about 'horrific crimes'. He clearly doesn't think that reading about murder or sexual violence leads to more murder or sexual violence - so why does he think that a criminal's thoughts on felt-tip line drawing is 'offensive'? Though if he feels that no books by criminals should be allowed on the shelves, I'm tempted to agree: let's rid public libraries of the complete works of Jeffrey Archer!
Let's talk about Nabokov. Lolita is one of the vilest books I've ever read. As you probably know, it's an exploration of a much older man's sexual obsession with a very young girl. I do actually think that it's paedophilic, and that fascination with young girls pervades much of Nabokov's work. I still wouldn't ban Lolita nor do I think even great literature, let alone Rolf Harris's books should be totemised as magical objects with the power to turn ordinary people into slavering perverted beasts. Texts are framed and contextualised in particular ways: while I find Lolita creepy and unpleasant, I don't think it's an advert for an act society has deemed beyond the Pale. Additionally, texts don't exist in a vacuum. They aren't magic: readers create texts by reading from their own unique perspectives. I'm sure a determined paedophile could manage to turn Lolita into simplistic one-handed entertainment, and perhaps even Rolf on Art, but the problem is with the reader: s/he's the paedophile, not the book. S/he still would be even if the book had never been read. There's only a social and legal problem if the reader commissions or commits a paedophilic act.
Away from the sphere of illegal acts, I'm generally against censorship of other material. Too many texts have been banned because some politician or campaigner sees temporary, local advantage in it. I'm sure Evelyn Waugh had Ulysses in mind when he lampooned the government in the first chapter of Vile Bodies, in which poor Adam has his autobiographical manuscript confiscated by customs.
Oscar Wilde, Radclyffe Hall, Joyce, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter…all have been subject to bans for offending someone (well-meaning liberals don't like To Kill… being used in classrooms because it uses authentic but now-offensive racial epithets, while evangelists in the US condemn Rowling for promoting witchcraft). Social mores are complex and fluid: banning texts often seems very silly in a short space of time. It really bothers me that those with the loudest voices or cultural capital get to decide what gets banned. This isn't mature, democratic debate. It's the morality of the lynch mob.
It's impossible to ban books or anything else anyway. The Spycatcher case established that national boundaries had become meaningless: the book was banned in the UK but published overseas, and a judge ruled that as overseas publication had put any sensitive material in the public domain, British publication may as well go ahead. And this is before the internet, of course. Despite the spirited efforts of every government, material can't be buried for long. If all the libraries removed Rolf Harris's books from the shelves, anyone determined to learn how to draw anthropomorphic kangaroos could locate a copy on the web in seconds.
No, physical interdiction and legal intervention aren't any good when we're talking about ideas. I'm perfectly happy to ban the circulation of material depicting illegal acts, but it's far more important to discuss why we have taboos, and educate people so that they either don't feel or don't act on desires we collectively and calmly decide are damaging.
So anyway, that's what I'd have said in my 2 and a half minutes on local radio. And then the local paper would have led a violent mob to my front door.
Oh, and a final word of advice to libraries and readers. Don't buy books because they're (ghost)-written by celebrities. Buy books on the basis of quality.
Monday, 23 December 2013
Reading this blog may warp your fragile little minds.
I feel like I should be wearing some kind of medallion, because I'm clearly a serious threat to public morality. That's right: Plashing Vole is BLOCKED under 02's 'Parental Control' settings.
Oh yeah. My stern critiques of Michael Gove, neoliberalism and bad books are TOO HOT for impressionable young minds. Still, I've got a way to go: 02 still thinks this is an 'Educational Site' and adults are still able to read the poisonous filth dripping from my keyboard. I'm not as dangerous as some other depraved sites which have been blocked under the default safety rules: Childline, Refuge and on BT:
Dolores was as keen on stifling free speech as our current government which – I should point out – ran for office on platforms of increasing civil liberties after New Labour's absurdly authoritarian behaviour.
One of JK Rowling's greatest creations, Dolores hides a vicious hatred of dissent, enjoyment, citizen autonomy and freedom of speech and assembly under the guise of concern for morality and young minds. She's a mix of Michael Gove and Mary Whitehouse. In fact, I might start a campaign to rename ISP censorship Dolores' Law.
As an aside, I remember some pompous Tory MP demanding in Parliament that David Cameron stop his kids viewing porn. Given that the Tories are thoroughly against the Nanny State and Big Government, I wrote to him suggesting that rather than relying on laws and technical fixes, he could educate his children and/or keep an eye on their browsing choices himself. Sadly, he couldn't find time to reply.
If anyone would like to test the new Cameron Filters on their ISPs, do let me know if I've been declared a Public Enemy via other services. If you can still get in touch, that is.
They'll never take me alive!
Oh yeah. My stern critiques of Michael Gove, neoliberalism and bad books are TOO HOT for impressionable young minds. Still, I've got a way to go: 02 still thinks this is an 'Educational Site' and adults are still able to read the poisonous filth dripping from my keyboard. I'm not as dangerous as some other depraved sites which have been blocked under the default safety rules: Childline, Refuge and on BT:
"sites where the main purpose is to provide information on subjects such as respect for a partner, abortion, gay and lesbian lifestyle, contraceptive, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy."Oh, and 'esoteric material', which I would hope to qualify for one day. It's fascinating that the primary moral fear in the UK is sexuality, rather than say, violence. What's next though? Once sex has been banned from the internet, will politics and religion become verboten? I think of David Cameron as an even less intelligent version of Dolores Umbridge:
 |
| 'For the greater good. I want to do what must be done. ' 'Let us preserve what must be preserved, perfect what can be perfected and prune practices that ought to be... prohibited!' |
One of JK Rowling's greatest creations, Dolores hides a vicious hatred of dissent, enjoyment, citizen autonomy and freedom of speech and assembly under the guise of concern for morality and young minds. She's a mix of Michael Gove and Mary Whitehouse. In fact, I might start a campaign to rename ISP censorship Dolores' Law.
As an aside, I remember some pompous Tory MP demanding in Parliament that David Cameron stop his kids viewing porn. Given that the Tories are thoroughly against the Nanny State and Big Government, I wrote to him suggesting that rather than relying on laws and technical fixes, he could educate his children and/or keep an eye on their browsing choices himself. Sadly, he couldn't find time to reply.
If anyone would like to test the new Cameron Filters on their ISPs, do let me know if I've been declared a Public Enemy via other services. If you can still get in touch, that is.
They'll never take me alive!
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Sighberspace
Groan. Here we go again. A bunch of self-appointed moral arbiters from the reactionary right are demanding that the government makes ISP's block all pornography automatically so that the little kiddies are protected: adults wanting a little visual stimulation will have to tell their ISP that they want to opt in.
Here's the argument against censorship, for dummies.
1. Very basically: it won't work. Any teenager hunting for filth will be way, way ahead of their parents. How long will it take, do you think, between the National No-Naughtiness Curtain being instituted and a bright teen uploading a YouTube video showing his friends how to 'opt-in'. On an even simpler level, filters never work. My university tries to block spam email based on textual analysis algorithms, but just this morning I've deleted invitations to access dictators' billions, save £££s on items of tat and increase certain sections of my anatomy beyond all proportion. So I can't quite imagine an ISP's filter managing to decide that Francis Bacon's nude portraits count as Art whereas Katie Price's la-la's are Filth.
2. Why should a porn-loving adult (and shock horror: some parents like to watch strangers doing the nasty) have to tell their ISP that that's what they plan on doing after bedtime?
3. What's next? First they came for the grumble fans (and the definition of pornography really isn't as simple as pro-censorship forces suggest). Then they came for the guns-and-ammo kids. Then for the Islamist dissidents. Who's to say that a government won't decide that anyone wanting access to robust communist discussion boards shouldn't have to notify their ISP, in case Portia and India catch sight of cynical subversion?
3. Pay attention. This is the big one. The last time some Tory MP moaned about having to worry about his little darlings watching some plasticised Californians get on down because THE GOVERNMENT WOULDN'T STOP THEM, I wrote him a letter. A letter which received no response. I pointed out the the Tories are the party of the family (they claim) and parental responsibility. I then suggested that rather than asking the state (which they habitually excoriate as a bureaucratic, remote monster) to protect the kiddies, they could try doing some bloody PARENTING.
I don't just mean that a savvy parent should occasionally check the History cache, or sit behind their pride and joy making sure they don't see anything stronger than Peppa Pig. I mean that Mummy and Daddy might consider acculturating their offspring: make sure they understand the bewildering experiences of puberty and discussing the impulses they might encounter. Then they could explain that the internet is the repository of everything they might imagine and quite a lot of things beyond their imaginations (I'm told) and that there are psychological, moral and social consequences bound up with viewing this stuff. Let each parent decide what's OK, not some - presumably very busy, red-eyed - civil servant.
Mater and Pater don't need to be a police force, nor should they demand that the government police their children's web activity. They simply need to play an active role in educating their children about the pleasures and pitfalls of pornography and the internet as a cultural space.
It's like the give-a-man-a-fish/teach-a-man-to-fish argument. Keep your daughter in a bubble of ignorance and she'll be utterly screwed up when some nasty little brat shows them a Brazilian Fart Porn (© South Park) clip in the school toilets on his mobile phone, whereas a carefully-educated kid will understand the emotional, moral and social context and make wise choices. Duh!
But that's obviously too hard. So we'll get the Daily Mail to start a moral panic instead.
Here's the argument against censorship, for dummies.
1. Very basically: it won't work. Any teenager hunting for filth will be way, way ahead of their parents. How long will it take, do you think, between the National No-Naughtiness Curtain being instituted and a bright teen uploading a YouTube video showing his friends how to 'opt-in'. On an even simpler level, filters never work. My university tries to block spam email based on textual analysis algorithms, but just this morning I've deleted invitations to access dictators' billions, save £££s on items of tat and increase certain sections of my anatomy beyond all proportion. So I can't quite imagine an ISP's filter managing to decide that Francis Bacon's nude portraits count as Art whereas Katie Price's la-la's are Filth.
2. Why should a porn-loving adult (and shock horror: some parents like to watch strangers doing the nasty) have to tell their ISP that that's what they plan on doing after bedtime?
3. What's next? First they came for the grumble fans (and the definition of pornography really isn't as simple as pro-censorship forces suggest). Then they came for the guns-and-ammo kids. Then for the Islamist dissidents. Who's to say that a government won't decide that anyone wanting access to robust communist discussion boards shouldn't have to notify their ISP, in case Portia and India catch sight of cynical subversion?
3. Pay attention. This is the big one. The last time some Tory MP moaned about having to worry about his little darlings watching some plasticised Californians get on down because THE GOVERNMENT WOULDN'T STOP THEM, I wrote him a letter. A letter which received no response. I pointed out the the Tories are the party of the family (they claim) and parental responsibility. I then suggested that rather than asking the state (which they habitually excoriate as a bureaucratic, remote monster) to protect the kiddies, they could try doing some bloody PARENTING.
I don't just mean that a savvy parent should occasionally check the History cache, or sit behind their pride and joy making sure they don't see anything stronger than Peppa Pig. I mean that Mummy and Daddy might consider acculturating their offspring: make sure they understand the bewildering experiences of puberty and discussing the impulses they might encounter. Then they could explain that the internet is the repository of everything they might imagine and quite a lot of things beyond their imaginations (I'm told) and that there are psychological, moral and social consequences bound up with viewing this stuff. Let each parent decide what's OK, not some - presumably very busy, red-eyed - civil servant.
Mater and Pater don't need to be a police force, nor should they demand that the government police their children's web activity. They simply need to play an active role in educating their children about the pleasures and pitfalls of pornography and the internet as a cultural space.
It's like the give-a-man-a-fish/teach-a-man-to-fish argument. Keep your daughter in a bubble of ignorance and she'll be utterly screwed up when some nasty little brat shows them a Brazilian Fart Porn (© South Park) clip in the school toilets on his mobile phone, whereas a carefully-educated kid will understand the emotional, moral and social context and make wise choices. Duh!
But that's obviously too hard. So we'll get the Daily Mail to start a moral panic instead.
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Blocked in Beijing!
I may have been interviewed for a Chinese news programme, but the authorities in Beijing take an even dimmer view of my blogging activities than do my employers: Plashing Vole is blocked by the Great Firewall of China (test your own site here)
Obviously it's hurtful to be scorned by my fellow socialists - or it would be if there was even the tiniest hint of socialism left alive in China - but I suspect the comrades are more offended by my love of early-90s lo-fi.
So even though they can't see it, here's a lo-fi tribute to my long-suffering Chinese fans - some indie tracks using 'Chinese' in a tediously stereotypical fashion.
The Auteurs, 'Chinese Bakery':
Then there's Blur's 'Chinese Bombs' (try not to work out what Albarn's on about, he's not very bright).
As for Brett Anderson's 'Chinese Whispers'… oh dear. But at least I'm not giving you George Formby's 'Chinese Laundry Blues'. I love George, but his racial attitudes are a little dated, to be kind. Although he did insist on playing integrated venues in South Africa and when Jan Smuts phoned him to complain, his wife picked up the phone, listened to the general and slammed the phone down after telling him to 'Piss off, you horrible little man'. Which was good.
Here's a band I loved and haven't played for years: Luna, with 'Chinatown' (Shack's 'Chinatown' isn't online, which is a massive fail for the Internet as far as I'm concerned.
And then there's wonderful Melys, the electro-pop Welsh/English bilingual band - another 'Chinese Whispers':
Although I like Natalie Merchant, I get the sense that 'The King of China's Daughter' tries rather too hard to be a bit Chinese and might not be entirely authentic.
I couldn't finish without a nod to politics, so here are a excerpts from John Adams' opera Nixon in China (also on the Civilization IV soundtrack):
'The Chairman Dances'
'The People Are The Heroes Now':
Tested From: | Shanghai, China |
Tested At: | 2012-07-12 |
URL Tested: | http://http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plashingvole.blogspot.co.uk |
Resolved As: | 74.125.71.132 |
Status: | 404 - Not Found |
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Obviously it's hurtful to be scorned by my fellow socialists - or it would be if there was even the tiniest hint of socialism left alive in China - but I suspect the comrades are more offended by my love of early-90s lo-fi.
So even though they can't see it, here's a lo-fi tribute to my long-suffering Chinese fans - some indie tracks using 'Chinese' in a tediously stereotypical fashion.
The Auteurs, 'Chinese Bakery':
Then there's Blur's 'Chinese Bombs' (try not to work out what Albarn's on about, he's not very bright).
As for Brett Anderson's 'Chinese Whispers'… oh dear. But at least I'm not giving you George Formby's 'Chinese Laundry Blues'. I love George, but his racial attitudes are a little dated, to be kind. Although he did insist on playing integrated venues in South Africa and when Jan Smuts phoned him to complain, his wife picked up the phone, listened to the general and slammed the phone down after telling him to 'Piss off, you horrible little man'. Which was good.
Here's a band I loved and haven't played for years: Luna, with 'Chinatown' (Shack's 'Chinatown' isn't online, which is a massive fail for the Internet as far as I'm concerned.
And then there's wonderful Melys, the electro-pop Welsh/English bilingual band - another 'Chinese Whispers':
Although I like Natalie Merchant, I get the sense that 'The King of China's Daughter' tries rather too hard to be a bit Chinese and might not be entirely authentic.
Couldn't leave out R.E.M's '7 Chinese Bros':
I couldn't finish without a nod to politics, so here are a excerpts from John Adams' opera Nixon in China (also on the Civilization IV soundtrack):
'The Chairman Dances'
'The People Are The Heroes Now':
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Here we go again…
Every so often, a hysterical rightwing newspaper or attention-seeking corrupt discredited member of Parliament calls for a crackdown on violent video games because they corrupt innocent little minds.
This time it's Keith Vaz, an embarrassment to humanity, let alone the Labour Party and democracy (career highlights: suspended from Parliament for unfounded accusation against a policewoman, leading a demonstration calling for The Satanic Verses to be burned; expenses fraud and blocking an investigation into further fraud; dubious financial links with some very dodgy billionaire businessmen; being 'for hire' ideologically and betraying his supposed principles in the hope of currying favour; frequently interfering with government business on behalf of dodgy friends; 'flipping' his homes to con the expenses rules and over claiming on various items; obsessively supporting homeopathy).
So a rather slippery, unintelligent and untrustworthy chap. But he's grabbed some headlines by saying that Breivik's claimed use of a video game to 'train' for his massacre.
Sigh. Here we go again with a debate we stage for first-year media students every year before moving on to more intelligent ideas.
We start by asking how many of them have played violent video games. Most have. Then we ask them to calculate how many people they've killed in the games, and how many deaths they've witnessed in games, on TV, at the cinema and so on. The total is usually some astounding number.
Then we ask them to confess to the number of actual real-life killings they've committed. The total is usually quite low, though I suppose we should control the statistics for the possibility that some students might not reply honestly to this question.
It becomes clear that these young people tend, on the whole, not to transfer their garrotting, shooting and bombing skills from the screen to the street. We then consider whether it's possible that killers who do possess violent games might choose them because they have pre-existing violent tendencies. It's even possible that people use fictional violence as a safety valve, letting off steam without doing any harm. I had a housemate who ended up attacking several of us with a knife before being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His shelves were full of martial arts and UFC DVDs. I didn't assume that they caused his mental illness - I think he liked them so much because he was mentally ill. It might even be that watching them delayed the day he lost control.
From where I'm sitting, there's a clear line between Vaz's Nazi-style book-burning and his belief in homeopathy to his argument to his assault on video games (which I don't play, by the way). Clearly he believes in the power of fiction to an extent greater than the rest of us. He operates by anecdote unless - and I know this is cynical - he just wants the attention.
But why stop with video games? I read an awful lot of disgustingly violent books. Last week I read a play in which a man dabbles in the occult, then murders his way to the top of the tree. It's called MacBeth. And yet I haven't stabbed by line managers at all. Similarly, Titus Andronicus involves cutting out a girl's tongue, cutting off her hands, then two boys being baked in a pie and served up to the family. Yet my chopping board is dusted with nothing more than flour even after exposure to this sick filth. I've read Portnoy's Complaint without wrapping a raw liver around my gentleman's parts and pleasuring myself (yes, American Pie viewers, literature got there well before you). I've not followed any dilatory rabbits down holes nor followed any instructions to 'Drink Me'. I have not set out in any beautiful pea-green boats, nor knocked myself out on the entrance to Platform 9 and 3 quarters. I've eaten no Lotoses or attempted to enter Xanadu. I have not eaten of the tree of knowledge. Some of those poets are sick bastards. Get them off the shelves. Have you read any Swinburne or Dowson?
The truth is that however distasteful a particular artefact might be, it will form only a tiny proportion of anyone's life. Balanced against the desensitised slaughter of pixels are parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, fellow students and various institutions all encouraging you not to go on killing sprees. Viewers and gamers are complex and morally-sophisticated people - drawing a straight line between playing a game and committing a massacre.
I wonder which games Keith played to teach him him how to burn books, defraud the taxpayer, and corruptly cosy up to billionaires… or did he acquire all these skills by himself?
The funny thing about these self-appointed censors is that it's always other people they're protecting. Keith's too clever to be affected by these horrible games. But the oiks are stupid and suggestive and he needs to protect them from themselves.
I've a few simple rules to get me through life. One of them is as followers: 'anyone who burns books is usually on the wrong side of the argument'.
This time it's Keith Vaz, an embarrassment to humanity, let alone the Labour Party and democracy (career highlights: suspended from Parliament for unfounded accusation against a policewoman, leading a demonstration calling for The Satanic Verses to be burned; expenses fraud and blocking an investigation into further fraud; dubious financial links with some very dodgy billionaire businessmen; being 'for hire' ideologically and betraying his supposed principles in the hope of currying favour; frequently interfering with government business on behalf of dodgy friends; 'flipping' his homes to con the expenses rules and over claiming on various items; obsessively supporting homeopathy).
So a rather slippery, unintelligent and untrustworthy chap. But he's grabbed some headlines by saying that Breivik's claimed use of a video game to 'train' for his massacre.
Sigh. Here we go again with a debate we stage for first-year media students every year before moving on to more intelligent ideas.
We start by asking how many of them have played violent video games. Most have. Then we ask them to calculate how many people they've killed in the games, and how many deaths they've witnessed in games, on TV, at the cinema and so on. The total is usually some astounding number.
Then we ask them to confess to the number of actual real-life killings they've committed. The total is usually quite low, though I suppose we should control the statistics for the possibility that some students might not reply honestly to this question.
It becomes clear that these young people tend, on the whole, not to transfer their garrotting, shooting and bombing skills from the screen to the street. We then consider whether it's possible that killers who do possess violent games might choose them because they have pre-existing violent tendencies. It's even possible that people use fictional violence as a safety valve, letting off steam without doing any harm. I had a housemate who ended up attacking several of us with a knife before being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His shelves were full of martial arts and UFC DVDs. I didn't assume that they caused his mental illness - I think he liked them so much because he was mentally ill. It might even be that watching them delayed the day he lost control.
From where I'm sitting, there's a clear line between Vaz's Nazi-style book-burning and his belief in homeopathy to his argument to his assault on video games (which I don't play, by the way). Clearly he believes in the power of fiction to an extent greater than the rest of us. He operates by anecdote unless - and I know this is cynical - he just wants the attention.
But why stop with video games? I read an awful lot of disgustingly violent books. Last week I read a play in which a man dabbles in the occult, then murders his way to the top of the tree. It's called MacBeth. And yet I haven't stabbed by line managers at all. Similarly, Titus Andronicus involves cutting out a girl's tongue, cutting off her hands, then two boys being baked in a pie and served up to the family. Yet my chopping board is dusted with nothing more than flour even after exposure to this sick filth. I've read Portnoy's Complaint without wrapping a raw liver around my gentleman's parts and pleasuring myself (yes, American Pie viewers, literature got there well before you). I've not followed any dilatory rabbits down holes nor followed any instructions to 'Drink Me'. I have not set out in any beautiful pea-green boats, nor knocked myself out on the entrance to Platform 9 and 3 quarters. I've eaten no Lotoses or attempted to enter Xanadu. I have not eaten of the tree of knowledge. Some of those poets are sick bastards. Get them off the shelves. Have you read any Swinburne or Dowson?
The truth is that however distasteful a particular artefact might be, it will form only a tiny proportion of anyone's life. Balanced against the desensitised slaughter of pixels are parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, fellow students and various institutions all encouraging you not to go on killing sprees. Viewers and gamers are complex and morally-sophisticated people - drawing a straight line between playing a game and committing a massacre.
I wonder which games Keith played to teach him him how to burn books, defraud the taxpayer, and corruptly cosy up to billionaires… or did he acquire all these skills by himself?
The funny thing about these self-appointed censors is that it's always other people they're protecting. Keith's too clever to be affected by these horrible games. But the oiks are stupid and suggestive and he needs to protect them from themselves.
I've a few simple rules to get me through life. One of them is as followers: 'anyone who burns books is usually on the wrong side of the argument'.
Friday, 27 January 2012
Twitter revolutions become a thing of the past
One of the most tedious features of the last 20 years has been politicians spouting off about the revolutionary (in both senses) potential of new media. Most of them are strangers to electronic communication: Alastair Campbell's memoirs record receiving his first amazed text message from Tony Blair, after he resigned as Prime Minister.
Politicians' advisers tell them that new media will break down global barriers. They make speeches about information wanting to be free. They also make speeches about rooting out piracy, libel, subversion and immoral content via laws and technical fixes. Freedom, it seems, is something you wish on your enemies, not your donor corporations. In fact you encourage your tech sector to export censorship software to the dictatorships you claim to oppose.
With the Arab Spring, elevated claims were made about Twitter, including the story that the White House prevailed on Twitter to postpone a maintenance shutdown because the platform was being used to spread resistance (that it was also being used to spread disinformation and threats is rarely mentioned, nor are solid actual figures: a massive rise in traffic doesn't tell you how many people are involved).
That's all over now. Twitter has announced that it intends to censor Tweets on a country-by-country basis. The US claims it has a freedom of speech guaranteed by Constitutional Amendment, but this is obviously - and to some extent understandably - limited. However, the political rhetoric has been that Twitter and other media sweep away national boundaries. The truth is that we're not in a post-national situation, and corporations don't want one. They prefer to own countries rather than supersede them: governing is boring, expensive and complicated. Twitter is, let's not forget, a capitalist enterprise. It doesn't care about your repression, or your freedom of speech. It wants to make money. If you're a woman, atheist or homosexual in Saudi Arabia, don't rely on Twitter to facilitate your self-expression or activism. The same goes for union leaders in China, democrats in Ukraine and jihadists in the UK.
We need to take a more sceptical and evaluative approach to new media. The empty speeches by boosters and politicians are shaped by electoral calculation and profit-seeking respectively. Our usage of new media/social media isn't revolutionary: it's shaped by the economic, social and cultural contexts in which we find ourselves. Blindly announcing that Twitter is (or should be) a force for freedom and apple pie is as ridiculous as claiming that space travel will get us out of our environmental fix, or that the motor car = liberation. Blindly rushing to be first in the neophiliac queue leaves commentators looking very silly later, as Hillary Clinton found when she praised net freedom to the skies, before realising that Wikileaks took her literally: in her words, 'an attack on the US'. she and others haven't yet worked out that social media radically disperses interpretive authority (I'm trying to avoid claiming that information is power, because at bottom, millions of outraged Tweets are still outweighed by lots of guns and/or the means of production).
What have we learned?
1. Politicians: try to resist making sweeping generalisations which will inevitably be exposed the moment the demands of realpolitik change. Your citizens aren't as stupid as you assume when you make empty references to 'freedom' etc. I hope.
2. Citizens: don't put all your eggs in one basket. A pretty interface and free access doesn't mean that new media corporations are any less evil (whatever their mottos) than the big nasty companies they left behind. They're not activists or idealists: they want to make money and they will lobby governments, fund political parties, sell you, block you and silence you if that's what it takes.
3. Everybody: no issue is as simple as you think it is. This is a good thing.
Further reading: Mozorov's The Net Delusion.
Politicians' advisers tell them that new media will break down global barriers. They make speeches about information wanting to be free. They also make speeches about rooting out piracy, libel, subversion and immoral content via laws and technical fixes. Freedom, it seems, is something you wish on your enemies, not your donor corporations. In fact you encourage your tech sector to export censorship software to the dictatorships you claim to oppose.
With the Arab Spring, elevated claims were made about Twitter, including the story that the White House prevailed on Twitter to postpone a maintenance shutdown because the platform was being used to spread resistance (that it was also being used to spread disinformation and threats is rarely mentioned, nor are solid actual figures: a massive rise in traffic doesn't tell you how many people are involved).
That's all over now. Twitter has announced that it intends to censor Tweets on a country-by-country basis. The US claims it has a freedom of speech guaranteed by Constitutional Amendment, but this is obviously - and to some extent understandably - limited. However, the political rhetoric has been that Twitter and other media sweep away national boundaries. The truth is that we're not in a post-national situation, and corporations don't want one. They prefer to own countries rather than supersede them: governing is boring, expensive and complicated. Twitter is, let's not forget, a capitalist enterprise. It doesn't care about your repression, or your freedom of speech. It wants to make money. If you're a woman, atheist or homosexual in Saudi Arabia, don't rely on Twitter to facilitate your self-expression or activism. The same goes for union leaders in China, democrats in Ukraine and jihadists in the UK.
We need to take a more sceptical and evaluative approach to new media. The empty speeches by boosters and politicians are shaped by electoral calculation and profit-seeking respectively. Our usage of new media/social media isn't revolutionary: it's shaped by the economic, social and cultural contexts in which we find ourselves. Blindly announcing that Twitter is (or should be) a force for freedom and apple pie is as ridiculous as claiming that space travel will get us out of our environmental fix, or that the motor car = liberation. Blindly rushing to be first in the neophiliac queue leaves commentators looking very silly later, as Hillary Clinton found when she praised net freedom to the skies, before realising that Wikileaks took her literally: in her words, 'an attack on the US'. she and others haven't yet worked out that social media radically disperses interpretive authority (I'm trying to avoid claiming that information is power, because at bottom, millions of outraged Tweets are still outweighed by lots of guns and/or the means of production).
What have we learned?
1. Politicians: try to resist making sweeping generalisations which will inevitably be exposed the moment the demands of realpolitik change. Your citizens aren't as stupid as you assume when you make empty references to 'freedom' etc. I hope.
2. Citizens: don't put all your eggs in one basket. A pretty interface and free access doesn't mean that new media corporations are any less evil (whatever their mottos) than the big nasty companies they left behind. They're not activists or idealists: they want to make money and they will lobby governments, fund political parties, sell you, block you and silence you if that's what it takes.
3. Everybody: no issue is as simple as you think it is. This is a good thing.
Further reading: Mozorov's The Net Delusion.
Friday, 23 December 2011
What you won't see on ITV
Tim Minchin was asked to write a song about Jesus for the Jonathan Ross show on ITV. It's mildly amusing, and therefore the best thing on any Jonathan Ross show.
Or it would have been if the ITV Director Peter Fincham hadn't had thrown all his toys out of the pram and cut the song from the show. Which means a) he's a coward and b) viewers will be faced with Jonathan Ross grovelling to Tom Cruise, and nobody wants that, surely?
I couldn't deprive you of such a treat.
Or it would have been if the ITV Director Peter Fincham hadn't had thrown all his toys out of the pram and cut the song from the show. Which means a) he's a coward and b) viewers will be faced with Jonathan Ross grovelling to Tom Cruise, and nobody wants that, surely?
I couldn't deprive you of such a treat.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
In defence of English
One of the side effects of the Arab Spring is a move towards academic freedom (ironically, while the government here is subjugating us to the brutish whims of the market).
In Cairo, the academics have elected their Deans for the very first time, and a woman won the race for Dean of Arts. And then a state-owned newspaper weighed in with a belated complaint about a short story on the English curriculum, one with a lesbian scene - and the twin joys of academic self-rule and democracy are suddenly in doubt.
As an aside, I suggested to our Vice-Chancellor that an academic senate would do a fine job, rather than the politburo of apparatchiks on a minimum of £100,000, given our recent history of redundancies and fines. The suggestion went down like the proverbial bucket of cold sick.
But on the main point, I really shouldn't have to reiterate the values of a humanist education. I really don't know whether the short story with a lesbian scene is any good or not: but I'd rather trust an academic than a politician or a hack.
I've had frequent brushes with censoriousness. Friends of mine have been dragged through the tabloids for taking an academic interest in sexual texts, as though talking about what a society generates, watches or bans is the equivalent of actually attaching the student to the pig's genitals. It gets the complainant a few headlines of synthetic outrage in the less reflective newspapers, but over the long term, simply closes off more avenues of human enquiry. What Egypt needs now is a cohort of students who don't recognise taboos: they've had generations of rulers telling them what not to think about: women's rights, democracy, religion, human rights, freedom, sex. Now it's their turn to examine the pressing issues of the day.
I recently attended a seminar on the notion of 'teaching offence', and was surprised to learn that most other universities avoid teaching anything controversial. Bezhti, the play which annoyed some Sikhs was mentioned: the theatre cancelled the performances and one academic nervously cited it as the kind of thing to be avoided. Sorry - we've done that one already. We have to assume that students are ready to examine their personal limits, safe in the knowledge that we're not gratuitously provoking them. I've taught Beauty to a first year class recently - a book I consider borderline racist. Half the Asian students hated it, the other half thought it authentically echoed their own experiences.
I've also shown the Laurence Olivier Othello: hammy blackface and all. I got complaints and learned from it. I'd show it again too - as a demonstration of the fact that cultural values change. Olivier and crew clearly never considered a black audience was possible, and that white audiences would be perfectly happy with the kind of crude stereotyping presented in that production.
Morel closely linked to the Cairo situation, I've taught an entire class on historical interpretations of Sappho's poetry, covering the construction of Sappho as a lesbian (as Butler et al. demonstrate, it's more complicated than you'd think), the censorship implicit in various translations, and the titillation adopted by others. We did this in an all-female first-year class, with my PGCE mentor taking notes. I expected some complaints based on the material, and on the situation in which a male heterosexuality lecturer talks to female students about female sexuality. The complaints didn't come: instead, the students launched into a confident and sophisticated discussion.
If you feel that Egyptian students should have the right to read, then accept or reject texts for themselves, write to:
Professor Dr. Hossam Kamel, President of Cairo University
El Gamaa Street
Cairo
Egypt
In Cairo, the academics have elected their Deans for the very first time, and a woman won the race for Dean of Arts. And then a state-owned newspaper weighed in with a belated complaint about a short story on the English curriculum, one with a lesbian scene - and the twin joys of academic self-rule and democracy are suddenly in doubt.
As an aside, I suggested to our Vice-Chancellor that an academic senate would do a fine job, rather than the politburo of apparatchiks on a minimum of £100,000, given our recent history of redundancies and fines. The suggestion went down like the proverbial bucket of cold sick.
But on the main point, I really shouldn't have to reiterate the values of a humanist education. I really don't know whether the short story with a lesbian scene is any good or not: but I'd rather trust an academic than a politician or a hack.
I've had frequent brushes with censoriousness. Friends of mine have been dragged through the tabloids for taking an academic interest in sexual texts, as though talking about what a society generates, watches or bans is the equivalent of actually attaching the student to the pig's genitals. It gets the complainant a few headlines of synthetic outrage in the less reflective newspapers, but over the long term, simply closes off more avenues of human enquiry. What Egypt needs now is a cohort of students who don't recognise taboos: they've had generations of rulers telling them what not to think about: women's rights, democracy, religion, human rights, freedom, sex. Now it's their turn to examine the pressing issues of the day.
I recently attended a seminar on the notion of 'teaching offence', and was surprised to learn that most other universities avoid teaching anything controversial. Bezhti, the play which annoyed some Sikhs was mentioned: the theatre cancelled the performances and one academic nervously cited it as the kind of thing to be avoided. Sorry - we've done that one already. We have to assume that students are ready to examine their personal limits, safe in the knowledge that we're not gratuitously provoking them. I've taught Beauty to a first year class recently - a book I consider borderline racist. Half the Asian students hated it, the other half thought it authentically echoed their own experiences.
I've also shown the Laurence Olivier Othello: hammy blackface and all. I got complaints and learned from it. I'd show it again too - as a demonstration of the fact that cultural values change. Olivier and crew clearly never considered a black audience was possible, and that white audiences would be perfectly happy with the kind of crude stereotyping presented in that production.
Morel closely linked to the Cairo situation, I've taught an entire class on historical interpretations of Sappho's poetry, covering the construction of Sappho as a lesbian (as Butler et al. demonstrate, it's more complicated than you'd think), the censorship implicit in various translations, and the titillation adopted by others. We did this in an all-female first-year class, with my PGCE mentor taking notes. I expected some complaints based on the material, and on the situation in which a male heterosexuality lecturer talks to female students about female sexuality. The complaints didn't come: instead, the students launched into a confident and sophisticated discussion.
If you feel that Egyptian students should have the right to read, then accept or reject texts for themselves, write to:
Professor Dr. Hossam Kamel, President of Cairo University
El Gamaa Street
Cairo
Egypt
Friday, 28 January 2011
Internet secrets of the Pharaohs
The Egyptian government denies censorship and banning internet access.
Here's a lovely graph detailing the number of web addresses with Egyptian prefixes banned yesterday.
Last night they cut off access to the web for the whole country! That's never been done before, although weirdo Lieberman in the US Senate is introducing a law to make it possible in the US, and my own cerebrally-challenged MP, Paul Uppal, has asked the government to 'address the issue of the internet', whatever that means.
Here's the graph for Egyptian internet activity for yesterday (click to enlarge):
Here's a lovely graph detailing the number of web addresses with Egyptian prefixes banned yesterday.
Last night they cut off access to the web for the whole country! That's never been done before, although weirdo Lieberman in the US Senate is introducing a law to make it possible in the US, and my own cerebrally-challenged MP, Paul Uppal, has asked the government to 'address the issue of the internet', whatever that means.
Here's the graph for Egyptian internet activity for yesterday (click to enlarge):
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
How to write a bestseller
An immense body count? Teenage wizards? Heaving bosoms and steamy sex?
Forget it.
What you need is to pen Operation Dark Heart, a dry, academic analysis of 'spycraft and special ops on the frontline in Afghanistan'. Then the CIA will buy up the entire print run - and burn it. Repeat whenever you and your publishers need your bank accounts topping up.
More seriously, this is deeply sinister. Books of this type are regularly pre-censored or approved by the military authorities, as was this book. Then the CIA decided it wanted a say, but they were too late, and dreamed up this solution.
But don't worry - a redacted version is available on Kindle.
Forget it.
What you need is to pen Operation Dark Heart, a dry, academic analysis of 'spycraft and special ops on the frontline in Afghanistan'. Then the CIA will buy up the entire print run - and burn it. Repeat whenever you and your publishers need your bank accounts topping up.
More seriously, this is deeply sinister. Books of this type are regularly pre-censored or approved by the military authorities, as was this book. Then the CIA decided it wanted a say, but they were too late, and dreamed up this solution.
But don't worry - a redacted version is available on Kindle.
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
I pass the Groucho Marx test
I'm quite pleased by this.
My ranting on various subjects has led to plashingvole being banned from China by their firewall! I wonder what it was - the 'I love Unions' banner, the lefty attitudes, the jangly guitar pop? It's not as if I've mentioned Tiananmen or Falun Gong recently. Maybe they just dislike voles.
Either way, I'm with Groucho, who said that he'd rather not join any club prepared to take him on as a member.
Cynical Ben, on the other hand, isn't blocked. He must have friends in the Politburo.
Try out your favourite sites here.
My ranting on various subjects has led to plashingvole being banned from China by their firewall! I wonder what it was - the 'I love Unions' banner, the lefty attitudes, the jangly guitar pop? It's not as if I've mentioned Tiananmen or Falun Gong recently. Maybe they just dislike voles.
Either way, I'm with Groucho, who said that he'd rather not join any club prepared to take him on as a member.
Cynical Ben, on the other hand, isn't blocked. He must have friends in the Politburo.
Try out your favourite sites here.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Google: fearless defender of civil liberties?
I think not.
Google has announced that it's thinking about withdrawing the censorship it agreed to when it started in China. Chinese searches on certain sensitive topics (politics, sex, religion) return no results, as the result of an agreement between the company and the Chinese authorities.
Google has announced that, because sophisticated hackers (implication: the Chinese government) have accessed individuals' e-mail accounts, it's going to uncensor its operations, or leave China.
So: instituting censorship in pursuit of profit = absolutely fine. Hacking, on the other hand, is a no-no. It's not exactly a principled stand from the company, whose motto is 'Don't Be Evil'. I think this is the relevant point:
Google has announced that it's thinking about withdrawing the censorship it agreed to when it started in China. Chinese searches on certain sensitive topics (politics, sex, religion) return no results, as the result of an agreement between the company and the Chinese authorities.
Google has announced that, because sophisticated hackers (implication: the Chinese government) have accessed individuals' e-mail accounts, it's going to uncensor its operations, or leave China.
So: instituting censorship in pursuit of profit = absolutely fine. Hacking, on the other hand, is a no-no. It's not exactly a principled stand from the company, whose motto is 'Don't Be Evil'. I think this is the relevant point:
Evgeny Morozov, an expert on the political effects of the internet and a Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University, questioned why Google had made the decision after four years.
"They knew pretty well what they were getting into. Now it seems they are playing the innocence card ... It's like they thought they were dealing with the government of Switzerland and suddenly realised it was China," he said.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Freedom of speech. Islamic fundamentalists need not apply.
Nutcase irritants Islam4UK and al-Muhajiroun are to be banned from Thursday. Hooray, many of you may be thinking: they're opposed to everything that the UK currently appears to represent - sexual equality, religious freedom, liberal values.
But. These tiny groupuscules aren't terrorist organisations. They utterly reject and despise so-called Western values, and want to found a European Caliphate. So what? I can think of a much larger political party which rejects liberal values and often uses violence and confrontation to achieve its ends. It's called the British National Party.
I don't understand the difference in the way they're treated. Either you're pro-free speech in which case both these organisations should be legal (the argument that bad policies wither under scrutiny is a persuasive one - and proscribed organisations can get away with more than an open one can) or neither of them should be. Both are potential gateways to violent extremism, and both are hostile to mainstream values. Neither, however, are terrorist organisations. I worry about the arbitrary nature of this decision, which seems to rely on the Daily Mail readership's inherent racism and the group's tiny membership for justification.
Al-Muhajiroun, rightfully, have few friends: but this means that none of the usual liberal voices will stand up for their right to be as offensive as they like. The BNP has a couple of elected MEPs, and so there will be voices raised in their defence if proscription is suggested (this government's disgraceful way out of that particular Gordian knot was to pressure the BBC to refuse access to the airwaves for Nick Griffin while not banning the party).
I guess all this means that I'm actually a liberal. If I were a proper Trotskyist, as I often fondly imagine I am, I'd be all for the arbitrary exercise of power. Only liberals worry about equal rights and freedom of speech. Damn.
But. These tiny groupuscules aren't terrorist organisations. They utterly reject and despise so-called Western values, and want to found a European Caliphate. So what? I can think of a much larger political party which rejects liberal values and often uses violence and confrontation to achieve its ends. It's called the British National Party.
I don't understand the difference in the way they're treated. Either you're pro-free speech in which case both these organisations should be legal (the argument that bad policies wither under scrutiny is a persuasive one - and proscribed organisations can get away with more than an open one can) or neither of them should be. Both are potential gateways to violent extremism, and both are hostile to mainstream values. Neither, however, are terrorist organisations. I worry about the arbitrary nature of this decision, which seems to rely on the Daily Mail readership's inherent racism and the group's tiny membership for justification.
Al-Muhajiroun, rightfully, have few friends: but this means that none of the usual liberal voices will stand up for their right to be as offensive as they like. The BNP has a couple of elected MEPs, and so there will be voices raised in their defence if proscription is suggested (this government's disgraceful way out of that particular Gordian knot was to pressure the BBC to refuse access to the airwaves for Nick Griffin while not banning the party).
I guess all this means that I'm actually a liberal. If I were a proper Trotskyist, as I often fondly imagine I am, I'd be all for the arbitrary exercise of power. Only liberals worry about equal rights and freedom of speech. Damn.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Back crackers sacked!
Sorry for the pun. I am truly ashamed. It's the only humorous bit of this piece though.
I love blogging and bloggers because it allows the power of millions of bloody-minded nerds to be harnessed for troublemaking purposes.
Here's an example. As this article summarises, Simon Singh is a serious science writer who quite rightly described chiropractic as 'bogus' - i.e. pointing out that chiropractors' claims that their art can cure all sorts of ailments is untrue, a point supported by the Advertising Standards people, lots of proper scientists and so on.
The chiropractors' trade body quietly told all their members to remove any health claims from their websites to avoid prosecution. Then, instead of providing evidence for their assertions or conducting trials, they sued Singh, who has no money, for a six-figure sum, essentially using Britain's incredibly biased libel laws to silence a critic.
It didn't quite work. Thousands of informed bloggers reprinted the article as did Cosmos, an Antipodean popular science magazine), ripped apart the claims of the chiropractors and generally blew the story up. I'm proud to join in.
Shamefully, the Guardian withdrew the original article, though now it seems to have grown a little backbone in printing the account of proceedings. Almost there, Guardian! Although it's easier for annoyances like me to post stuff like this because I'm not worth suing.
So here it is, courtesy of 'gimpy', who added the comments in [].
Beware the spinal trap
This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
[This claim comes from D.D. Palmer The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic. Portland, Oregon: Portland Printing House Company, 1910.]
In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
[This claim comes from D.D. Palmer The Science, Art and Philosophy of Chiropractic. Portland, Oregon: Portland Printing House Company, 1910.]
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
[These claims are found in the following documents from the BCA website, Happy Families and A Real Pain in the Back.]
I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
[All details on Ernst's research on chiropractic can be found on PubMed here. Simon Singh has indeed co-authored a book with Professor Ernst.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
[This appears to be personal opinion based on research conducted by Ernst & others and is not libellous.]
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
[This paper can be found here]
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
[This is a personal opinion based on evidence]
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
[Some reports here.]
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.
[Details of this case and some conclusions here.]
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
[Details in this paper.]
Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week – if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
Beware of Singh's Sense About Science supporters though. They do some good work in opposing nutters, and have a convincing set of representatives, but they're a front group for some extremist weirdos who gather around Living Marxism, the Insitute of Ideas and Spiked, organisations formed of ex-Trotskyists who now exist solely to push the ultra-libertarian ideals of doing whatever large corporations want and never questioning the behaviour or motives of global capitalism. Interestingly, they all use pseudonyms and don't seem to like dialogue. We're down the rabbithole here, children - they're a fascinating example of what happens to vanguardist leftists who lose sight of reality and become ultrarightwing - as happened to many of Bush's henchmen. Lobbywatch summarises their network here, here and more shockingly here.
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