We're Doing It To Ourselves

We're not thinking about it, I can tell. We give it lip service, if that, and go our merry way. We're not going to change, and so whatever I'm saying won't mean much. Our own convenience means more than the bigger picture. We don't like libertarians, but we've been influenced by them just the same, because "it's not my problem" (the foundation of libertarian ethics) has moved into the central control booth in our lives. But hear me out.

We do our banking online. It not only exposes us to some degree of vulnerability, but it means less cashiers at the window, and less associates at the desks to work with. Bank doesn't have to hire as many people. Jobs are lost.

We do our bill paying online. It not only exposes us to some degree of vulnerability (I've had to cancel or change accounts for three credit card already, and it happens with regularity everywhere), it also means less people have to process the mail. No need for all these people opening envelopes. No need for all these people to process checks. No need for printers to print checks. No need for stamps. No need for the people who print stamps or sell them at the window of the post office. No need for the post office to have so many people. Jobs are lost.

They say "if I pay my bills online I am saving trees." But if you have any bills you pay by mail, just look at the little recycled symbol almost everywhere. Virtually no bills and billings are printed on "new" paper. The "save a tree" argument is bogus.

We buy things online. There still has to be someone to pack the order, ship it and deliver it. But who needs people at the counter? When was the last time you were at a mall or a commercial district? When you were there, did you notice how many people aren't behind the counters? Those jobs are gone.

Add this to the political climate and you have a problem. The big move is now to reduce "government spending" (not the military, of course, that would be unpatriotic), which will translate into cutting back government hours, government programs, and the people who run and administer them. Jobs will be lost. And the vicious, mean-spirited conservative will look at people from the Occupy movement and snarl "get a job." Exactly where that job is, however, remains a mystery.

We'd love to find someone to blame. But I think we're just doing it to ourselves.

There's a bit about public works in here...


Recorded during the Bush Presidency.

Anarchism and the Computer Age

"Anarchist Women of Spain"

There's more to "anarchism" than meets the eye. It isn't just a matter of protesting and eventually not participating in an election wherein you get a choice between two different brands of control over many aspects of your life, it is also a matter of conscience and observation.

I've mentioned before about an old friend of mine in Arizona named Fred Woodworth. He's the guy who has been continuously publishing the anarchist zine The Match! since 1969, and we even got a small mention in the Spring 2012 issue (so now I'm probably on a hundred different watch lists I guess... as if the Scientologists didn't already have me there).

But Fred is off the grid, as I mentioned, meaning he had brought a good healthy dose of anarchic skepticism about the net, and I thought it might be provoking to copy him here. Maybe provide some interesting reading as opposed to my usual tripe.

Okay, before you throw this magazine out in disgust, read on for just a moment.

Try to recall life of several decades ago. The activities carried out in the course of a day involved dozens, perhaps hundreds, of disparate operations: playing a record, taking a picture, paying a bill, conferring with an associate or friend, seeing a movie, writing a letter, going to the library or bookstore, doing homework, setting up a dental appointment, reading a newspaper, writing a comment for publication in the paper...

To do all these things you went to a lot of places, moved about, functioned diversely in and all over your town and city. More and more today, though, all of that human scope is being compressed down and moved in and out of your home on a couple of small wires (or a fiberoptic cable). How much easier this is for someone who might want to, and who has the power to, watch and control.

Pay attention to the routine news reports, and a phrase will begin to stand out in many of the accounts of arrests, investigations, etc.: "Authorities seized his computer" or "have started looking at his home computer files..." The presumption, and it is probably accurate, is that this accused person's entire legal existence is stored in one small box. They don't have to hunt around, go to the bank, bookstore, library, school, trashcan - they just have to grab this one little box.

There, everything resides: political affiliations, tastes in women (or men). If a person has made a disapproved or unwise comment or thought about or discussed some illegal act, it will be easily possible to both discover and prove that fact - something that would have demanded, in most cases, a stupendous and paralyzingly daunting amount of effort just a few years ago. Thus it is no accident (italics are Woodworth's) there is such a relentless push to force all life into this digital regimentation. Here it's not the normal climate just yet, although it's approaching that condition fast, and countless misguided enthusiasts for the new controlling technology seem to work tirelessly to cajole hold outs to get with the program. They're like dopers at a party where someone declines a joint - almost personally offended.

Where this has or should have significance for anarchists is in the fact that a free society cannot possibly exist under circumstances in which so much of your life passes through a cable smaller than a pencil and resides in a box smaller than a suitcase.

As a complete outsider only observing this horror from a distance, I can nonetheless imagine how hard it probably is for anyone to break such an addiction. Still, I urge you to try to do so.

Begin by resolving to draw the line at any further incursions. SEE the pattern - the "twitters", the Facebooks, the MySpace so-called pages, the "chat rooms" ad infinitum as a series that will not stop. They are a constantly escalating takeover of your humanity.

Move back down the scale; try consciously to use the computer and internet for less and less. If you can eventually break the habit entirely, good, though I'm not saying computers are somehow mystically evil. If you can get their use down to a small reasonable level, that's good too (though the moneyed interests and misguided pushers will never be content to let you alone at that low involvement).

Even if everyone reading this dropped out of the modern obsession next week it probably wouldn't make much difference; but on the other hand a vast social healing has to start somewhere - if it isn't too late already.

Fred Woodworth

And by the way, if you like good reading, that constitutes barely one page of the Spring issue, which consists of 71 pages. Well worth the time.

But I call that food for thought, Fred (not that he'd ever be reading this). I've never liked online banking, for instance. It just seems too easy to get to for anyone determined enough. I know some people for whom that would be a game just to see if they could do it.

My growing suspicion of the internet is tempered by the knowledge that at least one evil cult has been ruined by the device, and yet my involvement with that is easily traceable.

Think.

Can't Say Nothing

Lucky you, I'm still on regular hours and just awoke. The real overtime starts this Friday so I'm still on normal hours. And because of this I find it impossible to not make a mention of some of the latest goings-on with Anonymous. Lucky you, like I said.

It's Anonymous, whatever that is, that informs most of my outlook these days and - if pushed - I suppose if I had to declare a "party affiliation" these would be the guys I'd probably slide in next to. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, to me it's all the same mush. Relics of the past, to be perfectly frank. So I happily take on new symbols and metaphors - mostly in response to the stasis of modern politics and all the petty nonsense that defines it these days. Or perhaps has always defined it.

The fact of the matter is that, no, I'm not part of Anonymous. This is true mostly because you know who I am. Plus I don't have the mad internet skilz needed to do raids and the kind of civil actions Anonymous is known for. In fact the only direct dealing I've ever had with it is directed at the Church of Scientology's fraud and abuse. And, because the "church" knows me and I never signed onto anything without using my real name, what I'm actually a part of is a subtext known as "Project Chanology." What developed after, or along with, that project went on to Wikileaks, skirting around the Iranian internet blocks, the Arab Spring and, finally, the Occupy movement. Anonymous, or at least people who have some sort of nebulous connection to Anonymous, had a hand in all of that. The DNA can be traced back to the "leaderless group." They've also helped me track down a long lost classmate, but that's neither here nor there.

Anonymous has also battled neo-Nazis, child molesters, and evil neighbors of dying little girls. You should really read this short history to get an idea about the group. And, in that article, you will also see negative stuff. And that right there is the point.

The single most important thing people need to remember is something that runs counter-intuitive to standard analysis. The fact is that anybody can claim to be "Anonymous," and anybody basically has.

I've no doubt that the recent arrests of "hackers" that operated under the Anonymous banner are, in fact, targeted actual regulars within the group. But, like Islam, if you want to view the whole thing as a monument or a monolith you'd be way off track.

When my involvement with Chanology started to taper off, the demands of real life and the pursuit of long neglected dreams taking over, the only thing for sure I could say about the group was that there was - and so far as I can tell still is - a lively debate about internet activity. Denial of Service attacks, website content altered to say embarrassing or opposite views than those intended, are believed by some to be a legitimate tactic in the culture wars. Others think them counter-productive. That's not something that will be resolved soon, because there is no leader. There is the "hive-mind" (Read "on the internet" definition) and there is individual action.

So the recent arrests of people alleged to be part of Anonymous (which, laughably, could be anyone who claimed it whether they did anything or not) did get my attention.

There's a pretty well-informed article here at the Chicago Tribune today, which I strongly recommend you take five minutes to read - if nothing else than because it is one of the more cogent explanations from the "outside" as I've seen in a while. But the thing you have to remember is that what constitutes a "member" of Anonymous ("member of Anonymous" being a term which in and of itself is virtually meaningless) is wide open. You'd be surprised to learn who is part of it or supports it. If you think it's hackers on steroids operating from Mommy's basement you'd be believing exactly what "Anonymous" wants you to believe. The actual participants come from every walk of life. From professionals to people with well-known names. Don't laugh at that.

Laugh at this instead.

Anyway is this the end of Anonymous? Everybody scared off now?

lol...

A Look Behind The Scenes At The Editor's Office

Okay so this one was pretty funny. Since we started putting out Thrice it's been getting more and more attention from writers and that's the plan so it is a good thing. But you never sit in the editor's chair too long before you have a story to tell relative to the interaction between writers and editors, and as we approach our fourth issue (next March) I finally have one.

I got an email titled "Nevermind"** from a writer who didn't sign his or her name. It came in time stamped at 4:09 and reads, in its entirety;

"Can't even spare a contributor copy? Withdraw my submission from
consideration. I don't need any more glorious lines in my resume,
especially from fly-by-nights."

This was followed by another email time stamped at 4:12, also titled "Nevermind" which said only:

"Don't need any lines in my resume. Withdraw the recent submission."

There was no name attached to it, and no mention of what the title of the piece was. Well I am nothing if not careful with the intentions of artists, so I went through the entire collection of submissions sent to Thrice since we opened the submission process for issue #4 (happily, and somewhat astonishingly, there have been 14 submissions sent to us just in the last two days), looking for a match to the email address of the above emails.

Except there isn't one.

So probably I'm looking at someone who sent a submission with another email address, and then sent their withdrawal from a second email address. Very confusing. However not only am I careful with the sensibilities of artists, I am also prone to be thorough and polite. And so I dutifully responded with:

"Okay, but which one was yours? I don't seem to have one from this email
addy. Thanks."

Short and sweet, no offense taken or even perceived. I am now awaiting reply.

The whole thing is a little screwy because anyone can download a free copy of the magazine to their Kindle, or as a pdf to their computer. The reference the writer, whoever he or she may be, is making is to a line in our submission policy that says "all we can give you right now is a glorious line in your resume" which, I think most anyone would agree, is - if not funny in and of itself - said kind of funny in a self-deprecating kind of way. No?

Anyhow this sets up an interesting scenario. Let's say the writer doesn't respond. Say he or she was drunk when they sent that email and - upon more sober reflection - they don't own up to sending it. And then let's say in my list of accepted stories I happen to like the one he or she sent and dutifully inform them of the fact that they'll be in issue #4. How much would you want to bet that that offended individual wouldn't happily accept our acceptance without any mention of the withdrawal?

I'll tell you what you'd want to bet - nothing. Because their offended nature will heal with the words "we would like to use your story in the next issue..."

And - barring that - if the person tells me which is his or her story, I'll be more than happy to delete it. One less decision to make.

Either way, this is an easy fix.

Maybe I was born to do this?
-------------

** technically the words never and mind joined into one word are only correct in slang applications, as in "pay him no nevermind." It's patois only. Legitimate, certainly, but not entirely right in this case. Nevermind is a band, and can also be a condition, but to just say "nevermind" you should really write it as "never mind." But never mind.

I Am Not In London

And Jack the Ripper is not at my door.

Any of you folks who have me on your email list - or more accurately are on MY email list of contacts via hotmail - may have noted a plaintive cry for help late last week. From London, no less. Where apparently I have been taken by Jack the Ripper into a hovel and robbed of all my money. And the American embassy doesn't believe me and the hotel is mad at me and if you don't send me $2000 or some such amount I am going to be boiled in oil at the drop of a hat. It is a bald lie and I am in no way connected to such a wild story.

I have, however, been one of thousands of people who had their hotmail accounts hacked into last week. I can't get back into it because my password has been changed, and I can't get a new password sent to me because the "alternate email" they can contact me at has also been changed. So the account is gone and is now part of a vast network of spam originations sent out to thousands of unsuspecting contacts on every victim's list.

I've had that hotmail account since the years began with 1's. And I basically used it as the contact off the blog (where a lot of you found it) but also as the email addy I had to add onto commercial sites I needed to use and just KNEW it would generate millions of spams sent my way. For those who only have that hotmail addy as the contact info for me you should change it to ehwtfever (at) comcast (dot) net. And, yes, the wtf in the addy means what you think it means.

There were only a handful of old accounts that were still tied to that email account and, luckily because the addy was only stolen for the purposes of spam, none of them were compromised. So I had the opportunity to change all the entry codes to such places as the world-wide bunch of anarchists I play with and so forth.

I have no idea if any pleas for money like that ever work. Anyone who knew me enough to care about whether or not I was in actual trouble who didn't recognize it as bullshit would have just picked up the phone and called me. And everyone else recognizes stuff like that as bullshit. So however these people make money off of that is beyond me. But I suppose it's lucrative enough so that they keep on doing it. I guess if it wasn't they wouldn't bother. But that doesn't mean I can possibly understand how it could be.

Needless to say MSN, which operates hotmail, is perfectly useless in helping account holders fix the problem. The boards where incidents like this are reported is overwhelmed, and the "24 hour guarantee" they will address your problem has been waived. In the meantime they send you to links that tell you how to avoid the problem if it happens again, as well as a how-to for resetting your password. What the links don't tell you is what to do when you can't get back into your account to reset everything. They try to verify that you are the account holder and ask for your alternate email addy. But they don't tell you what to do if the hacker has changed your alternate email addy so that you no longer seem to know what the hell you're talking about. Then they want to know "Did This Help? Yes or No." Hahahaha.

My incident report has been sitting on their board unanswered for days now. And I see where other folks have said "WTF?? It's been two weeks! I need this for my JOOOOOBBBB!!!" Etc.

The weird thing, though, is that I got this hotmail account so very long ago that my alternate email address that I used when I signed up is from a provider that no longer even exists! So what good would that do me anyway?

All of which is proof, I suppose, that I have been connected to the inter-tubes for too long and need to get some fresh air.

They say Whitechapel is a good place for a walk...