Archive for the 'Civil Rights' Category
Offensive Content Warning! OH NOES!
April 24th, 2007
Well, shit the bed!–looks like 80% of blogs contain “offensive” content! As Ars Technica fuckin’ reports,
Blogs are known to be a free-for-all for “expressive” content, but according to a new report by ScanSafe, a vast majority of blogs host content that is considered “offensive” and potentially “unwanted.” ScanSafe’s Monthly “Global Threat Report” for March 2007 says that up to 80 percent of blogs host offensive content, ranging from “adult language” to pornographic images. The company suggests that businesses should be aggressive about preventing users from accessing some or all of this material. And of course, they’d hope that you’d use their products to do so.
Naturally, this “report” is no doubt little more than a fuckin’ baiting tactic that ScanSafe, “The World’s Leading Provider of Web Security-as-a-Service,” hopes to use to lure in more corporate customers–but that doesn’t mean that the fuckin’ data they’ve accrued is necessarily fuckin’ suspect. After all, it’s simple enough to draw up a list of naughty fuckin’ keywords and compile a list of how many fuckin’ times those words appear on various motherfuckers’ blogs. And, judging from my experiences in the blogosphere, I’d have to say they’ve got a fuckin’ point: some of these motherfuckers can’t seem to say five fuckin’ words without tossing some manner of fuckin’ expletive into the mix.
But…what’s the problem here?
Ars Technica quotes:
ScanSafe’s larger focus is not necessarily on single instances of offensive content, but overall security and liability for employees who might get caught with undesirable content on their computers while at work. “The content on blogs and other sites powered by user contributed content is constantly changing. As a result, Web security solutions that rely on Web crawling—or periodically scouring the Web for threats—rather than actually scanning the URL each time it is requested, can leave users exposed to malware and unwanted content,” Nadir [ScanSafe’s Vice President of Product Strategy] said.
In simpler terms, let’s protect employees from getting nabbed for reading naughty material at work and from accidentally exposing corporate intranets to various forms of malware. I can understand implementing a defense against malware that could potentially damage a company’s systems or expose private data to the World At Large…but protecting against bad fuckin’ language? Gimme a fuckin’ break.
Here’s the deal, folks: I rarely use expletives in my general writings, simply because they’re usually unnecessary, nothing more than “the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter.” I’ve often found those who overuse expletives of various sorts to be gauche and clearly lacking in solid material to discuss–yet it’s their right to write whatever they like in the sanctity of their own blogs. Furthermore, sometimes it’s necessary to throw in a good ol’ “fuck” or a “shit” of two–especially when quoting someone accurately, when using them for humor’s sake, or for rare instances of shocking emphasis.
And who’s to say what words are ultimately offensive or not? I certainly don’t have an attack of the vapors should my eyes come upon the word “cocksucker” in a text; nor do many in the contemporary world. Issues of obscenity have caused more pointless legal troubles than anything else…simply because “offensiveness” or “obscenity” is so incredibly difficult to define.
Which is why I find wanting to block or otherwise restrict anyone’s access to the Web based on something as mutable and as vague as a blog’s “offensive” word content to be ludicrous at best, and a waste of time and effort at most. Sure, most companies wouldn’t want their employees reading Fleshbot or pr0n reviews, but what about…say, Pegritz.com? I routinely post stories of an amusing and occasionally edifying nature whose only subject matter that could be considered “offensive” is the use of expletives here and there when spoken by characters. What about blogs that reference “offensive” words such as “nigger”, “ho”, “bitch” and so forth when discussing the pathetic state of popular hiphop? Would ScanSafe’s software block a website concerning mammograms and women’s health because it used that awful, dirty, pornomographic word “breast”?
Filtering content for malware and potentially deleterious code is admirable, and these days even necessary…but filtering content for a handful of fuckin’ words that some fuckers consider fuckin’ obscene is just stupid, because you’ll end up blocking not only 80% of the blogs Out There, you’ll end up blocking 80% of the entire fuckin’ Internet.
In short: FUCK DAT!
John McCain Can Kiss My Ass
December 18th, 2006
Oh, humanity, pity out poor beleaguered children! The Internet is nothing but one gigantic seething pit of sex-offenders, child molesters, and NAMBLA phishing sites just lying in wait for some poor, poor little tyke to log on so they may all pounce and RAPE AWAY! How can we possibly sanitize the Internet to make it a safe and wholesome place for our kids?
John McCain has an idea how to do it. Recently, he floated a bill before Congress that would–get this, folks–make blogs just like this hyar PEGRITZ(.com)! circus equivalent to ISPs and hold them responsible for all activity in their comments sections and user profiles! Think Progress, one of my alltime favorite progressive-though websites, has a nifty little breakdown of Herr McCain’s lovely little piece of patriarchal bullshit. Under the law, should it be passed:
– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
— Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.
PEGRITZ(.com)! is, primarily, a personal blog–my personal blog–but I do welcome comments to any and all entries, and anyone on earth is free to leave said comments. Sooooo…let’s say one of the people registered on my site were a–dun-dun-DUNNNN!–wicked, disgusting, thoroughly evil sex offender. If that person posted in a comment a picture of a naked five-year-old being “bathed” in a thoroughly inappropriate manner, I would be legally obligated to report that person to The Government or face fines that would put me and my descendants in hock trying to pay ‘em off. Would I immediately delete such a comment and ban that person from ever posting on my blog again? You’d better damn well believe I would! Hell, I’d probably report the jackass to the Feds on principle! But Herr McCain doesn’t trust me, a responsible citizen, to report such egregious behavior on my own, so legislation must be introduced requiring me to do so under threat of crushing fines.
But, quite frankly, I’m not too worried about that eventuality coming to pass. What particularly bothers me about this legislation is Item 3 above: the responsibility it places on social-networking sites to police their boundaries for the dreaded scourge of the Internet sex offender. It is basically stating that, under Federal law, anyone registered as a sex offender would be barred from taking part in almost any form of social interaction on the Internet–including being banned from creating a user profile on a commerce site like Amazon.com.
Do I think that sex offenders’ activities shouldn’t be monitored? Of course not. But first of all, what indeed is a sex offender? Obviously, someone with a history of sexual crimes–particularly against children–matches the definition. But so does the sixteen-year-old boy convicted of statutory rape because he had 100% consensual sex with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, whose parents found out that Daddy’s Little Girl was more than old enough to give up skins on her own accord and decided to prosecute the boy who made off with her virginity. At present, the definition of “sex offender” is far too broad and far too legally unstable in the United States to require individual websites to accept responsibility for policing themselves based on it.
And, more importantly, why require it in the first place? Republicans constantly rattle on about the evils of Big Government and the fundamental rights of American citizens to go about their lives with as little interference from Washington or state governments as possible…yet they are always the first to push such “Big Daddy” legislation that tacitly declares American citizens unable to properly monitor themselves. Oh, in many cases, American citizens can’t be trusted to govern themselves: if they were allowed to do so, in many parts of the country gay citizens would be hounded like Jews in Nazi Germany and African-Americans would probably still be suffering under Jim Crow laws. However, the aim of federal social legislation should be to protect the liberties of ALL its citizens from the prejudices and idiocy of certain others, not to restrict or otherwise oversee liberties–and such laws as McCain’s ludicrous blogosphere regulations do just that.
People…it’s simple: if you want to protect your children on the Internet, you as parents and individual citizens have to keep an eye on what your kids are doing. Of course, that won’t always work, especially if you have older kids who can easily hide their activities from you. But rather than expecting the government to do your job of providing your children with the necessary knowledge to protect themselves, why don’t you step to the plate and actually do it yourselves? Then the Senator McCain’s of the nation wouldn’t have any reason to trouble our nation with these kind of overbearing laws.
Sedition
September 29th, 2006
Readers of this blog have noticed that I rarely address politics here–and when I do, the political issues lining up to get holed in my shooting gallery are most often related to technological matters. I don’t really like discussing politics, for two reasons: 1) there are much better political news and discussion outlets than this one-man virtual donkey show; and 2) politics generally bores me blind. But the Bush administration’s ridiculous “War on Terror” and the horrendous, almost McCarthyite domestic policies it has lately been stirring up have finally loosened my lips.
Brace yourself, people. This is not going to be pretty–and, ohhhhhh yes, there will be foul language. Send the kids out of the room now before my invective scars their fragile little minds for life.
George W. Bush is a goddamned moron. Nay, not a moron, which Answers.com defines in turn-of-the-century psychological terms as “A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years and generally having communication and social skills enabling some degree of academic or vocational education.” A true “moron”, following this definition (which has not actually been used in psychological parlance since the early part of the Twentieth Century), at least can be a valuable member of society by serving some kind of positive function. But George W. Bush serves no function whatsoever save to dig a deeper and deeper hold for this nation to slip into.
Let’s, for the moment, forget the fact that he suckered Congress into redefining the definition of “torture”, as well as permitting warrantless wiretapping. That stuff is heinous in its own right, but the straw that final broke the blogger’s back was his pronouncement, earlier today (29 September 2006) that “critics who believe that fighting the war in Iraq has made America less safe are ‘buying into enemy propaganda.’”
WHAT enemy propaganda?! The only propaganda I have been exposed to lately are statements from the Bush Administration attempting to prop up our public opinion concerning the miserable, unwinnable “war” they marched us into by way of getting some good ol’ red-blooded American payback against them filthy towel-heads what blew up all our buildings. Consider the following statement quoted by USAToday.com:
Some of them [Bush’s critics] selectively quoted from the document to make the case that by fighting terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq, we are making people less secure here at home….This argument buys into the enemy propaganda that the enemies attacked up [sic] because we are fighting them.
The “document” in question is a leaked National Intelligence Estimate whose pertinent data appeared recently in the New York Times. Bushy claims that his critics “selectively quoted” from this document to support their perfectly common-sense thesis that “extremists were using the Iraq war to recruit more terrorists.”
Honestly…no one needs a leaked NIE report to realize this. The United States military invaded an Islamic country (that, incidentally, had one of the few truly secular, non-religious governments in the entire region) and destroyed the law-enforcement infrastructure in that country, which allowed a fullscale religious war between Sunni and Shiite factions to boil up on top of the perfectly natural anti-American sentiment that brewed among the Iraqis because we invaded their country. Whether our actions were justified or not on an international, or even a merely social, level is irrelevant: we, a very large, and very powerful military power invaded them…and, come on, people - NO ONE likes their lands and homes being invaded, whatever the reason. Especially when that invasion topples a regime that, yes, was certainly tyrannical…yet managed to keep sectarian religious violence under control. Now, the stabilizing influence of the Hussein regime is gone, and what’s left? An American “peacekeeping” force and a “new Iraqi parliament” that are so ineffectual and so confused that they are, for all intents and purposes, worthless. The religious wackos are having a field day. And anti-American sentiment is running wild.
And guess what? Al-Qaeda really likes to recruit religious wackos who have a thing against Americans.
Even if there weren’t data Out There that obviously supports this thesis, a simple, high-school-level Social-Studies-class understanding of the situation in Iraq would lead even a moron - ”A person of mild mental retardation having a mental age of from 7 to 12 years” - to conclude that it would be VERY likely that Al-Qaeda recruiters would be having a bloody field day swelling their ranks in Iraq.
“But,” Bush said (to long applause, USAToday.com notes), “I want to remind American citizens that we were not in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001.”
Well, DUH. The Al-Qaeda bastards who got the drop on us on 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. But the Al-Qaeda bastards who are someday going to attempt - and, who knows, maybe even succeed! - at topping their 9/11 stunt with another sweeps-week attack on the Great Satan are probably going to come from Iraq. Why? Because we stirred them up - we poked our stick into that ant’s nest of Medieval religious insanity.
Mr. Bush, dig the shit out of your ears for one fucking second and listen to what the entire world is telling you: THE WAR ON TERROR IS PRODUCING TERROR. It’s a vicious cycle of truly Orwellian proportions. Witness:
- Al-Qaeda terrorists representing militant Islam…oh, I mean, Islamic fascism (as opposed to, what, Bush/Blair PseudoDemocratic Fascism?) attack America. We respond by attacking the nation and regime (Afghanistan) that initially harbored them - an attack which I still believe to be justified - but then attack a nation which had NO roll in 9/11 whatsoever.
- Islamic radicals see the US’s invasion of Iraq as fulfillment of their beliefs that the US and the Western Powers have some kind of crazy grudge against Islam - which has been one of their recruiting messages for years. Way to go, Bushy: you just confirmed (in their minds) one of their primary doctrines.
- By pursuing “anti-terrorist” measures abroad, you have, in effect, stirred up even more anti-American sentiment…especially by “liberating” the Iraqi people from the stabilizing influence of a truly fascistic, but nonthreatening (to our nation), regime. Al-Qaeda recruiters would be stupider than you are if they DIDN’T flock to Iraq and any other Islamic nation feeling angered or threatened by US aggression.
- This will eventually, and inevitably, spur another Al-Qaeda attack on the US. Then what? Another invasion? Another “liberation”?
Lather, rinse, repeat.
And you have the gall to accuse American citizens who point out your obvious failings of succumbing to “enemy propaganda”? I ask again: WHAT PROPAGANDA? Do you honestly think we, your critics, are visiting www.al-qaeda.com and reading their convenient online FAQs? Or do you think we’re getting our news and information from - GASP! - overseas sources via the Internet?
Oh, you do? Well, I guess that does explain the warrantless wiretapping and revised “enemy combatant” laws you just railroaded through our equally-idiotic Congress.
Well, here - let me make it easy on you. I’m sure the NSA or CIA or some other intelligence-gathering organization will red-flag the following text and it may very well appear in the next “domestic terrorism” newsbrief to land on your desk:
Dear Mr. Bush:
I, Derek C. F. Pegritz, am entirely opposed to everything your administration stands for in regard to the so-called “War on Terror”. My views on this subject, and all of the information that I required to support them, was gleaned from the publication George W. Bush: Rapist of the Prophet which I received by anonymous courier after I used my PayPal account to donate a “love gift” of $3.25 (USD) to the Al-Qaeda Missionary Fund. Upon reading this three-page, photocopied pamphlet, I have decided that there is no God but God (that is, Allah, not the Christian or the Jewish “God”), Muhammad is His Prophet, and the United States is the Agent of Shaitan - by whom, I believe, they mean you. Al-Qaeda mail-order propaganda has now permanently influenced my views and, I believe, I am now what you would consider Un-American.
Oh, yeah - while we’re at it, I might as well tell you that I am a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, an Anarchist, a “Hippie”, a supporter of Iberian Expansion in the Philippines and the Caribbean, a “white indian” riding with the Apaches, a Confederate sympathizer, a Tory (God…I mean, Allah Save The King!), an Abolitionist, a Black Panther, a Branch Davidian, and a supporter of Universal Suffrage (yes, even for Negroes).
Before sending an NSA “extraction team” to my house, please call ahead and inform me of their dispatch so I may properly barricade my house for a proper fourteen-day-siege and prepare enough Plutonium for a minimum of seven dirty bombs.
Sincerely,
DCFP.
PS: I shall, in the future, refrain from calling you a moron out of respect for actual morons, who have informed me that they take offense at being lumped into the same category as yourself.
A Dream We Should All Still Seek.
January 16th, 2006
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I present to you the complete text of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech as given at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
