09/29 Open Thread- Free Speech, Hate Speech, Disinformation, and all that
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~~ Giordano Bruno
This topic should be at least a lengthy paper if not a small book but nonetheless I've decided to do a column on it because it has been a big deal for me for over 60 years. I sincerely doubt that anybody today truly believes in complete freedom of speech. Evelyn Beatrice Hall summed up Voltaire's attitude toward speech as I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it I really doubt that any but a very few in the so-called "West" could honestly claim to take such a position with respect to all speech. Almost everybody will admit that there are exceptions. It's really a question of how many exceptions one accepts or will agree to, and what they are and how and be whom they are to be determined and defined.
We in the US have something called the Constitution which purports to be the supreme law of the land and in it there is an Amendment which states, in part,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ...
, but the truth is that this only pertains to what the Supreme Court, at any given moment, in its infinite wisdom, considers to be protected speech. They have created a big list of exceptions, size and contents unknown because they don't always define any of this shit. Obscenity is not protected and they don't even always agree on what it may or may not be (though some have claimed to know it when they see it) and have always failed miserably in attempting to define it. They finally punted and coughed up a non-definitive "definition" that provides no guidance whatsoever to any non-omniscient being.
Looking past the law and what the government may or may not forbid, it gets even crazier. You either do or do not have one or more exceptions in common with the guy down the street or the Supreme Court, or your boss, teachers, lover or parents. Beyond the official restrictions upon our freedom of speech there are myriads of societal restrictions and limitations upon freedom of speech; what will get you jailed is often far more narrowly restricted than what will get you fired. The law only deals with what will get you sent to jail and what will not, but nothing is necessarily protected in the workplace, neighborhood or web .
In order to keep this to a minimum I've decided to try to stick to matters of so-called hate speech with a nod towards so-called misinformation and disinformation since that's what's in the title. We should probably start with this mis and disinformation garbage. There's no such thing; there is information, information that may or may not be considered correct today but which may or may not wind up being considered correct tomorrow. That's if you're empiricists and I am an empiricist. This column isn't really per se about me but that's life ;if you have magical beliefs that there are truths that are established without basis in evidentiary phenomenon and reason and logic then fine. However, a priori truths cannot inform us about the actual physical world in which we reside so this section can't really address them. At any rate, the problem is that there is no legitimate final arbiter of what is and is not true and none should be allowed to be created, certainly not in or by government or corporations. In the end, each of us is and must be the arbiter of the truth or falsity, utility, or uselessness or the information we come across and we should not entrust this function to others. Mistakes and errors happen,often driven by erroneous pre-conceptions. More importantly, propaganda, marketing and narrative manipulation are all pervasive in today's world and there is no way one can know, from minute to minute, who to trust.
Shifting to the whole question of hate speech, I don't think everybody or even anybody really hates all hate speech and of course like obscenity like National Security and all these other bug bears and free speech exceptions, it's not defined. The closest that we can get to a definition is probably the internet. I run three browsers I'm writing this in chromium because I'm using speech to text facilities provided by Google Docs, so naturally if I search the internet from here I get Google and this is what Google's AI Overview says in response to the question of what is hate speech is:
Hate speech is a form of expression that attacks, vilifies, or incites hatred against a person or group based on characteristics such as race, religion, gender, sexual identity, or disability. While there is no single, universally agreed-upon legal definition, the term refers to language that is discriminatory, demeaning, or intended to promote violence and hostility.
Google further quotes the OED as saying that hate speech is:
abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.
HAH! STOP RIGHT THERE! Three things::
Uno: There is no mention of mockery, which is a whole major sub-category of hate speech.
Dos: To completely refrain from using words and references and generally saying things that are divisive, discriminatory, prejudices and abusive, especially in the eyes of the beholder, is to be WOKE and this, we are told is a Very Bad Thing In fact, calling somebody WOKE could itself be considered to be hate speech. It seems that we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
Tres: Speaking of being damned, there is a word that was used for many centuries to divide, demean, and incite hatred for persons and groups. This word, and a cluster related words has been used to demonize, mark for torture, or death, and mark for sufficiently total ostracism that death will have to slowly follow. Over the ages these hate words have been responsible for innumerable deaths and unmentionable horrors, even genocides, yet they are very common and very widely and frequently used today. In fact, they can be and routinely are printed in full without a*tericks or other camoflauge. This family of words includes, "sinner", "heathen", "heretic", "non-believer", "apostate" , "infidel", "pagan", "damned", "witch", "wizard", and the like. Kindly let there be no more whining about "hate speech" until all those terms are completely eliminated from out vocabularies.
On this day in history:
1227 – Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades during the Investiture Controversy.
1567 – Protestant coup officials in Nîmes massacred Catholic priests
1724 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir ***
1789 – The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army
1829 – The Metropolitan Police of London, later also known as the Met, was founded.
1848 – The first battle of the Hungarian Revolution. the Battle of Pákozd was a stalemate
1885 – The first practical public electric tramway in the world opened in Blackpool, England
1907 – The cornerstone was laid for the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (aka the Washington National Cathedral) in Washington, D.C
1920 – The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic agreed to a truce with the Makhnovshchina.
1923 – The Mandate for Palestine took effect, creating Mandatory Palestine.
1923 – The Mandate for Syria and Lebanon took effect.
1923 – The First American Track and Field championships for women were held.
1940 – Two Avro Ansons collides in mid-air over New South Wales, Australia, remained locked together, and then landed safely still locked together
1941 – German forcesand their Ukrainian collaborators begin the two-day Babi Yar massacre.
1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) was signed.
1957 – The Kyshtym disaster, the third-worst nuclear accident ever recorded.
1971 – Oman joined the Arab League.
1972 – Japan established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China
1975 – WGPR became the first black-owned-and-operated television station in the US.
1990 – Construction of the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul aka Washington National Cathedral) was completed in Washington, D.C. Yay God!
1991 – A Haitian coup d'état occurred
1995 - Madalyn Murray O'Hair died
2004 – Burt Rutan's Ansari SpaceShipOne performed a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the Ansari X Prize.
2008 – The stock market crashed during the beginning stages of the Great Recession.
2016 – The Indian Army conducts "surgical strikes" against suspected militants in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
*** Whatever you do, do not let DJT or the US Army find out about this, they seriously assert that the US Army dates to June 14, 1775, well before the birth of the US
Some people who were born on this day:
Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.
~~ Miguel de Cervantes
1511 – Michael Servetus, physician, cartographer, and theologian
1547 – Miguel de Cervantes, novelist, poet, and playwright
1640 – Antoine Coysevox, sculptor and educator
1673 – Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, flute player and composer
1703 – François Boucher, painter and set designer
1758 – Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, admiral, Bonaparte's nemesis
1803 – Jacques Charles François Sturm, mathematician and theorist
1810 – Elizabeth Gaskell, author
1812 – Adolph Göpel, mathematician
1881 – Ludwig von Mises, economist, sociologist, and philosopher
1895 – Clarence Ashley, singer, guitarist, and banjo player
1895 – Joseph Banks Rhine, botanist and parapsychologist
1899 – László Bíró, journalist and inventor, invented the ballpoint pen
1901 – Lanza del Vasto, poet, philosopher, and activist
1901 – Enrico Fermi, physicist and academic
1907 – Gene Autry, singer, actor, and businessman
1910 – Bill Boyd, singer and guitarist
1913 – Stanley Kramer, director and producer
1913 – Rutherford Ness Robertson, botanist and biologist
1920 – Peter D. Mitchell, biochemist and academic
1922 – Reed Irvine, right wing propagandist
1925 – Paul MacCready, engineer, founded AeroVironment
1930 – Richard Bonynge, pianist and conducto
1931 – James Cronin, physicist and academic
1934 – Stuart M. Kaminsky, author and screenwriter
1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis, singer-songwriter and pianist
1935 – Carmen Delgado Votaw, civil rights pioneer
1937 – Tom McKeown, poet and educator
1941 – Oscar H. Ibarra, theoretical computer scientist
1942 – Mdealine Kahn, actress and singer
1942 – Jean-Luc Ponty, violinist and composer
1944 – Isla Blair, actress and singer
1948 – Mark Farner, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1948 – Theo Jörgensmann, clarinet player and composer
1952 – Roy Campbell, Jr., rumpet player
1954 – Geoffrey Marcy, astronomer
1956 – Suzzy Roche, singer, songwriter, and actress
1963 – Les Claypool, bass player, singer, songwriter, and producer
1967 – Brett Anderson, singer and songwriter
1978 – Kurt Nilsen, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1980 – Dallas Green, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1987 – Josh Farro, musician
Some people who died on this day:
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest
~~ Emile zola
1225 – Arnaud Amalric, Papal legate and inquisitor who advocated indiscriminate mass murder during the Albigensian Crusade
1800 – Michael Denis, poet and author
1902 – William McGonagall, poet and actor
1902 – Émile Zola, journalist, author, and playwright
1904 – Alfred Nehring, zoologist and paleontologist
1905 – Alexander Hay Japp, author, journalist and publisher
1908 – Machado de Assis, author, poet, and playwright
1910 – Rebecca Harding Davis, author and journalist
1910 – Winslow Homer, painter, illustrator, and engraver
1913 – Rudolf Diesel, engineer, invented the diesel engine
1915 – Luther Orlando Emerson, musician, composer and music publisher
1923 – Walther Penck, eologist and geomorphologist
1925 – Léon Bourgeois, police officer and politician, 64th Prime Minister of France, Nobel Prize laureate
1927 – Willem Einthoven, physiologist and physician
1935 – Winifred Holtby, novelist and journalist
1937 – Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková, botanist and zoologist
1952 – John Cobb, race car driver and pilot
1967 – Carson McCullers, novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet
1973 – W. H. Auden, poet, playwright, and critic
1982 – A. L. Lloyd, folk singer
1984 – Geater Davis, singer and songwriter
1988 – Charles Addams, cartoonist
1989 – Georges Ulmer, singer, songwriter, and actor
1992 – Don West, writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer and civil-rights activist
1995 – Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheist and activist
2007 – Katsuko Saruhashi, geochemist
2011 – Sylvia Robinson, singer, songwriter, and producer
2015 – Phil Woods, saxophonist, composer, and bandleader
2018 – Otis Rush, blues guitarist and singer
2020 – Helen Reddy, singer, actress, and activist
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
National Biscotti Day
National Coffee Day
Día Nacional del Maíz (Mexico)
International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (UN)
VFW Day
Today's Tunes
Apropos:
Jacques-Martin Hotteterre
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Clarence Ashley
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Bill Boyd
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Richard Bonynge
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1995 – Madalyn Murray O'Hair,
Jerry Lee Lewis
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Madeline Kahn
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Jean-Luc Ponty
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Mark Farner
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Les Claypool
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Brett Anderson
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Kurt Nilsen
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Luther Orlando Emerson
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A. L. Lloyd
Geater Davis
Georges Ulmer
Sylvia Robinson
Phil Woods
Otis Rush
Helen Reddy
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
open thread, Free Speech, Hate speedh, National Cathedral, Baba Yar Massacre, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jean-Luc Ponty, Les Claypool, Sylvia Robinson, Otis Rush, Helen Reddy, Madalyn Murray O'Hair,
Comments
My favorite is malinformation...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinformation
That's information that is true but TPTB don't like it...so it is bad and can be censored.
Thanks for the OT and all the music!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good morning LO. I remember the introduction of
tht "word" and the open admissin that they will censor anything that exposes their wrongdoing or idiocy, when the original impetus for free speech and press was in order that such wrongdoing and idiocy be ferreted out and exposed.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
quote from a recent cartoon
.
reporter asks a govt. spokesperson:
What is hate speech?
Answer:
Speech that I hate.
Thanks for the OT.
Zionism is a social disease
Good morning QMS. That cartoon had it very much
correct, which is why no branch of govt should ever be arbiter of what is acceptable, nor any coven of congressional spouses.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning, el!
To further complicate the speech problem, we have constant, and sometimes abrupt, re-definitions. And "woke" is flattering in some circles, and a pejorative in others.
It will get much worse when TikTok is controlled by Zionists.
Interesting times, dear friend.
I enjoyed your rant, for want of a better word.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning otc. Woke is indeed praise and/or
praiseworthy for some, but definitely not those in power, and I suspect only a smaller minority than we would like to think. Redefinitions are a constant, especially in politics (and what isn't political, at some point). It is unfortunate that somethint like TikTok can even have a bearing on the matter, it breaches the boundary of what a definition can be or is in such fashion that it is a language to itself that the rest of us do not speak but can only ignore at our peril.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Wait til the deep pockets
that bought Tik Tok discover the People will abandon it when they discover the extent of control.
A complete loss of investment.
Unless they pass a law that you must use Tik Tok.
Most likely they will ban all platforms but theirs.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
That would be gun and funny if it happens,
we'll have to see. A lot of people in the Bay Area dislike Mr. Ellison, specifically.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I still hate
his ass. When we lived in Foster City, we were just across Belmont Slough, the tidal mudway that separated our little bit of manmade-landfill-soup from Redwood Shores- we looked right at the big glass Oracle towers. When they decided to add the new huge parking garage to that complex, the back wall of the garage basically backed up to the back of our neighborhood. And they put about 50 insanely powerful sodium-vapor lights on that wall, 25 feet apart and about 4 stories up, so that they would shine directly into our bedroom and the bedrooms of all the people who lived near us. We complained and complained, and they told us to suck it up- someone might walk back there someday, and You Can't Be Too Careful, so they needed to keep it brighter than the surface of the sun 24/7. So when the opportunity to sell that place and get the hell out arose, we happily took it.
They also bought out my former employer, Sun Microsystems, and very effectively killed them. So I, for one, have no love at all for Mr. Ellison. And when he finally snuffs it, I hope they put one of those megawatt sodium-vapor lights into his goddamned casket with him, and keep it turned up to the max for the next 50 years or so. I want that man to be optically converted into a raisin, toot sweet.
Not a fan.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Ahhh, tell us how you rally feel. Killing Sun
was very bad juju. Never used oracle per se and think it is arguable whether java and java script are a net benefit to mankind. He's also famous, among other things, for annoying late & early morning flights into and out of San Jose in his very load private airplane.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Yup.
Worst thing of all is that the MRP (Material Requirements Planning) system at my "employer" is Oracle, under a JD Edwards hood. And people keep telling me "Hey, you worked for Sun- can you go in and fix/reprogram/mung it?"
Yes. Yes, I can. But no- no, I won't. First off, I'm a hardware guy, and I don't do typing. And secondly, I'd rather drink molten lead than have to screw with that 30-year-old database monstrosity they've cobbled together. Not my circus, not my monkeys...
Ellison flies in to Centennial here all the time with his ultrarich friends, and goes ripping loudly over the house at 500 feet on his approach when the winds are from the north. As you note, he doesn't do curfews- when you have that kind of money, paying the noise-abatement-bust fines is just a cost of doing business.
He has a Gulfstream G650, registered as N817GS. It has a very pedestrian paint job, compared with some of his buddies like Zuck (who also has a G650 that might as well be its twin). Can't get away from him, no matter how hard I try... (;-)
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Thanks for the OT, EL
And some great tunes.
Wasn't Bruno burned at the cross for something he said?
I do hope we don't go back to that.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
who is bruno?
-
not up on such things
BWANGO
Zionism is a social disease
Italian stable genius
Who was first to suggest the stars in the universe were other suns.
The religious authorities of that era didn't like free thinkers.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
maybe I would name my dog bruno
.
but what you say brings back some
education I have since unlearned
thanks!
Zionism is a social disease
Burned at the stake, iirc, for many things
he said, that's why I used that picture. I consider him to be a universal martyr to free speech and free thought.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The Constitution utterly failed
....Eugene Debs.
It would be foolish to rely on it for meaningful protection of speech in the US. The First Amendment does act as a sort of clearing house for benign issues.
But if someone deeply influential spoke out in public against the Palestinian Holocaust in Israel, for example, he would probably be shot from a rooftop.
I really enjoyed the musical selections.
Good afternoon Pluto. I thought about using the Debs
example, which is why I mentioned the Security bugbear as an item. Glad you liked the tunes.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Carlin and the 7words
Wiki's AI take:
The evolving standard now bleeps out words, regardless of context or subjective intent. My favorite example appears in the cable TV version of M*A*S*H --in the climax of the story, the irreverent heroes of the film played a football game against another military unit with better players. Our heroes solved that problem by getting a former pro football star transferred to their unit -- a "ringer." Said ringer had been a javelin thrower in college Track and field -- his nickname was "Spear Chucker." That pun now gets bleeped, obviously a woke solution to verboten words.
This fetishism would have destroyed Richard Pryor before he could get famous.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Heh, partially or fully automated censorship
is certain to be worse than that done by humans, but so, arguably are wikis. How, exactly, is "spear-chucker" a pun?
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Carlin was right
Censoring them just does not work - in fact, it causes problems, makes them worse, and/or prevents them from being solved.
Taboo-ifying things because they happened to be affixed to bad ideas and intentions, it should be noted, is the dead-opposite of the Cognitive Behavioral Technique which not only has the best track-record of any psychotherapy, but as I understand it, was a key practice of the Civil Rights Movement itself: Facing fears and threats (including way worse things than words, like dogs and firehoses!) and realizing the terror is worse than the actual thing.
Anyway, I was just going to contribute to the sillier side of things with my own observation: I play an online game that has (at times, I think it's gotten better about it recently, and it only matters so much when the "bleeper" of chat-text is entirely a user-end option) decided it doesn't like it if you try to talk about...:
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Pun = multiple meanings
of the term spear chucker:
track athlete vs. African heritage in racist slang
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
I know it's a bit late, but tell me about Madalyn Murray O'Hair?
I'd heard of her...and that something very weird was up with her death. Like, potential-conspiracy-action weird. Anyone around here know anything about that?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!