Twitter power

The New Neo Posted on by

After President Trump’s Twitter account was shut down for eleven minutes by a rogue employee or contractor on Thursday, Steven Hayward wondered:

…[T]his does raise an interesting question: If a Twitter employee can shut down Trump’s account, what else might a Twitter employee be able to do? If Trump has used the direct-message feature on Twitter, can Twitter access those? Could a rogue employee on Twitter send out a fake Trump Tweet, like “We begin bombing Pyongyang in five minutes”?

It’s an interesting question indeed. Prior to Twitter, presidents and other government officials communicated with the public through government channels, sometimes filtered through the MSM. Social media such as Twitter allows a president to reach the public more directly. But there’s still a middleman—Twitter itself. The president and the public rely on the integrity of the Twitter system, but is there any real reason to trust it?

The Spacey protection pattern

The New Neo Posted on by

The accusations against Kevin Spacey follow a certain pattern, one of attempted unwanted seductions, some so overt as to be harassment and non-violent assaults. A great deal of it seems to have been in the context of drinking, which doesn’t excuse it at all but probably is an indication of a drinking problem, too. I get the impression of a closeted gay man fighting the idea that he’s gay, but drinking quite a bit and taking advantage of the lowered inhibitions involved with drinking to make passes at any youngish man he saw as gay or possibly gay or willing to have a gay encounter.

Some of this behavior merely amounted to propositioning people. Some of it was worse, such as grabbing for their (clothed) genitals, or lying next to them or on top of them while they were sleeping. Some involved underage teenagers, but many involved young adults. But two things strike me about this. The first is how repetitive and compulsive it seems to have been. The second is how he managed to keep the secret all these years.

Perhaps that later phenomenon is the strangest of all. You’d think that, as a closeted gay person, Spacey would have a greater fear of being outed. But he never was, until Harvey Weinstein was accused and the MeToo campaign got started. Suddenly, it became okay to accuse famous and powerful Hollywood figures.

In all these matters it’s also possible that some of the accusations are lies, people piling on. In this case I just don’t think there’s a whole lot of that, although I can’t swear to it. If it’s all or even mostly true, one of the things Spacey apparently counted on was the fact that he was in the closet. From the article:

In the early 2000s, a journalist, then in his early twenties, interviewed Kevin Spacey in London for a national magazine, he told BuzzFeed News…

The interview, which took place at Spacey’s office at the Old Vic theater, went fine. “He was charming and doing impressions of Jack Lemmon and so on,” he said. Then Spacey invited him to go out with some friends for some drinks. Almost immediately after they arrived at the club, he said, Spacey began aggressively groping him…[[what follows is a lengthy description]…

When the journalist returned home, he said he told his editor immediately about his encounter with Spacey. (The editor confirmed this account to BuzzFeed News.)

…He said that he was astonished by Spacey’s behavior during the encounter because he was a journalist, and what “he’s not realizing is that I can f—ing hang him.” But in the days that followed, the reporter was hit with another realization: Sharing his account would out Spacey as gay.

“I consider that a pretty important principle: You don’t out people,” he said. “But it tied my hands. If I were to publish a story about Kevin Spacey sexually harassing me on the job ”¦ there’s no way without making it quite clear that he likes guys.”…

…”Being closeted has for him enabled him to use this privacy claim as a shield against anybody looking closely at his actual behavior. And then it may have served as this strange, protective mechanism, to say, ‘My whole sexual life is off limits because of my sexuality.'”

Well, I don’t think he’s alleging that Spacey actually said that. The reaction, and the decision, was all in the mind of the journalist. I find it interesting that he considered outing a gay man against his will to be a greater offense than keeping mum about his own sexual harassment at that man’s hands (literally at his hands) and facilitating future behavior of the same sort.

I’m not saying it was an easy decision either way. It sounds as though it was a horrible situation and a dilemma—like one of those hypotheticals that teachers give you to write an essay about on an exam in an ethics course. But it seems to me that once someone is doing that sort of thing to random people in a bar, the question of outing is secondary to the question of calling him on his behavior.

No one was doing Spacey any favors, either, by covering up for him. Just for starters, an intervention about his drinking might have been a good idea.

I can understand why young aspiring actors might have personal reasons for not outing Spacey. After all, he was a powerful man in the business (at the time of this interview, for example, he was director of the Old Vic) and he could hurt them in their careers in two ways: keep them from getting jobs and also out them as gay, if in fact they were. But journalists?

The Hollywood way

The New Neo Posted on by

Prior to the recent revelations about sexual harassment/abuse in the movie business, I don’t think many people thought Hollywood was a place of innocence and merit-based reward. Just one look at the fashions at awards ceremonies and the word “decadent” might easily have come to mind.

But I think the extent of the phenomenon—plus the fact that so many people knew about it and kept quiet—still retains some ability to surprise. And the revelations keep coming, with no end in sight, as emboldened victims come forward. There’s strength in numbers.

It’s impossible to know what’s true and what’s false in terms of these stories, but it seems highly likely that a goodly portion of them are true. It’s as though there previously were fingers plugging up the dike of disclosures with just a leak here and there, and now the dike has broken and the waters have spilled over.

I imagine one of the happiest people about these developments might be Bill Cosby, who can now say he was just doing what everybody does and that others were hypocrites for acting as though his predations were anything special.

Now when I think about the movies it seems to me as though they are like the pyramids, built on the backs of slave labor. Yes, of course that’s an exaggeration and an overreaction, but there’s something to it nevertheless. Not everyone was involved in abusing the younger and less powerful, but enough were. And not everyone knew about it and kept silent, but enough did. And there are also the younger and less powerful who willingly trade on their own sexuality to get ahead, but that’s less of a problem to my way of thinking.

How far does the rot go? I think pretty far. One of the things that happens in a situation like this is that people learn very quickly that something that might have originally shocked them is business as usual here, and that if they want to get ahead they either voluntarily use their sexuality as coin of the realm, acquiesce in their own abuse, and/or keep silent at the abuse of others they witness or hear about.

So the abusive behavior becomes normed, at least among those who stay. The others—the ones who can’t adjust to it, can’t take it in stride, are too disturbed by it, want to speak out—usually leave and we don’t hear much about them after that. One wonders how many of those who made it compromised themselves repeatedly while on the way up? And how many people in power consider sexual harassment to be a sort of lord-of-the-manor droit du seigneur (which, by the way, may have been mostly a myth in anthropological terms—see also this—but you get the idea)?

No prison time for Bergdahl

The New Neo Posted on by

Just a dishonorable discharge and a fine:

Bergdahl’s attorneys asked the judge for leniency during sentencing hearings, arguing he had a previously undiagnosed mental illness when he left his post.

“Hypothetically, he probably should not have been in the Army,” said Capt. Nina Banks, one of his military defense attorneys, in her closing argument.

Bergdahl suffered from numerous mental illnesses, including schizotypal personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Dr. Charles Morgan, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at the University of New Haven and Yale University. He testified for the defense Wednesday.

The defense also argued the information Bergdahl was able to provide upon his return — and his willingness to share that information and cooperate with investigators — warranted a more lenient sentence.

But government prosecutors said Bergdahl was aware of the risks when he deserted, and that doing so put his fellow soldiers in danger.

I remember thinking that Bergdahl really did seem so unbalanced that the initial error was letting him into the armed forces in the first place. However, his actions resulted in so much harm that it seems he should have been punished with some sort of prison term, and that his mental problems were not so great as to absolve him of responsibility.

What’s more, at least some of the harm his behavior caused was actually the result of President Obama’s decision to release so many dangerous people in exchange for Bergdahl, and Bergdahl himself bears no responsibility for that.

The Brazile revelations

The New Neo Posted on by

Hillary and Bernie and the DNC in 2015-2016:

Consider, then, that a formal agreement signed by the DNC and the Clinton campaign was executed in August 2015…

The agreement, according to Brazile, “specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics and mailings.”…

Democrats need to understand their own role in their own rotting position ”” including how they sold themselves to the Clintons for a mess of pottage they never even got to eat ”” if they are to have any hope of reversing the Republican tide.

Even if their fantasies were made flesh today and Donald Trump were somehow banished from Washington, the Democratic Party would be in no stronger institutional shape than it was yesterday.

Donna Brazile has given her unwilling fellow party members a good, long, unwelcome look in the mirror.

One question I have is why? Why did Brazile reveal this, and why now?

Here’s a theory that doesn’t make much sense to me:

But though the revelations dredge up old tensions from the Democratic primary, they may also counterintuitively show that the party is trying to heal old wounds ”” and bring Sanders supporters into the fold…

…overall, since the 2016 election, mainstream Democrats and Sanders have taken several key steps to ease tensions in the party. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer elevated Sanders to a leadership position within the caucus. Sanders campaigned across the country to save Obamacare, winning plaudits from national Democrats. Seventeen Senate Democrats signed on to Sanders’s Medicare-for-all health care bill.

This is one way to read Brazile’s revelation: as yet another sign that the Democratic establishment is trying to incorporate Sanders and his movement, by publicly distancing itself from those who allegedly tipped the scales of the primary away from him.

If I were a Sanders supporter, it certainly wouldn’t make me want to embrace the Clinton forces.

Known wolf from a known wolf den

The New Neo Posted on by

Of interest:

The NYPD had suspected New Jersey’s Masjid Omar Mosque, where jihadist Sayfullo Saipov reportedly worshipped, of having radical ties for over 10 years, allegedly keeping all its worshippers under watch.

Moreover, the FBI, which claims it had nothing to do with monitoring the mosque, interviewed Saipov as a potential Islamic terrorist in 2015, but ultimately let him go…

“The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing,” reported the Associated Press (AP)…

Although the “terrorism enterprise investigations” (TEIs) into mosques allow the NYPD to carry out surveillance for years, it has not reportedly yielded a criminally charged mosque or Islamic organization with serving as a jihadist organization.

What this tells us is that the police have been able to identify some of the places where jihadis find aid and comfort (and in some cases are created). These places are not only identified but investigated and monitored by infiltration and recording devices. And yet these efforts have not yielded the desired effects, which would included stopping someone such as Saipov.

What’s more, the FBI keeps encountering and even interrogating people who end up becoming mass murderers of the jihadi variety, and letting them go.

This is a kind of “good news bad news” scenario. The good news is that the authorities know where to look and are identifying the places where the bad apples lurk and even at times which apples are likely to go bad. The bad news is that they cannot seem to distinguish such people from the larger potential-jihadi crowd in these radical mosques and in particular they cannot seem to find a reason to detain them.

Our system protects liberty, particularly the liberty of citizens, and preventative detention of large groups of people without due cause is just not something we are willing to do. Nor is it something I think we should be willing to do, particularly to citizens. However, what about non-citizens such as Saipov? In other words, what about deportation? Here’s a list of reasons for deportation of legal residents such as Saipov. It’s rather long, but one of the items of particular interest might be this sort of thing:

…has engaged in or appears likely to engage in terrorist activity, or has incited terrorist activity, or is a representative a terrorist organization or group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity, or is a member of a terrorist organization (unless the person proves that he had no idea of its terrorist aims), or endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to do so, or has received military-type training from or on behalf a terrorist organization, or is the terrorist’s spouse or child, if the relevant activity took place within the last five years.

It’s that “appears likely to engage in terrorist activity” part that’s tricky yet potentially promising. How broadly or narrowly should this be defined? Someone like Saipov also had a wife and several children, and the children had apparently been born here and were citizens. What to do in a case such as that? And how dramatic should the red flags have to be before acting?

I am of the opinion that there is no reason we should be encouraging immigration through the diversity visa program from countries otherwise underrepresented in our immigration population (this is the program under which Saipov entered in 2010). That program is nonsensical and in this case it turned out to be self-destructive.

In addition, monitoring of mosques that are known to be hotbeds of radical Islamic jihadist thought is obviously inadequate at this point. Mosques, of course, are protected by the First Amendment, but if they’re preaching violence they’ve gone beyond the usual definition of “religion” and have segued into something quite different.

It’s not easy to draw the line, but in parts of Europe they have been far more Draconian than in this country. For example, in France:

French authorities shut down 20 mosques and prayer halls they found to be preaching radical Islamic ideology since December, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Monday.

“Fight against the #radicalization: since December 2015, twenty Muslim places of worship have been closed,” the Interior Ministry tweeted.

Of the country’s 2,500 mosques and prayer halls, approximately 120 of them have been suspected by French authorities of preaching radical Salafism, a fundamentalist interpretation of Sunni Islam, according to France 24.

“There is no place … in France for those who call for and incite hatred in prayer halls or in mosques ”¦ About 20 mosques have been closed, and there will be others,” Cazeneuve said.

Where does freedom of religion end and where does self-protection begin? I don’t think this is an easy question at all, but radical Islamic jihadism cloaks itself in the mantle of religious liberty, a liberty it would destroy if it had its way. Surely that should not be protected.

Gun-free zones

The New Neo Posted on by

I had a doctor’s appointment the other day, and as I arrived I noticed a huge sign on the door announcing that I was entering a gun-free zone.

As I sat in my chair waiting, I pondered—not for the first time—what the purpose of such an announcement might be. Because to me it seems that it’s tantamount to a great big sign saying: “Defenseless sitting ducks here.”

I truly cannot imagine a scenario where such a sign would deter a would-be troublemaker or killer, and I can certainly imagine a situation where it would encourage such a person. Is there any would-be perpetrator planning to barge into a doctor’s office with a gun, eager to blast people away, who would see that sign and stop in his/her tracks and think, “Oops, I better go somewhere else to do some massacring. They don’t allow guns here!”?

Of course not. Au contraire.

In this case we’re talking about a gynecology office, by the way, so it’s a roomful of women. As I said, sitting ducks.

Another scenario that the sign makers may have had in mind is the person who carries a gun for defensive purposes, enters the office peacefully, but suddenly becomes enraged there. Maybe it’s a guy accompanying his wife and they suddenly have an argument in the waiting room. Maybe it’s a woman who doesn’t like being kept waiting (gynecology offices are notorious for waiting, although mine is very good that way). The idea is that gun owners—or people in general—are inherently unstable and might fly off the handle easily and then use those guns. But again, would such people ever be deterred by a mere sign? If they ordinarily carry, and left their weapons in the car, for example, all they have to do is go out there and get it and then re-enter the office.

However, there is one logical reason for having a gun-free zone, and that is to prevent the accidental discharge of a loaded weapon. But most of these incidents (called “NDs” for “negligent discharges,” or “ADs” for “accidental dischares,” depending on the circumstances) occur when a gun is being handled, often for cleaning. I doubt anyone is going to clean a gun while waiting to be called on in the gynecologist’s office by the nurse, however boring the wait might be.

Where do NDs take place? Here’s a rather large study, and it appears that they occur either in the home or at gun ranges or gun shows or gun stores:

Now there are many reasons why we saw that the home was the most common place for these discharges to take place. A LOT”¦ and I mean FAR TOO MANY of these incidents happened when a child picked up an unsecured firearm that was not stored properly. There were also accidents while cleaning, or sometimes just playing around with the gun. But the overall motif behind each shooting is the same: It was simply due to a lack of care being taken at home and people letting their guard down.

I just spent quite a bit of time trying to ascertain how often, and under what circumstances, a concealed weapon that is not being handled goes off and injures someone. So far I don’t have the answer, and I’m going to give up for now (you’re free to keep looking, of course). I did encounter a great many articles that agree that a properly concealed weapon (properly holstered, for example) just about never goes off accidentally. But how many weapons are carried improperly, how many of them do go off, and if they do, is the only person ordinarily injured the gun owner?

I don’t have definitive answers to those questions, but if you look at articles such as this, for example, it seems fairly clear that a properly concealed weapon just about never go off accidentally, and the problem is encountered far more frequently when people take out concealed weapons and handle them improperly. But who takes out a weapon in a doctor’s office without meaning to use it? And would someone so negligent and reckless as to carry a firearm improperly (unholstered gun in a pants waistband, for example) really be obeying those “gun-free zone” signs, anyway?

By the way, quite a few firearms accidents that do take place in public areas that are not gun shows or firing ranges occur in public bathrooms and injure no one but the gun owner. Here’s the story of how it happens, in case you’re interested.

I haven’t found any incidents of the sort that advocates of gun-free zones seem to have in mind: where a concealed weapon is accidentally discharged in a public place such as a doctor’s office, for example, and injures others. Certainly I have never seen any that involve a properly carried (holstered, etc.) concealed weapon. That doesn’t mean such incidents never happen, but I just haven’t located any.

Yeah, it’s playwright

The New Neo Posted on by

When I write posts about grammar or spelling I try to be extra extra careful not to make any grammar or spelling mistakes, because it’s almost inevitable that I will.

Almost. We’ll see.

Today I was using the word for “the person who writes plays” and I had to pause for a moment and look it up to make sure it was “playwright” and not the more logical “playwrite.” Not to mention the fact that a careless person might even think it’s “playright,” although that would clearly be wrong.

It’s “playwright,” of course, although intuitively most people must think “playwrite” and people often spell it that way (Spell Check just reprimanded me when I typed the word).

The reason it’s spelled “wright” is that the word is an old-fashioned one for “fabricator,” a crafts person who creates something. There was even a Playwright’s Guild to designate that fact.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, back to our usual programming…

Why was the Ferguson grand jury testimony released?

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed yesterday in the “Ferguson, the play” thread that there seems to be some confusion about the way the grand jury testimony in the Ferguson matter was obtained by the playwright. So I thought I’d try to clarify.

No, the author didn’t have to do any special sleuthing to have access to the Ferguson grand jury proceedings. And yes, these things are usually sealed.

Ferguson was considered an extraordinary case in which public interest was intense and there was grave risk of riots and other violence at the announcement of the grand jury’s decision, particularly if it went against what the crowd wanted.

If the grand jury indicted Wilson, there would ordinarily be a trial and the evidence would come out publicly. In addition, the mob would be happy about an indictment. But what if there was no indictment? In that case, not only would there probably be violence, but the public would never know on what the grand jury had based its refusal to indict. There would be a very volatile situation in terms of public safety, and this was understood at the outset.

So before the grand jury even began its work, this announcement was made [emphasis mine]:

The decision to indict Wilson rests with the grand jury.

“If there’s an indictment of any charge, then all of the information would come out during the course of the prosecution,” [prosecutor] McCulloch said. “If there is no indictment, normally it’s a closed record, a closed file unless the judge agrees to release it. And the judge has told me that she will order that everything be released.”

All testimony is being recorded, McCulloch said, It is being prepared for release as the grand jury progresses, and is being shared with the federal government, which is conducting an independent investigation.

Such a release is unusual but not unprecedented and within the discretion of the judge. The MSM covered the release, and the full text of the proceedings was not only available to the playwright but to anyone with access to a computer.

Ferguson, the play

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t followed the story of this play too closely till now, but it sounds fascinating:

McAleer told me about Ferguson: The Play, a crowd-funded courtroom drama he wrote based strictly on grand-jury testimony following the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. McAleer has a Michael Moore-style impish streak and a Moore-style knack for creating controversy: When the play was in the workshop stage in Los Angeles two years ago, according to Deadline, cast members staged a mass walkout because they “felt uncomfortable in what they described as a play overly sympathetic to the police officer.” McAleer says the play simply lays out the facts, with no spin. Those facts tend to be inhospitable to the left’s narrative.

It may seem hard to see how a play that merely dramatizes courtroom testimony can be criticized. But where there’s a will there’s a way.

This particular run of the play ends on November 5, but it is hoped that there will be another run. I’d certainly like to see it. More information here:

McAleer, who is Irish but now lives in Los Angeles said growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles meant he felt compelled to write the FERGUSON play stating: “Growing up in Northern Ireland during troubled times taught me that the truth is very important – that no problems can be solved, no injustice righted, until we know the truth about contentious events or issues. That is why I was so strongly drawn to the Ferguson story. I was shocked when I read the transcripts of the Grand Jury investigation, there is so much truth about the shooting of Michael Brown that people don’t know and that was not being made public. I have an opportunity to bring to the stage the truth about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri the morning police officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown dead. I have been a journalist for 25 years and this is one of my most important projects and, also one of the purist. I have deliberately excluded the “journalistic voice,” from this project, there is no filter, no bias – just the voices of eyewitnesses. The truth is not necessarily what the public came to believe, it is full of shocks and surprises, but is unbelievably compelling. I hope the audience appreciates it and joins me on my journey to the truth.”