i2: Infective Invective: January 2007

Parents to Get The Spanking

Yahoo News reports a California lawmaker seeks spanking ban. Now who's got a Giant Hand arbitrarily threatening their ass, eh? Oh, it's okay when it's YOU wielding the power against the powerless, but if the The State wields it's power over you, then it's a problem. Okay, sure, that's REAL consistent reasoning. Not.

Labels: infective.invective

Cyber warfare and the "blogger threat" | Betterhumans > Blog Post

Excerpt from this time, last year (Feb, 2006):

[T]hat the Homeland Security Department considers bloggers a potential threat really shouldn't come as a complete surprise; the military would likely shut down threatening and subversive blogs during times of war or civil unrest.

It's during such episodes that control of information flow becomes tactically paramount -- so much so that nations often regress to de facto authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. As a result, the state has the power to claim a monopoly on the memesphere, including extreme censorship and propaganda campaigns.

Freedom of speech is a peacetime luxury.

At the same time, however, I have to think that the real impact bloggers could conceivably have is over-stated. I don't think memes work in such a pervasive way, particularly not today in the age of diversified media. If blogs could actually cause people to riot, for example, it's not because the blogs are telling them to do so, but because there's a genuine reason for doing so.

But as the Cyberstorm exercise shows, the revolution will not be televised, nor will it posted on a blog.

Labels: infective.invective

Daily Kos: The Spocko Incident

Daily Kos: The Spocko Incident.

Spocko has actually cost Disney money - he chased away advertisers and forced them to pay a law firm to intimidate his ISP. The story isn't all good though - Spocko's broke and can't afford to wage the legal battle, so he's shut down. That said, maybe we can use this space to buck up his spirits a little bit and see if there are any lawyers that want to file a Rule 11 motion against Disney's unscrupulous lawyers...

Labels: infective.invective