Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Comedy of Terrors
Posted on April 13, 2004 in Crosstalk The InterNet
It’s politics Tuesday.
I am running like a bell curve, a sine wave, as I evaluate my feelings about last week’s display of cowardice by members of the fanatical wRong. Part of me is asking “where do we draw the line for free speech”? The rest of me gasps in amazement. But we are not free to advocate violence against another human being for their words and their words alone.
The comedy of terrors continues. The latest is the reception of emails from abuse@hostmatters.com threatening legal action against Katherine Cramer for reporting impersonations and death threats. The source insists that Katherine failed to provide evidence for the claims. A belligerant claiming to speak for hostmatters.com said in her comments:
We did indeed note that everything you’ve sent will be copied to Charles Johnson, as it is certainly his choice to decide what to do about your broad complaints against him and as we have information that would be relevant to such a decision. Once you began accusing us (via our network) of being involved in “unlawful activity”, you crossed the line, just as you have here in this post, and that is a matter for our attorney. You have repeatedly misused technical terms in claiming that you have been attacked in some manner, and we further noted that this will be addressed with whomever receives these “filings”. These are not threats. These are the actions we will take because of your own.
The fact that the ISP is turning over confidential email to the complaintant and not specifying exactly what they wanted from Katherine Cramer is cause for further investigation of their relationship and ethical accountability. Annette and hostingmatters.com appear to be out to shut down everyone except a certain site which by force of wind alone claims to be not about hatred. Are they are as separate from Charle Johnson as they claim? A recent posting by Annette, a self-described “cat herder” has a neo-conservative apologist glow about it. Despite letters and emails from observers, this Annette insists that the site where Kathryn contends the death threats came does not qualify as a hate site. But as with the claim that Kathryn did not provide “sufficient proof” it does not give a definition of “hate site” that we can use as a gauge.
It’s sad that it is left to me to explain how to lodge complaints, but abuse@hostingmatters.com seems more intent on helping Charles intimidate Kathryn than helping promote understanding of abuse issues and fair policing of the net. For Kathryn and others: when speaking to issues of homicidal comments, you must include the DNS number and the complete text. It is simply unwise to say “Go to my blog and find it there.” You have to make the effort to collect the evidence.
For email, you must provide the full headers. This is because people have faked email addresses, pretending to be someone else. As loathsome as the emails may be to look at, you must keep copies of them.
This is what abuse@hostingmatters.com fails to explain in its abusive and noninformative public comments on Kathryn’s site.
Roaches often use different sites for accessing the net than the ones they use for posting their blogs. LGF occupies a moral dead zone. If the owner does not make the statements on his own blog or via a mailing list or email account on the site, then there is weasel room. The issue of what constitutes a “hate site” also allows for weasel room: Advocacy of killing anonymous people in another country for suspect ideological reasons is not counted as hate. Distorting the truth for the sake of a war is not counted as hate. Lumping lunatics who might be plants with strongly professed nonviolence advocates like myself and failing to report voices for nonviolence among peace activists is not hate? Failing to provide proper documentation at the first try and to make an underdocumented claim is hatred? Give me a break or at least an explicit policy!
I draw an analogy here to the issue of sexual harassment. It is not unusual for an institution where an incident of sexual harassment has taken place to conduct an investigation on the minimum of evidence. The complaintant is not put on trial: the allegation is investigated. Confidentiality of all parties is assured. Hostingmatters.com might think that they are off the hook because they weren’t given sufficient evidence, but they might well be hanging there like a trout waiting for the filletting knife.
The sharing of the private email might well be their deserved doom.
You will note that I do not include either the Daily Kos or Yglesias or any of the sites that Charles picks upon. I won’t characterize as LGF as a full-fledged hate site in the spirit of the Aryan Nation or the Nation of Islam, but I will say without remorse that it is antagonistic, vengeful, and promoting of violence against Muslims and other people Charles happens not to like. By my blogging here, I am making it clear that I am not the hypocrite he insists that all members of the Left are. You can mischaracterize me, Charles, but it ain’t going to stick. Perhaps that is why he hasn’t had the nuts to attempt to take me on. Guilt by association won’t work with me. I tell ’em off, Left and Right. Ask my critics on the Left.
And I won’t be called unpatriotic for linking this.
