Showing posts with label anonymity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anonymity. Show all posts

Monday, 18 March 2019

Christchurch

Hi Guys,





So, I'd guess everyone has heard about what happened in Christchurch on Friday. Certainly everyone in New Zealand has. And I'd guess most kiwis are a little like me, shocked and horrified by such a terrible act of violence. All of us will be saying - this is New Zealand - We don't have things like this. Not in Godzone.

But it seems we do. Even if the offender has to come here from another country to murder innocent kiwis who were doing nothing more than praying. (Note that I will only refer to him as the offender. I do not want to use his name and give him a single ounce of fame.)

My heart of course, goes out to the victims and their families. To lose their loved ones in such a brutal and senseless attack must be beyond our understanding. All I can say is that you have my prayers as you do those of all kiwis. 

This is a good country filled with good people, and we apparently let in one rotten apple. We have to make sure we never do that again. And quite frankly we have to get rid of all semi-automatic weapons. That will be my submission when the enquiry is put out for public comment as it surely will be. Let the gun makers cry into their empty bank accounts!

But I want to take a moment here to talk about the revolting ideology commonly called white supremacy. And to express my rejection of it speaking as a white half Aryan man.

Now I'm sure the neo-nasties will try to defend what they believe in. Just as I know that their entire belief structure is a lie. And I'm not just talking about the long since discredited doctrines of racialism and Nordicism. I'm talking about the lies all neo-nasties tell themselves.

It's not just the lie that one race is somehow inherently better than another. It's the lie they cling to in their beds at nights. In their hopes and dreams. That the white race (as if there were such a thing!) is somehow great - and so by extension, are they.

This is patently false. One race is not better than another. And even if one were, these individuals would be the exceptions.

Consider the concept of greatness. The one as espoused by Nietzsche (who only got it half right) and completely misunderstood by the Nazis. Ask yourself, what is a great man - or woman? What defines him or her?

Well one of the things is self awareness. Self knowledge. The very things the neo-nasties clearly don't have. You see a great man or woman looks inside him or herself, especially when things go wrong. He fails a test, doesn't get a job, doesn't earn a high salary or gets hounded by the police. Whatever it is, whatever failure has beset him or her, a great man looks first for the source of failure in him or herself. And when he finds it, he fixes it. He gives up drinking, works harder, stops breaking the law - whatever is needed. In so doing he becomes greater.

But a neo-nasty like the offender and his cohort? They don't do that. They look outside. They blame other people. They didn't get a job? It must be because the system is rigged to favour those brown people. It never occurs to them that the person who did get the job worked harder, studied harder, didn't do drugs or alcohol and didn't get a criminal conviction. And so it goes on. Always, for every failure in their lives, it must be someone elses fault. It could never be theirs!

Another of the things that defines a great man or woman is courage. And courage doesn't mean that they don't know fear. It means that they don't give in to it.

But the neo-nasty gives into fear without hesitation. Just listen to the snippets of the manifesto that the latest offender published. Why did he do what he did? Because there was an "invasion" of people who were different to him. He was terrified that he would be left alone and unemployed, inadequate in a world where people better than him succeeded. That's not courage. That's cowardice.

And then there's weapons - a form of power. The great man or woman doesn't need weapons. He doesn't need to use force to exert his or her will on the world. S/he knows s/he is right and carries with him / her an inviolable authority. Why would he need to use force? He doesn't. The great man knows his thoughts and beliefs are right and that others will see that and accept it.

The neo-nasty on the other hand, craves weapons. S/he craves anything that will make him or her stronger. And the reason for that? Because he or she knows deep down inside, that he or she is weak, even if they can't admit it.

This is the nature of the white supremacist. And of the offender who killed all those innocent, unarmed men and women and children in Christchurch. As well as so many others.

And the reason I wanted to say this? Because while this atrocity was carried out by one man, he was aided and egged on by so many others. All those who supported him. All those who took his feeds and distributed them.

I don't know if it's possible to track you down and expose you to the world. Since you so bravely decided to name yourselves as anonymous! But I do know that if you hold the same views as the offender, then you are the same as him. And if you encouraged him to do this, then you are as guilty as he is.

Don't come to New Zealand. You're not welcome here.

Greg.





Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Anne Rice's Petition To Amazon Against Anonymous Reviews - Why I Won't Sign.

Hi Guys,




Recently as many of you will be aware, Anne Rice, acting as a spokesperson for a number of authors on Amazon, posted about a petition they were putting out. A petition asking Amazon to stop the practice of reviews being posted as anonymous.


The reasons for this were mainly that anonymity allowed for posters to post reviews that were in some cases unfair, occasionally sock puppets designed to drive up (or down) book sales, often misdirected against the author instead of the work, and in too many cases actually threatening violence.

Look, I have respect as an author and a reader for Anne Rice's work. I have most of her Vampire novels on my shelves. And as an author also on Amazon who has taken a few hits from readers - some of which I regard as unfair - I have a fair degree of sympathy for the situation she describes. That being said, I will not sign the petition.

My reasoning is that anonymous reviews are simply part and parcel of the publishing world, and that to restrict the practice would be to restrict readers from having their say. Many readers would not post reviews if they had to use their own names, and I believe that most of them would not be those posting these unfair and sometimes threatening reviews. In the end we are talking about only a few reviewers who post inflammatory reviews under the guise of anonymity, but to take the action of stopping anonymous reviews is to punish everyone for their actions. That's unfair.

In my view the correct action is to directly target those who do post these reviews, and the way to do this is to ask Amazon to more strictly enforce their TOS. As part of that I would suggest the following:

First threats of violence. We live in a civilised world and there is absolutely no place for violence and threats. If someone were to come up to me in the street and threaten me, my response would be to go to the police. And if the medium has changed so that instead of a street it's on the Internet, the response should be the same.

Next reviews that can't seem to separate the work from the writer and end up in personal attacks. Look this again is a violation of Amazon's TOS. They should be reported and taken down as quickly as they go up. And if a particular reviewer seems incapable of avoiding the same mistakes repeatedly, they should be prevented from posting more reviews until they can.

Then the sock puppets. This is a complex problem and it actually occurs on both sides. Some sock puppets are actual attempts to drive up the rating and hence appeal of books. Others are by disgruntled readers who are so upset with a work that they believe just saying it once is not enough so they'll use multiple Amazon accounts and identities. In both cases this is a violation of the TOS and should be stopped. I understand that people on both sides feel passionately about various books, but in the end it's not about that. It's about having your fair say. And that generally means one review per person. Why should I or anyone else have more say than others simply because I have the skills to create multiple Amazon accounts etc? Why is my opinion more valuable than that of anyone else?

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this particular petition. In a nut shell it's using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut and it denies many readers the right to give legitimate reviews of what they read in the comforting embrace of anonymity. It discourages reviews, good and bad. And as a published author one of the things we should all want is feedback.

Cheers, Greg.