[Andre Jute]

Sander deWaal wrote:
"Andre Jute" said:


But I want to address just a single thought in this, which has also
been exercising my mind. Actually, it is both liberalism and
libertarianism that in different ways try

to imply kinship with strangers, yet cities full of
neighborhoods in which I cannot walk. Usenet newsgroups of vicious, hostile
people.


The essence of liberty is free speech. I therefore welcomed the
Internet and the Usenet as free, uncontrolled and uncontrollable
communications channels for Everyman. I had long thought it inequitable
that a rather tiny percentage of well-educated and articulate people
should have so much control over what Everyman learns, consumes and
thinks, and expected to welcome an explosion of democracy. Instead
Everyman turned out be a petty, vicious, nasty little control freak
motivated not by the aspiration to better himself but by such blind
envy of his betters that his only response is to try bringing them down
to his own level. The equivalence between the Usenet and the ghetto
where any outsider (automatically assumed to be superior...) is not an
example to aspire to but merely a target to be brutalized, is a
brilliant insight, Bob. It is also a deeply saddening observation.


I try to keep in mind that 10 or even more years from now, everyone
can still access the Google database and read what I wrote.

That thought frightens me every now and then, and it serves to remind
me of my responsibilities, both as a fellow human being and as an
audio person.

I wish I could undo some (a lot, actually) of the things I wrote.
I learn everyday, and what may seem totally logical and truthful to me
today, may well be proven very wrong tomorrow.


They say usenet is a volatile medium.
Google, however, never forgets anything.

--
"Due knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl miss steaks."

Google is the repository of an unbiased record. I have nothing to fear
from the truth evaluated in a calm atmosphere. I have an example:

You were here when I broke the back of the Magnequest Scum. At the
time, you will remember, I, and the very few who stood up with me
against the bullying of that slime, were widely, almost universally
abused because the members of the Magnequest Scum were popular. I paid
no attention, of course -- I do what is right regardless, and this scum
had chosen to put itself in my face -- and took my time dealing with
them, warning them at each stage that they were about to get hurt,
giving them multiple chances to run and save themselves. I was still
the subject of vituperation for a few years. But now the table is
turning. Those who read the record in Google without the baleful light
of friendship, loyalty, emotion or profit casting a purple light on the
proceedings, virtually without exception conclude that the Magnequest
Scum started the fight, and that I acted correctly (indeed generously)
throughout, and above all that I never exceeded the bounds of civilized
restraint.

As the truth is my friend, so is Google my friend.

Andre Jute
Truth is liberty -- Andre Jute, on the barricades in Paris 1968 (1)

(1) Christ, no, I wasn't beating up gendarmes. I moved from barricade
to barricade, spotted the instigators and demagogues -- and hired these
guaranteed articulate and inventive intelligences as copywriters for my
ad agency; those "revolutionaries" earned plenty for me, and for the
"multinationals" their grandchildren are now demonstrating against!