Witnesses, well-to-do or otherwise

This morning, when I read this passage in Bruno Latour's We Have Never Been Modern---

While a dozen civil wars were raging, [17th-century chemist Robert] Boyle chose a method of argument--that of opinion-- that was held in contempt by the oldest scholastic tradition. Boyle and his colleagues abandoned the certainties of apodeictic reasoning in favour of a doxa. This doxa was not the raving imagination of the credulous masses, but a new mechanism for winning the support of one's peers. Instead of seeking to ground his work in logic, mathematics or rhetoric, Boyle relied on a parajudicial metaphor: credible, trustworthy, well-to-do witnesses gathered at the scene of the action can attest to the existence of a fact, the matter of fact, even if they do not know its true nature. So he invented the empirical style that we still use today. (18)

---I thought of the Guardian article I read yesterday, Rick Perry Officials Spark Revolt after Doctoring Environment Report, noting how all the scientists who had contributed to the report removed their names in the face of the Texas governor's censorship of the science he is determined to suppress.

By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report has demanded their names be struck from the document. "None of us can be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names removed," said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice-president of the Houston Advanced Research Center.

"To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility. This is simply antithetical to what a scientist does," Lester said. "We can't be censored." Scientists see Texas as at high risk because of climate change, from the increased exposure to hurricanes and extreme weather on its long coastline to this summer's season of wildfires and drought.

However, Perry, in his run for the Republican nomination, has elevated denial of science, from climate change to evolution, to an art form. He opposes any regulation of industry, and has repeatedly challenged the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Texas is the only state to refuse to sign on to the federal government's new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. "I like to tell people we live in a state of denial in the state of Texas," said John Anderson, an oceanography at Rice University, and author of the chapter targeted by the government censors.

That state of denial percolated down to the leadership of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The agency chief, who was appointed by Perry, is known to doubt the science of climate change. "The current chair of the commission, Bryan Shaw, commonly talks about how human-induced climate change is a hoax," said Anderson.

When I read the article yesterday, I thought about how Texas's government censorship of science is perfectly in line with the state's Stalinist approach to rewriting the history that is taught in its public schools. But today I'm thinking also that Perry's tactics exemplify the nature of the struggle underway. Although people who call themselves "fundamentalist" Christians claim the Bible as their source of authority, they in fact (as any scholar of the Bible could tell you) ignore that authority when it suits their purposes (as well as favor mistranslations and similar distortions of it) and prefer instead to seize control of the doxa (mostly by brute, well-capitalized, propagandizing force). I wonder what Boyle might have said about this development (other than to characterize the lunatic Republicans as having adopted the "raving imagination of the credulous masses").

ETA: As with the Bible, so with the US Constitution. Always, they ignore and distort what doesn't suit their interests.

A Dark Day for Journalism

Last night the forces of the uprising managed, valiantly, to hold onto Tahrir Square against the deadly, vicious attacks of Mubarak's thugs. Today, though, numerous news venues are reporting that dozens of journalists, as well as human rights workers and bloggers, have been detained, beaten, carjacked, hunted down, and otherwise intimidated by the Mubarak government. Security personnel in the Hilton hotel have systematically removed photographers' equipment. Mubarak's thugs have dismantled satellite dishes and destroyed equipment at the television studios of non-State Egyptian stations. Perhaps of all, the live feeds from Tahrir Square have ceased. As the New York Times's Nick Kristof tweeted earlier today, "Govt is trying to round up journalists. I worry about what it is they're planning that they don't want us to see."

Here are some links:

Committee to Protect Journalists, Mubarak Intensifies Press Attacks with Assaults, Detentions
The New York Times, Gangs Hunt Journalists and Rights Workers
The Guardian, Egypt Cracks Down on Foreign Journalists
ABC News, List of Journalists Who have Been Threatened, Detained, or Attacked While Reporting in Egypt
Huffington Post, Human Rights Watch Researcher Detained
Huffington Post, Dozens of Journalists Detained, Clash with Pro-Mubarak Forces

The article at the Committee to Protect Journalist site observes:

"This is a dark day for Egypt and a dark day for journalism," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "The systematic and sustained attacks documented by CPJ leave no doubt that a government-orchestrated effort to target the media and suppress the news is well under way. With this turn of events, Egypt is seeking to create an information vacuum that puts it in the company of the world's worst oppressors, countries such as Burma, Iran and Cuba.

"We hold President Mubarak personally responsible for this unprecedented action," said Simon, "and call on the Egyptian government to reverse course immediately."

[...]

Government officials, pro-government journalists, and commentators loyal to Mubarak have for the past two days been engaged in a systematic campaign to present foreigners, and particularly foreign journalists, as spies. CPJ has documented at least seven instances on state-owned television or on private stations owned by businessmen loyal to Mubarak in which individuals described elaborate foreign plots to destabilize Egypt that centered on foreign provocateurs, including journalists. In several instances, they were described as "Israeli spies." In one instance, a woman whose face was obscured "confessed" to having been trained by "Americans and Israelis." She went on to say that the alleged training took place in Qatar, where Al-Jazeera is based.

I'd like to recommend Professor Juan Cole's blog, which has been running a series of posts providing background and analysis as the uprising continues. It is particularly instructive to read his Why Egypt 2011 Is Not Iran 1979, in which he spells out the immense, particular differences between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011.

Links for a Monday evening

--It's Banned Books Week in the US and the UK. Today's Guardian has an article about it that notes some of the usual targets of book-banning as well as some new ones. I was most interested by the one designated "the eighth most challenged book in the US last year":

Carolyn Mackler, whose novel The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things was the eighth most challenged book in the US last year for reasons including its "offensive" language and sexually explicit scenes, sent a statement to be read at the event. "While I'm honoured to be in the company of such amazingly talented authors, I'm certainly not honoured to be on the list," said Mackler. "And while I'm no stranger to book challenges, for some reason I'm always surprised."

She has received "hundreds of letters and emails from teenage girls" who have been inspired by the novel, she said. The book tells the story of Virginia, "a curvy 15-year-old girl who has been made to feel terrible about herself by her not-so-curvy family [but who] ultimately learns to feel good about herself, even to celebrate herself, as she is, without losing weight, without hurting her body."

"I write about teenagers as they are, and my characters sometimes curse, and they hook up, and they confront their parents when they feel they are being wronged. This, I suppose, is upsetting to people who don't want their child exposed to these things. While I sincerely doubt that my book will be someone's only exposure to such content, I respect a parent's wishes for their children. Their children, I emphasise. Not everyone else's," she said. "I am a parent. I closely follow the books that my son reads. If a book is scaring him, we talk about it. If a book doesn't seem appropriate for him, I tuck it away and suggest he wait a few years. I have a good sense of what he's ready for, what he's wondering about. But do I know what is right for his friend or classmate? No way. Please, all of us, let's keep standing up against book banning."

--Meanwhile, Aqueductista Sue Lange has posted Confessions of a Serial Book Banner.

--Strange Horizons has posted a review by Claire Brialey of The Secret Feminist Cabal.

--io9 reports that the UN has appointed Malaysian astrophysicist Mazlan Othman Earth's ambadassor in the case that an extraterrestrial species visit Earth (link courtesy of Liz Henry).

--Censorship isn't exactly book-banning, but the principle is similar. These days, censorship tends to be on "security" grounds, exercised by intelligence agencies. I'm sure everyone will be relieved to hear that some of those many US tax dollars at work in the Pentagon are being used to purchase 10,000 copies of a book written by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer-- a book vetted in advance, of course, by the author's military superiors-- in order to destroy virtually all of the initial print run. St. Martin's Press, the publisher, is producing a second version, with words, names, and even entire paragraphs blacked out throughout the book's 299 pages. I wonder. Who does St. Martin think will want to subject themselves to such a stymied reading experience? Is it possible they're hoping that non-serious readers will buy the book out of a certain kind of curiosity? It boggles the mind. Here is a portion of CNN's report by Chris Lawrence and Padma Rama:

The Pentagon contacted St. Martin's Press in early August to convey its concerns over the release of the book. According to the publisher, at that time the first printings were just about to be shipped from its warehouse. Shaffer said he and the publisher worked hard "to make sure nothing in the book would be detrimental to national security."

"When you look at what they took out (in the 2nd edition), it's lunacy," Shaffer said.

The Pentagon says Shaffer should have sought wider clearance for the memoir.

"He did clear it with Army Reserve but not with the larger Army and with Department of Defense," Department of Defense spokesman Col. David Lapan said earlier this month. "So he did not meet the requirements under Department of Defense regulations for security review."

One of the book's first lines reads, "Here I was in Afghanistan (redaction) My job: to run the Defense Intelligence Agency's operations out of (redaction) the hub for U.S. operations in country."

In chapter 15, titled "Tipping Point," 21 lines within the first two pages are blacked out.

In the memoir, Shaffer recalls his time in Afghanistan leading a black-ops team during the Bush administration. The Bronze Star medal recipient told CNN he believes the Bush administration's biggest mistake during that time was misunderstanding the culture there.

Defense officials said they are in the process of reimbursing the publisher for the cost of the first printing and have not purchased copies of the redacted version.

At least one seller on the online auction site eBay claiming to have a first-edition printing is selling it for an asking price of nearly $2,000. The listed retail price for the second printing is $25.99.

Which just goes to show that while book-banning and censorship work on similar principles, for authors, the difference is enormous.  

More on amazon fail

Speculation is now rife about the source of amazon fail. But regardless of what that might ultimately prove to be (presuming we ever do find out), I highly recommend Lawrence Schimel's Ruminations on Amazonfail, which reflects on important issues Amazon Fail raises, from several interesting angles.

Update on Amazonfail

The Los Angeles Times has picked up what is now being called "amazonfail." Check out their blog post here. One of the books they've disappeared is a winner of the National Book Award.

Amazon.com's new campaign against gblt books

Reports are flooding the blogosphere: Amazon.com has defined gblt books as "adult" and is disappearing their sales rankings in order to exclude them from searches as well as their best-seller lists.

I note that at least one of Aqueduct's books is getting this treatment. (I haven't had time to check out the 30-plus pages for all our books yet.) & I also see that some of Nicola Griffith's books are, too. Apparently a wide swathe of romances are getting the treatment, as well as YA books.

So nice to hear that the Obamas invited gay families to the annual Easter event at the White House. It makes an iteresting contrast to Amazon's behavior.

ETA: Want to complain? Here's the contact info you need:

Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon.com
1200 12th Avenue South
Seattle, Washington 98144-2734
United States
Phone: 206-266-1000
Fax: 206-622-2405