In Backtalk:
Jay Hilgartner: There are lots of reasons to be hopeful about politics in the US today — at least as compared to Germany in the 1930s.
David Bright: Most of Kucinich’s delegates did not vote for Kerry.
Mark E. Moore: MoveOn.org was created by Clinton supporters: of course they refuse to support an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.
Sam Koritz: Aggressive war is not a humanitarian act.
And more…
Dear Professor Reynolds,
I find it passing strange that a law professor with an interest in all things Internet (and presumably, free speech) would ignore Stephen Schwartz’s legal bullying of Antiwar.com about hyperlinking. Yes, yes, it’s fascinating that Justin Raimondo changed his given name as a teenager – that fact doubtless invalidates everything he has ever written – but when you’re done covering that momentous issue, could you please spare a little time to explain to Mr. Schwartz the legality of linking?
Thanks for your help, which I’m sure is forthcoming.
Best,
Matt Barganier
By the way, any bloggers interested in maintaining the right to hyperlink can e-mail Mr. Schwartz with their concerns. Or you can just keep his attorney busy by providing a link to his photograph.
UPDATE 9:30 p.m.: Instapundit:
Uh, thanks, Glenn, but you missed the point. He wasn’t complaining about bandwidth – check the url on the photo in question. And he didn’t merely complain, he threatened legal action. The totalitarian Schwartz thinks he can tell everyone on the Web what they can and cannot link to. That should bother even you.
Remarks given at rallies in Columbus March 19 and Cleveland March 20, 2005
by Mike Ferner
As we gather here this afternoon, our colleagues in Toledo are debuting “Arlington at Toledo,” a cemetery with over 1700 white, wooden tombstones to commemorate each U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over the past weeks, my wife and I painted a few hundred of these in our kitchen. Last Saturday we started putting labels on them with the name, age, rank and home state of each G.I. killed. As we sat on our living room floor, surrounded by stacks of tombstones representing so many young men and women, we listened to an old Dire Straits album. The track titled “Brothers in Arms” came on with these telling lines: “Every man has to die/But it’s written in the starlight/And in every line on your palm/We’re fools to make war/On our brothers in arms.”
Sue looked at the tombstone with a 19 year-old soldier’s name on it she was holding and dissolved into sobs crying, “He was someone’s baby…”
We are here today to recommit ourselves to ending this slaughter of someone else’s babies, whether American or Iraqi. We are here to demand an end to George Bush’s criminal war.
We must end Bush’s war to prevent more deaths and traumatic amputations of arms and legs, more quadriplegics who will be bedridden the rest of their lives. We must end Bush’s war because every day it continues, it produces more injuries we will never see until they explode years later at home. I’m talking about thousands MORE soldiers who will return from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), the injury that leaves minds riddled with flashbacks, anxiety, unpredictable outbursts of anger, depression, addictions and suicide. Continue reading “Iraq Second Anniversary”
Editorial Note: For those curious to know a few biographical details about Stephen Schwartz (and see below), here is a great little poem that appeared on a Sufi discussion site around the time of the Kosovo war. All the links are inserted by myself:
WHO IS THIS PERSON?
Who is this person, this man Stephen Schwartz?
a question that’s asked by all manner and sorts
A trade union man who ne’er mastered a trade
Or a man of the sea, who not one voyage made
An agent of anarchy in a radical cell
Merely playing a role for a story to sell
His passions confined to wars already lost
To bleed for beliefs? far too high a cost
With blood still being spilled for poor people’s fate
He chose the Spanish revolt, half-century too late
All ongoing struggles and fighting and killing
Were sidestepped with care by this warrior unwilling
Devoid of real courage and anarchist zest
He waged his revolt from the Cafe Trieste
No explosions nor death, desert heat, jungle rains
Just Latte’s, Biscottis, and hemorroidal pains
Comrade Sandalio walked away from the causes
An insurgent impotent, he obeyed all the lawses
But a new calling leapt from deep in his soul
To pen biographique for whom the bell tolls
At the obituary desk in the heart of the city
Steve’s secret life, just like Walter Mitty
While cutting and pasting details of the dead
To a war-ravaged land his fantasy led
Overnight, so it seems, a New Cause did emerge
Convert to Islam! An irrepressible urge!
Cartoon-like comb-over, ellipsoidal bod
Strange creature indeed, Suleyman ben Ahmad
Fake revolutionary? No, no, not any more
Now a make-believe journalist, bound for the war!
And Steve’s new religion and peaceful dictate
Caused nary a pause in his spreading of hate
We now see the dream of this red diaper boy
To preach war on TV is his true pride and joy
And no hawk so fierce, on the left or the right
As one calling for War once he’s too old to fight
But, balding and bitter, Schwartz did what he can
To wage holy war ‘gainst beloved Islam
Stephen’s Black Book of Bad Men, those who plot and deceive
Was it scripted for Ahmad in old Tel Aviv?
A self-proclaimed Sufi peddling Sharon’s agenda
He tiptoes the high wire as if born a Wallenda
He’s rejected your culture; he’s mocked it for years
Now he calls for your sons to shed blood, sweat and tears
Before waging a war from this charlatan’s teaching
Look up His Own History and what he’s been preaching
And there you will find amidst all of the rubble
A life of Great Causes…
but none worth your trouble.
————–
Mustafa Fazool
California Big Wave Sufi
Many people wrote me about my post yesterday ("Stephen Schwartz, Web Moron") thinking that Mr. Schwartz must have been joking when he demanded we stop linking to his photograph.
I assure you, Stephen Schwartz was not joking. I am including excerpts from the 15 emails he sent me yesterday. Mr. Schwartz went on about a number of subjects (mostly about his mother and how much more important he is than Justin Raimondo) but I am only quoting the sections (and my responses) having to do with our right to link to a publicly-available web page.
Stephen Schwartz: You have no right to misuse a copyrighted photo of me. Remove it from your links forthwith.
Eric Garris: You have no right to use the copyrighted photo of Justin Raimondo you ran on your article. Are you only able to accuse people of things that you are guilty of yourself? It certainly appears that way.
SS: I had nothing to do with the illustration of Dennis Raimondo included on FPM. I am not an officer, editor, board member, or otherwise involved with FPM except as an unpaid contributor. You and Dennis, on the other hand, have full responsibility for what appears on your site. Are you really so stupid as not even to understand this, while dispensing advice on how to use hyperlinks and so forth? If you had a problem with the use of the photo, you should have directed it to Horowitz and FPM, not me. It was a photo taken from your website. I was not consulted about it. The photograph of me is copyrighted and is not used on websites. It is used only by my publisher — a serious mainstream publisher called Random House. It is not your property to misuse, notwithstanding your alleged devotion to property rights. Remove it immediately.
EG: There is no copyright violation, we have not posted it, we are just linking to it. As I explained to your lawyer two years ago, there is no copyright infringement by linking. It IS public because it IS on a Website available to link to. We are just pointing to it.
SS: It is a copyrighted photo, stupid. You cannot use it without permission. It is only on publicity connected with the book and authorized by Random House. I’m copying all of this to them. You need to hire a lawyer. There is copyright involved in linking.
EG: We have not used it, we merely pointed to the Website that anyone on the Internet can look at it. Only an idiot would not understand the difference.
SS: Look at the picture, stupid. It has a world copyright mark on it. THE ATLANTIC used it with permission of the photographer. You cannot derive permission from that use. Invest in a dictionary, or look up copyright on the net, if you can’t afford a call to a lawyer.
EG: We are not using it, we are linking to it. The courts have said that linking is the same as citing something. I don’t need a lawyer, I have consulted with yours.
SS: Western Policy and TCS have my permission to use my picture. You do not. But the matter will be handled.
EG: We did not use the picture. Do you really believe that citations are the same as publishing something?
SS: Your Goebbels-esque attempt to twist language would be funny if it were not so lame. Yeah, I’m not in the game, but I appear on TV and my books are published by mainstream publishers, not as self-published pamphlets. Gosh, you’ve hurt me so bad. This is over. You’ve done me plenty of favors with this; I shouldn’t have complained.
SS (next day, after no further response from me): Playing slippery amateur dialectics with me doesn’t work. The use of the photo without permission is just one issue. Your collective statements, since you are responsible for Dennis’s libels as much as he is, about my marital status and religious status at birth are also at issue. They were made without any knowledge on your part and demonstrate the general pattern of reckless defamation pursued by your little clique of increasingly ignored nobodies. This isn’t a matter of changing the subject. It’s the same subject. You are deliberate liars, fabricators, and publishers of libels.
Greg Jaffe had a piece a few days ago in the War Street Urinal about the new planning document Donald H. Rumsfeld has released, a result of a major review conducted by the Pentagon every four years, and its implications for the future of the US military. The report, according to Jaffe, marks “a significant departure from recent reviews.” How is this report different? Jaffe says
At its heart, the document is driven by the belief that the U.S. is engaged in a continuous global struggle that extends far beyond specific battlegrounds, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The vision is for a military that is far more proactive, focused on changing the world instead of just responding to conflicts such as a North Korean attack on South Korea, and assuming greater prominence in countries in which the U.S. isn’t at war.
And why would the US military need a greater presence in friendly countries?
The U.S. would seek to deploy these troops far earlier in a looming conflict than they traditionally have been to help a tottering government’s armed forces confront guerrillas before an insurgency is able to take root and build popular support. Officials said the plan envisions many such teams operating around the world.
Get it? Rummy wants the new military of the future to help train storm troopers in countries where the governments are not very popular with their slaves, er I mean subjects. That way destructive revolutions such as, for instance, the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) will be prevented. At this point the libertarians reading this are no doubt screaming with rage, rightly so. On the positive side, Jaffe notes that this philosophy change will be bad news for the Military Industrial Complex, hurting great American merchants of death such as Lockheed Martin. That might be good news, but my cynical tendencies make me suspicious. Don’t these foreign governments need weapons to keep the people in line?
