Howard Zinn, Historian and Optimist, 1922-2010

"No, it's not true!"

Those were my words of denial last night when I first heard Howard Zinn had died.

There's so much to say, I'm at a loss for words. He was a hero and a mentor and someone who helped bolster my belief that humanity is basically good.

"I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?)," Howard wrote a few days after the 2004 presidential election, "but I keep encouraging people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests."

He wore many hats and accomplished many things - historian, author, teacher, playwright, orator, television producer - but it was his unflappability that I hope people remember most.

In March 2008, colleague Chuck Rosina and I recorded Howard and Professor Irene Gendzier at a symposium on empire and war at Harvard Law School. During the question and answer period, a student criticized Irene and Howard as "naive and impractical" for proposing an immediate US troop withdrawal from Iraq and asking them why, after so many decades of activism, "have groups of your persuasion accomplished so very little?"

Howard seemed a little angry at this student's ignorance but kept his emotions in check. "So here's what you're saying, I think, 'we haven't changed policy, therefore we've failed, therefore there's something wrong with what we're saying.'"

"Well, you have to examine what you're saying," Howard continued, "and see if it's right or wrong. I examine what we're saying about withdrawal from Iraq and I conclude we're saying the right thing. And you say, 'but our policy hasn't changed.' And I point to the fact that any time you look at any movement that is going on, before it succeeds, it has failed.

And you can look at the Black people in the South after they've been doing this and that and the other thing, and nothing has changed and you say 'see, you must do something different; must be something wrong with your tactics, you failed.'

No, the tactics of protest and resistance and spreading knowledge and agitation and civil disobedience, those are the tactics that have been used historically, and are still being used. There are no glamorous new tactics, that are required in order to bring about change. What is required is persistance and patience. Not the patience of passivity but the patience of action, continued action."

Author, social critic, and comedian Barry Crimmins agreed to come on the radio show this Sunday to help Marc Stern and I remember and reminisce about Howard. Barry's taking this very hard, noting that Howard was a father figure to him. Barry also is writing about his friend and mentor, saying that one of Howard's most endearing features was his voice: he could scold governments and sooth his audience at the same time, his words always articulate and never shrill.

After a long hiatus away from the grind of the road, Barry told me he's considering touring again, to speak-out about the issues important to Howard and to fill some of the void that inevitably will be left by Howard's absence.

"I have never felt so despondent over the death of an 87 year old man," says Barry.

Sums it up for me too.

Hang In There Baby!

Like that poster cat hanging on for dear life, I’m going waaaay out on a limb to make a bold prediction: Martha Coakley will win the Senate election.

I’m not saying this is equally a sure thing as predicting Jack E. Robinson will lose any election in which he takes part.

But there’s a new paradigm developing in the minds of Republicans that their guy, Scott Brown, can turn a blue state red and I’m just not buying it.

[By the way, please read the editorial by OMB’s Jason Pramas who giggles at the way Repubs have co-opted the color traditionally associated with communists…]

Why am I prognosticating a Coakley win on Tuesday? Because I don’t believe you base a new paradigm on ONE poll.

Recently, a voter survey originating from Suffolk University in Boston put Brown slightly ahead in the race. Oh my gosh, you would have thought the editors at all the local TV and radio stations and networks such as CNN had lost their minds at the exact same moment. A collective hysteria, if you will, which gained momentum through the bloviating of pundits desperate for an upset to talk about.

After all, who’s going to win big money gambling on two great teams with close odds (the Colts and the Saints in the Super Bowl) meeting to decide the victor when an underdog (the Jets anybody?) can be elevated to the role of supreme spoiler?

Secondly, much of the discussion is being driven by television commercials for and against the two candidates and extensively paid for by political action groups from outside the state.

[By the way, congratulations to all the broadcast stations on all the revenue this election has generated for them in campaign ads. I hope we see an increase in hiring across the TV and radio industries.]

But short of Brown’s calling Coakley a puppet and Coakley accusing her opponent of being anti-choice, how much will voters remember of all the vitriol once they step into the booth? Very little is my guess.

And so we have the mythology of Scott Brown, languishing in obscurity in the Massachusetts state legislature, rising up to slay the Kennedy mystique (a bit of a mythology itself) and the “in the back pocket of the Democratic machine” state Attorney General Coakley.

The problem with this theory of Republican ascension is that the vast majority of voters in MA belong to the ranks of the unenrolled; nearly half of all registered voters in fact. And trying to predict what they will do is like figuring out what kind of a season Daisuke Matsusaka will have.

It’s true that during the 1990’s and early aughts, Massachusetts voters installed Republican Governors and in the legislature, overwhelmingly Democrats. Former Governor Michael Dukakis has said he believes this phenomenon came from voters who believed one party should keep the other in check. But in the aftermath of the social and economic devastation wrought by the Cheney/Bush administration and a Republican controlled Congress, has there been any evidence that independents are ready to vote for gridlock rather than maintain Democratic control of the Senate?

Not at all…

Are people angry at and scared of double digit unemployment, tens of thousands of foreclosures, and cuts to education, welfare, and municipal services of all stripes. Yes, of course. But are they thrilled that federal stimulus money is filtering down to cities and towns and non-profits doing all sorts of recovery work in neighborhoods, and that the cost, for example, of having COBRA – the federal program that guarantees health insurance for families of people who lose their jobs – was slashed by two thirds by the Obama administration and recently extended for another 18 months?

They should be…

In this humble opinion, voters in Massachusetts are more sophisticated than either party gives them credit for. Citizens will remember that if recent history teaches them anything, it’s that members of the party of big business (the elephants) constantly scream bloody murder about taxes and yet gainfully accept subsidized health benefits and all the perks that taxes provide them: like police and fire protection.

Oh, and the two wars the Republicans have been saying we can’t do without for the past decade.

Finally, if you live in the Bay State, don’t forget to actually cast a vote on Tuesday; regardless of the weather. And don’t fall prey to the trap into which the professional gamblers would have you stumble: that a confident “poker” face should cause you to fold your cards.

4chan vs Sharecash: Sharecash Responds

Our recent article on 4chan's DDoS attack against Sharecash has garnered quite a lot of attention. As a matter of fact, it has been our most popular story so far (measured by weekly traffic). Most of that attention has come from 4chan regulars and sympathizers, but Open Media Boston also received correspondence from the owner of Sharecash and one of its more vocal (and less sensible) supporters. While these emails were not worth responding to individually, they were hysterical, and are worth sharing with our readers, who we think will appreciate them.

In the first email, Sharecash's owner, who reluctantly identified himself only as "Paul" for (justifiable) fear of retribution by the 4chan mob, took issue with Open Media Boston's reportage of the facts and our framing of the story. Discrepancies between Paul's and the 4chan community's perceptions of the weekend's events were addressed in updates to the article itself and need not be repeated here. Instead, let us focus on Paul's complaints of our framing.

Complaint One: You Say Attack, I Say Spam

According to Paul, Sharecash users who consistently posted child pornography and viruses to 4chan should not have been called "attackers." Paul wrote, "People who posted links are not 'attackers', that is a completely incorrect term. Spammers, perhaps, would be more appropriate, but 'attackers' is totally out of context. An example of attackers would be the people who attempted to flood our servers."

We used the word "attackers" because the repugnant content and sheer volume of posts to 4chan effectively shut down several of the site's most active boards. The constant flood of child pornography and links to viruses drove users out of 4chan boards, preventing them from using the services the site was designed to offer, just like the DDoS attack Paul claimed did not affect Sharecash's server prevented its users from utilizing Sharecash's services. This might not be illegal, but it is unethical.

It would be petty of me to start listing definitions of the word "attack" and explaining why so many of them are appropriate to exactly this situation. So I'll just pick my favorite and provide a link to the rest. Attack (n.): "The onset of a corrosive or destructive process." Sounds about right, no?

Complaint Two: Actually, Let's Not Say Spam

After calling those Sharecash users who attacked 4chan "spammers," Paul insisted our depiction of Sharecash as a "cash for spam" service (as was written in the article's title) is "not only derrogatory [sic] but shows a lack of understanding of internet marketing." This statement implies that Sharecash does not pay users to create spam, but in the very next sentence Paul defended those exact actions, writing that "nearly every single online income source, from Google Adwords to CPA Networks have people who spam their links to earn money," and that "these companies, too, don't ban the users, because it is not against their ToS nor illegal."

So which is it? Is Open Media Boston's characterization of Sharecash as an outlet that encourages users to spam unfair, or did it just hit Sharecash in a sore spot? We really can't say because just one sentence later, Paul wrote that Sharecash "never enouraged [sic] users to spam," but that doing so "was not against our ToS." I'm really confused now. Doesn't paying users who spam sites encourage them to do so? And if Sharecash was concerned with being perceived as a legitimate marketing service — rather than as an ATM machine for script kiddies and blackhatters — wouldn't they explicitly forbid spamming in their terms of service? I think so.

Anyone who has any lingering doubts about the nature of Sharecash's business model need only read the "Money Making" section of the site's forum. It includes topics like "Make money playing WoW," which advertises cash for (virtual) gold services, and "YouTube Commenting and Rating Service," which advertises YouTube comments and ratings for a fee. It is clear these are conversations between Sharecash users who buy and sell information and services intended to bypass other websites' terms of service agreements and spam protections.

The most telling fact, however, is that more than half the topics in this forum include referral links to Sharecash users' other sordid and disreputable sites. That's right... Half the posts on Sharecash's forums are spammers spamming spammers.

Complaint Three: Open Media Boston Encourages DDoSers

In the final paragraph of his email, Paul suggested Open Media Boston encourages organizations to utilize DDoS attacks to achieve their goals, and offered a veiled threat heartfelt concern that such a stance "could lead to a bad reputation" as our audience grows. The article in question briefly explains what a DDoS attack is and touches on the moral and ethical implications of recruiting users' systems into a botnet without their knowledge or consent via trojans or other malicious code. The article examines the then recent DDoS attacks against Iranian targets as an example of how such tactics disrupt civilian networks, but can potentially harm isolated targets without compromising network infrastructure or the systems of unwitting users.

It's an excellent read, I think, and broaches important issues, but at no point does it advocate the usage of DDoS attacks to achieve one's goals. To the contrary, it suggests that without clear international conventions to limit network warfare, the public Internet is likely to suffer. The final sentence warns, "The world has yet to confirm a case of state sponsored cyber warfare against a civilian network, but it seems foolish to think this critical component of a country's government, economy and culture would not be subject to attack just the same as any other."

I Can't Quit You, Dom

The second email, which came from "a very dedicated user of ShareCash," Dominick, had us gasping for breath. Here are the best parts:

First of all you claim that users have been posting and I cite: "... disgusting child porn..." I'm a regular 4chan visitor but I have never seen a post containing such content, maybe jailbait at most, or adults who look like children. As for malicious links and viruses, I cannot judge as I never click those links, I don't download from sharecash nor am I interested in such content.

The first point is just funny. Was there a reason write any of that? And then Dominick, a "dedicated" Sharecash user, reveals he doesn't download from the site and isn't interest in content hosted on it?

Also I don't see any paragraph in which the other side of the story is told apart from the two later added updates. The owner of ShareCash is a college student, as such he does not have sufficient time to cooperate as much as 4chan desires, this hasn't been mentioned by 4chan nor by your site, while it is an important factor in the matter.

Dominick didn't see Sharecash's version of events. Except for in the updates where we outline Sharecash's version of the events. Is Dominick unhappy we didn't rewrite the entire article to his liking? If so, we recommend he start his own website where he can blog about spam and blackhat marketing as much as he likes. Oh wait, he already has two such sites. Good job, Dominick!

Dominick's second point is irrelevant. 4chan's creator supposedly is (or was recently) a college student, a status many of 4chan's users likely share. Sharecash's owner has created a service that, by its nature, encourages users to propagate their links as widely as possible to large audiences. If Sharecash's users try to achieve this goal by violating other websites' terms of service agreements, Paul had better be prepared to deal with those users.

Third, a site owner can never be held responsible for the actions of their users. The only responsibility they have is cooperating with federal authorities of the country the website is based in. This has been like that since the beginning of the internet and will always be that way, again not mentioned.

To the first point, as mentioned just above, Paul created a service that encourages users to widely distribute referral links. If those users violate other sites' terms of service in the process, he can expect some phone calls. He might not be legally required to take action against those users, but by virtue of incentivizing and enabling them, he is responsible and should accept that. By banning posts to Chan sites, it seems Paul has accepted responsibility. Good on him.

Dominick's last point here sounds like dogma. "The Internet has always been, and will always be..." That's nonsense and is again irrelevant.

At the end of his email, Dominick wrote, "As you might be able to see my English isn't too proficient, not everyone has English as primary language." I simply don't believe this. Up until the dropped indefinite article ("a") in this sentence, Dominick displayed a perfectly correct — if somewhat simplistic — understanding of the English language. Moreover, Google searches for Dominick's full name and email address revealed only English language content. This language disclaimer just sounds like an excuse for what Dominick knew was a baseless argument made with slipshod reasoning.

Want Open Media Boston to Make Fun of Your Complaints?

Email us your comments and complaints. If they're as stupid as these two, we'll put them on our blog.

Random Ruminations On Radio

Reporters writing about WGBH’s bid to buy classical music WCRB Radio, turning 89.7 FM primarily into a news/talk station, and thus competing with NPR powerhouse WBUR are missing the point.

It’s not about who wins the ratings battle; the folks at ‘GBH understand they lost that battle a long time ago.

Earlier this year, WGBH forged a deal with WBUR to collaborate on a new project funded for at least two years by the Corporation for Public Corporation establishing what is being called a “Local Journalism Center.”

According to the original call for funding proposals, station groups will be expected to investigate and report on a particular topic, such as the economy or immigration. CPB bigwigs consider these collegial efforts between regional public radio stations (and TV stations and possibly websites such as Open Media Boston) a part of a crucial effort “to expand local news gathering and digital platform reporting capabilities.”

To be sure, making WGBH nearly all news is an extension of this and other initiatives that recognize the potential audience magnet that news, talk, and public affairs formats can be.

In the Boston metropolitan area sports talk and right wing leaning talk shows originating at WEEI-AM, WRKO-AM, WTKK-FM, and most recently WBZ-FM, The Sports Hub, are proof positive that conventional over the air listeners as well as internet users will flock to these sort of broadcasts.

And while ‘BUR only reaches 4 percent of Boston area listeners according to the Arbitron and Nielson research firms, that figure (plus their fundraising successes) make them a flagship station within the NPR universe.

All of which is being counted upon by WGBH management to help make their radio station relevant again. 89.7 FM, the ratings companies tell us, is being listened to by less than 1 percent of Boston area ears.

Which is remarkable for a station that has a 100,000 watt transmitter and reaches New Hampshire and Connecticut on a bad day.

Further evidence that both stations will be acting like friends rather than fiends towards each other comes from a recent internal station memo from WBUR General Manager Paul LaCamera.

Apparently leaked to the Boston Globe, LaCamera criticizes WGBH for “overreaching” in that station’s attempt to buy WCRB.

But he could have said much worse, and in a remarkably conciliatory tone, points out that at one time WBUR itself was guilty of what some have called a smug and holier than thou approach to all aspects of their internal and external operations.

WBUR, based at Boston University, will lead the Local Journalism Center project, along with WGBH and WFCR in Amherst and possibly other stations. Sources tell me that WBUR has decided to pursue the immigration angle as its two year reporting arc.

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Speaking of WGBH and WBUR, I bumped into former TV and radio public news and talk show host Christopher Lydon on the Boston Common on Thursday.

In a rush and walking past the site of the Alan Khazei Senate Campaign kick-off, Lydon asked when the event would start. Not soon enough to allow him to listen a while and make his train. He politely declined an offer to take some of my audio recordings from the event. (Always on the look-out to make a buck and expand the network, eh David?)

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And speaking of radio, this report just in from the watchdogs at business publication Crains New York, ""RADIO: It Ain’t Dead Yet".

The gist, according to Nielson Research is that young people ARE listening to music, talk and other types of programming the old fashioned way, on traditional radio sets. If accurate, I have one thing to say to all you new-tech aficionados and media doomsayers: raspberries!

One caveat: Nielson is new to the world of radio ratings and this release may be their way of getting lots of attention from station owners and managers. According to the story in Crains, Arbitron “did not respond to a request for comment.”

Et Tu, Bernstein?

David Bernstein of the Boston Phoenix saw fit to trash the At-Large Boston City Council Candidates Forum we held last night at Roxbury Community College in his Talking Politics blog today, saying "Man, I do love me some political theater. I went looking for some at an at-large Boston City Council forum earlier this evening at Roxbury Community College, but the poorly-promoted event had more candidates on stage than voters in the audience (this may actually have been literally true, once you subtract the press and candidates' aides from the audience). Yeesh."

First of all, Bernstein couldn't have stayed overlong at the event because there were over 70 attendees to the forum - although people were predictably slow to show up. Second, there were certainly aides and supporters present, but we estimate that those folks made up perhaps a third of the audience.

What Bernstein doesn't know - and likely didn't stick around to find out - is who the other attendees were ... and more to the point, what organizations they represented. Major community organizations like Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Chinese Progressive Association, and the Boston Workers Alliance.

Also, the event drew 11 out of the 15 candidates. Some ducked out to other events before the forum concluded, but a majority stayed to the end and spent a healthy chunk of time giving thoughtful answers to audience questions.

Finally, and most germane to this discussion, Bernstein slapped the forum down before bothering to ask the editors of Open Media Boston why we decided to do the event, how much lead time we had to work with, and why we held it at the RCC Media Arts Center instead of a smaller venue on campus.

Our answers are simple. We decided to do the event only two weeks ago when it became evident that there were very few opportunities for the at-large candidates to gather for a media-sponsored forum - compared to the number and quality of the mayoral race events.

We did it in a short time frame because we thought it was important that such a forum should take place before the primary later this month to give the full field a chance to hold forth, and get some extra publicity from our publication and the other community publications present like the Bay State Banner and the Dorchester Reporter.

We did it at the Media Arts Center because it's a very nice facility in the heart of the city right off the T and it was available for a very reasonable rate. We knew it was going to be too big for the crowd we thought we'd manage to pull in a few days, but the excellent a/v facilities there make it a very easy place to get good audio, video and photographic records of the proceedings - which we could then make available to our audience, and to other community publications (our event coverage will be up on our main site later this week).

The big question that Bernstein doesn't ask is the very one we asked ourselves before going to the trouble of overextending our very small staff and financial resources to pull the forum off in 2 weeks. That is, why don't larger publications like the Phoenix, Metro, Globe, Herald and others use their still-not-inconsiderable resources to put together a much bigger forum for the at-large candidates? Why just focus on the mayoral candidates? Aren't the council races important - especially the at-large races? Don't they have a critical impact on city politics in the near term?

We don't think that Bernstein's snarky tone was warranted or especially public spirited in this case. We did what we did in the public interest - which we believe is very much a critical part of being an urban publication of record.

In that spirit, we extend the hand of friendship to Bernstein and the Phoenix and enjoin them to work with us do a bigger and better event (with several weeks lead time) for the final 8 At-Large Boston City Council candidates in advance of the November elections. We would naturally hope that the Phoenix will see their way clear to bankrolling the event.

If the Phoenix is uninterested in staging such a public forum with us, we understand, but would say that it speaks volumes about their level of concern about the sad state of democratic discourse in Boston politics in particular and American politics in general.

MA(ck) The Knife?

All this talk of tagging sharks has me really creeped out.

As an Aquarius, I ought to love the water. But the image of Great Whites leaping out of the pounding surf; sharp teeth gleaming with blood and bits of seal entrails, has me tangled up in fear and loathing.

(I know they haven't done that off Chatham yet; I'm just can't resist Discovery Channel and "Shark Week.")

Also, I've never gotten over the sight of Robert Shaw being consumed toes to head by "Bruce."

But let me assure you there is deeper political meaning to all this carnivorous fish activity.

They say "when sharks circle, there must be blood in the water." So let's think about what's happening right now in Massachusetts.

We've lost a revered (by most people) elected official in Edward Kennedy. And his nephew Joe has declined to run for the office. That means it's open season on the Senate seat with representatives and lawyers galore coming out of the woodwork. First Coakley, then Lynch, and Brown, now possibly Capuano. (Maybe even Curt Schilling, and his bloody sock is sure to attract other meat eaters!)

The sharks - and I refer to them as such beasts with love in my heart - sense the blood of the Kennedys in the water and are preparing to engulf and devour.

Over at the State House, things look fishy as well. He has a fine new hip, but Governor Deval Patrick's approval ratings are approaching the Marianas Trench. (Folks, that's the deepest part of the ocean!)

Carcharodon Carcharias and their toothy brethren have their sights on Patrick's office. Tied to people's perception of President Obama as much as he is, the Governor better hope the outcome of the health care reform debate leaves the Democrats singing "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" and not "Big Eyed Fish" by the Dave Matthews Band.

And speaking of health care: all over this nation, lobbyists for the insurance industry are salivating over tasty morsels of "we told you the Commonwealth Connector and health insurance mandates would be too expensive to sustain and would never hold up as models for national reform."

Of course, the hungry fish are not all of the right flipper variety. "People before profits" lefties from organizations across the state are banding together like schools of piranha to take bites out of such titanic whales as Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.

Hmmm, all of these fish tales are making me hungry. Now I just need to find some mercury free, organically raised, Massachusetts bay harvested, CSF approved, cod.

Or some supermarket-purchased, scroddy fish sticks. Politics has lowered my expectations, you know.

We Must Have Two Senators

Some pundits and politicians would spin Ted Kennedy's request to change the state law and allow Governor Deval Patrick to choose a replacement Senator rather than hold an election in 5 months as a left wing vs. right wing affair. Or Democrat vs. Republican.

I disagree. I think it's about "no taxation without representation."

We must have two Senators representing Massachusetts in Congress. The issues before that much maligned legislature are too important.

So here's my prescription: the Democrats who blocked former Governor Mitt Romney from appointing an interim Senator when John Kerry ran for President in 2004 must apologize profusely for changing the law. They need to hang their heads and beg forgiveness. Then they should change the law back to the way it was and give the Governor the power to pick someone to fill the vacant seat as long as that person agrees not to run in the eventual election next year.

The Republicans will get their chance. (Even if they nominate Kerry Healey). In the meantime, Massachusetts needs full representation.