Entre chien et loup...Exeunt Ghostwriter

Ayant connu un matin formidable (il fait beau), je me suis posé la question, comment, à ma place, distinguer le jour du soir? Je me retrouve, effectivement, entre chien et loup. Ce n'est pas une grande malheur, je n'ai fait que ce que je considérais mon devoir, et je n'ai pas cherché quelque rôle que ce soit, ni récompense, et si certains en furent influencés, ce sont eux qui en sont responsables. Je n'ai fait qu'écrire, que m'exprimer, et parfois, de militer, etc., et ne m'ayant jamais réclamé de quelque statut que ce soit, c'est aux autres de prendre la responsabilité de leurs réactions et comportements. Or, il est vrai, je suis peut-être responsable d'avoir sous-estimer le cynisme et la cupidité de certains interlocuteurs, ou peut-être de mes pairs, mais je préfère, de loin, de garder un certain idéalisme, voire naïveté, quant aux autres, au lieu de me perdre dans l'abîme d'auto-justification et de cynisme de plusieurs. Au royaume des cyniques, l'idéaliste est-il le plus fou, ou le plus réaliste?

Cela dit, quoique je n'ai jamais cherché aucune récompense personnelle, il est quand même frappant de considérer le comportement des autres. Je ne suis pas un ange, je demeure suffisamment égoïste que quelque part, il m'aurait fait du bien de connaître une certaine reconnaissance de mes efforts. Mais en même temps, dès le début, mes attentes quant aux médias et au monde politique furent très limitées. Ce qui est drôle, de mon point de vue, c'est de s'en apercevoir qu'aussi limitées fussent mes attentes, elles étaient quand même bien trop élevées! Une bonne leçon, qu'on aprenne et révise constamment dans la vie, de notre naissance jusqu'à la fin.

Bon voilà. J'ai fait mon possible pour remplir mes devoirs, tels que je les conçois, sans tricher, et j'ose espérer que d'autres en feront de même. Ou bien admettez vos influence(s), ou fichez moi la paix. M'étant permis de m'identifer, de nécessité, je ne m'oppose pas à ce que l'on suive la première voie, même si j'ai longtemps cherché la seconde. Mais on ne peut pas, d'un côté, s'inspirer (pour dire le moins) de mes écrits, et de l'autre, le nier et se comporter comme des vandales à mon égard.

Cette expérience m'a donné beaucoup de sympathie pour les "ghostwriters" (je suis incapable d'employer le mot d'usage en français). Après tout, c'est une sensation assez bizarre. J'ai quand même les preuves concrètes, reconnues par des tierces parties, du piratage ciblé de plusieurs de mes comptes sur l'internet, et plusieurs indications d'autres comportements anormaux à mon égard. Je me trompe ici et là, sans doute, exagérant sur telle ou telle question ou interaction, mais il me semble qu'en gros, j'ai raison. Or, au moins j'ai eu ces preuves concrètes, reconnues par d'autres. Imaginez comment d'autres à ma place doivent se sentir, avec leurs soupçons mais sans la moindre preuve!

Quand je considère l'éthique et la morale de plusieurs, et l'exploitation d'autres, qui ne s'en rendent pas compte, je me dis que je suis assez bien et chanceux, après tout. Répétons, en guise de conclusion : quand on se regarde, on se désole, mais quand on se compare, on se console.

Bonne fin d'été à tous!

...mais quand on se compare, on se console

J.M.T. Bergbusch est le seul et unique responsable de toutes les idées et de tous les mots qu'on puisse lire sur ce blogue, et sur les comptes twitter "rumminegge" et "EFLib".
J.M.T. Bergbusch bears the sole and unique responsibility for all the ideas and words on this blog, and for those found on the twitter accounts "rumminegge" and "EFLib".
[edited 02/02/12 5:34pm EST: initials substituted for first name]


A series of incidents has forced me, after difficult reflection, to decide it is necessary to make this declaration.

The incidents have increased in frequency and invasion of privacy in the last two months, going from the unethical and immoral to the outright illegal. Already in December 2010 a journalist tried to gain information from me under false pretences at a bar. But in the last two or three months, this blog account has been hacked, a street corner argument has been reported in some quarters, my supposedly confidential dealings with the constituency office of my local MLA (NDP) seem to have been reported in certain quarters, one of my personal email accounts seems to have been hacked and some personal email redistributed in certain quarters, two weeks ago I had a nice conversation with a couple of American tourists about which within two days I began to wonder if they really were the university administrators from Tulsa as they claimed, and last week I realised someone had hacked my "rumminegge" twitter account, blocking all my followers, deleting certain carefully selected tweets, and deleting and adding to those other accounts "rumminegge" was following. This was no act of random hacking vandalism, this was a carefully considered effort. And these are only the incidents I know of and am given to understand.

Some of this is unethical and immoral, and some is outright illegal. If any journalist has been misrepresenting themself to me, let it be noted that I pose neither a threat to their person, nor do I represent some terribly iniquitous situation that can only be exposed through misrepresentation, like the examples of journalists exposing prison conditions in the 19th century, which are the two classic exceptions to the general ethical requirement that journalists neither engage in misrepresentation nor illegal behaviour. (I have come to realise that "media ethics" is the greatest oxymoron of all. Or, pace Gandhi, a very good idea). If you the reader know who has been engaged in illegal acts against me, be they media, politicos, or others, you have the ethical, moral and legal responsibility to notify me and the police. I can be reached at eugeneforseyliberal@gmail.com .

The central motivation behind anonymity was concern for others, in particular those who have the misfortune to share my surname, but if, as these incidents lead me to believe, my name is already known to those people and organisations whose capacity for dishonourable behaviour against others concerned me, then at this point continued anonymity would now work against the reasoning behind it. If my analysis is correct, then dishonourable people might know me AND ALSO be free to act against any associated with me in any way, surreptitiously, without anyone being able to identify the source of such behaviour as being animus against me. That is the worst of all possible worlds. So it is better to at least identify myself, such that any such possible behaviour might have a better chance of being denounced, at least.

The cost of self-identification is the loss of privacy, which I value more highly than most, for very good reasons, but it would seem that is close to being lost already. And unfortunately, self-identification will also make it more difficult to have as free, fair and democratic debate as possible, as perceptions of biographical information will affect the nature of debate, something I have tried very hard to avoid as much as possible. (When I have evoked others' biographies, as an anonymous blogger, it was always in a conscious attempt to try to strip away what I felt were perceptions of false authority based in perceptions of biographies. It is not because one has this or that perceived status that one's arguments are necessarily more authoritative. Too often people stand on the authority of their employment or social status rather than the strength of their arguments, and consciously or unconsciously try to intimidate those of perceived lesser status, or any observers of such debates, into assuming they must be right, given their perceived status. That is wrong. I was sometimes quite harsh in evocations of biographical detail in pursuit of a fair fight, and my harshness was calculated as best as possible to be commensurate to the issue at hand and the behaviour of the individual I was criticising. I may have got it wrong, sometimes, but it was always in a good faith attempt to strip away others' explicit or implicit bad faith so as to permit a fair debate. As I once noted: "Since society exists, unless you're a hermit, and no man has the right to physically impose his views on me, the liberal believes that the norms and codes that allow society to function are only legitimate if arrived at through free discussion and debate, and no man being inherently superior to another, no man's views are inherently superior. We are convinced on the merits, and not by questions of status.")

It was my intent to stop blogging and tweeting for a very long time, unless some exceptional situation was to arise. And that remains the case. But since there seem to be a number of people who are very motivated to use sinister means as regards me, I feel it would be best to offer any interested parties the opportunity to speak to me and get it out of their system. So tomorrow, Wednesday August 3rd, 2011, at 10:15 am PST, I will be having a coffee at a picnic table beside the concession stand above Third Beach in Stanley Park, Vancouver. There is nearby parking, washrooms and, obviously, refreshments. If you want to talk to me, come by. If you don't, it's no skin off my nose, I'd prefer a quiet morning, reading the paper on my own. But someone, or several people and organisations, seem determined to keep after me. So this is their/your chance. Come by and talk to me and get it out of your system, or stop any unethical, immoral and illegal invasions of my privacy. Speak now or forever hold your peace, as it were.

I should add that such constant invasions of privacy also have the effect of making one be, or feel, paranoid, and the line between actually being paranoid and feeling paranoid is so thin as to make no odds. I'm thinking of the joke, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you". And this is a very unhealthy situation. I'm happy to be wrong about my analysis, but one way or another this has to stop, because it's harmful to my mental health. If no-one emails me or shows up tomorrow, that's fine by me, and I will go on the assumption that I and others were just imagining things, beyond the physical evidence of hacking. But if someone reading this has been a party to such behaviour, then don't not show up tomorrow and continue in such behaviour. If the cost to my health was to prove too high, eventually, you would have a lot more to answer for, legally and morally, than you already do now.

So, 10:15am PST tomorrow, 3/8/11, picnic table beside Third Beach concession stand, Stanley Park, Vancouver. Or not, and that is the end of that.

PS. And I repeat, if you know of any illegal behaviour (in this case against me, but who knows how many Canadians are unknowingly subject to such hacking) then you should, must, report it. Or does omertà still hold among other communities as well?