Re: RJ

Peter Lovell (plovell@UNB.CA)
Fri, 1 Sep 1995 13:03:56 -0300

RJ has driven me off three newsgroups so far. I want to return the favour.

How does he do this? His rantings; his personal attacks; his unsubstantiated
criticisms (where, for example, is his analysis of Geertz's corpus which, he
promised us, would support his unprovoked attack on the man?), and his
over-the-edge postings are reasons enough to demand that a moderator take
action. Even his one attempt at kindness (his post about Said's alleged
illness) was insensitive gossip.

But what finally drove me off several newsgroups was RJ's spamming. It meant
that I could receive many copies of each of RJ's postings, because I was
unfortunate enough to belong to 3 other newsgroups (in addition to ANTHR0-L)
which he targetted. Also, I belong to the same newsgroup from which RJ gets
many of his forwarded postings.

This spamming is a real problem for me, and many others. I can't simply hit
the delete key because my mail reader actually downloads every message to my
hard drive. I have no choice in the matter. And, because my mailer does not
permit me to write "kill" files, I cannot filter out RJ's postings prior to
downloading. So if RJ cross-posted 4 times in one day, I would receive
multiple copies of each post on my hard drive. If the posts are lengthy
documents from other newsgroups, you can imagine the amount of time that it
takes (and the amount of disk space) to download all of this. And, as I am
charged an hourly rate, RJ's spamming has its costs in money as well as in
frustration.

I think that I understand RJ's political rage. It appears to be much the
same as mine which resulted from taking undergraduate anthro courses in the
early '70s. It's the same as mine when I lecture to undergraduate and
graduate students in anthropology. Certainly, RJ's rage is no greater than
that of Chomsky, or that of many others, including Michael Taussig, Bell
Hooks or Barbara Ehrenreich. Their influence proves that you do not have to
bludgeon people in order to get their attention. RJ's behaviour only makes
me angry at RJ, which deflects my attention away from the issues which are
obviously very important to him -- and to me.

Several have written that RJ's forwarded postings from other newsgroups
makes it worthwhile to have him on the list. I challenge that. Anyone can
get the benefits of RJ's cross postings without the spamming, the ranting,
and the rest of it, by subscribing to the following:

(i) misc.activism.progressive
(ii) alt.fan.noam-chomsky.

And if you really want hard-hitting analyses, assiduously documented and
argued in a reasonable manner, fire up Mosaic or Netscape and plug the words
"Chomsky" and "Noam" into your search engine. You will find two Chomsky
archives, Z magazine, and references to a raft of other resources, such as
Mother Jones. You can even sign up for university level courses from LOLU
(Left on Line University), and maybe even get Herman or Chomsky as your
professor. At $75 a course yet !!!

I don't want to be driven off yet another newsgroup by this abrasive and
ignorant individual. Please, Hugh Jarvis, remove Robert Johnson from this list.
Regards,

Peter Lovell plovell@unb.ca