The Politics of Imbecility in Blogging

I thought this would be a good time to lay to rest the ongoing dispute between myself and Hall, at least on this blog. No doubt a veteran cyber-stalker like himself will continue his vendetta, but I don't intend to waste any space on my blog on low-lifes like him.

As a final laugh, I thought it would be amusing to take a brief look at his attempt at a kind of 'not guilty' plea, with respect to his own actions. It can be found on his blog of shame here. Rather than issue a mea culpa for his most recent acts of stalking, as well as his newest attack blogs, Hall continues to drive his Noddy Car down the road of no return.

Hall points out that there are many different bloggers in the world - 'All are to be found when you brose the blogs that are out there'. He tries to persuade us that, for ethical reasons, those who blog under their own name have more 'gravitas' than those who use a pseudonym:

Put simply If an author is willing to affix their name to their opinion they have to be honest and truthful because there are penalties if they are not.

Hall omits any mention of the fact that, being unemployed (and possibly unemployable), there are precisely no consequences for him to be hosting the most virulent bigots on his site, or using his time stalking other bloggers. This is not the case for those with employers. Hall himself knows that vulnerable position that working bloggers face, which is precisely why he has tried (or threatened) to contact the employers of at least three bloggers with whom he disagrees.

Hall then drivels on for a bit about the evils of anonymous bloggers with different political beliefs to his own. Disagreement, and legitimate mockery are rebaptised as 'character assassination' in Hall's deluded dramaturgy. So what's a deranged blogger with wounded pride to do?

A blogger, who writes in their own name, who has been the subject of such behaviour, has no real recourse unless they can discover the identity of their attackers.

A blogger could always respond to the mockery with counter-mockery, or construct decent sentences (and better yet, arguments) in retaliation. Since, for Hall, these are not options, stalking and 'outing' is the only 'real recourse'.

Hall complains that slander and libel laws are not enforced on the blogosphere, but is unable to cite a single instance of where these laws might ever have applied to him. Different political opinions, and spirited criticism are not, after all, illegal. Hall continues to attempt to justify his profound contempt for others' privacy and, by extension, free speech:

Write about politics, religion or current events and you have to be just as ruthless as the anonymous attackers that will inevitably take you on and you have to find a currency that they will respect.

In Hallworld, this currency involves bribing individuals for information that may lead to the 'outing' of an enemy blogger. How very ethical of our respected conservative. He continues:

Once their name is known they will have to carry the chains that they have forged and those chains will clank about their person forever. Then again there are individuals who genuinely realise the error of their ways and take a real shot at redemption I for one am happy to forgive those that admit their error and apologise to those that they have wronged.

Hall himself has never once apologised for his own 'errors', and they are many, and great. These include 'outing' a blogger in 2006 who had made no personal attacks against him. This 'outing' extended to Hall spamming random blogs with his perceived enemy's details. By his own standards, redemption is a long, long distance away for Hall.

Rather helpfully, Hall has compiled a list of rules that he thinks all bloggers should follow, pseudonymous or not:

1. Always write about others as if you were known to them, even if you are using a pseudonym .

For Hall, this includes telling another blogger that he should have a 'hot shot' (i.e. overdose on heroin).

2. Be generous to those you debate with in blogs and respect the blog owner as if you are a guest in their home.

This includes telling a blogger with depression that he is just a 'sad lefty', at his own site, no less.

3. Always remember that the persons you are talking to are real people even if they have the most bizarre pseudonyms they can be offended and hurt by things that are said about them, just as much as you can be hurt.

Hall has created fake blogs under his enemies' pseudonyms, and tried to smear them with such charming labels as 'stinking pieces of shit' and 'lesbian nazis'. Then there is this piece of brilliance:

If you do have a dispute with a fellow blogger, in the first instance try to settle your differences privately via email (if they have one available) because once your dispute is being played out in public all sorts of malicious non-entities will try to butt into the argument often making a settlement all but impossible. But if that fails, be happy to walk away. There are millions of bloggers out there and you can’t expect a warm reception from all of them.

This is possibly the funniest thing Hall has ever written, and this from a man who once said that 'This is a woeful idea , mainly because UHT milk always tastes so bad. Not it is impossible to drink this stuff bad, but burnt and very processed bad'.

Firstly, Hall has spammed various left-leaning bloggers with unsolicited emails, and has invariably published any responses on one of his 78 blogs.

Secondly, Hall is yet to walk away from a single major dispute. He still writes regularly about people he agreed to leave alone, and who have long-since forgotten his demented blog of shame.

Clearly, Hall knows what the 'right thing' is when it comes to internet etiquette. It is just as evident that Hall himself refuses to abide by this etiquette, as he continues to be the saddest, creepiest and most deluded blogger in Australia. Hoisted by his own petard, Hall is, by his own criteria, the most contemptible of hypocrites. Not that this is news to anyone sufficiently unfortunate to have read his semi-literate drivel.

In the spirit of bloggerly goodwill, however, I am very happy to recommend Hall to a suitable psychiatric service in his area and cease to mock him again, upon production of an apology, a withdrawal of his hate-blogs, and verification of his bona fides. He lives to stalk, so I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE: I don't know who wrote this, but here is another view on the matter. Oh where oh where is Mr Bourbon?

I don't know much about art...

But I know what I like:





Image courtesy of this guy.

Much Ado About Nuffers...

Earlier in the week, I posted on a topic that had been on my mind a while, namely, the way some extreme rightists attempt to smuggle authoritarian, proto-fascist views under the aegis of libertarianism, or conservatism. In particular, I cited the examples of AWH blogger John Ray, who seems to expend most of his creative energies trying to demonstrate that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites. I also referred to his hapless follower, serial blogstalker Iain Hall, who has issued his unwavering support for Ray and his cronies.

In predictable squadristi fashion, my post was met with hostility.

Iain Hall continues to flood my comments threads with his efforts at dissembling, and appears to be carrying on a flame war with a character named Fang. He also seems to have turned his own blog into a 'Partisan Watch' site - 3 of his last 5 posts are dedicated to me.

Hall continues to view himself as a martyr of Christ-like proportions, when the only similarity he has with JC is an unwashed beard. Notably, he is the only defender of Ray's obnoxious, racist views. Anyone familiar with Hall's inept blogging will attest to the fact that, with friends like him coming to your defence, you really don't need enemies.

The response over at AWH has been less innocuous. Ray has been churning out post after post after post on his many blogs, attempting to lend a scientific veneer to his views on the intelligence of blacks. Here are some more pearls of Ray wisdom:

The outrage brigade will have stopped reading by now but I must make
clear that I am NOT equating blacks with chimpanzees. Blacks are clearly vastly
more intelligent than chimpanzees.

Glad you cleared that up for us.

Ray attempted to refute the claims of a statistician who pulled apart the mathematical basis for factor analysis and IQ testing:

Cosma Shalizi is a rather egotistical-sounding young man of apparently
Afghan ancestry.

An inauspicious start from Ray, who is perhaps attempting to refute his opponents by way of mentioning their ancestry. He concludes:

The sloth should rise above his fascination with mathematical processes and
focus on the underlying reality.

It seems our good Herr Doktor is not afraid to indulge in the personal abuse he professes to abhor. It also seems that he thinks he has privileged access to the 'underlying reality' of IQ-related matters. And what is this 'underlying reality'? According to Ray, it is nothing other than blacks being intellectually inferior to whites.

Naturally, the flailing from AWH's blackshirts didn't stop there. Ray penned this post accusing yours truly of 'hate speech'. As we might expect, his mindless sycophants and jesters chimed in with some charming comments:

And did you notice those very nasty allegations he made. Now if it was a
Hicks or some murdering terrorist, he'd be braying about rule of law, evidence
and international law, but for a Conservative blogger, no worries. No need for
any of that, just throw about any allegation or slur under the guise of free
speech.

(MK)

His nom de blog "Happy Revolutionary" ought to tip anyone off that he is
just another Che T-shirt wearing,anti everything democratic -loser.

(kman)

AWH should put a bounty out for his photo and address.

(Panday)

PandayI would like to see that scrote have to own the vile slurs that he
splashes about with gay abandon but as attractive as the idea of giving him a
taste of his own medicine may be we should resist the temptation of descending
to his slime filled level. By all means he should be outed though. I have
absolutely no problem with anyone writing under a pen name but when someone,
like Hap, uses anonymity to slander people, who write in their own names, then
these anonymous scumbags become an open target to be named and shamed.Personally
I offer a bottle of Scotch to anyone who can name the scrote.

(Iain Hall)

Hall doesn't seem to grasp that it's no act of virtue for unemployed hacks like himself and Ray to post under their names. Their identities are, after all, worthless.

Finally, I've long since been banned from commenting at AWH. This isn't something over which I've cried myself to sleep. There's no sense in debating these people, though there is some value in confronting them. In any case, when I open up the AWH comments page on haloscan, my ISP number is recognised, and I see a message at the top of the screen indicating that my comments will not be published. I was curious, then, to see that somebody had been publishing under my name and avatar here and here, to which AWH responded by launching a homophobic tirade.

So there you have it. Iain Hall is once again trying to 'out' his ideological enemies. AWH is still homophobic and racist. Ray is still trying to encase his contempt for blacks in scientific tartuffery. And deranged, far rightist trolls are using sock puppets, and impersonating me in an attempt to make their points.

Plus ça change, eh, mon amis?


UPDATE:
Not content to flood my comment threads with idiocy, or devote his own blog to lame critiques of my posts, Hall has now taken to writing threatening emails. I received this today (26/10/2007):

Remove the vile slur from the text of your post, I won't expect
an apology because you don't have the honour for it to mean anything , and we
can all move on to far more important matters of political discourse. But know
this should you fail to do the right thing here I am not going to let this
matter drop. You will be pursued wherever you go using this blogging identity
and when your real identity is discovered, as it will be, you will be named and
shamed. There is a line, in even the most heated political debate, that should
never be crossed and you sir have crossed that line.

Once again we have this great defender of Western freedom trying to bully others into silence.
Ironically, there isn't actually any 'slur' directed at Hall, other than some attacks on his feeble 'arguments'. Once again, Hall has no shame, as he clearly intends to add to his long history of cyber-stalking, bullying and harassment.

The Stalker (starring Iain Hall)

Serial cyber-stalker Iain Hall has begun sending me unsolicited emails in response to a comment I wrote on Grodscorp. After a couple of these emails, consisting of Iain's semi-literate rants about his 'troll', I pointed out to him his hypocrisy, by suggesting that he linked to some blogs that are hate-sites by any definition. The clowns at A Wanker's Haven, in particular, come to mind. Hall has used these correspondences as fodder for his latest post.

Hall basically tries 2 lines of argument. One, he suggests that I cannot criticise the bigotry of AWH, as apparently I support jihad. Secondly, in his emails, Hall repeatedly tries to claim that his detractors have 'threatened' him, and that his own stalking is/was entirely innocuous.

Firstly, it's uncontroversial to all but the most frothing at the mouth proto-fascists that AWH is an extremist hate-site. Others have pointed out some evidence for his, as have I. To put this in context, I have written a number of posts examining the rise of the radical right in the West, and discussed how the consequences of this rise are generally trivialised by the MSM, whilst Muslims (and gays, and um, Democrats voters) continue to demonised. I've also discussed the violent consequences of this ideology, in Cronulla, and elsewhere.

Our resident retard has, for some time now, given his uncritical support for this hate-site, saying that AWH's authors 'are courageous enough to stand up for our western society and tradition, which they vigorously and cheerfully defend.' The only tradition for which AWH stands is that involving brownshirts and jackboots, but naturally, this niceties escape Hall. To that end, back in July, after being the subject of many Hall posts, I wrote:

I've added Hallwatch to my
blog roll, something that will no doubt anger the subject of the said blog, Iain
Hall. Iain has a history of dubious online behaviour (which, in fairness,
appears to have improved somewhat of late), and Hallwatch functions as a kind of
psychoanalytic 'return of the repressed', making public all the stuff the Iain
disavows. Iain has often attempted to 'fisk', as he puts it, the present writer,
though his critiques don't go beyond cliches, slogans, and patronising ad
hominem attacks about my presumed age and political beliefs. All of this is
something I take with good humour. Perhaps Iain is even correct in believing his
right-wing mediocrity is a virtue; after all, it appears to be practiced in
company. And this company is the primary reason for my adding Hallwatch to my
blogroll. For as long as Iain gives support and links to those who agitate for genocide
and fascism, it is essential that his online 'conscience' be given a voice
on cyberspace. (July 2007)

These points were reiterated by me in my emailed responses to Hall, who has repeatedly badgered me about my 'support' for Hallwatch. Hall not only denies that AWH are proto-fascist in any respect, he accuses me of 'supporting jihad'. He repeated this claim via email, and I therefore challenged him to provide a shred of evidence for his assertions. His only 'evidence' has come today, when he has posted a quote of mine saying that we can 'readily explicate acts of terror' in countries that are occupied or at war. In this regard, I mentioned not only jihadists, but also the Tamil Tigers, and the Shining Path. Again, this statement is fairly uncontroversial, irrespective of your political persuasion, and it doesn't contain any endorsement of terrorism. Of course, we have not come to expect literacy from Hall.

Hall's rubbishy 'argument' in today's post doesn't contain anything other than a few non-sequiters, demands that I condemn jihad, and other garbage, presented in mangled syntax and backwoods dialect.

Secondly, in his various emails, Hall has exonerated himself for his long history of internet stalking. When challenged on his behaviour with Anonymous Lefty, and his name calling and threats to the employment of Mikey, for instance, Hall says:

I have brokered some sort of accommodation with the both Jeremy Sear and
Mikey Capital, I have made some rather big concessions in the process...There is
however one thing that you should realise about our learned friend and that is
that he did not start out posting as "Anonymous Lefty” His first blog was called
"Melbourne lefty" and he was not so precious about posting either his personal
details nor his own photo (which is how I got it from a google cache). It was
only after he was indiscrete about things that were going on in the law firm he
then worked for that he was forced, by him employer, to delete his
"Melbourne lefty blog" low and behold he then started his current blog with a
post begging for discretion from some of his blogging mates and tried to claim
anonymity.

Oh. Well that's not stalking then, is it...Hall also claims to have Anon Lefty's personal address, and considers himself a good sport for not having disclosed it.

Hall also defended his other flame-wars, in his typical chromosome-deficient prose:

You see what really started the fight was Sear coming over to my newly
created blog and demanding that I delete a piece I had written called
“being Anonymous” (in my archive) where I pointed out that we all leave clues
about our identity when we write on the net. This was inspired by an exchange
between Sear and another commenter about Andrew bolt knowing whom he was and
suggesting all kinds of grandiose conspiracies that Bolt would have needed to
find out who Sear is. Had he politely requested my discretion I would have been
happy to oblige but I have never taken to bully boy tactics and that was where
it all started.

Bully boy tactics? This accusation coming from Hall? He does not stop there folks:

You know what I have no guilt at all about the way that I have fought my
corner in the last couple of years but in reference to Mikey he himself
constantly refers to his obesity to his other health issues and at no time did I
ever threaten to inform his employer about his blogging in contravention to his
employment contract, but I did opine that such action would be possible. And do
you know why? Of course you don’t but you are willing to condemn me for it none
the less. So what you cite as facts are actually nowhere near as definitive as
you think.

That Hall has 'no guilt at all' does not, of course, make him 'innocent'. He continues:

Like wise my flame war with Everett is more nuanced than he would have
you believe, more to do with his objecting to my refering to his writing as
"stogey" than the matters that he claims and as for his harping on about
“Monster truck” what a crock that is (the full text of the correspondence is in
my archive) Everett likes to promote himself as some sort of science Guru but do
you know that he is just a student, and an undergraduate at that?

Perhaps if Hall became more student-like, he might give his readers a coherent sentence on occasion.

I won't continue with Hall's other emails; they go on an on. Suffice to say, Hall also accuses me of being Islamic, and of being 'ethically inconsistent' in opposing proto-fascism. Such slurs from the likes of him amount to a compliment, if anything.

I don't intend to waste further blogspace with this narcissistic half-wit. His own statements invite both condemnation (his unwavering support for the bigotry of AWH) and mockery (his inept attempts at blogging, stalking, and blogstalking). I see no cardinal sin in Hallwatch issuing a few broadsides. In any case, Hall's behaviour has become so notorious as to be the subject of an Encyclopaedia article, outlining his antics.

After all this unpleasantness, I'll leave readers with one of BB's satirical songs about Hall (to the tune of 'Candle in the Wind'), in which I find strange echoes of my own sentiments:

Goodbye Iain Hall

Thank fuck we don't know you at all

Or you might have got us sacked

Or even stalked us all

You crawled out of the woodwork

And you created a million blogs

All filled with piss and vinegar

Then again you had no job
And it seemed to us you live your life

Like a condom full of wind

Never knowing when to fuck up

So much shit to spin

We don't want to know you

You're a wanker mate

Your candles burned out, now fuck off

Forever would be great

UPDATE:

The intertubes have plenty of evidence of Iain; Hall's unhealthy obsessions:

http://thespinzine.squarespace.com/journal/2006/9/14/sex-and-the-blogosphere.html

http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/comments/dentist_drilled/#111481

http://industrialdollhouse.blogspot.com/2006/03/im-cute-buy-me-something.html#c114360614911298691

http://mrpetehasachat.blogspot.com/2007/01/another-one-down.html

If I could be bothered with more Googling, I'm sure I could find plenty more about Hall's pathetic attempts to 'out' other bloggers, and his laughable efforts to fill the intertubes with bile against ideological opponents.