Angela Benedetti

…until there actually is liberty and justice for all. That’s what ten-year-old Will Phillips says, and he’s acting on it, declining to stand for the Pledge at school because his family has gay friends who aren’t being treated equally under the law — who are being deprived of the right to marry, or to adopt children.

Predictably, Will is being harassed for his stance, first by a substitute teacher and (of course) by some of the more nasty and ignorant students at his school. (Although to be fair, this is only elementary school and I’d bet cookies that the students who are taunting and harassing him are just reflecting the views and behavior of their parents, so the shame is on them for not setting a better example.)

Will’s parents support him, though, and got the school administration to admit that he’s not required to stand for the Pledge, that he does have the right to sit through it.

And what about the substitute teacher who tried to bully him into participating, even threatening to get his mother and grandmother (whom she knew, although obviously not very well) on his case? Since he hadn’t broken any rules in refusing to stand for the Pledge, Will’s mother asked when they could expect an apology from that teacher. Well, the principal didn’t see that as “necessary.” Of course not. [eyeroll]

Will has an excellent sense of right and wrong, though, and I applaud his stand, and also his parents for supporting him in doing what’s right. Read more about Will and the Pledge incident in this Arkansas Times article, and more commentary by John Brummett, a columnist with the Arkansas News. If nothing else, Mr. Brummett’s suggested alternate Pledge is entertaining, and unfortunately apt.

Thanks to Indigene on The Phade for the original link.

Angie

Yeah, that’s pretty inflamatory. I’m feeling pretty damn inflamed right now, so I think that’s appropriate.

In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones, a twenty-year-old employee of KBR — at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton, and hey look, they’re hiring — was working in Iraq. Her co-workers drugged her, gang-raped her, abused her so badly her breasts were disfigured permanently, then locked her in a shipping container for twenty-four hours without food or water. She was told by her employer that if she left Iraq to get medical attention, she’d be fired.

According to an ABC News post:

Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones’ camp, where they rescued her from the container.

Also:

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped “both vaginally and anally,” but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

Wow, what a shocking misfortune.

Her assailants were never brought to trial, either, neither criminally nor civilly. Why? Because Ms. Jones’s employment contract with KBR states that a victim of sexual assault surrenders the right to prosecute their rapists; all such matters must be taken before a private arbitrator, where there’s no transcript kept and the proceedings are not public record.

And this is by no means an isolated incident. See the links below for more cases, more women who’ve been raped and brutalized and threatened while working abroad for defense contractors, coming forward.

So essentially, if you work for one of these companies overseas, your co-workers can gang rape you, leaving you permanently injured, the company you work for can threaten you with the loss of your job if you try to go home for medical help, their security people will “lose” key evidence of the crime against you, and your only recourse is private arbitration. Your assailants will never see prison time, and there’ll be no official record of what happened.

Or rather, this was the case until last Tuesday. According to a story in MinnPost.com:

In one of the most public tests of his political skills since taking office in July, Sen. Al Franken pushed through an amendment Tuesday that would withhold defense contracts from companies like Halliburton if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.

So essentially, if a company tries to create an atmosphere encouraging rape and assault among their employees by preventing victims from seeking prosecution, they’re cut off from defense contracts. That’s kind of minimal, but since the only thing these people understand is money, it might just work. Note also that the author of the amendment has only been on the job for three months — way to go, Senator Franken!

But now we get to the part which is relevant to the title of this post. One would think that every person with two brain cells to rub together for mutual warmth would be in favor of this change, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Thirty senators — all Republican, coincidentally I’m sure — voted against the amendment. Is your senator among them? If so, please write or call and tell them what you think of how they voted.

There’s a complete list of how everyone voted on the U.S. Senate web site. This is official, a dot-gov web site; it’s not some unofficial nose-count by a partisan press. Is your senator on the “Nay” list?

Also, props to the ten Republican senators who voted for the amendment:

Bennett (R-UT), Collins (R-ME), Grassley (R-IA), Hatch (R-UT), Hutchison (R-TX), LeMieux (R-FL), Lugar (R-IN), Murkowski (R-AK), Snowe (R-ME), and Voinovich (R-OH).

It’s pretty sad that voting in favor of punishing gang-rape is something worth particular praise, but still, I applaud these senators for voting for what’s right, rather than going along with the Boys-Will-Be-Boys Club.

Thanks to a friend of mine on LJ for giving me a heads-up to this.

More sources:

Celluloid Blonde
Firedog Lake — Ms. Jones says eleven more women have contacted her about similar incidents
Huffington Post
The Minnesota Independent
The Nation — and another KBR rape case.
Politico
Think Progress — this one has an embedded video of Sen. Franken’s speech.
Think Progress — this one talks about three other women who’ve come forward

Angie

LJ User Gwendolynflight, over in the Merlin fandom, decided that she didn’t want to do the work to learn to write and refine her technique and develop her own style. She wanted hugs and pats and e-cookies for her wonderful writing right now. So instead of writing a novel of her own, she grabbed a copy of Jordan Castillo Price’s first PsyCops book, Among the Living, did a bit of editing to change the names and the setting and such, and posted it to her journal as a Merlin fanfic. And of course, she got a lot of applause and e-cookies for it, because it’s a very good story. (Jordan isn’t a particular friend of mine, I don’t even have her journal friended, but we both publish with Torquere Press and I have Among the Living — it’s a good read.)

Of course someone figured out what was going on — ’cause there are fanfic readers who also read original m/m books, who knew?! — and after some incredibly lame excuse-making, the plagiarist took the story down. But check out this screencap and read through the comments. :/

I love the part where Gwendolynflight assures a commenter that “it is completely and fully beta’d.” Umm, right, because the real writer polished it, then sent it to a publisher where a line editor and a proofreader went over it. [eyeroll]

And then lower down where she actually admits that the story is a “fusion” with Price’s PsyCops series. o_O This is where I get the idea that she’s actually just that stupid, rather than a bold-faced thief. Not that being a moron is an excuse, but you know, it’s something different to smack her for.

Then a few comments later where she’s talking to a reader about how dark the story is, and mentions that Book Two is particularly dark, and she’s glad that isn’t turning the reader off. So she fully intended to go on doing this, through the whole series? Once she’d ripped off all the available novels, since she seems to think she’s doing absolutely nothing wrong, I wonder whether she’d have had the balls to, like, write to Jordan and nudge her about hurrying up on the next installment.

Finally, about 2/3 of the way down, LJ user Throwawayreview calls it what it is and clues poor Gwendolynflight that this isn’t a “fusion,” it’s not fanfic, it’s plagiarism. And of course Ms. Gwen has all sorts of excuses, because plagiarism is “a social concept” and not absolute. And later on she says that “plagiarism isn’t an inherent moral wrong – it’s an issue firmly bound up in economic and patriarchal issues.” Umm, right. It’s a weapon of the Patriarchy. So her stealing the actual words of another woman writer and posting them as her own and accepting praise and credit for writing the words another woman actually wrote, is actually Ms. Gwen sticking it to the Patriarchy. Wow, good to know. [eyeroll]

Note that Jordan has no problem with fanfic. She said, in her reaction to this situation:

I’d also like to say that fanfic is an entirely different thing. If a reader said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if Victor and Jacob got a flat tire…?” and wrote that story, using my characters and storyverse but their own plot and words, that would be fanfic. I’ve written half a million words of fanfic; it’s how I learned to write, for good or ill. This re-tooling of Among the Living was not fanfic.

So this isn’t a case of one of the uptight pro writers trying to stomp on the poor fanficcers. Actual fanfic would’ve been fine. Copying a whole freaking novel (with plans for the second one) and swapping out the names and places and a few police procedure details, but keeping the other ninety-some percent of the original author’s verbage is not fanfic, in any way, shape or form. Gwendolynflight is one of the people who gives all fanfic writers a bad name. She’s one of the people whose actions convince the New York publishers and the Hollywood producers, and their writers and their lawyers, that we’re all a bunch of pathetic, talentless thieves who are too lame to write our own stories and get credit and praise and e-cookies for our own work, so we steal from them and pretend their work is ours and claim credit for the wonderful writing we didn’t do. That’s what they think of all of us, and one of the reasons they think that is because there are people who do it in exactly that way. Because that’s pretty much what’s going on with Gwendolynflight.

She’s gone into hiding now — her journal’s been completely locked down, although it hasn’t been deleted. I’m kind of disappointed by that, because it means she might slink back out from under her rock at some point. I’m sure she has her own little group of friends who are all rallying ’round her now, giving her pets and hugs and feeding her chocolate and assuring her that she did Absolutely Nothing At All Wrong, and that all those evil mean people are just being so meeeeeean to her, isn’t it just terrible?! Those bitches!!

But you know, this isn’t the sort of person fanfic fandom needs, any fandom. And if she were eventually to pick up her dolls and flounce away and find a new hobby, I’d be just as happy.

Angie, who’s in no mood to give this idiot any slack whatsoever

ETA: LJ User Pecos pointed this out, from Gwendolynflight’s LJ profile:

This journal is primarily for whinging about school and/or teaching, and for posting the fanfic and fanvids which i occasionally, sometimes, rarely produce. You know, every once in a while.

This woman is a teacher. O_O

Someone named Richard Ridyard has been swiping lines from all over — including from Stephen King — and has just been exposed big-time by Angel Zapata. Thanks to Writtenwyrdd for the link.

One thing which makes this case notable is that, unlike every single other plagiarism case I’ve looked at in the last couple of years, there is no one sticking up for Mr. Ridyard here. Every other plagiarist who’s been shoved into the limelight has had dozens or hundreds of fans who’ve rallied round with their indignation and counter-attacks to let the accusers know just how horrible and mean they’re being. There’s nothing like that here, and I have to say it’s refreshing. Flash writers seem to be all on the same page when it comes to the evils of plagiarism and the need to find it, shine a light on it and stamp it out. Kudos to the flash folks.

It’s also nice to see so many flash editors and publishers saying straight out that they’re deleting Mr. Ridyard’s work from their sites and blacklisting him. (The only publisher which tried to deny the charge was Valentine Publications, where Mr. Ridyard is an editor.) After all the denials of interest or responsibility, and attempts to brush off accusations and queries, and to ignore clear evidence by the larger publishers in earlier cases, it’s good to see editors and publishers willing to take action and state in public that they’re doing so. Kudos to them too.

Angie

Also incompetence, but it’s the irony I’m mainly appreciating here.

This morning at around ten, the Coast Guard carried out some exercises on the Potomac near the bridge where President Obama’s motorcade passed by on his way to a 9-11 memorial event. Unfortunately they didn’t think to, like, maybe notify any other agencies of what they were doing, so the exercise resulted in CNN reporting ten rounds fired at a suspicious vessel, and departures from the nearby Reagan International Airport being held for almost half an hour while the FBI scrambled to respond to the hostile incident.

Oops.

Good to know our tax dollars are being used wisely in these harsh economic times, to say nothing of the government’s great respect for the time, money and feelings of its citizens (especially on this day — come on, people!) who get caught up in this sort of fiasco, whether they were near the bridge and worried that they were going to be killed, or were stuck at the airport being made late for meetings, missing connections, etc.

The gold standard of irony is toward the end of the article, though, where it says:

The Coast Guard is part of the Homeland Security Department, which was created in response to the 9/11 attacks. The massive reorganization was designed to promote sharing of information within the department and among other law enforcement agencies.

Umm, yeah. I think they need to work on that.

Angie

A quick compilation post because I have a story due tomorrow and a few thousand more words to go on it.

Rich Snobs in New York Blocking Children’s Library Expansion

My husband sent me a link to this article in School Library Journal.

Library Director Dennis Fabiszak has said that the East Hampton Village Board of Zoning Appeals has expressed concern that an expanded children’s collection would lead to more library usage by those who live in the less affluent areas of Springs and Wainscott.

East Hampton Village is a posh area where a lot of rich people (like Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Rudolph Giuliani) have summer homes. Certain residents are objecting to a 6800-square-foot expansion to the children’s area (which last year was ranked last in available books per child, although the article doesn’t say whether that was last in the state or the nation or what) for which private funds — four million dollars — have already been raised. The expansion will add ten thousand children’s books to the library to go with all that floor space, and most libraries would be delighted with the project.

In fact, the library is delighted with it, and wishes they could get on with the implementation.

The problem is apparently that “The library serves not only the Village of East Hampton but also the less affluent communities of Springs and Wainscott.” Ahh, there’s the rub. Some of the locals (just enough, apparently) object to the expansion because one never knows what sort of child would come in to use the library if they actually acquired a decent children’s collection.

I haven’t done any demographic research on these areas (see above for time crunch) but I doubt very strongly that the people of Springs and Wainscott are, like, horribly poor or anything. One doesn’t generally build a fashionable community for wealthy people’s second (or third or fourth) homes right next to a slum. So my guess is that Springs and Wainscott are probably middle class. If anyone knows otherwise, please drop a note and I’ll post a correction, but seriously, I doubt any of the people who live near enough to East Hampton to send their kids to its library are getting government cheese, you know?

Which means that the people objecting to the expansion are horrified at the thought of having to pass actual Middle Class People in the halls of their public library. The horrors! O_O One has to wonder, if they’ll fight this hard to keep children who aren’t actually rich out of their library, just how much empathy or compassion these people have for those who are actually poor.

No, really. Jim Hines posted a thoughtful, down-to-earth entry about freedom of speech and censorship and the consequences of being a jerkwad, in response to this open letter on the Carl Brandon Society site, which went up in response to this series of posts/incidents and particularly the third one. The original incident is over and done, since someone explained to Mr. Ellison that he’d been misled and he apologized (sort of) and Ms. Bradford accepted (see the fourth link) but the basic principle being discussed applies to any discussion and Mr. Hines discussed it in a more general context. The core of his point:

* People disagreeing with you is not censorship.
* People stating that they don’t like your cover art and think its racist, sexist, or whatever, is not censorship.
* People banning you from their blogs is not censorship.
* For the writers out there, an editor rejecting your story for his/her publication is not censorship.
* People saying they don’t like something you said is not censorship.
* People telling you racial slurs are unacceptable is not censorship.
* People criticising, mocking, or insulting you for choosing to use racial slurs is not censorship.

Also this: Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.

Amen.

Brazilian City of Belo Horizonte Ends Hunger with a System That’s Working

This Yes! Magazine article describes a system in which the government, the farmers and the citizens of the city all work together to end hunger, and all benefit. Usually programs to end hunger end up messing someone over. You can only live on government cheese and civil defense crackers for so long before the nutritional deficiencies become clear, and hunger programs based on government hand-outs both diminish the dignity of the beneficiaries and become an ever-greater burden on the taxpayer. Producers are often abused for the benefit of the poor, which drives the former producers into poverty themselves.

Belo Horizonte has figured out a way of making their program work for everyone, though. The poor have access to fresh produce at a reduced price, and the farmers are making more money selling their produce direct to the customers.

A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”

The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that, as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw their incomes drop by almost half.

One of the prime gauges of hunger in a population is the infant mortality statistics.

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

Sounds to me like it’s working. Major kudos to the people and government of Belo Horizonte.

There’s more — definitely read the article. They’ve got something here; it’d be great to see it spread to other areas.

Angie

The funny first. I was checking hits on my blog and I saw that someone was querying Google for “chasing fire by angela benedetti torrent” recently. Yay, someone else looking to steal one of my stories.

Except I’ve never published a story called “Chasing Fire.” Nor even written one. And when I checked, it doesn’t seem there’s anyone else named “Angela Benedetti” who’s written a story by that name either. (Although there are a couple others of us; one’s a meteorologist who publishes a lot of scholarly papers, and the other is a lady who works with children in Bogotá. So far as I know, neither one writes fiction.)

So it looks like this is one confused pirate. Not that I’m complaining or anything — confused pirates are the best kind. Hey, dude? If you can find a torrent copy of a story by me called “Chasing Fire,” go for it, with my blessing. [wave]

Moving on to the subject of slightly more competent pirates, someone finally did find a copy of “Learning to Love Yourself” and got it up on a torrent site back around the end of June. I sent a takedown note and, credit where it’s due, the site took it down. It was up for however many days, though, and a bunch of people got free copies.

It’s been argued at many times and in many places that piracy of this sort actually benefits the creative producer. That people who’d never have tried my work if they’d had to pay for it right off will instead download a pirated copy, and some significant number will like it and, being essentially good people, will then go and buy a legitimate copy. They might even buy more of my work, once they’ve tried my fiction and become fans. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the case with the person who made the original request for a free copy of “Learning,” judging by his/her comments in the request thread, but supposedly most of the people who use these sites are not actually selfish, entitled thieves, contrary to all appearances.

All right, fine — let’s test that.

Since the pirate copy was made available in late June, that’s too late for any Pirate Bonus Sales to show up in my upcoming royalty statement, but about three months from now I’ll be getting another one, covering sales in July through September. Surely that length of time is enough for most people to read a short story (about 3300 words), decide to buy a copy, and scrape together $1.29.

If my third quarter royalty statement shows a significant spike in purchases of “Learning to Love Yourself” — not necessarily a huge flood of sales, but a clearly noticeable increase over prior sales trends — then fine, I’ll assume that there is some significant number of ethical people who prefer to try before they buy, but who do buy, and that the net result of the torrent upload was a gain for me. “Learning” hasn’t been reviewed recently or anything like that, so there’s no obvious other source of sales stimulus right now; I’m willing to credit it to torrent people, if it occurs.

[Caveat: if "Learning" is reviewed within the next couple of months, or if irony strikes and this challenge is publicized all over the web, that would clearly taint the experiment with multiple sources of attention for the story, and it'll be impossible to sort out what caused any given number of sales. If the situation remains as it is now, though, then I'll assume extra sales are to people who downloaded the torrent copy.]

So there you go. To BUGCHICKLV and associates: if you’ve read a stolen copy of my story, this is your chance to prove to the world (or at least to me) that you’re not just a bunch of thieves. If I see that spike in the sales numbers, then I’ll admit that all the pirate apologists who make the “But letting people read for free results in more sales!” argument are right, and I’ll shut up about the issue. I’ll let my publisher go after pirates and torrent copies if they want, but I’ll personally leave it alone. Fair enough?

I think it’s more than fair, myself.

So, let’s see what happens. I’ll check back in on this subject when my third quarter royalty statement comes in, in late October or early November, and then we’ll find out whether piracy is actually “to the writer’s benefit” in the long run, or whether that claim is just a bunch of thieves whining and making excuses.

Angie