First, let me say this.

I'm a HUGE believer in Twitter free
speech. I've fought hard for it in the early days of Twitter when people
like copyleftist cultist Cory Doctorow wanted to get a critic like me
banned. I've literally refused to extend a contract with the
Soros-funded Eurasianet.org of Open Society Institute because they
unjustly wanted to slap a Twitter gag on me merely for legitimately (as
board and staff members conceded) fighting back against the contentious
Registan.net crowd. That's how strongly I believe in fighting Twitter
censorship — in a way few have ever done who spout about it.

And
as I've documented amply on this blog, four people associated with
Registan — Joshua Foust, Nathan Hamm, Sarah Kendzior, and Katy Pearce — all used
Twitter to harass and heckle me for my *legitimate* criticism of their views, and
even called for me to be removed from my position. I found that an
enormously creepy phenomenon by those close to power getting Department
of Defense contracts, and a tremendous chill on free intellectual
debate. Joshua Foust is a very-much documented bully, but that he has
groupies who also serve as his henchmen is not as well known.

So I'm very much for any kind of free speech on Twitter, and I have made the sacrifices for it personally. It's precisely for that reason that I distinguish between free speech and the kind of harassment and incitement for removal of somebody's livelihood that some engage in. In this post, I'm honestly asking whether a cocky public figure who brags about their knowledge and connection should be in government. That's what you get to do in a liberal democratic society.

So
because I put my money where my mouth is — very literally — I think
it's more than fine to ask when people harass and bully you on Twitter,
going beyond even pointed debate — whether they are fit for their jobs
or fit for even more prestigious jobs.

I've been travelling and
also on vacation and also started a new project so I haven't been
blogging as much. I left it to Twitter to give a little pushback on
Joshua Foust's awful article on Pussy Riot (and I'll try to return and
give it due diligence — Update, here I've taken it apart now). It was his usual ultimately pro-Kremlin stuff, wrapped in a
surrogate attack on intellectuals and celebrities who criticize the Kremlin and a tucked into a cunning and misleading faux-critique of Putin — and
gosh, don't you dare ever take a position accusing Foust of cunning pro-Kremlin
positions or bashing anti-Kremlin intellectuals as a surrogate, because
then he will call you a neo-con, or worse, a McCarthyite! It's so
tiresome.

That somebody could cross the street and dump on Pussy Riot
and urge that it not become "the next Kony" is simply despicable. I've
been far more tempered than most on the Pussy Riot question as I think
freedom of expression doesn't get to trump freedom of religion under the
principles of universality, but surely they don't deserve punishment
more than two weeks of community service and it's a welcome and unexpected development that despite the pernicious fashion of the Kremlin these days, especially with agit-prop Russia Today. Foust can't see his way clear
to moral positions like that, so he reaches for his club to bash his
fellow intellectuals who can, all the while pretending that unlike everybody else, he understands the "real" threat of Putinism and has explicated it with far more sophistication — *snort*.

For some reason, when I posted this
tweet describing Foust's position as awful, after several people agreed with me, someone named Christine Fair
@cchristinefair intervened and writes "@catfitz Hey Cat Fish..the dude is spot on. What's your grouse? @joshuafoust

Of
course, the marker for Internet assholery is obvious here, when
somebody has to make fun of your name to make an argument, but then the
perspective — supporting Foust in is odious slam not only on Pussy Riot
but their defenders — is its own marker as well. Who knows what drives
these awful positions? It's part "enemy of my enemy is my friend," and
part fake concern trolling for some putative balanced human rights
position that they themselves never practice in condemning America and
its friends as well. Does Christine Fair take the same uncritical — and
shifting and twisting — position on drones as her pal Foust?

This Twit spat might have ended there, but it didn't. It goads her enormously that anyone is characterized as pro-Kremlin. "Christine Fair
‏@CChristineFair

@joshuafoust You are so pro-Kremlin! WHO talks like that? Ms. Cat Fish talks like that!"

Yes,
I sure as hell do, because that's what the position is, and that's what
needs to be called out. What *is* this fashion of going soft on Putin by pretending to understand him "better"
really all about, again?! 

Says Foust then, "@CChristineFair don't feed the trolls, Chris. You will rue the day!"

So there's more sillyness: "Christine Fair
‏@CChristineFair

@joshuafoust No sir. Ms. Cat Fish will rue the day…She'll be the Wikipedia entry for "cat fish rues the day""

Foust then replies, "@CChristineFair go get her. She's been banned from half the Internet for her horrible trolliness"

Ugh.
Go get her?! What is this, the thought police?! I have been banned
from… Sluniverse.com, a website for fans of Second Life whose denizens
tend to be pro open source and to give griefing and online harassment a
pass so I'm critical of them and they hate me and ultimately banned me
for standing up to some really creepy types in 4chan and Anonymous, if
not LulzSec, who in fact were banned from the virtual world of Second
Life for harassment of other users and server crashing. Hello! I'm not
banned from this world or from its official forums (as is often
misreported, simply because long ago in 2006, I was for a time for the
same reason — thin-skinned open source cultists unable to take
criticism, but then wiser heads prevailed because I had not violated the
TOS).

I can't think of any other sites I'm banned from *except*
Registan. In fact, one of the reasons the ban-hammer Nathan Hamm banned
me was because in fright, he believed I was someone related to some
other Internet critic of his, and in intimidation, he had this illusion
that I was "banned everywhere" hyped by others, so he felt justified.

Good Lord, what a lot of nervous nellies.

Not Christine Fair, however. She writes boldly, "Christine Fair
‏@CChristineFair

@joshuafoust She can rumble with the trailer park rabble! Back to more Pak defense nonsense. Reading Hilal right now. Wanna shoot myself."

Er,
trailer park rabble? I deserve to have my name ridiculed, to be
threatened with online bullying ("go get her"), because…why? Because I stood up for
Pussy Riot and its defenders against the immoral Joshua Foust? Huh?

Foust later adds, "joshuafoust
‏@joshuafoust

@CChristineFair Hahaha Catty Catty Fitz Fitz is a priceless treasure whom everyone hates! (see also her Second Life: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=prokofy%20neva …)

"Everyone"
hates me, you see — LOL. And then he resorts to an entry in Urban
Dictionary put in by 4chan and Anonymous bullies who have been hounding
me since 2007, ever since I began reporting accurately on their Internet
antics, long before it became fashionable. So yeah, Joshua Foust and
Christine Fair are aligning themselves with an anarchist hacker movement
that has attacked the Pentagon and other government sites. Are they
pleased with themselves?

So I respond to Foust the only way you can:

CatherineFitzpatrick
‏@catfitz @joshuafoust @CChristineFair Still feeling insecure after all these years, Joshik! You *wish* you were as proud of your second life as I am!

Because at the root of every bully as we know is insecurity. That
much is clear from the twisted account of his life put up by the
equally-odious EXiled.

Now Christine replies, "Christine Fair
‏@CChristineFair

@catfitz dudette, you know that sounds cat-hoarding, stalker crazy? @joshuafoust

So,
wait. Standing up to a bully online who has written falsehoods about
you and harassed you for months on end is "stalker crazy"? Is
"cat-hoarding"? How do people *get* like this? Have they been on the
Internet too long? Has no one ever questioned what they do?

And this is why I ask, with frank bewilderment,
how a person gets this arrogant and cocky and engages in what can only
be described as casual assholery on the Internet. On her Twitter account, Fair writes:

Assistant Professor of South Asian pol-mil affairs at
Georgetown. Views are my own-especially if they are twisted. Awaiting
your anonymous, ad hominem attacks.

Washington DC
·

http://christinefair.net

Well, sure, we get the disclaimer, dearie. But what kind of
professor behaves this way? Oh, I know. another professor who was at
Georgetown — Katy Pearce. Is this how they are?

Again, the
issues isn't *criticism* of views or even *strong, robust criticism* of
views. It's *assholery*. That's the word you need to describe when
people behave badly — calling names, calling on others to "go get 'em,"
bullying, harassing, making up wild stuff like "trailer trash" and "cat-hoarding" and
"stalkery crazy".

As is known, when people continually do that, I
fight back — I fight back hard. In some cases, I'll find the perfect
name for them — and thought they have behaved badly first, they will
then find a taste of their own medicine and then indignantly cry foul.

But
I haven't called this Assistant Professor Fair any names nor accused
her of any outlandish stuff, other than alliance with Foust which she
herself expressed. I don't even know her and never heard of her, uh,
contributions to the military-political affairs of South Asia.

Here this cocky, brash obnoxious lady brags:

Christine Fair
‏@CChristineFair

@faisalkapadia @Manticore73 AT least parts of the State Dept…won't say which one as I might be doing a fellowship in State 🙂

So…let's get this straight? This, er, academic is not willing to call out which parts of the State Department still think the Haqqani network (just finally characterized as a foreign terrorist organization) are "useful" because….she might work for that department. How could someone be so craven? Only if they felt an absolute sense of their own high credentials and powers, even from their "assistant professorhood," because they feel they are a brain that someone will always want to hire for their expertise.

These kinds of fellowship seem to be more frequent  under the Obama Administration than they used to be, but someone can correct me if I'm
wrong.

In any event, I have to ask: this person should be in the
government, with this kind of approach to debate and intellectual
freedom? In other words, an approach that is antithetical to freedom and
involves bullying and harassment — name-calling and intimidation? 

This
person should be involved in diplomacy??? Why? Because they have a
hook-up at State? Because they have friends in high places?

And of course there's the larger question of whether a) someone should publicly criticism State policy if they wish to work there or b) our modern-day challenge, whether someone should Tweet that they still hope to get a job with State so won't name the folks guilty of still hanging on to the Haqqani illusion — calling into question their academic credibility.

Prof. Fair comes extremely high-credentialed:

Previously, she has served as a senior political scientist with the RAND
Corporation, a political officer to the United Nations Assistance
Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate in
USIP's Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. She is also a
senior fellow with the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point.

How
is it that all of these institutions — the RAND Corporation, that
people still think of as nearly synonymous with the CIA with all their
studies from the Cold War era (I'm reading a particularly delightful one
now on Bolshevik tactics); UNAMA, which for all its troubles has tried
to do good in Afghanistan and keep the record; USIP, which is a perfectly nice kind of
pasture for all kinds of officials to graze in for awhile between jobs and serves a
useful function in government; and West Point. West Point! How could
somebody who has been through West Point and RAND take part in childish
bullying online on Twitter against someone who *rightly* criticized an
awful ultimately pro-Kremlin blog post? It's as if flirting with Putinism passes
for critical thinking.

Prof. Fair may indeed be heavily qualified
for her fellowship at the State Department. But if she wants to be a
*good* official and engage in *good* governance, she will have to
refrain from bullying and harassing. It's just not professional. And I
hope some interviewer tells her so.

I'm going to read up on her
works and positions and see if she enjoys such fraternization with Foust
because she follows that same curious line of dismissing the
documenters and critics of terrorism as ill-informed hysterics.

"She is a many-time survivor of the University of Chicago. She earned
her B.S. in Biological Chemistry in 1991. She also completed an M.A.
from the Harris School of Public Policy as well as an M.A in South Asian
Languages and Civilizations in 1997. In 2004, she received her Ph.D. in
South Asian Languages and Civilizations.

She can cause trouble in multiple languages."

I'll bet.

The
reason a heavily-credentialed person close to all the military analysis
and planning of our country can do something like call a stranger names
on the Internet and ridicule them as "cat-hoarders" (?!) is because
they feel a supreme sense of impunity. Everyone who isn't in the same
corridors of credentials and powers is fair game and unprotected.

Maybe this is one of the things that is wrong with our country?