Belfast Castle Wedding

This happened on Wednesday July 16 2014. See my Live Drawing website with a full portfolio and selection of photos, here.

Leo Baxendale - Art is theft

Giles cartoon 25th July 1954

Leo Baxendale wrote:

"The catalyst for my creation of Bash Street was a Giles cartoon of January 1953: kids pouring out of school, heads flying off and sundry mayhems. Straight away, I pencilled a drawing of 'The Kids of Bash Street School' and posted it from my home in Preston to R. D. Low, the managing editor of D.C. Thomson's children's publications in Dundee. I received an offhand response, a dampener. It was only after I'd created Little Plum (April 1953) and Minnie the Minx (September 1953) that the Beano editor George Moonie travelled to Preston on 20 October 1953 and asked me to go ahead with Bash Street (he gave it the provisional title of 'When The Bell Goes'; when it appeared in The Beano in February 1954, it was titled 'When The Bell Rings'."

He also wrote:

"Alan Moore, Steve Bell, Savage Pencil and others have taken the ethos of my work, The Beano Spirit, that uninhibited outlook, and they’re carrying it on in their own work. I think that’s wonderful."

Christopher Hitchens on the word "community"

Wikipedia explained the etymology and origin of the line, "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun":

"When the Nazis achieved power in 1933, Hanns Johst wrote the play Schlageter, an expression of Nazi ideology performed on Hitler's 44th birthday, 20 April 1933, to celebrate his victory. The famous line "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun", often associated with Nazi leaders, derives from this play. The actual original line from the play is slightly different: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!" "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). 

The famous line is regularly misattributed, sometimes to Hermann Göring and sometimes to Heinrich Himmler. In December 2007, historian David Starkey misattributed it to Joseph Goebbels in comments criticizing Queen Elizabeth II for being "poorly educated and philistine". It has also been adapted, for example by Stephen Hawking as "When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my pistol" and by filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard in 1963's film Le Mépris, when a producer says to Fritz Lang: "Whenever I hear the word culture, I bring out my checkbook." Lang evokes the original line as he answers "Some years ago—some horrible years ago—the Nazis used to take out a pistol instead of a checkbook." Songwriter Roger Miller of Mission of Burma titled his 1981 song "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" after the line.

Christopher Hitchens said of the word "community":

"The word “community” pisses me off. Who isn’t in a community now? It’s particularly bad in my adopted country and in my home town of Washington DC. “The defence community”; alright if you must. “The intelligence community” for the CIA is an outrage. “The donor community” for those who seek to influence politics by giving money under the table is appalling. And the ultimate reductio ad absurdum of it, I did actually once read in a very guardedly written account of organised crime - “the Sicilian business community.” You hear the word “community”, keep your hand on your wallet… It robs the language of the word."

Here's my adaptation:

"Whenever I hear the word community, I reach for my gun."

Andrew Sullivan (@SullyDish) on the Tuam babies

Cartoon by Martyn Turner

Fintan O'Toole tweeted:

"[Ireland] locked up more people in psychiatric wards than Stalin's Soviet Union did."

Andrew Sullivan said:

"The Magdalene Laundries were really a kind of gulag for sexual miscreants."

Another called it "Ireland’s architecture of containment". Then put it like this:

"You had these industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, the mother and baby homes, all with different remits, but the basic model was to contain and segregate anything that was deemed morally inferior by society, whether that’s children, unwed mothers, the women in the Magdalenes, etc. The mother and baby homes were different in that they were regulated by the state and had to be accredited adoption societies, at least by 1952, which is when that became legal in Ireland. They received stipends from the day they opened, from the government. They were receiving the equivalent of an industrial wage at that time for each mother and baby, from the state. If that were the case, why were so many of these women, like my mother or Philomena Lee, expected to earn their keep if the state were in fact funding that? It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Obviously there was some profit being made there, not to mention what half of our parents paid. That’s another story unto itself. Adoptive parents were “donating” huge amounts of money."

Being middle class

Simon Hattenstone wrote in the Guardian:

"[Rod Liddle] talks about his return to London as a young man (he was born in Bermondsey, hence his allegiance to Millwall) to study at London School of Economics and how shocked he was to encounter students who were so posh and so privileged and just so bloody... liberal. Before that he had considered himself middle-class (his father ended up as a tax inspector, his mother worked at the then DHSS). But not any more. "The gap between my family and the poorest family in Middlesbrough was tiny, and the gap between my family and the London lot was just enormous. And that difference has got bigger and bigger and bigger."

Alan Bennett experienced something similar:

"If the dons [at Trinity College, Cambridge] were genial some of my fellow candidates were less so. That weekend was the first time I had come across public schoolboys in the mass and I was appalled. They were loud, self-confident and all seemed to know one another, shouting down the table to prove it while also being shockingly greedy. Public school they might be but they were louts. Seated at long refectory tables beneath the mellow portraits of Tudor and Stuart grandees, neat, timorous and genteel we grammar school boys were the interlopers; these slobs, as they seemed to me, the party in possession."

Kenneth Branagh - Art is theft, Ctd

Kenneth Branagh, in an interview with Charlie Rose on June 2014, said:

"Shakespeare was fantastically comprehensive in where he went for all his stories. He knew how to borrow and he knew how to be inspired."

He also said:

"The Barge speech in Thomas North’s ‘Lives of the Ancient Romans’, Shakespeare pilfers fairly comprehensively. He scattered his gatherings but always, always transforming."

Steven Greenblatt wrote in the Telegraph about the move of ideas from Montaigne to Shakespeare:

"The borrowing extends beyond certain expressions – kind of traffic, name of magistrate, use of service, and the like – to a vision of a whole society organised on principles directly counter to those in place in the familiar, grim realm of contemporary European reality. That is, here [The Tempest] as in the case of King Lear, Shakespeare is mining Florio’s Montaigne not simply for turns of phrase but for key concepts central to the play in question."

He continued:

"Scholars have seen Montaigne’s fingerprints on many other works by Shakespeare, whether in the echoing of words or ideas. When Hamlet exclaims to his mother, “Ecstasy? My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time,” (III .iv.130–31), Shakespeare may have picked up a hint from Montaigne’s “during his ecstasy, he seemed to have neither pulse nor breath” from “Of the Force of Imagination.” And Polonius’s “This above all: to thine own self be true” may owe something to “That above all, he be instructed to yield, yea to quit his weapons unto truth” from “Of the Institution of Education of Children.” More broadly, there is something strikingly Montaigne-like in Hamlet’s intertwining of Stoicism — “Give me that man / That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him / In my heart’s core” — (III .ii.64–66) with philosophical skepticism — “And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?” — (II .ii.297–98) and inner acceptance — “If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.” (V.ii.158–60)...But what is a problem for the scholarly attempt to establish a clear line of influence is, from the perspective of the common reader, a source of deep pleasure. Two of the greatest writers of the Renaissance — two of the greatest writers the world has ever known — were at work almost at the same time, reflecting on the human condition and inventing the stylistic means to register their subtlest perceptions in language."

Christopher Hitchens - You can't ventriloquise the dead

[UPDATE - see more thoughts on Tumblr here]

Christopher Hitchens said:

"Michael Korda, who has just done an excellent book on president Grant, General Grant, said you mustn’t ever write a biography in which you say, at this point he or she must have thought or he or she must have felt or must have… You’re not entitled and you’ll lose your integrity as a biographer and you can’t know it and you shouldn’t do it. And I thought how right that is. I’ve nodded at that so many times."

Eleanor Mills (@eleanormills) - When it's cool to be dumb, Ctd

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Eleanor Mills wrote in the Sunday Times of July 6 2014:

"Being “cool” was about rebelling: an urge to be doing what I shouldn’t — because I could. At 13 I would slink off to pubs in Covent Garden with my best mate — we’d tell her mother we were going to the cinema — and pretend to be 18 or older. We would drink and flirt and get into trouble, revelling in the newly honed power that we had over men, and then run off home on the night bus with our child-rate photocards.

And more:

"By 14 and 15 I was going clubbing (Phil Salon’s Mud Club, the Wag, Heaven) and dancing until the small hours. I was even interviewed by Paula Yates for a Channel 4 series she was making called Too Much Too Young.

She explained the report:

"Most school dropouts do not become pop stars. Indeed a large American study, just published in Child Development — a prestigious psychology magazine — found that indulging in minor delinquency, early romantic attachments and drug use at age 13, 14 and 15 might make you popular for a few years but is correlated with “long-term difficulties in close relationships... as well as significant problems with alcohol and substance use [along with] elevated levels of criminal behaviour” in early adulthood."

The authoritarian terror of Lundyism

Cartoon by Ian Knox of Alliance leader and NI Justice Minister, David Ford MLA

Any unionist opinion that deviates from the hardline, reactionary fringe is immediately and unavoidably smeared "Lundy." The colloquial curse word for the moderate member of the Unionist community. And you see it with the PSNI - An eire-phobia - where the slightest criticism of or incursion against loyalist promiscuity is labelled IRA. (Yet the irony is that in calling PSNI the PSNI-IRA, loyalists sound like republicans who call PSNI the PSNI-RUC.) A plurality and diversity of unionist opinion isn't just disapproved, but effectively outlawed. A total prohibition on anything not outwardly and chauvinistically Protestant.

The Lundy is the kuffar. The traitor. The heretic and apostate who has gone prostrate before the enemy. Only the deep and double-dyed sectarians and tribalists are the true and authentic holders and representatives of the community.

Of course this is nonsense. By their hysterical reactionism - the deep and double-dyed sectarian, so sure of themselves, so self-loving, so unbending - becomes a parody and caricature of the tradition they purport to represent. They don't seem to have any mechanism to question or analyse their own method and direction. This is not only incredibly self-satisfied but self-destructive. He who doesn't have the ability to adapt and and mould with the changing of events is doomed.

I want to live in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-confessional society and live with a multi-confessional unionism. It's only through argument and dissent and the constant challenging of ideas that you can refine and develop political ideology and practice.

I've variously been called a "Unionists my arse". A "condescending appeaser" by Jamie Bryson. Nick Garbutt being called a "snob" by Willie Frazer

The other colloquial swear word and pjejorative term for the unionist that deviates from the hardline, is "guilty prod". Glenn Bradley explained being called a "guilty prod" here.

My previous post on the authoritarianism of fringe unionism against the moderate, here. See all my posts on Ian Knox, who did the cartoon above, here.

Honesty is the Best Policy: Non-fiction Plagiarism

Guest post by Nikolas Baron.

Some writers I’ve spoken to think non-fiction is a lot easier to write than fiction. You’ve already experienced all of the events that are going to be written in your book. You have first-hand knowledge of the facts. You lived it and don’t have to imagine what it’s like. You can easily organize all of your story events because, well, they happened to you and you know where they best fit in your story. But there are some writers who believe that their story needs some more spice; more excitement. Some enhance details to enrich their story. Some just plain lie. And some decide that the best method is to plagiarize. These are facts, they think, they may not have happened to me, but at least they are true facts. The only fact in that scenario is that the writer is committing plagiarism.

Odd bedfellows - Anti-agreement republicans and unionists

Danny McBrearty, former commanding officer of the IRA’s Derry Brigade and former comrade of McGuinness said:

"Nothing surprises me any more about Martin McGuinness, so if he does give the Queen of England a guided a tour around the jail where republicans fought and died for their principles, I would not be shocked… Authentic republicans should take no part in or welcome this visit to the Crumlin Road jail. Instead they should be outside protesting against the presence of a British Queen in a prison where their comrades suffered so much. As for McGuinness - he is only shaking hands and guiding around his true boss."

Linda Nash on Martin McGuinness said:

"Does Martin [McGuinness] forget that the Queen decorated the Parachute Regiment and that they remain decorated? Can you sleep at night having given orders to young Irish men and women to attack the Queen´s forces when many of these men, women and teenagers were then murdered? I hope you are happy with your new found friends Martin. For they are the employers of the men who murdered our loved ones. Your actions, in my opinion, are traitorous."

Herb Block - The coiner of "McCarthyism"

In this video interview (at 8m25) Herb Block explains how he cointed the famous terms, "McCarthyism".

"Yea [I invented McCarthyism], apparently so. That's the first use made of that word that I know of. I remember how it originated, because they wanted to put something on that top barrel, and you couldn't call it McCarthy himself, and you wouldn't say 'McCarthy techniques" or so on. I thought well we could maybe use just one word, "McCarthyism". And it caught on."

Video in full here.

Morten Morland (@mortenmorland) - The cartoon process with Michael Gove

Morten Morland walks us through how he began drawing Michael Gove. I have noticed this. That there are people who are deceptive. You look at them and think, Oh they're easy to draw. Then you draw them and it won't happen. Yea that's the deceptive type. Any way here's what Morten said:

"The sketch above is of Michael Gove, who I’ve always found quite difficult to draw despite his wonderfully peculiar looks. It’s a bit like with Ken Clarke. There’s too much to pick up on! In Gove’s case it doesn’t help that his voice is even funnier than his appearance, which somehow leaves you trying to draw sound. 

And if that wasn’t enough, he’s deviously followed Jack Straw’s lead and ditched his trademark glasses, revealing eyes that are only half the size of those he used to present. 

Fortunately though he’s got lips that can pout for England, and when Gove becomes just a tad more famous, those alone should be able to carry a caricature."

A broader observation:

"The best caricaturists have always been those who can capture that one line or feature that tell the whole story, so to speak. I wouldn’t count myself among them, as I tend to elaborate and then elaborate some more. It’s a confidence issue more than anything else, and I hope I’m getting better at it. This applies to cartooning in general as well. How you compose your image – and how you edit it. 

The multi-award winning cartoonist Mike Tombs, originally from Coventry in England, has been one of Norway’s most successful, controversial and misunderstood cartoonists for three decades. Outside Norway his work has appeared in Punch, New Statesman and the Observer among others…"

In full here. 

Christopher Hitchens on mass, warrantless surveillance

In 2006 the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Detroit against the NSA. They accused the NSA of violating the US constitution by eavesdropping on people without court oversight. The case represented the first legal challenge to the surveillance programme. It sought an immediate end to wiretaps, saying they violate constitutional rights to privacy and free speech. 

The ACLU suit included Christopher Hitchens. He said in a full written statement and published on the ACLU website:

"People will say it’s wartime and we have a deadly enemy, and I agree with that. I was in favour of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan very strongly, but it is even more important in such a time that we don’t give away power to the unaccountable agencies that helped get us into this in the first place. It is extremely important we know what the rules are and there has to be a line drawn. You mustn’t turn emergency or panic measures into custom or practice."

He also said here, and echoed the bold words above:

"[It is] imperative that we do not take panic or emergency measures in the short term, and then permit them to become institutionalised."

He spoke briefly of the lawsuit in a speech here: 

"I am currently a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the National Security Agency, for doing what it knows how to do, which is bug American citizens instead of doing what it appears not to know how to do which is how to predict terrorist attacks in the United States."

My previous posts on Hitchens on Northern Ireland here, on segregated schools here and on the "parasitic class" here. On Albert Camus and "the rats" here. On Northern Ireland's "barbaric, sectarian leaders" here. His comment that anti-semites are "mentally and morally unwell" here. On Vaclav Havel here. On the US First Amendment here, on the US as an empire and class-based society here, and on how to succeed here. On women and poverty here. On the US Declaration of Independence here. Christopher Hitchens explained that he left the UK in part because of the libel laws, see here. Christopher Hitchens spoke here about the authority of bloggers and online writers (7m30s) (original video in full here). Hitchens on "being bored" as the worst sin here. On why Hitchens is such a compelling writer here. On cliché here. On socialism here. On Iran's "Baby Boomerang", here. On the need to defend the principles of the Enlightenment here. On thought crimes here. On the "encouraging signs of polarisation" here. On feeling "envious of someone who is young and active and starting out" here. Christopher Hitchens on the anti-Columbus movement. On opinion polls here. On the term "political spectrum"here. On Obama's Nobel Peace Prize here. Hitchens on how writing is hard, here. Hitchens on how a writer can never really stop, here. Hitchens explains why he is no longer a socialist, here. On the "some Christians fell into error" excuse here.

"The worst discrimination has come from closeted gay men"

To the Guardian, Mark Harold wrote a letter and said, "The worst discrimination has come from closeted gay men." Following an interview with Lord Browne, the Guardian (@guardian) asked readers to share their stories about coming out as LGBT in the workplace. Here's what Mark Harold said in full:

"I am a senior executive of a FTSE 100 company in my early 50s, and have been out at work since my mid-30s. The worst discrimination I’ve come across has come from closeted gay men. They live with insidious lies, and are often ruthless in protecting those lies. It’s important that gay men support each other, so the more who come out of the closet in business, the better."

The story of Sam “Skelly” McCrory is remarkable. This is a racist, sectarian, homophobic skin-head turned open and activist homosexual. He said to Henry McDonald in the Guardian:

"Even before I joined the UDA, I used to pretend I was homophobic. I went along with the crowd who were then close to the National Front. I hated Catholics, blacks, Jews and gays - even though I was gay myself. I was hiding my true self. I used to lie to the rest of C Company that I was having a relationship with a policewoman. Only Johnny knew it was a man. The lads used to ask me "Who's that policewoman you are shagging?" I couldn't tell them it was a man, it was such a macho, homophobic culture."

Paul Berry of DUP was a similar character. A religious loud-mouth and virulent homophobic... who was caught with a rent boy. Wikipedia reports it like this:

"Just days before the [2005] election, the Sunday World newspaper claimed that [Paul] Berry had met a man for a massage, with whom he had made initial contact via a gay chatroom, in a Belfast hotel room booked by Berry under a false name. Berry claimed that he was seeking treatment for a sports injury, and said he was considering legal action against the paper. He was not elected and was the only DUP candidate to experience a fall in their share of the vote in favour of the Ulster Unionist Party. 

Weeks later the DUP who, since 1977 have maintained a Christian fundamentalist stance on gay rights, and launched a campaign known as Save Ulster from Sodomy, suspended Berry from membership and commenced disciplinary proceedings. Berry launched a legal challenge but in February 2006 dropped these proceedings and resigned from the party."

#FutureOfJournalism - New journalism and hyperlinks

The Independent published an article on how the internet is changing journalism and hyperlinks, yet it didn't include a single hyperlink in it. Look here for a great example of effective use of the hyperlink on the media law blog, Inforrm. Andrew Sullivan said of hyperlinks:

"The superficiality [of a blog] masked considerable depth—greater depth, from one perspective, than the traditional media could offer. The reason was a single technological innovation: the hyperlink… a blogger’s chosen pull quote, unlike a columnist’s, can be effortlessly checked against the original. Now this innovation, pre-dating blogs but popularized by them, is increasingly central to mainstream journalism. 

The blogger can get away with less and afford fewer pretensions of authority. He is—more than any writer of the past—a node among other nodes, connected but unfinished without the links and the comments and the track-backs that make the blogosphere, at its best, a conversation, rather than a production."

With the future of journalism in mind we should turn to the two headline reports. 

One the leaked New York Times innovation report called "one of the key documents of this media age." The guys at Vox looked at the report here.

Two, Sir Howard Stringer’s report for the BBC, here:

"Given Buzzfeed, for example, was only founded in 2006, this raises the question of why the BBC’s global digital reach is not more significant. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that the BBC is punching well below its weight in the digital world."

We should also give a nod to the 2014 Stead Lecture given by James Harding - 'Journalism today'.

Also to the 2014 Charles Wheeler lecture delivered by Robert Peston (@peston) here.

Morten Morland (@mortenmorland) and the "Cartoon-Test"

Back in 2007, Morten Morland wrote about the LibDem leadership election. He predicted Nick Glegg's election would lead the party to oblivion. On what premise? Because Clegg is so exceptionally ordinary to draw and therefore exceptionally unremarkable to the electorate. "Mr. Some Bloke embodified" as Morten put it. He said:

"It’s simple, really. If a person is easy to draw, he’ll do well [in politics]. Because the likelihood is he’ll have other interesting characteristics too, which will make him appealing to journalists, thus raising the party’s profile in the media. And people watching are more likely to remember him, which is a bonus!

Morten then put Nick Clegg through what he called the "cartoon-test":

"A quick cartoon-test shows that Nick Clegg, probably the favourite in the party at the moment, will lead the party into eternal oblivion, if elected. 

He is Mr. Some Bloke embodified – despite the fact that he can speak several languages. 

I did a couple of quick sketches, and worringly for him, the best caricature came after I in frustration drew a lifeless mask. 

People will see Nick Clegg on TV and wonder whether he’s that guy from marketing whose name they can’t recall – or someone they’ve met at All Bar One.

Morten then put Chris Huhne through the "cartoon-test":

"Chris Huhne on the other hand, is better. Not great, but better. He’s got a prominent crazy eye – a feature that he famously shares with both Maggie and Tony. His mouth is similar to that of a hamster…or a mouse, and remember, those ears will keep growing. 

Between Clegg and Huhne, there really is no contest.

Art is theft, Ctd

Above is a Michael Ramirez cartoon, dated 17th Dec. 2003. Below is one by Morten Morland, from what looks like 2004. The second is not a copy or a theft, but an example of how artists can borrow and replicate; or, as could be the case, coincidentally come up with strikingly similar ideas. 

Ian Knox at work

The above is Ian Knox working ahead of the last ever episode of Hearts and Minds. Here he is producing a piece for the If You Ask Me segment written and narrated by Malachi O'Doherty. Watch here and see screen grabs of the end result.

Other posts on Ian Knox. Slideshow of Ian Knox riding his Penny Farthing here. Ian Knox riding his Penny Farthing during the Giro 2014 here. Ian Knox and friends on their Penny Farthings for the Hume/Dunlop anniversary cycle here. Ian Knox speaking with the Detail here. Chatting with Michael Smiley here. My blog post on Ian Knox's cartoons of loyalists and republicans, here. Ian Knox and I drawing together in the Black Box, Belfast in 2013 here. Ian Knox and I drawing at McHugh's, Belfast here. My coverage of Ian Knox's December 2013 exhibition, 'Lifelines and Deadlines' here. A selection of photos of Ian Knox at work here. My article here on why an Ian Knox prize to encourage satire and political cartooning like the Herb Block foundation in America which rewards and encourages future talent. A notice about my joint exhibition with Ian Knox on Slugger O'Toole is here. Ian Knox talking about flags, the Union and loyalists here.

Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) and gate-keeping the Snowden leaks

This is the charge repeatedly laid at Greenwald's door. Andrew Sullivan said it:

What the public knows and does not know about the NSA is determined by @ggreenwald, with no checks and balances: http://t.co/H5xAqP1RUb
— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) May 29, 2014

Greenwald flatly denies this charge, as he did here:

@sullydish That's false: 1) I collaborate w/editors & colleagues on every story; 2) WashPost, NYT, PP & Guardian all have much > 10,000 docs
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 29, 2014

Yet Glenn Greenwald has always insisted on full editorial control. He started blogging in 2005 and by the time he reached Salon he maintained the self-direction and individualism of an independent blogger. This independence continued with his move to the Guardian. As he said:

"I will write daily at the U.S. edition of The Guardian, which is based in New York, and will do so exactly the same way as I have here [Salon]: with full editorial independence and the same type of readership involvement and support upon which I’ve long relied, including a vibrant comment section. In addition to the daily writing, I’ll also write a more traditional once-a-week column there."

Andrew Sullivan further wrote here:

"The way the US government has behaved since 9/11 – its outrageous and criminal secret activity – seems to me to tilt the question in favor of the whistle-blower and the journalist, and some legal leniency – certainly for the journalist. But in all times there is a balance between these two contradictory democratic necessities – government secrecy and transparency – and at some point, the rule of law is the rule of law. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than all the alternatives. 

Right now, for example, what the public knows and does not know about the NSA is determined by Glenn Greenwald. He has in his possession vast troves of information that he is keeping secret, until he decides it will becomes public. He is picking and choosing what to divulge and doing so over an extended period of time. In that sense, he is close to being an alternative government, but without any internal checks and balances, and with no recourse for the public through the democratic system. What Mike is insisting is that this too is a genuine problem from the point of view of the public interest. Who gets to decide what the public knows? Right now, it’s Glenn. And I bet his security system for his data is extremely strong. He doesn’t want any leaks either, does he?"