The Ojai Post

Another low for the one who lacks imagination...

Ok, so now we have the original "Ojai Post," followed by the French sounding "La Ojai Valley Epost," and now the "Uncensored Ojai Poste," with the "e" on the end...

If I ever feel CENSORED, my blog will be "De Ojai Frei Post..."

And on my blog the word "post" is pronounced so it rhymes with "lost," instead of the "Post" that rhymes with "boast..."

Whoops! The above was me.

Seriously, congratulations Jock!

Let Freedom of the Press Ring!!

It will be interesting to see how folks feel about including full identification with every comment...

And the experience of being THE ONE in the editor's seat should be good for your evolution...

Seems less like a celebration of freedom from censorship and more like a theft of copyright, intellectual property or even trademark infringement of this site!

I'd have to agree with LS (whoever that is :) on this one. Fortunately for Jock, Tyler's general mellowness probably includes not only ignoring the implosion of society but also deciding not to waste his time pursuing legal action. My guess is that the reasoning goes something like this: Why DO something when you can just sit back and cheer the Lakers?

I've been thinking for months and months that someone in our midst has had a disturbing, unnatural and bent-on-revenge fixation on poor Tyler and the Ojai Post....

In the competitive and reader-poaching spirit Jock? As if.

Oh dear...lol

Well well well.

Anonymous Commenter #5 has the same IP address as Jock Doubleday.

Anonymity is just fine when you're taking a poke at me, but its beneath you when someone is taking a poke at you or you're on your own holier-than-thou site.

Stay classy, Jock The Decider.

I just KNEW that was him! And he knows full well who I am. Shame, shame, once again.

Did he take his blog down?

Priceless!

from jock's facebook page, announcing his new site-

There is only one rule for posting on this blog: We want to know who you are.

what is the Illuminatti?

Tyler:

You wouldn't let Jock post or comment as himself . . . so I guess he had to go anonymous like many of the other commenters here.

That's the thing about censorship. People just keep doing end-runs around it. :)

I wonder if Tyler would also give out other people's names who comment anonymously.

Or does Tyler only do that to certain people?

anonymous2 -

That's not true - I never once deleted a comment of Jock's, and he has commented multiple times in the last week as himself.

What is true is that I suspended his author privileges, while still keeping every post he ever submitted still accessible. That's not censorship.

Nobody HAS to go anonymous (or pseudonymous) - its an option that I allow, and I think it has pros that ultimately outweigh the cons of not allowing anonymity.

jock, you are done here. obviously most of these comments are yours. speak to a therapist. your obsession with tyler and this site is clinical and quite frankly, frightening.

Re: the question about the Illumaniti, take a look at the guy who is one of the leaders of the "Don't Call Us Conspiracists!!!" movement (Sort of a British version of Alex Jones)...

Beware the rich and powerful international cabal of Shape Shifters, y'all!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TidD_MnrfHI

That blog has already been removed from the web.

I am an old friend of Jock's from high school. I don't agree with many of Jock's beliefs. There is some truth in some of the things he says. As I age I know fewer and fewer things as certain.

We all have beliefs that are unwarrented from the information we have at hand to draw conclusions. It doesn't really bother me that some of Jock's beliefs are atypical. What bothers me about Jock and many of those who respond to him is...lack of forgiveness .

Lester Bangs review of the song "Madame George" from Van Morrison's Astral Weeks should be a reminder to us all. There is humanity even in the strangest of us. We are all precious; Jock is a person and in him we should see the miracle of each human life.

"I am broken, I am bitter
I'm the problem, I'm the politician
Watching for my sky to get torn apart
C'mon and break me"

Matt Kaul

Hi Matt,

Let me just chime in here real quick...The situation here (as I see it, anyway) over the past year or so has very little to do with Jock's beliefs (we have ALL had our differences of opinions and have all engaged in healthy - and sometimes not so healthy - debates which make for stimulating reading) and EVERYTHING to do with the way he has chosen to engage (or not to engage, as the case may be) with the Ojai Post community. It would take too long to go into it right now, but should you care to do some digging through some old threads, you would see what I am referring to. His style early on was to do a "drive by" on a thread, leave his Troll Poop, and then run off and completely ignore those who (in the beginning at least) tried to engage in conversation. He made outlandish predictions and refused to address them when questioned by us when time had passed and they did not come to fruition. He has become more and more sanctimonious and disagreeable over the past six months or so....And now, his tone of late has been unnessecarily rude, argumentative, paranoid, self-centered and downright abusive.

Look, I met Jock when he first moved to Ojai and thought he was a very cool, nice guy...I have no doubt he still has that side to him. But here on the OP, he has turned into a first class putz! He should realize that, take his lumps and either apologize to Tyler or simply slink away for a while... His puerile escalation of the situation speaks to his character, not of Tyler's or OP readers...

Just my two cents. You seem like an extremely intelligent, compassionate and fair individual. Hope to "see" you around more on these threads - should you choose to stick around. :)

A bright good morning to all of Ojai -- or at least to the five or so anonymous commenters who may be reading this. :)

Apologies for not writing sooner. Saturday night I was at G.L.'s birthday party (Lisa, you know who G.L. is, right? -- just by the initials? -- and I'm sure that Laura Stinchfield does too ;) . . . And Sunday I was putting in a garden for a friend. Today I will be putting in a garden for my cousin, so I'm caught between gardens -- a wonderful place to be!

I commented on Suza's article on water quality the morning of Tuesday June 23. Anyone interested in reading that comment will not find it on the Ojai Post. All are welcome to come to The Uncensored Ojai Poste to view that comment:

http://uncensoredojaiposte.blogspot.com/

My comment was made and declined at the height of the Obamahawk U.S. Birth Certificate "debate" -- not a debate, really, but a flurry of ad hominem attacks from the usual anonymous commenters, and one or two others, including Tyler -- warding off any possible discussion of the issue at hand.

But let's not get off topic and talk about political issues. Let's get back to Ojai Gossip's -- I mean, Ojai Post's -- favorite topic: "Who said what about whom and how they're wrong."

As the often reticent Tyler had joined in the ad hominem attacks by throwing into the ring a glove labeled anyone-who-suggests-that-a-politician-might-be-lying-must-be-a-conspiracy-theorist, and as Tyler seemed a bit weary of Yours Truly (who wouldn't be? nobody wants to talk about boring stuff like the Constitution -- and can't we stop that Jock guy somehow from posting?), I felt that Tyler's continuing and well-documented distaste for my words had reached its final limit -- i.e., the point at which he felt it necessary to bar me from making comments.

I had a few more things to say before my graceful exit, however, and my only other option seemed to be to join the slimy cowards who regularly comment anonymously on the Post. It felt sickening, but there didn't seem to be another way to get onto the Post to even moderately defend what was worth defending.

It occurred to me that by commenting anonymously I could mock anonymous commenting. I used that comforting thought to balance the sickening feeling in my stomach.

I put enough clues in the comment to ensure that people would know who was commenting. It was a big belly laugh for me when the Post's cadre of anonymous commenters, with the help of the editor, put their brain cells together to figure out that the anonymous commenter was -- wait for it! -- Jock Doubleday! . . . and publicly congratulated themselves on their sleuthing abilities! One must ask who else on the forum might EVER talk about "the implosion of society" or dare to lampoon the Post's dignified editor for his addiction to trivial pursuit.

LTOR's assertion that it's "priceless" that I commented anonymously on the Ojai Post is, I fear, incorrect. My commenting anonymously on the Ojai Post is worth about two cents, which is what the other anonymous commenters' comments are worth.

I am happy to explain to LTOR what hypocrisy (in his mind, "pricelessness") is. . . . It would be "priceless" if, having stated on The Uncensored Ojai Poste that I want to know who all posters are, I posted there anonymously. That's hypocrisy. It is not hypocrisy to post anonymously on a largely anonymous forum. But thank you, LTOR, for your opinion -- anonymous as always. :)

Let's turn to Tyler's other claim, that he has NOT censored one of his authors because he has allowed this author's past articles to remain in the archives.

As the five or so readers of the present comment no doubt remember, Tyler fired me as an author -- sorry, put me on "hiatus" :) -- a few minutes after I posted my video, "Breakfast with Jock: Top Ten Things I Love about Ojai":

http://www.ojaipost.com/2008/10/breakfast_with_jock_top_ten_th.shtml

Here is Tyler's chipper public pink slip, in its entirety:

"Hi Jock -
I hope the community joins me in sharing best wishes for you on your hiatus from The Ojai Post. You are of course welcome to participate in the comments, but I think the break from the home page will do us all some good.
Blessings,
Tyler"

Notice that Tyler pretends to speak for the community. But the community had something else in mind -- as can be discovered in the comments below "Breakfast with Jock." The only exception is "Harlequin." (One wonders if "Harlequin" is Tyler. :)

Notice that there is no reason given for the firing. (I talked to Ojai Post author Ray Powers a week or so later and he said that, from Tyler's words, he thought there had been some kind of agreement between Tyler and me regarding my "taking a vacation." Ray had no idea that I had been fired.)

To explain his firing me for posting "Breakfast with Jock," Tyler would have had to get specific, and he couldn't do that. So he took the politician's way -- mimicking the Obamahawk Sidestep -- and simply said "see you later" and went on with his day.

It would have been obvious to anyone that I had been fired (not "put on hiatus") if my archived articles had been deleted. If Tyler had deleted my archived posts, he would not have been able to claim that I am "on hiatus." So he kept my archived posts and continues to use them to claim he hasn't censored me.

In late September 2008, I sent an email to Tyler telling him that I had created a political poem based on Gil Scott-Heron's poem, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." I asked him if would it be okay if I posted this poem on the Ojai Post or on another of his forums. Tyler replied that he would not tell me what I could post.

Having asked for guidelines and received none, I went further in trying to meet his sensibilities. I proposed a ratio of 2:1 -- two local articles to one global article. Tyler wrote back to say that he wouldn't give me any ratios or guidelines for what could be posted, but that if he felt my articles were not in keeping with the Post's tone, I would be asked to retire as an author.

A few days later, I posted "Breakfast with Jock." And Tyler fired me for posting that video. And because Tyler fired me for posting that video, we're still talking about it now. Censorship always rejuvenates and inspires the censored, as a study of history will attest.

It turns out that everyone's opinion matters -- especially to the person whose opinion it is -- and civil discussion in a free society is always legitimate, no matter who the participant is. If it were Tyler's personal blog, it would be a different matter. But the Ojai Post has clearly been set up to be about and for the community. It is a community forum. Selecting certain community members for dismissal is in no way appropriate.

The flurry of anonymous comments and hoopla over personalities in the Ojai Post reminds me of high school, in which putting people down behind their backs is the order of the day. This is disturbing on more than one level, but the most obvious is that we're no longer in high school. We're adults. We've graduated -- most of us.

Perhaps it's time to meet issues, to look around, to see that society is changing at avalanche speed and that the people in charge are either 1) clueless as to how to stop the wreckage or 2) the perpetrators of that wreckage. Most of my articles (still archived! :) have attempted to inspire research into these issues.

Anyone who wants to research the origins of the present global collapse might begin with the Federal Reserve. Just google "Federal Reserve Act 1913." If you prefer information presented by video, go here:
http://www.livevideo.com/media/tag/federal-reserve-act-of-1913.aspx

On The Uncensored Ojai Poste, accountability is encouraged, because authorship of every post or comment is required. This is how you build community.

Obviously everyone has an opinion. Opinions will always differ -- and that's okay! The key to flowering discussion is a forum in which opinions are expressed by people, not by anonymous handles. We measure our speech when we are known to be the author of that speech. We have no incentive to measure our words, or even to say something intelligible, when we speak anonymously.

I spoke many times to Tyler about the problem of anonymity, but his answer was that the Ojai Post is just a blog and that anyway it's difficult to prove that someone is who they say they are. In fact, as we have seen, the Ojai Post is not just a blog. If it were just a blog, it would be called "Tyler's Blog," or something to that effect. Instead, it has the name of a newspaper: "The Ojai Post." So it does matter who's speaking, because a community of handles is not a community.

As for authorship/identity, it's not difficult to prove. Of course, even a U.S. Passport can be forged. Even a president's U.S. Birth Certificate can be forged:
http://www.fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate
But reasonable assurance of identity can be found with proper effort, and that's the best we can do.

Perhaps the editor of the Ojai Post has gone a bit far in using his position to determine what's good for the community. How about letting the community decide whose posts are good/relevant/interesting?

Tyler calls me the Decider because I dare to post my own opinions, which sometimes differ from his. As a censored Ojai Post author, I suggest that it may be the other way around.

Sincerely,
Jock Doubleday
Director
Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.
A California 501(c)3 Nonprofit Corporation
director@spontaneouscreation.org

P.S. If anyone wants to talk about issues, or just post a picture of your dog, come over to The Uncensored Ojai Poste! We welcome you and encourage you to speak your mind under the umbrella of your name. (Pet names welcome but not required. :)

P.P.S. We're all waiting for the amazing moment when the editor of the Ojai Post "outs" all of the anonymous commenters, now that he has outed one. Or we are waiting for the moment when Tyler admits that his actions toward community members are selective.

P.P.P.S. Tyler's "green" (i.e., ecological) New Agey persona is extremely well crafted. In fact, he's about as green as a charbroiled steak. Although I don't believe in any particular god, I pray to the general Divine for Tyler's evolution. That's why we're here in Ojai, isn't it? :)

Regarding the accusation that I "declined" a comment - this is false. If your comment was held up because of the number of links or the spam filter, then you need to email me to free it up. It is very clearly stated on the comment pending page. You did not do that. I have never declined a comment from you. I am happy to have comments posted here for discussion, regardless of whether I agree on it. I have been very consistent on that policy.

Regarding putting you on hiatus - it was a decision I did not take lightly, and I did not enjoy having to do that. I indeed hoped that it would be a hiatus. You had two choices: try to make things right (or better), or try to make things worse. You took the latter path - you went on numerous websites, claiming censorship, trying to get other people totally unrelated to Ojai to come to this site and defend you while accusing me. You also sent out a mass email crying censorship. Let's face it - you got pissed, and you did what a pissed person would do. If you were me, would you invite you back based on your actions?

Regarding firing vs. hiatus - I don't see how that affects the archive of content. The Washington Post fired Dan Froomkin, but they aren't going to scrub the archives of his content. I never had the intention of deleting your content, and it had nothing to do with appearances. Your contributions were increasingly out of alignment with The Ojai Post readership, and with how you initially presented yourself to me and the community. (www.ojaipost.com/jock.shtml)

Regarding your new site - I wish you best of success. I have encouraged you for quite some time to start an Ojai-related site, despite the parasitic name you've chosen. Regarding your statement, "This is how you build community" - well the proof is in the pudding.

Regarding the name of the site - it was loosely named after a community blog - The Huffington Post. Being a newspaper would imply that there is a revenue model, but there is none - it is a non-commercial site with no advertising that I maintain at my expense.

Regarding me going too far in using my position to determine what's best for the community - perhaps I have. I have expressed this concern multiple times that I find the balance in effectively managing this community. In general I do let the community decide what's good/relevant/interesting. In my view, that opinion regarding your posts was made, and I ultimately acted on it. I would also note that the tone of your posts grew increasingly fear-based and conspiracy-fueled.

Regarding your statement: "Tyler calls me the Decider because I dare to post my own opinions" - no, that is false. I call you The Decider, because you tell us what is important and what is not. It has nothing to do with your opinions, which do in fact frequently differ from mine.

Regarding this: "We're all waiting for the amazing moment when the editor of the Ojai Post "outs" all of the anonymous commenters, now that he has outed one. Tyler admits that his actions toward community members are selective." I have no intention of "outing" all of the anonymous commenters, even if I had the ability to do so. As a manager of a community, sometimes I have to take selective action.

Regarding my persona - I have no need to defend myself, the organizations I'm involved in, or my contribution to the community. I do what I do because its what I feel is important, not what you say is.

With all the disharmony, wars, strife and injury people inflict on one another daily in this world, why are we doing the same here? Why are we spending valuable time trying to hurt each other and muddying up the water with arguing when there are other things we could do to 'heal' the world? Ojai is this place full of compassionate people who get so angry at the injustices of the world. I cannot imagine that a post in Ojai has become the hotbed for vitriol, anger and noxious cynicism.
I realize there is a point at which we each state our points and hopefully enlighten others to information they've missed but this is ridiculous. There is also a point at which we divide ourselves as people/families and communities and we are here -- again. If we are acting like hateful children why do we think we are any better than someone who kicks a dog or tortures a prisoner? I just don't get this.
Jock, why keep reading the post if you don't agree with it or like it. Why meanwhile stop allowing it to do what good it does by badgering Tyler? Tyler? why entertain Jock? Can we just put a button somewhere on the post where people can either have Jock comments visible or not as they see fit? Jock? isn't there some supreme good you should be doing in the world?
Let Tyler run his post as he sees fit. Jock, you do the same. Simple, right?

You are absolutely right, DK...People thousands of miles away have been shot, beaten and rounded up right before our very eyes these past few weeks and are now being detained and tortured - simply because of their "audacity of hope" to do the impossible in their country: trying to secure for themselves what we (on this thread) are now so recklessly taking for granted and...let's face it... abusing.

I feel guilty for my participation in this....and I apologize and (for now at least) will desist in engaging in this way any further. I suggest that Jock think very hard about just what it is he is professing to be so enlightened about, and look within to evaluate whether he is or is not living up to those lofty standards. Tyler? Well...we all know he hits a home run every time!

Always the same error perpetuates itself. We maintain our self-sufficiency; perceiving very accurately the faults of others, but not noticing, in our pride, that we commit the self-same faults.

Ran across this interesting article that appears appropos...

from Spectator.uk.co:

Cass Sunstein — co-author of the hugely influential Nudge and an adviser to President Obama — unveils his new theory of ‘group polarisation’, and explains why, when like-minded people spend time with each other, their views become not only more confident but more extreme.

So are you saying I need to get off my butt, get out of my expensive massage chair, put down my imported beer, shut off my samsung hdtv, put on my expensive imported Italian shoes, go out and get in my BMW, round up all my friends from their fancy homes, and DO SOMETHING about CENSORSHIP?