[extropy-chat] REAL POLITIK IN THE WTA... and so long...

[Jose Cordeiro]

  Dear friends,
       This I hope will be my last message here for a long time. I am tired of all this infighting and I have better things to do, like you too. So please, don’t read any further if you are thinking you are wasting your time now, and disregard any pornographic material in between.
       I want to take this time to briefly describe the “real politik” in the WTA, which unfortunately follows very traditional and past left-right models. I will be sarcastic so that you get a more quick reaction and because that is my culture and general character, as you have surely noticed by now. Please, don’t be offended, but if you do, it is probably because you deserve it, as we say in Spanish: “el que se pica es porque aji come”. I am not sure about the equivalent in English, but you can do some googling and have fun.
       The current WTA Board is basically controlled by the large socialist block led Stalinistically by James Hughes. The other members are Mark Walker, Mike LaTorra, George Dvorsky, Nick Bostrom and Gaurav Gupta (some of whom seem to have had orgasms attacking me, both publicly and privately). Then there are two mostly independent characters (Giulio Prisco and Mike Treder) and the two anti-communists (Joseph Bloch and myself). You can check some general lines by seeing many of the WTA Board files www.transhumanism.org/mailman/private/wtaboard and vote results groups.yahoo.com/group/wtaboard. Now, let’s see these persons one by one and I also apologize for letting out some dirty secrets of all involved, c’est la vie:
  James Hughes has a great job that lets him devote his time almost continuously to the WTA. He is a former Marxist who has partially evolved into socialism, however, he keeps his Stalinist views and if you happen to be his target, he will continue until he destroys you. If you talk long enough with him, especially when he is drunk, he will tell you bad things about everybody, no exceptions, including himself. In fact, he formerly had in his web page that he hated his own sex (sadly he took it away, not his sex but the comments on it). He will do anything to get his objective, spare no prisoners, and forget about ethics. If needed, he will invent things, create stories, cheat and try to change the past. He loves to make enemies in the WTA, among transhumanists and other groups in general. James Hughes intensely hates Natasha Vita-More (more than Max More), his eyes turn red and his jaws begin salivating when he talks about her, maybe even more than when he thinks of Leon Kass or
 Francis Fukuyama. He is the scorpion who might destroy the WTA. He is a terrible manager who has also overseeing losing $12,000 from members and sponsors, and he hates audits, even if free. (Please, don’t ever give anymore money to WTA, but at least until its accounts are audited).
  Mark Walker is the grayest of the gray (he likes gray and black) personalities in the current WTA Board. If he disappeared tomorrow, no one would notice him missing. His claims to fame are to write some unreadable philosophical documents and to do some editing, besides not even caring to participate in half of the WTA Board votes: groups.yahoo.com/group/wtaboard. If needed, he will come running to do the dirty work that James Hughes would not do himself in order to keep their appearances of independence. He also hates me very deeply, intensely and passionately, almost as much as James Hughes loves (?) me.
  Mike LaTorra is a good hearted man, unless you discuss with him his Buddhist and socialist ideas. Then he gets really mad and threatens you with not being his friend and hoping that you will have a better reincarnation next time. He is known for putting together the WTA News and loving science fiction. He is very worried because he feels that he is getting old (aren’t we all?). If you are a Stalinist, but a “good” Stalinist, who makes nice web pages and translates well into Russian, Mike LaTorra will invite you to join his Club since he has a nice double morality.
  George Dvorsky has been very busy with some personal and work problems after losing his previous job, and he then has let the Toronto TA almost die. He is known for inviting some well-known clowns (this is the exact word used by Nick Bostrom) to his conference in Toronto and losing about $7,000 with the full cooperation of James Hughes. However, almost two years after the fact, the exact numbers are unknown. He is also the first transhumanist to have cloned himself in order to vote twice in WTA Board votes. Other than that, his departure from the WTA Board to IEET, together with Mark Walker, will hardly be noticed.
  Nick Bostrom keeps low profile for his public secret about learning transhumanist concepts and ideas from Extropy Institute and its members. He plagiarized most of the principles and frequently asked questions from the work of Sasha Chislenko, Max Moore, Harvey Newstrom and others. Because of his socialist leanings, he philosophized that he would start an apolitical umbrella organization, supposedly the current WTA, which is sadly neither apolitical nor an umbrella (or it certainly has many holes). He lets James Hughes do all the dirty work to keep his profile untouched, while he continues to package and repackage the ideas of others, with no moral drawbacks. He risks becoming to transhumanism what Hwang Woo-suk has become to cloning.
  Gaurav Gupta is a very immature and unpredictable person. He wrote that he “cursed the day (he) joined” the WTA, he slandered the founders of WTA-India (another Indian and myself), he resigned from the WTA Board, later he returned saying that he did not want to resign, then he looked for a girl friend to have a free ticket to come with him to Venezuela, and finally he said that he was not going to travel anyway. His only real contribution to the WTA Board has been to help writing a pamphlet about AI, useless but better than nothing.
  Giulio Prisco is the person that I admire the most in the WTA Board. He is calm, intelligent, tolerant, active and thoughtful. Even though he has a socialist leaning, he is very willing to compromise, and he is always looking for the most practical and better solutions. I think that is part of his scientific training which allows him to discern what works from what does not work. He has demonstrated to be very politically independent in the quarrelsome WTA Board; however, in times of crisis, he sides with the majority in order to preserve a false harmony.
  Mike Treder is almost as political independent as Giulio Prisco, also with a small socialist leaning, but sometimes he runs to help James Hughes (even though James Hughes has said that he is actually an asshole for not sharing some of his fantastic ideas about CRN with WTA, so Mike, watch out for your true friends). He designed one the best introductory pages about transhumanism, organized several transhumanist meetings in NY, was a dutiful treasurer while he lasted and is an incredible promoter of responsible nanotechnology.
  Joseph Bloch has continuously placed human freedom and human dignity above any totalitarian method to arrive to posthumanity. He is the only other staunch anti-communist in the group and is continuously attacked by James Hughes and his peons. He has devoted part of his time and money to promote the WTA in public events like some science fiction conferences and to organize transhumanist meetings in NJ. He is very active in the WTA Board and is heavily under fire from James Hughes, who did not want to approve his original statement against totalitarian systems.
  Jose Cordeiro is an “underdeveloped right-winger” according to James Hughes, a “rat” according to Gaurav Gupta, an asshole and many other nice words to some WTA members. Indeed, he is a warrior fighting for freedom in totalitarian Venezuela, and has arrested once and has been threatened to be killed twice by those same totalitarian chavistas that James Hughes and Danila Medvedev love so much. Transhumanistically speaking, he organized the largest and most accredited TV conference, helped starting the Spanish and soon Portuguese web pages, defends openly the extropian and other non socialist transhumanist positions, has begun and supported at least half of the current WTA Chapters and is now coediting the first book about transhumanism in Korean.
       But the WTA Board is not the end of the story, because James Hughes saw that some non socialists kept infiltrating the WTA. The cases of Harvey Newstrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Bruce Klein are notable (James Hughes loved to confront them), and now it is my turn and soon it will be others. For that reason, James Hughes started with most of his peons a “think tank” called the IEET, which would not be accountable to anyone but himself (the IEET has an extra E for ethics in the title but James Hughes wipes his behind with ethics, particularly if you oppose him). He first used me as a fellow to have some names, but never published any of my documents and then threw me out like an “underdeveloped right-winger”. The IET (with just one E, no ethics for simplicity) wants to be what the WTA could not be: the socialist group to promote his and Nick’s ideas, and forget about any problematic members or elections. Just like the WTA grew out of the ExI, now the IET was the perfectly
 controlled socialist transhumanist group. Sure, the IET supposedly had the grandiose objective to be a real think tank, but the real politik behind was also clear.
       I hate these simple definitions myself, but it is the easiest and most ironic way to transmit the message. Also, if you don’t like it: shoot the message but not the messenger (or is it the other way around?). I think that we should move forward from left-wingers and right-wingers to become up-wingers, as FM-2030 described, but James Hughes has made this impossible within the WTA. He is obsessed with his deep hatred of extropians and his particular idea, even if not Marxist anymore, but he should probably get some advice from Ronald Bailey (http://www.reason.com/rb/rb051105.shtml).
        Well, if you have read up to now and still have not killed me, think seriously about these issues if you want the WTA to achieve the goals most of us have in mind. If the WTA keeps being the Hughes or Socialist TA, that might be fine too if James Hughes had the decency of acknowledging it and saying that transhumanists who oppose his views are not welcome. James Hughes has to recognize that his period as Executive Director has been bad and that his performance was rather mediocre, besides financially irresponsible, intolerant, unethical and based on a double morality. I hope all these comments will serve to straighten out the WTA in the future.
       The WTA is right now a fringe organization within a fringe movement (and dare I say while looking for a mirror, with some fringe people too). If transhumanism is really going to succeed, we have to look forward united, with tolerance and ethics. I really tried my best in the WTA, and I did all I could while in the WTA Board. I am no longer interested in this useless infighting, if James Hughes believes that he has won, let it be, but right now the WTA, and particularly its Board, is a not functioning group because of the way that James Hughes uses and abuses power. I have other things to do that the WTA is certainly not doing. But if you thought that James Hughes or anyone was indispensable, you are wrong. In fact, the cemeteries are full of previously indispensable people. The WTA has now paying a staffer full time to do most of the needed work. What is actually indispensable is to correct the situation in the WTA, if it ever is going to change for the better.
       James, you don’t need to bar me since I will be putting all messages with the WTA word in a quarantined folder for at least two months. I don’t want to know what will happen until then. If the WTA can not solve its problems, it might not have a future, or even worse, a useless future. Also, don’t send me any Emails because I will not read WTA messages for that time. If anyone from the WTA needs to contact me just for a life or death problem write to another Email (jose at cordeiro.org). If anyone is just going to flame and scream asshole, send your messages to yet another Email (james.hughes at trincoll.edu). I am very disappointed with the WTA after several years, so if you still have not noticed that I am upset: yes, I am. Please, as an advice, don’t waste your time and money to support the rotten ego of James Hughes. If transhumanism succeeds, it will certainly not be because of the WTA as it is today.
       I hope that James Hughes, since he says that he is a Buddhist, reincarnates into a better person, and stops hating his own sex and everybody else who does not agree with him (he really has to fix some deep psychological problems). Others should also work at improving the WTA, and I wish well to the new WTA Board members. I will finish by saying that I will do my best as well and forgive my crudeness, I am only human as well. Well, those are my final 2 Kbits of news and best of luck to you all and to the WTA, it really needs it...
       Transhumanistically yours,




La vie est belle!

Yosé (www.cordeiro.org)

Caracas, Venezuela, Americas, TerraNostra, Solar System, Milky Way, Multiverse


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20060114/e2187ee8/attachment.html>