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There Is Nothing You Possess That Power Cannot Take Away | Easily Distracted

19 Jan

As the result of a ruling the Supreme Court handed down yesterday (Golan v. Holder), copyright just got worse.

The contemporary businesses who have registered a powerful stake in exceptionally restrictive monopolies over intellectual property have themselves been enormous beneficiaries of a conception of the public domain as a fundamental and irreversible right of a free society. No matter: they would now see it ended. Better to kill the future than live in a present where you can only have two Ferraris in the driveway.

Hollywood and the music industry have tried repeatedly to kill media technologies and practices which ultimately have returned them enormous profits. …

What’s increasingly apparent about law, rights and liberties in the United States is that we have lived in our times in a bubble, an interregnum, a moment where some agencies and operations of the U.S. government, most particularly the Supreme Court of the United States, have moved to align the operations of law and authority with a properly expansive vision of human freedoms and Constitutionally-protected rights. That moment is passing, the pendulum swinging to more Gilded Age norms of brutalist law enforcement, oligarchic license, and an open sanction to the use of military power at the whim of the executive.

via There Is Nothing You Possess That Power Cannot Take Away | Easily Distracted.

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In Piracy Bill Fight, New Economy Rises Against Old – NYTimes.com

19 Jan

…the legislative battle over two once-obscure bills to combat the piracy of American movies, music, books and writing on the World Wide Web may prove to be a turning point for the way business is done in Washington. It represented a moment when the new economy rose up against the old.

“I think it is an important moment in the Capitol,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and an important opponent of the legislation. “Too often, legislation is about competing business interests. This is way beyond that. This is individual citizens rising up.”

It appeared by Wednesday evening that Congress would follow Bank of America, Netflix and Verizon as the latest institution to change course in the face of a netizen revolt.

via In Piracy Bill Fight, New Economy Rises Against Old – NYTimes.com.

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How the U.S. Can Help Humanity Achieve World Peace (Yes, World Peace) | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network

18 Jan

The U.S., which continues to cling to the atavistic adage that peace can only be assured by fighting and preparing to fight, remains a major impediment to a post-war world. We insist that we are a peaceful people, and yet we maintain a global military empire, with soldiers deployed in more than 100 countries. In the past decade we have been embroiled in two major wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as contributing to the recent bombing campaign against Libya.

Consider, moreover, these statistics from SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a respected, independent tracker of trends in conflict. The U.S. military budget has almost doubled in the past decade to $700 billion. If you include spending on nuclear weapons and homeland security, our annual outlays approach $1 trillion, which exceeds the defense budgets of all other nations combined. We spend more than six times as much on defense as China, our closest competitor, and more than 10 times as much as our former nemesis Russia.

The U.S. is also by far the world’s largest arms dealer.

via How the U.S. Can Help Humanity Achieve World Peace (Yes, World Peace) | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network.

Flying Blind: Inside the Federal Reserve’s Damning 2006 Transcript – Derek Thompson – Business – The Atlantic

17 Jan

“The problem was not a lack of information,” Binyamin Appelbaum writes in the New York Times. “It was a lack of comprehension, born in part of their deep confidence in economic forecasting models that turned out to be broken.” It was total systemic failure, from 2006 into 2008, to diagnose a crisis and act to stop it, based partly on overconfidence that, in the economy, we had built an unstallable machine — that the plane could, quite certainly, fly itself.

via Flying Blind: Inside the Federal Reserve’s Damning 2006 Transcript – Derek Thompson – Business – The Atlantic.

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Towards a 21-hour working week? — Crooked Timber

15 Jan

An interesting discussion or the idea that a shorter workweek is an important component of a more sustainable world. We need more time for play, in the deepest sense of that word.

Last Wednesday I attended an event at LSE (under the auspices of the New Economics Foundation) exploring the idea of working-time reduction with an eventual goal of moving to a normal working week of 21 hours. …

The three speakers were Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth), Robert Skidelsky (former Tory spokesman in the Lords, but goodness knows what his party affiliation is today) and Tim Jackson (author of Prosperity Without Growth).

Schor explained that labour-time reduction had been an issue twenty years ago (I guess she was thinking of people like André Gorz) but has slipped out of the policy debate during the boom years. Now, in the post-2008 world, governments are pushing the line that we all need to work harder, for more hours and for more of our lives. But that, argued Schor is exactly wrong. Working-time reduction offers the threefold benefit of few people being unemployed, of less ecological damage and of people having more time to spend on social activities (cue mention of The Big Society). Even if we could grow our way to full employment, we shouldn’t. Rather we should reorient away from overconsumption towards leading better quality lives. More time-stressed households are have more carbon-intensive lifestyles. She held up the Netherlands as a model of how to start moving in this direction. Apparently, the Dutch are the slackers of Europe generally and, some years ago, made new civil service contracts 80%. You have the freedom there to choose to be a five, four, three, two or one-day-a week employee.

via Towards a 21-hour working week? — Crooked Timber.

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CENSORED NEWS: Wikileaks revealed US espionage of Indigenous Peoples in 2011

11 Jan

In the Censored News pick for the Best of the Best in 2011, Wikileaks claims first prize. Wikileaks exposed the US corporate schemes, espionage, promotion of mining and efforts globally to halt passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Wikileaks revealed extensive espionage of Indigenous Peoples, including the Mapuche and Mohawks, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales, who ushered in a new Indigenous global rights campaign.

The release of the US diplomatic cables of the US State Department confirmed that the US feared the power of Indigenous Peoples, specifically their claims to their traditional territories, a right stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Further, the Declaration states the right of free, prior and informed consent before development proceeds and protects intellectual and cultural property rights.

via CENSORED NEWS: Wikileaks revealed US espionage of Indigenous Peoples in 2011.

The EPA’s Weak Stance on Nasty, Immune System-Wrecking Dioxins – Barry Estabrook – Health – The Atlantic

11 Jan

It’s difficult to see how anyone can consider issues surrounding potentially fatal poisons as irrelevant to human health. The European Union and World Health Organization have already established safe limits for dioxins in food. They are weaker than those proposed by the EPA, but in the case of dioxins, any limitations are better than none — which is what we might end up with if the food companies succeed in silencing the EPA scientists.

via The EPA’s Weak Stance on Nasty, Immune System-Wrecking Dioxins – Barry Estabrook – Health – The Atlantic.

As Romney Advances, Private Equity Becomes Part of the Debate – NYTimes.com

11 Jan

Just as Mr. Romney and his advisers are defending his work at Bain, the industry is also trying to blunt some of the attacks. For a group of Wall Street executives who prefer to operate out of the spotlight, the repercussions could be considerable. Among the things the industry wants to preserve is favorable tax treatment for profits on private equity deals.

via As Romney Advances, Private Equity Becomes Part of the Debate – NYTimes.com.

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Our looming energy wars – Energy – Salon.com

10 Jan

The Strait of Hormuz is, however, only one of several hot spots where energy, politics and geography are likely to mix in dangerous ways in 2012 and beyond. Keep your eye as well on the East and South China Seas, the Caspian Sea basin and an energy-rich Arctic that is losing its sea ice. In all of these places, countries are disputing control over the production and transportation of energy, and arguing about national boundaries and/or rights of passage.

via Our looming energy wars – Energy – Salon.com.

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The Greatness of Ron Paul – Robert Wright – Politics – The Atlantic

9 Jan

…Paul is making one contribution to the foreign policy debate that could have enduring value.

It doesn’t lie in the substance of his foreign policy views (which I’m largely but not wholly in sympathy with) but in the way he explains them. Paul routinely performs a simple thought experiment: He tries to imagine how the world looks to people other than Americans.

This is such a radical departure from the prevailing American mindset that some of Paul’s critics see it as more evidence of his weirdness. A video montage meant to discredit him shows him taking the perspective of Iran. After observing that Israel and America and China have nukes, he asks about Iranians, “Why wouldn’t it be natural that they’d want a weapon? Internationally they’d be given more respect.”

via The Greatness of Ron Paul – Robert Wright – Politics – The Atlantic.

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