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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.

The Tea Party’s Not-So-Civil War – NYTimes.com

12 Jan

When you talk to activists around the state, as I did recently during a weeklong visit, you hear a lot about Romney’s record on health care, specifically, and about his ideological squishiness in general. But you also come to understand that the antipathy in Tea Party circles is more visceral. It’s a reaction to what they perceive as Romney’s synthetic and calculating persona, the sense that he somehow embodies everything that’s false and impenetrable about the parties in Washington. And so South Carolina, which will hold its presidential primary Jan. 21, is the place where two powerful political vehicles — Mitt Romney’s establishment-backed campaign and the three-year-old Tea Party insurgency — will collide full force. It’s here where Tea Party activists have expected to assert their influence over the party’s nominating process. For most of them, that means, above all, stopping Mitt.

The problem is that they’ve had a hard time settling on any obvious alternative to Romney, in a way that might transform the primary into a clear, binary choice.

via The Tea Party’s Not-So-Civil War – NYTimes.com.

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Occupii Membership Steadily Growing and Decentralized | Irregular Times

12 Jan

It’s been about two weeks since Occupii.org, the new social network site for the Occupy movement, got kick started. A look at membership trends suggests that overall membership is steadily growing, and that it’s decentralized. Most people are not joining the two biggest groups at Occupii, Occupy USA and Occupy UK, but are rather headed to a large number of smaller groups focused on particular interests, like running a newspaper.

via Occupii Membership Steadily Growing and Decentralized | Irregular Times.

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.

Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress: The Day After New Hampshire

11 Jan

I take Ron Paul’s strong second-place in the Republican New Hampshire primary last night as a very good thing for people like me who want more government respect for the First Amendment and an end to unconstitutional wars.

Yes, there are positions that Ron Paul holds which I strongly oppose – notably his call for a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion, which is inconsistent with libertarian philosophy and its view that the government should stay out of our lives. And I’m not at all happy about the racist observations that appeared under his name in his newsletter two decades ago.

But there’s a lot to commend in Ron Paul. He not only opposes undeclared wars but the NDAA signed into law by Obama and SOPA now under consideration in Congress. He wants an end to the massive Federal anti-drug enforcement, which he correctly sees as an invasion of privacy.

And his Republican rivals, who share none of his virtues, share all of his serious political defects.

via Paul Levinson’s Infinite Regress: The Day After New Hampshire.

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What about Ron Paul’s strong New Hampshire showing? – War Room – Salon.com

11 Jan

… the marked improvement in his performance from 2008 (when he finished with eight percent in New Hampshire and 10 percent in Iowa) is a testament to the growing appeal of his message, both inside and outside the Republican Party. Particularly notable is the starling support Paul received in the first two contests from voters under 30 — 48 percent in Iowa and 47 percent in New Hampshire.

Clearly, Paul speaks to a significant and growing number of Americans, and it’s worth trying to understand what specific aspects of his platform are energizing each component of his coalition. How big a factor, for instance, is his support for relaxed drug laws in the enthusiasm of young voters? Does the surprising level of evangelical support he won in Iowa (18 percent — or second place) suggest there may be more room for dissent on Israel and the Middle East on the Christian right than is commonly assumed — or are Paul’s religious conservative backers simply ignoring his foreign policy views and supporting him for other reasons? And so on. Paul’s coalition is as funky as his platform, and Paul-ism is a political force that isn’t going away anytime soon.

via What about Ron Paul’s strong New Hampshire showing? – War Room – 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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The biggest threat to Citizens United – Campaign Finance – Salon.com

6 Jan

Montana has had on its books since 1912, which was passed by citizens initiative, a law called The Corrupt Practices Act. And what The Corrupt Practices Act did is essentially said that corporations cannot make expenditures or contributions in the political system. And we got there because our history was rooted in corporate domination of elections. It was in 1906 that a paper in Montana said, “the greatest living question of the day is whether corporations shall control the people or the people shall control the corporations.” And at the time the Copper Kings as they were called, those mine (owners) that mined copper in Montana literally owned our legislature, our judges, our local county planning boards. It was all throughout and it was at one point called “the Montana situation.”

So we have a real background in the unfortunate effects of unlimited corporate expenditures in elections and as a result when Citizens United came down dealing with federal law and federal elections it wasn’t something that I wanted to just give up on the last hundred years in Montana. We defended out laws, right before New Year’s Eve the Montana Supreme Court said that our ban on corporate expenditures remains constitutional.

via The biggest threat to Citizens United – Campaign Finance – Salon.com.

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