Tuesday Morning Reads

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, the internet, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , | 33 Comments

Good Morning!!

The Villagers have returned from their two-week Easter vacation, so there’s a bit more news today than we have had recently.

First up, I want to call attention to an important series of articles the UK Guardian will be running all week on the “Battle for the Internet.” There will be a major story every day this week:

Over seven days

The Guardian is taking stock of the new battlegrounds for the internet. From states stifling dissent to the new cyberwar front line, we look at the challenges facing the dream of an open internet

Day 1: the new cold war
China may have the world’s most internet-savvy government but Beijing has been struggling to keep a lid on bold social networks, writes Tania Branigan

Day two: the militarisation of cyberspace
Internet attacks on sovereign targets are no longer a fear for the future, but a daily threat. We ask: will the next big war be fought online?

Day three: the new walled gardens
For many, the internet is now essentially Facebook. Others find much of their online experience is mediated by Apple or Amazon. Why are the walls going up around the web garden, and does it matter?

Day four: IP wars
Intellectual property, from copyrights to patents, have been an internet battlefield from the start. We look at what Sopa, Pipa and Acta really mean, and explain how this battle is not over. Plus, Clay Shirky will be discussing the issues in a live Q&A

Day five: ‘civilising’ the web
In the UK, the ancient law of defamation is increasingly looking obsolete in the Twitter era. Meanwhile, in France, President Sarkozy believes the state can tame the web

Day six: the open resistance
Meet the activists and entrepreneurs who are working to keep the internet open

Day seven: the end of privacy
Hundreds of websites know vast amounts about their users’ behaviour, personal lives and connections with each other. Find out who knows what about you, and what they use the information for

Be sure to check out this interview with one of Google’s founders: Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin

Next up, lots of news coming out of Columbia, where President Obama participated in the Summit of the Americas. It didn’t go well. Reuters:

President Barack Obama sat patiently through diatribes, interruptions and even the occasional eye-ball roll at the weekend Summit of the Americas in an effort to win over Latin American leaders fed up with U.S. policies.

He failed.

The United States instead emerged from the summit in Colombia increasingly isolated as nearly 30 regional heads of state refused to sign a joint declaration in protest against the continued exclusion of communist-led Cuba from the event.

The rare show of unity highlights the steady decline of Washington’s influence in a region that has become less dependent on U.S. trade and investment thanks economic growth rates that are the envy of the developed world and new opportunities with China.

Obama also certified the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement which will take effect on May 15, despite Colombia’s continuing human rights violations including the murder of labor leaders. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the decision “deeply disappointing and troubling.

Leaders of national labor organizations in Colombia joined Trumka in opposing today’s announcement, saying:

[T]he underlying trade agreement perpetuates a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of big business and multinational corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, and the environment. The agreement uses a model that has historically benefitted a small minority of business interests, while leaving workers, families, and communities behind.

In April 2011, the U.S. and Colombia agreed to an Action Plan on Labor Rights intended to “protect internationally recognized labor rights, prevent violence against labor leaders, and prosecute the perpetrators of such violence” in Colombia. Although the Action Plan includes some measures that Colombian unions and the AFL-CIO have been demanding for years, its scope was too limited: it resolved neither the grave violations of union freedoms or human rights.

Some two dozen Colombian trade union leaders were killed last year alone, and an AFL-CIO report released last fall found that the Action Plan, which was billed as a major step to ending violence against trade unionists and protecting the right of workers to come together in unions “has failed to achieve improvements on the ground for Colombia’s working families.”

And then there was the Secret Service scandal, which keeps on getting worse. The latest from the WaPo:

A probe into the alleged misconduct of nearly a dozen U.S. Secret Service agents has expanded to include more than five military personnel, Defense Department officials said Monday, as the scandal that erupted during President Obama’s trip to Colombia last week put high-level officials on the defensive.

A preliminary investigation by the Defense Department, which included a review of video from hotel security cameras, found that more military personnel than initially thought might have been involved with the Secret Service in the carousing at the center of the probe. Already, 11 Secret Service agents have been placed on leave amid allegations they entertained prostitutes, potentially one of the most serious lapses at the organization in years.

The charges are triggering scrutiny of the culture of the Secret Service — where married agents have been heard to joke during aircraft takeoff that their motto is “wheels up, rings off” — and raising new questions at both the agency and the Pentagon about institutional oversight at the highest levels of the president’s security apparatus.

There’s a lot more detail in that article. Ron Kessler, who used to work for the WaPo and now writes for NewsMax (is that a comedown or a horizontal move?) says the head of the Secret Service should be fired.

Ron Kessler, the author who broke the Secret Service prostitution story in the Washington Post over the weekend, has been making the morning talk-show rounds, saying the director of the agency should be fired after agents were alleged to have solicited local prostitutes ahead of President Obama’s trip to Colombia.

“This is the worst scandal in the history of the Secret Service,” Kessler said on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday. “The Secret Service, under Mark Sullivan, has gone from one debacle to another.”

The only scandal that comes close to this one, Kessler said on CNN, was in 2009, when Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed the state dinner at the White House.

“It goes back to a culture of laxness in the Secret Service,” Kessler said. “Corner cutting. Just a lax attitude which contributes to this kind of thing.”

Funny, I would have thought that Secret Service agents getting drunk the night before the JFK assassination and then not doing much to protect him would have been the worst scandal, but what do I know?

Now that Congress is back in session, the Senate didn’t waste any time dumping the President’s proposed “Buffet Rule” that would have made millionaires pay something resembling a fair share of taxes.

By a near party-line 51-45 tally, senators voted to keep the bill alive but fell nine votes short of the 60 needed to continue debating the measure. The anti-climactic outcome was no surprise to anyone in a vote that was designed more to win over voters and embarrass senators in close races than to push legislation into law.

At the White House, Obama denounced the vote, saying Republicans chose “once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class.” In a statement issued after the vote, he said he would keep pressing Congress to help the middle class.

Another victory on the road to serfdom.

And of course there’s the new media meme: because of a poorly worded remark by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, the Republican War on Women is over and the Democrats have declared a War on Motherhood.

Never mind that the War on Women is real–based on horrible Republican anti-abortion, anti-family planning, anti-Planned Parenthood policies that have been implemented in state legislatures around the country. Never mind that the “War on Motherhood” is based on hysterical pearl-clutching by cynical Romney campaign strategists. The media has swallowed the fairly tale bait hook, line, and sinker.

And so the horrendous insult to poor little Ann Romney was a prime topic on the Sunday news shows. Meet the Press’s idiot host David Gregory had a whole panel discussion on it. Naturally Charlie Pierce had a great writeup on that yesterday.

the panel, which included my man Chuck Todd and complete political failure Harold Ford, Jr., was talking about Hilary Rosen and hookers. Savannah Guthrie said that the Obama administration moved so quickly to distance themselves from Hilary Rosen, Warrior Queen Of All Liberals:

In some ways it had the equal and opposite effect. They worked so hard to disown Hilary Rosen that you almost felt, well, they must own her, they must be allied with her. It didn’t betray a lot of confidence about their position with women.

See that rock at your feet? Pick it up. Throw it as far as you can. Remember, though, the farther you throw it away, the closer it is to hitting you in the head. Savannah Guthrie, Theoretical Physicist. (Later, she talked about how the administration wanted to draw a line in the sand so that “six months from now,” if somebody said something about Michelle Obama etc. etc. Six months from now? Has Guthrie been on Tuvalu for three years?) My head was descending rapidly toward my desk when Harold Ford chimed in, and it accelerated downward faster than it ever has before. Harold liked very much what his nutty former colleague said about how stay-at-home moms are more attuned to the economy than they are the attempts by a bunch of white men to make sure there’s a little more mommin’ to be done while they stay at home. It’s truly hard to believe that, in a Democratic wave election, the people of Tennessee rejected this titan….

“I thought Michele Bachmann, whom I don’t often agree with, made some pretty valid points. This issue here is more powerful in some ways that the conversation about contraception… No one goes around talking about that. People go around talking about raising their kids. Wome are insulted if you say if they stay at home instead of working then something’s different about them.

It is important to remember that these people wouldn’t even be discussing a whopping 19-point gender gap if it weren’t for Republican attempts to control the unauthorized use of ladyparts, the Dildos Mandating Dildos legislation in the various states, and all that other stuff that Harold Ford, Jr. says women don’t talk about.

Sorry about the long quote, but I just had to use that whole section. It’s perfect!

Anyway, as everyone knows by now, the Romneys blew it bigtime by talking too loud at a $50,000-a-plate fund raiser in Palm Beach. They didn’t realize the press could hear them when they gloated about what a great “gift” Hilary Rosen had given them.

Mrs. Romney acknowledged Republicans’ deficit at present with female voters, and urged the women in attendance to talk to their friends, particularly about the economy. She also discussed the criticism she faced this week, and her pride in her role as a mother.

“It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it,” Mrs. Romney said.

Gov. Romney went further in engaging the so-called “war on moms” that followed in the media — upon which his campaign has been aggressively fundraising — calling it a “gift” that allowed his campaign to show contrast with Democrats in the general election’s first week.

Um…no one was critical of you as a mother, Ann.

But maybe it wasn’t such a “gift” after all, because women voters are apparently not as stupid as the Romneys think they are. According to a CNN poll taken two days after Rosen dropped her bomblet and the the Republicans took to the fainting couch, Obama still leads among women by 16 points and he is even ahead among men by 3 points.

But the Romneys still think they won something, and they’re using it to raise money with a new video in which Romney waxes as poetic as a robot can about his beloved wife Ann. For the brave souls among us, here’s the Romney campaign’s “Happy Birthday, Mom” video. Don’t watch it unless you have a strong stomach and normal blood sugar levels.

As an antidote, please read this NYT op-ed by Nancy Folbre, an economist from U. Mass. Amherst on the real meaning of the gender gap.

Those are my suggested reads for today. What are yours?

Thursday Reads

Posted: January 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: First Amendment, morning reads, Republican presidential politics, SOPA, the internet, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 39 Comments

Good Morning!!

There’s another Republican Debate in South Carolina tonight. Can you believe it? This one is hosted by CNN. How much more of this torture can American stand? These debates just keep on coming! We’ll live blog this one later on, perhaps with some interesting variations on the theme.

Speaking of horrible things that never end, can you believe Obama is considering appointing Larry Summers to head the World Bank? Here I thought we were finally free of Summers, but the guy just won’t go away. He keeps coming back, no matter how ghastly of job he does. From Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama is considering nominating Lawrence Summers, his former National Economic Council director, to lead the World Bank when Robert Zoellick’s term expires later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Summers has expressed interest in the job to White House officials and has backers inside the administration, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and current NEC Director Gene Sperling, said one of the people. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also being considered, along with other candidates, said the other person. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations….

A nomination of Summers would bring scrutiny of his previous stints in government, both as former President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary and Obama’s NEC director, as well as his tenure as president of Harvard University.

“Larry is controversial,” said Erskine Bowles, who served as Clinton’s chief of staff. “Anything you appoint Larry to, you know there are going to be some people who are going to take shots at him. But you know he’s a brilliant economist, which I think everybody recognizes.”

Oh really? If he’s so brilliant, then why is teaching college freshman? Why doesn’t he publish in academic journals? Why did he get fired by Harvard and the Obama administration? Enough with the retreads, Mr. President.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Mitt Romney has admitted he pays somewhere close to 15% of his income in Federal taxes. NPR’s Here and Now had an interesting discussion yesterday about how he and other richie-rich folks get away with this. I recommend listening to the show if you have time. Here’s a bit from the write-up:

“Carried interest is the way that hedge fund managers and private equity firm managers get paid when they do a deal,” Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Institute told Here & Now‘s Robin Young.

Gleckman says private equity firms bring in outside investors. To get in on the deals, investors pay the firms in two ways– an initial fee, and a 20 percent cut of future profits.

When the owners of private equity firms pay taxes on that compensation from the investors, they pay as if it were capital gains– so that means they are paying a top rate of no more than 15 percent.

“Ordinarily if they were paid like the rest of us in wages and salaries, they’d be paying a top rate of up to 35 percent,” he said.

Gleckman said the carried interest tax arrangement is completely legal and not uncommon.

Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice said that this kind of income comes from work and should be taxed as such. And Gleckman agreed, saying that capital gains taxes are lower because the goal is to encourage people to risk their own money. Romney isn’t doing that.

Here’s another explanation at Bloomberg:

Romney, one of the richest men to seek the presidency, probably benefits from a controversial tax break that allows him to pay a lower overall rate than do millions of American wage-earners whose votes he’ll need to capture the White House.

That’s because private equity executives, as Romney was for 15 years when he ran Boston-based Bain Capital LLC, receive much of their compensation as “carried interest.” That enables them to treat what would be ordinary income for other service providers, taxed at rates as high as 35 percent, as capital gains taxed at 15 percent….

Yet those investments were largely made by Romney’s former partners with other investors’ money, not his personal funds. The vast majority of the resulting gains represent compensation for Bain’s work acquiring, sprucing up and selling individual companies, critics say.

“This is labor income for them, not a return on capital invested,” said Victor Fleischer, an associate law professor at the University of Colorado whose 2007 paper on the topic helped spark a move in Congress to try to change the law. “It’s a method of converting one’s labor into capital gains in a way that’s unusual outside the investment management industry. Ordinary people wouldn’t be able to do this.”

If Romney just paid his taxes like the rest of us, he’d probably be doing a much greater service to the country than if he becomes president. BTW, the articles says that Obama has paid 31% of his income in taxes for the last three years.

But that’s not all. Romney keeps millions of dollars of his vast wealth in the Cayman Islands, a well-know tax shelter.

Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, has set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans.

Romney campaign officials and those at Bain Capital tell ABC News that the purpose of setting up those accounts in the Cayman Islands is to help attract money from foreign investors, and that the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney. Romney, the campaign said, has paid all U.S. taxes on income derived from those investments.

“The tax consequences to the Romneys are the very same whether the fund is domiciled here or another country,” a campaign official said in response to questions. “Gov. and Mrs. Romney have money invested in funds that the trustee has determined to be attractive investment opportunities, and those funds are domiciled wherever the fund sponsors happen to organize the funds.”

Bain officials called the decision to locate some funds offshore routine, and a benefit only to foreign investors who do not want to be subjected to U.S. taxes.

Whatever. The guy is filthy rich, pays very little of his income in taxes, and has no clue how most Americans live. His attitude is that capitalism is sacred and if millions of “little people” are hurt by the machinations of people like him, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. And we shouldn’t have any safety nets for when things go wrong either. This man should never be POTUS.

A few more Romney items …

While he was at Bain Mitt used large donations of stock to the Mormon church to avoid paying taxes.

The New York Daily News got ahold of John McCain’s oppo research on Romney from 2008. “Talk about awkward,” the first line reads.

And here’s another awkward moment for the Mittster: Mitt Romney Allegedly Pulls Back Handshake Upon Learning That DREAM Act Advocate Is Undocumented.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney suddenly pulled back his hand after hearing that a young college student who greeted him at a New York fundraiser Tuesday night was undocumented, according to DREAM Act activists.

“He extended his hand to shake mine,” the young woman told The Huffington Post. “But once I said I was undocumented, he pulled his hand away from me.”

The 19-year-old college student, who asked to be identified only as Lucy because of her undocumented status, said she was also booed by Romney supporters as she was escorted out of a New York City fundraiser. One of the supporters told her to “go back to Mexico,” and she responded that she was “actually from Peru,” according to her account of the event.

Oops! There goes the Latino vote….

But we can’t forget that Romney still has at least one viable competitor for South Carolina’s delegates–food stamp obsessive and child labor advocate Newt Gingrich. Guess what Newt’s been up to? He’s using a fund-raising letter to threaten to punch out Barack Obama

Newt Gingrich’s campaign sent out a fundraising request to supporters this afternoon touting that the former speaker said he wants to knock Obama out, because, as the subject line of the email suggests, “A Bloody Nose Just Won’t Cut It.” The comment comes from a recent town hall where a questioner asked Gingrich how he would “bloody Obama’s nose.” “I don’t want to bloody his nose, I want to knock him out!” Gingrich responded. “This is exactly why Newt Gingrich is the candidate who must face Obama,” campaign spokesman RC Hammond says in the email, above a bright red “Donate” button.

You just can’t make this stuff up!

Conor Friedersdorf has an excellent response to Andrew Sullivan’s silly Newsweek article defending Obama’s accomplishments as President. I think Friedersdorf is a liberatarian, but his assessment on Obama is still on point. Check it out. I’ll just reproduce his list of Obama’s “accomplishments” here:

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (14) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

Unfortunately, he didn’t include Obama’s many contributions to the war on women.

Speaking of Obama’s war on the Constitution, Chris Hedges is going to court to sue Obama over the indefinite detention portion of the NDAA.

Attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran filed a complaint Friday in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City on my behalf as a plaintiff against Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.

Thanks to Hedges for putting his money where his mouth is.

I’ll end with this piece from Reuters: Sunk! How Hollywood Lost the PR Battle Over SOPA.

In the space of a couple of days, Hollywood and its content creators lost the public relations war over Internet piracy SOPA legislation — which now appears poised to crumble into a million bits of dust.

Wow.

The messaging industry never had control of the message.

The tech guys found a simple, shareable idea — the Stop Online Piracy Act is Censorship — made it viral, and made it stick.

Hollywood had Chris Dodd and a press release. Silicon Valley had Facebook.

It shouldacoulda been a fair fight. But it wasn’t.

It seems that Hollywood still does not realize that it is in the information age. Knowledge moves in real time, and events move accordingly. The medium is the message in a fight like this.

I disagree that the fight is over, but it’s nice to see the battle for free speech and privacy getting some corporate media ink.

So … what are you reading and blogging about today?

Copyright Protection vs Big Brother Howling at the Door

Posted: January 11, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: cyber security, First Amendment, Free Speech, just because, SOPA, the internet | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

The United States Congress has been racking up historically low approval ratings, numbers bouncing from 3-9% over the last year.  Why?  Our legislative process has become paralyzed by partisan politics and perhaps, more importantly, the influence of massive amounts of money.  When lobbyists outnumber our representatives in the Halls of Congress by 5-1, the current inability and/or refusal to work in the interests of the American public is a given.

Money speaks.  Even the Supreme Court agreed in their disastrous Citizens United decision.  The more money, the bigger the noise.  The Do-Nothing Congress has earned its title.

Yet with all the pressing problems facing the Nation, one piece of legislation was kicked through the process and then flown, until recently, under the radar.  Specifically, that’s SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, and its kissing cousin IPPA, Protect IP Act.

Last October, I wrote about this legislation here.  With a quick followup here.

On the face of it, copyright concerns are absolutely legitimate.  Any artist, musician, writer, etc., wants and expects protection of his/her creative efforts from rip-off artists.  You create something, it takes off, you expect the financial and psychic reward from that success.  There have been [and probably will continue to be] amoral individuals who plagiarize [steal] with abandon.  Corporations–those that still develop ideas and products–are also open to thievery by competitors.  Governments are vulnerable as well, which if anything [at least in my pea brain] demands that security measures around highly sensitive material be strong and effective, including careful clearance of those working with said materials.  Regardless of where one falls on the Manning case [hero or villain], anyone ever wonder how Bradley Manning, a private first class, was able to so easily tap records for Wikileaks, particularly after several red flags were ignored by Army personnel?

Accountability for lousy security anyone?

However, are we as a population willing to accept the radical tradeoff that SOPA represents, a serious curtailment of free expression and innovation, a barrier in the exchange of information between individuals and groups around the world to protect the financial and security issues of other entities?  And if so, what will the Internet be reduced to?

Think about the information that has circulated on the Net, regarding corrupt practices on Wall St. that led to the financial meltdown, the collusion of political partners, the failure of government bodies to investigate and prosecute guilty parties.  Do you think this information would have been disseminated as widely without the Internet access? Have we heard much about it in the mainstream press/newscasts?  Beyond Dylan Ratigan, that is, a MSNBC commentator.  Or, the ongoing global protests—The Arab Spring, the European Summer, the American Autumn, the Russian Winter.  Do you think these Movements would have gotten off the ground without Facebook and other social media outlets? Do you imagine we would have known of subsequent police over reactions?

Here’s the scoop from Techdirt on the byproduct of this asinine proposal, which is now suppose to be cleaned up and improved—the 2.0 version:

End result: SOPA 2.0 contains a crazy scary clause that’s going to make it crazy easy to cut off websites with no recourse whatsoever. And this part isn’t just limited to payment providers/ad networks — but to service providers, search engines and domain registrars/registries as well. Yes. Search engines. So you can send a notice to a search engine, and if they want to keep their immunity, they have to take the actions in either Section 102(c)(2) or 103(c)(2), which are basically all of the “cut ’em off, block ’em” remedies. That’s crazy. This basically encourages search engines to disappear sites upon a single notice. It encourages domain registries to kill domains based on notices. With no recourse at all, because the providers have broad immunity.

Look, I’m all for protecting the copyright of artists and other creators.  But not at the expense of free speech, open channels of communication and political discourse.

Here’s another question—do you not find it odd that so little time [make that anytime at all] has been spent by the mainstream press to discuss the problems with this legislation?  This is the same mainstream press that is suppose to be ‘free’ but has been consistently found wanting in actual reporting the news or investigating much of anything.  Yes, there are exceptions [Dylan Ratigan and recently 60 Minutes].  But by and large, the press today is held captive by the very forces paralyzing the government and buying off politicians.  These forces are keenly aware that restriction of a free-information vehicle, the Internet, is in their best interests.  There’s no doubt major news outlets are concerned by online sources ripping off their reports word-for-word.  But as far as distribution, information sharing and dissemination?  They’ve lost that battle to the Electronic Age.  And frankly, if the MSM had been doing their jobs–speaking truth to power–instead of playing lapdogs, their market share would not be as dismal.

In addition to the music and movie industries supporting this legislation [which at least makes sense], the American Bankers Association is a sponsor as well.  In fact, here’s a list of sponsors [interested parties].

If that link turns to gobblety-gook on you, check here at Wikipedia:

The link turning to gibberish was pretty weird—maybe a sign of things to come.  It worked perfectly fine the first time I checked it.

We do not need a bazooka to bring down a mouse.  The collateral damage can be significant, sometimes worse than the original problem.  That’s what this legislation represents.  And by collateral damage, I mean you, me and anyone plugged in at moment.  Sorry, but there’s something very disturbing that a complaint against a website can result in that site being ‘disappeared’ without explanation or appeal.

Consider this the ‘indefinite detention’ for objectionable sites on the Internet.

For additional information on the legislation itself, go here, here, here, and here.  Note that numerous online bigwigs [Google, Facebook,  Amazon, etc.] strongly oppose SOPA and have threatened a boycott/blackout, most likely on January 23rd in opposition to the upcoming cloture vote on the 24th.  Yves Smith has a good essay on what we’re looking at in terms of implications.

This is an important issue.  Citizen/online pressure can bring results.  Paul Ryan, for instance, stepped back just this past Monday from his initial support.  Resistance is everywhere and comes in many forms.  Here’s a boycott of another flavor.

An informed public is the best weapon against Big Brother and the invisible supporters of authoritative repress-freedom-for-the-sake-of-security measures.  We need to protect access to information to protect the present and future. We need access to information to save and preserve the core of our freedoms.

Of BoobPads and BoobPhones

Posted: January 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: the internet | Tags: , | 9 Comments

I remember that at some point in my early childhood that dressing me up in a cowgirl outfit and putting me in front of the TV on my stuffed, pillow-like horse to watch Captain Kangaroo or the Lone Ranger turned from cute to too much.  I had other childhood occupations besides spending time outdoors with friends. One was practicing my piano from the age of three on; starting at 15 minutes a day with time off on Christmas and my birthday.  The other was being taken to the library–a big old Carnegie building with iron stairs and oak stacks–to pick out 5 books a week to read. There was a stint with ballet and tap and swimming lessons. Eventually, I learned that all mom’s childrearing literature at the time I was weaned from afternoon cartoons was filled with tales of the boob tube and fat, dull children who had been hooked in to it for hours a day. My mother wasn’t going to be caught raising fat, dull children. There was too much status at stake during that time in America.

I also remember when I was a young mom I had absolute dread when being begged to run the same Barney tape over and over. It was as bad as the continual whining about Rainbow Brite or My Little Ponies or what ever mass marketing TV toy of the day.  The real shocker was finding out how so many kids seemed to have nearly uniform expressions of glee when any where near the golden arches.  That included mine even when I was hand making all of the baby food and growing it in the backyard garden. I got motivated quickly to stack my daughters’ rooms full of nature items, books, and musical instruments.  We had a 5400 square foot house with one TV and thousands of books in hundreds of books shelves. TVs are not allowed anywhere near dinner tables or kitchens in my home.  There was  and is that same piano that both my mom and I played and games.  At some point, I got that boob tube message loud and clear too.

We got an IBM peanut when doctor daughter was about two and the one cartridge of child friendly software mostly had numbers and shapes on a very primitive level.  Dr. Daughter had to learn to work a keyboard the same way she learned piano.  That would be one key and one connected image at a time.  That’s like 25 years ago and it’s as much a world of difference from that time as it is from me sitting on the family room floor with a toy guy blazing watching Kemo Sabe get the bad guy one more time.  The boob tubes are much more sophisticated. I can only imagine any potential grandchildren I may have will have much more engaging boobtubes as the technology develops.

I have to admit that I spend hours in front of my PC doing work, playing games, and socializing. Even though it is much more interactive than Captain Kangaroo, it’s an isolating and nonphysical experience on the whole. It’s also quite addicting.  I remember graphic computer novel games–like Zork–used to keep me up at night. I call youngest daughter and she’s on the WII trying to take on the latest version of Zelda.  That happens at all hours and pretty much every time I call for about a period of a week. Thankfully, all three of us still retreat to our pianos and books which might actually be seen as earlier versions of boobtubes if you think about it.

Still, it makes you think when you see stuff like this.

THE average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing).

The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow, I heard myself tell the marketers in Singapore, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once.

I’ve just learned about a phenomenon called ‘internet rescue camp’ and ‘freedom software’ that helps netizens learn to disconnect.  I don’t want to disconnect. I have to admit that I can’t last through TV programs very much these days.  Going to a movie at a theatre is akin to a dentist trip for me.  I have the blackberry–crackberry–out within about 10 minutes looking for the latest twitter news or checking my email.  My blackberry has given me adult attention deficit disorder but I call it multi-tasking.  I can only imagine how bad I would be with a tablet and wifi. My kids aren’t much better.  I can’t get youngest daughter away from texting and 2 minute shout outs on the phone.  When the house fills up at Mardi Gras time, I discover just how much young adults text each other these days.  My daughter panics if she doesn’t have her phone on her at all times.  She might miss something earth shattering.

So, that article that I’m quoting is at the NYT.  It’s called ‘The Joy of Quiet’ and was sent to me by an old friend.   He knew me before I refused to go anywhere without internet connections.  I wonder what that says?

The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.

The author brings up one of my other long time activities; meditation.  I still escape to books.  I can spend hours still playing the piano.  It’s why gigging was the perfect antidote to working at the FED for me.  Right now, I’m reading 1Q84. This is a great pleasure for me given how much of my reading has been dedicated to scholarly articles the last few years. I snuck in all three of Larsson triology last summer too despite the pressures to get the dissertation done.  I still can’t believe I got my first masters with just a mainframe and tons of error messages on greenbar paper that had to be deconstructed by a computer person.  I get data from the Fed in two keystrokes now.  It used to take me days down in the university library basement where the government docs were stored.  I had to go through hundreds of Beige Books.  That didn’t even count the time it took to get stuff from nominal to real.  That’s not even a two minute activity these days.

The thing that has always historically defined our species is our use of tools.  It’s basically contributed mightily to the evolution of human intelligence from the time we first picked up sticks and stones.  Our cousins the great apes also use them.  However, what also defines us is our social displays.  We and our great ape cousins show empathy,  demonstrate a sense of humor, and thrive around friends and relations. We make love and war with tools and with out them.   So, not only do I play games to get my mind off of life, I Skype friends all over the world.  I also think, therefore, I blog.  It’s one of those chicken and egg things. Do we define our tools or do our tools define us?  Some times, it’s very hard to tell.

The Marvel of Coincidence, Part Deux

Posted: November 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, Banksters, corruption, cyber security, Economy, financial institutions, Media, net-neutrality, Regulation, the internet | Tags: , , , | 15 Comments

My, oh my!  There is a deluge of coincidence, enough to turn tinfoil hats into swanky silk toppers. 

First we had the mind-boggling convergence of right-thinking PD departments from cities across the country, all deciding within the last 4 days to crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street protests.  At least that was the ‘official’ story until Oakland’s Mayor, the rather infamous Jean Quan blurted out during a BBC interview that she had been on a conference call with 18 American city mayors, discussing the ongoing Occupy Movement.

Not to be outdone by Mayor Quan, a Homeland Security official had his own ‘blurt/burp’ moment, disclosing that the FBI and the Homeland Security Department had been discussing how to ‘handle’ OWS.

And just so US citizens can truly marvel at the strange alignment of the stars, we have this extraordinary comment made by Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group.

“It was completely spontaneous.”

The ‘it’ in that statement would be riot police sweeping the encampments in Portland, Denver, Oakland and NYC, etc. for health and security reasons.  I suppose we can assume that the ‘middle of the night/early morning’ phalanx strategy of surround and secure was also a spontaneous, creative leap by law enforcement or perhaps a coast-to-coast mind-reading experiment.

However, Mayor Bloomberg in NYC must be credited with additional points for creativity.  After all his passionate I-Love-the–First-Amendment declarations and as a media mogul himself [12th richest person in the country], he coincidentally declared a media blackout.  Meaning? There would no [or very few] unattractive images of protestors being rousted, cell phones confiscated and/or reports of a CBS helicopter prevented from taking aerial  film footage.   According the Washington Post Partisan blog:

Most disturbingly, the NYPD sought to block any and all press from covering this eviction. On the ground, reporters were stopped at the barricades and refused entrance. Numerous journalists reported that cops refused to let then in, even pushing reporters away; reporters even Tweeted about getting arrested. In the air, NYPD helicopters refused to allow CBS News helicopters to film the eviction from above. As for the camera already in the park–OWS’s livestream–the police simply blocked it with a pile of torn-up tents.

But Keith Olbermann in his inimitable fashion had a few choice words for Mayor Bloomberg. If you haven’t seen this, sit back and enjoy. It’s entertaining.

But there’s more!  Even with the blackout, even with reporters rounded and roughed up, the New York Times managed to describe the events in startling detail and had photos of the NYPD grouping at the South Street Seaport.  Which has led some to ask:  What’s the deal between the Mayor, the NYPD and the Gray Lady?  Another coincidence?  May the stars fall from the sky.

Finally, not to be repetitious but . . . the Internet Protection Bill and the evolving, expanding piece of legislation [HR 3261] Stop Online Piracy [SOPA] is chugging along brilliantly.  Think of the ramifications.  A copyright bill that would place wide, blunt controls on the Internet, our remaining set of eyes on the world, quietly wends its way through Congress at the precise moment that media blackouts are sanctioned for reasons of security.  Turns out I’m not the only one who finds this legislative creation and its Senate counterpart [S.968] more than a little suspicious.

Trojan Horse, anyone?  Or Coincidence Heaven?

Barnum was born way before his time.

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