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The Case for Public Patents, one of Kucinich's positions.

I also find it amusing that there is now a witness to the blatant lying of this Administration. Bush and his cronies lied to us. Shouldn't he be impeached for that? After all, Clinton was impeached for lying about getting a blowjob and Americans didn't die for that.

read more about Stealing This Country Part II: Iraq's Biggest Thief: Paul Bremmer

Have a John-Ashcroft-free weekend !!!!!!
W00t

Get a clue: None Dare Call it Treason

I have two illustrative quotes for you:

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Professor Schneider's bio

This quote was in the October 1987 issue of Discover magazine. The statement was quoted by Jonathan Schell, author of a volume entitled "The Fate of the Earth". To give context to the previous quote, Mr. Schell also notes:

"We need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance." [bold added for emphasis]

Mr. Schell is a contributor to the Nation.

I suggest that your bad science is right there. Distilled down, "We'll offer up lies and half-baked exhortations because those dumbasses won't know the difference, and are too stupid to discern the truth or understand us. And who knows, we might be right. But probably not."

I don't like being lied to, but since this issue is religion for one side of the debate, I can hardly imagine that side changing its ways now.

Doesn't change the fact that they are scumbags though.

AOL Time-Warner - WB, HBO, Cinemax, CNN, TBS

General Electric - NBC, A&E, Bravo, MuchMusic

Viacom - CBS, UPN, MTV, VH1, Showtime, Nickelodeon

Walt Disney Company - ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN

Liberty Media Corp. - Discovery Channel, TLC, USA Networks, Sci-Fi Channel

AT&T Corp. - Many shared stakes with AOL-TW

News Corp. - Fox Network, FX

Bertelsmann - Largest European broadcaster

Vivendi Universal - USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel, HSN, Sundance

Sony - Telemundo, Game Show Network

More detailed information available at The Nation.

Killing enemies who would otherwise kill you is the norm in EVERY country.

True, but I always thought that the US treated people (especially our own citizens!) as innocent until proven guilty. Blowing up people half a world away based on "intelligence" is simply murder. We're supposed to be a democratic republic; we're supposed to respect the rule of law and hold ourselves to a higher standard than a run-of-the-mill dictatorship. One can argue this is no longer true.

1. What kind of torture? 2. You know this, HOW?

Check out this week's print version of The Nation magazine. It has a front-cover story, "In Torture We Trust," about how the US routinely engages in torture now, with lots of juicy quotes from various officials.

Considering that George Bush has gone so far as to joke about torture in a news conference, this should be no surprise. But seriously, read that Nation article if you're truly interested.

How about grinding people up in plastic shredders?

At no time have I ever expressed any sympathy for Saddam Hussein's regime. On the other hand, many members of the Bush administrations have supported Iraq, have used our tax dollars to guarantee loans for billions of dollars to Hussein's regime, have sold weapons to Iraq, have had business dealings with Iraq, have shaken hands with Saddam Hussein and smiled at cameras with him thereby legitimizing his rule.

Given your opposition to torture and dictatorship, I suppose that means that you are opposed to any politician which supported and supports brutality and dictatorship, correct? If not, what rationalization did you use to clear your conscience?

Killing enemies who would otherwise kill you is the norm in EVERY country.

True, but I always thought that the US treated people (especially our own citizens!) as innocent until proven guilty. Blowing up people half a world away based on "intelligence" is simply murder. We're supposed to be a democratic republic; we're supposed to respect the rule of law and hold ourselves to a higher standard than a run-of-the-mill dictatorship. One can argue this is no longer true.

1. What kind of torture? 2. You know this, HOW?

Check out this week's print version of The Nation magazine. It has a front-cover story, "In Torture We Trust," about how the US routinely engages in torture now, with lots of juicy quotes from various officials.

Considering that George Bush has gone so far as to joke about torture in a news conference, this should be no surprise. But seriously, read that Nation article if you're truly interested.

How about grinding people up in plastic shredders?

At no time have I ever expressed any sympathy for Saddam Hussein's regime. On the other hand, many members of the Bush administrations have supported Iraq, have used our tax dollars to guarantee loans for billions of dollars to Hussein's regime, have sold weapons to Iraq, have had business dealings with Iraq, have shaken hands with Saddam Hussein and smiled at cameras with him thereby legitimizing his rule.

Given your opposition to torture and dictatorship, I suppose that means that you are opposed to any politician which supported and supports brutality and dictatorship, correct? If not, what rationalization did you use to clear your conscience?

I'm going to assume the author of parrent was suggesting non-commercial media (you know, those that aren't influenced by multinational corporations). Here are some suggestions:
-Independent Media
-Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
-The Nation

by Naomi Klein,
The Nation

Poor Endy Chávez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Magallanes, one of Venezuela's big baseball teams. Every time he comes up to bat, the local TV sportscasters start in with the jokes. "Here comes Chávez. No, not the pro-Cuban dictator Chávez, the other Chávez." Or "This Chávez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people."

In Venezuela, even color commentators are enlisted in the commercial media's open bid to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chávez. Andrés Izarra, a Venezuelan television journalist, says that the campaign has done so much violence to truthful information on the national airwaves that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. "I think their licenses should be revoked," he says.

It's the sort of extreme pronouncement one has come to expect from Chávez, known for nicknaming the stations "the four horsemen of the apocalypse." Izarra, however, is harder to dismiss. A squeaky clean made-for-TV type, he worked as assignment editor in charge of Latin America at CNN en Español until he was hired as news production manager for Venezuela's highest-rated newscast, El Observador on RCTV.

On April 13, 2002, the day after business leader Pedro Carmona briefly seized power, Izarra quit that job under what he describes as "extreme emotional stress." Ever since, he has been sounding the alarm about the threat posed to democracy when the media decide to abandon journalism and pour all their persuasive powers into winning a war being waged over oil.

[read the whole thing over here ]

by Naomi Klein,
The Nation

Poor Endy Chávez, outfielder for the Navegantes del Magallanes, one of Venezuela's big baseball teams. Every time he comes up to bat, the local TV sportscasters start in with the jokes. "Here comes Chávez. No, not the pro-Cuban dictator Chávez, the other Chávez." Or "This Chávez hits baseballs, not the Venezuelan people."

In Venezuela, even color commentators are enlisted in the commercial media's open bid to oust the democratically elected government of Hugo Chávez. Andrés Izarra, a Venezuelan television journalist, says that the campaign has done so much violence to truthful information on the national airwaves that the four private TV stations have effectively forfeited their right to broadcast. "I think their licenses should be revoked," he says.

It's the sort of extreme pronouncement one has come to expect from Chávez, known for nicknaming the stations "the four horsemen of the apocalypse." Izarra, however, is harder to dismiss. A squeaky clean made-for-TV type, he worked as assignment editor in charge of Latin America at CNN en Español until he was hired as news production manager for Venezuela's highest-rated newscast, El Observador on RCTV.

On April 13, 2002, the day after business leader Pedro Carmona briefly seized power, Izarra quit that job under what he describes as "extreme emotional stress." Ever since, he has been sounding the alarm about the threat posed to democracy when the media decide to abandon journalism and pour all their persuasive powers into winning a war being waged over oil.

[read the whole thing over here ]

>Utne Reader (uck) and Mother Jones (yeah).

Or on The Nation or Harpers. They come in dead tree format so no more wireless laptops in the bathroom. There's a decent essay out there of how Salon spends its money (giant office spaces, high living, etc) that makes me not want to help them, especially when some very decent papers like MaJones or The Nation do what salon does a lot better.

What bothers me most is the assumption that there is no room for liberal media and people using salon as proof. Salon is just a badly run company ready to join its dot com brethrens at fuckedcompany. They simply failed to compete against more established and better left-leaning news outlets.

Maybe it will slightly counter the leftist bias from ABC, NBC, CBS, AP, Reuters, and the other media outlets create 95% of all the news stories out there and yet fail to represent their viewers.

What Liberal Media?. Please mod parent -1 Troll.

From 2001-12, William Grieder writes A
New Giant Sucking Sound where China defines the bottom in "the race to the bottom".

(This is not per se about China, but globalization
policies and who benefits.)

As industries around you shut down in the face of
$1.00/day competition from overseas, your local economy turns into a *extraction* industry, where
what you make at your $7.50 an hour job at McD's
goes via WalMart to child labor in China. Until
McD's shuts down too.

It's not simply about ROI or how it sucks to be
the one affected, because everyone on the street
is affected when anyone on the street suffers.
ROI talks about things on the balance sheet and
income statement; if the business can dump poison,
murder employees and corrupt the government, none
of that shows up on the balance sheet and none of
that is reflected in ROI. Except maybe positively
because of the private benefit from public cost.
Eg the costs are externalized. Like power plants
in midwest dump crap into the air that makes the
air in Maine some of the most polluted in country.
Doesn't show up on their balance sheets/ROI, just
in our ozone days and health stats.

I live in Maine, and I'm watching the demise of
the local dairy, fishing and wood products
industries. When Monsanto is done with the local
dairy industry, there will be none and we will be
forced to the GM/antibiotic trough. Some people
might say that is "choice". Not my choice.

It's not a rising of the bottom but a ripping of
the top of the *labor* market. The CEO won't
take a cut, but he will get x $millions more for
exporting American jobs to China.

If the CEO only earned ten or even 100 times more
than the lowest paid worker, that might be ok.

ROI my ass. (BTW I am a CEO)

... and covering stuff like this. Here's something they don't like: Flat-Out Censorship on CNN

Is It Time to Move to Canada?

What a real mate would tell Bush

Beating the drums for justice: Calls for Bush's impeachment for 9-11

USA Oui! Bush Non!

Between Bush, Bin Laden & Hitler

German leader links Bush's 'style' to Hitler's

Judging war crimes, then and now

every time you vote Libertarian you are voting Republican

Wait, I'm confused. I thought voting for Greens was voting Republican. I thought voting Libertarian was voting Democrat.

The Big ten

Are you a patriot, or are you a terrorist?

Because if you're not with us, you're against us.

And if you're not a patriot, you're a terrorist.

A patriot has nothing to hide from his [sic] Country. A patriot is glad, glad with all his heart to hear that his country is taking the initiative, a patriot supports the party -- if the party wants to know whom Sam or Sally is speaking with, let the party know. If the party wants to know where every Citizen is, what every Citizen does, what every Citizen knows, then let the party know.

A patriot believes. A patriot is the opposite of the dissident.

A patriot does not support laws that allow terrorists, those who do not believe in the strength and ideals of our country, to hide behind anonymity. A patriot does not support anarchy, the total chaos that results when you allow dissidents to mess with public awareness, to spread their lies about our country.

And a patriot does not call for public hearings, checks and balances, handcuffs to hold the hand of Justice, to keep our men [sic] in uniforms -- who believe -- from doing what they believe in, what Americans -- real Americans, not bleeding-heart-liberals need for their protection.

A patriot does not question.

You're either with us, or against us.

If you're not a patriot, you're a terrorist.

I guess I'm a terrorist.

Sorry for the poor formatting and broken link... it was my first post and I accidentally clicked submit instead of preview... The first link should be this

There is already an addressed need to monitor our food supply for chemicals and pathogens. So new tests and controls are now necessary. So what?

The only difference with Genetically Modifying an organism is that it can accomplish a variety of plant in a much smaller amount of time. Additionally, while GMO's synthetically splice new DNA, which in turn creates new organic compounds, selective breeding HAS THE SAME EFFECT ON PLANTS.

Using GM foods is a mistake for the simple reason that it narrows the gene pool of our food supply. When(not if) a blight attacks a weakness of the GM plants, if they are a majority of our supply, we're screwed, because the crop is homogenous. See: This article for a comprehensive article on the danger of GM crops being released in to the environment.

I completely agree with your points for the most part... But I'd like to offer you some hope on this one:

I question The Journalist, too. Freedom of the press extends to those that own a press, and if you want to work as a journalist, you almost have to work for some fat cat with a press. Said fat cat isn't going to let you print stories that criticize fat cats in any meaningful way.

Thankfully, there are alternative voices out there if you are willing to look. But do stay away from the American "name brands" of media; they are likely only to lead you into the pen with the other sheep.

mesozoic wrote:

We need to remember that the judicial branch of the government is always slow to react, but that it does react -- and more often than not, it will favor the rights of the consumer over the rights of industry. A very convincing argument could be made (and will be, in the next couple years) to the Supreme Court challenging something as unconstitutional as the DMCA, or mandatory DRM. When Hollywood does get slapped in the face by the courts -- and I'm confident they will -- all of this nonsense will fade into the past, and a new wave of technological innovation will be allowed to continue.

Unfortunately this might not be true for much longer. 39 States have elected judiciary. Over the last decade industry has found it is just as profitable to buy judges just like they do legislators. There was an article about it in The Nation (I can't find it in their archive, but I believe it was the Sept 2 issue) a couple of weeks ago. A judge in Montana (or Texas) ruled against an industry and was soundly defeated the next election cycle by being out spent with "issue ads" sponsored by that industry and trade group.

Most industry has the money and time to stall the judicial system until a more favorable court is elected. Also the Supreme Court can refuse to hear an appeal. And they have been doing that more and more with consumer/civil rights issues. The checks and balances of the US isn't what it used to be.

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3 AM GIRLS
CINDY ADAMS
ARMY ARCHERD
DAVE BARRY
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PAUL COLFORD
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ANN COULTER
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LOU DOBBS
MAUREEN DOWD
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NAT HENTOFF
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H'WOOD REPORTER E-MAIL
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
INSIDE BELTWAY
INSIDE POLITICS
INSIDE THE RING
MOLLY IVINS
AL KAMEN
MICKEY KAUS
KEITH J. KELLY
MICHAEL KELLY
MICHAEL KINSLEY
HARRY KNOWLES
MORT KONDRACKE
KRAUTHAMMER
LARRY KUDLOW
HOWIE KURTZ
JOHN LEO
DAVID LIMBAUGH
RUSH LIMBAUGH
HAL LINDSEY
RICH LOWRY
MICHELLE MALKIN
CHRIS MATTHEWS
MARY MCGRORY
MICHAEL MEDVED
DICK MORRIS
PEGGY NOONAN
BOB NOVAK
OFF THE RECORD
KATE O'BEIRNE
MARVIN OLASKY
BILL O'REILLY
PAGE SIX
ANDREA PEYSER
JIM PINKERTON
JOHN PODHORETZ
TV PROGRAMMING INSIDER
WES PRUDEN
ANNA QUINDLEN
WILLIAM RASPBERRY
REX REED
RICHARD REEVES
J. MAX ROBINS
RICHARD ROEPER
RUSH/MOLLOY
BILL SAFIRE
SCHLAFLY
TOM SHALES
GAIL SHISTER
LIZ SMITH
MICHAEL SNEED
JOE SOBRAN
THOMAS SOWELL
ANDREW SULLIVAN
HELEN THOMAS
CAL THOMAS
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
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TV COLUMN
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Excellent slashdot alternative:

AlterSlash

I almost always read that instead of slashdot.

Reading or subscribing to slashdot only puts cash in the greedy pockets of VA Softwares board of crooks, er, i mean directors. The slashdot janitors and flunkies make the same garbage salary regardless of what happens.

Also another site that always gets the stories at least a day before slashdot sometimes as much as a week, or never in the case of something exposing hypocrisy from osdn.

LinuxToday

Last year when VA stock tanked Slashdot executed a nasty smear campaign against them in attempt to steal their readers, but due to blatant hypocrisy it failed.

Also if you want real dissenting political commentary from a respectable source may i suggest:

The Nation

This magazine was founded to promote the abolitionist movement in the 1800s and continues to be a well respected alternative news source today. Sure the DMCA is bad, but not being able to pirate DVDs on Linux is nothing compared to the real injustices going on in the rest of the world, many times funded by your tax dollars.

Enjoy these alternative news sources and feel good knowing you are no longer helping to line the pockets of crook CEOs from the days of infectious greed by supporting osdn and other fronts for the fizzled stock scam once known as VA Linux.

Excellent slashdot alternative:

AlterSlash

I almost always read that instead of slashdot.

Reading or subscribing to slashdot only puts cash in the greedy pockets of VA Softwares board of crooks, er, i mean directors. The slashdot janitors and flunkies make the same garbage salary regardless of what happens.

Also another site that always gets the stories at least a day before slashdot sometimes as much as a week, or never in the case of something exposing hypocrisy from osdn.

LinuxToday

Last year when VA stock tanked Slashdot executed a nasty smear campaign against them in attempt to steal their readers, but due to blatant hypocrisy it failed.

Also if you want real dissenting political commentary from a respectable source may i suggest:

The Nation

This magazine was founded to promote the abolitionist movement in the 1800s and continues to be a well respected alternative news source today. Sure the DMCA is bad, but not being able to pirate DVDs on Linux is nothing compared to the real injustices going on in the rest of the world, many times funded by your tax dollars.

Enjoy these alternative news sources and feel good knowing you are no longer helping to line the pockets of crook CEOs from the days of infectious greed by supporting osdn and other fronts for the fizzled stock scam once known as VA Linux.

Really, do we have a CEO appreciaton day for all their hard work?

Yes. Every freaking day they climb into the company jet, or the stock goes up a tiny bit and they are worth millions more, all the catered lunches, just about every freaking moment.

I think, in fact, a CEO non-appreciation day would be quite the event, where a CEO is treated just like any other employee. He has to get his own coffee. Field his own calls. Make his own travel reservations and fly coach to his luxurious golf trip / business meetings.

Heh, I guess that came across the wrong way. I didn't mean to imply that 'green' technology is perfect, or that its problems shouldn't be discussed. What I meant was that it is a developing technology, and the problems that it does have can be and are being resolved.

Sorry everyone, I don't normally reply to my own posts, but after thinking about it for a bit I realized it would be irresponsible to have included a link to a crazy site like Vreeland's without also including a link to a sane analysis of why he is in fact a nutter.

Here is a careful, balanced, and thoughtful examination of The 9-11 X-Files

The premise is that all the studios and distributors are now controlled by a handful of mega corps who make and market movies based on a formula of risk management.

You mean these big 10 media companies?

The Davis campaign committee reported receiving the Oracle check in June, two weeks after Oracle won the lucrative state software contract, which was awarded without competitive bidding.

Without competitive bidding... And a check received from a company boasting its software is unbreakable.

No, this is not quite on a par with the W. Bush dealings with Enron. But it's getting close.

Capped bandwidth reduces the cost of the service to ordinary users by not making the rest of us pay for what is probably P2P piracy.

Which could possibly be the big reason behind this.

It's also going to kill net radio services like shoutcast.

Another thought: It's going to make people (well, me at least) even more resentful of advertising.

I have to pay for (1) simple access, then I have to pay for (2) metered usage, then I have to be bombarded with (3) advertisements to see anything of value -- which I am paying to (4) download, and I have to (5) register with the content provider to get the content and advertisements.

I've got an internal network for testing and development. But I've been spoiled by the net. Maybe I'll just switch back dial up, and use lynx to read slashdot, google groups, search.cpan.org and java.sun.com. And pine (though Evolution is pretty nice) to read email. Maybe I'll resubscribe to a print newspaper and a weekly news magazine for news again.

I'll miss having so much technical information immediately at my disposal, but I've paid for all these technical reference books on my bookshelf. And many of them come with a digital version of themselves. Maybe it's time to use them as a first resource instead of google groups.

Yet another thought: I've been lazy wasting all this "precious" bandwidth by continually accessing content that doesn't change regularly. I'll start using local copies.

I'll have to look inito creating a caching server.

I'll certainly get some junkbuster software running now.

If they want us to *really* pay attention to bandwidth, it will kill a lot of the internet. Animation Express will die. That stuff is interesting, but I'm not going to pay to see it. Even stuff like Yahoo! Games (which I haven't played in while) won't last.

Think about it. A lot of the Internet is entertainment. What sorts of entertainment are people willing to *pay* for? Movies, Music, Pr0n... what else? This is all high-bandwidth, and outside of mp3, the online quality sucks.

Dancing Hamsters? 3 minutes Flash cartoons? Are you kidding?

Quickly changing information is useful to have. Weather, stocks, news. Which can all be distilled down to text and tranferred efficiently.

Technical documation, I can have a local copy of.

This is why I cancelled cable. If they started making you pay for each tv show you watched, how much of it is really worth watching? Not a whole hell of a lot, that's for sure.

So, for me, the internet boils down to two things: one-to-one communication (email and instant messaging) and e-commerce. I shop online to save trips to the store.

Here's a good question. If you had to pay for metered access, can you name any reason at that you ever, ever go to these web sites:

Burger King

7-Eleven

insert usless site here.

Lastly, one of the beautiful things about the Net was the smaller niche and fringe communities that conform without being bound by geographical boundaries. With metered access, those communities will have one more barrier. If you have to pay for acesss, people will more likely stick with the "tried and true" sites, rather that sifting through the mountains of crap to find the gems. This will undoubtedly result result in more concentration of users, content and money around the Big 10 Media Corporations. Which will incredibly boring.

Maybe this internet thing was a fad after all.

Don't mind me. I'm just bitter.

Okay. So how do you propose we set up a serious fund that gets the politicians into our pockets? Consider:

Anne Bingaman, former antitrust chief in Clinton's Justice Department and wife of the New Mexico senator Jeff Bingaman, went to work for Global Crossing to lobby the Federal Communications Commission. She reportedly earned an astonishing $2.5 million in less than a year. Tom Daschle's wife, Linda, who lobbies for airlines and aircraft manufacturers, helped design the $16 billion bailout rushed through for the airlines after 9/11--the legislation in which majority leader Daschle stiffed labor's plea for aid to laid-off workers. Ruth Harkin, wife of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, heads the Washington office of United Technologies and sits on the board of the National Association of Manufacturers.

- "Enron Democrats"

Saying something is a 'matter of economics' is far different than saying it is a 'matter of physics'. Relativity and quantum mechanics (with Newtonian physics a 'good enough' approximation at human scale) are strong predictive models of physical reality. This doesn't mean that they aren't falsifiable (else they wouldn't be theories), but it does mean that these two models have a strong experimental track record of having theoretical possibilities shown to be empirical realities. Economics, were it like physics, would need to have a rigorous mathematical model of the behavior of individuals in group settings which was likewise strongly predictive. The model of Economic Man, the "rational self-maximizer," simply doesn't correspond with real people. Outside of corporate libertarian fantasies, I don't believe such people exist. Don't take my word for it? OK. You mention General Motors. GM decided to make internal combustion engines depend on leaded gasoline. They did this for profit, despite the fact that lead is poisonous to people and damaging to cars. They poisoned three generations of children. They distorted research and covered up inconvenient facts in order to keep at it. Sounds like their model is a rationalizing greedy mofo. I remain unconvinced by your argument. The FSF's argument is grounded in the history of the computing field and reflective of my own experience. Works for me.

Perhaps we need a new word or phrase to describe it. Much like we say Marxist Communism as opposed to Soviet Communism, we have Microsoft Capitalism as opposed to Competitive Capitalism.

The Nation suggests the term "Enron Capitalism."

citizenship. yes, i have been mulling it over for years.

since the coup d'etat staged by the sOoPrEeM kOuRt of the yoo ess ay, i have been wanting to leave this mess of lies and hypocrisy. see this article for info about the coup d'etat. and see this article for what a Republican has to say about it and books written about this coup d'etat.

the hell of it is that most if not all countries are precious little better. other countries have one thing going for them, they are not my country of birth. this country (yoo ess ay) is my country of birth and as such it galls me to see the Constitution get pissed on and torn up constantly. i can not stand to see what is going on in my country. i think i will leave.

(now, watch all the shitforbrains reactionary swine come out from under their rocks and tell me "get out and good riddance!", to them i say: just wait until they come for you, scumbag, and kick your door down)

have a goddamn fucking fine day.

Microsoft fighting for something that makes sense? Maybe, here's a quote from a Nation article about defense spending: Even our own Bill Gates was alarmed at the United States' apparent hubris: "People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us."

But from the letter to the MPAA I didn't get any sense that MS, or Intel, or any other major computer manufacturer was actually going to work against anti-consumer DRM, just that they didn't want Congress involved. In fact, if DRM happens without Congress it might be much worse. Congress at least makes a pretense of getting public input and conducting halfway fair and open hearings and publishes their policies freely in many cases. You can bet that if industry (think oligopoly) does this on their own, the public will have no say, get stuck with a less secure (for users) security, and lose any chance for Fair Use and/or DRM-expiration when current media copyright expires (which we all suspect it may never actually do again).

When I hear the phrase "digital rights management" why do I get the feeling the only people who will have any digital rights left to manage are major corporations? Either way, unless consumers get informed and actually stand firm, we all stand to get fooked pretty badly on this one. I have friends who get downright vituperative about a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn baby, but bring up copyright-related freedom issues and even if they do comprehend the issue they couldn't care less. That's the real problem we're facing here: no one understands how this affects them, and even if they do they aren't willing to act differently to prevent it.

I'm not surprised that Bork opposes that joke of a deal. While he's certainly been a critic of antitrust law in general, he at least sticks to his principles. Many "conservatives" bash the antitrust case out of either deference to Micro$oft (a large campaign contributor) or sheer ignorance.

Many people overlook another conservative who chose to follow the law and base his thinking on the facts: Thomas Penfield Jackson...the judge in the original antitrust case. Jackson too was appointed by Reagan. In fact, he was appointed specifically to quash antitrust cases that came his way. But U.S. vs. Microsoft was just too compelling...they openly flaunted the law and even went so far as to fabricate evidence (the infamous video showing how difficult it was to remove IE). His findings of fact in the case, which were upheld by the appellate court, paint a picture of an extremely arrogant and socially destructive corporation openly engaging in socially destructive practices in clear violation of the law of the land.

I long for the days when there were still principled conservatives to be found in positions of power. I can respect an honest difference of opinion...but that's rare anymore. In a world where most conservatives are Enron conservatives it's nice to see someone take a principled stand (Bork's work for Netscape notwithstanding).

what stands out are his highly rational arguments, as well as his meticulous documentation

Clearly you ought to read more of Chomsky's serious critics. Granted, they can be hard to find since mainstream thinkers dismiss him and his fans out of hand.

This piece by Hitchens points out many gross errors in Chomsky's most ridiculous recent assertion --- that the Sept. 11 attacks considered as an atrocity do not "reach the level" of Clinton's bombing of the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory. (To me the most astounding thing was that Chomsky said this back when it was believed that over 10,000 people were murdered in the Sept 11 attacks!)

This is not to defend Clinton's bombing of the Sudan, but to show Chomsky's ultimate lack of credibility.

One of Chomsky's factual errors is to assert that the US blocked inquiries into the number of people dying from lack of drugs in the Sudan. This is easily verified as false. What the US blocked was an inquiry into what the factory produced.

One clear error in Chomsky's reasoning is his accounting of how death and suffering is to be compared. In the case of the Sudan, Chomsky counts indirect deaths caused by lack of medicine (he calls them direct). But with the destruction of the WTC he does not consider the staggering blow it has had on the world economy. Markets are held back. Foreign investments are curtailed. With decreased tax revenue in Europe, Japan, and the US, governments are forced to cut back on new programs to help the developing world.

Just where does he think $100M pharamaceutical factories come from? For that matter, how is it that new medicines are developed in the first place? The actual attack, as well as the fear of more attacks, has set back the entire world. It is in the developing world that people will suffer most of the continuing indirect effects of the Sept. 11 attacks. But although Chomsky finds these effects vitally important in the toll of the Sudanese bombing, but does not begin to consider them for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Worst of all, Chomsky wrote a reply which turns out to be more ad hominem than anything else. Chomsky does not respond to factual errors that Hitchens pointed out. Chomsky says he need not discuss the question of "Can the attacks of September 11 be compared to an earlier outrage committed by Americans?". But Chomsky did in fact compare the two events. (In his published note "On the Bombings".) Hitchens' question is legitimate and must be answered in any valid defense of Chomsky's statements on the Sept 11 attacks. In spite of earlier interest in the topic, Chomsky now declares the conversation ended, the question irrelevant and, in my view, forfeits both his position and his credibility as a serious, reasonable thinker.

However, I think this would be disastrous for the Linux community at large.

Part of the cachet of using a Red Hat distribution amongst the fringes of 'our little group' comes from its perceived independence -- I know it has plenty of investment from other computing companies, but it's a whole new ball of wax to consider the media giants of today.

Ultimately, it is this part I dislike the most about the rumour. I understand that Linux going mainstream means a move towards some form of meme shift. What I am worried about is the perception will be when America's biggest Linux firm becomes part of that media machine. Do we really need to have a Linux vendor in the grip of a media company?

On the other hand, this could represent AOL's desire to pull an OS X shift in the minds of x86 computer users. It's a flawed idea, not least because they have no 'sophisticated' computing experience to draw from, but an interesting one.

Unfortunately, the thought of it makes me quite ill.

S.O.A.

Blowback

CIA in Guatemala

Interview

These companies need to realize what dinosaurs they are. Their business model is doomed -- it relies on artificial scarcity that they want to maintain by crippling information technology.

I think Eben Moglen's article, Liberation Musicology has some very interesting ideas about the future of music distribution.

Nubmer of innocent Afghans killed by American bombs...

Who says we're only counting the ones killed by bombs? Why not those killed by the Northern Alliance while taking over all those cities, or all the refugees fleeing the bombings that died, for example? (Don't even get me started on other countries, like The Sudan, for example)

Installing a peaceful, fair government in Afghanistan: priceless.

Yeah, just look how well it worked with Saudi Arabia. Nobody could possibly disagree with that! (Hint for the clueless: this is one of bin Laden's primary complaints about the U.S.)

Funny, I thought that this was the online version of "The Nation"...

When you say that protesters confuse "globalization" with "corporatism," you are confusing the issue. Virtually no one (protesters or anyone in power) has a problem with globalization, per se. Everyone realizes that it's kind of like a freight train and therefore almost impossible to stop. Some people just don't like the direction of that train, or who the engineer is. You, yourself, even acknowledge that corporations can be more powerful than governments and do not always have the best interests of the majority of people at heart.

The architects of the global economy have little or no regard for the "third world" people that they are unconvincingly pretending to advocate. The "new" manufacturing jobs that are created in these countries have little or no protections for labor or the environment (the word new appears in quotes because many of these jobs used to belong to people from countries that otherwise take labor and environmental regulations seriously).

In the new global economy, workers and municipalities are pitted against each other in a perverse bidding war to see who can work the hardest for the least amount of compensation and who can allow corporations to pollute the most.

For the real face of the globalization freight train, consider Chapter 11 of the NAFTA agreement that allows corporations based in Mexico or Canada to sue states for lost profits resulting from environmental or labor regulation (do your homework, man). How are treaties designed to thwart lawmakers from protecting labor (not to mention the environment) supposed to be good for "third world" people or anyone else with a job? You might also wish to consider what the architects of globalization have done to the emerging economies of eastern Europe. Foreign manufacturers can compete openly with domestic manufacturers. On the surface, that sounds great. Unfortunately, because those domestic manufacturers had to adjust from a socialist economy to a free market economy, they really couldn't compete with already mature foreign competitors who were already running efficiently and knew a thing or two about marketing. Instead of giving local industries time to adjust to the new economy, the architects of it all (Bush I, Clinton, Yeltsin, etc) went to "cold bath" route because that was what was best for the already profitable corporations, and not for the local economies or the people who have to live there.

Maybe in a follow up article, you can explain how providing menial non-living-wage jobs, in toxic working conditions, with no opportunity for advanecment to people in impoverished countries is supposed to help them? This seems especially ridiculous given the current global economy that encourages companies to move their factories as soon as wages get too high or the other governmental policies are not to their liking.

Everyone (even the purple haired kids getting beaten up by the police) wants to see the world turn into that one Coca-cola commercial where all the kids are singing in perfect harmony. Unfortunately, that's not where we are headed right now.

If you can't afford the nine buck for Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President, you can always read the original article on which it is based (online). The points are unassailable, demonstrated by the fact that no GOP apologist has be able to refute it. They can't -- facts are facts. The best they can muster is to roll their eyes and whine "Get over it."

No. We won't "get over it" just to placate a clutch of putrid rightwing shysters. After attempting to villify Clinton for damn near a decade, they paid no attention to those of us who said: "He won the election, get over it." (Isn't irony ironic?) How it must gall these intellectual munkins to have their pseudo-patrotic blustering exposed as simple partisan braying. They judge everyone else's patriotism by the size of the flag they wave, yet they have no problem wiping their asses with the constitution as long as it benefits their candidate. Shrub cannot realistically be removed from office, but we can make sure he's a one-termer and is always followed by a footnote tagging him as "illegitimate".

Shrub was not elected, he was coronated. We had a coup d'etat. The supreme court handed him the election by stopping the recount, instead of sending it back to the state (as they should have). They didn't do that because Bush would have lost. Absolute worst case scenario, it would have been thrown into the House -- which is EXACTLY what the constitution provides for.

If you REALLY doubt this, ask yourself the following question: Can you imagine, in your wildest carck-induced dreams, that the Supreme Court would have stopped the election if it had benefitted Al Gore?

Oh yeah, the link: The Right and US Trade Law: Invalidating the 20th Century

The debate, though, is happening, albiet not in the mainstream press. (OTOH, the NYTimes has had several stinging editorials and op-eds, all against the measures - that's as mainstream as it gets, I guess.)

On the right: see this article - and on the left, this one is the only one I can find now. Excellent reading both, and you know something is up when the Nation and the New Republic agree! Or try this one, where Sandra Day O'Connor is quoted as saying "We're likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country."

Whoa! This is the swing vote on the Supreme Court... say bye bye freedoms. Some days, I wonder where we're going, and why we're sitting in this handbasket...