NYC Junta

Thanks to the efforts of the good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it’s now official: you can do what you want with your own devices.

Apple argued in this jailbreaking case that copyright law prevents people from installing unapproved programs on iPhones. But the EFF successfully argued that making a phone interoperable amounts to fair use. Copyright law says that if you pay for something, you have the right to use it as you wish as long it is not for some kind of commercial benefit.

The ruling also applied to video remixing, so is it possible we’ll see the return of all those great Hitler parodies spun out of Downfall?

Can capitalism survive the present trauma? Yes, of course.” But, Harvey explains, it can only do so at a terrible price. The mass of the people will be required “to give generously of their fruits of labour to those in power, to surrender many of their rights and their hard-won asset values (in everything from housing to pension rights) and to suffer environmental degradations galore, to say nothing of serial reductions in their living standards which will mean starvation for many of those already struggling to survive at rock bottom. More than a little political repression, police violence and militarised state control will be required to stifle the ensuing unrest.”

—David Harvey (who must be the only Marxist in America)

Fun stuff. This video shows a cartoon animation of Harvey’s explanation of the financial crisis, being drawn in real time with Harvey’s lecture on the audio track. Very creative delivery that adds zing to the dry academia of it all. Can one be any more contrarian than to be a Marxist in the USA of 2010?

The latest psychology strikes a blow against reality TV, but it shows some evidence in favor of what we’re doing at the Junta. From the journal Psychological Science:

Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations

Is the happy life characterized by shallow, happy-go-lucky moments and trivial small talk, or by reflection and profound social encounters? Both notions—the happy ignoramus and the fulfilled deep thinker—exist, but little is known about which interaction style is actually associated with greater happiness (King & Napa, 1998). In this article, we report findings from a naturalistic observation study that investigated whether happy and unhappy people differ in the amount of small talk and substantive conversations they have.

Next time you see somebody in the office kitchen, getting a coffee, don’t ask about their weekend. Ask what they think about Iran getting the bomb, or the nature of God, or … hell, at least talk about a movie. Just no more about the weather. It’s making you depressed.

This is the malevolence we are resisting. Ours is a worthy battle.

Via the Times

Wow.

Via Boing Boing, H.P. Albarelli Jr claims the CIA sprayed liquid LSD over the air and spiked the bread supply of Pont-Saint-Esprit, a village in southern France, in 1951.

From the Telegraph:

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Words escape me. Weren’t we just talking about how actions can have unintended consequences? One would think that—even in 1951—people would have considered how much could go wrong by feeding a large, unknowing population with heavy psychotropic drugs. But maybe not.

WNYC carried a story this morning about American companies doing business in Iran. While technically it is illegal under American law for companies to deal with Iran, business successfully lobbied to be allowed to subvert the embargo by using their foreign subsidiaries. This is how, for example, Honeywell is able to sell Iran technology to refine oil into gasoline.

The SEC used to compile a list of companies that were evading sanctions in this manner. Lobbyists fought successfully to end that practice; however, the New York Times carried a story over the weekend listing 74 companies doing business with Iran despite US laws and national security strategies that aim to stifle such business. So who is really in charge? Uncle Sam or the oil and gas corporations? (For it is mainly energy companies on the list).

What’s more, the companies in violation (in spirit, if not in letter) are also recipients of major government contracts—totaling over $100 billion in the past decade. So not only do they flout the national policies of their government, but they aren’t even ostracized for doing so. Sounds like a compelling case for the pointlessness of sanctions.

Are the Greeks likely to secede from the EU because of their sovereign debt? John Mauldin, a financial investor and writer who claims 1 million+ email subscribers, says its not as fanciful as it sounds:

The third option is that they could vote to leave the European Union. While this is unthinkable to most Europeans, it is an option that may appeal to some Greeks. They could create their own currency and effectively devalue their debt. It would make their labor and exports cheaper…

Most people scoff at this notion, but money is flying out of Greek banks into non-Greek ones, and to my way of thinking that is a suggestion that some Greeks think secession might be a possibility. It is also causing severe stress at Greek banks.

Mr Mauldin’s letter is worth reading in its entirety (he requires an email address to access full letter). It’s a 20min read but explains the reasons behind the Greek financial crisis and the possible ways out, and along the way showing the parallels with the rest of Europe and America.

Greece is being told that it must cut its budget to an 8.7% deficit this year and down to 3% within three years.

For my American readers, let’s put that into perspective. That is the equivalent of a $560-billion-dollar US budget cut this year and another such cut next year. That would mean huge cuts in entitlements, Social Security, defense, education, wages, subsidies, and on and on. And repealing the Bush tax cuts? That would just be for starters. No “let’s freeze the budget” and try and grow our way out of it, as we effectively did in the ’90s, or gradually cutting the budget a few hundred billion a year while raising taxes. That combination of tax increases and budget cuts would guarantee a US recession. Unemployment, already high, would climb higher.

And yet, that is what the Greek government is being asked to do as the price for a bailout.

[...]

Whether it is Japan or Portugal or the US or (pick a country), the body of evidence clearly shows that there is a limit to the amount of debt a sovereign country can handle without a crisis developing. That limit is different for each country, but there is a limit that the bond market will impose. And there are many countries in the developed world that are approaching that limit.

I highly recommend subscribing to his newsletter. It’s free.

Earlier in the day yesterday, I tweeted that I’d like to hear Obama admit the truth about the state of our Union. While he couldn’t come out and put it the way I did, I noticed that he avoided the traditional opening of the speech, “The state of our Union is strong.”

Obama opened with a frank assessment of the tough times we’re facing, but put them in a historical context so as to soften the blow of bad news. It was not until the twelfth paragraph of his speech (six minutes into it), as he concluded his introduction and came to specific proposals, that he affirmed the strength of the country.

It’s because of this spirit — this great decency and great strength — that I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight.  Despite our hardships, our union is strong.  We do not give up.  We do not quit.  We do not allow fear or division to break our spirit.  In this new decade, it’s time the American people get a government that matches their decency; that embodies their strength.

I found the speech uplifting, and welcomed the return of Obama the Force. Throughout 2009, it seemed the strong, eloquent man I had voted for was taking a back seat too often, and not standing up for important principles. Despite the power of the speech, I still find fault with his policies on the war, national security, and the prosecution of war crimes which were clearly committed by our government. I will still fight him on that. But this was a welcome return of a strong leader with the right ideas on jobs, energy and education.

One of the high points was when he said we need to reject those who say his program is too ambitious, and “that we should just put things on hold for a while.” Obama’s response channeled Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, where the civil rights leader wrote, “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ … This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”

As the President put it:

For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: How long should we wait?  How long should America put its future on hold?

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse.  Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy.  Germany is not waiting.  India is not waiting.  These nations — they’re not standing still.  These nations aren’t playing for second place.

I’m looking forward to the ways in which Obama might rally his party to avoid a monstrous November defeat. It will be difficult. But as he said, they still have the largest majority in decades, and we the people expect them to pass some meaningful legislation.

What did you think of the speech?

Good for Google, finally standing up to China, I hope this embarrasses the Chinese government. The Chinese government has been extraordinarily effective at censoring the internet, contradicting many who thought initially that the internet would be the trojan horse through which more liberal ideas circulated through to the people. I don’t care about the justifications about keeping order, or the tired story about protecting people from pornography, any regime afraid of ideas is a bad one.

I’m the benefactor of a smart colleague who is a voracious reader and, like I occasionally do, leaves magazines around the office for others to read after he finishes them. Among the mags I got today was Foreign Policy, just read Walter Russel Mead’s excellent piece that has gotten a lot of attention this past week for really exploring the comparison between the foreign policy of Obama and Carter.

News broke yesterday that China suceeded in pressuring Cambodia into deporting a few dozen Uighurs who had escaped the country after the riots there a few months ago. Not going to go into the whole Uighur debate, I’ve posted about that before on here, but those guys have it pretty rough. And now it comes out that China seems to have basically dangled new investments in front of the Cambodians to get them to return the Uighurs. So, who wants to live in a world dominated by Chinese power? Anyone think those Uighurs are going to get a fair trial? They’ll be sent to jail for life or executed (China executes more people than all other countries combined). This story is another reason why China’s massive foreign investment campaign in third-world countries merits close scrutiny.

I couldn’t believe this story, the Somali pirates have set up a stock exchange to help fund their activities. Pretty egalitarian too those pirates, not only for the jihadi fat-cats, even the common-folk can get involved, read to the end and check out the young woman who did pretty well after contributing an RPG she got, uh, from alimony.