Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of Copyrights and Copywrongs, faces off against MPAA demon Fritz Attaway, the Executive Vice President and Washington General Counsel of the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. on the NPR program Justice Talking. Fascinating.
General
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May 02
Venezuelan coup leader flees
BBC: Carmona, coup-leader and president for a day, is seeking asylum in Colombia. They need to get his ass back and throw the book at him. No doubt the US will attempt to make him safe possibly flying him to the US or a third country.
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May 02
Simulacra and Simulation
Pretty nice article. Makes me want to read that book.
A French Philosopher [Jean Baudrillard] Talks Back to Hollywood and ‘The Matrix’
This apocalyptic message owes something to the work of the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick (1928-82), a cult figure who wrote extensively about the moral problems that result when the distinctions between the natural and synthetic began to blur through cloning, artificial intelligence and android technology. Mr. Dick foresaw a future in which synthetic beings were mass-produced to be used as soldiers, assassins, Stepford-style love slaves and synthetic families next door, manufactured to keep settlers company when humans colonize other planets.
His most widely known novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” ? made into the wildly successful film “Blade Runner” ? centered on synthetic beings that escape servitude to pass as human, only to be tracked down and “retired” by a bounty killer. Hollywood’s indifference to the moral fine points was evident by the way it changed the plot. The bounty killer in Mr. Dick’s novel returns home to a realistically problematic marriage and a flesh-and-blood wife. In the movie, he falls in love and runs away with a synthetic woman manufactured by a firm whose motto is “More human than human.” Since “Blade Runner,” erotic involvement between humans and androids has evolved into a new form of soft-core cinema porn.
The hero of “The Matrix,” played by Keanu Reeves, has the dignity to decline when offered an intimate digital encounter with a virtual blonde. This is a nice touch ? and one of many references to Mr. Baudrillard’s theories ? but not enough to keep the movie from succumbing to the techno- and cyber-chauvinism that the philosopher hammers away at in “Simulacra and Simulation.”
- Reality of Simulation Great Baudrillard site
- America, America . . . (From Paraxysm, Verso 1998 – A great collection of Interviews by Philippe Petit) interview with Baudrillard
- Buy it online at amazon
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May 02
NMRPS Demands on Pearl Video
I wonder what’s behind the FBI’s attempts to prevent the dissemination of the Pearl execution video. Does it have anything to do with the NMRPS (National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistan Sovereignity) demands at the end of the video? Are they just carrying out orders from the corporate paymasters at Dow Jones, the owners of the Wall Street Journal where Pearl was employed? Or, are they worried that viewing this video will muddy the waters of this issue? Why should we fear information? The public can only be expected to make the best decisions once it has all the information. Like I said previously, if anything this video holds the potential to galvanize people around the world against terrorism.
NMRPS demands stated in the video:
- The immediate release of all U.S. held prisoners in Guantinamo Bay, Cuba
- The return of Pakistani prisoners to Pakistan.
- The immediate end of U.S. presence in Pakistan.
- The delivery of F-16 planes that Pakistan had paid for and never received.
At the end the video states that “We asure Americans that they shall never be safe on the Muslim Land of Pakistan. And if our demands are not met this scene shall be repeated again and again…” Mind you, this is all displayed with the backdrop of Daniel Pearl’s severed head. It’s pure insanity and awful and disgusting, but it is part of history and not even the FBI has the power or the authority or right to stop it. Download it here.
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May 02
WTO Statistics: World Slavery
Some staggering statistics from the Anti-WTO site www.gatt.org:
Studies such as those from which the following facts are culled demonstrate that current trade liberalisation rules and policies have led to increased poverty and inequality, and have eroded democratic principles, with a disporportionately large negative effect on the poorest countries.
The poorest 49 countries make up 10% of the world?s population, but account for only 0.4% of world trade. This disparity has been growing.
70% of world trade is controlled by large multinational corporations; this percentage has steadily increased over the past twenty years.
The richest fifth have 80% of the world?s income and the poorest fifth have 1%; this gap has doubled between 1960 and 2000. (Human Development Report, UNDP 1999)
In almost all countries that have undertaken rapid trade liberalisation, wage inequality has increased?20-30% fall in wages in some Latin American countries. (UNCTAD 1997)
Even in the First World, the gap between upper executive and worker salaries has never bigger. The gap is enormously huger, and is defended in theoretical terms.
Top 100 transnational corporations increased assets 697% between 1980 and 1995. At the same time employment in these corporations went down.
Nearly every single environmental or public health law challenged at the WTO has been ruled illegal. While it is likely that many should legitimately have been ruled illegal as they were, the fact that so few have gotten through has led us to question the validity of our processes.
A matter of perspective helps. On September 11, 3000 people died in the towers as a result of terrorism. On the same day, 24,000 people died of hunger, 6,020 children were killed by diarrhoea, and 2,700 children were killed by measles on that day.
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May 02
Naked chickens
An Israeli scientist has developed a featherless chicken. This thing looks just wrong. He says he’s ‘just helping evolution’. Everyday, I’m more and more glad I gave up eating meat. What’s next boneless chickens, headless chickens, vat-grown chickens, hairless cows, walking steaks? Something about this is seriously fucked up.
- Researchers develop featherless chickens from Alanta Journal Constitution Get an eyefull of a large pink cock.
- Cluck! Cluck! Chickens in Their Birthday Suits! These birds look so nasty.
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May 02
Dave Berg dead at 81
I haven’t read Mad Magazine since I was in my early teens and at that point it was an obsession. I still have a large box of them stuffed in my closet. Dave Berg produced ‘The Lighter Side of…’ almost through the entire history of Mad Magazine. He missed the first four years as Mad started in 1952 and he joined in 1956. One of the best things about the “The Lighter Side” was that Berg would often draw Mad celebrities in his drawings and it was a good opportunity for a fan like me to get an impression of how the ‘Usual Gang of Idiots’ were in real life. Thanks for the memories!
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May 02
World gets more Dickian
From The Economist, The future of mind control:
IN AN attempt to treat depression, neuroscientists once carried out a simple experiment. Using electrodes, they stimulated the brains of women in ways that caused pleasurable feelings. The subjects came to no harm?indeed their symptoms appeared to evaporate, at least temporarily?but they quickly fell in love with their experimenters. …
Yet neuroscientists have been left largely to their own devices, restrained only by standard codes of medical ethics and experimentation. This relative lack of regulation and oversight has produced a curious result. When it comes to the brain, society now regards the distinction between treatment and enhancement as essentially meaningless. Taking a drug such as Prozac when you are not clinically depressed used to be called cosmetic, or non-essential, and was therefore considered an improper use of medical technology. Now it is regarded as just about as cosmetic, and as non-essential, as birth control or orthodontics. American legislators are weighing the so-called parity issue?the argument that mental treatments deserve the same coverage in health-insurance plans as any other sort of drug. Where drugs to change personality traits were once seen as medicinal fripperies, or enhancements, they are now seen as entitlements.
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May 02
Buy this mp3
If you want a music format that is more flexible and lacks watermarks and can be copied repeatedly then you should really encourage record labels and artists to sell their music in mp3 format by buying the Meshell mp3 from Maverick Records. My guess is depending on how well the sale goes they may make more of their records available for sale in this manner. I paid the .99$. Of course, I don’t like Meshell, but some of my friends might and it’s a good use for .99$. I think if more companies sold mp3s everyone would benefit.