intellectual properties

a poem from the rooftops of Iran

with a heavy sigh on this beautiful sunny sunday here in oakland, as i pray for iran in the only way i know how, i am so grateful for my life.

things i learned reading the actual paper news today

144 people worldwide have died from swine flu.

every year, 500,000 people die from regular influenza.

i don’t mean to say that we shouldn’t cut a new flu virus off from spreading ASAP, but all this media etc seems a bit overdone given these numbers.

——-

first i read this and thought: hm.  how do i feel about a blogger being arrested because he ranted about taking up arms? seems like you should be able to rant all you want in a free-speech country.

then i read this about the white supremacist who just walked in the Holocaust Museum and shot a guard after ranting all over the internet about ‘blacks and jews’, and that changed my mind.

——

400,000 people die every year from tobacco-related diseases, according to government figures

do you know Obama is a smoker?

i support the new tobacco law. i think it’s smart that Phillip Morris supports it too. fighting against regulations involving public health and/or the environment does not make you competitive. just ask GM.

URGENT: california state parks

you may have heard that due to the state of california budget crisis, the state has said it will close 220 of the state parks. that’s 80% of them.
this will not solve the problem.
in fact, for every $1 invested in a state park, the state gets $2.35 back in tourist dollars.
it will only make the problem worse.
not to mention all the other issues with this preposterous idea. quality of life, jobs, protecting special places.

the savings derived from cutting the parks out of the budget would amount to 0.26 percent of the $24.3 billion budget gap.

“It’s a very, very tiny portion of the financial need, but the impacts would be draconian to say the least,” Goldstein said. “Not only is this bad for people who are relying on state parks more than they ever have for recreation and vacation, but it is also bad for the communities surrounding these parks.”

Stearns said 79.6 million people visited state parks last year. A huge number of reservations for campgrounds have already been made throughout the summer and into November, he said. Analysts estimate park visitors spend roughly $2.6 billion a year in and around the parks.

Goldstein said for every dollar spent, the state parks generate $2.35 in tax revenue from economic activity in the local communities surrounding the parks. That means the state could potentially see a reduction in revenue by closing the parks.

That’s not even counting the loss of day-use fees and the cost of patrolling the closed parks to make sure arsonists, vandals, transients, hunters and marijuana growers don’t move in, she said.
–SF Gate

this option should not be on the table.

please send a msg to the capital telling them so here or here. you can also donate to the California State Parks Foundation to help them fight the fight.

justice isn’t always on your side

the CA Supreme Court held this morning that Prop8 - the voter-passed amendment to the CA Constitution that defines “marriage” as only between a man and a woman - is to be upheld and not ruled unconstitutional.

The language of Justice George’s decision seemed almost regretful, as he wrote that “our task in the present proceeding is not to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution.” Instead, he wrote, “our role is limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values.” — “California Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Same-Sex Marriage”, NYT

all over Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else people are saying “i’m so disappointed in the Court” and “WTF is wrong with California” etc., but i wasn’t expecting anything but what happened, because that is what i expect courts to do.

to be honest, while i’m extremely sad that Prop8 is still in effect and sickened that so many Californians are so closed-minded and homophobic and stuck to “traditional values” in a constantly-changing world, i totally don’t think that the courts should be overturning anything voter-passed unless there was some sort of legal reason why the act was invalid (which they determined it wasn’t), and i agree with George’s statement of why they did what they did. maybe i have too much blind faith in the supposed non-partisan function of the legal system, or i’m missing something, but i don’t want court justices deciding our morals and values, even if i agree with them.

QOTD

.

“My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings.”

–Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee, and an important figure in the conservative movement.

the comments/debate there on thinkprogress.org are interesting and worth reading, esp wrt the difference btw being an economic conservative and a social conservative.

~via

taught v. learned

on Miss California and her statement regarding gay marriage: this part of her answer is totally fine with me:

“I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other,” Prejean responded. “But in my country, and in my family, I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

i was with her up to that point. you think “it’s great” that people have the choice in America, but you don’t agree. i feel the same way about a lot of things. (i wonder if she feels the same way about abortion?) the part that put me off, however, which no one else seems to be focusing on, was the last sentence:

“No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

first of all, anytime you start a sentence with “no offense”, YOU KNOW IT’S OFFENSIVE. and stating that makes you look like a bigot. as the most popular comment on the SF Gate article says: “Good for her to speak her mind! But her grand children will know her as the bigot that she was.”

secondly and more importantly, however, i can’t tell you how many times i’ve heard people defend their racism/sexism/ethically questionable position or action with “that’s how i was raised“. there was a time in america where the same thing defense could be said about believing black people are racially inferior and therefore not equal, or that it’s ok to beat your children as punishment. and you know what? not everything you were taught by your parents is correct. not all parents are saints. saying that, to me, is like saying: “I haven’t learned anything growing up, and I don’t have the ability to make my own conclusions. I believe what I was taught, even if the world changes and new information comes to light.”

i thought about all this when i heard it on the news, got irritated, and then sort of forgot about it. but then i read that bit in the paper yesterday about her going on The Today Show and defending it again by saying:

“It’s not about being politically correct,” she said. “For me, it’s about being biblically correct.”

and i thought my head was going to explode.

as @markmorford tweeted: “Meet the new face of Christian GOP marriage: blonde, skinny, not all that bright, does exactly what she’s told. Perfect.”

btw, here’s a pretty decent site discussing the context of homosexuality in the bible.

the robbers and the robbed

over the weekend, there was much fanfare in the media after a ship captain was rescued from pirates, and now Obama is all up in it. and i wondered: what is going on here?  who are the ships, and who are the pirates? who is the robber, and who is being robbed?

for reasons that i hope are obvious, i think this is really important: You Are Being Lied To About Pirates:

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.

The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why…

…

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”

One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.”

During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

stewart v cramer

“i understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it’s not a fucking game“.

john stewart skewers CNBC financial expert jim cramer on why particularly supposed “MEDIA” people and experts like himself let the market collapse go on without warning when they saw it coming, and possibly even supported it happening by reporting information they knew was either wrong and/or omitting key information, presumably for their won benefit.

best zing: “as carly simon would say, this song ain’t about you.”

if you haven’t watched it yet, watch it now.

btw, i’ve stopped putting money in my 401k until this shit is over.

yes we can change farming in america

jay and i watched the documentary “King Corn” last night. perhaps because both of us come from midwestern farming families, it was a little more personal, but while a documentary about corn farming in iowa might seem mind-numbing, if you have any interest at all in food production and economics, i think it was a well-done and interesting film. even jay stayed awake for almost all of it!

the farmers in the film all seemed to feel an impending sense of doom about their lifestyles, communities, and the food system as a whole.  at this point it’s pretty much just the agri-business industry who are interested in maintaining the current food-production model in the U.S. because they are the only ones benefiting and making any money.  everyone (and everything: the plants, the animals, the land, the rivers, the trees) else is losing. and somehow, despite there being record amounts of food production, have you noticed the cost of food going through the roof yet? i have.

i’m not going to go into all the how’s and why’s that this is happening, because it’s complicated. you should see King Corn (available on netflix), or The Real Dirt on Farmer John (on netflix, a REALLY GREAT and moving film that i thought i had written about here but i guess i didn’t), or Fast Food Nation (also on netflix), or read one of Michael Pollan’s books or his Oct08 letter to Barack Obama.

RIGHT NOW, you have a chance to do something to change the USDA.   SIGN THIS PETITION from Food Democracy Now:

It’s time to get serious about sustainable change at the USDA. As a result, here at Food Democracy Now! we’ve come up with a list of twelve candidates for Under Secretary positions at the USDA. And we’re calling them the Sustainable Dozen.

These individual’s backgrounds represent the type of candidates that we expect to be appointed to these positions in the very near future.

As you may already know, while the Secretary of Agriculture is an important position, it is our understanding that Under Secretaries may actually have “more influence on the day to day workings of the agency than the Secretary.”

Time is of the essence. It is vital that you express your voice for Sustainable Change by signing on to support these candidates and those who have worked alongside this community for decades.

NOW is the time to become the Sustainable Voice for change that our nation so desperately needs.

We will deliver this petition with your comments to Secretary Vilsack once he is confirmed and President-Elect Obama to encourage them to take these issues to heart as they lead the USDA and 21st century U.S. agricultural policy into the future.

i say amen!

i had to fight myself pretty hard not to pop a cork this morning.
i mean, if there was ever a cause for celebration….
but given that me starting to drink at 9:00am on a tuesday isn’t going to lead anywhere productive and obama called us all to get off our asses and get things done, i refrained.
it’ll have to wait until 5:00.

may a new age of peace and prosperity be upon us,
amen.

SUBSCRIBE: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/