Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

BBC News reports that America’s ready to claim its reward for the liberation of Iraq.

The American-backed administration in Iraq has announced sweeping economic reforms, including the sale of all state industries except for oil.

The surprise announcement by Iraqi Finance Minister Kamel al-Keylani dominated the second day of meetings organised by the International Monetary Fund in Dubai.

The recently-appointed minister unveiled a string of reforms that analysts said read like a manifesto devised by Washington, signing off 30 years of Saddam Hussein and the socialist Baath Party.

On top of the massive reconstruction contracts already being laid at the feet of American corporations, several industries are expected to be “privatized”, including telecommunications. In fact, in the next couple of weeks the contracts for establishing mobile phone service in Iraq will be auctioned off. An excellent move, if you ask me. Who needs 24-hour electrical service, decent water lines, or effective protection from roving hordes of “liberated” extremist thugs when you can have the Verizon guy checking to see if we can hear him now?

In addition, the banks and financial institutions will soon be primed to be taken over by foreign interests (except for the central bank, which will become “independent”). Six foreign banks (unnamed in the BBC’s report) will be “fast-tracked” into the country, pushed ahead of the others in acquiring local financial institutions.

Other industries previously government-operated will be privatized, as well. Which is no shock, seeing as privatization is the grand dream of the GOP. And just like in America, where they have friends waiting to pounce on any government agency that can be cut loose, there are vultures circling Iraq’s major industries. And many of those vultures have American backgrounds (Halliburton, we’re looking in your direction).

What everybody’s wondering, however, is who gets the oil? Well, wonder on – ‘til truth make all things plain. “Natural Resources” are not included in the drastic “restructuring” plan. No, not a single mention of selling off Iraq’s oil industry. Halliburton won’t be able to put their greasy fingers into Iraq’s black gold. At least, not directly. Of course, they will soon control the means of financing the oil industry. As well as the companies that handle the construction of oil refineries and important equipment. Not to mention the means of distribution. And their American buddies will be glad to help out by making certain that the Iraqi government knows that it’s best to sign exclusive contracts…

You know, the people who said this war wasn’t just about oil may have been right. It may just have easily been about Verizon and Coca-Cola, as well.

On the conspiracy theory kick comes The Moscow Times’ “Metropolis”, a (frequently critical) column on American politics.

It’s a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buyouts and bogus fronts. It’s a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers—and presidential family members—lie down together in the slime. It’s a hacker’s dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It’s how the United States, the “world’s greatest democracy,” casts its votes. And it’s why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States—no matter what the people of the United States might want.

The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players—Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia—with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation, coming on strong. These companies—all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid—have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems—many using “touch-screen” technology that leaves no paper trail at all—are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other universities.

It’s honestly hard to swallow that the upcoming elections are already fixed by the vote counters (note that I only say “hard” and not “very difficult” or “impossible”). However, there’s a little thing called the appearance of impropriety.

Judges with only the most tenuous of connections will excuse themselves from cases just to avoid the accusation of currying favor. Most (smart) businessmen avoid investing in their own companies in order to avoid the accusation of insider trading. There’s a committee in the Senate that handles ethical issues and which has the power to censure a Senator for the appearance of impropriety. A lawyer can be disbarred for it.

It’s not a matter of doing something wrong, it’s a matter of having reason to do something wrong. Prove to us that we can trust you. Show us that you’re not biased. If you have something that could cause that bias, show us and remove yourself – because it’s going to be very hard to trust you.

So explain to me why our votes are being counted by Republican fundraisers (who promise to deliver votes to specific candidates), partisan players, Christian Reconstructionists (who want – among other things – a Christian theocracy, the death penalty for homosexuality, and the reinstitution of legal slavery), and representatives of the gun lobby. Even if they can manage to suspend their extreme political beliefs for one iota of a second, how can we trust them?

How can we put our trust in a man who promises to deliver Florida to Bush? How can we trust his company to give us a fair and accurate count?

After the last election, when we were as much as told that these companies just estimate ballpark figures and predict the count of absentee ballots, how can we trust political extremists when they tell us our vote counts?

Who do you turn to when the fox is given the key to the henhouse?

Lawrence Lessig (Chair of Creative Commons) writes about a saddening situation in his blog:

I can’t describe how depressing this sort of stuff is. There are many in the content community who understood right away the benefits and virtues of Creative Commons licenses. Indeed, at our announcement in December, we had a video endorsement from not only John Perry Barlow but also Jack Valenti.

But we’ve obviously not yet made the mission clear enough — at least if this is the sort of response we get from a company like mp3.com. Mp3.com was, in its birth at least, one of the most innovative digital music companies out there. Artists were free to sign with mp3.com without promising exclusivity.

Sadly, Lessig isn’t running into something new at mp3.com.

Those of you who have followed my music career (all three of you) know that I began distributing on mp3.com way back in the early days. Not at the beginning, but just as they released their program to let you create your own CD’s. At the time, mp3.com was a sweet deal. Get a free website, let people download your music, and sell CD’s online. In exchange for the CD program, they took a percentage of your sale price.

But it wasn’t long before mp3.com’s revolutionary sensibility started to fade.

They started offering artists a chance to make money off of downloads. The top performing artists each month would split some cold hard cash.

And here our troubles began.

The system quickly fell prey to gaming. Artists quickly climbed to the top of the charts with “songs” named “Jennifer Lopez XXX harcore porn sex naked nude”. Anonymous clickers came into play. So mp3.com adjusted their original plan to reflect the almost-indecipherable percentage game played by ASCAP and BMI¹ with their artists’ royalties.

mp3.com quickly followed up with a “premium” service, which cost artists a monthly fee. Without it, you could still create CD’s and keep a website – but you were no longer eligible to earn money off of your downloads.

As time went on, more and more of the services once offered to their members for free disappeared into the murky realms of the premium service.

This eventually led me to move away from mp3.com I’ll admit to being less knowledgable as to changes since I left, but I have noticed a few things happening. Among them, the takeover of charts once full of indie artists by major-lable players (many of whom didn’t even allow downloads of their music), and a partnership with a new “promotion agency” which artists could join by paying an additional monthly fee.

You know, usually musicians get paid for their music (even if it is a pittance). It’s wrong to make them pay for their own exposure.

mp3.com’s response to Creative Commons’ polite offer to make it simple for mp3.com artists to register CC licenses puts a cap on a business plan that has turned the musicians into paying consumers – taking their money and selling their product, but offering little in return. Their brusque response leaves little to the imagination. With CC gaining notoriety as an agency allowing artists to license legal uses for their music for free, mp3.com has no time to even look over their initial message before they accuse CC of spamming and running a copyright scam.

For those considering online distribution, consider BitPass (here’s where I plug my store), or submit your music to Magnatune. Bitpass lets you register your CC license through them. And Magnatune’s not only CC friendly, they license all of their music through them.

While surfing Creativity Machine (good taste in blog titles), I got pointed toward Creative Commons’ call for remixes. So, I thought I’d give it a try.

Bm Relocation Program’s “Superego Exchange (DBF’s Signal Break-up Mix)” – lo-fi mp3. Full quality mp3 is available in the Digital Goods Store.

This mix is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

We’ve all heard that laughter is the best medicine. After all, grey skies are gonna clear up – put on a happy face. Turn that frown upside down and let a smile be your umbrella.

As Michael Moore points out (quoting an interview Ladies’ Home Journal), that’s exactly what Bush was doing on September 11, 2001:

George W. Bush: But the day ended on a relatively humorous note. The agents said, “you’ll be sleeping downstairs. Washington’s still a dangerous place.” And I said no, I can’t sleep down there, the bed didn’t look comfortable. I was really tired, Laura was tired, we like our own bed. We like our own routine. You know, kind of a nester. I knew I had to deal with the issue the next day and provide strength and comfort to the country, and so I needed rest in order to be mentally prepared. So I told the agent we’re going upstairs, and he reluctantly said okay. Laura wears contacts, and she was sound asleep. Barney was there. And the agent comes running up and says, “We’re under attack. We need you downstairs,” and so there we go. I’m in my running shorts and my T-shirt, and I’m barefooted. Got the dog in one hand, Laura had a cat, I’m holding Laura—
Laura Bush: I don’t have my contacts in , and I’m in my fuzzy house slippers—
George W. Bush: And this guy’s out of breath, and we’re heading straight down to the basement because there’s an incoming unidentified airplane, which is coming toward the White House. Then the guy says it’s a friendly airplane. And we hustle all the way back up stairs and go to bed.

Mrs. Bush: [LAUGHS] And we just lay there thinking about the way we must have looked.

Peggy Noonan (interviewer): So the day starts in tragedy and ends in Marx Brothers.

George W. Bush: That’s right – we got a laugh out of it.

Of course, being the buffoon that he is¹, Michael Moore makes certain we hear this story first before we move on to the meat and potatoes.

Moore asks the question: What can 87 Billion Dollars buy?

3.3 million people lost their jobs during the Bush administration. 87 billion comes to approximately $26,000 apiece. Of course, that would be a handout. We can’t have that, can we? After all, we have things in place to take care of the unemployed. Famine, for one. Plague’s another good one. Ooo, and commercial health care.

After-school programs. The government is changing its funding from one billion dollars (that’s ‘billion’ with a ‘b’) to 600 million (that’s ‘million’ with an ‘m’). But that’s another handout, right? I mean, entertaining kids – that’s what ski trips to Aspen are for, right? Give these poor kids a dimly-lit indoor basketball court with adult supervision and two whole basketballs, and you start gettin’ uppity kids with ideas like teamwork, fair play, and responsibility. And that kinda talk leads to revolution, Bunky.

It also buys twice the “homeland security” we’ve already funded. Oh. Wait. We didn’t actually fund the whole ‘homeland security thing’, really. We funded the creation of a massive government agency who is supposedly responsible for homeland security. They’ve even got a fancy seal and everything. But the government wouldn’t actually have funded the application of new security measures, because that would have been big government. They just funded the creation of ridiculous guidelines and then passed the crippling expense – excuse me, I mean the “power” – on to the states. The states whose combined budget deficits – by the way – could easily be paid by 87 billion, but who have received exactly $0.00 in support from the national government on that point.

Or, it buys our continued presence in a quagmire where American soldiers are in constant danger and the reputation of America suffers while corporations turn a tidy profit.

Guess which option Bush likes?
—
¹ Just to clarify: I’m a fan of Michael Moore’s work, but it’s my opinion that he’s set himself up to be a buffoon. His antics and ranting draw attention to serious issues so that the more responsible and well-supported analysts and political satirists like Molly Ivins and Al Franken can deliver the ol’ one-two punch – journalistic accuracy and humor.

Those of you on MoveOn’s mailing list have probably already heard, but they’ve got a new site.

Misleader.org promises a close look at the all-too-frequent misinformation coming out of the Bush administration.

Check it out.

There are musicians. There are entertainers. There are icons, and there are legends.

And there are those who are all of the above.

Johnny Cash

1932 – 2003

All right. I can live with not being Martin Sheen – CJ’s cool.

Smart, sexy, and sassy, both the press and other staffers know not to mess with Claudia Jean. A natural at her job, the press secretary is sensitive toward women’s issues and stands up for ‘the Sisterhood.’ Her wit and one-liners along with her lip synching ability are known across the land.


:: Which West Wing character are you? ::

Mercilessly stolen from Thudfactor:

You are the Fourth Doctor: A walking Bohemian
conundrum with a brooding personal magnetism
and a first-rate intellect concealed somewhere
beneath your charmingly goofy exterior. You are
perhaps the most terribly clever of all the
Doctors, though your occasional bouts of
childishness get you in trouble. You never go
looking for a fight, but when someone messes
with you… good heavens, are they ever sorry
they did.


Which Incarnation of the Doctor Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla