Month: July 2001

You Outta Know

Today’s USA Today has a brief blurb quoting Alanis Morrisette, of all people, as being concerned about music “conglomerates apply[ing] their same business practices to the Net” which would apparently result in only a few popular artists getting radio airplay and selling lots of albums.

Which is a bit odd coming from someone who is the property of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, AOL Time Warner. Just once I’d like to see these people put their careers where their ideologies are and foresake their large record contracts for life as an indie artist.

Or is Alanis too concerned that without the payola and other perks Warner Music provides her and other musicians, that she’d be stuck in Fugazi land? Come on Alanis — DIY or stop complaining.

PETA Celebrity Stefanie Powers a Hypocrite

The New York Post ran an excellent article pointing out the rank hypocrisy of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals supporter Stefanie Powers.

Powers recently wrote a letter to Southampton Town Supervisor Vincent Cannuscio asking Cannuscio to deny a permit for the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. circus. According to Powers, the metal bull hooks used to train the elephants are cruel.

Which is an interesting position, considering that Powers herself is a successful show horse jumper and is scheduled to compete in the Hamptons International Horse Show in August. As Neal Travis writes in the Post,

But hat she says about the alleged cruelty to elephants could be applied to the training of at least some show jumpers. Stories abound about horses being trained over jumps that have barbed wire atop them.

Then there’s the matter of spurs, commonly used in training and every bit as painful as the bull hooks that have Powers so upset. And they don’t whip elephants, do they?

Travis contacted a PETA spokeswoman who said, “I do not know anything about the horse show, so, therefore, I have no comment.” Imagine that — a PETA spokeswoman turning down a chance to decry the use of animals in entertainment! I guess the rules are different for PETA’s celebrity dupes.

Source:

Pachyderm Powers’ High Horse. Neal Travis, The New York Post, July 23, 2001.

Genital Mutilation — It’s Not Just for Women

Female Genital Mutilation has received a lot of attention over the past decade for very good reasons — the practice is abominable. Another dangerous form of genital mutilation doesn’t receive as much attention, however — traditional initiation rituals in some developing countries that often involve ritual circumcision under extremely unsanitary and dangerous conditions.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) recently reported that just in South Africa 20 boys died from various causes while undergoing such initiation rites. Several of the boys died from complications related to botched circumcisions. According to the Telegraph,

Some children have been dumped at local hospitals with advanced gangrene of the penis, leading the national health department to draw up guidelines for those who carry out circumcisions to learn the rudiments of surgical hygiene.

Other boys died from starvation, pneumonia and other problems related to the often-harsh conditions under which male initiation ceremonies are conducted. A major concern of health authorities is that often ritual circumcision ceremonies will circumcised many boys with a single knife, posing major risks of spreading disease.

This problem is hardly unique to South Africa. This practice is common throughout much of Africa and other parts of the developing world. So far, though, it hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

Sources:

Kenya’s unkindest cut. Muliro Telewa, The BBC, August 14, 200.

Coming of age in South Africa remains a deadly ordeal. Tim Butcher, The Daily Telegraph (UK), July 23, 2001.

The Cult of Celebrity on News Shows

Yesterday NBC News had a couple stories about the controversy over stem cell research. The stories were prompted by George W. Bush’s meeting with the Pope wherein the Pope expressed his view that stem cell research is immoral.

I happen to support stem cell research, but I was appalled at the short piece NBC News ran giving the pro-stem cell research point of view. What appalled me was that the segment was an interview with Christopher Reeve.

Reeve is a capable actor, but he’s no scientist and he’s certainly not an expert on stem cell research. The last person in the world I want to see explaining a scientific and ethical controversy is an actor who is best known for his role portraying a comic book super hero.

A longtime friend is of the view that network news shows are simply entertainment — differing little in form from the sitcoms, dramas, and soap operas served up by the networks. Sometimes, I’m inclined to agree.

The Uproar over Dmitri Sklyarov’s Arrest

Last week, in an action instigated by Adobe, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Russian programmer Dmitri Skylarov. Skylarov is accused of violating the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Basically, Adobe has a copyprotection scheme which encrypts PDF files. The system has a number of weaknesses, however, and Sklarov wrote a program that can quickly remove such copy protection measures.

A lot of the debate over the arrest online focuses on the DMCA and the elimination of “fair use.” For example, there are a number of programs which read aloud the text of documents for blind people (or anyone else for that matter). The encryption system used by Adobe typically renders such programs useless, even though such use clearly falls within the fair use provision of traditional copyright law — proving the main point of DMCA critics, that the end result of the legislation will be to eliminate any sort of fair use.

What really concerns me, however, is an issue that I haven’t really seen discussed. This program was created in and is sold by a company based in Russia where the DMCA does not apply. American companies, U.S. citizens and many politicians have been concerned that countries with restrictive speech laws would go after Internet communications that originate in the United States where laws are generally more expansive.

But here the shoe is on the other foot — the United States is attempting to legally enforce its copyright laws on a product that is completely legal to produce and sell within the country it was created.

This is definitely not the road the United States should be going down. In fact, you have to wonder if prosecutors in France and Germany aren’t licking their chops. After all both countries have brought cases against American Internet-based companies such as Yahoo! and Amazon on the grounds that the companies weren’t doing an effective job of not selling illegal contraband (such as books) that are legal in the U.S. but illegal in Germany. Prosecuting Skylarov simply buttresses the legal arguments made by those governments that they can prosecute a business for engaging in activities that are completely legal within a company’s home country.

It will be interesting to see how the United States would react if, say, Jeff Bezos went on vacation to Saudi Arabia and was arrested for violating Saudi Arabian law. Or if some police agency in India set a similar trap for Yahoo!’s Terry Semel for real or imagined slights against Hindus on Yahoo!’s discussion boards.

Sklyarov’s arrest really sets a dangerous precedent in this area.

Just How Corrupt Is The Drug Enforcement Agency?

The Washington Post recently published a story about corruption within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency that read like it was from some Third World country. Which is precisely what the American obsession with the drug war is doing to the American legal system.

The story involves a confidential information used by the DEA, IRS, FBI and other agencies. Andrew Chambers, originally applied to be a DEA agent in 1984, but was rejected because he was a high school dropout. The DEA did offer Chambers a deal to become a confidential informant with an amazing pay scale — Chambers would get a percentage of any seized assets.

And for 16 years, Chambers was amply rewarded, earning almost $2 million. Unfortunately Chambers had a habit of perjuring himself when testifying. An internal DEA report concluded that the agency knew that Chambers perjured himself in 16 of 25 sworn depositions and trials, and yet continued to use him as a paid informant anyway.

Los Angeles defense attorney John P. Martin told The Washington Post that the DEA was “addicted to” Chambers and that, “They were willing to overlook his perjury — if not assist him in continuing to perjure himself — because they were able to make cases.”

During his years of working for the DEA, Chambers was arrested 13 times and the DEA often stepped in to persuade prosecutors to drop all charges from their star witness (who turned around and lied under oath about his arrest record).

Now, the convictions Chambers helped to arrange are being undone, and the American justice system has demonstrated once more how the main corrupting force of the drug war is on legal institutions that are being warped and perverted by the win-at-all-costs mentality of the drug war.

Source

DEA Shielded Tainted Informant. Cheryl W. Thompson, Washington Post, July 19, 2001.