Category: Politics

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Community Agroecology

Fair Trade certified coffee is a great system for ensuring that exploited coffee farmers get more of the due for their labor. Even better is Community Agroecology, a system by which Costa Rican farmers send coffee directly to your house, bypassing all middlemen and ensuring that the farmers really get their fair share.

All funds from the coffee sales are returned to the Cooperative. This returns to farmers over five times more than those who sell their coffee in the conventional system and three times more than certified Fair Trade standards.

Ex-UCB student Joshua Deutsch, via email from Costa Rica, where he’s on currently working with coffee farmers and observing how commerce with America affects local economies: “This organization uses the term “fair trade direct” and aims to create a global network of direct purchasing between producers and consumers. The organization also guarantees that the coffee is grown in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Amy and I are giving it a shot (no pun intended).

Update: Looks like it’s also possible to order coffee directly from Zapatistas.

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Speechalist

Meet Harlan McCraney as George Bush’s speech writer (“speechalist”). Hilarious short featuring masterful interleaving of real Bush clips with Andy Dicks coaching from behind the scenes. Allegedly coming from Comedy Central, but can’t find any reference to it on their site.

Music: Eek-A-Mouse :: Neutron Bomb
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The Most Serene Republic of Theremins

Just got cajoled into creating my own country at NationStates, an online game that lets users explore the ramifications of political decisions on economies and social structures within a country whose parameters you establish and modify by making hard-core decisions. NationStates is no Sims knockoff — more of a text-based petri dish you can use to see how your political ideals might play out in the real world, if actually realized.

The Most Serene Republic of Theremins is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, notable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 7 million are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt. The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — is mainly concerned with Law & Order, although Healthcare and Education are on the agenda. The average income tax rate is 41%, but much higher for the wealthy. Private enterprise is illegal, but for those in the know there is a slick and highly efficient black market in Cheese Exports.

Game play consists of deciding one issue a day, with brief pro/con arguments there to help you find conviction; my first was whether to enforce compulsory voting on my citizens (lord, no). Looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

Music: Unknown Instructors :: Where You Find It
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Uncle Jam Wants You

Sounds like the premise to a South Park sub-plot, but apparently true: The Army National Guard is experiencing its lowest volunteer signup rates in quite a while. To remedy the situation, they’re giving away three — yes, three free iTunes music store downloads to all comers. All you have to do is hand over your contact info to a recruiter. Fear not for your life, lad — music conquers all!

Music: Dead Can Dance :: Cantara
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Washington Needs More Cowbell

Christopher Walken is preparing to run in the 2008 presidential campaign.

“Our great country is in a terrible downward spiral. We’re outsourcing jobs, bankrupting social security, and losing lives at war. We need to focus on what’s important– paying attention to our children, our citizens, our future. We need to think about improving our failing educational system, making better use of our resources, and helping to promote a stable, safe, and tolerant global society. It’s time to be smart about our politics. It’s time to get America back on track.”

No argument from me there, and I do think Walken would likely be a better untrained politician than Schwarzennegger, but I still don’t want an untrained politican running the country. Even if he does bring us more cowbell. Which we sorely need.

Music: Dexter Gordon :: Second Balcony Jump
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LBJ Invented the Internet

Move over Al Gore – Lyndon B Johnson assumes the rightful mantle as Inventor of the Internet. In 1967, LBJ gave a speech accompanying the signing of the Public Broadcasting Act:

I believe the time has come to stake another claim in the name of all the people, stake a claim based upon the combined resources of communications. I believe the time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio, and to enlist them in the cause of education….

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise. Think of the lives that this would change:

  • the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university….
  • the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;
  • a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;
  • a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.

And such a system could involve other nations, too–it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind.

A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday’s strangest dreams are today’s headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.

I have already asked my advisers to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge–and then to draw up a suggested blueprint for it.

Via Buzzmachine and elsewhere. Thanks baald.

Music: Michael Nyman :: Synchronising
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Kill ‘Em All

From Think Progress (no comment, this speaks for itself):

The United States is holding more than 500 foreign detainees at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These men have been deprived of basic legal and civil rights, and reports of abuse, torture and grotesque mistreatment are rampant. Many, if not most, of the detainees have been there nearly four years, yet in all that time, only four have been accused of any crime. And even then, military prosecutors recently charged the military trials against those four have been rigged.

So what would Fox’s Bill O’Reilly do to fix the problem? Kill ‘em all:
O’REILLY: I don’t give them any protection. I don’t feel sorry for them. In fact, I probably would have ordered their execution if I had the power. (Listen to O’Reilly here.)

Music: Black Cat Orchestra :: Chase
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Likable Liar

The majority of Americans now see Bush as dishonest. But 2/3 of respondents also describe him as “strong and likable.” So according to the Venn Diagram, somewhere out there is a sizable group of people who find our president a likable liar. How patriotic.

Music: Stereolab :: Contronatura
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Double Barrel

According to the Supreme Court (Grokster case), “software companies can be held liable for copyright infringement when individuals use their technology to download songs and movies illegally.” But the logic is inverted when applied to the gun industry. According to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, “The president believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others.”

So the corporation is liable for criminal uses of a product by its customers when that product involves copyright. But the corporation is not liable for criminal uses of a product by a customer when that product is a firearm (and the stakes could be human lives).

Daily Kos: What’s the common logic holding these disparate concepts together? Massive corporate special interest money. Welcome to your government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations, where a pirated copy of “Hollywood Homicide” is bigger threat than an actual Hollywood homicide.

Not making a point here about copyright or gun laws per se’, but about hypocrisy, messed up priorities, inconsistent logic and double standards.

via Weblogsksy

Music: The Fiery Furnaces :: Leaky Tunnel