Egressing the Fortress

The President has an historic opportunity, a chance to redo history and do it right. The French, always obstreperous, always with a sense of their own importance, have provided him with the perfect opportunity.

France insists on playing a leading role in the rebuilding of Iraq. Perhaps that is exactly what Bush should make sure happens. Rather than beating around the bush (no pun intended) and continuing the argument about who gets to be in charge in Iraq, let’s just put France in charge. Let’s let them send their troops there. Let’s pull out ours.

It’s Dien Bien Phu in reverse (except, unlike the French, we didn’t lose the battle or the war first). It would be nice to think of France struggling to straighten out Iraq and deal with the Middle East.

There’s an old saw, “beware of what you pray for.” Or as we continentals like to put it, “prenez garde pour de ce que vous priez.” The French are so hell-bent on a major role in the peace, maybe that would be suitable, even ironic.

Seriously, though, now that we’ve had a good laugh at France’s expense, it might be worth learning something from their own imperial adventures and failures. Most notably Algeria. They, along with the rest of continental Europe, want a quick withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq, and it is nice to see that despite the haze of tough talk from the Administration that is precisely what is happening.

Already there are stories floating around about how the U.S. may decide to pull its troops out of cities there to reduce tensions.

Good idea. Has someone at the Pentagon been reading this writer’s earlier columns? (Ridiculously unlikely.)

More to the point, has someone finally figured out that the only real goal of the war, unseating Saddam and reducing Iraq’s influence or even potential influence, is already accomplished? The endless discussion about bringing democracy to someone else’s country has the hollow ring of a parent lecturing a teenager. Or in this case a middle-aged child lecturing a failing parent.

There is nothing less appreciated, or listened to, than unasked for advice. That is true whether you’re talking about people or nations. The UN nations didn’t cotton much to Bush’s advice about how they should conduct their foreign policy. He didn’t much cotton to what they advised, either.

Germany will get involved in Iraq , according to its Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder, in an Op-Ed in the N.Y. Times Friday. This is a conciliatory gesture, suggesting that it’s time we all get over it, and get on with the inevitable.

The inevitable that the cynical French learned the hard way in Vietnam and Algeria. And which we may learn at a much cheaper price. In fact, a few weeks ago about 40 of Rummy’s boys watched the ”The Battle of Algiers,” the 1966 movie about France’s Algerian fiasco. Now it’s time to learn the hardest of all lessons History teaches: That you can’t ever really win a war. (With the exception of the Roman’s victory over Carthage.) You can only beat back the opposition and slam the manhole cover down on them one more time and, even then, just for a while.

The inevitable ebb and flow of history is about beating back the forces you are in conflict with, if you are lucky, in a ghastly, endless dance that kills a bunch of people and lasts a long time. But one that doesn’t wipe you out, or bring about a terrible dark ages that takes centuries to recover from.

Not a pretty picture, I know. I know.

Perhaps if I believed enough, then I could paint you a rosier one. But those who believe more are the very ones that send generation after generation to the front…from both sides.

While good may be more on one side than the other, the matters are almost always less than 100 percent clear. Certainly there is plenty of blame to spread around in the Middle East, if you care to go back far enough in time and include the empires that ran roughshod over the people there for thousands of years.

It takes passionate blindness to think, yet again, that there's some war that will end all war. It's this passionate, blind belief in the existence of such a final war, on both sides (of whatever issue is of the moment), that has kept humans at war since the beginning of recorded history.

And it will continue to do so, if we are not careful, until history is truly ended by Armageddon. Unless we learn to be a bit real politik about our battles, and know when we've won, if not all, enough. ¶ 3:48 PM

  The Real Enemies of Art

As someone who has googled himself and found his work being sold by a variety of “media” companies through the years without permission or recompense (and in violation of original contracts), let me put the abusive RIAA lawsuit business in some modest real and legal perspective.

Here’s a quick and typical writer’s tale. In other words, how things really work for most “artists.” A piece you wrote years ago, before the present media company contracts (more on that later), shows up for sale on a search service. You still own the rights, but you do not get any of the money. You contact them and they say, basically, go sue us or the guys we bought it from. This is over maybe a couple of hundred bucks.

So you do nothing. The writing life pays bad enough without spending extra time in court. ( Although Jonathan Tasini did just that, taking the NY Times to court and winning, to little avail. (The Tasini v. New York Times Co. ruling)

Bottom line? The noble protectors of creativity at the Times just changed their contract and threw any archived material they would have to pay royalties for off their website. This hurt both readers and writers. To see what they did, just check out the contract used at the Boston Globe, which is owned by, and run the same as, the Times.)

It’s too typical to be a big deal. The Globe contract is now the industry standard.

That said, I also say big deal to media companies getting ripped off by file swappers. Here’s why. If you look at those contracts “artists” are forced to sign, they are already getting ripped off so badly by their media moguls that the copiers are doing them little, if any, harm. If anything, swapping may be doing them a favor by increasing their marketing at a bargain price. Typical “artists” might get 15 percent, about $1.20 per CD sold at 18 bucks. Getting wider play via swapping builds their popularity and they easily make back the lost money when they go on tour… and when more of their CDs sell.

Heck, the pressure of the swappers might even force record companies to rethink their relationship with musicians as swapping will continue to create an easier and growing alternative distribution model for independent artists. The early adopters are already swapping garage band cuts around the country and the world, effectively bypassing the music monopolies. This brings money in to independent artists due to larger audiences for their live shows and greater CD sales.

Beyond just the music swapping controversy, ask anyone you know who is a writer or other creative type about the decade long war over copyrights and contracts now thoroughly lost by the “content providers” (that’s what they call us these days). Simply put, if you want to work in media (magazines, newspapers, videonews, etc.), you will wind up signing a so-called “all rights” or “work for hire” contract that forces you to give up all the rights in any media for all time to the company you work for in return for a one-time flat fee.

Point is, don’t cry for the artists. The people you rip off when you steal content with file swapping are mostly the real owners of the copyright…that’s right, the big monopolies who control production, distribution and airplay (like Time Warner and Clear Channel).

It’s illegal and they will hunt you down like a dog and sue 12-year-olds to force everyone to stop it. (Actually, it is unclear that swapping is actually illegal. The courts have long held that copying for personal use is OK. But no one has gotten far enough in the legal process just yet to sort through that issue.)

But these media firms, such stalwart protectors of artists’ rights and free speech, aren’t doing it to protect “speech”, “artists” or anything lofty at all.

You will notice with all the hemming and hawing about the morality of it in such notably anti-rights organizations as the New York Times the actually rip-off relationship they maintain with their own freelancers is not brought up. The closest they come to even touching on the simple fact that copying is, in fact, legal for personal use, comes in the 20th graph of today’s sycophantic puff piece in support of the media giants: “At the root of the resistance for many — besides a perhaps decisive fondness for getting things free — is a complaint that the record industry is trying to take away the ability to make copies of music to use personally and to share with friends — a practice that Americans have long enjoyed.”

That bit of hand wringing certainly obscured the legality of copying under current law (making the RIAA suits basically “frivolous,” which is a very bad thing in legal circles).

The big media companies are doing their damnedest to protect the stranglehold they have over distribution and marketing of information. And they do it so that the suits who rip off the artists, claiming vastly inflated expenses to promote and distribute their work, can continue to make 85 percent of every dollar spent on creative content. (This is called Hollywood financing in some circles, referring to the fact that no movie ever makes a profit on the books.)

It’s an old story, cloaked in the imaginary threat of a new technology. The promoters make the money. They make it off the creators, most of whom make a few bucks and then fade away.

I’ve no problem with promoters profiting, even quite handsomely. I believe in the free market.

But like Dick Grasso’s salary, it ain’t so much the principle of it. For me, we’ve established that the business side is a bunch of usurers. Now we’re just discussing the excessiveness of their vigorish. And the strong arm tactics they use to keep access to the market far from free. ¶ 7:46 AM

  Cancun Attitude

The collapse of the Cancun WTO talks represents a pivotal moment for trade between the rich and poor. The poor have, wisely or not, pushed back.

At issue, basically: Farmers in the developed nations get $300 billion a year in subsidies, breaking the backs of poor farmers in much of the “third world.” That said, it doesn’t help those farmers all that much, either. So it’s not necessarily about rich and poor nations, but about food producers everywhere and the bankers who have always controlled their fate.

The crux of the trade talk collapse? As recounted in the Salt Lake Tribune,"Before the talks collapsed, delegates spent Sunday debating not the changes to farming policy that they had spent much of the conference negotiating, but instead four proposals about foreign investment and competition." How wonderfully protective of our fast disappearing outsourced jobs and how helpful to family farmers, vs. giant agribusiness and multinationals these late-night debated proposals would have been is anyone's guess.

Turns out that the Group of 21, the developing nations’ organization that pulled out of the talks, may have even been a better friend to U.S. farmers than their own Administration negotiators. OF course, small farmers aren't donating thousands to Bush's reelection funds, so that should come as no shock. According to the Bismarck Tribune: “The deal on the table would hurt North Dakota producers,’ said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. Farmers in the United States should be glad the talks collapsed.”

But hey, I don’t begrudge people for trying to cut deals that favor themselves. It would be unrealistic to fight against such a basic human instinct. And it is no surprise that the financial sector would rather trade talks focused on their interests than those of the farmer. Their interests are mainly that these foreign markets are stable and open and let them invest there so that they can exact unspeakably high returns on the grossly underpaid human capital and undervalued raw materials there.

It’s worth noting that the Administration spokespeople are decrying the strong-arm tactics of underdeveloped countries. They emphasize how much it will hurt the noble efforts we are putting forward to raise these people out of poverty. They also are busy working hand-in-glove to “protect” the welfare-dependency of American farmers. But the boon goes to the biggest and the biggest are represented ably by the farm lobby. As cited by Elizabeth Becker in the New York Times, “political contributions from agribusiness jumped to $53 million in 2002 from $37 million in 1992, with the Republicans' share rising to 72 percent from 56 percent, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.” Those are the States Bush needs to win again if he has any hope at all of retaining the White House in 2004.

What’s really amusing in all of this is that the formation of this power bloc of the G21 should be viewed as such a tragedy by avowed free traders and globalistas, as we allegedly now have in the present Administration. Consider one of its many mouthpieces in the Senate, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican. He’s chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade, and had this to say in a statement about the G21, “The United States evaluates potential partners for free-trade agreements on an ongoing basis. I’ll take note of those nations that played a constructive role in Cancun, and those nations that didn’t.”

The group, by the way, includes the following countries:
. Argentina
· Bolivia
· Brazil
· China
· Chile
· Colombia
· Costa Rica
· Cuba
· Ecuador
· Egypt
· Guatemala
· India
· Mexico
· Pakistan
· Paraguay
· Peru
· Philippines
· South Africa
· Thailand
· Venezuela
· Nigeria.

What’s wrong with a group getting together to exert leverage to get the best deal they can for their members? Isn’t that what the developed countries do? Don’t we ensure that our tariffs protect those who keep us in power?

The Administration suggests that it will now proceed with bilateral agreements with selected countries, like El Salvador, which dropped out of the G21 at the last minute when the country was offered a favorable trade relationship with the U.S.

Interesting move. Playing a little trade hardball. A bit of the old divide and conquer. Well, maybe the sauce that is good for the goose is also good for the gander, then? Maybe we should applaud the application of negotiating power and collective bargaining on the part of the G21, instead of doing our best to disparage it. And maybe these 21 nations, all potential markets for each other, will decide to cut favorable deals with each other now, ultimately bypassing the financiers of the U.S. and the EU. The law of unintended consequences suggests that we will only know later what impact forcing the third world to trade without the first world will have.

What it suggests is an early, but tangible, sign that the bridge to the 21st century has been crossed. The poorest are banding together, reasoning, quite rightly, that they can’t suffer much worse than they already are. Consider that India is on the brink of producing drugs at much cheaper prices than our U.S. firms to sell to third world countries.

The third world has finally decided that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” as many of their leaders have said. This is, in fact, a good, solid, pragmatic beginning of civilized compromise and bargaining…a far better relationship that one of brute force of military and terrorist arms between competing factions around the globe.

Moreover, it is not so easy for America to do without the third world. Thanks to its cheap labor and workers we get to buy cheap sneakers and outsource U.S. jobs to boost multinational corporations' profits, thus causing their stocks to go up. Good for investors and good for consumers. (Maybe not so good, however, for workers, which is to say wage earners, here in the U.S., but that will only become clear down the road.)

So good for the G21. Let the whining continue from the U.S. and the EU faux-free-traders. They, like the empires before them, were also “blocs” that for centuries controlled the playing field on which raw materials and manufactured goods and capital, both human and monetary, were exchanged.

Now these G21 countries are exerting the first sensible capitalistic strategies that will get them a bigger share of the pie. Ironically, in the heartland of this country, the smaller farmers may also benefit from the G21. If this group succeeds, it will wean them from welfare-subsidies and eventually level the agricultural trade playing field and open new markets…to the benefit of food producers everywhere. After all, how many small family farms in this country are doing so well the way things are now? ¶ 12:51 PM