I’m told that Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” is one of the most popular places younger viewers get their news. More popular than late night chat shows and corporate news outlets, not that either of those shows make better choices. I watched the 2007 January 25 show with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to see what ideas this show brought to its viewers. I was disappointed but not surprised to learn that this show frames a pro-war stance where getting out of Iraq is quickly ruled out as something people don’t want.

This is odd to me because polls indicate strong disapproval with President George W. Bush, and the 2006 shuffling of the deck chairs in Congress was largely interpreted as Americans expressing disagreement with continuing the occupation of Iraq. This is a golden time to get mainstream press for the Out Of Iraq Now message so that it can be debated honestly and thoroughly.

Jon Stewart said that leaving Iraq immediately was outside the allowable range of debate

I think people do believe, though, that we can’t leave—just in a—like some sort of Dante’s Inferno and kind of walk away and be like ‘Wow, who started that fire!’. You know. I think most people believe that there’s something very serious to be done there.

Schumer replied that “the rational way to do it” means:

• “stop policing a civil war; no one bargained for that”, which is shockingly stupid in itself (how dare this immoral and illegal invasion and occupation turn into something ugly!). Schumer’s point here is chiefly convenient in its admission that Iraq is in civil war. Until recently, reps of both major corporate political parties told the US to stay in Iraq to prevent civil war. According to Seymour Hersh on Democracy Now!, Iraq was in a civil war in mid-2005. No matter when it began, it all happened on our watch and our continued presence apparently makes things worse.
• “just focus on anti-terrorism; you know, the small groups of al-Qaida”, which means we still define terrorism so that it doesn’t include our actions abroad: invasion and occupation, selling wars to the American people based on lies, and ignoring how this war fits a brutal pattern of US involvement around the world.
• using “many fewer troops; they don’t have to be in harms way” again defies the obvious (there’s a safe place for an occupying force to reside in a country they made hostile to their presence?) and reaffirms that we’ll continue occupying Iraq.

The Out Of Iraq Now message based on the immorality of war goes unrepresented on either side of this discussion, much like what one finds in corporate “news”. Apparently, it’s still too radical to criticize continuing to do what we shouldn’t have done in the first place and were warned against before the invasion began.

I have little reason to believe that Americans will stop the Iran war before it begins.

Blogger “Spocko” recorded and cited instances where Disney-owned KSFO-AM radio hosts Brian Sussman, Melanie Morgan, and Tom Brenner called for tortures and killings, used racist language, and aired speech against KSFO advertisers. Visa pulled their ads due to Spocko’s involvement and now apparently Disney fears that more advertisers will pull their ads too. Disney has threatened to sue Spocko for copyright infringement. Disney pulled Spocko’s blog offline for a while, but it has returned. Some of the audio clips, however, are not available on his blog. I’ve rescued the clips I could find so you could hear them for yourself.

While I can appreciate the tactic Spocko is using to bring change here (asking KSFO advertisers if this is what they want their brand name linked with), maintaining the image of a brand simply isn’t as important as threatening violence or death (ethically speaking or, less importantly, legally speaking). However, Spocko’s plan allows these advertisers to help with Spocko’s legal costs by contributing to the Electronic Frontier Foundation which is defending Spocko against Disney.

Daily KOS has more on this story.

Audio clips of the aforementioned KSFO hosts in Ogg Vorbis format.

While having sex with Monica Lewinsky (and lying about it) didn’t directly cause anyone to die, former US President William Jefferson Clinton’s policies certainly condemned a lot of people to death as William Blum points out.

In the past couple of weeks, two new defenses against copyright infringement have emerged:

1. Get a stern talking to by Edgar Bronfman, parent of 7 and Warner Music Group CEO who just admitted that he’s fairly certain that at least one of his kids have engaged in illicit downloading. As of yet, somehow these children have avoided being sued by the RIAA. Their punishment?

   I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.

   Stealing isn’t the issue here, copyright infringement is.

   Maybe these kids learned about infringement from the Warner Brothers movie studio which got started when the Warner brothers fled west to illicitly make and commercially show movies out of the reach of Edison’s patent police. Or maybe the kids picked up the idea of selectively obeying copyright law in their history class by recalling that the US didn’t initially honor foreign copyright, thus allowing American publishers to reprint works under copyright in other countries (much to the chagrin of Charles Dickens, whose work was being distributed commercially without remuneration).

   Warning: Bronfman lectures are limited to first 7 applicants.

2. Keep the infringing copy “safe in your vault” and you’ll be okay. Boing Boing has the scoop about a screening which took place on 2006-11-30:

   During the Q&A at last night’s screening of Kirby Dick’s “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” Dick recounted the story of how his film was unlawfully duplicated by the MPAA’s ratings board. He submitted one copy of his movie to the MPAA, extracting a promise that no more copies would be made — the MPAA’s own anti-piracy materials describe making a single unauthorized duplication as an act of piracy.

   Once it got out that the MPAA had made its “pirated” copy of Dick’s movie, one of the MPAA’s lawyers called Dick up to admit that the cartel had indeed made an infringing copy, but not to worry, “The copy is safe in my vault.”

   At this point, I raised my hand and asked if Dick thought anyone caught downloading movies from the Internet could get off the hook by saying, “Don’t worry, I keep my copies safe in my vault?”

   I still don’t think it’s wise, fair, or appropriate to use the term “piracy” in this context no matter how popular its use may be. Also, we have to consider the difficulty of avoiding infringement if the MPAA can’t manage to keep themselves inside their view of the law. But of course the larger issue remains how much deference we ought to give to any business model built on disallowing treating friends like friends.

Read this article on the myths Americans spread about the Canadian health care system.

One of these myths reminded me of a response I gave to Rep. Timothy V. Johnson (R-IL) a few years ago on a call-in TV talk show when I heard him spreading the lie that hospital waiting lists are so horrible they justify not having any kind of universal health care.

The waiting times for some procedures are longer in Canada than in the United States, but this problem is being actively tackled by the government in the wake of a Canada Supreme Court decision that “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” However, the decision did not abolish the one-payer system — in fact, it reinforced it by giving the Quebec government, which was the chief object of the lawsuit, 12 months to remedy the situation.

As a result, Quebec is working hard to catch up with the rest of Canada. The average wait for a hip replacement has been reduced to four to five weeks, and knee replacements usually take six to seven weeks. This may still be too long, but if you happen to be one of the 40 million uninsured Americans, you might have to wait forever.