corporate bastards

More from the "war on sharing"

Posted on: Fri, 12/09/2005 - 10:36 By: Tom Swiss

Slashdot refers us to this BBC story about the Music Publishers' Association trying to shut down web sites with music lyrics and scores, including wanting to lock people in cages for sharing the words to songs.

Somehow, it all seems...familiar. Back in 1998, I was interviewed for a piece in the Baltimore Sun about an attack on OLGA, the on-line guitar archive, where musicians share their interpretations of songs, by the Harry Fox Agency.

Excuse me while I repeat myself: Music is not a crime. Music is all about sharing. Performers share with the audience and performers share with each other. That's the folk tradition. We now have a new technology of information that renders the old laws obsolete. We need laws that recognize that the sharing of information is what makes us human.

Christian Science Monitor: A culture of bribery in Congress

Posted on: Fri, 12/02/2005 - 17:59 By: Tom Swiss

I'm still not sure how such an... interesting... religion as "Christian
Science" gets a newspaper as generally level-headed as the
Christian Science Monitor, but they've
got a nice

editorial on the Cunningham case and state of corruption in Congress
:

Either way, money still talks in Washington and the legal/illegal
distinction gets easily blurred in all the backroom dealings with private
interests until, that is, a brazen case of bribery pops up. Then

FEMA adds insult to injury by requiring use of Internet Explorer

Posted on: Thu, 09/08/2005 - 10:28 By: Tom Swiss

So let's say you're a Katrina refugee - sorry, that's not PC, evacuee, but that's another story - and you've found refuge at a friends' house. And let's say said friend has a computer. Can you go to register for aid from FEMA on-line? Only if your friend does business with a corporate criminal, Microsoft. MSNBC (ironically, a Microsoft - NBC joint venture) reports:

The good news: If you've survived Hurricane Katrina, the government will let you register for help online. The bad news: But only if the computer you're using is running Windows.

"Four Amendments & a Funeral" - Rolling Stone

Posted on: Mon, 09/05/2005 - 19:10 By: Tom Swiss

It's been said that those who love sausages or the law should never see either being made. As a vegan and an anarchist (a Zenarchist on a good day), I think that lovers of either should be forced to become intimately familiar with their origins, in order to cure those unhealthy loves. Rolling Stone takes us to the floor of the slaughterhouse of justice in Four Amendments & a Funeral: A month inside the house of horrors that is Congress. Depressing but necessary reading.

Coke adds...cadmium

Posted on: Mon, 08/29/2005 - 16:56 By: Tom Swiss

http://www.organicconsumers.org/BTC/cocacola082405.cfm

So in 2001, Coca-Cola builds a bottling plant in Plachimada, India. And then a few months later, the local wells start running dry. And then it turns out that the "free fertilizer" they've been giving out to the locals is lead and cadmium-laden waste sludge from the plant - with no fertilizer value.

Said Veerendrakumar, member of parliament and editor of the influential 'Mathrubhumi' newspaper: ''The fact of the matter is that that water from underground sources is being pumped out free, bottled and sold to our people to make millions for cola companies while destroying the environment and damaging public health''.
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