Open Letter To Barak Obama

Mr. Obama, President Elect – you have won, and the people cheer – and in huge neon letters, or so the media would have us understand – the world itself now sees the words ‘Hope’, ‘Change’, ‘Obama’ all writ large pnto some bright fantastical chimera. 

My skepticism is founded mainly on your foreign policies which, unfortunately, sound to me almost identical in attitude to the ones that have already cost America so much of its standing in the global community. The whole notion that unilateral actions are acceptable when America (and only America) chooses to act. The idea that America should play world leader, that somehow, America has been forced by virtue of some supposed superiority to police the rest of the world. That the injustices committed to some people are acceptable as long as they are perpetrated by ‘friends’ of America. That America would consider friends those who would perpetrate such injustices and in the process bloody the hands of all the otherwise good people that make up the nation. That America would threaten Iran as it did Iraq, with no legal basis and no proof. That it would blindly think that security is a function of power and not of the cultivation of good will and kindness. That the children, in short, will continue to pay in hunger and blood for the needs of wealthy old men.

However, despite my own opinions on the matter, the sheer scale of hope for something, anything better than what they’ve already seen is certainly palpable. That people would extend so much sheer hope that you, Mr. President Elect are their savior is on the one hand a poor exercise in naivette and on the other – well, frankly – it’s almost touching.

This raises a possibility - 

What if, just what if – I hope – You realize that this is how you won, that this is why you won – that people are so desperate for a real life super hero in office that they actually turned out, and put a cape on you – draping you in what each one believes to be the authentic American dream. Something, in any case, better than a Bush, better than a…well, Bush.

If such an effect were possible – if even its possibility is plausible – then perhaps it’s a mistake to go around telling all the Obamaphiliacs that they’re wrong. Maybe their optimism should be left to linger in the air – if there’s any chance at all that you will pick up on it. That you would be so awe-struck by the power of that hope you’ve been promising – the intense desperation with which people want it – to actually consider wearing the mantle – to actually consider for a second – like MiracleMan did on Olympus – that you have some real influence on the state of the world. That some possibilities could actually, be more than mere campaign attitudes. That if by simply invoking the possibility of hope so much support could be gained – then how much more support would surely follow if one were to actually provide not only the promise of change, but real, actual change. A change of heart. A re-examination of values. A refusal to work the tired treads of things, that in the end, yield only cruel profit. An affirmation of the value of all human life, an actual attempt to understand issues such as occupation before labelling their reprecussions as terrorism. An opportunity to work with the world, and for the world, and to understand that words such as ‘unilateral’ – are not words of change, nor are they words of hope. That American politics should stop, financially, militarily, and politically, at American borders. That when you poke your nose in the affairs of other countries, you will take no credit for anything good, and all the blame for everything bad – because you are operating illegally, imposing your will by might rather than submitting to the grace of right. That America’s opposition of the International Criminal Court is both disgraceful and shameful, that the very existence of a Security Council within the body of the United Nations is, in the final analysis, an absence of democracy, and that the absence of democracy, is in effect, a brutality.

These are all dangerous prospects for a man in your position, and I’m sure I do not understand half the complications involved. However, when reluctant, or hesitant, or not quite sure what to do or how to do it – I suggest you remember Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence – that these things you do will be here forever. That nothing ever ends, and that all moments must be moments that you would be proud to live again. That you do not visit upon yourself a moment that you would not choose to have again. That you do not yield to the demands of now.

I truly hope this message reaches you, and I truly hope you consider the sentiments behind it.

We need a better world. Badly.

Obama & Change – The Big Black Hype

The election is done, the choice is made, and the world cares. 

Hell

Hell is a darkness aborting the light and declaring itself to be true. It is cold and it is numb to the touch, and unyielding with certitude. It is a devouring un-tempered by kindness or grace, and it is absolute.

Hell is the poverty of the slum in the City of Gold. It is the hunger and the plague in rapt unison with maligned might and counterfeit rights. It is born of puerile pride and nurtured on vanity and a choice not to understand. It is empathy murdered and sympathy derided, it is suffering unconsidered and a man unconcerned. 

It is a mother no longer taking care of her child.

Hell is a loneliness born of betrayal and fathered by distrust. It is a withdrawal of the light affected through sorrow and pain. It is a grief overcome by sadness and unshed tears. 

It is a wounded infant unfamiliar with because. 

Foundations of A Broadcast-Based Financial Compensation Model for Digital Media

As a listener – as audience – I am driven towards media that I like.

I am infotropic, so to speak. Some data, some information, some inherent artistic or intellectual order manifests to me through songs, books, movies, and various other forms of media. Wanting this information is as basic to my spiritual/intellectual/cultural self as water is to my biological. In that sense, it feels like more than a want, it feels like a morally justifiable right. I want to pay for the stuff I like, in fact – proud to pay for it when it’s easy to, and when the compensation requested is within my budget. However, it seems that withholding the data, on condition of compensation is somehow contrary to the essence of information itself, to a moral imperative inherent in information – to the very fact that information seems to want to spread. It is self-reproducing.

As a musician – I am in a quandary.

I know that the best of the music that I make is not truly only mine. That is not ontologically exclusive to my self. That I am simply partner to a history of sounds, a history of lyrics, a history of patterns and shapes, and tempos. A whole data cluster to which I have been privy, and to which I am host. I try to take some credit, of course, but all in all – there is a partnership.

At the very best of times – and this can be confirmed, I think – by any musician or any anybody who has engaged in artistic process..at the best of times – it seems that a partnership is created between the whole data cluster itself, and the moment I find myself in. At those times, ever so briefly, the thing lives, and moves seemingly at its own accord – the guitar player, singer, or actor experiences an actual ongoing sense of surprise. It as though the information itself has become alive – taken over both artist and time.

It is very, very hard to take complete credit for experiences such as these. For many, the experience itself is so humbling – so necessary – that incurring the wrath of its muse doesn’t quite seem wise.

As a musician, I want everybody to hear all of my tracks. I might not need, and excusing myself with vanity, might choose not to want everybody to like my tracks – but it somehow seems to matter that anybody that would like something, should get the chance to hear it.

Charging people for this seems, on the face of it – stupid.

But the less music pays me, the more I have to do something that isn’t music. The more I do something that isn’t music, the less music I make. The less music I make, the less music you hear.

So, this just doesn’t work.

Copyright issues on the web have had us all in flames. I assume that everybody is right.

1. There is absolutely no excuse for different regional release dates in an online world – or data-blockages of any sort. Any data available anywhere should be available everywhere.
2. Data, in all forms – must be available to whoever can reach it. A ONE TO ONE profit situation (where a certain profit unit is made PER unit data-form sold) – should only be levied on products in which it the data-form is encoded into actual material. All pure data-forms (non-material) cost no material to duplicate and therefore a ONE TO ONE profit situation should neither be expected, nor condoned. Any attempt to do so is nothing less than a willful chocking of information.
3. Data that has no purpose other than the creation of material profit is almost by definition working against the very nature of informational growth – which seeks to free itself from material as much as possible so as to propagate as fast as possible, ultimately – as fast as light. This point must be understood.
4. Artist must be compensated in accordance with a) the will of the audience to listen to those artists, and b) the ability of the artist to sustain their art work through self-sustaining artwork or engaging some of their time towards more high-yield commercial investments.

Having established the above – a mechanism is necessary for satisfying points 1-4. Copyright protection schemes ALL violate 1,2, & 3 because they all attempt to establish a one-to-one relationship between data-form duplicated and material compensation.

The situation as such:

1. User pays his ISP for his web connectivity.
2. User downloads data. Some downloads are paid for, others are not. Protection systems increase the suggested price of the data to the paying user, and further convince the non-paying user that product is not worth the compensation requested.
3. As far as the user is concerned – he has (in his mind) somewhat already paid. He did that back in step 1 when he paid his ISP.
4. RIAA and other such entities sue the ISP for duplicating their data without license, and the user for downloading the data.

The failure to create un-crack-able data protection systems is due to the inherent desire of information to grow. All such attempts are attempts to dry wetness.

What needs to happen is:

1. The user, who previously paid X/bandwidth pays 2x or some such ratio for his web connectivity. The user might initially gripe about this, but once he absolves himself of the paranoia of the RIAA beating down his wife’s door, and savors the contribution he knows he is actually materially making to the artists whose work he enjoys – will be more than happy. The industry needs to understand one thing – it’s not that the user doesn’t want to pay, it’s that he either cannot afford it – or that the mechanism of payment is too awkward.
2. The ISP collects the money and keeps its share of it – let’s say one of those 2 x’s.
3. The other ‘x’ or portion goes to a Data Indexing and Re-Investment authority along with a file detailing the file-download stats for that month – anonymously reported in totals.
4. This authority then compensates the authors of the data in proportion to their downloads share. This raises one issue still in need of resolution – simple ideas – the paper-clips of ‘data’ – let’s say – will be picked up so ubiquitously that by sheer number – even though the data-packet itself may be small – it’ll still make something for its creator. Other data-packages such as movies or video games, might take up a greater bandwidth share per duplicate simply because they are bigger in size. So in that sense, the big productions will still make more money. Some problems might arise with people bloating their data consciously in order to get have more of a duplication index – but the counter to that, is that online reviews will work against it the more it chooses to do so.
5. Payments will not always be one-to-one, more importantly, they shouldn’t be. People who have the luxury to pay will always be the first to get it cause that’s where the streams originate. They are the people who are most data-hungry, and the ones that most can afford it. They want to pay if it means they get it, and they will pay a high bandwidth premium to download sooner as well as in quantity.
6. This may well mean that artists might take a hit, honestly, not many will mind. Most complaints come from the companies whose main gripe is simply because they are in the habit of thinking of their data as matter, and not information. In doing so, they still expect a one-to-one data-form to money relationship when it neither possible, nor good.
7. ALL attempts to block data duplication are inherently ill conceived. Release or don’t release. The only protection necessary is a copyright registrar. The producer need not get paid per duplicate as much as he needs to be able to prove that it is his data-form.

Similar systems are already used for radio. Artists get compensated by authorities that monitor the airwaves and get reports from radio stations and broadcasters. That’s how somebody somewhere gets paid whenever a radio stations somewhere plays ‘Happy Birthday’. Systems for doing this are already somewhat in place for radio. By all means – a completely digital medium should be even easier to administer.

And that’s how I think this particular dragon can be laid to rest.

Good Night & Good Luck This Ain’t : ABC News…

As usual, the local satellite channel MBC 4 continues to broadcast ABC News – featuring the effervescent Katie ‘Da Man’ Couric.

Joy.

Well, first of all – we’d all like to remind Katie that, generally speaking, ‘magnate’ is not best pronounced the same way you’d pronounce ‘magnet’…

Moving on…

Good Ole Katie, rather than actually do some research and find out some real hard data regarding whether things in Iraq are ‘getting better’ by checking indicators – such as crime rates, mortality rates, the quality of water, the availability of clean water and medicine, etc…Katie quotes polls conducted in America. She quotes the polls as indicating that the US military ‘surge’ have ‘improved conditions in Iraq’ and that despite those polls, two thirds of Americans still think the situation in Iraq isn’t very good.

No kidding.

And then, as though to deal with this aberrant strain of thought and help influence future polls – ABC follows this ‘news’ with a ‘human interest’ story titled ‘Rescued In Iraq’ – telling the story of a baby that was found by US Soldiers after her family was killed.

So, essentially, a baby girl had her whole family killed before her eyes, and this is somehow spun by ABC News, Katie Couric and the ever more hideous Lara ‘I’m a babe’ Logan into a positive story with which to make even more Americans think that the surge is ‘making things better’ in Iraq.

Is it any surprise ABC News isn’t running a segment on the growing shadow army of mercenaries now operating in Iraq?

Half-Full.

Having pointed out the true story behind the web of lies portrayed in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan to somebody – I was taken aback by the response. The person I pointed things out to asked my why I would do such a thing to start with.

Why, he asked, would I do such a thing? And, he continued, “its like you want to crush everything i like. And find something wrong in everything…seems like you have a bit of a pessimistic outlook on the world. The glass is half empty. And you seem to miss the good.”

My god…

It’s got nothing to do with ‘crushing’ what you like. I was looking through your profile to get a better idea of who I’m talking to. When I saw that Saving Private Ryan was one of your favorite movies – I felt I needed to make you realize the truth about it.

If hoping to open your eyes to something you may not know is seen by you as me attempting to ‘crush’ things you like, then you are just completely misinterpreting my motivations.

My motivations, and I realize that for some strange reason you seem to find this incredibly hard to believe – is to shed some light where little seems to be found. I am trying to show you something important that you may not know, in the hope that your choices and opinions might be better informed.

When I asked you to look up the Sullivan Five it was because I wanted you to understand the difference between reality and the incredibly irresponsible cheerleader rewriting of it that Spielberg went ahead and shot – a rewrite that serves to make a cruel, abusive, manipulative war-machine appear to be kind, gentle, and humane. If trying to take the wool off your eyes regarding something (whether it’s the situation in Iraq or the mess that is Saving Private Ryan) amounts to ‘crushing’ anything…

If there’s anything I’m trying to crush it’s the lies they surround us with, the lies they throw at you, and the lies which have led to you misunderstanding my every word and every attempt to communicate. The lies that twist whatever good intentions you might have into tools to be used and abused by unscrupulous politicians with nothing on their minds but power and genocide. I try to ‘crush’ the lies in the hope that you would do better if you knew better. I don’t do this out of hate, I do this out of hope, and it saddens me that you can’t see that. That whereas I have some faith in your good intent, you have very, very little in mine.

The glass isn’t half empty, it’s half full with poison. I’m hoping you’ll throw away the poison and fill the glass with some clear water.

And no, I don’t have a pessimistic outlook. If I had a pessimistic outlook, I would not be having this conversation – would not have made this deviation, would not have tried.

It’s been a long day.

Mike Gravel : Why I Care.

Somebody asked me why I want Mike Gravel to win – why I care either way, since I’m not even an American, and this is, after all, an American presidential candidate.

I’ve got more than a few reasons – and they all sort of come together.

I spent some time in the US as a child – and as a result spent a large part of my childhood with a bit of an American identity. It’s also remained a large part of my cultural background. It’s the music I hear, and the books, I read – the comics I grew up on, and various other things. Not quite Apple Pie and the Superbowl, but still ;)

The other thing is that, like it or not – America influences the whole world, and well, to be honest, considering how America has been lately, I have to say I don’t like the effect it’s having. I remember thinking years ago that because America chooses to stick its nose into the politics of just about every country in the world – then all citizens of the world should get to vote in American elections. That is, after all, the whole notion of democracy; that you get to vote on the people who affect your life.

I remember, for example, years ago – long before they ‘killed’ Captain America – there was a storyline in the comic when he was told that because the US Government developed the super soldier serum and the name and the costume of Captain America – that they ‘owned’ the brand – and he was told that he must either serve the government or give up the costume and the shield and the name. He went over to the committee that he had to answer to, and he told them clear and simple that he believed it was his duty to serve the American Ideal and that the government was just not doing that, and that he could therefore not subject himself to its will, and on that note, he left behind his costume, his shield, and the name of Captain America – and for a while, in the comics, operated only as The Captain. Incredibly enough, at the same time, Axl sung the lines ‘Captain America’s been torn apart / now he’s a court jester with a broken heart / he said “turn me around and take me back to the start / I must be losing my mind / are you blind? I’ve seen it all a million times” – in the song Paradise City.

In short, yeah. I do care. And it matters. And I am incredibly saddened by the horror that is Bush, and I am terrified of the nightmare that will be Hillary if she wins. I don’t trust her one tiny little bit. She strikes me as a cold, calculating, opportunistic schemer, and I know she’d be a terrible mistake. And I certainly don’t feel any better about Obama – and these are the two being shoved down everybody’s throat by the media. I don’t get it.

Things just … don’t look the same from different places.

I’ve lived in America, and I’ve lived in Egypt, and I’ve lived in the Arabian Gulf, and I’ve lived in Italy, and I’ve been to a whole lot of other countries in between – so I understand – to some extent why certain things aren’t clear to most Americans – and it saddens me that this unfortunate ignorance regarding the rest of the world is accompanied by such power over the rest of the world. The results have been catastrophic. For Afghanistan, for Iraq, for Palestine, and in fact, for the soul of America.

Some people can see this, some people can’t.

Things like the Project for the New American Century, and the neo-cons that drive such projects – the people that hoped for a ‘pearl harbor’ type event that would allow them to stretch their military muscle across the globe to establish an American Empire – these things scare me. They scare the living hell out of me. Gravel knows these things, and I’ve heard him mention them when he speaks – he actually cares, actually knows, and actually speaks. It’s not a common thing, and it’s breathtaking to see, and touching to hear. My eyes are welling up right now just thinking of the man, knowing how difficult it is for a man like him to win, and yet – how vitally necessary it is that he does.

It’s a hell of a world we’re in. This isn’t what it should be like. This was never how it should’ve been. I just keep hoping that it’s not too late, that we haven’t crossed some horrific point of no return. That we have not doomed both ourselves and generations to come.

We’ll see.

Vote for Gravel.