Archiv der Kategorie: USA

oddly enough, USA

Of course, No One Will Have To Burn Books…

when suppoedly indecent material cannot even be sold at first place. Today, the NYTimes reports that Wal-Mart is banning 3 men’s magazines (Maxim, FHM, and Stuff, of which I have never heard) because of the allegedly offensive nature of their cover designs.

According to the NYTimes

“[t]he decision to stop selling the so-called lads’ magazines is the latest in a series of moves by the company to limit distribution of entertainment products it judges too racy for its shoppers.The company has refused to sell CD’s that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics; instead, Wal-Mart Stores sell sanitized versions of albums.”

So this is what “lad’s magazines” might look on Wal*Mart shelves in the future should they too decide to honor Wal*Mart’s decision and market power with a special edition –

FHM cover, 'Wal*Mart edition'

Of course, Wal*Mart Stores, Inc., is a private entity and therefore, technically, no legal constitutional issues are at stake in instances like these. But that does not make things easier at all, as Nadine Strossen, a professor of constitutional law at New York Law School and the president of the American Civil Liberties Union explaines to the NYTimes –

“[w]hen you have a store that in many parts of the country has a dominant position, so that if you can’t buy a magazine at Wal-Mart, you can’t buy it at all … [i]t has literally the same practical effect in many communities as outright government censorship.”

If that were indeed the case, then the sheer market power of retail gatekeepers like Wal*Mart may make it necessary to rebalance their – and their shareholders’ – discretion with respect to other people’s ability to exercise their rights –

“[t]he Timothy Plan, a mutual funds management firm that invests in companies based in part on whether the companies share its values, has been pressing Wal-Mart to pull women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour from checkout lanes and put them back into the magazine rack. Arthur Ally, president of the Timothy Plan, said that he saw magazines like Maxim and FHM as ‘a level worse. It is soft-core pornography,’ he said. ‘It’s very addictive and leads to harder stuff.'”

Speech can only be free if it can be heard. And “censorship”, legal and/or de-facto always starts by prohibiting something not too many people won’t object to. The shifting of acceptance boundaries is what makes this process so dangerous.

But Wal-Mart’s decision may not prove to become a cultural disaster. Maybe, their decision will even foster digital literacy in those regions where the retailler does indeed possess the power to prevent people from buying the magazine of their choice.

For in the internet, there will always be a free shelf.

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quicklink, USA

Different Standards.

At the end of February, when a Frankfurt court sentenced Mounir Motassadeq to 15 years of imprisonment for aiding the 911 terrorists, the Washington post was a tad bit cynical about the fact that “European countries have different visions of just sentencing than those that prevail in [ths US]” entitling their commentary “1.8 Days Per Murder”. Today, Salon.com’s coverage of unjust executions in the US would allow to reciprocate the cynicism – if it weren’t so sad.

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compulsory reading, USA

A Big Place…

America is indeed. The country formerly known as the “Land Of The Free” may no longer be regarded as such by the majority of the world’s thinking inhabitants, but there is anecdotal evidence that Mars and Venus may have not yet actually decided to put the Atlantic between them as they still seem to believe the Rocky Mountains provide a sufficiently high geological divide.

In the South, AP reports,

“[t]he Alabama House voted against a bill [last] Tuesday that would have removed a ban on sexual devices, such as vibrators, from the state’s obscenity law. The ban on sexual devices was added at the last minute when the obscenity law passed the Legislature in 1998.”

Even though

“[a] federal district judge in Birmingham has twice ruled that the ban is unconstitutional…”

and therefore unenforceable. So maybe I am entirely misreading the poll. Maybe, what the lawmakers actually wanted was to leave in place an unenforceable obscenity law because they like obscenity. That, of course, would falsify the entire theory about the continental divide, as a Reuters story from the North, Northern California to be precise, can hardly be misinterpreted:

“More than 100 men and women have gathered in famously liberal San Francisco [last] weekend for what organisers said was the city’s second annual public “Masturbate-a-Thon”. Organisers said they have taken the event “from the sheets to the streets”, offering volunteers — 18 years or older — the opportunity to overcome their inhibitions in “a safe environment” and raise money for charity.”

What I like even better than the $25,000 these events have raised for charity in the course of the last five years is the pseudo-academic interpretation of the event –

“‘[t]his is an effort to counter centuries of censure, to make masturbation more fun and to make it more accessible,'” said Thomas W. Laqueur, a professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the recent “Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation…”

I honestly wonder if Mr Laqueur participated or once again proved the old quip right that those who do don’t teach, and those who teach, well… don’t do.

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intellectual property rights, quicklink, USA

Digital timeshifting.

Update

Please note that the legal situation regarding file sharing in Germany has changed since and is likely to change again.

Now that , a US court has denied the forced closure of P2P services like KaZaa (from heise online), as they are also used for legitimate purposes, look forward to intensified attempts to target individual users, in the US (from Salon), as well as over here (from heise online). BUT: private downloads of songs are in all likelyhood not illegal in Germany (as even the European president of BMG accepted in 2002).

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US Politics, USA

AAAAAAAAAAction!

Two weeks or so ago, a friend asked me if I knew anything about the budgetary problems California is facing during the current economic bust given a rapid fiscal expansion during the previus – particularly Sillicon Valley powered – economic boom. Well, I had to admit that my knowledge of US state budgetary affairs is minimal, to be exaggerating. But the good thing is, I am not the European who has to know about these things, as another one is apparently about to tackle the problem.

As the London Times explains,

“[e]veryone knew he would be back, but no one thought it would be this soon. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hollywood action star turned Republican activist, might get a chance to run for governor of California in September, three years earlier than expected.

As the article reports, the budgetary problems have (how surprising) caused a decline in the current governor Gray’s popularity. This has led some activists to try to gather some 900.000 signatures needed to challenge the sitting governor ahead of the end of his term, which would be 2006. So these people apparently decided to ask the Terminator, who was apparently expected to run for governor in 2006 anyway, to run on their ticket now. For a reason:

“Political strategists believe that, after the war in Iraq, Mr Schwarzenegger’s gung-ho, machinegun-toting image would be more attractive to voters than ever. Even historically liberal Californians might elect a Republican, they say.”

But for all his advantages there’s a drawback.

The heavily-accented Mr Schwarzenegger, … makes President Bush look like a natural orator.”

But then again, Ronald Reagan, to make the obvious comparison, even rehearsed press-conferences as President. So isn’t the biggest question of all if the US constitution will be amended again to allow for Arnie as President in, say, 2016?.

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Germany, US Politics, USA

Too Big? Too Small!

I contend that the United States of America might be not powerful enough. And Henry Kissinger – whatever your personal take regarding his personal moral responsibility for doubtful US foreign policies, he is clearly someone with a certain grasp of international realities – would probably agree with me.

After all, it was he who once claimed that a lot of the problems of the 20th century resulted from the problem that Germany, as a nation state, was originally too big (in all relevant measures) to be just one state among European equals but too small to dominate the continent on its own. Seen from this perspective of geo-strategic Realpolitik the violence of the last century seems like a historical trap, almost inevitable – in order to overcome this disequilibrium of power the only possibility was an attempt to expand and dominate, which, upon failure, led to the second possibility. Much of the opposition to the German reunification in France and the United Kingdom was driven by the fear that Germany might inadvertently fall into that trap again.

While I am sure that geo-strategic prowess is likely to create an expansionary tendency, I do not believe that human history follows such gravity-like rules, even if they have been proposed by Henry Kissinger. However, assuming for a moment that the model he suggested in that quote were correct, what would his theory tell us about the current global situation? It would tell us that, on a global scale, the USA could be the 21st century’s Germany, however benign or not her intentions of global governance under a Pax Americana may be. It seems self-evident to me that –

The USA is too big not to influence every other state on this planet while she is too small to dominate it entirely.

But no one can wish for another Wilhelmine experience on a global scale. So let’s just hope that Henry was not entirely right.

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compulsory reading, oddly enough, Political Theory, US Politics, USA

Desperately Seeking Simplicity

Somehow, I hate to restate something as obvious as this – the world we are living in is an extremely complex system. A system far too complicated for any individual to understand. That’s why we tend to categorize and model the world in order to reduce complexity and gain a little insight into the “underlying causes” of the reality constructed by our sensory system.

But somehow, I guess it is necessary. Fellow German Blogger “Lilimarleen” wonders how people living in a world featuring violent anti-globalisation demonstrations and politicians desperate to cater to the needs of multinational corporations with the ability to go “regime shopping” can actually believe that there is something like a “national” product that can be boycotted without harming anyone but a clearly (nationally) identifiable producer (and oneself, because of the choice not to engange in a otherwise utility enhancing transaction).

The answer is evident, in my opinion – they are looking for simplicity – and ways to regain control of a global system that is seemingly beyond anyone’s control. Knowing that their individual *political*, ie “non-market”, influence on the relevant international players’ actions is not even negligible, they are turning to a different institution of imaginary popular control – consumer “democracy”. As one of Lilimarleen’s reader’s remarked –

“Boycotting is the only way that I can make a difference.”

Well, should the problem of collective action indeed be overcome by a specific momentum like the current wave of “Freedom”-branding, they could indeed have *some* influence. But in an extremely complex system like the world economy, there is no way to predict the indirect ramifications of their actions apart from the fact that everyone will suffer from reduced economic exchange.

In order to uphold this illusion of influence those boycotting “French” products need to adopt a simplistic view of the transactional structure through which the good in question has been created.

I suppose it’s a bit like driving fast in a car – a mechanism of mental self protection. Rationally, I know that there are quite a lot of things that could lead to an accident that are entirely out of my realm of decision making. But I don’t think about that because holding the steering weel emotionally reassures me that I am in control of the machine I am sitting in. I am deluding myself, and I know it.

But otherwise, I would not be able to drive (fast) at all. And there is no way I would renounce to that.

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