Another socialist blog

When in doubt, attempt to shut up your critics? The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seems to be having mixed success with this strategy. Someone leaked a copy of the church’s Church Handbook of Instructions, a two-volume book of policies and is a guide for leaders of the Mormon Church. You wouldn’t think church policies would be secret, let alone copyrighted, but church lawyers have been busy silencing anyone who tries to bring the handbook into the light of day. They’ve managed, through abuse of copyright law, to force several people and organizations to take down the leaked—and presumably embarrassing— material, including Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Scribd and Wikimedia Foundation. Wikileaks, a whistleblower website which publishes anonymous submissions of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of its contributors, has refused to take the handbook down. Wikileaks describes the material as significant because “…the book is strictly confidential among the Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka LDS in short form) bishops and stake presidents and it reveals the procedure of handling confidential matters related to tithing payment, excommunication, baptism and doctrine teaching (indoctrination).”

Good for Wikileaks. This document is a perfect example of the twisting of intellectual property law, to cover material that isn’t valuable but is something the rich and powerful would like to hide. It’s madness to give new power to people who already have too much. Unless, of course, you’re a legislator who’s for sale to Hollywood.

Philip Alston, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, complained this week that there are large numbers of “extrajudicial” killings in Afghanistan, in plain English, murders of civilians.  While most of these are laid at the doorstep of the Taliban, the U.S.-led international military forces in the country have murdered as many as 200 Afghan civilians so far this year.

This is not a new development; there were already reports of summary executions of unarmed Afghan prisoners by American forces as early as 2002.  I’m guessing their families are unimpressed by our love of democracy.

NPR’s Marketplace did a story this morning about the rise of the urban farmer, which is just a cute way of saying, vegetable gardening. High food prices have encouraged a lot of people to grow their own tomatoes, for example. Stacey Vanek-Smith added up some costs to get into a small garden, and suggested that home gardeners might very well find themselves eating tomatoes that cost $64 each to raise. Bah. Here’s a comment I just sent to the producers of the show.

Stacey Vanek-Smith’s piece about tomato gardening was wrong even within the overly narrow confines of a strictly economic analysis of gardening.

1. Tomatoes are not a commodity. Anyone with tastebuds can appreciate the fact that the round red tomato-like objects at the grocery store don’t taste anything like a vine-ripened tomato. Commercial tomatoes are bred for their ability to withstand rough handling, not for flavor. They are harvested green and treated with ethylene gas to make them appear ripe. So even if home-grown tomatoes are more expensive than store-bought, who cares? It’s like telling me that home grown tomatoes are more expensive than paper towels.

2. Gardening improves both the soil, and the gardener. If Stacey sticks to her tomato project she’ll get exercise, fresh air, and a reminder that with patience comes reward. If her garden is organic, she will enrich a little plot of soil, improving its ability to hold carbon and rain water, among other benefits. It’s more than a retail transaction.

3. Stacey considered only the effect of the garden on Stacey, ignoring the value of her garden to the rest of us. If she grows her own, that’s less pesticides sprayed into the environment. Less fuel is consumed by tractors and tomato trucks, so less carbon dioxide and less demand pushing up my fuel prices. If the benefits to you and me don’t appear on Stacey’s bottom line, then the math is just wrong.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that permits local police to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. That’s right. Instead of civil lawsuits for money, the recording industry wants to criminalize what they call copyright violation, and empower law enforcement to permanently seize any property they claim was used to violate copyright. This expands a government power that even some conservatives will acknowledge has been widely abused.

This is the future of property rights. They will own the property. You can only rent it.

Nine months of blog inactivity! That’s a new record, and hopefully it’ll stand from now on.

I’ve converted from Blosxom to Wordpress MU, since I was rebuilding the server anyhow, so it’ll have more features and will probably look sharper as well. I should have all the old posts converted by the weekend.