Comments and trackbacks will be disabled until further notice. Twice in two days, comment spam robots maxed out my running processes and took down my web site. I thought that the TypeKey system would prevent that, but apparently it doesn't work; or, the spam robots have figured out a way around TypeKey. I will need to look into other measures to prevent comment spam attacks.

And what are these attacks for? Kids having fun? No; advertising. Marketing. These comment spam robots want to sell things, increase Google PageRanks, and make some money for their owners.

Posted by Mark at 12:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike posted a comment to my previous post, entitled "Exactly how stupid is our president?" The comment is pretty long, so I won't repost it in its entirety; rather, I'll address each section in turn.

I think building schools, hospitals, infrastructure, etc. is good news. Yes, when terrorists blow up our public works projects, that's bad news. And I'll concede that there's more bad news than good coming out of Iraq. But there is good news there.

Point taken. Yes, there may be some good news coming out of Iraq. But a majority of Iraqis (and especially those in Baghdad) don't feel that things are going so well and they actually wish Saddam Hussein were back in power. Why is this? Saddam's brutal repression didn't impact the average man-on-the-street very much. There was water, there was power. There weren't bombers blowing people up every day (and suicide bombers are now a daily occurrence in Iraq). Yes, Saddam was a dictator, and yes, dictators are always evil. But the Iraqis themselves don't necessarily feel that way. If his dictatorship touched them, it wasn't very much -- unless they were Kurds or dissidents (and, actually, "Iraqi Kurdistan," as it calls itself, is actually doing quite well; there are hardly any bombings up there, but then again, things were always better up there). Was did touch them was infastructure and the basic necessities of life. Saddam -- and to an even greater degree, the government -- kept that stuff running. Now that Saddam is out, there's no security, and you have situations where insurgents are destroying power lines and killing repair crews that come to repair the power lines. I submit that life for the average person in Iraq is getting worse. And people are fleeing Iraq to the tune of about 100,000 per month. Some countries, like Canada, have recognized that Iraq's situation is special and has granted refugee status to Iraqis. Again, there may be good things happening, but by and large, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, the Iraqis are worse off than they were four years ago.

2. Believing things were better under Saddam is not the same as believing Saddam is good.

Of course not. Nevertheless, you say, "But I would not be pining for the good ol' days of totalitarianism, even if I did recognize that Saddam imparted a certain stability." The problem is that there are Iraqis "pining for the good ol' days of totalitarianism." And this is a problem for us, because one of our many reasons for going into Iraq was to "spread democracy." If democracy is so great, why don't the Iraqi people realize it? The answer is that democracy is great, but we severely botched our implementation of democracy in Iraq to the point that people would rather have the greater security and lesser freedom of Saddam than the lesser security and greater freedom of an Iraq without Saddam. This reflects poorly on our leaders' handling of the situation. Democracy should be good in and of itself, without explanation, but in this case, we created a half-assed democracy that has all the appearances of a democracy (elected leaders, independent branches of government) without the substance of one. The fact that Iraqis would rather live under a repressive Saddam than a free Nouri al-Maliki is a testament to how bad the situation there is.

3-4. This all could have been cleared up if Iraq had been more forthcoming with UN inspectors. The onus was on them.

Granted; Saddam could have been more forthcoming about the fact that he didn't have WMDs (most likely, he didn't want the U.N. wandering around and finding massive human rights abuses, instead). But President Bush also prematurely removed U.N. weapons inspectors from the country in 2003 before they had a chance to finish their inspections, and then he spun it to make it seem as though it was Saddam who had tossed the weapons inspectors out. When President Bush claimed that all diplomatic means had been exhausted, he was lying. All diplomatic means had not been exhausted; rather, Bush put an end to diplomacy in order to begin military action, the latter of which he had been intending to use all along regardless of whether Saddam complied with weapons inspectors (cf. The Downing Street Memo).

5. Your argument amounts to the old "but officer, I saw two other guys speeding too, and you didn't give them tickets" bit. No sale.

Yes, sale. Bush's arguments about why Saddam was more evil than other dictators in the world were unconvincing. He offered no hard evidence as to why we should go after Saddam rather than, say, North Korea or Saudi Arabia. This argument speaks more to our intentions than anything else. Was our intention to do away with an evil dictator? If so, then why didn't we go after the more evil dictators who really did have weapons of mass destruction? Answer: because our intentions had nothing to do with the altruistic notion of removing an evil dictator from power. That was a ruse and it only proves that we have been consistently lied to for four years. Why go after a dictator who -- evil though he may be -- is not a direct threat to us? I still regret not asking P.J. O'Rourke this question when he came to Miami. Here's what I would have asked him: "Sometime in 2003, all of America went to sleep, and Iraq was a distant threat. Sure, it was run by a dictator, but it was a nebulous, indirect, and not urgent threat to the United States. Then, the next day, suddenly Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and they had to be taken out now. Why did the administration's view on Iraq change so dramatically and so suddenly?" The bottom line: Saddam was not a threat to us. There were other nations that were threats to us. And yet we attacked the country that was not a threat to us. Why did this illogical situation occur?

6. Maybe I'm dense (it's a distinct possibility) but I don't remember anyone but Bush opponents giving out the "Iraq = al-Qaeda" line.

There's a great book out there called All the President's Spin which actually analyzes the ways in which the Bush administration went to great lengths to equate Iraq and al-Qaeda without explicitly saying the words. By casually mentioning Iraq and al-Qaeda together, coupled with the words "September the eleventh," Bush was able to create the impression that Iraq had something to do with September 11 while all the time retaining plausible deniability by not overtly saying the words. "What? Iraq was involved in September 11? I never said that!" And it's true that he never said the words, but he has excellent P.R. people working for him who know how to sell an idea without actually coming out and saying "Iraq = al-Qaeda = September 11." Advertising is all about subtlety. The American people were sold on this war as though it were blue jeans or Camel cigarettes. Sure, Camel doesn't come out and say that smoking is cool, but it's difficult to say that its advertising doesn't suggest that. In 2003, 40 percent of Americans thought that Iraq was responsible for September 11. Where could they have gotten that idea, especially since Iraq has never bombed us and al-Qaeda has bombed U.S. properties (embassies in Africa, the USS Cole) several times? Remember: You're a lot smarter than the average American, so just because you didn't fall for it doesn't mean that other people didn't.

"He never defines what the 'job' is, or what 'done' means ..."

Granted. Bush defines "job" every time he says it: "an Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself." But he repeats it so often that it has become less a policy argument than a catch-phrase.

He may not be the smartest man ever to occupy the post of president, I'll concede that; but an incurious and uncaring man, interested only in self, wouldn't start a pre-emptive foreign war justified, in his words, by dangers to the nation's long-term survival.

Here's the cynical part: I don't believe that President Bush does care about our nation's long-term survival. He may offer these reasons as justifications for his war, but they are all bromides. Bromides for what, I don't know; I've been spending four years wondering what his true reasons for the Iraq War are. A just war requires no convincing. Take our action in Afghanistan, with which I completely agreed. Al-Qaeda, supported by Afghanistan's Taliban government, attacked us. I believe we were completely justified in retaliating, and the rest of the world agreed. And if President Bush is so concerned about democracy, why did he "cut and run" in Afghanistan? He left that country "before the job [was] done" so that he could focus on Iraq. One of these was a war of necessity (if such a thing can exist); the other was a war of choice. Our retaliation against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was a natural step that any president -- yes, even Al Gore -- would have taken. The war in Iraq is one that was undertaken by President Bush of his own volition. And he took resources from Afghanistan -- where, by the way, there are still problems that remain unfixed -- to fight his pre-emptive war of choice in Iraq.

It was only after we went to war in Iraq that the goodwill we had generated after September 11 was gone. The bipartisan bickering was back, and the world was more resentful toward us than ever before. Recall what former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said: that, after the September 11 attacks, Bush and Rumsfeld ordered the CIA to find intelligence -- any intelligence, reliable or not, that might link Iraq to those attacks. Their reaction was not, "Let's find out who did this"; rather, it was, "Let's find out how we can blame Iraq for this." For me, this serves as a terrible bit of evidence indicating that Bush was itching for a war with Iraq from the start.

It's not that I disagree with the way the president has handled this war. It's that I disagree with the war itself; there is no "good" way to operate this war, since it shouldn't have happened to begin with. I believe that it was unjustified, illegal, and morally reprehensible. I find it further terrible that President Bush makes bold, idealistic justifications in public when there is substantial evidence to indicate that his real reasons are more cynical, sinister, and less motivated by the public welfare. (Recall that Bush wanted to goad Iraq into war by painting a U.S. spy plane in U.N. colors, encouraging them to fire on it. He must have been reading Lyndon Johnson's The Art of War.)

Thanks for your comments, Mike. I hope you find this response less hate-filled. Years of lies, swagger, immature smugness, and a disregard for reality have left me with a deep distaste for this president -- a distaste that I had only finally put to words in that previous post.

Posted by Mark at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the past three years, the world has watched as the situation in Iraq has gotten progressively worse. In March 2003, the United States invaded the country and quickly defeated the national armies. In May, President Bush, in one of his more asinine acts of public relations, "landed" a fighter plane on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared, behind a patriotic banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" and the U.S. had won the war.

Or did the U.S. win the war? Note President Bush's choice of language: "major combat operations [...] have ended." This statement implies that "minor combat operations" may still be going on and begs the question, "What are 'major' and 'minor' combat operations?" As it turns out, taking over the country was a "major" combat operation. Subduing the populce was a "minor" combat operation.

But things got worse. L. Paul Bremer, III, headed up a body known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose job it was to rebuild the country and prepare it for self-rule. This included supervising the creation of a constitution and the holding of national elections.

But the Coalition Provisional Authority was never really in charge. Saddam Hussein had ruled the country for twenty-odd years and made it a policy to destroy any person or institution that threatened his power. The notion that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had any kind of operating relationship was ludicrous to people who paid attention, as Saddam was egomaniacal enough that he would never share power with anyone, even a group whose objectives were similar to his own. In the absence of a strong dictator and military police, the country went into chaos.

Iraq, like the rest of the Muslim world, is a majority Sunni country with a Shi'a minority concentrated in the middle and a Kurdish minority in the north. Like most former colonies, Iraq's borders were drawn by Europeans who either didn't know or didn't care about ethnic differences. They drew lines with rulers back in the comfort of England, fashioning a nation without regard to the rules of nation-building. Nations must be constructed among people who have similar religions, traditions, cultures, and, yes, ethnic backgrounds. Ethnic hatred has been popular in the world ever since the beginning of civilization, and nations would not have naturally formed among enemies. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened in Iraq. The Kurds -- who are Sunni -- nevertheless belong to a different ethnic group than ethnic Iraqi Sunnis. And Shiite Iraqis are ethnically Iraqi, but have a different take on Islam from the Iraqi Sunnis. The Sunni/Shi'a divide is practically as old as Islam itself, and Saddam Hussein spared no expense in tormenting the country's Shi'a minority. It certainly doesn't help that Iran, Iraq's bitter enemy, is the only majority Shiite country in the world.

So, once Saddam was gone, Sunni militants began to appear in Shiite areas, and vice-versa. It appeared as though a group of civilian militants were trying to seize power in the resulting vacuum, using bombs as their currency. The rest of 2003 was spent fighting this insurgency, most notably in Fallujah, where several U.S. defense contractors were killed and their charred corpses paraded through the streets. It also appeared as though militants were infiltrating the ranks of Iraqi police, enforcing the law by day and blowing people up by night.

By 2004, however, it became clear that it wasn't just Iraqis themselves who were responsible for this violence. A group called al-Qaeda in Iraq, formerly headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed to be bringing the anti-American, anti-Israeli platform of al-Qaeda to Iraq in the form of kidnappings, beheadings, and roadside bombs. Now, outside groups were coming into Iraq to take advantage of the weak government and lack of control in order to make Iraq a staging ground for their U.S. hatred and even to use Iraq as a terrorist training ground.

Through all of this, though, President Bush remained firm in his insistence that (1) the news media were merely reporting all the bad events and none of the good events and (2) that the world was a safer place with Saddam Hussein out of power. While it would be hard to disprove the first assertion, the second assertion can be disproven. In April, 2006, the U.S. State Department reported that worldwide terrorist attacks increased in 2005. A National Intelligence Estimate leaked in September indicated that the Iraq War had actually made the worldwide terrorism problem worse and had become a "cause celebre" for terrorists.

And that brings me to the crux of this article. For the past three years, President Bush has essentially told us the following things:

1. Iraq is doing just fine and the news reports you hear about it are blown wildly out of proportion.
2. The Iraqi people are glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power.
3. We went into Iraq to stop Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction.
4. We went into Iraq to stop Saddam from developing nuclear weapons.
5. We went into Iraq because Saddam was in violation of UN resolution 1441.
6. We went into Iraq because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

I will address these in turn.

1. Iraq is doing just fine

Iraq is not doing just fine. The report of the Iraq Study Group, released last week, concludes that our current strategy in Iraq is not working and things in Iraq are only getting worse. These are the conclusions of a bi-partisan panel co-chaired by James Baker, III, formerly Secretary of State for President George H.W. Bush. This is not The New York Times or CNN saying this. Furthermore, much of Iraq is still without infastructure, including water and power, and there is little economy to speak of. November was the worst month yet for terrorist attacks, which seem only to be getting worse. Nothing is going well in Iraq. It's not that news outlets over-report the bad news; it's that there is no good news coming out of Iraq to report!

2. The Iraqi people are glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power

In 2005, ABC News conducted a poll in Iraq that concluded that Iraqis were more optimistic about the future than they were in 2004. However, only 46 percent believe the country was better off than it was before the war, and two-thirds opposed the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq. A majority of Iraqis believes that things worse now than before Saddam Hussein.

3. We went for WMDs

This assertion was refuted long ago by David Kay, the U.N. weapons inspector who was prematurely removed from Iraq by the United States, the latter later claiming that it was Saddam who had removed the weapons inspectors "before the job [was] done." In 2004, The Kay Report concluded that "we were all wrong" about there being weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is compelling evidence to believe that the Bush administration knew this, but ignored intelligence that said so, preferring to give credence to intelligence that bolstered its position that Iraq did have WMDs.

4. We went for nuclear weapons

Many U.N. officials and Iraqi defectors have all said the same thing: Saddam abandoned his nuclear program in the mid-1990s, just like he said he did. Even though Bush claimed that "Iraq sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," this turned out to be a lie, based on intelligence from a source who was known to be liar.

5. We went in for the UN resolution

At the time that the United States invaded Iraq, some ninety other U.N. resolutions were being violated by other countries.

6. We went in because Iraq and al-Qaeda were in cahoots

The September 11 Commission found in 2004 that there was no "significant operating relationship" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And while President Bush publicly declared that, yes, there was no relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, he continued to repeat the equation "Iraq = al-Qaeda." Intelligence which claimed to show that Iraqi officials met with al-Qaeda officials has since been discredited, and was in fact known to be uncredible at the time.

And now, here we are, with the findings of the Iraq Study Group. The group was convened in March of this year, so it's only a coincidence that the report comes on the heels of a spectacular loss for the Republican party. The past month has been a strange one, with President Bush sounding the most conciliatory he ever has, since he knows that he can no longer get away with lying to a rubber-stamp Congress run by his own party.

Nevertheless, he has continued to mouth catchphrases like "We will not leave before the job is done." He never defines what the "job" is, or what "done" means, but continues to make these statements as though they are a package containing their own self-evident hypotheses, evidence, and conclusions.

But the Iraq Study Group is not the only government body to officially recognize that President Bush's tactics aren't working. Robert Gates, the soon-to-be Secretary of Defense, answered with a blunt "No, sir" when asked at his confirmation hearings if the situation in Iraq was going well. This is the first time we have ever heard a current member of the administration saying, in public and on the record, that the situation in Iraq is not what the president says it is.

Could it be that the president is ... mistaken? For three years, we have been lied to and watched as President Bush talks at us with his self-satisfied smirk about how things in Iraq are dandy, about how people who suggest otherwise are trying to play partisan political games, and how we mustn't give in to any thought of leaving before the undefined "job" is "done" without any parameters specifying when we will be "done."

But the Iraq Study Group has suggested that we have pretty much three options: (1) increase troop levels, (2) take the troops out and leave, or (3) take most of the troops out, leaving some behind not as police or occupiers but as "advisors." Bush, through Press Secretary Tony Snow, has said that it will be next year before we have a response to the Iraq Study Group findings. It takes more than a week, you see, to clean three years' worth of gunk out of the president's brain so that he can make his first-ever informed statement.

And this makes me wonder whether or not Bush is blissfully ignorant or intentionally ignorant. On the one hand, it could be that Bush is the nation's biggest idiot. It may be very well that he actually believes that the situation in Iraq is going swimmingly and that the only thing separating Iraq now from the utopian vision of Iraq in Bush's mind is more time and a little more faith from the American people. This is entirely plausible, since Bush surrounds himself with yes-men and doesn't tolerate dissention in his ranks. If someone in the administration disagrees with Bush, it's not that Bush is wrong, it's that the disagreer is wrong and must be banished from his sight. We've seen this with Colin Powell, Richard Clarke, and Paul O'Neill, among others.

But there is an equally good chance that President Bush is no fool and knows full well that the situation in Iraq "is grave and deteriorating." Yet, he keeps an optimistic attitude because, as a leader, he cannot let us see that he is just as pessimistic as we are about Iraq. If that were true, then there would be no hope for the future. Unfortunately, thousands of Iraqi civilians and American soldiers have died so that Bush may save face. The longer he insists that things are great, the longer we stay there, and the more American soldiers die for a cause that is emphatically not worth dying for.

Somehow, even though his agenda is clearly defeated, he still manages that self-satisfying smirk. He used it earlier this week when he talked about suggestions that he would reject, one of them being "leaving before the job is done." Like a self-appointed expert who knows that he doesn't know what he's talking about, Bush repeats the same things again and again, hoping beyond hope that the act of repeating them will make them true.

And now we wait while Bush's strategists try to come up with a response to the Iraq Study Group's report that will save face by making it appear that Bush is implementing policy changes not because he was goaded into it but because he has suddenly realized, of his own volition, that it was time for those policy changes. This is the reason for a month-long waiting period: to get the report out of the short-term memory of the American people so that when the policy changes do appear, no one will remember that they were actually someone else's recommendations.

Watching the president on TV, I'm astonished that, somehow, this man is our leader. I'm further astonished that, after the incompetence he demonstrated in his first term, he was re-elected. What does that say about the incompetence of America? Thankfully, this year's referendum on his performance said, in no uncertain terms, that we don't approve of what's going on. President Bush will live on in history as the most corrupt, asinine, incompentent, childish, immature, undeserving, stupid, and smarmy president in history. You can tell watching him that he was president of his fraternity; he acts every part the stereotypical frat-boy, a person who is intellectually not curious, doesn't care about the world around him, and is looking out only for himself and his cadre of buddies. He refuses to accept responsibility for the things he has done wrong and he even refuses to admit that he was wrong. It took even Augusto Pinochet thirty years to claim responsibility for his actions, and that was only on his deathbed. Must we wait until at least 2036 before Bush finally admits that invading Iraq was his fault and that it was a mistake? These eight years may well be regarded as a time when the world lived on a razor's edge between cynicism and out-and-out despair. There is only one man in the entire world who can be blamed, and everyone but him knows that it's his fault.

Posted by Mark at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In 1843, British writer Charles Dickens published "A Christmas Carol," a little story about the true meaning of Christmas. In 2006, "A Christmas Carol" is still one of the most enduring Christmas institutions, right up there with Santa Claus and Jesus.

Its endurance has occurred partly through the four hundred thousand film adaptations of "Charles Dickens' immortal classic." By my count, there are no fewer than seven film adaptations of "A Christmas Carol." And will I go through them all? You betcha. In this list, I will name only the actors who played Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, and Jacob Marley (in that order), as they are the main characters.

A Christmas Carol. Dir. Brian Desmond Hurst. Perf. Alastair Sim, Mervyn Johns, and Michael Hordern. Renown Pictures Corporation, Ltd., 1951.

This was the first widely released version of "A Christmas Carol," and it is sometimes known by the name "Scrooge." Also notable as the first -- and last -- non-musical version of "A Christmas Carol" to use all British actors.

Scrooge. Dir. Ronald Neame. Perf. Albert Finney, David Collings, and Alec Guinness. Twentieth Century Fox, 1970.

The next major version of "A Christmas Carol" to hit the theatre was ... a musical! Albert Finney sang and danced his way through Dickens' story as though it were completely natural. Kudos to veteran musicalist Leslie Bricusse for putting musical numbers in places where they more or less belonged. "Thank You Very Much" truly showcases how clueless Scrooge is, even toward the end of his journey. I love the scene of Scrooge in Hell when they bring out his chains and attach them to him. And what's Alec Guinness doing here?! Obi Wan Kenobi plays a Jacob Marley who delights in seeing Scrooge tortured in Hell by having huge chains attached to him and being forced to live in the only freezing room in the whole place (as an ironic punishment).

"Mickey's Christmas Carol." Dir. Burny Mattinson. Perf. Scrooge McDuck, Mickey Mouse, and Goofy. Walt Disney Pictures, 1983.

The metaphysical implications of this version of "A Christmas Carol" are astounding. Here, you have a universe of characters -- who are already fictional -- acting out a fictional play. But kids don't care; they just like cartoons. Scrooge McDuck finally gets to act as his namesake; for years, Scrooge McDuck was miserly but likeable. Here, he's downright mean to everyone: Mickey Mouse, his nephew (who is also his real nephew) Donald Duck, and Goofy, who, even as the ghost of Jacob Marley, is hilariously clumsy. This Mickey Mouse short is only half an hour long, but an excellent adaptation nonetheless.

A Christmas Carol. Dir. Clive Donner. Perf. George C. Scott, David Warner, and Frank Finlay. CBS Television, 1984.

This version of "A Christmas Carol" was a made-for-TV movie starring George C. Scott as Scrooge and David Warner as Bob Cratchit. And what does George C. Scott do? Kick ass and take names, of course! His grovelly voice is perfect for shouting, "Bah! Humbug!" at the ghost of Jacob Marley (played by David Warner, who would later go on to torture Captain Picard -- who later portrayed Scrooge -- in the sixth-season Next Generation episode "Chain of Command"). But it's still a little weird to see George C. Scott smile.

Scrooged. Dir. Richard Donner. Perf. Bill Murray, Alfre Woodard, and John Forsythe. Paramount Pictures, 1988.

This is my favorite version of "A Christmas Carol." The story is set in the 1980s and morphs Scrooge into Frank Cross: a cold, heartless television executive. Jacob Marley becomes Lew Hayward, the former television executive whom Frank replaced when Lew died; and Bob Cratchit becomes Grace Cooley, a single mother and Frank's long-suffering personal assistant. This is a very imaginative re-telling of the story, as it coincides with Frank's network's production of "Charles Dickens' immortal classic, Scrooge" (which, of course, is wrong, as Dickens' story was not called "Scrooge," but that's television for you). All the elements of the story, though, are 100% intact in this version of the story -- visiting his brother with the Ghost of Christmas Present and watching him and his friends play a 19th-century party game becomes watching his brother and friends play Trivial Pursuit. The film benefits from Bill Murray, who is able to be cold and evil as well as compassionate. But what is Bobcat Goldthwait doing here?

The Muppet Christmas Carol. Dir. Brian Henson. Perf. Michael Caine, Kermit the Frog, Statler and Waldorf. Walt Disney Pictures, 1992.

The last good Muppet film was this one, a derivation of "A Christmas Carol" that, like the other Muppet films, casts the Muppets alongside real people. Michael Caine does an excellent job as Scrooge, especially considering that he has to act off of puppets. An interesting adaptation involves Gonzo and Ratzo Rizzo as the "narrators" of the story, probably because they couldn't think of a part that Gonzo could play. After Jim Henson died, Disney tried to package all his stuff for mass consumption, resulting in a lot of terrible Muppet films. This one, thankfully, is not one of those. Jim Henson would approve.

"A Christmas Carol." Dir. David Hugh Jones. Perf. Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Bernard Lloyd. Hallmark Entertainment, 1999.

In between starring as Captain Picard in Star Trek: Insurrection and then re-igniting his career with X-Men in 2000, Patrick Stewart starred in this made-for-TV version of "A Christmas Carol" that aired on TBS. For Stewart, a classically-trained Shakespearean actor, playing Scrooge hardly involved him lifting his little finger. He is great, of course, but the decision to give him some stubble always made me uncomfortable. Come on, folks, it's either mutton chops or it's nothing. Even better than this -- and I've never seen it; I've only heard about it -- is Patrick Stewart's one-man show where he performs "A Christmas Carol." As in, he's all the characters. Now that would be an even better version to watch.

There are other versions of "A Christmas Carol" out there (including some trash called "A Diva's Christmas Carol"), but I find that these are the seven "canonical" examples of holiday cheer. You can keep your twenty-four hours of A Christmas Story; I'd rather have twenty-four hours of Scrooge.

Posted by Mark at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the cartel (not necessarily pejorative; the RIAA fits the definition of a cartel) of U.S. recording companies, is deeply concerned about artists. Many times, they have used, as an argument against file sharing, the moral argument: when you download music, you're stealing from the artists. And the artists deserve to be paid, too!

In an effort to keep their logic consistent, the RIAA petitioned the federal Copyright Royalty Judges to lower the royalty rates "in applications like cell phone ring tones and other digital recordings." A royalty is a fee paid to a content creator every time his work is publicly performed or copied. Recording companies license content -- in this case, a song -- from an artist and paid him for each copy of the song they sell. In the United States, this is called a "statutory fee" because the fee is set by statute.

How interesting that the RIAA, on the one hand, laments the plight of the poor artist who is losing money because Timmy is downloading illegal copies of his music, and on the other hand, wants to pay those same artists less money. Cell phone ringtones are a gold mine and the RIAA is furious that they have to actually compensate the people who wrote the song! That money should belong to EMI, or Atlantic, or Time Warner!

I haven't read the actual text of this request, so I don't know if the RIAA wants to lower royalty fees for all digital content. If that were the case, certainly any sane judge would realize that they're just trying to weasel their way out of paying for music in a burgeoning new market. That's been the RIAA's tactic all along: instead of adapting themselves to new markets, they've been trying to adapt the new markets to behave like the old ones, so that RIAA won't have to innovate or spend money changing anything. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was a valiant attempt to make digital content behave like analog content, but there's no guarantee that consumers will tolerate it.

I wonder what Metallica thinks now?

Posted by Mark at 8:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

AppleInsider reports that movie industry executives refuse to license their films to the iTunes Music Store unless Apple locks down the content in a way that makes them happy:

"The studios want to avoid the experience of the music industry, which has yet to recover from years of illegal digital piracy," the report states. It quotes one studio executive involved in the talks as saying Apple must introduce a "new model" for feature film content delivery.

It is debatable and, by all independent analyses, extremely unlikely, that piracy is responsible for a decrease in music industry revenue. Never mind that (1) companies similar in size to the aggregate size of the RIAA's member companies experienced a similar downturn in revenue; (2) the music companies have actually been releasing fewer units than before their downturn; and (3) it may just be possible that consumers are buying less corporate music because they don't like it.

The RIAA and MPAA have always argued that DRM is essential to their online business models. Without DRM, they argue, we wouldn't be able to provide the content to you; therefore, in order to provide content to you, we must DRM it. This flawed logic implies that DRM is necessary for online content distribution, when, in fact, these industries only require DRM so that they can be sure that no one will ever -- ever -- use their content in a way that they don't want.

But this isn't news. Music companies have been pressing Apple to fall into their way of doing things for years. Music companies want Apple to adopt a variable pricing scheme that makes popular tracks more expensive than unpopular ones. Ever since the inception of the iTunes Music Store, Steve Jobs has sold all music for the same price, regardless of popularity. The only things that makes albums more expensive at the iTunes Music Store is the amount of stuff included (i.e. a multi-disc collection is more expensive than a single-disc album).

Fortunately, Apple is more responsive to its consumers than Microsoft, and Steve Jobs is stubborn enough not to be bullied by music industry executives. When the music companies came to Microsoft and said that they wanted a device that would barely function, and when it did, it would function the way music companies wanted it to, Microsoft said, "Where do we sign?" Apple designed the iPod and the iTunes Music Store by asking, "What features do consumers want?" DRM is probably not at the top of the list.

Posted by Mark at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)