"Here is something you can do right now. In this NYT op-ed, I describe a proposal that would move more work into the public domain than a total victory in the Supreme Court would have. The basic idea is this: 50 years after a work has been 'published', a copyright owner would be required to pay a copyright tax. That tax should be extremely low--this proposal says $50, but it could be $1. If the copyright holder does not pay the tax for 3 years, then the work is forfeit to the public domain. If the copyright holder does pay the tax, then its contacting agent would be made a matter of public record. Very quickly we would have a cheap, searchable record, of what work is controlled and what work is free."

"The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions. But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet."

"Children and students are graded for their performance and behavior. Why should not governments be graded too for their performance? A yearly performance report should be produced by the UN or by an outside organization similar to Amnesty International.
A Performance International can show for example:

• the number of years a country has lived in peace with others,
• violence statistics,
• ratification of international treaties,
• implementation of UN recommendations on a host of subjects (human rights, labor relations, the environment, etc.),
• disarmament, shifting of military expenditures to peaceful, productive and social services,
• demilitarization, etc.

Such a report would lead to a lot of good in the world."

Our beloved Desmond Tutu has spoken out
against the USA's stance on Iraq. An extract: "I'm shocked to see a powerful country use its power frequently, unilaterally," said Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for opposing apartheid. "The United States says: 'You do this to the world. If you don't do it, we will do it.' That's sad," he said. "When does compassion, when does morality, when does caring come in?" he asked. "I just hope that one day that people will realise that peace is a far better path to follow."

"At this time especially, I am really proud to be South African. I am proud that our government is keeping a level head, and not going along with the "boys" Bush, Blair, Howard, and others, but rather making independent decisions, and maintaining a perspective of considering what is right for the global good."

"The settlers of Iceland divided the country into 4 regions. Each region had 9 godord and the godord were divided into three things. The godord were divided into groups of three and each thing had three godord.

The word 'godord' has two definitions. Godord represented a group of men. These men gave allegiance or alliance to a specific godi. A godi is the leader or chief who constructed a place of worship for his pagan followers. The godord was also a collection of rights, the right to represent the law making body of Iceland.

David Friedman states, "…seats in the law-making body were quite literally for sale." These men who were law-makers did not have power just because they held the title godord. They were powerless "unless he could convince some free-farmers to follow him." This kept tyranny and injustice in check.

Jesse Byock states in his book that, "leadership evolved in such a way that a chieftain's power and the resources available to him were not derived from an exploitable realm." This was because free farmers could change allegiance between godi without moving to a new geographical location. "The legal godi-thingman bond was created by a voluntary public contract." The ability to switch legal systems with out moving, is key to a decentralized system. It creates secession down the level of the individual, making all governance structures formed truly voluntary."

The Business Software Alliance and Computer Systems Policy Project -- two prominent high-tech trade groups representing Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley heavyweights -- are forming a new coalition and working to enlist support from consumer and business groups.

They hope to convince Congress that strict copy-protection legislation setting technological mandates would stifle innovation, harm consumers and threaten an already-suffering tech industry.

"The super rich, the less than 1 percent of the population who own the lion's share of the nation's wealth, go uncounted in most income distribution reports. Even those who purport to study the question regularly overlook the very wealthiest among us. For instance, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, relying on the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, released a report in December 1997 showing that in the last two decades "incomes of the richest fifth increased by 30 percent or nearly $27,000 after adjusting for inflation." The average income of the top 20 percent was $117,500, or almost 13 times larger than the $9,250 average income of the poorest 20 percent.

But where are the super rich? An average of $117,500 is an upper-middle income, not at all representative of a rich cohort, let alone a super rich one. All such reports about income distribution are based on U.S. Census Bureau surveys that regularly leave Big Money out of the picture. A few phone calls to the Census Bureau in Washington D.C. revealed that for years the bureau never interviewed anyone who had an income higher than $300,000. Or if interviewed, they were never recorded as above the "reportable upper limit" of $300,000, the top figure allowed by the bureau's computer program. In 1994, the bureau lifted the upper limit to $1 million. This still excludes the very richest who own the lion's share of the wealth, the hundreds of billionaires and thousands of multimillionaires who make many times more than $1 million a year. The super rich simply have been computerized out of the picture."

"My experience in the work world forced me to seriously reconsider my advocacy of capitalism in any form. As I was still very committed to libertarian principles, I began to study the "socialist anarchists". (I put "socialist anarchist" in quotes, as I now consider such a term to be a redundancy -- anarchists are necessarily socialists.) I forced myself to consider the fundamental disagreement that separates Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Malatesta from Rand, von Mises, and Friedman. My answer to myself: The advocates of capitalism believe that one can sign away or sell off one's liberty, whereas anarchists do not. As a right-wing libertarian capitalist, I was of the opinion that one could enter into a morally binding agreement in which one sacrifices one's liberty in exchange for a wage. My position was that a worker would be committing fraud against the employer if he attempted to retain rights to the full product of his labor. My argument was that if an employer has a "legitimate" prior claim upon the capital being used, then he has the right to dictate its terms of use. The laborer doesn't have the right to anything more than what the capitalist agrees to give, just as the capitalist doesn't have the right to take anything more than what the laborer agrees to give. (Of course, I didn't realize in my early "anarcho-capitalist" days that capitalists almost always demand more than what the worker initially agrees to give.)

My current position is that one cannot be ethically bound by agreements that restrict one's liberty to be self-governing. It has always been my view that one cannot be bound by an agreement to be a slave. Although one can enter into a contract that mandates one to serve as a slave, one should be considered free to cease honoring that contract at any time."

A century ago ... corporations were granted the rights of persons by radical judicial activism, an extreme violation of classical liberal principles... They were also freed from earlier obligations to keep to specific activities for which they were chartered... Furthermore, in an important move, the courts shifted power upwards, from the stockholders in a partnership to the central management, which was identified with the immortal corporate person."

"An array of mega-corporations, often linked to one another by strategic alliances, administering a global economy which is in fact a kind of a corporate mercantilism tending toward oligopoly in most sectors, heavily reliant on state power to socialize risk and cost and to subdue recalcitrant elements."

"One striking example (there are many) has to do with the international economic order -- what are called trade agreements. The general population, as polls make very clear, is strongly opposed to most of what's going on but the issues don't arise. It's not an issue in the elections because the centers of power, the minority of the opulent, are unified in support of instituting a particular kind of socio-economic order. So therefore, the issue doesn't arise. The things that are discussed are things that they don't much care about. Like questions of character or questions of reform which they know that aren't going to be implemented. So that's what discussed. Not what people care about. And that's pretty typical and it makes sense on the assumption that the role of the public as the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders is just to be spectators."

"My take on this, for what it's worth, is that it gives the UK everything that lukewarm Europhiles/moderate Eurosceptics have always wanted. EU will now be so large and will vary so much in cultural and economic conditions that a thoroughgoing federalist project is dead in the water. The centre - Brussels and Strasbourg - will be fatally weakened vis-à-vis the component parts of the union because twenty-five (or more) states will find it almost impossible to reach agreement on anything but the most anodyne proposals. Moreover, the disparities in wealth within the zone mean that it will be much harder to impose anything like common standards in matters like employment and social security for the EU as a whole. Think about it: a common minimum wage for Germany, France and the UK might be a crazy proposal, but it isn't quite so crazy that there isn't someone who might suggest it. A common minimum wage for Latvia and the Netherlands: the most starry-eyed Euroenthusiast, even fortified by several glasses of champagne, isn't going to entertain the notion!"

On the evening of December 9, 2002, the elected municipal officials of Porter Township, Clarion County -- a municipality of 1,500 residents an hour north of Pittsburgh in Northwestern Pennsylvania -- became the first local government in the United States to eliminate corporate claims to civil and constitutional privileges. The Township adopted a binding law declaring that corporations operating in the Township may not wield legal privileges - historically used by corporations to override democratic decisionmaking -- to stop the Township from passing laws which protect residents from toxic sewage sludge.

The actions by Porter Township thus repudiate the history of state and federal public officials restricting the rights of citizens while expanding the rights of corporations and their owners. ... (more)

USA
1. Honeywell (rockets, chemical)
2. Spectra Physics (chemical)
3. Semetex (rockets)
4. TI Coating (atomic, chemical)
5. Unisys (atomic, chemical)
6. Sperry Corp. (rockets, chemical)
7. Tektronix (rockets, atomic)
8. Rockwell (chemical)
9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (atomic)
10. Finnigan-MAT-US (atomic)
11. Hewlett-Packard (atomic, rockets, chemical)
12. Dupont (atomic)
13. Eastman Kodak (rockets)
14. American Type Culture Collection (biological)
15. Alcolac International (chemical)
16. Consarc (atomic)
17. Carl Zeiss - U.S (chemical)
18. Cerberus (LTD) (atomic)
19. Electronic Associates (rockets)
20. International Computer Systems (atomic, rockets, chemical)
21. Bechtel (chemical)
22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (rockets)
23. Canberra Industries Inc. (atomic)
24. Axel Electronics Inc. (atomic)

Britain
1. Euromac Ltd-Uk (atomic)
2. C. Plath-Nuclear (atomic)
3. Endshire Export Marketing (atomic)
4. International Computer Systems (atomic, rockets, chemical)
5. MEED International (atomic, chemical)
6. Walter Somers Ltd. (rockets)
7. International Computer Limited (atomic, chemical)
8. Matrix Churchill Corp. (atomic)
9. Ali Ashour Daghir (atomic)
10. International Military Services (rockets) (owned by the British Ministry of Defence)
11. Sheffield Forgemasters (rockets)
12. Technology Development Group (rockets)
13. International Signal and Control (rockets)
14. Terex Corporation (rockets)
15. Inwako (atomic)
16. TMG Engineering (chemical)
17. XYY Options, Inc (atomic)