Ford Chairman Warns of Global Gridlock

William Ford, the chairman of the eponymous American auto giant, is warning that the planet is facing a "global gridlock" that requires resolution sooner rather than (too) later. His remarks will be delivered later today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

For details, check out today's Financial Times article on Ford's comments.

NPR Again Skips African-Americans For News Operations Execs

Once again, NPR has managed to make complete hash of its promises to diversify its staff to include minorities. NPR's most recent lost opportunity occurred a couple of days ago, when the proudly liberal network announced two new executives for its news divisions. Both are NPR insdiers; both are Caucasian.

Unsurprisingly, the network supported by tax dollars and "from listeners like you" made a backhanded defense of its lack of diversity. Its announcement, response to a question about diversity, and other aspects of the NPR story, are available via Richard Prince's Journal-isms blog.

Dorothea Lange Photos Depict World War II Japanese-American Internment

Just About to Step into the Bus
at the Assembly Center
Dorothea Lange, 1942
(photo from Sacramento Bee
and Oakland Museum of California collection)

In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Federal officials organized the internment of Japanese-Americans. This episode, one of the most shameful in American history, has received its deserved share of notoriety. What's less well known is that the government commissioned photographer Dorothea Lange to document the event. She was a curious choice, given her Depression-era images of people struggling to survive that grim period. Lange was also known to have objected to the de facto imprisonment of those Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Nonetheless, Lange undertook the project. Unsurprisingly, her images were suppressed during the war years. They are available for viewing now. The San Jose Mercury News has collected sixty-five photographs from Lange's project, along with an interactive map identifying Bay Area photo locations that could be positively identified. Some of the photos are moving, some are beautiful, and all share a very scary context. Yes, it could -- and did -- happen here.

For a comprehensive look at Lange's work, the Oakland Museum of California is the place to visit. The photographer bequeathed 25,000 of her images to the institution; some of them are available to view online now.

Jeremy Grantham: The Investment "Industry So Much Prefers Bullishness..."

Jeremy Grantham

British investor Jeremy Grantham's most recent GMO Quarterly Newsletter has come out guns blazing. His observations, which are often worth reading and considering, offer a number of provocative points useful even for financial laypersons (count me in that category). One of them I appreciated was "If you can be patient and ignore the crowd, you will likely win." While that's easier said than done in finance, it's damned good advice.

Another favorite: "The investment "industry so much likes bullishness...so does the press." Anyone who has watched the CNBC cheerleaders and their relentless parade of "upbeat" analysts will appreciate this point.

Excerpts from Grantham's letter, as well as access to the entire (long) piece, was posted on the finance blog Zero Hedge.

LA Times Report: Oscar Voters Are "Overwhelmingly White, Male"

In a story that at first seems like discovering gambling in the casino, the LA Times reported that an "overwhelming" number of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members are white and male.

What's genuinely shocking, in the event one cares at all about the subject, is just how overwhelming the whiteness and maleness is. Of the Academy's 5,675 voting members, 94% are Caucasian and 77% are male.

The Academy's membership list is not public information. The three LA Times reporters conducted hundreds of interviews to determine the qualifying Oscar voters' gender and race. The story confirms what women of all ethnicities, African-American, Latino, Asian performers, and behind-the-camera pros have long cited about Hollywood's segregated, clubby atmosphere.

The composition of the Academy's voters is definitely something to consider as the Oscar voting patterns emerge.

NYPD Spies on Newark Muslims; Arizona House OKs Bible Classes for Public High Schools

The Republican Party's presidential candidates are having a televised debate this evening, and its two front-running candidates are right in the middle of religious controversy. Rick Santorum has essentially embraced a militant Christian mantle as his calling card for the presidency. Mitt Romney is the first significant Mormon candidate for high office. I wish I could ask each of them a question about two stories that appeared in today's news.

Exhibit A is the release of a secret report compiled by a clandestine unit of the New York Police Department. (The story appeared in The Star-Ledger of Newark and in Associated Press reports.) The focus of the report was Newark, New Jersey's Muslim community. Apparently, this police activity did not identify any criminal suspects, produce any arrest warrants, or bother to respect the civil liberties of an entire community. Those under surveillance were being watched on the basis of their religious beliefs. Much of the police activity occurred during the Bush-Cheney years, when the liberties for which our nation's Founding Fathers fought a revolution were aggressively violated.

Apparently, the NYPD was given the green light by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to undertake this domestic spying. Newark and New Jersey state officials have publicly denied knowledge of the snooping, although one wonders if they are indulging in "plausible deniability."

Contrasting with the revelation about the Gotham police's creepy, profoundly illegal profiling of law-abiding Muslims is a Los Angeles Times story from Arizona. That state's House of Representatives recently passed legislation permitting Bible classes to be taught in public high schools and charter schools. Of course, this measure disrupts the wise separation of church and state. In effect, the Arizona House has made Christianity the de facto government approved religion. Taxpayer dollars can be dedicated to the instruction of Christian precepts in a currently secular environment. Presumably the New York City police department will not find these religious fanatics as "suspicious" as Newark's Muslim population.

I wonder how former US senator Santorum would approach the two episodes. How would his stance on religious freedom dovetail with the NYPD's investigatory zeal? How would his perspective on Christianity play for those non-believers whose children attend public schools? And I would be very curious how Mitt Romney would approach both incidents, especially as his "home" state of Michigan includes a significant Arab population.

US Debt to GDP ratio passes 100%

In a dispiriting sign of the times, today marks the date when US government debt passed American GDP.  The story, noted in the financial blog Zero Hedge, includes a graph on the sovereign entities buying our nation's debt (hint: it's not the People's Republic of China.)

It is incredible to think that the United States now sells more more federal debt instruments than economic production can cover. What's more disturbing is that there is no sign whatsoever that this grim trend will slow down, flatten, or reverse its slope. The train will keep on rolling, until it becomes a train wreck.

Fannie Mae's Washington, DC headquarters

In a related story, the Washington Post noted details about a federal agency's plan to scale back Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This development, treated as a ho-hum article, was literally unthinkable a decade ago, even by the most ardent GOP congressman. Now, the twin housing behemoths are symbols of the housing disaster, a calamity whose ripples Americans are just starting to really feel. Yet this home-grown financial Pearl Harbor, more than any other episode during the disastrous first decade of the 21st Century, has shamefully brought our country to its knees.

Of course, if you count purchases of cell phones, tablets, and drones, we're doing just great.

Rare Interview with David Koch Focuses on Right-Wing Politics, Cancer Research

David Koch
(photo from Kansas City Star)

David Koch, one of the two Koch brothers prominent in American right-wing activism, recently talked with a Palm Beach Post health reporter about two topics of importance to the billionaire industrialist: cancer research and politics. The story was noted in a blog post by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel political writer Don Walker.

In the interview, Koch makes no bones about his support for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. The Kansas-based industrialist, whose wealth places him in the Top Ten of the Forbes 400 list, strongly asserts his belief that labor unions are inimical to unfettered free market capitalism. Walker's gutting of most Wisconsin public employee collective bargaining rights was something Koch ardently supported, and continues to support. Koch's political front organization, Americans for Prosperity, has supported Walker with TV commercials and other funded initiatives in the current recall campaign against the Wisconsin governor.

Koch's ideology has family antecedents. His West Texas father, according to the Palm Beach Post article, sold technology to the Russians during the Stalin era. That capability was used to help develop the Communist nation's nuclear capability. Koch père's upset over that development has been cited as a reason why he became a founder of the John Birch Society.

Today, David Koch and his brother Charles are visible tips of the right-wing political iceberg. They proudly welcome supposedly impartial Supreme Court justices, such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to events with a clear political and judicial agenda. Discussions from these meetings are divorced from public scrutiny, a stance more in keeping with Communist government practice than transparent democratic ventures.

Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker

The Koch interview is a timely one, as the recall campaign against Scott Walker is something of a tossup right now. The vote matters greatly to the unions and to the right-wing. The Walker maneuvers leveraged resentment that it has exploited to political gain far beyond the stated goals of overt limitation of union benefits. Liberals need to face the fact that a considerable portion of Wisconsin's electorate backed Walker's campaign and subsequent efforts to attack and ultimately destroy unions. While the Kochs' and their formidable allies are playing to win, one wonders where Barack Obama is on this debate. The president has never really been friendly with the labor unions he will ultimately need to win the Midwest in the 2012 presidential elections. His silence is even more curious as Obama's power base is Chicago, just a short drive from Wisconsin.

Regardless of the Wisconsin recall campaign's results, the Koch brothers fully intend to pursue their push to drive American political institutions and legal apparatus further to the right. They've just begun to fight.

Scientists Explore Sea Lion Population Decline

Sea Lions in San Francisco

When I lived in San Francisco, my first apartment was a relatively short walk to the bay. I enjoyed going to its shores and watching sea lions play in the chilly waters. Since that time, I've had a sentimental feeling about these creatures.

Today's online edition of the BBC includes a story about experiments whose purpose is to better understand why North America's sea lion population is in decline. It's an interesting article, highlighting the animals' "coachability" and playfulness. I hope the scientists determine why the sea lion population has diminished to an alarmingly low level, and can show ways to restore their numbers along Canadian and American shores.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Journalism Grads Recall UW Grad Anthony Shadid

Anthony Shadid, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who recently died in Syria, began his journalism career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal. Some journalists spawned at the Cardinal recently spoke with a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter about Shadid's influence and friendship. The reminiscences are reminders about how one person can impact peers and friends in ways that can't be measured in bits and bytes.

I can't pretend to have followed Shadid's writing or issues. We attended UW-Madison nearly a generation apart. His Daily Cardinal, and the one where I worked as a UW undergrad, were almost certainly different creatures. However, the paper was and remains a great place -- in my opinion, the best in the United States -- to learn the x's and o's of journalism. Shadid's body of work honors the Daily Cardinal's proud, enduring legacy.

Trust Lost: From Nixon to Google

Earlier today, a widely circulated report noted a Stanford University researcher's findings regarding Google's circumvention of Apple privacy safeguards. To put it mildly, the episode adds to Google's collective black eye over privacy. (Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt's announcement today of his intention to sell over two billion in Google stock seemed particularly ill-timed.) However, it would be fatuous to assume such privacy violations were unique to the Mountain View search giant. The sense, from Facebook's outrageous rape of privacy to the everyday data mining that American technocrats are convinced are their entitlement, is that Silicon Valley finds privacy rights simply inconvenient to their firms' ambitions.

It is ironic that Silicon Valley -- a hotbed of libertarian political philosophy -- should treat privacy so cavalierly. A previous generation understood how profoundly invasive and erosive electronic "data collection" -- a/k/a snooping -- can be. I was reminded of this when I read a rather truculent opinion piece in today's Miami Herald. The article, by Glenn Garvin, complained about what the author claimed were the less than virtuous motives of Richard Nixon's nemesis, Deep Throat.

Garvin alleged that Deep Throat, who was the FBI's numero due at the time of the Watergate incident, wanted to become the next J. Edgar Hoover. To that end, Deep Throat used his leaks to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to as leverage to ease out DT's bureaucratic obstacles. At that time, privacy was still something Americans of any political persuasion guarded. The notion that a widespread invasion of privacy, managed by a Mafia-like network within the federal government's executive branch, could seize control of the nation was a shivering thought. It was as if the very foundation of American political freedom and hope was being slowly strangled.

Nixon was stopped, though not easily and especially not without resentment from conservatives who saw Tricky Dick's denouement as a plot hatched in the editorial offices of "liberal" newspapers. The current situation, in which fabulously rich enterprises apparently simply flout any inconvenient privacy statutes in their lust for advertising and data dominance, is much more upsetting than Nixon's attempted overthrow of the Constitution.

Who will stand up to Silicon Valley?

Wallenda High-Wire Act Across Niagara Falls Gets Canadian OK

Blondin carrying his manager
across the Niagara River, 1869

Nik Wallenda will be bringing his high-wire act to Niagara Falls later this year.

According to a Reuters report picked up by Yahoo News, Canada's Niagara Parks Commission recently approved Wallenda's request to perform the stunt. Months ago, New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation permitting a one-time Niagara performance.

Wallenda's intention is to cross directly over the falls, rather than the gorge, where previous high-wire crossings have been attempted.

Expect an enormous media buildup and carnival-like flavor of its coverage of the Wallenda crossing. It will be interesting to note what prime event seats or standing room areas will cost. I will be quite curious what "oddsmakers" will post for Wallenda's safe passage over mighty Niagara.

Asking Price for Jeremy Lin Middle School Yearbook in the Thousands

Jeremy Lin

The hype over NBA player Jeremy Lin has me a little intrigued. The mass fascination over Lin has really come out of nowhere. In the space of a couple of games, this formerly unknown Asian-American pro baller and Harvard grad has captured an international audience. While a big deal has been made out of Asians, especially Chinese, watching Lin's performances, his following goes far beyond the Great Wall of China. Why that happened so quickly and so broadly is something I just don't know. However, as I said, the phenomenon does intrigue me.

Apparently, anything Lin touched has become valuable. The San Jose Mercury News reported that enterprising people have put their Palo Alto, California middle school yearbook, complete with photographs including the young Lin, for sale. According the the Mercury News story, the asking price for an unsigned middle school yearbook is over two thousand dollars. You have to double down to get a copy Lin allegedly autographed.

What would you pay for a piece of Harvard's second NBA player?

MIT Premieres Online, "Fully Automated" Course

MIT recently threw down the education gauntlet with its launching of an online, "fully automated" certificate course. An electronics course gets the honors. A number of media outlets covered this story, including the BBC.

This course is a harbinger of things to come in education. MIT is possibly using this course to test the waters for branded online programs. They can be taken at home, or what's more likely, in schools themselves.

Number of Registered Voters in Chicago Lowest Since WW II

Barack Obama Voting In Chicago,
November 2008

According to today's online edition of the Chicago Tribune, the number of that city's registered voters has bottomed out at 1.28 million. That figure represents the lowest number of registered voters in the Windy City since the months after America's entry into World War II.

The story did not note the number of "dead" voters for which Chicago is famous. My guess is that number has increased.

Of course, Chicago election behavior has been characterized, not always tongue-in-cheek, as "vote early and often." While Chicago hardly has the monopoly on "questionable" voting patterns (the Florida GOP's "dangling chad" vote in the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential election offers competition), the city still has the feel of politics of a century ago, when "vote early and often" was a national pastime.

Parisian Suburb Wants Bronze Sculpture Depicting French President's Wife

Lenin Statue/Seattle

I recently traveled to Seattle, where a massive bronze statue of Lenin is on public display. I didn't have time to see it, but I wish I had. There is something genuinely strange about sculpture of public figures, whether they are artifacts from a bygone era (surely Leninism qualifies on that score) or manifestations of current popular sentiment (the bronze bull in New York's Financial District is a case in point).

However, the notion that anyone would want a bronze of the wife of French president Nicholas Sarkozy is from way out of left field. In this case, I should say right field, as the request came from the mayor of a Parisian suburb who is a member of Sarkozy's UMP "right-of-center" political party.

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy

Mrs. Sarkozy happens to be Carla Bruni (now Carla Bruni-Sarkozy), an Italian who made quite a name for herself as a world-class fashion model. She also has done some acting, notably a cameo in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. The UK newspaper Guardian's report on the Bruni sculpture affair did not indicate whether the French first lady agreed to the sculpture project or if she was consulted.

However, the proposed six-foot piece will not be the same scale, or presumably historic intent, from the 16-foot replica of Lenin currently in Seattle's feisty Fremont neighborhood.

Whitney Houston -- RIP

I happened to be in the middle of a writing project when I learned of Whitney Houston's passing this evening. She was 48 when she died, but the accounts of her final, addled years made it seem she was long gone before today.

I had the good fortune to see Whitney Houston perform at the top of her game. At that performance, she was the backup act to Jeffrey Osborne. She looked terrific, in a yellow dress that didn't quite reach her knees. I always thought the promoters wisely paired the acts, as JO was highly professional and all business. His crossover audience also neatly dovetailed with the big plans in store for Ms. Houston.

Whitney came from gospel royalty. Her mother, Cissy Houston, made her name with sacred music. Whitney's godmother, Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, also happened to be a splendid gospel singer. (For a fascinating post script to the Houston strum und drang, read Aretha Franklin's comments about Whitney at a recent Radio City Music Hall event.) At her finest, Whitney could bring gospel fire and skill to tried and true lyrics. Suddenly a song's human drama, commingled with belief in the divine, became transfigured into something beautiful and moving. Whitney's vocal range, ability to musically emote, and raw energy made her best efforts worth listening to over and over again.

Recently, I attended a nonfiction reading in which an author made an observation about song lyrics that lacked "subtlety." What the author didn't understand was how the singer's voice could lift everyday words  into those very areas of "subtlety." I had a very similar argument with a writer after the Whitney Houston/Jeffrey Osborne concert we attended. My companion's mantra was the primacy of the word; I championed the voice.

Tonight, I lament with words the loss of Whitney Houston's voice, her heart, and her soul. If only my words could sing!

Navy To Name Ship After Former AZ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords

Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Harris
at today's ship naming ceremony at the Pentagon
(photo from the Associated Press).

In an interesting statement this week, the US Navy announced that its newest Littoral Combat Ship the USS Gabrielle Giffords. The future vessel, named after the former Arizona congresswoman, will be the 13th in Navy history to be named after a living person. The story appeared in today's online editons of the Washington Post.

Giffords was the congresswoman who was nearly murdered while meeting constituents in Arizona. The incident provoked national outrage and bipartisan concern that "open season" had been declared upon the people's representatives. Some had made emotional linkage with the attempt of Giffords' life and an electoral map used by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in which political opponents across the country were identified with gunsight targets. One of those in the crosshairs was Gabrielle Giffords.

Dealer Allegedly at Center of Major Antiquities Theft Ring Dies

Euphonios krater
(photo from The New York Times)

Robert Hecht, Jr., a department store heir tied to a global antiquities theft network, died earlier this week at his Paris home at age 92. His obituary appeared in today's LA Times.

Hecht's discovered a passion for the antique world at a relatively young age. That profound interest led him into the world of buying and selling splendid physical remnants of the Greco-Roman world. He was best known for selling the Euphronios krater -- a masterpiece of Greek vase making -- to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Met eventually returned the vase to its point of origin many years later, when the Italian fine arts bureaucracy, law enforcement, and legal apparatus convincingly demonstrated that the vase was smuggled out of Italy. However, the Met's gaffe was small potatoes compared to the Getty Museum's considerable traffic with the goods Mr. Hecht and his network were allegedly moving. The Getty's antiquities curator, Marion True, eventually was charged with criminal activity by Italian magistrates. The case, as well as one fingering Hecht, flopped. In both situations, the pursuit of the cases went beyond the time permitted under Italian law.

The underworld of fine art theft and smuggling offers an interesting story. For all the romantic tales of sophisticated thieves defying great odds to steal some valuable object, the reality is quite different. It involves hoodwinking a bureaucracy, doing plenty of dirty work behind the scenes, and having well-connected, respectable front men to make the transactions.

Hecht understood that world and, to some extent, shaped it. His passing does not exactly mark the end of an era. However, someone with Hecht's clout, money, and time, is rare, even in the world of high-stakes antiquity collecting.

New Downtown Kutsher's Brings Catskills To Tribeca

Kutsher's Tribeca
(photo from Kutsher's Tribeca)

When people get very sentimental, they will pay almost any price to sate their yen for nostalgia. From one perspective, this might explain why a New York restaurant called Kutsher's is a popular hit.

The Tribeca establishment deliberately provides some echoes of the Catskill hotel after which it's named. According to Adam Platt's recent New York magazine review, Kutsher's food offers new interpretations of New York Jewish ritualistic food, such as kreplach and gefilte fish.

I have not been to either the faded Catskills Kutsher's or Tribeca's new model. However, I want to check out the downtown version. I'm not Jewish, but over the years I've developed an affinity for Jewish home cooking and New York deli food. If someone can make a better gefilte fish than (fill in the blank's) grandmother, I'm game to try it.

To paraphrase the 1960s ads about Levy's rye bread, "you don't have to be Jewish to love Kutsher's." (For those unfamiliar with the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad, read this link from virutaljudaica.com.)

Report Claims JLo, Foreclosed Miami Condo Part Ways

Normally, I wouldn't care about a celeb's housing issues. This story, though, has an intriguing angle.

Pool at Icon Brickell
(photo from Travel & Leisure)

According to Jose Lambiet's Gossip Extra, Jennifer Lopez leased a fabu downtown Miami apartment that was in foreclosure. That circumstance is hardly news. The number of foreclosed residences being rented is something upscale communities, such as the Philippe Starck-designed Icon Brickell condo tower where JLo shacked up, desperately try to hush up.

What's interesting is that, according to Lambert's story, the condo "was one of 1276 condos seized by (HSBC Bank) in 2010 from developer Jorge Perez and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross's Related Group."

Oops. Who would have thought an NFL franchise majority owner couldn't swing the payments on some South Florida condos? (Where was the NFL's due diligence on Ross, anyway?)

Ah, but the story gets better. Lopez and Marc Anthony started leasing the condo in 2009, allegedly part of a marketing scheme developer Perez cooked up. The article notes that the JLo/Anthony "publicity machine made sure the gossip press believed the duo bought as many as 10 condos at the Icon, but public records never showed they purchased in the building. The claim they were owners in a building Anthony deemed to be 'the sexiest place in town' surfaced about the time Anthony bought a minority stake in the Dolphins."

NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell next to #16
Stephen Ross next to #24

Was Mr. Anthony interested in "helping" Mr. Ross through a difficult time? Did the majority owner of the Dolphins need some assistance, given his real estate firm's foreclosure issues? What were Marc Anthony's motives in becoming a minority owner of the football team? Were there other, silent investors who were more than willing to offer a "financial injection" into the Dolphins franchise in exchange for "considerations"?

Anthony was not the only celeb Ross roped into buying a stake in the Dolphins. Serena and Venus Williams were also identified as purchasing a piece of the NFL team. However, they didn't house sit a foreclosed condo for the Big Fish.

Report: Smart Phones Outsell PCs

Fry's Ad Offering Smartphones

In something of a landmark event, a widely publicized report asserts that smart phones are now outselling PCs. The tech consulting/analysis firm Canalys, which prepared the document, estimates that 488 million smart phones were shipped in 2011. PCs followed with 415 million units shipped.

Granted that "shipped" and "sold" are not quite the same thing, as anyone working the wholesale business will quickly tell you. The data nonetheless offer a compelling illustration of a shift in how mass market consumers and providers create, retrieve, and send information.

While it's easy to infer that Apple is the big winner here, a closer look at the data offers a different perspective. The Android system has definitely taken a big bite from the smartphone market. Samsung is selling lots and lots of phones. Apple's best move, according to the data, is not the iPhone -- it's the iPad. The iPad maintains a dominant place in its category, up to now. No wonder Amazon rushed the Kindle Fire (KF) to the market (before all of KF's kinks were worked out). Even less wonder why HP dropped out of the tablet race, even though its tablet was pretty good.

I suppose all of this sounds "business-y" and a little too enamored of data for its own good. That's a point taken. However, you can't deny the revolution in communication that's now in everyman's -- and everywoman's -- hands. It's as if we've moved from the horse and buggy era into the that of the automobile, from stage to movies, from sailing to flying.

Feds Team With NFL To Use "Guilty Until Proven Innocent" Web Law To Seize Internet Domains

According to a report in tecca.com, and picked up by Yahoo News, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has had a recent flurry of Web enforcement activity. Using laws whose premise is seemingly "guilty until proven innocent," the Feds shut down over 300 Internet domains "suspected of violating NFL copyrights."

It is not comforting to know that the federales have worked overtime to mollify the anxieties of the powerful NFL-industrial complex. There are simply far more important issues to resolve than the aggressive protection of greedy football teams. The recent embarrassing hacking of a Scotland Yard-FBI conference call by Anonymous hints at the folly of putting commercial interests ahead of international security.

Far more disturbing is the serious wedge into civil liberties that the Feds' use of two civil statutes invites. Both liberals and conservatives (in the American political sense) should be alarmed by this development. The notion that the law is really being used as a hammer to protect powerful commercial enterprises makes one suspicious of the law's true purpose. (As I understand it, the legal references are 18 USC 981 and 18 USC 2323.)

The Feds' crackdown on NFL copyright violators comes on the heels of proposed SOPA legislation in Washington. The proposed law, a legal love child spawned by major entertainment firms, was shelved when a web-aware public deluged Congress with protest e-mail and phone calls, and major tech players brought out its heavy lobbying artillery against SOPA.

The law would have permitted a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to websites fingered for alleged "copyright violations." This approach emasculates Internet freedom of expression so that media moguls can sleep more comfortably at night. Meanwhile, despite all the whining from Hollywood (and its financial enablers on the East Coast), the movie makers and cable monopolists are making more money than ever. It is illuminating to watch back-to-back TV segments in which movie flaks complain about piracy, followed by a review of the week's box office receipts for new releases. Sadly, the irony of the juxtaposition is lost on the entertainment business' far from innocent power brokers.

I don't mean to diminish commercial piracy as an issue. However, "guilty until proven innocent" is the wrong way to stop the pilferage. To my mind, the law, as it was applied in the NFL case, is the guilty party. Of course, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and the NFL are welcome to prove their innocence in the online court of public opinion.

Ben Gazzara -- RIP

Ben Gazzara (center)
with Peter Falk (left) and John Cassevetes

The actor Ben Gazzara, best known for his work with movie director John Cassavetes, has passed away at age 81, according to an Associated Press story picked up by The New York Times.

Gazzara, born in New York's Lower East Side, attended the city's renowned Stuyvesant High School. He later made his name on Broadway, where he eventually won three Tony Awards. In 1965, he shifted to the small screen, starring in the unusual drama Run For Your Life. The program's premise was that Gazzara's character is diagnosed with terminal cancer. This inspires him to cram a lifetime of adventure into two or three years. Around that time, another show featuring a man on the run, The Fugitive, was a big hit. That period was an odd one even for the strange, strange world of American television. Gazzara's running around the world was part of the mix.

In his later years, Gazzara played many parts without commanding a signature role. However, he usually found work, something that for older actors is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Gazzara's survivors include his German-born wife Elke Krivat and a daughter.

Nevada Hookers Lean Libertarian in GOP Prez Primary

Sign Outside Moonlite BunnyRanch

The Republican Party's race for Nevada's hooker votes has come to a head in recent days (puns very much intended). The surprise leader, up to this point, is Ron Paul. His libertarian ideology struck a sympathetic note with the state's legal prostitutes (no, we're not talking about its elected officials).

According to a bloomberg.com story, the customers and sex workers at Nevada's Moonlite BunnyRanch are ponying up for Paul's campaign. Intriguingly, they don't care for Mitt Romney, whom they view as "too square." That was not the case with Newton Leroy Gringrich, whose extra-marital affairs and tawdry divorce proceedings have generated more public debate than his policy positions have. Dennis Hof, the owner and self-proclaimed "pimp master" of the Moonlite BunnyRanch and other Nevada brothels, claimed his hooker poll (what a phrase to use in a political discussion!) indicated the women who play for pay liked Gingrich. "They don't have a problem with him being a womanizer," Hof said.

My Encounter with Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston
(photo from the Washington Post)

Earlier this evening, I attended a reading at Freerange, a New York venue for writers to read from work that has typically already been published. This is my second visit to the monthly event. Some work appeals to me; some of it doesn't. That's okay, as I believe experiencing authors' voices (literally and figuratively) offers enriching value that one can't get sitting on the sofa.

What made tonight a little different for me was that I won a Freerange raffle prize: a copy of Baratunde Thurston's new book How to Be Black. (I thought it was ironic, given that Don Cornelius, whose show Soul Train offered a window into popular African-American culture, died today.) The author read from his work, so I got a preview of what I'd just won. Later, I was encouraged to have the book autographed. That action was out of character for me, as I don't like author signings. However, since Thurston's autograph had some legitimate personal context, I walked up to him and he signed the book.

I didn't understand why he was wearing orange sneakers and an orange scarf on an unseasonably warm night, but it didn't matter. Then again, he didn't question why I wore a black shirt, black pants, black socks, and black shoes. After all, we were in New York's Lower East Side.

Later, I read today's Washington Post story on DC-born Thurston, conveniently dovetailed with the release of his book.

Quite possibly the most unusual observation of the Freerange event was watching a woman write notes by hand and then use her phone to tweet a report of the event for her Twitter following. Think of it as instant journalism: type 140-characters, add interest, stir lightly.