As for the Drums in the Global Village Blog, the address is still the same. Please click on http://whosemedia.com/drums to visit Dr Todd Steven Burrough’s exclusive media blog.

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Enjoy your stay.

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Thoughts on Music

Steve Jobs
February 6, 2007

With the stunning global success of Apple’s iPod music player and iTunes online music store, some have called for Apple to “open” the digital rights management (DRM) system that Apple uses to protect its music against theft, so that music purchased from iTunes can be played on digital devices purchased from other companies, and protected music purchased from other online music stores can play on iPods. Let’s examine the current situation and how we got here, then look at three possible alternatives for the future.

To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.

The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

To prevent illegal copies, DRM systems must allow only authorized devices to play the protected music. If a copy of a DRM protected song is posted on the Internet, it should not be able to play on a downloader’s computer or portable music device. To achieve this, a DRM system employs secrets. There is no theory of protecting content other than keeping secrets. In other words, even if one uses the most sophisticated cryptographic locks to protect the actual music, one must still “hide” the keys which unlock the music on the user’s computer or portable music player. No one has ever implemented a DRM system that does not depend on such secrets for its operation.

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple’s DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.

With this background, let’s now explore three different alternatives for the future.

The first alternative is to continue on the current course, with each manufacturer competing freely with their own “top to bottom” proprietary systems for selling, playing and protecting music. It is a very competitive market, with major global companies making large investments to develop new music players and online music stores. Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods. This is the current state of affairs in the industry, and customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices.

Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company. Or, if they buy a specific player, they are locked into buying music only from that company’s music store. Is this true? Let’s look at the data for iPods and the iTunes store – they are the industry’s most popular products and we have accurate data for them. Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores. On the surface, this seems like a good idea since it might offer customers increased choice now and in the future. And Apple might benefit by charging a small licensing fee for its FairPlay DRM. However, when we look a bit deeper, problems begin to emerge. The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute. Such leaks can rapidly result in software programs available as free downloads on the Internet which will disable the DRM protection so that formerly protected songs can be played on unauthorized players.

An equally serious problem is how to quickly repair the damage caused by such a leak. A successful repair will likely involve enhancing the music store software, the music jukebox software, and the software in the players with new secrets, then transferring this updated software into the tens (or hundreds) of millions of Macs, Windows PCs and players already in use. This must all be done quickly and in a very coordinated way. Such an undertaking is very difficult when just one company controls all of the pieces. It is near impossible if multiple companies control separate pieces of the puzzle, and all of them must quickly act in concert to repair the damage from a leak.

Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies. Perhaps this same conclusion contributed to Microsoft’s recent decision to switch their emphasis from an “open” model of licensing their DRM to others to a “closed” model of offering a proprietary music store, proprietary jukebox software and proprietary players.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

When I decided to take on the gruesome task of a starvation diet, I was ignorant to believe that hunger would be my only challenge. The hunger actually became a sick comfort to me, a reassurance that I was doing the “right” thing.

Countdown to zero: read Dawn’s diet diary

But the depression, the loneliness, and the chronic insomnia were the side effects of a dangerously low calorie diet, that made me worry I had flicked a mental switch, that I would never be able to turn back.

Since as long as I can remember I have been a size 12; 5ft 9ins, with really skinny legs, narrow shoulders, reasonably large boobs, a small bum and a sticky out belly, which continued in motion a little longer than I would have liked, after every step that I took.

I am the consummate “apple” shape; a walking, talking Granny Smith, but with enough height to disguise myself as a banana, if I wore a short enough skirt and a clever enough top.

Dawn Porter
Dawn’s diet was the focus of a BBC programme
But where is the line between looking one’s best, and taking the whole obsessive body image thing just a touch too far?

The recent “size zero” phenomenon (an American creation which actually translates as a UK size four), gleefully promoted by freakishly large-headed celebs, seems to have spawned a frightening increase in young girls developing eating disorders, as they associate “skinny” with “success”.

What happened to making it in life using talent and charm?

How could I show the hoards of young girls what starving themselves actually means; that the short term “gain” of a stick thin frame, had long term detrimental side effects?

I did the unthinkable, and road-tested the size zero lifestyle myself.

Just over eight weeks ago, I introduced a totally new concept of eating into my life, that being - not eating. I decided to go from my usual 1,500 calories a day to an absolute maximum of 500.

By day one I was having headaches, mood swings and demonstrating weird obsessive behaviour… and that was before lunch!

The hunger never goes, but you begin to enjoy it, trust it, and rely on it
Dawn Porter
Everyone knows how they feel when they haven’t eaten: moody, groggy, low energy. Well picture that a million times more intense, as it increases with every day that passes.

Life becomes a struggle with temptation, and a battle of self will. An unhealthy obsession with food is the only way to deal with the painstaking monotony of daily life.

The hunger never goes. But you begin to enjoy it, trust it, work with it and rely on it. When your goal is to be thin, the hunger is your best friend.

It’s the only thing that assures you that you are working hard enough, because no matter how many ribs you can see in the mirror, it is never enough. There is always further to go.

When I began this journey I was 10st 7lbs, and had a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI) of 22. In just 8 weeks I shot down 17lbs, and reached an unhealthy BMI of 19, which meant that just half a stone more and I would have been so worryingly thin, that some countries would have banned me from the catwalk.

Sickness risk

My weekly assessments with my doctor revealed my magnesium and potassium levels plummeted to worrying levels, as did my white blood cell count, and my antioxidant levels. I had increased my chances of contracting serious conditions such as tuberculosis, and dangerously increased my risks of getting cancer.

My mood swings were uncontrollable. Despite my doctor’s advice to eat properly, I continued.

Skinny model
The cat walk look that critics say is driving women to extremes
Most alarming was how my confidence got so low. As the project went on, and I apparently got the body I thought I always wanted, I felt more and more self aware and hated the idea of anyone looking at me.

I looked at my body in the mirror and hated it because it was the cause of me feeling so down. I couldn’t look at the weight loss as an honourable achievement because I was disgusted in what it took to achieve it.

I think it was then that I truly understood the pressures so many models are under, and how miserable their lives must be as they try to keep up with the super skinny look that their industry demands.

My final weigh-in saw that I had lost 17Ibs and 50% of my body fat. Which after everything I had been through strangely, and temporarily, disappointed me. I was nowhere near size zero, and I felt like I had not achieved what I set out to do.

And that’s exactly what this is all about: normal women, with normal constitutions set on unachievable goals. And when they don’t meet them, they feel like failures.

I could have lost that weight over time, in a healthy, balanced way, and felt wonderful. But being extreme and not giving my body what it needed meant that every effort was futile, and being thin, did not make me happy as you would generally expect.

I was warned to ease myself back into eating slowly, but I can’t say I followed that advice. Since ending the diet I have resumed my life as normal. Maybe one day I will try to lose a little more over time. But I never want to go back to how I felt when I was on that diet, and I hope to God, that my experience puts anyone else off trying the same thing. The body needs fuel. Food works, eat it.

by Richard Cummings
In November of 2002, Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security advisor, asked Bruce Jackson to meet with him in the White House. They met in Hadley’s office on the ground floor of the West Wing, not far from the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Hadley had an exterior office with windows, an overt indicator of his importance within the West Wing hierarchy.

This was months before Secretary of State Colin Powell would go to the United Nations to make the administration’s case for the invasion of Iraq, touting the subsequently discredited evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But according to Jackson, Hadley told him that “they were going to war and were struggling with a rationale” to justify it. Jackson, recalling the meeting, reports that Hadley said they were “still working out” a cause, too, but asked that he, Jackson, “set up something like the Committee on NATO” to come up with a rationale.

Jackson had launched the U.S. Committee on NATO, a nongovernmental pressure group, in 1996 with Hadley on board. The objective of the committee, originally called the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, was to push for membership in the NATO military alliance for former Soviet bloc countries including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

What Bruce Jackson came up with for Hadley this time, in 2002, was the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. The mission statement of the committee says it was “formed to promote regional peace, political freedom and international security by replacing the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government that respects the rights of the Iraqi people and ceases to threaten the community of nations.” The pressure group began pushing for regime change — that is, military action to remove Hussein — in the usual Washington ways, lobbying members of congress, working the media and throwing money around. The committee’s pitch, or rationale as Hadley would call it, was that Saddam was a monster — routinely violating human rights — and a general menace in the Middle East.

“I didn’t see the point about WMDs or an Al Queda connection,” Jackson says. In his mind the human rights issue was sufficient to justify a war.

Jackson had long been a proponent of unseating Hussein, and the committee dovetailed with his quite real sense of mission. In addition to his role in the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the U.S. Committee on NATO, he had also been president of the Project for Transitional Democracies, organized to “accelerate democratic reform” in Eastern Europe.

Still, there is another way to view Jackson’s activities. As The New York Times put it in a 1997 article, “at night Bruce Jackson is president of the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, giving intimate dinners for senators and foreign officials. By day, he is director of strategic planning for Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s biggest weapons maker.”

More:
http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/lockheed/download.pdf

The article describes how the state of Washington pays the highest minimum wage in the nation, almost $8.00 per hour, which is almost $3.00 per hour more than the minimum wage paid in neighboring Idaho. When the law raising the wage was passed almost 10 years ago, business owners decried voter’s largesse and predicted dire consequences and shriveling profits. Instead, business is booming in Washington “far beyond” the expectations of the worried rich. Another fascinating study in the power politics of money.

The complete story:

By Timothy Egan

Liberty Lake, Wash., Jan. 9 — Just eight miles separate this town on the Washington side of the state border from Post Falls on the Idaho side. But the towns are nearly $3 an hour apart in the required minimum wage. Washington pays the highest in the nation, just under $8 an hour, and Idaho has among the lowest, matching 21 states that have not raised the hourly wage beyond the federal minimum of $5.15.

Nearly a decade ago, when voters in Washington approved a measure that would give the state’s lowest-paid workers a raise nearly every year, many business leaders predicted that small towns on this side of the state line would suffer.
More..

By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Kathmandu
Nepal’s Maoist party has named the people who will serve as its MPs in a interim parliament to be established on Monday, after a 10-year civil conflict.
The rebel group says it will now follow a political rather than a violent path.

Its list of 73 MPs includes many people from traditionally marginalised groups, but not the party’s top three leaders.

In the past, these groups have been excluded from power and influence in what is an exceptionally hierarchical society, dominated by high-caste men.

The Maoists are now on the brink of sharing power - and it is weapons, not votes, that have brought them to this point.

Their selection of 73 MPs - their allotted share - is therefore intriguing.

Twenty-eight - or more than a third - are women, who are extremely under-represented in Nepalese institutions.

Eleven of the Maoist MPs will be Dalits, formerly known as Untouchables; 22 are from indigenous ethnic groups called janajatis; and 21 from communities of the plains bordering India.

Arms impounded

The list suggests the Maoists mean to raise up some of the communities they have always said they are fighting for.

The parliamentary group will be led by Krishna Mahara, the Maoists’ main peace negotiator, who served as an MP in the early days of democracy 15 years ago.

It was known in advance that top leaders, including the party chairman, Prachanda, would not join parliament. They perhaps feel they can maintain a more radical stance outside it.

On the same day the new parliament convenes, the Maoists’ weapons are due to be impounded as part of the peace deal.

The rebel group is still learning about democracy - there are still regular reports of their local-level members attacking and injuring people from rival parties.

In a few weeks, the Maoists are to join an interim government which will organise elections to a new assembly this year.

“This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops,” Bush said. “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

Bush said he had ordered a second carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf to bolster security and protect oil and other American interests in the region, a move Iranians consider provocative.

“Well I heard the sabers rattling on that,” retired Maj. Gen. William Nash, an ABC News consultant, said in an interview after the president’s address. “This may be what we’re talking about six months from now far more than we’re talking about the security sit (sic) in Baghdad. This portends a confrontation that could significantly broaden military operations in the region.”

The diplomatic shot across the bow of two of Iraq’s neighbors was one of the key topics in the opening round of a series of Capitol Hill hearings to scrutinize the Bush administration’s conduct of the war. Several Democrats expressed alarm at the president’s words.

“We hoped and prayed we would hear of a plan that would have two features: to begin to bring American forces home and a reasonable prospect of leaving behind a stable Iraq,” Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Instead we heard a plan to escalate the war, not only in Iraq but possibly into Iran and Syria as well. ”

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seemed incredulous.

“Really there are four or five — there are several wars,” Kerry said. “There’s a war of Sunni on Shi’a, there’s a war of Sunni and Shi’a on American occupiers, there’s a war of Syria, Iran.”

Rice repeated the Bush administration’s intent not to join in direct talks on Iraq with Iran and Syria because the United States would be seen as a “supplicant.”

“I think there’s a burden on Iran and Syria to show that there are reasons to come to the table that are in the best interest of the region,” Rice told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a morning hearing.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to step back from the president’s harsh rhetoric, saying that no military recommendation has suggested operations inside Iran.

“We can take care of the security for our troops by doing the business we need to do inside of Iraq,” Pace told reporters in a briefing with Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. “But with regard to those who are physically present trying to do harm to our troops, regardless of nationality, we will go after them and defend ourselves.”

[ABC News]

Just this week, the Bush administration is considering making a little futuristic news. The President might soon approve “a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades,” the Reliable Replacement Warhead. If only names were reality…

Critics are already claiming that the new “hybrid” design of the weapon, now planned to come on-line in 2012, will raise safety and other questions (and may someday lead to the resumption of underground nuclear testing). In other words, peering into our nuclear future, it’s possible to imagine that — to the tune of an estimated $100 billion — the crucial word is likely to be “proliferation.”

In fact, the future, as the military sees it, is simply filled to the brim with multibillion dollar American weapons systems of a sort that were once relegated to sci-fi novels for spacey boys. Now, they are the property of spacey generals, strategists, military planners, and corporate CEOs. Just a week ago, the Bush administration presented a supplemental military budget of nearly $100 billion to Congress to cover our ongoing disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as to replace equipment lost or worn out in both. But evidently Air Force officials, in a “feeding frenzy,” just couldn’t resist slipping in a futuristic ringer — the funding, according to Jonathan Karp of the Wall Street Journal, for two of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, a high-tech plane still in development.

By the way, as Richard Cummings points out in a stunning recent piece on Lockheed in Playboy, Dick Cheney’s son-in-law, Philip J. Perry, is a registered Lockheed lobbyist and his wife Lynne was on Lockheed’s board until he became Vice President. On settling into Washington, George Bush appointed Lockheed’s President and CEO Robert J. Stevens to his Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry. “Albert Smith, Lockheed’s executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions, was appointed to the Defense Science Board. Bush had appointed former Lockheed chief operating officer Peter B. Teets as undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office,” and that was just the beginning as the military-industrial revolving door spun wildly and the corporation made money hand over fist.

This month Tomdispatch is focusing special attention on the Pentagon, militarization, and the imperial path. Sunday, Nick Turse laid out Pentagon plans to fight crucial future battles in Baghdad 2025 and the mega-slums of other global cities. Today, Frida Berrigan of the Arms Trade Resource Center and a regular writer for this website, considers a range of weapons systems slated to come our way somewhere between tomorrow and 2040. If that’s not ownership of the future, what is? Next week, stay tuned for a Michael Klare series on the militarization of energy policy.

WASHINGTON — A major loophole in the Democrats’ recently unveiled ethics package will allow non-profit arms of controversial lobbying organizations to fund travel excursions for members of Congress, RAW STORY has discovered.

Though tasked with authoring the legislation, Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter (D-NY) said she disagreed with the exemption in an exclusive interview.

“I would’ve done it straight out,” Slaughter said, noting that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Aspen Institute are exempt from many of its harshest restrictions.

Slaughter didn’t say who, if anyone, had pushed for the exemption. As chair, the New York Democrat was responsible for pulling together the ethics reform package, which was hammered out between members of the Democratic caucus.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declined to comment.

Washington ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington – a nonprofit that has loudly decried Republican ethics scandals and enforcement – also declined to comment.

The Aspen Institute, which does not technically employ lobbyists, describes itself as an organization that runs “seminars, policy programs, conferences and leadership development initiatives” intended “to promote nonpartisan inquiry and an appreciation for timeless values.” The group concentrates on a wide range of public policies, but its foreign policy and weapons control arm — known as the “Aspen Strategy Group” — have included high-profile and arguably partisan fellows including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, former Vice President Al Gore Clinton Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

However, the group does pay for members to attend what spokesman Jim Spiegelman described as, “intensive, multi-day informational discussions on mostly foreign policy issues, wherein the institute takes “members of congress together on a trip and focuses on a given subject whether it’s the international environment, or non-proliferation or another [foreign policy] topic.”

AIPAC, on the other hand, is widely believed to be the most powerful lobbying organization in Washington, and it has used its might, some say, to help end the political careers of several members of congress who had been critical of Israel including Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Earl Hilliard (D-AL). It was recently implicated in an espionage scandal involving Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin who was suspected of passing sensitive legislation to Israel through contacts in AIPAC. It has also mobilized millions of dollars to fund non-violent defense technologies and has attempted to disrupt activities of militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

AIPAC declined to comment on being singled out by Slaughter, but spokesman Josh Block described the educational trips to Israel as “substantive, educational, and valuable.” He also pointed out that AIPAC had testified before congress last year on the issue of privately funded travel.

In that testimony, Bradley Gordon, AIPAC’s director for policy and governmental affairs, recommended that there “be more disclosure to the Ethics Committee both in advance and after the trip. A well-defined preapproval process is essential. We also think it is important to publicly disclose information about the trip after the trip is complete.”

Scores of 501(c)(3) organizations are headquartered in Washington, and many serve as platforms for advocating their causes. The Save Darfur Coalition and Human Rights Campaign each maintain 501(c)(3) status.
AIPAC singled out

Slaughter also detailed how she will ensure that the new rules are widely enforced and how as-yet-undetermined provisions will be strong enough to forbid unethical conduct.

The package is being touted as a watershed reform, intended to stem the corrupting influence of lobbyists that plagued the 109th Congress and which many critics say cost Republicans control of the legislature.

However, the rules do little to sever ties between members of Congress and political action committees (PACs) and non-profits, many of which are affiliated with the lobbying offices that are the targets of the new restrictions. They also allow “institutions of higher education,” as defined by the Higher Education Act of 1965, to repay the House for expenses incurred by members traveling under their auspices.

A source close to the Rules Committee indicated that though Slaughter would prefer more restrictive measures, the rules require “a unanimous vote in our caucus” and a majority on the floor of the House.

According to an AIPAC spokesperson, AIPAC benefits from these exemptions because it is affiliated with a 501(c)(3) organization called the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), which funds educational trips for private citizens and public officials. Organizations with that designation do not conduct lobbying directly and therefore are allowed to fund travel for members. According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), the group spent nearly one-million dollars on congressional travel from January 2000 through mid-2005. The Aspen Institute, on the other hand spent more than $3.5 million on member travel during the same period. According to the CPI “no other sponsor’s spending came close.”

AIPAC, through AIEF, also pays for educational trips for journalists, though the group does not ask reporters to write about their experiences. Jacob Weisberg, the editor of the online magazine Slate, recently disclosed — in a story defending President Bush against charges of complicity in last summer’s Israel-Lebanon war — that he’d traveled to Israel with AIPAC. Slate is owned by the Washington Post Company.
Ethics panel details still unknown

A number of other provisions contained within the new rules will hinge on the activities of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (more generally known as the Ethics Committee) and on future campaign finance reform efforts.

Yet to be finalized are guidelines governing member spending. Those guidelines will be written by the Ethics Committee and will be based upon the “connection between a trip and official duties,” “the reasonableness of an amount spent by a sponsor,” [the] relationship between an event and an officially connected purpose,” and “[the] relationship between a source of funding and an event.”

Slaughter said she will not accept any guidelines from the Ethics Committee that do not clearly and strictly limit those expenditures.

“I won’t allow it,” Slaughter said. “I don’t imagine that there will be a problem.”

When asked by RAW STORY about the strength of the guidelines, an aide close to the ethics committee said that they were likely to be “not tough but transparent.”

Citing recent ethical imbroglios that went largely unpunished, Slaughter indicated that she ultimately would like to see the Ethics Committee’s role overseeing the activities of members taken over by an independent commission.

“I think after Foley and, now, Weldon, we need a bipartisan panel of retired federal judges to eventually oversee the congress. It’s just too difficult for them to oversee themselves.”

In December, the Ethics Committee released a report that was highly critical of House Republican Leadership actions before, during, and after the Mark Foley page scandal broke out, but called for very few punitive measures against the members involved.

This week’s ruling by the Ethics Committee, that Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) and outgoing Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) had taken inappropriately funded travel excursions, resulted in both members agreeing to reimburse the cost of their trips.

Feeney will pay the treasury over $5000 for a trip he took in 2003 that was sponsored by disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Weldon will repay his sponsors — who were not named — for the entire cost of his trip.

The rules package amends the house rules of the 109th Congress in ways that specifically forbid the types of junkets and hiring practices perpetrated by former Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX) and influence peddler Jack Abramoff, who was recently sentenced to over five years in prison for acts of fraud committed in his capacity as a lobbyist.

One source noted, though, that the problem with the old rules was not that they allowed unethical conduct, but that under the watch of the Republican leadership they were never routinely enforced.

Echoing that concern, ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics applauded the bill but cautioned that its effectiveness will depend on oversight.

“The new Democratic leadership deserves credit for introducing legislation that tackles the ethics issues that plagued the last Congress,” said CREW executive director Melanie Sloan in a statement.

“Enforcement is the key to ethics reform,” she added. “Congress must create an independent ethics oversight body, such as an Office of Public Integrity, to restore public confidence in Congress.”

[Raw Story]

Racism continues to rear its head in the global job market.

Is it likely that the new year might see the global Indian transformed back into the unwanted Indian? I am not thinking only of the latest Indian complaints of being squeezed out of Britain, but also of a revival of certain ominous straws in the wind in Singapore.

Some months ago, an expatriate wrote to The Straits Times describing his problems in trying to rent a decent flat because he was Indian. The irony is that discussing the complaint, a local second-generation Indian sided entirely with the racist (Chinese, I assumed) landlords. “All for them lah,” my stout Indian Singaporean bellowed in habitual Singlish. “Indians living so badly, making thorough mess of things. One came for my flat.

‘Cannot’ I told him. Had to, lah …” Physically, no one could have looked more Indian than the speaker. But birth in another land entitled him to claim to be different, if not better.

Now comes an even more serious complaint about an online advertisement for a project manager’s job posted in late December. “Non-Indians preferred” it said bluntly. Flabbergasted by this unabashed evidence of prejudice, an IT manager, N Prasannakumar, wrote to Today newspaper: “Many of us would read it as ‘Indians not preferred’. This clearly reeks of racism in the Singapore job context and does not augur well for racial harmony in this country.”

The advertising company has since explained it was a “mistake” and “an oversight by a new staff.” Apparently, “the line was removed immediately when the mistake was discovered.” The company says the new project manager “will be part of a team of eight persons, among which currently, there are three Indians, three Chinese and one Filipino.”

Accepting this was a genuine mistake, I shan’t name the company while readers try to work out what the rigmarole means. But let me add that a recent survey by Kelly Services, a global staffing solutions firm, found that two out of three workers in Singapore complained of experiencing prejudice of one kind or another when applying for a job in the last five years. Age was the main reason but race came next, followed by gender and disability. That, despite the Ministry of Manpower’s efforts to educate employers in fair employment practices.

They are smoother in Britain. When the first Race Relations Act was passed in the late sixties, my elderly English secretary in London and her husband decided to sell their large suburban house in the Home Counties, and move to a smaller place. They lost money by not advertising the sale. “Oh! we couldn’t do that to the neighbours, Mr Datta-Ray,” she exclaimed. “We’ve been there 30 years!” What she meant was that a publicly advertised sale would have obliged her to sell to an Asian, African or West Indian. Privately, she could pick and choose among only whites.

After the US desegregated restaurants, a waitress in Atlanta, Georgia, told me they still didn’t serve blacks. “Oh, we have ways of making them feel unwanted,” she laughed, prepared to make an exception for an Asian who was obviously only passing through. I understood though why my hosts in Washington had booked me into Atlanta’s most expensive hotel.

I am told that a British reporting team assigned to expose discrimination in the job market recently went to a recruiting agency posing as an employer’s representative, and said it wanted only whites. “No problem!” the team was assured. The recruitment agency would so weed out applications that no disappointed coloured applicant would ever know that he or she had been rejected on grounds of race.

So, too, with the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme which was introduced four years ago when Britain needed specialist skills like cooking in Indian restaurants. That need has gone. Faced, moreover, with an expected influx of Romanian plasterers and Bulgarian cleaners to join Polish plumbers, Tony Blair’s government has cannily tinkered with the rules so that non-European migrants must be under 28 years of age and must earn more than £35,000 annually to qualify. Two earlier modifications, like a five-year, instead of four-year, residence qualification and sudden restrictions on non-European doctors also indirectly served the same purpose as the blunt Singaporean “Non-Indians preferred” job advertisement.

I am not complaining about this manipulation. Indians do not have a prescriptive right to live and work anywhere else but India. Economic need cannot masquerade as a human right. Every government enjoys the right to decide who it wants as settlers, and I can only think that the 30,000 Indians, who are reportedly suing the British government, somewhat lacking in self-esteem. There is also the funny side of an ageing Scots doctor being prosecuted under the Race Relations Act for advertising for a Scots housekeeper who could cook his haggis and kippers.

The reason for recounting all this is to remind ourselves at the start of another year that Wal-Mart and Lakshmi Mittal notwithstanding, little has changed for ordinary Indians. The rich and the talented have always been global. It’s humdrum wage-earners who yearn for the world more desperately than the world wants them.