Arctic Territorial Dispute

As things heat up in the South China Sea in the dispute between China and the rest of the region (Philippines, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and even Brunei – all with US support), there is a more fun example brewing on this side of the world.

In 1845, a British ship went down in the Arctic in a quest to find the Northwest Passage.  The ship has recently been discovered by the Canadians and they are trying to use the salvage operation as a way to establish sovereignty for the area.  This is a direct parallel to the Chinese activities.  The Chinese are going to claim that their activities building reefs and establishing bases on them demonstrate sovereignty over the area, which is full of fishing, oil and gas, and military benefits.  Canada wants to do the same thing here.  With the melting of the ice caps, there is a lot more potential for economic activity in terms of oil and gas exploration, shipping lanes, and more.

 But instead of building bases, they are salvaging a piece of history.  As the inheritor of the British colony of Canada, they claim that the sunken wreck is part of Canadian history. Its presence and subsequent salvage gives them a legal path to claim the area.

Then there is another interesting twist.  The US has come out against Canada.  Not because it could set a precedent that would help China in the South China Sea, but because it could set a precedent for Iran to claim the Straight of Hormuz.  Iran has similar activities over there.  And Iranian control of the major oil shipping lane would be a huge shift in the geopolitical balance.

Don’t play checkers when the opponents are playing chess !

Free Speech on Campus

I was listening to an interview this morning that was exceptional for two great reasons.  First, there were two guests – a conservative and a liberal.  But it didn’t degenerate into a he said/she said battle of talking points with the two pundits speaking over each other. The two people thoughtfully listened to each other and countered with their own evidence and ideas.  That is too rare these days.

The other reason is the quality of the discussion and the ideas.  The topic was free speech, which as you know is a passion of mine. But even though I have already thought and written a ton on the topic, I still learned from it.  I love it when that happens.

The interview was from On Point this morning and the two guests were Kirsten Powers and David Shipler. Both have books on free speech that just came out but a lot of the conversation focused on the recent Texas fiasco with Pamela Geller and the Mohammed cartoon content.  Both of the authors are strong free speech supporters but with very different approaches to it.  I strongly recommend grabbing the podcast from the web site.

But I just want to describe one story with you here that was shared by David Shipler.  He recalled a time in college during the Vietnam War when one of the leading proponents of US involvement came to campus to speak.  Shipler was active in the anti-war movement.  His group organized a big protest and demonstration outside the auditorium.  They were there when the speaker’s motorcade arrived and when all the attendees were entering the building. But they didn’t try to stop the speech or interfere with it.  They just wanted to protest it.

Once everyone was inside, they put down their signs and went inside.  They didn’t start chanting to drown out the talk; they went in to listen.  That is what college is supposed to be about. Even when you disagree with someone, you don’t try to stop them from talking or from being heard.  You engage in debate.  They raised their hands during the Q&A and asked tough questions. 

Contrast that with what happens now.  Student groups try to get controversial speakers “disinvited,” even when the topic of their speech has nothing to do with the controversy (for example when Condoleezza Rice had to cancel her commencement speech at Rutgers last year).  And if the speech does go on, they don’t protest the speaker.  They protest the administration’s choice to allow it. 

What happened to us?

Juliette Kayyem on Security

I just found out that Juliette Kayyem, former Homeland Security Adviser for the Obama Administration and MA Governor Deval Patrick and currently CEO and Founder of a very successful (and one of the few female owned) security consultancy Kayyem Solutions is launching a podcast on dealing with security issues as a member of the general public.

This is a critical service because us regularly people don't know what or how to deal with it. And usually, we shouldn't do anything about it - we should let the professionals handle it. But the media whips us into such a frenzy that we demand counterproductive measures - like TSA airport screening or buying plywood at Home Depot.

I have heard her interviewed on Boston Public Radio for 30 minute segments every Wednesday and I am a huge fanboy.  She is also frequently on CNN so many of you may have seen her already.  Definitely check out the podcast, at least for a few episodes and see what it is about.  Or check out some of her archived interviews on BPR. She is one of the few people that speaks open, honestly, clearly for the layperson, and really knows her stuff. 

The self-reinforcing cycle of disrespect

This article brings up some interesting points. But the disrespectful title shows what is wrong with the news media today. In an attempt to be "edgy" and attract the younger generation, they contribute to the dissociation that we are adopting with civic life.

The less we respect government as an institution, the less we are motivated to participate.  The less we participate, the more influence that the extreme views have.  The more influence of the extremes, the worse off we all become and many of our officials merit the disrespect we started out with.  This self-reinforcing cycle will be the end of us.

I can understand disrespecting specific politicians - there are certainly some who deserve it. But to disrespect the entire judicial branch in an attempt to get click-throughs is counterproductive and damaging.

If you are unfamiliar with Ozy, it is not a fly-by-night clickbaiter.  Carlos Watson is an innovator in news media and is a frequent guest on NPR and CNN. I expect more from him/them.

Policy rants for the day

I caught up on my Bloomberg Law podcasts last night.  My frequent disappointment in our legal system was renewed.  None of these cases seemed to interpret the law incorrectly. I am not a lawyer, but the legal experts on the show are pretty good at distilling the cases for an intermediate level listener (which I consider myself to be).  No, my disappointment stems from how poorly thought out many of our laws seem to be.

Citizen’s United received plenty of controversy when the Supreme Court ruled on it years ago.  Rather than revisit that, let’s just start with the premise that having full disclosure of donor lists makes unlimited political contributions palatable.  Many of you might have heard that the Koch brothers have launched a nearly $1 Billion (yes, that is with a “B”) fund to support their political causes.  In the spirit of Citizen’s United, they should reveal the names of their donors.  But hold on.  They already won that case, so why stop there?  They appealed to the California Supreme Court that they shouldn’t have to disclose either.  They are supported causes, not campaigns.  So it is not a political lobby it is a cause lobby.  Just in case that doesn’t work, they claim the harassment exception.  In the 1950s, some African-American groups were the subject of firebombing and lynching.  So they got an except that allowed them to keep names secret.  The Koch fund wants the same exemption because their donors may be harassed because of their donations to this fund.  Why doesn’t it feel right that these two are parallels?

Many of you might have recently seen the movie Selma.  It was a frequent candidate last night at the Oscars. You might have noticed that the film did not use any of MLK’s famous speeches.  Why?  Because of copyright laws.  The rights to his speeches are held by his family and they wanted some serious money to give permission to the film producers to use them.  The principle of Fair Use allows excerpts to be used in education, news reporting, and parody.  Otherwise, the material has to be “transformed” in way that adds a new creative element to the content.  Otherwise, you need the permission of the copyright holders to use it. But this was a money making film.  Having an actor read the speeches and having it in a movie was not seen as transformative enough.  So the screen writers had to write new speeches.  Despite the entire movie being a tribute to the life of MLK.

This is why fantasy leagues have to have real licenses from the sports leagues who control the copyrights to players names, photos, and stats (outside of news reporting, satire, etc).  Fantasy leagues only work if you use the real deal. The reverse happened with the Madden Football video game.  Rather than license the use of real players’ names, photos, and stats (costing a chunk of change), they modified each of these.  Just enough, they thought, to be transformative.  But a real football fan could figure out who was who with just a little research and thought.  EA Sports got taken to court and lost.  Not transformative enough. 

In another sports case, the PGA Golf Pro Tour is being sued by the players’ caddies.  They caddies are being forced to wear bibs with PGA sponsors names and logos on them.  The caddies are not being paid for this and it implies to the TV viewer that they support these companies whether they do or not.  You would think that their contract would make their agreement clear, but it turns out that caddies aren’t contracting with the Tour.  They are hired individually by the individual golfers.  So how can the Tour make this requirement?  Caddies work for the players and the players are contracted to the Tour.  So tough nougies.  The legal expert on the interview noted that the caddies would be happy to settle for health insurance (which they don’t get because they don’t work for the tour).  But since it looks like the Tour will win the case, this is still a long shot.

The last rant is the lawsuit by 26 states against Obama’s executive order regarding immigrants, deportation priorities, and legal status.  First, my personal bias is that the whole process is broken because immigration is good for the US economically, socially, and ethically.  But let’s take those considerations out of the picture because they are not part of this case.  The law says that this large group of people must be deported.  Of course, the budget of the INS does not cover deporting everyone, so the administration has to prioritize.  And that is not at issue here either if all the administration was doing was deporting felons first and Dreamers and parents of citizens last. What the lawsuit hinges on is that the administration is making this public and official.  It would be OK for them to deport felons and leave Dreamers alone.  But what they want to do is tell the Dreamers that they won’t be deported any year soon, so they can come out of the shadows, register to work, drive, etc, and not worry.  This significantly adds to their ability to contribute to the economy.  Good for the country.  But because it is adding a new kind of status, it is infringing on the powers held by Congress.  And therefore illegal.  They are allowed to do things unofficially and privately.  But not officially and publicly.  Even if it benefits the country.

Sorry for going on and on.