In this video clip (below the jump) from 1979 you can witness an exchange between a brilliant man with a grasp of history and a wishful dreamer who believes in ‘virtue’ rather than productivity, as they discuss economics.

If you would prefer not to see it, scroll on down.

(more…)

I love Twitter. This morning John Haydon pointed me to a video that he made regarding the censorship by flickr of the “Obama-as-Heath-Ledger’s-Joker” image that has been splashed all over the place.
TechCrunch had some things to say, too:

Flickr v. Free Speech. Where Is Their Courage?

(Read the whole article for the links to more material)

Flickr really stepped in it this time. And they’ve sparked a free speech and copyright fascism debate that is unlikely to cool down any time soon.

Sometime last week they took down a photoshopped image of President Obama that makes him look like the Heath Ledger (Joker) character from The Dark Knight. The image was created and uploaded to Flickr by 20 year old college student Firas Alkhateeb while “bored over winter school break.” It was also later altered yet again by someone else and used to create anti-obama posters that went up in Los Angeles.

Thomas Hawk has a good overview of some of the other details, but the short version is the image was removed by Flickr sometime last week due to “due to copyright-infringement concerns.”

Free Speech and Fair Use – More Important than Politics

As many people are pointing out, this is a Fair Use and Free Speech issue – an issue larger than whatever political affiliation that you may have. The really ironic part of this is that some of the initial commentary, from that brief time that the artist was unknown, called the picture “racist” and “the work of a White, Right-winger”. As this LA Times article points out, Alkhateeb is neither.

This post is a little bit hard for me to write, without throwing my own political views into the mix, but my views don’t matter. Artists, cartoonists, and writers have been attacking the politicians in government since the very beginning of our Republic. It’s part of how we do business and how we do politics (more on this here). As John mentions in his video, it is when the agenda of power is co-opted by businesses that Free Speech and Fair Use get trampled on. And this is why I am doing my part to help spread the news.

I believe that this issue is very important, thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your opinions.

Bill Whittle and Austin Bay have a discussion about how Twitter can be used to network and communicate in ways far beyond “what am I having for lunch”: The Strategic Implications of Social Media (link to the video, 12 minutes).

Here is part of a post with some background info:

“Iran’s Information Age demonstrators, exploiting the capabilities of the social networking and “micro-blogging” service Twitter, surprised then threatened Iran’s tyrannical mullahs. Tehran’s thugs in robes suddenly discovered they could not control information within Iran. Kicking out BBC reporters used to separate dissidents from the global megaphone, but no longer. Now that mobile phones are essentially small computers, instant Internet access is widely distributed. Men, women and children hold a global link with audio- and video-recording capability in their palm.

Twitter is the latest in a line of “social media” phenomena spawned by the digital communications revolution. Social media like Facebook and MySpace connected users on the Internet. Twitter, which specializes in brief “text messages,” bills itself as a service that answers the question, “What are you doing?” That message is shared with a group of friends or the world.

“Tweeting” Iranians let the world know they were launching street demonstrations and seeding an anti-regime rebellion. “

I have been Tweeting about this sort of action for a while now, calling for a “clean sweep” in Congress for the 2010 elections. As you know every single Representative in Congress and 1/3 of the Senate are up for re-election. It is time that we the people took America back from the entrenched power-lobby in Washington.

The career politicos.

The “elite” influence-peddlars.

Shelly Roche has taken this idea and run with it: Operation Clean Slate 2010 – New Political Leadership in Congress

Identify & Encourage New Leaders
Identify & encourage people who have the potential to be great leaders to become “Clean Slate” candidates.

What is a “Clean Slate” candidate?
* NOT a career politician
* Committed to representing his or her constituents with integrity
* Passionate about upholding the Constitution
* Impervious to special interest bribes
* Understands what the role of our government SHOULD be, as set forth by our founding fathers
* Prepared to stand up to the establishment and demand transparency and accountability throughout government

Watch this video: