Some time ago I blogged about the coming of the Pirate Party in Sweden.

Well they have been making headlines again, or at least bloglines! Seems that the Swedish government has had a fair bit of pressure put on them to shut down the Pirate guys.

Meanwhile the Pirates are flexing their muscles and....

The general elections are being held in the end of September, and the election campaigns are becoming hotter and hotter. The Pirate Party has decided that what they have now, ideas and ideology, strategy and policies, is what they’re going to run, no need to do any additions or changes now - all energy is put on the election campaign, and the work will be focused very strongly on this until after the election.

What happens after that will depend completely on how the election turns out, and here are many alternatives:

On one scenario, the Pirate Party gets their 4%, which few within the party doubt they will. In that case they will move to become influential in the forming of the government. In Sweden, the prime minister is elected by the parliament, which means that he or she must have a majority of the MPs behind him/her. No party ever gets that many seats, and so, a party that will form a government must seek support from another party, who then gets a situation where they can influence the government. This is a position that the Pirate Party seeks. Their parliamentary work will depend heavily on whether they succeed or not.

This is really interesting stuff. If this can work in Sweden - and bear in mind that at least part of the genesis of this is file sharing capability and practice - and in Sweden there is a totally difference copyright law in place than in the US and UK - much more in keeping with the sort of philosophies of Lessig, I would say.

If they can actually get enough seats to hold the balance of power, and create a stronger aspirational vector than the greens, what an example for the rest of the world. If we can't get charged up about saving the world from greenhouse gasses maybe we can all get motivated to share music and movies on line for free!

The coal lobby is concernced with the success of Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". Read the memo here.

They are raising (more) money to keep supporting professional skeptics that spread the counter-argument to global warming. (Clearly these guys  were NOT among the 132 people in Califormia who died of heat exhaustion last week, and who were not in London when the it reached 45 degrees on the London buses).

The only people I can imagine buying that BS are the same people who believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In case you missed it, it was reported in London last week that Rupert Murdoch has offered Tony Blair a position on the News Corp board.

"Yo, Blair - wanna join the board of a fair and balanced media company. Could be good for your career prospects!"

I spend a fair bit of time in San Francisco. Unlike Sydney, and London, and Tokyo, where I also spend a bit of time, San Francisco has a lot of homeless people. People who stand on corners with bits of cardboard that have messages on them like, "Out of work, down on my luck. Please give me a dollar".

Now I don't mean to make fun in any way of these poor unfortunate people that either the system has let down or they themselves have let down.

But I do want to pay attention to the poor unfortunate American satirists. Look at poor Will Durst, one of the finest, most intelligent satirists around.  Click here for something that he wrote a week ago about the G8 and President Bush.

American politics is already a satire of itself. Even a really clever guy like Will Durst can only report on the facts as they are! If this keeps on a lot of clever guys are going to be out on the street - how can they do their schtick when things are so crazy already!

The latest essay by Stephen Roach is compelling. As a very sane economist who has a responsibility to engender calm amongst his readers, this latest review of the confluence of economic events, and the need to understand the full risks of interdependence is all the more interesting.

If this does not set the alarm bells ringing when you read the whole lot, I would be very surprised.

Here is a sample:

Now when you get past the jargon, what he is saying is this: US record deficit + US interest rate tightening + housing market turning + increased price of oil = US consumer confidence goes South, and US business confidence right behind it = Chinese manufacturing turns negative = commodities sales goes south = Global bust. 

So the world's oil companies post record profits and what happened to the US consumer? They hit the wall in their big new SUV. The fact is that the economy of the world is totally interlinked and fighting a war without end saps the lifeblood out of the economy. It takes the money and worse still it takes the soul. It is impossible to create good when your basic premise is the taking of life.

War is bad. Profits made from war will bring down the system ultimately. Over the next year we are going to see a hard economic landing. I think that if you read between the lines, this is what Stephen Roach is telling us.

I hear that YouTube is being valued at a billion by the VC's.

It has been down for the last day.... Wonder how long the valuation will last if it stays now.

Global Warring or Global Warming. If one doesn't get us, the other will. And if those two don't, then the economic cycle is bound to...

I remember when I was a teenager and President Kennedy was assassinated. I was living in Cape Town at the time. I heard it on the news and wondered if there would be a nuclear war. Looking back on it, I am not sure why I would think that JFK dying would bring on a nuclear war. The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, maybe, but less likely that his assassination would.

In the last few weeks I have felt the same kind of despair about where the world is heading, and believe me, I am truly an eternal optimist.

I wonder what people are thinking who appear to be ignoring all the social, political and economic vectors of our age.

I feel for the woman I saw in the pharmacy earlier this evening who is due to have a baby in two days time. What kind of world is she bringing a child into?

This is serious stuff, people.

We have what is looking like a world war brewing in the Middle East. And like most things this may not be quite what it seems on the surface. Look at this report:

Here is an excerpt:

Surely this is madness. A madness that only seems to serve the interests of the large oil companies. How weird is it that the war in Iraq that was sold to the American public at least partially as a war to secure energy for the future has achieved greater instability of energy supply and simultaneously has driven oil profits through the roof?

And while the war rages species are being wiped out, people are dying of heat exhaustion in France and politicians are still in denial about Global Warming - and the hottest days of the Northern Summer are still ahead. Well they have to be don't they? If they accepted that it was real they would have to do something and it would be bad for the market too. If they keep denying it, they can establish their getaway in the mountains for themselves and prepare their escape before the rest of the sheep catch on...


And while that is happening in the US economic policy is creating more problems than it is solving according to Stephen Roach:

You have to wonder, don't you.....

And in the background we have people in power politically in all the major Western Powers (the English speaking ones anyway) who appear to have lost their marbles!

When are people going to wake up!

"The journey of a 1000 leagues begins with a single step".

First read this. Silicon Valley companies had to close because of the heat. People moved into hotels to escape the heat. What did they do when they got into the hotels? Turned on the aircon, no doubt. What did that do? Add to the heat of course.

Of course we have global warming. Let's get past that one. Now let's get past the apathy thing and realize that there are a lot of things we can all do about this:

Here are some ideas for starters:

1) Do not write to a politician or congressman to complain. They are lazy do-nothings who wouldnt want to risk their fat behinds in the next election because they actually did something. Waste of time and energy trying to get them to respond. And anyway they wouldnt know where to begin.
2) Contact anyone in a charity or NGO that you contribute money to. Tell them that you are going to only contribute in the future if they go green. That means that they have to move into an office or building which is energy efficient. If enough NGOs start changing their requirements of their landlords, building designers and owners will start making changes.
3) While you are at it, write to people you know who are philanthropists. Same deal. Tell them how important it is that they send out the right message. And that is to lead by example.

I would be surprised if you didn't know someone who is either a philanthropist or is somehow involved in a charity - perhaps because a family member is afflicted in some way. This is where the pressure has to start. And it has to start with an acknowledgement that regardless of the discomfort turning on the aircon on an already record breaking temperature day is not the answer.

4) If you are a shareholder in a company that asserts that it has a triple bottom line, again, write to them and ask them whether they have an energy efficient office building, a strategy for dealing with super hot days etc (eg is the office building one where the windows dont open and the only air circulation is via air con. If so, the reality is that they are going to become less productive as it gets hotter. Air con will fail on super hot days. That equals productivity lost as workers wont be able to sit at their desks. That equals reduced profits which equals lower ROI.

Come on people! Put the pressure on where it is going to have effect, and do it now while people are responsive because they are feeling the heat!

And if you are in Australia.... where it is winter.... do it anyway because this coming summer is bound to be a hot one.

I just saw on the SBS News in Sydney our Prime Minister, John Howard, saying that after July 25th he would not be able to guarantee the safety of Australian refugees in Lebanon.

So what does he know that we don't know?

Is a major Israeli attack on Lebanon scheduled for that day?
Is this going to be the beginning of the US attacking Iran?

Prime Ministers tend not to make statements accidentally. Unfortunately I don't think that whatever happens after that date is likely to be conducive to confidence in world peace.

We shall see...

From an article in the Washington Post about the impact of mobile/cell phone technology in the Congo:


Could this be the big tipping point in technology? And the reason: It is cheaper to build cell towers than to lay copper wire. And since there are more people where there is little old copper infrastructure, this is only going to increase. Which in turn has got to mean that the cultural mores of Africa, India, China etc are going to start to be the drivers of what we see and consume on mobile within the next few years...