So, you have probably heard of that parody version of the New York Times the infamous Yes Men gave out recently in Times Square (of all places).  Well, they went full tilt and put up a website for it, too: http://www.nytimes-se.com/

If you're not aware, the Yes Men are high-end pranksters that don't just play dumb jokes on people, they play jokes on entire corporations.  Democracy Now's Amy Goodman reported on the Yes Men's NYT parody last week, explaining that "One previous prank had a Yes Men member posing as a Dow Chemical
spokesperson to announce responsibility for the Bhopal chemical
disaster, forcing the company to remind the world it had done anything
but."

Whoops!

Obviously, I dig these guys.  They've got a movie and a book that goes into more detail regarding their activities, so I'll stick to the depressing stuff.

While their humor is pretty much brilliant (and a little dry–they way I like it), one of the sharper jabs I'm sure got missed by most folks checking out the http://www.nytimes-se.com/ was the ad for De Beers diamonds.  This was great–it promised that "Your purchase of a diamond will enable us to donate a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in the diamond conflicts.  De Beers. From her fingers to his."

Zowee.  See, what corporations do (this is true of other corps, not just De Beers) is go into 3rd world nations and effectively bribe the governments into letting them take most of a particular resource and most of the profits made from that resource, as well.  The people of the country see little or no change in their standard of living and in the case of the the diamond conflict, were caught in the middle.  Rebels rose up against governments and tried to convince locals to work with them, not the government.  According to Amnesty International, Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front's "signature tactic was amputation of civilians: Over the course
of the decade-long war, the rebels have mutilated some 20,000 people,
hacking off their arms, legs, lips, and ears with machetes and axes."

AA also reports: "People had their hands chopped off by RUF units and were sent wandering hopelessly to spread the message of terror."

Weee!  God damn!  Is greed a horrible thing, or what?  Those rebels may have represented the interest of the people in wanting their piece of the diamond pie (like Alaskans get of the Alaskan oil pie) but the RUF and all others in positions of power took things way too far.  You may feel the urge to suggest that De Beers has "got the right to make a living" but can you say that when other people are dying for that living?  Or are being horribly mutilated?

The selling of high end gems taken from mines in countries where poverty is rampant is unfair, cruel and just plain shitty.

When are we going to start talking about greed being reeeeally bad?  When is De Beers going to start talking about making up for their greed?

Well, thanks to the Yes Men, they might just have an opportunity to be guilted into doing it right now.

Don't buy diamonds.  They're pretty, but pricey in more ways than you probably want to consider.

Posted by email from thepete’s posterous

So, one of the hilarious things I hear from folks who think skyrocketing gas prices are no big deal is that adjusting for inflation, we actually pay less for gas now than we did at the end of the gas crisis in the 1970s.

Well, guess what! Even after adjusting for inflation, the price of car juice is set to crack the record. Check out this cutting from a November 18, 2007 article at CNN.com that reports on how we’re just nine cents short of the highest price for gas ever:

The price of gasoline has jumped another 13 cents in the last two weeks, close to the all-time high set earlier this year, according to a survey published Sunday.

The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular is $3.09, the Lundberg Survey found. That’s just 9 cents below the record set in May.

The latest price is also 9 cents below the inflation-adjusted all-time high, said survey publisher Trilby Lundberg. In 1981, the price peaked at $1.35 — which, in today’s dollars, comes out to $3.10 using the latest Consumer Price Index data, she said.

Don’t be surprised if the records are shattered in the coming weeks, Lundberg said. Even if crude oil doesn’t climb further, “we can easily see another dime at the pump,” she said, “because refiners are severely squeezed between their oil buying price and their gasoline selling price.”

Nice, so even if oil doesn’t climb any higher it won’t mean lower prices at the gas pumps. Too bad the price of oil is almost guaranteed to go higher.

Damn, I still haven’t bought that skateboard. Perhaps Santa will bring me one.

So, here in LA, it’s all about the Writers’ Strike. Everywhere you go, people are talking about it and shows have actually stopped shooting because of the strike. The whole problem the writers are having right now is based around “new media.”

What that means is digital media–like watching Daily Show on your iPod–if you got that iPod-friendly copy of the Daily Show from the iTunes music store the writers of the show should be compensated a bit more for it since the studio is making more money off of the writing than they had been. Seems fair enough–until you think about the future. See, there’s this quiet undercurrent, here in Hollywood. It’s like the studio system is dying and no one wants to talk about it. It’s this new digital media that’s doing it, too (see “Piracy is Good” at Mindjack.com for a good primer on this). Personally, I don’t think the studios will be around in ten years and letting them make more money now will make no difference in the long term since on the Internet you don’t need a studio to distribute your show. You just dial direct to your target audience.

Don’t think working without a studio net will work? Just ask the bad Radiohead. They ducked a deal with iTunes and did it on their own, allowing consumers to pay what they wanted for their new album. The funny thing is that I had initially heard that sales were really low–I toyed with the idea of blogging about it saying that perhaps the sales were low because their album really sucked. I should know, I paid $3 for it. However, this was before I saw a November 7, 2007 post at TUAW.com about how Radiohead actually did better selling their album on their own than they did selling through iTunes:

You’ll remember that they passed on iTunes to distribute their music themselves, and now we’re hearing that, after all is said and done, Radiohead earned an average of $2.26 per album by asking listeners to download the album for free and pay them whatever they thought it was worth. “$2.26 per album?” you say. “They got screwed! iTunes charges $10!”

Ah yes, but apparently Radiohead would have made about $1 per album if they’d gone through traditional channels. So actually, the creators doubled their income per sale.

The world of media is changing before our very living eyes and the studios are the greedy bastards who are going to lose unless they seriously start kissing the artists’ asses. Studio execs need to make a LOT less money if they’re going to survive and if they don’t start paying artists more, the artists will just go it on their own.

Damn, I just realized–I paid more than the average for that asstastic Radiohead album. That reminds me, I should go pay for that other indy album I grabbed recently–Niggy Tardust was actually pretty good.