Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

This week’s Supreme Court ruling (MGM v. Grokster) favoring the music industry against file-sharers should be called “the day the music [innovation] died.” It’s the day that 9 gray-haired eminences with little or no understanding of technology and the way real people use it in the real world decided that the corporate fatcats who’ve failed so miserably in holding onto their customer base deserve another day (or generation) to maintain their bloated corporate monopoly. It’s the day that technological innovation was chained and collared in favor of a dinosaur musical distribution system.

The decision walks a very thin and slippery line saying that creating file-sharing software is not in itself an infringement, but “actively encouraging” third-parties to share files does constitute infringement. To me, the justices doubled themselves up in knots to reach their conclusion. Now, no one–not innovators, not the music industry and certainly not the average person will have a clue as to where we go from here. In the future, anyone who creates technology related to online sharing of information will see that Damocles Sword of potential copyright lawsuits hanging over their head. No average person would have a clue how to determine what future software violates copyright and what doesn’t.

Souter’s decision turns Potter Stewart’s phrase about pornography, “I’ll know it when I see it” on its head. As far as file-sharing is concerned we won’t know what is kosher and what’s not until it’s been vetted by fleets of corporate lawyers, appeals court judges and Supreme Court justices.

I’m left scratching my head as to how the Groksters of the world might adapt their system so that it could still stay within the law (as defined by David Souter and his friends). I sure hope there is a way as I think (and I’ve written about this a number of times) that file-sharing is here to stay. Even should Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster disappear, too many have supped at the table of file-sharing to let it die. Other companies, other software, other innovators will rise up to take their place. It should be like a guerilla war. Remember those Iranian reformist newspapers which started one day only to be closed by the mullahs the next and reopened the following day under a different name. The watchword for the file-sharing community should be: start up, wait for the copyright infringement claim, close up, open again with a different and better product (perhaps one that is harder to label as “infringing”).

I find myself befuddled by the New York Times editorial position endorsing the decision when, after Grokster’s victory in the Ninth Circuit, the Times wrote this in an editorial:

This decision…implicitly raises a question central to most copyright battles. Is society better served by restricting or even prohibiting new technologies to protect the rights of copyright owners or is there a greater good in the widest possible exchange of information?

Freedom of information is at the root of American democracy, and yet every day we see that freedom being compromised, controlled and limited. The Grokster decision is a ruling in favor of keeping our bets open about which technologies will turn out to serve our freedoms best.

I think the Times has done a backflip on the issue. They move from a position advocating the “widest possible exchange of information” to a wholehearted endorsement of the record industry’s infringement claims. This week’s decision directly contradicts the “widest possible exchange” principle. I have to say that I’m not surprised at the flip-flop and found the earlier editorial to be surprising and refreshing in light of the Times’ being a major copyright owner who might be expected to side with other media conglomerates like the record industry. It seemed almost as if they were being a traitor to their class. And indeed, in the latest editorial they have reverted back to form.

Easily the most ludicrous and patently self-serving statement came from the RIAA:

“Tonight parents all across the country will go home to have conversations with their kids and say there is a right way and a wrong way to enjoy music,” said Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, the lobbying group for the major music labels.

Is that insufferable or what? I’m a parent and I did no such thing. I have far better things to talk about with my kids than telling them to “Honor thy record industry.”

As with so much of the African music I feature here, I first heard this album on Doug Paterson’s Music of Africa show on KBCS (Bellevue, WA). Doug specializes in the music of Kenya (and compiled the Rough Guide to Kenyan Music) but he does every region justice on his show. I know if I listen to his show I’m going to come away each week with at least one gem I’d never heard before.

And that’s what happened a month or so ago when I heard his show on South African gospel. He featured an amazing cut called Siyakubonga (hear it) by the Holy Spirits Choir. The song appears on Gospel According to Earthworks which is distributed by Stern’s Africa. A little warning if you’re on a budget: you can’t find this record domestically (if you can let me know because I couldn’t) and so you’ll pay a pretty penny for this one as an import. You can buy it from Stern’s but it’s a little cheaper at Amazon UK (to which I link here).

Siyakubonga is the sound of pure joy with a pounding rhythm, soaring organ backing and the powerful, insistent vocals of the choir. This music springs from the deepest wellsprings of human happiness as does all great African music. Here are the lyrics:

Siyakubonga (”We thank you Lord”)

We thank you my Lord
We will follow You
We live in peace
Because He is alive
We meet and gather together and offer
ourselves [to God]
We than the heavenly angels

Here are some excerpts from the liner notes:

Gospel has become one of the most popular musical styles in Africa, and nowhere more so than in South Africa…The roots of the music were developed especially in Natal round the time of World War I, mixing Zulu traditional music, western hymns and early ragtime.

This a capella music was popularised at all-night competitions held by migratn workers and miners. In the 1950s and 60s the music surged in popularity after the hit, Mbube (”The Lion”) by SOlomon Linda with his Evening Birds. The song was adapted by Pete Seeger adn the Weavers and released as Wimoweh, which became a huge hit in Europe and the USA.

The South African recording industry dubbed the music mbube. It captured the imagination of the public and soon there were choirs in most parts of the country from small towns to cities.

The Holy Spirits Choir was formed in 1985 by Joseph Kumaku originally from Kroonstad, Free State. Its recordings are made in Sotho and Zulu and the music is backed with a jive beat and consequently can be heard in taxis and shebeens (bars).

I wasn’t able to find much in the way of online reference material about South African gospel. The All Music Guide review of the The Rough Guide to South African Gospel by Chris Nickson discusses the music in a more satisfying and appreciative way that the online review of Gospel According to Earthworks. Here is some of what Nickson has to say about the musical genre:

Americans might be quite familiar with American gospel music, but gospel from South Africa…refracts the same ideas through a prism that makes them completely different…Gospel is a genre that’s very popular in the country’s townships, with its own stars, like Rebecca Malope and Ladysmith Black Mambazo (who also have huge secular popularity). It’s very inclusive music, pulling from several local styles, and immediately recognizable…

Whereas a lot of American gospel has been co-opted by the musical mainstream, especially modern R&B, that’s generally not the case in South Africa, where it remains a powerful, and still spiritual, roots genre. Ladysmith Black Mambazo [for example] keep their Zulu roots very strong.

Though musically they have nothing in common, I would liken the joyful spirituality of this music to that of the Hasidic nigunim (wordless spiritual songs sung in devotional contexts) I learned as a young person studying Jewish music. The music allows the soul to soar and for the body to leave all its worldy cares behind.

If you’re ready for a dose of pure joy give a listen to Siyakubonga and buy this record.

Please Read: This mp3 blog exists to spread the wonder and genius that is traditional music. By all means come, listen, enjoy, then follow the links to buy the music. If you come, listen, download, then leave—you’re violating the spirit behind this blog and doing nothing to support the artists featured here.

Avi Shlaim wrote a terrifically cogent and deeply depressing Op-Ed piece in the Guardian, Withdrawal is a Prelude to Annexation. In it, he confirms the worst fears of many of us who are trying to figure out where Sharon is going in his current political strategy (if it could be called that). Many of the Sharon watchers among us (and I have followed his career for several decades) are deeply skeptical that he has an “after” strategy for the period following the Gaza disengagement. Or to put it more accurately, many of us doubt he wishes to do anything further regarding the Palestinians in terms of compromise or negotiation.

But of course we hope that he might prove to be another DeGaulle, the one who sees a little more clearly than his predecessors; the one who understands the overwhelming benefits of peace and the overwhelming deficits of war. The one who becomes more realist than ideologue. But just how realistic is such hope? There is so much in Sharon’s background that militates against such hopes.

Shlaim reserves special scorn for Condoleeza Rice calling her statement hailing the Israeli Palestinian agreement to raze the homes of Gaza’s Jewish settlers “a fatuous statement by one of the most vacuous secretaries of state of the postwar era.” Strong stuff. In truth, Shlaim sees the loss of this housing for potential Palestinian families as a wanton act of destruction.

He takes U.S. Mideast policy especially to task:

the US effected regime change in Baghdad in three weeks but has failed to dismantle a single Jewish settlement in the occupied territories in 38 years.

He continues by noting the hypocrisy of Bush’s call for democracy in the Arab world, which only seems to apply to our enemies, but not our friends.

He calls the peace process: “a mechanism by which Israel and America try to impose a solution on the Palestinians.”

He sees little better in Sharon except that there is less shilly-shallying and pious platitudes emanating from him.

With Sharon, what you see is what you get. He has always been in the destruction business, not the construction business. As defense minister in 1982, he preferred to destroy the settlement town of Yamit in Sinai rather than hand it to Egypt as a reward for signing a peace treaty with Israel. George Bush once described his friend Sharon as “a man of peace”. In truth, Sharon is a brutal thug and land-grabber.

Shlaim continues by arguing that Sharon has destroyed the Road Map by continuing to build settlements and building the security wall in Palestinian territory.

Then, Shlaim makes his most daring and incendiary claim:

The real purpose of the move [i.e. disengagement] is to derail the road map and kill the comatose peace process. For Sharon, withdrawal from Gaza is the prelude not to a permanent settlement but to the annexation of substantial sections of the West Bank [here he is referring to the four West Bank settlement 'blocs' which Sharon wishes to remove from the negotiating table and retain for Israel permanently].

All Israelis are in the habit of spinning worst case scenarios. It must be something to do with a sense of doom and foreboding induced by Jewish suffering throughout our history. And Shlaim has done that to an extent here. I don’t believe that things must perforce become as hopeless as Shlaim makes out that they are. But then again, he may not be far wrong. As I’ve said before here, no one ever lost a wager about Mideast peace by betting against peace. Both parties seem to have done their best over the decades to ensure this continuing debacle.

Shlaim raises another troubling issue for U.S. Mideast policy: if we are as much in favor of democracy for Arab regimes as we claim–what will we do when Islamist parties win most of them and inevitably introduce, or attempt to introduce Muslim theocratic forms of government which would be largely anti-American, reflecting popular sentiments in most Arab Mideast societies?

Condi Rice and AIPAC will each tell you that a democratic Israel is America’s greatest asset in the region. Not so says Shlaim:

In fact Israel is America’s biggest liability. For most Arabs and Muslims the real issue in the Middle East is not Iraq, Iran or democracy but Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and America’s blind support for Israel.

He concludes on a highly critical note which nonetheless concedes the affirmative power America possesses to craft a real negotiated settlement:

Only a negotiated settlement can bring lasting peace and stability to the area. And only America has the power to push Israel into such a settlement. It is high time the US got tough with Israel, the intransigent party and main obstacle to peace. Colluding in Sharon’s selfish, uncivilised plan to destroy the Jewish homes in Gaza is not a historic step on the road to peace.

I’d say the jury is still out on whether Bush has the moxie to forge this muscular, activist stance toward Israel and the Palestinians which will be required if there is ever to be peace. I have more confidence that he has it in him than that Sharon will turn out to be the DeGaulle (or even the Begin) of Israel.

In migrating from Typepad to WordPress, mod_rewrite and .htaccess are your friend…when they are not your mortal enemy. After going through a brutal conversion process, I can honestly say I’ve been from heaven to hell and back again with mod_rewrite. In the interest of helping even one person to avoid some of my misery, I thought I’d try to put a few aspects of the conversion to post. A forum member suggested that I add this to the Codex. Once I feel I’ve described the technical issues correctly (and not added any mistakes or wrong information) perhaps I’ll do that. Here is is my story:

Converting Typepad Permalinks to WordPress-Compatible Permalinks Using Mod_Rewrite

When migrating from TP to WP, if you want to allow websites and search engines using your old format permalinks to reach your new site, you’ll probably have to write mod_rewrite rules to do it. Alternatively, if you maintain your old site indefinitely, then you can use it to redirect to your new site. That’s not an option for TP since it costs $13 per month to maintain a Typepad Pro (advanced) blog on their server.

If you know what you’re doing and don’t care about losing visitors who use your old format permalinks, before or after exporting your posts to WP you can change every single old style permalink to the WP format. You can also reformat your TP image file names as well as they will conflict too. I’m not aware technically of how you’d do this in an automated way though I’m sure there are ways to do it (you certainly wouldn’t want to do this manually).

Here’s the reason why mod_rewrite can be your friend in the migration process. There is a built in naming conflict in that Typepad names permalinks like so:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2004/04/us_iraq_war_dea.html

while WP uses this format:

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2004/04/us-iraq-war-dea/

Typepad Image Folder Path Conflict with WordPress

A separate problem is that in the Typepad environment, if you accept its default image upload settings when you upload your images, they may be stored in some weird folderpaths. I don’t understand why this is–I just know it happened in my case. Without having changed any image upload settings whatsoever during my stay with TP, I have images stored in three separate TP folders.

In addition, if you ever used TP’s domain (e.g. richards1052.typepad.com) before switching to your own domain (richardsilverstein.com), you likely have images stored separately from all your others within Typepad. Be sure you scour your TP image folders before you shut your TP account down. I learned this the hard way when, after shutting down my TP account yesterday, I spent all day today trying to restore scores of images I’d uploaded when I used TP’s domain (before I got my own). I had no ideas I had images stored at …richards1052.typepad.com/photos/…

It is very important if you want your image displays to work in WP that you mirror your TP image folder/filepath when you set up WP. Otherwise, if you accept WP’s default image upload configuration when you install WP, your old TP images will not display. Again, you may choose to accept WP’s default image upload config, but you’ll have to rename all those old image filenames to conform to WP’s default folder/filepath structure.

Even after setting up a mirror filepath/folder structure, you will probably not see most of your old images displaying in your WP blog. Again, this requires added mod_rewrite rules for the image display to work properly (I wish I could explain some of these technical issues better–all I can do is explain what happened and how we fixed it). As you will read below, Carthik Sharma wrote a complex set of mod_rewrite rules that provided for proper display of my images. But when those mod_rewrite rules were accidentally overwritten, I noticed all my images were gone.

A helpful WordPress forum member suggested that I post to the Webmasterworld.com Apache Server thread about my problem. Justin Womack**, an intrepid forum member there came to my rescue and wrote these rules which restored my images:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^/([^.]+)(\.htm) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^/([^.]+)(\.jpg)
RewriteRule ^\.shared/image.\html$ /%1%2 [R=301,L]

But this being mod_rewrite world, there’s never an entirely trouble-free solution. It seems when you fix one problem, you’ve accidentally caused another. So for some reason, after saving Justin’s new rules in my .htaccess file, my blog stopped converting old permalinks. I looked in the .htaccess file and saw this error:

# File modified on Thu Jun 23 15:26:28 2005 by server
# \xef\xbb\xbf# is not a supported htaccess directive
# # File modified on Thu Jun 23 15:15:28 2005 by server
# \xef\xbb\xbf# is not a supported htaccess directive

Justin says this is an error that should never have happened and that I need to ask my host why it’s causing a conflict. I asked BlueHost about this and they said they have no idea why the errors are occurring either. So now at least I have all my images displaying, but I’ve lost visitors who use my old permalinks until I can fix the conflict.

Anyway, here’s a link to my current .htaccess file. It includes the above error language and does not include Justin’s rules (also above) since the “not a supported htaccess directive” error seems to have removed them from the file (without causing me to lose the displayed images which Justin’s rules were designed to allow to display–don’t ask me to explain that one). But if you’re in my boat and need some ideas on how to get yourself “over” to WP, be my guest and take a look. Use it if it helps. And if you know mod_rewrite better than I and can fix, or shed any further light on my htaccess rules conflict, I’d be grateful.

Full-Size Images Associated with Thumbnails May Not Display

If you’ve created thumbnail/full-size image displays in your Typepad blog, you may find that Typepad’s folder path structure conflicts with WordPress so that some full-size versions of thumbnail images will not open once you migrate to WP. For some reason, TP was adding this folder filepath, “…/.shared/image.html?/…” to some, but not all of my thumbnails. By a mere fluke, I tried removing only that bit of the filepath and miraculously all my full-size images associated with thumbs were now displaying properly. Don’t ask me why or how. I don’t know. I just know it works (somehow). And that will suffice.

Mod_Rewrite Debacle

When considering my move to WP, I could see immediately that it would be complicated. I looked through the WP support forum site and the Codex material about MT to WP blog conversion and saw that Carthik Sharma was one of the forum “support mavens” on this subject. After e-mailing him about my problem, he bravely and wonderfully agreed to take the project on. He did virtually everything for me: installation, configuration, file export/import. In fact, this WP blog owes its existence almost entirely to Carthik and I can never thank him enough for what he’s done.

By the way, both the Codex material on MT/WP permalink conversions and the external links to WP users who’d successfully resolved this issue with fixes of their own–all these solutions never worked for me. Either they seemed to involve using your old blog to redirect visitors to your new or else I just couldn’t technically get the solution to work. This may’ve been due to my own technical deficiencies or some other reason, I just don’t know. Even though TP and MT use virtually the same code and work in very similar ways, I’m guessing there’s enough that’s different to cause good MT solutions for conversion not to work for TP blogs.

Carthik also originally wrote mod_rewrite rules which converted the old TP link format into the new link format so those following my old links could get to the same posts but in my new WP environment. But in working with the .htaccess file subsequent to that I must’ve somehow added code or a rule to it & in saving it somehow overwrote all of Carthik’s rules. Naturally, neither I nor Carthik had saved a copy of his rules. This is when you enter mod_rewrite hell. So he was forced to start over again and finally 10 hours or so after he began working on the problem we had a second set of rules which now work. Which goes to show–always maintain a copy of yr. .htaccess file on your server in case you do what I did. Better to have a copy than to have to recreate hours worth of mod_rewrite rules.

My fellow WordPress user and friend, Chip at The Binary Circumstance, who also just migrated from Typepad to WP told me that he too overwrote his mod_rewrite rules accidentally. I’m not really sure why it should be so easy to overwrite .htaccess. I wish there were a surefire protocol built into htaccess that would prevent this from happening.

For anyone reading this who knows more about .htaccess or mod_rewrite than I–and who finds that I’ve made an error here–please correct it for me. I want this post to be as accurate technically as it can be & I’m by no means an expert in this area.

Finally, when all is said and done it would’ve been almost impossible to do this conversion right without mod_rewrite and as of now, I’m 95% of the way there. When mod_rewrite works as you want it to it gives you the most liberated feeling in the world. But it sure does require a lot of hand-holding to get you where you want to go.

**Justin has created an interesting new mini-app which he’s calling Automated Article Adder. As he describes it, it’s a self-contained method to create website or blog pages without all the added software, installation, configuration and code. On a single page, Justin gives you every means you’ll need to create web pages and with almost none of the technical hassles that those of us face who personally maintain and code our sites. So, clearly this application is aimed at someone who wants to create blog or web pages but isn’t interested in learning all the technical stuff one has to master to do it. It’s perhaps an entry level pathway for those who know little about blogging but wish to try it. With the explosion of interest in blogging over the past year or so and hundreds of thousands of new bloggers minted each year, he should find a market for this useful product.

Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street says the coldly amoral line: “Greed is good.” Well, I think greed is funny. It’s also sad when its uncovered and faces the light of day.

Take the sorry plight of Jack Abramoff, former K Street powerhouse lobbyist and Tom DeLay hanger on. Today’s New York Times reveals this deliciously hilarious e mail that Abramoff sent to a rabbi:

“I hate to ask your help with something so silly, but I have been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc.,” Mr. Abramoff wrote in an e-mail message on Sept. 15, 2000, to Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a prominent social conservative who runs Toward Tradition, an alliance of Jews and evangelical Christians.

“Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none,” Mr. Abramoff wrote. “I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?”

You might gather from this that Jack Abramoff is an Orthodox Jew. I am a strongly identified Jew. But I don’t hold much stock in the theology or political stance of most Orthodox Jews. But even if I was a devoutly Orthodox Jew, Jack Abramoff would bring a chill to my very bones. A good Jew does good deeds. Jack Abramoff did good deeds. He stole tens of millions of dollars from various Indian tribes (how did they let him get away with this??) and used it to open a DC kosher deli so he and his friends would have a lunchtime watering hole in which they could hold their kosher heads high. He donated money to the DC Orthodox day school (again with clients’ money) which his own children attended. But there’s some kind of disconnect going on. Somehow Jack could feel good about stealing Native American money because he was doing good with it. Weird. That’s not the kind of Orthodox Jew I’d want to be.

Now to get back to the e mail: Abramoff’s pompous and terribly insecure personality is on display in his desperate need for validation from the good rabbi (even if it was fake validation). What I’m dying to know is what Rabbi Lapin wrote back to him. Did he reject him? Or did he coddle him as I’d expect this rabbi would do with such an important “personality” as Jack Abramoff? Of did he tell him it would be fine to call himself a Scholar of Talmudic Studies?

UPDATE:

Some of my intrepid readers have provided links to the Lapin-Abramoff correspondence (pgs. 42-43) and eye-opening it is. Before we quote this embarrassing material, I should note that Hillel’s comment below accepts Rabbi Lapin’s claim that he was merely humoring Abramoff in his reply. It’s clear below that Abramoff was dead serious and Lapin is a willing co-conspirator. The first e mail from Abramoff to Lapin is quoted above. The ones that follow are:

Lapin: Mazel tov, the Cosmos Club is a big deal.

Abramoff: Thanks so much for everything…

Lapin: Do let me know if you want to work on this today. I am home till I leave…to do the show…

Abramoff: Just tried you & got a busy signal.

Lapin: Sorry I didn’t get back till late…

Abramoff: …Hope we can chat tomorrow to get the awards moving. Thanks again.

Lapin: Yes, I just need to know what needs to b e produced…Letters? Plaques? Neither?

Abramoff: Probably just a few clever titles of awards, dates and that’s it. As long as you can be the person to verify them (or we can have someone else verify one and you the other), we should be set. Do you have any creative titles or should I dip into my bag of tricks?

The fact that the good rabbi goes along with Abramoff’s chicanery in this exchange does little credit to the stainless reputation that such a figure should have. With his continuing support for Abramoff I see Lapin as just another Baruch Korff (he was Nixon’s “chief rabbi” during the Watergate affair).

Jack Abramoff’s main problem was that he didn’t study enough Talmud or Chumash (Five Books of Moses). If he studied them at all, he surely forgot that little commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.”

tags congress, daniel_lapin, gambling, jack_abramoff, lobbyist, native_american_tribes, Orthodox_Jew, political_corruption, toward_tradition

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