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December 17, 2011

Lower Manhattan's Trinity Church has a "Solidarity" Problem.

Say it isn't so, Muffie. Over three centuries ago--and just about two decades after the English finally achieved permanent control of Dutch-built Manhattan--then-local Anglo-Saxon politicians and families did things that made Trinity Church, now standing at the corner of Wall and Broadway, a major landowner in Lower Manhattan. And nowadays, Trinity (and probably just trying to be a good landlord to its tenants) has a bit of Episcopalian egg on its face: it supports the Occupy Wall Street movement, but does not want protesters doing their protest thing actually on some of its real estate holdings. Surely, this is making some of the first English settlers of New York City spin in their churchyard graves. See at The Gothamist "Occupy Wall Street May Occupy Trinity Church's Property Today."

Protesters outside Trinity Church last month (Gothamist/Mattron).

Posted by JD Hull at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2011

Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-2011): Warrior Essayist.

He will be admired most because he was authentic and incapable of following anyone's script: of the Right, the Left, America, England, the entire West. As hundreds of news items from all over the world note this morning, Christopher Hitchens, the frighteningly-gifted author, essayist, pundit and student of the world, died yesterday at the age of 62 after an eighteen month battle with cancer. Adored, reviled and never boring, Hitchens was a Brit who moved in 1982 to America, where he quickly set up shop as a fiery amalgam of H.L. Mencken and George Orwell (with a dash of Hunter Thompson). Reams of copy and second-guesses will be written on his books, essays, television appearances, works, travels, career, life and personality. His two most famous books, God is Not Great (2007) and his biography Hitch-22 (2010), only scratch the surface of what he achieved. My two favorite pieces on his death are in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Washington Post. But I think the word "contrarian" (a word Hitchens even used to decribe himself) in both articles is a misnomer. Oh, Hitchens was much more than that.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 PM | Comments (2)

December 15, 2011

Russia: More Moxie in The Motherland.

Is the era of the cowed comrade about to end? With a population of over 140 million people, a land mass of 6.5 million square miles and enviable natural resources (including oil and gas) that are important to Europe, the Russian Federation, as a nation-state alone, will continue to occupy a huge role in global economics and politics over the next few decades. But recently (see our recent posts here and here) we've seen what might be the first stirrings in a new consciousness--a sea change in the way Russians feel, think and act--in the ideologically mercurial, troubled Mother Russia of the last 100 years. See by Charles Clover in the Financial Times "Russia’s Middle Class Finds Its Feet".

Mother Russia calls for More Attitude.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:35 PM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2011

Property Rights Dissipate in Keystone State: "Police Dude, where's my marijuana?"

A modest proposal. This all happened in Beaver County, Pennsylvania where I know from personal experience it's considered overly-formal and pretentious for lawyers to wear socks in open court. As reported by AP, and via Fox News, no less, see "Pennsylvania man asks officer: Can I have my weed back?"

Fair but unbalanced.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2011

Fear and Loathing on Russian Facebook.

More Big Ones from Mom-and-Pop Russia. Here's a headline you don't see every day. See at MSNBC "Angry Facebook Backlash After Medvedev Announces Russia Election Inquiry". Dang. Excerpt:

He [President Medvedev] announced the inquiry on Facebook--the same site used by organizers of mass rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Saturday--that called for the elections to be annulled and rerun. The protests were Russia's biggest opposition rallies since Putin rose to power in 1999.

Within hours, Medvedev received one insult after another on the social media website from people who made clear his response to the demonstrations was insufficient.

NBC correspondent Stephanie Gosk said the majority of the 12,000 comments were negative – a remarkable act of open defiance in a country where political activists are jailed and hostility to the government would have been unusual only a few weeks ago.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Is law developing to make Gaming the Net actionable?

The End of Cyber Creeps? No one wants to chill speech. And last week's opinion and jury verdict in Obsidian Finance v. Cox (D.C. Or.) may not be black-letter law perfect. (Despite Cox's post-trial comments that she can't pay the $2.5 million verdict against her, watch for some serious interest in and help with her appeal.) But something new if tricky might grow out of Obsidian and other extreme cases like it. Bloggers of the on-line hater and notes-from-the-underground persuasion may no longer have the luxury of what I call "Cartooning": (1) purposely attempting to mar reputations of non-public plaintiffs through malicious, bad and incomplete "reporting" in non-hot news scenarios and (2) manipulating the Net to make sure tabla rasa humans or those with no axe to grind see it. Do see in Forbes by Kashmir Hill (she handles a very difficult bit of news and its issues deftly) "Why An Investment Firm Was Awarded $2.5 Million After Being Defamed By Blogger". Lots of relief in these cases could come from the common law of nearly all (about 45) of the American states. Now, let's see. What were those four categories of defamation per se again? And the elements of false light privacy? And...

Posted by JD Hull at 08:36 PM | Comments (3)

December 11, 2011

In Russia: "I want new elections, not a revolution."

Decades-long totalitarianism casts a long and powerful shadow. It keeps good people wimpy but "smart" long after free elections and other democratic engines are triumphantly installed. Visit Moscow, Prague, Budapest--and even towns in eastern Germany. Caution and endearing caginess: it's all there in gestures, speech, eye movements and personalities of entire families. For too long they were told what to think, where to work, what to say, what to write. But Russia, the Big Dog in all this, might be changing. In a country and culture where since 1917 no one likes to diss The Man--ever, for any reason, and even after the institution of elections in June 1991--Russian citizens might be finding a voice. See, e.g., MSNBC's "Russians Stage Mass Protests Against Putin" on the perceived election-rigging in Russia earlier this month and general revolt against Vladimir Putin and his younger sidekick Dmitry Medvedev. What these protesters are doing takes big ones--and Spirit. Russian Spring is something we all should watch.

Big Ones.

Posted by JD Hull at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)