It looks obvious

I’ll open this thread of links with good news, and it is coming from no other than New Jersey. There are many questions about privacy in the era of facebook, It will take time until we will be able to sort the right formulation of privacy and the limits we set on corporations like google from using the knowledge the gather about us. But it is even more important to keep the government from abusing its power and protect our privacy:

The Supreme Court of New Jersey became the first court in the nation yesterday to rule that people have an expectation of privacy when they are online, and law enforcement officials need a grand jury warrant to have access to their private information.

In state proceedings, the ruling will take precedence over what attorneys describe as weaker U.S. Supreme Court decisions that hold there is no right to privacy on the internet.

It was somewhat amusing when in France the court ordered Amazon to stop the practice of Free Shipping, in the name of protecting competition and consumers interests. This story joins it proudly . This is how you justify government monopoly on alcohol in Sweden:

Imagine that you suddenly get this question from a tourist. Perhaps you know exactly how you should answer. If not, it might be good to know what the results of a recent survey showed: The Swedish alcohol monopoly saves many lives each year. If strong beer (Note: beer with more that 3.5% alchohol per volume), wine and spirits were sold in grocery stores consumption would increase by 30%, researchers believe. And they stress that this is a conservative estimation—the increase could be more. They calculate that there will be approximately 1,600 more deaths each year, 14,000 more assaults and around 16 million more sick days.

So the monopoly makes a huge difference for a lot of Swedes. And because it will only be around as long as people want it to be, we at Systembolaget have to do everything in our power to make sure our customers are satisfied.

This has resulted in our having perhaps the world’s largest assortment of strong beer, wine and spirits. (And an assortment one not finds in Stockholm and Gothenburg, but also in Jokkmokk and Töreboda.)

But if am I already bashing the Europeans for their lack of respect for Human Rights and individual’s liberty I can’t avoid the Brigitte Bardot story. The idea that people stand a trail for insulting others and the lack of freedom of speech in France is simply sad. As a side note it is also very interesting how it is more important to some people, Bardot including, to treat animals like humans while they are treating other humans like animals…

French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

[...]

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

Reading the NY Times is often upsetting, but than once in awhile it demonstrates why it is an important newspaper. This story dig deep into who are the military analyst appearing on our evening news show, what motivate them and what is the quality of the analysis we are getting. It is not a short reading, but it is highly recommended.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

And the last link for this post will focus on the true conditions of bloggers. Sometimes considered an hobby or a more comfortable for those who chose it as profession the true nature beyond the risk of blogging reveals here:

Please come to rescue me!

Wal-Mart, the giant retailer which many like to hate, using its market share to force lower prices on music: 

The major music companies have been resistant to lowering their price on CDs, but now they may be dragged to that point: Wal-Mart, the largest retailer of music with an estimated 22 percent market share, has proposed a five-tiered pricing scheme that would allow the discounter to sell albums at even lower prices and require the labels to bear more of the costs. 

According to sources, the Wal-Mart proposal would allow for a promotional program that could comprise the top 15 to 20 hottest titles, each at $10. The rest of the pricing structure, according to several music executives who spoke with Billboard, would have hits and current titles retailing for $12, top catalog at $9, midline catalog at $7 and budget product at $5. The move would also shift the store’s pricing from its $9.88 and $13.88 model to rounder sales prices.

One of the clearest examples of the weakness of central planning, and the evil results it usually generates is the Farm Bill. This story is only one additional example:

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

[...]

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

[...]

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets. (my emphasis)

And the final link for today is much funnier. If you think that government monopoly on the legal means of violence is limited to live people - think again!:

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

I guess that this kind of story couldn’t come from anywhere on earth but France

The latest consumer protection, the French version, is so typical - the consumer has to pay more in the name of competition:

Amazon.com may not offer free delivery on books in France, the high court in Versailles has ruled. 
The action, brought in January 2004 by the French Booksellers’ Union (Syndicat de la librairie française), accused Amazon of offering illegal discounts on books and even of selling some books below cost.

The court gave Amazon 10 days to start charging for the delivery of books, which should at least allow the company to maintain the offer through the end-of-year gift-giving season. After that, it must pay a fine of €1,000 (US$1,470) per day that it continues to offer free delivery. It must also pay €100,000 in compensation to the booksellers’ union.

Retail prices, particularly of books, are tightly regulated in France.

It is one step forward two step back with france

The realization that wealth isn’t created simply by wishing so must be painful to France:

Pleasant as it is to find a backstreet bistro run by lace-hatted crones, where nothing appears to have changed for centuries, the changelessness in France is an expensive illusion. The crones will be paying 50 per cent income tax and 19.6 per cent VAT, plus property tax, business tax, rubbish collection tax, licensed premises tax and a "solidarity" tax to support the unemployed. "How," asks the President, "can we continue to believe that by taxing more and working fewer hours, we can ever create wealth and jobs?"