by Stephen Diamond on November 4, 2009 · 0 comments
Once again the numbers indicate the devastating impact of the failed strategy of the Hollywood unions.
Both the WGA and SAG were taken over by more militant sounding leaders several years ago and both vowed significant gains for the members. Both failed, leaving the lopsided DVD revenue sharing formula on the cutting room floor in order to focus on the so-called “new media” sector.
Yet revenue numbers indicate a major difference between the two that only highlights the mistake in strategy: DVDs generate 20-25 billion annually in rentals and sales while new media comes in at some just north of $200 million while models like that of Hulu and YouTube have yet to turn a dime of profit.
Now, both the WGA and SAG are back in the hands of the so-called moderates who have had little to say on this issue over the years. At SAG all the talk is of merger with AFTRA with little, well actually no, serious explanation of how merger would make the DVD issue any more tractable.
Blockbusters May Rescue Ailing 2009 DVD Sales | The Wrap.
by Stephen Diamond on November 3, 2009 · 0 comments
Al Gore has millions invested in his climate change myth according to the New York Times. He defends himself by calling his critics “deniers” - what, as if they were denying the Holocaust?
The myth, of course, is not whether or not global warming is taking place - although some of the same people who told us 20 years ago to expect an Ice Age are now telling us the opposite. No, the climate definitely changes and the direction is a subject of legitimate debate.
The myth, of course, is whether human carbon contribution has anything to do with it. Ice core samples over 400,000 years demonstrate that in fact warming PRECEDES carbon change by some 800 years.
Gore’s Dual Role in Spotlight: Advocate and Investor - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com.
by Stephen Diamond on November 2, 2009 · 0 comments
by Stephen Diamond on October 31, 2009 · 0 comments
Did the Beijing-friendly Andy Stern, head of the low wage immigrant workers based union SEIU, green light the Obama Administration’s new “constructive engagement” policy with China?
Stern has been a frequent visitor to China in recent years advocating closer ties between the Chinese Communists’ state controlled labor organization, the ACFTU, and the US trade union movement. Stern has ignored or patronized independent labor activists in Hong Kong during these visits. Perhaps the only seat of government Stern has visited more often than that of Beijing is the Obama White House.
Stern’s overtures to the Chinese may have led the White House to believe that organized labor would not complain if human rights and labor rights took a back seat in the US-China relationship. Sadly, that calculus appears to have been correct as labor’s voice on China has been nearly silent in recent months.
No wonder the Nobel Peace Prize winning Dalai Lama was told by the White House’s Valerie Jarrett to stay home until Obama had time to check in with his new partners in Beijing next month.
SEIU’s Stern Tops White House Visitor List - Washington Wire - WSJ.
See my debate with China-friendly labor intellectuals here.
by Stephen Diamond on October 27, 2009 · 0 comments
The first significant resignation in protest over the US quagmire to be in Afghanistan has taken place. A link to the letter from Matthew Hoh is below.
Hoh told the US Ambassador who heads up the Foreign Service that we “misunderstand” the insurgency’s “true nature” and that US support for the Afghan government “reminds me horribly of our involvement with South Vietnam.”
Hoh is a former Marine who fought in Iraq. He explains that what is alleged to be a battle against Taliban insurgents is in fact part of a 35 year old civil war over the control of the Pashtun territory.
His reference to Vietnam is both accurate and tragically ironic in that we are currently signaling to Vietnam, Burma and China that we will go easy on their human rights violations. Continued US presence, he argues, contributes to the legitimacy of the insurgency.
How long will it take the Obama Administration’s “human rights dream team” (Harold Koh, Michael Posner, Samantha Power, Rosa Brooks and Sarah Cleveland) to follow suit with this brave soldier?
Matthew Hoh first US official to resign over Afghan War.
by Stephen Diamond on October 25, 2009 · 0 comments
Sometimes there are no words.
This from Tyler Moselle the Acting Director of Harvard’s Human Rights Center:
Al-Qaeda is a transnational terrorist movement that inspires individuals in a decentralised fashion. It is not solely located in Afghanistan. If the goal is to destroy it, then Mr Obama must create a strategy geared to head-hunting individuals in multiple countries.
I wish this were mere fantasy as far as Obama is concerned but a key advisor to Obama now is Anne Marie Slaughter, who was at Harvard Law School when she made a similar recommendation in the wake of 2001.
FT.com / Comment - Obama must shift the debate about a troop surge.
by Stephen Diamond on October 25, 2009 · 0 comments
The Financial Times reports that Bob Iger at Disney is trying to shake things up in Hollywood.
“The business model that underpins the movie business is changing,” Mr Iger told the Financial Times “If we don’t adapt to the change there won’t be a business – that’s my exhortation to my team.”
Bottom line? Studios are becoming master marketers and distributors and leaving the up front capital intensive high risk production game to others.
“It creates a business out of distributing movies made by other talented people, without committing our own capital,” said Mr Iger.
With the turn to moderation underway at the Writers Guild and SAG one wonders if the Hollywood labor can keep up.
Disney boss tells Hollywood to rewrite script.
by Stephen Diamond on October 24, 2009 · 0 comments
The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece recently that caught my attention. It’s here. It’s an attack on the shift in Obama’s human rights policy apparently written by Bret Stephens and appearing in the WSJ on October 19.
The only problem is that it looks an awful lot like my two blog posts more than a week earlier here and, to a lesser extent, here.
The repeat by Stephens of the cut-off in funding to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center was what got me thinking, are conservatives now turning to the democratic left for the substance of their critique of Obama?
Of course, Stephens puts a typical neo-con twist on his piece, accusing Obama of “appeasement.”
My view is that Obama’s policy of “strategic reassurance” is a return to realism from neo-conservatism - that is, a view that we care less now about what is happening internally in countries like Iran than whether Iran is simply a national security threat. That’s what led me to write this earlier blog post: Obama - a liberal mugged by real politik.
It is unfortunate that some of our nation’s leading human rights advocates like Harold Koh and Michael Posner are now providing a kind of fig leaf for the new Obama policy by serving in the Administration.
I critiqued the “new realism” taking hold within the human rights community here. I argue that the broad human rights agenda should be the basis of independent movements for democracy not a rationalization for imperial American foreign policy
I emailed Alan Murray, executive editor at the Journal, to ask him to compare what I had written with what Stephens wrote, but got the typical “mailbox full” response. It’s the same old one way street between the blogosphere and the MSM.
Ironically, the last time something like this happened it was The New York Times. Three of their reporters interviewed me five times about the longstanding relationship between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, but then ignored the critical evidence I provided demonstrating that Ayers appointed Obama as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. They made an oblique reference in the story (by Scott Shane) to bloggers without having the integrity to actually cite me. You can read my reactions to that incident here.
by Stephen Diamond on October 24, 2009 · 0 comments
by Stephen Diamond on October 24, 2009 · 0 comments
