Designed by Paul Rand in 1966, Henry Ford II thought it was too radical.
Matt Taibi on David Brook's Haiti idiocy. A must read.
A friend of mine sent a link to Sunday’s David Brooks column on Haiti, a genuinely beautiful piece of occasional literature. Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn’t just any writer.
Taibi at his best.
Sean Condon at Megaphone wrote this great piece on Haiti’s 200 year run of exploitation.
Condon refers to the US $21 billion that Haiti paid to France as the price of its freedom. The payment at some points took 80% of the government’s revenue and was paid off only in 1947.
When Haiti could not make payments, the United States Marines were sent in to ensure the money resumed, at one point occupying the country for 15 years.
Now look at Iceland. It is refusing to pay US $6 billion it owes to Britain and the Netherlands. I suspect the gunboats won’t be leaving port.
Former senator wants to buy pieces of CanWest
Former Liberal senator Jerry Grafstein wants the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and National Post.
Charter Cities - The new Shanghais
Paul Romer, a Stanford prof, is championing the idea of international charter cities. Essentially, stable Western countries would – with permission and cooperation of the the host government – set up and run brand new cities in the world’s most deprived areas.
The idea is to either create stability through the good example of 24 hour power, proper sanitation, public transit, and the like or to ease the transition from one political faction to another.
Romer gives the example of Guantanamo Bay.
For decades, the Unites States and Cuba have been parties to a treaty that gives the United States administrative control over a portion of Cuban territory straddling Guantanamo Bay. In a new treaty signed by the United States, Cuba, and Canada, the United States could give up its treaty rights, and Canada could take over local administration for a defined period of time.
An administrator appointed by the Canadian prime minister would be responsible for setting up and enforcing the rules that apply in this special territory. The legal protection and institutional stability that the Canadians provide would attract foreign investors and foreign citizens to the city. As the city grows, the Cuban government would gradually allow freer movement of people and goods between the land it governs and the charter city. At the same time, supporting cities and suburbs would grow up on the Cuban side of the city’s boundaries. The charter city itself would eventually return to Cuban control.
In this case, a treaty creating a special administrative arrangement already exists and Hong Kong provides a model for how a city might be governed. An interesting variant would be one in which several countries (e.g. Canada, Spain, Norway, Mexico, and Brazil) stand in place of Canada alone.
Naomi Klein on trying to avoid becoming a brand herself:
The aversion extended even to the brand that I had accidentally created: No Logo. From studying Nike and Starbucks, I was well acquainted with the basic tenet of brand management: find your message, trademark and protect it and repeat yourself ad nauseam through as many synergised platforms as possible. I set out to break these rules whenever the opportunity arose. The offers for No Logo spin-off projects (feature film, TV series, clothing line . . .) were rejected. So were the ones from the megabrands and cutting-edge advertising agencies that wanted me to give them seminars on why they were so hated (there was a career to be made, I was learning, in being a kind of anti-corporate dominatrix, making overpaid executives feel good by telling them what bad, bad brands they were). And against all sensible advice, I stuck by the decision not to trademark the title (that means no royalties from a line of Italian No Logo food products, though they did send me some lovely olive oil).
The mysterious figure who has left roses and cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the writer’s birthday didn’t make it yesterday.
There must be something in the water that drives the Poles to create such great design.
The large and small of Eye Magazine
The publisher of Stack, the indie magazine service, has an interview with Simon Esterson, art director of Eye.
One day John was having a conversation with one of the publishers over at Haymarket and it became clear that they might be interested in selling the magazine… There were quite a lot of negotiations, partly because I don’t think Haymarket had ever sold a magazine before! They were very good at buying magazines but not so used to selling them – they didn’t have the paperwork immediately to hand and things like that.