The newest leaked draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is proposing that border security will have the ability to inspect digital devices, determine whether they contain “infringing material”, and then confiscate them.
So if you have MP3’s on your iPod leally ripped from you CD, they get to confiscate it without any due processas, “The draft allows for the confiscation or destruction of any device the agents deem suspect.”
The draft is available at WikiLeaks.
It started innocently enough, with an ad from Dunkin’ Donuts:
Rachael Ray, who gets pictured eating in so many places that I expect the Phoenix Mars lander to snap a picture, doing an add for Dunkin’ Donuts frozen drinks.
Notice the paisley silk scarf? So did Michelle Malkin (sorry, no link to her, ever), and she claimed that it was the Arab headdress known as the Keffiyeh, and that Dunkin Donuts was “hate couture”, and an endorsement of Jihad.
Well, the donut and coffee purveyor, did not do the sane thing, which would be to suggest that Malkin needs her meds adjusted, but pulled the ad and issued an apology, once again showing how American business capitulates to Jihadists.
Why am I calling Malkin a Jihadist? Let’s compare Ray and run the numbers:
It’s pretty clear to me which one is a Jihadist.
In any case, I am now boycotting Dunkin Donuts for capitulating to a terrorist.
*Credit where credit is due. I did not come up with this term. Tritumi at SP gets credit for this.
There are allegations that US troops are handing out coins with Christian bible verses to the residents of Fallujah, which the military has now confirmed:
At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.
Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. “Where will you spend eternity?” it asked.
He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.”
and
The U.S. military confirmed Thursday that a Marine in the Iraqi city of Fallujah was passing out coins with Gospel verses on them to Sunni Muslims, a U.S. military spokesman in Fallujah told McClatchy Thursday.
A single Marine, a lone gunman, whatever.
I call bullsh$#. If someone did this, than dozens of people knew that it was being done.
I read Clinton’s comments, and thought that they were really, REALLY, stupid.
Yesterday, I saw Olbermann’s comments, and while I agree with his basic take on the comments, that they were a very, very bad thing, I think that he was plainly overwrought.
With the possible exception of an editorial board meeting of the National Review, Olbermann’s MSNBC is perhaps the most intense pool of Hillary hatred in the media, though it is not an isolated phenomenon, you hear complaints about this everywhere from the local paper to NPR.*
So I’ve been thinking about it for the past 24 hours, and I’ve finally got a bit of a take on what she said, and the reaction to it among the traditional and internet political commentariat.
First and formost, this something that we are ALL thinking about. Every one of us, and we are unwilling to say it aloud, because it terrifies us.
Simply put, there are thousands of people who are looking at their guns, and wondering if they should, “Stop that uppity n***er“, and we all know that.
I don’t think that Hillary should have said this…I don’t think that anyone should have said this.
What’s more, I don’t think that any Democrat should have even made an Eagleton reference.
Her explanation, that, People have been trying to push her out of the race since Iowa, is factually true, and may explain but does not justify her comments.
As strange as it seems, I think that she is not talking about Bill Clinton in 1992, nor was she really talking about the assassination of JFK. She was talking about Eugene McCarthy†, who by most objective measures “won” the 1968 nomination process, after RFK was killed, at least the primaries, only to have it pried from him by the party bosses.
So this is where I think that statement came from, but that don’t make it right.
*This is why Clinton’s 3am ad was called racist, as was the statement that the nomination is for President (aka LBJ), and not leader of a civil rights movement (MLK), because I think that a lot of people inside and outside of the media, including Tweety, Pumpkin Head, and Olberman were looking for a reason to hate her.
†Truth be told, after losing McCarthy’s behavior showed him to be an embarrassment to the party and the nation **cough** World Series **cough**, and I don’t think that Hillary Clinton will do that.
It appears that a avid knitter has posted patterns online for various Dr. Who characters, and got a trademark takedown notice from the BBC.
It should be noted that trademark, unlike copyright for instance, is not for the benefit of the holder, but for the benefit of the consumer, to avoid confusion between products.
In fact, there is a specific exemption on this issue:
So, not only could Mazzmatazz potentially defend against the BBC takedown notice by claiming that her reinterpretation of the monster figures from the show is just that — a creative reinterpretation that doesn’t infringe any trademark, she might also be able to turn around and go after the people who used her pattern to create and sell little monster dollies on eBay. She could, in sum, achieve a win-win. That is, if the entire situation weren’t so ludicrous to begin with. After all, are the “unscrupulous individuals” who used the pattern that Mazzmatazz herself posted online to knit Doctor Who dolls and sell them online really making significant enough revenue that the BBC itself should be threatened?
I think that we have two lines, the the first IP lawyers and license holders insisting, either through legislation, regulation, and court precedent on an increasingly expansive definition of what is covered and what is prohibited, and the public and the political class, who are increasingly concerned about the degree to which this is being taken.
I think that the turning point was BlackBerry v. NTP, because when the Judge issued an injunction, BlackBerry’s (in retrospect remarkably savvy) response was that it could not separate government and commercial users, and so it would shut down the entire network, which included many members of Congress and Federal Judges, along with most of the Congressional aides and court clerks.
When the movers and shakers in IP regulation were going to be bitten, and bitten hard, on this, suddenly NTP’s demands became more reasonable, but the seed of doubt on IP triumphalism was sown.
They just audited $8.2 billion in Iraq spending, and once again no oversight to the people paid.
Money quote:
those results meant that almost 95 percent of the payments had not been properly documented.
**sigh**
Congress leaves 34 pages out of the farm bill that Bush Vetoed, so they will have to pass it again, have Bush veto it, and then do the override.
Someone should get fired because of this, but no one will be.
As is to be expected, the defense attorneys in the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, et al trial are making a number of motions to dismiss. It happens in any trial. It’s what defense attorneys are supposed to do.
This time however, they make a fairly good point, specifically that the convening authority is illegitimate because it’s head acted inappropriately (the equivalent to this in a civil trial would be along the line of a juror talking to an attorney involved in the case).
Seems like they are half way there, because the presiding officer has already removed Brig. Gen. Thomas W., “What, Me, Ethics?” Hartmann from the case for his inappropriate behavior.
The five defense lawyers representing the so-called high-value detainees, who face the death penalty if convicted, argued in a 127-page motion that military commission rules require the legal advisor to provide “neutral and objective” advice.
The lawyers cited testimony that last summer Hartmann urged prosecutors to target “sexy” cases and those in which American blood was shed, hoping to boost the tribunal’s image as the presidential election approaches.
….
The defense motion said Hartmann had steered Guantanamo prosecutors away from other cases and toward the five defendants in hopes of racking up high-profile convictions.
Seriously, they screwed up the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein too, turning one of the more detested figures in the Arab world a martyr.
On the up side, there is no way that these trials start before the elections now.
Silvio Belusconi has appointed Mara Carfagna, a “32-year-old former Miss Italy contestant and television showgirl”, to the post of equal opportunities minister in his cabinet, with the expected results, she is rejecting a gay pride march in Bologna in June, “gay prides are pointless.”
It appears that she thinks that there is no anti-gay bigotry in Italy.
A real candidate for Olbermann’s “Worst Person’s” segment.
Completely owned….
Wingnut radio talk show host talks about appeasement, but he does not know what Neville Chamberlain actually did.
In fact, I don’t think he knows who Neville Chamberlain was.
When Chris Matthews owns you, you have to be completely ownable…..I’ve never been that owned so completely by my cats, and as any cat owner knows, cats pwn their human. completely and routinely.
After something like 20 years of fraud and deception, someone in the US military has noticed that Achmad Chalabi is a con man who has played the Neocons establishment like a freaking violin.
Sources in Baghdad tell NBC News that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington’s once powerful neoconservatives.
What is it that Tom and Ray Magliozzi say? “Unencumbered by the thought process.”
Dude, read up on Bush and His Evil Minions™. You got nothing on them.*
*Truth be told, neither are intellectual slouches, having degrees in from MIT.
John Stewart v. Doug Feith.
This is ugly….fish in a barrel, children’s crusade, New Orleans Saints.
This makes a baby seal being clubbed look like Chuck Norris taking on a jillion Ninja.
Part 2
The Republicans have a new slogan that they are selling, “The Change You Deserve“.
The first problem with this is that it sounds punitive, like something a dominatrix would say to a bad, bad boy.
More problematic is that the slogan is already being use, by the anti-depressant Effexor.
**snort**
The Democratic governor of Oregon, who chose to appear at a McCain campaign event, because the sick old man threw out a couple of words on dealing with global warming.
Turkey.
Eric Alterman has a column up, Think Again: The Costs of Enforced Sexual Ignorance, in which he rightly excoriates the people who propose abstinence only education.
However, he misses the bigger point:
These programs are chosen as if specifically designed not to work. One long-term evaluation of 10 state abstinence-only programs concluded, “Abstinence-only programs show little evidence of sustained (long-term) impact on attitudes and intentions. Worse, they show some negative impacts on youth’s willingness to use contraception, including condoms, to prevent negative sexual health outcomes related to sexual intercourse. Importantly, only in one state did any program demonstrate short-term success in delaying the initiation of sex; none of these programs demonstrates evidence of long-term success in delaying sexual initiation among youth exposed to the programs or any evidence of success in reducing other sexual risk-taking behaviors among participants.”
(emphasis mine)
He seems to think that these programs are wrong headed, and failures as a result.
They are not. They are failures by design.
The driving force for the people behind these programs is that they believe that sex is evil.
The scripture , “It is better to marry than to burn”, states that marriage is preferable to lechery, but inferior to celibacy, and people behind this are not interested in protecting children, they are interested in punishing them.
In fact, not only to they oppose premarital sex and abortion, they oppose birth control for married couples too. Their goal is not to overturn just Roe, but also Baird. They want women barefoot and pregnant.
This is not the Onion, it’s the Washington Post, though, truth be told, the Onion probably does a better job of reporting.
And so are the US diplomats that they interviewed, because they find it somehow culturally alien that an envelope of cash won’t make everything better with regards to the Blackwater massacre in Baghdad.
As Spencer Ackerman so eloquently states:
If an unaccountable band of politically-connected soldiers-of-fortune shot my mother as she was trying to flee from a traffic circle, and the State Department offered me $5,000 in order to make the incident go away, I would not only be angry, I would be exploring my options for revenge. You don’t have to be an Iraqi to understand this.
If this happened in America, you would have family members demanding the death penalty
$5000 and a meaningless apology does not mean anything them, and it does not mean anything to us.
We are treating them like easily bought off sub humans, and they have legitimate cause to take exception.
The problem is that some of the soldiers in Iraq will die for what the mercenaries did in Iraq.
Yep, just what we need, commanders in Iraq assigning mercenaries to train Iraqi troops.
This has disaster written all over it.
So, we had an incident in the past couple of days in Sadr City, according to the western press, at least the New York Times, we had:
The ugly daily fight for ground in the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City unfolded Saturday at a small mosque next door to a hospital, damaging the hospital and a number of its ambulances, and near a group of children who were wounded as they gathered tin cans to sell for salvage.
So, according to US military reports, dutifully reported by the Times, we have bombed a Mosque and damaged a hospital in the process, and that’s the best spin that they can put on this.
Compare this to the foreign coverage, though:
Twenty patients and workers in al-Sadr Hospital were wounded and 49 civilian and ambulance vehicles were damaged when U.S. warplanes opened fire at the hospital on Saturday, a health official said.
Even with the best possible spin, we have an atrocity (whether it’s a violation of the law of war is another matter). We bombed a mosque, a house of worship, and we did so with so many, or such large, munitions that we damaged the hospital next door, and somehow this will lead us to win this war?
Since WWII, the US military has had a fetish about applying air power to win wars.
And now, in the campaign in Iraq, we are again relying on air power in ways that will, in the long run, cost more American lives, by moving the populace to supporting our opponents.
That’s the hed on the article in the The Washington Independent, and it’s a good three word synopsis of the superstition and hysteria that is the anti-vaccination movement.
See my earlier posts on the subject here, here, here, and here.