Glenn Greenwald asks:
What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people?
This country, if Obama gets his way. Follow that link.
Category: Politics Page 15 of 73
I’ve got a lot of impatience with the Obama Administration (some expressed, some not), but if he got this right? I could be a little more chilled about the rest of it.
Once again, we’ve got an ugly illustration that “Big IP” has almost completely captured the US government’s policy positions, resulting in absurd things like this:
Right now, in Geneva, at the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO history, the body that creates the world’s copyright treaties is attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the interests of copyright users, not just copyright owners.
At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia, people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages), introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. This should be a slam dunk: who wouldn’t want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it’s possible for disabled people to get access to the written word?
The USA, that’s who. The Obama administration’s negotiators have joined with a rogue’s gallery of rich country trade representatives to oppose protection for blind people. Other nations and regions opposing the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU.
And what’s the awful thing that the US, EU, and Canada won’t stand for? From James Love:
I am attending a meeting in Geneva of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This evening the United States government, in combination with other high income countries in “Group B” is seeking to block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities.
The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil society NGOs, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the Blind in the US, the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), Bookshare.Org, and groups representing persons with reading disabilities all around the world.
The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type. These works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons with disabilities…
The opposition from the United States and other high income countries is due to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a “paradigm shift,” where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand rights for copyright owners.
Citizens? They’re just consumers. Shut up and buy what we want you to.
Per Joy’s note below (thanks!), the article has been corrected. This looks like they’re just hauling out the old US-Visit program again. Which is still a pointless waste of money and unnecessary collection of information, but less worrying, to me.
Assclowning of the highest order:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Jce236HZ8[/youtube]
More death and destruction in Pakistan, today:
Gunmen detonated a car bomb near police and intelligence agency offices on Lahore’s Fatima Jinnah road Wednesday, killing 23 people and wounding more than 100, officials said.
At least four men with rifles stepped out from the car and opened fire on the intelligence agency building, then set off a massive blast when security guards returned fire, officials said.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik suggested the attack could be retaliation for the government’s military offensive to rout Taliban militants from the northwestern Swat Valley.
It’s heartbreaking, what this country has gone through. What it seems to be destined to go through. Like any other people, most folks there just want to live their lives in a quiet peace. And like any other people, there is a tiny segment of sociopaths that seem willing to use death and destruction to achieve their own narrow interests. I really hope Pakistan can find a way to limit the damage they can do.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjaNQFChkCY[/youtube]
Looks to be something of a puff piece, but I still found this WaPo story to to be an interesting biographical read on Brian Moran. Unfortunately, Moran is going to need a lot more than this to win on June 9th. Here’s to hoping that he finds that “lot more” somewhere. Somehow.
From the WSJ:
At the suggestion of some of his staff, Mr. Gates has begun referring to himself as the “secretary of war,” saying that shows he and his department have no higher priority than the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At least David “Get Your War On” Rees will be safely employed.
What Atrios says:
The greatest practitioners of whatever it is we call “identity politics” in this country is have always been white males. The lack of self-awareness of this fact is what is termed unexamined privilege.
Josh Marshall on Cheney:
By any standard the guy is a monumental failure — and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain’t Shakespearean.
So as we see the big reporters trying to put him on some sort of equal footing with President Obama today, let’s remember that the great majority of Americans see Dick Cheney, accurately, as a clown. And mockery isn’t just the most effective but also the most morally apt response to the man.