[via michaelgeist.ca]
Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill. The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill.
This classified CIA analysis from March, outlines possible PR-strategies to shore up public support in Germany and France for a continued war in Afghanistan. After the Dutch government fell on the issue of Dutch troops in Afghanistan last month, the CIA became worried that similar events could happen in the countries that post the third and fourth largest troop contingents to the ISAF-mission.
[via cnn.com]
Protesters against a planned anti-homosexuality bill in front of the Ugandan Mission to the U.N. in New York on November 19
As a gay man in Uganda, Frank Mugisha is used to the taunts, the slurs and the daily harassment of neighbors and friends.
But if a new bill proposed in the east African country becomes law, Mugisha could be put away for life, or worse, put to death for having sex with another man.
Amita was a sweet 9 year old girl who loved her family. One day, she was kidnapped, taken to a city far away and put in a cage. She was forced to have sex with dozens of men per day, and brutally beaten when she cried or refused. 5 terror-filled years later, suffering from sexually transmitted disease, she died from a beating at age 14.
[via arstechnica.com]
Harvard Law School professors Lawrence Lessig and Jack Goldsmith took to the op-ed page of the Washington Post today to slam the Obama administration’s approach to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)—and to threaten a lawsuit if ACTA is signed without Congressional oversight.
The US has positioned ACTA as an executive agreement rather than a treaty. Such a move means that ACTA doesn’t need Senate approval, but it also means that the agreement should not alter US law, either. If you want to change the law, you go to Congress.
[via engadget.com]
You didn’t think that just because Google started redirecting its Google.cn domain to its Hong Kong site, we were coming to a neat compromise to the big brouhaha between the search giant and China, did you? Oh no, brother, this thing is far from over.
China has now responded by whipping its state computers into a filtering frenzy, blocking and censoring out content it considers objectionable from Google’s HK-based search results. Adding to its show of strength, it’s expected the Chinese government’s influence will also result in China Mobile canceling a deal to have Google as its default search provider on mobile handsets.
[via bit-tech.net]
This is a really quick blog post and it’s one which is only really going to be relevant to our readers in the UK, but it’s still something everyone should be aware of.
Basically, the UK government is in the process of passing a bill which would regulate how UK residents might be able to use the internet. It’s called the Digital Economy Bill and you don’t need to take a very close look at it to see that it’s full of problems – not least of which is the hazy language and poorly defined punishments suggested for alleged illegal downloaders within the UK.
[via nationalpost.com]
A 15-year-old French schoolboy sprayed a teacher with tear gas after she described al-Qaeda as a “terrorist group.” “I had just explained that the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were carried out by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, as is written in the textbook,” said the history teacher, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He stood up and declared that al-Qaeda is not terrorist and that neither is the Taliban,” she said, adding that the boy then pulled out a spray can and doused her and a teaching assistant with tear gas.
[via bbc.co.uk]
The Start treaty led to huge reductions in the Russian and US nuclear arsenals.
Russia and the US have both said it should soon be possible to conclude a new nuclear disarmament treaty.
Officials in Moscow and Washington said US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had a “good conversation” reviewing negotiations.
The two countries are trying to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired last December.
The US says it has more than 2,000 nuclear weapons, while Russia is believed to have nearly 3,000.