bustill

Sarah Palin is a Flaming Delusional Moron, for example, when she speaks of 'death panels'

2009-11-09T11:00:00.001-08:00

Sarah Palin is a Flaming Delusional Moron, for example, when she speaks of 'death panels'

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin is doubling down on her warning about so-called "death panels" that may emerge from the heath care bill the House passed Saturday night.

"We had been told there were no 'death panels' in the bill," Palin wrote in a note on her Facebook page soon after the bill's passage. "But look closely at the provision mandating bureaucratic panels that will be calling the shots regarding who will receive government health care."

The former Republican vice-presidential candidate first raised the prospect of bureaucratic panels making end-of-life care decisions for the elderly in August, a claim which was widely shot down by the White House and Democrats in Congress.

In an October post critiquing Sen. Max Baucus's (D-Mont.) health care bill, Palin made no mention of "death panels."

Democratic leaders have also denied that the bill the House passed by a 220-215 vote provides health care coverage to illegal aliens, but following her "death panels" claim, the former governor urged supporters to "look closely at provisions addressing illegal aliens' health care coverage too."

Palin did not provide additional evidence for either claim, instead launching into a charge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not live up to her promise of transparency in pushing through the bill.

"Speaker Pelosi's promise that Americans would have 72 hours to read the final bill before the vote was just another one of the D.C. establishment's too-common political ploys. It's broken promises like this that turn people off to politics and leave them disillusioned about the future of their country," Palin wrote.

"Speaker Pelosi has broken her own promises of transparency to ram a health "care" bill through the House of Representatives just before midnight," Palin continued. "Why did she push the 2,000 page bill this weekend? Was she perhaps afraid to give her peers and the constituents for whom she works the chance to actually read this monstrous bill carefully, if at all?"

While the former Alaska governor was highly critical of the bill, she applauded Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) for passing an amendment baring federal funding for most abortions.

"All of us who value the sanctity of life are grateful for the success of the pro-life majority in the House this evening in its battle against federal funding of abortion in this bill, but it's ironic because we were promised that abortion wasn't covered in the bill to begin with," Palin wrote. "Now we can only hope that Rep. Stupak's amendment will hold in the final bill, though the Democratic leadership has already refused to promise that it won't be scrapped later."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29287.html

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Are You Getting Scammed by Facebook Games?

2009-11-08T23:11:00.001-08:00

Are You Getting Scammed by Facebook Games?

Facebook games — Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Restaurant City — have become surprisingly effective at diverting time wasters among the social-networking crowd. More than 63 million people alone play FarmVille. But now accusations have surfaced that the games can lead some more gullible players, including children, into Internet scams, especially if they have a cell phone.

Here's how it works. You join FarmVille, a game on Facebook in which you can create a virtual farm by growing crops and livestock and tilling the earth. Through your toil, you earn virtual money, but to farm more efficiently or quickly, you can also invest real cash (through PayPal or a credit card) to buy virtual goods, such as seed or a tractor. Should you not have any real cash to spare on things that after all do not actually exist, you can instead accept an offer from one of the advertisers on the game site and get virtual cash in return.

These offers, generally known in the business as lead-gen (lead generators), will give you some seed/tractor money in return for signing up for, say, a subscription to Netflix or a credit card. But less scrupulous advertisers lure players in with an offer to take a bogus survey or IQ test. Once it's completed they require a cell-phone number to send you the results. When you enter your cell number and create a password, you have unwittingly subscribed to a service you never wanted but will be billed for. If you're a kid, the mysterious charge then appears on the phone bill of the parents, who often find that phone companies will not cancel services from a third-party provider — even if the parent cannot find out who that provider is.

Will O'Brien, general manager of social and casual games at TrialPay, a company that matches advertisers with potential online clients, told the San Francisco Chronicle that offers to swap personal information for virtual cash are designed to reach the young because they're less likely to have a credit card. But they often have cell phones, usually on their parents' plans. Indeed, while Facebook rules state that users must be at least 13, FarmVille seems to be aimed at a youthful crowd, at least by its marketing pitch: "Howdy Ya'll! Come on down to the Farm today and play with your friends ..."

The issue came to a head on Nov. 1 when the blogger Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch confronted some of the advertising providers at a virtual goods summit with accusations of scammy behavior. He blogged about it and also managed to find a former social-networking ad executive who admitted that the industry knew that not all the ads were on the up-and-up.

Mark Pincus of Zynga, the largest and most profitable of the social-networking game companies, (it created FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Cafe World) was quick to respond. "I agree with [Arrington] and others that some of these offers misrepresent and hurt our industry," he wrote on his blog. "We have worked hard to remove bad offers ... Nevertheless we need to be more aggressive and have revised our service-level agreements." He also took down all offers that involve sending a mobile-phone number. Offerpal, the biggest provider of offer advertising, also apparently responded quickly, replacing CEO Anu Shukla, shortly after a video of her confrontation with Arrington surfaced. Other game developers said the accusations amount to nothing more than the rants of an attention-hungry blogger.

(Read what happens to your Facebook profile after you die.)

According to the Better Business Bureau of Greater San Francisco, 222 complaints have been lodged against Zynga in the last 12 months. But most of these have not been about advertising scams, and Zynga has raised its BBB rating to a B+ from an F. Offerpal has a B rating. Industry figures suggest that roughly 90% of social-networking game players neither spend any real money nor click on any ads. And Facebook and MySpace say they monitor all applications closely and have suspended companies that violate its advertising protocols. In the last several days, both companies have revised their guidelines to be more stringent.

But clearly there's reason for caution. Other Internet entrepreneurs have piped up about the issue. James Hong, who co-founded Hotornot.com, said that even back in 2005 he'd stopped taking the kind of offers that ask for cell-phone numbers or a subscription. "The offers that monetize the best are the ones that scam/trick users," he wrote on his blog. "Sure we had [legitimate] Netflix ads show up ... but I'm pretty sure most of the money ended up getting our users hooked into auto-recurring SMS subscriptions for horoscopes and stuff."

All in all, might be just as well to earn virtual cash the old-fashioned way: by playing for it.

By BELINDA LUSCOMBE Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Obama Presses Senate to Act Quickly on Its Health Bill

2009-11-08T22:48:00.001-08:00

Obama Presses Senate to Act Quickly on Its Health Bill

WASHINGTON — The White House, growing concerned that the Congressional timetable for passing a health care overhaul could slip into next year, is stepping up pressure on the Senate for quick action, with President Obama appearing Sunday in the Rose Garden to call on senators to "take up the baton and bring this effort to the finish line."

Mr. Obama's remarks came just 14 hours after the House narrowly approved a landmark plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years and extend insurance coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans; the president called it "a courageous vote." But the votes had barely been counted when the White House began turning its attention to an even bigger hurdle: getting legislation passed in the Senate.

In the Senate, where proposals differ substantially from the House-passed measure on issues like a government-run plan and how to pay for coverage, the bill is stalled while budget analysts assess its overall costs. The slim margin in the House — the bill passed with just two votes to spare, and 39 Democrats opposed it — suggests even greater challenges in the Senate, where the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, is struggling to hold on to all 58 Democrats and two independents in his caucus.

Mr. Obama has staked his domestic agenda on passing comprehensive health legislation, a goal that has eluded presidents for decades. While Democrats were forced to make major concessions on insurance coverage for abortions to win House passage of the bill, they were nonetheless ebullient on Sunday, with many saying the vote gave them momentum to push the bill forward.

"For years we've been told that this couldn't be done," Mr. Obama said in the Rose Garden. Of the American people, he said, "Moments like this are why they sent us here."

But for all the exultation, there was a sense inside the White House and on Capitol Hill that the hardest work is yet to come. The House debate highlighted the pressures that will come to bear on senators as they weigh contentious issues like federal financing for abortion, coverage for illegal immigrants and the "public option," a government-backed insurance plan to compete with the private sector.

In the Senate, Mr. Reid has merged two bills into one. The fine print is not public, but the broad outlines are known. Unlike the House bill, which pays to extend coverage by taxing individuals who earn more than $500,000 a year and couples who earn more than $1 million, the Senate bill imposes a 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac plans that cost more than $8,000 a year for an individual or $21,000 for a family.

And unlike the House bill, which includes a national public plan, the Senate measure would allow states to opt out. But even that is too much government involvement for moderates like Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat-turned-independent, who pledged Sunday to wage a filibuster to block any plan with a public option in it.

"If the public option plan is in there," Mr. Lieberman said on "Fox News Sunday," "as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote."

Apart from substantive hurdles, the Senate bill faces procedural ones; Mr. Reid cannot bring it to the floor for debate until he gets an analysis, or "score," from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, expected later this week. The delay could push Senate consideration of the bill until after Thanksgiving, which could in turn make it very difficult for Congress to meet Mr. Obama's goal of signing a health bill into law by the end of this year.

The timing is crucial. Administration officials say Mr. Obama wants to wrap up work on health care so that he can turn his attention to other legislative priorities, including passing an energy bill and revamping financial regulations. But White House officials also know that the closer the final vote comes to the November 2010 midterm Congressional elections, the more difficult it will be to pass legislation.

Sending members of Congress home over an extended Christmas break without a health care bill in hand could prove disastrous politically. Democrats remember well the setbacks they suffered over the August recess when the Senate Finance Committee failed to meet Mr. Obama's deadline for finishing its measure, and lawmakers were pummeled in town-hall-style meetings around the country.

"The holiday break is viewed the same way as the August break," said one Democrat close to the White House, speaking anonymously to discuss strategy. "We don't want a repeat. We could probably survive it, but why take the chance?"

The White House began prodding Mr. Reid to move quickly even before Saturday's House vote. In a private meeting with Mr. Obama this year, Mr. Reid pledged to work to finish the measure by the end of December. But last Tuesday, Mr. Reid said the Senate was "not going to be bound by any timelines."

On Wednesday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, visited Mr. Reid. The two met on Capitol Hill to "continue the discussion on ways to get a bill done by the end of the year," said Mr. Reid's press secretary, Jim Manley, adding that Mr. Reid intends to bring the bill to the floor "as quickly as possible."

In case the leader did not get the message, Mr. Obama reinforced it Saturday night. In a statement after the House vote, he said he looked forward to signing comprehensive health legislation "by the end of the year."

A big question is whether Mr. Reid has the 60 votes that will almost certainly be necessary to permit debate to begin. Mr. Manley said Democrats hoped "the momentum from the House bill will make everyone realize that the Senate should at least have a chance to begin debate." Still, he conceded that there was "no glide path" toward getting the Senate to actually pass the measure.

As the Senate vote draws closer, the fight on the airwaves, where groups for and against the health bill are already spending millions of dollars on advertising, will only intensify. Republicans are also intensifying their opposition as they try to cast Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals, a theme echoed Sunday by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

"Soon, Senate Democrats will propose their own version," Mr. McConnell said in a statement. "We don't know how big it will be or how expensive, but we do know with certainty that it will mean higher premiums, higher taxes and massive cuts to Medicare to create even more government programs. That's not reform."

Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, issued a fund-raising appeal within hours of the vote. In an e-mail message to supporters, he said of Democrats, "Their unprecedented power grab will further bankrupt America while destroying the finest medical system in the world."

But Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had his own fund-raising appeal, an e-mail message sent to supporters shortly after midnight Sunday that said "thank you for helping to make this historic day." Below the text was a bold blue icon, a link to the committee's fund-raising site, that proclaimed in block letters, "Contribute Now."

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: November 8, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/health/policy/09healthcare.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

What Americans owe to those who serve

2009-11-08T22:05:00.001-08:00

What Americans owe to those who serve

The woman's Halloween costume featured a Third Reich motif.

This was last weekend in a sprawling bar-and-restaurant complex near U.S. 41 on the west coast of Florida. I had made the miscalculation of stopping by in pursuit of a quiet cheeseburger, not realizing that adults in trick-or-treat costumes were making the rounds on this sultry evening.

The woman (or the costume shop from where she had purchased her uniform) at least had the good sense to omit the actual swastikas, but that was the only bit of subtlety. The Heinrich Himmler high-fronted military cap, the boots, the swagger stick she kept slapping against her palm. . .some of the customers, playing along, did little comic goose steps as they passed her.

I looked up from my newspaper and tried to surmise if anyone was going to be offended enough by this odious display to leave. She beat them to it; she and her friends made a few quick passes through the aisles of the place, then returned to the night, ready to continue their revelry elsewhere.

Halloween in the United States is an increasingly odd holiday, no longer child's play, but on this evening I was thinking about another holiday, this one official, that is coming up this week: Veterans Day.

And, having unexpectedly encountered the woman in her getup, I found myself wondering what, six and seven decades ago, they would have made of it: what the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, who were sent across the ocean to defeat a brutal enemy, would have thought about this scene.

They're old men now, the soldiers who remain; many are frail and in ill health. It can be easy for us to forget that, when they were uprooted from their daily lives in the 1940s, no one knew what the history books would eventually say. No one knew the outcome. They were little more than kids, many of them; they were in effect told by our country:

Are you in school? You'll have to leave it. Have a new wife? You'll have to say goodbye to her. Working at a job you like? Tell your boss that you have to quit.

We need you to go halfway across the world, because we need you to save the world.

And they did it. Some 292,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in battle during World War II; another 114,000 died from noncombat causes. Some 671,000 U.S. troops were injured, many of them grievously.

The uniforms they put on were not Halloween getups; neither were the uniforms of the enemies they confronted across the oceans. On their way to fight the war, it's a pretty fair guess that they were scared and lonely. They understood that there was no guarantee they would ever be coming home.

Each November we are asked to pause and honor them, which is, or should be, an honor in itself. After the events of the last week at Fort Hood in Texas, with their reminder of the sacrifices that the men and women of the military make for us, Veterans Day will hold special meaning this year.

This November also marks the second anniversary of the death, at age 92, of my friend Paul Tibbets, who I got to know extraordinarily well during the last years of his life. I'd like to say a few words about him here.

At the age of 29, out of all the men and women in the U.S. military, he was selected for a task of almost unfathomable importance. He was told to recruit, organize, supervise and command a group of soldiers and airmen who were to train in absolute secrecy. If he succeeded, he was told, then the war could be won.

Someone had started a terrible fight; he was asked to finish it.

He did. He got his unit ready. And on an August day in 1945, he flew a B-29 he had named for his mother, Enola Gay, to Japan, where he and his crew dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was the single most violent act in the history of mankind, and he carried it out without flinching because he believed, in the deepest part of his heart, one thing above all others:

He could end the long war. He could stop the killing. All of the American soldiers who were on their way to the shores of Japan for a land invasion could turn around and go home, could raise families, could live again in a world at peace.

He understood the controversy, and the anger, with which his mission would be received by some. He understood that there were people who would forever hate him. He and I talked about it many times before he died. After the war, he told me, President Harry Truman asked him if people were saying unpleasant things to him because of the bomb. Paul Tibbets told the president that, yes, some people indeed were.

And Truman said:

"You tell them that if they have anything to say, they should call me. I'm the one who sent you."

So it's November again. Veterans Day is upon us.

There is a quotation variously attributed to Winston Churchill or George Orwell. Regardless of our individual politics, regardless of our beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of a particular war, the words are worth reflecting upon anew this week:

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

And so, to all who have served us, then, now, and in the future, a word of somber thanks, from those of us here at home.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene.

Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose new book is "Late Edition: A Love Story."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/08/greene.veterans.sacrifice/index.html

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Lao Tzu meets Yin Xi, the Guardian of the Gate of Tibet.

2009-11-08T13:58:00.001-08:00

Lao Tzu: Father of Taoism

Although ascetics and hermits such as Shen Tao (who advocated that one 'abandon knowledge and discard self') first wrote of the 'Tao' it is with the sixth century B.C. philosopher Lao Tzu (or 'Old Sage' -- born Li Erh) that the philosophy of Taoism really began. Some scholars believe was a slightly older contemporary of Confucius (Kung-Fu Tzu, born Chiu Chung-Ni). Other scholars feel that the Tao Te Ching, is really a compilation of paradoxical poems written by several Taoists using the pen-name, Lao Tzu. There is also a close association between Lao Tzu and the legendary Yellow Emperor, Huang-ti.

According to legend Lao Tzu was keeper of the archives at the imperial court. When he was eighty years old he set out for the western border of China, toward what is now Tibet, saddened and disillusioned that men were unwilling to follow the path to natural goodness. At the border (Hank Pass), a guard, Yin Xi (Yin Hsi), asked Lao Tsu to record his teachings before he left. He then composed in 5,000 characters the Tao Te Ching (The Way and Its Power).

Whatever the truth, Taoism and Confucianism have to be seen side-by-side as two distinct responses to the social, political and philosophical conditions of life two and a half millennia ago in China. Whereas Confucianism is greatly concerned with social relations, conduct and human society, Taoism has a much more individualistic and mystical character, greatly influenced by nature.

In Lao Tzu's view things were said to create "unnatural" action (wei) by shaping desires (yu). The process of learning the names (ming) used in the doctrines helped one to make distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, and "being" (yu) and "non- being" (wu), thereby shaping desires. To abandon knowledge was to abandon names, distinctions, tastes and desires. Thus spontaneous behavior (wu-wei) resulted.

The Taoist philosophy can perhaps best be summed up in a quote from Chuang Tzu:

"To regard the fundamental as the essence, to regard things as coarse, to regard accumulation as deficiency, and to dwell quietly alone with the spiritual and the intelligent -- herein lie the techniques of Tao of the ancients."

One element of Taoism is a kind of existential skepticism, something which can already be seen in the philosophy of Yang Chu (4th century B.C.) who wrote:

"What is man's life for? What pleasure is there in it? Is it for beauty and riches? Is it for sound and colour? But there comes a time when beauty and riches no longer answer the needs of the heart, and when a surfeit of sound and colour becomes a weariness to the eyes and a ringing in the ears.

"The men of old knew that life comes without warning, and as suddenly goes. They denied none of their natural inclinations, and repressed none of their bodily desires. They never felt the spur of fame. They sauntered through life gathering its pleasures as the impulse moved them. Since they cared nothing for fame after death, they were beyond the law. For name and praise, sooner or later, a long life or short one, they cared not at all."

Contemplating the remarkable natural world Lao Tzu felt that it was man and his activities which constituted a blight on the otherwise perfect order of things. Thus he counseled people to turn away from the folly of human pursuits and to return to one's natural wellspring.

The five colours blind the eye.

The five tones deafen the ear.

The five flavours dull the taste.

Racing and hunting madden the mind.

Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.

He lets go of that and chooses this.

The central vehicle of achieving tranquillity was the Tao, a term which has been translated as 'the way' or 'the path.' Te in this context refers to virtue andChing refers to laws. Thus the Tao Te Ching could be translated as The Law (or Canon) of Virtue and it's Way. The Tao was the central mystical term of the Lao Tzu and the Taoists, a formless, unfathomable source of all things.

Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.

Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.

Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.

These three are indefinable, they are one.

From above it is not bright;

From below it is not dark:

Unbroken thread beyond description.

It returns to nothingness.

Form of the formless,

Image of the imageless,

It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it - there is no beginning.

Follow it and there is no end.

Stay with the Tao, Move with the present.

Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.

Lao Tzu has Yin Xi appear to the Barbarian as the Buddha.

Lao Tsu taught that all straining, all striving are not only vain but counterproductive. One should endeavor to do nothing (wu-wei). But what does this mean? It means not to literally do nothing, but to discern and follow the natural forces -- to follow and shape the flow of events and not to pit oneself against the natural order of things. First and foremost to be spontaneous in ones actions.

In this sense the Taoist doctrine of wu-wei can be understood as a way of mastering circumstances by understanding their nature or principal, and then shaping ones actions in accordance with these. This understanding has also infused the approach to movement as it is developed in Tai Chi Chuan.

Understanding this, Taoist philosophy followed a very interesting circle. On the one hand the Taoists, rejected the Confucian attempts to regulate life and society and counseled instead to turn away from it to a solitary contemplation of nature. On the other hand they believed that by doing so one could ultimately harness the powers of the universe. By 'doing nothing' one could 'accomplish everything.' Lao Tzu writes:

The Tao abides in non-action,

Yet nothing is left undone.

If kings and lords observed this,

The ten thousand things would develop naturally.

If they still desired to act,

They would return to the simplicity of formless substance.

Without form there is no desire.

Without desire there is tranquillity.

In this way all things would be at peace.

In this way Taoist philosophy reached out to council rulers and advise them of how to govern their domains. Thus Taoism, in a peculiar and roundabout way, became a political philosophy. The formulation follows these lines:

The Taoist sage has no ambitions, therefore he can never fail. He who never fails always succeeds. And he who always succeeds is all- powerful.

From a solitary contemplation of nature, far removed from the affairs of men, can emerge a philosophy that has, both in a critical as well a constructive sense -- a direct and practical political message. Lao Tzu writes:

Why are people starving?

Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.

Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?

Because the rulers interfere too much.

Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do people think so little of death?

Because the rulers demand too much of life.

Therefore the people take life lightly.

Having to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Taichi/lao.html

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Ahoy Pirates: France Approves Wide Crackdown on Net Piracy

2009-10-22T11:51:00.001-07:00

Ahoy Pirates: France Approves Wide Crackdown on Net Piracy

PARIS — France thrust itself into the vanguard of the global battle against digital piracy on Thursday, approving a plan to deny Internet access to people who illegally copy music and movies.

The country's highest constitutional court approved a so-called three-strikes law after rejecting the key portions of an earlier version last spring. Supporters say they hope that France, by imposing the toughest measures yet in the battle against copyright theft, will set a precedent for other countries to follow.

Britain appears set to introduce similar legislation next month.

"France is acting as a spearhead," said David El Sayegh, director general of the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique, the French music industry association. "Piracy is not just a French problem, it is a global problem."

Critics of the legislation call the sanctions draconian and say they will be ineffective in curbing file-sharing, or in converting pirates into customers of legitimate digital media businesses. They argue that disconnecting Internet accounts is unfair because of the increasing importance of the Web as a venue for commerce and political expression.

"It is a very sad day for Internet freedom in France," said Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesman for La Quadrature du Net, a group that had campaigned against the law. He said opponents of the law would seek new ways to subvert it.

The law creates a new agency that will send out warning letters to people accused of copying music, movies or other media content illegally via the Internet. Those who ignore a second warning could face yearlong suspensions of their Internet access, as well as fines.

Mr. El Sayegh said that members of the agency would be appointed in November and that the first letters could go out as soon as January. Suspensions could occur as soon as the middle of next year, he added.

The court reviewed the proposal because of a challenge by the opposition Socialist Party following parliamentary approval in September. The reversal is a big victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife, Carla Bruni, a singer and model, had championed the measure.

The main difference between the initial proposal blocked by the constitutional court and the version approved Thursday is that a judge, rather than the new agency itself, will be required to sign off on any account suspensions. Without that protection, the court had said, the law would have violated free-speech protections.

Campaigners against the plan complained that even the new version will deny the accused the right to due process because the procedures will follow a fast-track procedure similar to that employed for traffic violations.

Approval of the law in France comes as the European Parliament, which last spring sought to enshrine Internet access as a fundamental human right, potentially blocking any government-imposed cutoffs, appears to be softening its opposition to such penalties. New provisions included in a proposed telecommunications law would permit account suspensions, analysts say.

Across Europe, policy makers have been wary about embracing "three strikes" solutions. Critics say disconnecting people's Internet access is inconsistent with many governments' stated objective of increasing broadband penetration.

But Britain, which had consistently ruled out account suspensions, reversed course last month, saying that it would consider such measures as a last resort in the battle against file-sharing.

The shift exposed a rift among some prominent British musicians, after the singer Lily Allen weighed in on file-sharing on her blog, opining that it was hurting the prospects of young, emerging artists. She criticized musicians like Ed O'Brien of the group Radiohead, who have said that it was futile to criminalize file-sharing.

The British government's proposal, expected to be introduced in Parliament in November, has drawn strong opposition from some Internet service providers. BT, the biggest British telecommunications company, says enforcement would be expensive, raising costs for all broadband customers.

In France, the government has estimated that the law could result in sanctions against 50,000 people a year, according to leaked documents that were published during the debate on the plan. More than two-dozen judges will oversee the penal system created to enforce the law, according to the reports.

But Mr. El Sayegh said that he thought the actual number of suspensions would be low, because the threat of suspensions would convert copyright cheats into customers of legitimate online music, movie and other media services.

"The warnings will have a strong deterrent effect," he said. "This law is not a punishment against Internet users."

By ERIC PFANNER

Published: October 22, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/technology/23net.html?_r=1

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Rebranding America by Bono

2009-10-21T21:14:00.001-07:00

Rebranding America by Bono

By BONO

Published: October 17, 2009

A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive.

One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement.

When Mr. Obama takes the stage at Oslo City Hall this December, he won't be the first sitting president to receive the peace prize, but he might be the most controversial. There's a sense in some quarters of these not-so-United States that Norway, Europe and the World haven't a clue about the real President Obama; instead, they fixate on a fantasy version of the president, a projection of what they hope and wish he is, and what they wish America to be.

Well, I happen to be European, and I can project with the best of them. So here's why I think the virtual Obama is the real Obama, and why I think the man might deserve the hype. It starts with a quotation from a speech he gave at the United Nations last month:

"We will support the Millennium Development Goals, and approach next year's summit with a global plan to make them a reality. And we will set our sights on the eradication of extreme poverty in our time."

They're not my words, they're your president's. If they're not familiar, it's because they didn't make many headlines. But for me, these 36 words are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity — if the words signal action.

The millennium goals, for those of you who don't know, are a persistent nag of a noble, global compact. They're a set of commitments we all made nine years ago whose goal is to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Barack Obama wasn't there in 2000, but he's there now. Indeed he's gone further — all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.

Many have spoken about the need for a rebranding of America. Rebrand, restart, reboot. In my view these 36 words, alongside the administration's approach to fighting nuclear proliferation and climate change, improving relations in the Middle East and, by the way, creating jobs and providing health care at home, are rebranding in action.

These new steps — and those 36 words — remind the world that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

All right ... I don't speak for the rest of the world. Sometimes I think I do — but as my bandmates will quickly (and loudly) point out, I don't even speak for one small group of four musicians. But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president's words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.

In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it's resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.

It is a strangely unsettling feeling to realize that the largest Navy, the fastest Air Force, the fittest strike force, cannot fully protect us from the ghost that is terrorism .... Asymmetry is the key word from Kabul to Gaza .... Might is not right.

I think back to a phone call I got a couple of years ago from Gen. James Jones. At the time, he was retiring from the top job at NATO; the idea of a President Obama was a wild flight of the imagination.

General Jones was curious about the work many of us were doing in economic development, and how smarter aid — embodied in initiatives like President George W. Bush's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief and the Millennium Challenge Corporation — was beginning to save lives and change the game for many countries. Remember, this was a moment when America couldn't get its cigarette lighted in polite European nations like Norway; but even then, in the developing world, the United States was still seen as a positive, even transformative, presence.

The general and I also found ourselves talking about what can happen when the three extremes — poverty, ideology and climate — come together. We found ourselves discussing the stretch of land that runs across the continent of Africa, just along the creeping sands of the Sahara — an area that includes Sudan and northern Nigeria. He also agreed that many people didn't see that the Horn of Africa — the troubled region that encompasses Somalia and Ethiopia — is a classic case of the three extremes becoming an unholy trinity (I'm paraphrasing) and threatening peace and stability around the world.

The military man also offered me an equation. Stability = security + development.

In an asymmetrical war, he said, the emphasis had to be on making American foreign policy conform to that formula.

Enter Barack Obama.

If that last line still seems like a joke to you ... it may not for long.

Mr. Obama has put together a team of people who believe in this equation. That includes the general himself, now at the National Security Council; the vice president, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the Republican defense secretary; and a secretary of state, someone with a long record of championing the cause of women and girls living in poverty, who is now determined to revolutionize health and agriculture for the world's poor. And it looks like the bipartisan coalition in Congress that accomplished so much in global development over the past eight years is still holding amid rancor on pretty much everything else. From a development perspective, you couldn't dream up a better dream team to pursue peace in this way, to rebrand America.

The president said that he considered the peace prize a call to action. And in the fight against extreme poverty, it's action, not intentions, that counts. That stirring sentence he uttered last month will ring hollow unless he returns to next year's United Nations summit meeting with a meaningful, inclusive plan, one that gets results for the billion or more people living on less than $1 a day. Difficult. Very difficult. But doable.

The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, "Don't blow it."

But that's not just directed at Mr. Obama. It's directed at all of us. What the president promised was a "global plan," not an American plan. The same is true on all the other issues that the Nobel committee cited, from nuclear disarmament to climate change — none of these things will yield to unilateral approaches. They'll take international cooperation and American leadership.

The president has set himself, and the rest of us, no small task.

That's why America shouldn't turn up its national nose at popularity contests. In the same week that Mr. Obama won the Nobel, the United States was ranked as the most admired country in the world, leapfrogging from seventh to the top of the Nation Brands Index survey — the biggest jump any country has ever made. Like the Nobel, this can be written off as meaningless ... a measure of Mr. Obama's celebrity (and we know what people think of celebrities).

But an America that's tired of being the world's policeman, and is too pinched to be the world's philanthropist, could still be the world's partner. And you can't do that without being, well, loved. Here come the letters to the editor, but let me just say it: Americans are like singers — we just a little bit, kind of like to be loved. The British want to be admired; the Russians, feared; the French, envied. (The Irish, we just want to be listened to.) But the idea of America, from the very start, was supposed to be contagious enough to sweep up and enthrall the world.

And it is. The world wants to believe in America again because the world needs to believe in America again. We need your ideas — your idea — at a time when the rest of the world is running out of them.

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE and (Product)RED, is a contributing columnist for The Times.

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Reefer Madness:Justice Dept. to Stop Pursuit of Medical Marijuana Use

2009-10-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

Reefer Madness: Justice Dept. to Stop Pursuit of Medical Marijuana Use

WASHINGTON — People who use marijuana for medical purposes and those who distribute it should not face federal prosecution, provided they act according to state law, the Justice Department said on Monday in a directive with political and legal implications.

In a memorandum to federal prosecutors in the 14 states that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the department said it was committed to the "efficient and rational use" of its resources and that going after individuals who were in "clear and unambiguous compliance" with state laws did not meet that standard.

At the same time, the department emphasized that it would continue to pursue those who use the concept of medical marijuana as a ruse for drug trafficking. "Marijuana distribution in the United States remains the single largest source of revenue for the Mexican cartels," the department said in pledging that prosecuting the makers and sellers of illegal drugs, including marijuana, would remain a "core priority."

The Justice Department policy statement, foreshadowed since shortly after President Obama took office, was laid out on Monday in an announcement by Attorney GeneralEric H. Holder Jr., who made public a memo from David W. Ogden, the deputy attorney general, to the United States attorneys in the affected states, most notably California.

The announcement formalizes the Obama administration's departure from the policies of former President George W. Bush, under whose administration federal agents raided medical marijuana distributors that violated federal statutes, even if the distributors appeared to be complying with state laws.

Advocates of medical marijuana say the substance can reduce chronic pain, nausea and other ailments associated with cancer and other serious illnesses. In 1996, California became the first state to make it legal to sell marijuana to people with doctors' prescriptions. The other states that allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes are Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

"This is a major step forward," said Bruce Mirken, communications director for theMarijuana Policy Project, which supports legalizing the substance. "This change in policy moves the federal government dramatically toward respecting scientific and practical reality."

The Justice Department indicated that the memo should not be interpreted as legalizing marijuana. "Rather, this memorandum is intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion," the department said.

But there will inevitably be clashes, in political arenas and in courtrooms, over what constitutes "clear and unambiguous compliance" with state laws, and whether marijuana distributors ostensibly in business to provide the substance for medical use are being infiltrated by drug cartels.

Solomon Moore contributed reporting from Los Angeles.

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

Get Off Obama's Back ...second thoughts from Michael Moore

2009-10-14T11:27:00.001-07:00

Get Off Obama's Back ...second thoughts from Michael Moore

Friends,

Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. "No, I don't think so," I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he's now conducting the two wars he's inherited. "Yeah," she said, "but to tell him, 'Now earn it!'? Give the guy a break -- this is a great day for him and for all of us."

I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack's big day. Did I -- and others on the left -- do the same?

We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation -- financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?

Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to get out the vote last November? C'mon! We're the majority now -- the majority by a significant margin! We call the shots -- and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say -- or else.

All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is 202-456-1414). But don't abandon the best hope we've had in our lifetime for change. And for God's sake, don't head to bummerville if he says or does something we don't like. Do you ever see Republicans behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican presidents and they still couldn't get prayer in the public schools, or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that, but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came up nearly empty handed. No wonder they've been driven crazy lately. They'll never have it as good again as they've had it since Reagan took office.

But -- do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering, we just pack up our toys and go home.

So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere are celebrating -- that America now has a sane and smart man in the White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two daughters.

Many, for the past couple days (yes, myself included), have grumbled, "What has he done to earn this prize?" How 'bout this:

The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man -- a man who opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning -- offered to end the insanity. The world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson light the fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped off the nations on this planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn't attack us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.

And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.

So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.

One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio). The fact that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur -- and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as "Barack Hussein Obama"!) -- is more than reason enough he should be in Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along with him. 'Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its hat to all of us -- we, the American people, had conquered some of our racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans -- and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate -- we had all seen enough. It was time for change.

Thank you, Barack Obama, for giving us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you promised to do. We need it. The world needs it.

My prediction for the future? You become the first *two-time* winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!

Fred (that's Norwegian for "Peace"),
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe

What The Nobel Commitee Is Trying To Tell America

2009-10-14T11:25:00.001-07:00

What the Nobel committee is trying to tell America

Surprised that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize? So was Barack Obama. But like the decision to put the Olympics in Rio, there is nothing mystifying about it to people outside America, and the message to us is clear if we will listen for it.

Rio was a surprise only because Americans persuaded themselves that the pitches for Chicago by the president and Oprah were somehow unusual and special, even though every city in the running was represented by a head of government, except Madrid, which was represented by King Juan Carlos of Spain. In the end, the Olympic Committee understandably decided that it was time the games were held someplace in South America.

As for the peace prize, Americans, including their president, have been focused on domestic issues like health care, and when we do focus on the world we tend to think in terms of containing regional troublemakers through the exertion of American power, while people in the rest of the world see America as, sometimes, the biggest troublemaker of all, largely through its long history of using force where negotiation would do.

But to fully understand this, you first need to understand the Naguib Mahfouz Factor.

Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian author of 50 novels. He won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1988. I remember this because it was second or third year that the committee had gone for someone who didn't write in English and was pretty much unknown in America. The Russian Joseph Brodsky had won the year before and a Nigerian author the year before that. The Nobel committee was bent on honoring people we never heard of.

In the newsroom we made fun of this. We made an awful, irreverant list in the newsroom of his "books" that included "Naked Came the Terrorist," "Moby Sheik," "To Kill a Jew," and "A Tale of Two Camels." We were all young and thought this was a hoot. But we also did some research on the guy, and found he was being threatened by extremists for his support of the Camp David accords. I only learned while researching this post that the extremists got to him eventually, stabbing him in the neck and hand, leaving him unable to write without great pain. Mahfouz died in 2006.

The point is that the Nobel committee awarded him the prize, not just because some of them had read and liked his novels, but because they wanted to use the prize to call world attention to deserving authors, something more useful to Egyptian, Russian and Nigerian writers than to Americans, and also because they wanted to make a statement of support for a guy who was a force for good in a troubled region. Mahfouz returned the favor a year later when he said those who threatened Salman Rushdie were terrorists. Mahfouz wound up stabbed in the neck but Rushdie, whose novel "The Satanic Verses" is hilarious but arguably sacrilegious, is alive and well and writing at the age of 62.

So are we clear on this? The Nobel committee does not merely form an opinion on who's best at something or who has done the most. Its choices are gestures, meant to encourage what the judges feel should be encouraged. Which brings us back to Barack Obama.

For several administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, it has been U.S. policy to snub regional troublemakers, as if access to top U.S. officials is a privilege so wonderful that we must dole it out carefully as a reward for good behavior. President Obama has taken a different course, showing a willingness to engage afresh with a lot of people who haven't exactly been pulling their weight on world peace.

This simple change has not gotten a great deal of notice in the United States. The president himself seems to regard it as no big deal, merely something he thinks it's worth the effort to try, in case it works. Even the president's most intractable critics have barely mentioned it, considering other things more important to argue about.

But in the rest of the world, this is a big deal. We may feel we were only snubbing a couple of guys – North Korea's Kim, Libya's Ghaddafi, Iran's Ahmadinejad – who are neither major world figures nor particularly respectable. But from outside the United States, where everybody feels like a little guy compared to America the last world power, a fresh willingness to engage, even occasionally to consult, seems like a real good idea.

President Obama is right to suggest that the peace prize is not really meant for him. I don't think it is, either. I think it's meant for America, as encouragement to stick with this new business of being willing to talk to other world leaders.

And if you still bristle at a president winning the Nobel Prize less than a year into office, I think you're taking the prize too seriously. George Bernard Shaw, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, said he could forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite but not for inventing his prize.

/ `--'( ,,,
< [] []////////|:::)
\_.--.(realdeltablues

http://bustill.blogspot.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/riZe