Clueless music executives Part Infinity

Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,'" she said.

I blogged about this a few weeks ago but this quote was so cluelessly, crudely offensive that it deserves another kick with a hobnailed boot.

Jennifer, your expressed legal opinion not only makes me want to immediately grab up a stack of my CDs that I paid vastly inflated prices for and 'steal them' by burning them to my computer - Hell, it makes me want to come to your house and steal some of your stuff.

It's up there for sheer kleptocratic robber baron disdain and arrogant entitlement to your customer's business as the TV executive who said people using Tivos to avoid advertising were stealing TV. You see what I mean? The kind of stuff that makes you want to burn cars and go looting in these people's neighborhoods. We're the consumers, digital serfs nothing more, and any bright idea in our little heads that we actually 'own' anything needs to be beaten out of us.

When radio broadcasting began in Australia back in the 1920's, the bright idea the business and government elites had for a business model was sealed sets. You paid your license allowing you to be officially sanctioned to receive radio waves then you picked a radio station and bought their sealed set, with it's broadcast tuner preset to that radio station and only that station.

Building your own radio or breaking the seal on your preset one and taking control of the tuner were illegal. You were stealing if you did this and were condemned as a thief.

Does anything seem, I don't know, familiar or applicable about any of this?

The whole model collapsed in a few years of course. How could you keep people from building their own radios or adapting the ones they had? Plus, almost nobody bought the deliberately crippled technology of the sealed sets.

So it goes.

Sunday Linkblast - Dec 30

Last Linkblast for 2007! Four years to singularity! Woot!

• Best and Worst from Eric Margolis
  Signs of change bring hope?
  
  
• Stolen Election in Kenya?
  The polls said the voters wanted change, so did the vote tallies until the curtain went down, suddenly the old regime pulls out a last minute win. Rioting and flames tonight as inter-tribal conflict looms.
  
  
• Human face fish
  Goddamn that's creepy.
  
  
• Now they want to cooperate
  You know the Republicans sense electoral Armageddon when they start whining about bi-partisanship.
  
  
• The NDP prepare for an election
  It's coming and this time the NDP is ready for the standard Liberal appeals for NDP votes they haven't earned.
  
  
• Kristol shacks up with the Grey Lady
  The New York Times decides what they really need is a correspondent who is always grotesquely wrong about absolutely everything.

Privacy and freedom watch

Privacy International has released their 2007 International Privacy ranking. The US has been downgraded from an extensive surveillance society to an endemic surveillance society. This puts them in the same ranking as China, Russia and Malaysia.

Don't be too smug though, Canada dropped two rankings in one year. We are now in the 'Some Safeguards but weakened protection' category.

Looking south, we can see where this gradualist decay leads, the only question remains if we want to go there - or is it that we're being driven there?

Here comes the crass partisanship: The NDP are legitimately the most libertarian mainstream political party in Canada. Left wing libertarianism that believes its more important to make people free than capital.

The Greens? The Greens are now a political adjunct to the Liberal Party. Their political allegiance and ideology - such as there ever was - are now in service to the political destiny of Stephane Dion.

Who's Liberal Party was in power and was himself in cabinet when Maher Arar was kidnapped and tortured. When Security certificates, preventative detention and compelled testimony became law. Yes the Liberals opposed extending the most egregious elements past their sunset date - does anybody believe they would have done so if they had been in power rather than in opposition?

And as for the Conservatives, they fought to keep the provisions past their sunset period and have flirted with the religious war terminology of their ideological soul-mates south of the border. They've responded to important and substantive queries about human rights protection in Afghanistan with hysterical and borderline eliminationist rhetoric about 'Taliban sympathizers'.

Privacy and freedom along with the environment, pocketbook issues and Afghanistan will be the election issues - shall we say late spring? None of them will reflect well on either the Conservatives or the Liberals.

Worst of the worst

The Beast presents The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007:

10. Alberto Gonzales

Crimes: The most truckling, amoral flunky to ever serve as Attorney General. A jurisprudent organelle, he manifests no concept of the law independent of its expediency to the president. Would smilingly accuse himself of providing material support to al Qaeda at President Bush's request, hurriedly plead guilty, sign his own death warrant and flip the switch himself. His testimony before congressional committees is to public service what cholera is to the small intestine. As first Hispanic Attorney General, Gonzo typifies the self-betrayal and ethical compromise necessary for minorities to become successful Republicans. Been felching sweet approval from Bush's lily-white ass since Texas. A conscienceless, memo-drafting, loophole-crafting liar for hire, pushing for all the worst administration policies, including nixing habeas corpus, denying and then defending rendition, torture, political firings, and a ton of other evil stuff. He even visited a seriously ill and disoriented John Ashcroft at the hospital, attempting to coax him into reauthorizing a clearly illegal wiretapping program. The only Attorney General who ever could have made John Ashcroft a sympathetic character by contrast.

Exhibit A: "The fact that the Constitution -- again, there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away."

Sentence: Death by dull guillotine, head bent by Beckham.

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn't get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn't cover. You deserve it, chump.

Someone should do this for Canada...

Bush broke the cardinal rule: Don't screw with the CIA

...and the NIE estimate that says Iran has no nuclear program which neatly knee-capped the neo-con's campaign to conquer Iran leaving them enraged and sputtering? It's best understood as what Watergate conspirator Donald Segretti used to call a good old fashioned 'ratfucking'

Gin up intelligence and blame us when the lies are discovered? Humiliate us publicly, hell, expose and endanger one of our undercover agents destroying her career to publicly punish someone for pointing out your lies?

The CIA's been accused of killing Presidents for less.

"Merry Christmas, Mr. President," hissed the men in cloaks as they plunged a dagger into George Bush's back.

America's spooks finally had their revenge. After being forced by the White House in 2002-03 to concoct a farrago of lies about Iraq, and then take the blame for the ensuing fiasco there, the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies struck back this week.

U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell made public a bombshell National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that concluded "with high confidence" Tehran had halted its rudimentary nuclear weapons program in 2003.

If restarted, Iran is unlikely to produce any weapons before 2015.

The new NIE is a devastating, humiliating blow to Bush, Dick Cheney and the neocons who have been fulminating for war against Iran. Only two months ago, Bush warned Americans that Iran's secret nuclear program threatened to ignite World War III.

Christmas in New York

Actually I'm spending Christmas with my wonderful girlfriend in Calgary but this gem has the irreplaceable Oscar Peterson on piano. Rest in Peace Oscar.

Meaningless Presidential Predictions

A useless exercise, but fun. At this late date I re-examine the parallel Republican and Democrat campaigns for President and offer my picks for the likely survivors.

On the Republican side, while I sympathize with Andrew Sullivan's hope that the Huckabee surge propels him to the nomination so that he can get massively spanked in the general and break the fundys power over the party, I think the surprise come from behind winner will be...John McCain.

All of the successive Republican 'it girls' who have bobbed to the top of the midden in the past few months have sunk again as Republicans come to terms with the incredibly weak lineup of grinning waterheads they have to choose from. Huckabee is just the latest flavour of the moment as Giuliani and Romney were before him. The GOP establishment have the knives out and the media only built him up in the first place to have an obligingly bobbing pinata to tear down.

McCain has been quietly fighting a rope a dope game letting the front-runners bloody each other while his ground troops maintain the networks he's built up over years. My prediction is that he comes from behind and steals back the nomination people used to think was his by default.

Of course every polling indicator suggests that the Republican nomination will be a poisoned chalice in the general - particularly for an unabashed Iraq war supporter like McCain.

On the Democrat side - John Edwards. Massive discipline of message and campaign, a growing base missed by the campaign press focused on the Clinton/Obama show and that 'handsome liberal southerner' thing that has been very good to Democrats at the ballot box in the past will all come to a critical mass if he pulls off a win or even a respectable second place in Iowa -a place where he's been waging an impeccable crowd pleasing campaign and is remembered fondly from past races. He's who I'd be voting for were I an American.

He's the best case scenario for Democrats in terms of policy and winnability and considering the intriguingly gentle treatment the Edwards and Obama campaigns have given each other, with either we might get the other as a VP bonus.

Of course I might be completely wrong, it wouldn't be the first time - but I reserve the right to crow if I'm not.

UPDATE: Three days later and now CNN says the same thing.

Bill Hick's on the New World Order

Very definitely NSFW - he's talking about George Bush SR and Clinton mostly, but it's a great collection of his political rants and all more true than ever - plus some extended rants on unelected elites from others - gets a little paranoid by the end.

Sunday Linkblast - Dec 23

• Public Inquiry? What Public Inquiry?
  Dalton McGuinty promised a review when he brought in Ontario's health tax, he now says since he has no intention of repealing it, the review is purely technical. Mulroney and the Conservative government said they wanted a public inquiry into the Schreiber affair - but now that it might address Schreiber's manipulations of Canadian right wing politics going back to the putsch against Joe Clark, they've changed their minds.
  
  
• New Orleans and the Shock Doctrine in action
  The elites use the aftermath of Katrina to destroy the public sector and bulldoze affordable housing.
  
  
• 'They never specified they wanted videotapes'
  The CIA lamely justifies destroying evidence of torture.
  
  
• The GOP created a monster and now it's terrorizing the countryside
  The religious right is supposed to vote for who the Republicans tell them to and keep their mouths shut afterward. Not actually get any real power. The Chickens come home to roost and the GOP elite are terrified.
  
  
• It depends what the meaning of 'I saw my father march with Martin Luther King' is
  If you think it means Mitt Romney's father actually marched with MLK and Mitt actually 'saw' him doing so, then you are being far too literal. His answers to questions about Executive Power have been far more revealing as Greenwald details here.
  
  
• Hoover's Night and Fog
  J Edgar planned mass arrests, secret detentions and the suspension of Habeas Corpus in the 50's. Over 12,000 'subversives' would have been disappeared if the plan had been approved.
  
  
• Canada's 'new' government: Environmental criminals
  The Harper Government's deliberate obstruction in Bali was a national embarrassment.
  

For Profit Health Care claims another victim

Nataline Sarkisyan, 17, dead because her insurer Cigna HealthCare's profit margin is dependent on finding excuses to deny the care it's customers pay their premiums for.


After first approving the liver transplant she needed to survive her illness, on the medical advice of her doctors, Cigna then claimed the procedure was 'experimental' and said they wouldn't pay for it. Nurses at the hospital where Nataline was being cared for rallied for her care, the story spread across the blogosphere and Cigna facing a tidal wave of fury over their callousness relented.

Too late. Because of the time wasted fighting the insurance company Nataline died 6 PM Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center only hours after Cigna relented and finally approved the treatment the Sarkisyan family's insurance covered and her doctor's said was necessary to save her. They had managed to stall long enough to avoid the lifetime of expensive care Nataline would have required.

Presidential candidate John Edwards was clearly furious, speaking about the case yesterday:

"Are you telling me that we're gonna sit at a table and negotiate with those people?" asked a visibly angered Edwards, challenging the health care companies. "We're gonna take their power away and we're not gonna have this kind of problem again."

It is my fervent hope that letting Nataline die will ultimately cost Cigna many thousands of times as much as keeping her alive would have. In a just world their corporate board would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

This is what the 'free market solutions' that people like the Fraser Institute and the Conservative Party push for Canadian health care would mean.

Another day, another 'Rachel Marsden acts like a psycho' story

Spotted at Scott's Dia Tribes:

Rachel Marsden, serial stalker, Anne Coulter wannabe, former Fox News personality fired for being too crazy for even Fox news (!) and ongoing raving train wreck is being investigated for criminal harassment again.

From the Toronto Star story:

A right-wing former Fox TV pundit is being investigated for criminal harassment after accusing an ex-boyfriend of leaking Canadian anti-terrorism secrets.

Rachel Marsden, prominent in the late 1990s for accusing a Simon Fraser University swimming coach for raping and stalking her, says OPP anti-terrorism Const. Tony Backhurst fed her top-secret papers.

"I don't know why he (gave me the documents)," she said yesterday in an email response to an interview request, "other than perhaps he was too cheap to buy me jewelry and figured state secrets would be a good substitute."

She denied harassing the officer.

"I live in NYC," she wrote. "If I was going to 'stalk' anyone from that kind of a massive distance, it sure wouldn't be that loser.

"Anyone who reads my blog or column knows it would be (French President) Nicolas Sarkozy!"

Yeah, any French Secret Service agents out there? One would hope darling Rachel would set off some alarms if she ever tried to disembark at de Gaulle Airport.

The Star story has a concise run down of Rachel's long history of, lets be circumspect and call it eccentricity:

• Marsden grew up in Port Coquitlam, B.C., and was enrolled at Simon Fraser in 1995 when she accused swimming coach Liam Donnelly of sexual harassment over a 16-month period and date rape.
• In 1997, prominent feminists took up her cause.
• Donnelly was fired. Two months later, he was exonerated, paid compensation and rehired, and the university president resigned over mishandling the case.
• In 1999, Marsden was warned she would be evicted from campus residence unless she agreed to stay away from Donnelly and SFU criminology professor Neil Boyd. Both complained she was stalking them, although no charges were laid.
• In 2002, Marsden was charged with criminally harassing former Vancouver radio host Michael Morgan after being warned to stay away from him. In 2004, she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a conditional discharge.

This list doesn't include items like racist on air comments about Pakistani hygiene, describing water-boarding as 'CIA swim lessons', working for soon to be disgraced Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal under a fake name, oh and photo shopping her head onto Julia Robert's body for one of her many provocative website photos.

See:
Too crazy even for Fox
She's Baaaack

Teh Crazy, it goes away?

Back at the beginning of November I wrote about the Calgary Sun inviting Ezra Levant 'to seek other opportunities' and other startling displays of editorial rational thought like their critique of Harper's flip-flop on the death penalty.

In the comments of the post I reassured a fellow blogger concerned that The Calgary Sun's turn away from the entertainingly psychotic would mean a dearth of blogging material that 'while Ted Byfield and Paul Jackson still have columns - the crazy well will never completely run dry'.

I really need to watch what I say, Byfield hasn't had a column in the Sun since November - and fair enough, he's dealing with a family tragedy - and now it looks like Paul Jackson's reactionary run is over.

While I was off celebrating the season with family, PC apostate Craig Chandler decided to drag Jackson down with him. As Ken Chapman relates here, Jackson flip-flopped on his support for far right soul mate Chandler's run for the Calgary Egmont PC nomination. After Chandler called him on it, Jackson e-mailed him that he wrote the column opposing Chandler after 'a call from the Premiers office' asking him to support Chandler's opponent. Then he apparently realized that he hadn't recognized the callers voice, never got his name and hey, maybe it wasn't the Premier's Office who called after all.

Sun Editor Jose Rodriguez now says Jackson has some 'splaining to do before his column runs again, hitherto no such explanation seems to have been offered and Jackson is apparently hiding out in Mexico complaining that Chandler has ruined his credibility and his career.

Some weird stuff going on in the Sun's newsroom...

UPDATE: FFWD's rundown of the story.

The MPPA's torturous reasoning

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) determined that the three posters above for torture porn horror movies were acceptable and “suitable for all audiences”. The one on the right for factual documentary 'Taxi to the Dark Side' about an innocent Afghan taxi driver tortured to death by American troops was ruled“not suitable for all audiences.” and they have banned it's use to promote the film.

Fake torure and mutilation of nubile young women for the amusement of jaded horror fans is just fine. A poster using a real photo of troops leading away a prisoner with no violence displayed to advertise a documentary about real torture is not.

Makes sense.

"Congratulations on saving the national igloo"

When Huckabee met Mercer

Spotted at Crooks and Liars

You keep using that word...

...I do not think it means what you think it means.


The Right Honorable Brian Mulroney explaining how there was nothing at all unsavoury about taking thick wads of cash from a greasy lobbyist in hotel rooms and not declaring them for six years.

First thing we do...

Let's kill all the advertising executives.

New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear asking, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, “It’s not your imagination.”
That’s right — some bunch of fuckheads have invented street ads that beam their vocal pitch right into your goddamn head:
The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an “audio spotlight” from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium.

Huckabee: Women should submit to their husbands

Spotted at Crooks and Liars:

“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

You don't own the music you've paid for

The Recording Industry Association of America, the organization primarily responsible for the DMCA, the American copyright law and it's Canadian clone the Conservatives just blinked on, is now arguing that it is illegal for someone to copy CDs they've paid for to their computers or mp3 players.

The RIAA's brief makes the novel contention, contradicting its lawyers' arguments at the Supreme Court in MGM v. Grokster, that making personal copies of songs from one's CD onto one's computer is an infringement.

Silly consumer. Thinking that just because you've paid a hugely inflated price for a CD that you actually own it.

Help! The mighty have fallen and can't get up.

CHICAGO -- Conrad Black, the convicted felon who was once one of the world’s most powerful press barons, on Monday received 6 1/2 years in a U.S. federal prison for stealing millions from Hollinger.

In the US, minimum security is reserved for citizens. He'll be doing real time in a real medium security facility.

It's kind of heart warming when bad things happen to bad people for a change, isn't it?

Fox News: Almost impossible to parody

The Parody












The Original

Provocative proof

When protesters said that the Quebec police had gone undercover during the summit of North American leaders at Montebello as Agent Provocateurs trying to provoke violence, the Quebec provincial police denied the armed masked men in the video were police officers.

When that farcical claim crumbled under the overwhelming video evidence - video has not been the friend of Canadian police officers this year- the Police finally admitted that the men were in fact undercover officers, but claimed they were there to stop violence not to provoke it.

Masks, rocks and witnesses who said the men tried to provoke violence aside.

But now the high definition video replay reveals one of the undercover police officers struck a uniformed officer on his face plate.

For those who don't belive that the police will ever deliberately create violence or excuses for violence, will video satisfy you?

Spotted at Engaged Spectator

Huckabee's rape and murder problem

I briefly profiled surging Republican candidate Mike Huckabee a couple weeks ago and said then that he would face his biggest challenges over his release of a rapist and murderer to cater to Clinton conspiracy fanatics when he was governer.

That didn't take long.

They can't claim they didn't know

The international community may have as little as a decade to bring greenhouse gases under control or risk catastrophic global warming that places millions of people at risk, warns a group of the world's leading climate scientists.
In a declaration released today in Bali, Indonesia, where representatives from about 180 countries are attending a UN conference on climate change, the scientists say emissions need to peak and then start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years as a first step, and then be cut in half by 2050 from the level prevailing in 1990.
If releases aren't curbed soon, "millions of people will be at risk from extreme events, such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms; our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels; and many ecosystems, plants and animal species will be in serious danger of extinction," the scientists say in their declaration.
More than 200 leading researchers - many of the world's pre-eminent climate scientists, including seven from Canada - endorsed the statement. Its release was timed to put heat on the negotiators at the Bali climate-change talks.

Add this to the long list of evidence, findings, studies and unequivocal and stark declarations by scientists, and the gang of three at Bali, The US, Japan and of course our own Conservative Canadian government are knowingly committing crimes against humanity with their opposition to real curbs on greenhouse gasses.

There is no real significant dispute among the scientific community, this isn't a long term problem, economic growth is not just as important as greenhouse gas reduction and regardless greenhouse gas reduction will be necessary to reduce massive long term macro-economic costs - see the Stern Report. Intensity reductions are not reductions and the consequences of blocking real action will have these governments remembered in the history books as shortsighted, reckless and corrupt. They will not be able to claim they didn't know the consequences of their actions and in light of the scientific consensus their inaction is criminally irresponsible.

Criticising the former Liberal government's dismal record on climate change (As Harper and his Ministers do at every opportunity) is fair. Not including the context that the Conservatives and their predecessor party The Alliance - the same individuals - in opposition fought tooth and nail every day to keep the Liberals from doing anything on climate change is not. Not providing the context that up until very recently the members of this government were publicly siding with industry owned hacks and incompetent wackos against the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is real and human caused is based on an insulting assumption that Canadians can't remember their words and deeds of only a few years ago.

Calling out China, India and other developing nations for inaction on global warming is fair. Not providing the context that their significant contributions of greenhouse gasses began decades after the developed world and that their per capita greenhouse gas emissions are still only a fraction of ours is not.

Canadians used to provide leadership, not whine that 'everyone else is getting away with it, so we should too.'

The Conservatives regional fealty to the oil sands at the expense of Canada's international standing and our species long term survival is a shocking and despicable abdication of responsibility.

A proud tradition of ignorance

When George W was running for President the first time back in 2000, he was interviewed on the radio by a DJ who started quizzing him on Foreign Affairs 101: 'What's the name of the President of North Korea?, What's the name of the leader of Iran?' That kind of stuff. How did Georgie do?

Yeah.

So the reporter was excoriated, both by partisan Republicans and by other, so-called, journalists for having engaged in a sneak attack ambush. 'It wasn't fair to expect Bush to know this stuff' went the whining at the time 'he'd have people around him as President to know it for him.'

And we all know how well that worked.

So Mike Huckabee, who some think has a very real shot at the corroded brass ring of the Republican nomination, was just asked his opinion of the new NIE report stating that Iran hasn't had a functioning nuclear weapons program since 2003. His response boiled down to 'Huhh?'

As Crooks and Liars put it: imagine if one of the leading democrats had demonstrated this kind of cow-eyed ignorance about a foreign policy issue that had been front page news for days. It would have dominated the news cycle and been presented as part of the narrative that only Republicans are serious on security and foreign policy issues.

Expect the story of Huck's charming befuddlement to disappear without a trace.

Eww.

And another one sourced from WarrenEllis. com - The Westboro Baptist Church-goers being their usual charming selves.

If you actually can make it to the end of the gut-wrenchingly grotesque video, the last twenty seconds or so are the kind of thing that will make you want social services to kick down doors and seize children.

Jesus, what balls!

George W. Bush actually has the gall to complain that Senate Democrats are using a procedural trick to keep him from using a procedural trick.

President Bush Monday welcomed back Congress by criticizing Democrats for their priorities and blasting the Senate for using a procedural maneuver to prevent him from making recess appointments.
“In a political maneuver designed to block my ability to make recess appointments, congressional leaders arranged for a senator to come in every three days or so, bang a gavel, wait for about 30 seconds, bang a gavel again, and then leave,” Bush said. “Under the Senate rules, this counts as a full day. If 30 seconds is a full day, no wonder Congress has got a lot of work to do.”

For those who don't know, Bush has in the past used recess appointments to give power to psychotic far right wingers who he knew the Senate would not approve. He is literally, petulantly complaining that the Senate is preempting one of his orgies of right wing nut-bar enabling by deliberately circumventing their constitutional duty to vet his choices.

It's like a mugger complaining that his potential victim was engaging in a mean-spirited campaign of staying in well lit crowded areas.

Facebook: Privacy rights are double plus ungood

After intense criticism, Facebook publicly claimed they would allow opting out of their controversial Beacon system to sell web surfing information to advertisers, but Internet experts discover that the system still tracks users movements even when Facebook is off line.

Beacon will report back to Facebook on members' activities on third-party sites that participate in Beacon even if the users are logged off from Facebook and have declined having their activities broadcast to their Facebook friends.
...
"It can happen completely without their knowledge, unless they are examining their network traffic at a very low level," Berteau said.

Sunday Linkblast - Dec 2

• Internal Government documents contradict Harper government environment policies
  Refusal to acknowledge a global tipping point could have catastrophic effects.
  
  
• Taser shotgun
  Weapon linked to hundreds of deaths goes wireless.
  
  
• Glenn Greenwald VS. Time Magazine
  Greenwald has been torturing Joe Klein and Time magazine in his column for days, exhaustively detailing their journalistic irresponsibility and incompetence. It's all part of the 'giving a lie the same weight as the truth' school of 'unbiased reporting'.
  
  
• Karl Rove: 'It was those bloodthirsty Democrats who forced us into Iraq'
  Turdblossom spins, but this time it's a spin too far.
  
  
• Carole Taylor leaves BC politics
  The politician who's false claims of a health care fiscal crisis were contradicted by her own government department contemplating a federal run?
  
  
• Dion insists he's still in the game
  The Conservatives are doing a good job of destroying themselves, does Dion plan to finally start helping them?
  
  
• Huckabee and Obama
  Iowans ignore the MSM anointed inevitabilities of Clinton and Romney and make their own choices.
  
  
• Voldemort wins
  Russians decide the lesser evil is for pussies.

America asserts the right to kidnap anyone, anywhere, any time

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

They have their own offshore, extrajudicial gulag, don't believe strapping someone down and slowly drowning them constitutes torture and believe they have the right to kidnap anyone in the world.

Do you feel safe living in the same world as America?

Spotted at Warren Ellis's place.

Chandler purged

Surprising.

Stelmach and the Alberta PCs have clearly seen which way the wind is blowing in Alberta - and it isn't from the far right - hot air aside.

RED DEER — An ugly internal dispute over sex, religion and violence erupted within the Alberta Conservative party Saturday, ending up with a candidate being ousted and Premier Ed Stelmach saying the reasons for the "difficult" decision must remain confidential.

Mr. Stelmach presided over a private meeting of his party's 40-member executive committee, which voted not to endorse the nomination of a candidate who founded a group linked to an anti-gay letter.

Mr. Stelmach emerged from the closed-door session to announce that Craig Chandler's nomination in Calgary-Egmont was "not in the best interests of the party."

....

Mr. Chandler said he felt like the clock had been turned back 50 years and he was being grilled in front of the anti-communist hearings in the U.S. led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.

"(They asked) 'Are you a right-winger? Are you a social conservative? Do you believe in Jesus Christ?"' Mr. Chandler told reporters.

He used the word "Christ-o-phobic" at one point and said there is a "growing intolerance" within the Tory party.

This from the man who has called gays as bad as murderers and said anyone not willing to vote conservative wasn't welcome in Alberta.

It was a surprising display of rational self interest on the part of the provincial Tories - Calgary is right wing, but it's a pro business, socially moderate and urbane right wing. Chandler would have cost the party Calgary-Egmont - not that they're guaranteed to keep it anyway - and thousands of votes province wide.

His ouster will cost them some psycho reactionary support split off to Alliance and Wild Rose, the split on the right in Alberta has always had more effect than the left wing split that Alberta Liberals whine about whenever New Democrats get votes.