Currently viewing the tag: “Notices”
Since Japan's earthquake and following nuclear crisis, the CBS Evening News has done two reports on the Obama administration blocking use of the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada to safely dispose of U.S. nuclear waste. Meanwhile, NBC and ABC have ignored the controversy.
The first CBS report on the issue came on March 22, when Evening News anchor Katie Couric declared: "The crisis in Japan has renewed the debate over nuclear power in this country. Today a federal appeals court heard arguments in a lawsuit over what to do with spent fuel rods." Correspondent Jim Axelrod explained: "An estimated 66,000 metric tons of spent fuel are stored at 77 sites around the country. That's more than 145 million pounds….Plans to make Yucca Mountain in Nevada a long-term storage site were scuttled by the Obama administration a year ago, after 20 years of planning costing $ 14 billion."
In a follow-up piece on Thursday's Evening News, correspondent Armen Keteyian went further in laying blame on the Obama administration: "There was one site designed to hold all of our nation's nuclear waste and it's right here in the high desert of Nevada, at a place called Yucca Mountain. Today, the federal government won't let our cameras anywhere near it. It's shut down, locked up, caught up in what critics charge is nothing more than pure politics."
Fill-in anchor Erica Hill teased Keteyian's report at the top of the broadcast: "Why did plans to bury nuclear waste inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain get killed? Was it safety fears or politics?" Keteyian described how the, "Obama administration kept its campaign promise….And shut down Yucca Mountain. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must decide if it wants to restart what is already a 25-year, $ 14 billion project, in the face of tough opposition, like that from Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader from Nevada."
Keteyian also pointed out the political background of the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Obama: "A former staffer for Senator Reid, Greg Jaczko, now chairs the NRC. Jaczko recently came under fire after shutting down the agency's safety review of Yucca Mountain and after key safety recommendations were redacted, cut out, from a long-awaited NRC report."
In the March 22 report, Axelrod noted: "The head of the NRC may not see a pressing problem, but the states now suing did not want to take that risk before Japan's disaster and certainly don't want to now."
On Thursday, Keteyian challenged Jaczko: "Critics charge that you were simply doing the bidding of your former boss, Senator Harry Reid, a fierce opponent of this project."
Keteyian concluded his piece: "The NRC inspector general and Congress are now investigating the decision to shut down the safety review. Still, nuclear waste is scattered across 35 states, and Yucca Mountain sits silent and empty."
Here is a full transcript of Keteyian's March 31 report:
6:30PM ET TEASE:
ERICA HILL: Why did plans to bury nuclear waste inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain get killed? Was it safety fears or politics?
6:38PM ET TEASE:
HILL: And when we come back, it was supposed to store all of America's nuclear waste, so why then is this desert facility now deserted?
6:40PM ET SEGMENT:
HILL: For more than 50 years a debate has raged over where to store radioactive nuclear waste in this country. And that debate has been reignited by the crisis in Japan. The solution was supposed to be here at a place called Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the multibillion-dollar storage project has been shelved and as chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian explains, a congressional committee wants to find out why.
ARMEN KETEYIAN: Nuclear waste – the radioactive guest on the doorstep of many of America's most populous cities. Nearly 70,000 tons from 104 reactors often piling up within 50 miles from cities like New York, Chicago, and San Diego.
There was one site designed to hold all of our nation's nuclear waste and it's right here in the high desert of Nevada, at a place called Yucca Mountain. Today, the federal government won't let our cameras anywhere near it. It's shut down, locked up, caught up in what critics charge is nothing more than pure politics.
Gary Holis and Darrell Lacey are key officials in Nye County, Nevada. They want the waste at Yucca Mountain for the jobs and money it would bring.
DARRELL LACY [NYE COUNTY NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY PROJECT OFFICE]: The people in this area are all fairly comfortable with Yucca Mountain. Many of them have worked at Yucca Mountain.
KETEYIAN: Four previous presidents funded safety reviews of the project but last year the Obama administration kept its campaign promise.
CAMPAIGN AD: Barack Obama opposes opening Yucca.
KETEYIAN: And shut down Yucca Mountain. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must decide if it wants to restart what is already a 25-year, $ 14 billion project, in the face of tough opposition, like that from Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader from Nevada.
JEFFREY LEWIS [PH.D., NUCLEAR SAFETY EXPERT]: If the U.S. government wanted to do Yucca Mountain, it would have had to shove it down Harry Reid's throat.
KETEYIAN: A former staffer for Senator Reid, Greg Jaczko, now chairs the NRC. Jaczko recently came under fire after shutting down the agency's safety review of Yucca Mountain and after key safety recommendations were redacted, cut out, from a long-awaited NRC report. Three NRC staffers formally protested the decision to derail the safety review, charging it caused 'confusion, chaos, and anguish'. Today, Jaczko told us the safety report was preliminary, a draft, and that he had nothing to do with the redactions.
Critics charge that you were simply doing the bidding of your former boss, Senator Harry Reid, a fierce opponent of this project.
GREGORY JACZKO [PH.D., CHAIRMAN, U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION: It was a difficult decision and – because it is such a controversial program – but, again, it was one that was made in, I believe, in the best interest of the agency.
KETEYIAN: The NRC inspector general and Congress are now investigating the decision to shut down the safety review. Still, nuclear waste is scattered across 35 states, and Yucca Mountain sits silent and empty. Armen Keteyian, CBS News, Nye County, Nevada.
— Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday went to great pains illustrating the similarities between President Obama's Libya address to the nation and his December 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Not surprisingly, the devout dove suddenly turned hawk chose not to discuss the irony (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
RACHEL MADDOW: Whether or not you like this intervention in Libya, it is clear that the President's explanation for why it is justified matches what he said he would do with military force, what he would see as the justifiable use of the U.S. military. It is clear that it matches what he said about that issue at the very start of his presidency, when in his first year as president he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maddow then played a clip from that acceptance speech back in December 2009, and a part of Monday’s address containing some similar language and concepts, after which she continued:
MADDOW: 2009, “America cannot act alone.” 2011, “The burden of action should not be America’s alone.” Whether you are for or against American participation in an international intervention like this war in Libya, it is the type of intervention that this president said at the outset he would favor as president. As for the differences between him and the previous guy, as for the differences between him and George W. Bush, defined sharply tonight at one point in his speech in terms of why the U.S. would not make it the goal of our war in Libya to topple the dictator there, a la Iraq.
So, rather than point out the hypocrisy not only in Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize months before he expanded the war in Afghanistan and started a new one in Libya, but also in these speeches having any similarity at all, she instead made the case that such likeness was a good thing while taking the opportunity to bash Bush.
Truth be told, we have entered a new era in liberal media bias when doves are growing talons before our very eyes.
Let's understand that we have absolutely no idea how this incursion is going to turn out for America, Libya, or this region. This is complicated by our very involvement in humanitarian military missions in the past being by no means without their disappointments and casualties.
Despite this, devout, military-hating leftists have lost the ability and/or the desire to express any skepticism concerning this legislatively un-sanctioned mission.
Like her colleague Ed Schultz, it appears Maddow's devotion to Obama has trumped all her natural, lifelong anti-war instincts. Between the two of them, the past ten days have been like watching Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders root for the New York Giants.
I can't wait to see what color her pom poms will be tomorrow.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday went to great pains illustrating the similarities between President Obama's Libya address to the nation and his December 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Not surprisingly, the devout dove suddenly turned hawk chose not to discuss the irony (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
RACHEL MADDOW: Whether or not you like this intervention in Libya, it is clear that the President's explanation for why it is justified matches what he said he would do with military force, what he would see as the justifiable use of the U.S. military. It is clear that it matches what he said about that issue at the very start of his presidency, when in his first year as president he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maddow then played a clip from that acceptance speech back in December 2009, and a part of Monday’s address containing some similar language and concepts, after which she continued:
MADDOW: 2009, “America cannot act alone.” 2011, “The burden of action should not be America’s alone.” Whether you are for or against American participation in an international intervention like this war in Libya, it is the type of intervention that this president said at the outset he would favor as president. As for the differences between him and the previous guy, as for the differences between him and George W. Bush, defined sharply tonight at one point in his speech in terms of why the U.S. would not make it the goal of our war in Libya to topple the dictator there, a la Iraq.
So, rather than point out the hypocrisy not only in Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize months before he expanded the war in Afghanistan and started a new one in Libya, but also in these speeches having any similarity at all, she instead made the case that such likeness was a good thing while taking the opportunity to bash Bush.
Truth be told, we have entered a new era in liberal media bias when doves are growing talons before our very eyes.
Let's understand that we have absolutely no idea how this incursion is going to turn out for America, Libya, or this region. This is complicated by our very involvement in humanitarian military missions in the past being by no means without their disappointments and casualties.
Despite this, devout, military-hating leftists have lost the ability and/or the desire to express any skepticism concerning this legislatively un-sanctioned mission.
Like her colleague Ed Schultz, it appears Maddow's devotion to Obama has trumped all her natural, lifelong anti-war instincts. Between the two of them, the past ten days have been like watching Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders root for the New York Giants.
I can't wait to see what color her pom poms will be tomorrow.
Ben-Dror Yemini at Maariv (Hebrew only) takes a look at the Palestine Papers and discovers that the Guardian and Al Jazeera have been misrepresenting what they say.
If he would have read my blog, he could have saved a lot of time.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker just issued this ultimatum.
If his bill is not passed, taking away collective bargaining rights to most public sector workers, he will send layoff notices this Friday.
In a comment to my earlier story on the New York Times noticing the Arab lobby in America, Jed G notes a BBC piece about how Arab governments try to influence British journalism:
Over the past two months, as unrest spread across the Middle East, from Tunisia to Bahrain, many Western journalists were discreetly contacted by PR agencies acting for Arab leaders trying desperately to stem the flow of negative headlines.
The UK has become a global centre for this kind of international PR.
London is becoming a global hub for governments and world leaders – some of them with very questionable human rights records – who want to give their reputations in the west a bit of a facelift.
“I would imagine that all of those (countries) are represented in some way or another by a UK-based PR agency,” Nick Allan told me in one of Soho’s most exclusive clubs, as I showed him a list of Arab states that included Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Nick Allan spent 20 years working for Britain’s Foreign Office. Now he is an independent PR consultant. Although he does not currently represent any foreign governments, he has in the past had to deal with what he calls “difficult regimes”.
“The key is to change the narrative about that regime. So you can’t change the fact that it’s a dictatorship, there’s only so much lipstick you can put on a dictator, but you can certainly try to change the narrative by pointing to as many positives as you can.”
In practice, Mr Allan says, the work would include drafting and placing articles in newspapers, introducing journalists to members of the government in question, or organising trips to that country. Often the PR agency will also try to squash negative stories.
“Quite often what you’re doing is just pure damage limitation. There’s an article in the press that your client doesn’t like, and they are screaming at you down the phone to ‘close the story down’, do whatever you can to make the story go away.
“A lot of PR agencies will employ media lawyers to do exactly this: to write to the editors, to put as much pressure as possible on the editor or the newspaper to not run the story.”
The picture that is being painted is not pretty. We see that people are being paid by foreign governments to write their own articles in newspapers, presuambly without identifying their ties to their unsavory employers they are defending.
Even worse, we are seeing that these same PR agencies are hiring lawyers to threaten newspapers to pull stories that would make Arab dictators look bad.
In other words, they are doing everything they can to limit freedom of the press and transparency.
This is an important article, one that helps explain the incredible bias in UK journalism. But it is missing a key component – a component that makes one think that the problem is even worse than is being reported.
Why didn’t the BBC reporter interview anyone from the BBC who has gotten pressured by these PR firms?
It is one thing to interview someone who (says that in the past he) applied pressure to tilt news stories towards his clients’ viewpoints. But why not go into the BBC newsroom and find real reporters and editors and publishers who admit that they changed their stories in reaction to outside PR pressure?
This is a story about the media that doesn’t bother to interview anyone from the media. Instead, it treats the PR firms as if they are the only ones who have to answer for their unethical behavior.
Certainly the reporter could have shielded the names of the journalists who succumbed to bribes, or threats, or more subtle forms of pressure. But that is the story, and the BBC completely missed the boat in framing it as only being about PR firms taking money from less than ideal clients.
The BBC can start by identifying its own offenders. And if they claim they have never given in to Arab pressure, let’s hear examples of what failed.
The consumers of British news media deserve to know the truth about how the news is created and spun. By deflecting the argument, this story looks more like a whitewash of journalists than real journalism.
For years, they have been one of the most formidable lobbying forces in town: the elite band of former members of Congress, former diplomats and power brokers who have helped Middle Eastern nations navigate diplomatic waters here on delicate issues like arms deals, terrorism, oil and trade restrictions.
Just last year, three of the biggest names in the lobbying club — Tony Podesta, Robert L. Livingston and Toby Moffett — pulled off a coup for one of their clients, Egypt. They met with dozens of lawmakers and helped stall a Senate bill that called on Egypt to curtail human rights abuses. Ultimately, those abuses helped bring the government down.
Mr. Moffett, a former congressman from Connecticut, told his old colleagues that the bill “would be viewed as an insult” by an important ally. “We were just saying to them, ‘Don’t do this now to our friends in Egypt,’ ” he recounted.
Now the Washington lobbyists for Arab nations find themselves in a precarious spot, as they try to stay a step ahead of the fast-changing events without being seen as aiding despots and dictators. In Libya, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt and other countries in the region, leaders have relied increasingly on Washington’s top lobbyists and lawyers, paying them tens of millions of dollars. Some consultants are tacking toward a more progressive stance in light of pro-democracy protests, while others are dropping their clients altogether because of the tumult.
Would the NYT, or anyone else, have written such an article had the Arab world not been rocked by mass demonstrations? it is not as if the human rights abuses of these governments were secret, after all. But only now does the mainstream media decide it is newsworthy.
But talking about the “powerful Israel lobby” is a staple of news coverage of the region.
Just another example of the media’s double standard with respect to Israel.
Of course, the NYT does not touch the Palestinian Arab lobbyists. To even mention their existence would upset the meme that Israel has a stranglehold on the US government. Yet, in the Palestine Papers, we see that they did hire one – Bannerman and Associates, which features Ed Abington, Jr., former United States Consul General in Jerusalem.
The PLO, much of which is funded by the US to begin with, paid millions of dollars to retain this firm – to lobby the US.
While it appears that Bannerman and Associates is no longer lobbying for the PA, who took their place?
(h/t David G)
For years, they have been one of the most formidable lobbying forces in town: the elite band of former members of Congress, former diplomats and power brokers who have helped Middle Eastern nations navigate diplomatic waters here on delicate issues like arms deals, terrorism, oil and trade restrictions.
Just last year, three of the biggest names in the lobbying club — Tony Podesta, Robert L. Livingston and Toby Moffett — pulled off a coup for one of their clients, Egypt. They met with dozens of lawmakers and helped stall a Senate bill that called on Egypt to curtail human rights abuses. Ultimately, those abuses helped bring the government down.
Mr. Moffett, a former congressman from Connecticut, told his old colleagues that the bill “would be viewed as an insult” by an important ally. “We were just saying to them, ‘Don’t do this now to our friends in Egypt,’ ” he recounted.
Now the Washington lobbyists for Arab nations find themselves in a precarious spot, as they try to stay a step ahead of the fast-changing events without being seen as aiding despots and dictators. In Libya, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt and other countries in the region, leaders have relied increasingly on Washington’s top lobbyists and lawyers, paying them tens of millions of dollars. Some consultants are tacking toward a more progressive stance in light of pro-democracy protests, while others are dropping their clients altogether because of the tumult.
Would the NYT, or anyone else, have written such an article had the Arab world not been rocked by mass demonstrations? it is not as if the human rights abuses of these governments were secret, after all. But only now does the mainstream media decide it is newsworthy.
But talking about the “powerful Israel lobby” is a staple of news coverage of the region.
Just another example of the media’s double standard with respect to Israel.
Of course, the NYT does not touch the Palestinian Arab lobbyists. To even mention their existence would upset the meme that Israel has a stranglehold on the US government. Yet, in the Palestine Papers, we see that they did hire one – Bannerman and Associates, which features Ed Abington, Jr., former United States Consul General in Jerusalem.
The PLO, much of which is funded by the US to begin with, paid millions of dollars to retain this firm – to lobby the US.
While it appears that Bannerman and Associates is no longer lobbying for the PA, who took their place?
(h/t David G)
Each one of the 1,926 teachers working for the Providence School Department was sent a dismissal notice this week, in a move officials say was necessary to deal with a projected deficit of almost $ 40 million next year.
According to The Providence Journal, “[s]chool and city leaders said they were forced to issue the mass dismissal notices because of a state law that says teachers must be notified about possible layoffs or terminations by March 1.” In a statement, Mayor Angel Taveras said that because the deadline for informing teachers about employment changes came before the budget for next year could be determined, the move was necessary.
“Providence faces significant challenges in getting its financial house in order,” Taveras said in the statement. “Spending reductions are inevitable. It is also inevitable that some portion of cuts will come from the school budget. This is why we faced the difficult decision of sending letters to all teachers: we do not yet know what actions will be required and believe it was only fair to let all teachers know about the severity of the situation.”
Taveras told the Journal that there would be fewer schools open, and fewer teachers teaching, in Providence next year — he just couldn’t yet say how many.
“To be clear about what this means,” Superintendent Tom Brady wrote in an email to teachers, “this action gives the School Board the right to dismiss teachers as necessary, but not all teachers will actually be dismissed at the end of the school year.”
Brady told the Journal that Taveras had asked him to find a solution that gave the city “maximum flexibility” to deal with the deficit.
“This is beyond insane,” Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith told the Journal. “Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.”
Read the Mayor’s full statement:
This week the Providence School Department sent letters to all public school teachers informing them that they may be dismissed at the end of the current school year. The dismissal notices were delivered in accordance with a State law requiring that teachers be notified about potential changes to their employment status by March 1.
As a Providence public school graduate, I understand how great teachers can change lives. I have the honor of serving as Mayor in large part because of the gifted teachers who invested their time and energy in enriching my life, and I will never forget that. Providence schools are home to many teachers who, day after day, do all they can to educate and improve the lives of our City’s students. I am sensitive to the uncertainty and anxiety that teachers felt today when they received this letter.
State law requires that teachers be notified by March 1 about any potential changes to their employment status. This law puts us in the very difficult position of having to issue notices before the budgeting process is complete. Decisions around school funding must be made in a careful and well-planned manner that best serves students, schools, our teachers, and the community. Unfortunately, the March 1 deadline does not coincide with the careful budgeting process we must undertake to make sure school funding decisions are made in the best interest of all.
Providence faces significant challenges in getting its financial house in order. Spending reductions are inevitable. It is also inevitable that some portion of cuts will come from the school budget. This is why we faced the difficult decision of sending letters to all teachers: we do not yet know what actions will be required and believe it was only fair to let all teachers know about the severity of the situation.
The School Department has annually supported legislation that would extend the March 1 deadline to July 1. My team will support similar legislation this year in hopes of avoiding situations like this in the future.
There is nothing more important to me than making Providence schools the best in the country. I am hopeful that we can work together to address the fiscal challenges we face in a way that supports our students, our schools and the countless teachers who dedicate themselves to educating our young citizens.
We will communicate more information about the budget and possible cuts to school funding as soon as is possible.
Sincerely,
Mayor Angel Taveras
Governor Scott Walker is not backing down and is urging Wisconsin democrats to return to their post.
In an interview with the AP, Walker even warned layoff notices may be sent by next week if the bill eliminating collective bargaining rights isn’t passed soon.
Nir Hasson has a report at Haaretz’s Hebrew edition about GOD TV’s role in funding the Jewish National Fund’s ethnic cleansing of the Bedouin village Al Arakib in order to plant a non-native forest. There isn’t much in Hasson’s piece that we didn’t already learn from Richard Silverstein, Neve Gordon, and my reporting. But since Al Arakib has been destroyed for the 16th time (and Israeli riot police have begun firing rubber bullets and teargas at its residents), Hasson noticed that GOD TV recently published a disclaimer at its website distancing itself from the JNF’s monstrous project.
This is the network’s statement:
It has come to our attention that reports have been posted on the Internet. These reports mislead readers to believe that GOD TV may be responsible for displacement of Bedouin people in the Negev Desert in Israel. These claims are false.
We cannot comment on any ongoing legal proceedings between the Israeli Government and the village of Al-Arakib, as GOD TV is in no way involved in these proceedings.
GOD TV has committed to sponsor one million trees, to be planted through the efforts of the Jewish National Fund, KKL, and the Land of Promise Foundation, throughout the nation of Israel in an effort to restore the desert places to the lush green land it once was, preparing the Holy Land for the return of the King of Kings.
This apostolic, prophetic act of planting trees across Israel is a result of the commitment of Christians around the world coming together to bless the nation of Israel, and make the deserts livable once more.
GOD TV is not responsible for, or involved in, the decision as to the specific places trees are planted across the country.
GOD TV is so frightened by the exposure of its collaboration with the JNF in the dispossession of Al Arakib’s residents that it attempted to suppress my freedom of expression by filing dubious trademark claims with YouTube about a video Richard Silverstein and I created to draw attention to the situation. YouTube removed the video, but a vigilant reader has reposted it here:
Of course, if Rory Alec and the GOD TV staff had genuine moral objections to forcing indigenous families from their homes with bulldozers and rubber bullets, they could register them with the JNF. And if the JNF refused to change course, they could pull out of the project. Instead, GOD TV appears to be concerned solely with its public image. That is why it has tasked its lawyers with suppressing free speech and why it must reassure its donors that only the JNF has the power to decide where the land will be prepared “for the return of the King of Kings.”
Don’t the good folks at GOD TV know that ethnic cleansing makes Baby Jesus cry?
Hard-Left journalistic propagandist Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post manages a reasonably good summary piece here on the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt and their fears of Muslim Brotherhood rule, but she serves her masters well at the end by glossing over Islamic supremacism and ascribing the problem to “extremism, not Islam.”
“Egypt’s uprising stirs fears of persecution of minority Coptic Christians,” by Michelle Boorstein in the Washington Post, February 3:
With attacks on Christians already increasing in the Middle East, the populist uprising in Egypt has triggered fears among some that the region’s largest non-Muslim population – Egypt’s 7 million Coptic Christians – could be at risk.
Copt leaders in the United States said they are terrified that a new Egyptian government with a strong Islamic fundamentalist bent would persecute Christians. They are quietly lobbying the Obama administration to do more to protect Christians in Muslim countries and are holding prayer vigils and fasts, such as one that ended Wednesday evening at Copt churches across the country, including four in the Washington area.
“The current situation for the Copts stinks, but [longtime Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak is the best of the worst for us,” said the Rev. Paul Girguis of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Fairfax County, which has about 3,000 members. “If Muslim extremists take over, the focus will be extreme persecution against Copts. Some people even predict genocide.” […]
After last month’s bombing of the Coptic church in Alexandria, Pope Benedict XVI publicly urged the Egyptian government and other leaders in the region to protect religious minorities. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the pope’s comments were “an unacceptable interference” in the country’s internal affairs, and Egypt withdrew its ambassador to the Vatican in response….
A 2009 survey by the nonprofit Pew Forum that measured governmental and societal restrictions on religion found that a number of the world’s least tolerant countries are Muslim-majority. The list included Iran, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan as well as India, which is majority Hindu. Concerns include bans on public preaching and conversion and the lack of prosecution for religion-based violence.
Some advocates for religious freedom note that moderate Muslims and non-majority Muslims also suffer attacks and that the problem is extremism, not Islam.
Of course! Look at all the extremist Christians massacring non-Christians around the world!
(Stewart Baker)
Julian Assange is writing a book — and expecting to make somewhere between $ 1 and $ 2 million from it. But his royalties will depend on something he claims to abhor – using government authority to control the distribution of information.
Because if a believer in the free distribution of information were to copy Assange’s book and post it on a U.S. website, Assange or his publisher could insist that the website owner take the infringing copy down immediately under threat of action in US courts. Failure to take down the book would subject the website to massive damages under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (This post assumes that Assange won’t do what I did with Skating on Stilts — make the book freely downloadable under Creative Commons license — but I’m betting that he and his publishers are too greedy to do that. Oh, sorry, I mean he needs to “recover his legal fees.”)
Now you’ll have to admit that there’s some irony in this. Assange’s Wikileaks got the equivalent of a takedown notice from the US government, and he gave them the finger. In fact that conflict is what makes his book worth the royalties that he’s going to get. But now he and his publisher are going to rely on United States law to do for them exactly what he refused to do for the United States. Except this time the takedown notice will protect not lives, but Assange’s income and his publisher’s profits.
Speaking of his publisher, when it signed Assange to the book deal, Canongate Books was giddy with enthusiasm for how he was changing the world: “WikiLeaks has helped redefine our idea of investigative journalism and our understanding of how information should be disseminated,” its spokesperson said.
All righty, then. Now that Americans’ “understanding of how information should be disseminated” has been so bluntly redefined by Wikileaks, is it time to show Julian Assange and his publishers that redefinition is a two-way street? In short, why doesn’t Congress simply take away the takedown rights of Assange and his publishers? Let them live in the world he’s helping to build.
I don’t propose here to work through all of the issues that such a law would raise. I’ll leave that to the comments – and perhaps to Eugene Volokh, who has already debated a related issue with me here. But the most obvious question is whether a selective withdrawal of copyright remedies will pass constitutional muster.
That analysis starts with Simon & Schuster v. Members of NY State Crime Victims Bd., 502 US 105 (1991). Fearing that the “Son of Sam” serial killer would write a book about his crimes, New York imposed a statutory escrow on royalties from books describing a criminal defendant’s crimes; the proceeds were to go to the criminal’s victims rather than the criminal. On review, the Supreme Court said, in essence, that strict scrutiny applied to the selective denial of compensation for a fundamental first amendment activity like book writing. The Court thought that preventing criminals from profiting from their crimes was a compelling state interest. But the statute was not well tailored; it would have applied to a lot of perfectly respectable books that mentioned in passing a crime committed by by the author. So the law failed the Court’s strict scrutiny.
Does that analysis make it unconstitutional to deny DMCA remedies to Assange and his publishers? I’m not convinced. For two reasons.
First, the DMCA takedown provisions are not core copyright rights. Rather, they are part of a carefully limited remedial compromise that gives online service providers protection from massive liability if they comply with takedown notices. This compromise recognizes that the online service provider is serving a first amendment purpose when it allows people to post material without undertaking lengthy copyright reviews. But to avoid those reviews, the service providers need to be protected from massive liability; that protection is available if they follow the takedown process. In short, there are first amendment interests on both sides of the line drawn by the DMCA. That’s why the right to get a quick takedown is not available if the poster of the material promptly claims not to be infringing; and why takedown notices must meet very specific format requirements to have any effect. And, most important, that’s why I question whether we should treat limits on the takedown requirement as though they were presumptive first amendment violations.
In fact, as far as I know, we don’t do that with other restrictions on copyright remedies. For example, the copyright damages remedy is quite limited unless you register your copyright in advance. Or, to take a judge-made remedial limit, copyright plaintiffs have to show that they have “clean hands,” an anti-hypocrisy doctrine that Congress might reasonably decide to apply to Assange and his publisher. Are these limits on harsh copyright remedies unconstitutional if they don’t serve a compelling interest in the narrowest possible way? I don’t see how they’d survive such a test. That way lies madness for the copyright bar. (Not that they don’t deserve it!)
Second, Congress probably wouldn’t deny Assange a takedown remedy just because it doesn’t like him. It might decide to bar takedown remedies that benefit, oh I don’t know, criminal defendants who refuse to show up for their trials, say. Or it could decide to delay the takedown remedy until a hearing to resolve any claims against the author by the United States government or other victims of the author’s torts. By the time that litigation was done, even if they won, I’m pretty sure that Assange and his publisher would have gotten a full taste of just how thoroughly their model for dissemination of information could be redefined.
As I said earlier, this isn’t a finished piece. It’s more akin to one of Mickey Kaus’s “assignment desk” posts than a full-blown legal analysis. I’d welcome thoughtful legal comments. And maybe somebody else will want to write an article on it.
Or a law.
From the BBC:
One of Mr Hasayin’s postings was called Why I left Islam. He goes on to strongly criticise the religion for not allowing free-thinking and also mocks and insults the Prophet.
Some of his essays posted on a website called The Light of the Mind are detailed and clearly written by someone with a strong academic background. He also identified himself as a Proud Atheist.
As to exactly why Mr Hasayin has been arrested, the Palestinian Authority is not saying.
A spokesman for the Palestinian security services, Gen Adnan Damiri, said he could not comment on an ongoing investigation.
“Insulting religion is a crime under Palestinian law,” says Naser al-Rais, a lawyer with the Al Haq human rights organisation based in Ramallah.
Asked to comment on the case, Mr Rais said: “I respect Mr Hasayin’s right to have these beliefs but he also has to respect the law, there are limits to freedom speech.”
Mr Rais says Mr Hasayin could face a prison term of between three months and three years.
Nice to see that the BBC is catching up to things I wrote about two and a half weeks ago, that the AP noticed a few days later, and the LA Times mentioned a few days after that.
President Obama’s disdain for that class of nations and leaders traditionally referred to as “allies” has become apparent even to the more obtuse among us. I refer to the New York Times’ s featured op-ed, by the noted op-ed-er Roger Cohen, a distinguished former foreign correspondent in central Europe and elsewhere, who has just noticed that President Obama doesn’t cultivate foreign friendships the way he promised to, gosh darn it. Embarrassingly late to the party, aren’t you, Roger?
Mr. Cohen is perturbed by President Obama’s indifference to tried and true European allies, noting with consternation:
[Obama] has dedicated scant diplomatic energy to Europe. . . . he is the first post-Atlanticist president, drawn by temperament, upbringing and circumstance to focus elsewhere.
But where? Or, rather, what has the president gained by abandoning European allies?
President Obama gave a famously fawning speech in Cairo. Despite his best efforts, a year later people in Egypt have a less favorable view of the U.S. than during the end of the reign of the hated Bush the Younger. Middle Eastern, Asian and Russian governments Obama has wooed seem to show much interest in cooperation, while Western governments mope like jilted lovers.
After the President’s infamous gift to Gordon Brown, snub of Binyamin Netanyahu, cancellation of his trip to Australia, and general lack of chemistry with any foreign leader whose name is not Hugo Chavez.
In short, Mr. Cohen, my only question is this: what took you so long?
