Archive for June, 2008

From the United States of America, home of the House on Un-American Activities Committee and the Patriot Act, comes another fine piece of legislation: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, otherwise known as ACTA. Although not legislated, ACTA is currently being negotiated upon by a number of counties, such as the U.S.A, Japan, Australia, the European Commission and Switzerland and set to be proposed at the upcoming G8 summit in Japan. This international treaty would provide measures that aim to protect the intellectual property rights and information based goods over the internet and stem the movement of pirated goods.

With measures that Graeme Philipson of The Sydney Morning Herald described as being “draconian” in his June 10 article Digital copyright: it’s all wrong, the treaty includes provisions that allow for border security in countries involved to have “ex officio authority” to “seize and destroy IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) infringing goods”, be it on any electronic device such as walkman, laptop, phone, anything. By ex officio, it means “authority to act without complaint by right holders”, which leads to a situation in which, according to Phillips:

They need no proof, only suspicion…They would be able to seize any device - laptop, iPod, DVD recorder, mobile phone, etc - and confiscate it or destroy anything on it, merely on suspicion. On the spot, no lawyers, no right of appeal, no nothing.

My two cents on this contentious issue? The fact remains that it is extremely important for record companies, film studios and other corporations that produce the material which we download or buy illegally to sell and profit. Otherwise what incentive is there for them to keep on producing what we download? If they don’t profit, the industry may as well shut down. But has the entertainment industry shut down as a result of piracy and illegal internet downloads? It would appear not. While it is worth noting that the movie industry and music industry has slumped, Many films are still being able to profit despite the vast availability of it to download from the internet. Record companies and singers still continue to sing because they still sell and are able to recoup the production costs. If anything, the only thing dented by illegal internet downloads is the amount of money executives can put in their wallet. And if we take a close look at the proposed treaty and those behind it, we can easily see that this treaty is less to do with intellectual property than with ensuring company execs receive a fatter paycheck. The man behind ACTA is one Rep. Howard Berman, a man who has received close to $200 000 in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry, the top four of which (and were also his top four campaign contributors) were: Time Warner ($21,000), News Corp ($15,000), Sony Corp of America ($14,000) and Walt Disney Co ($13,550). One has to wonder as to why the treaty was organized.

While internet downloads and piracy remains a concern and problem, it is not serious enough to warrant these drastic measures which impose on our civil rights. If you have an internet connection and a computer, then chances are you would have downloaded a song, a movie, a file that was illegal. In today’s society, it is a common norm. Does that mean we all should have to be punished and have our MP3 players, laptops, phones confiscated and destroyed every time we go through an air port? Even though the songs and files were downloaded months before the treaty will be put in place, if it ever is? Illegal files are not downloaded simply to cause mayhem and to bring down companies. They are downloaded because it is cheap and convenient. It is a way of life that has yet to hurt anyone. No major studio has been brought down for any reason other than poor movie choices. ACTA is nothing but a ham-fisted attempt to dissuade people from downloading songs and movies, and forcing them to fork over money, like highway robbery. If anything the treaty will dissuade people from going to the airport

Janson Says: Do we need to protect intellectual property? Yes. Is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement the way to do it? No.

Sources:

• http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/Proposed_US_ACTA_multi-lateral_intellectual_property_trade_agreement_%282007%29
• http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/acta-proposal-2007.pdf
• http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/discussion-paper.html
• http://www.smh.com.au/news/perspectives/digital-copyright-its-all-wrong/2008/06/09/1212863545123.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement#Enforcement

Chapter 3

The flow of cold water onto Blaine’s back cleared his head. It felt cool, refreshing. Sharp. It brought his senses back to where he was and reminded him what he had to do. Fuck. He thought that to himself upon his realisation as to where he was and what he had to do.

He tries to distract himself from his sad reality by thinking back to more pleasant times. Times when things were simpler. Times when he was in his house in Maryland. The last time he hugged his wife Jennifer. The last time he saw his son Joseph in the hospital. Then his mind shifted to when all this crap began. When the shit began its course towards the fan.

It was his first trip to the White House. The Old Man had asked for him to come and give a detailed assessment over the feasibility of invading Iran. Well…that wasn’t true. The Old Man had asked CIA Director Diane Trestle for someone who thinks that war was feasible. Trestle wasn’t going to play into his hands and become a scapegoat. She sent Blaine instead. And she knew the Old Man wasn’t going to like it. Everyone knew it was simply impossible to start a war with Iran. Military forces were stretched to the limit, already fighting in two combat zones. The main problem wasn’t taking Tehran. It was holding it. But Blaine had a feeling he wasn’t going to sway the dogmatic Old Man. He went there and gave his presentation anyway.

When the Old Man was ready to see him, he was led into the conference room. It was a packed house. The Old Man was there. National Security Advisor Wheat was there. Secretary of State Simpson was there. Secretary of Defence Goodwill was there. Vice President Henry was there. Also there were a number of aides and advisors: Carl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Bremer and others he didn’t know. Several prominent figures were there. Senator McCain was there. Senator Lieberman was there. George P. Shultz was there. Richard Perle was there. Also there were several heads of some of the most powerful oil companies. This was going ahead no matter what Blaine told them.

“…with roughly 14% of our armed forces already operating in two fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention additional forces already posted elsewhere for humanitarian missions, it is fair to say that U.S. military forces are stretched to capacity and to send anymore would leave America vulnerable. To open up a third front in Iran would not be advisable…” Blaine was about to go on when he was interrupted by the Old Man and his thick southern accent.

“But logistically speaking, we’re not exactly opening up a new front. We’re more of just expanding the fronts to include Iran and to form one front.”

One military meeting and the asshole thinks he’s Patton.

“Nonetheless it will still require additional troops to be sent in, not only as part of the invasion force but also to be kept there to maintain security and that’s the hard part. As we saw in Baghdad in 03, the insurgent was near to impossible to contain and we’re still struggling to cope with today. Iran would be vastly different. Where in Iraq much of the violence was sectarian based and among Iraqis themselves, the violence that will be seen in post invasion Iran will not. Given that 90% of the population are Shiites, there will be a low chance of sectarian violence and that the majority of the violence will be aimed at American forces. Fighting will be much like the fighting seen after the fall of Berlin in 1945. Close quarters door to door fighting in the streets against a very dedicated enemy. There will also be elements of the insurgent methods seen in Iraq such as IEDs, EFPs, VBIEDs, suicide bombers, sniper squads and the like. Next to oil, Iran’s second biggest export is explosively formed penetrators, most of which is sent to its neighbour Iraq, followed closely by insurgents and militants. They have been known to fund and train Hezbollah, Hamas, the Badr Force, among many others. Considering the…”

“You say that Iran supplies Iraqi insurgents with explosively formed penetrators, the type of weapon that has been known to kill and maim American soldiers in Iraq?” Senator McCain chirped in.

“Yes. Of all the EFPs found in Iraq, 68% were found to have been constructed in Iran. 89% of the remaining 32% are in someway attributed to the Iranians.” Blaine resumed. He knew what McCain was going to say next. He could see it a mile away.

“If so, then isn’t that a good enough reason to enter Iran? I mean what do I say to mothers and fathers of soldiers who have been killed as a result of Iranian EFPs?”

“You tell them that you’re going to beef up border security and prevent the influx of Iranian weapons into Iraqi streets. Either that or tell them you are going to take them out of Iraq and out of harms way. Those are your only options because if you send U.S. forces into Iran, then that will just be more American deaths but this time you will have no one to blame but for your” Again Blaine was interrupted. This time by the Old Man again.

“Thank you for your time Mr Blaine. Your presentation has been very enlightening and we’ll be taking it to great consideration. Mr Gates will escort you out.”

That was the last time he went to the White House. And he was glad about that. Five months later the vote was put to Congress about wether or not to go into Iran on the basis that it was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. It was narrowly passed. Two months later an ultimatum was put forward to the Ayatollah to surrender and within forty-eight hours, the bombs started falling into Tehran. Within hours, soldiers were already landing onto Iranian land from the ships based in the Persian Gulf. Troops were crossing the border from Iraq and Afghanistan. It took just over three weeks for American troops to take Tehran and topple the Ayatollah’s grip. However a mere five hours after the Old Man declared that major combat operations had come to an end and that Iran was free from terror, terror came back with a bang. A massive truck bomb rammed its way into a United States Army barracks, detonating before it hit the actual barracks, killing sixty-eight American soldiers. That was the first strike of the insurgency. The next strike came a mere six hours later before U.S. forces could respond to the first one, this time a similar bomb exploded outside a Tehran post office, killing dozens. Local journalists captured the carnage that was brought about: scores of charred bodies that were once full of life, pools of blood that not a mere moment ago was alive and well, people screaming for lives lost, cursing those who were responsible and damning the Americans for not protecting them. Part of the news footage showed a man, in his late thirties or early forties in a blood drenched shirt with cuts over his body and bleeding carrying a lifeless young girl probably not much older than six. She was clearly not moving and had a thin layer of dust and ash over her body. She didn’t even twitch. Tears were streaming down the man’s face.

And after three years of senseless bloodshed and violence, Richard Blaine touched down at Tehran International to fix this shit up, just to find things blow up in his face. Literally.

Chapter 2

“A U.S. convoy was hit today in what appears to be a change in tactic for Iranian insurgents, aiming more at foreign troops rather than at the civilian population. Reports are sketchy at this point but sources have said that a suicide bomber drove up behind the convoy along the Visible Highway before firing a rocket propelled grenade at a black hawk helicopter and then blowing up the vehicle, killing himself and three Army personnel and injuring six others. There has been no word about the state of the black hawk that has been allegedly shot down due to the media black out on the incident. This attack is the latest in a long line of what appears to be a surge of Insurgent attacks beginning in August this year and comes a day after three more U.S. soldiers were killed in action…” The woman on the television buzzed. The new CNN correspondent for war-torn Iran she was. Richard Blaine has seen her before. On television when she was the weekend anchor for CNN. Makes you wonder if this was a promotion or a demotion for her Blaine thought to himself.

He sat in the infirmary wing of his new workplace, the “Ministry of American Occupation” as the locals liked to call it. The friendly politicians call it the “American Embassy”. To the unfriendly ones, it’s the “Shed in the Whitehouse Backyard that is the Middle East”. To Blaine, it was simply the “CIA’s Base of Iranian Operations”. He sat on a soft clean and comfortable gurney with a gauze patch on the left side of his head, to stop the bleeding from a gash that he sustained as his SVU flipped over in the explosion.

His doctors had cleared him and he was free to leave. He just wanted to stay a bit to watch the news story and to savour the time before he became an “agent of the occupation”. He looked to the clock up on the wall to his right. Half past three. He had a meeting with the important people at five. Military commanders, Iranian government officials, Parliamentary committee members. So called movers and shakers of Tehran. He decides to get out of the gurney and head to the showers, to rinse out as best he could the smell of blood and death out of his tortured body.