Did weak copyright laws help Germany outpace the British Empire?:
Höffner contends … that the near absence of copyright law in eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany laid the groundwork for the “Gründerzeit” — the enormous wave of economic growth that Deutschland experienced in the middle and later nineteenth century.
While I was partying at Sunrise Celebration in Somerset recently my good friend Ken O’Keefe was sailing off to Gaza on the Mavi Marmara, as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
The flotilla was carrying humanitarian aid, medical supplies, and construction materials, intent on breaking the Gaza Strip blockade being perpetrated by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.
In the middle of the night on 30 May, while in international waters, they were forcibly boarded by armed Israeli commandos. The passengers defended their ship against the invaders and nine of them were murdered, most shot at close range in the back of the head.
Ken helped overpower two commandos and managed to disarm one of his pistol and empty it’s ammunition. The commandos eventually overpowered the flotilla, then promptly kidnapped everyone, towing the ships to a detention camp. After stealing everyone’s possessions and generally treating them like dogs the kidnappers relented to international pressure, releasing and deporting most of those they had kidnapped. Ken wanted to appeal his deportation to Ireland and instead go to Gaza, but, having already been seriously beaten twice by Israeli soldiers while captive, his solicitor advised him that for his own safety he should leave Israel.
For his troubles Ken was laughably listed on the IDF’s official propaganda weblog — IDF Spokesperson — as “known to be involved in terrorist activity,” and continuing with:
Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an American and British citizen, is a radical anti-Israel activist and operative of the Hamas Terror organization. He attempted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a commando unit for the Palestinian terror organization.
To form and train a commando unit? I’ve had some heated arguments with Ken over the years but ‘terrorist commando’? Someone in the IDF propaganda unit’s been telling porkies. (Note to IDF: when you’re falsely accusing someone of being a terrorist try not to get their nationality wrong. Kind of makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.)
So let’s get this straight. They kidnap Ken (whose life story happens to be an open book). Then they deport him. And then they tell us he’s a known terrorist? Wouldn’t it perhaps be a little more prudent to hold onto a terrorist?
Someone in the IDF propaganda unit doesn’t know how to tell porkies.
External links
Props to Iceland for going ahead with plans to pass the world’s strongest freedom of speech laws.
Time to look for a new web host in Iceland.
There are hundreds of parodies of this “Downfall” clip. The studio, Constantin Films, has ordered takedowns of some of them, and eventually even had this parody removed from YouTube. In this clip, Hitler is the producer, and his lawyers tell him why he can’t do a DMCA takedown and how the EFF could stop him. He desperately searches for other ways to protect the movie. Click through for the video.
Collateral Murder, another U.S. massacre, this time caught on tape. When you watch the video bare in mind the U.S. military claimed the victims died in a battle that took place between U.S. forces and insurgents:
“There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force”
—Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Bleichwehl,
spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad. (New York Times)
The reality is a bunch of coward rednecks flying around in helicopters committing murder from high above.
When the Nuremberg Tribunal described a war of aggression as the supreme war crime, because it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole,” this is the kind of thing they were talking about. These trigger happy rednecks flying around in helicopters just shouldn’t be in Iraq in the first place.
And this redneck nation wonders why people want to fly planes into their buildings.
Freedom of speech is on the offensive.
What an idea, a new business model for Iceland:
On Tuesday, the Icelandic parliament is expected to introduce a measure aimed at making the country an international center for investigative journalism publishing, by passing the strongest combination of source protection, freedom of speech, and libel-tourism prevention laws in the world.
Supporters of the proposal say the move would make Iceland an “offshore publishing center” for free speech, analogous to the offshore financial havens that allow corporations to hide capital from authorities. Could global news organizations with a home office in Reykjavík soon be as common as Delaware corporations or Cayman Islands assets?
“This is a legislative package to create a haven for freedom of expression,” Icelandic member of parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir confirmed to me, saying that a proposal for comprehensive media law reform will be filed in parliament on Tuesday, and that whistle-blowing specialists Wikileaks has been involved in drafting it.
Professor Colin Blakemore assesses the intriguing implications of advances in neuroscience that have made it possible to communicate with those in a vegetative state:
Astronomy, from Copernicus on, has transformed our view of the place of the earth in the heavens. Darwin changed forever our view of the status of humanity. Neuroscience is likely to challenge our very understanding of what it is to be a person.
There’s a campaign under way in the U.S. to “restore the First Amendment to its original purpose: to protect people, not corporations.” They need to hurry. The U.S. has long taken the road to corporatocracy. The longer this goes on the less likely they’ll ever be able to turn back.
