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Haiti: Leaked Cables Expose U.S. Suppression of Min. Wage, Election Doubts and Elite’s Private Army
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Drawing on almost 2,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables on Haiti released by WikiLeaks, a partnership between The Nation magazine and the Haitian weekly, Haïti Liberté, exposes new details on how Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Levi’s worked with the United States to block an increase in the minimum wage in the hemisphere’s poorest nation, how business owners and members of the country’s elite used Haiti’s police force as their own private army after the 2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and how the United States, the European Union and the United Nations supported Haiti’s recent presidential and parliamentary elections, despite concerns over the exclusion of Haiti’s largest opposition party, Lavalas, the party of Aristide.
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Policing the Internet
[LA Times]:
A Senate bill aims to cut off support for any site found by the courts to be ‘dedicated’ to copyright or trademark infringement. Its goals are laudable, but its details are problematic.
Hollywood studios, record labels and other U.S. copyright and trademark owners are pushing Congress to give them more protection against parasitical foreign websites that are profiting from counterfeit or bootlegged goods. The Senate Judiciary Committee has responded with a bill (S 968) that would force online advertising networks, credit card companies and search engines to cut off support for any site found by the courts to be “dedicated” to copyright or trademark infringement. Its goals are laudable, but its details are problematic.
TSA asked 95-year-old woman to remove adult diaper
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A woman has filed a complaint with federal authorities over how her elderly mother was treated at Northwest Florida Regional Airport last weekend.
Jean Weber of Destin filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security after her 95-year-old mother was detained and extensively searched last Saturday while trying to board a plane to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.
Her mother, who was in a wheelchair, was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.
“It’s something I couldn’t imagine happening on American soil,” Weber said Friday. “Here is my mother, 95 years old, 105 pounds, barely able to stand, and then this.”
Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, said she could not comment on specific cases to protect the privacy of those involved.
“The TSA works with passengers to resolve any security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner,” she said.
Feel saver?
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Sony’s Insane Fear Of ‘Piracy’ Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters
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Nina Paley alerted us to an article from the Boston Globe that’s been getting some attention about how many theaters are showing digital projections of regular “2D” movies that look really bad because projectionists don’t remove 3D lenses. Basically, lots of theaters are using digital projectors, which were supposed to be a huge boon for the theater industry. It’s easier than shipping and loading film. It can often present a crisper picture. In general it provides plenty of benefits. Those same projects can show 3D movies, but if you try to show a 2D movie via the 3D lenses, you can lose a ton of light. In some cases, the films are being projected 85% darker due to this. In other words, it’s making the theater experience dreadful.
You might just think the issue is lazy projectionists who don’t want to change lenses. While that might play a part… the bigger issue appears to be Sony’s insane fear of digital infringement:
So why aren’t theater personnel simply removing the 3-D lenses? The answer is that it takes time, it costs money, and it requires technical know-how above the level of the average multiplex employee. James Bond, a Chicago-based projection guru who serves as technical expert for Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest, said issues with the Sonys are more than mechanical. Opening the projector alone involves security clearances and Internet passwords, “and if you don’t do it right, the machine will shut down on you.’” The result, in his view, is that often the lens change isn’t made and “audiences are getting shortchanged.’”
Yes, the projector requires you to get security clearances and internet passwords just to change a lens… or it shuts down on you. Why? Because of the fear of the dreaded “piracy.” Of course, all this really does, in the long run, is drive more such “piracy” by making people question why they should go to the theater for a crappy movie-going experience.
* Oh, and yes, it’s pretty freaking cool that Roger Ebert’s projectionist is named James Bond.
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I thought this bit farther down was key: