Monthly Archives: June 2011

Why didn’t Obama’s strike team bring Osama bin Laden to justice?

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As Democracy Now! headlines described today: A trial is underway in Cambodia for the four most senior surviving members of the Khmer Rouge. The former officials face charges that include crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture. The Khmer Rouge is believed to have killed at least 1.7 million Cambodians during the late 1970s. All four of the accused have plead “not guilty” to the charges against them. Stephen Rapp is the U.S. ambassador at large for war crime.

This is such a traumatic event in the history of this country that touched every single person here, a quarter of the population murdered and a country that was turned back to the year zero. An understanding of why it happened and how it happened is really critical to going forward, and that is why there is such an outpouring of interest here and why it is so important that the international community support this trial to the end.Stephen Rapp, U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crime Issues

There is “an outpouring of interest” in the crime of 9/11 as well and “it is so important that the international community support [a] trial to the end” for what happened then too. But instead of a trial for Osama bin Ladin, who we’re told is one of the masterminds of 9/11, President Obama had bin Ladin killed. One must wonder why murder is a preferable outcome to bringing him in alive and trying him in open court with evidence presented against him.

Update 2011-10-02: President Obama’s CIA claims to have 52 separate photos and videos of Osama bin Laden’s body, the U.S. raid that killed him, and his burial at sea, but refuses to release them because publication might inspire terror attacks on U.S. targets according to ABC news.

Always give credit where credit is due!

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Nina Paley, author of Sita Sings the Blues, just released another animation called “Credit is Due (The Attribution Song)”; another in a series of Minute Memes. She’s released a few of these shorter animations and they’re all informative and fun.

According to the page for this video on archive.org, this video is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. According to the footer on QuestionCopyright.org our content is released to the public and can be considered to be in the public domain: you may copy, share, excerpt, modify, and distribute modified versions of this and other pages from QuestionCopyright.org.. It’s unclear precisely how this work is licensed to you or if this work is under copyright at all. I can only guess that you are free to share unaltered copies of the work, transcode the work in its entirety to make it playable for yourself and others, and distribute copies of the work in its entirety with some reasonable amount of attribution (the more restrictive of the two sets of permissions). Until the two pages above are in sync I cannot be sure.

Update (2011-06-30): User “camille” (whom I believe is QuestionCopyright.org’s own Camille E. Acey) replied to my post about the confusing licensing on QuestionCopyright.org’s blog post about this video. Ms. Acey said that there is no licensing confusion because it is impossible to actually *put* anything directly into the public domain unless it originates from a government agency. I believe that is untrue: I believe all American copyright holders may choose to place a copyrighted work into the Public Domain thereby forgoing all copyright power for that work. I also believe if this were not the case the many lawyers at the Creative Commons would not have worked on their public domain dedication (deprecated since 2010-10-11) and then later reworked their public domain dedication into CC0 in order to broaden the usefulness of the dedication. Given Ms. Acey’s belief about placing works into the PD, she continued our statement that everything on our site is public domain is just a stance, not a legal reality which I believe only further confuses the issue. In the interest of correcting my own misunderstanding, I asked for Ms. Acey to cite sources for her belief. She cited How can I put a work into the public domain? which says exactly nothing to defend the errant notion that it is impossible to actually *put* anything directly into the public domain unless it originates from a government agency. My latest contribution to the QuestionCopyright.org thread awaits moderation. Until corrected I maintain the licensing confusion I list above remains. A copyright reform organization should not be unclear about licensing.

Also see:

Civil liberties require software freedom

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FreePress.net, a media reform organization, occasionally sends out emails and hosts feedback campaigns where they ask people to contact someone in an organization which is doing something wrong. In many situations their publicity efforts are right-minded and centered on drawing attention to policy changes that can be corrected by publicizing the wrongdoing—in 2003 the FCC said they’d listen to Americans give their views on media concentration but then FCC Chairman Michael Powell said he’d attend only one hearing in Richmond, Virginia (in order to save money on hotel rooms and airline tickets), the American public was outraged. The public understood that this issue had the potential to adversely affect most citizens (regardless of political position). A series of well-attended town hall style hearings followed but Chairman Powell was absent for most of these hearings, clearly displaying his disrespect for the public’s views. FreePress.net (which started in late 2002) had begun and helped formulate a principled message illustrating why media concentration is bad news for everyone but the media conglomerates consolidating their power.

FreePress.net’s most recent campaign targets Apple Computers’ Steve Jobs, calling him out for Apple’s control over iPhone cameras and a related process Apple seeks to patent. FreePress.net’s campaign letter begins “Apple wants to control the camera on your phone.” and goes on:

The maker of the iPhone wants to patent a sensor that would detect when people are using their phone cameras to do things like film concerts — and give corporations the power to shut them down.

This is a compound statement and therefore less than clear; there are two issues bundled together here, both of which a tech-savvy organization should oppose.
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Obama-Bush profits again: U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion but it was probably stolen, wars continue apace

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Remember when $6.6 billion went “missing” after huge quantities of $100 bills were shipped to Iraq in 2003-2004?
Now President Barack Obama’s government are, according to Sydney Morning Herald author Paul Richter, “finally closing the books on the program that handled funding for reconstruction in postwar Iraq” and it’s a doozy: President “no looking back”‘s council tells us the money was probably stolen. I know, incredibly obvious, right?

Twenty-one giant C-130 Hercules cargo planes each carrying $2.4 billion cash went to Iraq and somehow the cargo went unaccounted afterwards. Stuart Bowen, special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, said the missing $US6.6 billion might be ”the largest theft of funds in national history”. While the Pentagon said they could track down the money given enough time, six years later it seems the money is still not able to be tracked. Isn’t that what a thief would say?

As bad as a $6.6 billion theft is, keep in mind that trillions of dollars are spent on all the occupations, invasions, and bombings the US heads up today: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, saber-rattling against Iran, …all while Americans are suffering from an illegal and unchallenged foreclosure wave, a larger gulf between the rich and poor than ever before, and no clear indication the American government cares about its citizens woes.

Is any of this really a surprise? How bad do things have to be before millions of Americans find the time to protest in all the major cities at the same time (so as to clearly show solidarity)?

Blender Institute videos are well worth paying for

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I have been an avid supporter of the Blender Institute videos for a long time (as you can see from many posts to this blog). One reason is they treat their users well: works are licensed to share (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license). I encourage you to purchase the videos, share, and enjoy!

For all of the videos: Everything else (video tutorials, HTML, and so on) Blender Foundation | www.blender.org