Slashdot Mirror

China tends to donate seized counterfeit goods to charity. The US actually sued China at the WTO over this practice, and eventually lost.

The Saudis don't want the material transferred from their country except by a special mechanism which guarantees them the Patent rights.

Er.. not really right, it's a dutch genetics lab that has a sample of the virus, and are making people who use the data or sample sign an MTA (Material Transfer Agreement), that basically says you can't do commercial things with it without paying them, non-comercial research stuff all fine.

From this article hare

The Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), to which Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands are parties (as are practically all other UN members except the US), establishes obligations for access and benefit-sharing for biodiversity, including prior informed consent of the providing country and mutually agreed terms for utilisation of the material. These obligations are further detailed by the Convention's Nagoya Protocol, which is presently gathering ratifications for entry into force.

The situation of Erasmus having obtained the virus and placed intellectual property claim over it without the consent of the Saudi government and without an agreement for benefit-sharing appears to be at odds with the requirements of the Convention.

Basically the Saudis and the Dutch lab are both fighting over the IP rights.

The fishy bit seems to be that the Saudi's didn't seem to want the rest of the world to know they had a little disease outbreak, and it reads a bit like they were trying to supress anything to do with it, and now seem to be making excuses.

(And none of this stops you taking your own sample from a parient with the virus and doing your own genetic analysis...

I would be really really interested to the reason for this. Your suggestion is possible; Look at the quotes in my other comment though and you see that part of the delay is probably because they simply didn't realise they had a new disease. The most interesting bit though is that it seems that they only just agreed to a new transfer

“But now... we’ve got an approval to move these samples and they will be shipped for testing,” he said.

(from this Alarabiya article.) and note this, from the original article (with my emphasis)

The PIP augments the International Health Regulations, creating a series of understandings that are flu-specific regarding sample sharing, patents, and profits from products derived from viral discovery. Chan's response to Memish's accusations no doubt stems from her concern that the Saudis could invoke provisions of the flu-specific PIP, demanding control over the MERS-CoV samples, patents, and products.

In other words; the Saudis now believe that they have a legal basis for control, even if they share. Before they were worried about this. And notice, the same article mentions that the Indonesians did exactly that so this is not something that's being thought about for the first time.

One suspects that you did not read the article... which is normal for slashdot, but given your username I would have expected different ;)

I took my username specifically to remind me to read the article. In this case, the trollish bit is that I read not just the original article but a few more. The accusation is good though; keep it up and keep trolling all of us with it whenver you can.

RTFA. They didn't patent it, they're not blocking anyone.

These suspicions were confirmed on 28 May by Science magazine, to which Erasmus admitted an as yet unpublished claim over use of the virus.

(from this article)

The problem is with Saudi-Arabia, not with the Dutch lab.

Erasmus determined that it was a new coronavirus (SARS is another coronavirus), but delayed several months before making it available to others.

(same source)

Saudi Arabia's Memish complained at the WHO meeting that there was a lag of three months, between June and September 2012,

(article linked from summary above)

The article is borderline slander, but the summary is outright misleading.

That's a strong statement you are making there.

The problem isn't with a Dutch lab that asks for payment in return for results and a cut of the potential profit. The problem is with the Saudi government that fires people who actually try to alert the world.

Why does the problem have to be one or the other? Why can't it be both, but especially the involvement of patents in medicine and especially in patenting pre-existing natural gene sequences and their derived products? For clarity I deleted a section of your post where I have no comment

Thanks for the history lesson. I can wonder if the same happened in Argentina, too?
    "Argentina: Sheer neoliberal lunacy"
    http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr137a.htm
"The following article provides the background to the current crisis in Argentina and traces the roots of the crisis to adoption of the neoliberal economic reforms advocated by the IMF. ... SINCE 1989-90, Argentinaâ(TM)s neoliberal economic model has closely followed the Washington Consensus requirements: trade (tariff reduction) and financial (free capital inflows and outflows) liberalisation; deregulation of the economy (liberalisation of prices of goods); and the âretirementâ(TM) of the State from economic activities (privatisation of the state enterprises, e.g., oil and gas, banks, telecommunications) as well as some of its functions (coverage of social security, for example). This prescription, which has been applied mainly through the medium of the economic reform policies of the Bretton Woods institutions (in particular the IMF), has also shaped the development of many other countries of Latin America. ..."

I can fear you will prove right, sadly. The USA is already so far gone. But the problem is, Mexico did not have nuclear weapons and other WMDs like killer robots to unleash as it descended into madness. The USA, on the other hand...

"They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45"
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."

European Patent No. 301,749, granted in March 1994, is an exceptionally broad “species patent” which grants gene giant Monsanto exclusive monopoly over all forms of genetically engineered soybean varieties and seeds - irrespective of the genes used or the transformation technique employed

Source.

Virtual monopolies over GMOs are an idiotic, and natural marijuana strains may not be able to compete in the long term with genetically engineered strains, but marijuana strains which are currently in use are presumably not patented, nor are they genetically engineered, and thus no one will be able to assert control over them. The fears of legalization allowing Monsanto to come in and steal rights to your pot is paranoia.

Gene patents are also big in the agriculture industry. And they actively sue to keep it that way.

Numerous reports on TV and a lot of newspaper articles. Two are a few that a quick Google search turned up:

Third World Farmers Hit By Unfair Rules

The Seed Gestapo And Third World Farmers

Also, We Feed The World is kind of a starting point.

Unlike what Monsanto said, and you fell for

[Citation needed]

• Superweeds fear from GM crops
• Destructive creation: GM superweeds
• Rise of GM superweeds
• RE: Government Study Finds GM 'Superweeds'
• "Cross-Pollination Leads to Triple Herbicide Resistance"

Crops cross pollinate, GE or otherwise. And those who complain about GE crops need to Keep It Real - we've been genetically engineering for thousands of years through cross breeding.

We have not been inserting fish genes into tomatoes, or any other foreign genes into any other plant or animal life for thousands of years. Horizontal gene transfer happens rarely in nature. Simply selective breeding as is done in agriculture and farming does not introduce genes that do not occur naturally in plants or animals into those plant and animals. All it does is amplify traits that already there. I garden and if I come across a trait say in tomatoes I grow, I currently have four different tomatoes growing in the garden, I can save the seeds from the tomatoes I like and plant them the next year. If next year I do the same and keep doing that year after year I'll eventually create my own cultivar. That's a lot different than introducing foreign genes.

Yes, I know Monsanto are dicks, and I heard about that farmer. What I don't see, however, is how this is Gore's fault

It's not Gore's fault but he supports increasing genetic engineering.

The most a quick Googling brings up is that Clinton's secretary of agriculture was opposed to it while Gore was VP - pretty weak sauce.

Perhaps you searched for the wrong things. From wiki's article on Al Gore:
"Gore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their 'passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect.'"

• Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel
• Al Gore's Mealy-Mouth Position on Genetically Engineeered Food

Falcon

Funny thing is, "poor countries" are enacting their own tariffs, if they get a chance (nobody financing a civil war) or don't care about getting loans from development agencies.

I don't think I'll ever become a "localvore" ... there is only so much cabbage and potatoes I can eat ... or I'll have to become a nomad, to be a 'localvore' in a more than one climate zone.

"What free trade also does for third world farmers is encourage them to grow for export rather than for the local markets." -- if they don't grow crops for export, how are they going to buy computers ( and iPods :-P ) ?

"The crisis of pollution and depletion of water resources is viewed by Monsanto as a business opportunity."

"Monsanto's genetic engineering trials in India are dangerous and anti-democratic"

"Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81"

"Corporate biopiracy and the terminator seed"

"Percy Schmeiser, a Canadian farmer and seed saver of many years, was sued by the Monsanto Corporation (producer of the poisonous "Round Up") for growing GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) seeds patented by Monsanto. The seeds had blown into the ditch by his field. He is fighting this huge corp. which has the potential to control all the food in the world if not stopped."
http://www.suesupriano.com/audio/schmeiser.mp3
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

"Terminator ban undermined at UN meeting in Spain"

This is about "full-spectrum domination" as far as I'm concerned; imagine if you could simply turn off a region's food supply.

Exactly what of value is there in having many languages? It's a sentimental hold-over from when travel and communication were difficult as far as I'm concerned.

Have you ever heard of the Pacific Yew tree or of Taxol? Taxol is a drug derived from the Pacific Yew tree used in the treatment of Breast as well as other cancers. Medicine men of American Indians living in the Pacific Northwest knew it could be used as a "drug" to cure illnesses. The study of a language may reveal a potential cure for other illnesses or diseases. This is one reason ethnobotany is studied. The W R Grace company used local knowledge from Indians to make a pesticide from the neem tree. They did this by studying what the Indians did, and was granted a patent, however because they relied on common local knowledge the patent has been contested as a form of biopiracy. When locals loose their language they loose much more than the language, they could potentially loose a life saving drug or something else beneficial to them and to others.

Google is great:

http://www.ewg.org/farm/findings.php
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr141f.htm
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?Sto ryId=3795%20#Box

The fact that most of the subsidies go to large agribusinesses makes it even more depressing.

The main reason why the Indian government wants to make it a publicly known document is because there have been many cases where products like basmati (long grained rice from India and Pakistan), turmeric (used as an antiseptic in ayurvedic medicine), the neem tree (used for anything from disinfectant to toothbrush to itch reliever for chicken pox), bitter gourd(excellent for treatment of diabetes) etc. It took 10 years to revoke the patent on Turmeric (from the BBC website). I don't think anyone wants to go through that kind of litigation without having some strong proof of prior art.

Suppose some Indian company wants to export these products to the US at some later stage, or the patent laws allow for greater integration with worldwide patents (it's not probable... but anything's possible right?), then the patents issued would cause problems for them at that stage. It is this that the Indian government wants to avoid by creating a searchable digital archive with proof of prior art.
-Mohan

The REAL reason Monsanto would sue that farmer would be so that the Monsanto sponsored farmer could by his land, with Monsanto's help. In exchange the farmer who aquired the new land would have to sign a contract stating they would purchase Monsanto seed exclusively for all their crops - but didn't set a price. Then Monsanto jacks the cost to that farmer just enough to fleece him indefinitely, but not enough to put him out of business.

It's, Monsanto suing a farmer, has already happened:

Monsanto vs. Schmeiser"

The United States has always provided 20-25% of the UN budget, far more than any other nation in the world. How anyone could mod the parent post as "informative" is beyond me.

Granted the US has been assessed at 25% of the UN budget, however, the US has been in arrears to nearly $1.6 Billion. Meaning, despite saying the US is responsible for one quarter of the UN budget, the US hasn't been paying any of it out.

Bottom line, the US OWES the UN for non-payment of its Member Fees. I quote this "As the single largest debtor, the U.S. has severely hindered the UN's capacity to deal with the many problems that face the world today."

To further what I have said, the US has given itself a unilateral deduction in its dues from 25% to 22%. The US voted itself to pay less.

The US made a one time payment of $1.4 Billion to cover its arrears as "Thanks" for the help in Afganistan, but still owes nearly $1 Billion from non-payment till this day.

For your reading pleasure, here are some of many that I have found using Google. International Court Rebuffs U.N. Defaulters

U.N. Member States Accept New Deal on U.N. Budget

Trade and Global Governance

The people who modded it "informative", are likely people who have made the effort to research the background information as opposed to spouting off patriotism at a drop of a hat.

Just because you live in a country, doesn't mean that it's always right all the time.

I don't think you can just wave your hand and say "Okay, there are still costs invovled in researching"... especially when that is what 99.9% of the cost is in. Now saying exactly opposite of what you said i.e. waving your hand and nonchelontly saying "Okay, there are still raw material costs" would be more appriate since they are a tiny sliver of a fraction of the cost. [emphasis mine]

99.9%? Bullshit. Show me your source for that figure, or did you just make it up off the top of your head like the rest of your sweeping statements?

Modern pharmaceutical companies spend more in advertising than they do on research and development. For most companies their advertising costs are at least twice their research and development costs; for some, it's nearly quadruple.

Don't believe it? Open your eyes. Turn on your television. Open a magazine. Or better yet, read the actual figures. We're in the middle of a non-stop advertising blitz. And that's just for the public! Pharmaceutical reps spend ridiculous amounts on comping doctors and hospitals in order to ensure sales--do you really think you can just wave your hand and make those very significant costs go away?

-Grym

In fact, WIPO's existence is not dependent on rightholders, and rightholders do not "fund" WIPO. WIPO as an international intergovernmental organization is answerable to its Member States and its existence depends on its Members only.

how does it help the 10k people that die each year in the US due to lack of health insurance?

The parent tried to make the point that we are now all about money, and no longer "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". If you read that however, you are only guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You are not guaranteed happiness, you have to make that happen yourself.

What you didn't mention (or possibly were not told by the source of your information) is that they caught this in pre-pre-production trials (they screen new genes for the existence of allergins in a trial before introducing it into pre-production breeding programs). In other words, this is a known risk, and this is an example of the system interdicting a possible health risk in exactly the manner it was intended to, not the narrowly averted disaster anti-GMO pamphlets try to make it out to be.

Somethings may he caught in "pre-production" trials, however even these trials can't catch everything such as long term risks In other cases risks are dismissed or are denied, such as cross pollination. For instance for years Monsanto denied their GM corn would cross pollinate with wild relatives, yet it has been shown it has happened. A few years back an organic farmer in Canada had his shipment of corn denied entry into Germany because it was shown to be contaminated with foreign genes. In another case another farm in Saskatchewan, Canada was sued by Monsanto because pollen drift from a neighbor farmer contaminated his crop. In the case of Monsanto vs. Schmeiser Canadian courts ruled in favor of Monsanto. It's been shown that corn has been contaminated in Mexico, where growing GE crops is illegal. If the wild corn in Latin America, where corn orginates from, becomes contaminated who knows what the consequences could be, other than that Monsanto can claim because it's genes are in wild corn Monsanto owns them too. And it's not just GE corn where it has happened, it's also been shown to have happened with rape-seed, aka cannola.

Allowing the same amount of food to be grown on less land, thus slowing natural habitat destruction.

Can you provide any studies showing GMOs crops yield more food on the same amount of land than other methods, such as organic? As of yet though I've searched I haven't found any.

Increasing local crop yield in developing countries that can't count on foreign crops to get to them.

Most farmers in Third World countries simply can't afford to pay for gmo seed. Instead many save seed from their crop each year and companies who sale GMO seed don't allow this. In Canada Monsanto sued, and won, a farmer in Saskatchewan for growing one of Monsanto's GE crops without paying a royalty, Monsanto vs. Schmeiser even though it was pollen from a neighbor's crop that contaminated his.

Yes, because ignorance is mainstream.

That much is true, since most people are unaware of both the risks and the prevalence of GM crops.

Yet this is exactly analogous to what the GM-labeling people want -- information that is only useful for making irrational decisions. There is *no* evidence that genetic engineered foods can harm you,

First, many people are more concered about the long term ecological impact of GM crops than about personal health risks. Besides the problem of GM crops escaping into the wild and displacing original species, risks to wild animals (like birds and butterflies) from toxins produced by GM crops, and increased use of pesticides on "Roundup Ready" crops, there are risks of gene transfer into other organisms - including disease organisms.

Second, GM crops have not existed long enough to be proven safe. There are unanswered questions about allergens and toxic substances produced by GM crops. You wanna eat 'em? Hey, I support your right to put anything you want into your body - so long as you grow them under biohazard protocols and label them, so that I don't have to assume the risk too.

Thrid, GM food crops have no real benefit except inflating profits of multinational corporations at the exepense of third-world farmers. The idea that third world farmers should plant "golden rice" rather than go back to those local crops rich in vitamin A that were displaced by globalization - where third world nations have to grow food that can be exported for the profit of others, rather than feed their own populations - would be laughable if it were not so tragic.

Choosing to avoid GM food is not only a rational decision, it is the only rational decision.

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/pushes.htm

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/trade/msf05012002. html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0419-01.ht m

The problem really is one of money. Why would anyone want to work in India for fraction of the money you can get anywhere else ?

Considering how easy movement of professions helps Indian S/W industries, I'm sure the govt. will be willing to introduce temporary work permits too if need be. Infact, they had mooted GATS guidelines on visas, work permits. I don't know the status now.

For those who don't know, India has a huge illigal immigrants problem. The immigrants are mostly from Bangladesh. In the 80's and 90's there was a very militant movement against illegal immigrants in the state of Assam. See this article.

Opposition to H1B in the US now is understandable. Infact, if INS is even now giving out H1B visas in this economy, it is absurd.
.

Just a few examples of the stupid US patents on other countries' products:

Bio-Piracy Campaign Exposes Holes in U.S Patent Laws
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/tur-cn.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/1996/3011am.htm
The US Patent System Legalizes Theft and Biopiracy
Absurd patent laws

There's no need for conservation if we can produce enough electricity to cover our needs...

That depends on the cost of producing it.

If you patent an invention that naturally tends to reproduce itself then you shouldn't go whining to the authorities when it does exactly that.

However, a blurb from this article is also relevant:

CLARIFICATION: A March 30 article about a Monsanto Co. lawsuit against a Canadian canola farmer failed to fully report the judgeâ(TM)s conclusions in deciding the case. Judge W. Andrew MacKay wrote that the amount of Roundup Ready canola in the farmerâ(TM)s fields likely could not be explained by cross-pollination and the spread of seed from nearby fields and passing trucks, as argued in the farmerâ(TM)s defense.

So, in the judge's opinion, the case isn't a cut-and-dry drive-by pollination mishap.

Since this took place in Canada, I am curious - have any similar cases gone to court in the US yet? I had trouble doing a quick search for just that; all I could find were more references to the Canadian case.

Nobody really wants to take responsibility for the (relatively minimal) clean-up/recovery costs..

Apparently these little switches are one of the top sources of mercury contamination out there.

I meant to say, Another example...

IIRC from my undergrad days in econ, technically MS would not be covered by US anti-dumping laws, but by the anti-trust laws under a doctrine known as deep pockets. The idea is that you have enough cash stashed away that you can afford to drop your prices for a sufficiently long time to drive less well endowed competitors out of business and then raise prices to the monopoly level. Here is an example from the US airlines industry. Anti-dumping is a similar idea but under US law applies to foreign companies selling for less than production costs.

There are a couple of problems with both the deep pockets notion and anti-dumping laws. First, a large competitor may well have a lower cost of production than a smaller competitor and costs can be notoriously hard to measure. This can lead to charges that what is really happening is that the DOJ is bringing the case for political reasons, i.e. the protection of small business (the A&P grocery case is the classic example). The second problem is that cutting the price imposes a cost on the big competitor as well (e.g. $177 million quarterly loss for the MS game console) and so it isn't entirely clear that this is a rational strategy. Remember that both the large and small guys do best where their marginal revenue = their marginal cost (i.e. profit maximization) and this is not necessarily the same as maximizing market share as many Korean and Japanese firms have discovered in the past decade or so.

And for the parent who wrote:

The US puts taxes at will on any kind of product if they think their own industrie soffers from forreign laws... However: what is legal and what not, all over the world, is final descided by a US court.

The EU and the Japanese are at least as guilty of protection as the US (try selling Guatemalan bananas in the EU). Most of these disputes are now settled under GATT treaties by the WTO, not US courts. In fact, the US 1916 anti-dumping law has been held to violate the WTO and GATT treaty by the WTO. Under the rules, the US is required to bring its domestic laws into conformity with WTO and GATT rules as are all of the other signatories.

Since I remembered the lawsuit by Monsanto, I entered into Google:

farmer sued genetically corn patented

And these articles came forth:

The farmer's page
Article"
Another
Another
Tale of the Absurd
Monsano wins
Commentary
and on...
and on...
Comment
Good ol' Mother Jones

Y'all see, there is a damned good chance that such corn will contaminate the other crops, and then Monsanto or whomever will own their souls. Or GNP, whatever works.

I'm surprised that the Canadian case isn't common knowledge. Then again, it wasn't exactly Evening News material for the U.S. No network news department head wants to seem "liberal" nowadays, which translates to "damned few stories critical of corporations" (balance), which of course is not connected to trying to please conservative corporate owners who have become quite.... proactive in their news departments of late.

The submitter of the item is correct in identifying IP lawsuit threats as an important datum in the decision to decline the food, even if the article cited doesn't make a point of it. An informed person would already know about the enormous lawsuit potential, and add that to the stack.

Well, this Eden project looks really cool, but there are definitely other candidates for the 8th wonder of the (modern) world: The Baha'i Gardens:
http://www.tour-haifa.co.il/BahaiShrine/indexEng.h tml
http://www.bahaiworldnews.org/terraces/ And as for the ancient world here is a candidate eighth wonder: Banaue Rice Terraces:
http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/forgotten/ban aue.html
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/mm-cn.htm

Baloney. That's just rather narrow political correctness.
If it's so bad to use Third World, then why do The Third World Network and The Third World Academy of Science and The Third World Quarterly and Friends Of The Third World - all worthy institutions - all feel able to use the title without being derogatory or racist?

Every year, I find myself disliking Christmas more and more, exactly because of the impersonality that seems built-in to the model. I think this year was particularly bad because of the exhortations to spend out of patriotism (buck up the economy and all that). The modern goal of Christmas is to spend, spend, spend and get, get, get, and to be honest I find myself, in that final shopping rush, looking for what I call 'respectable' gifts, instead of the kind of personal, lovely gift I really do want to give. What I call a 'respectable gift' is one that costs about the 'right amount of money' -- not so much that I am uncomfortable with it, but not so little that the recipient will think I am cheap. It seems impossible to hit the target correctly -- probably (to take a metaphor a couple of steps too far) because the arrow is bent, and hitting the target with a bent arrow would be pure chance.

I don't think the system mentioned in the article will make this phenomenon go away. I think it will make the phenomenon worse. It becomes even easier to put less thought into the gift. It makes it easier to 'scorekeep' monetarily ("Damn! He bought me a $50 present, and I spent a lousy $15 on him... I better get him something else"). It turns gift-giving and gift-receiving into a commodities market, where you buy futures ("I think Joe will like a CD this year!"), watch whether the recipient bargains up or down, and finally whether the recipient finally orders what you bought... for delivery a few days later, of course, pre-wrapped for them at the factory.

The root problem, really, is time. Do you have the time to make truly personal gifts for all your gift recipients? I'm not talking cookies -- I've discovered that homemade cookies don't cut it as a Christmas gift, unfortunately ;) I'm a divorced mother, and I'm doing well some nights to find time to make myself dinner. Americans on average put in more hours at work than any other industrialized nation, and it's only growing -- just about everyone is feeling a time crunch.

I'd also bet most of us live hundreds of miles away from most of our relatives. Once upon a time, most of your family would live in one town, and you would know much more (perhaps too much) about all of them. Now, you might see relatives a few times a year.

Be honest -- how much time do you spend with your friends that is comprised of more than LAN gaming, shop talk, or non-interactive movie-watching? How much time do you really spend with your spouse, your parents, your aunts and uncles? Given this, on what basis would you select a really appropriate gift for him or her? Hence 'commodity giving' and 'respectable' gifts -- and gift receipts, and gift certificates, and online gift wish lists.

The effect, for me, is a lingering dissatisfaction with my own efforts (or lack thereof), which leaks over into dissatisfaction with the season and the shallowness of the way we celebrate it.

Australians scientists found that by adding a single gene to mousepox they can create a 100% lethal virus (even to resistant mice), with the effect of vaccines being greatly reduced. It is thought that the gene placed in smallpox would have a similarly devastating effect on humans. heres an article and another.

FUD?
I've read articles that show otherwise..
Drug makers spend FAR more in marketing then R&D.

Family Media Center
Third World Network

This is one companies research so take it with a grain of salt.
Drug companies, like any other business, are in it TO MAKE MONEY. That is their only purpose in life. How many lives are saved in the process is a bonus.

Closely related is the tobacco companies "charitable" contributions. They spent 15 million in a marketing blitz telling the world how they gave some charitible organization 5 million in donations. I could not find any links to this but I have read it in the past, really!

claiming that Bush's travel plans were posted to the web, thereby hurrying the supena through on national security grounds.
(no such itinerary was posted).

requiring the source of a news media story requires personal review by the Attorney General and proof that alternative methods wont work. None of this was done in this case.

the gag order on Indymedia was an abuse of govt. authority, since it requires at least that US laws be violated (no US law was violated). The gag order was later repealed on these and other grounds.


Lefties seem to have trouble realizing that the law is the law, and if you want to fight it, do it properly from within the system.

It seems that you don't think that the laws need to be followed, or at least that the govt. need not follow its own regulations. This is the kind of abuse of power that those of us who care about freedom of the press are worried about.

BULLSHIT. Even some of the anarchists and communists there acknowledged that any "infiltrators" were few and far between, and that THEY were responsible for trashing the city.

oh..so only "a few" infiltrators are ok, huh? I don't want any infiltrators, thank you. Because I don't think that the govt's job is to break up protests it doesn't agree with. Are you beginning to understand why some of us are suspicious of state power?? Btw, the 600 neo-nazi infiltrators were videotaped talking with the police. They wore black uniforms and gas masks and were widely reported to commit most of the violence. Details here.

I have no doubt those carabinieri would have been killed by those thugs if the police hadn't DEFENDED themselves.

I'm sure you have no doubt of many things, but a G8 inquiry into the killing as well as eyewitness accounts contradicts you. In fact most of the violence was perpetrated by the police on the demonstrators (see above or do a simple google search. Le monde also has good coverage.)

Typical lefty doublespeak..

If you think that the Genoa protest was about "smashing the state," then I am horrified at your ignorance. There were 300,000 mostly peaceful demostrators there, who were attacked, beaten with baton clubs, tear gassed, and infiltrated by black masked police agents. They were protesting serious issues of our day, such as what power private investors have to nullify local laws, wether nations will be forced to adopt new IP laws, what power a nation has over its currency, and wether committees of beaurocrats will be able determine how a govt. chooses to spend its money. If you have any idea of the nature of the protests, of the NGO's, working groups, or organizational drives which went on during Genoa, then you would be embarrassed by your accusation.

But my post was not really relevant to which side of the "globalization" debate you fall on, although I seem to have pushed a hot-button with you with that example. I was citing examples of abuses of state power (you were unable to counter any of my other examples). Specifically, the dangers of the ATA in expanding the definition of "terrorist" to include civil disobedience and protest. You just made my point perfectly in this line:

This is why you're seen as terrorists - because you are

First of all, Mr. Anonymous Coward, I am not a terrorist, and the fact that you can so blithely call me one, in these times, because of my words illustrates exactly what we are fighting against. The 300,000 in genoa were not terrorists. "lefties" -- whom you know so well -- are also not terrorists.

.. you like to throw around justifying the Taliban sheltering of bin Laden while his followers kill THOUSANDS. .

I've never justified the Taliban in sheltering bin laden. It seems that if I don't agree with whatever war rhetoric you happen to favor, then I must automatically be on the side of the enemy, in your mind. Maybe, like Bush's press secretary said, I had better "watch what I say". Is a twinkle of revelation entering your mind why many of us are concerned about the lack of debate or endagerment of our freedoms?

Just be lucky you live in AMERICA, the land of the FREE, where you can spew your totalitarian bullshit with impunity, while right-thinking people freely ignore and refute your sick ideology.
Yes, America *is* the land of the free and the home of the brave. But we have to share this country with you, Anonymous Coward. And you are trying to make it less free, with your "totalitarian" rhetoric:

You attack as terrorist those whose politics you don't agree with.

You defend police violence because the "lefties" "deserve whatever happens" to them.

You equate those who disagree with you as "justifying the Taliban."


But some of us actually want to preserve the bill of rights, specifically, "freedom of assembly" and "freedom of the press". You may be ignorant of how much this country has benefitied from public protest, from the Boston Tea Party (property was destroyed! Terrorism!) to the civil rights marches, to the Pullman strike and 8 hour work days. That's a big part of why we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. But I wont accuse you of being a terrorist, nor will I claim to understand everything in that angry head of yours. All I can do is pray that you are in no way connected with govt. or a law enforcement agency. Also, I can ask of you this:

Don't wrap your totalitarian rhetoric in our Old Glory. It's hard enough trying to care for her with the ATA and DMCA to worry about.

You need not set your flamebait to her stars.

the official info is here
a good example of how TRIPs can be a Bad Thing is here
dense analysis in small font size is here

don't like how any of that sounds? fight it. come to kanaskis g8 2002. info here

What happens when someone tries to patent, say, the grape?

They are already doing so. A Texas company called RiceTec was granted a patent for Basmati rice. Basmati is a kind of rice that grows only in the foothills of the Himalayas in India and Pakistan. Like how the label ``Champagne'' may be used only for products from a particular place. Read an analysis of the patent and its consequences.

For centuries in India, turmeric has been used as a home-remedy and traditional medicine for wounds. In March 1995, a patent was granted to the University of Mississipi Medical Centre for precisely this use. What made this a particularly disgusting case was that the patent was in the name of two Indian researchers at the university. The US Patent Office did uphold a challenge to this patent and it was revoked. There are many such patents that need to be cancelled.

Cancelling these patents is the first step in stopping biopiracy. The author of this piece reiterates that patents must be granted on the basis of Novelty, Non-obviousness, and Utility.

Novelty implies that the innovation must be new. It cannot be part of 'prior art' or existing knowledge. Non-obviousness implies that someone familiar in the art should not be able to achieve the same step. Most patents based on indigenous knowledge appropriation violate the criteria of novelty combined with non-obviousness because they range from direct piracy to minor tinkering involving steps obvious to anyone trained in the techniques and disciplines involved.

Software patents are not the only area in which patent laws are hopelessly out of sync with reality. The two-fold problem is:

• how to educate lawmakers about issues involved
• how to combat special interests in lobbying Congress to pass sensible laws