from the why-do-they-insist-on-secret-negotiations? dept.
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [TTIP] protesters faced water cannons as the public were barred from observing the negotiations in Brussels.
Peaceful Protesters against austerity and the secrecy surrounding TTIP agreements were met with violence and water cannons from Belgian police.
In an unprovoked move 281 people were "violently arrested" (quoted Revolution News), including Belgian and European parliamentarians and candidates, senior trade union officials, farmers and many elderly citizens.
US Ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, and the EU Commissioner responsible for TTIP, Karel De Gucht have recently complained that speculation of social media has been spreading rumours on false grounds - "There's a void [in information]. The void is being filled more and more by social media." A lack of transparency surrounding the negotiations may have created that void in the first place.
(Score: 3) by Geezer on Monday May 19 2014, @07:20PM
do not wish to be disturbed by noisy populists braying about fairness and honesty.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday May 19 2014, @07:35PM
I know, right?
"Find the Dom Perignon's year from the noise of the bubbles in my Baccarat crystal flute" needs silence to practice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 20 2014, @01:22AM
That's right. Now you can just go home and keep quiet while we negotiate how we are going to scam you. and if you don't like it you can pound dirt because we're going to do it anyways. What makes you think this is a democracy or that we care about the people?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Monday May 19 2014, @07:24PM
These "trade agreements" are some of the most dangerous things going on today. This promises to be just as bad as the ACTA; if they weren't afraid of what the public would think, why wouldn't they draft in the open?
These are particularly alarming when you realize that, if adopted, treaties take precedent above the laws of the land and second only to the Constitution (which isn't worth much anyway, these days).
We need a return to rational copyright: 5 years maximum, one renewal, only valid if registered. That would actually facilitate useful progress in the Arts. What we have today does the opposite, and is already unconstitutional. The last thing we need is more red tape between the current state and where we must go as a society.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tathra on Monday May 19 2014, @08:05PM
absolutely. we need to start pushing the fact that eternal copyrights are theft since they're stealing from the public domain, and stealing our culture wholesale. no, this isn't hyperbole, because the whole idea behind copyright is to enrich the public domain by encouraging people to produce works and profit from them for a limited time, before they ultimately become public property. there's no point to copyright if the works never enter public domain.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Monday May 19 2014, @08:46PM
FIFY - If this treaty is so benign bring it out into the open. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 1) by joshuajon on Tuesday May 20 2014, @06:56PM
Bleach is pretty good too.
(Score: 1) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday May 20 2014, @01:09PM
Copyright needs a much more complex overhaul than a one-size-fits-all approach like that. A flat setting of "5 years, 1 renewal" across the board would actually damage the arts, not improve them. I've thought about this at great length over the years, here's a rough idea of what I've come up with instead:
-- The main goal would be to balance the public's access to a work, new independent artists' ability to work with it, and a creator's ability to earn a living. In my eyes, the real cancer in the system is the presence of corporations and inheritance.
-- Two forms of copyright would exist: one would be the right to determine what is done with your work, the other would be the right to earn money from it. (Individuals in the public would have the right to mix-and-match videos, game footage and music creatively, share music videos, etc. to their heart's content. In addition, as long as a copyright holder has their work available for free, the public would have the right to share it using the same medium.)
-- All 'crafts' would function as they did long ago: an apprenticeship of N years where the person is mentored while they hone their skills by doing work for free, which would culminate in a graded project like a college senior project/thesis; a journey(wo)man period with very light mentorship where they can earn a certain amount; and a final pass-or-fail project proving their mastery of their craft, equivalent to a doctorate project/dissertation. A passing grade would then give them full financial copyright status.
This would both give the public plenty of free material, amateur creators would have free access to experienced mentors, write games/stories using an existing 'universe' but not the protagonists, etc.), people would know they're not going to be ripped off if they pay for things, AND it would allow truly good creators to earn a living.
-- Copyright of non-video creations could only be held by the actual creators as individuals and small groups. They could sign a contract with a corporation to be employees paid X amount (or more) during the production of the creation in exchange for limited exclusive distribution rights for X years. After that, they could then lease the distribution rights to one or more corporate entities for renewable 3-to-5 year periods.
-- Video copyright could be held by moderately-sized businesses, but would be limited to 3-10 years, with the length determined by how creative it is. (Retellings of existing cultural tales would be 3 years, retellings with major twists or perspective shifts could be 5, etc. highly original works 6-8, and highly original works based on a non-video creation 10.) This would give them time to earn back the money they put into it, plus some extra; the 10-year option would exist to ensure the highest potential pay for the individual creator(s).
-- There would be no law against hobbyists using games/videos to mix-and-match their own creations.
-- Copyright on writing, music, and standalone graphical art (paintings, etc.) could not be inherited, but would be lifelong. This is primarily because individual/small-group creators are 'paid' for their work over a very long period of time, and based on existing figures, it takes at least 20-40 years for most works to earn the equivalent of working for minimum wage.
The more time a high-quality pro spends working a day job, the less time and energy they have to devote to their craft, and in order to get it out the door in a reasonable timeframe, they release it for sale before it's polished & ready. Worse, only the first version/draft or two -- about the first 5-10% of work required for professional results -- is driven by the creative urge, and creators doing it for personal gratification then move on. If the creator won't even be paid minimum wage for each work, they're going to sell the crappy first version and get to work churning out the next one, as the self-published mobile games, ebook markets, etc. show.
I wrote the above outline pretty hastily, but hopefully you get a good idea of what I'm getting at -- uniformly short copyright periods damage the arts rather than promote them, merely removing corporate entities from the copyright equation and establishing quality guidelines would fix 99% of the damned problem. (Which is why it will never happen, of course... *sigh*)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Monday May 19 2014, @07:33PM
From the IBTimes
THis is not about what they are protesting or why, but that the spin can be also misleading. If there is a law in a country that says you need permission, and you don't get it, then we cannot surprised by a local government response. Water cannons are nothing good, but it beats what armed official use in Venezuela or some other more "reactive" countries. With that out of the way,
In reading the related articles I can begin to understand why people are protesting. Here is lies another moment where a statement of "This Trade will be good for you" coming from Politicians and High Business is translated to "We will screw you over and enjoy the fruits of our labors". If TIPP is such a good thing then by all means, let it be transparent in its process. Then there would be less of a knowledge gap on both sides.
The disorganization seen in modern protests is something else. From OWS to this TIPP protest, it just feels lacking in focus and leadership. I believe in civil disobedience, but to do it wisely makes more sense. You going to protest, get your permits, and if you can't get that then broadcast to the world that you were denied such option as you get hauled away. Where was the next wave, and the next so attention remains and systems are overwhelmed and people take more notice than just "Oh hippies don't like rich people". OWS failed, because you don't "occupy" something, you overwhelm it with movement. Sit ins work in diners, not in streets or parks. Numbers matter, and using those numbers in a way that continue to focus attention to strong arm tactics even more. If you have a million people in Tahrir Square you can occupy, if you can only muster a few hundred then you need to not blow them all at once.
People complain about the lack of transparency in the TIPP talks, but those opposed are doing little to get their own message out clearly like how the IBtimes seems to be doing. [ibtimes.co.uk]
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday May 19 2014, @07:51PM
The European Convention on Human Rights is conspicuously silent on the right to peaceably assemble. I'd say I was glad that the US has had different rules, except that in the US the police will engage in thug tactics against peaceful protesters anyways, at the cost of a few careers of uniformed police who are considered expendable by the Powers That Be.
The reason I think there's a lack of focus and leadership has a lot to do with the fact that anyone who tries to lead a protest movement is targeted for police harassment. For example, back in 2004 some friends of mine were planning a perfectly legal and properly permitted protest at a party convention. The police showed up at the headquarters and several other locations used by the organization, decided the PVC pipes they were using to make puppets and signs were in fact bomb-making materials, and arrested everybody they could find. That's why the trend has been towards decentralized tactics and "no leaders" philosophy.
I agree there's such a thing as dumb civil disobedience though. For example, it is not uncommon for small protest groups to commit the crime of trespassing in order to protest a rule other than barring someone from what used to be public land is stupid: nobody outside of the protest notices, and if they allow you to trespass all you get to do is say "Look what I got away with". The point of that kind of civil disobedience is typically not protest at all, but to establish activist cred within the protest movement in question.
By contrast, smart civil disobedience is done in a way that if they let you do the illegal act, you accomplish something you want to accomplish. When Rosa Parks refused to give up your seat on a bus, she was prepared for the driver to just let her get away with it, and if that had become widespread the bus segregation law might have gone away in fact long before it went away by law (and, for the record, Rosa Parks wasn't physically tired, she was tired of being pushed around).
In this case, I'd say it's fair-to-middling: Their goal was to make it clear that the TIPP wasn't universally supported, and in that they succeeded. They might have also wanted to make it clear that the police would use violence to force the TIPP on an unwilling population, and they succeeded at that too. But if the police hadn't been so heavy-handed, I don't know that it would have worked as well.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bucc5062 on Monday May 19 2014, @08:12PM
Thank you. Some great insights and it allows me to look at protest from a different angle. When I wrote my first comment what I had in my head was both the non-violent protests from MLK and the protests led by Gandhi. In both, they did not need overt props to make their point, they learned and adapted so each subsequent protest used different methods to counter the actions of authority. In a strange way, they used methods of War to implement non-violent actions that brought the most attention, the maximum effect (like you mentioned at the end).
Both King and Gandhi were accepting of being arrested, establishing leadership chains to keep pressure occurring in both the outside and inside areas of their opposition. How many "leaders" (and I will admit to not being that type) today are ready and willing to do the same...or...is it that much scarier to be arrested as leader in even our "free" societies....hmmmm...
End of the day, People could get behind a Rosa Parks for the cause, and the desired result were simple to understand. Someone could get into the shoes of Ms Parks, they could see that oppression was eventually evil and that made it easier to fight against. Things like TIPP, HAFTA, SOAP...the typical person cannot grasp the issue for it is more subtle, more insidious, eventually more oppressive (by sheer numbers), but much more complex. "You can't sit here" is understood. "You may not one day be able to say or do things, but for right now you wont notice a change at all"...huh? What? Okay, I'll get back to American Idol or Soccer or what ever distracts the mind. How do you tell a factory worker that this bill may not kill his job today, but it will kill it ten months or ten years from now and not only will he be effected, so too his children.
This is why OWS had the right ideals, they just f'ed up the execution and never ever managed the image or message.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19 2014, @08:59PM
Violence exists, it's not a choice of being violent or non-violent. MLK would have been ignored, except white folks were terrified by people like Malcom X and Black Panthers. When MLK marched on Washington white people were shitting their pants there would be a riot and DC would burn. Gandhi did not liberate India on his own. There were many violent revolutionaries in India actively fighting the British.
They ignore peaceful protest.
A recent example is Kiev, nothing happened until the protesters starting throwing molotovs and then something was actually accomplished and Yanukovych was booted out.
Get your permits and stay huddled in you free speech zones, it will accomplish nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19 2014, @11:51PM
You mean, until the snipers that were hired by the new "government" started firing shots at both sides.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday May 19 2014, @09:28PM
Both King and Gandhi were accepting of being arrested,
However, much, much worse happened to Gandhi's people. I'm not a historian, but I did watch the movie, and there was one incident (shown in the movie) where British troops opened fire on peaceful protesters who refused to leave some public area. As I recall, about 2500 people were murdered that day.
There's a lot more at stake in a peaceful anti-government protest than merely being arrested. The thug American cops at the OWS protests were all too happy to use OC spray and batons violently against totally non-violent protesters.
Ironically, in recent memory, the protesters who have done the best against the government thugs are the ones at Bundy Ranch. Disagree with their cause all you want (it does seem rather silly...), but the government does think twice about taking on a large number of (possibly wacky) guys with rifles with military training. It's too bad those guys don't redirect their energy to better causes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19 2014, @09:51PM
I get my history from movies too. Wasn't it badass how Noah fought a war and those rock-encrusted Watcher dudes? I wonder how that stuff got left out of the Bible?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19 2014, @11:57PM
The Watchers [wikipedia.org] are in the bible, and so are their half-angel half-human children, which were giants known as Nephilim [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by starcraftsicko on Tuesday May 20 2014, @04:14AM
It's too bad that OWS and others don't learn from and adopt their tactics. An *armed* peaceful protest is a mite harder to disrupt with force. Or to put it another way, I wouldn't want to be the guy told to bring a fire hose to a possible gunfight.
This post was created with recycled electrons.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 20 2014, @01:10PM
Well it doesn't help that the people who are more interested in social justice issues (like income equality, higher taxation for the rich, better government regulation, esp. of industries like banking) are also against gun ownership.
(Score: 1) by Nr_9 on Tuesday May 20 2014, @09:29AM
It's not their rifles, it's their political opinions. If you had a far-left organisation running around with rifles they would be put on terrorist lists so fast it would make your head spin. (See the Black Panthers and Cointelpro for a historical example...)
It's a general pattern in Western Europe and Northern America that right wing protests are treated more softly than left-wing ones. How many tea party protests have been kettled, pepper sprayed or been infiltrated by police provocateurs?
I am not claiming that there is a conspiracy or a clear policy behind this. The reasons are undoubtedly complicated, but the pattern is quite clear.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 20 2014, @01:58PM
Forget the Black Panthers: The FBI under J Edgar Hoover considered Martin Luther King to be a public enemy. They spent far more resources going after non-violent and in some cases completely legal leftist groups than they did on the KKK (who was at the time bombing churches, lynching voter registration volunteers, beating Freedom Riders and torching the buses they were on, starting riots that left a Kennedy administration official badly beaten, and numerous other major violent crimes).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday May 21 2014, @02:39AM
I'm not attempting to contradict your point, but I'm offering a possible theory.
Movements are easily co-opted (e.g. COINTELPRO, etc). Because right-wingers tend to follow authoritarian thinking, it takes vastly more cognitive dissonance among individual members to even think about questioning the group. Therefore, when a seemingly right-wing movement gets "bought out," all the fans get bought out as well. Allowing seemingly right-wing movements to suck up fans who find group identity more important than the individual logical process would be advantageous to TPTB who have a compromised right-wing movement in their deck.
This effect is far less with left-wing movements. While just as easily co-opted, perhaps the threshold for cognitive dissonance is less amongst folks who arrived at their allegiance to a left-wing movement due to questioning authority. It's much more difficult to "buy out" the fans/followers, so the movement itself must be crushed directly. (This would not apply to seemingly left-wing movements that nonetheless follow the pattern of right-wing authoritarianism... feminism and the ALF come to mine.) Compromising a left-wing movement is too much of a risk. The compromise may become apparent on an individual level with great frequency among the "fanbase," thus defeating the purpose of compromising the movement in the first place.
Therefore, it's advantageous to TPTB to go soft on right-wing movements and act harshly towards left-wing movements. Maybe I'm being too much of an armchair sociologist. Thoughts?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday May 20 2014, @01:26AM
For the record, the problem with the buddies of mine was not that they were afraid of getting arrested and thrown in jail for nothing, it was that this meant that their plan for the protest fell apart because the people who were organizing it were now incommunicado and all the materials they were planning on using were being held as evidence by the police. That was the point of arresting the leaders: disrupting the protest with a completely baseless case.
A judge threw out the cases as soon as they came before him. That was too late, because that was about 10 hours after the protests were supposed to have happened.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19 2014, @08:01PM
"We will screw you over and enjoy the fruits of YOUR labors" ftfy
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zeigerpuppy on Monday May 19 2014, @10:43PM
For a moment I thought you were going to be insightful...
"If there is a law in a country that says you need permission[to protest], and you don't get it, then we cannot surprised by a local government...."
I would say:
If there is a law in a country that says you need permission to protest then that country has ceased to be a democracy.
I include my country in this description.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 19 2014, @10:59PM
I concur. Either all parties agree to play by fair rules or it's a free for all.
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Monday May 19 2014, @11:31PM
The rationale behind curbing protests is that they often degenerate into breaking laws. This is accurate, but why? because my fave scenario never happens. My fave scenario is: protesters, police armed to the teeth with real guns and both parties with cameras. The first idiot who does as little as scratching a car gets lead. The first police guy who does as little as slapping a guy who is simply protesting without harming properties or other people, gets lead, by his own peers.
(Score: 1) by hoochiecoochieman on Tuesday May 20 2014, @09:34AM
Maybe you should stop watching action movies and get out of your house once in a while.
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Tuesday May 20 2014, @09:55AM
I simply traded an extreme unfair solution for an extreme unfair one which makes roughly the same amount of deaths and ensures a bit more peaceful protesting.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday May 19 2014, @11:32PM
I would say: If there is a law in a country that says you need permission to protest then that country has ceased to be a democracy.
A country without such a permission system will not be a democracy either; it will be anarchy, as anyone and everyone would be welcome to continually protest everything they desire, anywhere they want, no matter if it is day or night, residential or business area, peaceful or not so much.
A democracy is simply "a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting." It may also be defined as "an organization or situation in which everyone is treated equally and has equal rights." None of those definitions give the people the right to even assemble, let alone to do it without permission. The only right the people have is to vote; they still can be poorly treated and have hardly any rights - as long as they *all* have them.
The laws try to balance the desire of people to assemble and make their grievances known against the desire of other people to not be inconvenienced by such gatherings. You can say, correctly, that those laws are often abused, and permits are not issued if the assembly is going to be unwelcome to politicians in power. These incidents should be challenged in court, not in the street. Once the debate is past the talking phase and enters the acting phase, democracy is over, and the rule of force is in effect.
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Tuesday May 20 2014, @03:23PM
A right to peaceful protest has been recognised for quite some time as a pillar of democracy, for instance in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (article 20).
In recent times the constructed threat of terrorism has been used to erode the right of free assembly and free association in a number of western democracies.
It is important to remember that direct action is the relief valve that prevents collusion, corruption and oppression by the rulers in society and without it we are left with a shadow of the right of the people.
In Australia at least, the right to protest did not lead to anarchy, it lead to a vibrant and accountable society in which we did not need the police to hold our hands.
(Score: 2) by everdred on Monday May 19 2014, @08:08PM
> Karel De Gucht have recently complained that speculation of social media has been spreading rumours on false grounds
Massive amounts of water sounds like an effective way to prevent the spread of rumors... by destroying everyone's mobile devices.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday May 19 2014, @08:51PM
Pro-tip: When going to foam parties, places with swimming pools and teenagers, or near protests, grab one of the conveniently-sized smallest ziplock bags (or cheap copies) for the non-waterproof valuables in your pockets.
Offtopic but related airport pro-tip: put your passport, and some of your credit cards, in an ESD bag.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 19 2014, @11:10PM
What's up with airports and ESD?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 19 2014, @11:46PM
Just look how many of the data protection countermeasures are optional and continue reading for how much you can trust you passport is safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday May 19 2014, @11:48PM
High concentration of people with high-value RFID-equipped devices (passports and credit cards) in a confined and slow-moving environment.
A few years ago, it took some guy 2 weeks to figure out how to clone US passports' RFID chips.
For one white hat that reveals what he found, there may be quite a few people who know more (how good is that encryption?) and won't talk.
So I put my RFIDs in a metalized bag when in a high-risk environment, just so the 1-in-a-million chance victimizes the old lady in the next lane instead. Not paranoid, just reducing my risk at negligible cost.
ESD bags are also waterproof, and we know what happens in planes with children.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday May 20 2014, @12:26AM
What for? I just use a hole puncher, like this guy [feilipu.me], but sometimes I take out the big guns big guns [events.ccc.de].
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 20 2014, @12:56AM
Because I'm less likely to spend an hour per inbound trip sitting in US DHS "secondary", if my passport's chip still works when the agent checks it.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 20 2014, @01:59AM
Chip works but RFID not right?
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Tuesday May 20 2014, @12:56PM
Why, you just had the passport in your coat, which got stuck in the door, when you closed it with a bit of force. It's not like they got rid of the regular swipe-through/in systems.