Saturday, November 7, 2009

American political commentator Glenn Beck has lost his case against a satirical website which parodies him, in a ruling from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. The website argued Beck’s actions to shut it down were an attempt to silence free speech. On Friday, the website’s creator sent a letter to Beck saying he would voluntarily turn over the domain name to him.

Florida resident Isaac Eiland-Hall created the website in September, and it asserts Beck uses questionable tactics “to spread lies and misinformation”. The website was represented in the case Beck v. Eiland-Hall by free speech lawyer Marc Randazza. Wikinews interviewed Randazza for the article “US free speech lawyer Marc Randazza discusses Glenn Beck parody”, and previously reported on the case in articles, “US free speech lawyer defends satire of Glenn Beck” and “Satirical website criticizes Glenn Beck for ‘hypocritical’ attempts to silence free speech”.

Eiland-Hall registered the website at the domain “www.GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlIn1990.com”. Its premise was derived from a joke statement made by Gilbert Gottfried about fellow comedian Bob Saget. Users of the Internet discussion community Fark first applied the joke to Beck, and it then became popular on several social media sites. Eiland-Hall saw the discussion on Fark, and created a website about it. The website asserts it does not believe the rumors to be true, commenting, “[b]ut we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.” The website was created on September 1, and just two days later attorneys for Beck’s company Mercury Radio Arts took action. Beck’s lawyers sent letters to the domain name registrar where they referred to the domain name itself as “defamatory”, but failed to get the site removed.

Beck filed a formal complaint with the Switzerland-based agency of the United Nations, WIPO, who operate under regulations laid out by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Beck asserted the website’s usage is libelous, bad faith, and could confuse potential consumers. Beck’s complaint was filed under the process called the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. This policy allows trademark owners to begin an administrative action by complaining that a certain domain registration is in “bad faith”. Beck argued the site should be shut down because it is an infringement upon his trademark in his own name, “Glenn Beck”.

Eiland-Hall retained Randazza as his attorney after receiving threatening letters from legal representatives of Beck. On September 28, Randazza filed a response brief to WIPO, contending the site is “protected political speech”, due to it’s “satirical political humor”. Randazza stated, “even an imbecile would look at this Web site and know that it’s a parody.” Randazza’s brief commented on Beck’s style of reporting, and highlighted a controversial statement made by him when interviewing a Muslim US Congressman. Beck said to Representative Keith Ellison, “I like Muslims, I’ve been to mosques. … And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” According to the Citizen Media Law Project, the website’s joke premise takes advantage of “a perceived similarity between Beck’s rhetorical style and the Gottfried routine”.

Randazza argued in the response filed on behalf of Eiland-Hall that Beck attempted to use the process of the WIPO court to infringe the free speech rights of his client; “Beck is attempting to use this transnational body to circumvent and subvert the Respondent’s [web site owner] constitutional rights [to freedom of speech],” he wrote. Randazza cited the U.S. Supreme Court case, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, in arguing that Beck’s attorneys advised him against filing legal action in a U.S. court because the website would likely be seen as a form of parody and due to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, such legal action would not be successful.

On September 29, Randazza sent a request to Beck’s representatives, asking that their client agree to stipulate to the United States Constitution, and especially to the First Amendment, during the case before the WIPO. In the request, Randazza quoted a statement from Beck himself about the usage of international law by United States citizens, Beck said, “[o]nce we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead.” In an October 19 interview with Wikinews, Randazza stated that Beck had not replied to his request to stipulate to the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment in the WIPO case.

On October 20, Randazza filed a surreply – a response document to an October 13 supplementary filing made by Beck in the case. Attorneys for Beck asserted in the supplementary filing that the joke made by the website is difficult to comprehend, and therefore the domain name is confusing. In Beck’s supplementary filing, his lawyers argued, “While there is absolutely nothing humorous or amusing about the statement made by Respondent in his domain name that ‘Glenn Beck Raped and Murdered a Young Girl in 1990,’ the average Internet user finding the domain name GlennBeckRapedAndMurderedAYoungGirlin1990.com (“Disputed Domain Name”) in a search would have no reason not to believe that they will be directed to a website providing factual information (as opposed to protected criticism or similar protected speech) about Mr. Beck.”

Randazza’s surreply asserted, “An average Internet user might not ‘get the joke’. In fact, the average Internet user does not understand any internet memes. That’s the fun of a meme – it is an esoteric inside joke that will leave most people scratching their heads.” In Randazza’s conclusion to the Eiland-Hall surreply, he called Beck “the butt” of a joke he apparently does not understand. Randazza wrote that Beck “should be deeply ashamed” for devaluing the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

For Beck to have prevailed in the case, the WIPO arbitrator would have needed to rule in his favor on three points: the domain name was confusing with the mark “Glenn Beck”, the registrant Eiland-Hall did not have rights to the domain name, and that the domain name was registered as an act of “bad faith”. Frederick M. Abbott, the WIPO arbitrator, did rule that the domain name was confusing, but also ruled that Eiland-Hall had legitimate interest in the domain name of the website he created. “Respondent appears to the Panel to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that Respondent appears genuinely to believe is employed by Complainant in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason Respondent can be said to be making a political statement. This constitutes a legitimate non-commercial use of Complainant’s mark under the Policy,” said the WIPO ruling.

The WIPO decision also commented on the matter of third-party websites which may have derived profit through links from Eiland-Hall’s website, “While there is some evidence that at some stage third-party vendors of goods and services critical of [Beck] may have earned some income on sales of t-shirts and bumper stickers embodying political slogans based on click-throughs from [Eiland-Hall’s] Web site, the panel does not believe this is sufficient ‘commercial activity’ to change the balance of interests already addressed,” said the ruling.

After the WIPO ruling, Eiland-Hall decided to voluntarily relinquish ownership of the domain name and hand it over to Glenn Beck. On Friday, Eiland-Hall sent a letter to Beck, and pointed out that Beck’s actions only served to further increase publicity to the meme described on the website. “It bears observing that by bringing the WIPO complaint, you took what was merely one small critique meme, in a sea of internet memes, and turned it into a super-meme. Then, in pressing forward (by not withdrawing the complaint and instead filing additional briefs), you turned the super-meme into an object lesson in First Amendment principles,” wrote Eiland-Hall in the letter to Beck.

Eiland-Hall criticized Beck’s actions with regard to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, writing, “It also bears noting, in this matter and for the future, that you are entirely in control of whether or not you are the subject of this particular kind of criticism. I chose to criticize you using the well-tested method of satire because of its effectiveness. But, humor aside, your rhetorical style is no laughing matter. In this context of this WIPO case, you denigrated the letter of First Amendment law. In the context of your television show and your notoriety, you routinely and shamelessly denigrate the spirit of the First Amendment”. He stated that he persevered in the case in order to uphold the value of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “I want to demonstrate to you that I had my lawyer fight this battle only to help preserve the First Amendment. Now that it is safe, at least from you (for the time being), I have no more use for the actual scrap of digital real estate you sought…” A representative of Beck declined to provide a comment about the WIPO ruling, after a request from PC Magazine.

Commentators likened the legal conflict between Beck and the site to the Streisand effect, a phenomenon where an individual’s attempt to censor material on the Internet in turn proves to make the material itself more public. Wendy Davis of Online Media Daily commented on the impact of the case, “The decision appears to mark a significant win for digital rights advocates because a ruling in Beck’s favor could have encouraged other subjects of online parodies to take their complaints directly to the WIPO rather than U.S. courts, which are bound by the First Amendment.” Citizen Media Law Project’s assistant director, Sam Bayard, wrote that the ruling was appropriate, “It’s good to see that this WIPO arbitrator had no interest in allowing Beck to circumvent the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.”

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A professional football player from Brazil and a former police investigator are among seven people arrested in connection with a murder police called “barbaric”. Flamengo goalkeeper, and captain, Bruno Fernandes is accused of hiring former policeman Marcos Aparecido dos Santos to kill his mistress.

Police say Fernandes met Eliza Samudio, 25, at a party organised by another Flamengo player last year, and spent the night with the former model and pornstar, impregnating her. Her refusal to abort the pregnancy is cited as the motive behind the killing. Samudio has been missing since June 4^th. Police state she contacted them earlier to complain of violence and threats from Fernandes. He is alleged to have attacked her and tried to force her to swallow an abortion pill in a complaint filed in October. He supposedly told her, “[y]ou don’t know me and you don’t know what I am capable of – I’m from the favela.”

Police allege that Samudio was abducted from a hotel in Rio de Janerio and driven for six hours to reach a house belonging to Santos near Belo Horizonte. There, according to newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo, one of Fernandes’s cousins, allegedly involved, said loud music was played to cover up the screams as “barbaric tortures” were inflicted upon her by Santos.

It is alleged when she exclaimed she could no longer bear being beaten the ex-policeman responded “[y]ou are not going to bear it any more. You are going to die.” Souza is said to have been present and witnessed both her torture and her strangulation. Although she remains missing, police state that they are confident she is dead and claim her remains were disposed of by being fed to at least one rottweiler. Remaining parts are said to be encased in concrete.

The child, a boy, had already been born and is now four months old. Police say his mother was killed when she began attempts to prove the footballer, who was rumoured to have received an offer worth millions of dollars from AC Milan, was his father. Homicide investigator Edson Moreira is running the probe and was in no doubt of the footballing “idol”‘s guilt: “[he is] a monster for what he did to this young lady.”

The investigation has been a major focus for Brazilian media. The nation has an upcoming presidential election and candidates were quick to express their views. Dilma Rousseff, who present president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wishes to succeed him, said “[t]his is a barbaric crime. The whole of Brazil is disgusted by such a barbaric and perverse crime.” Rainforest campaigner Marina Silva, another candidate, expressed concern that “[w]e have repeatedly seen this kind of episode against the lives of women.”

Fernandes denied any involvement, claiming a “clear conscience”. He has commented that he is concerned the investigation may hamper his prospects of representing Brazil at the 2014 World Cup. Currently in a jail cell, he was requested to provide DNA samples but exercised his constitutional right to refuse. His wife is also alleged to have been involved and is jailed as well. Santos has said, via his lawyer, that he too is uninvolved in any crimes.

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A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, December 23, 2009.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

A fire broke out in a refugee camp in eastern Chad Friday, leaving 3,000 people homeless and injuring 10, according to the United Nations (UN) refugee agency United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Refugees have been living in the camp as a result of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The fire started in the Goz Amer camp triggered by a cooking fire that had gone unwatched. The fire moved quickly through the camp due to high winds. Many of the refugees lost all of their belongings and food rations in the blaze. After receiving tents from the UNHCR in 2004, many of the refugees built traditional dwellings out of sticks and mud, and these shelters burned rapidly in the fire.

In a UNHCR press release, Emmanuel Uwurukundo, acting UNHCR head in Koukou-Angarana said: “Everybody around, refugees and all our partners alike, rushed to the spot and tried to extinguish the fire with whatever they had: clothes, extinguishers and water. The teamwork was outstanding.”

In Geneva the UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres commented on the situation: “The refugees have already suffered so much tragedy and now face yet another trauma. I am deeply relieved that there was no loss of life in this devastating fire. We will do everything we can to help and to get shelter and food supplies to them as quickly as possible.”

Families affected by the fire were housed at three area schools, and the UNHCR announced on Friday that it planned to deliver aid supplies including sleeping mats, blankets and kitchen sets. The World Food Programme was also asked by the UNHCR for an extra monthly food ration to be delivered to the families whose homes were destroyed in the blaze.

The Goz Amer camp houses about 20,500 refugees, and is located approximately 70 kilometers from the Sudanese border. Goz Amer is one of 12 UNHCR-run camps along the Chad-Sudan which all told contain over 240,000 refugees from Darfur.

Chad and Sudan signed a peace agreement on March 13 in an attempt to end a five-year conflict, and the leaders of both countries agreed not to back rebel groups that are active near their borders.

Approximately 2.2 million people from the Darfur region have left their homes since the beginning of the violence in 2003. The UN puts the number of deaths due to the Darfur conflict at over 200,000, and the Sudanese government has said that only 9,000 have died.

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.

The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.

The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.

Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.

Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.

Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.

According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”

In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.

In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.

April 7, 2005

The state Premier of Western Australia (WA), Dr Geoff Gallop, gave an apology to children physically and sexually abused in institutional care within the state between the 1920s and 1970s. The statement was given in reaction to an Australian Senate inquiry into institutional child abuse published last year.

“We acknowledge our state’s history, the role played by the state in providing care for children and particularly past practices in the provision of care,” Dr Gallop told Australian Associated Press.

“We apologise to all those people who were harmed as children while in institutional care, and express deep regret at the hurt and distress caused. We recognise that the effects of physical, psychological and sexual abuse did not end when these children became adults.”

Many of the children had been placed in care by government agencies.

“Overwhelmingly, the (submissions) make tragic and distressing reading. They tell of neglect, of shocking abuse, of predatory behaviour from so-called carers and of criminal activity,” Senator McLucas told federal parliament at the time of the Forgotten Australians report, last year.

“The evidence is also there that authorities in the church and in governments either knew or should have known that much of this horrific activity was occurring.”

The inquiry found that an apology was an important symbolism in recognising past wrongs and helping victims gain closure, according to an ABC News report. And Dr Gallop said the victims’ personal histories must be heard and acknowledged in order to build a better care system for the future.

WA’s Community Development Minister, Sheila McHale, said those wishing to find out about their time in care in WA as children should contact the Department for Community Development, which is also providing counselling services to those who were abused in an institution.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Indian Ocean – The death toll continues to grow and millions face a homeless life in the new year as coastal communities in south Asia struggle against continued aftershocks and flooding caused by the largest earthquake to strike the planet in more than a generation.

The magnitude 9.0 undersea megathrust earthquake struck off the western coast of Sumatra, Indonesia on December 26, 2004, at 00:58:50 UTC (or 07:58:50 local time in Jakarta and Bangkok).

The earthquake was the strongest in the world since the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake which struck Alaska, USA in 1964, and the fourth largest since 1900. More than 140,000 deaths[1] were caused by resulting tsunami, which in Thailand were up to 10 meters (33 feet) tall, and struck within three hours of the initial event.

Multiple tsunamis struck and ravaged coastal regions all over the Indian Ocean, devastating regions including the Indonesian province of Aceh, the coast of Sri Lanka, coastal areas of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the resort island of Phuket, Thailand, and even as far away as Somalia, 4,100 km (2,500 mi) west of the epicenter.

While the earthquake and the tsunamis are no longer ongoing (other than aftershocks), the humanitarian and economic crisis generated by the disaster is still ongoing. This report will attempt to cover the crisis as it continues to develop.