The New Dominatrixes of Empire: Hey, Hey NSA: How Many Leaders Have You Spied On Today?

Data mining transforms the Spy business

By Danny Schechter

Global Research, November 02, 2013

Region: USA

Theme: Police State & Civil Rights

As Data mining transforms the Spy business, Everything is fair game according to the NSA.

Their problem, says Danny Schechter, is that most of the world does not agree.

First we had Spymaster James Clapper dismissing concerns about NSA spying abuses denounced worldwide with a reference to the movie Casablanca. (His critics most recently were seconded by Secretary of State John Kerry who fears a tad of overkill, at least, now that some of this surveillance has been exposed.)

 To Clapper’s cinema-addicted mind, the critics are naive in the same way that French colonial police were when gambling was “discovered” in the famous Rick’s Café.

 He told a congressional committee probing his agency’s overreach: “ Some of this reminds me a lot of the classic movie ‘Casablanca’: ‘My God, there’s gambling going on here!’”

  Explained the CNET website to those who missed the reference to one of America’s greatest and most watched movies, “As you may recall, the scene has the French Capt. Renault (Claude Rains) closing down the cafe run by American Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) on the pretext that it’s a front for a casino.

  “I’m shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in here!” Renault says, at which point, of course, he’s approached by a croupier who hands him a wad of cash.

  “Your winnings, sir.”

 ”Oh, thank you very much.”

  And that’s the scene that was invoked to dismiss critics who questioned Washington’s clandestine spying on foreign leaders, be they friends or enemies.  The NSA’a head honcho even said that the practice was “not significant enough” to tell Congress about.

  The practice was defended simply as a staple in what’s known as intelligence “tradecraft.”

  In These circles, apparently, it is  no longer enough to be a know it all. Today, you are only prized if you can claim to know everything—except perhaps how to build a health care website that works

  Morality or special relationships don’t enter into the picture.
Clapper and company seem familiar fixtures, calling to mind– the character of General “Buck” Turgidson in another movie, “Dr Strangelove,” the saga of a mad and paranoid  U.S. General who starts World War 3 by bombing Russia.
Wouldn’t you know it that his successors literally live and work in an office designed as movie set, so attuned are they to Hollywood symbolism.
Clapper’s boss, General Keith Alexander operates from man NSA command module,</a> built as a replica of the bridge of the fictional Starship Enterprise. No joke: That is the centerpiece of his war room. (They must be nothing, if not “cool” in the StarTrek community.) Alexander even sits in a “Captain’s Chair” fashioned after the one on the TV series and movies that followed
The model they chose to appropriate is  “Next-Gen NCC-1701-D.” That’s where they play at masterminding global espionage in the name of Washington’s vision of U.S. global command and control.

They also have a fascination, make that an obsession, with technology as well, and speak of the process of mopping up data  “hoovering,” a reference to vacuum cleaners of days gone by.

Oh, how fun. They try to get it all because, well, simply, they think they can.

Reports the Washington Post:
“‘Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ said one former senior US intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. ‘Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it. . . .”

This is how the concept of Total Information Awareness  (TIA) has morphed into Total Information Dominance.(TID.)  Move to the side you S&M freaks, your calling has a new brand of Dominatrixes.

 This agency and its clones at local and state levels have set out to suck up  as much “data” as they could with no apparent limits. Their bible is an Army intelligence memo, EO 12333:

 “EO 12333 provides that “timely and accurate information about the activities, capabilities, plans, and intentions of foreign powers, organizations, and persons, and their agents, is essential to the national security of the United States.“ reports  the Post “All reasonable and lawful means must be used to ensure that the United States will receive the best intelligence possible.”

And so it is all rationalized as “technical means” with the law interpreted to justify virtually anything. Since few in the public are savvy enough to know how it all works, most are in awe as they continue to try to master the latest generations of smartphones or iPads.
These documents are riddled with carefully contrived distinctions like ” merely receiving information does not constitute “collection” under AR 381-10; collection entails receiving ‘for use.’”

The Agency’s decide what they can and can’t get away with in an environment where Congressional oversight has deteriorated into cheerleading instead of an effective check or balance. Members of Congress who are privy to the secrets are briefed in special lead-lined rooms, and flattered into feeling self important and part of the “mission.”

 Says THE memo: “Remember, Army intelligence may always receive information, if only to determine its intelligence value and whether it can be collected, retained, or disseminated in accordance with governing policy.”

This is spy-speak of the highest density, and found in documents with endless subordinate clauses.

 Any questions? Try ringing up Intelligence Watch at  (703) 697-5484/5485, the inside number listed in the memo.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Shane Harris labels Alexander the “Cowboy of the NSA,” noting that he has the reputation of being able to “charm the paint off a wall.”
“Today,” he writes, “the agency is routinely scooping up and storing Americans’ phone records. It is screening their emails and text messages, even though the spy agency can’t always tell the difference between an innocent American and a foreign terrorist. The NSA uses corporate proxies to monitor up to 75 percent of Internet traffic inside the United States. And it has spent billions of dollars on a secret campaign to foil encryption technologies that individuals, corporations, and governments around the world had long thought protected the privacy of their communications from U.S. intelligence agencies.”
Why all this official attention to so much detail? Is the danger that great and are there methods that accurate? Other experts question the underlying arrogance here and challenge the assumption that it leads to smarter policy outcomes.
Many intelligence vets say it is misguided and  compromised by a focus on the  trustworthiness of individuals while ignoring key political trends and what drives all the international anger at the U.S.
On my radio show this week, I spoke with Coleen Rowley, an FBI Veteran who became a post 911 whistle blower and who was focused on the culture of secrecy in a country where nearly five million people now have high security clearances.
What was once considered the ‘cult of intelligence,’ has grown exponentially on an industrial scale.

Rowley’s take is that more secret everything is, the less critical thinking there is—the very antithesis of what makes for useful and usable intelligence. The “Intelligence community” is now in the data processing business, not independent analysis , because if your conclusion is in conflict with the the conventional wisdom, you are danger of becoming suspect, even considered a potential Snowden.

In fact, former agent Rowley was one of the former intelligence officers who actually met Snowden in Russia. She was not only convinced of his sincerity but told me that his motive was not to bring down his “industry” but to reform it by using selective exposure.

The super spyboys have had a good run,  but now the real world is bursting their bubble with pushback and ridicule. Something’s gotta give and it will.

 News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs at News Dissector.net and edits Mediachannel.org.  His latest book is Madiba A-Z: The Many Faces of Nelson Mandela (Seven Story Press) Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

When Police Drills Go Live? Los Angeles Ontario Airport “October Drill” Almost Identical to November 1st LAX Shooting Scene

By Shawn Helton

Global Research, November 02, 2013

21st Century Wire

Region: USA

Theme: Police State & Civil Rights

Almost exactly one month earlier…
Los Angeles Airport Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department took part in  an ‘active shooter drill‘ on Saturday, October the 2nd 2013 at L.A./Ontario International Airport.
According to a report by the San Bernardino Sun , written by Doug Saunders, one such shooting scenario had an “armed man” shooting “three people” before officers locked down the scene.

IMAGE: LAPD shooting drill (October 2nd, 2013)
Shockingly this was nearly an identical scene to what unfolded on Friday, November 1st ( All Saints Day) at LAX. A scene in which, one TSA officer was shot and killed, with three others wounded, leaving a total of 7 injured at the Los Angeles International Airport.
OVERKILL, OR JUST A DRILL?
It was an overwhelming display of state security assets. The exercise involved some 3oo police officers to perform an active live drill, a massive fire department presence including dozens vehicles and even more support personnel – along with teams from federal agencies FBI, ATF and DHS.
This should come as no surprise to anyone following some of the recent mass casualty events in the Untied States, such as the Aurora theater, Boston Bombing and Sandy Hook, all of which were said to have had some type of drill prior to the “real-life” event.
One should also note that in 2002,  Hesham Mohamed Hadayet opened fire in the same airport killing two Israeli’s at the El Al airlines ticket counter.
It was also initially reported that the 23year-old suspect, Paul Anthony Ciancia of New Jersey was a TSA agent by authorities, almost simultaneously someone posted a fake account on Facebook with the same name containing a photo of another man.
Was this an act of misdirection, clouding one’s ability to sift carefully through the information, giving authorities the chance to change the TSA agent narrative?

IMAGE: An apparent picture of Paul Ciancia the alleged shooter at LAX.
“Law enforcement sources had earlier told The Times that the gunman was a TSA employee.” – The Times.

IMAGE: Paul Anthony Ciancia (differs dramatically from eye-witness accounts)
Watch the YouTube video below, the eye-witness below is clearly not talking about the same suspect at the LAX shooting…
“He was dressed like that, like a security TSA agent.”
Amazingly the eyewitness reports that the alleged shooter was much bigger than him in addition to being dressed like a uniformed TSA agent. Clearly something is amiss?
Note the witness also states that the person shooting had a pump shotgun and a hand gun not an AR-15 style rifle. He also make mention to possible body armor.

An unprecedented response for just “one shooter” at LAX.

IMAGE: posted by Mike Repplier Associate Producer at ABC News on Twitter.
Air travelers in a ‘panic’ over LAX shooting, what do you really see? Is this Westgate all over again?
Will this open the door for armed TSA agents in the near future?
MSNBC and other liberal-leaning media outlets are already devoting most of their debate time to the presence of the much-feared “AR-15″ Semiautomatic assault rifle at the scene of this event. The talk of assault rifle bans is back on, and will provide an easy distraction from the other more important – and critical national issues and scandals plaguing the Obama White House.
Thus far this appears to be another botched false flag operation, but that’s just our opinion…

RIAA and BPI Use “Pirated” Code on Their Websites

• Ernesto
• November 2, 2013
• bpi,
  RIAA

It turns out that even the most vocal anti-piracy advocates are guilty of infringing the copyrights of others on the Internet. TorrentFreak has discovered that the websites of the music industry groups RIAA and BPI have removed the copyright notices from popular web software, violating the open source licenses these scripts are distributed under.
Copyright is a double-edged sword, and those who sharpen one side often get cut by the other.
Two weeks ago we reported that the new Healthcare.gov website had stripped the copyright notice from one of the scripts it used. This blatant act of ‘piracy’ prompted us to take a closer look at the websites of several anti-piracy organizations, and today we present our findings.
As it turns out the U.S. Government is not the only one violating copyright licenses. The websites of music industry groups RIAA and BPI also use infringing code.
On both sites we found open source JQuerys scripts that are released under the MIT license. This license permits any person or organization to use, copy, modify, merge, distribute, or even sell copies of the software. There’s only one condition users have to agree to; that the original copyright notice stays intact.
Ironically, the scripts used on the RIAA and BPI websites have the copyright licenses removed.
BPI uses the depreciated template script jQuery.tmpl.min.js, and as can be seen below, yesterday there was no reference to the MIT license or the copyright holder listed at the top of the file.

BPI violation

The image below shows what the 2011 copy of the script should look like, with the proper copyright credits and applicable licenses included.

Proper credits

The RIAA makes a similar mistake with the image slider plugin jquery.orbit.min.js. This software is copyrighted by the design firm ZURB but the version in use at the RIAA website yesterday fails to mention this, or the MIT license.

RIAA violation

Here is what a copy of ZURB’s plugin should look like when the copyright holder and MIT license are properly mentioned.

Proper credits

TorrentFreak asked both RIAA and BPI for a comment yesterday. RIAA said it was looking into the issue and appears to have added the copyright notice now. BPI has not responded to our question but clearly received our email as they also updated the file with proper credits.
These type of violations are not unique, and can be found in many websites all over the Internet. Still, from outfits whose raison d’être is protecting copyrights, we have to expect that these issues are carefully checked.
The violations were probably caused by the web developers who coded the RIAA and BPI sites. We doubt that any of the higher ranked executives know about it, but next time they may want to instruct their coders to keep their site free from copyright infringements.
This is not the first time that an anti-piracy group has been accused of pirating software. A few years ago the MPAA removed the linkware license form Patrick Robin’s Forest Blog software. The movie industry group later said that this was a mistake, and it was only used for testing purposes.
Instant Update: A final check upon publication revealed that RIAA and BPI both fixed the infringements, probably more swiftly than the average website processes DMCA requests. Neither group provided a comment on the copyright violations.

Exposed: Divide and Conquer Strategy To Grab Your Guns

truther November 2, 2013  Rick Wells
The Progressive’s war against the second amendment is a multi-fronted action; with an eastern front a mid-national front and a western front. This is in keeping with their proven tactics of incrementalism and the “divide and conquer” strategy.
The eastern front is composed largely of the liberal hotbeds of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States, while the western front is composed of the primarily liberal strongholds of California, Oregon and Washington. The mid-national front is the third prong which focused on Colorado as its initial target.

While all of these fronts have a significant rural population, which values their second amendment rights, there are enough of the densely populated liberal-leaning city dwellers to make their efforts effective. Additionally, the people in these initially-targeted urban areas are generally more liberal-minded and less concerned with erosion of their liberty.
This appears to be the method through which the Hussein Obama administration as well as the liberal gun-grabbers in Congress have chosen to advance their agenda.
After failing at a national attempt to restrict the right (not privilege) to bear arms, their attack has shifted to a more stealthy and well-funded state by state approach.
They exploitatively pursued gun and ammunition legislation on the heels of mass murders in the Aurora, Colorado theater incident and the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Those events set the stage for restrictive legislation in Colorado as well as Connecticut and its neighbor New York.
Now, in the face of the backlash which has been incorrectly directed at gun owners, rather than the culpable pro-disarmament types, the state of Washington has its own unique challenge to the citizens’ rights to keep and bear arms.
A group supportive of gun rights and the Constitution has offered I-591, an initiative for the affirmation of primarily two basic tenets of gun rights. One is to establish and assert that it is illegal for the state to confiscate the citizens’ guns. The second is the prohibition against any background check requirements unless a uniformed national standard is required.
In an apparent attempt to cloudy the water, and invalidate or pre-empt the pro-gun rights bill I-591, another initiative has appeared. It is I-594, an initiative sponsored by the Barack Hussein Obama front group, Organizing for Action. Organizing for Action is an evolution of Organizing for America, which was itself an outgrowth of the Obama 2008 campaign. Their website URL is www.barackobama.com and their website is littered with the infamous “flag O” logo of the narcissist-in-chief. That would certainly lead one to believe that this is a national anti-gun effort with Democrat Party connections.
They pitch it in an innocent-enough sounding presentation, detailing its “reasonable” benefits. However, the measure would establish specific and unique state registration requirements which would be incompatible with a different, national standard set by I-591.
It could thereby necessarily invalidate portions of I-591 if approved and could require much more stringent background check standards. Additionally, the measure could be interpreted by voters as an alternative to I-591 in its entirety, possibly resulting in a failure of the bill and its protection against gun confiscation.
What is presented as a reasonable alternative to a shortcoming in the gun registration process, i-594 is a dilution more likely intended to confuse the issue, to detract and distract from the efforts of and potentially defeat i-591.
On a side note, also on the western front, another salvo was just fired in the war on the second amendment in the city of San Francisco. On October 29^th, a ban on magazines of a capacity greater than ten rounds was approved unanimously by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. California is a progressive’s paradise as the implementation of laws locally designed to ultimately expand upward is the model of choice, and a successful one.
In regards to Washington State, on October 31^st, an email was sent out from barackobama.com, urging people to work for the required signatures and votes to get I-594 before the state legislature or the voters. There is not much doubt who the gun-grabbers are behind these and other actions and their reasons for wanting to disarm Americans.
An unarmed population cannot defend themselves from a tyrannical government.
It is fortuitous for the gun-grabbers that the mass shootings are taking place in liberal strongholds, as that helps to facilitate their agenda nationally. I would expect the next such incident to also occur in a Democrat-leaning area, to be followed closely by comparable legislation.
Of course it would just be coincidence, but that wouldn’t stop the left from seizing upon the opportunity.
We know how the lefties feel about wasting a perfectly good crisis.
____________
Rick Wells is conservative libertarian author who contributes to popular online media outlets. Please take a look at some other articles posted by Rick and follow Rick by clicking on the Facebook link below:
– Website

THE 50th ANNIVERSARY MONTH OF THE MURDER OF JFK: SOME THOUGHTS

November 2, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell

I must confess, I enter the blogging phase for the month of November, 2013, with reluctance and trepidation, for as most know, this month, and the 22nd of this month, is the 50th anniversary of the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.  I did not suspect, that as a boy of six, home sick from school that Friday, that I would literally watch a president be murdered, and later that weekend, his alleged assassin’s murder. I did not suspect that, fifty years later, I would be writing this blog, and series of blogs, on the implications of that event, for the continued deterioration of American society, culture, and what remains of civil political discourse.
There remain those in America that, in all honesty and sincerity, still believe the official story. I have no quarrel with them, nor even with the more sinister shills in public life who still promote the official version in spite of the mountain of evidence that it was, and was intended to be, a tapestry of lies and coverups. To make my own position clear, I am on of the growing majority of Americans who believe there was a conspiracy to murder the president that day, one going very deep, and embracing a multitude of factional interests. I am also one, within that group, of a smaller subset of people who believe essentially that a coup d’etat was staged that day, and that on that day, an oligarchy took open control of the instrumentalities of power, and has not relinquished them since.  Or rather,  it reasserted its privileged position in the face of an administration that threatened to unseat it.
The implications of the coup hypothesis are, however, deep and profound, for ultimately, one of them is that the unresponsiveness of government institutions to the genuine wishes of the people can be rationalized: that non-responsiveness is the result of an oligarchical system, of a deep state that saw its privileged position threatened by the Kennedy Administration. There were, of course, scandals and deeply divisive issues in prior American history. One need only think of the populist movement, the election of 1896, and its ultimate denouement with the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the IRS in 1913. There was the infamous Teapot Dome scandal.
But the Kennedy assassination is different, for the reasons of what followed, the infamous and egregious examples of the fallout and blowback from that event. It qualitatively changed this country and its political culture profoundly for the worse. The prelude was Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex. The climax was Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963. The aftermath has been Watergate, Iran-Contra, BCCI, Nugan-Hand, the Savings and Loan Scandal, Waco, Oklahoma City, Ruby Ridge, and, of course, 9/11. All are manifestations of a covert culture of power and covert operations, of government by gunshot and and false flag ops. And the first shot, literally, in that transformation of the republic into an oligarchical state run by technocrats, military men, intelligence agency gurus, and financial paper shufflers and secret bookkeeping. When the ugly threat to promoted memes and oligarchical agendas occasionally occurs, that threat is removed. By scandal if possible, by “wet measures” if necessary. One can think of the more-than-suspicious deaths of  US Senator Paul Wellstone(D-Minnesota), of Congressmen Begich(D-Alaska), Long(D-Louisiana), not to mention, of course, the murder of Robert Kennedy, and Dr. King. And on and on one could go.
Having been a boy when it happened, the event has stuck with me all my life. I remember Lyndon Johnson being sworn in, I remember Lee Harvey Oswald being murdered on TV while Ike Pappas, the CBS news journalist reported, stunned, on the event. I remember when the Warren Commission Report was excerpted in our local newspaper, with its cute diagram of the “Magic Bullet.” I remember thinking we are being lied to, that something was deeply wrong.
Above all, I remember the comments of my family and its friends: no one… absolutely no one in my family or its circle of friends believed the official story. A kind of sullen gloom descended for days. There were discussions around the kitchen table with friends over games of cards.  The concensus? All agreed the truth would never come out completely, and the reason why was that a fundamental change had occurred in the nature of government.
Happily, fifty years has proven at least a part of that prognosis untrue. The truth has come out due to the tireless and dogged research of literally hundreds of people who knew they were being lied to.  Most people now believe the assassination was the work of a conspiracy. What most do not yet realize, are the deep connections of that event, via the same factions and interests of the deep state, to the other scandals that have been a feature of American governance and its “scandal per decade” since then. The only thing that has not changed is that the same corruption persist and has only deepened its divisive grip on the country.  That grip tightened on Nov 22, 1963, to be sure. It has tightened even more in the decades since. But it is not yet total, nor complete.
That’s why the Kennedy assassination still matters. And that’s why it matters to drill home, over and over again, to all those who will listen, that it was the work of a massive conspiracy. Because once that is understood, people will start to understand why the system is so broken.

Read more: THE 50th ANNIVERSARY MONTH OF THE MURDER OF JFK: SOME THOUGHTS

Gov Targets Ammo Supply Lines: Prices to Rise Sharply As America’s Last Lead Supplier Calls It Quits

Mac Slavo November 1st, 2013 SHTFplan.com

A couple of years ago we opined that the anti-gun establishment had found a loophole for the Second Amendment and that rather than targeting the banning of all firearms, they would instead turn their attention to ammunition.
The government’s most recent efforts to reduce open market availability through taxation, individual purchase restrictions and a massive stockpiling effort by the Department of Homeland Security has forced ammunition prices to nearly triple, while also dwindling supplies of many popular calibers.
But they’re not done yet.
In fact, they may have finally found a way to circumvent U.S.-based domestic production altogether.
The all-out attack on Americans’ gun rights is now being taken to the next level.
The goal is to regulate all forms of ammunition out of existence, and they’re starting with Doe Run, which is the last of America’s domestic lead processing and manufacturing facilities.

Now, the only ore-to-lead producer in America… the largest in the Western world… has been shut down by EPA regulation.
EPA’s regulatory uncertainty and an estimated $100 million to convert [to non-smelter manufacturing] caused the company to finally throw in the towel.
It’s not just ammunition that’s disappearing. American industry… American jobs…. are being regulated out of existence as well.
Lead’s still going to be manufactured in China, but it’ll be done without any environmental oversight, it’ll be scarce, it’ll be expensive, and we’ll have fragile supply lines.
…
It’s party of multi-pronged attack on ammunition.

• Drying up the market by hoarding billions of rounds
• Shutting down the market with background checks, registration, and banning of online sales
• Environmental regulation to ban the use and manufacture of lead

And after we can no longer manufacture ammunition domestically we have the UN Arms Trade Treaty to stop the importation of ammunition.

…If you look at the multiple ways they’re trying to remove all ammunition… not just certain guns they believe are dangerous… there’s no question that this is about all-out gun control.
Via David Knight of Infowars.com

The War on Ammo: Total Gun Control

Doe Run is scheduled to layoff its workforce and close its doors before the end of the year.

With no more lead being processed in America, we are now completely dependent on our largest creditor, China, to supply the necessary base metals for ammunition production.

This will have the immediate effect of further limiting supplies, while also increasing prices, and we can expect this soon after Doe Run’s closure this December.

Furthermore, in April of this year James Rawles of SurvivalBlog.com detailed new importation restrictions set forth in a Presidential Executive Action following the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, which bans the importation of military surplus items that include magazines, firearms accessories and, of course, foreign ammunition.

Couple this with the implementation of U.N. “authorized” trade restrictions set forth in the new UN Arms Trade Treaty, and you can see where this is headed.

It is not an over-exaggeration to suggest that ammunition supply lines will soon be cut, effectively making it nearly impossible to acquire.

Brazil thinks it’s being colonized by China, and wants its economy back

Source: QZ

Brazil and China can’t seem to agree on what either country is getting out of their economic ties. Take this most recent example: China Construction Bank, a huge state-owned lender, just sunk around $716 million into a 72% stake in Brazil’s Banco Industrial e Comercial, a nearly 19% premium (paywall) on BicBanco’s current share price. Some might argue that the move positions CCB to profit from Chinese investment in Brazil. But to hear the head of another Chinese bank tell it, that might be a naive move.

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“The ardor for investment in Brazil is fading. Operating in Brazil is a huge challenge,” Zhang Dongxiang, CEO of Bank of China’s Brazil unit, told Reuters. “Public opinion sometimes seems to be against foreign investment… as if it makes local industry less competitive.”

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Zhang blames his wariness about investment in Brazil on the protectionist policies of the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff. In an effort to boost dwindling government coffers, Rousseff has enacted policies such as taxing foreign-made cars and limiting the land available for purchase by foreigners.

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Others companies, like Huawei, are exiting due to Brazil’s slowing growth. Some two-thirds of Chinese investments in Brazil since 2007–about $70 billion in projects–have either been suspended or have been canceled, reports Reuters.

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Note that 2012 reflects only first-half data.

Brazilians, however, generally hold a different view. Local businesses complain that Chinese companies drag their feet on deals and are excruciatingly patient negotiators, reports Reuters–or simply never round up the funding. Many of the projects China has made good on involve Brazil’s coveted commodities. Starting in 2010, big state-owned enterprises (SOEs) like Sinopec and Sinochem have amassed plum natural resource projects.

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The friction is building. The Chinese acquisition (in a consortium with two European oil companies) of Brazil’s biggest oilfield sparked violent demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro at the end of October.

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It’s a similar problem to what China has faced from investing in sub-Saharan Africa, says Derek Scissors of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. “What happens is you start getting people saying ‘Wait a minute, we are running a huge trade deficit with China. They are investing $20 billion and grabbing up all our resources. Are we a colony?’” Scissors told Reuters.

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Some of the outrage probably stems from the fact that Chinese investment hasn’t resulted in deeper trade ties that boost Brazilian manufacturing, as Brazilians had hoped.

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On first glance, it might appear that Brazil is ahead, since the country runs a trade surplus with China. But some 80% of Brazil’s China exports still come from three commodities: iron ore, oil and soy. China, meanwhile, has expanded the range of products and services it exports to Brazil. Lack of growth for Brazilian manufacturers is hurting their competitiveness; one study shows they’ve lost share to Chinese ones (pdf, p.19) in other markets.

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Despite the bellyaching on both sides, Chinese investment in Brazil looks set to continue. China’s state-owned enterprise may be losing interest, but nimbler private Chinese companies are still seizing opportunities. Search engine Baidu recently launched in Brazil, months after Lenovo bought a Brazilian electronics company for $146.5 million. And more Chinese car brands sell in Brazil than do American or Japanese brands.

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That’s a good thing for both countries, since those companies see value in Brazil beyond its natural resources.

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Correction: November 2, 2013, 10:30a.m. (EST): An earlier version of this post contained a typo that put CCB’s investment at $716 billion, not $716 million.

German Director Proposes 'One-Stop Shop' For Free, Instant, But Non-Exclusive Licenses To Offer Films Online

from the great-idea,-so-it-will-never-happen dept

It's always heartening to come across new ideas for ways to make creations more widely available to the public while allowing artists to benefit. Here's one from the German film director Fred Breinersdorfer, probably best known for his film "Sophie Scholl". In an article that appeared recently on the newspaper site Süddeutsche.de (original in German), he complains about the fact that searching online for his film throws up plenty of unauthorized versions, but precious few authorized ones.
He recognizes that the absence of easy-to-find, easy-to-use legal offerings tends to drive people to infringing sites, and thus offers a radical suggestion for solving this problem. According to his plan, governments would bring in compulsory licensing, so that all films could be made available for anyone to offer online in any way they want, provided they share the proceeds with the people who create the films. He compares this with the mechanical licenses that are available for music. Here's how it would work:

As soon as the usual terms of protection for theatrical release after the premiere [of a film] have expired, everyone would be entitled to offer copies on the Internet -- non-exclusively. This would apply to classic films as well as to new releases. The collecting societies for copyright and related rights involved in a film and its screenplay could create the legal and technical framework for a "one-stop shop", where the license can be obtained and settled in a second by clicking online. The licensee would then decide how to organize and finance the offering.

As Breinersdorfer explains, this would open up all kinds of interesting possibilities:

it could very soon be possible for someone to open a portal where you can watch all German comedies of the silent era up to "Kokowääh 2" as free streaming or a download, funded by advertising or "premium" accounts for the HD version. Another film connoisseur might make a portal with all the films of Oscar winners in the category "Best Supporting Actress", and a third might be devoted to film noir, with the most comprehensive accompanying material, including Chinese subtitles. Anyone who wants to can combine advertising revenue with subscriptions or on-demand billing. An open market of freely-available films could arise against which the online film thieves would have a weak hand because their copies are often of lousy quality.

It's a wonderful vision of how near-frictionless licensing of the world's films would allow exciting speciality sites to be created by taking different "slices" through the cinematic repertoire. And it's exactly how the online market for films ought to be developing by now -- all the technology is there. Pity it will never happen given the dogmatic attitudes of the movie industry, fixated as it is on punishing copyright infringers rather than making money and spreading the joy of cinema.