Quotulatiousness

June 17, 2014

BC supreme court attempts to extend jurisdiction over Google’s global services

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:10

Michael Geist talks about another court attempting to push local rules into other jurisdictions online — in this case it’s not the European “right to be forgotten” nonsense, it’s unfortunately a Canadian court pulling the stunt:

In the aftermath of the European Court of Justice “right to be forgotten” decision, many asked whether a similar ruling could arise in Canada. While a privacy-related ruling has yet to hit Canada, last week the Supreme Court of British Columbia relied in part on the decision in issuing an unprecedented order requiring Google to remove websites from its global index. The ruling in Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack is unusual since its reach extends far beyond Canada. Rather than ordering the company to remove certain links from the search results available through Google.ca, the order intentionally targets the entire database, requiring the company to ensure that no one, anywhere in the world, can see the search results. Note that this differs from the European right to be forgotten ruling, which is limited to Europe.

The implications are enormous since if a Canadian court has the power to limit access to information for the globe, presumably other courts would as well. While the court does not grapple with this possibility, what happens if a Russian court orders Google to remove gay and lesbian sites from its database? Or if Iran orders it remove Israeli sites from the database? The possibilities are endless since local rules of freedom of expression often differ from country to country. Yet the B.C. court adopts the view that it can issue an order with global effect. Its reasoning is very weak, concluding that:

    the injunction would compel Google to take steps in California or the state in which its search engine is controlled, and would not therefore direct that steps be taken around the world. That the effect of the injunction could reach beyond one state is a separate issue.

Unfortunately, it does not engage effectively with this “separate issue.”

Game of Thrones lessons learned by ISIS

Filed under: History, Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:56

I haven’t been watching Game of Thrones, but I’ve seen enough of it that James Delingpole‘s observations seem rather accurate:

Consider some of the Isis footage now doing the rounds on the internet. One video is filmed from the point of view of some young men in car, driving along a highway outside a town somewhere in northern Iraq, looking for cars to shoot up with their AK-47s. The innocent drivers clearly aren’t expecting this. By the time they’re aware what’s going on, it’s too late: soon, their bullet-riddled cars are veering off the roads, their dead or wounded drivers slumped at the wheel. Next, eager as puppies, out pop the jihadis to inspect the damage, gleefully filming their dying victims and then finishing them off. It’s like an episode of Grand Theft Auto Mosul, only acted out for real.

What kind of mindset do you need to carry out this kind of barbaric violence? Well I hesitate to say a “Medieval” one because then the Medievalists get all upset. But let’s agree shall we that it is a mindset almost completely alien to Western Judeo-Christian culture. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule: the obvious one being Germany in World War II. At the risk of crudely generalising though, I’d say that however much society breaks down in the West I can’t ever see any of us reaching the point where we start machine gunning road users just for the sheer hell of it, any more than I can ever imagine us beheading or crucifying prisoners. We got all that stuff out of our system, over the centuries, in a succession of savage conflicts like the Thirty Years War and the Wars of The Roses.

It’s from the Wars of the Roses, of course, that George RR Martin gets a lot of his gory detail, including the kill-or-be-killed mindset of his protagonists. They don’t think like us because they don’t enjoy the luxury of living in a society as advanced as ours. What to us might seem like basic human decency would strike the Game of Thrones protagonists as fatal weakness. Hence, for example, the House Bolton’s practice of flaying its prisoners: a) a dead enemy is never going to kill you and b) it so terrifies your foes that — as Isis have found in Iraq — they would rather flee for their lives than face you in battle.

This kind of insight is, I’m sure, one of the main reasons why Game of Thrones has grown to achieve its status as unmissable, landmark television. Yes, of course, the fine acting, great locations, pert breasts and CGI dragons are a big draw too. But what really makes it stick out is that, unlike almost any other fiction set in the past, it chooses not to imbue its characters with the liberal values of the present. This brutal honesty is at once exhilaratingly novel but also deeply unsettling, for it opens a window onto a world where people may look like us and apparently share the same hopes, dreams and fears as us, but where the progressive pieties to which we’ve become accustomed in the post-war years simply don’t apply. Not only do they not apply but they actually look foolish, counterproductive, suicidal.

Somaly Mam’s Icarus turn

Filed under: Asia, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:31

In Taki’s Magazine, Kathy Shaidle describes the rise and fall of Somaly Mam, who is the most recent fantasist to dupe Westerners about conditions in her home country:

One of the last thrills still permitted us normal folks (for now) is getting to watch one of these self-appointed activists and advocates endure an Icarian tumble. Take that recent Newsweek exposé of secular saint and “sex work” abolitionist Somaly Mam.

No, I’d never heard of her before, either. I didn’t realize how far removed I was from what the authorities have deemed reality until I read that, among other things, this woman had been feted by the White House and the State Department, appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, made the “TIME 100” list, and declared one of Glamour’s “Women of the Year.” Plus she’d been named one of the “Women Who Shake the World” by, er, Newsweek.

Cambodian-born Somaly Mam began making claims she’d been sold into sexual slavery as a youngster. After a daring escape, she dedicated her life to rescuing other girls from the same fate, leading armed raids on brothels, then providing shelter, education, and vocational training to the former captives—with the help of Western donors, many of them celebrities.

Aaaaaaannnnnddddd … ? Oh, come on. Guess.

Simon Marks has been investigating Mam for The Cambodia Daily (“All the News Without Fear or Favor”) for years. When Newsweek ran his findings in that cover story last month, the rest of the world found out what actual Cambodians and NGO-types have been trying to tell us all this time:

Mam’s “origin story” is mostly bollocks on stilts.

Her “rescues” are more like kidnappings, and her statistics about Cambodia’s trafficking rates, exaggerated. She coached non-ex-prostitutes to tell hair-raising tales of rape, torture, and even eye-gouging when pale-faced documentarians came calling. “[I]nstead of a brothel or a massage parlour,” Mam’s “rescued slaves” ended up “working for poverty-level wages in unsafe and exploitative conditions in sweatshops.”

Don’t expect to see Canadian involvement in Iraq

Filed under: Cancon, Middle East — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:17

Paul Wells outlines why nobody is expecting a new Canadian commitment to addressing the situation in Iraq:

The United States is sending hundreds of troops, maybe more, to Baghdad as chaos in Iraq mounts. Canada, John Baird told the Commons today in a 35-second response to a planted question, isn’t. The foreign minister and the prime minister needn’t worry about having to explain themselves further on Iraq, as the Conservative government’s policy of concerned distance from the mess puts it in pretty good harmony with the opposition New Democrats, the Liberals, and Stephen Harper’s predecessor Jean Chrétien.

I don’t follow Canadian-Iraqi relations overly closely, so I was surprised on Monday when DFAT-D announced it was pulling Canada’s chargé out of Baghdad, leaving no Canadian diplomatic presence there. Turns out we don’t have an embassy in Iraq after eight years of Conservative government. Our ambassador to Iraq lives and works in Jordan. The chargé who’s been asked to leave for her safety was first posted there a year ago. And though there were several reports in Iraqi media last autumn to the effect that a full embassy would open in Baghdad this year, there’s been no follow-up and I’m not sure how much credence to give the original reports. For one thing they all misspell the Canadian amabassador’s name. […]

The absence of a full ambassador in Iraq is a tell, and what it indicates is what you suspected: the prime minister is less excited than he used to be about the potential benefits of military intervention in Iraq. We have to look for hints like this because nobody has seen fit to walk us through Stephen Harper’s reasoning.

[…]

The evolution of Harper’s thinking on Iraq, and on military matters generally, would be fascinating to investigate. It’ll all have to await his memoirs, if any. You could put a good face on things by concluding quite simply that he learns from events: having delivered far more phone calls to the families of soldiers who died in Afghanistan than he’d planned to, and having learned for himself what an amazing schmozzle any war and (to a lesser but still substantial degree) any equipment procurement becomes, he’s decided to do less by military than he once wanted to. The scale of military cutbacks is getting noticed, although again that leaves Harper vulnerable on his right flank, where there are no opposition parties.

Not all wines should be cellared

Filed under: France, Wine — Nicholas @ 00:01

At the Wall Street Journal, Will Lyons has some suggestions for wines you can — and should — drink sooner rather than stashing them in your cellar for a far distant future date:

These are styles of wines that aren’t enormously serious, in that they don’t have a huge range of flavors. (A shorthand for this category, suggested by Charles Lea, owner of London fine wine merchant Lea & Sandeman, is “anything you can drink out of an ice bucket,” which includes a variety of reds as well as whites.) That isn’t to deride these wines in any way. It is as legitimate to appreciate an uncomplicated style of white wine, designed to refresh and be sipped without too much thought, as it is to purr enthusiastically over the grandeur of a classed growth Bordeaux. In that vein, let’s celebrate this expression of youth.

The obvious place to start is with white wine, as the vast majority are best drunk within a year of the harvest — although the later bottlings always tend to taste a little better. Sauvignon Blanc, Vinho Verde, Moscato, Pinot Grigio and Picpoul de Pinet are the best candidates for “better when young.”

One wine that is absolutely made for this time of year is France’s Condrieu, made from the Viognier grape. Wine writer Hugh Johnson likened its smell to that of a “garden of unknown flowers.” You can find Viognier now planted all over the world, particularly in Australia and California, and I always find it is best drunk young. Chenin Blanc, dry Riesling and Argentina’s Torrontés can also bypass the cellar, as can almost any rosé.

With red wines, the choices aren’t as obvious. As a rule of thumb, anything heavy with lots of tannin, like Cabernet Sauvignon, Barolo or a heavy Merlot, improves with time in the bottle. Italy’s soft, fruity Dolcetto; straight Beaujolais, by which I mean Nouveau and Beaujolais-Villages (not Cru Beaujolais); and anything made with the Gamay grape are good to go from the off.

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