{ texts for nothing }

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that at least two major publishers are refusing to distribute e-books to public libraries. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster feel that e-books in libraries are incompatible with their business model. The fact that this violates the spirit (and possibly the letter) of the first sale doctrine is apparently not an issue for them. They can’t figure out how to adapt to the modern world, with its computers and internets and whatnot, so they’re doing what they can to prop up that business model against the tide of history.

If you’ve ever tried to use your library’s e-book collection, this probably won’t surprise you. Selection tends to be hit-and-miss, the user experience provided by most e-book vendors is appalling, and both problems are a direct result of content providers’ paranoia about their profit margins in the digital world. We’ve already seen that Macmillan and Simon & Schuster won’t sell e-books to libraries; other publishers don’t do the e-book thing at all because they’re afraid of piracy or too scared of change to see a market in e-books. In some cases, when you “check out” an e-book at your library, other patrons are prevented from signing out that “copy” of the book, which makes no sense at all — except, of course, as a mechanism for content providers to maximize their control and thereby, theoretically, their profits. I can’t even use large portions of my local library’s e-book collection because you have to install DRM-enforcing software on your computer (even for the public-domain e-books!), and the software in question doesn’t run on Linux. Some libraries have found ways around the usability problems, but if the publishers won’t sell you e-books under any circumstances, there’s not much that libraries can do about it.

So much for e-books. Now we learn (if a rumor on Twitter is to be trusted) that Baker & Taylor, the biggest wholesale vendor of library materials, is being forced by Hollywood to sell rental versions of DVDs to its customers, rather than the more feature-rich versions available on the retail market. In other words, a lot of content will only be available to individual consumers who shell out extra cash for their own personal copies. Aside from simply being unfair to library patrons, the studios’ actions here undermine the public library’s role as a sort of community memory, since the extra content simply won’t be available to the community as a whole.

The DVD restriction is not an earth-shaking development — we’re talking about special features on major-studio releases, after all — and it hasn’t been publicly confirmed yet, but if we combine that with the e-book problems outlined above, we see a trend on the part of “Big Content” to screw over public libraries in the digital realm in the name of profit and a failing business model. And when you add a legislative regime that’s moving towards the absurd restrictions on library use and distribution of digital content that we saw in last year’s proposed copyright law, it starts to look like maybe there is a real problem here.

A few months ago, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (who notoriously once stated that “Canada isn’t a hotel”) announced new visa requirements for people visiting Canada from Mexico and the Czech Republic. People from those countries now “have to apply for temporary resident visas in order to visit, study or work in Canada.” The reason? Those two countries are the top sources of applications for refugee status. Kenney’s argument at the time was that “many of the asylum requests are either rejected or abandoned, raising questions about the legitimacy of the claimants’ allegations that they face persecution in their home countries.”

In other words, the Canadian state responded to a high volume of refugee claims not by giving more resources to the people who evaluate the claims, nor by finding better ways to separate “genuine” refugees from those filing false claims, but by making it harder to apply for refugee status — as if the only real refugees are the ones with the resources to get around the arbitrary obstacles that Canada’s immigration bureaucracy puts in their way.

And now we learn that deportations from Canada have increased dramatically over the past ten years — and the majority of those deported are failed refugee claimants:

Figures obtained by The Canadian Press through Access to Information show Canada removed 12,732 people last year — a major increase from the 8,361 who were deported in 1999.

A series of steady increases over the years shows no sign of abating in 2009. By Aug. 25 of this year, 8,999 had already been deported.

Statistics from the Canada Border Services Agency show failed refugee claimants accounted for three-quarters of deportations while the remainder were often removed on criminal or security grounds.

[...]

The government explains the spike in deportations as the logical result of a jump in refugee applications; there were 35,000 refugee claims last year, and the government says the system can only handle 25,000. [...] But the stats cast some doubt on Ottawa’s explanation. Figures obtained from the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate the 35,000 refugee applications received last year is no record.

While the figure represented a six-year high, it was still far less than the 44,000 cases received in 2001 and 39,000 in the following year. While there was an increase in claims in 2008, the government also completed far fewer cases than in the past.

Refugee advocates say the explanation is simple: the government has wanted to deport more people, and has taken steps to do it in recent years.

(I highly recommend reading the whole article, which goes into detail about some of the failures of the current immigration system and the appalling consequences for rejected refugee claimants.)

There’s an interesting bit of circular reasoning at work here. The rationale for the new visa requirements was that most refugee claims are rejected; the implication was that most such claims were made under false pretences. But we know that the people who control Canada’s borders have been intentionally rejecting more applicants as a matter of policy. Then they use the resulting increase in rejections as a pretext to keep more and more people out of the country. It’s a deliberate vicious cycle — and the people who get screwed are the ones trying to escape misery and persecution back home. That’s one hell of a legacy, Mr. Kenney.

It’s been clear since early in his campaign for the presidency that Barack Obama is committed to escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has added 21,000 troops to the American military presence in Afghanistan since taking office, and is currently contemplating how many more to send (one of his generals wants an additional 60,000 soldiers). The immediate goal of Obama’s Afghan policy is to prop up Hamid Karzai — a man whose legacy so far includes widespread corruption, election rigging, and the legalization of rape — and, of course, to continue the war against the Taliban. Genuine, lasting peace in Afghanistan is not on anyone’s agenda.

Meanwhile, just over the border, Obama has been expanding the war into Pakistan with a series of air strikes, killing innocent civilians (including children) and threatening Pakistan’s already-fragile political stability — which seems like a pretty stupid thing to do if you want to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of those wacky Islamic fundamentalists. Again, it’s hard to see how this policy is doing anything to promote peace in Central Asia.

Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that ordinary people in the region are less than thrilled to learn that Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

“I don’t know how he can get this prize,” said Najeeb, a 30-year-old shopkeeper attending a friend’s wedding party [in Kabul]. “Maybe it’s been awarded for all the houses they are bombing, or perhaps it’s for all his soldiers that are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Obama’s deployment of the tools of war is not restricted to the Middle East. His administration has also been expanding the American military presence in Latin America. The US claims that the military installations it’s planning to use in Colombia don’t count as new military bases — they’re merely “Cooperative Security Locations” leased from the Colombian state, which somehow makes them completely different and definitely not army bases. True, the troop levels involved are relatively small (the numbers would increase from less than 300 troops to no more than 800), but it’s clear that the intent here is to step up the US drug war in Latin America. Dropping more soldiers into the middle of a 40-year-old guerrilla war is not going to create peace in Colombia or anywhere else.

All in all, it seems that the best way to win the Nobel Peace Prize is to continue with the American imperial project in a manner slightly less offensive than that of George W. Bush. I’d say the decision tarnishes the Nobel prize’s reputation, but these sorts of controversies are not exactly news: Henry Kissinger, for example, was awarded the same prize at the height of the Vietnam War, while Gandhi was overlooked despite multiple nominations. I don’t even think it’s reasonable to hope that this latest prize will lead to serious scrutiny of Obama’s foreign policy: his approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan has been receiving substantial attention and analysis since long before his inauguration, and the Colombian thing is more or less business as usual and will therefore be ignored. All you can really do is shrug your shoulders, admit that some folks in Norway decided to be particularly stupid today, and move on.

The BC Civil Liberties Association is helping two anti-Olympic activists to sue the City of Vancouver over a bylaw that would restrict free speech during the 2010 Games.

“The bylaw is an affront to free speech.  Its purpose and effect is to limit citizens’ rights to express dissenting views and to hear dissenting views on public property,” says David Eby, Executive Director of the BCCLA. Eby cited concerns about the bylaw restricting signs that aren’t “celebratory” and listing public facilities and even a city park as places where free expression is limited as particularly offensive. [...]

“Vancouver’s Olympic bylaw is an infringement on my Charter rights and those of all people who wish to express themselves and to listen,” said Dr. Shaw [Chris Shaw, one of the activists who filed the lawsuit]. “If the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to be a guarantee of anything, if it is to be more than words on paper, this bylaw cannot be allowed to stand.”

This makes me happy.