Sarkozy To “Go All The Way” Against Internet Piracy

Yesterday from the Palace of Versailles, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first president to address Parliament in 150 years. He took the opportunity to show his determination over the proposed HADOPI legislation, promising that he will “go all the way” to enforce law on the Internet.

Sarkozy’s address yesterday was made possible by the annulment of a law prohibiting a sitting president from addressing lawmakers. The last time an address of this type occurred was 1848, in Napoleon’s day.

After condemning the wearing of burqas by Muslim women in France and labeling it a “sign of subservience,” he moved on to HADOPI - France’s controversial anti-piracy law which aimed to implement “3 Strikes” for alleged pirates.

Earlier this month the Constitutional Council, France’s highest legal authority, deemed Internet disconnections unconstitutional, and stopped the law.

Speaking to both the Senate and the National Assembly in a joint session at Versailles Palace just outside of Paris, Sarkozy was clearly undeterred. During a 45 minute speech, he turned to the issue of Internet piracy, stating;

“How can there be areas of lawlessness in areas of our society? How can one simultaneously claim that the economy is regulated but the Internet is not so? How can we accept that the rules that apply to society as a whole are not binding on the Internet?”

Sarkozy went on to say that by championing HADOPI, he’s not just protecting artists.

“By defending copyright I do not just defend artistic creation, I also defend my idea of a free society where everyone’s freedom is based on respect for the rights of others. I am also defending the future of our culture. It is the future of creation.”

In pressing for HADOPI, Sarkozy said he will “go all the way.”

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/sarkozy-says-he-will-go-all-the-way-with-3-strikes-090623/

Tags: Nicolas Sarkozy, France, EU, French National Assembly, Napoleon, constitutional council, Paris, Palace of Versailles, HADOPI, Global IT News, Burqas, Internet Piracy, Copyright, Artists, Free society, Muslim,

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N Korea Defiant After New Sanctions

North Korea has warned that it will increase its nuclear activities and could launch military action against the US and allies after the UN Security Council announced new sanctions over last month's atomic test. North Korea's foreign ministry said it will regard any attempts to impose a blockade against it as an "act of war", the state-run KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.

"We'll take firm military action if the United States and its allies try to isolate us," the unnamed foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying. The UN resolution, passed on Friday, banned all weapons exports from North Korea and authorised member states to inspect sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy goods that violate the sanctions. The UN resolution was passed as media reports suggested that North Korea could be planning a third nuclear test.

Enrichment Programme

But North Korea remained defiant, pledging to start a uranium enrichment programme for a light-water nuclear reactor. The foreign ministry spokesman also warned that the North would "weaponise all plutonium [in its possession]" and had "reprocessed more than one-third of our spent nuclear fuel rods."

Alexander Neill, the head of the Asia security programme at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in the UK, told Al Jazeera that while the warning is "bluster", it is also a serious threat. "This [threat of enrichment] is not a new phenomenon," Neill said. "It would take a long time and sophisticated technology to convert plutonium to missile-grade material, but it is a gesture with a lot of teeth behind it. "When it comes to the international reaction, the only option is for the UN Security Council resolution. "It is almost certain that the US and Japan will enforce a blockade which will put a pincer movement around any of the sea trade going in and out of North Korea.

"The question is whether it will have any result inside North Korea. The regime has proved resilient to sanctions in the past," he said. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Saturday: "The North Koreans' continuing provocative actions are deeply regrettable'. "They have now been denounced by everyone, they have become further isolated, and it is not in the interest of the people of North Korea for that kind of isolation to be continued."

'Firm Opposition'

North Korea's nuclear test in May defied a previous Security Council resolution adopted after the North's first underground nuclear test in October 2006. Zhang Yesui, China's UN ambassador, said the resolution showed the "firm opposition" of the international community to North Korea's nuclear ambitions. The backing of China, one of North Korea's key trading partners and regional allies, and Russia for the resolution gave greater weight to the new sanctions as they have been reluctant to act in the past.

"To a certain extent, China has been happy to leave North Korea to its own devices," Al Jazeera's Tony Cheng, reporting from Beijing, said. "Now China is profoundly concerned about the regime in Pyongyang, which seems increasingly unstable and seems increasingly not to follow Beijing's lead." Japan is expected to impose its own sanctions on North Korea, including suspending all trade, in a largely symbolic demonstration of its opposition to the test, the Kyodo news agency reported.

'Tightening Sanctions'

Al Jazeera's Cheng said that it was difficult to judge what effect the new sanctions would have on the already impoverished state. "This is really just tightening sanctions that already exist on North Korea, but they do target it in specific areas," he said.

"I think that one area that will hurt quite a lot will be the ban on conventional weapons arms sales and the possibility of stopping ships going to and from North Korea ... that is a business that could earn Pyongyang as much as $100m." Jamie Metzl, the executive vice-president of the Asia Society, said North Korea had exported arms to about 20 countries in the past, including Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan.

"Their finances are in big trouble. They have almost nothing that anybody else wants to buy but these arms," Metzl said. The UN vote comes amid continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea on Thursday demanded a 3,000 per cent increase in rent and a 400 per cent increase in wages for 40,000 workers employed by South Korean companies at an industrial park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong.

North Korean state media issued a statement on Thursday saying that relations between the two countries had reached the "phase of catastrophe" and that the Kaesong complex had been "thrown into a serious crisis".

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2009/06/200961361534368421.html

Tags: Kim jong il, Kim jong un, USA, China, Russia, UK, France, UN Security Council, Sanctions, Nucelar reactors, Nuclear Weapons, Global Development News, Hillary Clinton, Kaesong industrial Park, South Korea, Japan, Kyodo,

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Security Council Set to Tighten Sanctions on North Korea

UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council’s five permanent members agreed on Wednesday on a draft resolution that would ratchet up sanctions against North Korea by concentrating on its financial transactions and its arms industry, including allowing for inspections of its cargo vessels on the high seas.

The sharply worded resolution, while diluting some of the sanctions sought by the West and Japan, would still serve notice on North Korea that its nuclear and other weapons programs had created sufficient alarm to forge a rare unified front among the world’s major powers.

Written by the United States, the resolution came after more than two weeks of negotiations among the five permanent members — China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France — as well as with Japan and South Korea. It was presented to the full Security Council on Wednesday, and although no timetable for a vote was announced, it could come as early as Friday. Given its supporters, the measure seems assured of passing.

Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, told reporters, “Having sanctions and things like that is not our choice, but a certain political message must be sent, and some measures must be taken, because we are facing a very real situation of proliferation risks.”

North Korea did not react immediately, although its reclusive government has said in the past that ship inspections or other intrusive steps would be considered acts of war. If the resolution is approved, the next hurdle will be ensuring its highly technical provisions are all carried out. Not all resolutions are equally respected by United Nations member states, and, as Ambassador Jorge Urbina of Costa Rica noted, the draft resolution is complex.

The biggest question mark involved China, which has been reluctant to deploy the full weight of its influence on North Korea out of fear of destabilizing it amid a leadership transition. But various analysts suggested that it would not have publicly backed such sanctions unless it was serious about responding to North Korea’s underground nuclear test on May 25.

“They are deeply troubled by North Korean actions,” Jonathan D. Pollack, a professor of Asian and Pacific studies at the Naval War College, said in a telephone interview from Beijing.

The nuclear test followed a series of confrontational actions taken by the North, largely reversing every step it had taken to abandon its nuclear program in recent years.

“It is important for there to be consequences, and this sanctions regime, if passed by the Security Council, will bite and bite in a meaningful way,” said Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador, who shepherded the resolution through the negotiations.

The United States and its allies had wanted the draft resolution to include mandatory cargo inspections, if there was reasonable suspicion that the cargo was weapons-related — something Washington had been seeking outside the United Nations during the Bush years through its Proliferation Security Initiative. But China and Russia balked at mandatory inspections. In a compromise, the resolution requests that states inspect ships on the high seas. If the country where the ship is registered decided to reject an inspection in international waters, then the country would be required to direct the vessel to a nearby harbor for an inspection. If neither happened, the episode would be reported to the Security Council’s sanctions committee. The resolution also suggests that states should cut off “bunkering” services, like refueling, for North Korean vessels.

It is assumed that North Korea would balk at any inspections of its ships, analysts noted, and the resolution does not come under a United Nations provision that would allow the use of force as the ultimate fallback. The sanctions basically fleshed out measures that were first listed in a Security Council resolution passed after North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006. They were never enacted, because the North agreed to participate in talks to dismantle the program.

The draft resolution condemns the latest North Korean nuclear test, demanding that North Korea conduct no more tests and that it suspend its ballistic missile program and rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The theme salted throughout the resolution is choking off anything that might feed the country’s nuclear and weapons programs, including a complete arms embargo, with the exception of small weapons.

Arms generate significant earnings for North Korea, Ms. Rice said, “and we think it important that that source of revenue be entirely curtailed.”

Analysts said the proposed sanctions with the most bite might be the financial ones. They called upon member states to cut off financial services related to the North’s nuclear and weapons programs, to avoid any new grants or loans to the country and to halt other trade support like export credits. Financial transactions for humanitarian or development purposes would be allowed.

William H. Tobey, the former senior Bush administration official for nuclear nonproliferation, who is now at Harvard’s Belfer Center, said that North Korea imported about $3 billion in goods annually, $2 billion of it from China. It exports about $1.5 billion legally, so it needs significant credit to make up the difference. “It would put a significant crimp in their ability to import,” he said of the financial sanctions.

In recent years, efforts to sanction rogue states like Zimbabwe have foundered on the split between Russia and China, on one side, and Western nations on the other. The fact that all five permanent Security Council members agreed on the draft showed how seriously they viewed the gradual global decay in the nuclear nonproliferation treaty — a message aimed not only at North Korea but at other countries suspected of trying to develop nuclear weapons, like Iran.

“They have to get North Korea right, because it has implications for the entire nonproliferation regime,” said Robert C. Orr, the United Nations assistant secretary-general for policy planning.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/world/asia/11korea.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Tags: UN, United Nations, UN Permanent Security Council, China, Russia, USA, Britain, France, Global Economic News, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Nuclear weapons, Economic Sanctions, Croatia, Costa Rica, Vitaly Churkin, Robert C Orr,

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Conservative Parties Cheer Victory in EU Parliamentary Elections

Conservative parties across Europe are cheering their victory, following four days of voting for the E.U. Parliament that resulted in heavy losses for the left.

Governing parties in a dozen European countries began the week on a down note, after suffering humiliating defeats in the European parliament elections. That included Britain, where the ruling Labor party marked its lowest score in decades, with about 16 percent of the vote. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was scheduled to meet later Monday with parliament members from his party.

Governing conservatives in France, Germany, Italy and Poland emerged winners in the voting to select the European Parliament's 736 deputies. Leftist lawmakers like Martin Schulz, president of the parliament's Socialist group, say they are bitterly disappointed with the results. Schulz says the vote marks a sad period for socialists in Europe. But he says the themes of the left - social values, more market regulation and fighting climate change - are as relevant as ever.

Analysts say voters wanted to punish the left for what they perceived as its inadequate response to the financial and economic crisis. Domestic issues also topped the agenda in countries like Britain, where the already unpopular Labor party is reeling over a scandal over lawmakers' perks.

In some countries, such as Italy, Britain and the Netherlands, far-right parties running on anti-immigration and Euro-skeptic platforms scored gains in the elections, as did the Greens party in France. But voter apathy ruled the day, with only 43 percent of Europeans casting their ballot - a record low.

EU lawmaker Francis Wurtz of France says the rate of voter abstention showed lack of confidence in the European Union. Polls indicate many Europeans have little faith in the European Union and believe EU parliament members are overpaid and detached from their daily problems.

Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-06-08-voa4.cfm

Tags: EU Parliamentary elections, Martin Schulz, Gordon Brown, UK Labor Party, Voter apathy, Francis Wurtz, France, Germany, Poland, Conservative parties across Europe,

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4 Travelers Missed Doomed Air France Flight 447

PARIS – A reservation mix-up, an overbooking and a Brazilian cabbie's passion for soccer are all that saved some would-be passengers on Air France flight 447 from the fate of 228 others who lost their lives in the mid-Atlantic.

The survivors say their relief is overshadowed by the immense sense of loss they feel for those who didn't make it. "It feels miraculous and sad at the same time," said Amina Benouargha-Jaffiol, who tried to get on the flight Sunday night, even enlisting a diplomat friend to try to pressure Air France to let her and her husband on.

"Of course, at some level we feel lucky, but we also feel an enormous sadness for all those who perished," she said. For some it was a simple matter of arriving at Rio's airport late; for Andrej Aplinc, it was because he got there early.

The 39-year-old Slovenian sailor and father of two was spared because his cab driver was in a hurry to see a soccer match. With time to spare at the airport, Aplinc, who was supposed to take Flight 447, learned there was no seat on the plane with enough legroom for him to stretch out his bum knee. But since he'd arrived early, he was able to board an earlier 4 p.m. Air France flight, which did have a roomy seat.

"It was such huge luck that I flew with that earlier plane," Aplinc said from his home in Radelj Ob Dravi in northeastern Slovenia. Gustavo Ciriaco was scheduled to be on that 4 p.m. flight. But he arrived late at the check-in and was told airline agents could not find his seat and the gate was about to close.

The 39-year-old Brazilian choreographer and dancer was on his way to Europe for two weeks of rehearsals for his next ballet, and had a connecting flight to catch in Paris. Ciriaco pleaded to be let him on the plane, and finally the airline discovered the seating error and relented.

If the reservation mix-up hadn't been resolved, "I would have tried to take the following flight because I would have arrived in Paris with enough time to catch my connection," Ciriaco said. The next flight? Air France 447.

"Survivors" like these often need psychological counseling, said Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, whose father was among the 170 people killed in 1989 when Libyan terrorists downed UTA Flight 772 with a suitcase bomb. He now heads an association that helps victims of airline disasters.

"They can have big psychological problems. We meet a lot of people like that," said Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by French authorities to counsel relatives of the victims of Flight 447 at a crisis center at Paris' airport.

In the case of UTA flight 772, some of the pilots and cabin crew who had flown the French DC-10 jetliner before handing it over to the doomed crew "couldn't resume their careers," Denoix de Saint-Marc said.

"They lost their flying licenses because of big psychological problems or alcoholism," he said. Such traumas have a name: "Survivors' syndrome," seen often in combat and other crisis situations in which those who make it feel as though they fled, deserted their buddies or were cowardly, said psychiatrist Ronan Orio. But being saved by the ticket counter, traffic or other caprices of life should not be considered traumatic, said Orio, who has worked with victims of hostage situations, terror attacks and airline crashes.

Instead, near-miss situations should be viewed in a positive light, he said. "People who take a plane and have a second chance win the lotto. They have the right to continue where the others died," he said.

Benouargha-Jaffiol and her husband Claude Jaffiol got a second chance last Sunday. The couple, who live in Montpellier, France, had pulled strings to try to get on Flight 447, even drafting a family friend, a Dutch diplomat, to phone Air France and try to get them seats on the overcrowded plane.

"My husband demanded that Air France put us on that flight," Benouargha-Jaffiol said. "But nothing doing, the flight was totally full." She and her husband finally left the airport, returning Monday after the disaster.

"This type of tragedy should give us all a lesson in humility and humanism," she said. "No one lives forever. We often forget that."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_re_eu/eu_brazil_would_be_passengers

Tags: Air France, Brasil, France, Survivor’s syndrome, Flight 447, Ronan Orio, Dutch diplomat, Paris,

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Obama Warns N Korea of Further Nuclear Tests

The US president has said that North Korea's leaders will not receive preferential treatment following recent missile tests. Barack Obama made the comments before a ceremony on Saturday in France to mark the D-Day landings, a turning point in the second world war.

 

Obama said moves by the North Korean government, which included nuclear tests, had been "extraordinarily provocative", pushing diplomacy to its limits. He said that his preferred use of diplomacy to solve tensions may not continue, particularly if North Korea does not respond in "a serious way".

 

'No rewards'

 

"We are going to take a very hard look at how we move forward on these issues," Obama said after a meeting Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, the city of Caen in Normandy, northern France.

 

"I don't think that there should be an assumption that we will simply continue down a path in which North Korea is constantly destabilising the region and we just react in the same ways.

 

"They have made no bones about the fact that they are testing nuclear weapons, testing missiles that would potentially have intercontinental capacity.

 

"We are not intending to continue a policy of rewarding provocation."

 

North Korea last launched a long-range missile in April. It has since carried out a nuclear test and several short-range missile tests. North Korea is believed to be preparing for a further long-range missile test.

 

Obama said that the UN security council was preparing a new resolution on North Korea. He asserted that China and Russia - the two major powers closest to Pyongyang - were also taking a stricter stance.

 

"They understand how destabilising North Korea's actions are," he said. Obama was talking ahead of a ceremony to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings, a key date for the allies' victory in the second world war.

 

Tags: obama, north korea, d day, nuclear tests, missiles, sarkozy, france, kim jong il, kim jong un, china, un, un security council, global development news

 

Source: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/06/200966124659929919.html

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