Speaking about the recently introduced copyright bill, Moore said that “The only people who are opposed to this legislation are really two groups of radical extremists.” The bill has a provision making it illegal to break digital locks on content, even if you own the content and are using it in a manner consistent with the rest of copyright law.

Moore added a shot at University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, a well-known and well-respected expert on copyright who has suggested modifications to the bill by saying “There are those that pretend to be for copyright reform, but they don’t believe in actual copyright reform. There are those that are cited as experts by the media endlessly who are not in favour of copyright reform.”

Usually, the national government of a country receive significant revenue from the mine and allows and often supports mining even though the local people are strongly opposed. However, there’s some good news from the Pakistani province of Balochistan, where Barrick Gold has just been told to leave at the end of an exploration contract. For once, the national government is listening to the local people. You can follow the destruction that Barrick is causing in other parts of the world at protestbarrick.net and find out more about the Canadian mining industry at miningwatch.ca.

In East Vancouver, police beat a man after being called to a domestic dispute. After they’d broken fractured bones around his eyes and handcuffed him, they realized that they were at the wrong residence. Not only is that very bad luck for the guy with the fractured bones, but really, if they had been at the right address and beaten up someone there would that have been any better?

“They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” That’s what Rear Admiral Harris, in charge at Guantanamo Bay, said after three prisoners supposedly hung themselves. Well, it appears that the warfare was indeed asymmetrical, but not against the U.S. Four American soldiers have come forward to say that they were on guard duty in Guantanamo Bay the night that three prisoners supposedly committed suicide, and contrary to the official report, they saw no one, alive or dead, pass between the prisoner’s cellblock and the camp infirmary where the bodies ended up. What they did see earlier in the evening was a government van usually used for transporting prisoners move between the cell block and a separate installation widely believed to be used for torture. The van returned several hours later and stopped at the infirmary. Since the Obama government has taken office, these guards have been cooperating with federal authorities in investigating what really happened that night, but federal investigators have declined to continue the investigation.

And ABC is reporting that the scopes on U.S. military sniper rifles are being stamped with New Testament references by the manufacturer.  That’s not strictly a beating, but it sure breaks the rules.

The current recession makes the need more urgent, but also makes the decision to spend more to reduce poverty more financially responsible. Economists are quite clear that the best way to get more money into circulation in the economy is to give it to the poorest people you can find, because they will spend it, while those of us who are well-off are more likely to dump it into a savings account. And yet governments are still not putting the money where it is most needed, and food bank use is increasing rapidly.