Thursday, December 13, 2012

Human Rights Complaint Filed By Chinese Miner

Chinese miner launches human rights complaint against union

Alleges United Steelworkers Union creating contempt for Chinese people

The Canadian Press

Posted: Dec 13, 2012 3:58 PM PT

Last Updated: Dec 13, 2012 5:58 PM PT

Counterfeit And Pirated Goods Site Canceled

U.S. drops China's Taobao website from "notorious" list

Thu Dec 13, 2012 6:48pm EST

[-] Text [+]

By Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday dropped a website owned by China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, from its annual list of the world's most "notorious markets" for sales of pirated and counterfeit goods.
Taobao Marketplace, an online shopping site similar to eBay and Amazon that brings together buyers and sellers, "has been removed from the 2012 List because it has undertaken notable efforts over the past year to work with rightholders directly or through their industry associations to clean up its site," the U.S. Trade Representative's office said in the report.

The move came just before an annual high-level U.S.-China trade meeting next week in Washington.
Taobao Marketplace is China's largest consumer-oriented e-commerce platform, with estimated market share of more than 70 percent. The website has nearly 500 million registered users, with more than 800 million product listings at any given time. Most of the users are in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called Taobao "one of the single largest online sources of counterfeits."

The Chinese Commerce Ministry strongly objected to Taobao's inclusion on the USTR's 2011 notorious markets list. A ministry spokesman said it did not appear to be based on any "conclusive evidence or detailed analysis.

Alibaba hired former USTR General Counsel James Mendenhall to help persuade USTR to remove Taobao from its list.
The Chinese company's bid to shed its "notorious" label won support from the Motion Picture Association of America, a former critic of Taobao, which praised its effort to reduce the availability of counterfeit goods on its website.

But U.S. software, clothing and shoe manufacturers urged USTR to keep Taobao on the list.
To stay off in the future, USTR urged "Taobao to further streamline procedures ... for taking down listings of counterfeit and pirated goods and to continue its efforts to work with and achieve a satisfactory outcome with U.S. rights holders and industry associations."

USTR said it also removed Chinese website Sogou from the notorious markets list, based on reports that it has made "notable efforts to work with rights holders to address the availability of infringing content on its site."

U.S. concerns about widespread piracy and counterfeiting of American goods in China are expected to be high on the agenda at next week's meeting in Washington of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.

The 2012 notorious markets list includes Xunlei, which USTR described as a Chinese-based site that facilitates the downloading and distribution of pirated movies.
Baixe de Tudo, a website hosted in Sweden but targeted at the Brazilian market, was also put on the list along with the Chinese website Gougou.

Warez-bb, which USTR described as a hub for pre-release music, software and video games, was also included. The forum site is registered in Sweden but hosted by a Russian Internet service provider, USTR said.
The full report can be found on USTR's website at: here%20Notorious%20Markets%20List.pdf
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Will Dunham, Dan Grebler and Jim Marshall)

Canadian Labour Shut Out Of Mining Jobs For Imported Chinese Who May Remain In C anada For 14 Years

Canadians shut out of jobs at B.C. mine

Photo 1/2

Mining firm says in court documents it advertised for Canadian workers

Photo 2/2

Union workers in B.C. have raised the alarm over a Chinese coal company's plan to bring foreign miners to work in Canada.

By James Keller, The Canadian Press December 13, 2012

It could be more than four years before any Canadian miners are hired at a controversial underground coal project in northern British Columbia and more than 14 years before all the temporary foreign workers are gone, says a transition plan prepared by the company behind the mining proposal.
HD Mining submitted the document to the federal government earlier this year as it applied for temporary foreign worker permits to bring 201 Chinese miners to its proposed Murray River coal mine near Tumbler Ridge.

The plan was released Wednesday as a pair of unions challenging those permits asked a Federal Court to stop any more workers from arriving.
The Chinese-owned company has said it must hire foreign workers because there are no Canadians trained in the specialized form of mining that would be used at Murray River, and it has stressed the Chinese miners’ jobs are temporary.

The document indicates the company plans to use temporary foreign workers to build the mine, which it expects would take 30 months to complete. If the mine is approved, temporary foreign workers would be used at the mine for the first two years of operation as they set up a training school and start recruiting and training Canadians.

After that, the document says it would take another decade to shift the work to Canadians at a rate of 10 per cent of the mine’s workforce per year.
The B.C. Federation of Labour, which isn’t directly involved in the case but has been a vocal critic of the mine, seized on the document to suggest the public has been misled about the temporary nature of the Chinese miners’ work.
“They’re talking 14-and-a-half years — that would be unacceptable to anybody in Canada,” Sinclair said in an interview.
“This is a total abuse of the program. There’s nothing temporary about any of these jobs.”

The proposed Murray River mine has been the source of controversy since details of the foreign worker permits surfaced in news reports two months ago. The federal human resources minister has said her ministry has its own concerns about whether the rules were followed and announced last month that the entire temporary foreign worker program is now under review.

HD Mining has proposed a $300-million underground mine southwest of Tumbler Ridge, about 140 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, Alta. The court heard that 17 Chinese miners are already in B.C. and another 60 are expected to arrive this weekend as the company prepares for preliminary exploration work while waiting for full approval for the mine.

HD Mining has already said it would take 10 years to transition work to Canadians, but it has not said it would be more than four years before the transition would begin.
Spokeswoman Jody Shimkus said HD Mining wants to hire Canadians as soon as it can, but she insisted it will take time to transfer the skills needed to work in the mine, especially given the current labour shortage facing the industry.
“If we’re successful transferring the skill set before then, that would be wonderful,” Shimkus said in an interview.

“But when we submitted the plan, we also submitted the information on the overall shortage of skilled workers both in B.C. and Canada, so we will be competing with all other sectors and natural resource operations for that pool of workers.”
Shimkus noted the company recently signed an agreement with Northern Lights College to create a curriculum to train workers.

B.C. Jobs Minister Pat Bell has been one of the mine’s most vocal supporters, repeatedly defending the company’s plan to use temporary foreign workers and suggesting the temporary jobs are linked to exploration work that will last six to eight months.
Bell did not make himself available for an interview Wednesday, instead issuing a written statement that ignored a question about the length of HD Mining’s planned transition to Canadian workers.

Bell’s statement said the latest court documents released in Federal Court show HD Mining made extensive efforts to meet provincial workplace safety rules.
The transition plan outlines the steps the company has put in place to ensure the mine meets provincial rules, including asking B.C.’s inspector of mines to review the issue of the use of Mandarin at the mine.

The Federal Court case linked to the mine was launched by the International Union of Operating Engineers and the Construction and Specialized Workers Union, which are seeking to have the company’s temporary foreign worker permits thrown out.

The two unions were in court Wednesday asking for an injunction to prevent more workers from arriving — including the 60 expected to arrive this weekend — until the legal challenge can be heard.

...Where is the Candian Government in all of this nonsense?

Chinese Miners To Be Here For 14 Years

A Canadian's Comment

Harper Conservatives aren’t serving national interest

Re: Ottawa approves foreign takeover bids, Dec. 8

The Harper government has not explained how allowing the sell-off of Canada’s most promising companies to the highest foreign bidder will help Canada to grow its own competitive corporations, or get it to the comfortable economic haven Norway finds itself in.

Through smart government choices Norway’s Heritage Fund now delivers more wealth to the nation than its oil industry.
We need to do something much smarter than cash in our chips when we think we are ahead.

Gone are the Incos and Falconbridges, gone is Alcan along with its water rights in perpetuity.

Selling off the best is like high grading a forest; you are left with the genetic junk and a degenerate forest.
Why would Canada’s best business minds stick around in this degraded corporate environment?

With the defanging of many environmental regulations, the behind-closed-doors negotiation of the China trade deal, the lack of white papers and parliamentary discussion to thrash out complex issues, one gets the disturbing sense that it is not Canada’s interests that are the overriding concern of the Harper government, but multinational corporate interests.

Douglas Bruce, Vancouver

China Buying Up Agricultural Lands

Monday, March 29, 2010

Chinese Are Snapping Agricultural Land in Canada

Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen reports today that Chinese investors are buying Canadian farmland, raising many concerns throughout the country.

The issue is Chinese' growing middle class. Hundreds of millions of people in China modified their eating habits and are consuming vastly larger quantities of meat and higher protein foods. There isn't simply enough arable land in China to meet this new demand. hence, the Chinese interest in fertilizers and agricultural lands (not to mention base metals and other materials).

In Canada, Quebec's agricultural producers union is making noise expressing concern that by Chinese buying large tracts of agricultural land in the province constitute a food security issue and that it may be related to a new international property speculation in agricultural land.

Both would drive up Quebec farm prices.

The report states that Canadian western farmers are also unreceptive to the Chinese interest in their lands, citing a firm called Monaxxion, which is looking to buy 40,000 hectares of land in Canada

Farmers are leery of Monaxxion.

"Sherbrooke's La Tribune newspaper reported Friday that a farmer in St. Clotilde de Horton recently backed out of a tentative $30-million deal with Monaxxion after concluding the firm and its clients weren't as solid as he had been led to believe".

Te article mentions that fears are growing about the Chinese motives as "China has been investing heavily in agricultural land in Africa and other Third World nations. China has 20% of the world's population and an increasingly wealthy middle class"

"China has been actively seeking new supplies of food, hydrocarbons and other commodities on international markets.The country has been trying to buy into Canada's oil sands developments. It has reconfigured its foreign-aid programs to concentrate on helping countries such as Zambia that have rich copper deposits. And it has worked diligently to develop closer relationships with oil-rich countries such as Iran".

Daniel Mercier Gouin, a professor of agricultural economics with the Université Laval says there is no longer any doubt that the world is seeing the beginning of a speculative boom in agricultural land.

"To date, there have been plenty of inquires and even purchase offers by Monaxxion, but nothing really solid in terms of sales.
However, Bergeron of Monaxxion says there are some important transactions being negotiated right now. And he said he plans to make his investors more open for public scrutiny"

China and Russia Snubbed, UK and US Including Canada Wont Sign UN Treaty

13 December 2012 Last updated at 16:07 ET

US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN's internet treaty

The UN's telecommunications treaty will not be ratified by the US, UK or Canada

The US, Canada and UK have refused to sign an international communications treaty at a conference in Dubai.

The three countries had objected to calls for all states to have equal rights to the governance of the internet.
Russia, China and Saudi Arabia were among those pushing for the change.
It marks a setback for the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which had said it was sure it could deliver consensus.
"It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said Terry Kramer the US ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit).
"The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years."
Negotiators from Denmark, the Czech Republic, Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Kenya have said they would need to consult with their national governments about how to proceed and would also not be able to sign the treaty as planned on Friday.
Censorship claims The ITU had organised the 12-day conference in order to revise a communications treaty last overhauled 24 years ago.

193 countries have been debating changes to a communications treaty in Dubai

It said the document would help nations co-ordinate efforts against spam and widen access to the web.
However, much of the discussions ended up focusing on whether or not countries should have equal rights to the development of the internet's technical foundations.
In particular many attendees believed it was an anachronism that the US government got to decide which body should regulate the net's address system as a legacy of its funding for Arpanet - a precursor to the internet which helped form its technical core.
However, the US said this allowed it to ensure that technical experts could make "agile, rapid-fire decisions" about the net's development as part of multi-stakeholder organisations.
It added that other references to net might also be used to legitimise censorship and other interference in the operation of internet service providers (ISPs) and cloud-based operations, such as Google and Facebook.
Its view was supported by the internet and web pioneers Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee who warned any changes posed a "disruptive threat to the stability of the system".
Russian proposals A proposal from Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Sudan calling for equal rights for all governments to manage "internet numbering, naming, addressing and identification resources" was eventually shelved

The US's Terry Kramer had pushed for minimal mention of the internet in the agreement

But there was fresh controversy on Wednesday night after an alternative non-binding resolution was debated which suggested the UN agency's leadership should "continue to take the necessary steps for ITU to play an active and constructive role in the development of broadband and the multi-stakeholder model of the internet."
This was opposed by the US and European nations who repeated their argument that the treaty's regulations should not stretch to internet governance.
As debate continued into the early hours of Thursday morning the conference's chairman, Mohammed Nasser al-Ghanim asked for a "feel of the room" noting afterwards that the resolution had majority support, while stressing that this was not a formal "vote".
Matters were also complicated by an African bloc of countries calling for a paragraph to be added to the treaty's preamble stating that: "These regulations recognise the right of access of member states to international telecommunication services."
The US and its allies suggested this as an attempt to extend the treaty's regulations to cover internet governance and content.
'Bad agreement' After a break for sleep, Iran called for a vote on the African proposal which was carried by 77 votes to 33. This was in spite of the ITU's earlier pledge that disputed issues would only be resolved by consensus and not a majority vote

Iran brought matters to a head by calling for a vote on the treaty's preamble text

The organisation's secretary-general attempted to salvage discussions, but the US, Canada and UK said they could no longer ratify the treaty.
"My delegation came to work for revised international telecommunication regulations, but not at any cost," said the head of the UK delegation Simon Towle.
"We prefer no resolution on the internet at all, and I'm extremely concerned that the language just adopted opens the possibility of internet and content issues."
Despite this setback, the ITU's secretary-general Dr Hamadoun Toure insisted that those countries which did sign the treaty would benefit from other achievements including " increased transparency in international mobile roaming charges and competition".
He stressed that it was his belief that - despite what others had indicated - the treaty did not cover content issues

...this of course, maddened China.

WOT! Just Days After NEXEN Takover Another China Move In Canada's Oil Patch

Encana, PetroChina form joint venture to develop natural gas in Alberta

Lauren Krugel, Canadian Press | Dec 13, 2012 1:01 PM ET | Last Updated: Dec 13, 2012
More from Canadian Press

Nelson Ching/Bloomberg Pedestrians walk past a PetroChina Co. Ltd. gas station in Beijing, China. A subsidiary of state-owned PetroChina will invest $2.18 billion for a 49.9 per cent interest in about 180,000 hectares Encana has in the emerging Duvernay formation.

CALGARY — Less than a week after Ottawa waved through CNOOC Ltd.’s $15.1-billion takeover of Nexen Inc., a different Chinese state-owned company is plowing another $2.2-billion into the Canadian oilpatch.
Natural gas giant Encana Corp. and a subsidiary of PetroChina announced Thursday they have reached a deal to work together in the Duvernay, a promising shale natural gas formation in west-central Alberta.

PetroChina will end up owning just shy of half of the 180,000 hectares Encana has in the Duvernay, which means the deal won’t be subject to the same federal review as the Nexen deal.
In announcing the Nexen decision — as well as a green light for Malaysian state-owned firm Petronas’ takeover of natural gas producer Progress Energy Resources Corp. — Prime Minister Stephen Harper stressed that those types of deals would not be the norm
.

Click to enlarge

“I think Prime Minister Harper was clear that Canadian was still welcoming foreign investment,” said Geoff Hill, a partner at Deloitte’s Calgary officer.
“Where he was also clear was that control and complete ownership, especially by state-owned enterprises, would be much more difficult.”
Encana estimates there are nine billion oil-equivalent barrels initially in place on its Duvernay lands, which are rich in valuable natural gas liquids. It will remain operator of the project.

It is a strong endorsement of Encana’s position as a reliable long-term partner

“Phoenix’s investment demonstrates the tremendous value that Encana has created in this early-life, liquids-rich play and enables us to accelerate the pace at which the full production potential of our Duvernay lands can be achieved,” Encana CEO Randy Eresman said in a release.
“A transaction of this magnitude keeps us on track to create a more diversified commodity portfolio and maintain our balance sheet strength. It is a strong endorsement of Encana’s position as a reliable long-term partner.”

Ted Rhodes/Postmedia News filesEncana president and CEO Randy Eresma.

PetroChina has already paid $1.18-billion to Encana, with the remainder being stretched over the next four years. The two companies plan to invest about $4-billion in the project over that time.
“This joint venture will build a foundation for the successful development of the Duvernay play and help to diversify our business portfolio,” said Pheonix CEO Zhiming Li.
“Encana is our ideal long-term partner for the development of our future natural gas business.”
Encana and PetroChina have a history: an earlier $5.4-billion joint-venture deal for Encana’s lands in the Montney region fell apart in mid-2011 after they failed to see eye-to-eye on how that project would operate.
Encana has been inking several joint venture deals in recent years so that it can develop its huge resource base more quickly than would otherwise be the case.
The cash injection from deep-pocketed partners has helped Encana cope with persistently low natural gas prices.
Encana shares rose 2.3%, or 47 cents, to $20.91 in Thursday afternoon trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Encana has drilled nine wells into its 445,000 acres (180,100 hectares) in lands in the Duvernay, where numerous companies have amassed large land positions through government land sales and takeovers.
In October, Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to spend C$2.6 billion to take over Celtic Exploration Ltd., which has extensive acreage in the region.
A study by the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board and Alberta Geological Survey said the Duvernay formation, which extends through much of central Alberta, contains 443 trillion cubic feet of total gas in place, 11.3 billion barrels of natural gas liquids and 61.7 billion barrels of oil, putting it on par with some of the continent’s largest shale prospects.
The Canadian Press, with files from Reuters

Internet Freedom: Why China & Russia!

ITU and Google face off at Dubai conference over future of the internet

The battle lines are drawn for an east v west showdown at a UN conference on telecoms regulation starting on Monday

Jemima Kiss
guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 December 2012 07.12 GMT

Jump to comments (6)

Radio telecommunication masts. ITU members disagree over payment models for new infrastructure. Photograph: Alamy

Two thousand delegates from 193 countries are meeting for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai this week to negotiate a treaty on telecoms regulation that has not been updated since 1988 - before the internet was in mainstream use.

Up for negotiation at WCIT are the International Telecommunications Regulations, or ITRs, which cover everything from improving internet access for the elderly and disabled, to enabling access for the 4.6bn people in the world with no access at all, improving cybersecurity and, most controversially, discussing the "sender pays" economic model of delivering web content.

Amid all the hyperbole and acres of coverage about the future of the free internet, the treaty is the latest round of a long-fought battle between the internet lobby and the telecommunications companies.

The west, including the corporate world and open internet advocates, claim the "sender pays" model would benefit larger corporations, but penalise individuals and less wealthy businesses who can't afford the bills.
On the other side of the argument, mobile operators represented at WCIT by the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO) argue that developing countries have to establish and fund broadband networks that then enable western internet companies to reach new markets at no expense to themselves - in effect free riding on the infrastructure which costs money to install and run.
Attention has swirled around political tensions that will also be played out at the WCIT, with Russia and China explicit in their desire to wrest control of the internet away from the US, and other proposals to change regulation in a way that critics say could infringe privacy and free speech. But developing countries, who have struggled to gain a voice in this debate, feel the ITU is one of very few organisations where their voices can be heard, and they too want a say in the future of the internet.
Google, along with Cisco, Microsoft, Comcast and AT&T, has been part of a well-funded campaign coordinated through lawyer, former US ambassador and former US government IT policy co-ordinator David Gross. A powerful lobbying force, Google has played a shrewd hand, using its policy specialists and tech-celebrity executives.
Vint Cerf, one of the "fathers of the internet" who is now "chief internet evangelist" at Google, has been campaigning against the ITU almost full-time for months, offering a seemingly inarguable combination of the economically and democratically essential open internet, and his winning putdowns.

A lengthy comment piece in the New York Times proclaimed: "The decisions taken in Dubai in December have the potential to put government handcuffs on the Net." The New York Post was rather less measured, quoting Cerf in a piece that began: "If delegates have their way at next week's World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, the man in charge of the Web will be a Soviet-trained apparatchik from Cold War days."

Even Cerf himself appeared to lose his composure last week when he told Reuters: "These persistent attempts are just evidence that this breed of dinosaurs, with their pea-sized brains, hasn't figured out that they are dead yet, because the signal hasn't travelled up their long necks."

Back at the ITU, the small staff team has seemed increasingly bewildered and put on the back foot by the ferocious onslaught of press coverage against them.

The ITU responded to criticism about its lack of openness by publishing WCIT material on its site, including inviting public comments on the changes to the ITRs; only 29 were received in three months. With no small irony, ITU has even paid for Google ads next to searches for 'WCIT', hoping to redress the information balance slightly. It also claims that journalists have repeatedly published inaccurate statements about ITU without contacting it for comment, and that publications have refused to publish corrections.

The ITU describes itself as an administrative body that does not make regulations, but organises negotiation of the ITRs. Individual countries are then obliged to legislate for after the process of negotiation and voting on each of the proposed changes to regulations, which number around 1,000.
Speaking ahead of WCIT, ITU secretary general Dr Hamadoun Touré said: "It is important to remember that when you talk of internet freedom, most people in the world cannot even access the internet. The internet is the rich world's privilege and ITU wants to change that.
"It is our global objective to assure that every citizen is connected no matter what their circumstance, and we need to reach a consensus no matter what the ideological view on member."

Touré also condemned the Syrian regime's decision to cut off international phone and internet access to the country, pointing out that it is part of the ITU constitution that members should "protect people's right to communicate and access critical communications infrastructure".

The ITU has tried to play down the apparent battle with Google, pointing out that the internet search giant is not a member of the ITU, though ETNO is.

Four Google representatives, including telecom policy counsel Aparna Sridhar, will attend WCIT as part of a 100-strong US delegation. Cerf will not.

"We will challenge Google again to bring their points to the table," said Toure. "In 1988 [the last WCIT] there was the same friction between East and West, and they managed to get over it.
"We've had 147 years of brokering agreements between member states. We have survived two world wars and 70 years of cold war, and if member states had not come together and make agreements, there would be no satellites in orbit, no spectrum allocated, no radio or television - and no internet."

ITU's secret weapon is counsellor Richard Hill, a former Orange and HP executive and statistician with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the telecomms industry. "ETNO has made no bones about what it is looking for - remuneration for the additional value they believe they can provide," he said. "But from friction comes light, and we believe discussion will be useful in formulating solutions that will be in the interests of all parties, and will lead to further expansion of the internet."

These proponents [such as our 'buddy' Mr. Hill] will lie to you how it protects the individual and provides them ..thats you folks..[ahem, cough cough] security.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Internet Fascism-Yes, Thats What I Said...

Arabs team with Russia, China to push Internet control

Dubai, United Arab Emirates is the setting of an international conference on Internet control and regulation.

Credits:

(Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

controversial international plan to control the Internet has aroused the protests of the United States as certain Arab nations have teamed up with Russia and China to attempt to place the World Wide Web under the control of the International Telecommunications Union.
At the World Conference on International Telecommunications currently meeting in Dubai Dec. 3-14, a group of Arab states along with Russia and China proposed that nations strictly control Internet companies, leading many critics, especially in the United States, to charge that the proposal would severely hamper Internet freedom.
With the Internet currently under the control of the United States through its corporations that first laid the groundwork and software for the development of the World Wide Web, attempts to micromanage the Internet and the companies that provide it have been resisted in the name of the free flow of information.
As the Internet has spread, however, nations that do not value nor want freedom of information have been attempting for at least a decade to restrict the information that is made available on the Web and to micromanage Internet companies so that strict limitations by various governments can be placed on access to information.
China was perhaps the first nation to insist on such restrictions, requiring that U.S. Internet companies that do business within the country censor their search engines to prevent average citizens from gaining access to information that their government considers to be off limits.
Google, for example, was forced to make such restrictions as a condition of doing business in China, but after a few years of censorship the company decided that these restrictions were unacceptable.
More recently other nations with totalitarian forms of government, such as Russia and Muslim nations, have also insisted that strict limits be placed on access to information on the Internet. These proposals have gone nowhere, in spite of support from the United Nations. But now the nations that want the restrictions are using a different tactic by pushing to place the entire Internet under the control of an international labor union, the International Telecommunications Union.
The proposal put forth in Dubai has not managed to garner very much support, however, and the talks are in danger of falling apart over opposition to the push by the Arab nations and Russia and China to place censors on the Web.
ALERT! BRAND NEW!!
A brand new entry is now available in my regular series Musings After Midnight, which is now posted at my blog, The Liberty Sphere. The very latest is "Strategy Considerations in Moving Forward to Depose Tyranny and Restore the Constitution."

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“It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the U.S. must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in the current form,” said Terry Kramer, the U.S. ambassador to the UN body. (www.ITU.int)

Canada, U.S. snub UN telecoms treaty over government role in Internet Add to ...

Brian Murphy

The Associated Press

Published Thursday, Dec. 13 2012, 3:05 PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Dec. 13 2012, 6:31 PM EST

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A number of western countries including Canada snubbed a UN telecommunications treaty Thursday after rivals, including Iran and China, won support for provisions interpreted as endorsing greater government control of the Internet.
The unraveling of the conference displayed the deep ideological divide at the 193-nation gathering in Dubai, where envoys grappled with the first revisions of global telecom codes since 1988 — years before the dawn of the Internet age.
A Western bloc led by a powerhouse U.S. delegation sought to stop any UN rules on cyberspace, fearing they could squeeze Web commerce and open the door for more restrictions and monitoring by authoritarian regimes that already impose wide-ranging clampdowns. The head of one tech industry group said it could “forever alter” the Web.
A rival group — including China, Russia, Gulf Arab states, African nations and others — favoured UN backing for stronger government sway over Internet affairs and claimed the Western dominance of the Internet needed to be addressed.
The battles were over language that could influence perceptions of what the Internet means as a modern tool for business, communications and societies — and not directly about specific practical regulations.
The head of the U.S. delegation, Ambassador Terry Kramer, described it as a “crossroads over the collective view of the Internet.”
Many of the disputed clauses were quashed or watered down during 10 days of negotiations, but the non-Western bloc managed to win support for wording that supported governments’ rights to have access to the Web.
This was viewed by the U.S. and its allies as a backdoor attempt to gain UN sanction for more government controls over the Internet, adding to earlier objections about references that could suggest UN backing for more state authority over content and commerce.
In a packed meeting hall, Mr. Kramer said he could not sign the final accord, noting a “heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities.”
A host of Western nations also said they could not back the new charter by the UN’s International Telecommunications Union, or ITU, a group dating back to the birth of the telegraph more than 140 years ago.
“Internet policy should not be determined by member states, but by citizens, communities and broader society ... the private sector and civil society,” said Mr. Kramer. “That has not happened here.”
Canada’s industry minister, Christian Paradis, said in a release that Canada could not sign on to the UN treaty as it threatened an open, accessible Internet.
“Our government will continue to support an open and accessible Internet that facilitates economic development and prosperity,” Mr. Paradis said in a release.
The ITU has no powers to instantly change how the Internet operates and its regulations are non-binding. It also cannot compel reforms by states that already widely censor cyberspace.
But the U.S.-led coalition at the talks argued that any UN codes sanctioning greater government roles in the Internet — even under the framework of state security — could be used as justification for even more controls from Web watchers in places such China, Iran and other nations.
The host United Arab Emirates announced stricter Internet laws last month that outlaw postings such as insulting rulers or calling for protests. The Iranian delegate at the talks said it was time for a more “balanced approach” between the Internet’s borderless reach and the needs of nations.
There is an outside chance that final text could be rewritten to appease the U.S. and others before the meeting closes Friday. But ITU spokeswoman Sarah Parkes said it “looks like a formality” that the document will stand.
“It’s not a crime to talk about Internet inside the ITU,” said the group’s secretary-general, Hamadoun Toure, before Thursday’s decisive session.
Mr. Toure insisted the treaty did “not include provisions” on direct Internet oversight by governments. But he noted the growing rifts over how to deal with the Internet.
“There is no single world view, but several and these world views need to be accommodated and engaged,” he said after the Western rejection.
The U.S. team in Dubai also includes heavy hitters from the tech world such as Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., which stood up against proposals by European telecoms companies to charge Internet content providers for access to domestic markets around the world.
Michael Beckerman, president and CEO of the Washington-based industry group The Internet Association, said the efforts for greater government controls could “forever alter” the current framework of the Internet.
“The unique nature of the Internet - free from government control and governed by multiple stakeholders - has unleashed unprecedented entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation, and freedom far beyond imagination,” he said in a statement. “Preserving a free Internet for all people is essential to the preservation of political and economic liberty.”
Other issues in the accord include calls for more transparency on roaming charges by mobile phone companies, efforts to fight Internet fraud and spam and creation of a worldwide emergency number for mobile phones and other devices.

China'Watch'Canada

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Human Rights Complaint Filed By Chinese Miner

Chinese miner launches human rights complaint against union

Alleges United Steelworkers Union creating contempt for Chinese people

The Canadian Press

Posted: Dec 13, 2012 3:58 PM PT

Last Updated: Dec 13, 2012 5:58 PM PT

Canada: Who Gets In

News Stories

Features

Interactives

Counterfeit And Pirated Goods Site Canceled

U.S. drops China's Taobao website from "notorious" list

Canadian Labour Shut Out Of Mining Jobs For Imported Chinese Who May Remain In C anada For 14 Years

Chinese Miners To Be Here For 14 Years

A Canadian's Comment

Harper Conservatives aren’t serving national interest

China Buying Up Agricultural Lands

Monday, March 29, 2010

Chinese Are Snapping Agricultural Land in Canada

China and Russia Snubbed, UK and US Including Canada Wont Sign UN Treaty

US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN's internet treaty

WOT! Just Days After NEXEN Takover Another China Move In Canada's Oil Patch

Encana, PetroChina form joint venture to develop natural gas in Alberta

Related

Internet Freedom: Why China & Russia!

ITU and Google face off at Dubai conference over future of the internet

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Internet Fascism-Yes, Thats What I Said...

Arabs team with Russia, China to push Internet control

Canada, U.S. snub UN telecoms treaty over government role in Internet Add to ...

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Thursday, December 13, 2012

Chinese miner launches human rights complaint against union

Alleges United Steelworkers Union creating contempt for Chinese people

The Canadian Press

Posted: Dec 13, 2012 3:58 PM PT

Last Updated: Dec 13, 2012 5:58 PM PT

Canada: Who Gets In

News Stories

Features

Interactives

U.S. drops China's Taobao website from "notorious" list

Harper Conservatives aren’t serving national interest

Monday, March 29, 2010

US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN's internet treaty

Related Stories

Encana, PetroChina form joint venture to develop natural gas in Alberta

Related

ITU and Google face off at Dubai conference over future of the internet

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Arabs team with Russia, China to push Internet control

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