Russian law: No Nazi Pooh!

Winnie the Pooh has made the list!

The Justice Ministry in Moscow has released its latest ‘Extremism List’. It is now illegal to display an image of Winnie the Pooh in the company of a Nazi swastika. It is also illegal to display an image of Putin with a swastika… no word on displaying images of Putin and Pooh together.

The latest list includes 414 new entries, much of which are vague and left for interpretation. Police officers and other law enforcement officials use the list in street checks, property searches and criminal cases. The list is likely to be misused by said authorities — further stifling the rights of the Russian people.

Some items on the list include the outlawing of flags with crosses. Which means the Swiss embassy better beware, their flag is now banned in Russia. As are the religious banners inside the Russian Orthodox churches. Though, conveniently for Putin, this law also outlaws Georgian flags.

The list continues to restrict speech and expression by banning “a self-made template for a future newspaper, comic or other print materials.” Basically, an individual cannot write their own newspaper, newsletter, or work on their hobby as a comic strip creator. And the banning of templates for “other print materials” could be stretched to include items as harmless as letterhead and business cards.

Other banned elements include; specific documents, Islamic academic readings, and specific blogs on LiveJournal. What will they think of next?

Argentine football has been saved, by the Gov’t

In a growing trend of government intervention and bailouts, the Argentine government has decided to step in and save the Argentine Football Association (ASA). The government has announced that it will pay the ASA $155m for broadcasting rights, more than double what any private groups had offered.

The season had been delayed indefinitely when multiple clubs were unable to reach an agreement with commercial channels due to financial woes. The intervention will allow football to be shown on terrestrial channels for free.

The government says that the intervention has made the nation “more democratic,” arguing that “it’s not good that only those who can pay can watch football.”

Football was always the love of the people and now its also ‘of the people’ — kinda.

Makes me wonder, how many people will stay home for the free broadcast and forgo spending additional money on tickets to the games?

If they love the sport as much as I do they will probably still buy tickets.

DHS gives funds to AU campus security

American University has received a grant in the amount of $73,000 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be used for the purpose of making security upgrades to the university library. The goal: ‘improve security in and around the Bender Library to help reduce the incidences of theft – particularly of laptops.‘ The university has used the grant funds to install a number of new anti-theft cameras.

That’s right, your tax dollars are paying to protect the laptops of students at a private university in Washington, DC. Even more annoying, there were only a mere 34 laptop thefts at the university in the past year.

While I feel for the individuals whose laptops were stolen, I fail to see how the theft of student laptops qualifies as a threat to national security and warrants federal grant funding.

Pilot Plight

Via DCist — Overheard in DC:

On the “From the Cockpit” channel on a United flight on Sunday at National Airport:

United 604: “United 604 to ground. Can you find us a better path to the gate? We’re bouncing around out here on the tarmac, all kinds of holes.”
Control Tower: (with laughter) “Good luck with that United 604. Maybe we can do something with some stimulus funds, but they haven’t shown up yet.”
Another Pilot: “All the money went to CARS!”

FOX News misplaces Egypt, loses Iraq

The Middle East according to FOX News…

FOX News has physically displaced Egypt, moving it to fit between Syria and Iran. I’m not quite sure how Iraq feels about that, or where they have been relocated to. Someone’s getting fired!

Facebook acquires FriendFeed

Facebook released the following press release today:

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founders. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

About Facebook

Founded in February 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.

What about that Colombia Free Trade Agreement?

The Colombia Free Trade Agreement is a proposed agreement between the US and Columbia. It is designed to eliminate tariffs and trade barriers between the two nations, bringing them closer together and enabling stronger markets in both nations. Along with trade benefits, it also includes environmental, labor, property and intellectual property rights protections.

The agreement was signed by the trade-reps of both the US and Columbia in November of 2006, approved by Columbia’s Congress in 2007, and passed a legal review by Columbia’s Constitutional Court last month. However, President Obama has now stalled the agreement. He has stated publicly that he has no timetable for the deal and nearly expresses no commitment to it at all, simply asking the Office of the US Trade Rep. to ‘address outstanding issues’ with the agreement, without clarifying the existence of any.

Some facts on the US-Columbia trade relationship:

• Columbia is the US’s 27th largest trade partner.
• About 39% of Colombia’s exports come to the US
• About 29% of Colombia’s imports come from the US
• Columbia is a large supplier of crude oil to the US – 65,076 barrels in 2008

Not only would the trade agreement strengthen the already beneficial relationship, it would improve it. Around 80% of US exports on consumer and industrial products would be traded without duties. The agreement would further remove duties on a number of agriculture products from both the US and Columbia, and implement a unified inspection procedure for products coming from Columbia. The removal of duties and the increased availability of products would decrease prices for consumers. It has even been expressed that the agreement would likely decrease the illegal spread of drugs in South America by opening and easing the market in other fields, thus providing legitimate opportunities for businesses to prosper.

The Columbia Free Trade Agreement is crucial to furthering the foreign policy and economic trade goals Obama once proposed. Increased trade and diplomatic relations with regional neighbors are paramount to continued and increased prosperity, especially in a recession. The US should establish a tight and committed timetable to ratifying the agreement in Congress and must continue working to promote further free-trade agreements with other regional allies.

Energy independence — in Portugal

Image Source: Eco Auto Ninja

All part of the plan to “liberate Portugal from its dependency on foreign oil,” Prime Minister Jose Socrates is taking a bold move. He is calling for a nationwide network of electronic charging stations for electric cars. Socrates’ plan calls for 1300 stations spread across Portugal. Is Portugal setting the stage and the bar for the next level in green trends? Maybe. Nissan is now planning to introduce their electric models into the Portuguese market in 2011.

On top of ‘liberating Portugal from foreign oil,’ the PM’s plan will also set a new bar for green energy standards at an international level. As of now, ‘Portugal produces over one-third of its electricity from renewable sources, double the average of the 27 European Union nations.’ The goal is to increase that to nearly 45% in the coming year.

On top of increasing Portugal’s green image, PM Socrates’ also hopes his plan will encourage future investment in the Portuguese market from manufacturers, developers, and production groups. Something a guaranteed network of charging stations is likely to make possible.

DOD all a-twitter about Twitter

The Department of Defense is toying with the idea of banning, or at least cutting back, its level of social media use. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and more.  Why? Security of course.

The DOD sees the potential for security issues culminating in hackers entering defense networks by way of social media sites.

The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users. It’s just a fact of life.

Currently, access to social networks are blocked on classified and top-secret government networks (for good reason). The new proposal would only affect the unclassified network and make it nearly impossible for social media sites to be accessed from military computers. Which makes me wonder…

• How will the Joint Chiefs update their status for their thousands of followers?
• What will will happen to the 1200+ followers of the US Army Africa Command?
• Will the followers of the US Air Force and Air Force News be left in the dark?
• Where will all the followers of the Pentagon and the Army go now?

Just when I thought the DOD was catching up with the web world, they pull a one-eighty. My hope is they can find a way to increase security and avoid an all out ban.