Newspapers Reporting On ACTA, Sept 1 - Nov 1, 2011

From January 1 to September 1, there were only seven newspaper stories in LexisNexis. Results from GoogleNews mirror those from LexisNexis.

India insisted it would “not accept any intellectual property talks outside WTO” and The Guardian ran a column from Cory Doctorow that mentioned ACTA as it analyzed how computers can be used to “control and spy on us.”

Compare that with 82 newspaper articles, mostly U.S., published in December 2011 that mentioned the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

It’s not like ACTA wasn’t talked about among insiders. Inside U.S. Trade, for example, ran an article on October 14, 2011 noting that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) challenged the Obama Administration. In a press release, Sen. Wyden said:

“It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered, without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law,” Wyden writes. “But regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law…the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress’ authority, absent congressional approval.”

And it’s not like ACTA wasn’t talked about by lawyers and geeks.

It simply wasn’t talked about by the media elite, many of which are linked directly or indirectly to Hollywood.

Despite the fact that thousands are protesting in Europe, U.S. newspapers are still ignoring the treaty. But here’s the Financial Times, from Thursday:

Though ACTA has already been signed or initialled by all EU governments, it requires ratification by all 27 national parliaments as well as the European Parliament in Brussels.

That process looks to have been derailed by the anti-ACTA activists, particularly in central and eastern Europe.

Even the RIAA chief, writing in the NY Times last week, went after SOPA/PIPA but mentioned not one word about ACTA or the RIAA’s role in crafting its language. By the way, he implied that if you opposed either piece of legislation that you were either gullible (“anybody could click on a link or tweet in outrage — but how many knew what they were supporting or opposing”) or misinformed (“The hyperbolic mistruths, presented on the home pages of some of the world’s most popular Web sites, amounted to an abuse of trust and a misuse of power.”)

Back during the development of the treaty:

The negotiating text of ACTA and many other documents, including even the lists of participants in the negotiations, are secret. The White House claims the secrecy is required as a matter of national security. But that does not mean the documents are off limits to everyone outside of the government. Hundreds of advisors, many of them corporate lobbyists, are considered “cleared advisors.” They have access to the ACTA documents.

Who is on the U.S. Trade Representative Advisory Committees who saw the pre-public text of ACTA?

• Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights
• Entertainment Software Association
• International Intellectual Property Alliance
• Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.
• Recording Industry Association of America
• Software and Information Industry Association
• Time-Warner
• Verizon Communications Inc

The 2009 FOIA request also revealed that Sony Pictures Entertainment and News Corp were privvy to pre-public documents. More background from Knowledge Ecology International on the ACTA process.

If you don’t think the IP measures relating to digital content are onerous, what about generic drugs?

The French MEP who resigned his position in charge of negotiating the international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta) has said it “goes too far” by potentially cutting access to lifesaving generic drugs and restricting internet freedom.

[...]

“The title of this agreement is misleading, because it’s not only about counterfeiting, it’s about the violation of intellectual property rights,” he told the Guardian. “There is a major difference between these two concepts.”

[...]

“The problem with Acta is that, by focusing on the fight against violation of intellectual property rights in general, it treats a generic drug just as a counterfeited drug. This means the patent holder can stop the shipping of the drugs to a developing country, seize the cargo and even order the destruction of the drugs as a preventive measure.”

This trade agreement has been negotiated in the dark with input from insiders who will profit from restricted trade.

Just say no.

Call your Senators and demand that ACTA be treated like the treaty that it is, which requires Senate approval. Bring the discussion of intellectual property protection out of the backroom and into the sunlight.

[1] Source [News, All (English, Full Text)]; query: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
[2] Image THE BATTLE OF COPYRIGHT 2011 Christopher Dombres

Earlier In TMV

• Guilty Until Proven Innocent Is Bad Law; We Need A Little Sunshine (2012)
• Winner Take All In The Tech Economy (2012)
• Europe To Sign ACTA Thursday, Poland Protests (2012)
• Tech Community Flexes Muscle, Senators Run For The Door (2012)
• On Internet Censorship : ACTA and COICA (2010)
• Obama Administration Secret Proposal On Copyright Puts ISP At Center Of Debate (2009)

The Nazi legacy is an understandably heavy burden for Germany, even today. This leaves Germans emotionally vulnerable to comparisons to their 20th century forebears. And with the country exercising ever-more influence over its European Union allies, cutting remarks that include such comparisons are blossoming like mushrooms after a spring rain. So how to deal with it? For Germany’s Die Zeit, Bernd Ulrich writes that in order to operate as the ‘U.S. of Europe,’ Germans will have to grit their teeth until this particular phase of European history passes.

For Germany’s Die Zeit, Bernd Ulrich writes in small part:

It doesn’t take much to figure out why so many Nazi comparisons are being made right now: For the first time since 1945, Germany is stepping up with all its power, not because it wants to, but because the European debt crisis has made the economically-strongest economy into the most politically powerful. Germany is now profoundly intervening in the domestic affairs of others.

The country is gradually taking on the role in Europe that the U.S. has long played on the global level: As the country that used and occasionally abused its power, was to blame for everything, was supposed to save everyone, and had to endure insults for how it went about doing it. What evil hasn’t been imputed to the Americans? The CIA was behind every evil, and Americans were constantly being accused of imperialism.

But there was one thing the Americans could never be accused of: sending six million Jews to their deaths and plunging half the world into war. In the case of Germany, ranting against the leading power that is at once quite understandable, human and often justified, very often takes on an entirely different pallor, which serves to put an end to any discussion or serious exchange.

For quite a while, Germany’s new role will continue to result in a proliferation of Nazi comparisons. Like it or not, we will have to bear it and wait until it passes. However, in such stoicism there is also a serious problem. That has to do with the German historical paradox, which may be described as follows: The only way Germans can prevent their past from repeating itself is by never being absolutely sure that it won’t.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR GERMAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Is it possible that American citizens, now under arrest in Cairo, were involved with a plot to partition Egypt into four smaller states? According to columnist Muhammad Dunia of Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram, maps that were discovered during a raid on the Cairo offices of the U.S.-based International Republican Institute prove that at least some of the foreign NGOs operating in Egypt are actively involved with the scheme, which Dunia calls a long-term ‘American-Zionist’ project.

For Al-Ahram, columnist Muhammad Dunia starts off this way:

Over the past few days, some Western media have begun to revisit the old idea of a plan to partition Egypt based on the American-Zionist project to divide the country into four states.

The first would be in the Sinai, east of the Euphrates River delta, under Jewish influence. The second, with Alexandria as its capital and extending South to Asyut, would be Christian. The third would be in the Nubia region, and the fourth would be a Berber state with Cairo as its capital.

Up to now, some thought the ravings about this suspicious plot were for domestic political consumption only. But during the investigation into illegal funding of non-governmental organizations by Egyptian justice, maps were found inside an American non-governmental organization [the International Republican Institute] laying out plans to partition the country.

The subject wasn’t really a secret, as a scheme to divide Egypt into an Islamic State in the North and a Christian one in the South was leaked on the Internet not long ago. This is particularly dangerous because some international media have exploited the protests at the Maspiro TV station [by Coptic Christians - 27 were killed]. Certain analysts and researchers of Middle East affairs sought to revive the notion by posting partition maps on the Web. This demonstrates both foreign and domestic hands behind what is happening now in Egypt.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR ARABIC AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

UPDATE:

A wave of unusually severe cold is gripping Europe. But the weather is not the only thing that is chilling over there. Under the headline “A Chilling Verdict in Spain,” the New York Times reports that “The enemies of Judge Baltasar Garzón have finally gotten their way” as Spain’s Supreme Court has found Judge Garzón guilty of misapplying the country’s wiretap law and suspended him from the courts for 11 years.

The 7-0 ruling flowed out of a 2008 corruption case in which the judge ordered wiretaps of conversations between lawyers and their clients.

According to the Times:

Judge Garzón was not alone in ordering those wiretaps, but he alone was prosecuted, even while the public prosecutor argued that there were no grounds for a criminal proceeding. Convicting a jurist over a court ruling is an appalling attack on judicial independence. Two other cases against him are pending — one involving his inquiry into mass killings during the civil war and the Franco dictatorship, and another concerning allegations of conflict of interest in a tax fraud case.

Judge Garzón is far from perfect, but the decision by the Spanish Supreme Court to remove him from the bench is enormously damaging to the prospects of fair and impartial justice. What investigating magistrate would not now hesitate before pursuing politically sensitive cases? Will the Franco-era crimes that scarred Spain for two generations remain forever uninvestigated?

Apparently, Judge Garzón cannot appeal this decision in the Spanish court system, but he could challenge it in Spain’s Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

Mr. Garzón has already accepted a consulting position at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Perhaps he can continue his pursuit of justice from there.

Read more here.

====

Back in March 2009, a Spanish court took the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The case was sent to the prosecutor’s office for review by none other than Judge Baltasar Garzón, Europe’s best-known counter-terrorism magistrate, renowned for his determination and his abilities to bring suspects to justice, no matter how powerful or where they may be—and especially for terrorism and human rights abuses.

His targets have included the al-Qaeda 9/11 and Madrid bombings perpetrators, the infamous Chilean General Pinochet, ETA and related Basque terrorist organizations, Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organizations operating in the Maghreb region, including Spanish enclaves in Morocco, Argentine ex-naval officer Adolfo Scilingo who was convicted of crimes against humanity and others.

I don’t know where the case against Bush administration officials stands right now and, for the sake of letting bygones be bygones, I will not pursue that at the moment — especially since mine would be the proverbial voice in the wilderness.

However, the present government in Spain, by no means a voice in the wilderness, apparently does believe in letting bygones be bygones or, as they say in Spain “lo pasado, pasado está” as, according to the New York Times:

… Judge Garzón is now himself under legal attack for confronting Spain’s own dark history. He is on trial this week before the Spanish Supreme Court for daring to investigate crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War and the nearly four-decade dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco. The case against him is fueled by domestic political vendettas rather than substantive legal arguments and it could dramatically set back international efforts to hold human-rights violators accountable for their crimes.

The case stems from Judge Garzón’s edict, in October 2008, ordering the exhumation of 19 mass graves and charging Franco and his accomplices posthumously with the murder and disappearance of more than 114,000 people.

The edict, however, was challenged by Spain’s chief prosecutor, Javier Zaragoza, and ruled against by an appellate court — “and the case appeared to be resolved. But several months after the ruling, two tiny far-right groups sued Judge Garzón for ‘prevarication’ — knowingly overstepping his authority — in violating the amnesty law.”

The Times continues:

Criminally charging judges for prevarication is extremely rare in Spain, and a conviction would disbar Judge Garzón for 20 years — effectively ending his career. The Supreme Court’s zeal to try him has little legal basis; rather, it reflects Spanish elites’ widespread unease with applying international legal principles to Spain’s conflicted history and a deep-seated animosity toward Judge Garzón that is as much personal as political.

The prosecution of Judge Garzón is having a “chilling effect” on other international efforts to hold human-rights violators accountable, and a conviction would be interpreted as an even stronger warning sign, the Times says, and “[M]ore disturbingly, due to Judge Garzón’s legal woes, the case brought by Franco’s victims and their families is now languishing. (The only exception is in Argentina, where a prominent human-rights lawyer, using universal jurisdiction, recently filed suit charging Franco with crimes against humanity.)”

The Times concludes:

In his 2005 memoir, Judge Garzón wrote, “A system built on the corpses of those who are still awaiting justice so they can rest in peace is an illegitimate system and one that is condemned to eventually suffer the same fate.”

It would send a tragic and telling message to those victims — and others like them around the world — if the one person convicted for Franco’s crimes is the judge who dared to investigate them.

There are some bygones that just cannot be forgotten or swept under the rug of political expedience. Lo pasado, no siempre está pasado.

Read more of the Times’ article here

Image: Shutterstock.com

When it comes to the oppression of dissent in Syria, are the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council undermining global peace and security by issuing ‘reckless vetoes’? According to this editorial from Japan’s Kochi Shimbun, by concerning themselves with the interests of their own countries rather than what is best for the world, China, Russia, America, Britain and France are demonstrating an extreme form of irresponsible selfishness.

The Kochi Shimbun editorial says in part:

It is a pity that a U.N. resolution, at a moment in which the international community needs to stand together to put a stop to the violence as quickly as possible, has been vetoed. Coupled with their vetoes of economic sanctions on Syria last October, the attitudes of Russia and China are simply incomprehensible.

With respect to humanity, although we say that such a terrible situation cannot be allowed to continue, if we focus exclusively on pursuing the security and expectations of our own countries, the result is that the U.N. Security Council fails to uphold its responsibility of maintaining global peace and security. If the permanent members of the Security Council continue to issue reckless vetoes, we will see a return to the stalemate of the Cold War era.

The Assad regime must not be permitted to use the China and Russia vetoes as a way to “indulge” itself with more oppression. Sooner or later, the “Arab Spring” will put an end to leaders like this. Meanwhile, we must seek an immediate cessation of the violence.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR JAPANESE AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Would the United States, utilizing what is known as a ‘false flag’ strategy, sacrifice a nuclear aircraft carrier to persuade the world that a war against Iran must be waged? According to columnist Anna Pinderak of Poland’s Wprost24, a theory is making the rounds that the Pentagon has sent the famed USS Enterprise to the Persian Gulf – to sink it – and then to blame Tehran for the crime.

For Poland’s Wprost24, Anna Pinderak starts out this way:

Is the United States using a “false flag” strategy to justify declaring war on Iran?

What is a “false flag” strategy? As the phrase suggests, it is a covert operation undertaken by governments, corporations or other organizations. The name derives from the military concept of “false colors,” i.e.: an operation conducted under a foreign flag. The goal of these operations is to blame the other side for initiating a conflict, whether it be a hostile country, organization or ethnic group.

Is it possible that the U.S. would go to such ends to find a pretext for open conflict with Iran? We all know that Washington can’t count on the U.N.’s blessing for another Middle East intervention: Russia and China, both equipped with a Security Council veto, wouldn’t consent to it. If the United States wanted to deal with Iran militarily, it would first have to convince them that Iran constitutes a threat to international security. Somehow, Washington would also have to convert international public opinion. After the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, few are convinced of the benefit of sending U.S. Marines into volatile regions. And everyone remembers that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, just like Iran today, possessed, according to American intelligence, weapons of mass destruction. But when the red, white and blue flag fluttered over Baghdad, it became clear that Saddam had no such weapons – and most likely could not have had them. No wonder the public treats all warnings about the Iranian nuclear threat with a healthy dose of skepticism.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR POLISH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

As compared with the Brits, few Americans have made India their home. Among those Americans who became well-known, I wrote about the legendary Samuel Evans Stokes Jr who fought along with Mahatma Gandhi to free the country from the colonial rule, and also brought horticulture revolution in the hills. The other well-known figure is an Indian actor of American origin – Tom Alter – who is now a household name.

Born to an American Christian missionary couple, Tom Alter acted in several Bollywood and Hollywood films and also made a name for himself in theatre and TV serials. His elder sister Martha has a PhD in Sanskrit and his brother John is a poet and a teacher.

He has worked for noted filmmakers like Satyajit Ray in Shatranj Ke Khiladi and is remembered for his role as a British officer in Kranti. In Sardar, the 1993 film biography of Indian leader Sardar Patel, which focused on the events surrounding the partition and independence of India, Tom portrayed Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

Tom has also played Indian characters in Indian TV series, such as the long-running Junoon, in which he was the sadistic mob lord Keshav Kalsi. He also acted in Hollywood movie One Night with the King with Peter O’Toole. More here…

Tom was given a civilian award Padma Shri by the Indian government for his distinguished contribution in the field of art.

Now Tom Alter has turned his attention to writing about cricket, a game that makes Indians go crazy. In his first article “In the name of cricket, we market grief, violence and greed”, Tom hits out at those who have turned this “gentleman’s game” into a pure profit-making activity.

“Does no one realize anymore the beauty of bat on ball, the simple and so, so difficult art of spin and speed? … We have marketing everything – everything—now we market grief, and violence, and greed..

“Would it not be wonderful to see our players representing the country with only India written on their shirts; on their hearts? To have a sponsor who had no wish to have his name even bigger than India’s on the beloved jersey? To have a player say that he will play for India for free, and wear a jersey, of his own choice, with only India written on it, in royal blue?”

More here…

(The YouTube video above shows Tom Alter interviewing India’s cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar when the latter was very young.)

“Rick Santorum was a sitting senator who in re-election lost by 19 points, to my knowledge the most in the history of this country for a sitting senator to lose by 19 points. It’s unheard of. Then he goes out and says oh ‘okay’ I just lost by the biggest margin in history and now I’m going to run for president.

“Tell me, how does that work? That’s like me saying I just failed a test. Now I’m going to apply for admission to the Wharton School of Finance. Okay? He just failed a test…And now he’s going to run for president. So, I don’t get Rick Santorum. I don’t get that whole thing.”

No matter how pointless the exercise, grownup Americans actually voted not only to put a one-dimensional religious zealot into the world’s most powerful institution but let him run it—-with his finger on the nuclear button, to nominate Supreme Court justices and devastate the whole nine yards of their lives.

MORE.

But evolution stops short of fantasy and now, as the GOP demonizes our 44th President and deifies the 40th, come reminders of the limits.

Speaking near Reagan’s grave, Haley Barbour, a conservative, tells colleagues:

“In the 2012 campaign every candidate for the Republican nomination has invoked Reagan…But Reagan did not demand or expect everyone to agree with him on every issue. He wasn’t a purist…

“Some candidates are vying to be the most conservative candidate, and some voters are seeking purity in their choice…Well, in politics purity is a dead-dog loser. You need unity. And purity is the enemy of unity.”

Before taking office, Barack Obama worried publicly about trying to hold onto his authentic self, telling Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” with a worried smile that his wife and friends thought he was still there behind all the hype but admitting on 60 Minutes that the “attempt to airbrush your life…is exhausting.”

In this campaign, airbrushing has escalated to fictionalizing as Newt Gingrich’s minions are caught trying to rewrite his Wikipedia entry to alter the self-professed historian’s own history, making 60 “adjustments” about his three marriages and the ethics charges against him while he was Speaker of the House.

MORE.

For a global business community still experiencing economic pain, Facebook’s humongous $100 billion Initial Public Offering has been an emotional shot in the arm. For French business newspaper Les Echos, columnist Philippe Escande praises the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as being at the heart of what still makes the American business sector the greatest in the world.

For Les Echos, Philippe Escande starts out this way:

It is an improbable story – one that could happen only in the United States. That of a twenty-year-old kid who in 2004 founded his own business just to prove he can, and eight years later finds himself the leader of a business valued at $100 billion. One hundred billion dollars is as much as McDonald’s and two and a half times that of General Motors. All this for a sophomoric prank that today employs no more than 3,000 people.

That is the magic of the U.S. financial sector, which is now being so widely criticized. To all those who think that the stock market serves only to accommodate rapacious speculators who enrich themselves while asleep, getting richer whether the market rises or falls, the Facebook story is a reminder of the two basics of investing: the long-term and risk. The long-term, because the value attributed to Facebook, the profits of which are minimal but the cost of doing business for which is still modest, is an anticipation of future performance. It is the idea that this company, which has quadrupled its revenues in two years, can in a single decade become a giant worth tens of billion of dollars. Which is precisely the gamble Amazon’s stockholders have made over the last ten years, and who are concerned about its weak returns but fascinated by the explosion in sales. For Facebook, as for Amazon and Google, growth potential seems unlimited.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Are young people in America less stridently nationalistic than their predecessors? Columnist Fyodor Lukyanov of Russia’s Gazeta, citing recent Pew Research Center polling data, asserts in this detailed evaluation of U.S. public attitudes, that there is a declining tendency on the part of the U.S. population to believe in American exceptionalism, and concludes that U.S. foreign policy will be increasingly focused inward and toward the “near abroad” of Mexico and Latin America.

For Gazeta, Fyodor Lukyanov writes in part:

The age breakdown of answers to the question of American exceptionalism – measuring the assertion that the United States is the greatest country in the world – is interesting. The largest number of those who share this belief (64 percent) is among the oldest, the “Silent Generation,” (which reaches a height of 72 percent in the 76-83 age range). Baby-Boomers are split precisely in half, and among Generation X, only 48 percent are proponents of American exceptionalism, with the youngest – the Millennial Children, being the most skeptical – 32 percent. A similar pattern can be seen when it comes to the question of patriotism: Seventy percent of Millennium Children answer positively to the question of whether they consider themselves “very patriotic.” The remaining numbers range from 86 percent to 91 percent. Seventy percent is without a doubt high, but that level has fallen consistently since 2003, when 80 percent of young people felt the most patriotic.

In assessing the source of national success, the nation is united. The vast majority of Americans of all ages consider freedom to be the central source of this success, followed by hard work, natural resources, military strength, democratic governance, free markets, and religious and racial/ethnic diversity.

What is telling is the fact that the older groups tend to place more significance on military power than the younger, and the younger groups believe democracy and religion to be relatively less important.

Of course, these statistics don’t allow us to predict U.S. foreign policy for the next ten to twenty years. Especially since foreign policy is formulated by the ruling class, which even in a democracy isn’t guided by the will of the people. And yet, a trend is detectable.

Young people, who are now entering active public life and building careers, are distinguished by a greater openness, tolerance and a positive outlook. But at the same time, they have a declining tendency toward patriotic bravado and perceive the theme of American greatness more calmly and with far less pathos. Furthermore, a more positive attitude toward immigration is evidence of a sober evaluation of necessity.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR RUSSIAN AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

To celebrate the launch of the all-new 2012 CR-V, Honda brought Ferris Bueller’s Day Off back in a big game commercial. We cast Matthew Broderick as himself, skipping out on a day of acting work and living it up in his all-new CR-V. Relive movie history with Honda’s fresh twist and wonderful homage to this ’80s classic.

Think you’re a true fan of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? We hid over two dozen references to the movie throughout the commercial. Some are obvious, some are VERY subtle. See how many you can find. #dayoff

And here’s the “extended” version of the ad starting the always delightful Broderick:

Here’s the Today segment where they also it did it, but had an interview with Radcliffe — talking with his normal accent (an even shorter version performed outside):

Here’s the full show-stopper on the CD (not abridged and it IS a show stopper). Even if you watched the above, listen to it in its entirety.

I’m on a national tour in my other incarnation which ends at the end of May. I have the CD of the Broadway show with me. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

For a roundup of the best Super Bowl commercials from 2007 – 2011 GO HERE.

Chances are if you (among the millions) watch the Super Bowl today you’re going to see one ad that turns out to be highly controverial. The Hill:

Super Bowl advertisements have a long history of attracting political controversies, and this year is no different.

While the match-up between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants will be country’s focus on Sunday, the high-priced ads during the game will come in a close second. And in an election year, the odds are that there will be some ads that stir up political controversy.

Terry, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president to attract attention to the anti-abortion cause, filed a complaint with the FCC after WMAQ Chicago, an NBC affiliate, refused to run his ad.

Jason Rose, a public relations expert in Arizona and partner of the firm Rose, Moser and Allyn, said the sheer size of the Super Bowl audience drives companies to take a risk in advertising.

(UPDATE: NBC scored a real touchdown with its own NBC network promo for the Super Bowl — a slick musical number from “How to Succeed” adapted to promote all of NBC’s shows with some of its biggest entertainnment and news names. GO HERE.)

The Hill gives these links to five of the most controversial Superbowl commercials:
Pepsi Max
Focus on the Family
Sales Genie
Snickers
Move On

And if those aren’t enough for you, here’s a collection of Super Bowl ads from past years:

The top 25:

The Top 10 from 2011:

The Best from 2010:

The Top 10 from 2008:

The Top 10 from 2007:

Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News

Pundits had been predicting it would happen but you can’t obscure the real impact: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won big in the Nevada caucauses yesterday — further consolidating his candidacy, after a gaffe-peppered week adding to the positive image of someone who’s on a political roll, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s candidacy continues to shrink in terms of support and imagery.

The New York Time’s report captures the new dynamic. First the win:

Mitt Romney handily won the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, solidifying his status as the front-runner and increasing his momentum as he seeks to use the month of February to ease doubts within the Republican Party about his candidacy and begin confronting President Obama.
Prediction: talk about the anti-Romney will collapse as support will start to fall in line and will be totally in line once conservative radio and cable talk show hosts unabashedly support Romney and put past criticisms aside. Put your money on it.
Mr. Romney ran well ahead of his three opponents on a night that delivered his second decisive first-place finish in four days, following his victory in the Florida primary on Tuesday.

Indeed, if it had been close — given expectations for a big Romney win — the Sunday morning talk shows would have a different narrative than you will hear today. Romney was clearly elated as he savored his big victory. The Times goes on:

He appeared elated as he took the stage at his election headquarters at the Red Rock Casino hotel here, kissing his wife, Ann, who reminded the crowd that Nevada would be important in the general election, and hugging his sons before delivering a speech geared toward the fall.

“This is not the first time you’ve given me your vote of confidence, and this time I’m going to take it to the White House,” he said as the crowd chanted his name. And he delivered a harsh critique of Mr. Obama: “This week he’s been trying to take a bow for 8.3 percent unemployment. Not so fast, Mr. President.”

Nevada offers only a sliver of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination, making it more of a symbolic triumph than a practical one. But it gave Mr. Romney an important opportunity to make a more assertive case that the party is finally coming together behind him.

It also gave him an advantage in his attempt to dispatch his chief Republican rival, Newt Gingrich, through the contests this week in Colorado, Minnesota and Maine.

And although new and old media love a horse (or elephant) race, barring some huge political development, Romney will be the nominee. (See below for several more signs of what’s happening).

The Romney victory further deflated the once-vital challenge posed by Mr. Gingrich, girding for a rough few weeks of political weather during which Mr. Romney is expected to do well. But Mr. Gingrich, who remained defiant on Saturday, hopes to revive his chances with stronger showings in the 11 states that vote on March 6, “Super Tuesday.”

Far from competing with Mr. Romney here in Nevada on Saturday, results showed that Mr. Gingrich was vying to place a distant second to Mr. Romney against Representative Ron Paul of Texas.

Mr. Gingrich was once again in the position of vowing to carry on in the face of questions about his viability. He took his second straight defeat to Mr. Romney as an opportunity to hold a press briefing to outline his strategy for continuing on to the Republican convention in Tampa this summer.

The election night imagery was striking: Mr. Romney was surrounded by cheering supporters holding signs that said “Nevada Believes.” Mr. Gingrich used his first television appearance of the night to speak to a ballroom of reporters, without applause or signs, standing before a simple backdrop as he outlined his strategy.

“I am a candidate for president of the United States,” Mr. Gingrich said emphatically. “I will be a candidate of the president of the United States. I will go to Tampa.”

The question is whether by the time he gets to Tampa he’ll still be a viable candidate or someone jumping up and down for attention that has veered away from him given political realities.

And Gingrich has been telegraphed a new reality: his prime donor is already looking in the way of R-o-m-n-e-y:

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino executive keeping Newt Gingrich’s presidential hopes alive, has relayed assurances to Mitt Romney that he will provide even more generous support to his candidacy if he becomes the Republican nominee, several associates said in interviews here.

The signals from Mr. Adelson, whose politics are shaped in large part by his support for Israel, reflect what the associates said was his deep investment in defeating President Obama and his willingness to play a more prominent role in the Republican Party and conservative causes.

The assurances have been conveyed in response to a highly delicate campaign by Mr. Romney and his top Jewish financial supporters to dissuade Mr. Adelson from adding to the $10 million that he and his wife have given to a pro-Gingrich “super PAC,” Winning Our Future, that has been tearing into Mr. Romney through television advertising.

Several people who have spoken with Mr. Adelson over the past two weeks said he would most likely continue to help the group as long as Mr. Gingrich remained in the race. But, they said, he is concerned that additional deep-pocketed donors have not joined him. And, they said, his affection for and loyalty to Mr. Gingrich, who met with him here on Friday, have not blinded him to the reality that the nominating contest is tilting in Mr. Romney’s favor.

“Sheldon is committed to keeping him in the race as long as he wants to stay in,” said Fred Zeidman, a top fund-raiser for Mr. Romney and a longtime friend of Mr. Adelson. “But any time that Newt decides to get out of the race, he would devote his energy and money to the overriding issue, which is beating Barack Obama.”

Underscoring Mr. Adelson’s devotion to that larger cause, he was among the conservative political financiers on hand last weekend for the twice-yearly gathering of the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch near Palm Springs, Calif., where the Kochs and their like-minded colleagues discussed their efforts to ensure Mr. Obama’s defeat.

Mr. Adelson, who has long been a behind-the-scenes financier to Republican candidates, is said to be comfortable with a more visible role in the 2012 election.

CNN:

Romney’s Nevada win makes him the first GOP candidate in this cycle to score back-to-back wins. The former Massachusetts governor appeared to win in the Iowa caucuses but the contest was later awarded to Santorum when the vote was certified. Romney scored a big win in New Hampshire but was then stunned in South Carolina by Gingrich. Romney scored a 14-point victory over Gingrich and the rest of the field in Tuesday’s Florida primary and entered Saturday’s contest with a sizable lead in polls.

The caucuses were open only to the state’s more than 470,000 registered Republicans. Nevada’s 28 delegates will be awarded proportionately based on the statewide vote.

Polls leading up to the vote had shown Gingrich trailing far behind Romney. At one point in the wake of a poor showing in the Florida primary, Gingrich advisers said he would concede the state and look down the road to more friendly states that vote in the March 6 Super Tuesday contests. But ultimately he chose to campaign in Nevada and didn’t appear to make up much ground on Romney.

As the votes were being counted, a leading Romney backer in Nevada was calling for Gingrich to drop out of the race instead of continuing to divide the party.

Nevada Rep. Joe Heck, who has been closely allied with Romney since his 2008 presidential bid, said the results of the caucuses should be a wake up call for Gingrich.

“I hope he takes the message that it’s time to withdraw gracefully and not continue to divide the party,” Heck told reporters in Las Vegas, shortly before the first round of caucus results were announced.

While Romney’s campaign and his network of supporters have voiced concerns about Gingrich’s threat to remain in the race for the long haul, there has not yet been a chorus of Republican leaders publicly asking him to drop out.

Look for that chorus to start very soon.

And here’s what the chorus (which will start soon) will be singing:

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey notes:

Romney won all of the age demos except 17-29YOs, which he lost by only two points to Ron Paul. He won every education demo, and he won every income demo except under-$30K, which Paul won by just one point. Paul won independents by 17 points, but Romney won Republicans with a 61/20 win over Newt Gingrich. Romney also won all three ideological categories, including “very conservative,” by majorities; Gingrich only got 24% of the very conservative vote. He got 74% of the vote for those whose most important candidate quality was the ability to beat Obama, 55% of those who are looking for the right experience, and 56% of those looking for strong moral character. On that last category, Gingrich got 1%.

This one’s a wipeout, and I’d guess that Gingrich gets no more than 19% when the votes are totaled, again assuming the exit poll is accurate.

The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz adds this context:

It sounds coldly calculating for a candidate to root for high unemployment, but the central rationale of Romney’s candidacy is that America needs a CEO to fix its ailing economy. The malaise about the 1992 economy helped Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush, and Romney will have a tougher time unseating an incumbent if the jobless picture is seen as improving.

After three strong months of job growth, Romney is reduced to making a more convoluted argument: yes, things are getting better even though Obama made them worse, but I will make them even better than he would. Of course, there are no guarantees that unemployment will continue on a downward path, but the president is the obvious beneficiary if the rate dips below 8 percent.

In a strange way, Romney may be hurt if Gingrich is fading as a serious threat for the nomination. When Newt was coming on strong after South Carolina, the conservative media and the old Bob Dole establishment ganged up on him, which had the effect of boosting Romney. Now that the Mitt limousine is back on cruise control, some conservatives are grappling with what they didn’t like about him in the first place.

Writing in Time, RedState founder Erick Erickson, a Gingrich backer, says: “Conservatives who hitched a ride with Romney did not expect him to run in 2012 like John McCain, let alone as the heir to Bush’s Big Government conservatism. The internecine fights we are witnessing are about a conservative movement starting to separate itself again from the Republican Party.”

Most on the right will fall into line this fall if Romney is taking on Obama, a prospect that each victory in states like Nevada makes a bit more likely. The question is whether they can muster the same degree of enthusiasm for a candidate whose conservative credentials—and political skills—remain suspect.

My own prediction: GOP conservatives will rapidly put their reservations about Romney on the back burner, take a deep breath, hold their noses and get behind him to do battle with the candidate of the opposing party — which what they always do. And –quite clearly – what the Republican establishment correctly counts they will do.

But no matter how the election turns out, historians won’t call nomination of the party’s candidate as a huge victory for the Tea Party movement.

Which is what could help Romney in the general election.

And Gingrich? His candidacy now is based on a fatal assumption: that if conservatives seek an anti-Romney they would want him.

UPDATE: Here’s a reaction from National Review Online to Romney and Gingrich and what happened in Nevada:

But whether he knows it or not, Gingrich is becoming a caricature of petulance: no concession in Nevada, no call to Romney, no awareness that his inability to raise money at levels of a political rival or to match a competing campaign organization is not necessarily unfair. That’s politics, and Gingrich knows it. I don’t understand why he thinks now losing to Romney in 2012 is solely due to Romney’s innate deviousness in a way McCain beating Romney in 2008 was not — given that Romney was about the same in both 2008 and 2012. Gingrich seems oblivious to the fact that McCain’s style and history gave him advantages over Romney’s money and hardball in ways Gingrich’s own proven liabilities apparently do not.

Gingrich should carefully play a tape of his post–Nevada caucus performance, and then he would quickly grasp that it was little more than a litany of excuses, whining, and accusations — characterized by stream-of-conscious confessionals and rambling repetitions. And, I think, will hurt him more than anything yet in the campaign.

Verdict? Gingrich is going to have to stop the accusations now, turn attention away from himself, stop complaining about the mechanics of the race, stick with critiquing Obama, and at least seem a good sport when he loses. Romney is wise to focus on Obama, ignore his rivals, and get prepped every day by staff who press him on his wealth, in efforts to inoculate him from self-inflicted, offhand remarks about the poor, money, class, etc. Gingrich’s stabs about a supposedly out-of-touch aristocrat are kid’s play compared to what will come from Obama’s $1 billion dollar Chicago hit team.

By now most readers know my (changed) position on the Afghanistan War.

I have expressed concern among other about rampant corruption and backstabbing at the highest levels in the Afghanistan government, incompetence of and disloyalty among its military and police and continuing human rights violations.

I have mourned our casualties and fretted about our huge financial costs.

But — perhaps insensitively so — I have not mentioned much about the suffering of the Afghan people.

A piece in the New York Times today, brought such suffering home in the most poignant way by focusing on the suffering — the dying — of the most vulnerable human beings: the children.

The article starts with the jarring intro: “KABUL, Afghanistan — The following children froze to death in Kabul over the past three weeks after their families had fled war zones in Afghanistan for refugee camps here…”

It then goes on to list the names and ages of four of the “at least 22 [children] who have died in the past month, a time of unseasonably fierce cold and snowstorms.”

Among those 22 children:

¶ Mirwais, son of Hayatullah Haideri. He was 1 ½ years old and had just started to learn how to walk, holding unsteadily to the poles of the family tent before flopping onto the frozen ridges of the muddy floor.

¶ Abdul Hadi, son of Abdul Ghani. He was not even a year old and was already trying to stand, although his father said that during those last few days he seemed more shaky than normal.

¶ Naghma and Nazia, the twin daughters of Musa Jan. They were only 3 months old and just starting to roll over.

¶ Ismail, the son of Juma Gul. “He was never warm in his entire life,” Mr. Gul said. “Not once.”

About Ismail the Times says, “It was a short life, 30 days long.”

According to the United Nations, there are 35,000 people living — barely surviving might be a more accurate term — in Kabul refugee camps, such as Charachi Cambar and Nasaji Bagrami where the children froze to death.

“Both camps are populated largely with refugees who fled the fighting in areas like Helmand Province in the south. Some people have been in the camps for as long as seven years; others arrived in the past year,” says the Times.

Those who claim that we are making progress in Afghanistan generally point to the schools we have built and other “infrastructure projects” (Let’s not forget the $60 million prison we built at Bagram Air Base), at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.

That is all good and well. However, Americans need to raise the same question the Times poses:

After 10 years of a large international presence, comprising about 2,000 aid groups, at least $3.5 billion of humanitarian aid and $58 billion of development assistance, how could children be dying of something as predictable — and manageable — as the cold?

If you have the fortitude, you can read the heart-rending stories of how and why these children are dying in these wretched camps here — camps where Solidarités International, a French group that has had a limited program of emergency food aid and sanitation in the camps, surveyed mortality rates in recent months and came to the harrowing conclusion that, among children under 5, the camps’ death rate is 144 per 1,000 children.

According to the Times, this rate is “stunningly high even for Afghanistan, which already has the world’s third highest infant mortality rate” and means “one out of every seven children in the Kabul camps will not survive until his or her sixth birthday.”

For those of us who believe that we should get out of Afghanistan, there is the sad conundrum:

If we stay longer in Afghanistan, will we be able to save these children?

If we leave Afghanistan now, will more children die?

Of course, this is not the only criterion, but it is a very emotive one and one we should include in any decision making process about “the future of Afghanistan.”

The reader can also view a heartbreaking set of photos about this tragedy here.

Image: shutterstock.com

The French version of the fashion magazine Elle recently posted an article about ‘Black Power Fashion’ that has triggered a wave of indignation. The article, which has since been pulled off the Web, appeared to belittle Black people and their fashion sense by implying that thanks to the Obamas, African Americans have learned to ‘dress White’ while retaining their ‘Blackness.’ This open letter from France’s Le Figaro, signed by some of the country’s movers and shakers in fashion, the arts and journalism, contains excerpts from the Elle article, and sharply criticizes the employees of the magazine for being clueless to the world outside their glass-covered tower.

From Le Figaro, the open letter to Elle starts off this way:

Elle magazine has permitted us to grasp: In 2012, the ‘Black-geoisie’ has adopted all the White fashion codes.” ["Geoisie" is French slang - an offshoot of the word bourgeois - for something unfashionable that has become "chic."] What’s more, “in this America led for the first time by a Black president, chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged to its ‘streetwear’ codes.” That’s right – while Blacks have dressed like hoodlums in hoodies for decades, they have finally understood – thanks to the tutelage of Whites – that they should pay more attention to their appearance. That was the tenor of an article published in the January 13 issue of the weekly magazine so favored by housewives of the “White-geoisie” (since apparently, we now divide the bourgeois by race as well) entitled Black Fashion Power, which sought to analyze the red-carpet success of African-American personalities.

It’s simple: if Blacks are now chic, it’s because they finally have an icon worthy of the name – Michelle Obama – who sets the tone by, “revisiting Jackie O’s wardrobe in a jazzy style.” Yes, because even though she is first lady, Michelle Obama herself had to be inspired by a White role model; and since she has natural rhythm, of course she added a touch of jazz.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.