aspro said:

Can you imagine the shit storm if an American company like Exxon had an oil spill in the English Channel like the one Britich Petroleum has in the Gulf of Mexico?

Actually american companies have done all sorts of bad shit around the world. Like that company that was responsible for a toxic gas leak in India that killed over a thousand people.

Lord Tebbit: former UK trade secretary

At least on the other side of the Atlantic the conduct of President Obama over the great oil spill is explicable, even if despicable. The whole might of American wealth and technology is displayed as utterly unable to deal with the disastrous spill – so what more natural than a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance against a multinational company?

It is time that our American friends were reminded that they sang a different tune when the American company Union Carbide killed many thousands of Indians at Bhopal. Not to mention when the American company Occidental killed 167 people on a North Sea oil rig in 1988.

At the very least, the president might acknowledge that the company directly responsible for the Gulf disaster was American, not British. He may be holding on to some Democratic Party votes, but he is storing up a great deal of ill will that he might regret at some time.

Perhaps BP may be reluctant to say much about that because it would highlight the fact that the company now lacks not just the technical expertise to operate drilling rigs or refineries, but almost anyone in the company competent to assess and monitor the competence of its contractors. The much acclaimed strategy of getting out of the dirty and difficult jobs of exploration, extraction and refining in favour of branding, distribution and sales now seems to be rather less clever than when Lord Browne was riding high as the boss of BP.

It would be unwise to think that BP’s run of expensive accidents is just bad luck, or even individual manegerial failure. It may be that the strategy, while no doubt both New and Modern, is inherently dangerous, as the management is no longer in control of actions for which it has to take responsibility.

BP, British Petroleum is actually an American and British owned company. The American sub-contractors were responsible for the oil leak. And UK and American pension funds are heavy investors in BP shares, so Obama attacking the company is affecting British and americans pensions in a negative way.

Man up Obama. By law BP has limited liability, but it's gone much further than it legally needs to in covering costs.

YouTube Wins Case Against Viacom

Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.

N Korea seeks $75 trillion in compensation

Cash-strapped North Korea has demanded the United States pay almost $US65 trillion ($75 trillion) in compensation for six decades of hostility.

The official North Korean news agency, KCNA, says the cost of the damage done by the US since the peninsula was divided in 1945 is estimated at $US64.96 trillion.

The compensation call comes on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the start of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

KCNA said the figure includes $US26.1 trillion arising from US "atrocities" which left more than 5 million North Koreans dead, wounded, kidnapped or missing.

The agency also claims 60 years of US sanctions have caused a loss of $US13.7 trillion by 2005, while property losses were estimated at $US16.7 trillion.

The agency said North Koreans have "the justifiable right" to receive the compensation for their blood.

It said the committee's calculation did not include the damage North Korea had suffered from sanctions after its first nuclear test in 2006.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has approved a cybersecurity bill, Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA), that would give the president far-reaching authority over the Internet in the case of emergency.

As The Hill explains, the bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, and Tom Carper, would give the president "emergency authority to shut down private sector or government networks in the event of a cyber attack capable of causing massive damage or loss of life." The original bill granted the president the authority to "indefinitely" shut down networks, but an amendment to the PCNAA, approved yesterday, mandates that the president "get Congressional approval after controlling a network for 120 days."

The authority granted to the government in the bill has been likened to an Internet "kill switch."

Collins noted that she takes issue with the "kill switch" term. The Hill writes,

"It's been frustrating to read some of the misrepresentations of our bill in the cybersphere," Collins said, arguing the new bill actually circumscribes the president's existing authority and puts controls on its use. "I believe the substitute amendment we're offering strengthens those protections even more."

As we wrote here, the bill would also see the creation of a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security, the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC). Any private company reliant on "the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. 'information infrastructure'" would be "subject to command" by the NCCC, and some would be required to engage in "information sharing" with the agency, says CBS4.

The bill will soon head to the Senate for a vote.

aspro said:

It's like saying you don't like a retailers health insurance policies so it's okay to shop lift against them.

I'd put it more along the lines of you didn't like the way your muffins turned out, so it's fine to go throw rocks through street windows.