Pakistani teen blogger shot by Taliban 'critical' after surgery

By Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- As a shocked Pakistan prayed for her recovery, Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for writing a blog about daily life in the war-torn Swat Valley, was still in a critical condition Wednesday after surgery to remove a bullet, her surgeon told NBC News.

Doctors said her head, face and neck started swelling Tuesday night, prompting doctors to call an emergency meeting at 1 a.m. Wednesday (4 p.m. ET) when they decided to operate on her.

Surgery at the Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar started at 2 a.m. and was completed at 5 a.m. Wednesday (5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday ET). The doctors' panel treating Malala, which includes military and civilian staff, is led by senior neurosurgeon Mumtaz Khan. 

Talking to NBC News after the surgery, Khan said Malala's brain had started swelling as its left portion was damaged by the bullet.

He said they operated on the damaged part of her brain and neck and removed the bullet from her body.

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A short documentary profiling an 11-year-old Pakistani girl on the last day before the Taliban closed down her school. (By Adam B. Ellick)

"Malala is still in critical condition and had been shifted to the intensive care unit of the hospital, but I am optimistic and by the grace of Allah she will recover," Khan said.

A plane is on standby at Bacha Khan International airport to take her to the United Arab Emirates for treatment if doctors decide this is necessary.

Girl shot by Taliban to be sent abroad for treatment, Pakistani president says

Malala was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011 for a blog she wrote under a pseudonym for the BBC's Urdu-language news service. She started writing it when she was just 11.

She also won the National Peace Prize in Pakistan, was honored with a school named after her, and quickly became an outspoken critic of the Taliban in Pakistan and a public advocate for peace.

ISPR via AFP - Getty Images

Soldiers carry Malala Yousafzai, 14, at an army hospital following an attack by gunmen in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Oct. 9, 2012.

In her blog, Malala chronicled life in the Swat Valley under the brutal and oppressive rule of the local faction of the Pakistani Taliban, who carried out public floggings, hung dead bodies in the streets, and banned education for girls.

In early 2011, the militants had added Malala to their hit list. 

Nosheen Abbas, of BBC Urdu, told NBC News that Malala was "very passionate about education, and she spoke about that a lot to me."

"It angered her deeply when girls' schools were closed, and she was affected, and her class fellows were affected. She would talk about (hiding school bags)," she said.

"She was so open about what they were doing to her city, and she was so vocal about it -- that is what made her so threatening," she added.

 Abbas tried to explain why the Taliban had reacted so strongly.

"When it's coming from a child, it's innocent, it's honest, it's open, and I think that's what was so threatening," she said of the blog.

"I think that code of honor that used to exist where women and children, they weren't attacked, they were honored in a way never touched. I think that no longer exists, I think that is what it shows," she added.

/

Pakistani school girls pray for the recovery of Malala Yousafzai in Multan, Pakistan on Oct. 10.

Grief across Pakistan
Meantime, the shooting drew a huge outpouring of reaction across Pakistan. The front pages of national newspapers carried pictures of a bandaged and bloody Yousufzai being brought to hospital.  "Hate targets hope" the Express Tribune said in a headline.

Pakistan's president, prime minister, and heads of various opposition parties joined human rights group Amnesty International and the United Nations in condemning the attack.

"Pakistan's future belongs to Malala and brave young girls like her. History won't remember the cowards who tried to kill her at school," Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on Twitter.

The attack was also condemned by many leaders of ethnic Pashtun tribes in northwest Pakistan.

"This attack is against Pashtun and Islamic practices," said Khurshid Kaka Ji, leader of a jirga, or tribal council, in Swat, a one-time tourist destination of peaks and meadows where the military has battled the Taliban intermittently since 2007.

"The security forces and police deployed should capture the attackers and punish them. If they do not catch these people, then the peace that Swat has gained through bloodshed will be shaken." 

Reuters and NBC's Waj Khan contributed to this report from Islamabad.

 Taliban gunmen shoot 14-year-old girl activist

Posted: Oct 09, 2012 4:12 AM EDT
Updated: Oct 09, 2012 7:23 PM EDT

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 Gunmen hunted down young Malala Yousafzai at her school, shooting her in the head after she dared to criticize the extremists who are ravaging her country. NBC's Amna Nawaz reports.

By REBECCA SANTANA and SHERIN ZADA
Associated Press

MINGORA, Pakistan (AP) - Fourteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai was admired across a battle-scarred region of Pakistan for exposing the Taliban's atrocities and advocating for girls' education in the face of religious extremists. On Tuesday, the Taliban nearly killed her to quiet her message.

A gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school in the volatile northern Swat Valley and shot Malala in the head and neck. Another girl on the bus was also wounded.

The young activist was airlifted by helicopter to a military hospital in the frontier city of Peshawar. A doctor in the city of Mingora, Tariq Mohammad, said her wounds weren't life-threatening, but a provincial information minister said after a medical board examined the girl that the next few days would be crucial.

Malala began writing a blog when she was just 11 under the pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC about life under the Taliban, and began speaking out publicly in 2009 about the need for girls' education - which the Taliban strongly opposes. The extremist movement was quick to claim responsibility for shooting her.

"This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter," Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan by telephone.

The shooting provoked outrage across the country, angering Pakistanis who have seen a succession of stories about violence against women by the Taliban.

"This attack cannot scare us nor the courageous Malala. This cowardly act cannot deter Malala to give up her efforts," said Azizul Hasan, one of the girl's cousins.

Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf condemned the attack and called her a daughter of Pakistan. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland called the shooting "barbaric" and "cowardly."

Leila Zerrougui, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, condemned the attack "in the harshest terms." ''Education is a fundamental right for all children," she said in a statement. The Taliban "must respect the right to education of all children, including girls, to go to school and live in peace."

The attack displayed the viciousness of Islamic militants in the Swat Valley, where the military conducted a major operation in 2009 to clear out insurgents, and a reminder of the challenges the government faces in keeping the area free of militant influence.

In her BBC blog, Malala wrote about not wearing her uniform to school after officials warned it might attract the Taliban's attention, and how many other students moved out of the valley after the Taliban issued an edict banning girls from school. She wrote about the Taliban movement had kept her family from going out after sunset.

While chairing a children's assembly supported by UNICEF in the valley last year, the then-13-year-old championed a greater role for young people.

"Girl members play an active role," she said, according to an article on the U.N. organization's website. "We have highlighted important issues concerning children, especially promoting girls' education in Swat."

She was nominated last year for the International Children's Peace Prize, which is organized by the Dutch organization KidsRights to highlight the work of children around the world.

Malala was shot on her way home from a school run by her father, Ziauddin, who is also known in the valley for promoting education of girls.

The bus was about to leave the school grounds in Mingora, the largest city in Swat Valley, when a bearded man approached it and asked which one of the girls was Malala, said Rasool Shah, Mingora's police chief. Another girl pointed to Malala, but the activist denied it was her and the gunmen then shot both of the girls, the police chief said.

The Swat Valley - nicknamed the Switzerland of Pakistan - was once a popular tourist destination for Pakistanis. Honeymooners used to vacation in the numerous hotels dotted along the river of the same name running through it. But the Taliban's near-total takeover of the valley just 175 miles (280 kilometers) from the capital in 2008 shocked many Pakistanis, who considered militancy to be a far-away problem in Afghanistan or Pakistan's rugged tribal regions.

Militants began asserting their influence in the valley in 2007 - part of a wave of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters expanding their reach from safe havens near the Afghan border.

By 2008 they controlled much of it and began meting out rules and their own brand of justice. During about two years of its rule, the Taliban forced men to grow beards, restricted women from going to the bazaar, whipped women they considered immoral and beheaded opponents.

Taliban militants in the region also destroyed around 200 schools. Most were girls' institutions, though some prominent boys' schools were struck as well. The private school owned and operated by Malala's father was temporarily closed under the Taliban.

At one point, the Taliban said they were halting female education, a move that echoed their militant brethren in neighboring Afghanistan who during their rule barred girls from attending school.

While the Pakistani military managed to flush out the insurgents during the military operation, the Taliban's top leadership escaped, leaving many of the valley's residents on edge.

Kamila Hayat, a senior official of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said Malala's activism sent a global message that Pakistani girls could fight for their rights. But she also worried that Tuesday's shooting would prevent other parents from letting their children speak out against the Taliban.

"This is an attack to silence courage through a bullet," Hayat said. "These are the forces who want to take us to the dark ages."

The problems of young women in Pakistan were the focus of a separate case before the high court, which ordered a probe Tuesday into an alleged barter of seven girls to settle a blood feud in a remote southwestern district. The tradition of families exchanging unmarried girls to settle feuds is banned under Pakistani law but still practiced in the country's more conservative, tribal areas.

A tribal council ordered the barter in early September in the Dera Bugti district of Baluchistan province, the district deputy commissioner, Saeed Faisal, told the court. He did not know the girls' ages but local media reported they were between 4 and 13 years old.

The Advocate General for the province could not confirm the incident.

Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ordered Faisal to ensure that all members of the tribal council - and a local lawmaker - who belongs to one of the groups believed involved - appear in court on Wednesday.

___

Santana reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Abdul Sattar in Quetta and Zarar Khan and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.

'New radicals': Pakistan's Generation Y battles to shape country's future

10

Sep

2012

4:28am, EDT

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Khalida Brohi, 23, helps women in a remote part of Pakistan to "unleash their own potential" and battles against honor killings and for women's rights. "I want to change how people perceive women in Pakistan," she says.

By Amna Nawaz, NBC News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Khalida Brohi's new life began when another girl's life ended.

Born and raised in Pakistan's remote, conservative province of Balochistan, Brohi was 16 years old when the community's traditions collided with her own personal beliefs.

"I found out about a girl who was murdered in the name of honor," she recalls. "I knew her and why she was killed. She wanted to marry someone she liked and she was killed just for that. When I found out about this girl, I knew that was the turning point in my life."

While still a teenager, Brohi founded Sughar Women's Program, a nonprofit organization with the mission of educating women about their basic rights. In many conservative communities across Pakistan, a woman's world extends only so far as the walls of her home. Their social interactions are restricted to family members and opportunities are defined by husbands, fathers and elder brothers.

But training and micro-loans provided by Brohi's group have resulted in CDs, books and embroidered handbags the women produce being sold across the country as well as at a flagship Sughar store in Karachi.

Now 23, Brohi is somewhat of a veteran in her field, and she's not alone.

In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable

All over Pakistan, where the majority of the 180-million-strong population is under the age of 30, members of Brohi's generation are striking out on their own to work toward change in their country, at an age when most are still finding their footing in life.

These social innovators, "change-makers" and "new radicals," as they've been called, represent an increasingly influential segment of civil society, in a country where the decision-making power has always been confined to limited circles.

'Demographic disaster'
Born, raised, and educated in Pakistan, but increasingly connected to the rest of the world through affordable telecommunications and readily-accessible social networks, many members of this generation are flexing their muscle in unprecedented ways when it comes to shaping Pakistan's future.

Ex-ambassador: US, Pakistan should 'divorce'

Their emergence, in some part, is a reaction to their circumstances. A 2009 study on the attitudes and needs of Pakistani youth, conducted by the British Council's Pakistan office, predicted a looming "demographic disaster," if social and economic changes weren't made to support the next generation.

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

Half of Pakistan's population is under the age of 20; two-thirds have yet to celebrate their 30th birthdays. To meet the expectations of this group, the study found the country would need to create 36 million new jobs by 2019. Fifty percent of those surveyed felt they weren't qualified to secure a good job; 79 percent felt Pakistan was headed in the wrong direction.

Growing importance, declining reputation
Many members of so-called Generation Y grew up under a military dictatorship or watched the same two political leaders bounce in and out of office. Their formative years were spent watching Pakistan's importance grow on the world stage, while its reputation has declined. They've come of age under the specter of war, watching a burgeoning and aggressive media fill the headlines and airwaves with stories of terrorism, corruption and political crises.

Red Cross halts most Pakistan aid in wake of beheading

After watching previous generations succumb to disillusionment, Brohi believes her peers are uniquely positioned to make lasting change.

"My generation is amazing. It's energetic. It's filled with anger," Brohi says. "They want something new in this country. And they want to take the reins in their hands now."

Happiness over 9/11
Ali Abbas Zaidi knows all about that anger. When he went to school on September 12, 2001, he was shocked by what he found.

"Some of my friends, they were congratulating each other," Zaidi says. "They were like, 'Congrats -- 3,000 people have died in America.'"

Zaidi, a soft-spoken 26-year old who was studying to become an aeronautical engineer, smiles in disbelief as he recounts the story.

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Ali Abbas Zaidi is founder of the Pakistan Youth Alliance, a group which campaigns against extremism. "Something is wrong with the way we teach our kids," the 26-year-old says. "A lot of the youth population in Pakistan have extremist tendencies ... and we challenge that."

"That was the changing point for me," says Zaidi. "I was like, 'How can you be so sick,' you know? Being a human being that you're happy on the death of 3,000 innocent people?"

Zaidi worked to trace back the dominant collective mindset he saw in so many of his peers. He found elements perpetuated early in life by the educational system, and reinforced at various stages by religious, social, and political leaders. It is a mindset, he says, that glorifies violence and conservatism, and leaves the country's youth vulnerable to manipulation by ideological and cultural forces.

Veiled women in Pakistan rally for the hijab

Zaidi says his generation -- roughly 100 million people -- has become walking, talking "time bombs."

"If you don't correct them, if you don't guide them to being more peaceful citizens of this country and as a global citizen it will be disastrous for us, and for the world," he warns.

To balance the prevailing narrative and work to engage members of his generation, Zaidi founded thePakistan Youth Alliance (PYA) in 2007.

Counter-terrorism workshops
Besides mobilizing some of his 50,000 Facebook followers for social welfare and relief work, Zaidi taps into this network as he seeks to change the dominant national dialogue. He and his fellow PYA members hold counter-terrorism workshops across the country, inviting local community members to debate them on religion and politics. They organize marches to peacefully protest policies with which they disagree. They've even organized street theater performances in parts of the country's rural and volatile northwest, with the goal of provoking local community members to engage and discuss.

"The older generation didn't realize that their voices mattered," Zaidi adds. "I think my father's generation was very apathetic. And they're responsible for what is happening in this country now. So our generation, we have to be responsible for what happens next."

Aid workers become targets in Pakistan

Blogger Sana Saleem, 24, has been writing for as long as she can remember. But it wasn't until 2008 that she realized how easily her voice could be quieted.

A controversial event called "Draw Muhammad Day" appeared on Facebook, drawing the ire of Muslims worldwide, many of whom object to any imagery of their prophet. Pakistan's government censorship agency leapt into action, banning Facebook and thousands of other websites, including Saleem's blog, all deemed to be in breach of the government's controversial blasphemy law.

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Sana Saleem, 24, campaigns against "controversial issues that are not talked about" including Internet freedom and minority rights. "I want to see a Pakistan where diversity is thriving," she says.

"We've seen how social spaces can be constricted by using these laws, and this was just a side step of doing something similar in cyberspace," Saleem says. "We just felt that this was a dangerous precedent the government was setting."

'Rape threats'
She and a group of fellow journalists founded Bolo Bhi, which means "Speak Up" in Urdu, to organize and protest the government bans. The reaction was swift and fierce.

"A lot of hate we got was based on the claim that we were favoring porn, that we were favoring objectionable content, that we were somehow trying to spread immodesty," says Saleem. "Because a lot of our members were women, most of the threats were really vile, and they ranged from acid attack threats to rape threats."

By lending her face and name to the cause, Saleem became a target for the vocal, conservative forces in Pakistan that often bully and harass dissenting voices into silence.

"It puts you in a spotlight where it's either you're with them or you're against them," Saleem says. "What really scares me is the polarization here; the two ends have become such extremes, where the one hand has much more power and guns, and we have only our voices and the motivation to make change happen."

An embattled minority: Christians in Pakistan

Over the years, Bolo Bhi has become a safe space where controversial issues – like gender-based violence, minority rights, and Internet freedom – are given a forum. The seven core members of the group use the platform to raise awareness, enable discussion, and advocate for change on matters traditionally not acceptable for public discourse.

For Saleem, an effort launched to preserve her own voice in society, has grown into a mission to help her generational peers find their own.

"The youth [in Pakistan] is sort of suffering from an identity crisis, trying to battle between what Pakistan was in the past, and also moving forward," says Saleem. "How do we create the society that Pakistan was meant to be, and that was lost in those decades?"

NBC News' Waj Khan contributed to this report.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Photo of the day:

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Photo of the day: U.S. Army Veteran Lewis Neal and his dance partner Leslie Mallory rehearse their routine for the stage show at the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival. The week-long festival uses creative arts as one form of rehabilitative treatment to help Veterans recover from and cope with physical and emotional disabilities.

Department of Defense (DOD)

Photo of the Day:

Department of Defense (DOD)

Photo of the Day: A U. S. Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 367 provides security as two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron (HMH) 463, Marine Aircraft Group 24 (MAG-24) perform a mid-air refuel demonstration from a C-130 Hercules aircraft during the 2012 Kaneohe Bay Airshow at Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, Sept. 30, 2012. MAG-24 took part in the three-day event featuring performances and demonstrations by both civilian and military aircraft. DOD photo by Lance Cpl. Kevin Jones, U.S. Marine Corps

Democrats really do have a shot at winning the House

Democrats remain quietly confident that they can take the House. Will Mitt's bumbling campaign work in their favor?

By Alex Seitz-Wald
Monday, Oct 8, 2012 10:15 AM EDT




With most observers still predicting — though less confidently than before last week’s presidential debate — that Obama will secure a second term and Democrats maintain control of the Senate, it is the House that could determine the short-term future of the country and mean the difference between a fruitful or impotent second term for the president. Would it look like Obama’s first two years in office, when he and congressional Democrats pushed through sweeping reforms on healthcare and Wall Street, or the last two years, which were defined by bitter stalemate and unproductive battles over spending issues?  

Obama’s ambitious legislative agenda of unfinished work from the first term — immigration reform, climate change legislation, etc. — would be virtually dead on arrival if Democrats can’t take the House, blunting the victory of a reelection.

 If you ask most analysts, the question of whether Democrats can win the necessary 25 seats is not even worth asking. “House majority remains out of Democrats’ grasp,” veteran handicapper Stu Rothenberg titled a blog post yesterday. Charlie Cook agrees. So does Kyle Kondik, the House editor for Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, who wrote Thursday, “there’s very little indication that Republicans will lose their House majority.”

Democratic leaders have been saying publicly for weeks that they think they have a good shot of picking up the House, which pundits dismiss out of hand as empty posturing. Privately, some Democrats say they really believe the odds are better than 50-50 and that all the pundits and handicappers are a month behind — a month that’s seen a nose dive for Mitt Romney, with a potentially dire coattail effect for House Republicans. But Democrats are wary of making their case too strongly, they say, for fear that conservative super PAC money will abandon Romney and starting pouring into key House races, where a relatively little bit of money can make a huge difference. So for now, at least, they’re sitting back without pushing back too hard on the prevailing conventional wisdom.

Even the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol seems a bit concerned.  “IF the polls are right, and IF nothing much changes over the remaining six weeks, the House could well be in play,” he wrote recently. “Maybe Republicans will hold on in an even popular vote election with the help of incumbency advantages and post-2010 redistricting. But it’s also possible that an Obama +3 victory on Election Day would drag the Democrats to an edge in the congressional vote — and control of the House. In any case, based on current polling, I don’t think one can say that it’s now out of the question that we could wake up on the morning of November 7 to the prospect of … Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”

Indeed, there’s some reason for his concern in the polling. In early August, the Reuters/Ipsos poll House generic ballot test — which asks if respondents would vote for a generic Democrat or generic Republican — showed the parties tied at 46 percent.  In September, this same poll showed Democrats leading by 6 points, 49 percent to 43 percent. An NBC/Wall Street Journal generic poll from July had similar movement since July, as did an Economist/YouGov poll. The most recent generic poll comes from NPR, which shows Dems up 3 points. Another recent poll of exclusively battleground congressional districts, conducted by Politico and George Washington University, had Dems up 2.

Democrats need 25 seats to win, and internal polling shows there are 32 Democratic candidates leading or tied with their Republican opponent, according to a memo from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official body tasked with electing Democrats to the House. The committee claims a total of 75 races are “in play” across the country, and has put 53 districts in its Red to Blue program, which means they think there’s at least enough of a shot at winning in those seats to invest money and resources.

The DCCC has outraised its GOP counterpart, the NRCC, by about $10 million over the cycle and is prepared to spend about $18 million more on commercials. Democrats have reserved $65 million in airtime before Election Day, while NRCC has received just over $47 million. But that advantage could be easily wiped out by outside Republican super PACs, explaining why Democrats are hesitant to tout their optimism about the battle for the House. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and its affiliate Crossroads GPS spent $50 million on House races between Oct. 13 and Election Day alone in 2010.

There are few things working against Republicans this year. The problem with any wave election is you then have to defend your gains the next cycle. These gains, by definition, come mostly from swing districts previously occupied by Democrats, so it doesn’t take huge shifts in public opinion to swing things back the other way. Redistricting, the decennial process of redrawing congressional districts, was expected to give Republicans a huge boost, thanks to their massive gains in state Houses across the country, which control the process. But the end result will probably have little net effect. “Add up all the numbers and you get Democrats +1 seat, Republicans -1. In other words, redistricting has been something of a wash,” Rothenberg wrote earlier this year. For the dozens of states where Republicans effectively gerrymandered districts, there are other, larger states where Democrats did the same, especially in California and Illinois. These states are so big and have so many congressional districts that anybody’s list of the top House races is dominated by these two states.

The key, Democrats say, is Mitt Romney and his lackluster performance. “In August, the pick of Congressman Paul Ryan made his Medicare-ending budget the ticket mate for every Republican running for Congress and gave us the nationalized Medicare debate we’ve wanted all year. Then Congressman Todd Akin’s offensive comments reminded voters how extreme Republicans are,” the DCCC memo states. It’s still unclear whether Romney would bring the House down with him if he lost, but it’s certainly possible. Even with all this, Democrats’ chances of capturing the House are still shy of 50 percent — 25 seats is a tall order — but probably better than a lot of pundits think.

Will SCOTUS make it illegal to resell your stuff?

A case that could jeopardize eBay, Craigslist and your garage sale 

Wow, talk about infringing on our rights, what is happening to our free market existence. Our right to sell or exchange products we purchased, used and now want to get rid of.  We need to watch this case closely. It could effect more than we now know.


By Natasha Lennard
Monday, Oct 8, 2012 11:26 AM EDT

(Credit: Shutterstock)
If you buy an iPod or a phone, a book or a DVD, it’s currently legal to resell it, as thousands of eBay and Craigslist posts attest.
However, as Jennifer Waters at MarketWatch reports, a little-known case “tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s agenda this fall could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4.”
Under current law — on the books since 1908 — copyright holders only have control over the first sale, so while I cannot take iPhones straight off the factory line and sell them, I am able to sell a device that I first bought from a retailer.
This, Waters reports, is being challenged:

If the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling, it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.
… The case stems from Supap Kirtsaeng’s college experience. A native of Thailand, Kirtsaeng came to America in 1997 to study at Cornell University. When he discovered that his textbooks, produced by Wiley, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in Ithaca, N.Y., he rallied his Thai relatives to buy the books and ship them to him in the United States. He then sold them on eBay, making upward of $1.2 million, according to court documents.
Wiley, which admitted that it charged less for books sold abroad than it did in the United States, sued him for copyright infringement. Kirtsaeng countered with the first-sale doctrine. In August 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling that anything that was manufactured overseas is not subject to the first-sale principle. Only American-made products or “copies manufactured domestically” were.

There would be serious implications for manufacturers and online giants like Craigslist and eBay were SCOTUS to uphold the ruling. Firstly, it would become an incentive to manufacture overseas so that all resales could then be controlled and charged for by the copyright holder. Secondly, the entire of eBay and Craigslist’s business would be jeopardized. “If sellers had to get permission to peddle their wares on the sites, they likely wouldn’t do it,” Waters notes.

Dueling Conspiracy Theories on Jobs Numbers, Debate Cheating

Dueling Conspiracy Theories on Jobs Numbers, Debate Cheating

Friday, October 5, 2012

Friday, October 5th is turning into conspiracy theory day on the campaign trail, with both sides suspicious of each other after a potentially game changing debate Wednesday night. First up, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch set off a firestorm by tweeting an accusation that the Obama campaign manipulated the sub-8% unemployment rate announced this morning. The narrative was quickly adopted on Fox News.



ᔥ ThinkProgress
On the other side, there's a video that appeared on YouTube last night showing slow-motion footage of Mitt Romney slyly pulling notes out of his pocket and dropping them on his debate podium. Debate rules state: "No props, notes, charts, diagrams, or other writings or other tangible things may be brought into the debate by any candidate."

Published on Oct 5, 2012 by ben8jam

Is Romney pulling a cheat sheet from his pocket at the start of the debates? You decide!

Published on Oct 4, 2012 by BigCheeseKIT

Romney's Amazing Sleight of Hand Performance!

"No props, notes, charts, diagrams or other writings can be used by the candidates; however, they can take notes on the type of paper of their choosing.The candidates cannot ask each other direct questions, but can ask rhetorical questions.The candidates cannot address each other with proposed pledges.Each candidate can use his own makeup artist.No candidate is allowed to use risers or any other device to make them look taller.The Coin Toss: At least 72 hours before the first debate, there will be a coin toss on the order of questioning and closing arguments."

WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH NOTES ROMNEY?!?! YOU GOT CAUGHT CHEATING!

Sunday best: Chuck Todd loses it

He blasts Jack Welch for "corroding trust in our government" while Paul Krugman drives Mary Matalin insane VIDEO

By Joan Walsh
Sunday, Oct 7, 2012 02:31 PM EDT

What use are Sunday morning news shows in our post-truth political era? Four days after Mitt Romney lied his way through his debate with a listless, diffident President Obama, and two days after former GE CEO Jack Welch ousted Donald Trump to become Mayor of Crazytown on Foursquare, journalists and campaign surrogates had a lot of decisions to make: Would conservatives escalate, backing Romney and Welch? Would liberals fight back more effectively than Obama (OK, that’s an easy one)? And would reporters on the panels lapse into easy “both sides do it” equivalence and ignore the way the Republican campaign, including Welch and Romney himself, has ratcheted up the prevarication and character assassination to new levels?

To keep from drowning in despair and nihilism over what the Sunday shows tell us about the bankruptcy of American politics, Salon is bringing you Sunday Best: Our choice of the best moment of all on the top Sunday shows. (We may occasionally have to turn to MSNBC’s “Up With Chris” or “Melissa Harris-Perry,” but if we put them in the mix every week, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. We’ll mainly focus on the productions of the big networks.)
This Sunday, there were plenty of good moments.

Predictably, Democrats fought back better than Obama did, with Robert Gibbs calling Romney’s performance “fundamentally dishonest” and his budget math “absolutely crazy” on ABC’s “This Week.” On Fox, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told Chris Wallace, “The fact of the matter is in this debate we saw Big Bird meet the big lie.” Also on “This Week,” Paul Krugman told the panel, “The press just doesn’t know how to handle flat-out untruths,” which led Mary Matalin to absolutely lose her shit and call Krugman himself a liar.

You have mischaracterized and you have lied about every position and every particular of the Ryan plan on Medicare, from the efficiency of Medicare administration, to calling it a voucher plan, so you’re hardly credible on calling somebody else a liar.

Actually, Mary, Romney himself admitted it was a voucher program on Wednesday night. Someone’s lying here, and it’s not Krugman. Digression: Paul Krugman probably deserves the Sunday Best award for simultaneously fighting off Peggy Noonan’s gauzy, shimmery fantasies and untruth, along with Matalin’s sharp and ugly lie-daggers, on the very same show. But Krugman would probably win it every week, which wouldn’t be fair.

Things got even more interesting when it came time for Republicans to defend Romney and Welch.  On “Meet the Press,” Newt Gingrich took the unusual strategy of declaring, “I think it’s clear he changed” his tax policy, a change he described as “good politics.” Yet Romney hasn’t come out and said he’s changed his tax policy; he’s only saying that his tax cuts won’t cost $5 trillion because of all those loopholes and deductions he’ll close – you know, the ones he won’t tell us about.

Republican strategist Mike Murphy, also on “Meet the Press,” didn’t deny Romney’s tax-slashing plans, he took the tack of defending Romney’s refusal to enumerate the loopholes and deductions he’d eliminate in order to raise the tax burden of the rich – because such details would hurt Romney politically.

Here is the problem. You guys won’t give him any credit for closing loopholes, because like you guys, he won’t name the loopholes. Why? Because you’ll attack him for doing it. You attack him for not giving you a little target… and then you attack him when you get the target.

Remember, that’s also why Romney told us he won’t inform the voters which federal programs he plans to cut. So Murphy and Romney are basically admitting that the Republican nominee’s actual policies are so unpopular that if he told us what they were, he wouldn’t get elected.

On Jack Welch’s claim that Obama’s “Chicago” campaign cooked the BLS numbers to make unemployment go down – he famously tweeted, “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers” – Gingrich took the position that Welch’s charge was “plausible,” at least. “It rings true to people. You have a president of the United States so deeply distrusted by people like Jack Welch — who is hardly a right-winger, Welch is one of the most successful businessmen in America — that Welch instantaneously assumes this is the Chicago machine.”

Not surprisingly, Peggy Noonan, also on “This Week,” took a similar dreamy “reality has a well known liberal bias” approach to what James Carville termed “economic birtherism.” Noonan proclaimed from on high, “I don’t think anyone in America looks at that number and thinks ‘that’s reality in America.’” Really, Peggy? You’re the arbiter of reality? Reality is what Peggy Noonan feels America feels? We’re all in trouble.

But Gingrich’s spew inspired our Sunday Best, when NBC’s Chuck Todd lashed back. Todd can sometimes seem a captive of the Beltway, but on Sunday he staged a prison break, going off on Welch and Donald Trump and formerly respectable business leaders for their vicious insanity. See the video below, starting at 09:00:

 

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“This is really making me crazy,” he told his “Meet the Press” friends. ” The Federal Reserve gets questioned now for politics these days. The Supreme Court and John Roberts get – we have got, we have corroded – what we’re doing, we are corroding trust in our federal government in a way. And, one-time responsible people are doing it. And the idea that Donald Trump and Jack Welch, rich people with crazy conspiracy theories, can get traction on this is a bad trend … We have mainstreamed, ‘when did you stop beating your wife.’”

Certainly I’m not endorsing putting the politics of the Federal Reserve or Supreme Court off limits, but it was great to see Todd object to the mainstreaming of crazy by “one-time responsible people.” That’s the Sunday Best for this week.

One final debate note: I’m not a fan of “both sides do it” journalism, but to be fair, while there’s no equivalent of economic birtherism on the left, there is a kind of  ”debate trutherism,” where fervent Obama supporters, especially on Twitter, explain that the president was once again playing 18th-dimensional chess and intentionally blowing the debate only to win it somewhere down the line, drawing out Romney’s lies with his somnolent performance. Um, no. Obama blew it, big time.

Thankfully, the campaign rejects debate trutherism. “The president is his harshest critic,” David Axelrod told “Face the Nation.” The debate about the debate is over. If we don’t want to say Romney “won” because lying should disqualify you from a win, let’s just say Obama lost. And move on.