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Future
Canada

Hey Anti-Piracy Haters! Meet CETA, The 'Trojan Horse' Of Just Rejected ACTA

FutureWORLDCRUNCHSourcesCanadaCountries

LE MONDE (France), TORONTO STAR, RABBLE (Canada)

Worldcrunch

According to Canadian expert in copyright, Michael Geist, the European Commission is planning to implement the recently rejected provisions of ACTA with a clever little workaround: by applying the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

The Canadian publication Rabble reports that Canada and the European Union are trying to ratify the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement through the backdoor.

Michael Geist, who is also the Toronto Star"s Internet legal affairs columnist, stated: "The European Commission strategy appears to use CETA as the new ACTA, burying its provisions in a broader Canadian trade agreement with the hope that the European Parliament accepts the same provisions it just rejected with the ACTA framework."

On his blog, Mr Geist presents the similarities between ACTA and CETA provisions, mainly concerning the Internet Provider Liability, the Civil and Criminal Enforcement, as well as the Border Measures.

French daily Le Monde points out that according to leaked documents from February 2012, the CETA agreement will oblige Internet providers to disclose the identity of their users suspected of piracy.

Dubbed "ACTA's Trojan horse" by several European websites, CETA is currently in its last stage of negotiation.

As for the ACTA treaty, which the European MPs massively rejected in the voting session last week, it is to be examined by the European Court of Justice. ACTA could be re-examined by the EU Parliament, if the Court decides it respects fundamental rights.

In the meantime, reaction was fierce in Europe to reports of this Plan B for anti-piracy policy:

French Indignados' reaction on CETA: "Europe thinks you are idiots'

"Brussels is trying to cancel the rejection of ACTA. Did you say European democracy???"

"Goodbye ACTA, hello CETA; A new struggle begins."

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Society
religion

Brazil's Evangelical Surge Threatens Survival Of Native Afro-Brazilian Faith

Followers of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion in four traditional communities in the country’s northeast are resisting pressure to convert to evangelical Christianity.

image of Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Agencia Publica
SocietySourcesAGÊNCIA PÚBLICAfeatured-postCountriesBrazil
Géssica Amorim

Among a host of images of saints and Afro-Brazilian divinities known as orixás, Abel José, 42, an Umbanda priest, lights some candles, picks up his protective beads and adjusts the straw hat that sits atop his head. He is preparing to treat four people from neighboring villages who have come to his house in search of spiritual help and treatment for health ailments.

The meeting takes place discreetly, in a small room that has been built in the back of the garage of his house. Abel lives in the quilombo of Sítio Bredos, home to 135 families. The community, located in the municipality of Betânia of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco, is one of the municipality’s four remaining communities that have been certified as quilombos, the word used to refer to communities formed in the colonial era by enslaved Africans and/or their descendents.

In these villages there are almost no residents who still follow traditional Afro-Brazilian religions. Abel, Seu Joaquim Firmo and Dona Maura Maria da Silva are the sole remaining followers of Umbanda in the communities in which they live. A wave of evangelical missionary activity has taken hold of Betânia’s quilombos ever since the first evangelical church belonging to the Assembleia de Deus group was built in the quilombo of Bredos around 20 years ago. Since then, other evangelical, pentecostal, and neo-pentecostal churches and congregations have established themselves in the area. Today there are now nine temples spread among the four communities, home to roughly 900 families.

The temples belong to the Assembleia de Deus, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the World Church of God's Power, the latter of which has over 6,000 temples spread across Brazil and was founded by the apostle and televangelist Valdemiro Santiago, who became infamous during the pandemic for trying to sell beans that he had blessed as a Covid-19 cure. Assembleia de Deus alone, who are the largest pentecostal denomination in the world, have built five churches in Betânia’s quilombos.


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