The Jan 2nd news that Spain has full implemented it’s anti-piracy ‘Sinde Law’ was a blow to the Anti-SOPA community. It was even more painful to learn today that there’s deep allegations of US involvement and threats geared towards passing the law.
If you’ve been on Reddit, or Torrentfreak, you’ve probably seen the following allegations:
In a leaked letter sent to Spain’s outgoing President, the US ambassador to the country warned that as punishment for not passing a SOPA-style file-sharing site blocking law, Spain risked being put on a United States trade blacklist . Inclusion would have left Spain open to a range of “retaliatory options” but already the US was working with the incoming government to reach its goals.
United States government interference in Spain’s intellectual property laws had long been suspected, but it was revelations from Wikileaks that finally confirmed the depth of its involvement.
More than 100 leaked cables showed that the US had helped draft new Spanish copyright legislation and had heavily influenced the decisions of both the government and opposition.
Okay, so then if we hop over to WikiLeaks (the same uber-political anti-American site that’s been caught multiple times sharing carefully doctored misinformation) this should be all over the front page right? Nope. Nothing posted to WikiLeaks since December 16th 2011. Apparently the only thing the Wikileaks folks are excited about is getting more donations to ‘fight the evil US’. 
So if we look around we should be able to find the leaked cables right? Nope. (Please correct me here if I’m wrong.)
What’s more there’s conjecture that the ‘supposed’ US involvement was a ploy to put the blame for the bill on the US when the Spanish government had long term goals to put the bill into effect. Apparently the furore over further meddling by the US in Spanish politics might distract the majority of the voting public and save the current political parties from losing support over pushing through the bill?
Talk about confusing! I have a headache just thinking about all these people standing in a loose circle pointing at each other saying ‘blame them!’.
It will be interesting to see how this news unfolds and if the US administration will dispute the claims or just lump it since the Spanish anti-piracy bill clearly falls in-line with current direction of the US policy makers?
On a slightly different topic of heads, Chia Bart has sprouted:
Sorta gross isn’t it?
It was a moisture issue, I had to put a bag over his head for the whole night to get the sprouting to happen. Now it should just need some light and regular water top-ups to get the green to start showing.