text:
Film Review: Another Winner from the Creative Team of 'Toy Story 4'
Forky
CHICAGO – When you've brought to life one of the greatest animation series ever produced, there is not much to prove. The "Toy Story" series has relied on the strong and emotional stories since 1995, and after a nine year break comes back for one more intriguing spin for their characters, finding a new path in "Toy Story 4."
Film Review: 'John Wick 3 Parabellum' is More Bang For Your Buck
Submitted by PatrickMcD on May 17, 2019 - 8:57am
John Wick 3 Parabellum
The Adjudicator
CHICAGO – I must admit that upon initial viewing, I didn't care much for the original "John Wick" film. Coming as it did in the post "Taken" wave of old guy revenge thrillers, I found it to be stylish but supremely silly nonsense, since it was the death of puppy as the spark that lit the fuse. However as time has gone by, John Wick has grown on me.
Film Review: Glaring Lack of Originality Handicaps 'The Bad Batch'
The Bad Batch
Yolanda Ross
CHICAGO – Dystopia has been dissed out. Mining the negative vibe future world can't seem to touch the rich creative vein any more and the reserves seem dry. Writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour may have an element within her interpretation that is hard core, but it's not enough to understand the overall vision of her tomorrow world, except that we're all part of "The Bad Batch."
Interview, Audio: Director Ana Lily Amirpour Stirs up 'The Bad Batch'
CHICAGO – The dystopia – or negative future world – is a genre staple, from "Soylent Green" to "Max Max." The latest film to ponder the possibilities is "The Bad Batch," from writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour. This is her sophomore feature, after "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night," and features Suki Waterhouse in the lead role.
Film Review: 'John Wick: Chapter 2' Adds Artistry to Mass Murder
Submitted by JonHC on February 16, 2017 - 8:08am
derek kolstad
Gun-fu
The Matrix Reunion
CHICAGO – It takes a special kind of film that enthralls the audience so much that they stop caring about the body count and are more concerned with the main character running out of bullets. "John Wick: Chapter 2" offers the same cathartic effect as watching a Nazi get punched but in an infinitely more picturesque package.
Film Review: Beauty Becomes Beastly in Uneven 'The Neon Demon'
Bella Heathcoate
CHICAGO – "The Neon Demon" is definitely worth seeing, if only to create an understanding as to what you think beauty is, but the film suffers in its last quarter by taking a turn towards horror. This mix of decisions by director Nicolas Winding Refn ("Drive") is audacious and maddening.
Interview: Elle Fanning, Nicolas Winding Refn on 'The Neon Demon'
CHICAGO – The contemplation of beauty gets a little more truth in a new film by Nicolas Winding Refn ("Drive") entitled "The Neon Demon." It features Elle Fanning as Jesse, a naive girl who wants to break into the world of modeling, and does so in an unexpected way. The symbolic film has both strange drama and touches of horror.
Film Review: Keanu Reeves in Ludicrous Premise as 'John Wick'
Submitted by PatrickMcD on October 24, 2014 - 3:41pm
CHICAGO – Keanu Reeves has been in a lot of dogs over the years, but rarely has he left such a high body count while avenging one of them. "John Wick" is a brutal revenge thriller where Reeves is a ex-mob enforcer who goes on a murderous rampage leaving blood on every doorstep to avenge the death of his dog.
Blu-ray Review: 2013 Hollywood Disaster '47 Ronin' Rescued by Mediocrity
Submitted by NickHC on April 9, 2014 - 12:28pm
Carl Rinsch
Hossein Amini
Ko Shibasaki
Theater, TV, DVD & Blu-Ray
CHICAGO – If you've ever wondered what the difference is between a director and a producer, let "47 Ronin" explain how the hierarchy of creativity hinders the evolution of even the most straightforward-sounding pitches. "47 Ronin" is the type of samurai movie set in Japan that features native actors speaking only English, while Keanu Reeves stars as an outsider clearly plunked into the picture for stateside star power.
HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: 5 '47 Ronin' Blu-ray Combo Packs with Keanu Reeves
Submitted by HollywoodChicago.com on March 30, 2014 - 5:12pm
Hiroshi Sogabe
HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Combo Pack
Jin Akanishi
CHICAGO – In the latest HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Combo Pack with our unique social giveaway technology, we have 5 free Blu-ray and DVD combo packs up for grabs for the home entertainment release of the new visually stunning 3D film "47 Ronin" starring Keanu Reeves!


… That is unless you're playing online with friends, holed up in a safehouse arguing about who ate the last pineapple or coming back from a scavenging run with someone always there to make a hot cuppa (until the power goes out). So, whilst it's not my favourite genre, the online aspect has made this a growing favourite in weekly gaming sessions. So, like an enthusiastic ornithologist trying desperately to show you their holiday snaps, here's our group photo taken at the North Farm; our own little slice of the apocalypse that we like to call home.
It'd be a nice Kodak moment of we weren't all huddled awkwardly behind the couch, and it's the same in the kitchen; we stand by the oven, cooking dinner and then loiter close to a table and chairs eating. All this isn't so bad compared to the ultimate crime of standing in the middle of the room next to a perfectly good comfy chair reading a book. In recent sessions this has started to make me physically uncomfortable; I spend a good portion of my day sitting down, getting home and flomping onto the couch is one of the best feelings after a long day. Seeing my character ingame returning from a frantic and risky dash into a warehouse to liberate some playing cards and a dead mouse, unable to kick-back in the lounge for a quick round of Kanasta detracts from the sense of achievement of surviving another 24 hours. It's not just PZ (which it is worth mentioning is currently still early access so sitting might be implemented later), games in general have a complex relationship with sitting and chairs.
One reason for this is that it's usually not an issue. Ingame the player is generally expected to be 'doing something', chairs feature as 'common objects', populating briefing rooms and office space, silently waiting to tumble around in an explosion demonstrating a physics engine or to be theatrically swept away by some rampaging monster. It's when the player needs to interact with the chair that things start to get awkward.
In real life, many chairs (dining chairs, office chairs etc.) are considered moveable objects, we push them in, pull them out when we sit on them, slide them out the way when we need to go past. In the world of games however things are a little different; if the player needs to interact (or 'sit' as many of us call it) with a chair, it is much simpler for the chair to be considered as a fixed object. Around 10 years ago I descended into madness and spent a few months playing only the sims (it all had to stop when I started speaking sim-ish and hallucinating green diamonds hovering over my friends and family). Chair issues are rampant in the sims; your first house is small by necessity, you can spend time carefully planning the smallest room you need in order to contain all the necessary objects before you realise that although the room contains that table and chairs, and it looks like your adopted sim-puppets should be able to move around, they can't push those fiddly ikea-knockoffs under the table and hours and hours of ingame time is wasted as your sim-minions attempt (and fail) to navigate the kitchen.
Since then, I'd like to think that my gaming tastes have matured… or at least evolved, but the chair problem hasn't. In the 16-bit era chairs were often relegated to background art; flavour for a tavern or pews in a church. When they weren't, the two-dimensional world forced the player to jump over them and little has changed in many cases. 1st person games which pride themselves on some level of realism allow the player to leap onto them like they are pillars of immovable granite evoking no flicker of surprise from the vacant stare of any surrounding NPC's. Move into a region which has fixed-seating such as a cinema where in real life you might consider sidestepping down an aisle and you can be reasonably sure to encounter either an invisible wall, or hum 'Deeper Underground' to yourself as you jamiroquai over the top. The use of chairs as just another 'lump-of-stuff' in the game-world was cemented in Kim Swift's post-portal cutesy puzzler 'Quantum Conundrum'. Here players are forced to essentially use perfectly fine looking couches as platforms and weights to solve puzzles. Admittedly it's all part of the charm, but given the game's setting of 'mansion' isn't it telling that a design choice was taken to use a chair as an item, that you might normally find just lying around not serving any other function, to jump all over? So the chair in modern games is largely either an immovable obstacle, a fidgety piece of physics, or (possibly the closest to its actual use) a device to interact with and move the plot along (i.e. Sit Down to talk to character X and find out your next objective).
The Ship, the now ghostly servers allow you to wander around a source engine renderings of Art-Deco cruise ships, sipping cocktails and murdering your fellow passengers for money. It's a very playable, silly and non-gamer accessible online game if you can find a few friends (Also everyone seems to have multiple gift copies in their Steam Inventory) but it also boasts being able to just sit down and watch the world go by… and of course work out who is a murderer by subtly person watching.
.. and secondly 'ICO'; saving and seating never merged more perfectly than taking a seat with Yorda or loading a game to find yourself waking up on a stone couch head resting on her shoulder. It's a mutually exclusive arrangement where either you are sat on the couch and they are running around fighting evil, or they get to sit down and fall asleep on that couch whilst you .. erm.. fight evil (depending on your vocation).
As always I'm not entirely sure I have a point; maybe I'm pining for better ingame seating, or just making an observation. Either way it's a big part of our lives that games often overlook.. and I like sitting down..


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Genevieve George
Genevieve George [McFaul] (September 27, 1927 – March 11, 2002) was a Canadian catcher who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Listed at 5' 3", 110 lb., she batted and threw right handed.[1][2]
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
Born: (1927-09-27)September 27, 1927
Died: March 11, 2002(2002-03-11) (aged 74)
Batted: Right Threw: Right
Muskegon Lassies (1948)
Women in Baseball – AAGPBL Permanent Display at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum (unveiled in 1988)
Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Honorary Induction (1998)
Born in Regina, Saskatchewan,[1] Genevieve George was one of the fifty seven girls from Canada who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during its 12 year history.
George grew up in a household with nine children, which gave her plenty of playmates. At age 13, she began playing in a city softball league. When she was 16, six other Regina ballplayers joined the All American League, including her elder sister Bonnie Baker.[2]
Like her sister, George was a catcher, a valuable commodity in the league. She then earned an opportunity in 1948 and was assigned to the Muskegon Lassies, where she played as a backup for incumbent Dorothy Maguire.[3] The 20-year rookie was sparingly used, as she only caught 14 games during the season. George then was not offered a contract to return the next season.[2]
She posted a batting average of .154 (2-for-13) with a run scored and two runs batted in.[3] On the field, she handled 19 putouts with two assists without committing an error.[3]
Afterwards, Genevieve came to Regina and started to play at third base for the city team. In 1951, she married to Canadian Football League tackle Jim McFaul. The couple fostered two sons, Jim and George, and had five grandchildren.[2] In between, she played with Regina through 1959, winning the World Championship with the team in 1954. She widowed in 1994.[2]
In 1988, Genevieve received further recognition when she became part of Women in Baseball, a permanent display based at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York which was unveiled to honor the entire All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.[4] She also gained honorary induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998.[5]
She died on March 11, 2002 in Regina, Saskatchewan, at the age of 74.[1]
Career statisticsEdit
15 13 1 2 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 4 .154 .154 .154 .308
^ a b c Genevieve McFaul (George). All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Retrieved 2019-04-08.
^ a b c d e Madden, W. C. (2005) The Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: A Biographical Dictionary. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-2263-0
^ a b c Madden, W. C. (2000) All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Record Book. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-0597-8
^ Before A League of Their Own. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
^ Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame – 1998 Induction. Retrieved 2019-04-13.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genevieve_George&oldid=894552095"

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Pythonic way to get all the unique factorial combination of 3d matrix So I have 2 lists, one looks like:
drivers = ['bob','Lenny','frank','sunny']

the other looks like:
cities = ['Austin','San Antonio','Houston']

This could be easily represented by a table like:
            |  bob  | lenny | frank | sunny
Austin      |  $45  |  $15  |  $77  |  $33
San Antonio |  $12  |  $23  |  $10  |  $18
Houston     |  $44  |  $99  |  $78  |  $12

So I want to calculate all the VALID combinations, meaning that I can leave a drive outside the schedule but I cannot put a driver on 2 cities at the same, and I cannot leave a city without a driver.
Any ideas?

A: If you can make the assumption that all cities in cities are unique, you can simply generate all itertools.permutations of length len(cities), and (optionally) zip them with the cities like:
def valid_combinations(cities,drivers):
    return itertools.permutations(drivers,len(cities))

Or if you want to zip them with the cities:
def valid_combinations(cities,drivers):
    for perm in itertools.permutations(drivers,len(cities)):
        yield zip(cities,perm)

For the last one we generate:
>>> list(map(tuple,valid_combinations(cities,drivers)))
[(('Austin', 'bob'), ('San Antonio', 'Lenny'), ('Houston', 'frank')),
(('Austin', 'bob'), ('San Antonio', 'Lenny'), ('Houston', 'sunny')),
(('Austin', 'bob'), ('San Antonio', 'frank'), ('Houston', 'Lenny')),
(('Austin', 'bob'), ('San Antonio', 'frank'), ('Houston', 'sunny')),
(('Austin', 'bob'), ('San Antonio', 'sunny'), ('Houston', 'Lenny')),
(('Austin', 'bob'), ('San Antonio', 'sunny'), ('Houston', 'frank')),
(('Austin', 'Lenny'), ('San Antonio', 'bob'), ('Houston', 'frank')),
(('Austin', 'Lenny'), ('San Antonio', 'bob'), ('Houston', 'sunny')),
(('Austin', 'Lenny'), ('San Antonio', 'frank'), ('Houston', 'bob')),
(('Austin', 'Lenny'), ('San Antonio', 'frank'), ('Houston', 'sunny')),
(('Austin', 'Lenny'), ('San Antonio', 'sunny'), ('Houston', 'bob')),
(('Austin', 'Lenny'), ('San Antonio', 'sunny'), ('Houston', 'frank')),
(('Austin', 'frank'), ('San Antonio', 'bob'), ('Houston', 'Lenny')),
(('Austin', 'frank'), ('San Antonio', 'bob'), ('Houston', 'sunny')),
(('Austin', 'frank'), ('San Antonio', 'Lenny'), ('Houston', 'bob')),
(('Austin', 'frank'), ('San Antonio', 'Lenny'), ('Houston', 'sunny')),
(('Austin', 'frank'), ('San Antonio', 'sunny'), ('Houston', 'bob')),
(('Austin', 'frank'), ('San Antonio', 'sunny'), ('Houston', 'Lenny')),
(('Austin', 'sunny'), ('San Antonio', 'bob'), ('Houston', 'Lenny')),
(('Austin', 'sunny'), ('San Antonio', 'bob'), ('Houston', 'frank')),
(('Austin', 'sunny'), ('San Antonio', 'Lenny'), ('Houston', 'bob')),
(('Austin', 'sunny'), ('San Antonio', 'Lenny'), ('Houston', 'frank')),
(('Austin', 'sunny'), ('San Antonio', 'frank'), ('Houston', 'bob')),
(('Austin', 'sunny'), ('San Antonio', 'frank'), ('Houston', 'Lenny'))]

So in the first case 'bob' drives to 'Austin', 'Lenny' to 'San Antonio' and 'frank' to 'Houston'; in the second case 'bob' drives to 'Austin', 'Lenny' to 'San Antonio' and 'sunny' to 'Houston'; and so on. The total number of valid configurations is here 2×3×4=24 which is also the number of elements that are yielded.
Nevertheless if you want to find the optimal combinations - something that is not clear from your question - you can use a variant of the Hungarian algorithm to solve this in O(n3).

A: A way for a hierarchical presentation, using Pandas Dataframe:
with df :
            bob  lenny  frank  sunny
Austin       45     15     77     33
SanAntonio   12     23     10     18
Houston      44     99     78     12

We can do :
m,n=df.shape
idx=[list(t) for t in itertools.permutations(range(n),m) ]
cash=df.values[range(m),idx]
staff=np.take(df.columns.tolist(),idx)
total=pd.DataFrame(index=staff,data=cash,columns=df.index)
total['amount']=cash.sum(axis=1)
print (total.sort_values('amount',ascending=False))

For :
                       Austin  SanAntonio  Houston  amount
(frank, sunny, lenny)      77          18       99     194
(frank, bob, lenny)        77          12       99     188
(bob, sunny, lenny)        45          18       99     162
(bob, frank, lenny)        45          10       99     154
(bob, lenny, frank)        45          23       78     146
(frank, lenny, bob)        77          23       44     144
(sunny, bob, lenny)        33          12       99     144
(sunny, frank, lenny)      33          10       99     142
(bob, sunny, frank)        45          18       78     141
(frank, sunny, bob)        77          18       44     139
(sunny, lenny, frank)      33          23       78     134
(sunny, bob, frank)        33          12       78     123
(frank, lenny, sunny)      77          23       12     112
(lenny, sunny, frank)      15          18       78     111
(lenny, bob, frank)        15          12       78     105
(frank, bob, sunny)        77          12       12     101
(sunny, lenny, bob)        33          23       44     100
(sunny, frank, bob)        33          10       44      87
(bob, lenny, sunny)        45          23       12      80
(lenny, sunny, bob)        15          18       44      77
(lenny, frank, bob)        15          10       44      69
(bob, frank, sunny)        45          10       12      67
(lenny, bob, sunny)        15          12       12      39
(lenny, frank, sunny)      15          10       12      37

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: Appending to a tuple I am having the weirdest problem, perhaps someone could explain this to me. I am trying to do some tuple manipulation:
rec_tuple = ()
sender = 'a'
message = 'b'
subject = 'c'
for i in range(1,4):
    message = (subject, message, sender)
    rec_tuple = rec_tuple+message

output for rec_tuple:
('c', 'b', 'a', 'c', ('c', 'b', 'a'), 'a', 'c', ('c', ('c', 'b', 'a'), 'a'), 'a')

The tuple concatenation doesn't seem to be working properly. But when I do:
for i in range(1,4):
    message = ('a', 'b', 'c')
    rec_tuple = rec_tuple+message

output for rec_tuple:
('a', 'b', 'c', 'a', 'b', 'c', 'a', 'b', 'c')

Which agrees with the docs. So why can't I pass in variables to create my tuple? Is there another way that I should be doing this?

A: message = (subject, message, sender)
rec_tuple = rec_tuple+message

In this case, you are replacing message on every iteration with the value of message and subject and sender. So, you are nesting the message tuple.
To fix that, try using some other variable name
message1 = (subject, message, sender)
rec_tuple = rec_tuple + message1

Better use the tuple as it is
rec_tuple = rec_tuple + (subject, message, sender)

Even better, use short hand notation
rec_tuple += (subject, message, sender)

This lets the user understand that you are concatenating the tuples and reduces the number of lines as well.
Output
('c', 'b', 'a', 'c', 'b', 'a', 'c', 'b', 'a')

A: You're stomping on message in the loop. Use a different name.

A: You're using the variable "message" for two different purposes. Fix that and your problem will go away.


text:
Filtering by Tag: Flint Taylor
False Light Theory Illuminate Media Wrongs in Evans Case?
August 11, 2015 / Martin Preib
False light is a legal theory that allows someone to file a lawsuit against a media outlet for publishing offensive and false facts.
Closely related to defamation, the false light theory claims that information released about an individual is wrong if it is misleading, unreasonable, and malicious.
The legal theory holds the following elements: a publication about someone, one made with actual malice, and one that places the individual in a perspective that would be considered highly offensive by a reasonable person.
More and more this false light legal theory seems to address the abuses Chicago Police Commander Glenn Evans has endured by Chicago's media machine.
Evans was indicted last year for allegedly sticking a gun in the mouth of gang member Ricky Williams after a chase in 2013.
A few days after Williams was arrested, Evans was called down to headquarters and ordered by the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA)—the agency that investigates police misconduct—to submit his pistol for a DNA swab. A state police DNA report later indicated the swab showed Ricky Williams' DNA was on Evans' gun.
A media frenzy followed, describing the report as indicative of Evans' guilt. Part of that frenzy included reporters requesting Evans' work history and publishing complaints made against him over the course of his career.
But the criminal case against Evans has taken some heavy blows in the last few months, not the least of which is the emergence of possible exculpatory evidence. In June, the Cook County State's Attorney announced that this evidence emerged from an inquiry by the city's Inspector General (IG) into the IPRA, the agency that investigated Evans.
Exactly what that exculpatory evidence is, isn't clear. Judge Diane Cannon has imposed a protective order in the case.
But a reporter for public radio station WBEZ, Chip Mitchell, has stated in his reports that one aspect of the investigation by the IG into IPRA is the release of the DNA report of Evans' gun to the media. Mitchell and other media outlets have stated that this report was first released by Mitchell.
If IPRA released the report, it would be a significant violation of Evans' due process and a serious blow in the case against him. It could be construed as an underhanded act to portray Evans in a negative light.
Did the reporter who allegedly first released the DNA report, Chip Mitchell, know that its release might be a violation of Evans' due process? How did he get hold of it?
More so, is the report even indicative of Evans' guilt at all?
Evans' attorney, Laura Morask, has stated that the DNA could have gotten on the gun in various ways. Evans never denied, for example, that he was wrestling with Williams in the course of the arrest. So why then is the DNA report portrayed as such a bombshell piece of evidence against Evans?
It may be just as feasible that the state DNA report actually bolsters Evans' account of what took place.
And what about the exculpatory evidence the prosecutor and IG have brought forth? Why didn't the media discover it in the course of their investigation? If they were being reasonable in their reporting, wouldn't they have discovered such evidence or learned that IPRA was itself the subject of an investigation?
Rather than discover this evidence, media reps like Mitchell at WBEZ and the Steve Schmadeke at the Chicago Tribune obtained the record of accusations made against Evans, records they obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
The reporters dug deeply into the allegations against Evans, but, it appears, not so deeply into other aspects of the case, such as potential misconduct by IPRA.
Then WBEZ's Chip Mitchell took it a step further. He interviewed G. Flint Taylor from the People's Law Office in an article in which Mitchell described the misconduct complaints against Evans.
Seeking a comment from Taylor is somewhat surprising.
The reason is that Taylor is the leading architect of the wrongful conviction movement in Chicago. His law firm has spent the last three decades vilifying Chicago Police Officers, claiming, among other things, that many are racist torturers. Taylor's PLO is also infamous for its long client list and associations with native terrorist groups who have committed bombings and other violence throughout the country, many of them driven by an intensely anti-American, pro-Marxist ideology.
But in the last few years, Taylor's claims about police corruption have taken their own body blows. Some of the seminal wrongful convictions Taylor and other wrongful conviction activists have cited as evidence of police wrongdoing have imploded, much as the Evans case now seems to be.
Chief among those is the Anthony Porter exoneration in 1999. Once the lynchpin wrongful conviction case in Illinois, the Porter exoneration is showing itself to be nothing more than a criminal conspiracy by wrongful conviction activists at Northwestern University, longtime allies of Taylor. The evidence of wrongdoing in the case was never difficult to find, but Taylor and his wrongful conviction cohorts ignored it for more than a decade.
Another key murder case, this time a mass murder in which seven people died in an arson, is also revealing itself to be every bit as corrupt as the Porter case. In this arson case, Madison Hobley was exonerated and released from prison. A key witness against Hobley was Evans, who maintains to this day—in defiance of the wrongful conviction mythology posited by Taylor—that Hobley was guilty of the arson.
The Evans connection to the Hobley arson in light of the indictment on charges that would undermine his credibility in any criminal case is a connection Mitchell, or any other reporter, will not draw.
Mitchell does not explain is just why he still considers Taylor a reliable source for commentary on Evans' case.
The evidence of wrongdoing among wrongful conviction lawyers and activists, including freeing a mass murderer and making him rich, pales in comparison to the accusations against Evans.
But Mitchell, and the Chicago media in general, nevertheless insist on running to Taylor for an almost obligatory comment against the police.
And Taylor delivered:
"He's [Evans'] one of the worst [excessive-force] repeater cops in the history of the city of Chicago," Taylor said. "He should be fired."
One of the worst in the history of Chicago?
A police officer who went to the upper ranks of the department and worked in the most violent, crime-ridden neighborhoods is one of the worst excessive force cops in the history of the department? A police commander beloved by many people in the community, who garnered the support the superintendent and the mayor?
He should be fired?
On what basis does Taylor make this claim? And on what journalistic criteria does Mitchell publish it?
Clearly Judge Cannon did not see the misconduct complaints as holding much import. Clearly she didn't see Evans' work history in such an extreme perspective as Taylor did. In fact, Cannon ruled these misconduct complaints won't be allowed into trial:
But in terms of relevance and materiality, the court found there was nothing systematic, nothing alleged in the OPS [IPRA] records. There was no history of brutality. The vast majority were not sustained of the OPS [IPRA] records, unfounded. The defendant was actually exonerated. The petitions were withdrawn. And, again, a large portion, the defendant was not the arresting or primary officer.
So what exactly is Flint Taylor talking about?
It's almost as if Flint Taylor is the go-to guy when the media wants to press a case against police officers, when they want to hang them out to dry, as the media did to the detectives in the Porter case, and then in the Hobley case.
And then again, where is the coverage of Evans' success? Where are the discussions of his awards, the breaking down of crime statistics before and after he came to a district?
What about his medal of valor?
In fact, isn't fighting crime exactly what he was doing the night he chased Ricky Williams after observing Williams with a gun? Isn't this what the police are supposed to be doing?
If the criminal case against Evans falls apart, how can all this blatantly biased reporting not be construed as malicious, a key element in proving the "false light" legal theory?
There is one more telling development in the case.
If Evans were truly guilty, wouldn't he dread a trial? After all, he stands to lose everything: his pension, his job, his reputation, even his freedom. If he were guilty, there would likely be signs of a plea deal, but there is no evidence that Evans ever did anything but fight for a trial, as if he is chomping at the bit to get the evidence into court.
"I cannot comment directly on the case because of the protective order, but I am eager to go to trial and confident the evidence will absolutely show I am innocent," Evans told Crooked City.
These are hardly the statements and actions of a guilty man.
It's more like the conduct of a man guided by a singular vision, a vision that takes shape in the false light of the Crooked City.
Click Here to Order a Print or Electronic Copy
Martin Preib is an awarding-winning writer and Chicago Police Officer. His first book, The Wagon and Other Stories From the City was published by the University of Chicago Press. His second book, Crooked City, chronicles his investigation into Chicago's wrongful conviction movement. Told in the gripping tension of a crime novel, Crooked City paints a dire picture of the movement to release convicted killers from prison.
More Articles by Category
Anthony Porter
CHIP MITCHELL
Eric Zorn
G. Flint Taylor
Glenn Evans
Howard Morgan
Jon Burge
Madison Hobley
Mahaffey Murders
TIRC
WBEZ
Weathermen
tags / Glenn Evans, Madison Hobley, Flint Taylor, Chip Mitchell, WBEZ
The Life of the Mind
Sitting in the courtroom of Judge Erica Reddick at 26th and California, one comes to know clearly the cost of a legitimate imaginative life in Chicago.
The reason is that since the takeover of a vast part of the city by a collection of 1960s radicals through what has become known as the wrongful conviction movement, a vicious imaginative tyranny has imposed itself upon the city.
This tyranny is led by attorney G. Flint Taylor at the People's Law Office, a law firm that got its start representing the families of Black Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, who died during a shoot-out with Chicago Police and federal agents in 1969.
Since then, the clients of the PLO are a virtual Who's Who of America subversives and terrorists, many of them guilty of the most cruel and brutal crimes, including bombings. Included among them are the Weather Underground and FALN. Of the Weather Underground in particular, a common refrain in their political ideology was the call "to kill the pigs."
But it is not representing terrorists that garnered G. Flint Taylor and the PLO their fame and fortune. It was their pursuit of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. Taylor spearheaded the claims that Burge and his men for decades on the south side tortured confessions out of African American suspects.
The long, twisted tale of how Flint Taylor and his supporters created the mythology around Jon Burge and his men is a narrative that takes years to master.
Throughout all of it, Taylor's arguments against Burge hold a deep moral indignation, claiming that Burge and his men committed the worst atrocities for the worst reasons.
Wrongful conviction allies maintain their narratives with a strict political correctness. It is rare, indeed, to see one wrongful conviction law firm ever question the conclusions of another, and there is an unwavering willingness to attack their detractors with a "by any means necessary" strategy, even, it appears, when the detractors are right and there is overwhelming evidence of corruption in the wrongful conviction methods.
This group-think adherence in the movement is rooted in the political systems Taylor and his allies have openly supported for decades, the Marxist regimes that drew the romantic sympathies of the America left from the 1960s onward. These regimes maintained their power through a demanding and strict allegiance to the party line, no matter how corrupt. Like Castro's Cuba—a tryanny that still garners the adulation of the left—every institution is subordinated to whims of the ruling party.
An example of making the group-think more important than the individual is described in a new, detailed history of the Weather Underground (WU). It was the 1970s. The Weather Underground went around setting off bombs throughout the 1970s, calling for a Marxist revolution in America.
According to author Bryan Burroughs in his latest book, Days of Rage, WU members lived in what they called collectives in different cities. They would often gather together in these collectives and take turns criticizing each member, attacking each other's actions, thought patterns, their manners—anything, really—for signs of anti-revolutionary, bourgeois sensibilities. These attacks were reportedly quite vicious and were aimed at undermining the members' individuality in favor of the group party line. Some members could not endure these vicious attacks and left the movement, according to Burroughs. That meant that only the most ideologically driven members remained.
Taylor's methods have worked. Banding together with their narratives, Taylor and his supporters have freed one inmate after another and accumulated millions in legal settlements from the taxpayers, from which they, in turn, increase their power over judges, prosecutors, aldermen, activists, intellectuals, and, most of all, the media. They have also entrenched themselves in university departments, selling themselves to students as committed activists and crusaders for civil rights.
The reason they have been able to do so is the fact that Chicago's corruption is such that its institutions are not driven by principle. Instead, they are guided solely by the currents of power. As Taylor and the wrongful conviction movement gained in power in the city, the city acceded to them, despite the fact that Taylor achieves these victories while many attorneys, police officers, journalists, and citizens reject both his claims and tactics.
All of this brings us back to the criminal courts at 26th and California, in particular the courtroom of Circuit Court Judge Erica Reddick.
This is where you will find Taylor and PLO partner Joey Mogul these days, as they prepare for a hearing in which they hope to exonerate yet another convicted killer, this time Alonzo Smith. The claim for exoneration is—drum roll, please—the claim that Burge and his men dragged Smith down to the basement and tortured him into confessing.
From the PLO website:
…in an important ruling, Circuit Court of Cook County Judge Erica L. Reddick granted Alonzo Smith a new hearing to present evidence that he was tortured by Chicago Police and forced to confess to a crime he did not commit. The night he was tortured, Mr. Smith was left bloodied on the floor, fearing for his life. He eventually relented to the abuse and falsely confessed to the murder and robbery of James Fullilove.
This tortured confession led to his wrongful conviction and incarceration for 20 years. Mr. Smith has steadfastly maintained his innocence and has persistently alleged that he was tortured by Sergeant John Byrne and Detective Peter Dignan, members of the now convicted, former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge's notorious Midnight crew.
The wrongful conviction movement has become so powerful in Chicago—in large part because of Taylor's PLO— that convicted killers can get out of prison just by claiming torture.
But Reddick's courtroom is also where once can observe the willingness of Taylor to silence any opposition to his claims.
Recently, Taylor subpoenaed the email records of Chicago cop and author Martin Preib.
Preib, the author of two books and several magazine articles, is a vocal critic of Taylor and his wrongful conviction claims. He, along with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bill Crawford and two retired ATF investigators, now private detectives, Jim Delorto and John Mazzola, successfully fought to get Alstory Simon freed from prison.
Simon had been incarcerated through the actions of Professor David Protess and his students at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, longtime allies of Taylor and PLO. Simon's 1999 conviction for a double homicide paved the way for the release of Anthony Porter for the same murders.
The four men argued that Protess, his private investigator Paul Ciolino, and Northwestern students framed Simon as part of a plan to exonerate Anthony Porter in 1999.
Preib's book, Crooked City, is a step-by-step account of his investigation into the Simon case and the fight to free Simon. Crawford has also recently published another book about the Porter case, Justice Perverted: How the Innocence Project at Northwestern's School of Journalism Sent an Innocent Man to Prison
Last year, in response to the work by Preib, Crawford, Delorto and Mazzola, Cook County Prosecutor Anita Alvarez released Simon from prison, saying wrongful conviction activists at Northwestern University violated Simon's rights when they obtained a confession from him.
Then, a few months ago, Circuit Court Judge Thomas Byrne declared that Simon was innocent.
It was the obliteration of the key wrongful conviction case in the state's history, the one upon which the mythology of the movement had been built. In the Porter exoneration, the claim was that—just like in so many of Taylor's cases—the detectives framed Porter. It was eventually claimed that they even tortured Porter. But even a cursory review of the case rejects such torture claims as ridiculous. It was physically impossible, for the detectives never met Porter; they only obtained a warrant for his arrest based on witness statements.
The fact that not one wrongful conviction activist ever acknowledged the corruption in the Porter case is a chilling sign of their party-line adherence, a solidarity that achieves absurd heights, for the claim that detectives could be accused of torturing someone they never even met in the course of their investigation was never acknowledged by one single wrongful conviction activist or journalist who supported them.
In the face of this ideological tyranny the wrongful conviction movement holds over the city, of which Taylor is a kind of godfather, Preib, Crawford, Delorto and Mazzolla nevertheless were able to free Simon.
One would think that the advocates of this so called "wrongful conviction" movement and their supporters in the media would be interested in what Preib, Delorto, Crawford, and Mazzola have to say. One would think that they would want to know more about their arguments on key wrongful conviction cases, especially as their claims have been tested in the courts, and won. Especially since their arguments have sprung an innocent man from prison.
But that's not the way it works in Flint Taylor's Chicago.
In fact, Preib's investigation and willingness to reveal the corruption at the heart of the wrongful conviction movement only intensifies Taylor's ideological rage.
So Taylor demands Preib's personal emails.
In perhaps any other city but Chicago, the request by the PLO to demand the records of a published author would be laughed out of court. In any other city but Chicago an attempt to harass a writer in such a manner would elicit anger over the violation of free speech. They are records that clearly should be subject to the statues protecting journalists. These emails should be protected by the first amendment, by the rights of privacy.
But not Chicago, where the party line—like some Soviet outpost—rules above all else, even the basic tenants of the Constitution.
So Judge Reddick rejected Preib's motion—with little explanation or legal justification—that his personal emails should be protected. She passed them over to Taylor and Mogul, who gleefully took them.
What Taylor and Mogul will do by getting the emails is not clear, save that there is no doubt they will be used in some way to maintain their party line about Burge and the wrongful conviction movement.
None of this is any surprise to Preib and Crawford. They've learned one essential truth in their crusade to free Alstory Simon: The closer one gets to undermining a wrongful conviction narrative, the more vicious the response from guys like Flint Taylor and their supporters.
Here is the rub for Taylor and his allies: Follow the evidence of corruption in the Porter case, and much of entire wrongful conviction mythology—the one Taylor largely built—collapses.
Consider, for example, what happened in the years after Porter was exonerated and Alstory Simon was sent to prison.
Porter's exoneration initiated a flood of similar claims that resulted in inmates being set free.
Former Governor George Ryan played a crucial role. Ryan claimed he was so moved by the Porter exoneration, it compelled him to place a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. Later, he harkened back to the Porter case as he freed several other convicted killers from death row.
What made these later exonerations so unusual was the fact that no new evidence arose that pointed to the inmates' innocence. In other words, the entire criminal justice system bolstered their convictions, but a governor, one who would eventually be sent to prison himself, nevertheless pardoned the four men, Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Stanley Howard, and Leroy Orange. The pardon of the four men infuriated prosecutors and police alike.
From the New York Times:
Richard A. Devine, the Cook County state's attorney, issued a statement this afternoon calling the pardons ''outrageous and unconscionable.''
''These cases against these men are still before our courts, and it is the courts that should decide the issues in these cases,'' Mr. Devine said, referring to pending appeals. ''By his actions today the governor has breached faith with the memory of the dead victims, their families and the people he was elected to serve.''
Though 102 condemned inmates have been exonerated nationwide since the death penalty was re-instituted in the mid-1970's, several experts said they knew of no other case of an inmate being pardoned directly off death row…
Governor Ryan's action today is also different because Mr. Hobley and the others -- Stanley Howard, Leroy Orange and Aaron Patterson -- have been unable to convince judges or prosecutors that they were wrongly convicted.
These men were "…never been able to convince judges or prosecutors that they were wrongly convicted"?
In any city not caught in the web of Taylor's party-line propaganda, such an egregious violation of the entire criminal justice system would have initiated howls of protest.
Especially when one takes a close look at the cases, particularly the Hobley case.
Hobley was convicted of setting a 1987 fire that killed seven people, including his own wife and child. It was a legendary crime scene in Chicago, the fire department pulling out horribly burned bodies, and more than 17 people injured, often grotesquely, from jumping out the third floor window to escape the flames.
The evidence was overwhelming, including multiple confessions by Hobley in front of different investigators.
The detectives who worked the case and saw Hobley go free were furious. They prepared long and hard to defend their investigation in Hobley's civil trial, the one where he was attempting to become a millionaire by suing the city.
The fact that the detectives fought desperately to take the case to trial is hardly the behavior of crooked cops. If they had actually abused Hobley, the last place they would want to go would be a civil trial in front of a frothing collection of wrongful conviction attorneys, who could gather more evidence against them.
In preparation for the civil trial, private investigators Jim Delorto and John Mazzola once again played a key role. They uncovered even more evidence that showed Hobley's overwhelming guilt and the absurdity of his exoneration.
Part of their investigation, for example, included going to the residence of Hobley's mother. It was here that police first encountered Hobley hours after the 1987 fire.
They met Hobley at his mother's apartment. Suddenly, without any prompting, Hobley handed the detectives a bag with clothes in it, saying that the detectives would probably want it. The detectives had made no request for his clothes. In fact, they weren't even thinking about it. To them, Hobley was just a witness.
This gesture by Hobley surprised the detectives. Who hands clothes to cops without them even asking? They took the bag and put it in the trunk of their car. This handing over of the clothes would become another piece of evidence pointing to Hobley's guilt, because the clothes Hobley gave them did not match the description of the clothes he was seen wearing by several witnesses right after the fire at the crime scene.
Because of this discrepancy in the clothes, detectives later obtained a warrant to search the residence of Hobley's mother to see if they could find the real clothes Hobley was wearing, and submit them for testing, for evidence such as gasoline spills.
But the detectives came up empty.
There was a good reason why.
Delorto and Mazzola found out years later when they returned to the apartment of Hobley's mother, during their re-investigation for the civil case against them. When they got there, the Hobleys had moved away. Delorto and Mizzola met with the landlady.
She had quite a story to tell them.
She told Delorto and Mazzola that the night of the fire, Hobley's mother came to her apartment and handed her some clothes and told her to keep them so the police would not find them. The mother threatened the landlady with harm if she didn't comply. Terrified, the landlady did what she was told.
Now that the Hobleys had moved away, she was willing to tell the truth.
The new evidence Mazzola and Delorto dug up didn't matter in the end. The detectives would never get their civil trial. The city settled with Hobley's lawyers right before the trial was to start, shocking the entire police department. The detectives had prepared for months to show that the criminal justice system had worked when it convicted Hobley of the seven murders, and the city just caved in. A mass murderer walked right out of death row and became a multi-millionaire.
Bad enough, right?
Well, it gets worse. It always gets worse.
Hobley's lawsuit also named Jon Burge, though there is scant evidence Burge had anything to do with the original criminal investigation.
In the course of the case, Jon Burge denied ever abusing anyone. This denial became the foundation for the long-coveted criminal conviction Taylor and his movement sought against Burge, for Burge was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for making these denials.
That's how Burge ended up in prison.
But now that the narrative over the Porter case has been destroyed by Crawford, Preib, Mazzola and Delorto, there is a major problem for the wrongful conviction movement. The fraudulent Porter exoneration paved the way for Hobley's exoneration, and now the Hobley exoneration appears every bit as dirty as Porter's.
So one question rises up against Taylor and the wrongful conviction crowd: In order to get their long sought-after conviction against Jon Burge, did the wrongful conviction machine knowingly liberate a man who incinerated his own family?
It's a question that can't be asked, not as long as Taylor and his allies author the party line in Chicago.
Instead, the full weight of the wrongful conviction movement will be invoked to avoid this question and attack anyone who asks it, just as the full weight of the wrongful conviction movement went to work to vilify Bill Crawford in his crusade to liberate the wrongfully convicted Alstory Simon.
One reason the question cannot be asked is the fact that it undermines the moral sanctimony with which Taylor has unleashed his 30-year crusade against Burge and the Chicago Police Department. The question takes the first step in transforming Taylor from an icon of principled justice to another seedy player in a city that feeds on its own corruption.
Consider: Whatever moral indignation Taylor employs against Jon Burge pales in comparison to the mounting evidence of letting a mass murderer like Madison Hobley out of prison, making him rich, and using him as a means to indict Jon Burge.
Which brings us back to another compelling question:
What is the cost for someone, particularly a writer, of imagining the city outside the rigid dictates of Taylor's political correctness?
The answer to that question resides on the second floor of the criminal courts building at 26th and California, room 206 to be specific, the courtroom of Cook County Judge Erica Reddick. There a writer might find himself coughing up emails to Taylor and Mogul by an order from Reddick.
This is the price you pay for an imaginative life outside the dictates of the most Crooked City.
Alstory Simon
Andrea Lyon
Anita Alvarez
Central Park Five
Charles Salvatore
Ciolino
David Protess
Dick Devine
Dohrn
Flint Taylor
Larry Grathwohl
Paul Ciolino
Protess
Steve Mills
Thomas Epach
Thomas Gainer
Wrongful Conviction
categories / PLO, G. Flint Taylor
tags / Flint Taylor, Anthony Porter, Anita Alvarez, Alstory Simon, Northwestern, Innocence Project


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Don't Call Me Illegal
Written by Mark Mayberry on August 24, 2012
Since President Barack Obama made his decree to the country to look the other way on illegal immigration, the debate cup "hath runneth over." The debate has literally split the country: in a recent FOXNEWS poll, a little over fifty percent of those polled agreed with what should now be called the Obama Immigration Edict.
On the heels of this debate comes another movement that is slowly gaining ground and is sure to start yet another firestorm of discussion around the water cooler and dinner table. There is a national movement known as "Drop the I Word"; this group has been pressuring major media outlets as well as radio personalities to stop calling illegal aliens, just that, illegal.
Out of this movement, hundreds of smaller movements have sprung forth. One of these movements has made its way into the national news this past week. In the small town of Woodbury, New York, immigrant advocates and several illegal immigrants met to protest the use of the term "illegal." Several members of the group gave statements to the media and the general consensus in the group is that the word "illegal" is racist and makes them all feel "uncomfortable."
One quote given by Osman Canales described the word illegal like this, "It's a racist word against our community…" This is pretty much in line with statements made by the "Drop the I Word" campaign in which they referred to the word illegal as a slur.
So the question begs to be asked: when did this term become such a racist slur? Does anyone remember when it simply meant something that was against the law?
A student who was at the demonstration and described herself as undocumented said, "By saying illegal, they're assuming that we broke a criminal law." Well, unfortunately for a young lady who is a student at Tour Law Center, she must have forgotten about Section 1325 of the U.S. Code that states that illegal entry into our country is punishable by no more than six months is prison. For each resulting conviction you can spend up to two years in prison. The idea that illegal aliens are not breaking the law by simply being here is a fallacy, not to mention all of the residual crime that comes with illegal aliens like identity theft and document fraud, just to name a few.
Mr. Canales has also asserted that using the term illegal criminalizes an entire community of people. Well, this is a correct assertion to make. It does in fact criminalize an entire community of criminals. Rapists and murderers don't like to be called rapists and murderers but at the end of the day it is in fact what they are.
The fact that these groups have gone as far as to call the term "illegal" a racist slur only proves to legal Americans that it is nothing more than a ploy to change the narrative in the United States on immigration. Race has been used as a tool to change many narratives in political discourse over the years but never to the point of converting what amounts to a universal adjective to a racial hot button. What group is being racially stereotyped here?
According to Pew, illegal aliens make up four percent of the United States population. Granted the majority of these aliens come from Mexico and various other Latin American countries; however Asians, Europeans and Canadians as well as Africans make up over two million people.
So who is really pushing this agenda of "illegal" being a slur for Hispanic Americans? In reality, illegal immigrants come from every walk of life and every race. So are we looking at the first racial slur that covers everyone?
In closing, we should look at the reality of what life is like in the United States. As much as illegal aliens seek to be part of the American fabric, they also seek to set themselves apart. Illegal aliens, particularly of Hispanic origins, are guilty of refusing to assimilate into the culture of the United States. Just last month an Olympian carried both the American and Mexican flag to the podium to receive his metal. Until this group of people seeks to be apart of America, there is little chance that America will be willing to welcome them in as one of their own.
Image:Immigrant rights march for amnesty in downtown Los Angeles, California on May Day, 2006.Courtesy of Jonathan Mcintosh
Mark Mayberry
Mark Mayberry lives in Tennessee and is pursuing a Law Degree. He hopes to work in politics and law after graduating. He is also a staff writer at TruthAboutBills.org and is the operator of http://www.guerrilla-politics.com. Mark is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys spending time hunting and fishing as well as with his family. You can reach Mark on Facebook and Twitter as well as his website http://www.guerrilla-politics.com.


The Motorola Atrix is no more exclusive to Orange, and is now available on T-mobile UK. You can grab it for free on a 24 month contract of £35.75/month or more. However, there are 9 different monthly price plans that T-mobile UK is offering, Go for a cheaper or shorter contract, you will have to pay between £50 and £350 upfront for your Atrix.
Motorola Atrix is powered by Android 2.2 Froyo and sports 1GHz Dual Core processor , 5 Mp rear camera along with a front facing camera, 4 inches qHD display (960 x 540), 4G support and memory up to 16 GB on board.


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Disputing foreign direct investment
Nepal's investment strategy should be designed from a legal, not just policy, perspective.
Sabrina Singh
Published at : August 19, 2019
Updated at : August 19, 2019 10:34
In 2001, a Swiss corporation sued Pakistan in an arbitrational tribunal. Initially hired to provide pre-shipment inspection services for Pakistan's exports, the Swiss corporation claimed that by cancelling their contract, Pakistan breached its Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) with Switzerland. Thus began the arbitration case known as SGS v. Pakistan at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). From Pakistan's viewpoint, this course of action came as a bit of a surprise. This was the first time that it had faced such a legal proceeding. The then-attorney general of Pakistan searched 'ICSID' and 'BIT' on Google to even comprehend what was happening.
This anecdote is no criticism of a particular country but a paradigmatic example of how developing countries have approached foreign investment and trade. Many leaders and policymakers see economic development, including foreign investment and trade, as high-level policy decisions and diplomatic formalities while ignoring the tangible and binding legal effects they could have in the governance of their own countries. One such legal effect of investment policy is investor-state dispute settlement.
International investment agreements and codes are critical instruments to attract and retain foreign direct investment (FDI). They often also contain arbitration clauses that allow investors to sue host countries. Worldwide, there are 3,300 international investment agreements, both bilateral and multilateral. Although Nepal has lagged behind in attracting FDI, today's Nepal seems keen on catching up. The government is targeting a 10-percentage-point increase in investment rates by 2021, and a graduation to middle-income country status by 2030. The Investment Summit earlier this year unveiled projects worth $24 billion, and a similar Tourism Investment Summit is on the horizon, scheduled for 2020. Nepal has introduced some domestic law reforms meant to create an investment-friendly environment and signed BITs with countries like India, Mauritius, and Germany. At this critical juncture, we should learn from the experience of other developing countries and recognise that investment instruments are not just policy frameworks, but can be binding and legally-enforceable commitments at the international level.
This is an important lens for Nepal due to several reasons. First, it is theoretically likely that Nepal could be subject to arbitration proceedings in the coming years. Earlier this year, Axiata UK (through investment in Ncell) filed a request for arbitration against the government of Nepal, based on the UK-Nepal Bilateral Investment Treaty signed in 1993. If Nepal is indeed serious about attracting and retaining FDI, the government should simultaneously build its legal dispute resolution capacity. Second, Nepal's administrative and legal bodies can be slow, ambiguous and unpredictable. Such conditions are fertile grounds for disputes to arise with foreign investors.
For example, in 1990, Mexico contracted with a foreign company to build a landfill, and the federal government had given some form of assurance about the proposed investment to the foreign investor. Shortly after, there was widespread local opposition to the landfill, and the municipal government denied the investor the final permit needed to continue construction, stating that the targeted area was ecologically sensitive. By 1994, construction had come to a complete halt and the investor brought an arbitration proceeding against Mexico. The tribunal found Mexico liable. It is not a stretch of the imagination to picture a similar scenario in Nepal. This is important in the context of Nepal because such disputes can influence domestic resources and decisions about tax, regulations, human rights, environment and other governance issues.
The future of international investment and trade dispute regimes are uncertain. With the rise of Chinese investments and numerous other states calling for reform in investor-state dispute resolution, there may be changes in the practicalities of the legal investment and trade regime. But it is especially important in uncertain times to make smart moves. Nepal's leadership should learn from the investment and trade experiences of other developing countries: A smart path to development includes legal capability, foresight, and flexibility.
Sabrina Singh studies international law and human rights at Harvard Law School.
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Communist Party of Britain: The European Super League is an assault on the game of the working class
With the following comment, posted on its social media accounts under the title "Listen to fans and players", the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) denounces the "European Super League" formed exclusively by major football clubs.
The comment reads:
"The Super League proposal is an attempt by the wealthy clubs to establish a perpetual monopoly and to resolve their debt issues: Barcelona are £1bn in debt and in financial crisis. Real Madrid could not afford one big signing last summer, Juventus have to find around £100m by the end of June. Internazionale's owners sought emergency funding in February.
Apart from the telling metaphor of a debt-ridden capitalism striving to link reward to existing wealth and privilege rather than merit, this is completely against the wishes of the game's real sponsors, the fans: nobody asked if we wanted this because they knew the answer would be an emphatic "No."
The Communist Party rejects totally this assault on the game of the working class. We call for immediate points reductions and the imposition of serious fines on all the clubs involved. Football is bigger than the combined egos of the rich men who think they own our beautiful game.
Communist sport podcaster and candidate for the GLA in May's election Stewart McGill says, "This clash has been years in the making as the clubs increasingly became separated from the fans who created them, through good times and bad. Now it's again up to the fans who will have to fight to rescue the soul of a great sport."
IN DEFENSE OF COMMUNISM ©
Tags Capitalism, Communist Party of Britain, European Super League, Football, Sports
Brazilian Communist Party: "The crisis generated by the pandemic evidenced the superiority of Socialism"
The text below is the contribution of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) to the Extraordinary Teleconference of the International Meeting...


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text:
Nokia Corporation v. Omar Al Khatib
1.1 The Complainant is Nokia Corporation of Espoo, Finland, represented by Talal Abu Ghazaleh Legal, of Jordan.
1.2 The Respondent is Omar Al Khatib of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
2.1 The disputed domain names <nokiachat.com> and <nokiachat.net> (the "Domain Names") are registered with eNom (the "Registrar").
3.1 The Complaint was filed with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (the "Center") on September 29, 2008. The Complaint was initially brought in respect of the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name alone. It named Host Gator as the registrar for that Domain Name, but WhoIs print outs at that time suggested that the Registrar was eNom and that Host Gator provided other registration services in relation to the Domain Name.
3.2 On September 29, 2008, the Center transmitted by email to eNom a request for registrar verification in connection with the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name. eNom replied later that day confirming that the Domain Name was registered in the organisational name of "Gemirates" and the individual "Omar Al Khatib" and confirming that the Domain Name had been placed on registrar-lock. Although the Center had requested registrant, technical contact, administrative contact and billing contact details for the Domain Name, only one name and address was provided by the Registrar with no further differentiation.
3.3 On October 2, 2008, the Respondent sent an email, using an <@gemeirates.com> email address to the Center. That email contained the following statement:
"Thanks for informing me of my WIPO complaint case number, honestly I own this domain name <nokiachat.com> also <nokiachat.net> since 4 years ago and I registered these domains for the reason that I like Nokia mobile phones, nokiachat.com was a chat website with good chat script and progeam, and it was also famous website, but since three month I decided to stop the chat to offer this domain name for sale. So if Nokia Corporation wants this domain name I offer this domain name for $100,000 and this price include also nokiachat.net domain name"
3.4 On October 3, 2008 the Center sent an email to the Complainant's lawyers stating that they had incorrectly identified the Registrar as Host Gator rather than eNom and requesting the Complainant to submit an amendment to the Complaint correcting that error within 5 calendar days.
3.5 On October 4, 2008 the Respondent sent a further email to the Center. In that email he claimed that he had read "the ICANN rules" with his lawyer and claimed that the Complainant had failed to prove that the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name was registered in bad faith. No attempt was made to further substantiate this assertion but he finished his email with the following cryptic statement:
"And I have the prove for each articles, in this case I can't send any files or information with my sign and my offer is still available for Nokia Corporation"
3.6 On October 5, 2008 the Complainant's lawyers submitted an Amendment to the Complaint. That Amendment to the Complaint not only corrected the details of the Registrar, but sought to add the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name to these proceedings. The Complainant's lawyers also confirmed that a copy of the Amendment to the Complaint had been sent to both the Respondent and the Registrar.
3.7 On October 6, 2008 the Respondent sent a further email to the Complainant's lawyers (copied to the Center) in similar terms to that sent two days earlier to the Center. In that email he denied that he had been engaged in any of the bad faith activities set out in paragraph 4(b) of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and repeated his claim that the Domain Names had been registered for a chat web site.
3.8 On October 7, 2008, the Center transmitted by email to eNom a request for registrar verification in connection with the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name. eNom replied later the same day, providing the same contact details in relation to this Domain Name as it had on September 29, 2008 in relation to the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name. The Center, noting that the publicly available WhoIs details for the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name identified the "Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc." as registrant1, sought further confirmation of its earlier request. eNom confirmed by return that "the correct Whois information" was that which it had provided earlier that day.
3.9 The Center verified that the Complaint together with the Amendment to the Complaint satisfied the formal requirements of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Policy"), the Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Rules"), and the WIPO Supplemental Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Supplemental Rules").
3.10 In accordance with the Rules, paragraphs 2(a) and 4(a), the Center formally notified the Respondent of the Complaint, and the proceedings commenced on October 8, 2008.
3.11 On October 13, 2008, the Respondent sent a further email to the Center and the Complainant. It read as follows:
1- These nokiachat.com & nokiachat.net domain names has been successfully redirected to Nokia Chat Labs website please check: <www.nokiachat.com>, <www.nokiachat.net>.
2- This redirection will be active until the end of WIPO Case Number (D2008-1466) to show good faith and behavior!
3- Even if i can't sale these domains in any way, i'm ready for the final decision to end this case without any material loss for me or for Nokia Corporation.
Waiting for WIPO response to end this case as soon as possible."
3.12 In accordance with the Rules, paragraph 5(a), the due date for Response was October 28, 2008. The Respondent did not submit any formal Response over and above the emails already identified.
3.13 The Center appointed Matthew S. Harris as the sole panelist in this matter on November 11, 2008. The Panel finds that it was properly constituted. The Panel has submitted the Statement of Acceptance and Declaration of Impartiality and Independence, as required by the Center to ensure compliance with the Rules, paragraph 7.
4.1 The Complainant is the well-known telecommunications equipment supplier and the world's largest supplier of mobile telephones. It has used the "Nokia" name since at least 1968 and is currently the owner of numerous registered trade marks that comprise or incorporate the "Nokia" name in a very large number of countries. Its marks include:
(i) United Arab Emirates Trade Mark Nos. 77302, 77303, and 77304, in class 41, 28, 9, for the word NOKIA (all applied for on December 19, 2005)
(ii) Jordanian Trade Mark No. 83313 in class 38 for the word NOKIA (filling date December 11, 2005)
4.2 The Respondent would appear to be an individual located in the United Arab Emirates2. The WhoIs records for the Domain Names suggest that both of the Domain Names were registered on September 26, 20073.
4.3 As at the date of the Complaint the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name resolved to a web site which showed a logo comprising the text "NOKIACHAT" (with the elements "Nokia" and "Chat" in different colours") under which were placed the text "The nokiachat.com domain name is for sale, for more information or to place a bid call [a UAE telephone number]". At the bottom of the page appeared text, which appears to have incorporated various links, as follows:
"© 2004 – 2008 NokiaChat | Advertising Programs | Chat Rules | Chat Help | About NokiaChat | Contact Us | Feedback"
4.4 Clicking on the link "About NokiaChat" produced a page with the following text (which, for reasons that will become apparent later on in this decision is reproduced in full and without correction):
"NokiaChat - Meeting Sharing People!
Welcome to the one of the latest sites in the cyber world, which provide an updated source of information and a fun and friendly atmosphere, where people from different cultures all around the world can chat, meet and share their information, also send free sms and chat mails, and have more fee useful services.
NokiaChat create the best chat environment possible encompassing as many topics as possible. We have been hard at work custom developing chat software to meet the needs of people around the world, also nokiachat doesn't need to installing any software in your PC because it's online chat website.
NokiaChat custom built chat software enables us to continually refine your chat experience to better suit you. You'll find our rooms easy and quick to get into and always full of eager chat friends.
Many people have asked about the meaning of our name nokiachat indeed was inspired by (Nokia Mobile Phones & Chat English Word), our mission always is to provide and update nokiachat for people, and to do this was listen carefully to our guests and members needs, wants and suggestions."
4.5 As is stated in the Respondent's email dated October 13, 2008, the Domain Names currently link to a web page on the Complainant's web site advertising the Complainant's "Nokia Chat" application.
5. Parties' Contentions
5.1 The Complainant refers to its trade marks and asserts that Nokia has sold "billions of dollars worth of goods and services" under its name. It states that as a consequence "NOKIA has become famous, acquired distinctiveness, significant goodwill, and services to uniquely identify Nokia and its products and services". It refers to a list of prior decisions under the Policy which are said to accept that the word mark NOKIA "constitutes one of the most famous marks worldwide"4.
5.2 The Domain Names are said to comprise the trade mark in its entirety and the mere addition of the term "chat" is said not to add any distinctive feature to the Domain Names. It claims that the selection of the term "chat" is an attempt to trade off the goodwill and reputation associated with the Complainant's services. Further, the Complainant contends that "the mere addition of a common or generic word such as 'chat' to a registered trade mark has consistently been deemed insufficient to avoid confusing similarity between the domain name[s] and the complainant's trademark". The Complainant, therefore, asserts that the only distinctive element of the Domain Names is identical to the Complainant's NOKIA mark.
5.3 On the issue of rights and legitimate interests, the Complainant contends that given the Complainant's reputation it is inconceivable that the Respondent was not aware of the Complainant and its NOKIA mark at the time that the Domain Names were registered. From this it is said that "any argument by [the] Respondent that it registered the [Domain Names] for a legitimate purpose is not credible". Further it is claimed that the Respondent has breached the terms of paragraph 2(c) of the Policy in which an applicant for a domain name warrants that the domain name "will not infringe upon or otherwise violate the rights of any third party" and "will not knowingly use the domain name in violation of any applicable laws or regulations".
5.4 The Complainant also claims that the Respondent had used the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name to create a false association with the Complainant so as to "lead unsuspecting consumers to his web site to fraudulently gather their personal information. Finally it asserts that none of the circumstances set out in paragraph 4(c) of the Policy (i.e., the non-exhaustive list of circumstances that show a right or legitimate interest) apply in this case.
5.5 On the issue of bad faith the Complainant contends that the registration of Domain Names that incorporate the very famous NOKIA mark without any evident right to do so, is said of itself to evidence bad faith. Further, the Complainant asserts that the Domain Names are so similar to the Complainant's mark that Internet users are likely to believe that the <nokiachat.com> web site is an authorised and authentic Nokia web site. This is said to disrupt the Complainant's business (although there is no reference to paragraph 4(b)(iii) of the Policy) and to constitute activity that falls within the scope of paragraph 4(b)(iv) of the Policy.
5.6 The Complainant also refers to the fact that the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name has been advertised for sale on the web site operating from that Domain Name. That web site is also said to "imitat[e] aspects of the official Nokia website with the heading 'NOKIA'". Further, the Complainant contends:
"The Respondent is imitating the Complainant's mark in color shape, design and text, using the colors green and blue and it is noted that the sponsor of the website is (Nokia Mobile Phones) as a hyperlink to the original site of the [Complainant]".
This linking to the official web site is also said to constitute bad faith "because there [is] no authorization from the Complainant for the Respondent to do so."
5.7 The Respondent has not filed a formal Response in these proceedings but has merely sent the emails already described. In the circumstances, the Respondent is in default in these proceedings. This is more than simply a failure to comply with a formality. For example, for the reasons that this Panel described in greater detail in Audiotech Systems Ltd. v. Videotech Systems Ltd, WIPO Case No. D2008-0431 (paragraphs 6.1 to 6.3), the requirement that any response contains the statements set out in paragraph 5(b)(viii) of the Rules is an important one. It may result in a panel disregarding the assertions of a respondent in their entirety and at the very least is something that a panel will take into account when considering what weight (if any) to give to factual assertions made by a respondent.
6.1 There are no exceptional circumstances within paragraph 5(e) of the Rules so as to prevent this Panel from determining the dispute based upon the Complaint, notwithstanding the failure of the Respondent to lodge a Response.
6.2 Notwithstanding the default of the Respondent, it remains incumbent on the Complainant to make out its case in all respects under paragraph 4(a) of the Policy. Namely the Complainant must prove that:
(i) the Domain Names are identical or confusingly similar to a trade mark or service mark in which the Complainant has rights (paragraph 4(a)(i)); and
(ii) the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the Domain Names (paragraph 4(a)(ii)); and
(iii) the Domain Names have been registered and is being used in bad faith (paragraph 4(a)(iii)).
6.3 However, under paragraph 14 of the Rules, where a party does not comply with any provision of the Rules, the Panel shall "draw such inferences therefrom as it considers appropriate".
6.4 It is clear that the Complainant is the owner of a number of trade marks that comprise the word "Nokia". Further, the Panel accepts that each of the Domain Names, when one disregards the TLDs ".com" and ".net" can only sensibly be understood as the name "Nokia" in conjunction with the English word "chat". "Chat" is of course an ordinary English word for an informal conversation and is a word that has an obvious potential association with the speech-related telecommunications products for which the Complainant's marks are in part registered. In the circumstances, the Panel has no difficulty in concluding that the Domain Names are confusingly similar to trade marks in which the Complainant has rights.
6.5 The Complainant has made out the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Policy.
B. Use of the Domain Names
6.6 Before addressing the issues of rights and legitimate interests and bad faith it is convenient to consider the question of how it is that the Respondent has used the Domain Names. This is not straight forward since it is not at all clear what it is that the Complainant is alleging in this case. First, there is the assertion to be found in the Complaint that the Respondent has used his web site with a view to "fraudulently gather [Internet users'] personal information". It is not quite clear to this Panel what is the fraud alleged here. Is it merely that the gathering of the information is said to have been gathered fraudulently or is it that the information is being sought for some fraudulent purpose? However, whichever is correct this is obviously a serious allegation.
6.7 The difficulty is that the Complainant has not brought forward a single piece of evidence to support that allegation. The Panel has merely been supplied with a copy of two pages from the web site operating from the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name. These have already been described in detail in section 4 of this Decision. Neither appears to suggest that the Respondent has been gathering information from Internet users. The fact that this allegation is mentioned by the Complainant under the heading of rights or legitimate interests, and not the heading "bad faith", is somewhat odd. It is an allegation, which if correct, the Panel would have expected the Complainant to make much of so far as bad faith is concerned.
6.8 Further, the Complainant seems to have contended that the Respondent has included a hyperlink from his web site to the Complainant's web site. The exact wording of that allegation has been set out in section 5 of this Decision and it is somewhat difficult to follow what is being alleged here. What form this alleged link takes and where it is said to be on the Respondent's web site is not explained.
6.9 Next it is unclear what exactly are the Complainant's allegations in relation to the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name. As has already been described above, the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name was added in to these proceedings after the original Complaint was filed with the Center and after the Respondent revealed in an email that he was also the owner of this Domain Name. Given that at that time the true owner of the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name was disguised by the use of a WhoIs Privacy service, this was an entirely reasonable amendment for the Complainant to have sought. Previously, panels have held that they have discretion to allow a complainant to amend its complaint to allow domain names to be added even where the proceedings had formally commenced and a panel appointed (see for example, Société Air France v. Spiral Matrix, WIPO Case No. D2005-1337). Where, as here, the amendment is sought when proceedings are pending but have not formally commenced5, the Panel sees no reason why the addition of domain names to a complaint prior to formal commencement (subject of course to the Panel's ultimate review) should not be allowed provided that the domain names are registered by the same domain name holder (as revealed on the raising of the WhoIs Privacy service). Such amendment would appear to be consistent with the spirit of paragraph 3(c) of the Rules, and indeed eminently reasonable in cases involving services in which the identity of any underlying holder of a domain name may only be revealed by the registrar after the filing of a complaint.
6.10 The difficulty in this case is not that the Complainant sought to amend the Complaint to add a domain name to these proceedings. It is that the relevant amendment took the form of a separate document which simply amended section II of the Complaint in which the Domain Names are listed and the relevant Registrar identified. No attempt is made to separately identify or describe the circumstances in which the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name has been used.
6.11 Ultimately, therefore, the Panel will proceed on the basis that the Complainant has shown that the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name has been used to display the pages that are described under the "Factual Background" heading above, and (to the extent it would be relevant to the Decision) that the allegation of a link to the Complainant's web site had not been substantiated.
6.12 So far as the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name is concerned, whilst the Complainant has brought forward no evidence of its use, ultimately the Panel is of the view that in the circumstances of this case, it makes no difference so far as the outcome is concerned. The WhoIs details for the Domain Names suggest that both were registered by the Respondent at the same time. Further, the emails sent to the Center and the Complainant by the Respondent suggest that the Respondent himself contends that both Domain Names were registered for the same purpose. Essentially, the Panel is prepared to accept that regardless of whether the <nokiachat.net> Domain Name has been used in the same way as the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name, or for that matter has not been used at all, the Respondent registered them with the same purpose in mind. Accordingly, so far as the assessment of rights and legitimate interests and bad faith is concerned, the two Domain Names stand or fall together.
6.13 For the reasons that are described in greater detail under the heading of bad faith below, the Panel has reached the conclusion that the Respondent registered the Domain Names with the intention of taking advantage in some manner the reputation that the Complainant has developed in the Respondent's name and as such has unfairly attempted to use the similarity between the Domain Names and the NOKIA mark to draw Internet users to his web site. This does not provide rights or legitimate interests under the Policy.
6.14 The Respondent suggested that the Domain Names were used in connection with some genuine business. Again as the Panel will explain, the Panel is doubtful as to whether this is the case.
6.15 Further, even if this were so, the question would have still remained as to whether the Respondent is entitled to adopt a Domain Name that incorporates in whole the Complainant's NOKIA mark. There may be circumstances in which use of a mark in a domain name to refer to the goods and services of the trade mark owner may be permitted even without the express permission of the relevant trade mark owner. For example, in Oki Data Americas, Inc. v. ASD, Inc., WIPO Case D2001-0903, (and other cases discussed in paragraph 2.3 of the WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions) the panel held that a reseller of goods can use a domain name that incorporates a trade mark for a website selling only those goods provided that is satisfies certain conditions. However, as was held by the three person panel in Dell Inc. v. Radvar Computers, LLC WIPO Case No. D2007-1420, it is for a respondent to positively advance such a case and bring forward evidence in support. The Respondent has failed to do so in any meaningful sense in this case.
6.16 The Complainant has, therefore, made out the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(ii) of the Policy.
6.17 In coming to this conclusion the Panel has not attached any weight to the Complainant's assertion that the Respondent in this case has acted in breach of paragraph 2(b) of the Policy. The Panel of course accepts that a registrant of a domain name subject to the Policy does warrant that the registration will not infringe the rights of others. However, it does not assist the Panel in coming to any conclusion as to abusive registration in this case.
6.18 The reason for this is that insofar as this is read as a representation that the registrant will not act contrary to the terms of the Policy, then the Complainant's argument is no more than an assertion that the Respondent does not have any rights or legitimate interest because he has acted contrary to the terms of the Policy. The argument is wholly circular and provides the Panel with no assistance in determining whether Respondent has acted in a manner which is contrary to the Policy.
6.19 It may be that the Complainant is saying something different from this. The warranty is broad enough to cover rights under local law and it may be that the Complainant is claiming that there has been some breach of some local law rights. However, there are two problems with this. First, it is not at all clear what local law rights are claimed to have been infringed in this case. One perhaps could speculate given the location of the Respondent and the rights relied upon that there is some claim under the laws of the United Arab Emirates, but it is not a claim that is made clearly nor is it a claim that is substantiated in the Complaint. Second, and more fundamentally, the Panel is unconvinced that even if such a claim were made it is one that has place in a consideration of the issue of rights or legitimate interests under the Policy. The Panel is of the view that "rights or legitimate interests" should be viewed to the extent possible as an autonomous concept to which local law analysis generally adds little6.
6.20 There is no doubt in this case that the Respondent registered the Domain Names with the Complainant's NOKIA marks in mind. First, there is the nature of the mark itself. If there is some non-trade mark meaning of the term "Nokia" the Panel is not aware of it. Next there is the extent of the Complainant's business and the fame of the NOKIA mark world wide. Further, and perhaps most tellingly, there is the wording that appeared on the Respondent's own web site and the statements in his emails. He readily admits that the term "nokiachat" was chosen because of the use of NOKIA for the Complainant's mobile phones.
6.21 Why then were the Domain Names registered? There is a suggestion in the web site material and in the Respondent's emails that it was registered for use with a chat service. However, the Panel is unpersuaded that this is the case. The Panel gives little weight to the assertions to this effect in Mr. Al Khatib's emails. They are inherently vague and unsupported by a statement of truth or any evidence. The Panel is of the opinion that the content appearing on one of the pages of the Respondent's web site does not constitute persuasive evidence of a real continuing business. It is little more than an assertion of a business concept and even this description is problematic. It contains grammatical errors and is at times hard to follow. At least one element of the description given strikes the Panel as implausible. The Respondent declares that "[m]any people have asked about the meaning of the name 'nokiachat'". However, if this were a genuine business, the reasons for the choice of this name would frankly be obvious. The Panel is therefore unconvinced that there was ever any genuine business in this case.
6.22 Far more compelling is the offer for sale also placed on the web site. That offer for sale was repeated by the Respondent in his email correspondence with the Center and with the Complainant. The Respondent sought the sum of USD100,000. The Domain Names associations with, and similarities to, the Complainant's NOKIA mark are the only credible reasons why the Domain Names might command such a large sum.
6.23 Paragraph 4(b)(i) of the Policy gives as one example of bad faith registration and use:
"circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name".
6.24 Interestingly, the Complainant does not appear to rely on paragraph 4(b)(i) in this case. Instead it claims that paragraph 4(b)(iv) applies. In broad terms it alleges that the Respondent has sought financial gain by creating a likelihood of confusion with the Complainant's mark. The financial gain is said to arise from the potential sale of the Domain Name itself. The argument seems to be that confusion with the Complainant's NOKIA mark will result in more Internet users visiting the Respondent's web site and seeing the Respondent's statement that the Domain Name is for sale. Whether or not that confusion would have made the sale of the Domain Name materially more likely, the Panel cannot say, but what is important here is not whether the Respondent's actions are effective but whether such gain was the Respondent's intent (see for example ServiceMaster Brands LLC v. Riel Roussopoulos, WIPO Case No. D2007-0346 at paragraphs 6.35 to 6.37).
6.25 The Panel accepts that when the nature of the Domain Names, the lack of evidence of any genuine business having operated from the Domain Names and the registrants' recent offers for sale are considered together, they overwhelmingly suggest that the Domain Names were registered because of their similarities and potential confusion with the Complainant's NOKIA mark. Further, the Panel accepts that this was done either (a) with the intention of onward sale at a value that reflected that potential for confusion and/or (b) with the intention to gain some other form of financial advantage from the similarities between the Domain Names and the Complainant's mark. Whether or not these activities strictly fell within the scope of paragraph 4(b)(i) or 4(b)(iv) of the Policy, the Panel accepts that this was registration7 and use in bad faith.
6.26 The Panel also accepts that the fact that the Respondent has adopted a very similar, if not identical, font on its web site for the term "nokiachat" as the Complainant has used for NOKIA on its own web site is also supportive of this conclusion. It is not that the Panel is convinced that Internet users reaching this web site will necessarily conclude from this that the web site is operated or used by the Complainant. This seems somewhat unlikely if the first thing that the Internet user sees is a message that the <nokiachat.com> Domain Name is for sale. Nevertheless, this imitation of the Complainant is not something that one would accept of a legitimate business. It calls for an explanation and none is forthcoming. Similarly, there is the fact that the Respondent has recently taken down his web site and is currently linking the Domain Names to a web page describing the Complainant's own "chat" service. Why if the Respondent believed he has been engaged in a legitimate business activity, did he change those activities once proceedings were commenced?
6.27 In the circumstance the Panel has made out the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy.
For all the foregoing reasons, in accordance with paragraphs 4(i) of the Policy and 15 of the Rules, the Panel orders that the domain names, <nokiachat.com> and <nokiachat.net> be transferred to the Complainant.
Matthew S. Harris
Dated: November 19, 2008
1 This continues to be the case as at the date of this decision.
2 As has already been described the Domain Name appears to have been registered in the organisational name of "Gemirates". The status of "Gemirates", whether it is a trading name of the Mr. Al Khatib and/or if it is a separate legal entity, its exact connection with Mr. Al Khatib is unknown. However, both parties have appeared content to proceed on the basis that Mr. Al Khatib is the owner of the Domain Name and the Panel sees no reason to proceed otherwise.
3 Although the Panel notes that there are records on the Internet that suggest that the Domain Names, or perhaps earlier and yet identical domain names, were in existence in at dates back to 2004. See footnote 8 below in this respect.
4 There is also reference to a couple of case that are said to state that the Complainant's mark is a famous trade mark. However, these cases involve Volvo and not the Complainant.
5 For an explanation as to when proceedings are "pending" and when they are "commenced", see for example Mrs. Eva Padberg v. Eurobox Ltd., WIPO Case No. D2007-1886 at paragraph 5.16
6 For a further explanation of why this is the case, see this Panel's decision in 1066 Housing Association Ltd. v. Mr. D. Morgan, WIPO Case No. D2007-1461, which was followed on the question of local law in Fundación Calvin Ayre Foundation v. Erik Deutsch WIPO Case No. D2007-1947. The Panel recognises that the approach set out in 1066 is not universally accepted. It is sufficient however for present purposes to state that the Panel remains of the view that the autonomous concept approach set out in 1066 is to be preferred.
7 There is a complication in this case in that it is not entirely clear when the Domain Names were actually registered by the Respondent. The Respondent asserts in his emails that he has owned the Domain Names for four years. The Panel was disinclined to give much weight to this unsubstantiated assertion and the WhoIs print outs provided with the Complaint suggested that the Domain Names were registered on September 26, 2007. However, when verifying the WhoIs information provided for the Domain Names on a publicly available web site the Panel noticed that these Domain Names have WhoIs histories that may stretch back to 2004. Further, whilst the Complaint contends in the Complaint that the Domain Names were registered "just after the advertisements and promotions in newspapers, magazines on television and through Nokia websites", it does not give any date for these registrations advertisements (nor for that matter does the Complainant explain what these advertisements were actually for). Nevertheless, the Panel ultimately is of the view that in the particular circumstances of this case the exact date of registration does not affect the analysis of bad faith.


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