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Right in the centre of London there's a square mile managed not by the Metropolitan Police but by the City of London police, and it's armed to the teeth with CCTV. Unlike recent America, a few years ago London did have a real problem with terrorism: every few months the Provisional IRA would plant a bomb, so the idea initially was to identify suspicious behaviour and/or to have records of just about fucking everything, so the perp dropping the bag or whatever could be identified after the fact. Did it stop the bombings? Of course it fucking didn't. This is London, not some village in the middle of nowhere:

(1) A wig, fake moustache, make-up and (fuck me this is high-tech!) change of clothing are enough to make anyone's face completely unrecognisable by current CCTV standards, and anyone will have mingled quickly into the crowd of a million other Londonners;

(2) Over time, criminals learn where the cameras are: each time evidence comes to court, each time someone infiltrates the police. I have one family member who works in a police operations centre, and he had to go through all the security vetting bullshit - the usual crap that's easily defeated by planting someone who (oh, much like, say, those in the 9/11 attacks) has a spotless record to date.

Now the terrorism threat is over (no really, compared to London when the Troubles crossed to the mainland, it's over), what do the City of London police busy themselves with? You may have heard of them as the guys that over-zealously notified a Church of Scientology protester that they shouldn't write signs saying mean things about the organisation. And it has nothing to do with the `Church' giving junkets to high-ranking policemen, of course. They also occasionally follow those who look like they shouldn't be driving high-priced cars (remember this is around the rich financial district).

Nope, they don't reduce crime. They don't even prevent them. They don't deter and they are pretty much useless.

CCTV cameras are everywhere in the UK, but, according to a recent report by the CCTV manager of Scotland Yard... They simply don't work, despite billions of UKP invested. You can read this analysis here.

Putting real, flesh-and-blood policemen, on the beat is the way to go. Putting cameras (which hardly qualifies as high-tech anyway) don't work.

That's an oversimplification. CCTV works against certain kinds of crime (burglary for example) but it is quite ineffective against others such as mugging (much more fast paced). The error made by the british was to think that cameras solve ALL kinds of crime

They've had this in london for a while, and it's been a severe invasion of privacy.

And it cost billions of pounds yet doesn't help in actually fighting crime.

Nope, they don't reduce crime. They don't even prevent them. They don't deter and they are pretty much useless.

CCTV cameras are everywhere in the UK, but, according to a recent report by the CCTV manager of Scotland Yard... They simply don't work, despite billions of UKP invested. You can read this analysis here.

Putting real, flesh-and-blood policemen, on the beat is the way to go. Putting cameras (which hardly qualifies as high-tech anyway) don't work.

Ingushetia website owner killed by police: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/01/russia1

"As they drove he was shot in the temple ... They threw him out of the car near the hospital," Kaloi Akhilgov told Reuters by telephone. "He was discovered there and they quickly put him on the operating table, which is where he died."

Sounds pretty conclusive to me. The last time I shot someone in the head "accidentally" with my gun, I also threw him out of the car because I was "careless". Wake up.

The right was granted in the Constitution, and while the Constitution allows it to be temporarily suspended, it has not been lost.

It's not been lost? Tell it to those in Guantanamo Bay, or those held without legal consul, notification to their families, or admissions of their presence in this and similar facilities. Since their names are secret, and even admitting that you know the names can get you thrown in jail as a security risk, that's about as serious a violation of habeas corpus as you can commit. It's also a major violation of the Geneva Convention.

For those that still refuse to believe the US government disrespects human rights nowadays, the best evidence you can provide are reports from reliable sources such as Amnesty International, other human rights organisations, and even the UK government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/31/uselections2008.barackobama
( republican attack-ad program, and its effectiveness against Obama )

Unless that republican torpedo is countered, Obama is losing ground every day.

Use some social networking, blog, etc, get viral!

If you "go the other way", then do the same thing:
find the most effective Obama method, and torpedo that by using it against them!

...Americans seem to hate the French.

I don't think it's fair to single out Americans on this. Everyone hates the French, the yanks are no different to the rest of us.

Good luck with that. Hate to break it to you, but Obama isn't going to win.

Well *duh*. The fix is in, I'm sure the dud is going to win, even with his painfully awful VP pick. The last two elections have already proven that the American people have a track record of picking the most painfully awful candidate.

Oh yeah, and another thing, Obama and McCain aren't all that different with respect to energy policy. The big difference is McCain doesn't want to impose a windfall tax on the oil companies in order to give "tax cuts" to the lowest earning third of US workers. I put "tax cuts" in quotes because of course, the lowest earning third of US workers are net recipients of Federal money and don't really have a net tax load.

Okay, I'll bite on that one. WaPo's analysis (available here seems to disagree with your assessment of the share of tax burden/tax cuts under their respective tax plans.

Obama's energy plan, though supporting some limited offshore drilling, does not emphasize it. And McCain's proposed suspension of the Federal gas tax would do more to destroy our existing highway infrastructure than help consumers. And a side by side comparison sure looks like Obama's plan is much more ambitious. Also, I don't think that the point of taxing oil company products is to give "tax cuts" to the poorest 1/3rd, but rather to subsidize heating and energy costs for them.

The USA passed a law specifically allowing the US to invade the Hague to retrieve any US soldier or citizen held at the International Criminal Court.

This is basically to prevent any of their soldiers or contractors being tried for war crimes by an international court. Obviously, even soldiers can be tried in a given country for offences committed there; but the US is not exactly easy to get extradited from, and even when you do face trial, the witnesses and evidence are hard to get hold of. Take the examples of the rape cases in Japan for example, or the italian cable car incident where drugged up pilots struck and severed the cables where US co-operation was less than stellar.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/dec/02/humanrights.usa (December 2001)

Most alarming of all, a recent CNN poll revealed that 45% of Americans would not object to torturing someone if it would provide information about terrorism.

And I'm pretty sure I heard about a poll that had it over 50% but it is hard to find polls from 7 years ago.

OFCOM ruled that channel4 was "unfair in its treatment of the IPCC and leading scientists..." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/ofcom.channel4?gusrc=rss&feed=media and "it was in breach of due impartiality...". It did not rule that the program had materially misled the audience. So, I'm sorry, the OFCOM ruling does not debunk "The Great Global Warming Swindle".
While scientists may not be "rich powerful men who can manipulate the media", many of the public voices for global warming alarmism are (not all persons who advocate for action against global warming are alarmists, but many of the most prominent one's are. for example, Al Gore).

They lost my vote when Obama voted for immunity for Telco's.

Um, Obama actually voted against immunity for telcos regarding the wiretap issue. (See e.g. this news article) McCain, on the other hand, voted for immunity.

But don't let facts get in the way of your voting decisions.

If urinals, piss, and elephant shit can be art, then, why not a video game?

Previous to the 20th century defining art was easy. Nowdays, not so much.

Really? No Model?

Their profits ony rose 13% in the first quarter! And they're not the number one company in the world for laying out cash for child care anymore! And my foi gras was .03 cm under standard size! waaaaaaa!

What the UK needs is for the government to get the bill for breaches ;-)

Seriously, the Information Commissioner has actually served enforcement notices on the most incompetent departments and the Conservative opposition has called for prosecutions.

That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.

That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so thereâ(TM)s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!

That Jonathan Bushâ(TM)s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osamaâ(TM)s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.

That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.

That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.

That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbo

Another way newspapers are failing on the web is the use of terms in headlines that generate high ranking on search engines.

Stories like the iPhone Nano that the Mail ran a few weeks ago, and that was linked to from here are perfect examples of it.

Journalism is second place to the SEO it seems.

Charlie Brooker wrote about it a couple of weeks ago, but the best example he gave was from the Telegraph where journalists wrote: "Young women - such as Britney Spears - are buying more shoes than ever"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/charliebrooker.pressandpublishing

Here we see Hollywood studios regularly rob, cheat and steal from the people that work for them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/aug/31/artsfeatures

Here companies like News Limited trick the public into surrendering their copyright, giving them massive royalty-free photo libraries, all for the "chance of winning an iPod".
http://blogs.smh.com.au/photographers/archives/2008/07/read_the_fine_print.html

Orson Scott Card wrote this good piece on the hipocracy of the RIAA:
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-14-1.html

And for years, we the public have had our rights progressively eroded. Well-monied rights holders throw money at congress who turn around and keep extending their copyright. This reached an artform in the "Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act", otherwise known as the "Mickey Mouse Copyright Act". Yet Disney has quite happily argued against this when it suits them.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17327,00.html

Well, eat this Disney: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mickey22-2008aug22,0,3228580,full.story

And then there was that DRM debacle... What's worst is countries like Australia spinelessly accepted the DRM laws as their own (and US patents being enforcable in Australia) all for a political photo opportunity with George W. Bush. In this way, these execessive new laws are spreading all over the world. And here we have Universities teaching one side of the Great Copyright Rights Grab. Why aren't they educating their students about both sides, instead of brainfeeding them RIAA propaganda?

Bottom line is: Congress doesn't work for you. It works for these guys. I don't see Congress ever saying no to MPAA slush funds, and treating IP the way the Constitution intended it too. So to hell with Congress and the MPAAFIA: Stupid Laws are made to be broken. I say torrent freely and torrent often. It's our very own digital tea party.

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

My history teacher pointed those out in 1997 and he wasn't thinking of the USA back then. I thought: come on, it can't be that easy! However, seeing what happens in the USA, I humbly have to retract that opinion.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy: 9/11 Terrorists, enemy combatants and unspoken Islam
2. Create a gulag: Two words... Guantanamo Bay
3. Develop a thug caste: Not yet, I think so at least.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system: See article
5. Harass citizens' groups: Again, see article and peaceful oriented groups have already been infiltrated. Okay, my source is Roger Moore so a grain of salt the size of Canada is needed.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release: This goes along with Guantanamo. However, non-fly lists are in those lines....
7. Target key individuals: Is most certainly happening....
8. Control the press: Conglomerates do this... Don't even bother. Real historic dictatorships couldn't do this as well as capitalistic US.
9. Dissent equals treason: If you're not with us, you're against us.... I have to say no more.
10. Suspend the rule of law: Habeas corpus is gone, more laws have followed and more will follow.

Dawkins said the same thing after 9/11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/15/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety1

If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?

Usain Bolt goes for McNuggets

Seriously, the guys is amazing. He doesn't need any fancy timing technology. Just some weird food technology.

A couple of elderly women (70+) are being reducated for wanting to protest their eviction and their sin was timing their application during the Olympics. That and the incident where their poster golden boy broke down from too much training and his coach said the extreme pressure from the regime was to blame convinces me there is a god up there and he was looking after me for I was not born in China.

Yes, I am being melodramatic and I think it's apt.

No, the IOC is going to keep quiet about this one. Given the recent revelations about CGI fireworks, fake sports fans, dubious pianos, and the substituted singer, they're desperately hoping we won't find out that this is the ACTUAL stadium...

Because heroin isn't exactly an unknown quantity. We've known that it's 100 percent addictive for, oh, centuries now.

Except that heroin is not 100% addictive: perhaps more like 10% of heroin users are addicts. And it was first synthesized in 1874 and only became popular after it was independently re-synthesized 23 years later, and was marketed as a non-addictive morphine substitute until 1910 - its addictive nature has in fact been understood for less than a century.

You know what's going to happen when you put that needle in your arm. You know because everyone else that's done it has ended up the same way.

Yeah, you might end up like David Bowie or Keith Richards or hundreds of other famous musicians, actors, writers, artists who have used heroin...for those can afford their fix and have access to the pure stuff, heroin use or even addiction is not a big deal. It's less damaging to your body than addiction to cigarettes or alcohol.

As Bill Hicks noted, "If you don't think drugs have done good things for us, then take all of your records, tapes and CDs and burn them. Cause you know what? The musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years? Real fucking high on drugs."

Which is not to suggest anyone go shoot heroin. The crap you buy from typical street dealers is cut with gods-only-know-what and may well kill you; and really, there are better ways to spend your time and money.

And yet, after decades of "tolerance" they're busy dismantling the Red Light district in Amsterdam

Again, your facts are in error. The prostitution shops were only licensed in 2000, not "decades" ago. And they're shutting down owners believed to have criminal connections, not the entire district.

I will recommend Peter McWilliams' book Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country, available online at www.mcwilliams.com.

Sadly, McWilliams became a victim of the War on (some) Drugs when his access to medical marijuana, used to treat symptoms of AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was ended; forced to switch to the ineffective Marinol, he aspirated his own vomit and choked to death.

The misinformation you are spreading is killing people. Please, cut it out.

According to the BBC, Phelps's armoury of secret weapons includes ... Hot Grits! (no, really):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7562840.stm

Oh, and eggs. Lots of eggs. But don't try this at home:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/15/foodanddrink.michaelphelps

Here's the thing: a bunch of people were protesting by chaining themselves to gates and generally impeding operations at a power station.

Your citation for this? Climate Camp was a peaceful legal protest from everything I have read.

Yes, you are right that this is more an issue of the protest than the board game - the article is rather misleading to miss this out. But last time I looked, police confiscating things because they don't like what you are protesting about is just as worrying a thing, if not more so.

The actions of the police have been criticised by politicans (one MEP was at the event)

Also see:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/08/405874.html

http://www.hippyshopper.com/2008/08/climate_camp_a_report_from_the_front_line.html

Unless you have evidence that the board game was seized as part of crimes committed, please refrain from spreading misinformation about "shutting down a power station", and making the "protester == illegal" assumption.

(Personally I don't have a strong opinion on the issues being protested either way, but I do have concerns about police action, and I was alerted to these events from a friend who was present as a Legal Observer and witnessed these events.)

Ah sorry - my misunderstanding. I thought iPlayer was not available at all outside the UK.

Are we talking about this http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ ?

iPlayer is not available outside of the UK (unless you configure Tor nodes etc) Adverts are not shown on the BBC website within the UK, and I believe outside of the UK. For now. http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/advertising.shtml However, the BBC are looking into doing that: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/oct/30/bbc.broadcasting

It's not exactly related but Al Jazeera just had a piece about a pedophile who got arrested last year after interpol "unwarped" some picture he had put online.
Maybe those new tech might be used to produce that kind of useful result and not only better pops and moms holiday pictures..
Old article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/19/ukcrime.internationalcrime

I'd say that you should challenge police. Arm yourself with some knowledge of the laws they try to use (PACE section 1, section 60, section 50 (ASB), etc), and ask them to quote what law they are acting under.

For example. If a police officer stops you going about your normal business under PACE 1, that officer must have reasonable grounds to suspect *you*. If they search you under that act, then they must again give grounds to suspect *you* of carrying offensive weapons or items to be used for criminal damage (for example).

The police are not the law. They are there to uphold it, and must do so lawfully.

Anyone who visited Climate Camp last week will have noticed just how little regard for the law the police had. When they seize crayons, board games, building materials (to make toilets) and such (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/kingsnorthclimatecamp.climatechange) they are certainly not acting within the law.. they're acting as a law unto themselves!

The IOC will throw notices at any and all unlicensed uses of it's trademarks, regardless of legality or the context in which it stands.

Well, the Guardian's cartoonist Martin Rowson has managed to get away with it in a cartoon attacking China's human rights record.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/cartoon/2008/jul/30/china.human.rights/

I would imagine that pretty much every UK quality paper has published something similar over the past week or so.

1) the better way to "protect wildlife" is to not build a city where it lives. (Duh?) The Chinese are absolutely deadly to the environment - not just the air and water, but also leaders in deforestation and species extinction, even outside their borders.

2) the better way to cut pollution is to... uh... do something about the extreme pollution all over mainland China.

Who knew that clean air and water, forests, and sustainable coexistence with other species on the planet was worth having? Human greed trumps everything. The US was the poster child for environmental damage (Bush is very proud of being the "biggest polluter"), but China is competing for that gold medal.

Here is a recipe for a school sausage, given to us by a manufacturer who prefers to remain anonymous. It is for what he described as a "pork product" made "down to a price" to win a local authority contract. The sausage contents: 50% "meat", of which 30% is pork fat with a bit of jowl, and 20% mechanically recovered chicken meat, 17% water, 30% rusk and soya, soya concentrate, hyrolysed protein, modified flour, dried onion, sugar, dextrose, phosphates, preservative E221 sodium sulphite, flavour enhancer, spices, garlic flavouring, antioxidant E300 (ascorbic acid), colouring E128 (red 2G). Casings: made from collagen from cow hide.

"Sausage factory"

I can't think of any country that would benefit more by this sort of thing.

I can. Maybe the US since they do have the highest total annual CO2 emissions and the highest CO2 emissions per capita

Wrong on both counts. China passed the US on CO2 emissions. The US is 10th on a per capita basis. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/19/china.usnews http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

If the arctic ice melts, oceans will rise, sure.

The Arctic ice certainly is melting, but it is not causing the sea level to rise. The reason is that it's already displacing water because it's floating in the Arctic sea. It's the melting glaciers and ice sheet on land that will cause sea level to rise.

Changing the order of things may seem like a trivial change but unless it is explained that this has been done it may give the impression of a very different series of events. Just ask the BBC.

Just a few years ago, the same USA demanded that ALL passports to be used while entering the USA had to be machine readable and it is the case now.

And from the people I speak to, lots of people aren't visiting the US due to all the information that the US requires, and the way they're treated at Immigration. Read some of the comments in this, and this, or this.
Yep, I can guess your response: Well don't come here then, we don't want you anyway.

Just a few years ago, the same USA demanded that ALL passports to be used while entering the USA had to be machine readable and it is the case now.

And from the people I speak to, lots of people aren't visiting the US due to all the information that the US requires, and the way they're treated at Immigration. Read some of the comments in this, and this, or this.
Yep, I can guess your response: Well don't come here then, we don't want you anyway.

And we got cheap personal computing because IBM took the decision to set up a skunkworks to design an open architecture PC - disruptive technology.

You might want to read the history of the IBM PC. IBM made the model 5150 with an open architecture because they did not want to invest too much money in the project. The published BIOS specs allowed other companies to reverse engineer the BIOS and make clones. This was certainly not the intent of IBM, as represented by the fact that they came up with the proprietary micro-channel design (be sure to read the "market share" section) as an attempt to recapture the market.

The IBM PC was a Black Swan. Gate's brilliance was in the way he structured his DOS license agreement with IBM. IBM had a royalty free right to distribute it with every PC they built. Gates retained the right to sell it to any other vendor, none of which existed at the time. The IBM people thought the idea of clones was far fetched, evidently. The clone market turned out to be enormous, which was great for Microsoft, but also recognize Gates couldn't be certain that it would be. IBM doesn't do anything disruptive intentionally. Their customers don't like disruptive things, and they don't like disruptive things. Like most companies, they try to stay in Mediocristan. Desktop linux is from Mediocristan, as is Vista. Embedded and server hosted linux is from Extremistan, as is Windows NT and Mac OS on the iPhone.

If you think my view has some merit, you might want to reconsider this statement:

The other is of course its decision to support Linux.

Oil isn't a renewable...

That's where you're wrong, friend!

At least, with any luck, will be soon...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/31/biofuels.travelandtransport?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews

Children see man decapitate fellow passenger on Greyhound bus in Canada

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/01/canada

"With a warrant, the library can, of course, release the information, but lacking a warrant patrons DO have an expectation of privacy BY LAW in that state."

What is this "law" thing you speak of? Don't you know we're in post 9/11 times, son? There are no laws that we can't circumvent and obfuscate under "State Secrets". Come now, don't cause a fuss, or we'll have to put you on "The List".

Sound vaguely familiar? (9 and 10 there)

"If you read these posts you would think that the average slashdotter was planning to overthrow one (or more likely all) governments on a regular basis. Really now. From your respective basements?"

Isn't that the point? Shouldn't we be portraying that EXACT image to the respective governments who are trying to overthrow us? Seriously, isn't that EXACTLY what they're trying to do with the false security theater that is being thrust upon us with each new day of news reports from the Middle East and domestic?

You might find the article "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps" interesting in this context.

In short, the government SHOULD be afraid of the power of the people, because it is exactly those people, who gives the government their power, not the reverse. We all COULD be harboring plans to overthrow the government, and we should anyway, if they cease to support our rights and needs as a populace. In other words, do what we're expecting of you, or expect to get overthrown. Period.

(The Guardian)

China lifts ban on Tiananmen sites

Officials heed pressure from Olympic committee

        * Tania Branigan in Beijing
        * The Observer,
        * Sunday August 3 2008
        * Article history

Websites on sensitive subjects such as the bloody crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were accessible in the Chinese capital yesterday as the authorities lifted more internet restrictions in order to meet their Olympic Games commitments.

However, reporters questioned the International Olympic Committee's claim that the issue had been 'resolved', pointing out that many sites - such as those sympathising with Tibetan groups - could still not be accessed.

Kevan Gosper, head of the IOC's press commission, described the changes as 'a work in progress', but acknowledged that some restrictions would remain.

While some sites, including the BBC's Chinese-language service and Amnesty International, became available on Friday, yesterday's changes went much further. English-language accounts of the 1989 protests on the BBC and Wikipedia sites were accessible from outside the Olympic press centre yesterday. Some less detailed Chinese-language material could also be found.

However, Wikipedia's 'Chinese democracy movement' page was inaccessible, and websites on banned spiritual movement the Falun Gong, the Tibetan government in exile, the International Campaign for Tibet and Free Tibet remained off limits last night.

Under pressure from IOC officials, the authorities began unblocking sites following an outcry over censorship. While they routinely bar access to sites, they had promised that Olympic reporting would be 'free and unfettered'.

It was unclear yesterday why the restrictions were so widely lifted when the original promise was made only to overseas journalists who would presumably be working in the main press centre and major hotels. But, with the opening ceremony on Friday, officials seemed keen to smooth over the row and stress that they welcomed foreign media.

'The IOC put in place a working group with BOCOG (the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad) to start examining those sites that the international media thought should be unblocked,' said Gosper.

But he added that every country censored sites that it judged to be subversive or dangerous to national interests. 'The line between what could be considered as a national interest issue might be a bit blurred, but we will work on it and deal with any potential grievances,' he said.

Challenged over IOC president Jacques Rogge's pledge that 'there will be no censorship on the internet', spokeswoman Giselle Davies insisted that the committee's position had not changed. Human Rights Watch spokesman Nicholas Bequelin said: 'Arbitrarily blocking and unblocking websites is not true respect for freedom of expression. The government can turn off the tap as soon as they want.'

Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of the Beijing-based media website Danwei.org, said: 'The filtering programmes are probably turned up high - but because they are trying to make sure that foreign language sites that journalists care about don't get blocked, there are going to be lots of leaks in the system.'

The IOC agreed yesterday to donate £2m to the earthquake-hit Sichuan region. A 6.1-strength aftershock on Friday - one of the largest since the main tremor on 12 May - injured 231 people.

Moron. That WAS evidence. Bush quietly made a huge real estate purchase in paraguay. Presumably you missed it if you watch fox "news" or something, but he was acting like some movie Nazi war criminal planning to flee to South America. Only now, since the cover was blown, he probably isn't planning to use the paraguay compound anymore.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/23/mainsection.tomphillips

To me, tens of thousands of dollars does not seem unreasonable. It's not a crippling amount of money (but it will sting) to anybody who owns a computer

Lucky you. So young and innocent. In the real world...

More than a third of adults would be unable to support themselves for a fortnight [14 days] if they were made redundant or found themselves unable to work, according to two separate surveys published today ... 36% of people would run out of cash in just 11 days - guardian newspaper, July 25 2008

I don't know, care or can change what happened in some far away country 200 years ago...

Everybody should read this excellent article, especially fellow Americans, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment

And wedding parties. Got to bomb those too. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jul/03/afghanistan.lukeharding

The "intolerable" argument seems like a stretch to me (to say the least). The guy isn't facing the death penalty and U.S. prisons (especially the minimum security ones, where this guy will probably end up) are at least as good as UK ones.

I think not, for someone accused of (amongst other things) obtaining secrets that might have been "useful to an enemy", "causing the US military district of Washington became inoperable" and specifying that it "occurred immediately after 9/11", I don't think he'll have it easy.

He'll have to be in solitary for his own protection.

In his own words from http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/jul/09/weekend7.weekend2:

sitting up all night thinking about jail and about being arse-fucked. An American jail. And remember, according to them I was making Washington inoperable 'immediately after September 11'. I'm having all these visions of ... " Gary puts on a redneck prisoner voice, "'What you doing attacking our country, boy?

However, if plays nice and owns up to all the stuff he says he didn't do but they claim he did

Not quite true.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/jul/09/weekend7.weekend2:

Gary was kept in a police station overnight. Then the Americans offered him a deal, via his British solicitor. "They said, 'If you incur the cost of the whole extradition process, be a good boy, come over here, we'll give you three or four years, rather than the whole sentence.' I said, 'OK, give me that in writing.' They said, 'Oh no, we can't do that.' So they were offering a secret trial, no right of appeal on the outcome, no comment to the newspapers, and nothing in writing. My solicitor, doing her job, advised me to take it, and when I said no, she was very, 'Ooh, they're going to come down heavy.'"

Also, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/27/internationalcrime.hacking...

In a further twist, it has emerged that a crucial file containing details of the early meetings with the US prosecutors, at which the offers were apparently made, has gone missing from the office of McKinnon's solicitor. A laptop holding details of the same meetings was stolen from the car of one of his barristers.