Slashdot Mirror

On Al-Jazeera - the only TV channel with access to Afghanistan, and one of the few 'independant' channels in the Arab world.

[BTW, I'm still not too sure what I think of Colin Powell asking Qatar to muzzle their 'free press'...]

A good piece on airdropping aid and other issues.

And a piece on why it is about Islam (and about the USA, not the whole Western world).

Some interesting views there. Especially the facts and figures for those aid drops, which at least partly undermine Bush & Blair's humanitarian claims.

"These are people that come from a country where it's a crime if you teach a woman, that's right, you go to JAIL if you teach a woman.. A country that sends you to jail if you don't have a beard.. A place where you can't give woman rides, dancing is illegal and playing any music other then music approved by the government will also land you in prison.."

None of which was the case before the USA, UK and Pakistan destabilised Afghanistan to get at the USSR, laying the groundwork for the Taliban to get into power in the first place...

"It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth."

Quoted from the UK's Guardian newspaper - the full (rather cynical) article is here

Microsoft Breakup Decision Overturned by the Court of Appeals

Judge Jackson had compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers".

by Michael Jennings

(Thursday, June 28, 2001) Today the Court of Appeals handling the Microsoft anti-trust case overturned the lower court's decision to split Microsoft into two or more companies. The breakup would have placed the Microsoft Windows operating system in one company and created a second business for everything else.

This decision of the Court of Appeals has been widely recognized as fair because of the behaviour of the judge of the lower court, in which he had not given the required appearance of impartiality. Judge Jackson had, for example, compared Microsoft to "drug traffickers", and Bill Gates to Napoleon. (See page 111 of the Court's decision [PDF format]).

The Court of Appeals found that Judge Jackson's 206-page Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal conduct, was entirely acceptable. It was his conduct outside the courtroom that was a violation of the code of conduct for United States judges. (For more about this, see pages 111 to 115 of the decision.)

Earlier, many people had praised Judge Jackson's skill in handling the case inside the courtroom. Technically oriented observers considered the Findings of Fact to be very well informed.

However, the penalty that Judge Jackson recommended for Microsoft was voided because of his public misconduct. The Court of Appeals directed that a new district judge examine the case, using the Findings of Fact as a starting point.

The story is very widely reported. For examples, see: ABC, AP, BBC, Washington Post, Seattle Times, CNet, The Industry Standard, Reuters, Guardian, Motley Fool, and MSNBC. The NY Times article requires that you register. Registration is free.

Silicon Valley.com said "[Microsoft] can continue its brutal practices for a while longer..."

There were two parts to the anti-trust case, 1) the Findings of Fact, in which Microsoft was found to have engaged in illegal activity, and 2) the remedy, which is what would happen as a result of the court finding illegal activity. Judge Jackson had ordered that Microsoft be broken into two companies. It is only this second part, the remedy, that has been voided (vacated) by the Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals wrote, "We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte [outside the court] contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality."

The Court of Appeals added, "Although we find no evidence of actual bias, we hold that the actions of the trial judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process."

The ruling of the Court of Appeals was unanimous, by a 7-0 vote.

More links:

Open Secrets.org report on Microsoft soft money donations

Common Cause report on Microsoft political contributions

Antitrust Law and Economics Review

Older Articles:

Microsoft Unfazed by Threat of New Antitrust Suits (Thursday, June 21, 2001)

What, me worry? Microsoft's Ballmer stays cool, confident, composed. (PC World, June 17, 1998)

Michael Jennings
Futurepower®
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
U.S.A.

Tel: (503) 233-7820
Fax: (419) 781-4606
E-Mail: jennings_michael @ hotmail.com (remove spaces)

Futurepower is a registered trademark.
Copyright 2001

boo.com did a similar thing in London for its relaunch, they plastered pesky little stickers all over Camden Town.

Fly posting is illegal under the Town and Country Act and carries fines of up to £1,000 per offending poster - or in this case, sticker... ouch, now that could really add up.

Those figures are nothing though, the old Boo.com managed to eat through a whopping £178 million ($250m, yup a quater of a billion bucks) in funding in 3-4 months. Man... what were they spending it on?

Now Mbeki wants to blame the drug companies. Regardless of the moral issues of drug company pricing strategies, South Africa's problems will not be solved until its leadership faces them head on and stops trying to allocate blame and make excuses. Lack of leadership on this issue is the major reason that 1 in 9 South Africans are infected with HIV, and 1 in 5 pregnant women in Soweto township are HIV positive.

Thabo Mbeki is a big part of the problem. It's a pity that the African National Congress (ANC) couldn't find a more worthy successor to Nelson Mandela.

But the Commission also proposes that Dutch citizens get the possibility to store other information in their digital safe-deposit, like medical and financial information. Citizens can decide to whom they will give access to these types of information. The digital safe-deposit should be located at the web sites of the municipialities. For the protection of the safe-deposits the commission suggests to give each Dutch citizen an electronic identity card with biometrics information. Citizens who are not on-line should get access to their digital safe-deposit through public terminals at the municipal hall.

The Commission thinks that the introduction of the system will give a boost to the digitalisation of Dutch society. New developments like electronic commerce and payment systems for driving have a clear need for the availability of reliable personal data that easily can be transferred and checked.

Ok so my postings so far for the day will come to a halt, but I figured this should be included in the topic, or... You could just read it anyways...

Two British astronomers have counted up to 20 "free floating" planets, drifting in the constellation of Orion. They told the National Astronomy Meeting in Cambridge yesterday that they had identified the "signature" of water vapour in the infrared spectrum of faint points of light in the Orion nebula. This is a vast cloud of gas and dust 1,300 light years from Earth, but visible as the middle "star" in the sword of the constellation of Orion.

Read on

In the UK we have a television programme called the Mark Thomas Comedy Product that made a very interesting and funny point. In the UK we have something called the data protection act, which gives us the right to access any data held about us from any company (with the exception of MI5/6,etc) for an administrative fee of ~£25.

This includes digital CCTV footage.

He gave us several examples of himself on various CCTV cameras (including the police, and several other government organisations), he's now running a competition for the best short film recorded on CCTV and obtained by the data protection act.

He has a website www.mtp2001.co.uk but it's a bit thin, does anyone know of any better links. This Guardian link explains some of his other escapades (scroll down to the bottom) Guardian Unlimited

Better get filming - Sam

Just remembered a recent and definite case where CCTV in the local areawas beneficial. We had a loony running around planting nailbombs in Brixton, then Brixk Lane (large asian population) and a gay pub in Old Compton St in Soho. Here's the nutter caught on CCTV in Brixton: unsurprisingly he was caught very soon after this picture was released.

--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

The Guardian [...] is seen as a trendy middle-class pseudo-intellectual broadsheet,

The Grauniad is reasonably objective, but the ICA is gaining an increasingly bad reputation for black-turtlenecked post-modern wankerdom from the technically illiterate chattering classes.

Now whenever I go to, for example, a news article at c|net (random example), I get a friendly little warning about accepting activex controls & plugins. I saw no, it goes away, I get a nice sedate page. The ad is still huge, but at least it's calm & easily handled. A better solution would be of course to tinker around with something like Junkbuster, but I haven't had the time.

Of course the obvious question at this point is "isn't that a pain? Aren't things less interesting without Flash?" to which the answers are "yes, and absolutely not." Examples of Flash files being actually useful are exceedingly rare, and I don't mind the encumbrance if I can filter them out of all the other pages. For the occasional file that I go to specifically for the Flash content (say, those wacky Mahir, Hatten, & AYBABTU movies...) it's easy enough to just click "yes" ever once in a while.

We should be encouraging the banner ad makers to be inventive, and use flash and the like, rather than just being more obvious and intruding.

Yes. Surely some stupid Flash animation couldn't be any more obvious & intruding than an animated gif. Suuuure.....

Encouraging marketers to take advantage of what the web medium is capable of isn't a bad idea, but what it actually ends up meaning is making the page more obnoxious, which is a bad idea. I showed the c|net example (a Sun ad, as it happened) to our marketing agency (whose background is primarily from print advertising) and they were impressed that it kept everything within the page. That is, there was no page to click through, but rather you were shown more information without leaving the current article. It ended up being less of a distraction than normal banners, which try to get you to abandon whatever you were looking at previously.

On a semi-related note <really free associating now>, it occurred to me that day that a fundamental difference between marketing on the web and marketing in other media is that the latter force you to have one clearly defined message that can be conveyed in a short space (a sound bite, a slogan, a couple of lines of text, etc), while the web doesn't really have that restriction. Rather than one clearly defined message, it's possible a medley of messages, variations on a theme, such that one customer, drawn to one topic, may go after one part of your site, while other customers can be drawn to other messages etc. That is, traditional media force you to have depth and not breadth, or perhaps vice versa, whereas with the web you aren't forced to make a choice -- you can have either and at best you should have both.

I am not really sure how this plays into the ideas behind web marketing (I'm not so naive as to think that I'm the first one to have thought of this), but it seems like it opens up a peephole into a much more interesting and dynamic kind of marketing. For example, a "banner" for a weather related site might be not just one image to click on, but an image map of a geographic map -- "don't just tell me about your weather abilities, tell me what the weather is going to be in Boston!" Ditto for news sites, etc. It's kind of a waste to have a banner -- especially the big banners this article is warning about -- to only link to one place. Better by far would be for it to allow many links, and compressed information, that would genuinely interest people, rather than just trying to be shinier than all the competitors. It should be obvious by now that most people see right through that kind of crap...</free associating / thinking aloud>

I suppose it would be unwelcome to note how little Katie Hafner has done for the hacker community, and how unpleasantly she has portrayed people who share a love of computers in general?

Of course, everyone has to make a buck, even if it's off the backs of talented, driven people. But it would be good to know beforehand about their motives.

Hafner in a Chat from 1992
Mixed Reviews of Hafner's Book with John Markoff
Kevin Mitnick's view of Katie Hafner and John Markoff

It would be really sad if Katie Hafner were allowed to shunt her past work and reinvent herself as a technology advocate. She is anything but.

article here

I was driving one of my 8 series (an M Tech believe it or not, we're talking a potential 200 MPH + ). Anyhow, on a country road we were forced to slow down (I don't speed BTW) because some loon had been pulled for speeding. Anyhow 5 minutes later, said loon is behind and harrassing me 'cause I'm only doing 30 in a 30 zone. I hope he gets banned 'cause he just doesn't understand.

Candiates vie for office. The outcome is in doubt, so they go to court for recounts. The courts deny that. Loser concedes. Winner gets stuck with the job.

Then came the court actions, where in the end the Supreme Court (including two justices with blatant conflicts of interest, who were therefore required to recuse themselves and did not) made a ruling for Bush not based in law, fact, or logic.

Bush lost the popular vote, he almost certainly lost the Florida vote, but he won with his brother's cronies and with his daddy's pals on the Supreme Court. The big shame is that in their (understandable) anti-Gore sentiment, many Bush supporters have backed this destruction of democracy.

Welcome to the end of the American Century.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

tele2 has been around for around 2 years, if I remember correctly. Their roll-out to other areas of the UK is frustraitingly slow, unfortunately. It's an off-shoot of a http://www.tele2.dk/">Danish company, but my Danish is not good enough to determine if they're doing wireless there.

The UK is interesting because of the relationship between BT, the cable companies and all the other phone companies. BT is moving as slow as possible in rolling out ADSL (it's only just become available in the last couple of months), and the cable companies are largely ineffective in providing cable modem access (largely thanks to the rapid consolidation in the industry, and the problems in integrating the different networks, I suspect). In the past 24 hours, however, the telecoms regulator, OFTEL, has started to put pressure on BT to speed up the unbundling of the local loop, which could change things dramatically.

Anyway, the point being, the telecoms landscape in the UK makes it difficult to get high speed (and consumer level cost) internet access over fixed wire. Hence, options such as the service provided by tele2 are interesting. Or the grass roots consume.net, or others.

If BT was playing nicely, it wouldn't be necessary, but they may end up shooting themselves in the foot.

No complaints there.

...j

i'm sorry but this doesn't absolve us of responsibility either. i.e. it's still our fault. it's not as if poor people are saying to themselves "I'm going to starve to death, but I still can't be bothered to reduce corruption and get priorities straight." They want desperately to get their priorities straight; unfortunately, the good ol' U.S. of A. has interests in having corrupt governments in place in poor countries. it supplies them with an enormous supply of cheap labour: starving farmers will work cheaply (they have to in order to survive), the world bank and the international monetary fund force export oriented economies onto them and PRESTO- tons of cheap food. when poor people do make attempts at overthrowing their corrupt, brutal governments, uncle sam sends guns to the regime to make sure that the threat to profit is kept at bay. please read this article in the U.K. press which announces the U.S. admitting to these types of activities in Latin America. You would be hard-pressed to ever find an article like this in the U.S. press.

There's an explanation of Gene patenting linked from that article that explains many of the issues in a form that even I can understand!

Son of a bitch. Hereis that link again. :-p Bastard-ass internet explorer changing my ;gt& 's.
--

Well...while we are quoting research, abcnews.com had an artical on recently that said Marijuana may be somewhat addictive in some people afterall.

Yes. Here
I'm not arguing that pot can't be psychologically addictive - anything can. If you enjoy doing something, and then suddenly stop, it's going to be hard. But pot is not physically addictive, and therein lies the difference. This study was completely bogus, and anybody who reads the article will be able to tell that.
--

I want French Attack Monkeys!

-Dorsey

Quote: Graeme Jacobs, editor of Which? magazine said: "If you're worried about levels of radiation from your mobile phone, you shouldn't rely on a hands-free set. The two models we tested triple the radiation to your brain, though we still don't know for certain whether that radiation is harmful."

See: This article for details.

Baz

from the Grauniad Online. Unfortunately, it's by Jack Schofield - he's only just stopped promoting Atari so it'll be a few months yet before he gives up on Microsoft.

To get a handle on just how hopeless Mogg's predictions have been in the past just check out this this article by Francis Wheen. Scroll down to the paragraph headed "The Guru Has Spoken". I have to admit that I practically choked on the (absurdly late) sandwich lunch I was eating when I caught sight of the original post on the usually clueful Slashdot site. Rees-Mogg may have edited the Times, but he is still (IMHO) an upper class, establishment nitwit of the highest (lowest?) order. Incidentally, for those of you reading outside the UK, the "London" Times is no longer considered the "newspaper of record" here. It has declined shockingly since becoming part of that "Virtual Merchant State", the Murdoch media empire. Wheen, on the other hand, writes for the Guardian, probably the best broadsheet newspaper in Britain today (and the only one with any real claim to independence). He is that rare thing, a commentator I frequently disagree with violently, but who always gets my attention. William "Lord" Rees-Mogg isn't.

Unfortunately they are. Reports on CNN, TV5 and BBC this week point to companies moving from Germany (the strongest economy in Europe) to the States because they cannot compete with the prices of raw materials being caused by the weak Euro. Unfortunately it was on TV, and thus I cannot provide a link, so I cannot provide the evidence to back this up despite a quick search on Google.

most Japanese car manufacturer were building or moving their plants from UK to countries part of the Euro...

Most? Evidence please? I think perhaps you are confusing Ford moving manufacturing of the Fiesta to Cologne from Dagenham, and from this page, this quote sums that up:

Bill Morris, the Transport and General Workers' leader, is almost certainly right to maintain that it is much easier and cheaper to sack workers in Britain than in Germany and that this is a major factor behind Ford's apparent decision to shift output to Cologne.

What would you prefer : pay someone 50000 USD/year or 50000 Euros/year ?

It doesn't work like that. If the cost of living in Europe is higher, which it is, it means you pay them accordingly. You don't just set an arbritary figure and then add a $ or on the end of it. If a barrel cost $30 and the Euro slumps, it means that whereas it used to cost 30 it now costs 35. So the fact that the oil has risen as well is only part of the reason for the current blockades.

kissing the US ass

I hope this isn't just jealousy because the UK overtook France as the second biggest economy in Europe this year having not joined the Eurozone and although Echelon was not just the UK and America as you seem to imply, France wasn't included...? You should be grateful as you got your own Echelon system whereas we had to share with Australia, New Zealand... :-(

If the UK wants to remain an island isolated from the world

remain (r-mn)
v. intr. remained, remaining, remains.
To continue in the same state or condition: These matters remain in doubt.

For us to 'remain' it is dependant on us already being isolated, and we aren't really as we are kissing up to the US ass and moaning all the time about the EU, as well as being the head of the Commonwealth? When Norway voted against becoming part of the EU, did you notice how isolated they became('remained'), and the country's GDP rose in the following year?

I am with you on the last point: I wish we never had joined, as do most (69% at the last poll) of the people in the UK. We moan for good reason. For an example of this and on how certain people want Europe to work try checking here. He implies that he only thought the German people had a right to decide on whether more countries should joing the EU..

PS Maybe we should be working together on this, as we both seem to want the same thing: the UK out of Europe! :-)

Here's a link to a Guardian(UK) story talking about long-term changes...hope people find it informative... http://ww w.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 052241,00.html

Basically these scientists have taken core samples off the ocean floor which go back 60 million years, and measured the amount of carbonic acid stored in seashells at all levels, which is a fairly reliable indicator of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. Their finding: the last time CO2 levels were as high as they currently are was 20 million years ago. Just another datum, but a bit longer-range than the recorded weather history.

Taken with everything else, I'm concerned...

what am i basing the IOC being out of the loop? you remeber Samaranch's explanation about his financial deal ings....

the IOC is a corrupt. he's old school. he's what's wrong with business today - old men with money living lavishly off the profits of the companies that they run.

as for why is the internet just so important:

i work alot. i get a lot of content at work. i buy stuff from work. i have both my work/personal life at work. the Olympics is financially motivated, just like baseball, football, and any other sport. so if king samarach denies the web from providing content - the he's denying profits. and if you think that the little old king isn't concerned about profits, go re-read the orginal story. that's billions with a capital B.

besides the $$? because i keep up with professional cycling. i actually give a shit. and the Olympics are huge for cycling. next to the Tour de France they may be 2nd for eyeballs. and for me, i want to be able to get that information at work. isn't a difficult concept. as a business, you put the content where people will use it. the all or nothing ideal of tv vs. the web is ignorant. and my guess is that Samaranch doesn't get it. i would venture that he sees it as dilution. in fact, it may be concetration. but the "dance with the date who brung ya" attitude is what makes this all possible. Samaranch is beholden to the medium that my parents are more in touch with than i am.

As for 'Disadvantages of the jackets include the possible implications of network crashes and the effects of rainstorms on techno-clothing while being worn.': the network in the current jackets is passive, and therefore there's nothing to crash, and the jackets are designed to be machine washed and so a little rain (or indeed a great deal of hot soapy rain) really isn't going to bother them...

There's a rather more accurate article in the Guardian online at: http://ww w.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 051264,00.html

Asher Hoskins
Philips Wearables Project
(a engineer, not an official spokesman! go speak to Philips PR if you want one of those!)

The UK broadsheet, The Guardian has as reasonable and balanced an editorial on the Napster Pirates / Crappy Record Industry, as a person could hope to find: here.

After a somewhat dodgy report of the case earlier in the week, the Guardian had a fairly clueful article . Shame about the title but that's editors for you.

After a somewhat dodgy report of the case earlier in the week, the Guardian had a fairly clueful article . Shame about the title but that's editors for you.

I get enough of a buzz from kissing someone on the lips without getting a hit of caffeine when I do it!

Baz

June 30, 2000: MP3 Summit Ian at MP3 Summit webcast
You can find Ian's hour long talk at the MP3 Summit about 1 hour 8 minutes into the Wednesday webcast.

June 16, 2000: Guardian Free market fight for music moguls
Interesting article in a British national newspaper.

May 27, 2000: LA Weekly Genie 1, Bottle 0
Very amusing article on Freenet and copyright. Highly recommended.

May 24, 2000: Channel 4 News Hackers stay one step ahead
A very cool news item talking about recent attempts by the British government to censor the Internet and how Freenet will make this very difficult. Includes text and streaming video of the item.

May 23, 2000: Libération L'anarchie est au bout du clavier
An interesting French article about Freenet, concentrating on the freedom of information aspects of the system rather than just copyright.

May 12, 2000: National Post Napster secured page in Internet history
Interesting description of why Freenet is not vulnerable in the same way that Napster is, although I must say that their "final thought" is slightly perplexing!

May 12, 2000: O'Reilly Network Gnutella and Freenet represent true technological innovation
A nice article concentrating, for a change, on the technical side of Freenet and Gnutella. Reasonably accurate, although it understates the efficiency improvement that Freenet should provide (describing it as of comparable efficiency to the WWW where it should be much more efficient).

May 12, 2000: Het Nieuwsblad Vrijheid van downloaden
A Belgian article about Freenet.

May 10, 2000: Houston Chronicle Software developer pledges to foil all intellectual property watchdogs
A version of the article below, doesn't require that you register.

May 10, 2000: New York Times The Concept of Copyright Fights for Internet Survival
One of the better articles; concentrates on the copyright issue. Requires free registration.

April 27, 2000: PCFormat Daily FreeNet
A brief article on Freenet.

April 27, 2000: Heise News-Ticker World Wide Anarchy: Netz ohne Kontrolle
A German article on Freenet.

April 26, 2000: CNET.com Free, anonymous information on the anarchists' Net
Entertaining article with some nice quotes.

April 17, 2000: The Irish Times Anarchy Rules Alternative Web
A rather amusing article on Freenet.

April 16, 2000: Freshmeat Client As Server: The New Model
An interesting article discussing distributed systems and how systems like Freenet are actually in a similar spirit to the original Internet.

April 13, 2000: El País Freenet propone una red sin censuras, alternativa a la WWW
A Spanish article about Freenet.

April 10, 2000: Slashdot.org FreeNet's Ian Clarke Answers Privacy Questions
A very informative interview conducted by the readership of SlashDot.org, probably the closest thing to a FAQ, aside from our faq.

March 25, 2000: ABC News Freedom on the Net?
A rehash of the New Scientist article below, but likely to reach a much larger audience.

March 25, 2000: New Scientist Out of control
A "big bad Internet"-style article, but it is reasonably well researched and seeks the opinions of those who might be considered Freenet's opposition.

March 23, 2000: Heise.de Ein Netzwerk, das Zensur unmöglich machen soll
A German article on Freenet.

March 14, 2000: OLinux Freenet, a polemic concept to deal with WWW
An English translation of a Brazilian interview with Ian Clarke. Focuses on the technical aspects of Freenet, and goes into a reasonable amount of detail as to how the system works.

March 10, 2000: Webwereld Anoniem Freenet ultieme schuilplaats voor piraten
A Dutch article on Freenet. My Dutch is a little rusty but it looks like it is primarily inspired by the Wired article below.

March 8, 2000: no spoon FreeNet : le réseau anonyme distribué qui supplantera le Web
An excellent French article on Freenet, draws an interesting parallel between Freenet and the writings of Neal Stephenson.

March 3, 2000: Need To Know sufficiently advanced technology: the gathering
A brief but excellent article again approaching Freenet from a pro-freedom standpoint.

February 24, 2000: PigDog Journal Get in on the Ground Floor of Freedom
A very positive little article describing Freenet and why they think it is interesting using some rather "colorful" language.

August 14, 1999: Brave Gnu World FreeNET
One of the first articles about Freenet back when it was 100% theory. Still an excellent introduction to the way Freenet works.

It seems like the US's adventure-loving spy agencies might have gone on a bit of a spree - bombs and all - in Italy, too. This hit the world news back in 1990 when the CIA's Operation Gladio was revealed in court, but since then it's kind of fallen into the oubliette, gee wonder why?

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Hmm. Despite an earlier ruling that Sealand lay outside of .uk's territorial waters back in the 3-mile days, the Home Office have announced to the press that Sealand DOES fall under their juristiction for purposes of the RIP bill. Do you have any plans to get official recognition by the European parliment or UK courts of Sealand's status before you go ahead?
--

Socioeconomic Hazards

The patenting of genetically engineered foods and widespread biotech food production threatens to eliminate farming as it has been practiced for 12,000 years. GE patents such as the Terminator Technology will render seeds infertile and force hundreds of millions of farmers who now save and share their seeds to purchase evermore expensive GE seeds and chemical inputs from a handful of global biotech/seed monopolies. If the trend is not stopped, the patenting of transgenic plants and food-producing animals will soon lead to universal "bioserfdom" in which farmers will lease their plants and animals from biotech conglomerates such as Monsanto and pay royalties on seeds and offspring. Family and indigenous farmers will be driven off the land and consumers' food choices will be dictated by a cartel of transnational corporations. Rural communities will be devastated. Hundreds of millions of farmers and agricultural workers worldwide will lose their livelihoods.

Some History:In the late sixties Roy Bates and his family occupied one of the forts and declared himself a soverign nation. This was upheld in British Court and the long bizarre history began. The tiny nation was attacked and captured by a German businessman and friends for several weeks until Roy could put a crew together to retake it by rappeling from helicopters. (There were no known fatalities from these actions.) Here are some fun links to learn more:

• The New York Times Article that started it all.
• What appears to be the official webisite:http://www.sealandgov.com/index.html
• The HavenCo homepage: http://www.havenco.com/
• A very nice article about the off-shore radio stations in England during the 1960's. http://fre\espace.virg in.net/line.design/forts/radioforts.htm. This includes a nice picture of the fort being installed: http://freespace.virgin .net/line.design/forts/sea_forts.htm.
• Some publicity shots of Sealand from their old (archived) website. http://www.fruitsofthese a.demon.co.uk/sealand/gallery.html.
• A Guardian Article about Sealand.
• A Sunday Telegraph Article.
• Dorothy Lerda at The National Geographic answers a question about Sealand. (Notice that she has what is likely to be the web address of the imposters responsible for selling passports.)
• A brief history of the forts with pictures and diagrams.

www.havenco.net, ns1.havenco.net, and www.sealandgov.com are all the same server at the same IP address which, according to a traceroute, appears to be in Pennsylvania, several thousand miles from the Principality of Sealand.

http://www.fruitsofthesea.demon.co.uk/sealand/ is cited as the "real" website for Sealand in this article which exposes the fake website which sells fake passports. But the FruitsOfTheSea site and the Sealandgov.com sites, which both claim to be official, don't link to each other at all.

sealandgov.com claims you can know it is the 'real' website because they are not selling anything. (See their FAQ, second to last question.) Umm.. what about all that colocate space you're pushing??

sealandgov.com and havenco.net were both registered on the same day, *less than a week ago*.

Although http://www.principality-sealand.net/540.htm is pretty clearly a fake, the pictures seem to be legit. Check out the pictures of the "island". Where exactly do you place a server farm? According to the Guardian article (link above) it is under 1000 square yards in size. That's smaller than a football field.

As someone else mentioned, the cast of characters is rather.. odd. Did The NY Times contact any of these people to verify this story?

It isn't "their" diplomacy site at all -- you are quoting from a scam. Read this

Please note that the first address you give,

http://www.principality-sealand.net/en00.htm, is actually run by a group of people who sell fake Sealand passports. It is not a site endorsed by Prince Roy or Princess Joan

The following article from The Guardian explains the issue:
Storm Warning

I guess you haven't been listening to the news lately: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/s tory/0,3604,102378,00.html

Quote from the link above: "These K-For figures suggest that there are as many murders now as there were in the two months of mutual ethnic attacks before Nato air strikes began against Yugoslavia in March - roughly 15 to 20 a week." Happen to know how many Serb civilian were killed by NATO airstrikes? (Hint: it's more than the number of people from all sides that had been killed in Kosovo before the NATO airstrikes.

It looks like that if you are Serb, Roma, muslim Slav, Jew, or even moderate Albanian being killed doesn't count as ethnic cleansing: http://www.seattle-pi.com/opinion/soap131.shtml and http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.ht m

At least the NATO troops at Kosovo have some perks . http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/02/ 05/timfgneur01001.html?1984

Care to reconsider your views? Maybe human rights didn't have much to do with the Kosovo "virtual war"?

This Guardian article reports on how the European Commission has just criticised BT for being too slow in rolling out access to the local loop to other companies.

The EC thinks they should do it by the end of this year, not mid next year.

Nice to know someone with a bit of weight is happy to throw the cat amongst the pidgeons.

...j

In the UK where I am writing from (and I have no reason to think that the law may be differnt in the USA), the managers of pension funds are legally obliged (yep, and there are cases where they have been taken to court) to make as much money as possible for the holders of that pension fund.

The managers of yopur pension fund, which your hard earned cash goes into every month, are the people responsible for driving many of these deals forwards. Why - because they are legally obliged to.

I think that there are two underlying reasons for this (I seem to recall a story in the financial section of the Guardian I can't find the article I was looking for in the archive - but these ones may be relevent/of interest:

Investors wield their power

Whisper it ... takeovers don't pay )

First, this legal obligation on pension fund managers - pressure for a legal change would help here, although the recent performance of ethical trusts and investment portfolios has been encouraging, and can be used for pointed questioning for pension fund meetings. Second, the investment model in the US/USA is much more dependent on raising money from shareholders than from the bank (which, while they may be b*stards from time to time, at least only demand a set interest rate, and don't ask why you havn't been able to pay them more interest).

So where does this leave us. If you want to check the power of the multinationals it is unfortunately the case that the offering of economic incentives is, as Jon Katz points out, the most effective. The adverse publicity that Shell received over the Brent Spar decommisioning caused a major change in mindest. The publicity over 'fat cat' utility managers in the UK has also been very high profile.

If you want to get involved, then talk to your representatives of your pension fund. Apply pressure to them directly to invest ethically, and to take a long term view. After all - it's your money. If you own shares in a corporation, get along to the AGM if you can. Ask them about their policies, these people *really* hate it when they take flak from shareholders - as any number of news stories show.

Remember, it's your money. You may have earned it, but the way you invest it (be it in goods, services or stock) is, amongst other things, an ethical decision.

In the UK where I am writing from (and I have no reason to think that the law may be differnt in the USA), the managers of pension funds are legally obliged (yep, and there are cases where they have been taken to court) to make as much money as possible for the holders of that pension fund.

The managers of yopur pension fund, which your hard earned cash goes into every month, are the people responsible for driving many of these deals forwards. Why - because they are legally obliged to.

I think that there are two underlying reasons for this (I seem to recall a story in the financial section of the Guardian I can't find the article I was looking for in the archive - but these ones may be relevent/of interest:

Investors wield their power

Whisper it ... takeovers don't pay )

First, this legal obligation on pension fund managers - pressure for a legal change would help here, although the recent performance of ethical trusts and investment portfolios has been encouraging, and can be used for pointed questioning for pension fund meetings. Second, the investment model in the US/USA is much more dependent on raising money from shareholders than from the bank (which, while they may be b*stards from time to time, at least only demand a set interest rate, and don't ask why you havn't been able to pay them more interest).

So where does this leave us. If you want to check the power of the multinationals it is unfortunately the case that the offering of economic incentives is, as Jon Katz points out, the most effective. The adverse publicity that Shell received over the Brent Spar decommisioning caused a major change in mindest. The publicity over 'fat cat' utility managers in the UK has also been very high profile.

If you want to get involved, then talk to your representatives of your pension fund. Apply pressure to them directly to invest ethically, and to take a long term view. After all - it's your money. If you own shares in a corporation, get along to the AGM if you can. Ask them about their policies, these people *really* hate it when they take flak from shareholders - as any number of news stories show.

Remember, it's your money. You may have earned it, but the way you invest it (be it in goods, services or stock) is, amongst other things, an ethical decision.

"Monsanto, the US biotech corporation, has indicated that it is considering a major climbdown over genetically modified food in Britain. It has offered to use its vast gene databases to help plant breeders create new varieties of crops using traditional cross-breeding techniques."
The Guardian, Sunday September 26th 1999

"The Soil Association yesterday described as "hugely significant" indications from the US biotech company Monsanto that it might be prepared to rethink its commitment to genetically modified food in Britain."
The Guardian, Monday 27th September 1999

Now... what's going on here? I suspect that Monsanto is trying to regain shareholder confidence (after the Deutschbank recommended against investment in GM foods), or trying to bolster PR and associate their name with benevolence before they hit us with GM food again five or ten years from now. The less cynical side of me, however, is rather hoping that they've actually rethought the direction of their business due to public pressure. Power to the people!

Hamish

"Monsanto, the US biotech corporation, has indicated that it is considering a major climbdown over genetically modified food in Britain. It has offered to use its vast gene databases to help plant breeders create new varieties of crops using traditional cross-breeding techniques."
The Guardian, Sunday September 26th 1999

"The Soil Association yesterday described as "hugely significant" indications from the US biotech company Monsanto that it might be prepared to rethink its commitment to genetically modified food in Britain."
The Guardian, Monday 27th September 1999

Now... what's going on here? I suspect that Monsanto is trying to regain shareholder confidence (after the Deutschbank recommended against investment in GM foods), or trying to bolster PR and associate their name with benevolence before they hit us with GM food again five or ten years from now. The less cynical side of me, however, is rather hoping that they've actually rethought the direction of their business due to public pressure. Power to the people!

Hamish

DU-enhanced weapons are like Lite Nukes minus the Giant Mushroom Clouds and the guilt; the reason the guilt isn't there is because there doesn't seem to be much reportage or discussion about it. See No Evil, etc. It will take widespread news footage of deformed babies and livestock, and mutant produce before that discussion will begin, and then Americans may just choose to ignore it unless it happens on their own soil. And it has, in a way -- Gulf War Syndrome and health problems in post-Gulf offspring may well be related to DU; if there's a ground war in Serbia, the NATO troops may be exposed to the radiation, leading to Who Knows What?®

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