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Lobbyists Attack UK Open Standards Policy
superglaze writes "The Business Software Alliance, a lobbying organisation representing the likes of Microsoft, Adobe and Apple, has laid into the UK's recently-adopted policy of mandating the use of open standards wherever possible in government IT systems.The policy describes open standards as being "publicly available at zero or low cost" and having "intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis" The BSA said this would "inadvertently reduce choice [and] hinder innovation", and even went so far as to claim open standards would lead to higher e-government costs, but open-source advocates say the policy reflects how much the European Interoperability Framework is weighted in favour of the proprietary software companies."
where ever we are. scary crowd to say the least
By Carl Teichrib:
â€The Georgia Guidestones, a massive granite edifice planted in the Georgia countryside, contains a list of ten new commandments for Earthâ€s citizens. The first commandment, and the one which concerns this article, simply states; â€Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.â€
Robert Walker, former chair of PepsiCo and Proctor & Gamble on water:
Water is a gift of nature. Its delivery is not. It must be priced to insure it is used sustainably.
Mikhail Gorbachev:
â€We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there arenâ€t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.â€
Jacques Cousteau UNESCO Courier 1991:
â€In order to save the planet it would be necessary to kill 350,000 people per day.â€
Jacques Cousteau, Population: Opposing Viewpoints:
â€If we want our precarious endeavor to succeed, we must convince all human beings to participate in our adventure, and we must urgently find solutions to curb the population explosion that has a direct influence on the impoverishment of the less-favoured communities. Otherwise, generalized resentment will beget hatred, and the ugliest genocide imaginable, involving billions of people, will become unavoidable.â€
â€Uncontrolled population growth and poverty must not be fought from inside, from Europe, from North America, or any nation or group of nations; it must be attacked from the outside – by international agencies helped in the formidable job by competent and totally non-governmental organizations.â€
David Rockefeller: Memoirs 2002 Founder of the CFR:
â€We wield over American political and economical institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as â€internationalists†and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political structure, one world, if you will. If thatâ€s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.â€
David Rockefeller, Co-founder of the Trilateral Commission:
â€We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine & other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promise of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plans for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American Case Officer for the State Departmentâ€s Office of Population Affairs (OPA) (now the US State Dept. Office of Population Affairs, est. by Henry Kissinger in 1975): â€There is a single theme behind all our work -we must reduce population levels,†said Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Departmentâ€s Office of Population Affairs (OPA). â€Either they [governments] do it our way, through nice clean methods or they will get the kind of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran, or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it. â€The professionals,†said Ferguson, â€arenâ€t interested in lowering population for humanitarian reasons. That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our strategic needs, and we say that this country must lower its population -or else we will have