Recently in World Category

Second Life escapists told to wake up:

The World Development Movement (WDM) has loaded a digital counter into Linden Labs' virtual world which tallies the number of preventable child deaths since it was first opened in 2003. A child's life is lost every three seconds.

The wake-up call comes on the same day a chilling survey reveals almost half of Americans who use "virtual communities" believe events there to be just as significant as those in the real world.

The WDM's Peter Taylor said: "Millions of people are now spending more and more of their time in Second Life or similar virtual environments. We are here to remind them that they can't escape the problems of the real world."

I think it's first time I mention Second Life. I was just waiting about something worthy to post about ;-).

Irrepressible Adj. 1) Impossible to repress or control.

Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information.

The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are cracking down on freedom of expression.

Amnesty International, with the support of The Observer UK newspaper, is launching a campaign to show that online or offline the human voice and human rights are impossible to repress.

The campaign site: irrepressible.info.

I fear now for my children growing up into a world where the leaders turn their backs on the spirit of reason and inquiry. Where the new cardinals of the church deny evolution not on any grounds of empirical reason or evidence, but rather like children having a temper tantrum because they want it not to be so. Where the leaders of this country try to take Terry Shiavo's husband to court not because of any evidence, but because they are angry to have been proven wrong by science. Where cowardly murderers kill innocent men, women, and children and claim to do it in the name of a religion, meaning something that no one can possibly argue with from a rational point of view. Where the education board of Kansas makes the state a mockery by demanding that irrationality be held to be as valid as science. Where 1.2 billion people consider it acceptable for some man with a vision to utter a Fatwa ordering some person killed simply because he doesn't like what the other person chooses to believe in or even just disapproves of his line of inquiry. Where political correctness means that if some lines of inquiry are pursued, others feel free to harass and abuse and even threaten the people trying to find out the facts. Where people believe that they have the right to tell others what to believe, what to wear, what to eat, what to say, and what to think.

[...]

It is time to speak up. It is time to say that facts are what matter, not faith, that human progress is accomplished through unfettered use of reason and inquiry and tolerance and discussion and debate, not through intolerant and irrational acts of terror or edicts. For all of our children and for the future, speak up against this wave of intolerance and irrationalism washing over the world.

Adam Bosworth, Speaking up.

Excellent question. I just love the conclusion, Dr Dave.

It's a sad day today in London.

As usual, security measures will be further tightened pretty much everywhere, which will just make public transportation a little more difficult for everybody, and will not prevent in any way another attack. Apart from the foolish war that's going on in Irak, have our leaders a clue on what's going on and what to do? Tim Bray has a point:

I’m not saying that there’s any political grievance to which attacking New York, Madrid or London is a reasonable response. But when something is driving enough people into insane belief systems that we see regular explosions in our cities, it would be smart to care—a lot—what that something is. Because, on the evidence, I don’t think the leaders of the Western world have a clue.

In Iran, one can be imprisonned and risks the death penalty for blogging.

Free Mojtaba Saminejad:

Mojtaba SamieNejad, 25 year old blogger and student, was first arrested on November 1, 2004 for reporting the arrests of three other bloggers. He was held in custody for almost three months. Following his temporary release on January 27, 2005, he started a new blog to reflect his thoughts and beliefs. This resulted in a second unlawful arrest which has lasted to this day.

Mojtaba is kept in Ghezel Hesar prison amongst inmates convicted of murder and other serious offences. Mojtaba was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment on June 2, 2005. This sentence was issued by Judge Saadat of Revolutionary Court 13.

It is ours' and all human rights activists' duty to take a stand against the injustice of imprisonment for voicing one’s opinion. We ask all bloggers, human rights organizations and free people of the world to help Mojtaba by voicing their objection to his sentencing and demand his immediate and unconditional release.

Please sign the petition, it will take you one minute and can help set him free.

Mojtaba Saminejad (in Persian).

Update: a few links for more insight on the subjects...

• Iranian Journalist Credits Blogs for Playing Key Role in His Release From Prison


• Going home, finally


• The Association of Iranian Blogwriters (Penlog)


• Committee to Protect Bloggers


• Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad gets two-year prison sentence


• BBC: The price paid for blogging Iran

The Chesnot and Malbrunot families have received the best Christmas gift they could possibly expect this year. After 124 days being held hostages in Iraq, I hope the two journalists will be able to return safely at home as quickly as humanely possible.

So be it. For a few hours I hoped that all my American friends were wrong, but they were right, all those I kept asking, in predicting the outcome a long time ago.

Had Kerry not conceded and, instead, enforced the "every vote counted" promise, this election would have surely ended in a juridical imbroglio reminiscent of the 2000 Florida mess. As Le Monde wrote today in its front column, "What image for a democracy that sets itself as a world example, with voters lining up at night in Ohio, anticipated votes, provisional votes, unreliable voting machines, endless recounts!".

I might lean towards Le Monde in thinking that the US electoral archaism is worrying, because it has an impact far beyond the US frontiers.

Le Monde writes, to explain why the Bush administration has no inclination to concede to America's traditional allies anything that relates to US security, that:

Americans do not understand that for Europeans, 11-9 (Nov 9, 1989, i.e. the fall of the Berlin Wall) is more important than 9-11 (the Sep 11, 2001 attacks on US soil).

For the Europeans, the key date is one of reconciliation ; for the Americans, a declaration of war. The American politics expert Robert Kagan has painted this gap in opposing a Europe coming from Venus and an America coming from Mars.

I do not share the newspaper hypothesis that the second Bush's term will mark a fall of the neocons influence in terms of foreign policy (I might be pessimistic though). But I share their views in both the fact that Europe and America cannot ignore each other in many key international issues (terrorism, Palestine/Israël, vigilance against the proliferation of WMD, etc.), and that Bush's re-election should be an electroshock for a Europe that needs to decide for itself rather than react to Washington's policy.

No system without balance is stable, and a world with just one superpower (from Mars) is not one I feel safe living in.

Watching the US presidential election has never been so interesting. Actually way more interesting than those of many banana republics out there. Enough for the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to deploy an Election Observation Mission there (and they have already published a puzzling report [PDF] following their first evaluation visit).

After Bush who bans everybody but North Americans from his site (but I can still see ya, Junior!), now 58,000 Florida ballot papers go missing just days before the deadline, leading to a flurry of lawsuits. Florida, governed by Jeb Bush, once against will shine with hints of voter fraud, dirty tricks, facing election fracas by enforcing its bogus felon list again, enjoying e-vote snafu and bugaboo with electronic voting machines just as they are turned on (oh, and don't miss the chimpanzee demonstrating how to erase votes on the higly secured Diebold machines, but no need to worry now that a Diebold rep runs the elections in a California County). Oh, and I forgot about "cutting edge" user interface design.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, a coalition of private citizens and local elected officials plan to file a lawsuit to block the state's use of electronic voting machines, because they "cannot be relied upon to protect the fundamental right to vote".

And with more electoral codes than states in the US, there might be other surprises, such as if Colorado voters scrap the winner-takes-all electoral college system, in favour of a more proportional solution. Making every vote count in a democratic election, who would have thought of that before?

Indeed, let's stop complaining and recognize how far ahead the US are compared to our old democracies: technology-driven elections that can potentially be determined before a human being casts a vote, a system where you don't need to get the majority of votes to be elected, where the highest Justices are politically affiliated and can nominate the winner in case the lawsuits don't work... No, really, watching this from my middle-aged city in old Europe, I'm impressed.

The Register reports that Bush's website is blocking visitors from outside the US, citing an article from Netcraft which monitors the site from various points worldwide. Netcraft has noted that since Monday, www.georgewbush.com is reachable for visitors coming from within North America, while others (like me today) are greeted with a rude "Access Denied: You don't have permission to access http://georgewbush.com on this server." error message (a "403 forbidden" HTTP response for the geeks out there).

Bush's reelection campaign site is distributed via the Akamai CDN which provides a significant boost to bandwidth and resilience to flash crowds and attacks. This makes this ban even more surprising, IMO.

Well, may be that's the proof we were all waiting that, if re-elected, Bush would respect his promise to favor the moderate Republicans over the neocons, and consequently show some consideration for the foreigners out there!

Remember: promises bind only those who listen to them!

Update: ah! Being a customer of Akamai myself, I did the trivial test of finding the origin server via origin.georgewbush.com and, bingo! There you are, the origin server does not apply the ban. This further confirms my opinion that this ban is deliberate, and utterly stupid, politially speaking. Junior's site is also accessible at http://65.172.163.222/. Amateurs (private French joke).