Forget the $100 laptop, India develops one at much lower price

The current model developed in India actually costs only 35 dollars, they expect the price to drop to 20 and even as little as 10 dollars soon.

The device has been developed by the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science. It has a touchscreen system, Linux operative system (get used: Windows is out, Linux is in), web browser, PDF reader and video conferencing capabilities, being flexible enough to incorporate other stuff.

Source: The Guardian (includes a short video of the official presentation)

Greek blogger shot down in Athens

Sokratis Giolias, 37, was shot down before his home in Athens after men possibly dressed in police uniforms rang his bell and said his car had been robbed. They shot 16 bullets of the 19 mm caliber at him.

Giolias run the most popular blog and one of the most visited websites of Greece, Troktiko, which mixed frivolity with wide spectrum journalism, including, it seems, investigative journalism. He may have stepped on the wrong toe of someone with very bad temper and enough power. Who exactly? That I don't know yet.

While the police accuses the mysterious leftist armed group "The Revolutionary Sect" (variously called in the media "Sect of Revolutionaries" or "Rebel Sect"), which possibly means Revolutionary Struggle, which sent a parcel-bomb to the Greek Minister of Interior recently, killing one of his aides. I find this association strange to say the least, as the modus operandi is clearly different, there are reports that the men were dressed in police uniforms and, after hours of reading an automatically translated version of the blog, I get the conclusion the main targets of his reports seem to be the establishment, including the police, wealthy tax evaders, fire arsonists and EU dictator Joao Barroso, as well as fascist Turkish groups like the Grey Wolves.

[Update: a frequent poster at the blog, Anagnostis, says that while "the Sect" had threatened certain journalists, Giolias' name was not in their list. He/she adds other reasons not to believe in the official version].

I suspect that the Greek police is trying to cover up the institutional murder of a free reporter who had become a problem for them. But we'll see because it's not like we can be deceived forever, right?

Most intriguing is this announcement repeatedly placed in the blog yesterday which reads (according to Google translator):

Do not miss tomorrow troktiko

Tomorrow we will see how the state of the relationship between security forces and entrepreneur! With photos and documents

From what I could gather from the media, he was about to publish an investigative report on corruption, possibly those links between the police forces and the capitalists that we can understand from the babbling translation provided by Google.

Mainstream media references: Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters, New Europe.


________________________

Update (Jul 23): Antimperialista blog[es] reports that all documents and personal objects of Sokratis Giolias have been confiscated by police on the pretext of doing a throughout investigation. That way the investigation on police corruption he was about to publish will never see the light.

It also clarifies that the mysterious "Revolutionary Sect" is believed to be different from other armed groups and a cover up for police and fascist murderous activities.

The blog also links to Il Manifesto newspaper[it], which wonders if Greece is falling again into the Lead Years, name by which are known the period of the 1970s and 1980s that, specially in Italy but also in other areas of Europe, characterized by state terrorism against revolutionaries and complex manipulations leading to farce-trials.

73,000 blogs wiped off overnight

The sheer number is scary. The WordPress powered blog-hosting site Blogetery was closed down on July 14 on initially unknown reasons. The closure brought down some 73,000 blogs.

As I say, it was unclear why the site was closed down because, whatever the possible crimes committed by individual bloggers, it made little sense to close all them. However in the end it seems it was not the FBI nor the judicial authorities which ordered the closure but the hosting server BurstNet on its own (pretty much abusive and unjustified) decision.

Apparently the case is after all not about copyright issues nor child pornography as was speculated early but about one blogger seemingly linked to Al Qaeda who posted a bomb making manual. While the FBI did use the powers granted by the Patriot Act to demand access to hosted data, the closure was decided, admittedly, by the host company.

Sources: various but specially CNET. See also the discussion at this forum between a BurstNet employee and the owner of Blogetery, who was obviously confused and upset. Notice how many people in the thread take the side of the blurry authority figures regardless that it's a clear case of freedom of speech and contractual responsibility and that the victims were not offered any explanation at all. It's quite worrisome that people tend to think that way because that is the gate that lead us to fascism.

Update: seems the issue has snowballed to some dimension. BBC reports on the matter today reflecting the anger of users who blame BurstNet of not caring about their customers. Certainly a bad publicity move, I'd say: would you hire their services?

Another site, iBPFree, hosting forums, has also been closed without apparent reason.

Does piracy really harm musicians?

According to Ciudad Futura the answer is in this graph, showing where the benefits of the average music record goes to:

For those who can't read Spanish, the translation is:

• Compañía discográfica: music company
• Procutor: producer
• Manager: manager
• Estudio de grabación: recording studio
• Anterior discográfica: previous music company
• Representantes: representatives
• Abogados: attorneys
• Músico/artista: musician/artist

So draconian anti-piracy laws are hardly justified in the name of the artists' profits. It's really more a matter of vampires'... I mean: corporations' profits. Nothing else.

Hence my fatwa is piracy is good, at least in most cases.

SourceForge boycotts Cuba!

I am outraged to find out that the supposedly main Open Source repository SourceForge.net dares to discriminate countries such as Cuba or Syria in following the abusive unilateral sanctions of the Helms-Burton law.

From the terms and conditions page:

Users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, may not post Content to, or access Content available through, SourceForge.net.

From the cryptographic software hosting page:

At time of this writing, cryptographic software may not legally, knowingly be exported to Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.

The logical thing to do is to migrate that service to some other country where that stupid law does not apply. But seemingly that is not something that has gone through the brains of the promoters of SF.

Notice that such discrimination has nothing to do with any human rights sensitivity, as countries with much worse human rights records, such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, Morocco or Colombia are not listed at all.

I came to know because the Brazilian public telecom company, SERPRO, has removed itself from this repository precisely because of the boycott to Cuba. Personally I will make my best from now on not collaborate with SF, not even downloading anything from its imperialist computers, until such arbitrary restrictions are removed.

New wiki on Iruña-Veleia

Under the motto scientia vincere tenebras (defeating darkness through science), and promoted by a rather large group of scientists, Veleia-Online has arrived to the Internet. In their own words:

MISSION STATEMENT

SOS-Veleia has been created to serve as an online resource tool for those interested in exploring questions related to the discovery of the so-called ‘exceptional inscriptions’ of Iruña-Veleia (Northern Spain), excavated in 2005 and 2006 by the Lurmen group. Our inquiry is grounded on the premise that the falsity of the artefacts has not been sufficiently demonstrated and that there are reasons to believe that they are authentic. Our goal is to foster honest and transparent reflection concerning the authenticity of the artefacts discovered to date by applying sound scientific methods to their study. With this objective in mind SOS-Veleia seeks to:

• Make available the reports that have been prepared to date by all parties involved.
• Display all photographs currently available of the pieces.
• Situate the pieces along with their respective transcriptions and interpretations within the archaeological context in which they were found.
• Encourage debate so that experts as well as other concerned individuals can express their opinions and provide input.
• Compile and make available reports and other information that this subject has elicited in the past and continues to produce.
• Demonstrate why it is important that new physical tests be carried out on the artefacts.
• Establish why it is essential that the contrastive controlled excavations recommended by Professor Perring be conducted. Dr. Perring is an internationally recognized expert in the field of Roman archaeology and a member of the Scientific Advisory Commission and therefore , hence an expert appointed by the Deputy Lorena López de la Calle. In his report to the Scientific Advisory Commission, dated 21 september 2007, Dr. Perring made this recommendation: that well recognized archaeologists, not connected to any of the parties involved, carry out new excavations at the site. Specifically, Perring stated the following in section 3.7.2. of his report (2008, link to full text of Perring’s report: Anexo IV): “An additional test, and perhaps the most important, is to see if the results obtained can be duplicated by an independent team of researchers. Much as is the case with any scientific experiment, the replication of the experiment provides the ultimate proof. A new archaeological team, involving none of the archaeologists or institutions involved in the recent work, should be invited to see if their excavations at Veleia will also produce ‘exceptional graffiti’.”

The site is promoted by:

• Estitxu Breñas Glz de Zarate; B.A. in Geography and History. Editor. (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
• Pello Eizagirre; Specialist in Palaeo-Christianity (Zarautz, Gipuzkoa)
• Juan Martin Elexpuru; Ph.D. in Basque Philology. (Bergara, Gipuzkoa)
• Enrique Fernandez de Pinedo; B.A. in Basque Philology. (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
• Idoia Filloy Nieva, Master in Archaeological Patrimony. B.A. in History (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
• Roslyn M. Frank; Ph.D. Linguist and Bascologist, Professor Emeritus, University of Iowa (US)
• Eliseo Gil Zubillaga, Master in Archaeological Patrimony, B.A. in History (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
• Xabi Otsoa de Alda; B.A. in Geography and History. (Vitoria-Gasteiz)
• Koenraad Van den Driessche; Ph.D. in Geochemistry (Beasain, Gipuzkoa)

I have already discussed to some extent the Veleia affair in this blog.

Found via: Iruña-Veleia, Gezurra ala Egia?

Australia to follow the steps of China: will filter Internet

On the pretext of fight against crime, Australia will now implement a guvernamental filter. Obviously, human rights watchdogs are very concerned, as they strongly suspect it will serve to much more than block illegal sites, but to implement censorship on the Internet.

Read more at BBC.

I mentioned recently how the EU is also implementing such institutional filters, in this case with the even more pathetic pretext of enforcing corporative copyrights.

The Great Western Imperial Firewall

Paul Marks writes at New Scientist:

"THIS is the kind of snooping you'd expect in China, not a modern western democracy. It raises huge questions over privacy invasion and freedom of expression." So says Andrew Heaney - who is not, as you might imagine, a civil liberties campaigner, but a senior executive at TalkTalk, one of the UK's largest internet service providers. Along with other ISPs, his company faces the prospect of being forced to spy on its customers' downloads for signs of potential copyright infringement.

>> Read more.

We supposedly enjoy the right to use our property the way we want, we supposedly enjoy the right not to be spied by the authorities without justified judicial intervention... but that does not apply to the Internet. While my phone or snail-mail conversations are protected by the right to privacy, whatever I do in the Internet is considered unprotected and open to be scrutinized by the police without any judicial supervision.

And if I happen to breach their corporativist laws, I won't even have a trial: I will be severely sentenced without any kind of guarantees.

And worst of all is that all their efforts to control intellectual property are futile. People will keep downloading and sharing one way or another, and they won't buy more because they just can't. Some will be punished but essentially piracy will just change its forms without any reduction. If anything people may feel even more justified to infringe copyright at any occasion because the mafioso style of this thought police is so annoying that you can't but choose to punish them whenever you can.

The whole project is going to fail (again). Their attempts to capitalize into even the most marginal sectors is essentially doomed. However it may have a good facet: that it will unavoidably open the debate on one of the central tenets of the late Toyotist capitalism: extremist intellectual property and how it makes impossible to do anything. And this kind of virtual property is the last hold of Capitalism: when we are done with it, this age will be over.

It is a fact that the labyrinth of patents and copyrights is hindering research, that fair use should be standard not any exception - even if just for the sake of science.

Worst game ever

This is quite funny:

Posted originally by frustrated Shadowbaner (Tremblewick) at SBEmulator forums. Shadowbane was of course the best game ever... but now is dead.
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Anti-copyright-madness party growing in Europe

You might have heard of Pirate Bay, a Swedish site dedicated to share all kind of e-stuff with total disregard for the so-called "intellectual property" that has been harshly persecuted recently. Well, people of the same ideas organized a party for the last Euro polls and got a seat with 7.1% of votes in the Scandinavian kingdom.

But the anti-copyright snowball may have just began to roll: some weeks later a German MP deserted the SDP to become the first Pirate member of the Budestag. Now the news is that the brand new British Pirate Party is adding some 100 members per hour to its ranks. Due to economic constrains, they may not be able to run in all districts in the next general elections.

The Pirates want to legalize non-commercial file sharing and cut excessive Internet surveillance, they also want to reform the copyright laws that do not benefit the creators but the corporations.

There are registered or unregistered Pirate Parties in most EU and NATO countries, as well as in Russia, Australia, South Africa, Peru and Chile. I wonder if this crucial issue of who controls the every day more virtual capitalist property is a new fact of the secular Class War. It certainly fits very well within what Toni Negri wrote a couple of decades ago claiming that the crucial struggle nowadays is that for control of the production.

Map showing the countries where there are registered (black) or unregistered (blue) Pirate Parties or where these are being considered (red).

Sources: The Register (links in text) and Wikipedia.
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Zionist Anthropology Forum (2)

This post continues the previous post of the series. As the other one it is mainly intended for the people in that sad site to know the truth of what happened. The truth they will never be allowed to know there.

What follows (in blue) is a copy (with minor format modifications: just those needed to change from BBcode to HTML - nothing else) of the post that was first agreed I could post (the exact content was not discussed) and then censored. It explains the events from the beginning until a hopeful point in which I thought I would be able to stay:

I am NOT leaving (and why)

First of all and most importantly: I AM FINALLY NOT LEAVING.

I'm going to try to explain the matter as briefly and fairly as possible here.

Also, thanks to all the people who replied with messages of sympathy. I'm not sure I can really reply to all - though I'll try. My apologies for the "false alarm" but I was determined to leave at the moment. Things have changed since then though.

Let's go step by step.

As you may know, certain moderator with whom I have got lengthy discussions on Zionism, decided last Thursday that certain paragraph of mine was "racial slur". The paragraph in question was this one:

It's clear that Zionism is not good for Jews either, at least not for working class Jews. It's probably good for the financial and political aristocracy and the occasional Madoff (how many of the rest are just Madoffs filling their pockets and grabbing positions of power with the pretext of Zionism?)

Though the first sentence was cropped from the sanction notice. Judge yourself.

I felt (also for previous warning/threats) that he was acting inquisitorially from an ideological viewpoint and just looking for anything that could be somehow sanctionable. Additionally he was both judge and part. Not finding anything else, he picked this sentence that apparently excited his imagination.

I was quite pissed off, as you can imagine, but followed the procedure. I appealed to him to no avail (rule 14) and then I was given the choice to appeal to one out of three administrators (rule 15): Ayepod, Augustus Khan and Aino Tuitti. I had thought to appeal to Ezana (who's presence as admin here was the main reason I decided to join first of all) but it was then when I learned he was not anymore and admin.

After careful consideration, I chose Aino. Who had only recently promoted to admin. I argued my innocence and asked the removal of the sanction and the disciplining of the mod in question for abuse of power.

I was rather disappointed when she wrote back saying she was going to consult with Ayepod. I protested that by rule 15 it was one admin and not the whole administrative board who should consider the matter. I got no reply.

Beforehand, I had already decided that, if the system was not able to impart justice in this so clear matter, I would leave. I told that to Artbro, who did not care, but I omitted in my appeal (did not want to pressure the system more: if it failed, it was clear that I was in the wrong place).

So yesterday, as many of you already know, I got notice from Ayepod saying that the sanction was to stay. I wrote a lengthy reply announcing my leave and the whole set of irregularities of this process. I also posted a copy with a brief explanation to all members I could think I had some sort of sympathy for, who are many.

I was obviously determined to quit, otherwise would not have sent so many PMs. I was attending to some concerned replies when I got replies from Ayepod and Aino. Actually there was a cut of service in between and only after it I got these replies.

They will surely explain themselves better but essentially Ayepod said he should not have interfered and that they were willing to follow the procedure this time. After some consideration, I replied that ok and that, in order to allow for a fair retrial, I could only take compromise on not leaving on this matter, whatever the final result.

I also mentioned that I would have to make a post like this one in order to explain.

The mark is not the issue, obviously, but the fairness and neutrality of the process. I felt under some sort of Zionist inquisition willing to split the non-existent hairs of Yul Brynner's head in order to "scare" me or even get rid of me altogether. Obviously I was not in the mood of taking part in such a mockery of justice nor there was any point in suffering under such a system when it's so easy to just take the door and leave.

At this moment the sanction has been reppealed by Aino anyhow. But, as I said and repeat here, I felt it was needed that I revoked my decision completely in order for a fair appeal to take place without any pressure. They were willing to correct their errors and I could not take any other stand that was fair for all.

So I'm staying.

I'll try to reply individually to all who have written but, if I fail to, please accept my apologies. Also my apologies for whatever confusion I may have created.

Sadly, the issue did not end here: minutes later I learned from Ayepod himself that the post had been deleted (Artbro I guess). Some time later he said that the post had been properly deleted: that I was challenging a moderator.

Hm, whatever. Are you going to let common users be persecuted ideologically and the perpetrators to remain beyond scrutiny? In my concept of democracy and justice, people invested with power are much more subject to public scrutiny and have to bear the weight of their decissions much more than those that, like me, are just commoners.

I was just being gagged again, this time in order to protect some Torquemada. So I could not stay. I have been thinking on the matter for some 48 hrs and could not come to any other conclussion.

Minutes ago I noticed I could not even reply to private messages in the site anymore. The Inquisition at its best. Sadly for them their power does not reach beyond their petty forum. Here I can write freely and nobody seems to want to gag me.

Good riddance!
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Zionist Anthropology Forum (1)

The following was written some three days ago but stored as draft as new events unfolded. This and the upcoming posts of this series are mostly intended to give the explanations I could not give in the proper channels to the other members of that site. They won't find this issue explained anywhere in the site, except maybe in the backstage rumor mill that sadly enough seems the only reliable source of information there.

This post is about an infamoust Zionist-controlled site I'm leaving behind, anthroforum.com, and why.

But I should start from the beginning. Why I joined it first of all. Well, as my readers surely know I am very interested in anthropology, prehistory and human genetics. So along the last years I've been member of several forums, not many anyhow because it's difficult to find nice places that deal with such matters (that sadly enough seem to attract racist bigots like honey does with flies). In the past I was hence member for some time of a now extinct site called Human Biodiversity Forum (HBF for short) that I eventually left tired of the abusive behaviour that was allowed to all kind of trolls, notably all kind of racist idiots.

But there was some nice people there too, not necesarily people that agreed with me in everything (not at all) but people with whom you could have decent serious constructive debates. Among them there was an Ethiopian nicknamed Ezana, a person I considered serious, hardworking and fair. When there was a vote to propose new moderators I voted for him but at the time he declined the responsability.

Years later, this spring, I saw a comment by Ezana in some other blog with a link to this Anthroforum site. I followed the link out of curiosity and found he was an administrator there. That was enough to persuade me to join.

So I've been active at that site for some time. Till today.

Things started going awry some days ago, as certain moderator, known as Artbro, who had been arguing with me rather heatedly on Zionism, sent me an informal warning for comparing Zionism with Nazism and arguably falling into ad-hominem attack because I included the sentence "You are a Nazi" in this context. No big deal, largely because it was not an infraction by the rules, that require "repeated personal attacks". But it got me paranoid about this guy and, as resulted eventually, with good reason.

Some days later, in the very same discussion thread, he decided that the following paragraph was "racial slur":

It's clear that Zionism is not good for Jews either, at least not for working class Jews. It's probably good for the financial and political aristocracy and the occasional Madoff (how many of the rest are just Madoffs filling their pockets and grabbing positions of power with the pretext of Zionism?)

According to him criticising the Jewish capitalist class, even if it's obviously in contrast to the Jewish working class, is racial slur.

It was such a blatant injustice that really got me pissed off. I nevertheless followed the procedure and appealed, first to Artbro himself (what was doomed from the beginning) and then to an administrator of my choice. I wanted to appeal to Ezana but it was then when I discovered that he was not anymore administrator. Later I found via gossip that Ezana and another administrator, Kadu, had been deposed by the site owner some days before, apparently because they wanted to punish some abusive white supremacists and the owner did not.

At that moment I felt that my presence on that site was virtually over. But I had to finish the procedure first, just to check the system and see if the rumors were correct or what? I could choose between thre administrators: Ayepod, the Jewish or half-Jewish owner of the site and the person responsible for Ezana's demotion and white racists being allowed to run amok, Augustus Khan, a Nordicist right-winger, and Aino Tuitti, a reflexive Finnish woman who was surely already a little molest with me for arguing that there was Siberian genetics specially among Uralic Europeans, and also among others.

I chose the later, requesting the infraction to be removed and Artbro to be disciplined for abuse of power. Minutes later I got a reply that she had to consult with Ayepod. I protested that she was supposed to rule on the appeal on her own but to no avail. Today I recieved a notification from Ayepod saying that the infraction stayed:

After some debate amongst the moderators, the consensus is that the infraction should stand. Although it should have been accounted in your infraction at the time, the 'Zionazi' jibe is also on our minds. The infraction is on the harsh side. So that it does not occupy your User CP forever, you can PM me in 5 or 6 weeks, and the infraction can be deleted from appearing in your User CP.

I replied that I was leaving and explaining in detail why (Zionist inquisitorial persecution, Ezana's demotion, feeling insulted about being called "racist", lack of a proper procedure, etc.) I also let that be known to everyone who matters in private communications.

(to be continued)
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People losing everything. Worried.

Yesterday night two different people with whom I play at classical online game said they were financially bankrupt (in real life) and were being evicted from their homes within a month. The word "homeless" was used, with all it implies.

They are from the USA, a state that has a very weak welfare. It made me suddenly realize how deep in the crisis we are already and also that the people I play with are not just friendly toons in a virtual reality, that they may have serious issues in real life and that these issues are right now primarily of economic nature.
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