Showing posts with label uzbekistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label uzbekistan. Show all posts

03 December 2008

Tell Us What You *Really* Think, Craig....

Some fine outrage from our ex-man in Tashkent:


I still do believe that we will come to recover from the terrible poison of the New Labour years, and return to being a liberal society. We will look back at all this as Americans now look back at McCarthyism, with horror and shame. And when historians write the history of these times, there will be a special footnote devoted to the infamous, the disgraceful, the appalling Sir Michael Wright.

This in reference to Wright's extraordinary instruction to the jury at the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes that it will not be able to consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

Er, why might that be, Mike baby? Aren't open societies supposed to leave this kind of decision to the jury, rather than being directed by the powers that be? You know, that's why we have juries....

11 September 2008

Uzbeks, Rejoice!

You have your own distro:

Завершена работа над созданием релиза Linux дистрибутива Doppix 2008.0 Edu, национальной операционной системы Узбекистана. Дистрибутив базируется на Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring Free, содержит полный набор образовательных, офисных и мультимедийных приложений, и предназначен для использования в среднеобразовательных учебных заведениях (школы, колледжи и лицеи), а также на домашних компьютерах и рабочих станциях предприятий.

Doppix 2008.0 Edu поддерживает 3 языка: узбекский (кириллица/латиница), русский и английский. В процессе разработки нестабильные и устаревшие пакеты были заменены более новыми. Также был добавлен обширный объём документации и расширена справочная система. Дистрибутив Doppix 2008.0 Edu разрабатывается с учётом местных условий специально для учебных заведений. Основной упор при разработке сделан на стабильность, простоту и общедоступность.


[Via Google Translate: Completed work on a Linux distribution release Doppix 2008.0 Edu, a national operating system in Uzbekistan. Distribution is based on Mandriva Linux 2007.1 Spring Free, contains a full set of educational, office and multimedia applications, and is intended for use in secondary schools (schools, colleges and lyceums), as well as home computers and workstations enterprises.

Doppix 2008.0 Edu supports 3 languages: Uzbek (Cyrillic / Latin), Russian and English. In the process of developing unstable and obsolete packages were replaced with newer. Also added was a vast amount of documentation and expanded information system. Distribution Doppix 2008.0 Edu developed to suit local conditions specifically for schools. The emphasis in the design placed on stability, simplicity and accessibility.]

15 May 2008

A Blog Rant from Absurdistan

One of the great things about the blogosphere is the scope it provides for the unfettered rant – a piece where the author is totally and utterly out of his or her pram. I should know: as a blogger, I've penned a few myself. So I was delighted to come across a fine example, which begins thus:

Another anti-Microsoft (MSFT) front group has emerged in favor of “free and open standards,” hyping what it calls the Hague Declaration and making some absurd connection to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The propagandists, partially funded by publicly traded companies, have a little trouble describing what that term “free and open standards” means (or even using it consistently) but the group has no trouble indicating its political stripes. Unbelievably it calls itself Digistan, apparently to indentify with the fascist terrorists based in countries and regions using the Farsi-based suffix “stan.”

All of these front groups percolate around about two dozen individuals, mostly European. The vast left-wing conspiracy of George Soros works around the edges of their mostly web-site-only organizations. But there is a profit motive. Some seem to exist to raise money from public companies in order to hold conferences at excellent venues. Others run consulting companies to advise governments how to follow “free and open standards” or law firms that write licenses that follow “free and open standards.” Only if these lefties could be time warped back to the last century so that they could ‘fight the right’ in Spain (or sit in the Les Deux Maggot and talk about fighting the right in Spain). Then the rest of us could avoid having our tax dollars wasted and our share values diminished.

Well, you can't argue with the opening statement: given Microsoft's trashing of the ISO process for the sake of having its OOXML format blessed, any group in favour of “free and open standards” must, I suppose, by logical necessity by be anti-Microsoft – and especially anti-Microsoft (MSFT). But I find the idea that this group calls itself “Digistan

to indentify with the fascist terrorists based in countries and regions using the Farsi-based suffix “stan.”

a little harder to parse, since it seems to paint any region ending with “-stan” with a rather broad brush. I wasn't really aware that countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, or regions like Hindustan, Rajasthan, Tatarstan and Turkestan were hotbeds of fascist terrorism, but you live and learn.

Perhaps the point is simply to get to use the magic “T” word, so that our Pavlovian reaction is to beg – salivating the while - for an honest-to-god, shock-and-awe attack on the wicked state of Digistan, which at this very moment is doubtless re-directing its civil nuclear programme to build weapons.

The next paragraph is easier to follow, because it uses a few tried and trusted tropes. Apparently, this terrorist Digistan is made up of “mostly European” individuals; well, we all know how terribly unreliable those Europeans are – just look at their plumbing. And then we have that old favourite, the “vast left-wing conspiracy”, still in remarkably fine fettle after blowing out 200+ candles on its birthday cake. There's even a little jokette about “Les Deux Maggot” (and who says Americans aren't subtle?)

The concluding thought starts badly:

Then the rest of us could avoid having our tax dollars wasted...

Unless the US government (I presume these are US tax dollars we're talking about here) is funding those unreliable Europeans, or the conspiratorial George Soros, it's hard to see why the actions of this sad, sad group of Digistanis affects the amount of money that the US can spend on humanitarian projects in the middle east one jot or tittle. But the logic picks up right at the end:

...and our share values diminished.

Which is doubtless true if we're talking about “our” Microsoft (MSFT) shares, since the net effect of Digistan will be to make people aware of open alternatives to Windows and Office lock-in, causing them to shovel less of their money into the Microsoft (MSFT) maw, with terrible knock-on consequences for those (MSFT) share values.

But then, what do I know? I'm just some leftie European living in Londonistan, who has actually been to Uzbekistan, and stood in the middle of the Registan. I probably even support those awful free and open standards.

Anyway, if you'd like join those appalling chaps behind Digistan - out-and-out communists like Andy Updegrove and our own Mark Taylor – you can do it here. At the very least it might provoke another entertaining blog rant from Absurdistan.

Update: Here's some another pinko Euro (who happens to vote Conservative), while Andy Updegrove himself offers some calm words of wisdom.

30 December 2005

The Power of Blogs - Ain't that the Truth?

Few can match the British Government when it comes to belligerent secrecy. Under the shameful Official Secrets Act, not only is practically everything a state secret, but there are no public interest exceptions that allow the whistle to be blown on corrupt, deceitful or inept politicians, for example.

One person suffering mightily at the hands of the British Government and its attempts to stifle the truth is Craig Murray. Until recently, he was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. But his growing distaste for the current Uzbeki regime, and the for the British Government's complicity in obtaining intelligence extracted by foreign torturers (specifically Uzbeki ones), has led him to become one of both governments' most articulate and implacable critics.

Of course the British Government hardly wants the information he has been privy to out in the open, and it has been steadily applying pressure to keep it secret. A few years back, it would have succeeded. But in these days of the Internet it has already lost that battle.

Murray has posted some deeply incriminating documents to his blog (read them here, and weep at the Machiavellian duplicitousness and moral degradation of the UK Government). Just as importantly, he has asked other bloggers to copy and publish them.

Heaven knows that I have no time for facile boosterism that sees every blogger - all 24 million of them - as a potential William Shakespeare. But never mind the quality, feel the width: their astonishing numbers, and their continuing growth, make them potentially powerful weapons in the fight against closed minds in general, and official secrecy in particular. As this useful page shows, the Uzbekistan genie is out of the proverbial bottle, and nothing the UK Government can do is going to put it back.