The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, York Zimmerman Inc. and BreakAway Ltd. have been collaborating on A Force More Powerful � The Game of Nonviolent Strategy, set for release in early 2006.   more »

More than 50 people are dead and scores wounded in a series of suspected bomb blasts in India's capital, Delhi.   more »

Paul Mason reports on Flock on Newsnight at 10.30pm on BBC Two   more »

The NCeSS has organized an Agenda Setting Workshop on e-infrastructures for Social Simulation.   more »

Tom Zeller Jr. writes in The New York Times about the backlash against Yahoo over the Shi Tao case.   more »

The FT explores price targeting strategies: individual v group, and more generally, how consumers react to prices - uniform v targeted.   more »

Incommunicado network launches PPP-in-ICT and PPP-Watch.   more »

From nuclear weapons to climate change, the Vietnam war to urban segregation, the prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling’s leaps of lateral thinking are weapons of enlightenment, says The Undercover Economist.   more »

Free from judicial shackles, the retired law lord is speaking his mind as the new chairman of Justice. The Guardian profiles Lord Steyn . . .   more »

Oct. 24, 2005 marks pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s 10th year under house arrest.   more »

Nominet votes for Argentinian solution to net ownership.   more »

20th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE or French Secret Service), otherwise known as Opération Satanic.   more »

China's Middle East policy is undergoing a major shift (a really major shift).   more »

China's double-digit growth now biggest threat to environment reports Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor on the front page of the The Independent.   more »

The Human Security Centre announces the launch of the 2005 Human Security Report.   more »

Queeruption is an internationally relevant website where

alternative, radical, disenfranchised queers can exchange information, network, organise, inspire and be inspired, self represent, challenge ourselves and each other, and learn about DIY ideas and ethics. We hope this site will convey the diversity of queer life, identity, and politics; provide visibility for a definition of queer that confounds and contradicts the limited representation of the "normal"/consumerist model; and be an active tool for building community that recognises the differences in queerness globally.

Lu Banglie is alive and has been speaking to the BBC about his ordeal. The Beeb also has a good piece on local elections in a land without the rule of law. Benjamin Joffe-Walt and Jonathan Watts profile the popularly elected village chief (today is the anniversary of Gandhi's birth,

A film about Gandhi changed his life. He believes the aggression and hyper-control of the Chinese authorities can be combated only with dialogue, teaching, learning, petitions. Mr Lu studied the doctrines of non-violence to appreciate simplicity, to focus, to spread the word in the villages.

Martin Jacques, currently a visiting scholar at Renmin University, explains more about the background story: sharply increasing inequality and a flood of hundreds of millions of migrant workers sucked into the cities - totally unsustainable ..

In the early phase of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms the farmers were the main beneficiaries, but by the end of the 80s the rural communities began to lose out to the cities, a process that has accelerated in recent years and is the single biggest cause of the alarming growth in inequality. The sense of rural injustice and grievance, fuelled by widespread corruption, is reflected in the huge increase in protests reported last year compared with previous years.

Stephen Bowen of Amnesty international writes,

The story of Lu Banglie and Taishi village is incredibly significant ('They beat him until he was lifeless', October 10) - a fork in the road at which the authorities can move towards human rights and democracy, or impunity for abusive officials. But, sadly, it is a far from isolated case. .

How democracy activist in China's new frontline was left for dead after a brutal attack by a uniformed mob   more »

"Climate change is wreaking havoc at the birthplace of China's mother river," said Greenpeace China climate change researcher Li Mo Xuan.   more »

Mohammed ElBaradei is the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), both winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.   more »

Here’s an opportunity to participate in peacekeeping work in Sri Lanka!   more »

Kieren McCarthy conitunes his excellent series of articles on the WSIS process   more »

Leading loyalist paramilitary Jim Gray has been shot dead in east Belfast.   more »

Randeep Ramesh reports from Gangtok on the on-going feud over the identity of the Karmapa.   more »

Photographic Essay: Tibet, Environmental Destruction   more »

Rob has transmitted his concern and serious reservations about the last minute process that has been developed to the Canadian govt officials involved in the WSIS.   more »

For the first time in its history, the Internet is running a real risk of fracturing into multiple and perhaps even incompatible networks. That's why the next few weeks before the final meeting in Tunisia will be crucial.   more »

The Burmese junta has dismissed as 'absurd' former Vaclav Havel and Desmond Tutu's 70-page report "Threat to the Peace: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in Burma".   more »

One of the top concerns voiced by European citizens in recent surveys is ‘security’ in its various guises. Many of the worries stem from very local threats but others are global issues often best guarded against from above – high above in space. Headlines explores European space and security research in a two-part feature starting in reverse with security today and space in next week’s edition.

Source: EU sources


Contact:
research@cec.eu.int

Civil society believes that the Internet's value is created by the participation and cooperation of people all over the world. The Internet is global, not national. Therefore, "No single Government should have a pre-eminent role in relation to international Internet governance." The WGIG report came to a consensus on that position. It is expressed in paragraph 48 of the WGIG Report. Civil society expresses its strong support for that conclusion.   more »

All the ITU or any international body need do in order to fork the Internet is to do it. There is no army, and no weapon, which can prevent the creation of new DNS regimes, especially if national governments choose to force ISPs to point to them.    more »

NGOs are considering organising a counter summit parallel to the official UN conference.   more »

The motion
introduced by China was adopted by the Preparatory Committee by a recorded roll-call vote of 52
to 35, with 35 abstentions.   more »

New Left or "Neo-Comm"? Capitalism or Social Democracy? Co-existence or Containment? The routes open are many - but no one, least of all China, seems to know which way it will go ...   more »

At least three explosions have hit the Indonesian island of Bali   more »

Who should govern the net - the US commerce department or a global, accountable public body? After the WSIS Geneva summit split, read Bill Thompson's prescient argument for a "democratic republic of cyberspace"

New: Marcus J Gilroy-Ware, a proud citizen of Wikipedia, describes his passion for open source

More from our peer power debate:
Miriam Clinton on the rule of law

Stephen Howe, 28 - 9 - 2005

Behind recent violent unrest in Loyalist working-class communities in Northern Ireland is a story of promiscuous cultural borrowings attempting to shore up a collapsed political identity, says Stephen Howe. In the first part of a two-part essay, he examines their manifestations in music, visual display and political rhetoric.

By Xiao Qiang :: 2005-09-30, 09:14 PM :: Human Rights
The Asian Wall Street Journal publishes Xiao Qiang's commentary on the recent Internet Regulations.   more »

Gangtok - China’s sudden decision to defer the opening of border trade through Nathu La pass has come as a jarring note in the improvement of relations on the Sino-Indian border.   more »

Oneworld: Recent investigations by wildlife organisations reveal that a new breed of wealthy Tibetans who prize tiger skins as trimmings for their traditional costumes pose the latest and biggest ...   more »

"I just want a search engine that works," laments Chris Roddy, a politics and linguistics undergraduate at the University of Emory.

"I can get a Google search with porn turned ...   more »

Internet Governance and Follow-Up after Summit still open [Smoke on the Water mix]

30 September 2005. The last preparatory conference, less than 60 days before the Tunis summit, ended tonight at 21:00 without an agreement. The open questions will have to be dealt with in the time before Tunis – and basically without civil society participation.


Internet Governance: from no text to ten proposals

The Internet Governance subcommittee A, chaired by the focused Pakistani Masood Khan, managed to come from a blank sheet of paper to agreed text on most aspects within a week. The only paragraphs still in brackets in the first four parts are related to cybercrime and cybersecurity, where an old battle between the United States and Russia is blocking progress. This will probably be resolved quickly before the summit, with reference to agreed language from the Geneva Declaration. Another smaller fight is taking place around the issue of interconnection costs, where the Bangladesh government wants negotiations on better conditions not only for least developed countries.

Dir. Muhammed Rum, USA, 2004, 110mins,
Cast: Edgar Oliver, Waleed Zuaiter, Hussam Hamadeh, James Arnold   more »