Apparently Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez believes that George W. Bush is plotting to assassinate him. However as a future law student I feel I should point out one significant piece of evidence in Dubya’s defence: plotting requires at least one brain cell.
Probably for the first time in their history, Lucas arts occupy the top and second places of the Uk games chart. This should show them the kind of rewards available to publishers that sell proper games. I have played the Mercenaries demo to death, denying San Andreas and Final Fantasy, and from what I’ve heard Sith Lords is a solid RPG just gives you a lightsaber halfway through as an excuse to call it a Star Wars game. In other words they are no longer releasing horseshit that relies on the license to sell. Long may it continue.
I’ve just received word that the Iranians have sentenced Arash Sigarchi to 14 years in prison for being a reporter- and even then all he was doing was commenting on the imprisonment of other bloggers. The charges included espionage and ‘insulting the country’s leaders’. I doubt if Arash’s blog constituted the former (was he mentioning military secrets in his blog? I doubt it somehow) while the latter is abhorrent in any country in which the government has respect for human rights. Unfortunately it appears that Iran is not such a country.
The Committee to Protect Bloggers, an organisation set up recently to campaign against the intimidation and/or imprisonment of bloggers in countries such as Iran, China, etc. has asked bloggers everywhere to use today (Tuesday 22nd February 2005) to highlight the case of two bloggers in Iran. Arash Sigarchi is currently in Lakan prison in the Iranian city of Rashat, and although Mojtaba Saminejad has been temporarily released from prison he still faces serious criminal charges. Their ‘crime’?
Writing a weblog. These people haven’t told lies, or revealed military secrets that could compromise Iran’s security, all they have done is put their opinions on an internet site. Bloggers in the rest of the world take pride in writing stories about whatever political issue takes their interest. That is exactly what that Mojtaba and Arash are being persecuted for. Not beating up old people in the street, not molesting children. Distributing their opinions to other people. Feel free to check out the Committee to Protect Bloggers site for more information on this, but as far as my own personal appeal is concerned I will finish with this:
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
-Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy (1925-1968)
That is exactly what Mojtaba and Arash have done, and bloggers as a community must not allow this to go unnoticed. If you run a blog, and haven’t mentioned this already then do so. If you don’t run a blog, go to the Committee to Protect Bloggers site to see what else you can do for Mojtaba and Arash.
I’ve just learned from the BBC that Edinburgh residents have rejected the council’s proposals for a so-called ‘congestion charge’ which would have seen Scots (and anyone else for that matter) who dares to live outside the Edinburgh boundary charged ?2 to enter their capital city. Almost 75% (74.4% to be precise) of voters were against the plans, in a humiliation for the controlling Labour group on the council, who spent a vast amount of public money on propaganda campaigns to try and get this through. As much as it might upset Labour councillors, Edinburgh residents obviously do not want any of Red Ken’s policies to go any further north than Watford.