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I blogged the other day about my skepticism about the suggestion that the internet needs "governing" by bureaucrats and politicians out there in the "real world". The internet without such governance has provided a way for many more people to express themselves to a wider audience than they ever could have done in physical media. And having given it some more thought I can only conclude that any attempt to impose outside governance on it in the past has been counterproductive.

The BBC reports today from Athens that an Internet bill of rights [is] proposed

See, it's not like the existing charters of rights are upheld in respect of the "real world". Even by some of the "better countries" in the world, like the ones who recently decided that they could define what torture meant in the Geneva Conventions.

Many years ago now, in lawless Finland, there was a fantastic service called "anon@penet.fi". Some chap had been very clever and come up with a mechanism where people who did not want their identity revealed for whatever reason could register and his servers would automatically anonymize anything the user posted to email or usenet. It was very useful. People who were scared of "outing" themselves, people making controversial political points, whistle-blowing on employers or others, used it.

Then the FBI saw something they thought illegal from a poster and demanded to have the logs so that they could match Penet's client users with their supposedly anonymous posts. Rather than give in, I seem to recall he destroyed the database. An early attempt to police or govern the web had resulted in an ingenious facility that could nowadays be being used by dissidents from countries who are scant respecters of human rights, just those countries and practices that the "Internet Governance Forum" is now highlighting, to safely spread word about their countries and bring forward the day those regimes were exposed and changed their ways, closing down for everyone.

But forget China and Syria. The UN is utterly unable to enforce human rights as it is in such regimes. Why does it imagine it can do so by "governing" the internet? Indeed, if you know of IndyMedia in London, you'll realise that the FBI are just as bad - raiding and seizing with the collusion of British police and the Home Office a bunch of servers that happen to highlight news issues that are often, shall we say, uncomfortable for western governments.

Let the geeks get on with finding ways around these attempts to silence us and leave governance to the anarchic but massively people skewed internet itself. Every attempt so far has been heavy handed and counter-productive.

And this time it's Pauline...

(Photo courtesy of bbc.co.uk)

Cherie .oO "I'll bet her's cost £7.70 with a tip at Betty's on the Beverley Road"

And, could we be assured that none of my UNISON dues went towards any hair-dos, either affiliated or general?

Now, we may not be at the end of a war in the conventional sense in which national planning was necessary to keep up the war effort, but have a look at this and see how many of the captions can still be applied to today's political establishment and direction. It's quite scary really:

Courtesy of revver.com after F A Hayek & Look magazine.

Is T Blair the "strong leader" brought in to enforce obedience to the plan whom they thought they would one day be able to dispense with I wonder?

Is there any evidence that the ability of "planners" (aka political leaders) to implement a plan has improved?

Is there not a feeling growing more and more that a propaganda (aka "spin") machine is controlling the agenda we are allowed to hear?

The BBC reports that scientists have created sperm cells from stem cells.

Now I am no biologist for sure, but doesn't everyone produce stem cells? And anyone's stem cells can be switched on to produce any type of human cell? Does this not imply that it would be possible to turn a woman's stem cells into sperm cells? Is this the beginning of the end for men's part in the reproductive cycle?

Can't live with them, can live without them?