Day: October 5, 2001

CamWorld and Voices of Unreason

I almost forgot to mention two other sites when I wrote about Seth Dillingham writing about my sites.

Cameron Barrett remembered one of my more Cliff Clavin know-it-all moments when we worked at a student newspaper together. As you can tell from this site, I’m not exactly much of a graphic design type and I can vividly remember Cameron saving my butt more than once with some excellent graphic design work.

Now, Mark Morgan’s site, Voices of Unreason, uses the same software I’m using, but is a lot easier on the eyes than mine (and has a kicka– domain name). Mark did some things with his site a last year which really made the light bulb go off in my head about how the various features of Conversant could be mixed and match to powerful effect.

And, again, Voices of Unreason is an example of how Conversant makes it easy for a lone webmaster to do some very sophisticated things without requiring a programming or technical background (Mark does have some volunteer help now from some of his users, but like this site it still something done in his spare time).

Unbelievable 9/11 Comments

Okay, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen is 73 and maybe he’s got Alzheimer’s or some other problem, but it is hard to fathom what would motivate anyone to say anything like this about the terrorist attacks on the United States,

What has happened is — now you all have to turn your brains around — the greatest work of art there has ever been. That minds could achieve something in one act, which we in music cannot even dream of, that people rehearse like crazy for ten years, totally fanatically for one concert, and then die. This is the greatest possible work of art in the entire cosmos. Imagine what happened there. There are people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5000 people are chased into the Afterlife, in one moment. This I could not do. Compared to this, we are nothing as composers… Imagine this, that I could create a work of art now and you all were not only surprised, but you would fall down immediately, you would be dead and you would be reborn, because it is simply too insane. Some artists also try to cross the boundaries of what could ever be possible or imagined, to wake us up, to open another world for us.

Great Britain Considers Allowing Company Directors to Withhold Their Home Addresses

In the wake of the often violent campaign by animal rights activists against Huntingdon Life Sciences, Great Britain is considering changing laws which place the home addresses of company directors in the public domain. But even if the change is made, it is unlikely to prevent activists from targeting the homes of people involved in animal enterprises.

Great Britain requires company directors to supply their home addresses to the Department of Trade and Industry. The addresses are made publicly available in a special Companies House list. According to a Department of Trade and Industry spokesperson, “Having a home address available publicly is an important part of transparency for directors.”

The proposed change would all directors to provide an address where they can receive mail but which is not necessarily a home address.

But first directors would have to jump through a series of hoops to prove that they are at risk of violence and intimidation if their home addresses are published. The proposed law also provides criminal penalties for directors who falsely claim to be at risk of violence (I’m not sure how British prosecutors intend to prove that someone was lying abut a perceived risk of violence).

Regardless, this proposed change smacks of a pointless feel good measure that will allow Parliament to tell constituents it is doing something about animal rights extremists, while barely altering the status quo. It is extremely unlikely, given the sophistication in gathering supposedly private information that the animal rights movement in Great Britain has shown, that omitting the home address of a company director is going to slow down activists for more than a very short period of time.

Sources:

Directors ‘at risk’ may keep addresses secret. James Mackintosh, Financial Times (London), October 4, 2001.

Biotech directors shielded. Terry Macalister, The Guardian (London), October 4, 2001.

Anonymity for at-risk company directors. Mark Williamson, The Herald (Glasgow), October 4, 2001.

29 Animal Rights Activists Arrested in Great Britain in Last Few Weeks

Earlier this year Great Britain set up a special unit to investigate animal rights extremism. The first major result of that has been the arrest of 29 suspected animal rights activists who are alleged to have taken part in a scheme to defraud Britain’s Department of Education and Skills.

The department has a program that provides money for people to study outside of the traditional educational system. Animal rights activists are alleged to have fraudulently applied for funds from this program, which they then used to conduct surveillance directed at animal researchers, fund animal rights activity, and to provide financial support for the activists while they were busy engaging in animal rights activities.

On September 28, 11 suspects were arrested in connection with the investigation. They made bail but were not formally charged at that time. On October 4, an additional 18 suspects were arrested in connection with the alleged fraud scheme.

Britain’s National Crime Squad said that it believes some of those arrested were “key players” in animal rights extremism in Great Britain.

Sources:

Animal rights suspects held in fraud swoop. Nick Allen, Press Association, October 4, 2001.

Animal rights activists arrested. The Independent (London), October 5, 2001.