Wikipaedophile

by | Dec 7, 2008 | Influence and networks, Off topic, UK

Prepare yourself for a bad-tempered row over UK attempts to censor Wikipedia. The reason? Virgin Killer – a 1970s album from German heavy metal band, Scorpions. The result: Wikipedia is now shut to (anonymous) edits for large swathes of the British population.

The album cover features a picture of a prepubescent girl and was banned in many countries – though you can still buy it (with the original cover art) on amazon.co.uk. The Wikipedia page discussing the album, and the controversy around its cover, has now been blacklisted by the Internet Watch Foundation, a quasi-official body that censors “images of child sexual abuse hosted anywhere in the world”.

IWF’s blacklisting has led to six ISPs blocking the page – something they’ve done by filtering all traffic through two proxy servers (if this reminds you of the Great Firewall of China – it should).

Unfortunately, the result of this is to make it seem as if vast swathes of the British population are visiting Wikipedia from the same IP address. That makes stopping abusive edits more or less impossible – so Wikipedia has had to ban all these users from anonymous editing:

Wikipedia has been added to an Internet Watch Foundation UK website blacklist, and your Internet service provider has decided to block part of your access. Unfortunately, the method they are using makes it impossible for us to differentiate between legitimate users and those abusing the site. As a result, we have been forced to block several IP addresses from editing Wikipedia.

Reports that all 1970s heavy metal are to be removed from the Internet on the grounds of musical taste, meanwhile, have been denied by the Internet Watch Foundation…

ISAF’s supply lines through Pakistan

by | Dec 7, 2008 | Conflict and security, South Asia

News is emerging this morning of a militant attack on NATO supply containers in Pakistan, where they were awaiting onward shipment to Afghanistan. CNN has details:

A security guard was killed and two employees were wounded in the attack on the Faisalal terminal just outside of the city of Peshawar, according to officials. Companies hired by NATO to drive fuel, food and other supplies to troops fighting the Taliban use the terminal to park containers waiting for convoys across the border into Afghanistan. The fire started by the attackers destroyed 62 containers, according to Peshawar Senior Police Superintendent Kashif Alam.

This latest attack follows another a week ago, and plenty more in the preceding months.  It’s still only a few weeks since Pakistan’s army chief did a big presentation in Brussels vowing to keep NATO’s supply lines to Afghanistan open:

“We will do whatever is possible, whatever is within our power to ensure that this line of supply is open,” Kayani told top officers in Brussels, according to Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, head of NATO’s military committee. “We understand how critical it is to Afghanistan … and because we want Afghanistan to succeed we would harm ourselves if we did not do our best to ensure that,” Di Paola quoted Kayani as saying.

But can he deliver?  AP flags up the key statistic: “up to 75 percent of the supplies for Western forces in [Afghanistan] pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi”.