Darkness at Noon

I know a lot of jobs will be lost and that’s a really terrible thing, but it’s hard to feel bad about this:

STARBUCKS will close 70% of its Australian stores and slash more than half of its workforce as the once-mighty coffee giant battles an economic downturn in the US, its own rapid expansion and local competition.

So long, fair well.

So here is one for the mathematicians amongst us: If 61 stores is 70% of Starbucks cafe’s in Australia, how many will be left for us to try and shut down?

With the world’s eyes on China, Amnesty are capitalising on the attention by asking people outside China to monitor access to key websites in China over the coming months to determine how much China controls internet access. If you thought Net Neutrality was an issue in the west, what do you think it is like in China!

Their methodology is interesting too:

The CICI generates a daily index which decreases when fewer websites are successfully accessed, and increases when more websites are available. Data is collected in a number of ways; automated tests run every three hours checking site availability via proxy servers in China, manual tests are run by participants within and outside of China via proxy servers and a control test is also run every three hours checking site availability from outside of China.

Check it out: www.uncensor.com.au

Back in November 2005 the Centre ran a forum with Yorta Yorta Elder Monica Morgan and FoE campaigner Jonathan La Nauze call “Speaking up for Country“.

The forum discussed how the proposed Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Act removes control of Aboriginal cultural heritage from Traditional Owners as well as environmentalists collaborating with Traditional Owners on the Murray River.

Well the fight for Barmah-Millewa jointly managed National Park has come to a bit of a head, I just received this email from Jonathan and I urge you all to get involved:

Dear friends,

We are about to face the ultimate challenge in our campaign to create Victoria’s first Indigenous jointly-managed national parks and protect the magnificent red gum forests of the Murray River. The long awaited final report from the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council (VEAC) on the future of River Red Gum forest-wetlands will be handed to the Victorian Government some time in the next 2 weeks and made public almost immediately.

The coming months, and particularly the first week following the release of the report will be critical if the Brumby government are to agree to the recommendations in the report. Whilst they have up to six months to make a decision, it is unlikely the Premier will leave this up in the air for that long.

At the last State election, the Victorian government committed to all Victorians that it would create new Red Gum National Parks if recommended by VEAC, and explore making them jointly managed with Traditional Owners. We have yet to see the final report, but we believe that there will be significant recommendations for new parks to save River Red Gums, protect rivers and threatened species and provide for the first ever jointly managed parks with Aboriginal people in Victoria.

You can help once the report is release by doing the following:

• Writing letters to the editor in local papers and the Age and Herald Sun supporting new jointly managed parks
• Calling talk back radio, particularly ABC regional radio and Melbourne talkback shows such as ABC 774
• Calling, emailing or writing to your local MP supporting new parks (watch this space for an easy online tool to send an email directly to your local member)
• Regularly visiting our dedicated campagin website at www.saveredgum.org for updates – the new look site will go live this weekend!
• Telling your friends, family and colleages about the campaign and this e-bulletin (they can subscribe be sending a blank email to barmahbulletin-subscribe@lists.foe.org.au)

Your help over the coming weeks and months will be essential if we are to achieve Victoria’s first Indigenous jointly-managed national parks and protect our Iconic River Red Gum wetlands and forests.

Regards,
Jono La Nauze
for the Barmah-Millewa Collective
Friends of the Earth Melbourne

As the Free Software Foundation notes:

Brussels, 2 April 2008 — ISO members failed to disapprove the Open XML format. Microsoft has compromised the International Standards Organisation (ISO) during the rush to get a stamp for their Office OpenXML (OOXML), using unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process.

So imagine my surprise when I read that Microsoft’s Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will actually support the OpenDocument standards. I’m not sure what this says about Microsoft (which I’ve heard people say is softening it’s stance on FOSS) or what it says about the growth of FOSS, Open Office and Linux. But it does mean that in a few year’s time when people start adopting Office 2007 I’ll actually be able to send them files they can read and that is something I welcome.

I’d also like to applaud the National Archives of Australia who are using OpenDocument as their choice for a cross-platform/application document format.

…and while we’re on all things FOSS, I recently had the pleasure of seeing the film Revolution OS. You can watch is on Google Video here – the opening comment is fantastic.

Anyway, it was great to get all that history and see the personalities behind the FOSS movement. Richard Stallman is quite something.