Church of England apologises for slave trade

LONDON: Almost 200 years after slave trade was abolished, the Church of England has admitted its complicity in the trade and apologised to the descendants of the slaves, some of whom also hailed from India.

The church profited from the trade - it owned a slave plantation in the West Indies while several bishops had owned hundreds of slaves.

The General Synod of the church admitted its complicity in the trade at a meeting on Wednesday.

During an emotional debate, the General Synod voted unanimously to tender an apology to descendants of the slaves. The slave trade included people from eastern Uttar Pradesh and other parts of India.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, urged the Church to share the "shame and sinfulness of our predecessors".

The Church's missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts, owned the Codrington plantation in the Barbados island and slaves had the word "Society" branded on their chests with a red-hot iron.

One archbishop, the Most Rev Thomas Secker, wrote to a fellow bishop in 1760: "I have long wondered and lamented that the Negroes in our plantation decrease and new supplies become necessary continually.
"Surely this proceeds from some defect, both of humanity and even of good policy. But we must take things as they are at present."

According to The Telegraph, the bishop of Exeter and three business colleagues were paid nearly 13,000 pounds to compensate them for the loss of 665 slaves in 1833.

The Rev Simon Bessant, of Blackburn, told the Synod: "We were at the heart of it; we were directly responsible for what happened." He said that, despite the efforts of Anglican reformers such as William Wilberforce, the Church was "part of the problem as well as part of the solution".

Bessant amended a motion by the Bishop of Southwark, the Right Reverend Tom Butler, urging the Church to mark the bicentennial next year of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807.

Bishop Butler said that a Synod apology could result in the Church becoming the "national scapegoat" for slavery when the whole country should share the guilt.

But the amendment was supported by speaker after speaker, including Williams and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu. Williams said the apology was not political correctness but "necessary".

Russian Government is planning to introduce new legislature that will force users of internet in Russian Federation to provide full details such as passport numbers and other documents before they can connect to the net.

Else where, today (Jan 31, 06), the UK High Court has ordered 10 internet service providers to hand over information of 150 customers accused of illegally sharing and downloading desktop software on the Web

The illegal file-sharers were identified after a 12-month covert investigation by the Federation Against Software Theft called Operation Tracker.

The federation, a software industry group that fights piracy, said it also suspects that some of the individuals were using their employers' corporate networks for trading the software illegally.

The individuals all use false names but the federation has now secured the court orders that will force the Internet service providers to hand over personal details, including names, addresses and dates of birth, of the 150 individuals.

BT, NTL, Telewest and Tiscali are among the ISPs named in the court order. The presiding judge said there is "an overwhelming case" for ordering such customer details to be released.

The federation will work with the police and Crown Prosecution Service once the individuals have been identified.

John Lovelock, director general at the federation, hailed it as a landmark case for the software industry in the battle against piracy but warned it is only the beginning.

[source: Cnet - News.com]

This week Google has totally capitulated under its thirst to enter China and has voluntarily offered to censor its search results to the fullest satisfaction of the Beijing Mandarins. Yuck!

Internet search giant Google Inc. will block politically sensitive terms on its new China site, bowing to conditions set by Beijing in return for access to the world's number-two Internet market.

The voluntary concessions laid out on Tuesday by Google, which is launching a China-based search site as it officially enters the market, would parallel similar self-censorship already practised there by most multinationals and domestic players.

Homegrown giants like Sohu.com Inc. and Baidu.com Inc., along with China sites operated by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft, all routinely block searches on politically sensitive terms such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement and Taiwan independence.

"In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn in response to local law, regulation or policy," Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel, said in a statement.

"While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission."

Google, known for its "Don't do evil" mantra, is developing its China approach as it seeks to strike a balance between the freedom of information it champions and the censorship demanded by Beijing, which controls access to China's 111 million Internet users.

The company added that at least for now, it will stay away from e-mail and blogging in China, which have been the source of recent controversies after Beijing demanded information on an e-mail user from Yahoo, and Microsoft pulled down a politically sensitive posting from its China-based blog service.

Google said it will also stay away from chat rooms, another popular form of expression over the Internet.

[source: Reuters]

Arstechnica Reports: Let's say, just for fun, that you lived in Nevada in 2004. Let's also say that you were a lawyer, a lawyer who wanted to make a lot of money—but without working too hard. How might you have gone about it? Well, perhaps you sat down at a computer for three days in January and typed up 51 pieces of what can only be called "text" (neither poetry nor prose quite seems to fit and "string of letters" seems a little harsh). You gave them titles like "Good Burritos" and created stanzas that would make T.S. Eliot weep:

There's this burrito joint that's not too far from here,and they make a pretty good burrito.It's also a very inexpensive burrito, as theircadillac [sic] entre [sic] is the most expensive at $4.10.And for that, you get a whole lot of food.A burrito as big as your head, even.

Then, because you're a lawyer and you've really thought this through, you created a web site and posted all 51 works there. Then you registered for copyright on every work and waited for Google to index the site. Once that happened, you searched for your own material, found it, then clicked on the "Cached" link to display a copy stored on Google's servers. Why would this make you a truckload of money? Because you then sued Google for violating your "exclusive rights to reproduce copies and distribute copies of those works."

We sincerely wish this were a joke, but it was instead the actual plan of one Blake Field, a Nevada lawyer. Those of us at the Orbiting HQ with any remaining innocence immediately lost it upon hearing the sordid tale, which wins the award for Most Cynical Use of the Legal System in the new millenium

---

IIPM, in the past had resorted to google spamming to get higher pageranks for their websites.
Today, they have the honour of being featured on Google Current TV for being one of the most popular searches on the seach engine (from Google Zeitgeist data), reports 'Typical Grad Procrastinator'.

The video can be assesed here, perhaps only be residents of US; Others can try to access it through US based proxies.
More Info on Current TV: Googleblog
Links: Gaurav Sabnis, Desipundit's Comprehensive Post, and JAM magazine where it all started.

The Manalaa Blog and Big Pharaoh report the Arrest of a Blogger in Egypt for apparently falling foul of Islamist groups.
Quote:

Quote:

If you have a blog, kindly post this news and spread it around. It is the minimum we can do for him. The ensuing publicity will ensure that he has a proper trial atleast. Additional scruitiny and noise on the Internet may even prompt the Egyptian Government to drop charges.

Update: Seems like THIS was the article that got Karim into trouble

Update: The Jerusalem Post reports on this story. Perhaps the first MSM to take care to notice it.

IIPM is going places. Till a few days ago, IIPM was only mentioned in the Mainstream Media, but the newspapers and magazines have very short SHELF life. Books on the other hand, are forever!

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds takes a second look at the IIPM fiasco at MSNBC and comments on the Online Journalism Review by Mark Glaser. His earlier post on IIPM vs Blogosphere issue is here.

Glenn links to his own book on Amazon, aptly titled, 'An Army of Davids': How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths.

I am sure IIPM will find its mention there or in his forthcoming books and be recording for eternity as a lesson in PR and corporate responsibility towards free speech.

IIPM has achieved what it set forth to achieve: Train managers of corporate houses to be better managers - BY SETTING AN EXAMPLE and finding mention under captions in management tetbooks such as:

5 Things to avoid to PR disaster especially if you have skeletons in your pant pockets:

1. Do not try to bully ordinary citizens into silence using hefty worded legal notices.

Online Jounalism Review posts yet another nail in the IIPM coffin.
OJR also reveals the hypocrisy of the MSM when they, on one hand ask for the Bloggers to adhere to the same journalistic standards as the main stream, but at the same time, they themselves tend to go overboard and start hitting the bottom and digging.

Quote:

IIPM knew all along that it was in reality a glass house and was afraid of stones subconsciously. What it failed to appreciate is that preemptive strikes meant to frighten and bully everybody into submissive silence can sometimes bring a avalance of stones they can only stare at mesimerised.
So much for the Management Guru managing his P.R. Did he really think that spending cartloads of money on advertisements is all there is to do for good PR?

IIPM posts what is arguably its first 'civil' response to the whole fiasco instead of shooting off legal notices.

The JPEG is here.

The notice bleeds desperation to save some skin, the tone is defeatist and in the process of 'refuting' the findings of JAM, the notice only adds more subtances that beg to be investigated.

Also, they are doing the sort of maneuver known to millitary commanders which I term, 'the side dodge' and to logicians as the 'straw man fallacy'.

They have side stepped the real allegations and are trying to argue on grounds they still have 'some' strenght. If they succeed in focusing all attention on points they can fight on and possibly win, the onlookers will forget about the other side-stepped real issues and think that IIPM has substanciated themselves. This is the same as building up a straw-man and going on to demolish it with pomp and show.

• First point:

  The article claims that the magazine's 'reporters visited various IIPM facilities', and that 'the swimming pool, 300 seater auditorium, seven huge ampitheatre classrooms, mini golf course, and other fancy facilities are restricted to just one campus'. The fact is that one reporter of this magazine visited only the Delhi campus of IIPM and did not visit any other facility. All the other eight IIPM towers located in various parts of India also provide world-class facilities in exact accordance with what IIPM mentions in its advertisements.

  They mention with such confidence that the reporter visited only ONE facility and that she/he did not visit others. Now, does that really have any bearing on the fact that the other campuses do not have a swimming pool and mini golf courses? It is plain rhetoric to claim that all other eight IIPM towers 'provide' world class facilities 'in exact accordance with what IIPM mentions in its advertisements'. Wow. But.... the issue is NOT about whether these towers provide vague 'world class facilities' but whether they all have in particular, a swimming pool/ mini golf or not. The difference is that they can resort to complex circular logic to argue that it is NOT mentioned anywhere in their advertisements that ALL the eight towers have these particular facilities. However the advertisements are tailored in such a way to appear so to the students. JAM made an well deserved endeavor to dissolve the rhetoric paradise image IIPM was projecting and reveal them in plain english. IIPM is only concerned about the artificial image they try to manufacture for the potential students, not the truth.

In my old posts I had 'expected' the inevitable:

• Oct 9: If the IIPM continue to raise the ire of the Blogosphere, chances are that dedicated blogs will spring to point out anything from the myriad typos and grammatical mistakes on the IIPM website or their Dean's site to financial iregularities they unearthed and so on




• Oct 11: If IIPM thinks that this will be the end of this matter, well, things have taken a momentum of their own. It won't be long before the main stream media will have to take notice.




• Oct 22: It won't be long before IIPM will have a law suit in its hands. Larger the bully, heavier the fall.

  Two of three are a reality already.. For the lawsuit, Count down starts... 30 days.. before either a PI is filed or the Election Commission will come a visiting...

The list of all posts on this topic are here. Click to 'easy read'.

IIPM vs Free Speech issue has crossed the 'divide' and is now gracing the pages of the mainstream media.

• BusinessWorld has an indepth look at the matter and the conclusions are the obvious.

  Meanwhile, "Professor" Chaudhuri decided to pay a visit to the editors of various media houses to present his side of the case. He visited Businessworld and invited it to conduct its own examination of the IIPM facilities and his credentials. He promised to provide all documentary evidence to prove the veracity of his claims. However, he also pointed out that his advertisements were models of careful wording.Businessworld's investigation: At the outset we must confess that despite his claims of providing us with all help, neither Chaudhuri nor his head of corporate communications, Amit Saxena, provided us with the details we had asked for.



• Business Standard's columnist Kanika Datta posting from New Delhi writes:

  Also to the point, none of this does IIPM the slightest bit of credit, nor does it enhance its reputation. If it wants to defend itself with dignity and credibility, the institution would do well to set up a blog of its own rebutting the facts in the JAM piece and publicly dissociating itself from the more injudicious comments of its enthusiastic alumni. The Net is increasingly becoming a pain point for corporations, especially large multinationals in controversial businesses. If there is a larger lesson for them in this incident, it is how not to deal with negative stories



• Indian Express, true to its style reports under the headline, 'Bloggers join hands against B-school'.


• Outlook has a two page article in its print edition, web edition awaited, reports Desipundit.

My initial posts were a sort of cryptic advisory for the IIPM executives to heed: STFU and wait for the storm to abate. But they decided to ride the storm to ever high publicity. And now they are reaping it.

It won't be long before IIPM will have a law suit in its hands. Larger the bully, heavier the fall.

The Indian Blogospace has fared well and has come out strong from this issue. Truly, if this is a preview of what to come, then we sure live in interesting times!

Before the heat goes down, the next issue would be to counter corrupt politicians, Pakistan over Kashmir and terrorism and the scrouge of Bribery in India's Babudom.

Also, the 'Right to Information' act is going to change the scope of Indian Blogosphere. Expect some real bomb shells soon!
Happy browsing and blogging!


Technorati : CNET, Gaurav, IIPM, Sabnis
Del.icio.us : CNET, Gaurav, IIPM, Sabnis
Ice Rocket : CNET, Gaurav, IIPM, Sabnis

Vineet Rai posts on Global Voices Online

still wondering what the fuss is all about??? A person decided to criticise an institute, the insti filed a case, the person decided to quit from his company thinking the company is facing trouble and all with personal choices.

So where is the problem. IF IIPM is fake and fraud it would get proven in the court where they filed the case, why are we going ballastic about the Indian government and right of free speech!!!!

I think IIPM does have a right to sue Gaurav if it believe about not being a fraud insti, and Gaurav should do the same as well ( may be all the bloggers can fund him to do that

how about that?

A typical view perhaps.. but needs to be addressed. I attempt a reply:.....

Times of India writes:

Count your chickens before they hatch and don't let your grandma tell you any different. At least, that's what self-styled management guru, consultant, mediaperson and entertainer Arindam Chaudhuri would have you practice to become a success.

Chaudhuri, MD of the Rs 200 crore Planman group, was in Ahmedabad to deliver lectures on his favourite topic 'Count....hatch' as part of IIPM's seminars in eight cities.

Self-styled management guru and entertainer. Right!
And now, online throttler of free speech.

At this very moment, The issue is not whether IIPM is a fantastic institute or a phony money making venture. It is not whether their advertisements are true or empty hype.

The issue has gone beyond the scope of such questions and now is concerned with a singularity: Whether IIPM was right in trying to silence Gaurav Sabnis or were they justified in threatening him.

Free press, right to expression is what this is all about right now.

Those who are posting good stories about IIPM in an attempt to defend IIPM all over the net are shooting at the wrong geese. The more they try to question the intentions of Gaurav Sabnis and Rashmi Bansal, the more the credibility of IIPM will go down the drain, dragging along with it, the future of its students - past and present.

I think actually IIPM should now thank Rashmi Bansal for the publicity they are about to receive now.. right from Global Voices Online of Harvard Univ, to google news!

News tickling in... The Renegade of Junk reports (apparently) :

Students of a popular management institute in India called IIPM (Indian Institude of Planning and Management) have decided to burn their degree certificates in order to voice their support for their institute, which is currently in the midst of a controversy.

IIPM is fair game now. Gaurav Sabnis has resigned his job at IBM/Lenovo owing to the fallout from the IIPM fiasco.

Expect every Indian blogger worth his salt to write about IIPM. They will soon have their hands full. How many lawsuits do they expect to send? Do they seriously think they can stiffen the voice of hundreds if not thousands? At this very moment, the word is spreading by e-mails, yahoo groups, mailing lists and so on.
Already, technorati search results have reached 11 pages and counting.

The battlelines have been drawn. This issue was a big test for public relations management of IIPM from the point when JAM published their article. They utterly screwed up when they threatened Gaurav Sabnis with a legal notice. And now, the matter has reached a point of no return after Gaurav was coerced to resign.

If IIPM thinks that this will be the end of this matter, well, things have taken a momentum of their own. It won't be long before the main stream media will have to take notice.

Students at IIPM will have to talk to their management and restrain them from causing any more damage. They need to act coherently, responsivily. The ad hominem attacks against against Rashmi Bansal will tilt the public opinion wihtout Rashmi having to say a single word in her defense. The students need to realise that they stand to loose the most.

The advertisements of IIPM are in public domain. Anybody and everybody reserves the right to comment on them, as long they are opinions.
I know how this is going to end. Only sorry for the students though.

JAM a niche magazine published an article on IIPM (Indian Institute of Planning and Management scrutinising the claims made by IIPM in their full page advertisements

Gavrav Sabnis posted a story linking to this article on his blog and subsequently received a Legal Notice from IIPM. (read more for that letter)

The Notice will almost make you believe its a parody.. caution: Before you read it, put down any drink you are holding. You might spill it or worst, choke on it!

The IIPM execs handling this are in for a surprise. Obviously, they have no idea of the blogsphere domino effect nor do they seem to be aware of the consequences of getting into situations they can hardly control. Free speech and rights of expression are fiercely defended online - Blog authors in particular will go to any extent to defend them. The solidarity of authors to defend their rights to opinion is one platform that really unites across the board.

The IIPM lawyers haven't heard of the Blogosphere's victory over similar attempts to censure opinions elsewhere. If they had known that, they would have thought twice before dispatching that legal notice. If the IIPM continue to raise the ire of the Blogosphere, chances are that dedicated blogs will spring to point out anything from the myriad typos and grammatical mistakes on the IIPM website or their Dean's site to financial iregularities they unearthed and so on.
Instead, IIPM should immediately issue an Apology for threats against Gaurav Sabnis and post it publically on their website.

They have succeeded in publicising the JAM article far beyond the limited reach of that magazine. Their 'desperate' toned acknowledgement is as follows:

The articles have caused unfathomable damage to the reputation of IIPM and to its various operational areas.

Ad hominum attacks on the JAM magazine's editor and publisher, Rashmi Bansal are vindicative of the fact that the otherwise irrefutable article has indeed made an impact. Gaurav's questioning of the Arindam Chaudhuri, dean of IIPM's educational background is yet more damning beyond JAM's article.

So, we now have the first official victim of the Indian Blogosphere! Bhawahahaaa!

I hereby invite the IIPM's dumb attorneys and lawyers to serve me a similar legal notice that I can frame and hang it on my wall. Make it look good guys.. unlike the totally whaky advertisement you cookup in the Newspapers.

Oh yeah, a word about those advertisements: Rape of Aesthetics! so sue me!

Kancheepuram, Oct 4 (PTI) A court here has framed charges against columnist S Gurumurthy for writing "defamatory and misleading" articles on the Sankararaman murder case in which Kanchi seer Jayendra Saraswathi is the prime accused.
Judicial Magistrate G Uthamaraj framed the charges yesterday and posted the case for further hearing on November 17.
According to the prosecution, which filed the chargesheet on July 26 last, the articles written by Gurumurthy were defamatory and misleading.
Gurumurthy was questioned by the special investigation team in December 2004 in connection with the articles written by him.
PTI report

This is clearly a case of Judiciary trying to restrict the freedom of expression. Columnist Gurumurthy had written articles critisising and raising doubts against the Tamil Nadu Government's arrest of Seer Sankaracharya of Kanchi Mutt.

The curtailing of free speech rights of Gurumurthy will hardly go noticed or raised by the Press Community since Gurumurthy does not subscribe to the general Leftist slant of the Indian Press Majority.

Compare this with the huge protests, hue and cry over isse of arrest warrant against Mr. Ravi, the editor of 'The Hindu' by the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker and one can easily notice the differences.

Article 19 of the Indian Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech and expression.

Netherlands, the land of many personal liberties has now almost legalised polygamy when a Man married two women in what is termed a 'Trio marriage'.

The Brusselsjournal notes: The Netherlands and Belgium were the first countries to give full marriage rights to homosexuals. In the United States some politicians propose “civil unions” that give homosexual couples the full benefits and responsibilities of marriage. These civil unions differ from marriage only in name.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands polygamy has been legalised in all but name. Last Friday the first civil union of three partners was registered. Victor de Bruijn (46) from Roosendaal “married” both Bianca (31) and Mirjam (35) in a ceremony before a notary who duly registered their civil union.

The 1971 Indo-Pak war shall go on in History along with such other ephoch making wars as the Peloponnesian War. Of the Heroes, Field Marshal Gen. Sam Maneckshaw, a Parsi Zorastrian, Lt. Gen. J.S. Auroa, a Sikh and J. F. Ralph Jacob, a Jew represent the finest of our Motherland's patriots.

Today on TV and elsewhere, we are bombarded with culturally regressive, morally bankrupt cinemas and shows which can serve only the most degraded of sensual mundane minds. In defience, I would like to revisit an article about Gen. Ralph Jacob, as narrated by a Canadian Jewish Journalist. Read on...

Missionary Staines Killed was Frontline News; Gujrat is still a huge club to bash India and Hindus with.
Hindus should die. They should die unwept, unknown and unsung. Such is our fate. The Leftists and the Secularists will see to it.

1. The Unread Story!
2. The Answer!

Bhutan, the land of the Drak Pa, the Thunder Dragon is a peace loving, serene Nation that values 'Gross Happiness Index' more than the 'Gross Domestic Product of economists has shown that it can be as tough as it is benovelent. Having been peaceful for more than one and a half centuries, the modest Bhutan army has demonstrated exemplery courage while it fought Militant groups taking advantage of the Buddhist Nation's non-violent nature and exploited it for their own selfish ends. This post is a Salutation to the King of Bhutan, the Bhutanese Soldiers and to the ever lasting Friendship between our Nations!