So it turns out that China’s main trading partner in Africa, accounting for more than 20 per cent of Beijing’s trade with the continent, is South Africa. Fancy that!
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) — South Africa’s embassy in New Delhi has denied travel documents to Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, barring him from attending a peace conference in Johannesburg, activists said Sunday.
The Dalai Lama had planned to join other Nobel peace prize winners including Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk at a conference Friday to discuss ways of using soccer to fight racism and xenophobia, as South Africa prepares to host the 2010 World Cup. more
It speaks volumes that one man carrying no gun can make such a very large country as China so very afraid.
The ability to easily create an IP network in rural areas, developing countries and disaster zones can significantly contribute to the ability of people to communicate with each other.
Afrimesh builds on top of the most excellent B.A.T.M.A.N. project to provide a simple management dashboard which enables network operators to create and sustain a resilient communications network with a minimum of fuss.
For the first release we are working hard towards simplifying common tasks such as managing clients, maintaining network maps, monitoring the network and managing bandwidth.
The current status of the software should still be considered pre-alpha and it is only recommended that you check out the source code if you are comfortable with a unix shell, know your way around a text editor and are able to find and follow the badly written directions on the wiki.
Binary packages are coming and will support the following environments:
* FreeBSD
* OpenWRT
* OpenWRT + R.O.B.I.N.
* Ubuntu
Future development direction will be largely determined by demand from users but some ideas that have already come up include customer billing management, telephony integration and support for building social apps that connect mesh users with each other.
The source code is licensed under the New BSD License and is hosted at:
http://code.google.com/p/afrimesh
Finally, a very big thank you to each of Ajay, Chris, George & Kobus from the Meraka Institute of the CSIR, Sebastian from wire.less.dk and Steve from the Shuttleworth Foundation for the many contributions that have made this project possible.
“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
— From President Barack Hussein Obama’s Inaugural Address
“The people who were born after the Apollo pictures of the Earth seen from space represent the first people who will fully inhabit a new consciousness. Those of us, like myself, who took this amazing picture in as someone already living on the Earth, had to learn this consciousness; for those born after me it is their birthright.The recognition of the civil rights of lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people is part of the broad shift in consciousness towards which we are moving. Same-sex marriage in California is an important vehicle in the on-going work of making sure all American citizens enjoy the same rights in civil society.
This shift in consciousness, including same-sex marriage, is a move towards the good. I affirm this from a spiritual, religious point of view. As a Christian, I view the trajectory of history as moving us towards global reconciliation and global justice. The Gospels tell us that Jesus said that God’s love is pervasive. He used the idea of rain and sunshine, both of which fall on all the world, irrespective of people’s prejudices about who is deserving or who is not.
If Proposition 8 passes, which I hope it does not, those of us committed to civil rights for all will simply continue to hope, and continue to work. Perseverance, knowing that God continues to travel with those who are disenfranchised, is a path we know. I trust, however, that the great Californians with whom I live will continue their tradition of forging ahead towards what lies before our whole great country.”
— The Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California
One way or another, in a week or so it will all be over in the US of A and the process will start kicking into high gear locally.
In my opinion we, the geek.hood, have the following broad options that we can choose one (or more, or variations) from:
- Vote ANC and do everything possible within our individual circles of influence to ensure that we get the Marxist vision of socialism and not the Stalinist version.
- Vote for an opposition alliance and do everything possible within our individual circles of influence to ensure that we build a country where the rule of law and the constitution guides the political process and not the whims of whichever individual happens to inhabit the presidency at any point in time.
- Don’t choose. After all, apathy is a venerable political stance within our country and no one will look at you skew if you still complain about the choices everyone else made.
- Let politics be politics and continue working on long-term visions of some kind of collective grassroots sustainable future with crypto-anarchic tendencies and a whole lot of ubuntu thrown in.
- Do a Rincewind and rrrrrrrrrrrrrun!!!!
Amandla! Wethu!
