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Time Warner Seeks to Destroy the Internet

Like a cartoon villain, Time Warner has enacted a devious plan that promises to destroy something that brings joy to the people like you and I. If you haven't heard about this yet, Time Warner has begun testing a tiered system where they charge you by both the speed and total amount of bites you operate at in a month. If you aren't feeling outrage right now, then you don't understand what I just said.

Time Warner is attempting to take advantage of the average person's ignorance of how computers and the Internet operate by manipulating ambiguities in language to make it seem like there is somehow a finite amount of Internet out there. When operating under that vague understanding of resource use that is so obvious in the physical world, it seems reasonable that they would want to charge us for how much of something we use. The thing is that this is a deception. There is not a finite amount of internets out there that one day we might us up much like we might one day use up all the oil. There are just limits on how much can be delivered to a certain number of users at any given moment. Which is why the erroneous "tubes" analogy is so attractive.

It is helpful to think of this from the end of the ISP. Faced with the need to consistently upgrade their capacity to handle many more and more customers at the faster and faster speeds that are needed to run the more and more intensive operations we perform over the Internet the ISP decides, not that the costs will one day become prohibitive(because as the Wired graph shows, that simply isn't true. And simple logic tells you that if they faced a problem of overhead they could simply raise their rates. They are the cable company after all), but that since this technical reality creates users of different needs, using a different metric vastly changes your rate structure and you can balloon your revenue.

The simple capitalist, free market logic is obvious here. Where you have a monopoly in your individual markets you can charge whatever you want. Since most regions of the country are serviced by a single cable company or ISP they can all do this without fear of being out competed by the numerous other companies out there. The only customers that will be spared are those that live in competitive markets. And sure enough ATT has started testing this idea out themselves. Now Comcast, the big villains of the last bandwidth war are looking competitive because all they have is a cap.

The slightly less obvious reason that is highly compelling for a cable company to do something sinister like this is that they are a cable company. They are primarily in the business of offering TV entertainment and people going over to the Internet to get their shows whenever they want(even their own customers) deprives them of a customer for their other services, and of ad revenue since people are having difficulty finding satisfying advertising solutions on the Internet. Largely because you have accurate measures of how effective your ads are on the Internet where they are cheap, but have to pay top dollar for television ads that are widely believed to be entirely ineffective.

The tiered structure is basically Time Warner punishing online gamers and online movie watchers for getting their entertainment elsewhere.

The tiers are also very low. Or at least in the way we measure Internet use anymore. Time Warner points out that their first tier, 1G, satisfies the needs of a third of their customers. These are basically the people that don't use the Internet. I admit that these people will probably pay less for the same amount of Internet. Anything above your grandmas Internet use enters an onerous tiered system where you pay for each gigabyte you use. In a month.

Apart from the possibility of viruses and malware using Internet without your consent and beyond your control, this is an attack on the basic philosophy that has led to the Internet and computer use as we know it. We all converted over to cable Internet because it was fast and primarily because we didn't have to pay for every minute of Internet use through a dedicated phone line. It freed up so much of the initial cost barrier of the Internet and increased the speed to the point where it became the multi-media communications tool it had always promised to be. This type of Internet service created the concept of the computer as the always-on, always-connected Internet terminal. This philosophy of the personal computer is central to the way we think of computer use and central to how software operates. Going back to a tiered structure where one pays based on an almost arbitrary metric is an attack, an attack based in greed, but an attack on the philosophy that was foundational to Web 2.0. We will never be able to proceed to Web 3.0 with this albatross around our necks.

That is where monopolies hurt business. Even regional ones. This was a lesson we learned around the last great depression and hopefully with a Democratic congress it is not a lesson we will have to re-learn the hard way. There is at least one Congressman trying to fight back. He has proposed the interesting philosophical change of calling the Internet a utility. I like that. If phone service was essential to daily life enough to be called a utility then the Internet is as well.

You should write to your representatives at the state and federal level. Raising Cain on the Internet will only go so far to produce resistance to this move by Time Warner and Ma Bell. You have to get the honest perspective of the people to the government before the industry twists the story.

It's easy to question the validity of an economic argument that relies on the business generation of the Internet. If you are a moron, or have been living in a cave since 1990. It is easy to point out that many small businesses and individuals have been able to expand their sales and start new businesses because of the low overhead cost of the Internet and its ability to reach an international consumer base. But there are specific businesses that will be impacted by this kind of tiered Internet usage structure. Online gaming is the first that comes to mind. This is now the primary business model for game manufacturers. Every gaming platform is connected to the Internet. The single player content is often secondary in importance to the users of the games. And every gaming device now can download new titles entirely from the Internet. This new business model for the gaming industry that drastically reduces overhead and cuts out the middle man would be jeopardized by requiring gamers to engage in a cost benefit analysis of whether the game would be worth the additional tiered charges.


I currently use Time Warner service to access the Internet. But that will change as soon as I can find an alternate service provider. The only thing a corporation can understand is their own greedy, short term, self interest. So the only way to communicate with them is with money. So I will be taking mine away from the finks at Time Warner for even thinking about using the byte as a metric for billing.

Evamaloutions

I think the real issue is not clearly explained in debates over creationism. In discussion over changes to curriculum it becomes apparent that what is being debated is the position of science in our society and the deference due to science in examination of nature. I don't think that the scriptural interpretive preference of an obnoxiously vocal minority should have any bearing on how we regard the statements of experts on matters of fact. The point is not that fundamentalist Christians are trying to hijack our culture through the indoctrinating power of the already failing public school system, but that they intentionally avoid narrowing the issue or focusing on details because this is a discussion they loose as soon as rationality prevails.

In case you were wondering this post was not provoked by anything in particular but is tangentially related to the posts this week regarding stumbling upon websites anthropomorphizing of animals and showing that the efforts by religious fanatics to destroy science is not restricted to right wing Christian maniacs.

Posted from a Palm Treo mobile device.

The Difference Between Infantaside and Abortion

You are probably seeing this article in your Google search because you misspelled "infanticide."

This posting is only slightly related to the title. On Friday Obama signed an executive order reinstating funding for groups that perform or provide information regarding abortion overseas. Reversing the "Mexico City Policy" of George Bush and the right wing religious extremists that supported him. Editorials across the nation declare that this has inflamed the national furor over abortion again, but this was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and those people had their undies in a twist for this day in advance.



It is really upsetting to me that the national abortion debate never rises above our worst and most base instincts. People on both sides straw man each others position's and are disrespectful of their opponents ideology to the point of deliberately lying to their own supporters. What is most interesting to me is that the Supreme Court has heard some well thought out policy arguments in its handling of the issue and it is unfortunate that some of these thoughts don't trickle down into the national debate. For instance the supreme court ruled a law criminalizing use of contraception out of respect for the dignity of family and marriage and the privacy of marital intimacy. Kind of throws a clog in the pro-family rhetoric the right wing slings about.

When it comes to women in the workplace and abortion I feel stupid for never putting two and two together until I read the opinion of The Court in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey.

The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.

505 U.S. 833, 833 (1992) Hurrr I'm a durrr. Given the nature of the glass ceiling and the thinly veiled questions women get in job interviews regarding whether they are "planning to have a family", and the correlation between attitudes regarding abortion and attitudes regarding women in the workplace, I can't believe it took the Supreme Court to point out this conclusion to me.

Weaseling Out of Things

With the new year and the change of administration in Washington there has been a tendency lately for retrospective looks at the outgoing Bush administration which has reminded us of all that has gone wrong in the last eight years and all that the Bush administration and its collaborators have to answer for. This tendency has in turn provoked the apologists for the Bush regime who are now using the unitary executive theory as a shield rather than a spear. The result is conversations like the one on the Diane Rehm show this morning where lawyers acting as apologists for the nefarious acts of Bush policy sound like panicky weasels trying to slip out of anyone having to take responsibility for the wrongs they have done. These pundits try to appear to be centrists, but the way they use arguments regarding pragmatic politics to evade moral accusations that there has been wrongdoing on the part of the Bush administration paints these men as the worst caricature of the sleazy lawyer.

Depression Era Tactics

We have really hit the shit now people. Labor is dusting off tactics that they haven't used since the bad old days of company towns and anarchists. Laid off workers have occupied a factory in Chicago. They were given short notice of the closing of the plant and are attempting to get the severance and vacation pay due to them. This is actually connected to the $700,000,000,000.00 bailout because one of the banks that got assistance from the Treasury is the bank that finances this company that employees these workers and said bank refuses to loan the company the money it needs to keep up with its payroll, forcing it to close its factory doors. Which is exactly why there needed to be better controls put on this massive act of corporate welfare so that Paulson wasn't left with the sole option of begging the banks to not horde the cash but deploy it. Because if they won't spend the money then the bailout can't serve the purpose it was authorized for.

Prop. 8

I am not a citizen of California, so I have not been following the news surrounding Prop. 8. I don't even know the technical wording of what it does. I recently read this article, and it reminded me of something I have tried to address in previous postings. The idea that there can be a status equivalent to marriage for homosexuals that simply uses a different word. I have explained before that separate is not equal and that there are technical differences in the law that would be difficult to account for in creating a parallel civil institution.

I would like to try to address the underlying argument that if homosexuals are allowed to marry it somehow damages the sacred unions of heterosexual marriage. To me this seems like saying that every time I have a bacon cheeseburger, it harms every Jew that keeps kosher. Sure they might feel left out at a BBQ, but bacon is still delicious. OK, so the analogy needs work. I have yet to hear any reasoned argument behind the bare assertion, other than a veiled suggestion that the purpose of marriage is to produce future taxpayers. That upsets me as a Libertarian, but as a moral human being this concept throws me into a foaming rage that a human child is being valued only as a walking wallet. I think it shows that these people who claim to be for morality and the family are really the most cynical and selfish, if you only press them beyond their memorized talking points.

Personally I find it hard to argue with Mormons on the issue of family because they have such a strong family ethos and make it a central tenant of their religion. My bone of contention with them is that their conception of "family" is so narrow, it excludes and even rejects some of the diversity on Earth and in society that must be a part of God's plan. A faith that has a de facto exclusion of the childless and infertile, and an outright hostility to homosexual families seems to me to be directly rejecting the spark of divinity inherent in every part of God's Creation.

The Walk of Shame: A Shameful Roundup

Saving the best for last.

First, a new study shows that half of all American doctors prescribe a placebo to their patients, and most of them that do, do not inform the patient that the medication will not do anything for their condition. The study goes on to say that doctors usually use pain medication, vitamins, or stress medications rather than the sugar pill one usually associates with placebo.

This throws into question medical ethics and the doctrine of informed consent. It would be possible to meet the standard of informed consent and still get the beneficial effects of a placebo. It also raises questions of further wasting money in the already inefficient American medical system.

This strikes me as similar to the use of tazers since in both cases a professional with a fiduciary duty to the people is using a device as a shortcut around dealing with the psychological difficulty's of the individual they are faced with at the time. It's lazy. It's laziness that has harmful consequences.


Second, the McCain campaign volunteer who claimed to have been attacked and beaten by a black man who carved a "B" into her face to signify Barrac Obama, admitted to lying about the attack. Apparently the woman is mentally unstable and probably did it to herself.


Lastly, we have the Maryland police spying scandal. The state police went to public meetings of politically left protest organizations and entered the names of participants in a database of persons suspected for involvement in terrorism. So essentially what we have is a law enforcement body labeling as terrorists, U.S. citizens who are exercising their constitutionally guaranteed first amendment rights without any evidence that any crime had or would be committed.

The ACLU were the ones credited with this story seeing the light of day because of an information request. This week the state started sending out letters to people who's names are on the list. There are varying accounts of what the letters say or what their purpose is. Questions need to be answered like; why were these people targeted, was it because they were politically liberal, why not investigate groups like the KKK which is already listed as a terrorist group, what prompted this spying, will the victims be able to see what is in their file, what criteria are used to determine someone is a terrorist, how does someone get their name off the list, is it possible to remove someones name?

This again gives an answer the question, "if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to fear?" These people were not doing anything wrong. One officers reports even showed that these people were not planning on doing anything wrong. Yet they were labeled as terrorists. At this point we still do not know why. Again, most people don't concern themselves with the draconian methods of dealing with suspected terrorists since 9/11. Except we have been repeatedly shown that one does not need to do anything wrong to be labeled a terrorist and be subjected to torture. But then again, this woman seems to think that protesters, or anyone that is vocal about their political opinions deserves to be given the third degree.

Flagrant Fascism Fronts RNC Convention

Instead of waiting for scenes of peaceful protesters being outnumbered and surrounded by riot control police, or being sprayed with a pepper spray cannon that looks like a fire extinguisher, or being callously shoved to the ground as was the case in Denver, the police in the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area have been proactive in suppressing potential problems. Instead, they have staged a series of raids on houses and meeting places of potential protesters, and confiscated computers and written materials. Of those arrested so far, the only charge that has been brought forth is a constitutionally questionable charges of "conspiracy to incite a riot." The St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said that the cause for the search warrants that police were executing is not public at this time. Also targeted in the raids were journalists from other parts of the country in the area to cover the protests.

The group targeted, the RNC Welcoming Committee, which describes itself as "anarchist/anti-authoritarian," was described by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher as "a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists...intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention."

For a bit of editorializing, the police are engaged in an active campaign to block freedoms of speech and assembly, which form the cornerstone of representative democracy is unabashedly loathesome. The fact that only a handful of those detained have been arrested is a clear indication that the authorities in Ramsey County are limiting their actions to those which rest in the ambiguous grey margins of the law, as evidenced by use of the 'conspiracy to commit riot' charges.

PETA

The important thing to remember is that PETA kills animals.

Sen. Feingold Breaks it Down

Sen. Feingold, in the video below reminds us why it is that people participate in the democratic process. It's a long lecture, but it's the most authoritative denunciation on the the government's program possible given today's classification restrictions. We can only hope that the ACLU's lawsuit, timed with Bush's signature, forces the judicial branch to step in and hold those responsible for abrogating the rights of American citizens to be held accountable in the way the law proscribes. After all, how strong is the rule of law when the government itself is known to disregard provisions and limitations on its behavior? Why should anyone be allowed to be immune from allegations of rape, for instance? Maybe I'm deranged. But someone really deranged would wonder why anyone votes at all. By the way, that's not a scream you're hearing, it's the utter silence of a society looking on in horror as an elected body completely contravenes their desires.

I Got Yer Millitia Right Here

Today the Supreme Court Ruled that the Second Amendment ensures an individuals right to own and possess a firearm. Few people were suprised by this decision. Either in its ultimate result or in its scope. Scalia, who wrote the position for the majority, has previously written opinions for the court in gun control cases that are fundamentally similar to this result. The Court has said in the past that the right enshrined in the second amendment is an individual right but it is not a right without restriction. This can be seen in past cases regarding the federal ban on fully automatic rifles such as in Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600 (1994).

The cases and statutes throughout the United States have created a general guideline that seems to indicate an individual may own as many guns as they wish for recreation, sporting, or self defense, but may not own military equipment, and may be restricted in time and place of usage and transport within reason. The definition of what is military equipment changes frequently as can be seen by the recent expiration of the Brady Bill which forbid removable magazines of a capacity over ten rounds among other things. This most recent ruling not only ensures the individual's right to own and possess firearms, it also sets a line that may not be crossed in restricting type of gun and how it may be possessed and transported. This is because the D.C. gun ban that is overturned forbid ownership of a handgun. The court has clearly declared that this type of restriction violates the Constitution. The law also required registration of other firearms and that those registered firearms be locked when in the home. It is already well settled law that when transpiorting a gun one must have it locked and the ammunition must be locked in a seperate container, but today's Supreme Court ruling seems to indicate that a local law may not require that one keep ones guns locked in ones own home.

The ruling also seems to indicate that legislation requiring registration of firearms also goes to far. Many may not understand why this would be objectionable. After all, you have to register your car. The principle difference there is that there is no constitutionaly protected right to own and operate a vehicle. This is more than just a trite observation. Though a car may seem more essential to one's daily life, Congress may decide one day that cars are too dangerous and too polluting to allow in private ownership and ban them. However possession of a weapon is a right granted to us by our creator, like freedom of speech, and is protected by the Bill of Rights. The second reason to object to registration of firearms is a bit more paranoid. Firearm registration just gives the government a list of what law abiding citizens have guns ans what they have in their arsenal. The fear of armed government agents going door to door with a list and confescating the firearms of law abiding citizens in a time of emergency, when they are more likely to need them, is less paranoid when you remember that it happened and happened recently. When Bush suspended posse comitatus after hurricans Katrina and the national guard confiscated guns from people who were just trying to defend themselves from looters and murders who were roaming the streets after the disaster.

Despite the apparent clarity, the actual bounds of the Supreme Court's decision will be heavily litigated and fought over. The lawsuits have already started. As this article indicates these lawsuits by the NRA were already in the works before the decision came down.

The Walk of Shame: Fight the Power

When the Chinese government was putting on a carefully orchistrated dog and pony show to the western media to try and convince us that all is well in Tibet, some brave monks busted in and began pleading with the assembled members of the press, not to believe the crap being fed to them. Aparently this was not so carefully orchistrated after all. The shame is on the Chinese for trying such an old trick.

I want to contrast this to Bjork, who recently ended a concert of hers in China with a call to free Tibet. This was entirely selfish. Her chanting to the audience will have no effect on whether Tibet will gain any sembelance of independence. There was not some person in that audience that will rise up and liberate the downtroden because of a subversive message whispered at the end of a concert. All Bjork did was mark everyone in the audience as a suspect. She got to leave China but now her fans may have to endure scrutiny as suspicious persons because of her self-indulgent outburst.

Guns and Profanity

There are two issues going before the Supreme Court in the news today. The hearing challenging the Washington D.C. gun ban and a challenge to broadcast indecency regulation by Fox. Both of these cases have to do with the relationship of individual to one's government. And, in both of these cases freedom is being defended by right wing maniacs. The same maniacs who have been decidedly anti-freedom under the Bush administration.

It's difficult to defend freedom of speech when its offensive, and it's difficult to defend the right to have and use a lethal weapon without resorting to a slippery slope argument that evokes an opressive totalatarian 1984 regime.

Many of the Founding Fathers were philosophically libertarian. This philosophy describes the American way the individual relates to one's government. Power is vested in the government by the citizens and the purpose of the government is to preserve the rights of its citizens. This is the only way sovereignty can be legitimate. Under this philosophy, the rights delineated by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not granted by the document but ensured by it. Every human has these rights, it is the purpose of government to ensure the freedom to use these rights.

Freedom can be a scary thing. Its hard to trust strangers not to abuse their freedoms and infringe upon ours, but that is the freedom that each of us gives up to live within civilization. As long as no one infringes on your rights, you do not have the right to be offended.

The national debate over guns is often depicted as having one side that declares, possessing guns is an individual human right, and another side that declares that guns kill people. I do not see these as counterpoints to one another. Saying that a gun kills is like saying water is wet. A gun is a tool for killing and a pistol is a tool for killing other humans. The point is so obvious that it overlooks a fundamental difference in ideology that stems from the Western fear of death. We believe that death is bad and killing is wrong as if they are intrinsic universal truths. In an urban life, separated from the terrifying freedom of nature, and surrounded by a comforting layer of concrete and glass it is easy to believe, "my life does not cause death," but that is not true. It seems to me that this is the same kind of foolishness that leads to veganism. Though, as much as I believe it to be foolish, it is each person's right to choose when it is acceptable to kill. And in a society where our killing is done for us by others, it is difficult to stop. I can only accept that by being alive that my life necessarily causes death, one day I will die, and something will eat my body.



All this wheel of life shit is too philosophical for the debate at hand. The point is that sometimes, killing is necessary. Sometimes it is necessary to kill another human being. For instance, in self defense when that human is trying to rape you, kill you, or severely injure you it is acceptable to use lethal force to protect yourself. Libertarian philosophy supports this conclusion and our laws regulate its effect by apportioning guilt. If you accept these two points, that there are acceptable times to kill and one of those times is to protect your person, the only remaining debate is one of tool choice and the question of banning guns becomes one of reasonable regulation. Should weapon choice be limited, and in what way?



Meaningful hard data is difficult to come by since through studies have been done by either side of the issue and anecdotal evidence can be pointed to by either side. In my recent posts on this blog I have referenced some stories from the past year that tend to support the conclusion that gun regulation either does not work or is counterproductive. One story noted a significant decline in violent crime in Detroit, every year for the last ten years since the passing of Michigan's concealed carry law. In the tragic massacre at Virginia Tech, the killer had been declared to be a danger to himself or others. Existing gun control laws prohibited him from purchasing a gun but he was able to anyhow, either because of bureaucratic bungling by law enforcement or through the negligence of the shop owner. Even more recently a gun toting maniac shot up a convent and was stopped from killing more people by an armed member of the congregation that had the lawful right to carry and had been a police officer.

One last point about the Second Amendment. The founding fathers were radical revolutionaries who had just overthrown their government through a violent war. They knew this was only possible by having armed citizens who could be loosely organized into militia when there was a need for extra military force. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Such an audacious quote brings me to the topic of freedom of speech. You are not really using your freedom of speech unless someone is trying to take it away from you. The gurantee of this freedom exists not to protect mundane and polite speech, but offensive, shocking, profane, and challenging speech. This is why freedom of speech means you do not have the right to be offended.

Speech is impossible to regulate. Profane language is derived from emotion and is meant to convey that emotional content. The power is only marginally in the words but it really stems from the emotional content they are meant to convey and the power we invest in them. You might as well attempt to regulate anger and criminalize rage.

Even if one could make a list of say, seven words, that must never be spoken and if that regulation can actually have an effect on stamping out those words. Other words will be granted offensive power by being filled with the same emotional content and social stigma making the old words meaningless and silly. Language is fluid and meaning changes in relatively quick time even in regular words. "Humbug" used to be a profoundly profane word and is hardly used today.







Further, such regulation is inherently self-defeating. Labeling certain words as taboo only encourages their use for the purpose of shocking others. Thusly, restricting a words use as profane, only enshrines its profanity, and further empowers it to do harm.

I am certain that this was the goal of the performers who used these offensive words and caused Fox to be fined by the FCC. It seems ironic to me that Fox, the network that curtailed political speech and freedom of the press through social pressure and jingoism in the frantic run-up to the Iraq war where the MSM failed its duty to the entire world, is the one who is fighting for a small victory for free speech. Then again, if anyone is going to go to court over profanity, its going to be the network that brought you "Who wants to marry a millionaire?"

Waxing and Waning

Escalation and peace talks, or things in between are the theme of military news today, with local grassroots activism thrown in for flavor. Roughly organized from worst news to best news, here is a brief of places where people are killing each other or moving away from it.

In what would be a dangerous escalation of the Bush administration's Global War on Terror, the CIA is reportedly considering expanding its area of operations into the tribal regions of Pakistan. Pakistan's government, of course, has announced that they would not allow any such operations within their country. Meanwhile, Pakistan's government has reassigned Generals ahead of a massive military effort in the aforementioned tribal region that is the North West Frontier Province. Should the CIA get approval to implement such a horribly misguided policy, the situation will become much worse, with global public opinion shifting further away from the idea of the United States as anything other than a lonely bully.

On the front of one of the longest-smoldering flashpoints in the world, Ehud Olmert has ordered security forces "to escalate Israel's actions" in Gaza after their homemade rockets went a little further than normal. According to the article, 4 people were killed and 34 wounded. This comes ahead of Bush's visit to the Middle East, which has been roundly denounced by al Qaeda's American spokesman. On the question of what becomes of those held by Israeli security forces during their raids into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organization, has published a damning report of the Israeli Defense Force's military court system.

From another of the world's longest-smoldering flashpoints, comes news that the Tamil Tiger's military intelligence chief has been killed amid renewed fighting in northern Sri Lanka. The Nordic monitors are leaving, and the army is expected to begin its new escalation on January 16th.

In other news, the deal worked out with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program isn't being implemented as smoothly as envisioned.

Myanmar is celebrating its Independence Day! Iraq is celebrating its Army Day!

The Armed Forces of the Phillipines announced they are on schedule to crush the Islamist uprising in the southern regions of the country.

The guns will fall mostly silent in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the government has suspended operations against rebel factions ahead of a planned peace summit.

Local citizens in Cyprus attempted to stand up for their sovereign rights in the face of British imperialism, with 120 demonstratings throwing rocks and fireworks at RAF Akrontiri.