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Today's Stories

October 10, 2003

Chris Floyd
Body Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women

October 9, 2003

Jennifer Loewenstein
Bombing Syria

Ramzi Kysia
Seeing the Iraqi People

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Groping the Body Politic

Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?

Alexander Cockburn
Welcome to Arnold, King for a Day

Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark

 

October 8, 2003

David Lindorff
Schwarzenegger and the Failure of the Centrist Dems

Ramzy Baroud
Israel's WMDs and the West's Double Standard

John Ross
Mexico Tilts South

Mokhiber / Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust

James Bovard
The Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster

Michael Neumann
One State or Two?
A False Dilemma

 

October 7, 2003

Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion Ethnic Cleansing

Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta

Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present

David Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq

Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required

Cynthia McKinney
Who Are "We"?

Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case

Walter Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall

Gary Leupp
Israel's Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?

Website of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot

 

October 6, 2003

Robert Fisk
US Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria

Forrest Hylton
Upheaval in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity

Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War

Bridget Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus

Nicole Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials

JoAnn Wypijewski
The New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor

Website of the Day
Guerrilla Funk

 

October 3 / 5, 2003

Tim Wise
The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment

Peter Linebaugh
Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW

Gary Leupp
Occupation as Rape-Marriage

Bruce Jackson
Addio Alle Armi

David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?

Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers

Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean

Mickey Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest

Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq

John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus

William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac

Glen T. Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism

Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos

Wayne Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can

M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier

William Benzon
Scorsese's Blues

Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest

Poets' Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie

 

October 2, 2003

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What's So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
The Ashcroft-Rove Connection

Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair

Hamid Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)

Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act

Saul Landau
Who Got Us Into This Mess?

Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!


October 1, 2003

Joanne Mariner
Married with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families

Robert Fisk
Oil, War and Panic

Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia as State Policy

Elaine Cassel
The Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act

Shyam Oberoi
Shooting a Tiger

Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?

Sean Donahue
Wesley Clark and the "No Fly" List

Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund

 

September 30, 2003

After Dark
Arnold's 1977 Photo Shoot

Dave Lindorff
The Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well

Tom Crumpacker
The Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers

Robert Fisk
A Lesson in Obfuscation

Charles Sullivan
A Message to Conservatives

Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective

Naeem Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth

Amy Goodman / Jeremy Scahill
Does a Felon Rove the White House?

Website of the Day
The Edward Said Page


September 29, 2003

Robert Fisk
The Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies

Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!

Lee Sustar
Paul Krugman: the Last Liberal?

Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War

Uri Avnery
The Magnificent 27

Pledge Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com

 

September 26 / 28, 2003

Alexander Cockburn
Alan Dershowitz, Plagiarist

David Price
Teaching Suspicions

Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity

Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and the Patriot Act

Brian Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again

Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama

Robert Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions

M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA

John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN

Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada

William S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security

Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia

Chris Floyd
Vanishing Act

Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui

Richard Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved

George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said

Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized

Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss

Mickey Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice

Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said

Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room

Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie

Website of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?

 

September 25, 2003

Edward Said
Dignity, Solidarity and the Penal Colony

Robert Fisk
Fanning the Flames of Hatred

Sarah Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School

David Krieger
The Second Nuclear Age

Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak

Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime

Michael S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs

Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley

Mustafa Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights

Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate Heart

Website of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine


The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!


September 24, 2003

Stan Goff
Generational Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War

William Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark

David Vest
Politics for Bookies

Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin

Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship

Latino Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!

Neve Gordon
Sharon's Preemptive Zeal

Website of the Day
Bands Against Bush

September 23, 2003

Bernardo Issel
Dancing with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand

Gary Leupp
To Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo

Gregory Wilpert
An Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela

Steven Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and Radical

Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?

Robert Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq

William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent

Elaine Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers

Yigal Bronner
The Truth About the Wall

Website of the Day
The Baghdad Death Count

September 20 / 22, 2003

Uri Avnery
The Silliest Show in Town

Alexander Cockburn
Lighten Up, America!

Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet

Anne Brodsky
Return to Afghanistan

Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me

Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie

Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open

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Kurt Nimmo
Colin Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja

Brian Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame

Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush

Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda

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An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector

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Contracts and Politics in Iraq

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WTO Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold

Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals

Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane

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Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America

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October 10, 2003

Misery and Intellectual Property Rights

Trashing Free Software

By TONI SOLO

"In a world without fences who needs gates?" The question on the T-shirt flags the developing struggle between Microsoft, led by Bill Gates, and its rapidly growing open source software rivals. The arguments around patents, copyright and software mark another decisive failure for hypocritical advocates of "free trade". Perhaps only on agricultural policy are neo-liberal arguments more obvious as shameless propaganda for monopoly capitalism.

The term open source software--the opposite of proprietary software--applies to computer applications made freely available under a public license agreement so anyone can adapt and improve them. The most common complaints about Microsoft's proprietary software programs are their relatively high cost and that, when they break down, only Microsoft can fix them. Increasingly, large organizations of all kinds are opting for open source solutions to their computer needs because open source products are generally cheaper, more reliable and easier to fix when they go wrong. The personal computer market is not far behind.

Some of the biggest buyers are national or local government bodies. In May this year the city authority of Munich decided to convert its 14,000 computers to an open source operating system (the most well-known, called Linux). Microsoft worked hard to try and swing the deal their way, but still got turned down. In Brazil, the government is planning to use open source software in up to 80% of its computers. In Spain and Australia, municipal authorities have ruled that purchasing policies must prioritize open source programs. In September this year the governments of Japan, China and South Korea agreed to start a joint open-source software project for a wide range of applications.

The relentless whine of the "free " market

Not surprisingly with billions of dollars of business at stake, resistance to regional, national and local government moves in favour of open source software is fierce. In classical neo-lib style, Microsoft and its trade supporters have argued for deregulated markets. Neo-lib propagandists churn out declarations like, "Decisions about software purchase should be left to the market, allowing all producers--open source and proprietary--to compete for customers. Products should be evaluated based on the value they provide to the end users."1

What the neolibs are unable to admit is that cities like Munich and countries like China and Brazil are preparing statutes after the fact. They weighed their options and decided clearly against Microsoft. The sums are simple. As the head of Brazil's Information Technology Institute, Sergio Amadeu puts it, "If we do this right, over 17 million people will have access to computers. If every one of them had to pay 100 reales for their desktop software then we'll be sending 1700 million reales (US$600 million) to pay for licenses. Without free software it's impossible to have a significant policy of digital inclusiveness."2

But regulation is also necessary to prevent huge businesses like Microsoft distorting the market by subsidising products in the short term in order to clean up long term once their less wealthy open source competitors are forced out. In fact, leading free software proponents view legislation with ambivalence. For example Richard Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, "These laws are not the kind of help we most ask for from governments...What we ask is that they not interfere with us with things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with software patents, with prohibitions on reverse engineering that enable companies like Microsoft to make proprietary data formats and prohibit our work. Those are the main obstacles to satisfying the software needs of humanity."3

Not only government bodies looking to get the best deal are choosing open source software. Early this year, the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS) switched to Linux under pressure from customers. A Reuters systems manager said "The call for RMDS for Linux has been astounding... They saw performance improvements and cost savings. These folks are bankers, and they know you almost never get more for less -- but this time they did."4 Wall Street monsters like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse First Boston and the Goldman Sachs Group have all moved to open source software.

Free big deal?

So what is the great attraction of open source software? Its low cost is one. But perhaps not the most important. Reliability is another. The open source Apache program for internet web servers leads the market precisely because it combines low price with high reliability.

Security is also a major concern. The persistent problems with computer viruses that beset Windows for many people are just a foretaste of future problems. As one information technology analyst put it recently, "Everyone in the industry knows the world's chronic dependence on Microsoft products is one day going to cause catastrophe, yet many people who know about security are likely to be reluctant to speak out."5

Security is closely tied to independence. Says Phil Hughes publisher of Linux Journal, "Commercial proprietary software companies have attempted to undermine Linux acceptance by questioning the legality and practicality of the General Public License. But once there has been an open discussion of the terms and conditions there has been little questioning of the license. In addition, the advantage of open source code, of knowing that one is not dependent on the software vendor for support has tended to outweigh any doubts about the validity of the licensing procedure."6 Backing up that analysis, big computer companies like Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems and IBM have moved to open source software. They too want low cost combined with reliability, security and independence.

But Phil Hughes' optimism about legal issues may be premature. Microsoft and its trade supporters are more than ready to defend their market share. As long ago as November 1998, Microsoft anxiety at the market success of open source software became apparent when internal documents, the so-called Halloween Documents, were made public. Now Microsoft and other trade allies are supporting lobby organizations like Initiative for Software Choice (ISC), a project of the Computing Technology Industry Association. Microsoft say, "Microsoft is a founding member and maintains a strong commitment to the ISC. This commitment is based on Microsoft's support of the initiative's belief that it is important to allow multiple software development, business and licensing models to compete on their merits and without government regulations that would seek to prefer one model over another."7

Sound familiar? It should. It's the same argument the US and the EU deploy on agriculture on behalf of their multinationals against developing countries. In that particular "free trade" conflict, a massively subsidised, genetically modified, machinery and chemical-warfare wielding colossus enters the arena against a tiny malnourished day labourer armed, if they are lucky, with a mattock.

Intellectual property and the public good

In the case of software, with the two sides a little more even, the unconvincing complaints of unfair trade from giant, convicted anti-trust offender Microsoft and its allies, are supplemented by efforts to create market fear and uncertainty. But after losing the historic anti-trust judgement back in April 2000, Microsoft is more careful about how it deals with competitors. As open source advocate Bruce Perens puts it "I expect that Microsoft will try and find other proxies to do their dirty work for them."8

In March this year a proprietary software company called SCO brought a billion dollar law suit against IBM citing breach of confidentiality for disclosing alleged trade secrets to the public. SCO and IBM had collaborated on software development in the past. But when IBM switched much of its program development to take advantage of open source software, its work with SCO was largely superseded. Essentially a financial dispute between two very big companies, the law suit has little to do directly with open source software businesses but has caused insecurity among potential customers.

The underlying issue is that of intellectual property rights – patents and copyright--and how they affect trade and economic development. Phil Hughes again, "It's very easy to make a jump from the open, free, cooperative, non-hierarchical base of Linux commercial success to questions about the need for or even the fundamental viability of intellectual property rights as currently practised and understood. This affects the general public good in a huge variety of ways. For example, the public health implications of patenting generic medicines, or closed source electoral software susceptible to tampering or other corruption, or food security in impoverished developing countries--perhaps even the very possibility of sustainable technological development in the developing world. The basic issues seem to be ones of access to information and capacity to innovate."

When the United States and the rest of Europe were struggling to catch up and overtake Great Britain as industrial powers back in the nineteenth century, they depended on copying technology. In those days it was impossible to enforce patent and copyright. Now the major economic powers, through their inherent financial might and the World Trade Organization, their global all-in-one sheriff, judge and jury, can intimidate weaker developing countries so as to keep them in their neo-colonial place.

For "free trade" advocates, there's the rub. Anything that is patented or copyrighted can never be freely traded. Neoliberal propagandists go very quiet when their clarion calls for deregulation come bang up against multinational patent rights. Richard Stallman observes, "There is a partial similarity between free software and globalization, but also a major difference. The advocates of "free" trade, and neoliberalism in general, argue that it creates wealth. That is true--but it also concentrates wealth. The result is that only the rich benefit. The poor gain little; they may even lose, as has happened in the US. Free software is different, because it works against the concentration of wealth. (Copyright is a major factor for concentration.) So when free software creates more wealth, the benefits are general."9

The human factor – freedom and creativity

Free software enthusiasts really seem to be arguing for a return to the practice of the 1950s and 1960s when software was freely shared so as to promote rapid development of computer applications. They say it is essential to be able to freely run programs, study how they work, adapt them, make copies to help other people and release improvements to the public, so everyone benefits. Access to program source code, the kernel of any computer application, is a precondition for these freedoms--something that is anathema to proprietary software companies like Microsoft whose fortunes are based on keeping people dependent on paying for their software.

Another baffling factor for the neo-liberals is why anyone would want to contribute their work for free. That bafflement is understandable. Creative solidarity led tens of thousands of software programmers around the world to cooperate and create the Linux operating system because the achievement and the benefits it brought to so many other people were worthwhile in their own right. That phenomenon is incomprehensible to anyone looking for dollars on the bottom line. Free software has little to do with a free lunch or a free ride and everything to do with liberty and creativity, freedom of thought, speech and expression. The neo-liberal ideologues currently dominating international economic policy will never understand that.

The U.N. World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in December this year is probably the highest profile event so far to address these issues. It is the first of two world summits on communications and information technology scheduled to take place in Geneva. It is likely to be another forum for dispute between the US and the EU.10 Despite the fact that large US government departments, like the Department of Defense, have opted for open source software, the US government position is officially neutral. A Commerce Department spokesman is quoted as saying "Our view on open source is that the U.S. and foreign governments need to be technology neutral in its procurement and R&D investments."11

Meanwhile in Europe, on September 24th, the European Parliament approved amendments to a European Commission directive on information technology intellectual property rights which effectively insists that in Europe software should not be subject to patents. This vote could affect over 20,000 software patents accepted by the European patent office. Whether the democratic will of people in Europe expressed through their parliament survives industry lobbying of government ministers in the Council of Europe remains to be seen.

Patented poverty--recipe for under-development

A year ago the independent UK funded Commission on Intellectual Property Rights reported on the impact of intellectual property rights on developing countries. Chaired by Professor John Barton of Stanford University, the report confirmed that poor countries suffer badly as a result of patents and copyrights affecting health, agriculture, education and information technology. True to the style of these commissions, Professor Barton heavily understated the case, "The temptation to impose very strict protection because of the ease with which software and other digital media can be copied may diminish the very real benefits they could bring to developing countries, particularly in accessing educational and scientific documents at low cost."12

This kind of pronouncement by comfortable career academics (who would never be asked to chair such commissions were their conclusions likely to be contoversial) belies reality. The neo-liberal bureaucrats driving international development policy have a destructive and impoverished vision derived from centuries of colonialism and patriarchy. Human creativity and natural diversity have little place in their reduced, profit obsessed world. For them it is all the same whether they promote patents for basmati rice or for some obscure software patch.

Voices from oppressed sectors of the developing world speak more directly than Professor Barton. As Indian writer Vandana Shiva says, "Basmati, neem, pepper, bitter gourd, turmeric . . . every aspect of the innovation embodied in our indigenous food and medicinal systems is now being pirated and patented. The knowledge of the poor is being converted into the property of global corporations, creating a situation where the poor will have to pay for the seeds and medicines they have evolved and have used to meet their needs for nutrition and health care."13 Wholesale enforcement of intellectual property rights brings misery and untimely death to many millions of people the world over.

The conservative US poet Robert Frost once wrote "Good fences make good neighbours". In the case of software, as in everything else, global multinationals have trampled at will over every neighbour in sight, from Brazil to Korea. Now those countries are struggling to set things right as best they can. One thing they are able to do is adopt free software like Linux. But the powerful proprietary software lobby is determined to stop them. We can be better neighbours by defending open source software and adopting Linux ourselves. Remember that T-shirt.

Toni Solo is an activist based in Central America. Contact tonisolo52@yahoo.com.

1. 'New Protectionism: Mandates for Open Source Software', Citizens for a Sound Economy August 27, 2003

2. "El otro pinguino--Avance del software libre en la administracion argentina" Andrea Ferrari, Pagina 12, September 29th 2003 www.rebelion.org

3. 'Governments push open-source software', August 29, 2001, by Paul Festa, CNET

4. "Banks Want to Swim With Penguin", Wired News, February 3rd 2003

5. John Naughton, Observer (UK Sunday newspaper). Sunday October 5th.

6. Interviewed for this article

7. "The politics of open-source software", by Declan McCullagh, July 14 2003, CNET

8. 'Open source confronts IP issues--Building on grass-roots heritage, open source facing commercial IP practices' by Robert McMillan, Ed Scannell. InfoWorld August 15, 2003

9. Quoted in (In "Is Free Software Inevitable?" Linas Vepstas , February-July 2001

10. The activist group Geneva-03 is asking all interested people to get involved with their initiative around the WSIS event. www.geneva03.org

11. 'Open source' software trend faces barriers', by William New, National Journal's Technology Daily, August 25, 2003, www.govexec.com

12. 'Intellectual property rights "harm poor" ', by Alex Kirby, 12 September 2002, BBC Online

13. 'GLOBALIZATION AND POVERTY--Economic globalization has become a war against nature and the poor.' by Vandana Shiva, from the review Resurgence issue 202


Weekend Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003

Tim Wise
The Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment

Peter Linebaugh
Rhymsters and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW

Gary Leupp
Occupation as Rape-Marriage

Bruce Jackson
Addio Alle Armi

David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?

Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's War on Whistleblowers

Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean

Mickey Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest

Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq

John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus

William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac

Glen T. Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism

Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos

Wayne Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can

M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier

William Benzon
Scorsese's Blues

Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest

Poets' Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie

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