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posted by admin
on Sunday December 09, 2001 @10:23 PM
from the commondreams.org dept.
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writes "Published on Saturday, December 8, 2001 in Guardian of London
The US Has Been Sponsoring Terror in My Native Latin America for Decades...
by Bianca Jagger My involvement in human rights issues and my commitment to justice was inevitable, for I was born in Nicaragua, a country which endured almost 50 years of despotic rule. In the early 20th century it suffered invasion and repeated occupation by US forces. In 1932 they helped General Anastasio Somoza to seize power. The oligarchy that followed pillaged the country of its natural resources while following a policy which opened the door for US business. I was born into a well-to-do family but my parents divorced when I was 10. This changed my life. My mother, now single, had to support three children and was often discriminated against because of her sex and status. As a teenager I too felt powerless when I saw the student massacres perpetrated by Somoza's national guard. From a very early age I wanted to make a difference, to demonstrate against state brutality, to become an instrument for change. I wanted an education which would protect me from my mother's fate. Never would I be a second-class citizen because of my gender. Never would I feel powerless when forced to witness atrocity at first hand. Armed with a French government scholarship, I left Nicaragua to study political science in Paris.
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| Sprawl No Antidote to Terror |
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posted by admin
on Sunday December 09, 2001 @10:19 PM
from the commondreams.org dept.
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Published on Saturday, December 8, 2001 by Keith Schneider One of the odd and troubling ideas that crossed the nation in the weeks after September 11 was the notion that as a safeguard against terror, urban sprawl might be a good thing after all. On the right, for example, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal called for cities to spread out further. The op-ed page of the Detroit News noted that “in the wake of Sept. 11, the constituency for density has probably thinned out.” On the left, editors of Newcolonist.com, a Web site that pays attention to urban and suburban design, interviewed national experts to “get an early feel for how the attacks may affect perceptions of density, transportation, and city life.” With the murderous collapse of New York City's tallest buildings, both proponents and critics of the useful work to contain sprawl can be excused for wondering whether skyscrapers have outlived their usefulness and spreadout suburbs are a safer bet. But viewing dense city neighborhoods as somehow an easy target and the suburbs as a haven from terrorism overlooks some of the underlying causes of the Sept. 11 attack. Continuing to spread out across the landscape will only aggravate the situation.
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| House Wants to Bail Out Insurance Companies |
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| Moving Forward: FREE SOFTWARE & G P L SOCIETY |
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posted by admin
on Sunday December 09, 2001 @04:53 PM
from the autonomedia.org dept.
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Molly Maguire writes: Many who embrace social contestation still have not got the message about free software. As a result, political measures which hinder its growth do not receive the attention I believe they merit. The following interview is helpful not only in explaining what free software is, but also in offering a hopeful vision of what it may be a harbinger of on a wider social level.
// FREE SOFTWARE & G P L SOCIETY //
Interview with Stefan Merten, Oekonux, Germany
by Joanne Richardson, November 2001
>> Q: Oekonux - an abbreviation of "OEKOnomie" and
"liNUX" - is a German mailing list discussing the
revolutionary possibilities of Free Software. Many
people speak of Free Software and Open Source Software
interchangeably - could you explain how you understand
the differences between them?
The term "Free Software" is older than "Open Source".
"Free Software" is used by the Free Software
Foundation [http://www.fsf.org/] founded by Richard
Stallman in 1985. The term "Open Source" has been
developed by Eric S. Raymond and others, who, in 1998,
founded the Open Source Initiative
[http://www.opensource.org/]. It's not so much a
question of definition as of the philosophy behind the
two parts of the movement - the differences between
the definition of Open Source Software and Free
Software are relatively few. But whereas Free Software
emphasizes the freedom Free Software gives the users,
Open Source does not care about freedom. The Open
Source Initiative (OSI) was founded exactly for the
reason to make Free Software compatible with business
people's thinking, and the word "freedom" has been
considered harmful for that purpose.
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posted by admin
on Saturday December 08, 2001 @01:41 PM
from the user-submission dept.
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John Chuckman writes "
SOME LONG-TERM IMPLICATIONS OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
by JOHN CHUCKMAN
How did carpet-bombing Afghan villages and conducting air strikes against Taliban prisoners represent the actions of a free people, of a great democracy? The forces of darkness required an immediate, crushing response rather than any mere effort at securing justice through diplomacy and existing international institutions.
However disturbing to some, the answer does accurately reflect important American attitudes about the War in Afghanistan. The success of the war, as measured by the fairly rapid change in that country's government and quite apart from what will almost certainly prove a failure to end terrorism, may well usher in a dangerous and bizarre era of international relations.
Since the collapse of the Cold War, America has addressed the world with a new emphasis on democracy and human rights. We enjoy official pronouncements on these precious concepts at fairly regular intervals, although they are often used in ways that resemble chamber-of-commerce boosterism, trade-concession negotiations, or just plain advertising and leave one's hunger for worthy principles in international affairs satisfied only by the taste of flat beer or stale bread.
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- 12/11/01