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U.S. Representatives Torpedo UN Information Summit
StoneLion writes "The United Nations World Summit on Information Society was established to 'harness the potential of knowledge and technology' and to 'find effective and innovative ways to put this potential at the service of development for all.' You'd think open source software would be a natural for many UN member countries. But NewsForge's Joe Barr discovered that the US is driving policy for the organization, and its official position is that 'using free software to achieve the WSIS goals might get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit'; in other words, they want to make the world safe for capitalism." We've mentioned WSIS before. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.
Please, can you write more interesting blurps?
of the GNAA I number of FreeBSD Hubbard and Mike Turd-suckingly
Won't last long:
The Americans could live with Saddam until he started
selling oil for euros instead of U.S. dollars. Then the
Europeans could live with him.
* * *
GOOD AS GOLD
>From 1944 to 1971, the U.S. dollar was ``backed'' by gold, meaning that the government agreed to buy and sell gold for a fixed price in dollars. Other governments did likewise, leading to fixed exchange rates between their currencies.
In 1971, when U.S. President Nixon abandoned gold backing, the exchange rate system began to unravel. Domestically, the U.S. dollar became a ``fiat'' currency, i.e. a currency whose only ``backing'' is the legal obligation to accept
that currency as final payment of debts. Internationally, however, there is no such thing as a fiat currency, and no currency will be accepted as payment unless it is
guaranteed to buy some valuable commodity.
GOLD TURNS BLACK
In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quadrupled the price of oil but continued to accept only U.S. dollars in payment, so that the demand for dollars soared. From then on, the dollar was effectively backed by oil instead of gold -- and the U.S. government didn't even have to own the oil!
Because dollars can buy OPEC oil, countries that need to import oil -- i.e. most developed countries -- will accept dollars as payment for their exports. Hence everyone who needs to buy from those exporters will accept dollars as payment for other things, and so on, so that the dollar is
the preferred global currency. To pay their bills,
importers must have reserves of dollars. To prop up their
currencies against speculative attacks, the central banks
of all countries must have reserves of dollars. To get
capital, poor countries must borrow dollars, and to service
these debts they must export goods to obtain more dollars.
About 2/3 of all currency reserves, more than 4/5 of all
currency transactions, more than half of the world's
exports, and all loans from the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) are denominated in dollars. As these things create
demand for the dollar and shore up its value, OPEC is the
more willing to accept payment in dollars. So the system
is self-reinforcing.
The result is that America can export dollars, which cost
nothing to produce, and receive real goods and services in
return. As long as those dollars are spent outside
America, they don't cause domestic inflation. And when
they eventually find their way into foreign reserves, they
can only be invested in American assets. This continuous
flow of foreign investment (on the ``capital account'')
props up the American real-estate market and stock market,
and allows America to run a mammoth trade deficit (on the
``current account'') without devaluing the dollar.
America's imports now exceed its exports by almost 50% (or
5% of GDP) and its foreign debt is 60% of annual GDP.
If OPEC were to abandon the dollar in favour of some other
currency, the whole process would slam into reverse.
America could no longer export paper dollars for real goods
and services. Corporations and central banks would sell
their dollar reserves, causing the value of the dollar to
plummet. The redemption of dollar reserves would force
sales of the assets in which those dollars are invested, so
that the American property and stock markets would crash.
Other investors who have bought American property and
stocks with borrowed money would declare themselves
bankrupt, causing some American banks to collapse under the
weight of bad debts. The newly liberated dollars could
only be spent on American goods and services, which would
begin to flow out of the country (reducing living
standards), while the glut of dollars chasing these same
goods and services would cause massive domestic inflation.
The flow of foreign investment would dry up, so that
America could no longer run a trade deficit, but would have
to export yet more
. . .the U.S. has more than its fair share of open source development houses. . .
Like, Ooooooh, IBM? You think they might want to leverage Open Source for a piece of the "I" pie?
Of course identifying the particular interests would go a long ways too....
Ooooooh, Oooooh, don't tell me Mr. Kotter. I think I know this one.
KFG
Here AGAIN we see IP working as intended. It's shame that almost nobody realizes that the whole idea of IP is truly evil. But there's money to be made, so carry on.
What?
The United States position, formed at the behest of the Business Software Alliance, CompTIA, and other organizations dedicated to maintaining the status quo and curtailing the growth of free software, is that no software development methodology -- closed and proprietary versus open source -- be recommended over any other.
This is a far cry from torpedoing open-source. This is the way it should be done, regardless of whether it's UN or not.
Not to say I disagree with your general point, but like every every attempt to compare two (or more) seperate events as the same, important differences are left out. For one example, when it comes to Pakistan vs Iraq, Pakistan never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and hasn't defied a whole host of UN resolutions and acted as guilty as possible while doing so. Even if you believe there is no justification for the war in Iraq, the situation there is not especially comparable to that of Pakistan.
The UN is pretty much irrelevant now anyway. We ensured that by attacking Iraq when the UN really, really didn't want us to. So now the UN has been proven a farce, but the rest of the world won't admit it because they're afraid of what the US might do if they did. The UN was basically started as a deterrant against future wars. The fact that we so easily sidestepped them with absolutely no consequences (and the fact that the rest of the countries in the world started sucking our dick after we began handing out "rebuilding contracts") proves that the UN is completely meaningless.
"There is no shortage of evidence that the U.S. has caused untold misery around the world for decades."
When I read such stupid stuff, ir reminds me that your mother is miserable she didn't use that coat hanger when it would be considered a legitimate medical procedure.