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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.
U.S. Representatives Torpedo UN Information Summit
That sounds oftly violent. Why didn't they just try to screw up all the meetings using their influence?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
"The U.S. view is that we don't want to see government, or in this case, the World Summit, advocate one type of software over another." -Sally Shipman
When you get down to the nut and bolts all software is just 1s and 0s: there aren't different "types" at that level.
I think what Sally Shipman really means is "We want our large US software firms to continue to reap Huge profits: Open Source threatens that."
That's fine, after all it's a US delegation and they're supposed to look out for their countrymen. Now, why can't they word it that bluntly? Simple: because Open Source doesn't contribute millions to election campaigns.
Trolling is a art,
You say that like it's a bad thing. Without the efficient, industrial base proided by capitalism there would be no computers or internet to create free software with/on/for.
Sounds like another goon who isn't good enough to get a job.
Blar.
But the US is the new evil; its actions are unilateral and goes against the wishes of the international community and it's only making things worse for its citizen and the rest of the world.
In the Soviet Russian point of view, USA is the baddie! Well I guess we're living in a joke now.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
When a government, let alone a metanational body, intervenes to affect the market that is not capitalism, it is a mixed economy.
I find it mildly amusing that protecting capitalism is linked to this seeing as how our capitalist economy here in the U.S. has more than its fair share of open source development houses and they are doing just fine. I think capitalism is less to blame than big money IP special interests, they might be a better, more specific target than a particular economic system. Of course identifying the particular interests would go a long ways too....
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Why must we constantly focus on profits? I suggest that the UN torpedo Microsoft for interfering with the profits of Apple, Sun, IBM, and other companies.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
make the world safe for capitalism.
When will the US gov't realize that open source is capitalistic - it reduces your costs allowing you to make greater profits.
Shh.
"Using free software to achieve the WSIS goals might get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit"
Thank you Captain Obvious! Using free software keeps companies that sell software from making a profit on software they don't get to sell. This guy's got to be an economics major...
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Good lord, they operate by consensus?
With all the nations on the glode, with so many widely different opinions, why it god's name would they even try to operate by consensus?
The motivation behind this decision is either a) Extreme optimism or b) Extreme Stupidity. Likely, it is both.
Although, I suppose we could consider a third if you felt like breaking out the tin foil hates.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"the UN is driving policy" and instantly reread it cause they it was wrong. Nevertheless, I am forced to agree with the opponents of the current US government and say that thier policy of intellectual protectionism to the point of intellectual imperialism is not the way to go. Japan went isolationist for a century and what did that get them? The same here, only instead of just isolating ourselves from the innovations of the rest of the world we are isolating ourselves and arresting the progres of our own innovation. There is a darwinism to nations and policies that clearly shows that nations that create policies (no matter how justified they may seem) if those current policies retard that nations sucess either those policy must go or that nations will. Laws that don't work either will collapse themselves or bring down those who attempt to enforce them. You cannot control innovation. If you try, you will fail. That is why the concept of intellectual property will colaapse. Either we must abandon are perceptions of it or face the growing threat of those who will ignore such absurd laws. Just as we can innobvate so can they and saying that we own one thought will just be laughed at by those who do not follow our laws and realize that just becuase you are the first to have a thought does not by nature give you the sole and exlcusive oweneship of that thought.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
"in other words, they want to make the world safe for capitalism." I must have missed your point. Why is this a bad thing?
"Never tell me the odds"
Sweet Don Quixote, why can't they get it through their heads that higher quality is more important than higher profit?
"A working-class hero's something to be." --John Lennon
First of all, I don't think that open-source software is really going to stand in the way of making a profit. By some estimates, software licenses account for only 8% of revenues in the software industry.
Second -- why is profit at the top of the list of priorities for this particular initiative? I believe that an open democracy is possible.
I don't believe in forced sharing, but I do believe that we should be allowed to share if we so desire. The wording here seems to suggest that sharing is a significant threat to selling, and that as such, it should be disallowed entirely. I realize that hasn't been said, but it's not a big stretch from his current position... I don't want to see the world start down that slippery slope.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
should have read:
The first is the United States' position that profit -- or even the potential for profit -- by major corporate donors to the current administration is more important than anything else.
Interesting that when this U.N. summit was first proposed, eveyone laughed at how stupid it sounded and how pie-in-the-sky politician-makes-you-feel-good wishy-washy etc. it sounded. Now that the US torpedos it, you blame "evil capitalists and BUSH". Good riddance, open source doesn't need the U.N.
Ignoring the "Let IBM/Microsoft/DELL solve the worlds problems and give us cash!" angle, the US' stance does make some sense;
You might be threatening your burgeouning software industry/IP industry by promoting open source. Thats great if your goal for information technology is to make your companies money.
But how many countries are in the same position as the US? And how many more would actually like to leverage cheap costs of open source for immediate tangible benefit?
If the US was a third world nation, it would change its tune. IN the mean time, its business as usual.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Until we stop having this survival of the fittest idealogy, I will not be supprised by the actions of those who are top dog. Anything will be done to protect that position.
Others are of no consequence.
Using proprietary software might also get in the way of an intellectual property owner's ability to make a profit, i.e. another company. That's what happens when you make a choice between one product or another. So what are they saying, that they should only buy software if there were no competing products? That they should only buy from monopolies? Please tell us, oh wise and corrupt US representatives...
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
All Your `cat \usr\share\dict\words` Belong To U.S.!
-chill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
the UN has been trying to control the internet for some time now. The US doesnt want that. What's the problem? If you want open source, then just use it: we dont have to all bend over for the UN.
in other words, they want to make the world safe for capitalism
Capitalism is an economy in which sources of production are controlled by private entities(instead of by the public/government). This shouldn't be confused with things like intellectual property rights, which isn't even a source of production, and really has little to do with wether you have a capitalist economy.
A modern day witchhunt.
Each government member is supposed to bring its own opinionto the table.
The U.S. government is entitled to think commercialware should be the only ware out there.
Fine. Other countries, if so inclined, can argue otherwise.
On the other hand, it is up to any interested U.S. citizen to disabuse his government of this lunatic option, if the citizen is so inclined. If the citizen does not care, the government will go with the easiest thing to do, which is to follow lobbyst advice.
... Shipman told me, "The U.S. view is that we don't want to see government, or in this case, the World Summit, advocate one type of software over another." ... It offends the sensibilities of corporate lobbyists whose moral compass points at nothing but the bottom line.
This is merely a continuation of the point that the USA's representatives do not want to turn control of the base portions of the Internet over to another closed international organization. As the process stands right now, the current controllers happen to be capitalist, but they also happen to exist in a free enough society that we can bitch about their behaviors and impose change through democratic processes (or semi-democratic, if you include getting a congress-person to impose some new regulation that dictates how things should be). There is no such guarantee once control leaves our borders.
Furthermore, there are a handful of governments who are turning from the IBM AIX/Microsoft Windows proprietary software systems to the open source models that Sourceforge and Slashdot staff seem to champion. But, that in no way implies once the WSIS takes over, the open-source methods would be adopted either. The danger expressed by the representatives is that a 3rd party such as the UN will be in control to dictate connectivity, and that the majority of members of that UN body are not interested in the free flow of information in the form that the USA embrases it. We see nations like China filtering content into their space, nations in the Mid-East who would be even more harsh on content flow, and would these nations be in the majority on the WSIS board, it would spell an end for the freedom of content that we have enjoyed this last decade.
It doesn't matter if the firewall is closed source or open source, I don't want a firewall blocking a nation from my content.
the US is doing the same thing it's always done in the UN -- attempt to provide token participation in a body that is sometimes useful for achieving otherwise-difficult ends, but that can be easily bogged down or otherwise rendered useless when it tries to do something that we don't care for.
I would even go so far as to say this isn't about maintaining capitalist dominance or corporate dominance per se, so much as it is derailing something that could potentially be highly disruptive to the US position as a technological leader and controlling force on third-world technological innovation. Open Source would drastically lower the barrier to entry for pretty much any country looking to develop an information technology regime, which puts countries on a much more even footing to do things the US doesn't like (organize, provide information to people, utilize cryptography, and heavens! even provide a means for impoverished people to have true democracy), let alone making governments more effective. Strict politics-of-power thinking would suggest that other countries having strong, independent governments is not in the US' interests, because such governments and countries (and ultimately, populations) are much harder to manipulate...
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Open Source Intellectual Property (in the form of Copyright works) has owners too and they have the right to make a profit. Unfairly excluding their work from use restricts their ability to make a profit from their work, for example by selling consulting services, or add ons or their skills and services in general. Let's not pretend that OSS is anti-capitalist or in any way incompatible with capitalism. It is another component in what should be a free market where EVERYONE including free software authors should be allowed to compete on a level playing field. If the U.S. government has forgotten this or has sold out to lobbyists representing vested interests then we need to make the case for Open Source and Free Software clearly without muddying the watters with silly statements about making the world safe for capitalism.
Well, first off, when the government grants a person an unnatural monopoly on copying things, it is anything but free market. But second off, this really touches on something that has been bothering me about America lately. The path to wealth comes about by making freedom an end in itself, not greed.
If I pointed a gun to your head, took 10K, invested it, made 20K, and then gave it back to all your friends and took the credit for it - then technically speaking the group would better off financially, but they wouldn't be better off overall because they would have lost controll over their own destinies in the process. IMHO, this is what is happening to the USA. We have lost our financial freedom even though technically speaking we are wealthier than ever.
Free (as in libre) software is not mutually exclusive with capitalism. Ask RedHat. Or IBM. Or any number of companies that develop free (again, libre) software and make a profit (or, at least get a return in dollars) while operating in a capitalist system. The opponent here isn't capitalism. It's closed software and closed development methods. Of course the US (and a number of other countries, I assume) wants to promote capitalism. But it can do that and also promote free software.
Wasn't it Linus who said that following that logic, marrage should be illigal, since it interferes with prostitutes makeing a profit?
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
I know this assertion is attributed to the US Govt, but sounds like Darl from good ole' SCO could have said the exact same thing too!
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Capitalism is not a guarantee to make a profit. I find Open Source just as Capitalistic as Closed Source is. Open Source projects, for the most part, lose MONEY in developement, and expect no profits, as a direct source of selling said projects.
Instead, projects are developed and funded by people to USE those projects to create profits as a SIDE benifit, and those profits are not tied directly to the developement or use of those products.
Let us take a big corporation that spends $$ on an "Office" product. They do so, not because "Office" makes them money directly, but because it helps them make money. Big Corporation realizes that it can take a percentage of $$ money spend on licenses, and apply it to an "Open source" project and even direct the project to include features not found in "Office" and end up with a product that is immeasurably better than the original "Office".
Big Company #2, #3 etc all start to realize the same thing, it becomes CHEAPER and BETTER than the original "Office", and each contribute. It actually because Cheaper in the long run to fund Open Source than it does to pay licenses for each new version of "Office".
The company who originally created "Office" (copied actually) complains about "Anti competitive behaviour" and "profits" are only trying to protect that which is not rightfully theirs (the right to profit).
To me, protectionism doesn't work. It is trying to protect the buggy and whip industries as cars start becoming ubiquitous.
I am all for monopolies, as they create other opportunities for innovation. Microsoft is a monopoly and I don't have a problem with it, because THAT is exactly what fostered Open Source.
If STANDARD OIL wasn't broken up, we might actually have ALTERNATIVES to hydrocarbon fuels today. In a free and open society, Monopolies are short lived, because people find OTHER WAYS of doing the same thing.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Capitalism is an economy in which sources of production are controlled by private entities(instead of by the public/government). This shouldn't be confused with things like intellectual property rights, which isn't even a source of production, and really has little to do with wether you have a capitalist economy.
This correct. 'Intellectual Property Rights' are government sanctioned monopolies. The exact opposite of capitalism.
--fatboy
In the sense that it's used here, making things "safe for capitalism" is a bad thing. When the government gets involved and uses it's might to shift or sway the market playing field, it's almost always a bad thing. Open source software exists and functions quite well in a free market. If it beats out more traditional software companies, it's because it out competed them in terms of value given per cost demanded.
Open source is not inherently communistic, nor is it a threat to capitalism. It's simply a threat to particular companies, just as new innovations are always a threat to older companies. Even if particular companies die, the market itself will hum along just fine.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
This isn't helping capitalism any... Open Source is part of capitalism, government is not. When government tries to protect any entity, be it a corporation or a sector, its no longer capitalism, its the American System of Mercantilism has established by Henry Clay (and furthered into the US by Abraham Lincoln).
Remember, Open Source is free market driven as well. The customer may pay nothing, but they also may want to pay for closed software so they receive some sort of guaranteed support or whatever it is they want. Just because software is free doesn't mean that there is no cost to run it.
Government picking closed source over open source really doesn't help capitalism any. In a truly capitalist society (The US is NOT capitalist in any way), open source can compete freely with closed source. Indian programmers can compete with American ones.
Government mandated monopolies do not make capitalism safe.
-I am an elective eunuch.
If the US pushes an agenda that the rest of the world disagrees with then they will be ignored. No one is going to buy the recommendations of a committee that is obviously in the pocket of the US commercial software industry.
If in the worst case this committee secures funding for enforcement and UN troops start showing up with BSA agents to perform audits then that will most likely just accelerate a shift to open-source.
I'm amused how the same people who push the point of view that free software should be allowed to compete with pricey software are the ones who say that cheap foreign programmers should not be allowed to compete with pricey american ones.
They're putting the "right" of a select few to maintain dictatorship(s) over a section of the world economy that is greater than the GDP of many nations ahead of the right of people to acquire and use free software. (Microsoft's profits rival and exceed the GDP of many countries and apparently the US cares more about this than freedom). In other words, the US is promoting the limitation of freedom in favor of dictatorships over vast areas of the technology sector. They care more about the power of a priveledged few than freedom. The idea that our freedom is being taken away should concern anyone that understands the concept of freedom. If you don't think the idea of software patents is a threat, then you need to do more research. Anyone who argues that this is being done for average Americans should ask themselves the extremely obvious question, "What happens when all of the obvious ideas are patented? How does the little guy or small business enter the market after that?" This is a very obvious question that anyone who has put more than 30 seconds of thought into the idea of software patents should have already asked themselves.
Both open source and closed source can happily live in a capitalistic society. However I do think that closed source and closed standards lead to a monopolistic capitalism, while open source and open standards lead to a free market capitalism. I personally would rather have the free market capitalism, but I don't think we can force a free market to be free, it must free itself. In technology this is what seems to be happening. I hope it continues.
We don't need those lolly gagers any more than we need international law. We don't need to a permission slip to defend our freedom and we don't need one for anything else either. France and the UN can go back to eating cheese and smelling bad while we the glorious United States of America continue to do as we please. Can you pass the ribs please?
Thanks
-- George W Bush
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."
... a slashdot post.
Where does it say that it's the offical position of the US 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'? It's Joe Barr's interpretation, and the second half of that is the posters interpretation of Joe Barr's quote. I would like to see more quotes and references. The article is a lot like
"The software companies have gotten fat and lazy. Open Source came at them from left field and they still can't figure out how to honestly fight it. That's why they go crying to the politicians after contributing money to their campaigns.
This is a good point. I think it reflects the general laziness on the part of behemoth corporations with establish streams of revenue. Take Disney for instance. Every time the Mouse's copyright (Steam Boat Willy for goodness sakes!) almost comes up for expiry, another copyright extention gets past. Disney knows it's in hot water, especially lately because it hasn't had a mega-hit since the Lion King.
But it's not just Disney. If Linux really, and I mean really became a threat to Microsoft it would come down to either Microsoft ceasing to exist as it does now or Linux being made illegal (or tied up in the courts 'till forever). My guess is on the latter. Few people seem to point out (that I see, anyhow) that all this talk about innovation is total crap. Established corporations don't really want to innovate, because that costs money! Why innovate when you can just throw lawyers at threats to your revenue stream? This has been going on since (at least) Edison when he forced all the movie producers to move out to California to evade patents on motion picture equipment.
Linux will just have to do what it does best and no one else really wants to do -- innovate. Innovate damn well, too. Microsoft's $250-something billion market cap. is one heck of a freight train to derail.
That is not what the official position of the organization is. It is the article writer interpretation of the position. The quotes do not surround anything the official said but are part of a sentence in the article where the writer gives his interpretation of the official position.
Ann Coulter would be proud of your effort. But I'm going to hold /. to a slightly better standard than that.
I agree with the article but don't see the value in bad arguments.
Now that looks to me like oss/free software is in there. and personally I guess I'm inclined to be pleased that it's there at all, rather than bitching that it's not how 'we' might like it.
And then declaring the entire ting to be a failure.
Which is why I don't rely on 'pundits' such as Barr, Perens or FSF to do my thinking for me.
Anyone who's expecting oss/free to be some major plank in a guidance document under the auspices of the UN is either dreaming or stupid.
As for what the US position might or might not be frankly I don't care. Foreign policy is an arcane art at best, and if the US doesn't often fairly represent *my* views in FP, well I don't think many nations' FP's come much closer.
So for my $0.02 (yes, US) I'm glad to call this a (limited) win and go back to doing what I do which is software and engineering and occasionally bitching out / voting out the pols who can't figure out their ass from a hole in the ground. but ultimately they don't matter I do, I do stuff I make stuff, I write stuff and I'm happy enough to leave the politicing to others.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
Why should software be any different from sugar?
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson wants more time for conclusive scientific study as the United States recommendations to the World Health Organization, which has the temerity to come out with outlandish and controversal dietary recommendations such as eating less sugar and more fruits and vegetables.
Other sugar-producing nations in the Americas are falling into line with this policy view. (Although I can't understand that they're very happy with the US subsidies to its domestic sugar producers.)
For those old enough to remember, this "needs more scientific study of direct causal relationship" was trotted out by the tobacco industry for a long time to combat U.S. governmental efforts to label cigarette packs.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You might be threatening your burgeouning software industry/IP industry by promoting open source.
Interestingly, Oracle, IBM, Novell and other software companies who promote linux don't feel as you do - perhaps there is a fatal, obvious flaw in your argument?
There are three ways to get wealth: inherit it, marry it, or steal it.
Given that most of the wealthy nations of the world got that way through theft of some kind or another: colonial resources, natural (many would say aboriginal) resources, intellectual property (North America in the 19th century, witness China doing the same today) or labour (slavery or equivalents). I suspect the third world may take note of the precedent in their drive to get out of poverty.
We in the west are a little too comfy, I think, with the idea that our priveleges are entirely a product of our own innocently industrious natures. I think we are in for a painful readjustment. Even now countries like China are gathering the capability to put our currencies in the toilet. I am personally hoping it only takes stolen "intellectual" property to get the third world out of poverty.
The international community isn't about being benevolent. It's about stopping (well, trying to stop) bullies from kicking about outside of their borders. The US (among others) is *really* bad at staying out of other countries' affairs.
Why your statements may work in a idealistic world, it doesn't cut it in the real world. For example...
Pharmaceutical company A spends 10 billion dollars in R&D to create a cure for cancer and does not patent it for the good of the world...
Idealistic world: Other pharmaceutical companies allow company A to recover it's cost and even let it make some profit for the hard work before copying the drug.
Real world: Other companies copy the new cancer drug and sells it a hundred times cheaper then the company A does as they have no need to recover the R&D costs. Company A goes bankrupt.
IP rights is like a tool. It itself is neither good (like GPL) or evil (like SCO). It's all about how you use it.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
What I don't understand is why people here think that "protecting capitalism" is a good thing.
If capitalism is such an efficient economic formation, why does it require such protectionist policies (such as employed by US)?
This situation is not unique to the software industry. US representatives actively protect IP rights of large multinational pharmaceutical companies, which is, without a doubt, a major factor in AIDS pandemic in Africa. Another industry that will not make without the help of US politicians is biotech.
US, WTO and World Bank have been pushing similiar policies for many years and US policy on WSIS is just their logical continuation.
What confuses me is the seeming inability for administrations to resort to more rational compromises instead of steamrolling everything.
In the Disney/copyright case, it would have made much more sense to tinker with the copyright renewal process than to extend all copyrights accross the board, including the ones that nobody cares about anymore. There used to be a perfectly good copyright renewal process, described here, that was amended to provide "automatic renewal", probably to cut down on administration costs as much as everything else.
For whatever reason everyone's now decided to focus on simply extending the copyright term for everything instead of requiring those who actually still want to enforce their copyright to actively say so. This means that lots of derelict and abandoned work is simply disappearing because projects such as Project Gutenberg aren't allowed to save them.
You forgot the fourth way - create it. This is what America does so well, and what socialists do so poorly, perhaps because they buy into blather like yours.
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."
/.ers, disagree with the statement that OSS gets in the way of profits. OSS certainly requires a different business model to generate revenue, (duh) but from an economic perspective, it isn't any better or worse than proprietary software.
Obviously, Capitalism is the economic system which works the best i.e. it provides the best chance for a given nation to operate on it's production possibilities curve (yeah...econ101) and therefore provide the highest standard of living for the people.
I, like most
I do not however like the negative spin that you are putting on Capitalism. Achieving a decent standard of living with plentiful food, medical care, and economic and political stability cannot be achieved as well with any other system; Capitalism has emerged as the clear winner. Degrading this most efficient system because it's not always associated with your views on software licensing is just foolish.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Copyright and patents are meant to bring knowlege into the public domain, not to perpetuate monopolistic gouging.
>>>>truth; beauty; unix.<<<<
This is not capitalist vs socialist or communist. This is about the public money being spent on something that cannot be controled by the public. Even Microsoft can be made to understand that when a public office buys a software product, the public buys a service that must be public for the good of the public. The government should not spend more money than absolutely necessary (that's a laugh) this means that if a PDF reader is bought from Adobe, there must be a way to read PDF files even if Adobe goes under and the software becomes unavailable for the new machines, possibly for a different OS in a few years. PDF should be an open standard, at minimum, at best Adobe would give the government the source code for the sold software.
In a government, where it is everyone's money, these money must not be wasted, and many times buying closed source software could become a waste.
So, get with the program, you, proprietary corporations, if you want to sell to governments - sell open source software.
This is not about communism vs capitalism, this is about your money.
You can't handle the truth.
They should talk directly to the Open Source community, not the US Government Corporate. We don't need Government permission.
:v)
Vik
Yeah right, because at the time the US had such a great alternative! You forget the threat that Iran posed to the US at that time. The Iranian government had just been overthrown by radical extremists and they had taken several American citizens hostage, or don't you remember that little hostage crisis that arguably cost your man Carter the presidency. The US armed and supported Saddam because he wanted to take on Iran and at the time Iran was a very serious problem. I doubt very much that the US had any idea that Saddam was going to turn into the monster that he became. Did the US have inklings? Probably. Was arming Saddam a better option at the time then doing nothing about Iran? Absolutely. Hindsight is always 20/20.
No one is saying that US foreign policy is something to hold up as an example of virtue. It's not. It's ugly and it's very necessary. The entire point of US foreign policy is to make things better for the US. You won't find a country in existance that acts in a disimilar fashion. The US stands out now because it is the only superpower left on the block and that, believe it or not, is actuallly a good thing when you consider the alternative. Or would you prefer if the USSR, that shining beacon of freedom, democracy and human rights, would have won the Cold War? Why don't you ask some of the people who risked their lives crossing the Berlin Wall just how wonderful that would have been.
You know, I went one step beyond RTFA and clicked the link to the actual WSIS declaration of principles here:
1 16 1|1160.asp
http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi-en-
I think the article by Barr misrepresents what the WSIS declaration says. At best, he's confusing what the declaration actually says with what the US representatives may have wanted it to say (or at least what *he* thinks they wanted it to say!). The declaration includes plain language about
1. The importance of public domain: "A rich public domain is an essential element for the growth of the Information Society, creating multiple benefits such as an educated public, new jobs, innovation, business opportunities, and the advancement of sciences. Information in the public domain should be easily accessible to support the Information Society, and protected from misappropriation."
2. The role of open source: "Access to information and knowledge can be promoted by increasing awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different software models, including proprietary, opensource and free software, in order to increase competition, access by users, diversity of choice, and to enable all users to develop solutions which best meet their requirements."
3. The only mention of Intellectual Property in the declaration is followed by noting the importance of knowledge dissemination: "Intellectual Property protection is important to encourage innovation and creativity in the Information Society; similarly, the wide dissemination, diffusion, and sharing of knowledge is important to encourage innovation and creativity."
But who am I to spoil the fun of everyone straw-manning the declaration?
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Since you are one of those people who believes that coporations never pay (or very little) taxes, I sugggest that you go ahead and form a coporation (you can do it in most states for around $100-200) and not pay taxes for the rest of your life. After all, big tax cuts only benifit the coporation so why not take adventage of it? I'm willing to bet that you'll end up behind bars instead.
Take cancer for example. Have you hear of Immunogen? It's developed by British Biotech, not University of So and SO. How about TAP? By SmithKine Beecham.
Beside, I spent a couple of years serving in the student government and learned that many schools are run like a corporation, riddled with politics.
And taking about the defense contractors and knowledge not making back to the public, were do you think that Internet came from?
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Actually, it is the current US government that has been shown to be a farce in the Iraq war, with their exagerated claims, and as a final humiliation, ending up begging the UN to clean up their mess in Iraq afterwards.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
1) Iraq Death Toll
The Age.
And yeah, there are mass graves, lots of them. But do we right a wrong by killing more people? It's easy to win a war, but much harder to win the peace. There's also a very good reason the humanitarian argument for invasion wasn't used before the war. Because it would have directly led to the argument why the US was invading Iraq rather than a dozen other countries with worse human-rights records.
2) We know Iraq had WMD, US supplied them and the UN destroyed them. The question is whether Iraq had a WMD program capable of threatening the US or surrounding countries. These things aren't easy to hide. You require facilities, research papers, scientists, engineers, factories. The fact that these have not been found indicates that Iraq wasn't a threat. After all, Saddam could have ordered the destruction, but with a realistic weapons program, traces of evidence will be left behind. Soil samples tainted, research papers unburnt, people willing to talk for a new life in the US. You can't just dig a hole and hide a weapons program that was supposedly a threat to the world.
Anyway, you can't prove the non-existence of something. There's anthrax in soil, but there's a big difference between having a small sample of anthrax and having a weaponised anthrax along with the weapons systems to target, launch and the personnel to run it.
Anyway, where's your evidence? David Kay seems to disagree with you multiple times.
3) I'm unsure, about this, someone else would have to answer this.
4a) Okay, again, you want me to prove evidence that something doesn't exist. That's impossible. Saddam did provide some evidence of the destruction of some of the weapons, he simply couldn't provide all the evidence. That seems realistic to me, records get lost, misprinted, mislaid, incorrectly filed, not filed at all. Lack of evidence of destruction does not equate to no destruction occuring.
4b) Oh, do you mean "Ansar al-Islam"? A terrorist group situated in non Saddam-controlled Iraq, you know, the northern no-fly zone. With doubts whether there are actually any real links between Saddam and terrorist groups here and here.
5) No, there's ill-will in Australia (and UK and Spain) and our government entered the war even though the majority of public opinion and the parliament opposed the war. Secondly, France and especially Germany has historically been relatively pro-American. France may not be bending over friendly, but they've always been relatively friendly.