That's not true. Globalization wasn't even noticed by the majority of North Americans until people protested with civil disobedience and tactical sabotage.
These tactics are effective in getting people's attention, and they do not turn people off nearly as much as you think (the amount in which they turn people off usually relates to the person's class background. Rich people are scared of getting their shit busted up, poor and working people not nearly so much, because they don't consider banks and starbucks to be their shit).
If everyday people are so opposed to property damage, why don't you give us what you think everyday people's opinion on the Boston Tea Party is?
This is fucking great! I wonder if one of the million Stalin-esque informants will help me install this software?
I mean, it's really good that the same government that busts into a house, shoots an elderly black man, and then realizes the grand drug bust was supposed to go down across the street is going to help me secure my homeland.
Yeah, I'm enduring my fucking freedom more and more every day!
Okay, as much as they fucked up with the whole "mutation" thing, you can't say that their refusal to use the word "terrorist" is not noble, at least within the context of journalism.
Reuter's editorial policy is that they will never use the term "terrorist" or "freedom fighter" or whatever, unless they are quoting. The goal is to be objective, and since Reuters is an international news service, they cannot afford to be US-centric or centered on the terminology of any nation.
Remember, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom-fighter. The word terrorist is very loaded. Reclaim The Streets! parties have been labelled terrorists simply for dancing in the streets. The French resistance against the Nazis was also called terrorism. It would be unethical, in the context of objective journalism, to use any government's definition of terrorism, so Reuters simply refuses to use the term, unless they are quoting.
Now, honestly, is that so bad?
(I do agree that journalism can never be truly objective, which is why I support media projects like the Independant Media Center, which wear their bias on their sleeves, but that's a debate for another day)
I know this is off-topic, but I figured you'd like to hear about it. Here's a good article.
Ignorance is Not Bliss Lack of Reporting Civilian Casualties from the War in Afghanistan is Keeping Americans in the Dark -- And Endangering Their Future
by Roberto J. Gonzalez
Upshot of it all is that somebody did an independant study cultivated from multiple sources, and determined a low estimate for the number of non-military civilians who were killed by US bombing, either purposely or indirectly (ie, "smart" bombs going astray).
Since you started the project because you had an itch to scratch, then your best bet is to just announce that you are no longer maintaining the codebase, and that if anybody starts updating it, and needs to contact you, that they should.
Wait for somebody else to have an itch to scratch. The idea that you need to "appoint" a new leader is contrary to the non-heirarchical nature of open-source.
It seems like for all the time I've been on Slashdot (at least 3 years now), there's been this constant discussion around whether we're losing our rights or not...
I want this discussion to end. Not because it's not a valid discussion, but because conclusions have already been made.
Yes, we are losing our rights.
Where are we losing them from? Some say government, others say industry, and some insist that we're not losing our rights at all.
I'm not interested in arguing with those who insist everything's just fine.
There needs to be a basic analysis of how anarchic cultures like that of the internet and that of the free software movement interact (and many times, are at odds with) with heirarchical structures like the state and the capitalist marketplace.
Ultimately, power corrupts, and any strong concentration of power moves towards greater concentration. In other words, "Welcome to the new economy, same as the old economy."
Our rights are lost as corporations consolidate, create bigger lobbies, and government bends over backwards to accomodate them. Things like DMCA don't come out of anywhere, and if corporations and the "power elite" (C.Wright Mills) truly believed in a free marketplace, then DMCA would never have been created.
So, you have us, the idealistic internet users, techies, free software advocates, etc., up against the biggest economic superpowers the world has ever known.
What do we do? How do we fight this?
Well, in one way, we've been doing really well in the realm of creating alternatives. Free software work, it works well, and it's not dependant on the NASDAQ for it's survival. Very good.
In other realms, we haven't done all that well. There's been talk about creating a "tech" lobby, but it's never really materalized. And could it even stand up to the hegemony of the lobbies that are already entrenched in Washington DC?
The EFF is a wonderful organization, but look at what they're up against. Look at how hard it is for the ACLU to influence lawmaking, and they've got a support base that's much larger than the EFF. The ACLU has written scathing reports on the threats to civil liberties that the USA-PATRIOT ACT (and the even scarier Illinois version), yet these are being pushed through without any consideration.
I think in order to properly preserve our rights, and more importantly, greatly *EXPAND* them, we need to abandon all notions that the market and the state are on our side, in any way shape or form.
Think in terms, not of what we want to oppose, but what we want. How should intellectual property be handled? Is it really *wrong* to reverse engineer something? Should a law stop us? If a law makes something illegal, can we create a technical solution to make it impossible to regulate (ie, gnutella/freenet?). What about a large project to create an internet service provider collective with incredibly cheap internet access? What about free internet access for everybody? Don't think we can do it? The hell we can't!
And furthermore, does this only affect us, or does it affect everybody? Why are we only preaching to the choir? How do these issues tie in to other issues that affect people?
Think about it. I hate to use the cliche, but we're gonna have to fight back. Sitting around on Slashdot, complaining about how we're losing our rights doesn't solve anything.
Maybe we should, to use the old syndicalist slogan, start building the new world in the shell of the old...
Actually, I wrote it just for this article. If you're capable of finding this rant elsewhere on the internet, I'll concede, but considering the impossibility of that, I stand that this is an original work.
Situations like this underscore the real strength (and weakness) of the GPL. The strength is that the GPL has worked so far without any large-scale legal challenge. There's a strong social understanding that comes with GPL'ed code, that you give back to the community from which you've taken.
The weakness is that the GPL would probably lose in court, to some degree. This is because copyright law and, in many ways, the legal system, in the US and elsewhere, were never designed to work in accordance with the common good, especially when it comes to issues of property, and even moreso when it comes to the issues of intellectual property (really just an illusion of modern society).
Therefore, when approaching breaches of the GPL, it's probably in our best interest, as a community, to not immediately threaten legal repurcussions, but instead work on other ways to pressure entities to abide by our community's standards.
Any entity that uses GPL'ed code in bad faith ultimately will recieve a pretty bad reputation in the growing free software community. Also, if they're not willing to abide by our rules, what says that we should abide by theirs? For instance, if Microsoft rolls a bunch of GPL'd code into a new product, then we retain an ethical (if not legal) right to distribute the resulting binary of that product as much as we'd like.
I didn't intend this post to be as long as it is, but basically, think about this: Do we see free software as a phenomenon? Something that just happened? Or as a movement? Something that we all made happen? If it's a phenomenon, then the best we can hope for is that the GPL sticks, on a legal basis. If it's a movement, then we're going to have to be prepared to come together and face challenges. So far, although a lot of us haven't acknowledged it, we've functioned as a movement, and we've been very successful. Witness the FUD that Microsoft used to spread about Linux. Our responses to that FUD ended up making MS look more like sore losers than better producers.
Also consider that it's possible the struggle for collectively owned information and intellectual property may some day move far outside of the internet, and into the real world. That might require a whole new re-evaluation of our tactics and ideals.
Timothy McViegh was *NOT* an anarchist! You are disrespecting the memories of millions of anarchists, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, Emma Goldman, the CNT/FAI and other anti-fascists, and many, many more, when you make a false statement like that.
If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would
be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
Thus, the anarchists proclaim, "Property is theft," because the ownership of property by institutions (corporations, non-profits, governments, etc) deprives humanity of utilizing that property to their best ability.
the difference is that companies have competition.
You're forgetting that communist regimes have competition too. Competition with capitalism is what the Bolsheviks (and more importantly, later, the Stalinists) used to justify their attrocities.
Corporations are creating this strange new form of nationalism. And same thing we saw with the Communist and Capitalist countries who were all too willing to work together to increase their mutual power over citizens, we're seeing competing corporations who will work together in order to increase their control over consumers.
Strange days, no?
All of this serves to maintain a stable system, a corporate ecology. Birth, life and death are all factored in so that the system may perpetuate itself. There were no such measures taken for communism.
Maybe Adam Smith's version of capitalism, yes. But remember that theory and practice are very different beasts. Marx's communism had people in control of the government. Has that ever happened? No.
Witness the amount of control corporations have over each of the candidates. Would Adam Smith or any of the "fathers of capitalism" have condoned corporate control of electoral democracy?
The odd thing is that we're seeing stuff go wrong now with corporate capitalism what we saw go wrong with communism.
These huge corporations keep getting bigger and bigger, allowing themselves a stranglehold on the industry, and in doing so, they become hugely beauracratic, heirarchical, and conservative.
So some horrible design issue is found in one of Intel's products, something that would guarantee failure for a smaller company, and what happens? Intel denies a few allegations, issues a few workarounds to Microsoft, and hires a few new spin doctors to make sure everything works okay.
The computer industry is just catching on to this. The oil and tobacco industries have been doing it for years. Microsoft shows an uncanny brilliance for turning a bumbling mistake into a "feature." But at least, unlike Shell, they're covering up system crashes and not genocide.
It took Communism around 80 years to become so big and unwieldy that it collapsed under it's own weight. After 114 years of corporate rule (SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY ), it seems that the incredible arrogance of corporate capitalism is putting it on the same route.
Spanish Civil War, circa 1936. Anarchist Collectives form to redistribute land and abolish private property in accordance to anarchist-communist principles.
Also, most indigenous cultures don't have private property (especially when it comes to land), and therefore most of them didn't have poverty.
It would have been interesting to see industrialisation if it had occurred according to a dogma other than western capitalism or government. Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Non-PROFIT!?! What's wrong with these people? Donating their time and (most importantly) money, without ever considering getting something tangible (as in more money) back?
We have to rid ourselves of these evil communists before their cult of "sharing" and "cooperation" destroys the fabric of capitalism!
As the Great Prophet Ayn Rand once said, "Screw the poor, I got mine."
Or was that Ronald Reagon who said that? I can't recall. In any case...
We can't allow these godless pinkos to spread their ideas. We must rid ourselves of the whole notion of "altruism" and "selflesseness." People who care about other people will never help out those in need. Only people who care purely for themselves can help out the poor, the homeless, the sick, the underprivileged.
Join me as I pledge my allegience to these people, these leaders of the capitalist utopia.
Our Beloved And Respected Comrade Leader Bill Gates!
Our Beloved And Respected Comrade Leader Phillip Knight!
Our Beloved And Respected Comrade Leader Donald Fisher!
All Hail Monsanto-Novartis-DuPont-PhillipMorris-Time-Warner , Inc!
I know little to nothing about anarchists as a group-I know some about the black bloc (morons, in a word), and I listen to what my friend says, that's it.
If that's the extent of your knowledge, why the hell aren't you educating yourself? I've read Marx and Engels, and countless other authoritarian socialists' work. I wouldn't criticize a viewpoint without at least being familiar with their arguments and point of view.
Then why has the YCL tripled in size in the last year? Come to Algeria next August for the Youth Festival, and tell the 5000 expected attendees that communism is dead.
Why is it that almost every new activist I come into contact with identifies with anarchism?
Pots and kettles, pal. And I'm not the one dressed all in black.
No, you're wearing red uniforms, provided to you by your organization. As witnessed in Philly, wearing black wasn't necessary to be an anarchist (only about 500 anarchists wore black). Or did you miss the Revolutionary Anarchist Clown Bloc?
Man, at least read something about anarchism before you start denouncing it.
I have a friend who's a self-described anarchist, who bases his political ideals on the idea that no one should have power over him.
I am a "self-described" (why do people always use that word? just because there's no anarchist party to join?) anarchist, who was in Philadelphia protesting. What you're using as an argument against anarchists is something that was probably handed down to you by your YCL leaders.
The point of anarchism is two-fold: I don't want anybody to have power over me, and I don't want to have power over anyone else. People who just care about the first part aren't anarchists, they're assholes.
Face it, man. Communism is dead. There's no possibility of a Communist revolution anymore. Anarchism, however, is gaining steam. The best thing you could do for yourself right now is to educate yourself about anarchism, and not blindly accept the propaganda of your "leaders."
Oh, and by the way, Anarchism is not opposed to organization, in fact anarchism and organization go hand in hand. It's *how* we organize that's the important part. "An" (without) "Archos" (rulers).
I am a proud libertarian, but if you think that implies that I worship the market, and that I'm going to vote (how do you eliminate government by encouraging it?) for the Libertarian Party, you're sorely mistaken.
Years ago, there were anarchists. They were a lot like socialists, except for one major difference: They didn't see the point (some even accurately predicted the brutality of Marxism) of taking over government to achieve socialism. Government, they felt, was the enemy of common people, and it was instituted by the powerful in order to protect their interests. In other words, government acts as a buffer between capitalism and people in order to prevent or squash revolution.
Then, at some point in Europe, it became illegal to call yourself an anarchist. So, people started calling themselves libertarians. Same concept, different name.
How did "libertarian" in the US end up being a fiscal conservative/social liberal mix? I don't know. But I wish it meant the revolutionary definition it was meant to. I wish I could call myself a libertarian without people automatically assuming that I'm in favor of privatizing the police and military.
I'm a libertarian (aka, anarchist), because I want to get rid of government, not transfer it's powers over to corporations.
Within Slashdot I see a lot of strange juxtopositions. We're rabidly anti-government, which is good. We're also rabidly opposed to certain corporations, which is also good. But a lot of us are still fixated on this ridiculous notion of "the market", as though human happiness could be measured by stock values.
I don't worship the market. I hate the market. I despise the idea that human worth is measured, packaged, and profited from. I don't want to accept a world where currency is backed up by military force, and where the only means of survival is working for the profit of others.
In short, I hate capitalism, and almost everything that it implies. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate Communism more. The way it looks, Communism has a lifespan of about 80 years, tops. Capitalism has a much longer lifespan, that is kept alive only by constant technological advancements that keep it going. But I have a feeling that it's at the end of it's rope. Maybe it's time to check out alternatives?
So, yes, I am a libertarian, but not in the legacy of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, or others who worshipped capitalism as the means and the goal. I am a libertarian in the legacy of P.J. Proudhon, Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, and Petr Kropotkin, who believed in revolution as the means, and freedom as the goal.
I love violent video games. I grew up playing Street Fighter (in all it's incarnations), Final Fantasy, Doom, etc. Although I tend to dislike violence in games for the sake of violence, if it's a good game, *and* it's violent? Hell, I'm interested...
Now, that would mean that after uppercutting, shooting, stabbing, slicing, and kicking digital people my whole life, that I'd be desensitized to violence, right?
Wrong. On December 1st, 1999 in downtown Seattle, I was engaged in a peaceful march with locked-out steelworkers. As we marched, we chanted "Assembly Is A Right!" with peace signs in the air, and moved towards the "no protest zone". About two blocks outside of the designated zone, we found ourselves trapped by urban control vehicles and black-clad riot police. And then the tear gas came.
Oh, but this wasn't regular tear gas. They had run out of that stuff, this was military grade tear gas. It didn't make you cry. It fucked you up. Potentially, it could have killed somebody.
I did my best to evade the gas, running down alleys, kicking canisters back at the police. My adrenaline was pumping, so I wasn't doing much thinking, until I saw this guy sitting on the sidewalk...
He was around 55 to 60 years old, and he looked anything like a typical protestor. He looked homeless. He was sitting, slumped against a parking meter, almost completely comatose. He was spitting up a kind of mucous that definitely looked unnatural. People were trying to wash his eyes out with water, and see what was wrong with him. He either was having a major allergic reaction, or he had gotten a full-on dose of military grade (CN gas, I believe) tear gas.
I turned around, and saw a group of people running past me. Two more urban control vehicles had moved up to us, and I heard three or four loud bangs as more tear gas was being shot at us...
A canister fell right at my feet, and I ran down an alley faster than I ever have before. On the other side were people being pushed towards Pike's Market by riot police. Among them was a woman with a baby in a stroller, desparately asking a private security guard where she could go to be safe...
I started crying. Sobbing, really, like a little kid. The kind of uncontrollable sob you remember from when you were six, where even talking isn't an option. I don't know how long I was crying and wandering in and out of the police riot (as best I could), but eventually this young woman (and I wish I remembered her name) came over and calmed me down. We took some time to help people who were injured, but eventually decided it was time to find a way out of there.
We walked through Pike's Market in order to escape, and on the way out, I saw a woman with her hands out, sitting on the curb, bleeding from the mouth, her chin burnt from what I can only assume was a tear gas canister that had hit her directly in the face. The only thing I could do to stop myself from crying was to repeatedly hit a stop sign with my bare fist...
I grew up watching violent television, movies, playing violent video games. And when I was attacked with chemicals, when I saw people being beaten and terrorized, I couldn't take it. When I was finally confronted with real violence, Mortal Kombat didn't mean jack shit.
I'd say that computers are neutral compared to the damage that forced education does to children. This may be a bit off-topic, but I think it's something that people should learn more about.
Check out stuff by authors such as A.S. Neill, John Taylor Gatto, and Alfie Kohn. In fact, Alfie Kohn has a website devoted to his work, and the school started by A.S. Neill (Summerhill School) also has it's own website.
We all need to realize where the idea of public schools and everything involved with them (forced education, splitting the day into one hour segments, age separation, bells, assigned seating, raising your hand) originated, and it did not originate in the idea of creating a free-thinking society. John Taylor Gatto has an essay that deals with just this subject.
Here's an excerpt:
The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.
So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
1.Obedient soldiers to the army;
2.Obedient workers to the mines;
3.Well subordinated civil servants to government;
4.Well subordinated clerks to industry
5.Citizens who thought alike about major issues.
Other things to look into are schools such as the "Sudbury Valley" schools, and even Montessori (although I don't find Montessori schools to be nearly radical enough in their teaching methods).
The whole idea of these schools (usually called "free", "democratic", or "modern" schools) is that children do not need to be forced to learn. Teachers should play a supportive role, and should involve themselves only when children initiate learning.
A lot of people say, "But then children won't learn anything," but that's not the case. Children are, by nature, very curious and willing to learn. If you've ever observed students going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd grade you see an incredible transformation from being absorbed by learning, to actively resisting it. This is because they're being forced to learn subjects and in ways that they're not comfortable with.
Before the Spanish Civil War, a lot of the anarchists (which totalled around 3 million out of Spain's 20 million) were strong advocates of modern schools as put forth by Francisco Ferrer (who later was killed by the Catholic Church), because they were opposed to the authoritarian methods that the Church used in their schools (which were the only ones available to poor children).
To summarize, authoritarian learning is not really learning, but instead obedience mixed with memorization. Libertarian learning, on the other hand, is much deeper, because it is based on what a child wants, and not what teachers and by extension, the state, imposes on them.
In other words, computers in the classroom are the least of these children's worries.
Er, that should be "I don't condone all revolutionary anarchist actions."
Here's a few things I want to point to. You say I condone mass murder, which is interesting. Why do you think mass murder would be necessary for the following to occur?
General strikes - The workers simply stop working. If the people in power insist on forcing them to work, that is fascism and slavery. Who has the moral high ground, then?
Liberating political prisoners - Simple. All you need is enough guards who sympathise with the situation.
Workers taking over factories - They work there already, no? This happens pretty often all over the world. Sometimes it works, usually the workers get violently attacked by hired thugs or the police (is there a difference?). Once again, who has the moral high ground?
Farmers redistributing land - Destroy records of ownership, and this can be done very non-violently. Does the CEO of Maxxam corporation really know exactly what lands he owns?
Mass protests are occurring - Protests are, by nature, non-violent. It's only the government response that is violent.
Creating mutual aid organizations - It's very obvious that doing this is not violent.
I think your problem is that you've grown up in a culture of violence, one that insists that every problem be solved with a violent response. Think outside the box, the best way to topple the system is with a population that refuses to passively be a part of it.
And another thing, as global capitalism increases it's stranglehold on the planet, you'll see a large backlash. The hope of anarchists is that this means liberation and freedom, as opposed to a series of fascist dictatorships. Michael Chisari mchisari@usa.net
The difference is that anarchy can be achieved non-violently, whereas communism can't, since anarchism is meant to eliminate positions of power, whereas communism is simply a changing of the guard.
I'll remind you that Gandhi was an anarchist.
I'll also remind you that positions of power and government in general commits mass murder on a daily basis. I don't condone revolutionary anarchist actions, but they can be achieved non-violently, whereas capitalism can't (or is violently unwilling).
You're right, you haven't researched anarchism enough. I would recommend you do.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not true. Globalization wasn't even noticed by the majority of North Americans until people protested with civil disobedience and tactical sabotage.
These tactics are effective in getting people's attention, and they do not turn people off nearly as much as you think (the amount in which they turn people off usually relates to the person's class background. Rich people are scared of getting their shit busted up, poor and working people not nearly so much, because they don't consider banks and starbucks to be their shit).
If everyday people are so opposed to property damage, why don't you give us what you think everyday people's opinion on the Boston Tea Party is?
dominion
This is fucking great! I wonder if one of the million Stalin-esque informants will help me install this software?
I mean, it's really good that the same government that busts into a house, shoots an elderly black man, and then realizes the grand drug bust was supposed to go down across the street is going to help me secure my homeland. Yeah, I'm enduring my fucking freedom more and more every day!
Dominion
Okay, as much as they fucked up with the whole "mutation" thing, you can't say that their refusal to use the word "terrorist" is not noble, at least within the context of journalism.
Reuter's editorial policy is that they will never use the term "terrorist" or "freedom fighter" or whatever, unless they are quoting. The goal is to be objective, and since Reuters is an international news service, they cannot afford to be US-centric or centered on the terminology of any nation.
Remember, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom-fighter. The word terrorist is very loaded. Reclaim The Streets! parties have been labelled terrorists simply for dancing in the streets. The French resistance against the Nazis was also called terrorism. It would be unethical, in the context of objective journalism, to use any government's definition of terrorism, so Reuters simply refuses to use the term, unless they are quoting.
Now, honestly, is that so bad?
(I do agree that journalism can never be truly objective, which is why I support media projects like the Independant Media Center, which wear their bias on their sleeves, but that's a debate for another day)
I know this is off-topic, but I figured you'd like to hear about it. Here's a good article.
Ignorance is Not Bliss
Lack of Reporting Civilian Casualties from the War in Afghanistan is Keeping Americans in the Dark -- And Endangering Their Future
by Roberto J. Gonzalez
Upshot of it all is that somebody did an independant study cultivated from multiple sources, and determined a low estimate for the number of non-military civilians who were killed by US bombing, either purposely or indirectly (ie, "smart" bombs going astray).
Since you started the project because you had an itch to scratch, then your best bet is to just announce that you are no longer maintaining the codebase, and that if anybody starts updating it, and needs to contact you, that they should.
Wait for somebody else to have an itch to scratch. The idea that you need to "appoint" a new leader is contrary to the non-heirarchical nature of open-source.
Michael Chisari
dominion@tao.ca
It seems like for all the time I've been on Slashdot (at least 3 years now), there's been this constant discussion around whether we're losing our rights or not...
I want this discussion to end. Not because it's not a valid discussion, but because conclusions have already been made.
Yes, we are losing our rights.
Where are we losing them from? Some say government, others say industry, and some insist that we're not losing our rights at all.
I'm not interested in arguing with those who insist everything's just fine.
There needs to be a basic analysis of how anarchic cultures like that of the internet and that of the free software movement interact (and many times, are at odds with) with heirarchical structures like the state and the capitalist marketplace.
Ultimately, power corrupts, and any strong concentration of power moves towards greater concentration. In other words, "Welcome to the new economy, same as the old economy."
Our rights are lost as corporations consolidate, create bigger lobbies, and government bends over backwards to accomodate them. Things like DMCA don't come out of anywhere, and if corporations and the "power elite" (C.Wright Mills) truly believed in a free marketplace, then DMCA would never have been created.
So, you have us, the idealistic internet users, techies, free software advocates, etc., up against the biggest economic superpowers the world has ever known.
What do we do? How do we fight this?
Well, in one way, we've been doing really well in the realm of creating alternatives. Free software work, it works well, and it's not dependant on the NASDAQ for it's survival. Very good.
In other realms, we haven't done all that well. There's been talk about creating a "tech" lobby, but it's never really materalized. And could it even stand up to the hegemony of the lobbies that are already entrenched in Washington DC?
The EFF is a wonderful organization, but look at what they're up against. Look at how hard it is for the ACLU to influence lawmaking, and they've got a support base that's much larger than the EFF. The ACLU has written scathing reports on the threats to civil liberties that the USA-PATRIOT ACT (and the even scarier Illinois version), yet these are being pushed through without any consideration.
I think in order to properly preserve our rights, and more importantly, greatly *EXPAND* them, we need to abandon all notions that the market and the state are on our side, in any way shape or form.
Think in terms, not of what we want to oppose, but what we want. How should intellectual property be handled? Is it really *wrong* to reverse engineer something? Should a law stop us? If a law makes something illegal, can we create a technical solution to make it impossible to regulate (ie, gnutella/freenet?). What about a large project to create an internet service provider collective with incredibly cheap internet access? What about free internet access for everybody? Don't think we can do it? The hell we can't!
And furthermore, does this only affect us, or does it affect everybody? Why are we only preaching to the choir? How do these issues tie in to other issues that affect people?
Think about it. I hate to use the cliche, but we're gonna have to fight back. Sitting around on Slashdot, complaining about how we're losing our rights doesn't solve anything.
Maybe we should, to use the old syndicalist slogan, start building the new world in the shell of the old...
Dominion
If it's so out of whack, I would think it would be easy to begin flammage. Why don't you give it a whirl anyway, eh?
Actually, I wrote it just for this article. If you're capable of finding this rant elsewhere on the internet, I'll concede, but considering the impossibility of that, I stand that this is an original work.
Thank you, please come again...
Situations like this underscore the real strength (and weakness) of the GPL. The strength is that the GPL has worked so far without any large-scale legal challenge. There's a strong social understanding that comes with GPL'ed code, that you give back to the community from which you've taken.
The weakness is that the GPL would probably lose in court, to some degree. This is because copyright law and, in many ways, the legal system, in the US and elsewhere, were never designed to work in accordance with the common good, especially when it comes to issues of property, and even moreso when it comes to the issues of intellectual property (really just an illusion of modern society).
Therefore, when approaching breaches of the GPL, it's probably in our best interest, as a community, to not immediately threaten legal repurcussions, but instead work on other ways to pressure entities to abide by our community's standards.
Any entity that uses GPL'ed code in bad faith ultimately will recieve a pretty bad reputation in the growing free software community. Also, if they're not willing to abide by our rules, what says that we should abide by theirs? For instance, if Microsoft rolls a bunch of GPL'd code into a new product, then we retain an ethical (if not legal) right to distribute the resulting binary of that product as much as we'd like.
I didn't intend this post to be as long as it is, but basically, think about this: Do we see free software as a phenomenon? Something that just happened? Or as a movement? Something that we all made happen? If it's a phenomenon, then the best we can hope for is that the GPL sticks, on a legal basis. If it's a movement, then we're going to have to be prepared to come together and face challenges. So far, although a lot of us haven't acknowledged it, we've functioned as a movement, and we've been very successful. Witness the FUD that Microsoft used to spread about Linux. Our responses to that FUD ended up making MS look more like sore losers than better producers.
Also consider that it's possible the struggle for collectively owned information and intellectual property may some day move far outside of the internet, and into the real world. That might require a whole new re-evaluation of our tactics and ideals.
Okay, enough ranting.
Timothy McViegh was *NOT* an anarchist! You are disrespecting the memories of millions of anarchists, such as the Industrial Workers of the World, Emma Goldman, the CNT/FAI and other anti-fascists, and many, many more, when you make a false statement like that.
Anarchism FAQ
Timothy McVeigh was a murderer who had vaguely anti-government beliefs, true. But he was absolutely *NOT* an anarchist.
Dominion
Do you mean Social Anarchist or anarcho-capitalist?
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I think it's safe to say that we can now call Richard Stallman the "Noam Chomsky of Software."
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
- Pierre Joseph Proudon, "What Is Property?"
Thus, the anarchists proclaim, "Property is theft," because the ownership of property by institutions (corporations, non-profits, governments, etc) deprives humanity of utilizing that property to their best ability.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Umm, I don't know who the hell you are, but I've never posted that link before.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
the difference is that companies have competition.
You're forgetting that communist regimes have competition too. Competition with capitalism is what the Bolsheviks (and more importantly, later, the Stalinists) used to justify their attrocities.
Corporations are creating this strange new form of nationalism. And same thing we saw with the Communist and Capitalist countries who were all too willing to work together to increase their mutual power over citizens, we're seeing competing corporations who will work together in order to increase their control over consumers.
Strange days, no?
All of this serves to maintain a stable system, a corporate ecology. Birth, life and death are all factored in so that the system may perpetuate itself. There were no such measures taken for communism.
Maybe Adam Smith's version of capitalism, yes. But remember that theory and practice are very different beasts. Marx's communism had people in control of the government. Has that ever happened? No.
Witness the amount of control corporations have over each of the candidates. Would Adam Smith or any of the "fathers of capitalism" have condoned corporate control of electoral democracy?
btw, spilkas, how'd you acquire such a low UID?
I've been on Slashdot since about 1997 or so.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
The odd thing is that we're seeing stuff go wrong now with corporate capitalism what we saw go wrong with communism.
These huge corporations keep getting bigger and bigger, allowing themselves a stranglehold on the industry, and in doing so, they become hugely beauracratic, heirarchical, and conservative.
So some horrible design issue is found in one of Intel's products, something that would guarantee failure for a smaller company, and what happens? Intel denies a few allegations, issues a few workarounds to Microsoft, and hires a few new spin doctors to make sure everything works okay.
The computer industry is just catching on to this. The oil and tobacco industries have been doing it for years. Microsoft shows an uncanny brilliance for turning a bumbling mistake into a "feature." But at least, unlike Shell, they're covering up system crashes and not genocide.
It took Communism around 80 years to become so big and unwieldy that it collapsed under it's own weight. After 114 years of corporate rule (SANTA CLARA COUNTY v. SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY ), it seems that the incredible arrogance of corporate capitalism is putting it on the same route.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Spanish Civil War, circa 1936. Anarchist Collectives form to redistribute land and abolish private property in accordance to anarchist-communist principles.
Also, most indigenous cultures don't have private property (especially when it comes to land), and therefore most of them didn't have poverty.
It would have been interesting to see industrialisation if it had occurred according to a dogma other than western capitalism or government.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Non-PROFIT!?! What's wrong with these people? Donating their time and (most importantly) money, without ever considering getting something tangible (as in more money) back?
We have to rid ourselves of these evil communists before their cult of "sharing" and "cooperation" destroys the fabric of capitalism!
As the Great Prophet Ayn Rand once said, "Screw the poor, I got mine."
Or was that Ronald Reagon who said that? I can't recall. In any case...
We can't allow these godless pinkos to spread their ideas. We must rid ourselves of the whole notion of "altruism" and "selflesseness." People who care about other people will never help out those in need. Only people who care purely for themselves can help out the poor, the homeless, the sick, the underprivileged.
Join me as I pledge my allegience to these people, these leaders of the capitalist utopia.
Our Beloved And Respected Comrade Leader Bill Gates!
Our Beloved And Respected Comrade Leader Phillip Knight!
Our Beloved And Respected Comrade Leader Donald Fisher!
All Hail Monsanto-Novartis-DuPont-PhillipMorris-Time-Warne
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I know little to nothing about anarchists as a group-I know some about the black bloc (morons, in a word), and I listen to what my friend says, that's it.
If that's the extent of your knowledge, why the hell aren't you educating yourself? I've read Marx and Engels, and countless other authoritarian socialists' work. I wouldn't criticize a viewpoint without at least being familiar with their arguments and point of view.
It's really not hard to read the FAQ
Then why has the YCL tripled in size in the last year? Come to Algeria next August for the Youth Festival, and tell the 5000 expected attendees that communism is dead.
Why is it that almost every new activist I come into contact with identifies with anarchism?
Pots and kettles, pal. And I'm not the one dressed all in black.
No, you're wearing red uniforms, provided to you by your organization. As witnessed in Philly, wearing black wasn't necessary to be an anarchist (only about 500 anarchists wore black). Or did you miss the Revolutionary Anarchist Clown Bloc?
Man, at least read something about anarchism before you start denouncing it.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I have a friend who's a self-described anarchist, who bases his political ideals on the idea that no one should have power over him.
I am a "self-described" (why do people always use that word? just because there's no anarchist party to join?) anarchist, who was in Philadelphia protesting. What you're using as an argument against anarchists is something that was probably handed down to you by your YCL leaders.
The point of anarchism is two-fold: I don't want anybody to have power over me, and I don't want to have power over anyone else. People who just care about the first part aren't anarchists, they're assholes.
Face it, man. Communism is dead. There's no possibility of a Communist revolution anymore. Anarchism, however, is gaining steam. The best thing you could do for yourself right now is to educate yourself about anarchism, and not blindly accept the propaganda of your "leaders."
Oh, and by the way, Anarchism is not opposed to organization, in fact anarchism and organization go hand in hand. It's *how* we organize that's the important part. "An" (without) "Archos" (rulers).
Here, read the Anarchism FAQ
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I am a proud libertarian, but if you think that implies that I worship the market, and that I'm going to vote (how do you eliminate government by encouraging it?) for the Libertarian Party, you're sorely mistaken.
Years ago, there were anarchists. They were a lot like socialists, except for one major difference: They didn't see the point (some even accurately predicted the brutality of Marxism) of taking over government to achieve socialism. Government, they felt, was the enemy of common people, and it was instituted by the powerful in order to protect their interests. In other words, government acts as a buffer between capitalism and people in order to prevent or squash revolution.
Then, at some point in Europe, it became illegal to call yourself an anarchist. So, people started calling themselves libertarians. Same concept, different name.
How did "libertarian" in the US end up being a fiscal conservative/social liberal mix? I don't know. But I wish it meant the revolutionary definition it was meant to. I wish I could call myself a libertarian without people automatically assuming that I'm in favor of privatizing the police and military.
I'm a libertarian (aka, anarchist), because I want to get rid of government, not transfer it's powers over to corporations.
Within Slashdot I see a lot of strange juxtopositions. We're rabidly anti-government, which is good. We're also rabidly opposed to certain corporations, which is also good. But a lot of us are still fixated on this ridiculous notion of "the market", as though human happiness could be measured by stock values.
I don't worship the market. I hate the market. I despise the idea that human worth is measured, packaged, and profited from. I don't want to accept a world where currency is backed up by military force, and where the only means of survival is working for the profit of others.
In short, I hate capitalism, and almost everything that it implies. Now, don't get me wrong, I hate Communism more. The way it looks, Communism has a lifespan of about 80 years, tops. Capitalism has a much longer lifespan, that is kept alive only by constant technological advancements that keep it going. But I have a feeling that it's at the end of it's rope. Maybe it's time to check out alternatives?
So, yes, I am a libertarian, but not in the legacy of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, or others who worshipped capitalism as the means and the goal. I am a libertarian in the legacy of P.J. Proudhon, Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, and Petr Kropotkin, who believed in revolution as the means, and freedom as the goal.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I love violent video games. I grew up playing Street Fighter (in all it's incarnations), Final Fantasy, Doom, etc. Although I tend to dislike violence in games for the sake of violence, if it's a good game, *and* it's violent? Hell, I'm interested...
Now, that would mean that after uppercutting, shooting, stabbing, slicing, and kicking digital people my whole life, that I'd be desensitized to violence, right?
Wrong. On December 1st, 1999 in downtown Seattle, I was engaged in a peaceful march with locked-out steelworkers. As we marched, we chanted "Assembly Is A Right!" with peace signs in the air, and moved towards the "no protest zone". About two blocks outside of the designated zone, we found ourselves trapped by urban control vehicles and black-clad riot police. And then the tear gas came.
Oh, but this wasn't regular tear gas. They had run out of that stuff, this was military grade tear gas. It didn't make you cry. It fucked you up. Potentially, it could have killed somebody.
I did my best to evade the gas, running down alleys, kicking canisters back at the police. My adrenaline was pumping, so I wasn't doing much thinking, until I saw this guy sitting on the sidewalk...
He was around 55 to 60 years old, and he looked anything like a typical protestor. He looked homeless. He was sitting, slumped against a parking meter, almost completely comatose. He was spitting up a kind of mucous that definitely looked unnatural. People were trying to wash his eyes out with water, and see what was wrong with him. He either was having a major allergic reaction, or he had gotten a full-on dose of military grade (CN gas, I believe) tear gas.
I turned around, and saw a group of people running past me. Two more urban control vehicles had moved up to us, and I heard three or four loud bangs as more tear gas was being shot at us...
A canister fell right at my feet, and I ran down an alley faster than I ever have before. On the other side were people being pushed towards Pike's Market by riot police. Among them was a woman with a baby in a stroller, desparately asking a private security guard where she could go to be safe...
I started crying. Sobbing, really, like a little kid. The kind of uncontrollable sob you remember from when you were six, where even talking isn't an option. I don't know how long I was crying and wandering in and out of the police riot (as best I could), but eventually this young woman (and I wish I remembered her name) came over and calmed me down. We took some time to help people who were injured, but eventually decided it was time to find a way out of there.
We walked through Pike's Market in order to escape, and on the way out, I saw a woman with her hands out, sitting on the curb, bleeding from the mouth, her chin burnt from what I can only assume was a tear gas canister that had hit her directly in the face. The only thing I could do to stop myself from crying was to repeatedly hit a stop sign with my bare fist...
I grew up watching violent television, movies, playing violent video games. And when I was attacked with chemicals, when I saw people being beaten and terrorized, I couldn't take it. When I was finally confronted with real violence, Mortal Kombat didn't mean jack shit.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I'd say that computers are neutral compared to the damage that forced education does to children. This may be a bit off-topic, but I think it's something that people should learn more about.
Check out stuff by authors such as A.S. Neill, John Taylor Gatto, and Alfie Kohn. In fact, Alfie Kohn has a website devoted to his work, and the school started by A.S. Neill (Summerhill School) also has it's own website.
We all need to realize where the idea of public schools and everything involved with them (forced education, splitting the day into one hour segments, age separation, bells, assigned seating, raising your hand) originated, and it did not originate in the idea of creating a free-thinking society. John Taylor Gatto has an essay that deals with just this subject.
Here's an excerpt:
The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.
So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
1.Obedient soldiers to the army;
2.Obedient workers to the mines;
3.Well subordinated civil servants to government;
4.Well subordinated clerks to industry
5.Citizens who thought alike about major issues.
Other things to look into are schools such as the "Sudbury Valley" schools, and even Montessori (although I don't find Montessori schools to be nearly radical enough in their teaching methods).
The whole idea of these schools (usually called "free", "democratic", or "modern" schools) is that children do not need to be forced to learn. Teachers should play a supportive role, and should involve themselves only when children initiate learning.
A lot of people say, "But then children won't learn anything," but that's not the case. Children are, by nature, very curious and willing to learn. If you've ever observed students going from 1st to 2nd to 3rd grade you see an incredible transformation from being absorbed by learning, to actively resisting it. This is because they're being forced to learn subjects and in ways that they're not comfortable with.
Before the Spanish Civil War, a lot of the anarchists (which totalled around 3 million out of Spain's 20 million) were strong advocates of modern schools as put forth by Francisco Ferrer (who later was killed by the Catholic Church), because they were opposed to the authoritarian methods that the Church used in their schools (which were the only ones available to poor children).
To summarize, authoritarian learning is not really learning, but instead obedience mixed with memorization. Libertarian learning, on the other hand, is much deeper, because it is based on what a child wants, and not what teachers and by extension, the state, imposes on them.
In other words, computers in the classroom are the least of these children's worries.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Er, that should be "I don't condone all revolutionary anarchist actions."
Here's a few things I want to point to. You say I condone mass murder, which is interesting. Why do you think mass murder would be necessary for the following to occur?
General strikes - The workers simply stop working. If the people in power insist on forcing them to work, that is fascism and slavery. Who has the moral high ground, then?
Liberating political prisoners - Simple. All you need is enough guards who sympathise with the situation.
Workers taking over factories - They work there already, no? This happens pretty often all over the world. Sometimes it works, usually the workers get violently attacked by hired thugs or the police (is there a difference?). Once again, who has the moral high ground?
Farmers redistributing land - Destroy records of ownership, and this can be done very non-violently. Does the CEO of Maxxam corporation really know exactly what lands he owns?
Mass protests are occurring - Protests are, by nature, non-violent. It's only the government response that is violent.
Creating mutual aid organizations - It's very obvious that doing this is not violent.
I think your problem is that you've grown up in a culture of violence, one that insists that every problem be solved with a violent response. Think outside the box, the best way to topple the system is with a population that refuses to passively be a part of it.
And another thing, as global capitalism increases it's stranglehold on the planet, you'll see a large backlash. The hope of anarchists is that this means liberation and freedom, as opposed to a series of fascist dictatorships.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
The difference is that anarchy can be achieved non-violently, whereas communism can't, since anarchism is meant to eliminate positions of power, whereas communism is simply a changing of the guard.
I'll remind you that Gandhi was an anarchist.
I'll also remind you that positions of power and government in general commits mass murder on a daily basis. I don't condone revolutionary anarchist actions, but they can be achieved non-violently, whereas capitalism can't (or is violently unwilling).
You're right, you haven't researched anarchism enough. I would recommend you do.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net