U.S. Representatives Torpedo UN Information Summit 490
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.
Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Yes! MAKE the world sage for capitalism... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like another goon who isn't good enough to get a job.
Making the world safe for capitalism = oxymoron (Score:5, Insightful)
All about capitalism... (Score:5, Insightful)
ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sure those of us work for those corporations reaping huge profits would appreciate this position. For a lot of people, free as in freedom/free as in free trade are great ideas as long as it's not their ox that's being gored.
Disclaimer: I don't work for the aforementioned corporations.
Capitalism (Score:5, Insightful)
When will the US gov't realize that open source is capitalistic - it reduces your costs allowing you to make greater profits.
The US is protecting four things (Score:1, Insightful)
consensus? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
how many people read that as: (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
making a profit highest priority? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Slight Omission: (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Only michael would cry for another buearacracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All about capitalism... (Score:5, Insightful)
oss is the product of democtratic freedoms of expression, publishing and association, not capitalism. while liberal democracies and capitalism tend to co-exist in the western world, they are not dependent on one another - lots of brutal dictatorships are capitalist by nature.
i, for one, find the reference to the billy bragg song "making the world safe for capitalism" quite apt:
We help the multi-nationals
When they cry out protect us
The locals scream and shout a bit
But we don't let that affect us
We're here to lend a helping hand
In case they don't elect us
How dare they buy our products
Yet still they don't respect us
We're making the world safe for capitalism
Looking out for who's interest? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Me first then you. (Score:4, Insightful)
Others are of no consequence.
Oh, so monopolies are good now? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:I would just like to say (Score:1, Insightful)
We're not even talking about cloning AIDS drugs (which DID cost the pharma companies some real R&D $$$ after all...), but about suggesting a free alternative which was developed independently of the non-free (either sense of free (beer, speech) works here).
This is sickening. The analogue would be not allowing a charity to give away their own AIDS drugs, because the big players in pharma deserve a crack at it. Nonsense. True free markets don't actively suppress altruism...
is everyone still sleepy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Funny World... (Score:1, Insightful)
But the US is the new evil[.]
It makes me very sad that people believe this. It makes me sadder that those same people are ignorant enough to equate "international community" with the bunch of dictators and human rights violators that make up the joke that is the UN. It makes me sadder still that said people who say the U.S. is evil and makes things bad for its citizens and the rest of the world somehow never give any substantial evidence of that.
Re:Funny World... (Score:1, Insightful)
So honestly, what the FUCK are you talking about?
Safe for capitalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 is what the UN is for (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Even the author admits he misses the point.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Capitalism (Score:2, Insightful)
All the more reason it must be stopped at all costs. If unfettered capitalism were allowed in the USA, government-funded bailouts and taxpayer-subsidized salaries for the CEO would be a thing of the past. This cannot be allowed to happen.
Excluding OSS discriminates against OSS IP holders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:2, Insightful)
Watch out for your implicit double standards: The US is every bit as dodgy as the rest of the world.
USA land of the rich, but not free (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Important Point the Submitter Omitted (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Funny World... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, the war in Iraq may have a positive outcome, but that doesn't mean anyone's intentions were honest.
Re:Funny World... (Score:5, Insightful)
The US never learned how to do diplomacy. There's just too much of the schoolyard bully inherent in the attitude.
I laugh at your silly karma.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:5, Insightful)
and an abiding insistence that the WSIS not say or do anything that might prevent profiteering on the needs of the disadvantaged, now or in the future. Nowhere in the WSIS documents was it deemed permissible to state the obvious: that free/open source software is the logical choice in achieving affordable solutions.
English isn't my first language, but this is how i read it: The US position is that WSIS shouldn't do anything to prevent profiteering and the solution that delivers the most bang for the buck should be used. i.e. non-Open source software shouldn't be excluded. The author thinks open source software is the logical choice for the most affordable solution but that's just his opinion.
Another win for democracy! (Score:1, Insightful)
Capitalism vs Profit (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Safe for capitalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
This correct. 'Intellectual Property Rights' are government sanctioned monopolies. The exact opposite of capitalism.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes! MAKE the world sage for capitalism... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Capitalism and government do not mix! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Safe for capitalism? Remove IP. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely.
FOSS only commoditises what really ought to be commoditised.
Software companies can still make money by creating true value added onto that base of cheap hardware and cheap software.
We're talking about new software, or support, tuning, customization of software systems that users might not want to manage themselves.
Pricey american programmers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:USA land of the rich, but not free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:1, Insightful)
Quotes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:2, Insightful)
Not In My Backyard is right near the top of the most despicable tendencies of humans.
What might really be going on.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a dangerous and blatantly wrong statemnet. It shows that you probably have never seen the darker side of a totalitarian regime. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that the US are any good (read the parent post, first paragraph). I'm just saying that there are much worse and less humane governments around (North Korea anybody? Cuba?).
Comparing CIA to Czech STB is laughable. Has CIA ever run concentration camps? Where people worked in uranium mines? To sell uranium to USSR?
Spied on people? Give me a break. Do you have a clue what consequences it had for the people involved? If they had relatives still in the Czech rep. they lost their jobs, their kids weren't allowed to go to Universities. The fact is that you British (just guessing that you are) live in such a sheltered world it's remarkable. If you lived in a Commnist country for 9 years you'd know better.
BUT, my original point was that the US has no better (or worse) moral grounding than the UN for anything.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you work for a closed-source vendor, you'd better be looking out for your "ox", because if you don't work in Redmond, chances are US Representitives didn't have your employer in mind.
They've already eliminated the open source option. That's a pretty good sign that they've already got a policy of exclusion in place.
Re:Big bad USA advocating freedom of choice. Oh my (Score:1, Insightful)
Hey, do you mind (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Funny World... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nukes? None... WMDs? None... Terrorism? Well, there wasn't terrorism until we wiped Iraq clean of any and all army or police. Now the infamous Al Queda is flooding into the country killing scores of Iraqis almost daily. And those 'small skirmishes' have killed more American soldiers than the pre-"Mission Accomplished" war. We'll end up spending a few hundred billion by the time we're done. The rest of the world hates us to the point where the UN is going to ask us to get the hell out. And two weeks before we started dropping bombs on this wanker who we swore up and down had WMDs and was desperately trying to kill Americans, he offered to let our own FBI come in and perform inspections... unfortunately, he had no proof of having weapons he really didn't have so that was obviously insufficient.
What the fuck you ask? The administration lied to Americans playing off their fears and sympathies to fight a war of preemption drastically changing America's position in the world and squandering any good-will towards us. Hundreds of Americans have died. Thousands of Iraqi civilians have died. Iraq is now a hotbed for terrorism so bad in fact the UN is having meetings behind our back looking for ways to get us the hell out. And our federal coffers are draining to the tune of 500b a year. Oh yeah, and Osama... a real threat to national security, no idea where he's at. What the FUCK?
Well I read the WSIS docs, did Joe Barr? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Effects of Sugar Need "More Study" (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [thestar.com] 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.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, he said Dictators (Score:0, Insightful)
I've got all the Karma in the world, so you people can mod me down all to shit. I don't give a fuck. I'm tired of the words "international community" automatically being assumed to mean loving benevolent progress here when frankly, the UN and the so-called international community are a collection of gutless whining leftist states. When that's the case, I LIKE unilateral U.S. action.
Re: Linux a threat to software industry? hardly! (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, he said Dictators (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember: the last president, son of the former head of the secret police, was appointed by judges appointed by his father, after an election whose results and (mis)management was widely contested. Saying "it can't happen here" doesn't make it not happen.
Re:IP Thieft Good For Capatalisim (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Rant (Score:2, Insightful)
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 [geocities.com] IP rights of large multinational pharmaceutical companies, which is, without a doubt, a major factor in AIDS pandemic [globalpolicy.org] in Africa. Another industry that will not make without the help of US politicians is biotech [blackherbals.com].
US, WTO and World Bank have been pushing similiar policies for many years and US policy on WSIS is just their logical continuation.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:3, Insightful)
Disney and copyright (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [gutenberg.net], 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.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, it's great example of capitalism in action. The purpose of capitalism isn't to produce great, working, innovative products. The purpose of capitalism is to generate (suprise!) capital. Coincidentally sometimes this also means producing great, working, innovative products, but that's just a byproduct.
Most of the time on stagnant market w/o any scientific/technological breakthroughs on the horizon, entrenched monopolies/oligopolies extort huge money for crappy products, paying politicians/rulers/kings/whatever to mandate their products and seeking other ways to change their business model to de facto or de jure taxes. Why work to get the money when you can pay someone to order people to pay you for nothing.
Robert
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:2, Insightful)
Its US intentions that are misguided.
And a fourth... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the going theory, but we'll never know until we try.
Besides, copyrights have been around for a while but the world didn't blow up due to it.
That's because IP was never so easy to "violate". It seems that some are willing to "blow up" the world(go to war) in order to protect their IP. It is sickening to think that we might actually kill people for this.(If we haven't already)
What we need is a good protected IP rights such as GPL to keep certain ideas free while allowing others to gain from their IP.
What we need is to quit acting like animals and actually work for the mutual benefit of everyone.
Capitalism & OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't think its _run_ by the CIA, but Guantanamo Bay certainly qualifies as a concentration camp, and the CIA was certainly responsible for choosing the destination for many of its occupants.
Re:Funny World... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with this statement a 100%. what Pakistan was doing was a hundred times more dangerous than what was going on in Iraq. Pakistan 's Khan was shopping working nuclear bomb designs and manufacturing centrifuges in Malaysia for sale to the highest bidder, which could easily have included terrorists. North Korea presumably has nukes now thanks to Pakistan so we have a really dangerous unstable regime with nukes thanks to Pakistan. Is there any evidence anyone has WMD's thanks to Iraq?
Iraq doesn't seem to have had any nuclear program since it was dismantled in the mid 90's. They certainly weren't real cooperative with the U.N. over time but as Bush was rushing to war they were cooperating with all the U.N inspections. Iraq offered to let CIA agents come in and find all the weapons the Bush administration claimed were there and claimed to know where they were. If this was really about WMD's the CIA would have just gone in, found the WMD's and proved their case. They didn't. This was about taking down Saddam and the fact he was trying to fully comply with inspections was an inconvenience as Bush/Cheney rushed to war. There is NOTHING Saddam could have done to comply with the U.N. to stop the invasion.
As Wolfowitz has said since, WMD's were just a convenient pretext for invading. It was one everyone could agree on.
Laying WMD charges against a country is a delightful rationalization for aggressive warfare. Its a charge you can lay against ANYONE. All you do is say "WE KNOW" they have chemical or biological weapons. Its impossible for the accused country to prove they do not no matter how much you inspect them. If you don't find any you just say, "They must have hid them really well". After all little vials of Anthrax can be hidden anywhere.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of comments here are WRONG (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:3, Insightful)
But to take your point a step further, don't forget that the UN really is just an extensin of US foreign policy. The US has ( and uses regularly ) its right to veto any motion that doesn't suit their 'national interests'. Of course a select few other countries also have a right to veto motions, but:
a) it only takes one veto-happy country to ruin it
b) all countries with veto rights are right behind US foreign policy.
Do a google search on the number of resolutions calling for the Israelis to back out of the 'occupied' territories that the US has vetoed.
Baby Bush was right when he said that the UN is irrelevent. It is. It's as irrelevent as the statement that the US's real concern is democracy.
The only chance for international equality lies in demolishing the UN and replacing it with a true world government that is elected directly by the people.
The UN are talking to the wrong people (Score:3, Insightful)
Vik
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:3, Insightful)
But see, that's the problem - as soon as you allow that kind of thing to happen, you no longer have a free market. It starts to sound a lot less like capitalism, and a lot more like central planning. So you can't really blame the social and economic ills that result on capitalism.
I bring this up because the first step in solving a problem is correctly understanding what the problem is. Capitalism and the free market unquetionably have a lot of benefits. The problem is not capitalism per se, it's the destruction of free markets by "special interests". The question is, is it possible to construct a free market system that is impervious to special interests. If not, then perhaps we should be looking for another economic system. But I have yet to hear of any system that can match the efficiency and scalability of the free market's distributed agent architecture.
Re:Funny World... (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you have some secret intelligences (hopefully of better quality than those the intelligence agencies had), please share around. I'd be most interested in hearing about it.
Re:Yes, he said Dictators (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Best Politicians Money Can Buy (Score:2, Insightful)
Man you are killing me. You are the very example of what he is talking about! Overpriced, chemicals laden, unknown origin "coffee" sold by company which believes that the "Starbucks image" constitutes 90% of the "product". "Fleecing the sucker" is the dictionary definition of this situation. And as he explained the purpose of Starbucks is to ammass capital by any means possible. Less actual tangible product and more "fluff" the better. The fact that you are so totally brainwashed to actually consider it to your advantage is hillarious.
Re:IP Thieft Good For Capatalisim (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:1, Insightful)
b) all countries with veto rights are right behind US foreign policy.
Cause Russia, China, and France haven't disagreed with us on anything lately. :P
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they shouldn't.
What would that accomplish?
Say WHAT? (Score:2, Insightful)
a) it only takes one veto-happy country to ruin it
b) all countries with veto rights are right behind US foreign policy.</i></blockquote>
Yes, damn those asskissing bastards in France, sucking up to their American masters.
Have you even watched the news in the past few years?
The UN Security Council has made itself irrelevant by issuing resolutions that Iraq should honor the UN's resolutions, and following up violations of those resolutions with more resolutions stating the same.
I once did a count of all the times that happened from info at Wikipedia, and basically there were about a dozen ones relevant to the Iraq situation over a period of about 10 years. Also funny is that in the first 45 years of its inception, about 660 resolutions were passed, with resolution 660 coming in August 1990, concerning Iraq. On December 17th 2000, resolution 1284 was passed. Doubled the number of resolutions in less than a quarter of the time.
*THAT* is why they're irrelevant, not because of the US is so butch.
Re:Unnecessary violence (Score:1, Insightful)
The USA is MORE dangerous than the rest of the world, that simple. Mod me flamebait/troll or whatever, its your loss if you stamp on the voices you most need to hear. The USA right now is the single greatest danger to lasting world peace. What frightens the rest of the world is that until you start your next civil war and root out the fascists in your camp the rest of us are powerless, because nobody is going to fight your army face on. We are conting on you ordinary Americans to restore your contry to the exemplar of peaceful democracy and freedom it used to be. If you don't have the strength to do this now it will only get more painful and difficult in the future. Once it reaches the America vs Rest of the World stage its the end for everyone.
Also get over the ideological crap. This isn't about protecting Capitalism. It's about looking after the special interests of a few thousand of the very rich and well connected. America is becomming a very non-capitalistic society. Capitalism implies opportunity not a totalitarian boot in the face.