FolkWolf.Net

I've mentioned Jon Carroll, from the SF Chron numerous times before, and I've also mentioned Fafblog numerous times. In this column, JRC imitates Fafblog.

In Timbuktu Chronicles: Open source and Developing markets. Emeka Okafur, points to a CNET article on Open Source in the developing world. It brought to mind this quote from Bruce Perens speech at the WSIS conference in Tunis.

I bring you greetings from the hundreds of thousands of Open Source Software developers around the world. We embody many of the goals of the United Nations: we are a community without borders, a global network that shares knowledge, a social movement that produces real products available equally to the rich or poor, an economic reality that has engaged the world's largest companies and talented individuals in a collaboration of equals. Our work facilitates global e-inclusion and a sustainable infrastructure for technology and innovation in developing nations. Millions of people use our software to create global markets for local business through the Internet.

We create wealth for all. Our work, by metrics for conventional software creation, is valued in the billions of dollars. For our reward we ask only that you use our software. If you find it effective, perhaps you will join us in augmenting it.

Others offer developing nations charity and a relationship as vassals, captive markets and providers of labor at a salary the developed world would not accept. Open Source offers developing nations technological empowerment, control of their own infrastructure, and an equal technological partnership with developed nations.

This brings up the question: Why the hell aren't more people talking about this? All the pieces are in place, and have been for some time now. Extremely low cost computers are there. Open Source IS easy to use, if you're not used to windows. This is not only a great opportunity for Africa and the rest of the Developing world to get into ICT on a level playing field with the Developed world, but it is also a HUGE opportunity for Linux and other Open Source projects to gain true "World Domination," not just the domination of the small percentage of the world's population that already uses computers

Jambo OpenOffice is a start, I guess.

In this article: The Right Way in Iraq John Edwards says

The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president -- and that I was being given by our intelligence community -- wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.

And in this article Sen. Bob Graham tellingly states:

The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.

From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth.

On Oct. 11, I voted no on the resolution to give the president authority to go to war against Iraq. I was able to apply caveat emptor. Most of my colleagues could not.

What happened wasn't an intelligence failure, it was a deliberate distortion of intelligence that Senators "fell for". This has to come out at some point.

Posts like this one make me angry. Oh, let's go against ALL collective wisdom on Africa, and pull out one statistic, two anecdotes out and no first-hand experience, and say "No, people in Africa are happy!" btw phil, The celphone statistic is because: 1. most africans have never had a landline, 2. celphones are actually far cheaper in africa, and 3. Celphones are actually far more advanced in africa than they are in North America. The may not have cameras in them, but you can take your sim card with the same phone number to a different phone on a different provider.

[The folks who've actually spent time in Africa feel a lot less sorry for Africans. One fellow at the Hacker's Conference spent nearly a year on a road trip through Africa with www.dragoman.com. He said "In a lot of the villages where we stayed, folks only have to work about two months per year to pay for all of their food and shelter. They're so much happier than Americans." My friend who work in public health and have spent years in Tanzania don't shed tears for the locals, either. And there is some evidence that Africans may not be as bad off economically as the dry statistics suggest. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/gear/2005-10-16-africa-cellular_x.htm notes that "an estimated 100 million of [Africa's] 906 million people" have mobile phones.]

Another quote from Githush. This post should provide a little more context into the problem

Nothing weird you say, well on another channel - Bravo - they have a marathon of the reality show, The Restaurant. Now imagine this, on one channel you are watching a chef slathering a whole pig with butter, frying up some chicken, and grilling a ribeye steak. On the other channel you see folks (Ethiopian) forced to eat grass - which the refer to as cababage - a Sudanese family forced to go 3 weeks without food, and North Koreans forced to eat human flesh in order to survive. Curious are we, there is more.

The patrons in the restaurant can not stop complaining, ohh the food is not hot enough, it's taking too long, it's not in the right plate etc.. But the Ethiopian, Sudanese and North Korean just accept what little they have (though they try hard to get better) and do not keep complaining. Those with plenty bitch about not having enough or not the right knd, but those with little accept what they have, thank the lord for what they have and continue on with life. Kweli hardship hardens the skin.

I've been vaguely following the story of what Canada's been doing to help with the situation in the Darfur region of Red Cross, and also the story of David Kilgour who insisted that Canada send troops to Darfur, when the Sudanese gov't wouldn't let them in. The compromise that was come up with was that Canada would send APC's for the AU troops to use. The Sudanese gov't wouldn't even let those in, and there's been constant stories in the Canadian news on how these APC's were languishing in West Africa doing nothing. Then I read this story about the Sudanese gov't finally allowing the APC's in. But I only found out by reading the BBC Africa website.

I was riding up in the elevator, and I had bought a copy of The Ottawa Citizen, and had it tucked under my arm when a co-worker said, "Wow, reading a right-wing rag", "Yep". And I came across a telling series of events that illustrated my co-worker's point. The paris suburbs have basically descended into anarchy over the past two weeks, everybody agrees that they've been a problem for some time as this article points out. But instead of looking at what is actually going on in the country, this op-ed piece by Keith Spicer of which I can only give quotations because the Ottawa Citizen, among their other flaws, doesn't actually publish their material online. So I can only give you clap-trap like

Even more than elsewhere, French politicians paly in a little sand box of their own, with their own games, theit own ambitiions, their own vague, impenetrable vocabulary. "Social growth", "social fracture", "solidarity", damnable "ultra-liberalism". The entire French political establishjment is now mired in fuzzy leftist language. [...]

and

The dreamy model of multiculturalism promoted by Europe's leveral intelligentsia has been going up in smoke on the streets of Paris

Some have tried to link [the original two children's] deaths to police racism. That strikes as too simplistic

If you were to read the Citizen, you would think that the riots in Paris were caused by fuzzy leftist thinking. However, if you read real news, you realize that this analysis is 100% wrong. France is not a fuzzy leftist paradise. The prime minister can most liberally be described as center-right, and the minister of the interior is even far to the right of the prime minister. The riots in Paris have nothing to do with "Ultra-liberalism" and everything to do with the following, gleaned from the article linked to above in the beeb.

Last April, Amnesty International singled out the violence and racism of the French police towards the non-white people of the suburbs for particular criticism.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, now seems to be playing politics with the situation by appealing to the most basic and resentful attitudes of conservative France.

This second viewpoint fits in with what I know of France. France is not some ultra-left country, it nearly elected a neo-nazi not too long ago. It's very socially conservative, though their values are slightly different than conservative values in the US or Canada.

Normally I would chalk this up to a media bias that is different from mine, but the editorials in the Citizen seem to be attributing these riots to "fuzzy leftism" when, even as they acknowledge later, there is no evidence of this, and plenty of evidence to the contrary. When specified for details, they describe the french minister of the interior as a "Law and order man," they describe the prime minister as "on the right" They admit to the possibility that "The Paris riots are perhaps a backlash against France's clumsy efforts to homogenize the population" and "de Villepin ridiculed Britain's multicultural model, slyly referring to the London subway bombings as a consequence of too-soft policies"

What the Citizen seems to be saying is that, although all the people in control are right-wing, the riots are the result of "Fuzzy leftist thinking". Sounds like "Fuzzy right-wing thinking" to me.

I get an RSS feed from the BBC and this showed up, the day after I went to see Romeo D'allaire. It was, terrible timing, to say the least.

BBC NEWS Wars 'less frequent, less deadly'

That's a really rose-colored report. When you think of all the genocides and ethnic cleansings and child armies that have exploded since the end of the Cold War, war may have gotten slightly less deadly, but a whole lot dirtier. I was at a lecture by Romeo D'Allaire, the commander of the UN forces during the failed Rwanda mission on Tuesday, and he asked a question which illustrates war in these times, I'll have to paraphrase it, because I didn't take notes, but the question goes something like this.

"We came upon a small village in Rwanda, and we were looking for survivors, and once we came upon the church, villagers started streaming out of it, which was unusual, because the normal way of doing things was to round up the entire village, lock all of the villagers in the church, and burn it down. In this case, we thought we were lucky, because the villagers came streaming out of the church when we came into view. Suddenly a bunch of young boys between the ages of 9 and 14 came out of the jungle on our right, and started firing at us with AK-47s. Then a bunch of young girls about the same ages, some of whom were pregnant, appeared out of the jungle on our left, they were being used as human shields by yet more young boys with AK-47s firing at us, and the villagers coming out of the Church. Now, knowing that most of these children were forced into camps, brainwashed, and pressed into service under penalty of death, knowing that these children had a "Buddy system" where if your buddy ran away, you were shot, knowing that these children where only unknowing automatons, probably given drugs to commit this act, what do you do? You have nanoseconds to make a decision, and bullets are killing both your soldiers, as well as the villagers all around you."

What do you do, indeed. It's a heartbreaking question. Luckily, he didn't ask us the answer to the question, and I think the answer he came up with on that spot has haunted his dreams for more than 10 years now.

Aside from Voting in Howard Dean is as governor, they also run the minutemen out of town

In the vein of The Rude Pundit, there's I Fucked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hard, and Back in Ann Coulter's Ass-Saddle Again

Truly lowering the political discourse. And really really wrong.

I've heard lots of stupid reasons not to give money to the red cross. I'll give you one damn good reason to give money to the red cross.

They are the agency that best knows what they're doing, and how best to do it. MSF comes a close second.

www.redcross.ca, go there now, and donate 20 bucks towards Katrina Relief.