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What to do about democratically elected terrorist regimes?

Sunday, March 31st, 2013

Massive amounts of analysis and punditry has been offered regarding what do about non-elected terrorist regimes and non-state terrorists.

But what of democracies that engage in terror? Is analysis lacking because would-be analysts are too caught up in the mythology of the same regimes, or because coercion is off the table and imagining non-coercive solutions isn’t fun? Why should coercive solutions be off the table anyway? A criminal organization with fair internal governance is still a criminal organization. Those who commit and authorize crimes should be brought to justice, their organizations brought under supervision (one idea involving more democracy: extra-jurisdictional franchise), and laws to deter and penalize such crime strengthened.

Or we could leave the solution to the market, assuming that democratically elected terrorist regimes will eventually bankrupt themselves.

Posted in Economics, Politics | 2 Comments »

Realize Document Freedom Day

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

Open formats and open standards are excellent causes, but without free/open source software implementations and widespread adoption thereof, the causes are uphill battles, at best. So I’m appalled that the Document Freedom Day (which is today, March 27) website information and suggested actions are merely conceptual.

Let’s fix that, here’s the deal. Download, try, become an expert:

LibreOffice. If in 2013 you’re still using Microsoft Office, you’re either in an organization/industry with extreme lock-in through custom business automation or similar that is built exclusively on Microsoft tools, or you’re actively contributing to the destruction of freedom and equality in the world. If you’ve never tried LibreOffice, or if you’ve tried one of its predecessors (OpenOffice) more than a year ago, try LibreOffice (again) now. It’s excellent, including at reading and writing non-free document formats, a necessity for adoption. But most of the value in software is not inherent, rather in many people using and knowing the software. Network effects rule, and you can make a huge difference! If you can’t be bothered, make up for it with a large donation to The Document Foundation, LibreOffice’s nonprofit organization.

As the DFD website explains, document freedom isn’t just about word processor and spreadsheet documents, or even just about storage formats, but any format used to store or transmit data. Thus I put Jitsi as the second most important application to use in order to realize document freedom. It implements open standards such as XMPP and SIP to provide all of the functionality of Skype, which is completely proprietary in its formats and implementation, willing to work with oppressive governments, and increasingly castigated as bloatware or even malware by people who don’t care much about freedom. Jitsi recently released 2.0. If in the unlikely event you’ve tried it before, it’s definitely worth another look.

Probably everyone knows about Firefox, but not everyone uses it, and it does have the best support for open formats of the top browsers. Also, Firefox has progressed very nicely the last years.

Praise for Document Freedom Day

DFD has missed an opportunity to promote the realization of document freedom, but that would be good in addition to, not in place of their existing messages. Direct use of free software that implements open standards is incredibly powerful, but not the only way to make progress, and despite my mini-rant above The free software movement attaches too much political significance to personal practice. People should demand their governments and other institutions adopt open standards and free software, even if people cannot do so as individuals, just as people should generally demand adoption of good policy even if they cannot personally live wholly as if good policy were already in place.

DFD does a reasonable job of raising awareness of good policy. I strongly encourage doing a bit to realize document freedom today, but sharing a link to documentfreedom.org on your social networks helps too. Just a little bit, but what can you expect from clicktivism?

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I expect pro-free/open clicktivism to promote the realization of freedom!

I have similar complaints about Defective By Design campaigns. Speaking of which, their No DRM in HTML5 campaign is highly pertinent to DFD!

Putatively “open” advocates and organizations sending around .docx files and such, above mini-rant applies especially to you.

April (a French free software organization) has some nice posters explaining open formats.

Posted in Creative Commons, DRM, Inequality Promotion, Intellectual Protectionism, Open Access, Open Services, Open Source, Open Standards, Peeves, Politics, Public Goods | 7 Comments »

10 years

Sunday, March 24th, 2013

2003-03-19 you did not stop the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Don’t feel bad about not going to protests if you didn’t. Those are bullshit spectacle. Stopping war takes years of good politics; I don’t mean whatever you think constitutes goodness on petty “domestic” and “economic” issues.

You are responsible for mass murder and torture of some hundreds of thousands.

That will cost you not the $50 billion estimated by U.S. regime supporters, nor the $700 billion estimated by some in 2005. No, nearly $4 trillion. Not the usual 10x underestimate of financial war costs, but nearly 100x:

Total US federal spending associated with the Iraq war has been $1.7 trillion through FY2013. In addition, future health and disability payments for veterans will total $590 billion and interest accrued to pay for the war will add up to $3.9 trillion.

I haven’t written about the steady progression of these numbers for years because they cease to be news, I have purposefully followed current news less and less, and the non-financial tragedies you’ve inflicted are far more outrageous.

But a 10 year anniversary seems an occasion to raise the issue again, even if I missed it by several days due to aforementioned not following the news.

What have you done to exonerate yourself of the crime of mass murder? A martyr won’t absolve you, so the least you could do is to help save Bradley Manning.

“You” is not limited to U.S. citizens. The world, including its states, is highly interdependent, and voter/elected politician only one channel of responsibility.

Oppose “your” and all security states and all their theater and propaganda, including hate of people in other jurisdictions. All lies and delusion. This has to be the beginning of what I referred to as good politics above.

Posted in Economics, Iraq, Peeves, Politics | 2 Comments »

Free Bassel, with apologies but no caveats

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

Since March 15 a year ago free software developer and colleague Bassel Khartibil has been imprisoned in Syria. The #FREEBASSEL campaign says “We will not stop campaigning for him until we see him as a free global citizen once again.”

Sign a petition on freebassel.org and participate in events (eg, one in SF) and take other action especially on March 15, Free Bassel Day.

As an American, I am somewhat uncomfortable calling for the Syrian regime to do anything, without at a minimum apologizing for the terror the American regime has for decades unleashed on the region, and continues to do so. I apologize, vow to redouble my efforts to stop my jurisdiction’s murdering and torturing ways, to obtain justice for all who bring such to light, call on all to do the same … and demand freedom for Bassel Khartibil.

As a global citizen, I demand to see Bassel Khartibil as a free global citizen once again. FREEBASSEL!

Posted in Creative Commons, Open Source, Politics | 2 Comments »

OA mandate, FLOSS contrast

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

The Obama administration:

has directed Federal agencies with more than $100M in R&D expenditures to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research

A similar policy has been in place for NIH funded research for several years, and more are in the works around the world.

Peter Suber, as far as I can tell the preeminent chronicler of the Open Access (OA) movement, and one of its primary activists, seems to have the go-to summary post.

Congratulations and thanks to all OA activists. I want to take this particular milestone in order to make some exaggerated contrasts between OA and free/libre/open source software (FLOSS). I won’t bother with cultural, educational, and other variants, but assume they’re somewhere between and lagging overall.

OA is far more focused on end products (papers), FLOSS on modifiable forms (source)
OA is far more focused on gratis access (available on-line at no cost), FLOSS on removing legal restrictions (via public licenses)
OA has a fairly broad conception of info governance, FLOSS focused on class of public licenses, selection within that class
OA is far more focused on public and institutional policy (eg mandates like today’s), FLOSS on individual developer and user choices
OA is more focused on global ethics (eg access to knowledge in poor regions), FLOSS on individual developer and user ethics

If you’ve followed either movement you can think of exceptions. I suspect the above generalizations are correct as such, but tell me I’m wrong.

Career arrangements are an obvious motivator of some of these differences: science more institutional and tracked, less varied relative to programming. Thus where acting on individual ethics alone with regard to publishing is often characterized as suicidal for a scientist, it is welcome, but not extraordinary nor a cause for concern for a programmer. At the same time, FLOSS people might overestimate the effectiveness of individual choices, merely because they are relatively easy to make and expressive.

One can imagine a universe in which facts are different enough that the characteristics of movements for something like open research and software are reversed, eg no giant institutions and centralized funding, but radical individual ethics for science, dominance of amazing mainframes and push for software escrow for programming. Maybe our universe isn’t that bad, eh?

I do not claim one approach is superior to the other. Indeed I think there’s plenty each can learn from the other. Tip-of-the-iceberg examples: I appreciate those making FLOSS-like demands of OA, think those working on government and institutional policy in FLOSS should be appreciated much more, and the global ethical dimension of FLOSS, in particular with regard to A2K-like equality implications, badly needs to be articulated.

Beyond much needed learning and copying of strategies, some of those involved in OA and FLOSS (and that in between and lagging) might better appreciate each others’ objectives, their commonalities, and actively collaborate. All ignore computational dominance of everything at their peril, and software people self-limit, self-marginalize, even self-refute by limiting their ethics and action to software.

“Commoning the noosphere” sounds anachronistic, but is yet to be, and I suspect involves much more than a superset of OA and FLOSS strategy and critique.

Posted in Economics, Inequality Promotion, Intellectual Protectionism, Open Access, Open Source, Peeves, Politics | 3 Comments »

Extra-jurisdictional voting

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Are there any jurisdictions that permit or encourage people who are neither residents nor citizens to vote? Assuming each voter on average contributes something to good governance, why not as many as possible?

Some objections and counters:

Sovereignty. Citzenship and statehood are sacred bonds, like marriage between a male and a female. But the world is highly interconnected, and as people’s exclusionary notions about micro human relationships are crumbling, so will their notions about macro relationships. Excluding by default nearly all humans from participating in governance that will effect them is anti-democratic.
Meddling. Big city A and little town B are antipodal. Big city A voters swamp town B’s elections, extract all wealth from town B. But voting is primarily expressive, not self-interested.
Money. All such campaigns would be very expensive, or at least could be won with an expensive worldwide media campaign. Paradoxically, money would be much less important, as the average voter would pull information, rather than have it pushed to them: most of 7 billion people won’t be reachable by a campaign.
Anti-liberal. Most humans disfavor many freedoms for religious and cultural reasons. Liberal jurisdictions have checks and balances that limit state power.
Fraud. Prevention of all of fraud, coercion and disenfranchisement is hard; impossible to enforce extra-jurisdictionally. Hardly an excuse for choosing disenfranchisement; there would be different tradeoffs with extra-jurisdictional, even global, voting, but things like pre-registration, crypto-voting, and cross-jurisdictional cooperation could help on some dimensions; also note objections to sovereignty, meddling, and money above.

Furthermore, some general mechanisms to address challenges:

In-jurisdiction selection of candidates, extra-jurisdictional voting.
Override extra-jurisdictional vote by in-jurisdiction supermajority.
Random selection of extra-jurisdictional voters.

I grant that each of the objections above present substantial problems, are not exhaustive, and my counters are overly dismissive (but I claim have interesting substance). Still, why not some experiments? How about in non-state organizational governance? [Added: Some membership organizations are such experiments.]

If you’re itching to tell me that local voting on desired outcomes, global betting on how to achieve same (i.e., futarchy) is another approach to obtaining more inputs into good governance, good for you. But all of the aforementioned is relevant to choosing desired outcomes — in some cases more should be permitted and encouraged to help choose.

A survey suggests that worldwide, Obama would trounce Romney. That’s wholly unsurprising. I’d be curious to see similar polling for many more elections in many jurisdictions.

Posted in Apartheid, Economics, Politics, Prediction Markets, Public Goods | 2 Comments »

Open Data nuance

Sunday, October 7th, 2012

I’m very mildly annoyed with some discussion of “open data”, in part where it is an amorphous thing for which expectations must be managed, value found and sustainable business models, perhaps marketplaces, invented, all with an abstract and tangential relationship to software, or “IT”.

All of this was evident at a recent Open Knowledge Foundation meetup at the Wikimedia Foundation offices — but perhaps only evident to me, and I do not really intend to criticize anyone there. Their projects are all great. Nonetheless, I think very general discussion about open data tends to be very suboptimal, even among experts. Perhaps this just means general discussion is suboptimal, except as an excuse for socializing. But I am more comfortable enumerating peeves than I am socializing:

“Open” and “data” should sometimes be considered separately. “Open” (as in anyone can use for any purpose, as opposed to facing possible legal threat from copyright, database, patent and other “owners”, even their own governments, and their enforcement apparatuses) is only an expensive policy choice if pursued at too low a level, where rational ignorance and a desire to maintain every form of control and conceivable revenue stream rule. Regardless of “open” policy, or lack thereof, any particular dataset might be worthwhile, or not. But this is the most minor of my annoyances. It is even counterproductive to consider, most of the time — due to the expense of overcoming rational ignorance about “open” policy, and of evaluating any particular dataset, it probably makes a lot of sense to bundle “open data” and agitate for as much data to be made available under as good of practices as possible, and manage expectations when necessary.
To minimize the need to make expensive evaluations and compromises, open data needs to be cheap, preferably a side-effect of business as usual. Cheapness requires automation requires software requires open source software, otherwise “open data” institutions are themselves not transparent, are hostage to “enterprise software” companies, and are severely constrained in their ability to help each other, and to be helped by their publics. I don’t think an agitation approach is optimal (I recently attended an OpenOakland meeting, and one of the leaders said something like “we don’t hate proprietary software, but we do love open source”, which seems reasonable) but I am annoyed nevertheless by the lack of priority and acknowledgement given to software by “open data” (and even moreso, open access/content/education/etc) folk in general, strategic discussions (but, in action the Open Knowledge Foundation is better, having hatched valuable open source projects needed for open data). Computation rules all!
A “data marketplace” should not be the first suggestion, or even metaphor, for how to realize value from open data — especially not in the offices of the Wikimedia Foundation. Instead, mass collaboration.
Open data is neither necessary nor sufficient for better governance. Human institutions (inclusive of “public”, “private”, or any other categorization you like) have been well governed and atrociously governed throughout recorded history. Open data is just another mechanism that in some cases might make a bit of a difference. Another tool. But speaking of managing expectations, one should expect and demand good governance, or at least less atrocity, from our institutions, completely independent of open data!

“Nuance” is a vague joke in lieu of a useful title.

Posted in Creative Commons, Economics, Intellectual Protectionism, Oakland, Open Access, Open Source, Peeves, Politics, Wikipedia | 4 Comments »

Sunday, October 7th, 2012

I recognize the rhetorical value of pointing out that copyright can be used for unambiguous censorship but I try to avoid doing so myself: “can be used for” downplays “is”. But the following is too good to let pass.

Bishop Paprocki: Voting Dem...This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

Paprocki made a video sermon in which he says that voting Democrat puts one’s soul at risk, while disclaiming telling anyone how to vote.

Brian Tashman posted a criticism of Paprocki’s video, including (I surmise [Update: I was probably wrong; looking at the post again, I’m changing my guess to verbatim excerpt]) a video of himself on video criticizing Paprocki’s statements, including relevant excerpts of Paprocki’s video. I found Tashman’s post and video via a post titled This Week in God, where I noticed the embedded YouTube video frame said:

Bishop Paprocki: Voting Dem…This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Diocese of Springfield in Illinois.

I’m going to guess that Tashman’s use of the Paprocki video sermon was very clearly fair use. But even if the entire video was included verbatim, it’d be a zero diff parody. If you want to watch that, the original is linked above, and excerpted and uncut-with-but-grainy-with-additional-watermark versions posted by Paprocki fans remain on YouTube.

I don’t see how Paprocki’s statements could be electioneering, as nobody believes in eternal salvation or damnation, right? In case I’m wrong, some are using the opportunity to call for revoking the Diocese of Springfield’s tax extempt status.

(I grew up in Springfield, Illinois and heard they were getting a curious Catholic bishop last year, one who promotes exorcisms and says that sex abuse lawsuits are the work of the devil — not sex abuse, but lawsuits intended to redress the abuse. That’s Paprocki. But I’m not poking fun of Springfield. Salvatore Cordileone was recently promoted from Oakland bishop to San Francisco archbishop, shortly after demonstrating that the blood of Christ does intoxicate and can result in a DUI. Furthermore, I empathize with Paprocki. If I believed abortion were mass murder and homosexuality an abomination, I would feel compelled to risk mere tax benefits in order to tell people to vote against candidates who I perceived as being for murder and abomination. Indeed, I must tell you to not vote for Romney or Obama, as they both favor mass murder and abomination performed by the U.S. security state: murder, murder, murder, torture, and mass incarceration. But I’m rooting for Obama, as I suspect he favors a little less torture.)

Posted in Free Speech, Intellectual Protectionism, Oakland, Peeves, Politics | 1 Comment »

Oakland city council district 1 debate Thursday: voters, please demonstrate you are not stupid, lazy, delusional

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

I encourage Oakland residents to come to my neighborhood Thursday evening for a District 1 city council debate featuring all 7 candidates (my review of the field). The somewhat notable Actual Cafe is across the street from the venue.

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The East Bay Express this week includes two highly relevant articles. The People’s Police Department: Why federal consent decrees are working in Detroit, but not in Oakland, further subtracting from Oakland excuses and blaming on external factors (also see the Los Angeles Police Department improving under a similar settlement). The city and department leadership must be fully committed to change in word and deed. Oakland’s are not, as further evidenced by Deanna Santana Tried to Alter Damning Report: Emails show that Oakland’s city administrator sought to redact portions of the Frazier Report that included strong criticisms of the police department and its handling of Occupy Oakland (an example of a police department and administration aping national military and government, in disinformation as well as physical equipment and tactics).

A continued plea to both those who just want more cops and for them to crack down hard on crime, and those who just see the cops as criminals and non-cop crime due to other oppression. Both positions lead to severe dysfunction (so does the in between position of seeing police as necessary evil and therefore not worthy of support or effective management; to the extent the police are evil it is due to bad management and bad law, all the fault of a stupid, lazy, delusional electorate). The need for law enforcement is not going away, period, and the only way effective policing is going to get the support needed is for police to behave, as a matter of course. Los Angeles and Detroit show that a quick turnaround is possible. If Oakland residents on all sides do not constructively demand and obtain such, we have only ourselves to blame for continued out of control crime and police misconduct.

Posted in Oakland, Politics | 1 Comment »

Sizing Pentagon propaganda: $4.7b, 27k people

Monday, September 24th, 2012

The Return of â€˜The Runaway Generalâ€™ (full article subscriber-only; read at library):

Hastings gives a telling account of the Pentagon’s media operation, which tried to “make over” McChrystal. The Pentagon spends $4.7 billion a year on public relations and has 27,000 people working on them. Every general has his own team of media handlers–all too evident to any journalist who has interviewed senior US brass in Iraq or Afghanistan. On a regular trip General Petraeus would have a staff of fifty walking before and after him. In contrast, a senior State Department official would have less than five staff members, including his security detail.

Apparently this is old (2009) news, though I missed it. Spinning Us to Death (2011):

While American soldiers and Afghan civilians continue to kill and be killed in Afghanistan, the Pentagon seeks to provide the illusion of progress, systematically misrepresenting realities on the ground to bide more time, gain more troops, and acquire more funding. Itâ€™s bad enough that the American media uncritically relays statements from U.S. officials portraying â€œsuccessâ€ on the ground. Now the Pentagon is using its massive propaganda budget to blur the line between informing the public and spinning it to death. In fact, several years ago the Associated Press found that the Pentagon had spent $4.7 billion on public relations in 2009 alone, and employs 27,000 people for recruitment, advertising and public relations, nearly as many as the 30,000-person State Department. Essentially the Pentagon is trying to influence public policy and lobby civilian officials to shift policies toward their own ends while dispersing the costs onto the American taxpayer.

Military propaganda is nothing new, in the U.S. or elsewhere. Many people have written about how thoroughly militaries and militarists have subverted journalism, and civic discourse in general. Still, $4.7 billion and 27,000 people (and presumably more in other departments) paid to do this, while tiny portions of federal expenditure and staffing, disgusts anew — the object of disgust being the USian people for being willing fools.

Too many times I’ve heard in conversation people talk about 280,000 astroturfers employed by the Chinese government (and doubtless a similarly huge number of more traditional propagandists and censors) accompanied by adjectives like “craaazy”. “Our” militaries are running crazy amok (and are or will be happy to astroturf), and we’re to blame. Fix that, then gasp at the greater-by-degree insanities of more authoritarian regimes.

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The Return linked above draws on a number of Afghanistan books, and begins more or less predicting a similar US occupation aftermath to the USSR occupation aftermath; wouldn’t surprise me, at the least there’s a grave risk of ongoing war and/or an even more extremely brutal regime over the next few years, meaning that many thousands, maybe millions of innocent Afghans will be “displaced”, tortured, slaughtered, etc. The U.S. owes every Afghan who wants it immediate U.S. citizenship. Anything less, it bears, I mean we bear, even more responsibility for future mass murder than we already do.

Posted in Free Speech, Politics | 1 Comment »