POLITICS ALERT! If you are annoyed or offended by political
commentary an discussion on Mac Websites, may I suggest that you stop
now and move on to another article.
- From: John William
- Subject: Charles Moore
This is an open letter to Charles Moore from a very disgruntled
reader of the Applelinks, LEM, and Mac Observer sites (and likely some
sites I do not remember at this moment).
Mr. Moore
I wish you would stop writing political pieces on computer
information sites. I have read several of your reactionary pieces at
various computer sites and have always come away with a very bad
impression of you as a person. I do not get this same impression when I
read your often very informative computer articles. I am not interested
in the often uninformed polemic you so amply supply - find a pulpit on
a political commentary site for it and restrict your computer site
articles to computer issues. The article that has finally prompted me
to respond was the one I just read on broadband
access. In it, you manage to slander many thousands (around two
hundred thousand in Genoa, Italy, alone) of people who want to stop the
erosion of human rights and environmental degradation around the world
by referring to them as a "portable mob of criminal yahoos". I, and
I'll bet many others, think of the people inside those secret meetings
as the "portable mob of criminal yahoos". If "burning cars is not
democracy" neither is the mercenary-like evil of forcing people to grow
food for export while barely surviving the work day.
As for reports that claim information and communication technology
will help overcome "barriers of social, economic, and geographical
isolation; increase access to information and education; and enable
poor people to participate in more of the decisions that affect their
lives", we already know about all these injustices in our own countries
as well as elsewhere, so how will these technologies improve anything?
Do you think the poor and disenfranchised will somehow rise up and
force us to treat them with dignity because they can access each other
and other sites at high speed? As for the annual $500 billion US dollar
contribution to the US economy - from what? Are rural areas included in
this calculation? How will broadband access alleviate the problems of
distance to market and reliance on seasonal and cyclic industrial
models? Other than access to long distance education (possibly useful)
and emergency medical assistance (probably useful), I'm hard-pressed to
find any need for broadband except for the purely selfish reason that I
want it.
No electricity for a third of the world. Unhealthy drinking water
for half. Insufficient nutrition for nearly as many. Picture yourself,
as an ordinary human in these conditions, being in one of the majority
of countries around the world, with little to no chance of improving
your lot because of national political leaders falling in with the rich
IMF and World Bank prescriptions (while filling up their offshore bank
accounts with money skimmed off from shady deals with transnationals
and the rich in their own countries) and usually violently suppressing
any attempts at changing the status quo. Imagine what marvels would
arise out of broadband access.... Mr. Moore, please keep your
uninformed non-computer articles for some other venue.
John William
Rural dweller selfishly interested in Tobin's remarks
- From: Dan Knight
- Re: Charles Moore
John William writes:
- Mr. Moore
I wish you would stop writing political pieces on computer information
sites.
Mr. William, Low End Mac and many other
computer-related sites realize that politics and technology are
strongly intertwined. Examples of this are the Microsoft antitrust
case, the copyright issues involved with Napster, the free speech
rights infringed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Law, and the
social impact of technology on culture.
Asking Mr. Moore to "stop writing political pieces on computer
information sites" is really asking him not to write technology
articles that have a political aspect. As recent years have shown,
there is a political side of computers, just as there is a computer
side of politics (remember the Florida recount?).
I appreciate Moore's ability to comment on various aspects of
computing, not just hardware and software. In our common emphasis on
hardware and software, we sometimes forget the economic, social,
educational, psychological, and other aspects of computers and Internet
access.
I find Moore's "political" articles thoughtful and reflective, not
reactionary. He is welcome to continue sharing his political views on
Low End Mac - as long as they have something to do with computers.
- The article that has finally prompted me to
respond was the one I just read on broadband access. In it, you manage
to slander many thousands (around two hundred thousand in Genoa, Italy
alone) of people who want to stop the erosion of human rights and
environmental degradation around the world by referring to them as a
"portable mob of criminal yahoos". I, and I'll bet many others, think
of the people inside those secret meetings as the "portable mob of
criminal yahoos". If "burning cars is not democracy" neither is the
mercenary-like evil of forcing people to grow food for export while
barely surviving the work day.
I find it incredibly ironic that the anti-globalists take full
advantage of globalism while protesting it. They use the Internet to
communicate with each other, ride international transportation to
access the latest meeting place of the G8 leadership, and depend on
international news coverage to make their point to billions who cannot
see their protests in person.
These mobs are not practicing civil disobedience; they are
deliberately creating an adversarial relationship. They are not
providing reasoned arguments; they are attacking those whose job is
keeping the peace.
Even if the G8 leadership is somehow criminal, two wrongs do not
make a right. The actions of the anti-globalists do nothing to further
their cause. They only cause death and destruction.
As for reports that claim information
and communication technology will help overcome "barriers of social,
economic, and geographical isolation; increase access to information
and education; and enable poor people to participate in more of the
decisions that affect their lives", we already know about all these
injustices in our own countries as well as elsewhere, so how will these
technologies improve anything? Do you think the poor and
disenfranchised will somehow rise up and force us to treat them with
dignity because they can access each other and other sites at high
speed?
It almost happened in Tianemen Square with simple fax
technology....
As for the annual $500 billion US
dollar contribution to the US economy - from what? Are rural areas
included in this calculation? How will broadband access alleviate the
problems of distance to market and reliance on seasonal and cyclic
industrial models? Other than access to long distance education
(possibly useful) and emergency medical assistance (probably useful),
I'm hard-pressed to find any need for broadband except for the purely
selfish reason that I want it.
You may want to hoard Internet access as a toy for the wealthy, but
imagine the impact of access to a simple online encyclopedia for
someone in a town with no library. The Internet has more potential to
create a global village and give the disenfranchised the tools they
need to improve their condition than almost any technology on history.
Just as governments created widespread postal systems and universal
access to the telephone (well, almost), they now seek to do the same
with the Internet.
Question: Why do you feel free to share your political views with
computer people while at the same time asking Mr. Moore not to share
his?
Dan Knight, president, Cobweb Publishing, Inc.
publisher, Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/
- From Bryan Chaffin
- Subject: Re: Charles Moore
John William wrote:
This is an open letter to Charles
Moore from a very disgruntled reader of the Applelinks, LEM, and Mac
Observer sites (and likely some sites I do not remember at this
moment).
Hi John,
Charles has never written for The Mac Observer, though I look
forward to the day he does write something for us. Perhaps you are
disgruntled with The Mac Observer for other reasons such as my own
occasional philosophical and political commentary.
The one thing I have noticed from people who feel the need to tell
me personally not to comment about anything political, even if it is
tech related, is that the only ones who ever do so are people
who disagree with me or think they disagree with me. I would imagine
that Mr. Moore has experienced the same thing, but we have never
discussed it. From the sound of it, you might fit in the same category,
though I have no problem with being wrong about that either. :-)
The truth of the matter is that politics are sometimes related to
technology and the Mac platform. For instance, the Microsoft antitrust
trial can not be discussed without politics entering the discussion
(for good or for ill) at some point. Mr. Moore's piece was also
definitely tech related, including the opinions he expressed about the
hooligans in Italy (my definition of hooligan is not "a protester," but
rather anyone who was actively participating in the riots). He may or
may not be right with everything he says, but his comments were
appropriate to LEM in my opinion.
Furthermore, I think your request that we keep politics out of the
Mac Web is short sighted. You may not like what Mr. Moore or I have to
say (and he and I often differ to the extreme), but we get people (like
you, me, Charles, and everyone else who is reading) thinking and
talking about these issues. Talking about tech related political issues
in the Mac Web gets people involved, no matter what side you are on.
The discussion that results is almost always positive in that an
exchange of ideas occurs. If you want change to happen, then the active
participation of the largest amount of people possible is required. To
get that participation, you have to have discussion.
So, post in the comments, post in forums (we
have a dandy thread on this very issue in our own Rant Room that
would benefit from more contrary voices), and encourage more
participation, not less. I will add that you should ask the editors of
sites like Applelinks and TMO to publish counter opinions as well. We
have done so on several occasions, including a couple of pieces by some
very angry readers. Being insulting (as you were in your open letter)
will, at most, get you ignored.
The one thing you must not ever do is tell us not to express
our own opinions just because you don't agree with it. When you try to
limit discussion, you become a force for repression, not freedom.
Bryan Chaffin
Editor-in-Chief
The Mac Observer - http://www.macobserver.com
Mr. William;
You and I are obviously very far apart politically, although perhaps
not as far apart as you seem to think in terms of concern for the
world's poor. I just don't happen to think that rioting, arson, and
hooliganism are an acceptable or effective means of furthering the
interests of the underprivileged, and I am outraged that democratically
elected government leaders and international trade representatives can
no longer have international meetings or summits without mobs of
misguided and violent morons (along with some protesters who are just
misguided) descending and causing mayhem and damage ($61 million worth
in Genoa, reportedly).
I have no problem with peaceful protest, and I am a consummate free
speech advocate, but as Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who will
host next year's G8, commented:
- "Burning cars is not a demonstration. Burning buildings is not a
demonstration. And it is the job of the police to prevent that. We have
the obligation to meet. It is not a certain amount of anarchists who
will prevent democratic leaders to do their job,"
Chretien warned he will not permit rioting in Canada and said the
anarchists will be jailed and prosecuted.
- "These are the anarchists. I'm telling you, violence I reject. I'm
a democrat, so violence is a criminal act and there are laws for that,"
Chretien told reporters. "So if the anarchists want to destroy
democracy, we will not let them succeed ...We will make sure that those
who break [the law] will be punished."
Amen to that.
As for "uninformed polemic," you may disagree with my conclusions,
but since I read three or four newspapers a day, plus The Atlantic
Monthly, Harpers, The Economist, Time, Maclean's magazine, and sundry
other reasonably informative periodicals on a regular basis, you can
hardly support the innuendo that I am uninformed. It may surprise you
to learn that I am also something of an environmentalist, and was
recently accused of being a left wing environmentalist whacko nut by
readers of an editorial criticizing the Bush-Cheney energy plan I wrote
for a newspaper recently, so perhaps your pigeon-holing me is not quite
on the mark.
Your letter exemplifies the spirit and motif of the politically
correct left in all contexts: if you don't like the message, then do
your damndest to shut up the messenger, whether it be the G8 leaders,
the World Trade Organization delegates, or me. I, on the other hand,
really believe in free speech, for everybody, including those with whom
I disagree.
If I had written some boilerplate leftist twaddle about Genoa, you
wouldn't have complained about politics on Mac websites, would you? Be
honest.
Regarding the article that caused you to fly off the handle and
stick in the wall, I was to a large extent quoting with approval
sources such as the United Nations Development Programme, whose
Administrator Mark Malloch Brown warned: "Ignoring technological
breakthroughs in medicine, agriculture and information will mean
missing opportunities to transform the lives of poor people; and Klaus
Schwab, founder and President of the World Economic Forum who said
"Digital technology is... the key that opens the door to the knowledge
economy. And if we fail to provide access to digital technology to
countries in the developing world [and rural areas of the developed
world] we are, essentially, denying them an opportunity to participate
in the new economy of the 21st century."
I also noted that the international bandwidth for all of Africa is
less than in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. The total bandwidth
for all of Latin America is roughly equal to that of Seoul, Korea, and
that much older technologies have yet to reach the world's poor either.
Electricity, in widespread use since the invention of the light bulb in
the 1870s, is still not accessible for some two billion people, a third
of the world's population. Two billion people also do not have access
to low cost essential medicines such as penicillin that were mostly
developed decades ago.
I am not an uncritical cheerleader for capitalism, and certainly not
for big business, but I do believe that freedom is a good thing, and
that includes free trade. The economic record and standard of living in
countries that have endeavoured to live behind trade barriers, such as
North Korea or Albania under Enver Hoxha, is not encouraging. I also
believe in order and civility in society, and stuff like "Black-hooded
anarchist groups fought with riot police Friday and Saturday, smashing
windows, throwing rocks and firebombs, and torching cars and trash
bins.... Banks stood gutted. Charred hulks of cars lined the streets...
Police seized a stash of sledgehammers, pitchforks, knives, axes, wigs
and black hoods," does not fit the paradigm. The sort of tactics
employed by the mobs in Seattle, Melbourne, Washington, Prague, Nice,
Davos, Geneva, Quebec City, Stockholm, and Genoa over the past years
are worthy of nothing but contempt.
I happen to think that advocating access to the Internet as a means
of providing information for the poorer people of the two-thirds world
is a lot more positive approach than trashing cities and chucking
fire-bombs at police. The UN report notes "new opportunities for poor
people in terms of political empowerment (such as the global email
campaign that helped topple Philippine President Estrada in January);
health networks (as in Gambia and Nepal); long distance learning (as in
Turkey); and job creation (as in Costa Rica, India and South Africa).
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the lead author of the Report, argues that this is
just the beginning: "ICT is truly a breakthrough technology for
democracy and expansion of knowledge for poor people." The Report
points to low-cost computers and low-literacy touchscreens as examples
of technologies now under development that have great potential for
empowering the poor.
I have been following the street riot idiocy intensely since
Seattle, and I remain mystified as to exactly what it is these people
want, other than to destroy our political and economic system, which,
while surely imperfect, is a lot better than no system at all, and, as
Winston Churchill observed, "than all of the other systems that have
been tried from time to time." I have never heard any of the movable
mob of violent rioters ever suggest any policy ideas that might make
things better. They just rant against "capitalism" and "globalization."
These folks are perfectly free to form political parties and try their
hand at getting elected, but they would rather tear down and destroy
than to put their shoulder to the hard and painstaking work of actually
trying to build something.
I believe the great bogey of "globalization" is a straw man and
stalking horse for advancing a lunatic fringe left/anarchist social
engineering agenda. Free trade ultimately benefits the common good,
while protectionism, isolationism, and tariff barriers to trade destroy
efficiency, competitiveness, and innovation, and are bad for businesses
and individual citizens alike. The only ones who benefit, temporarily,
are minority vested interests like labor unions and companies provided
with protected markets by trade barriers.
Last spring, British Prime Minister Tony Blair - hardly a right-wing
poster boy, being as he is leader of the Labour Party - noted in an
address to the Canadian Parliament:
- It's time I think that we started to argue vigorously as to why
free trade is right. It's the key to jobs for our people, prosperity
and to development in the poorest parts of the world.
The case against (free trade) is misguided, and worse, unfair. However
sincere the protests, they cannot be allowed to stand in the way of
rational argument. We must start to make this case with force and
determination."
Hear, hear.
"I don't believe in these kinds of protests any more," said Fabrizio
Fioretti, a 26-year-old art director from Italy, commenting on the
Genoa debacle. "Dialogue would be better. Now is the moment to show
what the protest movement can do with ideas. Maybe we should create a
new movement."
Hear, hear to that too.
As for restricting my commentary to purely technical issues, forget
it. I endeavour to be topical within the broader context of IT issues,
and this article certainly qualifies in that context, but I'm an
intensely political person, and I don't draw hard boundaries between
various aspects of my experience and interest. If you don't like my
occasional forays into political commentary, you can always click past
without reading.
Yours sincerely
Charles W. Moore
