Un computer per ogni bambino delle elementari. Non è la proposta del solito paese scandinavo iper-tecnologizzato, bensì un progetto appena realizzato in Uruguay. Nei giorni scorsi – come riferito da BBC – il presidente Tabaré Vàzquez ha infatti ufficialmente consegnato gli ultimi portatili. Sono più di 360mila i bambini coinvolti, oltre a 18mila insegnanti.

Lo stato latinoamericano ha aderito in modo massiccio a One Laptop per Child (OLPC), il programma fondato dal professore del Mit Nicholas Negroponte per favorire l’alfabetizzazione informatica (ma spesso l’alfabetizzazione tout court) nei Paesi in via di sviluppo o nelle aree più remote. Era il sogno del laptop da 100 dollari, che non è mai riuscito a raggiungere davvero quella cifra, ma che in questi anni, tra alti e bassi, ha conseguito comunque una serie di successi.

Il programma uruguaiano (ribattezzato Plan Ceibal) è costato 260 dollari per laptop, che comprendono la manutenzione, le riparazioni, la formazione dei maestri e le connessioni internet. Di fatto la spesa totale rappresenta meno del 5 per cento del budget dedicato all’istruzione. Il governo di Montevideo sta puntando molto sui laptop OLPC – noti come XO-1 – anche in vista delle imminenti elezioni politiche, e i toni sono ovviamente trionfalistici, ma il programma si è scontrato con varie difficoltà, a partire dalla ritrosia di molti insegnanti. C’è poi il problema di come connettere questi computer, visto che l’acceso a internet in molte zone è ancora un miraggio.

Di ostacoli l’OLPC ne ha incontrati parecchi negli ultimi anni. L’idea, quando venne lanciata, era tanto ambiziosa quanto brillante: creare un portatile a basso costo specificamente orientato all’istruzione. Ed ecco nascere gli XO, i computer bianchi e verdi, con memoria flash al posto dell’hard drive, il sistema operativo basato su Linux e un’interfaccia originale e accattivante, Sugar. «Costeranno 100 dollari e ne produrremo 7 milioni», si era lanciato Negroponte.

Non è andata proprio così: oggi per costruire uno XO (li fa la taiwanese Quanta) ci vogliono ancora 180 dollari; poi vanno aggiunti la formazione, il mantenimento e via dicendo. A oggi ne sono stati distribuiti 1,5 milioni. Ma il colpo di grazia sembrò arrivare con la carica dei netbooks, i mini-laptop economici prodotti dai vari Acer, Asus: un mercato che paradossalmente era stato aperto proprio dall’OLPC.

Tant’è vero che la promozione Give One Get One – una maratona di solidarietà che sotto Natale con 399 dollari permetteva di comprare uno XO e di regalarne un altro a un bambino – l’anno scorso è stata un fallimento. «Il primo anno con Give One Get One ne abbiamo venduti 200mila. L’anno scorso molto pochi, forse 15mila», ha commentato al Corriere Matt Keller, direttore per la Global Advocacy dell’OLPC. «Le ragioni sono due: la concorrenza dei netbooks e la crisi economica».

Eppure, proprio mentre sulla stampa internazionale stava crescendo la disillusione verso il sogno di Negroponte, il progetto OLPC sembra essere ripartito di slancio. Le sue roccaforti sono l’America Latina (dove il Perù sta imitando l’Uruguay) e il Ruanda. In particolare il Paese africano punta sulla tecnologia per alimentare ulteriormente la crescita economica e seppellire per sempre i fantasmi del genocidio di 15 anni fa. Di XO ne ha ordinati 120mila, con l’obiettivo di distribuirli a quante più scuole possibili, finanziandosi in parte con la vendita delle licenze di telefonia mobile.

Tra gli stati africani è il primo a investire decisamente sui laptop di Negroponte, e potrebbe fare da apripista. Non a caso l’OLPC ha appena spostato il suo principale programma di training dal Massachusetts a Kigali, la capitale ruandese. «Le cose vanno alla grande in quel Paese – racconta Keller – Stiamo reclutando gli abitanti per diventare dei formatori di tecnologia e di pedagogia per l’Africa sub-sahariana. È tutto molto eccitante. Quando vedi quello che fanno i bambini con i laptop – programmare, creare contenuti, connettersi al mondo – hai l’impressione che questa generazione di studenti sarà molto diversa da quella precedente».

Articolo correlato: http://paoblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/in-rwanda-internet-raggiunge-le-campagne-in-autobus/

L’obiettivo dell’OLPC è in parte mutato. Non ha più tanto a che fare con la produzione di laptop a basso costo, quanto con la diffusione di una filosofia educativa. Certo, Keller assicura che di XO ne saranno distribuiti un altro milione il prossimo anno. Ma a essere diffusa sarà soprattutto l’idea della «natura trasformativa dell’educazione, così come l’importanza di accedere all’informazione e alla connessione, qualcosa che per la maggior parte della popolazione mondiale è ancora un sogno».

La prossima tappa del programma – già presente in una trentina di Paesi – sarà Gaza. Per novembre è prevista la distribuzione di 5mila laptop alle scuole palestinesi della striscia. Come ha scritto recentemente Negroponte in un’appassionata difesa del suo progetto: «Aspettate e vedrete».

Fonte: www.corriere.it

“Have you ever been inside an empty stadium? Try it sometime. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing emptier than an empty stadium. There is nothing more silent than the stands with nobody in them”. – Eduardo Galeano

For the last five centuries the West and the hegemonic power of multinational colonization have been stealing the essence of life and the aroma of our Honduran lands. They were violent centuries, with massacres of the first peoples. Centuries of immolation and lies, in the name of the cross, “the idea of civilization” and weapons. Centuries antagonistic to the dreams of Lempira, Morazán, Bolívar, Valle and Martí. Centuries of resistance in historic unity by the peoples of Our America.

We were prisoners in the mining and banana enclaves. Wealth at the expense of hunger and misery. The forests were cut down. The mahogany was used to beautify the mansions in Europe, and adorn the doors of the White House in Washington. Agribusiness, agri-combustibles and the loss of alimentary sovereignty increased the treasures of Wall Street, and international financial capital. Honduras was born during the decadence of the old world and the emergence of the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. Invaded by marines and modern pirates, who sang in unison the chorus “In God We Trust” – in God and in the World Bank.

At the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, the 1954 banana workers’ strike took place. The army, guardians of the banana plantations, controlled by the Pentagon and the CIA, put an end to the workers’ movement and participated in the overthrow of the government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala.

In the 80s there is a military occupation of Honduras. The principal strategist, John Dimitri Negroponte, strengthened the National Security Doctrine. The disciples of the School of the Americas put into practice the torture and physical disappearance of people with the acquiescence of the state judicial apparatus.

Since 1956 until the present century, there have been: seven military coups, signifying seven plagues against national progress. The stigmas: “Banana Republic”, “Country for Rent” have injured the national soul. They are damned names that mask a history of crime, corruption and the negation of a people that have always struggled for liberation.

At the end of the 20th century we were hit by Hurricane Mitch; made worse by transnational financial capital that bribes the powers that be, sells territory to the mining companies, textile sweatshops, banana plantations, energy plants, that increase climatic injustice and social poverty.

Over all these centuries, of coups, blows, paquetazos and trancazos (economic packages and beatings), to the mother and fatherland, they have accumulated and assimilated their own experiences and those of other peoples. Unity is constructed in the honey of practice of the social being and in the hell of the condemned of mother earth.

We learn to reject the lies against the people and governments of Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the very government of Honduras presided over by Manuel Zelaya; because there is no bigger truth than the generous testimonies of unconditional solidarity in health, education, economy and transport; that we have received from these sister nations.

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) is the most concrete expression of human cooperation and fraternity in the face of the unequal trade agreements with the United States and Europe.

In the first decade of the 21st century, June 28th of 2009; the first political, economic and military coup in Latin America takes place, carried out by an armed, religious, political, ideological and media alliance of local powers in tandem with world imperialist powers.

The de facto regime celebrated its repressive power in the patriotic festivities of September 15th. The festivities reminded us of our infancy when we were forced to march in the parades. As children we were dressed in uniform and transformed into “infantry”. We gathered in the stadiums to be passive, tolerant listeners to the despot of the moment. These were like religious rites, football and military rituals, with their generals, captains, bishops, reverends and chaplains and somehow a bad imitation of the carnivals of New York or California.

The lead soldiers marched, the uniformed robots without their masks of crime, the tanks and the canons burned gun powder and shot false canon balls. The speeches were rusty and cheaply patriotic. They debuted maneuvers in F5 planes, the parachute show of a parachute government.

The aerial noise did not scare the vultures that share the misery of the children living in the garbage, vultures that fly making fun of the war planes. It was a Neronian circus with forced students and teachers, beaten and threatened. The horses and the cavalry greeted with honors their great perfumed chiefs in ties. The popular protest could never be heard in a sports stadium empty of all popular warmth.

The National Resistance Against the Military Coup marched challenging the de facto government; rejecting the electoral farce, demanding the return to constitutional order and of president Zelaya. The popular clamor was for a Constitutional Assembly, The Second Independence, and the re-founding of the State of Honduras.

Recognition was expressed of the solidarity of all the peoples and governments, social movements, parties, ecclesiastical communities, women´s organizations, gay groups, human rights organizations, social communicators, worldwide fast, Vía Campesina, Friends of the Earth of Latin America and International Friends of the Earth.

On September 15th millions of Hondurans marched against the military political coup. The popular joy announced a dawning of justice. The hummingbirds jumped for joy and bathed in the dew of the ALBA and savored the nectar of the dreams of liberation. The march was the Biggest Embrace in History, with which the people, poets of liberty, have become poets for all the people of the world.

Por Antonio Blanc

A ONG OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), mais conhecida pela não tão bem-sucedida tentativa de criar um “laptop de US$ 100” para uso educacional, continua na ativa e perseguindo seu ideal. Seu mais novo “produto” é o XO-1.5, uma nova versão do laptop original (o XO-1), com hardware atualizado que traz uma muito bem-vinda melhoria no desempenho.
O XO-1.5 agora roda também o ambiente de usuário Gnome, o que o torna um netbook comum, apto para o dia-a-dia.

O XO-1.5 agora roda também o ambiente de usuário Gnome, o que o torna um netbook comum, apto para o dia-a-dia. (Crédito: OLPC)

Segundo nota oficial no site da OLPC, a principal mudança é a troca do processador, de um AMD Geode de 433 MHz para um VIA C-7M de 1 GHz, mesmo modelo usado em alguns netbooks, com 1 GB de RAM (contra 256 MB no modelo original) e 4 ou 8 GB de espaço em “disco” (na verdade, memória flash). A placa foi projetada para caber nas carcaças do XO-1 original, facilitando o upgrade, embora o novo processador exija a troca da fonte de alimentação.

O ambiente de software parece ser o mesmo do XO-1, baseado na interface gráfica Sugar, desenvolvida especialmente para o projeto com o objetivo de ser atraente para as crianças, e no conceito de “atividades” em vez de aplicativos. Entretanto, há uma novidade: a capacidade de trocar de ambiente de usuário entre o Sugar e o Gnome, o que tornaria o XO um computador com Linux “padrão” (gnome.org). Não há a necessidade de reiniciar o computador para trocar de ambiente: basta selecionar um item do menu. A troca é feita em cerca de 15 segundos.

O XO-1.5 ainda está em desenvolvimento, e as máquinas demonstradas são protótipos. Não há informações sobre data de lançamento ou preços. Mais informações sobre o projeto XO, bem como vídeos mostrando a troca de ambientes e a maior velocidade da nova versão, podem ser obtidos no site oficial, em laptop.org.

fonte: www.geek.com.br

Saat berpikir tentang OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project yang digagas oleh Nicholas Negroponte, mungkin yang terbayang di benak kita hanyalah sebuah XO Laptop hijau yang tampak seperti komputer ‘mainan’. Namun baru-baru ini OLPC project telah mendesain ulang XO laptop ini sehingga terlihat lebih cantik dan ramping. Konsep terbaru XO Laptop 2.0 ini menawarkan kelebihan dual-touchscreen interface yang mencoba menjembatani fungsi tradisional dari sebuah laptop sekaligus Internet tablet masa depan.
Secara detail belum diperoleh keterangan mengenai spesifikasi dari versi terbaru XO laptop ini. Namun desain penggunaan dual-touchscreen display yang dipergunakan untuk ‘indoor’ dan ’outdoor/sunlight’ ini memang sangat menarik. Desain ini secara otomatis telah menghilangkan feature traditional-keyboard yang biasa terpasang di laptop pada umumnya. Selain itu teknologi dual-display ini juga telah diterapkan pada iPhone dan iPod Touch milik Apple.
Berita lain yang lebih menggembirakan dari konsep terbaru XO Laptop 2.0 ini adalah perkiraan Negroponte selaku penggagas project yang menyatakan bahwa laptop yang akan mulai diluncurkan pada tahun 2010 ini akan berharga sekitar $75 dollar Amerika saja

En la actual era digital, resulta imprescindible para cuantificar el grado de desarrollo de un país incluir el índice de penetración de internet ya que de él, en gran medida, va a depender el desarrollo futuro.

Que el mundo es un lugar poblado por desigualdades, no es nada nuevo e internet, en tanto que alter ego virtual, no podía ser más que un fiel reflejo. Aún siendo consciente de ello, no deja de llamarme la atención la creciente brecha digital entre continentes y países.

En Europa está conectada el 48% de la población, en África el 5,6% y en Asia el 17,4%. Europa representa el 11% de la población mundial, África y Asia el 76%.

En Alemania la conexión a internet llega al 55,2% de la población y en Bulgaria, uno de los últimos países incorporados a la Unión Europea, sólo al 7,4%. La diferencia es de casi 48 puntos mientras que Berlín y Budapest está separadas por tres horas de avión.

Disparidad que se reproduce en el resto de los continentes: Asia, en Corea del Sur el índice es del 76% en Myanmar del 0,1%; África, en Egipto del 10,5% en Ghana del 0,9%; América, en Chile del 50,9% y en Nicaragua del 2,7%; y, Oceanía, en Australia del 80,6% y en la vecina Indonesia (Asia) del 10,5%.

Y es que mientras el primer mundo ya habla de web 2.0, cloud computing o web semántica, dos tercios de la humanidad están aún en fase beta.

©oídococina.com

Datos del resto de países, aquí.

Sugerencia del Chef: El corralito digital

I just wrote about the Vice President’s vision of Colombia in 2025 and how I saw it as a losing vision…well, here’s the head of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program going to Colombia for PR accompanied by some higher-ups in Colombia’s government and giving laptops to rural children. During the piece, he talks and talks about how it is such a positive thing yet of course he doesn’t consider that some people are just fine without knowing who Sir Issac Newton is or Einstein or Bill Gates, etc etc etc. We are imposing the Western world’s vision of what constitutes success on other countries. OLPC means to say that those who weren’t connected to their second brain, I mean, the Internet, are worse off than those who are.

The bigger problem is that the Internet and computers in general are pretty much a necessity in this day and age and to me, that is a sad thing because in the end, it is a culture that is being imposed on others, a religion of science that we must all follow and agree with in order to be productive members of society.

There are surely other ways to create prosperity in rural communities in developing countries than to get kids hooked on a machine. There’s a third generation rule that comes into effect here which says that by the third generation, no one will know life without (insert subject here) by the time that third generation grows up.

We are at an unparalleled place in history; teetering between wars, overpopulation, a chaotic growth of unbridled materialism and climate disaster. The United States has been one of the forerunners in dispensing this  paradigm of disinformation to the public – ‘to buy or not to buy’ – achieved through the apparatus of the media and Hollywood, in synch with profit driven private capital.  The acquired collective response is the  unquenchable desire to consume, rippling throughout most of the population and seeping into every aspect of life; food, transportation, housing, fashion, electronic gadgetry, pharmaceutical dependency… And as this myopic message is inadvertently exported to the rest of the world, the resulting gluttony is choking the planet.  Not only are peoples of remote cultures adversely affected by our excesses, but all other life forms as well; seemingly exponentially.

The materialism issue gets sticky when it comes to private ownership,  considering that as populations increase, the amount of accumulated stuff, grows exponentially.  There’s a man with a lot of influence as well as technological prowess with a dream, a “Laptop for Every Kid”, which with a bit of deliberation, I see as a nightmare.  Nicholas Negroponte claims that his motivation to provide a laptop to every child on the planet by the year 2010 – aimed primarily at the developing world – is purely altruistic, yet when one competitor, Intel Corporation, showed interest in joining this charade, they were met with animosity.  The hostility had since been allayed however, when Intel subsequently joined Negroponte’s board. [1]  This magnanimous claim that personal computers will entice children back to school, appears less so, when one considers the monstrous profits they will reap, with the focus on sales not to institutions, but private individuals; at $100 per computer X billions of people.  The fact is that many of the intended recipients are in need of much more basic goods and services.  A tool is useful and necessary only as far as its relevance in facilitating a specific activity.  And we all know that software and hardware don’t substitute for creativity, discipline or ingenuity, not to mention, clean water, adequate food supplies and other basic human needs.  So the question is, what dream could we be exporting?

Over the last decades the American empire has been more and more swinging towards big industry and the corporate globalization route, with the ubiquitous motive of making profit – regardless of whether it’s created out of fluff to drive up market shares – a priority, at the expense of individuals, moral values and the environment in which we live.  Within this globalization framework, are the lethal private equity firms who surreptitiously devour companies and rearrange their practices in order to reap the largest profits they can squeeze, under the guise of ‘predatory investment funds’. [2]  These vulturous business practices evolved with the equally clandestine WTO – World Trade Organization -  which has always been on the side of the business giants.  What never took hold, was a contrasting ethical version of this, in a charter proposed by the economist John Maynard Keynes in 1948, the ITO – International Trade Organization. [3]  This stressed not letting the most powerful governments – following the leads of their transnational corporations -  to make acquisitions wildly out of control.  The aim was to maintain checks and balances, so that no country could run a huge trade deficit or surplus, nor could there exist such a massive debt in the third world as there is today. [4]  The ideas were all about sharing wealth and education.

There’s another man who had a dream, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who beckoned his country to live up to its full potential; recognizing that if all of its inhabitants had equal rights, they could set examples for the rest of the world to aspire to; revealing what free thinking individuals working cooperatively could manifest.  King’s messages of spiritual depth conveyed his genuine insight into what values need to take precedence on this planet; a respect for all life as a coexisting organism.  An antithesis of Negroponte’s ambitions, these words of King’s reverberate, “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.  We have guided missiles and misguided men.” … and … “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”  Dreams and visions can empower and dignify people, or misguide and corrupt them.

Is the act of endowing portable computers to the homes of each and every child all about ’saving’ them – in many cases among communities that could genuinely benefit from more practical services such as electricity and plumbing?  Or are the aspirations of these high tech global business wizards all about making gains from head-swirling accounting figures; making astronomical profits through persuading these populations into believing that they can’t live without having one of these information technology devices in their personal possession?  A more sound and equitable method would be to introduce computer labs in schools as well as community science, art and business centers; where populations could be informed about how to utilize and apply these tools and programs applicable to their needs, as they also learn through direct communication among one another.

It’s a tough call.  On the surface there appear to be substantial benefits to the electronic revolution and the plethora of products born in its short history, [5] which have lead to this Information Age that we live in.  However when one looks further, there are tremendous strains that unchecked global technological advancement puts on our world, with not only enormous costs and burdens to the environment, but also to the worlds’ populations.  Looking at the facts, there’s much more to the picture than one may see on the surface.

In light of Al Gore’s documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth”, [6] revealing how unrestrained, excessive development has contributed to global warming on our planet, begin by looking at the immediate environmental impacts of computer production where it was spawned, in Silicon Valley, the birthplace of the computer chip revolution.  Within just a few decades, pristine farmlands became areas choking with toxic waste, becoming one of the worlds largest concentrations of Superfund clean up sites. [7]  Superfund is a term coined by the environmental protection agency of the US federal government, referring to programs devised to clean up the nation’s hazardous waste sites.  Silicon valley is home to 29 of these toxic sites [8], many of which have been since relocated to places around the globe where there are more lenient standards for environmental and worker protections; no doubt in the back yards of the communities where Negroponte would like to deliver his scheme. Who’s benefiting who?

The insidious ecological implications endemic to the computer manufacturing industry is the disproportionately high amount of energy needed to produce components, requiring extensive amounts of power and fossil fuels.  The high-energy intensity required for fabrication, combined with the high turnover rate – inherent in the marketing of most electronic devices – results in an annual life cycle energy burden that is astounding.  The production process and subsequent environmental hazards all lead to a pretty dirty impact on the natural surroundings; an e-waste and energy crisis to communities around the globe that is e-normous. [9] This is not taking into consideration the leftover carcasses of outdated computer parts littering the globe, which themselves leak toxic chemicals, including up to 8 pounds of lead per monitor.  There are a number of areas around the globe where these parts have been shipped to, in order to conveniently remove the toxins from our own back yards.  Subsequently, in many parts of the developing world, people, often children, involved in the technological profit food chain, ardently collect scraps of components and melt them to recover whatever valuable materials they can salvage for cash – an extremely lethal process – completely unaware of what dangers they are exposing themselves to. [10]

In addition to the pollutants associated with computer production, there are inherent social ills affiliated with their use.  The psychological contaminants are not intrinsic to the tools themselves, but in the ways they are marketed. It’s still early in the game, yet clear, that computers along with most electronic devices have an appeal that lure people to become more compelled with the interface, than the real thing.  It’s a preoccupation and distraction that further fragments our attention, in a world in which brief bites of information are the norm, as are various levels of alienation from one another.  The allure approaches the a-word ‘addiction’, except that this connotes something physical, whereas this ‘dependency’ is more psychological.  All over the world people are hooked on their electronic gadgets, blackberries, cell phones, computers, the internet and networking among the labyrinthine online virtual communities – in some cases without ever having to come face to face with another human being – which takes this masquerade to a whole other dimension.  It’s apparent with kids and their hand-held devices [11] and prevalent among the general population in the form of ‘cyberspace addiction’. [12]  There’s a multi billion dollar game industry, and among the ‘users’ a huge population who need assistance to recover from their gaming cravings. [13]    In response, there are a growing number of camps sprouting up worldwide to give professional help to those who have become dependent on their game fixations, such as Korea’s government-funded boot camps for ‘internet addicts’. [14]  There’s also a documented correspondence between excessive violent video game usage and the perpetrators of the various school shooting rampages which have occurred in number of wealthier western nations, made possible through easy access to fire arms. [15]

My suggestion is not to dismantle what the computer chip and internet have bequeathed to the modern world, but to acknowledge the huge responsibility and participatory approach that we all must embrace in order to make intelligent decisions towards checking and balancing ourselves and our industries, so as not to plunder the earth or corrupt future generations.  Fortunately there’s a growing movement of people finding innovative ways to tackle the nefarious aspects of computer manufacturing, labeled as Green IT; aspiring to create new paradigms for sustainable information technology. [16]

Is our allegiance to profit, or to genuinely giving a hand where it is needed and learning to get along with one another?  The need now is to dynamically respond to our needs and desires with sustainable activities.  Eating, watching television or using the internet – the powerful encyclopedic research tool that it is – only become radically unhealthy when they are excessive.  The consumption rate needs to be balanced with other activities, i.e. social, physical, intellectual and spiritual (not to be confused with frenzied religious dogmas).  Commercial advertisements implicitly distort images, which may be difficult for the average person to comprehend, when they are relentlessly apprehended with very one-sided messages, pushing to ‘have one of their own, to sooner than later, trade it in’.  It has been a long history of misinformation built into the ‘for-profit’ motif, dominating the Western world of extreme consumerism.

I’ve picked on this one person’s dream with my axe of disapproval, because now is the time not to have our eyes wide shut; material things will not cure a person’s dis ease.  We need to recognize that continuing this inundation of messages, seducing people to desire to acquire more, will only result in homogenizing the entire world into this insipid belief that the possession is the cure, rather than that of awareness of the spirit of sharing, caring and compassion.  Instead of introducing one laptop to every kid with the concomitant disadvantages of environmental and psychological e-hazards, we could think again together as a group of ways to evaluate and come up with some better actions; devising means to inform communities about ways to enable resource management, improve education, empower individuals, build cooperation, contain competition, manage our excesses and curb our greed-based desires for self-indulgence and profit – which preclude the health and well being of all the other life forms that share this planet.

We could regulate the corporate enterprises who are producing, controlling and marketing the various electronic devices by forming global interactive communities formed in order to advise, check and balance them.  There’s already an administrative solution that has been developed in order to cap companies pollutants, through monitoring the ‘carbon blueprint’, or emissions.  Various governments offer economic incentives for companies to reduce them. [17]

Rather than perpetual production without recycling and the promotion of private ownership, we could elicit a movement throughout the world, starting with the so-called ‘developed world’, realigning priorities to establish and endorse more community based centers where adults can access computer, musical, scientific and vocational equipment in order to learn the necessary skills and share the information for their art, science or business activities in more of a communal environment, and opt for school laboratories where kids can utilize computers and learn skills in a collaborative environment.  Shared spaces encourage more communication among individuals, a healthier alternative in which people are interacting with one another while at the same time learning new techniques.  Active participation among all populations in their own decision-making about what types of products they want to buy, what kinds of legislation they want to support and what types of economic systems they want to endorse is the wave of the future, away from heavy-handed, tightly controlled manipulation through strictly financial clout.  We can move towards economic transparency through shareware and ‘interdependence’, in which mutual effort among all individuals to cooperatively create working community based systems takes place.  It’s a much more advantageous alternative for all life, than bombarding the developing communities of the world with this pretense that private market profiteering and private ownership is the ideal, when in fact people in the West have been more and more isolated from one another than ever, nestled in their own homes with their elaborate home entertainment systems, held captive by the media with misinformation that breeds more alienation, competition and fear.

We need to encourage active participation, awareness, education, compassion, cooperation and love; not profit and competition, which inevitably plunder people’s spirits and their inalienable right to free thinking.  The genuine wealth of the human race is our creative adaptability, which we can employ towards living together in health, prosperity and harmony on this planet, our collective home.  Adding another poignant quote of King’s, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”  [18]

bibliography
1.    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/13/tech/main3056256.shtml?source=search_story

2.     http://mondediplo.com/2007/11/01leader

3.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Trade_Organization

4.     http://mondediplo.com/2007/01/03economy

5.     http://www.chiphistory.org/

6.    http://www.climatecrisis.net/aboutthefilm/

7.    http://www.epa.gov/superfund/

8.    http://www.etoxics.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_silicon_valley_toxic_tour

9.
http://www.etoxics.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_global_ewaste_crisis

10.    National Geographic January 2008; “High-Tech Trash”

11.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/297964/kids_and_their_addiction_to_handheld.html

12.     http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/cybaddict.html

13.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_addiction

14.     http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/18/koreas-internet-addi.html

15.     http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Video_games_-_Columbine_and_violent_video_games

16.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_IT
17.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading
18.    http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.

I think that Petras has a concise, dead-on analysis about how and who in the US is managing the coup.  I agree that Reich and Negroponte are not making the policy, but I’m sure that Negroponte’s advice is solicited from time to time.  While Petras did not mention Ambassador Llorens, it should be noted that he was the point man in Honduras who served as the glue keeping the various components of the coup machine together long enough for the helicopter containing President Zelaya to get off the ground at  Soto Cano base and head to Costa Rica.

REBELION: Petras: Understanding the coup in Honduras (English)

James Petras from Rebelion Aug. 18, 2009

Espal: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=90206

How to understand this coup d’etat in Honduras ? First is the integration of the Honduran army within the U.S. military system. I say that not as an ideological expression but based on many years of observation and empirical research. The whole official layer of generals down to lieutenants in Honduras is trained in the United States, under the tutelage of U.S. officials. The U.S. officials operate from the Honduran defense ministry. There are consultations not only on a daily basis but hour-by-hour they consult with each other on every military and political project of the United States in Central American and the Caribbean.

Häromdagen satt jag i soffan och bläddrade i Negropontes bok Being Digital. Den ansågs ju så framsynt och, öhm, modern när den kom i mitten på nittiotalet. Herregud vad det har hänt saker sedan dess. Allt tal om AOL, telefax, och e-postens globala möjligheter; all storögd framtidstro som inte var långt ifrån 1950-talets tankar om att vi snart alla kommer att ha flygande bilar; alla visioner. Being Digital har åldrats tre generationer på 15 år. Men ett kvardröjande intryck är  ändå optimismen. All utveckling i Being Digital är, mer eller mindre, framsteg. Allt blir bättre med Det Digitala.

Annolunda tecknas bilden i vår tids motsvarigheter. Harvard Law-professorn Jonathan Zittrain har skrivit en bok om Internet som, för att vara skriven av juridikprofessor, innehåller ganska litet juridik men väldigt mycket “food for thought”. Zittrains Internet är inte samma nyttiga glädjemaskin som Negropontes. Men det är inte heller någon dystopisk skildring av framtidens digitala samhälle som Zittrain levererat. Internet är som samhället i övrigt: Man får ta det onda med det goda.

The Future of the Internet – and How to Stop It kan laddas ned och läsas alldeles gratis under en creative commons-överenskommelse. Jag har bara precis börjat läsa men rekommenderar den redan nu.

Hittas här.

[July 4th at Toncontin airport, Tegucigalpa. Photo: Sandra Cuffe]

[http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff07222009.html]

Zelaya, Negroponte and the Controversy at Soto Cano

The Coup and the U.S. Airbase in Honduras

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

The mainstream media has once again dropped the ball on a key aspect of the ongoing story in Honduras: the U.S. airbase at Soto Cano, also known as Palmerola.  Prior to the recent military coup d’etat President Manuel Zelaya declared that he would turn the base into a civilian airport, a move opposed by the former U.S. ambassador.  What’s more Zelaya intended to carry out his project with Venezuelan financing.

For years prior to the coup the Honduran authorities had discussed the possibility of converting Palmerola into a civilian facility.  Officials fretted that Toncontín, Tegucigalpa’s international airport, was too small and incapable of handling large commercial aircraft.  An aging facility dating to 1948, Toncontín has a short runway and primitive navigation equipment.  The facility is surrounded by hills which makes it one of the world’s more dangerous international airports.

Palmerola by contrast has the best runway in the country at 8,850 feet long and 165 feet wide.  The airport was built more recently in the mid-1980s at a reported cost of $30 million and was used by the United States for supplying the Contras during America’s proxy war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua as well as conducting counter-insurgency operations in El Salvador.  At the height of the Contra war the U.S. had more than 5,000 soldiers stationed at Palmerola.  Known as the Contras’ “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” the base housed Green Berets as well as CIA operatives advising the Nicaraguan rebels.

More recently there have been some 500-to-600 U.S. troops on hand at the facility which serves as a Honduran air force base as well as a flight-training center.  With the exit of U.S. bases from Panama in 1999, Palmerola became one of the few usable airfields available to the U.S. on Latin American soil.  The base is located approximately 30 miles north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

In 2006 it looked as if Zelaya and the Bush administration were nearing a deal on Palmerola’s future status.  In June of that year Zelaya flew to Washington to meet President Bush and the Honduran requested that Palmerola be converted into a commercial airport.  Reportedly Bush said the idea was “wholly reasonable” and Zelaya declared that a four-lane highway would be constructed from Tegucigalpa to Palmerola with U.S. funding.

In exchange for the White House’s help on the Palmerola facility Zelaya offered the U.S. access to a new military installation to be located in the Mosquitia area along the Honduran coast near the Nicaraguan border.  Mosquitia reportedly serves as a corridor for drugs moving south to north.  The drug cartels pass through Mosquitia with their cargo en route from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

A remote area only accessible by air, sea, and river Mosquitia is full of swamp and jungle.  The region is ideal for the U.S. since large numbers of troops may be housed in Mosquitia in relative obscurity.  The coastal location was ideally suited for naval and air coverage consistent with the stated U.S. military strategy of confronting organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism.  Romeo Vásquez, head of the Honduran Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarked that the armed forces needed to exert a greater presence in Mosquitia because the area was full of “conflict and problems.”

But what kind of access would the U.S. have to Mosquitia?  Honduran Defense Secretary Aristides Mejía said that Mosquitia wouldn’t necessarily be “a classic base with permanent installations, but just when needed. We intend, if President Zelaya approves, to expand joint operations [with the United States].”  That statement however was apparently not to the liking of eventual coup leader and U.S. School of the Americas graduate Vásquez who had already traveled to Washington to discuss future plans for Mosquitia.  Contradicting his own colleague, Vásquez said the idea was “to establish a permanent military base of ours in the zone” which would house aircraft and fuel supply systems.  The United States, Vásquez added, would help to construct air strips on site.

Events on the ground meanwhile would soon force the Hondurans to take a more assertive approach towards air safety.  In May, 2008 a terrible crash occurred at Toncontín airport when a TACA Airbus A320 slid off the runway on its second landing attempt.  After mowing down trees and smashing through a metal fence, the airplane’s fuselage was broken into three parts near the airstrip.  Three people were killed in the crash and 65 were injured.

In the wake of the tragedy Honduran officials were forced at long last to block planes from landing at the notoriously dangerous Toncontín.  All large jets, officials said, would be temporarily transferred to Palmerola.  Touring the U.S. airbase himself Zelaya remarked that the authorities would create a new civilian facility at Palmerola within sixty days.  Bush had already agreed to let Honduras construct a civilian airport at Palmerola, Zelaya said.  “There are witnesses,” the President added.

But constructing a new airport had grown more politically complicated.  Honduran-U.S. relations had deteriorated considerably since Zelaya’s 2006 meeting with Bush and Zelaya had started to cultivate ties to Venezuela while simultaneously criticizing the American-led war on drugs.

Bush’s own U.S. Ambassador Charles Ford said that while he would welcome the traffic at Palmerola past agreements should be honored.  The base was used mostly for drug surveillance planes and Ford remarked that “The president can order the use of Palmerola when he wants, but certain accords and protocols must be followed.”  “It is important to point out that Toncontín is certified by the International Civil Aviation Organization,” Ford added, hoping to allay long-time concerns about the airport’s safety.  What’s more, the diplomat declared, there were some airlines that would not see Palmerola as an “attractive” landing destination.  Ford would not elaborate or explain what his remarks were supposed to mean.

Throwing fuel on the fire Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, said that Honduras could not transform Palmerola into a civilian airport “from one day to the next.”  In Tegucigalpa, Negroponte met with Zelaya to discuss Palmerola.  Speaking later on Honduran radio the U.S. diplomat said that before Zelaya could embark on his plans for Palmerola the airport would have to receive international certification for new incoming flights.  According to Spanish news agency EFE Negroponte also took advantage of his Tegucigalpa trip to sit down and meet with the President of the Honduran Parliament and future coup leader Roberto Micheletti [the news account however did not state what the two discussed].

Needless to say Negroponte’s visit to Honduras was widely repudiated by progressive and human rights activists who labeled Negroponte “an assassin” and accused him of being responsible for forced disappearances during the diplomat’s tenure as ambassador (1981-1985).  Moreover, Ford and Negroponte’s condescending attitude irked organized labor, indigenous groups and peasants who demanded that Honduras reclaim its national sovereignty over Palmerola.  “It’s necessary to recover Palmerola because it’s unacceptable that the best airstrip in Central America continues to be in the hands of the U.S. military,” said Carlos Reyes, leader of the Popular Bloc which included various politically progressive organizations.  “The Cold War has ended and there are no pretexts to continue with the military presence in the region,” he added.  The activist remarked that the government should not contemplate swapping Mosquitia for Palmerola either as this would be an affront to Honduran pride.

Over the next year Zelaya sought to convert Palmerola into a civilian airport but plans languished when the government was unable to attract international investors.  Finally in 2009 Zelaya announced that the Honduran armed forces would undertake construction.  To pay for the new project the President would rely on funding from ALBA [in English, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas] and Petrocaribe, two reciprocal trading agreements pushed by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez.  Predictably the Honduran right leapt on Zelaya for using Venezuelan funds.  Amílcar Bulnes, President of the Honduran Business Association [known by its Spanish acronym COHEP] said that Petrocaribe funds should not be used for the airport but rather for other, unspecified needs.

A couple weeks after Zelaya announced that the armed forces would proceed with construction at Palmerola the military rebelled.  Led by Romeo Vásquez, the army overthrew Zelaya and deported him out of the country.  In the wake of the coup U.S. peace activists visited Palmerola and were surprised to find that the base was busy and helicopters were flying all around.  When activists asked American officials if anything had changed in terms of the U.S.-Honduran relationship they were told “no, nothing.”

The Honduran elite and the hard right U.S. foreign policy establishment had many reasons to despise Manuel Zelaya as I’ve discussed in previous articles.  The controversy over the Palmerola airbase however certainly gave them more ammunition.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008)

Nicholas Negroponte is at it again, giving an interview in Singapore and discussing the major failings of the OLPC project.  I was struck by one thing that he said:

Putting a crank-shaft on the XO laptop was a mistake, but the biggest mistake was not having Sugar run as an application “on a vanilla Linux laptop”, said OLPC founder and chairman Nicholas Negroponte.

“Sugar should have been an application [residing] on a normal operating system,” he told ZDNet Asia in an interview. “But what we did…was we had Sugar do the power management, we had Sugar do the wireless management–it became sort of an omelet. The Bios talked directly with Sugar, so Sugar became a bit of a mess.”

After spending several years working in IT as a career I have learned that there is at times a disconnect between the words of management and the actual inner workings of a product.  This looked funny to me so I wondered what the actual people working behind the scenes thought of this.  Turns out Sugar wasn’t as bad as advertised:

Here’s the problem: through a somewhat regrettable set of naming decisions, the name “Sugar” came to represent two entirely different things. It was the name for the new learning-oriented graphical interface that OLPC was building, but it was also the name for the entire XO operating system, one tiny part of which was Sugar the GUI, and the rest of which was mostly Fedora Linux.

Nicholas, evidently, still remains blissfully unaware of any of this. As is plain to see from his own words, what he considers to be the biggest mistake of the project has nothing to do with Sugar the GUI, and everything to do with the gross, hairy, complicated systems development work that OLPC was doing to support the XO’s special hardware features. And to be clear, I mean “short bus special”, not “shiny unicorn special”.

Let me explain something to you. For most of OLPC’s existence, we had about two guys working on Sugar the UI. They were GUI developers, with GNOME backgrounds. They were not at all the same people doing systems development work to support our hardware. No resources were taken away from systems development to do Sugar. If Sugar hadn’t happened at all, we would have still had to do all the systems work to get Linux working on the XO, and it would have still taken just as long. So if you’re looking for things to blame, Sugar is not the droid you are looking for.

In truth, the XO ships a pretty shitty operating system, and this fact has very little to do with Sugar the GUI. It has a lot to do with the choice of incompetent hardware vendors that provided half-assedly built, unsupported and unsupportable components with broken closed-source firmware blobs that OLPC could neither examine nor fix.

So we wound up with a keyboard whose keys get stuck. A dual-mode touchpad, capacitive and resistive, where one mode doesn’t work at all, and the other makes the cursor spontaneously jump around and sometimes shuts off the touchpad altogether, prompting OLPC kernel developers to beg for saner hardware in the next round. We had board engineering issues that made power management practically impossible. We had a custom display controller chip that was incomplete in some regards, and completely broken in others. We had an embedded controller that blocks keyboard events and stops machine suspend, and to which we — after a long battle — received the source, under strict NDA, only to find a jungle of nested if statements, twelve levels deep, and no code history. (The company that wrote the code doesn’t use version control, see. They put dates into code comments when they make changes, and the developers mail each other zip files with new versions.) And we had a wireless chip that is so far beyond fucked, it’s just about funny.

(Each of those words is a different link. Click them all, I dare you.)

Thinking back, there’s a hardware incident I remember particularly fondly: one of our vendors sent us a kernel driver patch which enhanced support for their component in our machine. They chose to implement the enhancement by setting up a hole which allowed any unprivileged user to take over the kernel, prompting our kernel guy to send a private e-mail to the OLPC tech team demanding that, in the future, we avoid buying hardware from companies whose programmers are, direct quote, “crack-smoking hobos”.

In the end, Nicholas’ bit of interview nonsense just doesn’t pass the smell test. Customers aren’t stupid. There’s close to a million XOs out there; if Sugar was OLPC’s biggest mistake, Windows on the XO would be selling like hotcakes. Let me remind you, then, that the number of Windows-based XOs that OLPC has sold is exactly zero.

So next time you hear Nicholas break out the egg metaphors and wave his hands about the Sugar that doomed it all, shrug and smile. Hell, If I were a meaner person, I’d ask Nicholas why it is that Windows — you know, the Windows from Microsoft, mercifully unstained with the mistake of Sugar — can’t even shut down an XO without throwing up a blue screen of death.

I honestly don’t know what to say to this.  It’s a shame that the top down management style of the OLPC project nearly killed it.  I remember sitting around with my IT buddies excited about the future of Sugar and the XO laptop.  To be honest, most of us have moved on to something else.  What a shame…

* The Department of State had prior knowledge of the coup.

* The Department of State and the US Congress funded and advised the actors and organizations in Honduras that participated in the coup.

* The Pentagon trained, schooled, commanded, funded and armed the Honduran armed forces that perpetrated the coup and that continue to repress the people of Honduras by force.

* The US military presence in Honduras, that occupies the Soto Cano (Palmerola) military base, authorized the coup d’etat through its tacit complicity and refusal to withdraw its support of the Honduran military involved in the coup.

* The US Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Hugo Llorens, coordinated the removal from power of President Manuel Zelaya, together with Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon y John Negroponte, who presently works as an advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

* From the first day the coup occurred, Washington has referred to “both parties” involved and the necessity for “dialogue” to restore constitutional order, legitimizing the coup leaders by regarding them as equal players instead of criminal violators of human rights and democratic principles.

* The Department of State has refused to legally classify the events in Honduras as a “coup d’etat”, nor has it suspended or frozen its economic aid or commerce to Honduras, and has taken no measures to effectively pressure the de facto regime.

* Washington manipulated the Organization of American States (OAS) in order to buy time, therefore allowing the coup regime to consolidate and weaken the possibility of President Zelaya’s immediate return to power, as part of a strategy still in place that simply seeks to legitimate the de facto regime and wear down the Honduran people that still resist the coup.

* Secretary of State Clinton and her spokesmen stopped speaking of President Zelaya’s return to power after they designated Costa Rican president Oscar Arias as the “mediator” between the coup regime and the constitutional government; and now the State Department refers to the dictator that illegally took power during the coup, Roberto Micheletti, as the “interim caretaker president”.

* The strategy of “negotiating” with the coup regime was imposed by the Obama administration as a way of discrediting President Zelaya – blaming him for provoking the coup – and legitimizing the coup leaders.

* Members of the US Congress – democrats and republicans – organized a visit of representatives from the coup regime in Honduras to Washington, receiving them with honors in different arenas in the US capital.

* Despite the fact that originally it was Republican Senator John McCain who coordinated the visit of the coup regime representatives to Washington through a lobby firm connected to his office, The Cormac Group, now, the illegal regime is being representated by top notch lobbyist and Clinton attorney Lanny Davis, who is using his pull and influence in Washington to achieve overall acceptance – cross party lines – of the coup regime in Honduras.

* Otto Reich and a Venezuelan named Robert Carmona-Borjas, known for his role as attorney for the dictator Pedro Carmona during the April 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela, aided in preparing the groundwork for the coup against President Zelaya in Honduras.

* The team designated from Washigton to design and help prepare the coup in Honduras also included a group of US ambassadors recently named in Central America, experts in destabilizing efforts against the Cuban revolution, and Adolfo Franco, ex administrator for USAID’s Cuba “transition to democracy” program.

No one doubts that the fingerprints of Washington are all over the coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya that began last June 28th. Many analysts, writers, activists and even presidents, have denounced this role. Nevertheless, the majority coincide in excusing the Obama Administration from any responsibility in the Honduran coup, blaming instead the lingering remains of the Bush-Cheney era and the war hawks that still pace the halls of the White House. The evidence demonstrates that while it is certain that the usual suspects who perpetrate coups and destabilization activities in Latin America are involved, ample proof exists confirming the direct role of the new administration in Washington in the Honduran coup.

The Department of State

The new form of diplomacy of the United States, known as “smart power”, has played a principal role before, during and after the coup in Honduras. During a press briefing on July 1, spokesmen for the Department of State admitted to having prior knowledge of the coup in Honduras, clarifying that US diplomats had been meeting with the groups and actors planning the coup to encourage a different “solution” to their discontent with President Zelaya. The State Department also confirmed that two high level representatives from the Department, which included Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelley, were in Honduras the week prior to the coup and maintained meetings with the civilian and military groups that later participated in the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected president. They state their mission was to “urge against” the coup, but evidently such verbal pressure was insufficient to discourage the actors involved in the coup, particularly considering the actions manifested by Washington contradicted those harsh words.

On the day of the coup, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published a statement regarding the situation in Honduras. Despite the fact that governments around the world were quickly condemning the actions as a coup d’etat, Clinton’s statement did not recognize the events in Honduras as a “coup d’etat” and also did not call for the return of President Zelaya to power. Curiously, Clinton’s statements from day one have referred to “all parties” of situation, legitimizing the coup leaders and somehow placing blame – publicly – on President Mel Zelaya for provoking his own overthrow: “The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all. We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue. Honduras must embrace the very principles of democracy we reaffirmed at the OAS meeting it hosted less than one month ago.”

And ever since, despite different references to a “coup” having occurred in Honduras, the Department of State has refused to legally classify what took place as a coup d’etat. By doing so, the US government would be obligated to suspend economic, diplomatic and military aid to Honduras, which apparently they are unwilling to do, since such a measure would substantially affect US interests in the Central American nation and the region. On July 1, the spokesmen for the State Department explained their wavering on the coup question: “In regard to the coup itself, I think it would just – it would be best to say that this was a coordinated effort between the military and some civilian political actors. Obviously, the military was the entity that conducted the forcible removal of the president and has acted as the securer of public order during this process. But for the coup to become more than an insurrection or a rebellion, you have to have an effort to transfer power. And in that regard, the congress – the congress’s decision to swear in its president, Micheletti, as the president of Honduras indicates that the congress and key members of that congress played an important role in this coup.”

This position of ambiguity, that condemns the events in Honduras as a violation of constitutional order but doesn’t go as far as classifying the situation as a coup d’etat and also doesn’t call for the reinstatement of President Zelaya to the presidency, was ratified again after the meeting held between Secretary of State Clinton and President Zelaya on July 7. Clinton made the following statement, “I just finished a productive meeting with President Zelaya. We discussed the events of the past nine days and the road ahead. I reiterated to him that the United States supports the restoration of the democratic constitutional order in Honduras. We continue to support regional efforts through the OAS to bring about a peaceful resolution that is consistent with the terms of the Inter-American Democratic Charter…We call upon all parties to refrain from acts of violence and to seek a peaceful, constitutional, and lasting solution to the serious divisions in Honduras through dialogue. To that end, we have been working with a number of our partners in the hemisphere to create a negotiation, a dialogue that could lead to a peaceful resolution of this situation.”

Now it was clear, after this meeting, that Washington would no longer consider Zelaya’s return to the presidency as a necessary solution but rather would lobby for a “negotiation” with the coup regime, that in the end, favors US interests. Sources that were present at the Organization of American States (OAS) meetings that took place after the coup affirm that the presence of a high-level US delegation intensified the pressure against other States to urge for a “negotiated” solution that didn’t necessarily imply the return to power of President Zelaya.

This method of circumventing the main issue, manipulating the outcome and attempting to appear as though one position has been assumed when in reality, actions demonstrate the contrary, forms part of the new Obama doctrine of “smart power”, which purports to achieve imperialist objectives without demonizing the government. “Smart Power” es “the capacity to combine ‘hard power’ with ‘soft power’ to achieve a victorious strategy. ‘Smart Power’ strategically uses diplomacy, persuasion, capacity building, military power and economic and political influence, in an effective way with a political and social legitimacy.” Essentially, it’s a mix of military force with all forms of diplomacy, with an emphasis in the use of “democracy promotion” as a principal tactic to strongy influence the destiny of societies, instead of a military invasion. [Note: Beware that “smart power” places an emphasis on the use of agencies like USAID and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to do the ‘dirty work’ of silently penetrating and infiltrating civil society organizations in order to promote a US agenda. This explains Obama’s call for an additional $320 million in “democracy promotion” funds for the 2010 budget just for use in Latin America. This is substantially a higher sum than the quantity requested and used in Latin America for “democracy promotion” by the Bush administration in its 8 years of government combined.]

The Ambassador

Journalist Jean-Guy Allard has revealed the origens of the current US Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens . Per Allard, Hugo Llorens, a Cuban national from birth who arrived in the United States as part of Operation Peter Pan, is “a specialist in terrorism…In 2002, George W. Bush’s White House strategically placed the astute Llorens as Director of Andean Affairs at the National Security Council in Washington, D.C., which converted him into the principle advisor to the President on Venezuela. The coup d’etat in 2002 against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez occured during Llorens’ tenure, who was working together with Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich, and the very controversial Elliot Abrams. In July 2008, Llorens was named Ambassador to Honduras.”

On June 4, 2009, just weeks before the coup d’etat against President Zelaya, Ambassador Llorens declared to the Honduran press that “…One can’t violate the Constitution in order to create another Constitution, because if one doesn’t respect the Constitution, then we all live under the law of the jungle.” Those declarations were made in reference to the national opinion survey on the possibility of convening a constitutional convention during 2010, that would have taken place on June 28th if the coup d’etat against President Zelaya hadn’t occured. The commentaries made by Llorens evidence not only his position against the survey, but also his interference in the internal affairs of Honduras.

But Llorens wasn’t alone in the region. After his nomination as US Ambassador in Honduras – position that he was assigned to due to the urgent necessity to neutralize the growing presence of leftist governments in the region and impede the regional potency of ALBA – several other US ambassadors were also named in neighboring nations, all experts in destabilizing the Cuban revolution and executing psychological warfare.

The diplomat Robert Blau arrived first to the US Embassy in El Salvador, on July 2, 2008, named as second in command. In January 2009, Blau became the Charge d’Affairs at the Embassy. Before arriving to El Salvador, Blau was Subdirector of Cuban Affairs at the Department of State in Washington, after working for two years at the US Interests Section in Havana, Cuba, as a Political Counselor. His work with Cuban dissidents was so successful that Blau was honored with the Department of State James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence. Llorens and Blau were old friends, after working together as part of Otto Reich’s team in the State Department.

Soon after, Stephen McFarland was named as US Ambassador in Guatemala, on August 5, 2008. McFarland, a graduate of the National War College in the US, similar to Hugo Llorens and Robert Blau, and also a former member of Combat Team Number 2 of the US Marines in Iraq, was the second in command at the US Embassy in Venezuela during William Brownfield’s tenure. Brownfield is known for achieving a substantial increase in State Department funding and strategic support for the Venezuelan opposition. After Venezuela, McFarland was sent to the US Embassy in Paraguay to oversee the construction of the large US military base in that country that borders Bolivia. McFarland was also Director of Cuban Affairs at the State Department and his resumé claims he is an expert in “democratic transitions, human rights and security matters.”

Ambassador Robert Callahan arrived to Managua, Nicaragua, also at the beginning of August. Callahan has worked at the US embassies in La Paz, Bolivia, and San José, Costa Rica, and was a distinguished professor at the National War College. In 2004, he was sent to Iraq as press attaché at the US Embassy in Baghdad. Upon his return, he established the press and propaganda office at the newly created Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI) in Washington, which today is the most powerful entity in the US intelligence community.

Together, these ambassadors – experts in coup d’etats, destabilization and propaganda – prepared the terrain for the coup against President Zelaya in Honduras.

Funding the coup leaders

Just one month before the coup against President Zelaya occured, a coalition of different organizations, business associations, political parties, high level members of the Catholic Church and private media outlets, was formed in opposition to Zelaya’s policies. The coalition was called the “Democratic Civil Union of Honduras”. It’s only objective was to oust President Zelaya from power in order to impede the future possibility of a constitutional convention to reform the constitution, which would allow the people a voice and a role in their political process.

The “Democratic Civil Union of Honduras” is composed of organizations including the National Anticorruption Council, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP), Council of University Deans, Worker’s Federation of Honduras (CTH), National Convergence Forum, National Federation of Commerce and Industry of Honduras (FEDECAMARA), Association of Communication Media (AMC), the Group Peace & Democracy and the student group Generation for Change.

The majority of these organizations have been the beneficiaries of the more than $50 million annually disbursed by USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for “democracy promotion” in Honduras. In fact, a USAID report regarding its funding and work with COHEP, described how the “low profile maintained by USAID in this project helped ensure the credibility of COHEP as a Honduran organization and not an arm of USAID.” Which basically means that COHEP is, actually, an arm of USAID.

The spokespeople for the Democratic Civil Union of Honduras representing, according to them, “civil society”, declared to the Honduran press on June 23rd – five days before the coup took place against President Zelaya – that they “trust the armed forces will comply with their responsibility to defend the Constitution, the Law, peace and democracy.” When the coup took place on June 28th, they were the first to immediately claim that a coup had not occured, but rather “democracy had been saved” from the hands of President Zelaya, whose crime was to attempt to give voice and visibility to the people. Representing the biased middle and upperclasses, the Democratic Civil Union has qualified Zelaya’s supporters as “hoards”.

The International Republican Institute (IRI), entity that receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), received more than $1.2 million in 2009 to work with political groups in Honduras. IRI’s work has been dedicated to supporting “think tanks” and “pressure groups” to influence political parties and “support initiatives to implement political positions during the campaigns in 2009.” This is a clear example of intervention in the internal politics of Honduras and evidence of NED and IRI funding to those groups involved in the coup.

The Washington Lobby

Republican Senator John McCain, ex US presidential, helped coordinate the visit of a coup regime delegation to Washington last week. McCain is well known for his opposition to governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries in the region considered “anti-imperialist”. McCain also maintains very close ties to the Cuban exile community in Miami. McCain is also Chairman of the Board of the International Republican Institute (IRI) that has funded the coup participants in Honduras. McCain offered the services of a lobby firm in Washington, closely tied to him, the Cormac Group, that organized a press conference for the coup regime delegation at the National Press Club on June 7th. McCain also helped set up several meetings in Congress with the traditional Cuban-American representatives and those general “Chávez-haters”, such as Connie Mack, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mel Martinez.

But beyond the Republican connection to the Honduran coup regime, there is a even more damning link to the current Democrat administration in Washington. Lawyer Lanny Davis was hired by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) to lobby in favor of the coup regime and convince the powers in Washington to accept and recognize the de facto government in Honduras. Lanny Davis was special counsel to ex President Bill Clinton from 1996-1998 and he is a close friend and advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Davis is organizing a diplomatic offensive and public relations blitz in favor of the coup regime, including the strategic placement of advertisements in important US media that seek to legitimize the de facto Honduran government, and he is organizing meetings and hearings with members of Congress, the State Department and the White House. CEAL represents the conservative business community in Latin America, including those that have promoted and participated in previous attempts to oust democratic governments via coup d’etats and/or other forms of sabotage. For example, the Venezuelan representative of CEAL is Marcel Granier, president of RCTV, the television station that heavily participated in the 2002 coup against President Chávez and that consistently has violated Venezuelan law in order to promote its political agenda.

As part of this offensive, Lanny Davis arranged a special hearing before the House Foreign Relations Committee, attended by high level members of Congress and overseen by Democrat Elliot Engel (congressman from New York). Testimonies were given at the hearing by representatives of the coup regime from Honduras and others who have supported the coup – directly and indirectly – such as Michael Shifter from the InterAmerican Dialogue, Guillermo Pérez-Cadalso, ex Honduran Foreign Minister and Supreme Court Judge, and the infamous Otto Reich, a Cuban-American well-known for his role in the majority of destabilization activities against leftist and progressive governments in Latin America throughout the eighties. Reich, who was named Special Advisor on Latin America to President George W. Bush, also played a key role in the 2002 coup against President Chávez. As a result of this hearing, the US Congress is currently trying to pass a resolution that recognizes the coup regime in Honduras as a legitimate government.

Another consequence of Lanny Davis’ lobbying efforts was the meeting arranged in the Council of the Americas Washington office on June 9th. This event included the participation of Jim Swigert, Director of Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean for the National Democratic Institute (NDI), entity that receives its funding from NED & USAID, Cris Arcos, former US Ambassador to Honduras, and Adolfo Franco, ex USAID Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the director of the “transition to democracy” program for Cuba. These three characters are working as advisors to the Obama administration on the Honduran crisis. Franco, who was previously advisor on foreign policy to John McCain during his presidential campaign in 2008, has been accused of corruption for his mismanagement of USAID funds destined for the Cuba “democracy” program. Franco diverted a large quantity of these funds, totaling over $40 million, to groups such as the Committee for a Free Cuba and the Institute for Cuban Studies in Miami, without adhering to a transparent process of funds disbursement.

Negroponte and Reich, again

Many analysts and specialists on Latin American have speculated on the role of former Ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte, who directed the paramilitary forces and death squads known as the “Contra” against leftist movements in Central America during the 1980s. Negroponte held various high level positions during the Bush administration, including US Ambassador to Iraq, US Ambassador to the United Nations, National Director of Intelligence and lastly, Subsecretary of State, second only to Condoleezza Rice. After leaving the Department of State in January 2009, Negroponte entered the private sector, as is custom amongst former top government officials. He was offered a job as Vicepresident at the most influential and powerful consulting firm in Washington, McLarty Associates. Negroponte accepted the job. McLarty Associates was founded by Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton and also Clinton’s Special Envoy to Latin America. Since the end of the Clinton administration, McLarty has managed the most powerful strategic consulting firm in Washington, which until just last year, was called Kissinger-McLarty Associates due to the merging of Thomas McLarty and Henry Kissinger. This partnership clearly evidenced the bi-partisan unions that truly craft the most important policies in Washington.

In his new role, John Negroponte presently works as Advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Remember, the current US Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, has worked closely under Negroponte’s domain during the majority of his career. So it would not be a far jump to consider that John Negroponte, expert in crushing leftist movements in Central America, has played a role in the current coup against President Zelaya in Honduras.

Otto Reich has also been investing his energy during the last couple of years in a campaign against President Zelaya. The Honduran president actually threatened to sue Reich for defamation in April 2009, after Reich accused President Zelaya of stealing $100 million from the state-owned telecommunications company, Hondutel. These accustations were never backed by evidence, and the truth was revealed soon after that explained Reich’s interest in Hondutel. Through his consulting and lobbying firm, Otto Reich Associates, the Cuban-American was representing a multinational corporation that was pushing for the privatization of Hondutel, a move that Zelaya opposed. With President Zelaya out of the picture now, Reich is able to pursue the multi-million dollar deal.

Reich also co—founded an organization in Washington named Arcadia Foundation together with a Venezuelan, Robert Carmona-Borjas, a lawyer specialized in military law who is linked to the April 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela, per his own resumé. Robert Carmona-Borjas was in the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, together with the dictator Pedro Carmona, on the days of the coup, from April 11-12, 2002, and escaped, together with Carmona, when the palace was retaken by the presidential guard and constitutional order was restored. He later fled to the United States after he was brought up on charges for his role in the coup d’etat in Venezuela, and became a university professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (nice to see the warm welcome coup leaders and violators of democracy receive in the United States). Since last year, Reich and Carmona-Borjas have been conducting a campaign against President Zelaya, accusing him of corruption and limiting private property rights. Through the Arcadia Foundation, they created a series of video clips that have been shown in different media, attempted to portray Zelaya as a corrupt president who violates the basic rights of the Honduran people.

Carmona-Borjas has traveled frequently to Honduras during the last few months, and even held public meetings where the coup against Zelaya was discussed openly. At one encounter where Carmona-Borjas was present, the Honduran Public Defender, Ramón Custodia, who was involved in the coup d’etat, declared to the press that “Coups are a possibility and can occur in any political environment.” After the coup took place, Robert Carmona-Borjas appeared at a rally in support of the de facto regime, on July 3rd, and received the honors and applause from the coup leaders who declared him “an important actor” that “helped make possible” the removal from power of President Zelaya and the installment of the dictator Roberto Micheletti as de facto president.

Military Power

The United States maintains a large military presence in Honduras in the Soto Cano (Palmerola) base, located about 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa, that has been actively operating since 1981, when it was heavily occupied by the Reagan Administration and used for its operations in Central America.

During the eighties, Soto Cano was used by Colonel Oliver North as a base of operations of the “Contra”, the paramilitary forces trained, armed and funded by the CIA, and charged with executing warfare against all leftist movements in Central America, with particular focus on the neighboring Sandinista government in Nicaragua. From Soto Cano, the “Contra” launched terrorist attacks, psychological warfare (overseen by Otto Reich’s Office for Public Diplomacy), death squads and special covert missions that resulted in the assassination of tens of thousands of farmers and civilians, thousands of disappeared, tortured, wounded and terrorized all throughout the region.

John Negroponte, US Ambassador at the time in Honduras, together with Oliver North and Otto Reich, directed and oversaw these dirty operations. They later became involved in the Iran-Contra scandal once the US Congress cut the funding for the paramilitary groups and death squads used by the Reagan Administration to neutralize the leftist movements in the region, and the Negroponte-North-Reich team sold arms to Iran to continue funding their covert operations.

The Soto Cano base houses the US Joint Task Force-Bravo military group, composed of members from the Army, Air Force, joint security forces and the First Batallion Regiment 228 of the US Air Force. The current total presence of US forces on the base numbers approximately 600, and includes 18 combat planes, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, used for special warfare operations. The Honduran Aviation Academy is also located on the Soto Cano Base. More than 650 Honduran and US citizens also live inside the base installations.

The Honduran Constitution does not permit legally the presence of foreign military in the country. A “handshake” agreement was made between Washington and Honduras authorizing the “semi-permanent” important and strategic presence of hundreds – at times thousands – of US military personnel on the base. The agreement was made in 1954, in exchange for the multi-million dollar aid the US provides to the Honduran armed forces, which ranges from training programs, arms and military equipment and joint exercises and operations that take place on the ground in Honduras. The base was first employed by the US military and CIA to launch the coup d’etat against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.

Each year, Washington authorizes hundreds of millions of dollars in military and economic aid to Honduras, which is the third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti and Nicaragua. This “exchange” securing the US military presence in the Central American nation can be terminated at any time by the Honduran government, without much notice.

On May 31, 2008, President Manuel Zelaya announced that Soto Cano (Palmerola) would be converted into an international civilian airport. The construction of the airport terminal would be financed with a fund from the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA – of which Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominique, Honduras, Nicaragua, St. Vicents, Antigua & Barbados and Venezuela are members). This obviously was a huge threat to the future US military presence in Honduras.

The two generals that have participated in key roles in the coup against President Zelaya are both graduates of the US School of the Americas, famous for training dictators, torturers and repressors in Latin America, and they maintain very close ties with the US military forces based in Honduras. The Commander of the Honduran Air Force, General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the famous School of the Americas in 1996. The Head of the Honduran High Military Command, General Romeo Vásquez, who was fired by President Zelaya on June 24, 2009, for disobeying the president’s orders, and later appeared as the principal actor in the military coup just days later, is also a graduate of the School of the Americas. These two high level military officers also maintain close contact with the Pentagon and the Southern Command.

The US Ambassador in Honduras through September 2008, when Hugo Llorens was appointed to the position, Charles Ford, was transferred from Honduras to the Southern Command in Florida and charged with providing “strategic advising” to the Pentagon about Latin America, a position he holds today.

The Honduran military are funded, trained, schooled and commanded by the US military. They have been indoctrinated with the anti-leftist, anti-socialist, pro-empire mentality since the beginning of the Cold War. The Generals and high level officers involved in the coup in Honduras have publicly stated that they were “obligated” to remove President Zelaya from power because of the “threat” he posed with his “leftist” ideology and alignment to socialist nations in the region such as Venezuela and Cuba. Per one Honduran colonel, “’We fought the subversive movements here and we were the only country that did not have a fratricidal war like the others…It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That’s impossible. I personally would have retired, because my thinking, my principles, would not have allowed me to participate in that.”.

All of the above evidence – and certainly more to come in the future – proves the undeniable role of Washington in the coup d’etat aginst President Zelaya in Honduras.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56331.shtml

“This weekend, the US seems destined for a replay of 2002’s Operation Chaotic Coup. Amid a stream of contradictory messages it is clear that last month’s putsch against Mr Zelaya was brewed up in Washington by a group of extreme conservatives from Venezuela, Honduras and the U.S. They appear to have hidden their plans from the White House, but hoped eventually to bounce President Obama into backing them and supporting the “interim president”. “

While watching the U.S. backed coup in Honduras, I was surprised to here so many people say “but Obama and Hillary denounced the Coup in support of Zelaya?”

Really? Who knows if he knew or not. According to this article, he apparently didn’t know.

So certain people in the U.S are, yet again, involved in yet another Coup where yet another Democratically elected Leader gets toppled at the will of some Large corporations.

“Financial backing for the coup is identified by some as coming from the pharmaceutical industry” and “others point to big companies in the telecommunications industry opposed to Hondutel, Honduras’s state-owned provider.”  

The article continues “A key figure is Robert Carmona-Borjas” who “runs Washington-based Arcadia”.

“Behind Arcadia are NED and the International Republican Institute(IRI), the well funded overseas arm of the Republican party”

And it just gets worse “The conservative minded Mrs Clinton retains John Negroponte” who “represented Bush at the U.N. and in Baghdad” and was attacked by Democratic Senator Chris Dodd in 2001 for drawing a veil over atrocities committed in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, by Military forces trained by the US, Mr Dodd claimed that the forces had been “linked to death squad activities such as killings, disappearances and other human rights abuses”" 

It’s getting harder and harder for groups or the US government directly to topple other governments because of the heightened awareness of illegal US activity throughout the world. And also, because in many ways, the US is no longer all powerful. Latin America is going more and more to the left (…hence the reason for the attempted coups in Venezuela and now Honduras). Most of these countries are kicking out US companies, and nationalizing their lands resources – and according to the US – those resources are US interests and America will defend those interests no matter what, because America is an Empire, and we are it’s lowly minions. 

Latin Americans are well aware of what’s happening 

Here’s a cluster of stuff I’ve been reading on recent developments in internet regulation and media law (I’m reviewing the new Cass Sunstein book, so I was inspired). An older WSJ piece on homelessness and internet access; a Wired article on the future of Pirate Bay as a legal enterprise (really?); and an overview of Sunstein’s rather disturbing views on regulation, and how they may play out if he’s confirmed as regulatory czar.

Also, and thankfully, for those concerned about civil liberties and online censorship, the Lori Drew verdict was overturned on Thursday.

For a bit of background info, I refer you to the writings of Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, and generally the guy who foresaw our current technological conditions fifteen years ago. Enjoy.

Quest’anno, tra i temi proposti per i temi di maturità, anche l’Anno UE della Creatività e Innovazione 2009. Nella tipologia B degli argomenti (ambito socio-economico), come saggio breve o articolo di giornale, è stato chiesto agli studenti di dare il proprio contributo riflessivo su questo importante appuntamento, aiutati dalle opinioni e dalle presentazioni di G. De Paola (L’Europa al servizio della conoscenza, Nòva, 15 gennaio 2009), dalla “Proposta di decisione del Parlamento Europeo e del Consiglio relativa all’Anno europeo della creatività e dell’innovazione (2009)”, di A. Testa (Sette suggestioni per il 2009, www.nuovoeutile.it), di S. Carrubba (Contro le lobby anti-innovazione, Il Sole 24 Ore, 18 maggio 2003) e del capo del MIT N. Negroponte

versione italiana

Un buen amigo me hizo conocer las TED Conferences hace un año.

Existen desde 1983, y desde 1990 tienen lugar cada año: personajes de releve, mentes privilegiadas, gente que tiene algo que decir es invitada a hablar -uno de los requisitos es que no pueden vender nada. Los asistentes van por invitación -y después de haber pagado una entrada consistente.

Muchas de las Conferences se encuentran en YouTube, se pueden descargar en iTunes en podcast, y se pueden ver (con mejor definición) en el sitio oficial.

Algunas de mis favoritas:

Photosynth demo – Blaise Aguera habla de Photosynth, un software que crea imágenes tridimensionales desde imágenes digitales. Yo lo explico mal, entiendo la mitad de lo que significa, pero mirando el video me he quedado boquiaberta.

Why design? – Philippe Starck y el design, por qué lo hace, su evolución, qué es importante y qué no… Será porque él puede permitírselo, pero es extremadamente humilde.

What we can learn from spaghetti sauce – El marketing, los gustos de la gente, el plato platónico, y las perfectas salsas de tomate. Malcolm Gladwell escribe en el New Yorker artículos estupendos que se pueden leer también en su sitio, y publica libros que aún no he leído pero ya sé que me gustan. Con ese pelo y esas manos puede hacer lo que quiera, yo le quiero.

Rives controls the Internet – Rives, slam poetry, mi primera vez. Aún sin saber inglés se aprecia la afabulación. “If I owned the Internet, you could mail dead people”.

Negroponte nel 1984 – Prehistoria: Negroponte habla de teletexo, pantallas táctiles, videoconferencias, hipertexto (pero alguien aún habla de ello, del hipertexto? Una gran ocasión echada a perder…), el ordenador como medio y no como fin… nada de Power Point, claro, sino diapositivas cargadas en grandes discos (laser disc?). Descubro que era muy crítico on el ratón del Macintosh…