Svart-Vita huset

Det tog exakt 43 presidenter[1], men igår var det äntligen dags. Vita huset har fått en svart president. En som lovar förändring. Och vad det verkar så är det verklig förändring, inte bara ytlig sådan. Det handlar om utsträckta händer till den muslimska världen, en mer kritisk hållning gentemot Israel och en vandring från krig och segregation till gemenskap.

“… we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.” – President Obamas installationstal

Religiöst.

På ett bra sätt.

Men samtidigt, jag kan inte låta bli att undra om han lovar för mycket. Han talar mycket om verkligheten, på ett nyktert sätt, men nu ska han in i administrationen och möta en verklighet som inte alltid är så nykter. Ofta förvrängd till oigenkännlighet – av just religion.

Men kanske att det finns en öppning. För långt större än den utsträckta handen mot den muslimska världen är kanske det faktum att Obama inte bara vänder sig till nationens kristna, muslimer, judar och hinduer. Han vänder dig också, hör och häpna, till de icke-troende. Det kanske varken låter konstigt eller särskilt radikalt, men nog är det ett ovanligt drag från en amerikansk president. Ett som verkar generera en del diskussion.

Ja, till och med ateister får vara med. Tack Barack.

Som en liten sidonotis vill jag bara nämna det antal gånger Barack Obama nämnde några olika begrepp i det installationstal som handlade om att möte den nya tidens utmaningar:

Klimat / Global uppvärmning – 0
Olja/fossil energi – 0
Miljö – 0
Förnybar – 0
Fattigdom – 0
Globala matkrisen – 0

Obama talar om dessa ämnen, men nämner aldrig orden. Om det första steget till att lösa ett problem är att kalla det vid dess rätta namn så har vi långt att gå.

“For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.”

1. Jag vet, Barack Obama är USA:s 44:e president, men USA:s första president, George Washington, bodde aldrig i vita huset.

What more can I say? I’m amazed. Encryption up next I guess…

Vad gör du om du vill vinna en debatt? Det första du måste göra är att skaffa dig rätt motståndare. Du kan inte vinna en debatt mot hela svenska folket. Nej, du behöver en liten grupp personer, som få identifierar sig med, och som du kan göra till din huvudmotståndare. När du sedan sänkt denna motståndares trovärdighet har du vunnit debatten.

Vem är det som åker på Dreamhack? Ok, jag vet – och du som läser vet säkert också – det kan ju nästan vara vem som helst med lite datorintresse. Men det kvittar, för den bild som gemene man har av vilka som åker på ett event som Dreamhack spelar oändligt mycket större roll. Fördomsprofilen står klar för de flesta – finniga killar i tonåren som sitter det mesta av sitt dygn framför datorn och inmundigar pizza och amerikanska drycker. En fördomsprofil som väldigt många människor (inklusive många Dreamhack-deltagare) inte gärna vill bli förknippade med.

Men den där nervösa FRA-personalen som kom dit, bara villa sköta sitt jobb, och blev utbuad från scenen. Honom kan man iallafall identifiera sig med.

Det var inte länge sedan FRA debatterades i SVT:s debatt. Josefsson gjorde enligt mig sin sämsta insats någonsin just den kvällen. Han började med att utmåla Dennis Töllborg som den trovärdiga parten, professorn i rättvetenskap som sågade FRA-kritikerna. Sedan fortsatte han konsekvent att ge Töllborg utrymme, medan han mest lyfte fram skolungdomar som kritikerna. Dessutom hade han lyft in ett par pro-FRA-bloggare som fick vittna om hur de blivit påhoppade för sin åsikt.

Som bortglömda är de tunga kritikerna.

Inte vill väl FRA ha Advokatsamfundet eller bilden av tystade borgerliga riksdagsledamöter i folks sinnen när de tänker poå FRA. Inte vill de väl att folk tänker på att samtliga politiska ungdomsförbund ställt sig mot lagen, eller att hela den politiska oppositionen gjort detsamma. Eller vad sägs om Amnesty, Centrum för Rättvisa, Svenska Journalistförbundet, Tidningsutgivarna, European Federation of Journalists som också tagit ställning mot lagen. Eller vad sägs om tankesmedjorna Timbro och Arena är överens för en gångs skull – mot FRA.

Just nu har tyvärr FRA precis den motståndare de vill.

IPRED painkiller ad

There’s a lot of discussion about the Swedish Ipred implementation. Basically, the government want to allow rights holders to be able to sent threatening letters to people downloading copyrighted material, outsourcing law enforcement to private interests.

Here’s my favorite contribution so far – the Green Youth of Sweden edited the well known “Ipren” ad, as seen to the right.

Ipred
Unintelligence 400mg
Stops technological development and cultural exchange. Reduces integrity.

For politicians out of touch with reality

As far as I’m concerned, the most disturbing aspect of the new law is that it will make investigation of child pornography and other serious crimes on the Internet harder. Apparently, copyright laws must be implemented and defended at any prize whatsoever. If you thought that the media industry comparing file sharing with stealing cars was too unrealistic for anyone to really agree, think again. If you press the download button, you’d better think twice – to some you’re worse of a criminal than child pornographers or basically any other criminal on the net. You’re the lowest of low.

I’ll have that pain killer now, thanks!

Yesterday I found this web page. If you don’t understand Swedish, it’s an page from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, announcing their ‘FUD-program 2007′, about nuclear power and the final storage of nuclear waste. Being the nerd that I am, I found it hilarious. Now, ofc the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority isn’t spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about nuclear safety. (Although maybe they should, considering the risks associated) No, FUD in this case means ‘Research, Development, Demonstration’ (In Swedish: Forskning, Utveckling, Demonstration).

Maybe this is an attempt from some nerdy swedish public emplyee to alert people on what’s really going on in the Swedish authority. No matter what, their bad choise of abbreviation deserves some attention, just for the fun of it.

Some interesting facts about Swedish nuclear power:

• We produce the most nuclear power in the world per capita
• We have some of the best prerequisites for renewable energy in the world
• We have better prerequisites for wind power than Germany has, but produces about 5% as much wind power as does Germany
• We use about 3 times as much electricity per capita as most European countries
• About half of our electricity comes from nuclear power
• Liberal (at least that’s what they call themselves) politicians in Swe demands that we build new nuclear power plants
• It takes about 20 seconds to switch a light bulb into a more energy efficient one
• It takes at least 20 years to build a new nuclear power plant

Since there is no way of knowing if my e-mails are passing a border on their way to their destination (unless they’re destinated to a foreign server, then I can be sure) we all have to work on the supposition that the government is eavesdropping.

I’ll be spending my two last days of my digital freedom researching ways to encrypt e-mails and telling friends about it. Meanwhile, here’s a few hints:

Enigmail
GnuPG
CAcert

There should be no dubt that these money, spent in a sustainable way, could make a world of difference. As are they today, only in the wrong direction. They are the reason our seas are being emptied on fish, food production in poor countries is destroyed and gasoline in the US is cheaper than bottled water.

PS. James Martin claims that Norman Myers has come up with a figure of about $2 trillion annually. All I could find was the one above from 1998, presenting about $500 billion less than James Martin. If anyone can find a more recent study, that would be helpful.

“Catastrophes can wake up governments snarled in bureaucracy. A month after the Pearl Harbor attack, president Roosevelt gave the most extraordinary address to the nation. He announced huge targets for armament production. “Our task is hard. Our task is unprecedented. And the time is short. We must strain every armament-producing facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes all the way from the greatest plats to the smallest – from the huge automobile industry to the village machine shop.” He stopped car production almost immediately. For nearly three years there were almost no cars produced in the USA” – James Martin, 2006

Humanity’s ability to ignore threats is breathtaking. Scientists can keep throwing warnings at us for years without actions being taken. Usually, things don’t start to change until the catastrophe’s already happened, and then, sometimes, it’s too late.

During the cold war, we built 75,000 nuclear warheads, enough to destroy every city on the planet a hundred times over. The threat of a nuclear all-out war is still very real, and it could happen by accident. We know that such a war would annihilate humanity, but still we fail to dismantle those atomic bombs.

In Newfoundland, the cod population collapsed due to an over sized fishing fleet. The same thing is happening in Europe, but still we do little to stop it.

Global warming will change life as we know it, within a generation. Still, the only result from UN’s global climate conference in Bali this year, was a declaration that we all gotta do something. All objectives for national initiatives we’re postponed. We know we have to make a radical change now, but the rich countries haven’t seen enough of the catastrophe to make a change.

Here’s what the Roosevelt of the 21st century should be saying (and doing):

“Our task is hard. Our task is unprecedented. And the time is short. We must strain every nuclear-dismantling facility to the utmost. We must convert every available plant and tool to environmentally sustainable production. That goes all the way from the greatest plats to the smallest – from the automobile industry to the fishing industry.”

Todays leaders are cowards! They won’t sacrifice a gram of comfortability to save humanities future. Catastrophes happens for a reason – usually because people choose not listen or not to act upon knowledge. With humankind being stronger that ever, carrying the tools to destroy ourselves, we risk everything if we don’t change the catastrophe-first pattern.

But still, while greens are typically not much better at using free software that the average joe, I’d say they are more supportive and curious about it. How come? What is it about green ideology that says free software is a good idea? Environmentalism? Liberalism? Global solidarity?

The greens often claims that the main dividing line in politics is not the (somewhat outdated) left to right scale. Instead, they say the real divide is between large and small scale solutions; mono culture vs. diversity. And for the greens diversity is not only about the ecosystem, but also about social security, education, democracy and economics. And dare I say – technology.

And when you think about it – what makes the Internet as an architecture stable is the same thing that makes our ecosystem stable. Mono cultures may be more effective, but they are also extremely much more vulnerable. That goes for ICT as well as growing crops; similarity brings vulnerability and diversity brings stability. And the same goes for software. Everyone using the same software, owned by Microsoft, is just as bad as every farmer using the same seed corn, owned by Monsanto. And even if there are a couple of Monsantos or Microsofts out there, surely it’s better if the farmers or computer users can control their own seed corn/software, resulting in more variation.

Free Software is very much about diversity and about stability. Non-free Software is about mono culture and vulnerability. That should make free software an obvious choice for green parties all over the world. Next stop – Global Greens Congress in São Paulo, 2008? The step is not all that long, they’ve already got some credibility from running Drupal on their website!

“A transition, unique in human history will occur.
If the transition goes well, humanity has a magnificent future. If it goes badly, we may be thrown into a new Dark Age or worse.”

Into my mind pops this article. A group, calling themselves The Wild Growing Collective, are advocating Anarcho-primitivism; a civilization critical ideology proposing a return to the “non-civilized” era of hunting and gathering.

It is easy, and very tempting, to dismiss the anarko-primitivists. For the humankind to live like hunters and gatherers we need to decrease the global population by about 99%. Just think about the path there for a while…

Still, I know the primitivists have no viable solution for the global problems, but I can’t help to think… How come people seeing a Mad Max apocalyptic scenario in the future get so little respect when people seeing the Star Trek colonizing-space scenario get so much? How come Christer Fuglesang gets away with saying that colonizing space could be a good alternative with all the environmental problems on earth, like global warming. Moving onto other planets isn’t a very realistic alternative for six billion people either. In fact, it’s a far worse solution than just returning to hunters and gatherers. Really! How are we supposed to manage life on other planets if we can’t handle it on earth – a planet so optimal that life emerged on it’s own?

So, still waiting for the solution? Maybe that’s just the problem, people waiting for the easy solution. The truth is that the solutions aren’t easy. They require us to use the best of civilizations knowledge, but not to once again increase our consumption of natural resources, but to decrease it. They require us to adapt our economy to the reality of ecology. They require us to base the most critical decisions of mankind on what world we want our children to live in – not quarterly reports.

And we all have to play a part, sooner or later. It starts with you or it ends with you, your choice!