I work for the Free Software Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to advancing the cause of computer user freedom. Free Software is software that you can run for any purpose, where you have the freedom to change and improve the underlying source code, and where you have the freedom to make copies of the software and give copies to your friends or the entire world.



We live in an era where most of our correspondence, retrieval of political information and much of our purchasing and media consumption happens through our computers. Consider what it would mean for society if proprietary software corporations or governments had unfettered control over these activities. Individual liberty would be curtailed and the health of our democracy would suffer. Maybe you can begin to see why this work would attract someone like me.

Last week, I spent half a day at the Moakley Courthouse in South Boston in support of Vijay Shah, the friend of a friend, who had pressed forward with a lawsuit against the Secret Service after he was racially profiled and illegally detained on the day prior to the start of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in 2004.

Two strands of argument are most commonly deployed in official US pronouncements. The most common one is that “we were attacked on 9/11.” The follow-up argument is that the US is in Afghanistan in order to build up a stable regime that can subdue the Taliban. The Taliban is targeted principally for its supposed complicity with the 9/11 attacks (“harboring” Osama bin Laden) and secondarily, or so it is claimed, on the grounds of its (undisputed) extreme subjugation of women.



Forcible US intervention into Afghan affairs began not in October 2001, but in July 1979, when the US enlisted radical Islamists under bin Laden (a Saudi national) to overthrow a recently installed secularist regime (supported by the Soviet Union) which had offended the Islamists by outlawing child-marriage and bride-purchase and by requiring that public education be extended to women (see William Blum, Killing Hope, 338-52).

Six thousand new jobs are coming to Massachusetts. We need them. But will they be good jobs?



Not unless we make the fast-growing home weatherization field a high-road industry.



The home weatherization industry in Massachusetts is about to explode. Over the next three years the state’s utility companies will put $1.4 billion into energy efficiency, creating some 6,000 construction jobs. Other energy funds will create thousands more.

Lynn, Mass. - About 75 telecom workers and community supporters rallied in support of a local Verizon technician who was recently threatened by a supervisor while acting in his capacity as an IBEW Local 2321 steward during a "captive audience" safety meeting.

In response to the steward's statement that management often retaliates against workers who ask questions during meetings, the foreman forcefully pointed his finger in the steward's face and said, "you're dead!!" For emphasis, he said it twice.