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.

Porter Sq. Books in Cambridge was wall-to-wall with long-time activist Friday. Not where I would expect to see most of these people on a Thursday night, but Laura Whitehorn* was speaking about her book—the edited manuscript of Safiya Bukhari—“The War Before: The true Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison and Fighting for Those Left Behind” (Forward by Angela Davis; Afterward by Mumia Abu-Jamal).

Unimaginable a few short weeks ago: Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts was won by a Republican. Two months ago, Martha Coakley had a 31 percentage-point lead in polls over the obscure Republican state senator Scott Brown. Most had thought that the real race was over for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat when the Democratic primary ended. After all, the seat had been held by the Democratic Party for over 58 years, most of that time by two brothers with the last name Kennedy. Just over a year ago, Obama had carried Massachusetts by 26%. What happened?

Will United States Senator-Elect Scott Brown follow through on his promise of creating a “big tent”? Will he work collaboratively with those of us that are hurting the most in the economic crisis -- low-income people and the unemployed, African-Americans, immigrants, and families living in distressed communities? We challenge Senator-Elect Brown to join us. We challenge him to move beyond partisan politics by standing up for all families in Massachusetts and supporting a comprehensive package that will create a just and equitable economy that works for everyone.

While I was in the shower Election eve, I heard on my portable radio that Martha Coakley called Scott Brown to congratulate him on winning the Massachusetts Senate Race. The right-wing talk shows I dropped in on were the first to announce it, and were madly celebrating while the "progressive" pundits on WBUR were still arguing over whether Martha or the White House should be blamed if she lost. (Coakley reportedly “leaked” a memo to Politico yesterday blaming Obama).

At this time last year, the bombs had just begun to rain down on the Gaza Strip. In a devastating war that seems all but forgotten here in the United States, Israel brutally massacred more than a thousand people in Gaza in the short space of three weeks. A significant portion of those murdered were children; most were ordinary people hiding in their homes or UN buildings, terrified families and workers hoping to escape what they quickly discovered to be the inescapable carnage of the Israeli military. By the end of this audacious and catastrophic attack, over 1400 Palestinians were dead, over 500 were injured, and the major hubs of human life and community in Gaza – homes, schools, hospitals, roads, and mosques – had been disastrously destroyed.

As we approach the end of the year, I am part of a group in the Boston area preparing for what we hope will be a historic, life-giving march: a call to "End the Siege of Gaza." Fourteen Massachusetts residents will be traveling to the Gaza Strip to march alongside 1,400 internationals from 42 countries and tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of the blockaded Gaza Strip. Among them will be the writer Alice Walker, 85-year old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, European Parliamentarians and a contingent from South Africa including prominent colleagues of Nelson Mandela.

A year ago, on December 27, Israel launched its "Operation Cast Lead," which resulted in the death of more than 1,300. According to a UN investigative report, most were civilians and 300 of them were children. Gaza is one of the world’s most densely crowded places; a majority of its inhabitants are children. Last year at this time, after nearly two years of crippling sanctions and policed borders, it endured three solid weeks of aerial bombardment and ground attacks. For Gazans, there was nowhere to run.