Building the underground computer railroad (Salon)

Building the underground computer railroad (Salon)

Yeah, there's not really any irony here. There only seems to be because the media -- and some activist groups -- have named this protest movement "antiglobalization", when it's not that at all.

Only nationalists and isolationists oppose *globalization*; what those who are called "antiglobalizationists" oppose is the *corporate* globalization of the World Bank and IMF, which they, in conjunction with people in the global South, take to be more about imposing structural adjustments and trade liberalization at the cost of protecting the poor, workers, the environment, etc.

The antiglobalization left -- at least insofar as it is an heir of Marx (which isn't the same at all as having anything to do with the USSR) -- will always favor a globalization of people, not profit. Slapping Linux on old computers and sending them to developing countries is the very antithesis of the Washington-led style of so-called international development.

The real irony, if you need there to be irony, is that Linux has come to prominence most in the West because of inroads into corporate IT, when the most interesting and important thing about Linux is the power it offers precisely to those who fall outside that very, very narrow slice of the world.