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Security fears spark Linux drive in Iran |
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September 20 2004 at 02:57PM |
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By Stefan Smith
The reason has nothing to do with the guilt of using pirated software (a cracked Windows XP CD costs the same as a blank CD), but more pragmatic considerations - not least because of the irony that Iran's information technology (IT) backbone is based on software from its arch-enemy, the United States. Firstly, Iran is trying to gain entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a step that would entail respect of international intellectual property laws. "We would have to pay a lot of money," said Sephery-Rad, noting that most of the government's estimated one million personal computers (PCs) and the country's total of six to eight million computers were being run almost exclusively on the Windows platform. "Secondly, Microsoft software has a lot of backdoors and security weaknesses that are always being patched, so it is not secure. We are also under US sanctions. All this makes us think we need an alternative operating system."
The alternative selected is Linux - an operating system adapted by computer makers and other users to meet their own specifications. Derived from the Unix system by a Finn, Linus Torvalds, it has become one of the biggest competitors of Microsoft, even if Windows is still used on nearly 90 percent of the world's computers. Whereas Microsoft's code is a closely-guarded secret, the Linux core code - or Kernal - is the subject of ongoing development and is available for free download and adaptation, hence the term "open-source". "Our strategy is to have the option to change over if we have to. We need to have a solution that is ready, otherwise one day we may be caught with our hands in the air," Sephery-Rad told AFP in an interview. "Then we will try to convince people it is the best option. We want to switch over as much as we can." Around the world, several governments have been embracing Linux as a way to save money, break free from Microsoft's virtual monopoly and evade the daily barrages of viruses that bombard Windows systems. Linux advocates also tout what they say is superior stability, fewer crashes and those "Blue Screens of Death" that drive many Windows users to despair - hence the already widespread use of Linux in server applications. "Microsoft is a national security concern. Security in an operating system is an important issue, and when it is on a computer in the government it is of even greater importance," said the official. "Even with Linux, security is an issue - but maybe less so." But if there is one weak point with Linux, it is user-friendliness when ported to the desktop. Sephery-Rad acknowledged that you may not need to be a geek to use Linux, but it certainly helps. "It is very promising. Students and universities are showing great enthusiasm, but for older people it is difficult," he explained, adding that graphical environments such as KDE or Gnome were getting close to matching the easy task manipulation that a Windows-based PC provides. "It is not as easy as we thought. We will have to get people used to changing over. People are used to using Microsoft, so we'll need courses and seminars." Iran's Linux initiative is now three years old, but the idea is beginning to catch on. A Farsi-language Linux "Live CD" - a preview that does not interfere with a computer's hard drive - has just become available in what is the first concrete step to a changeover. Sephery-Rad, who also works as a physics professor, said the project should really get going in the next two to three years, with inspiration coming from similar efforts in Latin America, Europe and East Asia. "Most people have come to the conclusion that sticking to an operating system controlled by one company is dangerous," said Sephery-Rad. "Microsoft is like having a car where the bonnet is welded shut." - Sapa-AFP |
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One of those mysterious North Korean explosions and the intractability of Iran dramatize, if more evidence were needed, just how dangerous the world [again!] has become in the post-Soviet era. The events of 9/11 only served to focus the nature of that new jungle out there. Grappling with it is as complex as only a worldwide phenomenon could be. But the threats posed by North Korea and Iran do segment and dramatize it.
Pyongyang’s explanation of a “planned hydroelectric construction explosion” is not only ridiculous, but further evidence of the rickety nature of the regime. Big “events” are always trumpeted as obeisance to The Dear Leader. Certainly not a hydroelectric project in an area notorious for its aridity but known to have underground weapons installations. It does demonstrate the dichotomy of Communist regimes – relatively efficient weapons production accompanied by starvation, in living memory in a “revisionist” China and continuing today in ultra-Stalinist North Korea. [Note even the less than prosperous post-USSR Russia and Ukraine are grain exporters; the extent of the perennially failing Soviet crop used to be a measurement hotly debated among the Kremlinologists.]
Tehran’s conflicting statements and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s equivocation about its snooping is only matched by the wishful thinking [again!] among the US’ allies in Western Europe – now Britain as well as Germany, and, of course, France. They are holding out for diplomacy [appeasement?] to halt what has to be the mullahs’hellbent effort at producing nuclear weapons. There is no logic, as they maintain, in an impoverished society with some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves seeking “a full nuclear fuel cycle” for electricity– even for obscurantist Islamicists drowning in their 7th Century tribalism.
It is no accident, as the Communists used to say, joint development of missiles – and perhaps nuclear technology – bind the two pariah states. They have not only abetted each other. But their external support for diverse but equally deadly terror organizations notoriously continues. North Korea has graduated from aiding student revolutionaries in Mexico City, airport massacres in Israel, public assassination in Burma, and kidnapping in Japan, to peddling high tech weapons for its survival.
The Iranian mullahs are still in the same old business: arming terrorists working out of Syria [again!], to Iraq, Lebanon, and Pakistan. But their ambitions are now grander. With nuclear arms, a large population base, nascent industrialization, and a strategic position, they see themselves as the dominant Mideast power. These dreams are not new. But in the Shah’s time [with the exception of a little problem of OPEC and higher oil prices for the US and the West] nostalgia for past Persian glory was within the bounds of a U.S. alliance -- and a modernization toward more universal values.
It’s there all the efforts for compromise founder. Compromise is the product of diplomacy – and a shared reasoning. But in neither instance is there much hope of that.
Its proponents argue were the U.S. to negotiate on a one-on-one basis with Pyongyang, it would produce disarmament agreement which would remove the threat of a nuclear clad North Korea, and, worse, its selling such weapons, possibly even non-state terrorists like Al Qaida. Yet that logic dictates North Korea would have to transform itself, at least as far as Communist China has, into a more viable society with access to and dependence on foreign investment, trade and technology transfers. There is no evidence North Korea’s leadership does not see such developments as the regime’s death warrant. It seeks nuclear weapons to maintain the dictatorship of a military elite. The Bush Administration’s strategy, limping perhaps through the untrustworthiness of its allies [again!], is to seek the help of North Korea’s neighbors. They all have an interest in a North Korea without nuclear weapons, at least in theory. The threat of an economic blockade is the alternative to a compromise which would include economic aid for the regime. The problem is our allies – South Korea, and to some extent, Japan – are unwilling to consider applying those sanctions. China, the principle player, while mouthing platitudes, continues to be the main prop of the regime. Moscow’s Putin, ever ambivalent, blames U.S. rhetoric for the impasse.
The mullahs present an even more horrendous predicament. They see themselves as instruments of a higher power for world domination, justifying all prevarication and obfuscation with infidels. At their furtherest reaches, they pursue a fanaticism in which their followers’ death is only the entrance to paradise. But the Europeans base their hopes for the kind of change which came in Central and Eastern Europe under the Communists on a policy of “engagement” with these same mullahs. Meanwhile, the threatening clock ticks louder, not only for Iran’s Mideast neighbors, but for Europe as the range of their missiles lengthens.
Iraq, with all its problems, is only the opening act of the drama now ahead of us.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
Sep 20 2004 2:46PM
MOSCOW. Sept 20 (Interfax) - Russia has called on Iran to fully meet a resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors adopted in Vienna on September 18.
"The appeal to resume moratorium on enrichment projects is, in particular, addressed to Tehran. We support this appeal. Russia hopes that the maximum possible will be done to resolve problems and meet the resolution in full by November, when the IAEA Board of Governors will have another meeting," says a Monday report of the Russian Foreign Ministry received by Interfax.
The Choice on Iran
The Washington Post ^ | September 20, 2004
Posted on 09/20/2004 12:49:23 AM PDT by F14 Pilot
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1221096/posts
