Join Cuba's Free IT Revolution

Saving cash and breaking Microsoft's stranglehold are not government priorities but it could take a leaf out of Cuba's book, as the country gets to grips with the IT revolution, with plans to run computers on Gates-free, free software. 

In what smacks of a fresh salvo in a new Cold War, the island is following Russia's lead and moving away from Microsoft operating systems with its own take on the free, open source Linux-based system.

Here the government is paying lip-service to open source, vowing to boost its uptake in public services to reduce costs but with little evidence of action. A government 'action plan' is due to be published later this month.

The government's love affair with hugely expensive and utterly useless government IT projects is now beyond a joke, as gullible ministers continue to be taken in by the flannel of slick salesman, who promise the earth and deliver nothing. 

Today the biggest white elephant and biggest IT disaster, the £12.7 billion NHS computer shambles took a further knock, with one hospital trust claiming it's been forced to pump in £10m to prop up the useless system, causing the now all too familiar "heartache and hard work". 

As the NHS's Connecting for Health (CfH) computer system, dogged by problems and more than five years behind schedule, comes crashing down around the government's ears, beavering away in the background is the dominance of Microsoft in government departments and public bodies particularly schools, in return for a whopping licensing fee. 

Microsoft has a clear marketing aim to put its software in every computer in the world and who can blame them? But just because Bill Gates is big buddies with government doesn't mean ministers have to roll over and write a blank cheque with taxpayers cash. 

Computer sales to the public in Cuba only began only last year and the move is all part of a plan for "technological sovereignty".

The country this week launched its own variant of the Linux operating system in the latest fight against what it views as US hegemony.

According to Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software at Cuba's University of Information Sciences, about 20 per cent of computers in Cuba, are currently using Linux. 

"I would like to think that in five years our country will have more than 50 per cent migrated to Linux," he said.

In Cuba it makes sense. The long-standing US trade embargo against the communist island makes it difficult for Cubans to get Microsoft software legally, as Castro's kid brother Raul tries to bring the country into the 20th century. 

But the movement towards free, open source operating systems and software has dedicated supporters throughout the world. 

Moving away from Microsoft is not pie in the sky. It's happening already in the new breed of Netbooks now on sale in the High Street. It makes sound economic sense as any issues over compatibility can be easily fixed. 

Rodriguez said free software better suits Cuba's world view: "The free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty."

Now that's a tad controversial coming from a left-wing dictatorship but anything that's free and puts the brakes on Microsoft's plans for world domination is worth a serious look. 

Hasta La Victoria Siempre. 

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Boris's Jolly Olympic Gardening Jape

An Olympic scheme to turn the capital's wasteland into vegetable plots has been backed by Mayor Boris Johnson. But will this turn out to be a jolly jape with locals pushed out? Perhaps he should visit Cuba and Havana to see how it is really done and why. Or is that a tad too Red Ken for Boris's taste.

Londoners will be encouraged to turn derelict land into mini-allotments as part of a scheme to grow food on 2012 vegetable plots across the capital by 2012. The Capital Growth project is the brainchild of Rosie Boycott, chair of London Food. 

The Orange Party is sure both Boris and Rosie's hearts are in the right place. But we'll have to wait and see how many of these schemes actually get of the ground and how many will be run by locals rather than Monty Don wannabes. 

And why stop in London. Isn't this Olympics supposed to benefit the whole country? 

We used to have these plots here. They were called allotments. Now they are being gobbled up by greedy councils and developers. Anyone who fancies a potter has to wait years. In London apparently it's ten years. 

In Cuba, city-dwellers didn't have a choice. It was either find a plot of land or starve.

After going on for more than 20 years, Cuba now has more than 7,000 urban allotments or 'organoponicos', adding up to thousands of acres. 

More than 200 gardens in Havana alone grow more than 90 per cent of the city's fruit and veg.

Take a stroll through downtown Havana and they are everywhere. On tiny plots in the centre of estates (see picture above) and between houses. And with a chemical blockade, it's all organic. 

The danger with the London scheme is that it could turn into the latest lifestyle fad for the liberal elite. And true locals will be pushed out. Safeguards need to be put in place to make sure real people benefit.

There is a wider issue here. To encourage folk here to grown their own food on anything like a large scale takes a huge change in the mindset - and a willing labour force. 

Fat chance of that with a government happy to import cheap migrant slave labour to prop up the intensive agricultural industry. Or allow food to be grown in forced labour camps abroad to be flown thousands of miles to allow supermarkets to boast cheap food and farmers to grow biofuels.

Come the revolution we'll all be able to tend our plants while sipping a mojito. That's the good life. But over here, that isn't the real world.

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Vintage BBC Cold War Report From Cuba

Good to see the BBC still has a vintage Cold War reporter, alive and well and living in Cuba. Peddling politics, wrapped up as animal stories for the silly season, is as old as the hills. Now the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana is at it, with a story about Havana zoo swapping animals for vet equipment with Venezuela. 

Exactly the same story that has been kicking around for a week. Only the BBC chose to put it on the front page of their morning on-line news page - along with a stock PA picture of a cute baby giraffe. 

The report can't resist slipping in a few political comments. (The bits not about animals are in italics): 

"Havana zoo boasts one of the best collections in the Americas, partly due to Cuba's military roles in Africa. In the 1970s, tens of thousands of troops fought in independence wars on the continent. The zoo has an impressive breeding record, with 700 zebras and 300 lions having been born in their confines and subsequently exported. The animals are due to be sent by air freight to Venezuela next month. The two countries have a close relationship, with Cuba paying for Venezuelan oil imports with doctors and health workers."

What next, monkeys and missile-bases? This style of political spin is as old as Graham Greene.

Maybe the BBC's Man in Havana has been on too many daiquiris.

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US Kangaroo Court Sham In Cuba

Reports of a 'trial', a 'jury', a 'verdict' and a 'conviction', bandied about at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp show-trial, are highly misleading and make a mockery of justice. 

A US military commission, at the camp in Cuba, has 'convicted' Osama Bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, of supporting terrorism. The verdict is the first to be delivered in a 'war crimes trial' on the island.

Bin Laden's driver may be 'guilty' who really knows - but that's not the issue here. 

The prosecution had said Hamdan played a "vital role" in the conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks. Defence lawyers said he was just a hired driver. Hamdan is due to be 'sentenced' today.

The pointless 'trial'' is being played up for all its worth by the US authorities. The White House said the trial was fair and looked forward to more tribunals, claiming it shows GITMO does actually work.

But the 'jury' was made up of US military personnel. The 'trial' was actually a kangaroo court under the guise of a military tribunal and the whole thing played out behind closed doors in a tiny corner of the island. 

The so-called 'reports' came from journalists watching carefully screened footage on CCTV, while holed up in an air-conditioned hotel round the block. 

Lawyers around the world say it's unfair. The whole case will be thrown out by the US Supreme Court on appeal, anyway. 

Guantanamo Bay is a mystery. A strange, eerie sort of place on the eastern tip of Cuba. Leased to the US back in the 1920s, it's surrounded by razor wire and surveillance cameras. 

Dozens of other inmates are due to be 'tried' there in the coming months. Some are bigger fish - men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.

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Brown's Pork-Barrel Politics

Brown today repeated his claims that he didn't offer bribes to force though his 42 Days Detention Bill. But he would say that wouldn't he? That's the Brown style. He tries not to touch it, sign it, meet it or be phographed with it. But voters can see through the pork-barrel politics. 

The government may have won the 42 Day vote but Brown and New Labour lost miserably, scraping through by just nine votes. Exactly the number of MPs from Northern Ireland's DUP who voted for these draconian measures.

This ended up being nothing about 42 days and everything about fudges and bribes and Brown's leadership. Brown needed to win big, just to show that he is in charge. And he didn't. What should have been a vote on principles over civil liberties was a vote of confidence in Brown.

Now we'll just have to wait and see who gets the knighthood, whose post office is suddenly saved, what financial boosts come to the Northern Ireland economy and bizarrely, with a rumour of lifting the EU trade ban with Cuba as part of the deal, who goes off on holiday to Cuba. 

Brown could take that much-needed holiday there. It's the hurricane season in Cuba. Wild and windy weather and the storm clouds are gathering. It would be safer there in Cuba than back here in Blighty. 

The term 'pork-barrel politics' is used when government spending is used for projects to benefit particular constituents or campaign contributors. That means bribes.

The phrase originated in the US when gifts of salt-pork in a barrel were given by slave-owners to their slaves. How apt. Brown's Detention Bill supporters should take note.

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Our 'Secret' Guantanamo Bay

Guantanamo Bay sparks outrage in the west as the US government uses a leased base in Cuba to hold and interrogate terrorist suspects. The UK's own GITMO at Diego Garcia would cause equal concern, if only more people knew or cared.

Diego Garcia isn't a Brazilian footballer. It's a tiny island in the Indian Ocean which belongs to the UK. But we've leased it out to the US since the 1970s because they never had an Empire. 

The locals were forced out, so that the island could be turned into a US military base. Now the islanders live in poverty in Mauritius, more than 1,000 miles away. 

The New Labour government is happy to voice concern over Guantanamo Bay and how it's used to get round international law. 

And it still seems strange that the US has a military base in Cuba, when it spent years trying to kill Castro and wreck the economy . 

But unlike Dieigo Garcia, you can easily get to Guantanamo Bay and look at the eerie barbed wire and fences from a distance. 

But you can't drop by Diego Garcia, even with a UK passport, which should give you a right to visit all Crown Territories. 

The UK has a token force on island, which has a huge airstrip but it's mainly full of US military and an army of migrant workers to do the dirty work for them. 

Displaced locals must have some rights under UK law. After all this is Crown Territory. 

But they've been forced out, so the US can use the island for refuelling and long range bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, amid reports of notorious rendition flights and prison ships to the island, to hold and interrogate international terrorist suspects.

In 2004, Blair issued an Order of Council stopping the islanders from ever going back. This 'royal prerogative' was Blair's device to do what he wanted, without recourse to Parliament, the Crown or anyone. 

Through this Blair and New Labour have exiled a whole population from a British Overseas Territory. 

The plight of the islanders and with it the future of the UK/US military base is the subject of High Court and House of Lords appeals. But don't hold your breath on this one.

The case of Diego Garcia show just how hypocritical New Labour can be. What a waste of a beautiful island and what a shame for its people.

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Wake Up BBC News On-Line!

BBC News on-line needs a wake-up call. Since early yesterday morning the "news" site has led on the Guantanamo "trial" of 9/11 suspected accomplices, as if no other news had happened - or mattered.

Even the wording is misleading. This isn't a GITMO trial, it's a US military tribunal, in Cuba of all places.

UK diplomats may have been held in Zimbabwe, an MEP admits fidddling expenses, a serving Army chief attacks the government over serving soldiers pay - but what had we at the top of the BBC on-line "news" all day - the same old story.

Maybe our man in Havana had too many daiquiris.

The item finally disappeared - completely - in the early hours of this morning, to be replaced by the shock new that Clinton and Obama have held 'surprise' talks. Yes, Clinton and Obama actually talking to each other.

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