Re: nettime confused euro muslims (via b. sterling)
geert wrote: http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040802fa_fact The _New Yorker_ used to have better editorial standards. This article is inexcusable: it blithely equates Arabs with Muslims and Muslims with terrorists. The Internet provides confused young Muslims in Europe with a virtual community. Those who cannot adapt to their new homes discover on the Internet a responsive and compassionate forum. The Internet stands in for the idea of the ummah, the mythologized Muslim community, Marc Sageman, the psychiatrist and former C.I.A. officer, said. The idea here seems to be to infantilise Muslims: the former CIA officer would have us believe that, gullible and hypnotised by myth, all Muslims are easy prey for whatever devious, fanatical views they might find on the Internet. In any case, who wouldn't be confused by the fact that, in France for example, university graduates called Abdelatif or Nedjma are well advised to change their name to something that sounds more French when looking for a job?[1] The Internet makes this ideal community concrete, because one can interact with it. He compares this virtual ummah to romantic conceptions of nationhood, which inspire people not only to love their country but to die for it. The Internet is a medium for all sorts of nationalisms; there is nothing unusual about this. However, to imply that web sites made by Muslims are mainly focused on promoting war, with the aim of translating the concept of ummah into a real political entity, is ridiculous. Muslims use the Internet to communicate ideas as diverse as those of any other group of people, on as wide a range of subjects, both secular and religious. It allows the propagation of a universal norm, with an Internet Sharia and fatwa system. I certainly hope this Professor Kepel is being quoted out of context. The idea that Muslim writers on the Internet, never mind Muslim Internet users, represent a homogeneous group, adhering to a universal norm concerning Islam, is nonsense. Consider Tariq Ramadan[2][3], advocate of a fully European Islam, or the blogs of Raed Jarrar[4], an Iraqi, and his Iranian girlfriend Nikki[5], who consider themselves secular Muslims. Anyone can seek a ruling from his favorite sheikh in Mecca, Kepel said. In the old days, one sought a fatwa from the sheikh who had the best knowledge. Now it is sought from the one with the best Web site. This sounds suspiciously like the American neoconservative idea that the Internet is an immoral and decadent medium that corrupts the minds of youth (in this case those confused young Muslims). To a large extent, Kepel argues, the Internet has replaced the Arabic satellite channels as a conduit of information and communication. Here we elide the distinction between Arab and Muslim. The people who make Arabic-language satellite channels and web sites, and the people who use them, include many Christians as well as Muslims. The editor of Al Hayat[6] (a widely read Arabic-language newspaper and web site published in London, which often contains articles of great perceptiveness and wit) is a Lebanese Christian. One can say that this war against the West started on television, he said And with no transition, we pass from Arabic-language media to a war against the West, as if the two were equivalent. As if Algerian[7], Moroccan[8] and Tunisian[9] journalists and web site operators weren't being imprisoned for criticising their *own* governments. As if the state-controlled Egyptian newspaper and web site Al Ahram[10] didn't publish deferential interviews with George W. Bush[11] and Francis Fukuyama[12]. Or as if the Internet didn't contain a plethora of Arabic-language women's magazines, full of the sort of material you find in all other women's magazines. A jihadi subculture has been created that didn't exist before 9/11. As most nettime readers will probably know, the United States nurtured the jihadi subculture as an instrument of its proxy war against the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s.[13] Because the Internet is anonymous, Islamist dissidents are less susceptible to government pressure. There is no signature, Kepel said. To some of us who have been trained as classicists, the cyber-world appears very much like the time before Gutenberg. Copyists used to add their own notes into a text, so you never know who was the real author. It's hard to believe that anyone who has actually used the Internet, in any language, would think that most of the texts on the web are not signed. Specific targets, such as the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, or FedWire, the money-clearing system operated by the Federal Reserve Board, are openly discussed. We do see a rising focus on the U.S., Weimann told me. But some of this talk may be fake -- a scare campaign. Indeed. And some articles in the _New Yorker_ may also be part of a scare campaign. Ben [1]
nettime Interview with Jeanette Hofmann
Open Ends: Civil Society and Internet Governance Interview with German policy expert, Jeanette Hofmann By Geert Lovink Berlin-based researcher Jeanette Hofmann is a key player when it comes to German and European Internet policy. Late 2000 she briefly reached international media fame when she got elected as an ICANN at Large member. Besides her busy international agenda she is also a professor at the University of Essen where she is teaching governance-related issues. In this online interview Jeanette Hofmann talks about her ICANN experiences and her current involvement as a civil society member of the German delegation for the World Summit of the Information Society. I got to know her work in the mid nineties when Jeanette worked on an interdisciplinary research project that mapped the Internet as a set of technical, cultural and political arrangements. GL: You recently published a paper (in German) called 'The Short Dream of Democracy on the Net.' Your conclusion is a rather sombering one. How would you describe the current situation related to ICANN? You state that nothing has been learned from the failed At-Large Membership experiment. Would you even go that far and see a backlash happening right now? JH: The argument of my paper goes as follows: In the last decade, a growing number of international organizations has established cooperative relationships with NGOs. There are two reasons why international organizations are willing to talk with NGOs. First, NGOs provide specific expertise. Second, international organizations are struggling with a widening democratic deficit deriving from the fact that international agreements are out of reach for most people. Those affected by international policies are unable to participate in the decision making process. Likewise, international organizations are not accountable to the people. Diplomats cannot be voted out of office when they act against the peoples' will. Cooperating with NGOs, however, makes international bodies appear more open, fair and thus legitimate. Civil society groups, on the other hand, are eager to get involved in international policy making because participation is seen as a first step towards substantial changes in international policies. What looks like a win-win situation for both parties turns out to be problematic for civil society. Evidence from most policy fields shows that participation of NGOs so far doesn't lead to significant policies changes. ICANN's five At Large directors, for instance, had hardly any impact on ICANN's DNS policies. While cooperation between international organizations and NGOs may improve the reputation of the former, it clearly creates legitimacy problems for the latter. As soon as civil society organizations assume formal roles in international forums, their representativeness and legitimacy are also called into question. Ironically, NGOs are charged with the democratic deficit they once set out to elevate. ICANN has been an excellent example of this mechanism. After the At Large directors' elections in 2000, ICANN's inner circle successfully challenged the legitimacy of both the At Large membership and the elections. Thus, most people today recall the ICANN elections as a complete failure. The elections were regarded as a disaster because they lacked, guess what, representativeness. Of course, the elections were unrepresentative! It is impossible in global environments to hold representative elections. As far as I remember, nobody ever expected the ICANN elections to globally representative. Not even the governments in ICANN have succeeded in establishing a representative body with all nations participating in the Governmental Advisory Council. The same holds true for the Internet industry and the technical community. By and large, it is a tiny minority which really cares enough about Internet names and numbers to participate in ICANN. However, the lack of representativeness has been raised particularly as an issue with regard to individual users. The At Large membership was the only group of stakeholders which was critizided and finally disqualified on the grounds of a lack of representativeness. Once disqalified as illegitimate, the remaining stakeholders happily agreed to kick individual users out of the ICANN board. ICANN's organizational reform in 2002 thus put an end to the original idea of fair, equal participation of individual users in ICANN. A majority of stakeholders chose to get rid of the weakest stakeholder in the game. As a result, representation of individual users on the board has been reduced to one liaison person without voting rights. Seen from this perspective, ICANN's reform constitutes a backlash for Internet governance in particular and for the notion of a democratization of global politics in general. GL: Could you imagine that Internet governance will have to be drawn up from scratch? Are ICANN, but perhaps also bodies like the IETF beyond repair? You and others
Re: nettime A 'licensing fee' for GNU/Linux?
A stupid question: what is FOSS? FSF? OSI? this reminds me of the horrible alphabet soup I used to encounter all the time when I worked in Washington. While it may be very convenient for writers to use initials, the practice very quickly renders conversation impenetrable to those who haven't been paying enough attention to recall all the abbreviations. I urge nettimers to take the time to spell out the meanings of abbreviations frequently, if not at least once per posting. Best, Michael --- Michael H. Goldhaber [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/ On Aug 11, 2004, at 4:45 PM, Novica Nakov wrote: In this sense, SW patents will not kill FOSS, but they will give large companies much more leaway in determining its future, substantially hollowing out the 'freedom' in free software. Or, in a highly unlikely scenario it can go the other way. If IBM holds on to its pledge [1] not to use patents against linux, and if other companies follow extending their good will to all software that is compliant with the FSF and OSI definition than everyone will develop FOSS simply to stay clear of patent trouble and we'll have all the freedom in the world. [1] http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5296787.html And another link: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-870390.html - Stallman's thoughts on software patents, 2 years old. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
