"Messengers" from a dead friend

[Michael Gurstein]

> 
>Hello Michael
> 
>Hi Don, How are things? M
> 
>Great!
> 
>How are you?
> 
>I'm well had a bit of a bout last year but over that now. How are
>things in Chicago?
> 
>Great!
> 
>Hope you also heard the good news
> 
>No, what is that?
> 
>Just wondering if you have heard about the International Monetary Fund
>(IMF) giving out grants?
> 
>No! Tell me more.
> 
>Really? The International Monetary Fund commission organization set up
>to help people financially with money all over the world for the
>old,Retired,disable, citizen, hard hearing, youth and Workers too. Do
>you get yours?
> 
>Not yet what do I need to do?
> 
>Oh my goodness! I even thought you have been contacted already because
>I saw your name among the winners list when the IMF agent brought cash
>to me at home
> 
>Wow need to get it quick as I heard Trump was taking US money out of
>things like that.
> 
>You need to contact the online claim agent now to know if you are still
>eligible to claim your winning grant prize, do you know how to contact
>them?
> 
>No, how do I do that?
> 
>Should i share you the agent contact number?
> 
>Sure
>
>5023787___. Text them your name and tell them that you are willing to
>know if your name is still on the winners list too. Am sure the agent
>will help you out okay.
> 
>Make sure you do that now and keep me posted
> 
>Tks and good if surprising to hear from you like this. I heard that you
>died a couple of years ago. Saw the obit and everything.
> 
>Never
> 
>I am not dead am alive
> 
>Really. So what is our mutual friend Richard's last name.
> 
>xxx   
> 
>Ok so why are you sending around well known scams?
> 
>It's not a scam
> 
>It's real and i got mine already
> 
>am serious
> 
>Really, the IMF only deals with governments and has no "retail" staff.
> 
>This is 100 percent real and not a scam
> 
>I got mine already\
> 

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FW: For those who wanted to "give Trump a chance"

[Michael Gurstein]

To be clear, I did not produce the very useful list that I forwarded
yesterday (received without attribution via FB).

A colleague has now tracked down the origin which is 
http://leftunity.org/the-daily-trump/ (It seems that they are keeping this 
mostly up to date...

Usefully my colleague also provided a link to a fact check of the
original list
http://americannewsx.com/hot-off-the-press/fact-checking-we-are-4-days-in-pay-attention/

For those not following too closely in the last several days since the
original list came out Mr. Trump added to his list of “achievements”

• A phone call with the President of Mexico that included a threat of
invasion

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-threatens-send-troops-mexico-stop-bad-hombres-article-1.2961897

• A phone call with the Prime Minister of Australia that ended with Mr.
Trump angrily hanging up

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/us-australia-trump-turnbull.html

• A tweet from Mr. Trump apparently threatening war with Iran

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-tweet-iran-on-notice-after-ballistic-missile-test-a7559001.html


(and for good measure Mr. Trump’s Rasputin—Steve Bannon--was widely
quoted as having indicated that war with China over the disputed islands
in the South China Sea was inevitable.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/steve-bannon-donald-trump-war-south-china-sea-no-doubt

M  

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For those who wanted to "give Trump a chance"

[Michael Gurstein]

For those who wanted to "give Trump a chance" it seems he is out of
chances already :

For those finding it difficult to keep up - here's a run down of the
week so far To recap:

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ's
Violence Against Women programs.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
National Endowment for the Arts.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
National Endowment for the Humanities.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Minority Business Development Agency.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Economic Development Administration.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
International Trade Administration.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal
Services Corporation.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil
Rights Division of the DOJ.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the
Office of Fossil Energy.

* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal
agencies frozen.

* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop
using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the
crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.

* On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and
face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers,
journalists, and medics.

* On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the
World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He
remains in critical condition.

* On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a
meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted
almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.

* On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a
press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting
the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the
inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, "period."

* On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended
Spicer's lies as "alternative facts" on national television news.

* On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James
Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a
gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on
the back.

* On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which
defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a
medical option.

* On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate
China's expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially
threatening war with China.

* On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people
voted "illegally" thus costing him the popular vote.

* On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the
anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite
turning himself in.

* On January 24th, 2017, Spicer reiterated the lie that 3-5 million
people voted "illegally" thus costing DT the popular vote.

* On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter
account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and
will hang in the White House press room. The photo is curiously dated
January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the
Women's March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.

* On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with
the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants
and contracts.

* On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with
the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any
papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to
be authorized and vetted by the White House.

* On January 24th

Re: Protocols and Crises

[Michael Gurstein]

In fact, I believe that "protocol power" is the precise opposite of
multistakeholderism where MSism is always and necessarily ad hoc, temporary,
localized and where "showing up" (with the resources and staying power to
keep showing up) is the source of power in a MS environment.

"Protocol power" is fixed, static and generalized (globalized)--think the
rule of law rather than the outcome of a continuing series of ad hoc
negotiations among multiple disconnected stakeholders.

M

-Original Message-
From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of André Rebentisch
Sent: January 31, 2017 12:43 PM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: Re:  Protocols and Crises

The more common match term for "protocol power" as coined by the abstract
seems to be the anglo-saxon "multistakeholderism" governance model. It is
deeply embedded in their political culture. I assume it stems from a more
corporatist past.
 <...>

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Re: The Trump Speech

[Michael Gurstein]

Note, I am not defending Trump or Trumpism but I think developing an
effect response means to have a fairly clear idea of what is going on.

Please note that Trump’s first Executive Action has been to support
Bernie’s position and cancel US participation in the TPP thus
effectively killing it (and with it the next stage of embedding
neo-liberalism into the very fabric of global economy, governance and
society.

Also, please note if we (including myself and I would guess many others
on this list) had not been out demonstrating against Trump and Trumpism
on Saturday; we would, had Hillary won, very likely been demonstrating
against her and her support for the TPP (along the lines of the Battle
of Seattle and as had already taken place in many parts of the world…

Trumpism is a clear rejection of neo-liberalism in favour of America
First nationalism which is as much anathema to the mainstream of the GOP
as it is to the Hillary mainstream of the Dems.

M

-Original Message-
From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org On Behalf Of Joseph Rabie
Sent: January 23, 2017 1:48 AM
To: Nettime-L 
Subject: Re:  The Trump Speech


> Le 22 janv. 2017 à 21:35, Michael Gurstein  a écrit :
> 
> There has been, in other contexts, an on-going discussion as to 
> whether Trump's evident rejection of the post-war neo-liberal order is 
> sufficient reason to applaud his victory


This is something that I am quite incapable of grasping. Trump rejecting
post-war neo-liberal order? The man is the epitome of it. His Trump
Towers business is global, as are the people he has appointed to office
coming from the financial establishment.
 <...>

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The Trump Speech

[Michael Gurstein]

There has been, in other contexts, an on-going discussion as to
whether Trump's evident rejection of the post-war neo-liberal order
is sufficient reason to applaud his victory given that Hillary's
win would have further entrenched neo-liberalism as the necessary
framework for capitalism going forward and as the dominant ideology
in all institutions and as the ever more deeply embedded normative
framework for this millennium. Others argue that the other elements of
Trumpism outweigh these benefits.

I think to reconcile the two positions it is necessary to distinguish
the neo-liberal project of "globalization" as initially propelled by
the Bretton Woods institutions and then (and somewhat independently)
by primarily US corporate interests building on technology
change in transportation and communications; from the process of
"internationalization" (and to a considerable extent decolonization)
initiated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN
institutions which formed parallel to the Bretton Woods institutions.

The globalization i.e. neo-liberal project was one where US corporate
and political dominance was largely hidden behind a veil of
ideological positionings re: "Freedom of this and that. This is what
Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair and the "Third Way" politicians globally
bought into and rode with great political and personal success over
the last several decades. Also, this was the basis for the quite
legitimate reaction to the marginalization and impoverishment of the
traditional working class and industrial sectors that the Third Way
politicians have overlooked and which the Third Order populists such
as der Trump, Farage etc.etc. have been allowed to steal from the
progressive's agenda; thus putting us all at the risk where we find
ourselves today.

However, the underlying "internationalization" of transportation and
communications links, global behavioural and legal norms, certain
global institutions, and the global post-WWII political and diplomatic
order has to be seen as distinct from this and one which until
fairly recently was broadly accepted globally as the basis for
geo-political order going forward-interacting with and generally
supporting globalization but with distinct features and partial
outcomes. The distinction of course has been diminishing recently with
the very broad-based "success" of globalization.

And now in more recent times there is the development of the
"transnational" global networks such as the Internet and global
transportation networks and the networks such as global Civil Society
which are built on the Internet as independent elements in linking
the various parts of the world. This has partially been associated
with those few significant resisters to neo-liberalism such as China,
Russia and Iran.

What is so startling about Trump's "America First" speech is the way
in which he disavows not only globalization which he so forcefully
(and I think usefully) critiqued in his campaign, but also it appears,
the Post-WWII Geo-political internationalization ordering which among
other things has been a basic element in cross-partisan political
positions in the US and elsewhere globally (particularly for the EU)
for several generations (although attacked by the far right and more
recently the Tea Party-ers).

What remains to be seen and what is perhaps of most direct interest
to the Internet community is his position on the Transnational
networks and this includes the Internet. Early indications are that
Trump (or handlers his Steve Bannon and V. Putin?) are positive
towards for example, the transnational network of the far Right
through which Russia is exerting influence in Europe and elsewhere.
I think that it is quite possible that Trump et al might look to
transnationalization as a substitute for both globalization and
internationalization although what form that might take is still
unclear but a transnational order linking nationalistic resurgencies
in the US, Russia, the UK and elsewhere seems quite evident and quite
consistent with the nationalization/transnationalization which China
has been attempting in its trade policies and more recently in its
policies for Internet governance.

M

 

 


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Re: What is the meaning of Trump's victory?

[Michael Gurstein]

The emerging explanation for Trump seems be of the misogyny or racism of
a significant portion of the US population.  That may or may not be true
(I rather think that a portion of those voting for Trump were
racist/misogynist but by no means all).

What is overlooked in all of this discussion looking for the villain(s)
in the Trump election piece is that Progressives scored a number of huge
victories with the recent election with the resounding rejection of
neo-liberalism and its counterpart in an overt reaction to elite
control; the evident defeat of the TPP; the rejection of austerity and
an apparent shift to Keynesian economics with the Infrastructure
program; even the re-opening of the seriously flawed Obamacare.  

That these were all done as a result of a response to pressure from the
US working class should equally please US (and other) progressives. The
problem of course is that the wrong guy is able to take credit for this
and to steer it in his perverse and dangerous direction and of course
the other elements of baggage of his deeply flawed personality and the
repugnance of many of his backers.

If (and I know how difficult it is) we were able to remove the obnoxious
personality of Trump from the circumstance many of us would be
celebrating unreservedly at the shattering of the ideological hegemony
that has been strangling popular developments throughout the world. 

Of course, Trump and his neo-fascist compatriots are an extremely
dangerous political reality but that reality should be seen for what it
is the wrong set of pilot fish leading an analysis and social forces
which could and should more appropriately have come from the Left rather
than the Right.  

One immediate lesson to draw from this I think is that rather than
mourning and celebrating Hillary and  the folks in the DNC one should be
recognizing the fact that it is a direct result of their failures and
egoism that Trump is the beneficiary rather than someone like Sanders or
more importantly popular movements and that our responses to Trump and
actions into the future should be done in full recognition of this.

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A Picture is Worth...

[Michael Gurstein]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-russia.html

MOSCOW — A group of arms control researchers have determined that two  
 images 
released by the Russian government, ostensibly to help clarify why a civilian 
airliner was shot down two years ago, were digitally altered using Photoshop 
before being posted online.

Parts of one Russian military satellite image simply vanished, according to 
researchers at the   Middlebury Institute for 
International Studies at Monterey, in California, behind a suspect-looking 
cloud.

In another image, two chunky, tracked antiaircraft weapons appear in sharper 
focus than the surrounding landscape, the researchers said in  
 the report 
posted online on Friday.

“It is clear the images have been modified or altered,” the researchers said, 
after running the photographs through a suite of professional software used to 
detect fake digital pictures, in court proceedings in Europe.

The finding is hardly the first to  

 debunk important elements of the Russian government’s narrative of who shot 
down  

 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard, 
in the worst atrocity of the war in  

 Ukraine.

At the time,  

 Russia’s state news agency, RIA, initially reported that Russian-backed 
separatists had shot down a Ukrainian military aircraft, but quickly 
backtracked once it became clear a civilian airliner had been brought down.

Russian state television devoted considerable airtime to conspiracy theories, 
including assertions that the Ukrainians were trying to shoot down President  

 Vladimir V. Putin’s plane, that the plane had been filled with dead bodies and 
crashed in an elaborate ruse to embarrass Russia, or that the  

 Central Intelligence Agency was behind the attack. Ukraine and Western 
governments say that none of this is true, and that active-duty Russian 
soldiers backing the rebels fired on the airliner, perhaps mistaking it for a 
military aircraft, as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian 
capital.

The photographs were published on the websites of the Russian Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense just days after the crash. They were 
presented as having been taken by one or more Russian spy satellites on  

 July 17, 2014, as war raged in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian presentation asserted that “according to our information on the day 
of the accident the Ukrainian armed forces deployed three to four artillery 
battalions of Buk-M1 missiles, and provided two satellite images to support the 
claim.

The anti-tampering software, though, found that a cloud obscuring a portion of 
one image had at one point been saved using a different form of data 
compression from the rest of the picture.

In the other photograph, showing a pair of rocket launchers in a field with a 
road looping through it, the launchers are inexplicably in sharper focus than 
the surrounding field, according to the report. Along with Photoshop, other 
programs may also have been used, the researchers said.

“It’s hard to be certain about what they have done,” Jeffrey Lewis, one of the 
report’s authors, said of the manipulation of the images. “It’s possible they 
enhanced the missile launchers that were there or that they cut and pasted them 
in.”

The researchers focus on using open-source information to study nuclear 
nonproliferation. They originally bought the specialized software to analyze 
North Korean propaganda photographs, but have found other uses for it.

“It’s wonderful — you can see who touches up their wedding photos,” Mr. Lewis 
said. “It turns out people touch up photos quite a lot.”

Asked on Friday about the allegations, the Russian Defense Ministry said it 
would require three days to respond. The Ministry of Foreign Aff

Tech Millionaires vs. Tech Billionaires (guess who is winning... And why it matters to the rest of us

[Michael Gurstein]

   (Open letter from Nick Denton (Gawker) to Peter Thiel (PayPal, Facebook
   etc.) who evidently has been bankrolling the legal hell ($125 mill and
   counting) that Gawker has been experiencing around the Hulk Hogan
   privacy lawsuit.

   http://gawker.com/an-open-letter-to-peter-thiel-1778991227

   Peter Thiel,

   Nearly a decade ago, [1]after you had opened up to friends and
   colleagues, a gay writer for Gawker shared an item with the readers of
   Valleywag, a section for news and gossip about the rich and powerful of
   Silicon Valley. "[2]Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay,"
   wrote Owen Thomas. "More power to him."

   And more power did indeed come to you. Your investments in Facebook and
   other companies have given you a net worth of more than $2 billion. You
   have tapped some of that fortune to [3]support gay groups such as
   HomoCon. It is now clear that gay people are everywhere, not just in
   industries such as entertainment, but [4]at the pinnacles of Silicon
   Valley power.

   I thought we had all moved on, not realizing that, for someone who
   aspires to immortality, nine years may not be such a long time as it
   seems to most of us. Max Levchin, your fellow founder at Paypal, told
   me back in 2007 you were concerned about the reaction, not in Silicon
   Valley, but among investors in your hedge fund from less tolerant
   places such as Saudi Arabia. [5]He also warned of the retribution you
   would exact if a story was published about your personal life.

   Your revenge has been served well, cold and (until now) anonymously.
   [6]You admit you have been planning the punishment of Gawker and its
   writers for years, and that you have so far spent $10 million to fund
   litigation against the company. Charles Harder, the Hollywood
   plaintiff's lawyer who has marshaled your legal campaign, is
   representing not just the wrestler Hulk Hogan on your behalf, but two
   other subjects of stories in suits against Gawker and its editorial
   staff.

   You told the New York Times that you are motivated by friends who had
   their lives ruined by Gawker coverage, and that your funding is a
   "philanthropic" project to help other "victims" of negative stories.
   Let us run through a few examples so that people can actually read the
   articles you find so illegitimate, and make their own judgment about
   their newsworthiness.

   Sean Parker, a partner in your Founders Fund and an early backer of
   Facebook, is one of the friends who was covered extensively on Gawker's
   Valleywag. [7]Those stories, some of them by me, helped define the
   colorful character played by Justin Timberlake in The Social Network,
   the David Fincher movie about the founding of Facebook. Parker was
   stung more recently by criticism from his neighbors of the disruption
   to 10th St. in Manhattan when [8]the street was dug up to get a Fios
   line to Bacchus House, the famous party venue where Parker had been
   planning to live. Valleywag covered that story, as well as [9]his
   lavish and controversial wedding in the redwoods near Big Sur.

   Hulk Hogan was the first client represented by Charles Harder in a suit
   against Gawker. As we now know, the famous wrestler and entertainer
   sued over snippets of a sex tape apparently [10]in order to shut down
   reporting of a racist rant against a black man dating his daughter.

   Ashley Terrill, also represented by Harder, is suing Gawker for $10
   million for defamation. She is a reporter who offered information about
   the conflict between the founders of two dating apps, Tinder and
   Bumble, who herself [11]became part of the story after claiming she was
   being harassed and surveilled by agents of Tinder co-founder Whitney
   Wolfe.

   Shiva Ayyadurai is a Massachusetts entrepreneur who says he invented
   email--about a decade after email was actually invented. A story on
   Gizmodo, Gawker's tech property, [12]said straight out that his claims
   were false, as did the [13]Washington Post and the [14]Los Angeles
   Times. Represented also by the lawyer you hired, Ayyadurai is suing
   Gawker for $35 million for defamation, though not the other news
   organizations that made the same point.

   Peter Thiel--that is, you. Yes, Gawker has often been critical. Our
   writers have derided [15]your views on female suffrage, mocked the
   libertarian separatist vision of [16]offshore seasteads free of
   government interference, and [17]questioned some of the businesses you
   have backed. There is much more. They don't find you very likable.

   data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABACH5BAEKAAEALAABAAEAAAICTAEAO
   w==

   [18]This Is Why Billionaire Peter Thiel Wants to End Gawker

   Why has Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel spent upwards of $10
   million funding third-party... [19]Read more

   I can see how irritating Gawker would be to you and other figures in
   the technology industry. For Silicon Valle

Multistakeholderism in full action

[Michael Gurstein]

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/a-borderless-economy-that-will-be-controlled/article8581476.ece



A borderless economy that will be controlled

 

Parminder Jeet Singh

Jack Ma, the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has proposed a new 
business-led initiative for framing global e-commerce rules. Announcing it at 
the Boao Forum for Asia, he said: “Let businesses drive it with governments and 
NGOs and other organisations participating”. Mr. Ma’s proposed setting up what 
he calls the World e-Trade Platform (WeTP). The WeTP is supposed to complement 
the World Trade Organisation which can remain in charge of global rules for 
offline trade. Alibaba will present this plan in the G-20 meet later this year 
in Hangzhou, China, where it is headquartered. In short, this means that those 
who run e-commerce businesses are proposing to draft the rules for e-commerce 
too, because in their view, they know best. 

Mr. Ma’s announcement is apparently a political shocker — corporate power is 
making a direct political challenge to governmental actors. However, a former 
vice minister of China, the Indonesian Trade Minister, and the President of the 
Inter-American Development Bank — all of whom were present at the Boao Forum — 
reacted positively to the announcement. To understand what is happening here, 
let us step back a little. 

Digital monopolies 

In the digital realm, it is said that code is law and architecture is policy. 
Those who control the software code, and the architecture of large ‘platforms’ 
around which key social systems are organised today, get to set the rules for 
these sectors. ‘To organise the world’s information’ is Google’s stated noble 
function. As Google developed monopoly over this sector, it increasingly 

manipulated its algorithms for its own commercial gains. It judges what content 
needs to be pulled down for violating intellectual property rights or on 
grounds of defamation, normally a public function. Facebook similarly makes the 
global social rules on its monopoly social media platform, as Apple does for 
the mobile app ecology on its App Store, rivalled only by Google’s Android 
market. 

Things get more complex as we move to sectors that are not purely 
informational/digital. But even in these cases, any first mover who can 
organise the digital connections between the suppliers and consumers in any 
sector, and the valuable data that arise from the ensuing digital interactions, 
can expect to quickly develop a monopolistic position. The first mover comes to 
own the ‘platform’ around which the digital avatar of the concerned sector 
takes shape. It can become the Airbnb of accommodation booking, the Uber of 
city transportation, or the Amazon/Alibaba of e-commerce. 

Similar monopoly platforms are expected to develop in all areas, including key 
sectors such as education, health, and agriculture. Monsanto has graduated from 
a manufacturing company to being intellectual property-based and now to 
becoming an agriculture data company. It plans to monopolise macro and micro 
data about farming, right up to the soil type and micro-climate of each farm, 
to be able to fully control all agricultural inputs, both hard and soft. With 
privileged access to information about what is going to come out of the fields 
and when, it can, in due course, also expect to dominate the agri-output 
market. The automobile sector is similarly undergoing major digital 
transformations, with Google and Apple moving in. Daimler’s CEO recently 
expressed concern that traditional car-makers may get reduced to becoming the 
Foxconn (the China-based i-Phone manufacturer) of the car industry, while 
others own the all-important digital operating systems. 

As all sectors go digital, some interesting reorganisation is happening. There 
is a marked tendency towards greater monopolisation with the key positions held 
by whoever can control the ‘platform’ that digitally connects different actors, 
especially with consumers, and, even more importantly, control the data about 
the sector. These two kinds of controls are related as data mostly gets 
generated from digital interactions in the sector — among human actors, but 
also increasingly with and among ‘things’, what is called the ‘Internet of 
Things’. 

Fixing regulation 

Strong network effects implied in both these controls is the reason for 
increased monopolisation. We see its extreme expression in pure digital 
services such as search and social networking. In non-digital areas, there are 
still the traditional manufacturing/intellectual property competencies and 
brand loyalties to contend with, even as digital behemoths make audacious moves 
to take on these sectors. There also exists a good amount of innovation outside 
the current industry giants. However, starts-ups are fast being bought out, and 
mergers and partnerships are taking place, overall tending towards a very few 
actors dominating each sector — some competing wh

The Canadian upending how the IMF thinks about the economy

[Michael Gurstein]

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/the-canadian-upending-how-the-imf-thinks-about-the-economy/?google_editors_picks=true

The Canadian upending how the IMF thinks about the economy

The head of the IMF research department, Jonathan Ostry, on why countries
with the fiscal space to stimulate their economies 'should not sweat the
debt'

Kevin Carmichael

May 5, 2016 

One of the biggest supporters of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to
try to boost economic growth by running deficits is the International
Monetary Fund. This will come as a surprise to anyone who still sees the IMF
as the overlord of the Washington Consensus, shorthand for the neo-liberal
economic agenda that the fund promoted through the 1990s and in the years
ahead of the Great Recession. But over the past number if years, the IMF has
become far less doctrinaire. It now says it is okay if countries seek to
regulate hot money, and it talks openly about income inequality as a threat
to economic growth. This shift was based on research, and Canada's Jonathan
Ostry was responsible for much of it. Ostry, born in Ottawa and educated at
the University of Chicago, wields influence as the deputy director of the
IMF's research department. Last year, he challenged orthodoxy again by
showing that austerity could actually make it harder for countries to manage
their debts by constraining economic growth. Ostry spoke to Maclean's
recently in Washington.

Q: When you started your work on deficits and debt, what did you think you
were going to find?

A: What got us thinking about this idea was that after the global financial
crisis, many, many advanced countries woke up with a huge increase in their
public debt. It is not the case that the reason for that increase is
primarily the fiscal stimulus that was undertaken. That was a part of it,
but the larger part was the need to bail out the financial sector as well as
the impact of low growth. There was a period of low growth when money was
not coming into treasuries around the world, so there was a big run up in
public debt. You had a sense throughout the world that, 'Okay, debt is
really high and it should be paid down. What goes up should come down.'
We at the fund and elsewhere seemed more concerned about the pace at which
the debt ratio should be brought down, rather than whether it should be
brought down in the first place. The argument went: 'if you pay it down too
quickly, you will undermine the recovery; and if you pay it down too slowly,
you might unnerve markets.' I felt one needed to ask a more basic question:
should the debt be paid down at all? I later convinced myself that, in
history, the way debt ratios get reduced is primarily through the
denominator (GDP) rather than the numerator (the level of debt). Periods of
long, sustained growth are what have enabled countries to durably reduce
their debt ratios.

That was one thought in the back of our minds. The other was that it
couldn't possibly be right that the advice to pay down the debt through
fiscal effort (a larger deficit) would apply equally to countries with a lot
of fiscal space and to countries with very little fiscal space. Countries
where markets are already giving you strong signals that you need to get
your fiscal house in order are going to have a much greater need to have
large government surpluses to pay down the debt. But for countries where
there is very little real prospect of a fiscal crisis on the horizon, the
case for fiscal efforts to pay down the debt seems much less compelling.

What we tried to do was put together a framework that might illustrate those
two points. There is an analogy to monetary policy. When you have a lot of
monetary policy credibility, you can afford to be more aggressive in
combating deflationary risks even if it may look somewhat irresponsible.

Sometimes it is responsible to do irresponsible things. Likewise, I think
countries that have an excellent track record of fiscal responsibility can
afford not to pay down their debt in short order, especially in periods like
the one we are going through.

Q: Yet paying down debt has dominated economic thinking over the past five
years.

A: When you talk about the virtues of paying down the debt, two arguments
are normally made. One is that high debt is bad for growth, so low debt is
good for growth. I have no argument with that. I accept that. The other is
that low debt is needed as a kind of insurance to enable you to have the
elbow room if something bad happens to you tomorrow. So it's insurance. Low
debt has both an insurance value and it is good for growth.

The problem is not with those two points, the problem is that you somehow
imagine that you can get to low debt costlessly and you ignore the
transitional cost of getting to low debt. If there is waste in the
government, and you cut that waste, there is indeed a costless way of
getting debt down. But if there is little or no waste, getting debt down
involves either productive spe

Re: Guardian > Monbiot > Neoliberalism -- the ideology at

[Michael Gurstein]

To add to these distinguished commentaries...

I think that in examining "neo-liberalism" as an ideology it is
worthwhile to also see it as a political program with quite direct real
world correlates and moreover one which for a significant period of time
was dominant in the World Bank and the IMF through its unconscionable
and now largely discredited imposition of the SAP's (Structural
Adjustment Programs) which laid waste to the social fabric of much of
sub-Saharan Africa and significant parts of Asia.  It also provided the
basis for the very widespread program of privatization of the teleco
services throughout the developing world and as I tried to show in the
blogpost I recently circulated re: the Alliance for Affordable Internet
(A4AI) is the program currently being promoted by the USG and its allies
for the management and regulation of the Internet throughout the
Developing World.

What is rather more insidious and of even greater and longer term (and
historical) consequence is the attempt through more or less direct
intervention by the US State Department and the NTIA and their allies in
the "Technical Community" (the IETF, IANA, ISOC, etc.), the corporate
sector (Google, Facebook, etc.) and civil society (APC, and other of the
"Internet Freedom" partners) to ensure that a neo-liberal regime is
built into the very fabric of the global Internet through the (non)
structuring of global Internet Governance (I've discussed this and
documented this at considerable in my blog (and over the last several
years shared it on this e-list) --search on "Internet Governance" at
http://gurstein.wordpress.com).

Among other things that are noteworthy about these latter initiatives is
the degree to which the Technical Community and virtually all of the
directly involved Civil Society have been either complicit or active
contributors to these efforts. (Also, of course it is of note that these
initiatives have been taking place while the internal "governance" of
the Internet via the FCC has taken a rather more interventionist and
socially aware set of directions.)

M

-Original Message-

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org On Behalf Of Brian Holmes
Sent: April 28, 2016 5:12 AM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: Re:  Guardian > Monbiot > Neoliberalism -- the ideology at

There have been great points in this debate (notably Allan's and
David's), yet still it leaves me totally unsatisfied. I'm amazed how no
one seems to care about the history of ideas, and with all due respect
there's no way I can accept Florian's claim that ultimately,
neoliberalism is what people think it is -- in other words, it's some
kind of popular meme. No, it has a long and complex history with
diverging and reconnecting strands that can be excavated, reconstructed,
examined and evaluated. History matters and the devil is in the details.

 <...>

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Re: 'responsible' handling of the Panama Papers

[Michael Gurstein]

Excellent, Ted.

I think what the "responsible" journalists don't get is that this isn't
about criminal wrong-doing (well some of it is).  

The problem at its base isn't about whether folks did or did not break the
law but rather that the law itself is wrong (most certainly the result of
effective lobbying by the 1% and others) allowing for folks to get out of
paying what they should be paying in tax. (The folks demonstrating in
Iceland seem to have got this right.)

So the objective here is not to save the innocent, in this circumstance
there may be relatively few or even no innocents, rather it is how to
contribute to a global campaign to put laws on the books to ensure that
everyone is paying their fair share.  So as you most effectively argue, the
more information the better, and the journo's involved need a lot wider
input into the filters that they are using for saving us from ourselves.

And we all should be remembering that the biggest and most egregious tax
dodgers aren't the Messi's and Cameron's of the world rather they are
Google, and Facebook, and the big drug companies.

M

-Original Message-
From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of t byfield
Sent: April 7, 2016 8:08 AM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject:  'responsible' handling of the Panama Papers

Here's a mail I just sent to a list devoted to discussion of 'responsible
data.'

Cheers,
T

- - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - 

Hi, all --

I appreciate that a forum devoted to responsible data is what it says on the
tin, but I want to question the reflexive assumption that journalists'
gatekeeping role is the most responsible course of action in the case of the
Panama Papers. It may be the most *defensible* and it may be the most
*professional*, but a lot of other freight can be smuggled in under labels
like that. That's basically what Mossack Fonseca did: use anodyne language
to mask activities that -- to put it charitably -- benefited the few at the
expense of the many. And while it would be grossly unfair to lump the
investigative journalists working on the papers together with MF's staff, it
is a *fact* that, for the purposes of public access to the vast majority of
the documents, the actions of both groups will have the same outcome. And
that's a material fact, because it is how many powerful forces will exploit
this leak to prevent another like it from happening again -- for example, by
intimidating journalists into acting 'professionally.'
 <...>

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In Plain Sight: The Alliance for an Affordable Internet: Discussion Summation

[Michael Gurstein]

The below has been adapted from the original blogpost (with very extensive
links/referencing) at: 

https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/the-a4ai-discussion-a-summation/ 

As some of you will know I recently published a blogpost which presents a
detailed critique of the A4AI (the Alliance for an Affordable Internet)
"Best Practices" document; and a second blogpost which presents a detailed
alternative set of "Best Practices". These have generated quite a lengthy
and sometimes heated discussion on some broader e-lists of interest to the
Internet policy community (specifically governa...@lists.igcaucus.org, the
e-list for civil society in Internet Governance; and
internetpol...@elists.isoc.org , the policy e-list for the Internet Society
(ISOC). Overall the discussion has generated some 200 or so individual posts
with some continuing to be posted.

I'm biased of course, but as the discussion progressed and as it forced me
to go deeper into the background for the Alliance a few things became very,
even startlingly, clear:

   1. The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI)  describes itself as "the
world's broadest technology sector coalition" with a variety of very heavy
corporate (Google, Facebook, Intel etc.), civil society (WWF, ISOC) and US
aligned governmental interests (US State Department, US AID, UK AID etc.)
participating.  So what the A4AI says and does is not trivial.

   2. While the A4AI appears to be doing useful research and advocacy work
on the ground (their annual Affordability reports) the explicitly stated
fundamental objective and priority of the Alliance is to rework via its
"Best Practices" document, the policies and regulations of the participating
Less Developed Countries (LDCs) thus: "A4AI has a laser focus on. regulatory
and policy change".

   3.  The "Best Practices" document would appear to have been produced by
Hillary Clinton's US State Department in conjunction with Google and bears
little or no real relationship to actual best practices (for enhancing
Internet access particularly for the un/underserved) as observed by
experienced practitioners in the area.

   4. The "Best Practices" document is at its core an ideological, market
fundamentalist/neo-liberal document and is looking to have LDC's implement
market fundamentalist policies as the fundamental structure for Internet
governance, policies and regulations at the national level including fully
open markets, prohibition of government involvement to support broader
access, full (international) corporate involvement in deployment of
Universal Services Funds (often in the $100's of millions of dollars--huge
sums for LDCs) among others.

   5. The "Best Practices" document is meant to bring LDC's into alignment
with the preferred policies of the USG and its corporate allies irrespective
of the fact that it is in direct contradiction with the current domestic
actions and policy directions of most Developed Country jurisdictions (USA,
Canada, Australia) which recognize the necessary role of governments in
supporting the provision of service to the un/underserved.   

  6. The continued participation by the various CS organizations among
others (Worldwide Web Foundation, Internet Society, APC etc.) means that
they are complicit in the A4AI's (I think it really should be renamed as the
Alliance for an American Internet) neo-liberal agenda for remaking the
policy and regulatory framework of LDC's.

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From Twitter -- Trump Channels Mussolin

[Michael Gurstein]

(from) Donald J. Trump Verified account
þ@realDonaldTrump

"@ilduce2016: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a
sheep.” – @realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain"


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Other News - Why The European Periphery Needs A Post-Euro Strategy

[Michael Gurstein]

It appears that Germany is proposing to impose similar regimes to those
of Greece on other of the "periphery" countries at an accelerated pace.

M

Why The European Periphery Needs A Post-Euro Strategy

Thomas Fazi - Social Europe

In recent weeks, Germany has put forward two proposals for the 'future
viability' of the EMU that, if approved, would radically alter the
nature of the currency union. For the worse.

The first proposal, already at the centre of high-level
intergovernmental discussions, comes from the German Council of Economic
Experts, the country's most influential economic advisory group
(sometimes referred to as the 'five wise men'). It has the backing of
the Bundesbank, of the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and, it
would appear, even of Mario Draghi.

Ostensibly aimed at 'severing the link between banks and government'
(just like the banking union) and 'ensuring long-term debt
sustainability', it calls for: (i) removing the exemption from
risk-weighting for sovereign exposures, which
 essentially means
that government bonds would longer be considered a risk-free asset for
banks (as they are now under Basel rules), but would be 'weighted'
according to the 'sovereign default risk' of the country in question (as
determined by the fraud-prone rating agencies depicted in The Big
Short); (ii) putting a cap on the overall risk-weighted sovereign
exposure of banks; and (iii) introducing an automatic 'sovereign
insolvency mechanism' that would essentially extend to sovereigns the
bail-in rule introduced for banks by the banking union, meaning that if
a country requires financial assistance from the European Stability
Mechanism (ESM), for whichever reason, it will have to lengthen
sovereign bond maturities (reducing the market value of those bonds and
causing severe losses for all bondholders) and, if necessary, impose a
nominal 'haircut' on private creditors.

The second proposal, initially put forward by Schaeuble and fellow
high-ranking member of the CDU party Karl Lamers and revived in recent
weeks by the governors of the German and French central banks, Jens
Weidmann (Bundesbank) and François Villeroy de Galhau (Banque de
France), calls for the creation of a 'eurozone finance ministry', in
connection with an 'independent fiscal council'.

At first, both proposals might appear reasonable -- even progressive!
Isn't an EU- or EMU-level sovereign debt restructuring mechanism and
fiscal authority precisely what many progressives have been advocating
for years? As always, the devil is in the detail.

As for the proposed 'sovereign bail-in' scheme, it's not hard to see why
it would result in the exact opposite of its stated aims. The first
effect of it coming into force would be to open up huge holes in the
balance sheets of the banks of the 'riskier' countries (at the time of
writing, all periphery countries except Ireland have an S&P rating of
BBB+ or less), since banks tend to hold a large percentage of their
country's public debt; in the case of a country like Italy, where the
banks own around 400 billion euros of government debt and are already
severely undercapitalised, the effects on the banking system would be
catastrophic.

We know for fact -- despite the feeble reassurances of the eurozone's
finance ministers -- that the banking union's bail-in rule -- for reasons
that I have explained at length here -- is already causing a slow-motion
bank run on periphery banks, with periphery countries experiencing
massive capital flight towards core countries (almost on par with 2012
levels), as bondholders and depositors flee the banks of the weaker
countries in fear of looming bail-ins, confiscations, capital controls
and bank failures of the kind that we have seen in Greece and Cyprus.
Extending that same rule also to sovereigns would simply mean doubling
down on a measure that is already exacerbating core-periphery imbalances
and increasing (rather than reducing) the risk of banking crises. The
risk is not limited just to periphery countries, of course, as the
recent panic over Deutsche Bank testifies.

Moreover, the proposed measure, far from 'severing the link between
banks and government', would almost certainly ignite a new European bond
crisis -- of which are already witnessing the first signs -- as banks rush
to offload their holdings of 'risky' government debt in favour of
'safer' bonds, such as German ones (as the German Council of Economic
Experts report acknowledges, 'as a result of the risk-adjusted large
exposure limit, there is more leeway for holding high-quality government
bonds than with a fixed limit'). The report estimates that banks will
have to divest around 600 billion euros of government debt. As Carlo
Bastasin of the Brookings Institution writes:

Sovereign bonds have a unique and pivotal role for the financial
systems of the euro-area. So, once sovereign bonds in some euro-area
countries become more risky, the whole financial system might turn
frail

Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch

[Michael Gurstein]

Sorry to intrude in this Euro-centric (myopic) discussion but just as DIEM25
was being presented Bernie Sanders was winning the New Hampshire primary for
the US Democratic party nomination on the basis of rebuilding US democracy
and being a facilitator of a "democratic revolution" and "socialism" in the
US.  

An interesting contrast I think in Sanders' self-identifying and embedding
his campaign as part of a broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled
participative social movement with what appears to be a top down, (left)
elite driven and non-participative process in DIEM25.  Further it is quite
clear that should by some chance Sanders were to become the next President
of the US, the only possible means by which he can deliver on his promises
(and his expressed strategy) to curb campaign finances, break the hold of
Wall Street, implement single payer medicare etc.etc. is through continuing
and extending his campaign mobilization of his broad based, highly
distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement (something which
to his eternal discredit Obama chose to demobilize immediately after his
election...

Another straw in the hurricane which doesn't seem to have wafted through the
rarified halls in Berlin are Corbyn's broad based, highly distributed,
Internet enabled participative social movement towards his ascension to the
BLP leadership.

And finally, here in Canada the quite spontaneous and largely unorganized
and leaderless broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled
participative social movement which led to the sound defeat (70% to 30%) of
Canada's version of austerity driven neo-liberalism (the hard right
government of Stephen Harper) and the rather surprising election of a
progressive centrist government through PM Justin Trudeau. Trudeau's
government while not itself responsible for the anti-Harper movement is, in
a wide number of interesting ways, attempting to govern as a broad based,
highly distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement and
directly opposite in social and at least for the moment, economic policies
of its immediate predecessor.

Some possible lessons to be learned?

M

-Original Message-
From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Frederic Janssens
Sent: February 14, 2016 8:22 AM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: Re:  notes from the DIEM25 launch

   Some comments and proposals.

   (I only followed the live-stream.)

   Geert Lovink 
   12 February 2016 at 21:33

   >"The real challenge DIEM has to tackle is the question of organization.
   >It is called a movement, but is it really? Someone mentioned that one
   >cannot "found" a movement. They emerge, bottom up. What will happen
   >over the next weeks, and perhaps months, are local DIEM events to start
   >with Madrid, Amsterdam and for sure more that I do not know about.  This
   >is the age of the internet so how about some internet coordination?"
   >...
   >"The internet easily
   >replicates the celebs memes but the hard work of designing internal
   >democracy has yet to begin."

   Yes.

   My proposal would be to formulate it thus :
 <...>

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Welcome to America, Where We Fight for the Freedom to Visit Disney World

[Michael Gurstein]

< 
http://www.thenation.com/article/welcome-to-america-where-we-fight-for-the-freedom-to-visit-disney-world/
 >


 Welcome to America, Where We Fight for the Freedom to Visit
 Disney World

 That's why we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, right?


 By Tom Engelhardt

 OCTOBER 29, 2015

 You may not know it, but you're living in a futuristic
 science-fiction novel. And that's a fact. If you were to read
 about our American world in such a novel, you would be amazed by
 its strangeness. Since you exist right smack in the middle of it,
 it seems like normal life (Donald Trump and Ben Carson aside).
 But make no bones about it, so far this has been a bizarre
 American century.

 Let me start with one of the odder moments we've lived through
 and give it the attention it's always deserved. If you follow my
 train of thought and the history it leads us into, I guarantee
 you that you'll end up back exactly where we are -- in the midst of
 the strangest presidential campaign in our history.

 To get a full-frontal sense of what that means, however, let's
 return to late September 2001. I'm sure you remember that moment,
 just over two weeks after those World Trade Center towers came
 down and part of the Pentagon was destroyed, leaving a jangled
 secretary of defense instructing his aides, "Go massive. Sweep it
 all up. Things related and not."

 I couldn't resist sticking in that classic Donald Rumsfeld line,
 but I leave it to others to deal with Saddam Hussein, those
 fictional weapons of mass destruction, the invasion of Iraq, and
 everything that's happened since, including the establishment of
 a terror "caliphate" by a crew of Islamic extremists brought
 together in American military prison camps -- all of which you
 wouldn't believe if it were part of a sci-fi novel. The damn
 thing would make Planet of the Apes look like outright realism.

 Instead, try to recall the screaming headlines that labeled the
 9/11 attacks "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century" or "a new Day
 of Infamy," and the attackers "the kamikazes of the 21st
 century." Remember the moment when President George W. Bush,
 bullhorn in hand, stepped onto the rubble at "Ground Zero" in New
 York, draped his arm around a fireman, and swore payback in the
 name of the American people, as members of an impromptu crowd
 shouted out things like "Go get 'em, George!"

 "I can hear you! I can hear you!" he responded. "The rest of the
 world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these
 buildings down will hear all of us soon!"

 "USA! USA! USA!" chanted the crowd.

 Then, on September 20, addressing Congress, Bush added,
 "Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years they have
 been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941." By
 then, he was already talking about "our war on terror."

 Now, hop ahead to that long-forgotten moment when he would
 finally reveal just how a 21st-century American president should
 rally and mobilize the American people in the name of the
 ultimate in collective danger. As CNN put it at the time,
 "President Bush...urged Americans to travel, spend, and enjoy
 life." His actual words were:

  > "And one of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore
  > public confidence in the airline industry and to tell the
  > traveling public, get on board, do your business around the
  > country, fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Go
  > down to Disney World in Florida, take your families and enjoy
  > life the way we want it to be enjoyed."

 So we went to war in Afghanistan and later Iraq to rebuild faith
 in flying. Though that got little attention at the time, tell me
 it isn't a detail out of some sci-fi novel. Or put another way,
 as far as the Bush administration was then concerned, Rosie the
 Riveter was moldering in her grave and the model American for
 mobilizing a democratic nation in time of war was Rosie the
 Frequent Flyer. It turned out not to be winter in Valley Forge,
 but eternal summer in Orlando. From then on, as the Bush
 administration planned its version of revenge cum global
 domination, the message it sent to the citizenry was: Go about
 your business and leave the dirty work to us.

 Disney World opened in 1971, but for a moment imagine that it had
 been in existence in 1863 and that, more than seven score years
 ago, facing a country in the midst of a terrible civil war,
 Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg had said this:

  > "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task
  > remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take
  > increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
 

"Sunny days...

[Michael Gurstein]

As most people perhaps know the recent election in Canada resulted in a set
of rather surprising results.  The ruling Harper Conservative (extreme
rightist) government was defeated after a very very ugly racist and
deliberately (by the Cons) divisive campaign to be replaced by a majority
(centre left?) Liberal government under Justin (son of Pierre) Trudeau. The
mildly (more) leftist New Democratic Party (NDP) which had been leading in
the polls going into the election lost over half its members (and its vote)
in an overwhelming rejection of Harper and Harperism where the Liberals
represented a clearer and more forcefully articulated opportunity for
"progressive" change--opting against austerity and balanced budgets and for
taxes on the 1%.

The somewhat unexpected victory by the Liberals evidently because of their
shift to the left to outflank the NDP whose campaign in certain significant
elements were more Harperite than anything consistent with its social
democratic history, raises some very interesting questions in a global
context which, particularly in the European context is wrestling with how to
deal with "austerity" as an ideology and an economic (neo-liberal) practice.

It isn't clear that the Liberals thought through their
pro-deficit/anti-austerity position beyond it's use as an election tactic
but when seen in the context of the current political turmoil in various
parts of (Southern) Europe their position becomes very interesting. Rather
than challenging the neo-liberal Washington Consensus from the far left, the
Libs have (perhaps inadvertently) fallen into challenging it from the mushy
centre.  Precisely what that means or where that might go is by no means
clear but it does open up the possibility for some quite significant global
ideological leadership for the Libs if they choose to carry through with
this since of course there seems to be a very widespread hunger throughout
Southern Europe and elsewhere (Corbyn, Sanders) in this direction. 

How this hunger might be realized in a (relatively) stable economic,
political and social environment as in Canada raises some extremely
interesting and even exciting possibilities for recasting ideological
positions in the 21st century away from those cast in stone in the post WWI
(social democratic) and then post-WWII (neo-liberal) global socio-economic
ideology building. 

Of course, a serious "radical" departure from current socio-economic
convention is unlikely (the Libs position on the TPP, at least, for now
unclear) and the Libs will likely revert to their norm of electioneering on
the left and governing on the right but who knows. As Justin Trudeau said in
his victory speech quoting Wilfred Laurier and earlier Canadian PM, "Sunny
days"...?

And whatever happens with the Libs in power, at least (to quote a noted
Canadian political analyst) "ding dong, the witch is dead...

M


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Re: [governance] VW

[Michael Gurstein]

  [Orig CCed to  -- mod (tb)]

David,

Let's assume for the moment that we agree that the fundamental and overriding 
objective is the protection of the public interest in the operation and 
evolution of the Internet (and not for example as seems to be (or at least to 
have been) the case with some of our colleagues that the fundamental objective 
is the protection of the integrity of the Internet itself).

The questions then are several:
1. how is the public interest defined
2. who is to be involved in making those definitions
3. what procedures are to be followed in making and implementing those 
decisions
4. and so on.

Certainly the private sector and particularly the Internet giants have to have 
a significant role in advising on this process--as Jeremy pointed out--they 
have a lot of the knowledge and expertise and already are making a lot of the 
rules. But should they be involved in actually defining and making the rules?

However much Facebook or Google are attempting to in effect become the Internet 
-- they are not the Internet, they are private corporations seeking in various 
ways (sometimes ethical sometimes less so) to pursue their own private 
interests--and we would not expect anything else.  In fact under certain 
jurisdictions they are legally obliged to act in this way.

Why VW is pertinent is because it shows the depths to which a major corporation 
will go in pursuit of those interests.  Fortunately there is a legal regime 
which was meant to govern their actions and which they fraudulently flouted.  
Imagine if they had been in a position to legally and with an enthusiastic 
welcome participate in the definition and implementation of that legal regime 
(notably one of the reasons that their actions were undetected for so long is 
because following the logic of governance in the age of neo-liberalism, funds 
for enforcement were cut back in the various jurisdictions and the companies 
were given the responsibility of "self-enforcement"!). 

Do you really believe that these companies would somehow end up pursuing the 
public interest rather than their own private interests and with their wealth 
and power (and capacity for political influence) not in the end "do whatever it 
takes" to skew the outcome in their favour and further closing the circle by 
structuring the rules and the structures of accountability to support their 
private interests.

I agree with you about the need for transparency and accountability for the TPP 
and TISA etc.etc. and quite honestly I think the active promotion of the 
multistakeholder model by the major proponents of these types of agreements is 
precisely because they recognize the difficulty they are having in pursuing 
these given Civil Society (and Labour and other) opposition they are concluding 
that where there is a multistakeholder approach with a coopted/compromised 
civil society is a part of the process, it is a lot easier to control and 
implement the outcome than it is by pursuing the current TPP and TISA model.

M

-Original Message-
From: David Cake [mailto:d...@difference.com.au] 
Sent: September 28, 2015 10:48 AM
To: governa...@lists.igcaucus.org; Michael Gurstein 
Cc: t byfield 
Subject: Re: [governance]  VW


> On 28 Sep 2015, at 6:16 am, Michael Gurstein  wrote:
> 
> Ted and all,
> 
> Far be it from me to second guess the insight (or well-placed cynicism) of 
> Nettimer folks but dare I say that not all folks who should be, are quite as 
> perspicacious.
> 
> The flavour of the day in global governance circles--think managing the 
> Internet (ICANN etc.), the environment, "sustainable development" and on and 
> on is what is being called "multistakeholderism" i.e. where governments, the 
> private sector, civil society and all get together and "find consensus" 
> solutions on to how to manage the world for the rest of us.

> 
> Significant portions of Civil Society have bought into this approach 
> which is firmly premised on the notion that somehow the private sector 
> should be directly involved in making governance decisions because 
> well, they are so public spirited, or that they have the long term 
> interests of everyone at heart ("they are people too aren't they"), or 
> we can trust them much more than those perfidious folks in government, 
> or they are "accountable" to their shareholders and wouldn't do 
> anything completely untoward to risk shareholder value etc.etc. (you 
> know the drill???

Shocking though it is when policy is determined via open and 
transparent meetings of government, private sector, civil society, academia etc 
get together to work out policy, I still find it preferable to the de facto 
alternatives - which is usually government and the private sector get together 
secretly and work out a

FW: VW

[Michael Gurstein]

Ted and all,

Far be it from me to second guess the insight (or well-placed cynicism) of 
Nettimer folks but dare I say that not all folks who should be, are quite as 
perspicacious.

The flavour of the day in global governance circles--think managing the 
Internet (ICANN etc.), the environment, "sustainable development" and on and on 
is what is being called "multistakeholderism" i.e. where governments, the 
private sector, civil society and all get together and "find consensus" 
solutions on to how to manage the world for the rest of us.  

Significant portions of Civil Society have bought into this approach which is 
firmly premised on the notion that somehow the private sector should be 
directly involved in making governance decisions because well, they are so 
public spirited, or that they have the long term interests of everyone at heart 
("they are people too aren't they"), or we can trust them much more than those 
perfidious folks in government, or they are "accountable" to their shareholders 
and wouldn't do anything completely untoward to risk shareholder value etc.etc. 
(you know the drill...

But if VW can and will commit fraud and what is in effect a crime against 
humanity for short term financial (and/or ego) gains then what might one expect 
from lesser lights with perhaps less to lose and who aren't so deeply enmeshed 
in what should have been (and what purportedly was) a deep web (errr network) 
of accountability, responsibility, enforced integrity etc. (as per your 
comments...

What VW tells us (and why "motivation" is worth looking at) is that when push 
comes to shove we really really need some structures of accountability that are 
responsive to "our", the public's needs and not the shareholders and that 
multistakeholderism as a system of governance is basically giving away the keys 
to the kingdom.

Mike 

-Original Message-

 From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org  
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of t byfield
 Sent: September 27, 2015 12:08 PM
 To: nettim...@kein.org
 Subject: Re:  VW

 On 25 Sep 2015, at 20:59, Michael Gurstein wrote:

 > Thanks Ted, very useful.
 >
 > I guess what I'm curious about is the motivations, individual and/or 
 > corporate thought processes/incentives etc. that underlie the initial 
 > decision to go down this path and then the multitude of decisions at 
 > various levels up and down the organization to continue on this path.
 <...>

 Michael, your line of questions seems to be a high priority for the
 media: today's NYT top story is "As Volkswagen Pushed to Be No. 1,  
Ambitions Fueled a Scandal." Personally, I don't think there's been much  
innovation in the motivation dept since, say, Sophocles, so the  
human-interest angle isn't very interesting, IMO. If anything, it's the  
primary mechanism in diverting attention from the real problem, namely,  
how to address malfeasance on this scale. Corporations are treated as  
'people' when it comes to privatizing profit, but when it comes to  
liabilities they're become treated as amorphous, networky constructs,  and 
punishing them becomes an exercise in trying to catch smoke with  your 
hands. Imagine for a moment that by some improbable chain of events  VW 
ended up facing a 'corporate death penalty,' there remain all kinds  of 
questions about what restrictions would be imposed on the most  culpable 
officers, how its assets would be disposed of, and what would  happen to 
its intellect
 ual property. (It'd be funny if the the VW logo  was banned, eh? I'm not 
suggesting anything like that could actually  happen, of course.) The 
peculiar details of this scandal could spark a  systemic crisis of a 
different kind, one that makes evading guilt more  difficult. The 'too 
complex for mere mortals' line won't work in this
 case: VWs have come a long way since the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or R. 
 Crumb-like illustrated manuals about _How to Keep your Volkswagen  
Alive_, but not so far that people will blindly accept that they can't  
understand them. Popular understanding of negative externalities in  
environmentalism is decades ahead of its equivalent in finance. And it  
doesn't hurt that Germany, which has done so much to bend the EU to its  
will, looks like it'll be the lender of last resort.
  <...>


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Re: VW

[Michael Gurstein]

Thanks Ted, very useful.

I guess what I'm curious about is the motivations, individual and/or
corporate thought processes/incentives etc. that underlie the initial
decision to go down this path and then the multitude of decisions at various
levels up and down the organization to continue on this path.

It seems to me that it is somehow the equivalent of those US politicians who
insist on sending porno pictures of themselves via unencrypted emails to
(supposedly) teenage girls. It is very hard to see the risk reward
calculations here making any sense given that the outcome of eventual likely
exposure is catastrophic and fatal (from a career/corporate perspective)
i.e. why on earth they would risk it given what would be at stake? 

Further to this what was their perception of the broad environment in which
they were perpetrating this fraud.  Did they not understand the (likely)
inevitability of exposure.  Were the short term rewards such as to overcome
any concern with the longer term penalties?  Were they sufficiently arrogant
to think that they were too clever/important to be exposed and if exposed
too important to be allowed, in the neo-liberal scheme of things, to be
compelled to bear the full and likely consequences of their actions?

In the case of the individuals electronically exposing themselves, the
matters could be perhaps explained by individual psychopathology but is this
an explanation that makes sense for the second largest auto-maker in the
world? In some ways this is even more egregious than the other automobile
scandals as revealed by Ralph Nader for example where faulty engineering and
internal corporate imperatives led to an on-going attempted cover-up. This
one was a deliberate conscious willed action to commit serious fraud by
presumably multiple individuals in a company which employs 600,000 people
and is one of the mainstays of the largest economy in Europe.

Some insight into what went on in the decision processes might be very
revealing about the nature of the global corporate climate is in these days
of corporate triumphalism and the ascendance of their political enablers.

Mike 


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A Canadian Election Programme for Digital Citizenship and Social Equity

[Michael Gurstein]

https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/a-canadian-programme-for-digital-c
itizenship-and-social-equity/

A Canadian Election Programme for Digital Citizenship and Social Equity 

The Internet and digital technologies have gone from exotic to commonplace
in the blink of an eye. The Internet and digital technologies now provide
the platform for much of the world’s economic, social, cultural and
political activities.

The resulting transformations in the way we conventionally do things
presents enormous risks as well as benefits–accelerating economic
inequalities which appear to have partial roots in digital technology; the
rise of digital surveillance and the “surveillance State”; the
vulnerabilities built into remotely managed and controlled digital systems
putting individuals and communities at continuing risk of catastrophic
failures; all of this alongside unprecedented opportunities for increasing
efficiencies in and universalizing access to information and to the means of
production and distribution. and thus for realizing broadly based social
equity.

At the heart of these developments and their risks is the inability of
current systems of public accountability to allow citizens to determine the
broad directions for their communities and their own rights and
responsibilities in a digital age. Existing forms of democratic control and
citizenship do not seem adequate to the task.

Rather there appears to be the need for a new form of citizenship, one which
can renew the accountability of institutions of governance, of assigning the
rights and responsibilities of individuals and communities in the context of
this digital transformation—a form of digitally enabled citizenship adequate
to the digital age—a ”digital citizenship” for short.

It is thus surprising how little attention has been paid to the Internet and
the digital in Canada’s current election campaign. The only mention to date
has been the Conservative’s dusting off previous funding commitments for
broadband for rural and remote areas. The only extensive outside
election-focused discussion of Internet based issues and policies is the
useful but limited contribution from OpenMedia.ca.

In the following I want to lay out what hopefully may function as an initial
program towards a “digital citizenship” — a form of digitally enabled and
enhanced citizenship for the Internet age; and one which takes as its basic
assumption the Internet’s transformational risks and opportunities. This is
presented in the form of an election “platform” — a set of principles and
policies which gives citizens a choice as to directions they may wish to
follow.

Principles
1. Inclusive openness–openness of systems, institutions, information along
with the attendant processes and supports for broad-based inclusive
participation; and inclusiveness in participation and control over systems
and institutions enabled by information openness to achieve the maximum of
accountability;
2. Decentralized and distributed control towards the local and the
community-based with means provided to support such initiatives;
3. Internet and the digital as a supporting and equalizing ‘playing field’
on which various social, political, economic and cultural activities can
take place, both in collaborative and competitive modes;
4. Social and economic equity as ultimate goals for system enhancement and
development

Towards a program for universal Canadian Digital Citizenship
1. Fundamental to achieving digital citizenship is access to the opportunity
and means to use digital technologies–a commitment to ensuring the
opportunity for full Internet access and use to all Canadians. There are now
multiple means for delivering the Internet under the widest variety of
physical and geographic conditions. There thus must be a formal commitment
to ensuring for all Canadians a level of Internet access sufficient to
ensure that the user can be a fully active citizen in the digital age. Such
a commitment needs to include not simply physical access to the systems/the
Internet but also the range of education, training, linguistic, disability
and other supports required to ensure the opportunity for the effective use
of the Internet and digital systems for the full range of activities which
constitute active and effective digital citizenship.

2. Among the most significant strategies for providing high speed low cost
access at the local level particularly in smaller and more remote
communities is through community based initiatives in the self provision of
broadband Internet access. Such initiatives should be encouraged and
supported and recognized as a desirable option among the range of Internet
delivery options.

3. Associated with this is the need to ensure that those who are the least
able to undertake effective digital citizenship have access to facilities –
Community Access and Innovation Hubs (CAIHs) where the devices, training and
supports required for for digital citizenship are made locally avai

Corporate Ad Mocking Burning Man's Corporate Influence Is So Accurate That Burning Man Might Sue

[Michael Gurstein]

   http://sfist.com/2015/09/11/this_corporate_ad_mocking_burning_m.php


   A new advertisement that mocks Burning Man's corporate influences and
   was itself produced by sandwich company Quizno's (as a faux-installment
   of The Maze Runner movie franchise) is so meta and self-aware as to be
   nearly sentient. At once brilliant and sordid, this is the kind of
   meta-TV that David Foster Wallace warned us about, may he rest in
   peace. Oh, and perfectly completing the meta-mind-fuck of this whole
   episode, Burning Man officials are considering a lawsuit against
   Quizno's -- for commodifying its culture.

   As the Reno Gazette-Journal reports, Burning Man isn't very amused,
   perhaps because the ad strikes such a nerve. Spokesperson Jim Graham
   Burni says legal action is being considered because the video is theft
   of the event's intellectual property. "We are pretty proactive about
   protecting our 10 principles, one of which is decommodification,"
   Graham said. "We get a quite a number of requests each year from
   companies wanting to gift participants with their product or to capture
   imagery or video of their products at the event, and we turn them all
   down."

   Quizno's and Burning Man have not yet been in contact.

   "We'll be coordinating with our legal team to see what action we can
   take," Graham said. In the past, Burning Man has sued the Girls Gone
   Wild filmmakers on similar grounds and won.


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Fwd: ZNet Commentary: Joe Emersberger: Europe's Democratic Deficit

[Michael Gurstein]

   -- Forwarded message --
   From: ZCommunications 
   Date: Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 3:08 PM
   Subject: ZNet Commentary: Joe Emersberger: Europe's Democratic Deficit


   Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

   Joe Emersberger: Europe's Democratic Deficit

 Z Communications Daily Commentary

   A July 10 Yougov poll found very solid public support in Germany for
   the Merkel government's leading role in the destruction of the Greek
   economy.

   Only 9% of Germans blame the Troika - the European Union, European
   Central Bank (ECB) and IMF - for the state of the Greek economy. The
   level of ignorance is even worse in Sweden and Denmark. Only 6% and 4%
   in those countries, respectively, blame the Troika for the crisis in
   Greece.

   In Germany, 59% exclusively blame past and present Greek governments
   for the crisis. In Sweden and Denmark, 65% and 70%, respectively,
   exclusively blame Greek governments. These numbers are a grim reminder
   of how effectively the media undermines democracy.

   Consider how Der Spiegel, a German media outlet, summed things
   up for its readers:

   "Greece is little more than a failed state governed by clientelism and
   nepotism, a country whose economy has little to offer aside from olive
   oil and beach barsThat was true already five years ago when the
   government in Athens admitted to having taken on three times as much
   debt as previously disclosed, an admission that triggered the start of
   the euro crisis."

   Putting aside the condescension and near bigotry in the passage above,
   the "euro crisis" was actually triggered by a global recession that
   struck in 2009. It devastated countries like Spain which, unlike
   Greece, had been running budget surpluses and whose governments had
   not lied about their finances. Moreover, absolving Greece's creditors
   by saying they were successfully bamboozled until 2010 is outrageous.
   Lenders are supposed to identify fraud and bad investment risks. It's
   the socially useful function they supposedly perform.

   It gets worse for the story Der Spiegel sells its readers. Dangerous
   trade imbalances within the Eurozone - especially in Greece, Ireland
   and Spain - had been building for several years before the global
   recession. Dean Baker points out that the ECB was too incompetent to
   take action. Baker remarked that "Since it is apparently possible to
   take away the pensions that Greek people spent their life working for,
   some people may want to know if it's possible to take back the much
   higher pensions earned by top officials at the ECB."

   ECB officials need not worry provided they remain shielded by Der
   Spiegel and countless similar European outlets. Greek pensioners, on
   the other hand, have plenty to endure and worry about.

   Absolving creditors for what happened in Greece up to 2010 is
   ridiculous, but ignoring their overwhelming culpability for what has
   happened since then is on a whole other level of absurdity.

   According to Der Spiegel, "Much had improved before Tsipras took over
   the government, to the point that national revenues had finally
   exceeded spending. But the Tsipras government loosened up the austerity
   regime, unsettled the business sector and consumers with contradictory
   announcements, and refused to privatize state-run enterprises."

   The cynicism of this passage would have impressed Goebbels. It is best
   exposed by a single chart that Paul Krugman pointed out. You can
   literally draw a straight line between the amount of austerity (budget
   slashing) the Greek government has imposed over the past five years (as
   commanded by the Troika) and its brutal economic collapse. Greece's
   public debt and the cost of public pensions both increased
   dramatically relative to GDP as the economy shrunk. A slow recovery had
   just begun when Tsipras took office, but that recovery was supposed to
   happen years earlier according to the Troika. Quite simply, the
   Troika's orders were very closely followed and it led to a
   disaster comparable to the Great Depression. The polls I
   cited above show what a fine job the media in Europe has done to hide
   this simple truth from its audience, but there is more.

   The long overdue recovery in Greece was undone by the malevolence of
   the ECB, and not, as Der Spiegel claimed, by Tsipras who has only been
   in power several months and, it should not even need saying, could
   never operate with very much autonomy from his European overlords.

   As Mark Weisbrot explained,

   "Just 10 days after the election, the ECB cut off its main line of
   credit to Greek banks, even though there was no obvious reason to do
   so. Shortly thereafter, the ECB put a limit on how much Greek banks
   could lend to the government - a limit that the previous government did
   not have."

   When the Tsipras government called a July 5 referend

Tsipras: hero, traitor, hero, traitor, hero

[Michael Gurstein]

   https://www.byline.com/column/11/article/164

   ALEXIS TSIPRAS: HERO, TRAITOR, HERO, TRAITOR, HERO
   Alex Andreou | Athens, Greece & London, UK | 13 July 2015

   It is revealing of the political landscape in Europe - indeed, the
   world - that everyone's dreams of socialism seemed to rest on the
   shoulders of the young Prime Minister of a small country.  There seemed
   to be a fervent, irrational, almost evangelical belief that a tiny
   country, drowning in debt, gasping for liquidity, would somehow (and
   that somehow is never specified) defeat global capitalism, armed only
   with sticks and rocks.

   When it looked like it wouldn't happen, they turned. "Tsipras
   capitulated." "He is a traitor." The complexity of international
   politics was reduced to a hashtag, that quickly changed from variants
   of #prayfortsipras to variants of #tsiprasresign. The world demanded
   its climax, its X-factor final, its Hollywood dénouement. Anything
   other than a fight to the death was unacceptable cowardice.

   How easy it is to be ideologically pure when you are risking nothing.
   When you are not facing shortages, the collapse of social cohesion,
   civil conflict, life and death. How easy it is to demand a deal that
   would plainly never be accepted by any of the other Eurozone member
   states. How easy brave decisions are when you have no skin in the game,
   when you are not counting down, as I am, the last twenty-four doses of
   the medication which prevents your mother from having seizures.

   Twenty doses. Fourteen.

   It is a peculiar feature of pathological negativity to focus only on
   what is lost instead of what is gained. It is the very same attitude
   that means sections of every country's population - long for their
   perfect Socialist Utopia while simultaneously avoiding tax every way
   they can.

   The idea of Tsipras as a "traitor" relies heavily on a cynical
   misinterpretation of the referendum last week. "OXI", the critics would
   have you believe, was "no" to any sort of deal; an authorisation to
   disorderly Grexit. It was nothing of the sort. In speech after speech
   Tsipras said again and again that he needed a strong "OXI" to use as a
   negotiating weapon in order to achieve a better deal. Did you all miss
   that? Now, you may think he didn't achieve a better deal - that may be
   fair - but to suggest it authorised Grexit is deeply disingenuous. And
   what about the 38% that voted "NAI"? Was Tsipras not there representing
   those people, too?

   Fear not. The deal may prove unworkable anyway. It may not be passed by
   Greek Parliament. Syriza might tear itself apart from within. Grexit
   may be forced by those who have been trying to make it happen for years
   now. Then we get to assess what your better outcome looks like.

   Twelve doses. Ten.

   The agreement that Tsipras achieved (caveat: as we know it) after
   negotiating for 17 hours, is a lot worse than anyone could have
   imagined. It is also a lot better than anyone could hope. It simply
   depends on whether you focus on what has been lost or what has been
   gained. The loss is a package of horrific austerity. It is a package
   which, anyone with any political understanding knows, was coming
   anyway. The only difference is that, through a compliant government
   like the previous ones, it would be accompanied by no compensations.

   What has been gained in return is much more money than previously
   imagined to properly fund the medium term and allow the government to
   implement its programme, a significant stimulus package, the release of
   EFSF money which had until now been denied (to the "good" government of
   Samaras), and an agreement to restructure debt, by transferring bonds
   from IMF and ECB to the ESM. That is nothing, hecklers heckle. ERT
   analyst Michael Gelantalis estimates this last part alone to be worth
   between eight and ten billion less in interest repayments a year. That
   is a lot of souvlaki.

   In the last few hours I have been told that Greece "should just #Grexit
   NOW"; that we have "a wonderful climate and could easily be
   self-sufficient"; that we "should adopt bitcoin and crowdfunding to
   circumvent monetarism"; that "the US would send us medicine". None of
   these people are suggesting that this should happen in their own
   country, you understand. Just Greece, so they can see what happens.
   Most of them live in states with centrist governments, which espouse
   austerity, but guarantee a steady supply of the latest iPad to the
   shops. All of them, without exception, could have negotiated a much
   better deal with a knife to their throat; could have been braver.
   My question to those critics is: What battles are you fighting in your
   country, city, town, right now? And at what risk? Are you not, in fact,
   just as bad as the hardcore austerity ideologues that want to
   experiment with a "toy country", with people's lives

Flashmob choir interrupts TTIP congress - Boing Boing

[Michael Gurstein]

   http://boingboing.net/2015/07/03/flashmob-choir-interrupts-ttip.html

   > The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a secret EU/US
   trade agreement that "puts the right to profit above all other rights,"
   in the words of one MEP.
   >
   > Like its cousin, the Trans Pacific Partnership, TTIP is being
   negotiated by trade officials and industry reps, without any oversight
   from elected legislators and without any participation by citizens'
   groups, environmental groups, or labor groups. And like TPP, it is
   expected to arrive with Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions
   that lets offshore corporations sue your government to overturn the
   democratically enacted environmental, labor and safety laws that
   undermine their profitability.
   >
   > At a pro-TTIP congress where the Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister was
   promoting the treaty, a flashmob of attendees stood up singly and then
   in bunches, singing "Do You Hear the People Sing?" a rousing
   revolutionary song from Les Miserables, as the moderator sputtered with
   comic ineffectualness into the microphone. It's a hell of a video.
   >
   > At this point, you may be asking yourself, well, so what? It's not
   like interrupting this one meeting will stop TTIP from grinding on.
   >
   > You're right. This won't stop it.
   >
   > The reason TTIP and TPP are steamrolling on is that, like all the
   most dangerous evils in the world, they are profoundly boring. It is
   virtually impossible to get anyone out there interested in them, and so
   there's virtually no discussion of them, even though they will affect
   every bit of your life and your kids' lives, in ways large and small,
   ranging from whether the water in your tap comes out literally on fire
   to whether you're entitled to compensation when your employer's
   negligence maims you for life.
   >
   > Dullness is a huge fitness factor for bad stuff. And what these
   brave, singing people have done is make TTIP slightly less dull. They
   have created a video that you can show to your friends, which is
   intrinsically interesting, if only because it's not every day you see
   high-level business meetings get disrupted by flashmobs with showtunes.
   And once you've got your friends watching this video, you can tell them
   about TTIP.
   >
   > These folks have not ended TTIP. That's up to us. They've given us
   one of the tools to do it.
   >
   > Stop TTIP



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FW: Other News - How the World’s

[Michael Gurstein]

   From: english-boun...@other-news.info
   [mailto:english-boun...@other-news.info] On Behalf Of
   engl...@other-news.info
   Sent: May 8, 2015 3:41 PM
   To: english
   Subject: Other News - How the World's Largest Psychological Association
   Aided the CIA's Torture Program


   Image removed by sender. []

   How the World's Largest Psychological Association Aided the CIA's
   Torture Program


   Lisa Hajjar - The Nation


   The APA's collusion was crucial because other physicians were
   increasingly reluctant to participate in the interrogations.


   The public exposure in mid-2004 of a government-sanctioned and highly
   bureaucratized program of torture and cruel treatment caused a
   political crisis that threatened to derail the Bush administration's
   interrogation and detention policies. In the wake of that crisis, some
   American Psychological Association (APA) senior staff members and
   leaders colluded, secretly, with officials from the White House,
   Defense Department and CIA to enable psychologists' continuing
   participation in interrogations at CIA black sites, Guantánamo, and
   other overseas facilities. One result of this collusion was a revision
   in 2005 of the APA's code of ethics for interrogations in order to
   provide cover for psychologists working in these facilities.


   The participation of psychologists was essential for the CIA's torture
   program to continue during the Bush years. The legal authority for CIA
   interrogations was based on then-classified Office of Legal Counsel
   memos. The first set of memos, authored by John Yoo, signed by OLC head
   Jay Bybee and dated August 1, 2002, were withdrawn in late 2003 by Jack
   Goldsmith (who replaced Bybee when he became a federal judge). In June
   2004, one of the Yoo/Bybee "torture memos" was leaked to the press, and
   public outcry about the legal reasoning--especially among
   lawyers--created pressure on the Bush administration to release some
   additional legal memos and policy directives relevant to prisoner
   policies. In December 2004, acting OLC head Daniel Levin revised the
   narrow definition of torture in the Yoo/Bybee memos but reaffirmed
   their legal opinions. In the spring of 2005, the CIA requested new
   legal opinions to validate the techniques in use, and OLC head Stephen
   Bradbury authored three new memos in May. All of these OLC opinions
   were a "golden shield" against future prosecutions of officials
   responsible for the CIA program. According to Bradbury's 2005 memos,
   the involvement of health professionals in monitoring and assessing the
   effects of "enhanced" techniques was necessary in order for them to be
   considered legal.


   Why was the APA's secret collusion so essential for continuance of the
   program? A key reason was because other physicians and psychiatrists
   were increasingly reluctant to participate in national security
   interrogations. In June 2005, doctors in the CIA's Office of Medical
   Services refused a new role required by the Bradbury memos to engage in
   monitoring and research to determine whether the treatment and
   conditions to which a detainee was subjected were cruel, inhumane, and
   degrading. In 2006 the American Psychiatric Association and the
   American Medical Association passed directives barring their members
   from participating in such interrogations on professional ethical
   grounds. The APA, in collaboration with the Bush administration, was
   willing to allow psychologists to fill the role balked at by other
   health professionals.


   Details of this collusion--which APA officials have concealed and
   denied for a decade--are the subject of a new report, All the
   President's Psychologists, authored by Drs. Stephen Soldz and Steven
   Reisner, and Nathaniel Raymond. The information comes from 638 e-mails
   from the accounts of a RAND Corporation researcher and CIA contractor,
   Scott Gerwehr, who died in 2008. James Risen, a New York Times
   journalist and author, most recently, of Pay Any Price, obtained the
   e-mails through Freedom of Information Act litigation and shared them
   with the report's authors.


   The trajectory of collusion and deception begins in July 2003, when the
   APA leadership, along with the CIA and the RAND Corporation, sponsored
   an invitation-only conference on the science of deception where
   "enhanced" interrogation tactics and related research were discussed,
   including the use of pharmacological agents and sensory overload. Two
   of the invitees were retired Air Force psychologists James Mitchell and
   Bruce Jessen, which contradicted the APA leadership's repeated denials
   about any relationship with or knowledge about the duo's activities.
   Mitchell and Jessen had been hired by the CIA in late 2001 to design
   and implement the program of black-site interrogations, and had been
   engaged in such interrogations since April 2002 following the capture
   o

Another Example of "Multistakeholder Governance" in

[Michael Gurstein]

   With links (which are probably necessary to make useful sense of the
   argument below) see:

   
https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/another-example-of-multistakeholder-governance-in-action-the-global-cyberspace-15-unicorn/

   http://tinyurl.com/ptxatgy

   Michael Gurstein
   @michaelgurstein

   Another Example of "Multistakeholder Governance" in Action:

   The Global CyberSpace 15 Unicorn

   The Global Conference on Cyber Space 15 (GCCS) has just concluded in
   the Hague, Holland.

   Of course, there are a dozen conferences a week on the Internet, the
   Digital World, Cyberspace and so on. But this one was meant to be
   slightly different. Not just a run-of-the-mill trade show, or a
   trotting out of show-boating pilot projects or demo's, or folks
   developing positions for pursuing their interests in Cyber Space...

   No, this one was meant, well, to have gravitas... to be a collection of
   sympathetic governments and the full panoply of "stakeholders" and thus
   to have some sort of broader impact on Global Governance of the
   Internet (and thus dear readers, or at least those who haven't spent
   the last five years in a cave, an impact on the on-going global
   governance of all and everything.)

   So this is how the conference describes itself:

   On 16 and 17 April 2015 representatives of governments, international
   organisations, businesses, civil society, academia and the technical
   community gathered in The Hague, the Netherlands, to discuss key
   developments in the cyber domain with a view to presenting a
   forward-looking agenda to promote a free, open and secure cyberspace.

   The Conference has taken stock of key developments in the various
   fields and has offered a platform for presenting and discussing
   important issues for the near future. It aims to be a catalyst for
   discussions on key aspects of the cyber domain, presenting an
   integrated strategic view of the issues. We welcome the general
   agreement that there is an urgent need for international cooperation on
   cyber issues among all stakeholders.

   The use of ICTs, and in particular the Internet, has become a matter of
   strategic importance for governments, businesses and citizens alike.
   Governed through a partnership between all stakeholders concerned, the
   Internet is an engine for economic growth and social development that
   facilitates communication, innovation, research and business
   transformation.

   The Conference reaffirmed its commitment to the multistakeholder model
   of Internet governance and called upon all stakeholders to further
   strengthen and encourage the sustainability of, participation in and
   evolution of this model.

   From the beginning of the London process, through Budapest and Seoul,
   there has been a growing commitment to cooperation among stakeholders.
   Governments were urged to ensure that cyber policy at national,
   regional and international level is developed through multistakeholder
   approaches, including civil society, the technical community,
   businesses and governments across the globe. Only then can the
   increasingly complex cyber challenges be fully addressed. To ensure
   that the Conference reflected the above principles, the Netherlands
   facilitated the organisation of a civil society pre-conference. The
   participants encouraged future editions of the Global Conference on
   Cyberspace to include a civil society pre-event.

   To unpack what is being said a bit. The conference is endorsing the
   multistakeholder governance model. The conference has now organized
   itself to include the range of "stakeholders" i.e. including "Civil
   Society" and thus has now entered (through this laying on of "civil
   society's" legitimizing hands), into that sacred state of
   "multistakeholderism" where the shackles of ordinary modes of
   governance and their banal and outmoded rituals of democratic
   accountability, transparency, representivity (with all their
   "baggage") can be thrown off and they (and we) can enter into that
   blissful state of consensus decision making by means of the sanctified
   apostolic group of (multi)stakeholders.

   We can thus expect them to perform their incantatory rituals of faux
   consultation and ceremonies of participation among the carefully
   anointed "chosen" and thus reach the nirvana where they are in a
   position to make their divinely and mystically conjoined
   multistakeholder consecrated decisions for us all.

   This particular "multistakeholder conference" has assigned itself the
   task of developing "an agenda" and a "platform" for Internet Governance
   specifically in the area of Cyber Security. It is clear from the
   announcements leading up to the conference and the outcome statements
   from the conference that the GCCS is meant to b

FW: The Internet Social Forum and the "Global Internet Community?"

[Michael Gurstein]

A version of the below complete with the many links can be found at 

https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/the-internet-social-forum-and-the-global-internet-community/

http://tinyurl.com/ptxatgy

M

An initiative towards an Internet Social Forum (ISF) with a close
association to the World Social Forum ?(WSF) was recently launched by a
number of Civil Society (CS) organization at the WSF in Tunis. This specific
initiative comes out of a continuing history of discussions and initiatives
in the area of Global Internet Governance as flowing from the World Summit
of the Information Society.? This World Summit had two major outcomes?one a
continuing if rather ineffectual set of processes concerned overall with the
use of Information and Communications Technologies in support of Economic
and Social Development. This which will reach some sort of culmination at a
global summit (WSIS + 10) later in 2015. 

A second outcome and a rather more consequential set of activities concerns
the way in which the global Internet would or would not be subject to some
form of global ?governance? intervention and particularly in support of the
broad public interest.

I won?t go into the extremely lengthy and somewhat convoluted history of the
?governance? outcome of the WSIS except to say that the formal element of
this outcome by means of what is known as the Internet Governance Forum has
adopted as its (effectively) compulsory mode of operation and as its anchor
framing and normative concept the notion of ?Multistakeholderism? (MSism).

MSism is understood by its proponents as being the necessary mode for the
on-going ?governance? of the Internet in all of its various aspects
including technical areas (where the notion has very considerable validity)
but also including public policy areas where there is a clear attempt to
substitute MSism and the highly determining role of the corporate sector as
partner ?stakeholders? as a substitute for democratic governance.? 

There is also clear evidence to suggest the intention by global elites to
build on the ?success? of MSism in the Internet area as a pilot and model
for imposing this as the preferred institutional mode in in broader areas of
global governance. There has been very considerable discussion and critique
of this approach most particularly pointing to its fundamental basis in
introducing a neo-liberal governance model into the very core of the
Internet and more particularly the only partially disguised attempt to
substitute ?multistakeholder? governance for democratic governance as the
fundamental approach to governance in the Internet age.

A notable and somewhat bizarre feature of the Internet Governance stream of
activities is the degree to which many self-described Civil Society
individuals and organizations are active supporters of the multistakeholder
governance models and the current Internet Governance status quo with its
dominance by the US and its national and corporate allies.? This has been
partially explained (and justified) by pointing to the successes that have
been achieved using the MS model in the inclusion of Human Rights and
particularly rights of free expression and association as elements in
broader Internet Governance activities and norm setting.? While to a degree
this is correct it should also be noted that there is strong support for
these ?Rights? from such well known global defenders of Civil Society values
as the US State Department for whom support for ?Internet Freedom?
(understood as ?Freedom of speech on the Internet?) is both a strategic and
a tactical tool in its quest for geo-political, economic and
security/surveillance global dominance.? 

Equally while there has been considerable success in implanting strong
support for Rights of free expression and association in various Internet
Governance normative documents it is worth pointing out that among the
strongest supporters of these have been various Internet giants such as
Google and Facebook for whom these rights are central elements of their
business model.? Notably there has been no similar CS successes resulting
from ?Multistakeholder collaboration? in areas such as making Intellectual
Property rights or draconian Copyright rules to be more reflective of a
broad public interest. 

What is equally notable is that these Civil Society supporters of the MS
governance model have chosen to ignore or even actively suppress other areas
of Human Rights concerns notably those supportive of Social Equity and
Social Justice ?which of course, and again purely coincidentally are not of
any particular interest to the other partners in the various
Multistakeholder collaborative structures which are being actively pursued.
?The overall consequence of the above is that those from Civil Society who
have a concern for democracy and social justice as constituent elements of
Internet Governance and an Internet Governance global system have had to
struggle initially and directly with those elements o

Why I'm Giving Up on the Digital Divide

[Michael Gurstein]

Folks might find this of interest (and comments are of course welcome?

https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/why-im-giving-up-on-the-digital-di
vide/

Why I?m Giving Up on the Digital?Divide 

I?ve spent much of my working life engaging in one way or another with what
is generally termed the ?Digital Divide? (defined as the ?divide between
those who have Internet access and those who do not?).

The broad area in which I work and which I have contributed to building ?
Community Informatics ? arguably had its origins and its development framed
by the concepts of the ?Digital Divide? (DD); and in particular through the
Community Informatics challenge to those concerned with the DD to address
issues of ?effective use? of the Internet as a means to achieve community
enablement and empowerment beyond the simple availability of ?access?.

However, of late I?ve begun questioning whether the notion of the DD is any
longer of value. I?ve begun to wonder whether the continuing visibility and
attention being given to the DD even after 20 or so years may in fact be a
diversion and distraction from the broader issues of social equity and
social justice that energized my own involvement with Community Informatics.
What is interesting of course, is that the DD and ?access? discussion which
has been around since almost the very beginnings of the public Internet, is
still so seemingly active and pressing and is apparently such a
pre-occupation and priority at least at the pro-forma level in the variety
of forums currently attempting to engage with Global Internet Governance
issues. Surely everything that could possibly be said and advocated in this
area has already been said and repeatedly over many years and with many
iterations.
??? 10. The importance of access to open, secure and stable
communication infrastructures around the?world was stressed. It is of equal
importance that developing countries can fully connect to the internet
economy. Delegates underlined the importance to include the need for
universal Internet access in the post 2015 agenda.
(DRAFT Chairperson?s Statement GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON CYBERSPACE 2015, the
Hague, Netherlands)

he problem in ?overcoming the DD? surely isn?t a matter of awareness raising
or information sharing as seems to be the only objective and possible
outcome for these events. In fact most of these discussions are of the ?feel
good? form of ritual incantations meant more to indicate a general aura of
sympathy for an issue via the the conference, panel, Commission, or whatever
than any intention of actually engaging in meaningful action or committing
to resource consuming outputs.

Simply repeating the desirability of overcoming the DD for advantaging the
rural and the poor, enhancing the position of Less Developed Countries,
gender equality, etc. etc. without at the same time tackling how these
social objectives will in practice be achieved (moving, as Community
Informatics has been arguing for some 20 years from ?access? to ?effective
use?) may give oneself and one?s constituencies the satisfaction of being on
the side of the angels, but accomplishes little if anything.

And surely after 20 years of unrelenting rhetorical attacks on the DD it
might be time for people of good-will to declare victory and move on,
recognizing the DD approach for what it is?a fine ?cyber? example of the
?welfare dependency model?, where we beneficent and generous (rich and from
the global North) folks are going to give those poor and needy people living
on the ?other side of the Digital Divide? some sort of (pale and poorly
equipped) version of the Internet in return for which they will be suitably
and demonstrably grateful and in our eternal (figurative or even quite
material) debt).

Further having done this, having passed the pre-canned resolution, included
the standard paragraph in the outcome document, taken the necessary bow in
the direction of social concern?the attitude is clearly ?can we now get on
to the serious matters at hand? which of course have nothing to do with
ensuring that poor people or even those of us who aren?t on one or another
of the various Internet gravy trains get a fair shake out of the Internet.

The challenges to overcome the DD have been significantly, even wildly,
successful. From a standing start some 20 or so years ago there are now in
excess of 3.1 billion individuals able to access (if not ?effectively use?)
the current Internet. Perhaps of even more importance, issues of Internet
access (but again not of use) are being taken up by significant corporate
and governmental forces (both national and inter-governmental).

Companies such as Facebook and Google are in the process of launching and
implementing innovative infrastructure oriented projects (involving
balloons, drones, cabling etc.) to increase those numbers into the next
billions. Their intent of course, is not idealistic but rather a clear
recognition that they benefit significantly from the ?network effe

FW: [P2P-F] Greek Vice-President explicitely endorses commons strategy before parliament

[michael gurstein]

   (with permission)

   From: Eleftherios Kosmas [mailto:elkos...@gmail.com]
   Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 2:48 PM
   To: michael gurstein
   Subject: Re: [P2P-F] Greek Vice-President explicitely endorses commons
   strategy before parliament

   Hi guys. I checked the speech of Mr Dragasakis I will try to translate
   some parts of it. Bear in mind that due to the cultural and linguistic
   differences of the Greek language with English I might not be able to
   convey it properly (I am not a trained translator)

   "Title: Speech during the government's policy statements"

 The most interesting part at least for my shelf as a member of a
 commons based collective like hackerspace.gr and a strong
 supporter of the commons personally and in public is the following.

   I would like to, conclude with the permission of the President, with a
   general thought. Often in everyday life we all live events happening
   that only hindsight their importance. We live, then, and now a historic
   era, characterized not only by the crisis and the collapse of obsolete
   models, but we live a crisis that eventually spawned new models and new
   social organization models, as was done in the past. In this sense,
   then, this is an opportunity to take up the deficits of the past, to
   close this modernization deficit, but by addressing the contemporary
   social problem of unemployment, social security and social exclusion.
   This could establish a new paradigm in Greece and other countries of
   southern Europe, combining advanced forms of democracy, social
   self-motivation, social justice on a strong foundation of common goods,
   a society-centric model, which would give dignity and confidence in
   society hope to the people, optimism in the new generation. Thus,
   Greece from being the Guenna-pig of austerity and destruction could be
   the a ground of pioneering ideas and policies, and the benefit would
   not be just for us. The world would become a security goal in a region
   of insecurity and "aged" Europe could re-discover through the symbiosis
   of different development models inside. Let's not rush some say that
   these are utopias, because there are utopias that are realistic. Are
   those whose implementation depends not on supernatural powers, but by
   the unity and collective action of ordinary people in Europe, in Greece
   and worldwide. Thank you.

   Greek speakers could find the original here.
   http://www.dragasakis.gr/omiliesparembaseis.php?id=1041


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#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org

FW: Global Civil Society launches the Internet Social Forum

[michael gurstein]

Global Civil Society launches the Internet Social Forum - With a call to
occupy the Internet
 
PRESS RELEASE. Geneva, Switzerland, 22st January, 2015.
 
A group of civil society organisations from around the world has
announced the Internet Social Forum, to bring together and articulate
bottom-up perspectives on the 'Internet we want'. Taking inspiration
from the World Social Forum, and its clarion call, 'Another World is
possible', the group seeks to draw urgent attention to the increasing
centralization of the Internet for extraction of monopoly rents and for
socio-political control, asserting that 'Another Internet is possible'!
 
The Internet Social Forum will inter alia offer an alternative to the
recently-launched World Economic Forum's 'Net Mundial Initiative' on
global Internet governance. While the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the
'Net Mundial Initiative' convene global elites, the Internet Social
Forum will be a participatory and bottom-up space for all those who
believe that the global Internet must evolve in the public interest; a
direct parallel to the launch of the World Social Forum in 2001 as a
counter initiative to the WEF.
 
The Internet Social Forum will reach out to grassroots groups and social
movements across the world, catalysing a groundswell that challenges the
entrenched elite interests that currently control how the Internet is
managed. The Internet Social Forum's preparatory process will kick off
during the World Social Forum to take place in Tunis, March 24th to
28th, 2015.  The Internet Social Forum itself is planned to be held
either late 2015 or early 2016.
 
???While the world's biggest companies have every right to debate the
future of the Internet, we are concerned that their perspectives should
not drown out those of ordinary people who have no access to the
privileged terrain WEF occupies ??? in the end it is this wider public
interest that must be paramount in governing the Internet. We are
organising the Internet Social Forum to make sure their voices can't be
ignored in the corridors of power,??? said Norbert Bollow,
Co-Coordinator of the Just Net Coalition, which is one of the groups
involved in the initiative.
 
The Internet Social Forum, and its preparatory process, is intended as a
space to vision and build the 'Internet we want'. It will be underpinned
by values of democracy, human rights and social justice. It will stand
for participatory policy making and promote community media. It will
seek an Internet that is truly decentralized in its architecture and
based on people's full rights to data, information, knowledge and other
'commons' that the Internet has enabled the world community to generate
and share.
 
Somewhat similar to Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee???s call for a ???Magna
Carta for the Internet', the Internet Social Forum proposes to develop a
People's Internet Manifesto, through a bottom-up process involving all
concerned social groups and movements, in different areas, from techies
and ICT-for-development actors to media reform groups, democracy
movements and social justice activists.
 
This year will also see the 10 year high-level review of the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), to be held in New York in
December. As a full-scale review of a major UN summit, this will be a
critical global political event. Since the WSIS, held in 2003 and 2005,
the Internet, and what it means socially, has undergone a paradigm
shift. The WSIS witnessed active engagement of civil society and
technical groups as well as of business. However, currently, there seems
to be an deliberate attempt to sideline this UN-led initiative on
governance issues of the information society and Internet in favour of
private, big-business-dominated initiatives like the WEF's Net Mundial
Initiative. The Internet Social Forum, while remaining primarily a
people's forum, will also seek to channel global civil society's
engagement towards the WSIS +10 review.
 
The following organisations form the initial group that is proposing the
Internet Social Forum, and many more are expected to join in the
immediate future. This is an open call to progressive groups from all
over the world to join this initiative, and participate in developing a
People's Internet Manifesto.
 
Just Net Coalition, Global
P2P Foundation, Global
Transnational Institute, Global Forum on Communication for Integration
of our America, Regional (Latin America) Arab NGO Network for
Development, Regional Agencia Latinoamericana de Informaci??n, Regional
Alternative Informatics Association, Turkey Knowledge Commons, India
Open-Root/EUROLINC, France SLFC.in, India CODE-IP Trust, Kenya
GodlyGlobal.org, Switzerland Centre for Community Informatics Research,
Development and Training, Canada IT for Change, India Association for
Proper Internet Governance, Switzerland Computer Professionals Union,
Philippines Free Press, USA Advocates of Science and Technology for the
People, Philippines Other News, Italy Free Software

The Caravan Has Set Out for a Neo-liberal Capture of Global Governance

[michael gurstein]

Here is another take on the current state of play in Internet Governance.

http://justnetcoalition.org/NMI-neoliberal-caravan

M


The Caravan Has Set Out for a Neo-liberal Capture of Global Governance

(With governance of the Internet as the path being broken first)
The Just Net Coalition1 (JNC) comprises several dozen civil society
organisations and individuals from different regions globally, concerned
with issues of Internet governance, from the perspective of all human
rights, including democracy and economic and social justice

A new chapter in global governance has been opened with the launch of the
NetMundial Initiative (NMI) at the World Economic Forum. This is the first
time that such a corporate-led venue - although sold as "multistakeholder",
"open", and "voluntary", among others - is positioned as being 'the'
mechanism for global governance in a specific sector. In fact it is being
openly and explicitly positioned as a direct replacement for existing
UN-based governance models2, which are routinely the subject of harsh
critiques by most of the NMI proponents3.

The Just Net Coalition rejects firmly and forcefully the transfer of global
governance prerogatives to corporate led initiatives such as the NMI,
because such initiatives are not consistent with democracy. We additionally
have grave concerns at the abandonment by certain elements of civil society
of traditional values of democracy and social justice as some civil society
organizations are apparently choosing to enthusiastically enter into this
unseemly collaboration with global corporate and other elites as represented
most clearly by the World Economic Forum and their annual gathering of the
1% in Davos.

1. We thus appeal to political leaders and governments to reaffirm their
commitment to the primacy of democracy, human rights, equality and social
justice, as the basic principles and values underlying their global
commitments and foreign policies and to apply these to their actions and
policies concerning the global governance of the Internet.

2. We further appeal to those sections of civil society currently active in
the area of Internet governance who have accepted4 the invitation from
global corporate and other elites to participate in the NetMundial
Initiative and its primary sponsorship from the top down, anti-democratic
and elitist World Economic Forum to withdraw from supporting such
corporate-led governance models. We recognize but reject the mistaken notion
that civil society is being given an opportunity to sit at the table with
these elites and the 1% and thus to have the opportunity of participating
more actively in decisions concerning global Internet Governance.

It is only necessary to point to the increasing stranglehold by the forces
of neo-liberalism in areas ranging from global finance to health care and
climate change. Strong and effective democratic movements from below are our
only means of countering these rapidly increasing threats to democracy and
social justice. A priority area for the neo-liberal assault on democracy and
the consequent neglect of escalating economic and social inequality has been
in the area of global governance, where poor political organization,
authority and weakened institutional development has provided a soft and
tempting target.5 Capturing the commanding heights of global policy and
governance also provides a convenient platform for propagating neo-liberal
ideology and 'policy-solutions' downwards, especially with a highly
globalised economy, supporting globalized economic, political and media
elites and the global 1%.

The chosen early priority target within the global governance space is
clearly the "governance" of the Internet. There are many reasons for this
choice. The foremost is that this is a territory in which governance
mechanisms and models are still being built. It is obviously much easier to
capture the processes and protocols of governance where none already exist
or are very weak rather than having to push against pre-existing structures
and mechanisms. Second, to the extent that any state-based authority exists
at all in regard to the governance of the Internet6, these techno-governance
reins are firmly in the hands of the US government7, the main political ally
and beneficiary of the neo-liberal onslaught. And thirdly, the history of
the Internet provides it with a certain character, wherein it is easy to
articulate a position against government interference - structures, law and
governance, meanwhile allowing for a cover up of the real controls which
underlie the operation and applications of the Internet, as Mr. Snowden has
so effectively demonstrated in his revelations concerning the undermining
and illicit control over the functioning of the Internet by the US National
Security Agency.

Such a make-believe doctrine of 'Internet exceptionalism' gets instinctive,
and often politically unexamined, support from two important quarters:
Internet technologists - who st

FW: Blogpost: Smart Cities vs. Smart Communities: Enabling Markets or Empowering Citizens

[michael gurstein]

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/smart-cities-vs-smart-communities-e
nabling-markets-or-empowering-citizens/

Hmmm..

So "Smart Cities" particularly in Less Developed Countries are ways of
turning urban environments into gold mines for consultants, hardware and
software companies and redoing the city in the image and for the benefit of
its most prosperous and well-serviced inhabitants and in the meantime
transferring additional resources and benefits from the poor to the rich.

But another type of "Smart" program is possible-one that is focused on
social inclusion, enabling citizens, supporting communities-a community
informatics model.  This would be a smart program where the emphasis is on
"Smart Communities" rather than "Smart Cities" and enabling and empowering
citizens and supporting their individual and communal quests for well-being
rather than turning cities into a series of cascading neo-liberalized
markets-for services, for infrastructure, for shelter.


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The future of Airbnb in cities

[michael gurstein]

http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/Travel_Transportation/The_future_of_Airbnb_
in_cities?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1411

Since its founding, in 2008, Airbnb has spearheaded growth of the sharing
economy by allowing thousands of people around the world to rent their homes
or spare rooms. Yet while as many as 425,000 people now stay in
Airbnb-listed homes on a peak night, the company's growth is shadowed by
laws that clash with its ethos of allowing anyone, including renters, to
sell access to their spaces. In this interview with McKinsey's Rik Kirkland,
Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky explores how the company's
relationships with cities can evolve. An edited transcript of Chesky's
comments follows.

It's a currency of trust, and that used to live only with a business. Only
businesses could be trusted, or people in your local community. Now, that
trust has been democratized-any person can act like a brand.

Airbnb is a way that you can, when you're traveling, book a home anywhere
around the world. And by anywhere, I mean 34,000 cities in 190 countries.
That's every country but North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Cuba.

The reason we started was I was living with my roommate, Joe, in San
Francisco, and I couldn't afford to make rent. That weekend, the
International Design Conference was coming to San Francisco. All the hotels
were sold out. Joe had three air beds. We pulled the air beds out of the
closet, we inflated them, and we called it the "Air Bed and Breakfast."

The reason it's grown so fast is, unlike traditional businesses, we don't
have to pour concrete. The infrastructure and the investment was already
made by cities a generation ago. And so all of a sudden, all you needed was
the Internet.
The 'disruption' debate

I never really loved the word "disruption," because it suggests that maybe
it's the kid in a class who was disruptive, who probably didn't add a lot to
class. I think that we have a lot to add to society.

Over time, cities have gotten so big that the sense of community has gotten
lost. And I think once you know everyone, that community can reemerge. And
as far as our relationship with cities, we can't succeed without a city. Or
we can't really thrive without a city. We don't want to thrive in spite of a
city. And I think if we work together, it's going to be amazing. I think the
people win. And I think if we don't work together or if we fight, the loser
isn't really us or the city-it's the people in that city.
Getting cities to embrace sharing

Fundamentally, the idea of the sharing economy is going to be great for
cities. It means that people all over a city, in 60 seconds, can become
microentrepreneurs. And they can be empowered. And they can make an income.
Now, this is amazing, but it's also complicated because there are laws that
were written many decades ago-sometimes a century ago-that said, "There are
laws for people and there are laws for business." What happens when a person
becomes a business? Suddenly these laws feel a little bit outdated. They're
really 20th-century laws, and we're in a 21st-century economy.

It's probably going to be a fair amount of work to revise some of the laws
and rethink the way cities and platforms work together, but I think that
work is worth it. Because what cities don't have to do is invest billions of
dollars in infrastructure to create jobs. Whereas historically, to create
opportunities, cities would need massive projects and investments, these
jobs only require the Internet. Now what they need to do is navigate the
legal framework, which is typically outdated. We want to work with the
cities. We're not telling them that their laws are terrible. The world
continues to change. Laws must continue to adapt for that world.

We want to help cities understand what our world looks like so they can
modernize the laws to make sense. We're not against regulation. We want to
be regulated because to regulate us would be to recognize us.
Airbnb's plans for growth

We want travelers to be able to book homes anywhere. Anywhere includes Asia.
Asia's a nascent market for us. Number two, we're also looking at other use
cases. Airbnb started as a way for travelers to find a budget way to
vacation in a city. But now we're starting to see people who aren't on a
budget. They want a much more high-end experience. And the third is that at
the end of the day, if you're traveling to Tokyo, you're not traveling to
Tokyo to stay in a home or a hotel. You're traveling to Tokyo-if you're on
vacation-because you want to have an experience. And we'd love to do more to
make that experience special and memorable.
The future of sharing: Your free time

I don't think people would view the jobs created in the sharing economy as
jobs. I don't even know if they get counted as jobs when the White House has
a new jobs report. They are jobs. As far as I can tell, people are working,
they're making income, and they depend on that income. Half of our hosts
depend on it to pay the rent 

social media & political activism redux

[michael gurstein]

A problem with all of this is that the ???hand???s off the Internet??? position 
is at the very core of a neo-liberal take down of the social contract.  The 
Internet erodes local tax bases, shifts wealth from the poor to the rich, from 
poor countries to rich ones; and the rallying cry for oppositional elements is 
???hand???s off

 
Of course, there were particularly obnoxious elements to this tax and 
especially with this government but how to shift the discourse in the streets 
away from a libertarian anti-governmentalist, anti-tax, anti-regulation 
position to a positive/pro-active one that recognizes the transformational 
impact of the Internet including in areas impacting social justice.

Mike


-Original Message-

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org [mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] 
On Behalf Of Geert Lovink

Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2014 6:34 AM

To: nettim...@kein.org

Subject: Re:  social media & political activism redux


Thanks a lot, Allan, this is interesting. The question imho is not how social 
media relate to the inadequate responses of political parties but if they will 
generate sustainable 'new institutional forms' over time. What if the current 
social media only produce one-off events? Protests without a cause? The social 
in these cases then gets reduced to the self-mirroring of the masses on the 
streets. That's old school spectacle and has remarkably little to do with the 
capacity of these social media to network, organize, debate. Mass mobilization 
these days disappears very fast, so fast that even the most involved insiders 
are baffled. I personally do not think this has much to do with the 'absence' 
of leadership and the absence of an avant-garde (and their artists). Politics, 
our politics, have become submitted to the same laws that rule everywhere: the 
law of the meme, in this case. Geert

<...>
 

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Ooh-la-la, the French Get (Inter)Net Neutrality Right: It's All About the Platform Monopolies-Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter etc.

[michael gurstein]

Version with formatting, links and comments:

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/ooh-la-la-the-french-get-internet-n
eutrality-right-its-all-about-the-monopolies-google-amazon-facebook-twitter-
etc/

http://tinyurl.com/qzlbzwc

Ooh-la-la, the French Get (Inter)Net Neutrality Right: It's All About the
Platform Monopolies-Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter etc. 


Michael Gurstein 
@michaelgurstein

 
Amidst all the storm and thunder surrounding the ever-elusive Net
Neutrality (NN) (the FCC call for comments on NN elicited some 1.1
million interventions), the actual point of the exercise at least from
the perspective of those looking for an Internet supportive of an
open, free, just and democratic Internet seems to have gotten rather
lost. Whether "Net Neutrality" is or is not possible from a technical
perspective - pragmatists argue yes, purists argue no; whether NN
is or is not a fundamental necessity for innovation and economic
progress; or whether NN is something that should even be addressed at
all given that it represents for some the creeping hand of control
over the Internet that so many find repugnant-all these issues and
arguments are still raging in the OpEds and online forums from Silicon
Valley to New York to Tokyo and beyond.

Meanwhile the rather more fundamental issues of monopoly control
of, in and through the Internet-content, services, even concepts
and affect seems to have fallen off the agenda. The use of Internet
monopoly control to further skew the possibility for competition
and market innovation; how that monopoly control gives some help in
avoiding taxation; how it has resulted in the flowing of revenues from
Internet activities into the coffers of a very few and overwhelmingly
US based corporations; is over-looked, avoided, perhaps deliberately
obscured to be lost in plain-sight while the NN hounds go after ever
more obscure technical NN rabbits.

So it is refreshing to find a clear-sighted, clear-headed
report-"Platform Neutrality: Building an Open and Sustainable Digital
Environment" on what NN looks like when seen from outside of the tech
pundit echo chamber. In fact according to this report, what NN really
looks like isn't NN at all.

Rather what the Centre Nationale de Numerique (CNNum) (French Digital
Council), a French Internet and things digital think tank funded
by and with some policy advisory role for the French Government
have identified is the rather more pressing issue of what they term
"Platform Neutrality", an interesting adaptation of a term usually
used in software circles to point to (or away from) lock-in to one
or another software "platform" (think Microsoft or SAP). The use of
the terminology in fact is similar in that in the CNNum's use it
refers to the Internet (and now mobile) based platforms - Google,
Facebook, Twitter, Amazon - where similar issues of cross-platform
interoperability, data portability, lock-in/lock-out for users,
suppliers, competitors are quite parallel.

The current report builds on an earlier report and "Opinion" on
Network Neutrality" which significantly focused more on Network
outputs (from the end user perspective) than on Network inputs i.e.
the technical details of how bits flow through digital networks and
where the conventional notion of Net Neutrality is significantly
extended as follows:

Net neutrality enforcement for platforms must do more than just
protect consumers' well-being. It must also protect the well-being
of citizens by ensuring that the Internet's role as a catalyst for
innovation, creation, expression and exchange is not undermined by
development strategies that close it off.

thus linking notions of Net Neutrality with notions of the rights of
citizens including for free expression and free exchange.

This new report, beginning from the notion of what they call "service
platforms", directly linked to the user-facing output notions from
their Net Neutrality document goes on to discuss Platform Neutrality
in the following terms

.service platforms have followed a different development path (from
(communication) network platforms) foregoing completely the national
monopoly stage: the low level of initial investment required has made
it possible to quickly build up dominant platforms on user functions
that fully harness the network effect. As long as they continue to go
unchallenged by either the political community or by other industry
players, their powerful position will be maintained.

This is the crux of their highly interesting and innovatively
political economic analysis-recognizing that these Internet
"platforms" have been "born digital and global" (and thus from
their inception outside of the range or even visibility of
national regulation or regulators); that they are a new type
of business/innovation model- low capitalization, multiple
functionalities, and rapid deployment; and perhaps mos

Re: [SPAM] Re: More Crisis in the Information Society

[michael gurstein]

I am finding it very interesting if a bit discombobulating to see my initial 
provocation turned into the stuff of common room chat. As one who has only one 
or two tremulous toes dipped in the sacred waters of academe the 
self-absorption that this represents is quite astonishing if not deeply 
saddening.

I think that Ted goes to the river but doesn't in the end immerse himself 
(sorry, I've just been briefly spending time with the 100???s of thousands of 
Shiva devotees braving a semi-torrential up-stream Ganges in search of 
something--but certainly not academic enlightenment...

The "crisis in the Information Society" dear friends is not simply a crisis of 
potential conscience (consciousness?) among "new media" faculty however 
important in the great scheme of things that might be. 

It is as I was trying to point out, a deep, dare I say existential crisis, for 
Western democracies and their camp followers.  The technologies which were to 
have taken them/us to a new stage of economic/social/cultural/political 
liberation are now demonstrated to be doing exactly the opposite and our 
addiction (to the digital) is so profound and so integral that there is no 
???work-around??? ??? we have seen the Surveillance/Control State and it is 
us???

So unless we can figure out and implement a way of controlling the ???deep 
(digitally empowered) state??? we had better all get out our well-worn and now 
(???it???s so 80???s???) discarded volume of 1984 and get our Newspeak lexicon 
up to speed (I???m wondering when it might be added as a language for Google 
translate ??? no time like the present and somehow it seems profoundly 
appropriate.


M

-Original Message-

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org [mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] 
On Behalf Of t byfield
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 12:16 AM
To: Nettime-l
Subject: [SPAM] Re:  More Crisis in the Information Society


One curious thing about this discussion is that most of the people
involved are speaking from their experiences on faculties involved,
broadly, speaking, in 'digital culture.' This field sits in an odd
conceptual space between design, art, 'technology' (e.g., computer
science), and critical fields grounded in somewhat politicized
humanities (as opposed to, say, political science). Certainly, many of
the main ideas proposed are shaped by different disciplinary
inflections, which are mainly institutional in their orientation: they
seem to look outward, but they remain tacitly inward-looking in that
constant reference is made to the experiences and prospects of
graduates, new classes to taught, and so on.
 <...>


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More Crisis in the Information Society

[michael gurstein]

Pando.com: New San Francisco billboard warns workers they'll be replaced by 
iPads
if they demand a fair wage


http://tinyurl.com/mn2xzzn

 

 

 



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FW: Blogpost: The-information-society-is-in-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it

[michael gurstein]

(Links and comments...

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/07/17/the-information-society-is-in-crisi
s-and-what-to-do-about-it/

http://tinyurl.com/oehhx8q

(These are notes for an address given as part of a Plenary Panel on
Governing Digital Spaces: Issues of Access, Privacy and
Freedom-International Association of Mass Communications Research
(IAMCR)-Hyderabad, India, July 18, 2014)

Many of us started out on this particular journey at the World Summit on the
Information Society. those were days of hope and splendour but now.

The Information Society is in Crisis-not the Internet Society, nor the
Networked Society, nor the Digital Society but quite specifically the
Information Society.

And why the Information Society and not the others. because the Information
Society is the terminology that focuses on the Information, the flow
through, the digitized, the content and it is here in the place where the
technology, the information and its uses/users come together that we find
that the crisis is occurring.

This crisis to some extent was long foretold and yet came up so suddenly
that we are still in the midst of the aftershocks (or perhaps the precursor
shocks for earthquakes yet to come. This crisis of the Information Society
can be understood best by drawing pathways between the various and recent
local eruptions.

First there was uneasiness from some quarters concerning the directions of
Internet Governance-controversies (and name calling) at the ITU/WCIT and the
subsequent campaigns and reactions and critiques concerning "Internet
Freedom" and whether that extended to "freedom from having to pay taxes",
"freedom to manipulate the world's knowledge to support various of Google's
commercial interests" and even including their allies in the US State
Department's "freedom to enshrine and ennoble a unipolar global Internet
Governance sphere which privileges some structures of control and influence
and renders impossible the development of alternatives that might support
alternative interests".

Then it was Mr. Snowden telling us how the NSA and its co-conspirators in
various other parts of the world were tapping into, collecting and
ultimately intervening and massaging the data flows and communications
activities for all the world.

Then it was Amazon, attempting to use its market domination to control what
books we read so that they can capture a few more percentage points of
profit from our acts of information seeking.

Most recently it has been Facebook, revealing, if inadvertently how it is
ready, willing and able to undertake mood control and who knows what else as
some merge their personal information flows with Facebook's information
stream and thus allow their very individual consciousness to become a bauble
to be manipulated by who knows who for who knows what end.

And so the Information Society is in crisis. The Information Society which
was to ensure that all of human knowledge would be available to everyone at
all times and in and from all places has to a considerable degree come to
pass. But what has also come to pass and which wasn't expected in those
early euphoric days was that the foundation elements, the platforms, the
frameworks, the integral algorithms that would provide such a cornucopia and
an informational utopia would not be operated in a beneficent way in support
of the broad public interest but would in fact be ultimately controlled by
machines and hidden forces of commerce and surveillance-forces well beyond
the capacity of individuals or groups, of civil society or even the ordinary
political forces of nation states to control.

What we have built (or have allowed to be built in our name and with our
information - with the very essence of who we are as sentient knowledgeable
human beings) are vast, uncontrolled and very likely uncontrollable
mechanisms which not only undermine and subvert human freedom and civil
liberties but are even in a position to frame and structure the basis of the
discussion concerning these and if or how we might be able to respond.

We become dependent on email to inform us and keep in touch with our
colleagues, our friends, our comrades and yet we know that the NSA is
capable and most likely reading all of those mails and equally having the
capacity to redirect, or delete or even false flag e-mails as and when they
choose.

We turn to Google to give us the knowledge base for acting in the world-for
helping us to reduce the complexity of choice in a world over overwhelming
with options and choices and too too much information. And yet we know that
how Google presents that information to us, how it supports those
choices-what it provides and perhaps most important what it doesn't provide
- what it allows to disappear is unknown to us and as unapproachable as the
deepest of deep secrets hidden both by the choices of the corporation and by
the intricacies of the technology which it chooses to use as its filter and
framework.

We cozy up to Facebook to provi

GCHQ joins Facebook In Pursuing Mind Control on the Internet: Digital Natives Beware!

[michael gurstein]

https://t.co/YESgZh52uE

The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the
internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the
results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites,
"amplif[y]" sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged
to be "extremist." The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent
prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users
together in a call.

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/facebook-does-mind-control/

News is coming out about Facebook initiated and largely conducted social
research experiment examining the effects of various types of emotionally
loaded messages on the "mood" of selected Facebook (FB) users.


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The Right to Remember: A Speculative Community Informatics Approach to "the Right to Be Forgotten"

[michael gurstein]

With links and comments:

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/the-right-to-remember-a-speculative
-community-informatics-approach-to-the-right-to-be-forgotten/

http://tinyurl.com/ny32god

The Right to Remember: A Speculative Community Informatics Approach to "the
Right to Be Forgotten" 

Michael Gurstein

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a recent and widely discussed
decision is requiring Google to consider individuals' requests to remove
links that they say infringe on their privacy. Much of the subsequent
analysis and commentary has focused on what this means from the perspective
of Google's activities as the de facto provider of what has become the
global collective memory-both pro and con. Some are arguing that this is a
good thing and that individuals (and companies?) have the right to have
certain things they would prefer to not be available in casual searches
online "forgotten" (suppressed). Others argue the opposite, i.e. that this
is a slippery slope and without clear guidelines it is not clear where this
right to "forget" will stop and the public's "right to know" about an
individual's (or corporate's) history will begin.

I think it is well to reflect a bit on the (likely) origins of memory
(Adaptive Memory) and its uses and what that might tell us about memory and
forgetting in a technology enabled world.

Memory presumably developed as a survival mechanism providing our
pre-history ancestors with the means to capture knowledge and retain it for
re-use in other times and places as a basis for survival-remembering what
foods made them sick and which did not, which paths led to new and
productive hunting grounds and which ones led into dead ends and potential
traps from wild animals or antagonistic neighbours.

But of course as we know, memory is a two edged sword-on the one hand it can
help in survival by directing current action but it can also be destructive
by misdirecting current action and understanding. Knowing that a particular
path leads across a river in one season and into an unfordable stream in
another is an equally necessary survival tool. Knowing that a plant is
poisonous when fresh, but medicinal when dried and mixed with another plant
becomes the stock in trade of the healer and the source of his or her status
in the tribe.

But in these contexts memory was specific and for the most part physically
and locationally constrained. Our ancestors had knowledge about their
circumstances and their environments, about their fellow tribe members and
occasionally the members of neighboring tribes but not much memory or
knowledge beyond that.

In practice memory and the knowledge that it represented and provided was a
communal/collective resource-something shared within the community, passed
on from within community and made practical and the basis of action (or
reaction) within the community. Only very occasionally as when tribes began
to develop more elaborate and wide ranging governance structures and trading
networks would memory go much beyond the community, the local, the tribe.
And even there the memory or knowledge would be constrained through its need
to be passed along from elder to elder, trader to trader.

The capacity to store memory in the form of writing to a degree liberated
memory from its severe locational and temporal constraints by allowing
memories stored in written form to be moved by means of some physical
storage medium (stone, clay, ultimately paper) from one location to another
and over time. But this of course, also had certain constraints of physical
degradation as the storage medium would erode or decay; and from the simple
cost in energy and wealth of storing memories in this form, moving the
medium from place to place and then of physically accessing/searching the
medium for the required information.

But all of these limitations of course, have now been overcome with digital
memory, digital storage, Internet access and so on. And as a collective
resource for helping all of us as humanity to respond effectively to our
many challenges this is almost certainly a huge and highly desirable step
forward.

However, as well, the dark side of this is the same as the bright side with
all such information/memories being available anytime, anywhere and with
effectively no or almost no cost to access, leaving us as individuals and as
societies vulnerable to the misuse of infinite memory in the same way as we
are the beneficiaries (e.g. what Snowden showed about the NSA's drive for
"total information awareness").

What is being overlooked however, in this current discussion is the original
functions and benefits of memory which as already noted were anchored in the
actions and specific contexts of the local, of communities where this
knowledge could and was put into effective action and where memories if
destructive would quickly be erased from the collective pool.

I should pr

Facebook Does Mind Control

[michael gurstein]

With links and comments:
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/facebook-does-mind-control/

Facebook Does Mind Control

Michael Gurstein

News is coming out about Facebook initiated and largely conducted social
research experiment examining the effects of various types of emotionally
loaded messages on the "mood" of selected Facebook (FB) users. The details
of the study are now becoming widely known and it is clear that the actual
study was the result of a combination of naivety and hubris on the part of
FB staff who didn't realize that there might be a very strong negative
reaction to this kind of activity.

The actual experiment (and results) are quite interesting from a social
research perspective and the undertaking of this kind of research is fairly
unproblematic (or apparently at least not illegal according to FB terms of
use) although it is unlikely that most universities would have allowed it to
pass an internal ethical review (on the basis of a lack of "informed
consent"). The findings do in fact show a limited but statistically
significant positive impact from positive messages towards a "positive" mood
among the selected experimental subjects.

There is a substantial buzz in the academic community and its surrounds
about the use of such experimental subjects without formal authorization,
conventionally a major no-no for academic research. There is also some
additional buzz concerning the fact that FB is intervening in this kind of
way with its "timeline" or main information feed/flow (the `creepiness`
factor), although information about this has been widely known to anyone who
is interested for some time.

I think however, that we should be celebrating this research and
particularly those who chose to publish it.  This publication, like Snowden
(if inadvertently), gives us a clear window into the reality of what another
of the major pillars of the Interneted Society is doing/capable of doing.
Without this publication we otherwise might not have been so acutely aware
of what is so evidently possible/likely. 

By publishing the study the FB folks shone a searchlight on the highly
significant capacity of FB to intervene, manage and ultimately manipulate
the information flow through FB and thus either directly or indirectly
intervene into, manage and manipulate the range of activities which are
built on the FB platform and equally impact and manipulate/direct the
"stream of digital consciousness" which FB represents and which appears to
be so highly influential for so many people.

We have learned several things from this, most of which we already knew but
didn`t really want to know that:
1. FB messaging operates both at the formal informational level and more
deeply at the mood (subliminal?) level. Those who are immersed in the
continuous flow/feed of FB postings are open to some degree of
management/manipulation/control by those who control that flow and this is
over and above the specifics/details of the content of the flow
2. FB is (not surprisingly) quite aware of these possible, even likely
effects and has an active interest in using these in support of its business
model
3. FB sees no barriers to its use of its algorithms in this way either
ethical or regulatory and its concern at least to date appears to be with
its with having `upset` its customers/users and not with dealing with the
matter that caused the upset.

The issue here of course, is not one fairly limited social research project
conducted by what appears to be a fairly clueless (and likely) junior
researcher but rather what this demonstrates concerning the potential deep
and pervasive power and influence of a/the major Internet corporations. The
issue is thus not the fairly minor incursion against research ethics that
Facebook has been caught doing, but rather what it tells us about what
Facebook could and very likely is doing on a day-to-day basis-managing and
manipulating information flows, giving priority to some messages and
messengers and rendering others more or less invisible; and all behind a
more or less invisible cloak with the suggestion that all is `free` and
`open` and one is able to be in more or less direct and unimpeded contact
with one`s `friends`.

Facebook currently claims some 1.250 billion users worldwide. It is widely
understood as being a basic framework for a whole range of social,
political, advocacy and even economic interactions. Through its purchase and
redistribution of bandwidth in Less Developed Countries it is seen by many
in those countries as the Internet itself since being a free service it
effectively crowds out other non-free services and opportunities for
web/Internet access and use.

Thus any capacity to manipulate the flow of information/postings through
Facebook could have quite severe consequences in a number of areas not least
of which are the variety of roles that FB plays in various political
activities throughout the world

Re: [SPAM] Re: tensions within the bay area elites

[michael gurstein]

Glad to see Google getting it's due but I'm wondering if the deeper
significance and risk posed by Google isn't being a wee bit overlooked
here...

In a blogpost I did about a year ago, I was pointing to Google's victory in
an anti-trust action which was being interpreted as a victory for "free
speech"; and arguing that the more significant risk was likely to come from
Google's impact on "Freedom of thought" as in "Google's algorithms have to
be understood at the level of "epistemology" i.e. from the perspective of
their role (in fact, intervention) in framing our underlying "knowledge,
understanding, justified belief about the nature of the world"."  

http://tinyurl.com/aokqzsl

Now that Google's halo is a wee bit dented some deeper reflection on what
Google might, through its search algorithms, be doing to our underlying
frameworks of knowledge--either inadvertently by structuring them in pursuit
of its commercial goals or purposefully by, for example, following the
direction of its friends in the US State Department--might be in order; and
perhaps even more usefully some thought on what might be done about this.

M

-Original Message-

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Florian Cramer
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014 9:38 PM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: [SPAM] Re:  tensions within the bay area elites

On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Hans de Zwart  wrote:

> Just look at the graph displaying Google's DC lobbying investment and 
> you will instantly realise that Google is not the same Google that it 
> was a decade ago.

To chime in here: If Facebook qualifies as "scary", then Google does even
more so. Lately, the company has been aggressively ventured into
military-industrial territory with its recent investments into robotics,
artificial intelligence, augmented reality and drone technology.
 <...>


!DSPAM:2676,53718551308591646260386!


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Blogpost: Multistakeholderism for the Powerful and Well Connected: Tyranny for Everyone Else?

[michael gurstein]

Multistakeholderism for the Powerful and Well Connected: Tyranny for
Everyone Else?

Michael Gurstein

Posted on April 27, 2014

Version with links

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/multistakeholderism-for-the-powerfu
l-and-well-connected-tyranny-for-everyone-else/

http://tinyurl.com/kwwmrdg
 

(I first wrote this in mid-February as the preparations for the Global
Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NetMundial),
April 23-24 in S?o Paulo, Brazil were in mid-development. For various
reasons I didn?t publish it at the time but now with the meeting having been
completed and with the results/outcomes having been deemed a success by the
participating ?civil society? individuals/groups, the business community,
and others; re-reading I think the below has considerable relevance. I?ll be
doing a second blogpost directly reflecting on how the observations
presented below should help us frame and understand the NetMundial outcome
(document) but also MSism itself.)

Make no mistake, Multistakeholderism (MSism) is now the favoured approach by
the powerful to control the Internet (and very likely much beyond this). It
has become the preferred alternative to allowing democratic processes to
find their way into the realm of Internet Governance.

Building from a background in self-governance of technical (and thus
non-political and largely non-conflictual processes) within the technical
community as it evolved Internet standards and protocols, MSism has been
transformed into the rallying call for those who would ensure that the
Internet retains its current veneer of self-governance (governance by those
who built and use it) while at the same time masking the deeper processes of
consolidation, concentration and deep subversion that ensures that the
currently powerful and well-connected maintain and extend their power as the
Internet becomes the dominant mode and infrastructure for the
digital/information society.

The fundamental problem with MSism which is deliberately obscured by the
dominant forces so actively promoting it (and their willing, if sometimes
unwitting acolytes in Civil Society and the technical community) is that
Internet Governance as with all governance processes where material
interests are involved is essentially a process of allocation and
distribution and thus a terrain of conflict and ultimately politics as
interests collide and the powerful seek to exploit and maintain their
dominance over the weak.

I?m just done with a very bruising interaction in the area of Internet
Governance and specifically concerning a possible role for the Community
Informatics community in the ?multistakeholder? governance structure of the
NetMundial . I think this experience reveals a very great deal about MSism
in practice?how it actually works beyond the gauzy superficiality of most
discussions where real issues and real conflicts as in the real world have
to be recognized and responded to.

Here is the report I sent to colleagues in this regard:

Community Informatics Colleagues,

I thought I should give all of you an update on how our candidates are
faring in finding a way to articulate a Community Informatics (CI)
perspective and give voice to CI concerns in the context of current
discussions and developments around Global Internet Governance and
specifically the up-coming Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of
Internet Governance, in Sao Paulo, Brazil sponsored by the President of
Brazil along with ICANN.

As you know the Community Informatics (CI) community went through a full and
fully transparent Nomination process for positions in the multistakeholder
planning process for the Brazil event during the period?Christmas a to New
Year?s when most are (and should be) pre-occupied with family. Nevertheless
we were able to successfully complete this and come out with a good slate of
candidates which have been presented to the ?responsible parties? for
various of the positions concerning the Brazil event.

I put the term ?responsible parties? in quotes because who precisely the
responsible parties for organizing the event in Brazil are, has been
shifting over time and only just now appears to have been finally
determined.

Notably, ?1net?, the emergent responsible party for the non-governmental
aspects of the event has ill-defined origins(although apparent links to
ICANN and others in the Technical Community) and to date no clear,
consistent or transparent operational processes or structures on the basis
of which they can be held accountable. 

Nevertheless this agency ?1net?has taken upon itself the right and
responsibility to designate who are to be the formal nominating bodies on
behalf of the Brazil event?s identified stakeholder groups (business,
academic, and civil society) and thus the sole providers of candidates for
the various responsible positions for the Brazil meeting including 1net?s
own governance structure?its Steering Committee.

As you know the CI community

Just Net Coalition publication: Delhi declaration and related articles

[michael gurstein]

Moving forward the necessary discussion on a political economy of the
Internet the essays pointed to below were compiled for NETmundial
 ? The Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future
of Internet Governance meeting about to start in S?o Paulo discussing the
future of Internet Governance.

 
http://justnetcoalition.org/sites/default/files/JNC-PUBLICATION.pdf 


M


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Blogpost: The Multistakeholder Model, Neo-liberalism and Global (Internet) Governance

[michael gurstein]

(with links)


http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/the-multistakeholder-model-neo-libe
ralism-and-global-internet-governance/

 

http://t.co/EU8F1LgUn6

The Multistakeholder Model, Neo-liberalism and Global (Internet) Governance 

Michael Gurstein

I've commented elsewhere on the sudden emergence and insertion of the
"multistakeholder model
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistakeholder_governance_model> " (referred
to here also as multistakeholderism or MSism) in Internet Governance
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_governance>  discussions some 2 or 3
years ago
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/whose-hand-off-what-internet-some-
reflections-on-wcit-2012/> . The term of course, has been around a lot
longer and even has been used within the Internet sphere to describe (more
or less appropriately) the decision-making processes of various of the
Internet's technical bodies (the IETF <http://www.ietf.org/> , the IAB
<https://www.iab.org/> , ICANN <https://www.icann.org/> ).

What is new and somewhat startling is the full court press
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-court_press>  by the US government (USG)
and its allies and acolytes among the corporate, technical and civil society
participants in Internet Governance discussions to extend the use of the
highly locally adapted versions of the MS model from the quite narrow and
technical areas where it has achieved a considerable degree of success
towards becoming the fundamental and effectively, only, basis on which such
Internet Governance discussions are to be allowed (as per the USG's
statement concerning the transfer of the DNS management function
<http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition
-key-internet-domain-name-functions> ) to go forward. Notably as well
"multistakeholderism" seems to have replaced "Internet Freedom" as the
mobilizing Internet meme of choice (
<http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/internet-freedom-and-post-snowden-
global-internet-governance/> "Internet Freedom" having been somewhat
discredited by post-Snowden associations of Internet Freedom with the
freedom of the USG -to "surveille", "sabotage", and "subvert" via the
Internet).

In the midst of these developments there has been a subtle shift in
presenting MSism as a framework for Internet Governance consultation
processes to now presenting it as the necessary model for Internet
Governance decision-making. Moreover it is understood that this
decision-making would be taking place not only within the fairly narrow
areas of the technical management of Internet functions but also into the
broader areas of Internet impact and the associated Internet related public
policy where the Internet's significance is both global and expanding
rapidly.

Most importantly the MS model is being presented as the model which would
replace the "outmoded" processes of democratic decision-making in these
spheres-in the terminology of some proponents, providing an "enhanced
post-democratic" model for global (Internet) policy making.

So what exactly is the "multistakeholder model"?

Well that isn't quite clear and no one (least of all the US State Department
which invoked the model 12 times in its one page presentation
<http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/prsrl/2014/221946.htm>  to the NetMundial
meeting in Brazil) has yet provided anything more than headline references
to the MS "model" or examples of what it might (but probably wouldn't) look
like given the likelihood of the need to contextualize individual instances
and practices.

But whatever it is, a key element is that policy (and other) decisions will
be made by and including all relevant "stakeholders". This will of course
include for example the major Internet corporations who get to promote their
"stakes" and make Internet policy through some sort of consensus process
where all the participants have an "equal" say and where rules governing
things like operational procedures, conflict of interest, modes and
structures of internal governance, rules of participation etc. etc. all seem
to be made up as they go along.

Clearly the major Internet corporations, the US government and their allies
in the technical and civil society communities are quite enthusiastic -
jointly working out things like Internet linked frameworks, principles and
rules (or not) for privacy and security, taxation, copyright etc. - is
pretty heady stuff. Whether the outcome in any sense is supportive of the
broad public interest or an Internet for the Common Good
<http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/1099> , or anything
beyond a set of rules and practices to promote the interests of and benefits
for those who are already showing the most returns from their current
"stake

Larry Strickling: ICANN and Global Internet Governance: The Road to Sao Paulo, and Beyond

[michael gurstein]

ICANN - Singapore
 Non-Commercial Users Constituency
 ICANN and Global Internet Governance:  The Road to Sao Paulo, and Beyond
 21 March 2014 
 
 KEYNOTE ASSESSMENT BY LARRY STRICKLING, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF
COMMISSIONERS, GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES
 
   >>BILL DRAKE:   So I think probably, Larry, we don't -- I get to say
somebody who doesn't need much introduction in this case.  Given recent
events, I think that I don't have to read your bio.  But it is linked off
the Web site, if anybody wants to know who Larry Strickling is, the
Honorable Assistant Secretary of State, head of the NTIA -- of Commerce,
sorry.  Commerce.  I'm tired.  And head of the NTIA.  Here is Larry
Strickling.

  >>LARRY STRICKLING:   Well, thank you, Bill.  And thank you for having us
here.  I mean, no better way to show a person he's welcome than to have him
fly 24 hours and then sit through eight hours of meeting and then react to
what he's heard all day.  So we'll see how exactly this plays out.

 But Bill had assured me, you don't have to prepare any comments.  Just show
up and react to the group.  So that's what I'm going to do.  But we'll try
to cover any of the topics that I'm sure are on your mind, whether -- if I
don't touch on them directly, do we have some time for Q&A?  We'll try to
take a few questions to make sure that we are able to address your issues.
 But I am extremely pleased to appear here because for 15 years, people said
this would never happen.  And I want to be able to -- I'm so pleased to be
here to be able to say that finally the United States government has done
something that Milton Mueller likes.  So --
 [ Laughter ]
 [ Applause ]
 Not that that was our goal.
 [ Laughter ]
 But it didn't hurt.

 So I just have a few points I'd like to emphasize.  And again, I did sit
through the discussion today with the idea of trying to pick up some of the
themes and trying to weave them together into some points that then relate
to the action that we did announce last Friday.

 And I will say that probably the most important take-away for me out of the
discussion today is a point that was emphasized right from the beginning by
Steve Crocker, right through the end, Marilia emphasized it again, and
that's it idea that this IANA issue, the transition of the United States out
of its role with the IANA functions, is really only one part of the Internet
governance debate we are facing this year.  And I would tell you that one of
our greatest concerns in the U.S. government about this was the fear that --
well, not fear.  The concern that by taking the action we took last week,
that somehow we would suck the oxygen out of this larger discussion that I
will tell you, in my own mind, is much more important longer term, and
that's the question of how do we engage the developing world and build
acceptance of the multistakeholder model in countries that haven't had the
same level of experience with it as the more developed countries.  That, I
think, should be the focus of NETmundial.  And I'm pleased, from Marilia's
comments, that it should be a major topic down there.  That's the role of
this high-level panel chaired by the President of Estonia to start to think
about that.  And, frankly, it was a very important part of today's
discussion as reflected in the last panel.  But that, I think, is the big,
big set of issues that we have to be working on.

 We have to find a way to get the developed world -- developing world
engaged in this more than they have been.  And part of that requires getting
the communities in these countries, civil society, business communities, to
be able to organize themselves to then provide the stakeholders that you
need to have for a multistakeholder discussion.

 So it's not just a question of talking and convincing governments of the
wisdom of this.  It's partly how do you reach out to the economies in these
countries that are struggling to get their arms around the Internet economy
and how to kind of ride that economic wave that comes with it.  But that's
what we really have to be focused on.

 And my deepest hope of what we put into play last week is that it might
serve as something of a booster shot to the efforts to focus on this larger
question.  And if it doesn't turn into that, then we should all say shame on
ourselves because that's really what's at stake here, not just the question
of who or what replaces the U.S. role in verifying the accuracy of changes
to the root zone.

 So that's kind of my first point.

 The second one is that we did set out some principles for this transition
last Friday.  And what I hope and what I heard today is that I think that
what we laid out, which were very basic, but I think that they already
represent a consensus of the community.  And I hope that that gets
established in the discussion over the next few days, and, in particular, at
the public session on Monday.  But the four principles that we used to build
the frame around the transition planning is w

Re: an historic retreat

[michael gurstein]

Dear Nettimers:

There is a very much bigger game afoot where issues concerning the
NTIA/ICANN etc.etc. are mere pawns on the chessboard.

The NTIA announcement has to be seen in the context of the NetMundial
meeting to be convened in Brazil at the end of April and where the NTIA
announcement pre-empted a (quite likely and more or less global) agreement
on a rather worse set of recommendations from the US's perspective.

The key element in the NTIA/USG announcement was not the preamble but rather
the first bullet point i.e. the determination that the transfer would only
take place in a manner which would "Support and enhance the multistakeholder
model". This should be seen in the context of the USG's statement to the
NetMundial concerning its position on the future of Internet Governance
http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/prsrl/2014/221946.htm where
"multistakeholderism" is mentioned 12 times and "democracy" is referred to
once in passing.

So what exactly is "multistakeholderism"? Well that isn't quite clear and no
one (least of all the US State Department) has pointed to a useful
definition.  

But whatever it is a key element is that all the relevant "stakeholders"
including the major Internet corporations get to sit around promoting their
"stakes" and making Internet policy through some sort of consensus process
where all the participants have an "equal" say and where rules of things
like procedure, conflict of interest etc.etc. all seem to be made up as they
go along. Also, it is becoming clear that the various proponents of MSism
see it as a replacement for democratic processes of Internet governance
(continuously misrepresented as being completely aligned with multilateral
processes). Clearly the major Internet corporations, the US government and
their allies in the technical and civil society communities are quite
enthusiastic -- getting to sit around and jointly work out things like
frameworks, principles and rules (or not) for privacy and security,
taxation, copyright etc. in an Internet enabled environment--pretty heady
stuff.  Whether the outcome in any sense is supportive of the broad public
interest and an Internet for the Common Good, well that isn't so clear.

Mike


-Original Message-
From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Felix Stalder
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 2:59 AM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: Re:  an historic retreat


Hi Dan,

I must say, I've never really understood the politics around ICANN. That has
always been too arcane for me. So I don't understand this development
either.
 <...>


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FW: An Internet for the Common Good: Engagement, Empowerment and Justice for All: A Community Informatics Declaration

[michael gurstein]

An Internet for the Common Good:
 
Engagement, Empowerment and Justice for All

A Community Informatics Declaration

Effective use of the Internet will benefit everyone. Currently the benefits
of the Internet are distributed unequally: some people gain power, wealth
and influence from using the Internet while others struggle for basic
access. In our vision, people in their communities and everywhere -
including the poor and marginalized in developing and developed countries,
women and youth, indigenous peoples, older persons, those with disabilities
-- will use the Internet to develop and exercise their civic intelligence
and work together to address collective challenges. 

More than a technology or a marketplace, the Internet is a social
environment, a community space for people to interact with the expectation
that principles of equity, fairness and justice will prevail. Internet
governance must ensure that this online social space functions effectively
for the well-being of all. 

A community informatics approach to Internet governance supports equal
distribution of Internet benefits and addresses longstanding social,
economic, cultural and political injustices in this environment. Questions
of social justice and equity through the Internet are central to how the
Internet and society will evolve. People in different communities must be
empowered to develop and adapt the Internet infrastructure to reflect their
core values and ways of knowing. 

We support development of an Internet in which communities are the "first
mile" and not the "last mile." We believe the primary purpose of the
Internet is not to mine data and make knowledge a commodity for purchase and
sale but rather to advance community goals equally and fairly within these
distributed infrastructures. 

We aspire to an Internet effectively owned and controlled by the communities
that use it and to Internet ownership that evolves through communities
federated regionally, nationally and globally. The Internet's role as a
community asset, a public good and a local community utility is more
important than its role as a site for profit-making or as a global artifact.
The access layer and the higher layers of applications and content should be
community owned and controlled in a way that supports a rich ecology of
commercial enterprises subject to and serving community and public
interests. 

As citizens and community members in an Internet-enabled world we have a
collective interest in how the Internet is governed. Our collective
interests need to be expressed and affirmed in all fora discussing the
future of the Internet. As a collective, and as members of civil society, we
have developed a declaration for Internet governance based on principles of
community informatics. We appreciate your interest and welcome your support.


A just and equitable Internet provides: 

1.  Fair and equitable means to access and use the Internet: affordable
by all and designed and deployed so that all may realize the benefits of
effective use. The poor and marginalized, women, youth, indigenous peoples,
older persons, those with disabilities, Internet users and non-users alike;
no one, from any community globally, should be without Internet access. 
2.  Equitable access within communities to the benefits of the Internet,
including information, opportunities to communicate, increased effectiveness
of communications and information management, and opportunities to
participate in system development and content creation. Everyone, within all
communities, should have the right, the means and the opportunity to use the
Internet to share the full intellectual heritage of humankind without undue
cost or hindrance. 
3.  Respect for privacy -- people must be able to conveniently use the
Internet in a way that is credibly protected against large-scale
surveillance or interference by government authorities or corporate
interests. 
4.  Infrastructure that ensures the maximum level of personal security
and reliability. 
5.  Opportunities for all within all communities to build, manage, and
own Internet infrastructure as and when it is needed. 
6.  Internet governance by democratic principles and processes -
including privileging input from communities affected by decisions and
ensuring inclusion of the widest possible perspectives supporting the
development of our digital environments. 
7.  A peer-to-peer architecture with equal power and privilege for each
node or end point and complete neutrality of the architecture and medium for
all users and all applications. 
8.  Recognition that the local is a fundamental building block of all
information and communications and the "global" is a "federation of locals."

9.  Equal opportunity for all to connect and communicate in a language
and culture of their choice. 
10. Recognition and equal privileging of many types of knowledge and
wa

Re: So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

[michael gurstein]

Andreas,

Given what we now know (and remember that this evidently is only a tiny
fraction of what we still might learn... my reading is that my formulations
are at least in outline correct (but I would be delighted to have someone
with the technical knowledge prove (or even argue) that I was wrong). 

Certainly there is much droppage between cup and lip but as I understand it
the overall capabilities I pointed to are there. Whether they can be
effectively executed, directed in any usefully targeted way (but of course
that is one of the problems--cf. the wedding goers/drone victims syndrome),
operated by sufficiently intelligent beings (are bots beings?) to actually
do what they are intended to do is either a very practical or a deep
philosophical question neither of which my post was intended to resolve.

Rather my post was a quite personal expression of the dilemma that I see as
someone trying to be active/effective (as a civil society person) in the
evolving space of global Internet governance.

Best to all for the new year,

Mike

-Original Message-

From: Andreas Broeckmann [mailto:broeckm...@leuphana.de] 
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2014 9:21 PM
To: nettime
Cc: michael gurstein
Subject: Re:  So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

dear michael, dear friends,

Am 02.01.14 06:06, schrieb michael gurstein:

> Whether we will live in a world where one country and its 5 allies 
> have access to all worthwhile information which allows them to control 
> any possibility of dissent (even before it happens), control the 
> inputs into and outputs from elections or any form of political 
> campaign, control financial markets and bank accounts, control the 
> behaviour of individuals and ultimately groups and that's for 
> starters-those are things we can interpolate based on what we know, 
> not as would surely be more realistic, interpolating from what else we 
> can foresee-these guys as we all know, have access to effectively 
> unlimited financial resources and the brainpower that goes with it.

i am wondering about the "all" in your formulation "all worthwhile
information", the two "any"-s and the two "control"-s, and then about the
"brainpower that goes with unlimited financial resources". - is this really
the issue, and is it such a vision of totalitarian surveillance what we
should be most, or ultimately concerned about?
 <...>


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So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World

[michael gurstein]

Blogpost (with links): 
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/so-what-do-we-do-now-living-in-a-po
st-snowden-world/

http://tinyurl.com/pvghcey

So, What Do We Do Now? Living in a Post-Snowden World 

Michael Gurstein

Posted on January 1, 2014

As the avalanche of Snowden revelations resumes after it's brief
organizational regrouping and holiday hiatus a few learnings and even
more direct and pertinent questions are starting to emerge.

Evegeny Morozov in an otherwise interesting piece in the Financial
Times is surely incorrect in his bald statement that "Snowden now
faces a growing wave of surveillance fatigue among the public". The
emotion isn't "surveillance fatigue" but rather shell shock at the
revelations as they keep coming, in wave after uncomfortable wave.
The first reaction of course was shock (and awe), the second was a
feeling of anger and rising resistance; but as the revelations have
kept coming, each one more disturbing than the last; but now shifting
from pointing to quantity of surveillance (everything, everyone,
everywhere, forever), to quality (from metadata to communications
content to networking to instantaneous full-spectrum profiling). The
emotion is now-what on earth can we do-this is impossible, democracy
or even any form of popular sovereignty is at immediate risk, but what
on earth can we do?

The techies who started off shocked and appalled and over-all angry
(at feeling personally and professionally betrayed) and vowing (or
at least those whose organizational or corporate affiliations didn't
leave them irretrievably compromised) vowed to fight back and there
were heated discussions in various tech forums of various technical
strategies for turning the surveillance tide.

But the revelations have just kept on coming and the tech community
like everyone else recognizes the scope and depth and ultimately
overwhelming power of an agency with access to the full might and
resources of the richest, most powerful country on earth led by a
President who himself seems to be either in thrall of the surveillance
machine or indentured to it for reasons we may never know. They, now
equally stand blinded by the headlights of a headlong careening tank,
are recognizing with appalled self-incriminations what a horror they
have allowed and contributed to being born.

Quite clearly technical solutions won't work (or at least won't scale)
if the dominant power doesn't want it to work, and anyway who would
trust that anti-surveillance solutions were working after all we know
of how the corporate sector and the tech community has been (willingly
or or no) brought in as semi-aware co-conspirators.

And by now, it appears reasonably evident (based on the overall
indifference to doing anything much by the political masterclass in
DC and elsewhere) up and down the decision tree and including its
FiveEyes handmaidens, that the decisions have been made not only that
resistance measures won't be allowed to work but that they will be
actively resisted and "attacked" with all the forces and resources
that have already gone into building the existing machine.

Even the corporate sector (US) has become extremely uneasy at
the damage that has and is being done to their reputation for
trustworthiness and reliability and with that damage would appear to
be escalating costs and penalties.

Even the cyber-libertarian pro-US chorus has gone silent -
recognizing as they had no choice but to do, the most fundamental of
contradictions between freedom and surveillance. Some of course, are
opting for the. "but your guys are worse" argument (but without having
any idea of whether there is any 'your' as in "your guys" anywhere to
speak of). Is anybody anywhere (except in Fox News fantasies) coming
to the support of Russia or China or Saudi Arabia as an alternative in
all of this.

And of course, the cyber crowd has spent the last 20 years
systematically denigrating and tossing rocks into the spokes of
any regulatory or governance vehicle that might, however remotely,
be able to mount a framework that could tame the surveillance
juggernaut.So, at the end of the day who is there to call when there
is an existential threat to the very foundation of Western values and
democratic processes. Ghost Busters? Even they seem too busy warding
off other threats from "real" aliens to the existential well-being of
the Western world.

The international community might, just might be able to do something,
if they were to gang up on the US (as seemed possible, if only
briefly, following President Rousseff's speech to the UN General
Assembly). But as "saner heads" and diplomats are coming into the game
that seems to be fading into the dusty hallways of the UN, likely
never to be heard from again.

There is still some hope from President Rousseff's meeting in Brazil
in April but the apparent lacklustre interest f

Mandela/Madiba

[michael gurstein]

As we recognize, mourn and celebrate Mandela/Madiba it might be worthwhile
to circulate and examine the
 draft South
Africa ICT Policy Framing paper
www.info.gov.za/view/DownloadFileAction?id=188939

 

This paper, I've been told by a Community Informatics colleague who is on
the SA Government's Task Force that produced this document, explicitly (as
in section 3.5 where principles are presented) draws inspiration in large
part from the ANC's
 Freedom Charter (1955)  http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=72
which guided Mandela and his ANC colleagues over the decades and as they
approached the work of Government.  

 

Best,

 

Mike

 

 


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FW: Internet Justice: A Meme Whose Time Has Come

[michael gurstein]

(for links and -- very interesting -- comments (or to add a comment) see: 

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/internet-justice-a-meme-whose-time-
has-come/

http://tinyurl.com/lwuyvdk

Internet Justice: A Meme Whose Time Has Come

For some time I've been discussing with colleagues how to approach Internet
policy related issues holistically. Not just from a technical point of view,
or commercial, or "user", or even civil society but rather from a
perspective which encompasses all of these while focusing most specifically
on an integrated approach to what we, as global citizens whose world is
being remade on the Internet's digital platform, might expect (and demand).

Much of the discussion to date has focused on "Internet users" as the most
general category.  The problem with this of course, is that it excludes
those and still a majority of the world's population -  who, for whatever
reason are not able or willing to use the Internet. Meanwhile, given the
global reach and penetration of the Internet even those currently unable or
uninterested in "using" the Internet are equally impacted by it.  Based on
simple principles of democratic participation even they should have some say
in how the Internet is deployed and managed in relation to matters of most
general concern.

We are all now citizens of an Internet-enabled world whether we are "users"
or not.

And as citizens of an Internet-enabled world we have interests and
perspectives on how the Internet is deployed and managed now and well into
the future; and those need to be expressed and articulated as demands in all
the forums where the future of the Internet is being discussed.

A preliminary list of what we might call the elements of "Internet Justice"
would include:

1. fair and equitable means to access and use the
Internet-affordable by all and designed and deployed in such a manner that
all may realize the benefits of effective use
2. a fair and equitable distribution of the benefits of the
Internet including the benefits of the widest possible access to information
and the opportunities to communicate; the financial and other benefits that
are accruing as a result of increased efficiencies and effectiveness of
communications and information management; the benefits that result from
users contribution to and participation in system development and content
creation; and of the benefits that are rapidly accruing as a result of
increased mastery over the elements of physical being in all its complexity
and variety
3. the right to use the Internet without systematic
interference by government authorities or corporate interests in the
messages which are being communicated
4. The right to use the Internet in privacy and without
surreptitious surveillance
5. the right, means and opportunity to use the Internet to
access and share without undue cost or hindrance the full intellectual
heritage of mankind
6. an Internet infrastructure which can be relied upon to
ensure the maximum level of personal security and reliability
7. an Internet where there is the opportunity for end users
to build or manage Internet infrastructure as and when it is needed
8. an Internet governed on the basis of democratic
principles and processes but also one where those impacted by decisions have
a role in making those decisions; and where there is a recognition that just
as we need to invite and acknowledge the participation by the highest
quality of disinterested information, advice and intervention in support of
our physical environment so too in our technology and digital environments
9. an Internet of peers within whose architecture each node
or end point is equal in power and privilege to every other end point.

This list is as open ended as the Internet is open ended. Just as the
horizon for enhancing the well-being of all global citizens through more
efficient and effective communication and access to and use of information
is continuously expanding, so is the need to ensure that the Internet is and
continues to be a resource available, usable and of equitable benefit to
all.

 Comments, suggestions, edits, additions, endorsement gratefully encouraged.

Tweet: #internetjustice

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D. 
Executive Director: Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development
and Training (CCIRDT) Vancouver, BC CANADA
tel/fax: +1-604-602-0624
email: gurst...@gmail.com
web: http://communityinformatics.net
blog: http://gurstein.wordpress.com
twitter: @michaelgurstein 


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"Internet Freedom" and Post-Snowden Global Internet Governance

[michael gurstein]

With links
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/internet-freedom-and-post-snowden-g
lobal-internet-governance/

http://tinyurl.com/n3onw87


 "Internet Freedom" and Post-Snowden Global Internet Governance: Michael
Gurstein

The big story for the 2012 Internet Governance Forum in Baku was the
almost overwhelming (and overpowering) emphasis placed by the US
government delegation and its corporate allies (primarily Google)
and its associates in (primarily US based) Civil Society on what was
termed "Internet Freedom" and Multistakeholderism as its primary
governance modality.

The campaign was very well orchestrated and coordinated (through the
US delegation led by a US Ambassador and the head of the NTIA Lawrence
Strickling) who insisted that any "Internet governance" position which
included any form of "government involvement" would necessarily imply
or result in government's "takeover" or "control" of the Internet.
Further, it was vociferously asserted that any deviation from this
path was by definition an infringement of "Internet Freedom" and part
of a slippery slope leading to full-on government suppression of "free
speech" on the Internet.

Those who pointed out that there already was quite considerable
involvement of various governments in various aspects of Internet
management were effectively shouted down as being sympathizers with
the autocrats and enemies of "freedom" in such states as China,
Russia and Saudi Arabia. The overwhelming response was that Internet
"governance" was optimal as it was (or at least the corporate, (inter)
governmental, and technical mechanisms governing its evolution were
optimal); and that the only possible position for "lovers of the
Internet" was to support the existing status quo with respect to
Internet ("non") governance.

Precisely what might be meant by "Internet Freedom" apart from rather
fuzzy libertarian notions of keeping "the dead hand of government"
as far as possible from the Internet as a hub of innovation and
enterprise, was never made very clear beyond the level of slogan
and exhortation. Rather it was loudly proclaimed that any form of
formal governance of the Internet would be the greatest sin that
could be perpetrated against the Internet as a burgeoning global
infrastructure.

In choosing among the various ways in which "Freedom" might be
characterized this lobbying steamroller made quite clear that they
were referring to Freedom "from"-government interference, government
oversight, government regulation of anything to do with the Internet.
And this theme and its ITU focused counterparts were equally evident
at the ITU policy meeting held in Dubai some few months later (the
WCIT).

When some few small voices suggested that this full court press in
support of "Freedom from" might also mean for example a freedom from
the means for countries, particularly Less Developed Countries to
introduce some form of taxation on the currently small but rapidly
growing flow of Internet based revenues from already impoverished
economies to already stupendously wealth private (and primarily
US based) Internet corporations; or that there might be something
wrong with the current way in which the basic "naming system" of the
Internet via ICANN might be structured (as a sub-contractor to the US
Department of Commerce); or that some issues such as privacy might
require mechanisms for policy development and global enforcement,
these comments were met with derision and howls that the authors of
such positions were secret sympathizers of communications censors
(ComSymps) of those on the other side of the emerging Internet cold
war - i.e. the Russia's, China's, Saudi Arabia's of the world.

But that was then and this is now and as startling revelation after
revelation tumbles from the thumb drives of Mr. Edward Snowden the
import if not the intent of (one hopes) certain of those Internet
Freedom warriors (speculating on precisely who knew what, when, and
how in this context makes for an interesting exercise) becomes clear.

While so loudly advocating for Freedom "from" (whatever.), the
Internet Freedom (IF) coalition was in fact, providing the diplomatic
cover and lobbying campaign to ensure that no outcome of Internet
governance would interfere with what would appear to be the overall
US strategy of Freedom "to" - surveille, subvert, suborn and overall
embed and maintain (as the NSA so aptly put it)-"total information
dominance" of the Internet and all of its various manifestations
now and presumably forever, in the service of US "security" and US
interests.

Such "security" it is clear from the Snowden documents means not only
security against terrorism but also it seems (as enabled by the NSA's
surveillance machine) se

In an Internetworked World No One Is "Foreign"

[michael gurstein]

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/in-an-internetworked-world-no-one-is-foreign

In an Internetworked World No One Is "Foreign"


by  <http://gurstein.wordpress.com/author/gurstein/> Michael Gurstein 

As everyone knows there have been some startling and shocking
revelations concerning the surveillance activities of the USA's NSA.
This has occasioned considerable to-ing and fro-ing from the US
Executive Office, from the major Internet corporations implicated in
these revelations, and from various elements of civil society.

To an equally astonishing and disturbing degree much of this to-ing
and fro-ing has centred around whether the rights of Americans have
been assaulted. Watching these discussions unfold including from US
colleagues in civil society, it has been interesting how a fine bright
line has been drawn between the rights of citizens and residents of
the USA and everyone else. The argument appears to be that while
the rights of Americans are somehow sacrosanct--protected by among
other things the US constitution and duly constituted legislation,
foreigners i.e. everyone else in the world have no rights--are "fair
game" for whatever actions the NSA or whoever chooses to invoke.

As a non-USAian watching all of this unfold I've been equally
astonished and horrified that otherwise perfectly sane and reasonable
people who pop up in all the right places often saying useful things
internationally could be so tone deaf when dealing with a real issue
with global ramifications.

As I've been thinking about this I haven't been quite sure why the
terminology of Americans "good"--"foreigners" "suspicious" should
grate so much.

We (being those of the non-USAian persuasion) are so used to listening
to cultural messages coming from the US including via movies,
television, music and so on that at some unconscious cultural level
"we are all Americans now". So when the divide between those placing
themselves under the shading protection of the US constitution and
everyone else is so actively and frequently expressed, the real divide
is made even clearer and more explicit.

However, as we all know as well, the Internet as a communications and
expressive platform knows few if any boundaries. While on the Internet
of course, some are more equal than others the specific nationality
as framed by boundaries and constitutions and legislation is left
somewhere in the background only to be invoked at times of crisis or
system failure.

 And that is why the language and conceptualization of the US vs.
foreigners seems so odd and unsettling since on the Internet no one
is a "foreigner" (and no one is a "national" except possibly of the
nation of the Internet and its netizens/"citizens"...

 This isn't to idealize the Internet as a place without boundaries
but rather to state the obvious, I'm able to and am frequently
active in being in my home in Canada or with my friends in Brazil
or with business colleagues in India instantaneously and seamlessly
from anywhere I happen to be able to connect--no passports,
no jurisdictional entanglements, in many cases no authorities
evidently hovering in the background. So when something like Ed
Snowden's revelations re-arrange again the Internet world around
boundaries--around "us" and "them", "citizens" and "foreigners" it
feels, well, so 20th century.

And to go on a wee bit--what is equally unsettling is the knowledge
again that we (foreigners) have gleaned from Ed Snowden's revelations
that the marginal and largely notional "protections" that distance
and boundaries have up to now offered to us from the over-weaning
and often absurdist actions by US authorities can now be seen as
having been finally and irrevocably "disappeared"; and while we may
be "foreigners" from the perspective of "rights", we are very much
not foreigners from the perspective of being somehow subject to the
actions of US authorities wherever we may or whatever we may be doing
anywhere in the world.

And of course, this is the case not simply for the usual
("legitimate") suspects but also for ordinary citizens, businesses,
governments, whatever--since the power of the Internet and the
facility with which its depth of penetration has been projected almost
universally has meant that the power wielded by those authorities is
now global in scope and reach and essentially unrestricted in its
actions. Thus in the sense of being subjects to US authority (or the
authority of anyone with the wealth and facility to effectively use
these tools--recent days have seen reports of similar actions by
spooks in India and Brazil) no one is now a "foreigner"--in that area
we are all equal and equally powerless.

So, if we are all -- USAians and everyone else now subjects of the
omniprese

FW: Erosion of gatekeepers

[michael gurstein]

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/erosion-of-gatekeepers/1096218/


Erosion of gatekeepers


Pratik Kanjilal 

Posted online: Tue Apr 02 2013, 03:36 hrs

 

Amazon-Goodreads merger unleashes a frisson in the publishing industry 

A merger and an acquisition in the US, both likely to be formalised in the
second quarter, have the capacity to move the goalposts in English language
publishing worldwide. It???s making writers antsy and when they think it
through, readers may not be ecstatic either. Publishing companies and
booksellers, the gatekeepers of the world of books, who compete
financially, are trying to form monopolies in order to lean on each other
harder. And two important stakeholders in book publishing, writers and
readers, primary producers and consumers, feature only as interested
bystanders in this arm-wrestling match. It???s almost enough to make them
want to join hands and cut out the middlemen. 

On Thursday, Amazon announced the acquisition of Goodreads.com, a
readers??? community which crowdsources reviews and ratings from 16 million
members. The volume of the deal remains unspecified, but educated guesses
range between $140 million and $1 billion. The US Authors Guild struck back
immediately, calling the buyout a ???truly devastating act of vertical
integration???. Its president, Scott Turow, made a bleak public statement:
???Amazon???s acquisition of Goodreads is a textbook example of how modern
internet monopolies can be built. The key is to eliminate or absorb
competitors before they pose a serious threat.??? 

Meanwhile, another monopoly-like deal has been slowly inching towards its
conclusion. In February, the Department of Justice cleared the proposed
merger of publishing giants Random House and Penguin. Now, the deal awaits
clearance from antitrust regulators in Europe and Canada, which is unlikely
to be denied. The merged entity will control perhaps one-third of English
trade publishing and will leverage its volumes to secure better terms from
Amazon, which dominates retailing. 

M&As sometimes trigger cascades as industries reorganise their assets. When
Random and Penguin announced their feelings for each other in October last
year, Rupert Murdoch was expected to start cruising for a partner for
HarperCollins. There was talk of a merger with Simon & Schuster in November
but News Corp, which owns HarperCollins, was probably too preoccupied with
the fallout of the phone hacking scandal in the UK to do a notable merger.
But if a deal of any magnitude had been struck, the English language market
would have been divvied up into two lions??? shares, leaving a wedge
populated by smaller players and indie presses ??? the Third Front of the
books trade. It was assumed that the battle would remain a straight contest
between publishers and retailers, each seeking to gouge better margins out
of the other. As the sharpness of Turow???s criticism suggests, a flanking
manoeuvre like the Goodreads buyout was totally unexpected. 

Amazon has made sizeable acquisitions in the past ??? IMDb, audiobook
specialist Audible, the daily deal site Woot, the social buying site
LivingSocial, the e-commerce site Zappos and Kiva Systems, which develops
robotics for large scale warehousing. All these were straightforward
decisions to improve market access and logistical efficiencies. But the
Goodreads acquisition is an attempt to control consumer behaviour. Amazon
has acquired the biggest source of credible crowdsourced reviews and
ratings on the Net, and it will kill it to remove competition with its own
user reviews. It will do this without even trying. 

Product reviews are powerful marketing aids but they are distrusted
precisely because they have commercial value. The credibility of media and
industry reviews is lower than that of word of mouth publicity. The
Goodreads business model was based on this distinction. The credibility of
the site owed to its independence and its ability to build ever-expanding
circles of trust among users who already knew each other. The site was
acquired by Amazon because it can influence sales and had the potential to
divert traffic to competing stores. But absorption into the very industry
it critiques would probably lower the perceived credibility of Goodreads.
In which case, rather than gaining a strategic asset, Amazon would have
only eliminated competition. 

Goodreads is an interesting example of the erosion of the traditional
gatekeepers of the Anglo-American industry ??? publishers, booksellers,
critics and agents ??? who are surrendering ground to the crowd. First,
Anglo-American publishers transferred marketing roles to writers.
Traditionally reclusive, they have turned performers in order to promote
their work. Agents and editors used to be deeply involved in shaping the
books of their writers, but that is now the exception rather than the rule.
And then Goodreads crowdsourced opinion and crowded out the critic. 

Eventually, perhaps mainstream trade publishers wou

FW: House of Cards

[michael gurstein]

This represents a breakthrough of sort perhaps breakthroughs in several
directions.

Note that my only connection to House of Cards is to have watched the
episodes on Netflix.

M

from: friendsofeliel [mailto:friendsofel...@gmail.com] 
sent: Saturday, March 02, 2013 1:47 PM
to: friendsofel...@gmail.com
subject: House of Cards

http://www.friendsofeli.com/live/video_popup.php/House_of_Cards.pdf?id=72
 &download=1&bipass=1&start_dl=1

Hello Friends, Family, and Neighbors,

I hope that you and yours are all doing well.  As you may know, "House of
Cards" has been release on Netflix.  I appear in episode 7 as "Congressman
Wilkins".  See the file / pdf.  Please call Asif Satchu and request that I
appear as "Congress Wilkins" as a recurring role and that you would view the
series if his character returns for season 2.  Here is his information:
* Asif Satchu, 310-786-1600

Warm Regards,
Eli

Phone: 301-906-1292
http://www.friendsofeli.com/live/video_popup.php/House_of_Cards.pdf?id=72
 &download=1&bipass=1&start_dl=1


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Google Wins Anti-Trust Case

[michael gurstein]

From: Dave Farber [mailto:d...@farber.net] 
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2013 5:35 AM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Google???s Lawyers Work Behind the Scenes to Carry the Day - 
NYTimes.com

 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/technology/googles-lawyers-work-behind-the-scenes-to-carry-the-day.html?hp

-

I've blogged about this:

I'm wondering though whether the issue concerning Google is rather
misplaced when included under matters concerning free speech/free
expression. Whether a search algorithm propelling a robotic process of
information selection would be covered by free speech "rights" is
something for legal scholars to ponder at their leisure.

I'm wondering rather whether the appropriate rights/freedoms
venue under which to assess Google's activities might not more
appropriately fall under "freedom of thought" rather than
"freedom of speech" i.e. that it concerns the way we know things
or our capacity to know certain things (and not have the means to know
(or believe) other things).


http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/is-google-like-gas-or-like-st
eel-neither-it-is-like-nernsts-third-law-of-thermodynamics-or-the-nice
ne-creed/

 

http://wp.me/pJQl5-ab

 

M

 



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FW: Hmmmm... Google: "Internet Freedom!"... (from taxes?

[michael gurstein]

http://vrritti.com/2012/11/23/australian-minister-provides-detailed-explanat
ion-of-tax-evasion-by-google-apple-and-others/

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/news/15431664/france-says-google-would-
lose-court-case-over-taxes/

http://en.apa.az/news_google_italy_suspected_of_tax_evasion__183392.html

http://www.3news.co.nz/Starbucks-Google-Amazon-accused-of-UK-tax-evasion/tab
id/369/articleID/276457/Default.aspx

http://www.linformaticien.com/actualites/id/27219/menace-d-une-taxe-en-allem
agne-google-defend-la-liberte-de-surfer.aspx

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/0156212/australian-govt-pledges-acti
on-on-google-tax-evasion

http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/the-ituwcit-thinking-about-internet
-regulatory-policy-from-an-ldc-perspective/

If governments, companies and (g@d preserve us) certain elements of civil
society want to pursue (project) a libertarian political agenda globally
that of course, is their g@d given right. But let's be clear, drop the
hypocrasy and call a bit a bit and stop confusing a bunch of well
intentioned people that this is some sort of holy crusade to "save the
Internet". 

I would be the first one to argue for a transparent, net neutral, open
access, free speech Internet but I'm also for an inclusive Internet in a
decent socially equitable environment with proper schools, and healthcare,
and an adequate physical and social infrastructure for all, not just for the
rich (or those in rich countries) and that means that companies, like
everyone else have to pay their fair share.

Greed is greed and the best way to keep from paying taxes as the
libertarians know extremely well, is to make sure that there are no
laws/regulations in place to require anyone to pay taxes.

(From my contribution to an on-going discussion on the civil society list
concerned with global Internet governance...

Mike







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Another perspective on Google`s `net freedom` initiative

[michael gurstein]

For another perspective on Google`s `net freedom` initiative.


M

 

From: governance-requ...@lists.igcaucus.org 
[mailto:governance-requ...@lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of parminder
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2012 11:50 PM
To: governa...@lists.igcaucus.org
Subject: Re: [governance] Google's Fight the ITU/WCIT website

 

>From Google's sign-on campaign 



???A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments 
alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions 
of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice.???


https://www.google.com/takeaction/?utm_source=google 

 &utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=112012freeandopen#make-your-voice-heard 


Dear Google; Yes, the world indeed needs an open Internet, for which reason it 
is rather awful to note that you, meaning, Google;

1) Sold the entire net neutrality campaign down the drain in the US, by first 
assuming its leadership and then entering into a self-serving agreement with 
Verizon, whereby the main means of accessing the Internet in the future - 
mobiles - are exempted from net neutrality provisions. 

2) Have recently entered into exclusive arrangements with telecos to provide 
Gmail, Google + and Google Search for free in some developing countries 
(Philippines) , and as a special low cost package exclusively of a few Internet 
services (and not the full, public Internet) in others (India), which makes a 
mockery of an open and net neutral Internet.

3) Tweak your search results, which is increasingly the main way of accessing 
locations on the Internet, in non-transparent ways, with increasing evidence 
that this is done in a manner that merely serves your own commercial interests 
and goes against consumer/ public interest, and for which reasons Google is 
currently subject to regulatory investigations in the US and EU. 

( There are hundreds of other outrages, big and small, including the fact that 
today I suddenly  see my default browser getting set for "Chrome' when I prefer 
and have always used Mozilla Firefox and never asked for the change of default.)

I cannot see anything other than effective regulation of the Internet to be 
able to check such excesses by Internet companies that are deeply compromising 
the openness of the Internet (sticking here to only to the subject of openness 
of the Internet, used in above appeal by Google). 

So, lets be honest, it is not about people versus ITU, not even, Google versus 
ITU, or even Google versus content regulation; it is Google versus any 
regulation of the Internet space so that Google, and similarly positioned 
dominant players, can have a free run over the economic, social and political 
resources of the world. 

It is very important to wage the needed struggles to keep Internet's content 
free from undue statist controls. But one needs to be careful about whom one 
chooses as partners, nay, leaders of the campaign. Remember, the lessons from 
the net neutrality campaign in the US which was sold cheap by those who assumed 
its leadership. Also, have no doubt whatsoever that ACTAs and PIPAs will come 
back in new forms, accommodating the interests of the big Internet companies 
that led the opposition in the first round. (Anyone wanting to take a bet on 
this! :) ) And. when the second round happens, since 'our leaders' would have 
crossed over, there wouldnt be much fight left to give. 

For sure, make opportunistic, tactical, alliances, but civil society needs to 
be careful not to abandon leadership of public interest causes to players who 
cannot but become turncoat and, well, betray, - sooner or later getting into 
bed with whoever is economically and politically powerful around to help their 
business prosper. Such is the structural logic of big business. Let them stick 
to what they do best - organise productive forces of the world. Leave public 
interest causes to public interest players - civil society and governments. 
However, if the sentiment is simply overflowing, maybe just donate some money 
to such causes, in an arms- lenght /hands-off approach vis a vis managing the 
precise activities involved. I simply dont fancy corporate-led 'public 
interest' campaigns. 

One was stuck by the number of Google organised panels at the Baku IGF, where 
they openly took part and gave their policy pitch. As a participant from 
Pakistan said at a workshop ' I find a Google representative at every panel 
that I am at'. Such brash presence at policy forums and taking strong policy 
positions by corporates is a relatively new game, and to my mind not a welcome 
thing for our democracies. I keep hoping that civil society would give this 
phenomenon a deeper thought and analysis, rather than just riding the 
bandwagon. 

parminder 

On Wednesday 21 November 2012 04:47 AM, Fouad Bajwa wrote:

Just saw Google's

Why Romney Lost the Election

[michael gurstein]

Obama tours with The Boss singing "We Take Care of Our Own"

and Romney

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y_y2SjUFTQ

(does really bad Karoke with Meatloaf.

M


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Election Monitors Coming to U.S.

[michael gurstein]

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/263141-international-monitors-at-pollin
g-places-draw-criticism-from-voter-fraud-group

Election Monitors Coming to U.S.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United
Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44
observers around the U. S. on Election Day looking for voter suppression
activities by conservative groups. "Through our contacts at state and county
level in certain states, we managed to secure invitations at local level and
we have taken up the offer to observe. Where this is not possible, we will
respect the state regulation on this matter and will not observe in
precincts on Election Day," said Giovanna Maiola, OCSE spokesperson.


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World's First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action

[michael gurstein]

World
 's First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action


http://torrentfreak.com/worlds-first-flying-file-sharing-drones-in-action-12
0320/


A few days ago The Pirate Bay announced that in future parts of its site
could be hosted on GPS controlled drones. To many this may have sounded like
a joke, but in fact these pirate drones already exist. Project "Electronic
Countermeasures" has built a swarm of five fully operational drones which
prove that an "aerial Napster" or an "airborne Pirate Bay" is not as
futuristic as it sounds.


 picture of a drone  In
an ever-continuing effort to thwart censorship, The Pirate Bay plans to turn
flying drones into mobile hosting locations
 .

"Everyone knows WHAT TPB is. Now they're going to have to think about WHERE
TPB is," The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak last Sunday, announcing their
drone project.

Liam Young, co-founder of Tomorrow 
's Thoughts Today, was amazed to read the announcement, not so much because
of the technology, because his group has already built a swarm of
file-sharing drones. 

"I thought hold on, we are already doing that," Young told TorrentFreak. 

Their starting point for project "Electronic Countermeasures" was to create
something akin to an 'aerial Napster' or 'airborne Pirate Bay', but it
became much more than that.

"Part nomadic infrastructure and part robotic swarm, we have rebuilt and
programmed the drones to broadcast their own local Wi-Fi network as a form
of aerial Napster. They swarm into formation, broadcasting their pirate
network, and then disperse, escaping detection, only to reform elsewhere,"
says the group describing their creation.

 

 


File-Sharing Drone in Action (photo by Claus Langer
 )


 picture of a sharing drone
 

 

In short the system allows the public to share data with the help of flying
drones. Much like the Pirate Box
 , but one that flies autonomously over the
city.

"The public can upload files, photos and share data with one another as the
drones float above the significant public spaces of the city. The swarm
becomes a pirate broadcast network, a mobile infrastructure that passers-by
can interact with," the creators explain. 

One major difference compared to more traditional file-sharing hubs is that
it requires a hefty investment. Each of the drones costs 1500 euros to
build. Not a big surprise, considering the hardware that's needed to keep
these pirate hubs in the air.

"Each one is powered by 2x 2200mAh LiPo batteries. The lift is provided by
4x Roxxy Brushless Motors that run off a GPS flight control board. Also on
deck are altitude sensors and gyros that keep the flight stable. They all
talk to a master control system through XBee wireless modules," Young told
TorrentFreak.

"These all sit on a 10mm x 10mm aluminum frame and are wrapped in a vacuum
formed aerodynamic cowling. The network is broadcast using various different
hardware setups ranging from Linux gumstick modules, wireless routers and
USB sticks for file storage."

For Young and his crew this is just the beginning. With proper financial
support they hope to build more drones and increase the range they can
cover. 

"We are planning on scaling up the system by increasing broadcast range and
building more drones for the flock. We are also building in other systems
like autonomous battery change bases. We are looking for funding and backers
to assist us in scaling up the system," he told us.

Those who see the drones in action (video below) will notice that they're
not just practical. The creative and artistic background of the group shines
through, with the choreography performed by the drones perhaps even more
stunning than the sharing component.

"When the audience interacts with the drones they glow with vibrant colors,
they break formation, they are called over and their flight pattern becomes
more dramatic and expressive," the group explains. 

Besides the artistic value, the drones can also have other use cases than
being a "pirate hub." For example, they can serve as peer-to-peer
communications support for protesters and activists in regions where
Internet access is censored.

Either way, whether it's Hollywood or a dictator, there will always be
groups that have a reason to shoot the machines down. But let's be honest,
who would dare to destroy such a beautiful piece of art?

 

 

 


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FW: The ITU/WCIT: Thinking About Internet Regulatory Policy From An LDC Perspective?

[michael gurstein]

Note, this flows from a discussion that initially took place on a listserve
sponsored by ISOC on Internet Policy. I'm also putting all of this below up
on my blog http://gurstein.wordpress.com where those with an interest might
wish to carry forward this discussion and where relevant links can be found.

 

The extended discussion is probably only for those with an interest in
Internet Governance issues and particularly as they apply to the regulatory
regimes (and policy stances) of Less Developed Countries and I would point
those with such an interest to research papers prepared by Michael Kende of
the consulting firm AnalysysMason on behalf of Amazon, AT&T, Cisco Systems,
Comcast, Google, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, National Cable &
Telecommunications Association (NCTA), News Corporation, Oracle, Telef?nica,
Time Warner Cable, Verisign, and Verizon. 

 

specifically:

https://fileshare.tools.isoc.org/wentworth/public/ISOC%20WCIT%20statements%2
0

&%20resources/Analysys_Mason_RDRK0_driving_broadband_Africa_Dec2011%20copy.p
df

 

and

 

http://www.analysysmason.com/About-Us/News/Press-releases1/Internet-global-g
rowth-PR-Sept2012/?bp=http%3a%2f%2fwww.analysysmason.com%2fSearch%2f%23query
%3dglobal%2binternet%2bgrowth%26access%3dAll+content

 

I should say that both of these reports are very interesting and contain a
wealth of good information, however, the problem that I have with them and
particularly the second report is that it so clearly starts off with its
policy conclusion and builds a case to support this.  This is not an area of
particular expertise for me but my gut is that the conclusions as to the
appropriate policy regime for Less Developed Countries (the apparent target
for the second policy report from Michael Kende) would look quite different
if it was done from/by folks from LDC's rather than sponsored as Kende's
report was by Google, Cisco, Amazon, Microsoft and so on and so on.

 

I'm not exactly sure what the LDC sponsored report would say but my guess
would be that they would focus rather more on looking at how costs and
benefits are and should be distributed as between some of the wealthiest
companies from some of the wealthiest countries and LDC's looking to
increase Internet access overall in environments of very low incomes, very
difficult physical environments, extremely weak regulatory and taxation
regimes, and vast areas and populations who might under some circumstances
derive benefit from Internet access but who would under almost any
conceivable current situation find paying for this almost impossible.

 

My hunch is that they wouldn't start out with indicating as the number one
recommendation of the report -- the basic point of the overall report from
what I can see -- the overwhelming importance of

Promoting network infrastructure: (by a) Focus on increasing investments
throughout the network, from mobile broadband access through national and
cross-border connectivity and IXPs, by removing roadblocks to lower the cost
of investment, including allocating spectrum for mobile broadband or
limiting licensing requirements and fees, in order to promote competitive
entry and growth.

 

>From what I am seeing (and Kende's report is as good a signal as any) the
Internet biggies are running a bit scared (the term "moral panic" comes to
mind) as to what "madness" might come out of the WCIT meeting that the ITU
is hosting in December in Dubai. And they are pulling out all the stops in
trying to derail any real discussion on how the costs and benefits might be
allocated of improving/extending Internet access in and into LDC's and
within LDC's to the other 99% or so in those countries who currently have no
possible means of access. This is of course because the ITU as the
traditional venue for global telecom "governance" includes among its 195 or
so Member States a very goodly proportion, probably a majority, who are
currently experiencing net costs (including many regimes who see these costs
in terms of lost political control) from Internet access and paticularly if
attempts at extending access to rural and maginalized populations are taken
into consideration, rather than net benefits and not surprisingly they are
looking at ways of righting that balance.

 

And so instead of actually sitting down and trying to figure out a global
regime for Internet (and possibly other) governance, that might in some
sense lead to an equitable distribution of costs and benefits the biggies
are launching verbal, research and whatever types of broadsides infinite
amounts of money, easy access to expertise and the current ascendance of
neo-libertarian (anti-State, anti-tax) ideology can muster.

 

I myself am of two minds on this issue.  I well recognize the value/benefits
that could flow from Internet access even to the poorest of 

Orlov: Shale gas the view from Russia

[michael gurstein]

http://peakoil.com/production/orlov-shale-gas-the-view-from-russia/

(Somehow this seems relevent...

Orlov: Shale gas the view from Russia

The official shale gas story goes something like this: recent technological
breakthroughs by US energy companies have made it possible to tap an
abundant but previously inaccessible source of clean, environmentally
friendly natural gas. This has enabled the US to become the world leader in
natural gas production, overtaking Russia, and getting ready to end of
Russia's gas monopoly in Europe. Moreover, this new shale gas is found in
many parts of the world, and will, in due course, enable the majority of the
world's countries to achieve independence from traditional gas producers.
Consequently, the ability of those countries with the largest natural gas
reserves-Russia and Iran-to control the market for natural gas will be
reduced, along with their overall geopolitical influence.

If this were the case, then we should expect the Kremlin, along with
Gazprom, to be quaking in their boots. But are they? Here is what Gazprom's
chairman, Alexei Miller, recently told Süddeutsche Zeitung: "Shale gas is a
well-organized global PR-campaign. There are many of them: global cooling,
biofuels." He pointed out that the technology for producing gas from shale
is many decades old, and suggested the US turned to it out of desperation.
He dismissed it as an energy alternative for Europe. Is this just the
other's sides propaganda, or could Miller be simply stating the obvious?
Let's explore. I will base my exploration on Russian sources, which is why
all the numbers are in metric units. If you want to convert to Imperial, 1
m3 = 35 cubic feet, 1 km2 = .38 square miles, 1 tonne = 1.1 short tons).

The best-developed shale gas basin is Barnett in Texas, responsible for 70%
of all shale gas produced to date. By "developed" I mean drilled and drilled
and drilled, and then drilled some more: just in 2006 there were about as
many wells drilled into Barnett shale as are currently producing in all of
Russia. This is because the average Barnett well yields only around 6.35
million m3 of gas, over its entire lifetime, which corresponds to the
average monthly yield of a typical Russian well that continues to produce
over a 15-20 year period, meaning that the yield of a typical shale gas well
is at least 200 times smaller. This hectic activity cannot stop once a well
has been drilled: in order to continue yielding even these meager
quantities, the wells have to be regularly subjected to hydraulic
fracturing, or "fracked": to produce each thousand m3 of gas, 100 kg of sand
and 2 tonnes of water, combined with a proprietary chemical cocktail, have
to be pumped into the well at high pressure. Half the water comes back up
and has to be processed to remove the chemicals. Yearly fracking
requirements for the Barnett basin run around 7.1 million tonnes of sand and
47.2 million tonnes of water, but the real numbers are probably lower, as
many wells spend much of the time standing idle.

In spite of the frantic drilling/fracking activity, this is all small
potatoes by Russian standards. Russia's proven reserves of natural gas
amount to 43.3 trillion m3, which is about a third of the world's total. At
current consumption rates, that's enough to last 72 years. Russian gas
production is constrained by demand, not by supply; it is currently down
simply because Eurozone is in the midst of an economic crisis. Meanwhile, US
production has surged ahead, for no adequately explored reason, crashing the
price and making much of it unprofitable.

Let's compare: Gazprom's price at the wellhead runs from US$3 to $50 per
thousand m3, depending on the region. Compare that to shale gas in the US,
which runs from $80 to $320 per thousand m3. At this price, the US cannot
afford to sell shale gas on the European market. Moreover, the overall
volume of shale gas being produced in the US, even given the feverish
drilling rate of the past couple of years, if cleaned up, liquified, and
shipped to Europe in LNG tankers, would not be enough to book up just the
LNG terminal in Gdańsk, Poland, which is currently standing idle. It seems
that Gazprom has little to worry about.

The US, on the other hand, does have plenty to worry about. There has been
much talk already about groundwater pollution and other forms of
environmental destruction that accompanies the production of shale gas, so I
will not address these here. Instead, I will focus on two aspects that are
just as important but have received scarcely any attention.

First, what is shale gas? Ask this question, and you will be told: "Shut up,
it's methane." But is it really? The composition of shale gas is something
of a state secret in the US, but information about the gas produced from the
nine Polish shale gas test projects did leak out, and it's not pretty:
Polish shale gas turned out to be so high in nitrogen that it does not even
burn. Technology exists to clean up gas that 

Two Worlds of Open Government Data: Getting the Lowdown on Public Toilets in Chennai and Other Matters

[michael gurstein]

Two Worlds of Open Government Data: Getting the Lowdown on Public Toilets in
Chennai and Other Matters 

For links etc.
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/two-worlds-of-open-government-data-
getting-the-lowdown-on-public-toilets-in-chennai-and-other-matters/

TinyURL http://wp.me/pJQl5-98

Posted on April 10, 2012

On the face of it (so to speak) locating public toilets would appear to be a
natural for Open Government Data (OGD). Most cities have such
toilets-maintained at public expense for the use of residents with an urgent
need. Data on such facilities should be relatively accessible from municipal
government offices and making that information available to the general
public as a service via a mobile app is an obviously useful application and
seemingly win-win-win. A win for municipal government-they get to appear
public-spirited and supportive of citizens/tourists; a win for app maker and
the platform providing the app-what better application for a globally
accessible smart phone than a map of facilities for folks on the run; and a
natural for private sector sponsorship particularly as in the case of a
leading provider of info and apps on public toilets,
http://www.SitOrSquat.com who are sponsored by Proctor and Gamble (the
"leading toilet tissue" brand); and of course a win for the user
whoever/wherever they may be.

Good news for OGD all round and the folks at SitOrSquat.com (SOS) have quite
naturally seen the marketing potential and have their marketing information
and campaign laid out foursquare on the website. A
public-private-partnership at its best and a potential sponsor's dream!

Sitorsquat.Com Demographics

Affluent . $49,000 average

High Income>$100,000: 33%

Demographics . Female: 60% . Male: 40%

Age Range: 20 - 60

College/Post grad: 67%

.and so they have plans for going global by providing to their top drawer
"demographics" a database of, and access to one million public toilets
globally. And good luck to them!

In a Developed Country (global North?) context this information, once having
been made available through municipal goodwill, efficiency and OGD spirit;
and combined and compiled with sponsor-supported entrepreneurial zeal, would
immediately be added to the global database and become another "app"
available to smart phone users if/when they ever have the need, on a visit
to San Francisco, Vancouver, Chennai or Timbucto.

However, as a bit of a caution, it might be well to take a look at the
experience of Nithya Raman and her colleagues in Chennai, India; who,
perhaps responding to the urgent exhortations made by the SOS folks to
globalize the opportunities for responding effectively to nature's calls,
undertook to get access to the equivalent OGD on public toilets available in
Chennai.

A paper in the current special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics
on Community Informatics and Open Government Data http://ci-journal.net
gives a quite dramatic account of their efforts to obtain information
concerning the number and location of public toilets in Chennai City, a
subject of considerable interest to a rather different 'demographic" from
that of the SOS group-

.(those living in) "slum areas, . street vendors., those (at) bus stops and
bus depots, (workers in the) clusters of informal sector industry, (those
in) waiting areas for daily laborers and so on".

"We first decided to get an accurate count of public toilets in the city.
One afternoon, I called the Chennai Corporation and asked for the department
that took care of public toilets. After many long holds, phones being hung
up, and failed attempts to transfer my call to the correct department,
someone finally connected me to the Buildings Department that managed all
Corporation owned structures. The man on the other end of the phone chuckled
when he heard that I was interested in public toilets, and then told me that
although the Buildings department was responsible for the construction and
maintenance of public toilet structures in the city, they maintained no
central register of toilets at the Chennai Corporation's main office. To get
information about the number and locations of toilets, he told me that I
would have to approach each of the Zonal offices individually.

"At the time, there were ten Zonal offices in Chennai, and I asked Meryl to
visit each office to get the total number and locations of all the public
toilets. The process we followed was the same for each Zone, but the offices
responded with varying levels of cooperation. For one Zone, Meryl left our
office armed with a letter of introduction specifying the information she
required and a vague address taken from the Corporation website, and
searched for the zonal office with an increasingly irritable auto-rickshaw
driver. When she finally arrived at the office, neither the Assistant
Commissioner nor the Executive Engineer was available, so the personal
assistant to the Assistant Commissioner sent her to the Letters department.
There, she wa

Re: What do you think about .art?

[michael gurstein]

While not disagreeing with Ted's overall pessimism as to the likely outcome
of this particular development it is well to note that the announcement
indicated that the decision was being made on behalf of the "global internet
community". Further, a key stated justification for the decision was NTIA's
demand that the IANA contractor - ICANN - must document that all new gTLD
delegations are in "the global public interest".

While as Ted suggests the NTIA (and the USG) are most certainly arrogating
to themselves (and to the governments of Russia, China, uncle Tom Cobley and
all) the right to define what is meant by and how to operationalize the
"global public interest" in this sphere, as we have just seen through the
backdown of the USG in the face of a truly massive (and unexpected
onslaught) concerning SOPA/PIPA there are folks out there--who with their
clout, numbers and smarts may be in a position to successfully take and
define an alternative position.

These are interesting times in Internet land.

M

-Original Message-
From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of t byfield
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2012 4:48 PM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: Re:  What do you think about .art?


r...@robmyers.org (Sat 03/10/12 at 06:25 PM +):

> Also, I demand a .marx domain.

The question's moot now because NTIA just announced that it was canceling 
the RFP for IANA:

 
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=e90ec616702fd6
c52c91c0e67ccbf501&_cview=0

In plainspeak, that means the US government was unhappy enough with ICANN 
to deny it the power to enter new gTLDs into the root. This will undermine
ICANN's legitimacy, maybe terminally. Once the IANA function is unbundled
from ICANN, what's left? An expensive, contoversial, and incompetent pseudo-
regulatory Californian legal entity masquerading as wannabe multilateral 
organization. 
 <...>


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Gmail Hell Day 4: Dealing with the Borg (Or "Being Evil" Without Really Thinking About

[michael gurstein]

hing number and the access to the
information about those people that Google obtains through the provision of
the "free" gmail service has made Google one of the largest and most
profitable and (at least in the tech and information world) most powerful
companies in the world.

But with great wealth and great power comes (or at least should come) great
responsibility and my little excursion into gmail hell indicates that not
only is Google operating in a thoroughly irresponsible fashion but with its
choice to offer a Borg-like interface with its users (and clients remember
that I'm paying for the storage of my gmail file) it is crossing the line
from neglect to actual "being evil".

Probably many if not most of the roughly billion people currently using
gmail aren't as heavily invested in their account and e-address as I am but
I would guess that a rather large are as or even more invested in a life and
death way.

Some of the ways in which gmail/Google is not accepting its responsibility
to its users/clients include.

That gmail can "temporarily suspend" my account with no explanation or
recourse or even means of communicating back to them to provide the
background to whatever my transgression has been,

That the "help" function for gmail is nothing more than a huge untended,
unedited flea market of bits and pieces of expertise, experience, knowledge
combined completely blind with inexperience, misdirection, and useless
information,

That there is no accessible and responsive point of contact for
circumstances such as mine (and anecdotally I'm hearing that these
circumstances are rather more common than not)-remember that I've now sent 7
emails to gmail-maintena...@google.com without one reply or even
acknowledgement!

Given the impact of the above on my personal circumstances gmail/Google has
acted in an "evil" way towards me-not just irresponsible but actually evil
in that I have had no recourse, no means of providing supplemental
information, no way of pleading my case, no indication as to when my
particular excursion into gmail hell might end or what form that final
resolution might take.  I'm in limbo-Kafka's Castle, the Borg, HAL-you name
the nightmare scenario of dealing with implacable, faceless, unresponding
authority/power/privilege and that is what you have with gmail in my life
and ultimately and potentially in the lives of any of the other billion or
so gmail users.

Why for example, gmail/Google hasn't spent the money to set up an
Ombudsperson service with an email that someone actually reads and answers
is something that would, if Google were as I mentioned selling milk or
mining coal, be something that legislatures would be compelling them to do.
Providing instructions and "help" information that are intelligible to
ordinary users would be the subject of regulation if they were selling
toasters or refrigerators rather than an email service.  Giving an
explanation about the "temporary suspension" of a vital service would be
required by law if it were concerning the flow of clean water or electricity
rather than the (arguably) equally necessary flow of information and
communications.

If gmail was a service delivering milk, or providing electricity or
supporting financial transactions they would be regulated and the kind of
behaviour I'm describing above would be subject to government intervention,
legal sanctions, political inquiries.  Because the world of the Internet is
so new, so shiny, so global it is a free-for-all and global utilities such
as Google (which is what email/gmail is in practice and as it should be
understood in law) can be as they are, with no recourse from individual
users who after all are scattered and isolated and without any of the
resources that a Google can command.

And notably the world has not yet managed to catch up so there are no
frameworks available globally to deal with issues such as mine (or megaliths
such as Google). They will come in time but a lot of folks are going to feel
a lot of pain, and Borgs like Google are going to get away with doing (and
being) a lot of evil in the meantime.

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.

email: gurst...@gmail.com
web: http://communityinformatics.net
blog: http://gurstein.wordpress.com
twitter: #michaelgurstein


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Are Mobiles a Capitalist Plot to Keep the Poor Poor?

[michael gurstein]

Blogpost:
http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/are-mobiles-a-capitalist-plot-to-ke
ep-the-poor-poor/
(the comments are interesting as well...

Are Mobiles a Capitalist Plot to Keep the Poor Poor?

by Michael Gurstein 
 
I was moved to ask the question in the title after spending the good part of
a week going in and out of a conference in Johannesburg on ICT4RD (Rural
Development) where much of the discussion and most of the presentations
seemed to be assuming some form of smart phone and some rather significant
(and expensive in the African context) mobile device and connectivity.

This could also be placed in the context that (as someone mentioned at the
conference) in one study in rural Africa it was being found that the costs
of mobile communications were absorbing up to 54% of the total net income of
certain farmers and perhaps more tellingly, the major applications for
mobiles in Sub-Saharan Africa seem to be premised on the likelihood that
those for whom the application was being designed would not have enough
money to actually pay for the connectivity costs of whatever
information/services was being touted.

I should also mention here that my somewhat jaded question was in part the
result of again hearing those energetically espousing the virtues of mobile
(over for example, fixed Internet access through ahem... Telecentres) by
pointing to the exact same applications that I was pointed to some 3 or 4
years ago when mobiles were still in their infancy i.e. providing up-to-date
market information to farmers and providing (mostly) safe sex reminders to
teenagers.

Both these applications are of course, worthy in themselves and significant
if the (as yet to my knowledge, not undertaken impact/evaluation
assessments) prove positive however, one would have hoped after all the hype
and expenditures (and more or less total diversion of ICT for Development
resources in that direction) there might be other additional significant
applications that could be pointed to.

So I took my hesitations and provocative blogpost title to lunch with some
colleagues here in Maputo (where I am at the moment) with very long and deep
experience with development and ICTs in rural Southern Africa.  The
discussion went back and forth but then a colleague drew a distinction
between mobile communications and mobile applications (apps).  What they
pointed out to me in example after example was the profound significance
that having low cost access to communications was having on the well being
of people (and in this instance particularly women). And of course, in the
rural African context this necessarily means mobiles because of the total
lack of alternative infrastructure .

>From being able to make contact with a migrant worker spouse, to knowing
that someone could be easily summoned in the event of an emergency
(including the police), to being able to determine if supplies to support
home crafts were available in the shop several kilometres away without
having to spend the day walking to the town only to find that what was
required was out of stock--the effect of (finally) having the
telecommunications access that most of the rest of us have taken for granted
for all of our lives was truly beneficial and even transformative of life in
rural Africa.

My colleagues went on to talk about the "shiny apps" which is where I had
started the conversation. They more or less dismissed these as being
irrelevant, at least in the case of Mozambique which is where their
experience was, given the relatively high cost of mobiles that could handle
the apps we were talking about and similarly the very high communications
costs which would be required in most cases to take advantage of these
services.

So, we answered my question--

No! mobiles aren't completely a capitalist plot to keep the poor poor at
least for simple low cost person to person communications, but the jury is
still out on answering the question for all the shiny M4D (Mobile for
Development) apps that seem to be so attractive these days to development
funders and the development-erati.

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Executive Director: Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development
and Training (CCIRDT)
Vancouver, BC CANADA

tel/fax: +1-604-602-0624
email: gurst...@gmail.com
web: http://communityinformatics.net
blog: http://gurstein.wordpress.com
twitter: #michaelgurstein



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[New post] Up from Facebook: #Occupy-(Re)Building and Empowering Communities

[michael gurstein]

-Original Message-
From: Gurstein's Community Informatics [mailto:donotre...@wordpress.com] 
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2011 2:20 PM
To: mgu...@vcn.bc.ca
Subject: [SPAM] [New post] Up from Facebook: #Occupy-(Re)Building and
Empowering Communities








New post on Gurstein's Community Informatics 

 



    

Up
 from Facebook: #Occupy-(Re)Building
and Empowering Communities

by Michael   Gurstein 

#OWS (occupy Wall Street and the "Occupy" movement) have been widely
discussed but not as yet in the context of a broader understanding of an
evolving Digital/Information Society.

Castells and Wellman and his colleagues have argued that the Digital or
Information Society (or in their term the "networked society") results in
social relationships characterized by what they call "networked
 individualism" 

.It is the move from densely-knit and tightly-bounded groups to
sparsely-knit and loosely-bounded networks. 

Each person is a switchboard, between ties and networks. People remain
connected, but as individuals, rather than being rooted in the home bases of
work unit and household. Each person operates a separate personal community
network, and switches rapidly among multiple sub-networks. 

For them, the organic and multi-dimensional relationships of communities are
being transformed into narrow digitally-enabled, highly individualized,
networked relationships; perhaps most widely recognizable as Facebook
"friend"-ings accompanied by Facebook "like"-ings as a possible substitute
for shared community values and norms. Regrettably their analysis nowhere
points out how these changes reduce the capacity for individuals to protect
themselves from the on-going encroachments of an impersonal neo-liberal
marketplace and particularly how it undermines the possibility of solidarity
which in the past has proven to be the most effective basis for effective
resistance.

According to Wellman and his colleagues there is a parallel transformation
in the political sphere with

civic involvement . increasingly . taking the form of e-citizenship,
networked rather than group-based, hidden indoors rather than visibly
outdoors.

and

This move to networked societies has profound implications for how people
mobilize and how people and governments relate to each other .  But such
e-citizenship also facilitates, and to some extent reinforces, mass society,
with the individual in direct relationship with the state without the
intermediary of local and even central groups. . the turn away from
solidary, local, hierarchical groups and towards fragmented, partial,
heavily-communicating social networks.  

Certainly politics in the Information Society seems to have taken the shape
prescribed for it by the marketplace-fragmented, concerned with short-term
individualized interest maximization, personality-obsessed media saturation
and so on. These changes in turn have been propelled by the forces of
technology and the breakdown of established employment structures, education
patterns, industry-based physical communities, even family and friendship
ties under the avalanche of neo-liberal induced corporate and governmental
restructuring, outsourcing, downsizing and so on.

Elsewhere
 I
have critiqued this position as one that is profoundly pessimistic and
depoliticizing and that it ignored the possibilities for community-based
ICT-enabled resistance arising within the Information Society. I pointed out
that while applications such as Facebook manifested these types of alienated
and alienating individualized relationships (where individuals interacted
with each other as fragmented and depersonalized "profiles" linked through
these social media); I also suggested that such social frameworks could and
would be countered through community informatics - digitally enabled
communities networked both internally (as communi ty networks) and
externally (as networked communities).

It is not I think an accident that the Occupy Movement overall is
characterized by processes of community formation enabled by Information and
Communications Technologies both locally - site by site - and as a movement
wide, mega-community rhyzomatically linking the individual sites
electronically and through shared values.  Tis emergent resistance is a
result of the fusion of the local and global - interacting and being enabled
both by face-to-face connections and electronic media - Facebook and Twitter
certainly, but perhaps most significantly through technologies of presence
in distance such as skype, online chat and streaming video

FW: [TriumphOfContent] The Strange Case of the Faux Nobel Literature Prize Website

[michael gurstein]

 
-Original Message-
From: triumphofcont...@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:triumphofcont...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Anjana Basu
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 6:05 PM
Subject: [TriumphOfContent] The Strange Case of the Faux Nobel Literature
Prize Website 

The Strange Case of the Faux Nobel Literature Prize Website 

3:00 pm Thursday Oct 6, 2011 by Judy Berman
  

 
 


This morning, most of the Western world woke up to the news that the Swedish
Academy had awarded their countryman Tomas Tranströmer (again, not Bob
Dylan) the Nobel Prize for Literature. Minutes earlier, however, Serbian
newspaper readers were informed that their very own Dobrica Cosic had won
the prize. As Jacket Copy reports
 , the culprit turns out to be a fake website
(www.nobelprizeliterature.org  ) that
was just purchased yesterday and mimicked the design of the real Nobel Prize
homepage  . The pranksters behind the site also
emailed the announcement of his victory to news outlets. Now that
nobelprizeliterature.org has been outed as a hoax, the group that created it
— which bills itself as a “non-profit, self-organized group of web
activists” — has posted a different message, in both Croatian and (somewhat
broken) English. Read what they have to say for themselves after the jump.



We are a non-profit, self-organized group of web activists.

The purpose of our activity is to bring to the attention of the Serbian
public dangerous influence of the writer Dobrica Cosic, who has been, again
this year, proclaimed by some as a serious contender for the Nobel Prize in
Literature.

Dobrica Cosic, author and public political figure, active for decades,
always close to the highest political power and those who exercise it, from
the Communist Party of former SFRY, inspirators of their manifest of Serbian
nationalism, infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of sciences, former
president of the Milosevic’s wartime SR Yugoslavia, to present alliance with
reactionary and most dangerous Serbian pseudo-democratic circles in the new
era.

We have registered the domain of this obviously hoax site on the 5th October
2011, as a symbolic reminder of that day eleven years ago, when Serbia
missed a historic opportunity to create a different and better world. Today
again, Serbia turns to war, terror and deadly kitsch of the nineties,
violence towards diversity, nationalist conservatism and dishonest
orthodoxy. We believe the political activity of Dobrica Cosic is still
deeply intertwined with this hazardous value system, which does not cease to
threaten us all.

Terrible consequences of decades of Mr. Cosic’s political, literary and
public activity are felt to this day, both by his own country and throughout
the region.

Dobrica Cosic is not a recipient of the Nobel Prize, although the general
public in Serbia, and he himself, believed he is for 15 full minutes.

We find some solace in that fact.

__._,_.___
Reply
 to sender | Reply
 to group | Reply

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Messages
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of your group activity without leaving the page you're on - Get the Yahoo!
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Re: some more nuanced thoughts on publishing, editing, reading, using

[michael gurstein]

I'm the Editor in Chief of the online open access open archive (all
volunteer) Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net.

We were born digital (7 years ago) and the PKP/OJS Open Journal Software
support system.. We are now (for the P&T folks) being indexed by IBSS (and
of course Google Scholar) and are being classified by the Australian
"Excellence in Research" in two categories (a "B" in both Library and
Information Science, and in Information and Computing Science).

The stats are truly astonishing... http://www.ci-journal.net/reports/ (also
http://www.ci-journal.net/stats/)

Journal Totals (since 2006-08-27)
Abstract Views: 217888
Article Views: 430362

The first year and half of stats were lost in a version upgrade so it would
appear that we have had rather more than 500,000 article views in roughly 7
years.

(We have had a fairly extensive and somewhat technical discussion on the
possible sources of error in those figures and the conclusion is that they
are in themselves correct and exclude the normal sources of possible error
viz. bots, misconfigurations etc. A review of the downloads per article also
tends to confirm in that the articles more widely cited are also those that
have the largest number of downloads overall.

We have only recently in the last month installed Google Analytics but the
figures from there confirm the overall direction of the above stats with the
additional interesting information that we have now had page views from some
106 countries and territories around the world. Our "Impact Ratio" is a
reasonably healthy 2.2.

My question is, given the above, why is anyone still working for/publishing
in/editing/reading/using or otherwise supporting the current more or less
obscene system of academic for profit publishing?

Mike

Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Editor in Chief: The Journal of Community Informatics
http://ci-journal.net

-Original Message-

From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org
[mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of McLaughlin, Lisa M. Dr.
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011 6:04 AM
To: nettim...@kein.org
Subject: Re:  some more nuanced thoughts on publishing, editing,
 reading, using

Gary, I agree that this is an excellent piece. Thanks very much for the
reference. It does give me qualms about editing a Taylor & Francis/Informa
journal. It has been difficult enough to know that I've been engaging in
free labor for a mega-conglomerate that operates as a cartel, but to find
out that the mega-conglomerate is clearly working for the military-industrial 
complex and actively courting the described geo-political connections is 
very disturbing indeed.

<...>



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They just keep coming...

[michael gurstein]

I have no idea of the truth or falsity of what is described in the below
blogpost but whether or not it is real or a very very contemporary science
fiction dystopia doesn't really matter because if it isn't real now for
somebody somewhere it will be very soon. 

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/brph8m

 On Wednesday 20th July 2011, @thomasmonopoly said:

Dear Google

I would like to bring to your attention a few things before I disconnect
permanently from all of your services.

On July 15 2011 you turned off my entire Google account. You had absolutely
no reason to do this despite your automated message telling me your system
"perceived a violation." I did not violate any Terms of Service, either
Google's or account specific ToS, and your refusal to provide me with any
proof otherwise makes me absolutely certain of this. And I would like to
bring to your attention how much damage your carelessness has done.

My Google account was tied to nearly every product Google has developed,
meaning that I lost everything in those accounts as well. I was also in the
process of consolidating everything into my one Google account. I had
actually thought through this a few months ago and determined Google to be a
trustworthy, dependable company. So I had imported all of my other email
accounts, hotmail, yahoo, etc, into that one gmail account. I had spent
maybe four months slowly consolidating my entire online presence, email
accounts, banking info, student records, etc, into that one Google account,
having determined it to be reliable. That means in terms of information,
approximately 7 years of correspondence, over 4,800 photographs and videos,
my Google Voice messages, over 500 articles saved to my Google Reader
account for scholarship purposes (a side-note: when I closed my original
Reader account to consolidate everything in my one reliable account bearing
my name I re-saved several hundred of the articles myself, by hand, one by
one to this new account. The one you have closed and with which I have now
lost all of the articles.) I have lost all of my bookmarks, having used
Google bookmarks. I had migrated my bookmarks from computer to computer, a
couple hundred of them, for maybe six years and I finally uploaded them all
to Google bookmarks, happy to have found a solution to migrating them and
happy to be safeguarded from their loss. I have also lost over 200 contacts.
Many of which I do not have backups of. I have also lost access to my Docs
account with shared documents and backups of inventory files. I have also
lost my Calendar access. With this I have lost not only my own personal
calendar of doctors appointments, meetings, and various other dates, but I
have also lost collaborative calendars, of which I was the creator and of
which several man hours were put into creating, community calendars that are
now lost. None of the calendars were backed up either. I have also lost my
saved maps and travel history. I have also lost in my correspondence medical
records and a variety of very important notes that were attached to my
account. My website, a blogger account for which I purchased the domain
through Google and designed myself, has also been disabled and lost. Do you
really think I would knowingly do anything to jeopardize that much of my
personal and professional information? And I am sure as the days continue I
will realize other things that Google has destroyed in their unwarranted
disabling of my account. I am only too angry right now to think straight and
realize them all. Why anyone would entrust anything to "The Cloud" after
what I have gone through is completely beyond my ability to comprehend.

I should also mention that I am in fact a paying customer in so much as I
purchased my domain through Google and I have purchased additional storage
from Google.

A few other things I would like you to consider: I am currently in the
process of applying to Graduate school. I was occasionally receiving emails
from professors and other people who I am not expecting and whose contact
info I do not have. Meaning that in addition to my friends and family abroad
or people who otherwise may not be able to reach me, these people too will
now receive a message from Google that my email address does not exist. And
I would imagine some of them will not have the time to find other ways of
contacting an applicant whom they were doing a favor to begin with.

A few other things I would like you to consider: I have been what you could
call an enthusiastic supporter of Google as a company. As an early-adopter,
you could nearly go so far as to say I have been an apostle of Google's
work. I had convinced the company I worked for to get on Google Business
Apps and to use Google Apps for nearly everything possible and to purchase
storage with Picasa to build our image database. I have also convinced
nearly all of my friends and family to open either a Google or a Gmail
account in the past two years and have shown people how to use the

Vancouver Sun: Beijing outclasses London in managing Murdoch

[michael gurstein]

Jonathan Manthorpe's coverage of Asia is the very best reason to subscribe
to and read the Vancouver Sun!

And this one is a beaut!

M


http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Beijing+outclasses+London+managing+Murd
och/5129528/story.html#ixzz1Sff7ADFF

Media tycoon's lust for a piece of Chinese market was so all-consuming that
authorities there easily milked his companies of their skills
 
By Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun July 20, 2011
 
A screen grab image taken from television on Tuesday shows News Corp. chief
Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, giving evidence to a Parliamentary Select
Committee on the phone hacking scandal, as Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng
(centre) looks on.
 

When dealing with Rupert Murdoch, the British political and chattering
classes should have taken advice from the Chinese.

Beijing quickly saw in the 1990s that when "the Dirty Digger" comes calling
it is a good idea to lock up your wives and daughters, keep a tight grip on
your wallet, and don't let him over the doorstep.

But the political and propaganda chiefs of China's Communist Party soon took
their view of Murdoch and his multifaceted media empire News Corp. to the
next level.

As in their dealings with so many other foreign business people, the Beijing
authorities saw that Murdoch's lust for a place in the China market of 1.3
billion people was so allconsuming he could easily be led around by the
nose.

Murdoch and his son and apparent heir, James, poured about $2 billion into
television and online enterprises in China.

They lost at least half of that while the Chinese authorities milked the
Murdoch companies of their skills in not only modern media communication,
but also in methods of content control and censorship.

Last year, Murdoch and son admitted they had hit "a brick wall" in China and
sold off their three remaining television channels, Xing Kong, Xing Kong
International and Channel (V) Mainland China, as well as their Fortune Star
Chinese movie library to an investment fund controlled by the Beijing
government.

The irony is that as the Murdochs withdrew from China they fixed their
attention on taking full control of British Sky Broadcasting, a bid that has
now gone down the tubes in the muck and mire of the scandal around phone
hacking by employees at the now defunct London tabloid, News of the World.

Murdoch's attempt to get into the Chinese television market started badly.

When he bought the Hong Kong-based Star TV satellite service in 1993 he
proclaimed in a speech brimming with hubris that this medium would be "an
unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere."

But Murdoch had already been taken for a ride. He bought Star TV for more
than $500 million from Richard Li, son of Hong Kong's tycoon of tycoons, Li
Ka-shing.

Somehow in the excitement of making the deal it failed to get mentioned that
Star TV's output in China was totally pirated and there was no income.

Within a month, Beijing made clear its view of Murdoch and his crusade to
bring the light of open information and ideas into the dark corners of
China's authoritarianism.

The ownership of private satellite dishes was banned.

The speed with which News Corp. changed tack and became a cringing
supplicant at the court of Beijing was astonishing.

Murdoch sold the Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post, to a
pro-Beijing Malaysian businessman, who has tempered its previously vigorous
coverage of China.

Murdoch's book publishing subsidiary, HarperCollins, produced a biography of
China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping written by his daughter - and
business tycoon - Deng Rong.

And to reinforce his new attitude toward Beijing, Murdoch ordered
HarperCollins to back out of a contract to publish the memoirs of Hong
Kong's last governor, Chris Patten, an account that was bound to anger the
Chinese government.

In 1994 Murdoch went further. The man who only a year before extolled the
reforming influence of free information took the BBC News out of the Star TV
satellite package because it was causing too much friction with Beijing.

A couple of years later Beijing apparently considered that Murdoch was now
suitably submissive.

In 1996 News Corp. made a joint venture with Liu Changle, who had links to
the propaganda ministry. They created Phoenix, which broadcast to a limited
number of urban households politically trustworthy enough to watch foreign
media.

Phoenix introduced Westernstyle fast-pace news reporting, but kept well
clear of sensitive topics.

The Chinese state-controlled media and censors learned a lot from Phoenix
and apparently decided that Murdoch could be managed.

He was given more access and over the next few years he sent teams to help
state operations such as China Central Television and People's Daily
newspaper develop their websites.

He also brought teams of Chinese television managers and technicians to his
satellite TV operations to learn how t

Worst Is Yet to Come for News Corp.

[michael gurstein]

I believe it was the Guardian who have nudged this story along from the
beginning...

If these folks did (or even I guess, tried to do) the hanky-panky with 9/11
then in their Aussie/Brit journalistic "exuberance" they surely have
"touched the third rail". 

Anyone care to assess the political/cultural fall out from a fallen Fox
News? 

M

-Original Message-
From: Portside Moderator [mailto:modera...@portside.org] 
Sent: Saturday, July 16, 2011 12:48 PM
To: ports...@lists.portside.org
Subject: [SPAM] Worst Is Yet to Come for News Corp.

Worst Is Yet to Come for News Corp.

By Matt Wells
Guardian (UK)
July 15, 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/15/les-hinton-news-corp?INTCMP=SRCH

Les Hinton sacrificed, but the worst is yet to come
for News Corp. Every time Murdoch ditches a key
executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer
to him.

No relationship is safe, no loyal bond strong enough
for Rupert Murdoch who - looking more than the sum of
his 80 years - is mounting a final battle to save the
company he built from nothing.

His decision to throw Les Hinton to the wolves is his
most dramatic move yet. For more than 50 years, as a
journalist and then an executive, Hinton loyally served
the Murdoch empire from its roots in Australia to the
height of its power in New York.

Now, in a desperate effort to save News Corporation's
most valuable assets - its 27 US broadcast licences and
the 20th Century Fox movie studio - Murdoch is prepared
to sacrifice one of his closest allies.

The problem for Murdoch is that every time he ditches a
key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer
to him.

Hinton was ditched because he was the crucial link
between Murdoch's valuable US businesses and the
tainted operation in Britain. He was at the helm of NI
- the holding company for his UK newspapers including
the News of the World and the Times - when it seemed
that everyone who was in sniffing distance of a
significant news story found their phones being hacked.

Questions were being raised about what Hinton knew
about corrupt payments to London police officers: if he
was shown to have been aware of them, that would be a
felony in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act.

The problem for News Corp now is that, at every stage,
its attempts to contain this story have failed. The
decision to close the News of the World was motivated
in part to save the chief executive of NI, Rebekah
Brooks: that decision bombed and Brooks resigned on
Friday.

But the departure of Brooks was not enough to contain
the scandal in Britain, so Hinton, who has been more significant to the
company's fortunes and to Murdoch personally for far longer than Brooks,
also left.

The inevitable next move for Murdoch is prolicide. His
son James, appointed in 2007 as chairman and chief
executive of News Corporation's operations in Europe
and Asia, based at News International's headquarters in Wapping, east
London, clings on - but only for now.

In London, James Murdoch oversaw the response to the
hacking scandal. He approved the £700,000 hush money
paid to Gordon Taylor, the former chief executive of
the Professional Footballers' Association - a decision
he has blamed on poor advice. (The legal director of
News International, Tom Crone, was one of the
executives of News International to leave this week.)

The departure of Hinton suggests that News Corporation
has finally got to grips with the global significance
of this story, but the worst is yet to come. The FBI
has launched an investigation into accusations that
News of the World journalists asked a former New York
police officer for the phone records of relatives of
9/11 victims. If that toxic allegation is shown to have
been true, one thing is certain: Fox News is finished,
along with the rest of News Corporation as we know it.

The emotional supercharge of 9/11 in the US is many
times greater than Milly Dowler in the UK - and look
what happened here.

Commentators have compared the crisis to Watergate;
Carl Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter
whose revelations helped depose a US president, says it
is evident to him the events of the past week "are the beginning, not the
end, of the seismic event".

To coin a famous Murdoch newspaper headline: will the
last person to leave News Corporation turn off the
lights?

___

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and to change it.

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Blogpost: "Open" - "Necessary" but not "Sufficient"

[michael gurstein]

y (as argued in
the original post)  to provide additional resources to the Sheriff of
Nottingham rather than to Robin Hood.

"Open Data" as articulated above by Willighagen has the form of a private
club-open "technically" (and "legally") to all to join but whose membership
requires a degree of education, resources, technical skill such as to put it
out of the reach of any but a very select group.

Allison Powell in her thoughtful comments on my blogpost talks (in the
context of "Open Hardware") about those who are in a position through
pre-existing conditions of wealth, technical knowledge and power to
"appropriate" the outcome of  "(hardware) Openness" for their own private
corporate purposes.

Parminder Jeet Singh in his own comments contrasts Open Data with Public
Data-a terminology and conceptual shift with which I am coming to
agree-where Public Data is data which is not only "open" but also is
designed and structured so as to be usable by the broad "public" ("the
people").

Originally in the context of the Digital Divide I articulated notions around
what I called "effective use" that is the factors that need to be in place
for "access" to be translated into "use" by those at the grassroots level.
In an earlier blogpost I transferred these concepts and updated them into an
"Open Data/Open Knowledge" context and I would modestly suggest that it is
through the implementation of a strategy incorporating "effective (data)
use" that the full measure and value of Open Data/Open Knowledge can be
achieved and the parallel dangers of a very damaging and socially divisive
"Data Divide" avoided.

(For this blogpost with extensive links and comments http://wp.me/pJQl5-7h)

Posted on July 6, 2011
Michael Gurstein
Vancouver, Canada


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Re: Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide

[michael gurstein]

Thanks Flick and David... 

Flick**your linking of the discussion to the Canadian Access to Information
law is very interesting and I think appropriate, and usefully shifts the
emphasis from the tech to the policy (where I think it should in large part
be...

David**you very sardonically do the same thing but focussing with deep irony
on the corporation as the holder of information rather than government and
in the process make a strong and insightful critique of an over-reaching
Google.

There were also very many extremely insightful comments/critiques of the
post on the blog site http://wp.me/pJQl5-79 which I would commend to your
attention. 

It is a measure I think, of the success of a blogpost if it elicits comments
which exceed the original in passion, knowledge and intelligence and this
one I think, succeeded in spades.

Best,

M




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Are the Open Data Warriors Fighting for Robin Hood or the Sheriff?: Some Reflections on OKCon 2011 and the Emerging Data Divide

[michael gurstein]

er status (age,
gender etc.) already have the means to communicate with and influence
politicians. The additional information and an additional communications
channel thus has the effect of reinforcing patterns of opportunity that are
already there rather than widening the base of participation and influence.

Similarly with the case that I quoted in an earlier post which examined the
outcome of a program to digitize land records in Bangalore and which had the
quite perverse and unanticipated effect of providing a means for the
wealthier land owners to extend their holdings and thus their wealth at the
expense of the poor because they had the knowledge in how to use the
information newly made available as well as the resources to hire the
professionals to help them interpret the information in the way which was
most immediately useful.

Thus it matters very much who the (anticipated) user is since what is being
put in place are the frameworks for the data environment  of the future and
these will include for the most part some assumptions about who the ultimate
user is or will be and whether or not a new "data divide" will emerge
written more deeply into the fabric of the Information Society than even the
earlier "digital (access) divide".

In each of these instances, by NOT paying attention to (and thus intervening
to redefine) who the ultimate users of the "open data/information" would be,
the effect has been to reinforce or even extend existing structures of power
and influence rather than to have this newly open data be the basis for more
inclusive and democratic participation. In the absence of making explicit
the model of the ultimate user and thus designing appropriate processes of
opening the data and making it available for the widest (and least
implicitly discriminatory) range of users, the result will be as we have
seen which is a user who is already in a position to make use of the
information because of prior existing skills, knowledge, power, or status.

For these processes to NOT have these outcomes the data designer must base
his work on an implicit model of user who is NOT technically skilled, who is
NOT financially well off, who does NOT have the characteristics of colour,
gender or class which automatically gives them influence and power.

I've dealt with the matter of how to ensure opportunities for a broader base
of effective use (and users) elsewhere but in this context as a
recommendation to the folks espousing and doing Open Data could I suggest
that there be a formal commitment to devote 10% of project (and programme)
resources including time and funds to ensuring Open Data use by groups and
individuals who are not technically skilled, are not middle income and
above, who are not currently active in the political process but who might
ultimately make the most beneficial use of the resources now being made
available.

For anyone interested in my thoughts on the "hot to's" of this I can refer
them to the earlier blog post  http://wp.me/pJQl5-3b and edited version of
which appeared in a recent issue of First Monday
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/.

Michael Gurstein
Vancouver, July 2, 2011


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Blogpost: Louder Voices and Learning Networks

[michael gurstein]

Louder Voices and Learning Networks http://wp.me/pJQl5-76

Posted on June 25, 2011 by Michael Gurstein

There is a stream of contemporary thought (with which I generally agree)
which sees knowledge as being largely produced and disseminated by and
through networks. That is, networks-social, technical, organizational-are
seen as providing the basic framework within which knowledge activities
increasingly are taking place and where knowledge workers increasingly are
doing their work.

This all seems really quite straightforward and even somehow commendable in
that it suggests that knowledge is being disengaged from the older top-down
authoritarian structures and institutions which so many have come to
distrust or even despise. And of course, these networks are (or at least
appear to be) immaterial and placeless-existing or taking their form and
substance through invisible wires, the ether, software such as Facebook, or
other seemingly virtual products, themselves the outcome of the digital age.

An upcoming conference "Mobilityshifts" is as good as any as an example of
this kind of thinking-asserting in a somewhat breathless way that "The
future of learning will not be solely determined by digital culture but by
the re-organization of power relationships and institutional protocols."...
http://wp.me/pJQl5-76




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Fwd: [Open Manufacturing] Russian President: Time To Reform Copyright - Slashdot

[michael gurstein]

 
A possibly interesting development particularly if it becomes more widely
supported among the BRICS!
 
M 

-- Forwarded message --
From: Paul D. Fernhout 
Date: Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 3:58 PM
Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Russian President: Time To Reform Copyright -
Slashdot
To: Open Manufacturing 


http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/06/07/0358209/Russian-President-Time-To-Ref
orm-Copyright
"While most of the rest of the world keeps ratcheting up copyright laws by
increasing enforcement and terms, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appears
to be going in the other direction. He's now proposing that Russia build
Creative Commons-style open and free licenses directly into Russian
copyright law. This comes just a few days after he also chided other G8
leaders for their antiquated views on copyright."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110606/07525814563/russian-president-prop
oses-creative-commons-style-rules-baked-directly-into-copyright.shtml
http://torrentfreak.com/russias-sane-thoughts-on-copyright-110530/

Also related:
http://hken.ibtimes.com/articles/153988/20110529/g8-closes-with-internet-dec
laration-and-russian-objection.htm

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.

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Re: Riot as Performance Art

[michael gurstein]

Patrick,
 
A couple of futher points...
 
As several of the commentators on your most interesting blogpost noted, I
don't think the "riot" had very much to do with the game/loss/Canucks... My
guess is that it would have happened in much the same way had the Canucks
won although the age demographic might have shifted slightly with more older
folks going into the streets (and then rapidly retreating...
 
Also, the set pieces with the police--them attacking and folks
running/resisting/fighting was most certainly "spectacle". However, the role
of cameras and their links into broader FB/SMS/Youtube distribution-- the
posing, the self-posing, the staging and so on and so on was I think, a very
significant (new) element broadening out the notion of the spectacle -- this
wasn't just about the gaze it was equally about the self-regard involved in
taking a totally exposed (to the world) picture of yourself with a cell
phone in front of a burning police car (the half page size picture on the
Vancouver section of the nationa newspaper -- the Globe and Mail). It is
"spectacle" but I think a good deal more.
 
Best,
 
Mike

-Original Message-
From: Patrick [mailto:patr...@teamsandwich.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2011 2:09 PM
To: michael gurstein
Cc: Nettime-L
Subject: Re:  Riot as Performance Art


Riot as spectacle ...

Spectacular Vancouver conquers itself





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Riot as Performance Art

[michael gurstein]

Datapoints re: the Hockey Riot in Vancouver observed after the game finished 
for about an hour.

1. The gender ratio was roughly 50-50.
2. Women seemed as aggressive as men.
3. At least half the folks had cameras of one sort or another and were
constantly taking pictures.
4. The crowd overall was cheerful.
5. Lots of alcohol and marijuana but not a lot of falling down drunk people.
6. Almost no one was covering their faces.

What does that sound like.  To me it seems rather more like a concert
audience than the makeup of a serious riot.

I think the key things though was the gender equality, the cameras, the
general good cheer and the uncovered faces. 

What made this different from a rock concert was the presence of the police.
They were costumed differently from normal rock concert security-kitted up
in riot gear complete with black uniforms, shields, weapons etc.etc.

But nor was this Seattle, the G20 Toronto or Tahir Square.  These folks
weren't afraid of being seen and recognized, they were going out of their
way to be recognized and they wanted that recognition, captured and
presumably re-presented to the world via SMS, Facebook or Youtube and the tv
news.

This wasn't a riot. It was a performance with much of the violence as far as
I could see it being done for photo capture and transmission rather than out
of deviltry, rage or simple youthful destructiveness.  On one of the news
shows a reporter passed along a story that the original truck which was
burned near the hockey rink had been deliberately brought to the site and
left exposed there so that it could be torched should the Canucks lose.

What is televised will not be the revolution.


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Darpa's Living Foundries

[Michael Gurstein]

Bryan Bishop  Jun 07 02:26PM -0500 ^
 
https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-11-44/listing.html
 
Synopsis:
Added: Jun 03, 2011 4:42 pm
Special Notice (SN) DARPA-SN-11-44
SUBJECT: Living Foundries Industry Day
DATE: June 28, 2011
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: June 21, 2011
Registration Website: https://safe.sysplan.com/mto/livingfoundries
TECHNICAL POC: Dr. Alicia Jackson, DARPA/MTO
 
Living Foundries Industry Day, DARPA-SN-11-44
 
The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) of the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) is sponsoring an Industry Day for "Living
Foundries," a new DARPA program. The goal of the Living Foundries program is
to apply an engineering framework to biology to harness its use as a
technology and drive its advance as a manufacturing platform. In turning
biological production into an engineering space where the only limit is the
creativity of the designer, Living Foundries aims to enable on-demand
production of new and high-value materials, devices and capabilities for the
Department of Defense and establish a new manufacturing capability for the
United States.
 
Because of the multidisciplinary nature of Living Foundries, DARPA is
looking to engage the wider research community from fields both outside and
inside the biological sciences to develop new ideas, approaches and tools to
overcome current limitations and to create revolutionary capabilities.
 
Current, primitive examples of engineering biology rely on an ad hoc,
laborious, trial-and-error process, wherein one successful project does not
inform subsequent, new designs. This approach combined with the complexity
of biological systems restricts current, one-off efforts to modifying only a
small set of genes and constructing simple, isolated genetic circuits and
metabolic pathways. Consequently, we are limited to producing only a small
fraction of the vast number of possible chemicals, materials, and living
systems that would be enabled by the ability to truly engineer biology.
Through an engineering-driven approach to biology, Living Foundries aims to
create a rapid, reliable manufacturing capability where multiple cellular
functions can be fabricated, mixed and matched on demand and the whole
system controlled by integrated circuitry, opening up the full space of
biologically produced materials and systems. Key to success will be the
democratization of the biological design and manufacturing process, breaking
open the field to those outside the biological sciences.
 
In order to achieve the vision of Living Foundries, new tools, technologies
and methodologies must be developed to transform biology into an engineering
practice, decoupling design from fabrication and speeding the biological
design, build, test cycle. These include: design tools that span from
high-level description to fabrication in cells; modular genetic parts that
allow a combination of systems to be designed and reproducibly assembled;
methods for developing and fine-tuning new genetic parts and systems;
well-understood test platforms, "cell-like" systems and chassis that readily
integrate new genetic designs in a predictable fashion; next generation DNA
synthesis and assembly techniques; and tools that allow for routine system
characterization and debugging, among others. Further, these technological
advances and innovations must be integrated to prove-out and push the
boundaries of biological design towards the ultimate vision of point-of-use,
on-demand, mass-customization biological manufacturing.
 
The Industry Day will be held at the Capitol Conference Center in Arlington,
VA on June 28, 2011. Directions to the Capital Conference Center can be
found at http://www.thecapitalconferencecenter.com/.
 
The goals of the Industry Day are: (a) to introduce the research community
(industry, academia, and Government) to the Living Foundries vision and
goals; (b) to encourage and promote teaming arrangements among potential
research organizations that have the relevant expertise, facilities, and
capabilities for executing research and development responsive to the Living
Foundries program goals; and (c) to facilitate interaction between
investigators who may have capabilities to develop elements of interest and
relevance to the Living Foundries goals. The Industry Day will include
overview presentations, a poster session to facilitate interaction and team
building among participants, and an opportunity to interact and present
capabilities and concepts to government personnel in closed-door sidebar
sessions.
 
There is no fee for any Industry Day activities. Registration is limited by
the venue capacity (maximum of 100 attendees) and early registration is
strongly recommended. Organizations are limited to two attendees; however,
in the event that the Industry Day is oversubscribed, DARPA reserves the
right to limit participation to 1 attendee per organization. The
registration cutoff date is June 21, 2011, at noon ET, or once attendance
capacity is met, wh

[New post] The Dead Hand of (Western) Academe: Community Informatics in a Less Developed Country Context

[Michael Gurstein]

There may be some interest in this context...

M

Gurstein.wordpress.com: The Dead Hand of (Western) Academe: Community
Informatics in a Less Developed Country Context 

I'm just back from a variety of recent travels--lecturing, workshopping,
seminaring, meeting with academics and researchers in various parts of the
Asian less developed countries (LDCs).  Specifically I was invited to
discuss community informatics with academics/researchers in 3 universities
in 3 rather different regions of Asia.

In reflecting on these meetings I realized the very strong strain of
consistency in our discussions.  In each instance, the academics, almost all
of whom had recent Ph.D.s from research universities in Developed Countries
(DC's) returned home to find that their recently acquired skills and areas
of expert knowledge were of little direct value in their home environments.

More http://wp.me/pJQl5-6Z


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FW: Loan

[Michael Gurstein]

This is the 4th of these I've received in the last day or so--all from gmail
accounts.  
 
Someone suggested that it has to do with the gmail hack that was reported
about a year ago but I've seen nothing anywhere on what might be going on.
(presumably an indication that the emails and passwords were sold in bulk to
some phisherman somewhere... seems like a rather low value use for these if
it is the case...
 
Comments
 
Mike
 
-Original Message-
From: [mailto: xxx @gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2011 7:45 AM
Subject: Loan


I just hope you get this email on time. Well I'm quite optimistic that all
is well with you. I just want you to know that I'm presently in Spain for a
conference. Kindly pardon my ignorance for not informing you about this
urgent trip and for reaching out to you this way. I'm actually facing some
difficulties here, so I thought it expedient for me to confide in you and I
will be glad to have this confidential between us.

Unfortunately for me, I got robbed with my friend right in his flat here in
Spain. Though I wasn't hurt, I'm mentally and physically ok, but my money,
mobile phone and my bags with some vital documents were taken away by these
guys. In fact I'm left with no money. I'm urgently in need of some money to
execute my major objectives of being here and to balance my bills till my
departure next weekend.

kindly lend me a sum of 2500euros [approximately $3300 us dollars] or any
amount you can afford to lend me. I will refund you with interest upon my
arrival back home. Let me know if you would be able to help me out with this
money or any amount you can afford, I can then forward you the details on
how to make the transfer directly on my name via the western union money
transfer service. I will really appreciate your concerned and fast response.

Thanks & Regards. 
 

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