Spinelli's Footsteps

Review: The Top 100 NGOs 2013 according to the Global Journal

Mikael — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:50:00 +0300

Last week Pambazuka News, one of my regular web sources, reprinted an article by Fairouz El Tom on non-governmental organisations (See Diversity and inclusion. Do NGOs practice what they preach?). Inspired by an ongoing discussion about the role of the NGOs in the World Social Forum, and particularly during the WSF event in Tunis last March (to which I myself was a participant), I decided to take a closer look on Fairouz el Tom's material. This is how I became aware of the existence of "The Global Journal" , edited by Jean-Christophe Nothias (globaljournal.net) and decided to buy myself a copy of its Special Edition on the "Top 100 NGOs 2013" for 10 Swiss francs. Below, please find three notes from my logbook.

My first reaction is that the selection of the TOP 100 NGOs 2013 of the Global Journal reflects the values and worldviews of the participants of the World Economic Forum. Not those of the participants of the World Social Forum. I mean, the issue has no photo of Chico Whitaker, but Bill Gates features in a pig picture. The leading analysis is written bay David Armitage of Harvard university. Is it even thinkable that it could have have been penned by Samir Amin of the ENDA?

Neither ATTAC, ABONG, Focus on the Global South, Tax Justice Network, Via Campesina, nor Conselho Internacional de Educação de Adultos, COSATU or MST did make it to the list of the Global Journal. I dont know if precisely these are the "Top 10" of WSF but I am sure I have heard and seen them there. How come none of them got mentioned in this special edition of the Global Journal?

Big companies publish glassy ads in the Global Journal and their selection of NGOs is prominently publicized in the mainstream press, such as the Guardian, UK. The aforementioned article by Fairouz El Tom had been published in the Guardian 7 May. The Global Journal is certainly an interesting read, though, and I would recommend that you get yourself an own copy. Still it surprises me that the excellent Pambazuka wished to reprint that article.

The issue #15 of the Global Journal is well-edited and carefully stuffed. On page 3 of the issue comes the first advertisment: "Conserving Resources, Protecting the Climate". It means, among other things, that Global Journal is financed by by drug giant BAYER AG. But then, of course, it is also partly financed by myself and other readers, who paid 10 Swiss francs to read its digital copy.

How does the GJ define an NGO? According to the GJ, an NGO is "...an operational- or advocacy-focused non-profit organization active at the local, national or international level." (p. 38) OK, but how to draw the line between "governmental" and "non-governmental"? In reality, this border is blurred. Even the so called 'boots on the ground' may be private (and/or corporate) and, in that sense, "non-governmental". So this definition must be in our heads only. Antonio Gramsci called it "methodological". We just need it in order to make sense of the great continuum that lies in between the state and the civil society, and to be able to maintain, whenever it proves necessary, that "we" are not The State. (L'état, c'est n'est pas moi.)

Corpwatch, the San Francisco based group, tries to hold corporations like BAYER AG accountable by researching and documenting their profit-driven malfeasance (see, e.g http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=723). So does Corporate Watch, another group with a similar name (see e.g. http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=320#poisons) So why are Corpwatch or Corporate Watch not scored, or even mentioned, in GJ:s report about the Top 100 NGO:s? Evidently, the reason is that these groups do not meet "the three key criteria relevant to the activities of any NGO impact, innovation and sustainability" (p 39 ; these are GJ's criteria for inclusion among the TOP 100 NGOs). Now, it must be added that GJ does not claim to be "scientific". Indeed, it explicitely stresses, that "despite our best efforts to ensure the ranking is based on concrete information fed through a rigorous, objective process, there is no science in the measuring", and continues: "We invite you to read the feature that follows for what it is a fascinating global snapshot of an often-overlooked sector." Agreed! The content of GJ #15 is indeed fascinating. But why does the digital copy have to cost 10 Swiss francs?

For your information, the TOP 100 NGOs, in the order they are listed by the GJ, are as follows:

1. BRAC 2. Wikimedia Foundation 3. Acumen Fund 4. Danish Refugee Council 5. Partners in Health 6. Ceres 7. CARE International 8. Médecins Sans Frontières 9. Cure Violence 10. Mercy Corps 11. APOPO 12. Root Capital 13. Handicap International 14. International Rescue Committee 15. Barefoot College 16. Landesa 17. Ashoka 18. One Acre Fund 19. Clinton Health Access Initiative 20. Heifer International 21. Human Rights Watch 22. Rare 23. Akshaya Patra Foundation 24. Gram Vikas 25. DIGITAL DIVIDE DATA 26. Room to Read 27. Amnesty International 28. AMREF 29. Pratham 30. iDE 31. Riders for Health 32. MERLIN 33. Fonkoze 34. Helen Keller International 35. Water for People 36. Aflatoun 37. FrontlineSMS 38. Marie Stopes International 39. International Planned Parenthood Federation 40. Save the Children International 41. PLAN International 42. Tostan 43. Fred Hollows Foundation 44. Transparency International 45. Saude Crianca 46. Escuela Nueva 47. Open Society Foundations 48. Operation ASHA 49. International Medical Corps 50. GAIN 51. Search for common ground 52. WITNESS 53. Friends of the Earth Middle East 54. CAMBIA 55. Common Ground 56. Viva Rio 57. International Crisis Group 58. Habitat For Humanity 59. KickStart International 60. ZOA 61. Friends-International 62. Architecture for Humanity 63. Concern 64. Center for Digital Inclusion 65. American Refugee Committee 66. International Center for Transitional Justice 67. Interpeace 68. Geneva Call 69. Rainforest Alliance 70. FAWE 71. Code for America 72. Child & Youth Finance International 73. Asylum Access 74. Ycab Foundation 75. PlanetRead 76. Dhaka Ahsania Mission 77. International Commission of Jurists 78. World Vision 79. Movember Foundation 80. PlaNet Finance 81. Free the Children 82. Terre des Hommes International Federation 83. TRIAL 84. International Bridges to Justice 85. Skateistan 86. International Alert 87. Libera 88. Krousar Thmey Cambodia 89. Greenpeace 90. Global Footprint Network 91. Luz Portatil Brasil 92. INJAZ al-Arab 93. CIVICUS 94. Generations for Peace 95. Send a Cow Uganda 96. Project WET Foundation 97. Instituto da Crianca 98. Diplo Foundation 99. Born Free Foundation 100. Akilah Institute for Women

It could be a nice exercise to try and couple each and every one of the above organisations with a more radical, feminist, socialist, honest, or just non-governmental alternative. Like e.g. Transparency International - Tax Justice Network; Diplo Foundation - Les amis du monde diplomatique; Generations for Peace - No Bases Network ; International Commission of Jurists - IALANA, etc. Or, one could also try to produce the opposite list, to quote a less radical, feminist, socialist, honest, or just more governmental alternative. For instance: Friends of the Earth Middle East - AIPAC ; Wikimedia Foundation - Heritage Foundation; etc.

The interview with historian Mark Mazower, author of the book "Governing the World", (see "Dreaming The International Dream", pp 10-14) gives more food for thought about the definition of an NGO. Asked about why 'world government' is nowadays only rarely spoken of, while the expression 'world governance' is all the more often heard, Mazower says: "I think the semantic shift betrays something very, very important, which is that we moved from a world where people had confidence in the idea of government or at least some did to a world that lost it."

It could be interesting to list the funding agencies, the international and national NGOs most active in and around the WSF, and to do a critical critical study on them. The results would certainly be very different to the GJ's TOP 100. But there would probably also be some overlapping. To do such a study could be a nice Master's or PhD project for someone, but not for the present writer; I shall now finish this trip to NGO-land with a few further notes.

The editors of the Global Journal do not say a word about imperialism. Do they think that imperialism is no longer a reality? And the nuclear weapons systems including the missile defense, are these only a thing of the past? The editors and writers of the GJ maintain a deep silence about the military-industrial-academic complex. But then the peoples of the WSF hardly speak loudly enough about that, either!

Nowadays, when I read an eJournal like the GJ, I cannot resist the temptation to do searches on the material. The searchword 'drones' leads to GJ's piece on On Borders (on p. 122), which was originally called The Ostkreuz Agency. This is only one of several NGOs on their TOP 100 list which I personally had not previously heard about (as said, this issue of the GJ is a good read!). "The Ostkreuz Agency was founded when what was probably the most important border in the history of Germany the Berlin Wall disappeared. Two decades later, its photographers set out on a search for todays frontiers ... On Borders covers many borders dissecting the planet, but there are some that seem less recognized: European borders. ... Ever since the advent of the Frontex Agency, a kind of common EU border patrol, technology is being upgraded along the edges of Europe.... In 2011, according to Frontexs report, the number of individuals arrested rose by 35 percent from 104,000 in 2010 to 141,000 in 2011. In the future, the organization plans to use robots and drones."

Henceforward, our external memory is carried by drones. But I remember the long list of names of the drowned and unsaved laid out on the ground at the campus El Manar in Tunis where the most recent WSF event was held. Hopefully, some photographers from On Borders also participate in the process of the WSF.

The advertisments of the GJ would be worth their own study. Even before the climate-friendly one of BAYER AG (p.5) come the Swiss watches of Jaquet Droz (p. 2). Somewhere, recently, I read about Yang Dacai, head of the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Work Safety, who was fired when users of the microblogging site Weibo noticed his collection of extremely pricey watches, one reportedly valued up to $32,000 and posted photos... (See Ivan Krastev: In Mistrust We Trust, kindlelocation 530; copied character by character by myself - because Kindle does not let you use the Copy and Paste function). Well, Yang Dacai's timepiece is in the price category of the Jaquet Droz watches for such kleptocrats.

Above, I quoted Mark Mazower on confidence in government. Or, more precisely, on the confidence lost. This theme (to use the musical term) is being further developed by Ivan Krastev in the aforementioned new eBook "In Mistrust We Trust - Can Democracy Survive When We don't Trust Our Leaders?" (I had to buy this one, too; price 4,95 USD). I'll say no more. Let me just note that while Ivan Krastev has many negative things to say about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, but nothing at all about Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia, The Global Journal does not even mention the former, while The Wikimedia Foundation (with its Wikipedia) features as #2 among the world's foremost NGO's according to GJ, and its chairperson is considered to be famous enough to be shown on a big photo without his name (the name "Jimmy Wales" is not to be found in the whole issue).

(Will be back to the Ivan Krastev book.)

The military exception

Mikael — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 12:56:00 +0300

The participants of the DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL Summer Academy (Burgas, Bulgaria, 12.-15.07.2012) underlined that the future of the European Union must not be decided only by representatives of governments, the central bank and other executive institutions. But how to enable the citizens of the EU countries to decide on their Union? DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL would "call for a European Convention - as foreseen in Article 48 of the Treaty of the functioning of the EU - and for a europeanwide referendum on the outcome of this convention and on the future of the EU."

This convention, summarizes Gerald Häfner, the President of Democracy International, in his email "should be elected by the people, have enough time for its work and integrate civil society proposals. The European Union has to become a Europe of the citizens - or the European Union will fail."

With this conclusion one could only heartily agree, if one would not see one major obstacle which, at least for the time being, is blocking the road towards a better future. What I aim at is the unwillingness of the citizens to discuss the most fundamental issue of the federal state which is its military defence. This issue is more or less the same as the question whether we should at all strive towards a European Union.

As we have seen, it is not possible to achieve a "full-scale economic union" without first achieving a political union. In particular, it is impossible to keep and deepen the democracy in such a fake EU. But the main reason for the failure of the full-scale political integration, namely, the absence of the defence union, is almost never even mentioned.

Why this silence? Is it really so that people do not understand the issue? I doubt that. Consider the example of the French nuclear strike force, the force the frappe, which is aiming, as they like to say, tous azimuths, i.e. in all directions and against all potential aggressors, and thus also against, for instance, Germany. Indeed, if history matters at all, then the French atomic bombs seem to have been built especially with Germany in mind.

Now try for a while to think about the political union. How can one even for a moment imagine a union between countries that aim at each others with weapons of mass destruction?

I deliberately chose to begin with the atomic weapons, because I wished to go straight into the matter, which is also what kind of united defence forces the European Union should have once its citizens decide to build a democratic state for themselves, which DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL obviously hopes that they will do. (And, just to clear away any misunderstandings, so do I.) Should the EU have weapons of mass destruction in order to "deter" and, if the "deterrence" fails, to actually exterminate the populations of any external enemies?

With this question alone, I already hope to have made my self a little bit clearer. Because this is precisely the kind of question that bears upon the future of the European union and which, by consequence, we absolutely need to discuss and decide upon.

Now, let's assume the resurgence of a Europe-wide progressive citizens movement for nuclear disarmament, a movement with participants from every kind of people from cat-lovers to army generals like the one that we had in the 1980ies, a movement of millions of people which strongly pushes for the denuclearization of the EU and its withdrawal from the present aggressive transatlantic plans regarding missile shields and full spectrum military dominance with drones, weapons for prompt global strikes and God knows what nano-, bio, or robotic monsters. (By the way, how can one for a moment imagine that any change in our "economic model" could come about without the resurgence of such a movement?)

Further, suppose that the resurgent European peace movement adopts the proposal of DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL, and calls for "a European Convention - as foreseen in Article 48 of the Treaty of the functioning of the EU" , with the aim of introducing the constitution of the EU, thus into its basic law, a clause whereby all the member countries agree to abolish whatever weapons of mass destruction they may have, and not to build any new ones.

So, what would happen if the real European movement would be there before our eyes? ? Well, if you ask any specialist trained in European law and business, nothing would still happen. Because, the revision procedures as foreseen in the Treaty of the functioning of the EU "apply to all European policies with the exception of defence and decisions with military implications"! (See http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institutional_affairs/treaties/lisbon_treaty/ai0013_en.htm.)

Jean-Marie Matagne perseveres

Mikael — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:38:00 +0300

In the southern French town of Saintes, Jean-Marie Matagne, aged 68, the President of Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (ACDN), began a hunger strike on 15 May 2012 to obtain a referendum on nuclear weapons.

The goal of Matagne and his friends is to break what he calls the nuclear omertà, or the shameful silence which surrounds France's weapons of mass destruction, and which also continued during the recent election campaigns.

In an article, which Dr Matagne wrote together with the Norwegian-born presidential candidate, the judge Eva Joly, they note, that France is in breach of international law spending billions of euros per year to develop new nuclear weapons.

The tenacious philosopher himself is one year older than the world's first nuclear test in Alamogordo, NM, USA (July 1945). Now that more than fifty years have also passed since the first French atomic bomb explosion in Reggane, Algeria (February 1960), Matagne believes that humanity risks missing its last chance to prevent a further proliferation and catastrophic use of weapons of mass destruction.

Nuclear weapons have never been the subject of democratic decision-making in France (or anywhere else). Now Jean-Marie Matagne and his friends insist on a referendum whereby the French people would be asked to decide on the following question: "Are you in favour of France participating with the other states concerned in the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, under a system of mutual and international monitoring that is strict and effective ?"

When I called up Dr. Matagne on Sunday, he confirmed that he will be continuing his hunger strike at least until Saturday, June 23, when forty days will have passed since he began. He still hopes to have the opportunity to discuss the referendum proposal with France's new government and new president François Hollande. Minister of Education Vincent Peillon and other new Cabinet members have acknowledged receipt of Matagne's letter. - After 40 days, my condition will probably turn critical. I have already lost 17 kg in weight, Matagne said.

(This entry is an English summary of my letters to the editor of the Finland-Swedish daily newspaper "Hufvudstadsbladet" concerning Jean-Marie Matagne's hunger strike. My first letter was published on May 18, and a second letter appeared on June 20, 2012. Read more about Jean-Marie Matagne's action at http://www.acdn.net. And remember: Without disarmament, there will be no sustainable development.)

Without disarmament, there will be no sustainable development

Mikael — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:04:00 +0300

The Trade Union Assembly statement from Rio is "an important step forward", writes Norwegian social activist Asbjörn Wahl to the mailing list of the European Social Forum. And I agree. In their statement, the workers "embrace the cause of a socially-just transition towards a sustainable development model", and they urge that this "transition must begin without further delay".

In the wording of this good trade union statement one looks, however, in vain for any explicit mention of the environmental impact of the arms industry, the contradiction between the arms trade and the social development, the CO2-emissions of the armies (major consumers of fossil fuels), and the threat posed to every living creature on earth by the existing radiological and other weapons of mass destruction.

But is a "transition towards a sustainable development model" even conceivable without a critique and a deconstruction of the military-industrial complex?

The answer is clearly no. This, on the other hand, has been well understood by the signatories of the international appeal Rio plus 20 Disarmament for Sustainable Development. This appeal was initiated by The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES), the International Peace Bureau (IPB), Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), the World Future Council (WFC), Mayors for Peace (MFP), VivaRio, Better World Links and World without Wars and Violence.

Quotation from the appeal "Disarmament for Sustainable Development":

"... Ecological disasters pile up; the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of the eco-system are increasing dramatically. In addition, the current economic crisis has made the world’s governments reduce spending on critical human needs and is once again hitting the weakest the hardest." "However, apparently unlimited financial resources seem to be available for military jets, tanks, ships, bombs, missiles, landmines and nuclear weapons. The technological developments in the armaments field are becoming more and more sophisticated and murderous." "How to reverse this process is the challenge of today." "The signatories of this Appeal demand that the governments of the world seriously address this neglected issue, and agree on a global plan for disarmament at the Rio Summit in June 2012... "

"Without disarmament, there will be no adequate development; without development, there will be no justice, equality and peace. We must give sustainability a chance. "

Pour une Union Européenne sans armes nuclèaires (For a EU without nuclear weapons)

Mikael — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:55:00 +0300

This entry was inspired by the hunger strike of Jean-Marie Matagne, which has by now lasted 21st days. I thought it was a good idea to try and write it in French...

Pour une Union Européenne sans armes nuclèaires

Pourquoi l'union européenne ne s'est elle pas materialisée, du moins pas au rythme qui serait nécessaire si l'intention est de répondre aux problèmes urgents de la crise économique et financière?

La réponse est facile à donner: l'économie est en grande partie politique. Par conséquent, il faudrait d'abord réaliser une union politique pleine et entière pour que l'union économique devienne une réalité.

Il faut faire une mise en garde importante, cependant. La politique est à son tour en grande partie une question de la guerre et de la paix. Cela vaut également pour l'Union européenne. Au début, la vision européenne a été fondée sur ce point, comme nous le lisons dans le "Manifeste de Ventotene" (1941). Les deux auteurs de ce texte fondateur, Altiero Spinelli et Ernesto Rossi, étaient partisans de l'argument fort d'Alexander Hamilton en faveur du fédéralisme: "Espérer le maintien de l’harmonie entre plusieurs Etats indépendants et voisins, ce serait perdre de vue le cours uniforme des événements humains et aller contre l’expérience des siècles."

Sur la base de cette idée réaliste, l'union économique présuppose l'union politique, qui à son tour exige l'union militaire. Ici se pose la question: pourquoi doit-il être si difficile de parvenir à une union militaire et politique des états éuropéens? La réponse spontanée, non seulement des Vrais Finlandais et leurs homologues en Europe mais aussi d'une grande partie de la gauche politique, c'est que l'idée d'un état fédérale européenne n'a pas obtenu le soutien des peuples. Une union européenne politique et de défense ne serait donc pas démocratique, il est réclamé.

C'est ignorer le fait que le premier Parlement européen élu, en 1984, a adopté, avec une confortable majorité (237 votes sur 31 avec 43 abstentions), le projet de traité instituant l'union politique européenne (qui d'ailleurs avait été proposé par le même Spinelli du "manifeste de Ventotene"). Presque tous les élus ont appuyé la proposition, mais tous les gouvernements l'ont rejeté.

Ce qu'on oublie aussi, ou qu'on ne veux pas ou n'ose pas prendre en compte , ce sont les armes de destruction massive. Comme un citoyen Finlandais qui aime bien la France, je dois pourtant donner raison à M. Jean-Marie Matagne qui a constaté, en commencent son grêve de la faim*, qu'il existe en France une sorte d’omertà nucléaire. Et comme un citoyen de l'UE, je retrouve ce silence honteux sur le plan européen. Sans doute, quelques géneraux de l'OTAN en discutent, mais pour les citoyens cette question clé est restée tabou.

”Le peuple français n’a jamais été consulté sur la question des armes nucléaires, armes de crimes contre l’humanité, construites en son nom et avec ses subsides”, a dit M. Matagne. Le peuple Finlandais non plus...

Cet obstacle, et la fausse idée de souveraineté absolue qui l'accompagne, doit être éliminé.

L'union européenne démocratique commence avec le désarmement nucléaire européenne, donc avec l'abolition des forces nucléaires françaises et britanniques, et le désengagement militaire américaine en Europe. Il s'agit-là d'un vrai projet de libération.

Mais nous ne devrions pas attendre que le Président de la Commission européenne, ou bien l'un de Présidents ou premiers des pays membres de l'UE, vont prendre l'initiative. Seule la pression d'un fort mouvement européenne pour la paix et le désarmement pourrait les faire tourner leurs manteaux.

Mikael Böök Lovisa Finlande

Voir « Je reste déterminé » Réclamant un référendum sur l'abolition des armes nucléaires, Jean-Marie Matagne jeûne depuis vingt jours. http://www.sudouest.fr/2012/06/04/je-reste-determine-733038-706.php

The hunger strike of Jean-Marie Matagne

Mikael — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:01:00 +0300

Jean-Marie Matagne, an anti-nuclear militant living in the town of Saintes of Southwestern France, went on hunger strike last Tuesday. Matagne, a 68-year doctor of philosophy, is calling attention to the nuclear omertà, that is, the shameful silence about France's nuclear weapons during the recent elections. I hope this theme will also be discussed at the ongoing Blockupy in Frankfurt, because I do not believe that a real and democratic European Union could possess nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. As Matagne says in his communiqué (see www.acdn.net) , the French people has never been heard about the construction of such criminal weapons. To show my solidarity with dr Matagne, I inserted the following comment on the website of the French newspaper "Sud-Ouest", where Matagne's hunger strike is being discussed:

@Pignon et autres, merci de ne pas refuser la conscience! Je pense que le lien entre les armes nucléaires et le statut de grande puissance peut être dissous en Europe, par les peuples européens eux-mêmes. Nous avons besoin d’un mouvement européen pro-européen pour le désarmement nucléaire. Pro-européen, c’est-à-dire en faveur de la création d’un Etat européen démocratique - une véritable Union européenne. Une telle Union ne peut pas disposer des armes de destruction massive. Comme le dit M. Matagne, ces armes ne sont pas du people ni pour le peuple. Salutations de Nord-Ouest, c'est-à-dire de la Finlande,

Mikael Böök

Loviisa

PS Pardon, la Finlande, c'est évidemment le Nord-Est! And once I am on it, why don't I add the idea in English, too:

The link between nuclear weapons and great power status can be broken in Europe, by the peoples of Europe. We need a pro-European movement for European Nuclear Disarmament. Pro-European means being in favour of establishing a democratic European state - a real European Union.

Not to speak about the need to uncover the links between the austerity measures and all the money that goes into the military-industrial production and consumption (the EADS, the BAE, the Finmeccanica, the missile defence systems, the "nuclear capable" aircraft), and so on... Greetings to Frankfurt! the same

Summary

Mikael — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:59:00 +0200

Dear forum goers,

hope you will have a good meeting. I cannot make it to Brussels today. Below, please find a short summary of my thoughts:

There is a necessary connection between any new constitution and the military strategy. To finish with the so called war on terror, working group 1 ought in my view to amend the draft treaty on EU which was approved by the representatives of several European peoples in February 1984. Points of departure for the re-drafting: the emerging informational hegemony of the internet; the dissolution of the military alliances, e.g. of NATO; the unilateral abolition of our weapons of mass destruction. Congo, and the millions of human beings killed there since the assassination of Lumumba, must also be kept in mind. Make the new draft even shorter and more gemeinverständlich than the draft from 1984. Make sure it will be swiftly translated into all languagues.

As for the debt crisis, let us all join the struggle of ATTAC for a tax on financial transactions. An FTT must not exclude the money trade. (1). Its purposes are two: to kill the financial speculation; to regulate the capitalists in order to give people power a better chance (2). The tax revenue should be spent on a useful purpose, e.g. on optical fiber networks owned by the public libraries, but that is not why an FTT is needed.

Warm regards,

Mikael

Explanations:

1: Presently, it seems that the EU-negotiators plan to introduce a financial transactions tax without a currency transactions tax. Source: Patomäki, Heikki: "Financial transaction tax (FTT): An analysis of the EU Commission proposal" (http://www.cttcampaigns.info/Patomaki_EU_FTT).

2: The capitalists are a group which roughly corresponds to that which is described by Nicholas Shaxson in his book Treasure Islands. Tax Havens and The Men Who Stole The World. Bodley Head 2011. People power (democracy) is our political goal. The old political system must go and the new system, which we call federation, must come in its stead.

Occupy the Spinelli Building, continued.

Mikael — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:34:00 +0200

Dear members of the Forum permanent de la societé civile,

how do we figure the Convention 2012, for which we are preparing? My own first associations are to 'something like the Congress of India, and even to Gandhi's 'Hind swaraj'. My second thoughts then go in the direction of what Altiero Spinelli described as the third phase in the unfinished second part of his autobiography:

"Fra il '54 e il '60' (?) ho lavorato sull'ipotesi che fosse possibile mobilitare l'europeismo, ormai diffuso, in una protesta popolare crescente - il Congresso del Popolo Europeo - diretta contro la legittimità stessa degli stati nazionali" -- Between '54 and '60 '(?) I worked on the assumption that it was possible to mobilize Europeanism, by then common, in a growing popular protest - the Congress of the European People - directed against the very legitimacy of nation states." (The English is mine and, as you can see, English is not my first language.)

Today, the 'Europeanism' which Spinelli had in mind would have to be squarely combined with the denuclearisation of Europe; but this was already made clear in my previous message yesterday, I think.

Spinelli, who already in the 1960ies spoke up for European nuclear disarmament and the military disengagement of the US from Europe, did not live to see Chernobyl (the Chernobyl disaster happened in April 1986, Spinelli died in May that year). Neither did he hear about the Fukushima catastrophe. Nor did he experience the fall of the Soviet Union, or the rise of the internet, two world historical developments, which should by now have resulted in the dissolution of NATO as a military organisation.

Obviously, the power relations between the West and the rest have also changed considerably since Spinelli's time. Why would "we" in the West still want to keep and modernise "our" nuclear strike forces (that is, the French, British, Israeli, and, of course, US nuclear weapons systems)?

The most important "reason" for this madness is nothing else than the tendency of the transatlantic, Western, military-industrial complex to continue its "development" by itself, unregulated, like a stone in motion with its own inertia. This tendency is what the historian E.P. Thompson, when he analysed the Cold War between Russia and West in the 1980ies, labelled as Exterminism. Unfortunately, the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement which Thompson inspired seems to have ended. But the phenomenon he called Exterminism certainly lives on.

The modernisation and proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which are nowadays built with nanotechnology, biotech and robotics, and the corollary of this process, namely the counter-weapons, like the ongoing construction of the missile defence shields, all together form an inexhaustible goldmine. With the extraction of its deadly military-industrial-academic gold, even more than with its virtual management in the tax-havens, our whole vicious anti-social, unsustainable, un-economical and speculative financial architecture stands and falls. Has not the word Capitalism begun to sound like an euphemism?

And yet this system certainly continues to be Capitalism at home, and global Imperialism abroad. Because, in their efforts to legitimise the aforementioned Complex, our governments also try to imagine and convince us of some more or less vague military threats to deter with their modernised doomsday arsenals. And nowadays it is, of course, the countries of the Global South, rather than Russia, which are supposed to pose those threats.

I now would like to come back to the question with which I begun this message: how do we envision the coming Congress of the European Peoples in 2012? Have we, as a part of our preparations, thought of setting up a working group on the military-industrial complex? Have we had the guts to enter the nuclear issues? Can you advice me on which PrepCom I should choose for my participation?

Greetings from Loviisa/Finland,

Mikael Böök

Footnote: The autobiography of Altiero Spinelli, "Come ho tentato di diventare saggio", was published in 1984 and 1987. The quoted sentence appears on p. 348 of the the edition in 1999 from the Società editrice il Mulino 1999. The name of Spinelli embellishes the house of the European Parliament in Brussels, yet his literary work seems not to have been translated into English. Neither, it seems, are translations into French or German to be found.

Occupy the Spinelli Building

Mikael — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:11:00 +0200

On December 6, which was Finland's 94th National Day, my compatriot friends got one of those long email messages which most people have to delete or move to the "read later" folder. Here, I shall omit the introduction and the stories about my previous adventures in Äkäslompolo, Lapland, because only the Saami, or the tourists who have visited their beautiful country, would have a chance to understand what I meant with those parts.

Anyway, the northernmost and the northeasternmost parts of Suomi have been struck with gold and uranium fever, and mining companies from all over are coming in to cure it. At the same time, Rovajärvi, formerly an exercise field for the heroic Finnish army that fought the Soviet aggressor during the Winter War 1939-1940, is being leased to some foreign companies for the testing of drones and other UAV.

The contents of my long email were summarized in a short political program, which i reproduce here for your information:

1. Refrain from building more nuclear power plants in Finland, France and the other European countries where they may be planned. Follow the wise German decision to phase out nuclear power and expand the alternative ways to produce electricity and other energy.

2. Eliminate, unilaterally, the French and British nuclear forces. This will require popular, civic, action from all over Europe, as in the European Nuclear Disarmament (END) movement in the 1980ies, but on an even bigger and wider scale. Politically, this means that we form an independent European federal state, but without a nuclear strike force.

3. Stop uranium mining and enrichment, especially in Finland and Niger. Redefine independence so that it no longer means the destruction of the lands and livelihoods of the Saami, the Tuareg, the tourists, and all the other more or less permanently resident peoples.

4. Urge the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and the other actual and potential nuclear weapon states to follow Europe's lead, as described in paragraphs 1-2. Require that the U.S. withdraws its nuclear weapons from Europe, those which are still present. This proposal is based on the theory that nuclear weapons, nuclear umbrellas and missile shields are unable to guarantee their (or our) independence. The theory remains to be proven with empirical evidence. So let's undertake the necessary practical experiments. (Some people still believe that the opposite theory was empirically proven at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, but their reasoning is based on Apriorism, and thus banned by modern science. Besides, look at the proliferation of the nuclear weapons, and consider the growing risk for nuclear terrorism, just to mention two corollaries of the theory on which our present political leaders base their practice.)

5. Break with the nuclear complex and with the military-industrial complex. (In reality, these are one and the same complex; the nuclear complex is only, so to speak, the tip of the military-industrial complex.) Any realistic combat against the resource wastage, the environmental pollution and the global warming tendency must begin here, but politicians and journalists are too cowardly to tell you so aloud. These are opinions and suggestions that can only be expressed and turned into reality through a popular uprising movement that forces the politicians and the media to turn their dirty coats after the wind. For them, it takes too much courage to say that NATO is no longer a stability factor, but a monster, designed to strike fear in us with its weapons of mass destruction and Prompt Global Strike. Restructure the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) , the largest air and space group in Europe and the second largest in the world, to become a group of purely civilian production. Develop and execute a plan for the conversion of the war industries. Unravel the German and French arms deals with Greece, which contributed significantly to the indebtedness of that country.

6. Retake the F-word, where F stands for Federalism. The F-word is not ugly, but it requires the denuclearisation and an economy that dumps the military-industrial complex. In spite of our much advertised soverign debt, we do have all that we need to change things for the better. For instance, the debt has not reduced our skills, we are certainly still able to produce our living, to satisfy our material needs (and even to to take care of our souls, if only we admit that our concept of national sovereignty is unwise.) Let's occupy the Spinelli Building and re-constitute the sane vision of Altiero Spinelli about a democratic European state.

This program only indicates where we need to start solving our problems, it does not pretend to tell how all the important problems can be solved, or to be the most important statement on everything that is the case. However, neither Frau Merkel nor Monsieur Sarkozy, or the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has so far showed the way, nor is it likely that they will ever be able to take the lead. The journalists have let us know what economists and finance experts think. Well, they have been talking a lot about our problems, but have you ever heard them coming up with the above political proposals?

Cheers,

Mikael

Democratic sovereignty?

Mikael — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:15:00 +0200

From the email list of the European Social Forum (ESF), http://lists.fse-esf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fse-esf

Dear all,

It is interesting to compare and to complete Yannis Almpanis' analysis "Papandreou government will probably fall until Friday" (http://bit.ly/sKcexb) with Attac France's statement "Référendum grec: une première avancée démocratique" (http://bit.ly/vYTJnE).

Attac France deserves thanks for its bold expression of political hope and fighting spirit in a situation that seems to grow ever more chaotic and dangerous. Almpanis, in turn, reminds us of some roots of Papandreou's politics, which are easily ignored by non-Greeks, and of the more general truth that Papandreou and his likes always put their own political survival above the interest of the people.

Attac France takes for granted that "NO" is going to win in the proposed referendum about the EU's bailout package, and concludes that this victory will make it necessary to put forward a concrete alternative to the neoliberal model:

"Mais elle (la vicoire du "NON") posera concrètement la nécessité d'une alternative au modèle néolibéral, qui devra commencer par la dénonciation des dettes illégitimes, le refus des politiques de régression sociale, la reconquête de la souveraineté démocratique sur notre monnaie commune, l'euro. Attac mettra dans les semaines à venir toute son énergie pour construire la solidarité européenne avec le peuple grec, faire triompher le non à l'austérité, et poser les premiers jalons de la refondation d'une Europe démocratique et solidaire."

To this I would like to wholeheartedly subscribe. For the alternative to be more concrete and precise, however, it is not enough to focus narrowly on the financial and social dimensions of the crisis. Our alternative must be European, we also have to take a common stand on the European Union.

"le peuple grec, en défendant ses droits sociaux et sa souveraineté démocratique, défend les droits de tous les peuples européens -- the Greek people, by defending their social rights and democratic sovereignty, is defending the rights of all European peoples",

Attac France says. But we will now also have to discover and to defend our common European "democratic sovereignty".

Therefore, everybody should take a close look at this pair of political words — the so called "democratic sovereignty". Beacause, nowadays, these words form an odd couple indeed. What is actually the sovereignty of a European country, say France, say Greece? Is it the sovereignty of Charles de Gaulle and his atomic strike force? Is it based on the "conventional" weapons — helicopters, warships, submarines, tanks etc. — imported to Greece from France, Germany and the USA?

Be aware, please, that "soverignty" is to do with aggression and defence, with war and peace. Note that it is futile to speak about "models" if you omit the military and the massive arsenals of destruction from the discussion.

Our alternative European model also must bring with it another kind of "sovereignty" than that which is cherished by the present European governments and the EU.

When demanding a different "model", it is high time to put questions like the conversion of the military production of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), for instance, squarely on the agenda. We must take on the military-industrial and academic complex!

After the Fukushima disaster, some European peoples have democratically decided to rule out the construction of new nuclear power plants. Let us hail those decisons, and let us pronounce a common "NON" to nuclear energy. We need a complete revision of the EURATOM pact from 1957, which has as its main purpose to "further" nuclear energy production.

Finally, lets say "YES" to European Union, lets create a democratic European state. That, dear activists of the European Social Forum, was actually the whole idea of the original eurofederalists like the Italian Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986), whose name still embellishes the building of the European Parliament. See what a mess they have made of the original good idea!

Yours in peace,

Mikael

2 November, 2011

Can alterglobalization endure and grow without doing away with the official myth about 9/11?

Mikael — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:36:00 +0300

Some rapid comments and questions upon reading the article "Elbowed Out of Spotlight by 9/11, Anti-Globalization Movement Endures" by Mark Engler:

1. What if the official account is false and 9/11 was orchestrated by leaders of the military industrial complex in order to start the "war on terror" (including the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq) and to hit our growing globalization-critical movement? What if 9/11 was a State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD)? (About SCADs, including the 9/11 SCAD, see American Behavioral Scientist, Volume 53, Number 6, February 2010.)

2. Obviously, the crimes of 9/11 caused an enormous backlash for all anti-imperialistic movements. The more interesting question is whether we can endure and grow without doing away with the official myth about 9/11.

3. Could the enduring alterglobalisation movement and the persisting movement for truth about 9/11 become one and the same justice movement?

4. "Recent opinion polls show that nearly half of New Yorkers continue to doubt the official account of 9/11: that's 10 million people." ( Quoted from the article "9/11 In-Depth: Long Suppressed Academic Evidence to Stream Live During Toronto International Hearings, September 8-11, 2011", CNBC News 6 September, 2011.) So the opinion is divided, to say the least. And that's only the New Yorkers. However, the need to re-investigate 9/11 has rarely been discussed at the social forums, with the exception of the first USSF in Atlanta. It is as if we, the peoples of the social forum, had reached a consensus. Let half of the world believe that the total demolition of 3 skyscrapers with 2 airplanes had to be an inside job, but we agree with the government that all it was was a terrorist attack by fanatical Muslims (!?) Yours in peace.

We need Eurobonds and a new charter for Europe, but is it possible without ...

Mikael — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 13:09:00 +0300

Susan George, in a recent interview, asks the Europeans to end the financial control of their governance, to issue Eurobonds, and to ceate a new charter for Europe. Read the interview at the Transnational Institute, here!

If we were to use our possibilities to discuss the current situation and arrive at common conclusions, then I would propose that we take this interview with Susan George as our starting point. Here the problems of the present are analysed in their historical setting, the much hyped "debt crisis" is reduced to realistic proportions, and some of the necessary steps towards the solution of the problems are explained. Let me repeat Susan George's proposals:

"How should social movements respond to the crisis? What alternatives can we put on the table? * Carry out debt audits to determine how much is "odious". * Develop a debt workout mechanism that isn't skewed entirely in favour of creditors. * We need Eurobonds and a new charter for Europe with an ECB that's much closer to the US Federal Reserve. * Use Keynes' bancor as the currency for trade. We'll need another interview to talk about that! * Meanwhile, I'd be more than happy with public, non-profit ratings agencies and governments that govern for citizens rather than for banks."

However necessary these economic and political measures, one may of course doubt that they are sufficient. In order to arrive aa an alternative to the Treaty of Lisbon, I think that we must also take on the problems which belong in the area of defence and military strategy, because

a) the present economy is militaristic, it is a war economy built around the military-industrial-academic complex, which is integrated with the nuclear complex, the aerospace and space industries, and so many other sectors of the economy. This is the elephant in our drawing room, which the media fail to see.

b) achieving "a new charter of Europe" is not possible without a common European understanding of human security in the age of nuclear weapons, nanotechnology, robotics and genetech. The road to a better future for our continent goes via denuclearisation and a military reform, which starts from the idea of human security.

Letter to Elizabeth

Mikael — Sun, 08 May 2011 05:30:00 +0300

Dear Elizabeth,

today is Mother's Day here in Finland. Do you have children? If yes, I hope they come and see you, or send you greetings. If no, I wonder if your own mother is around still so that you can go and see her, or send her greetings. If your mother is dead, I hope you have recognised it is springtime so that you can enjoy God's creation. But if you did it already yesterday, and have a terrible headache this morning, and hope your mother had never given birth, then have one more for the road, and you will be happier when you die. There are many more possibilities, of course. After all, OBL's funeral in December 2001, which was reported by UNI, the Indian news agency, might have been faked. I said as much in a short letter to the editor (of "Hufvudstadsbladet", our main newspaper in Swedish). I also wrote a longer piece, but that one was refused by the editors of two publications. The first just said he doesn't publish it; the second, that it was far too long. When are you going to send me your controversial essay?

Cheers,

Mikael

The Finnish book-entry register, or 'ceterum censeo tributum commercii esse delendum'

Mikael — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:10:00 +0300

This entry is about an issue in the the up-coming parlamentary elections in Finland. It should be the key issue, but it is not.

The Finnish book-entry register (also known as nominee registration of securities; fi hallintarekisteri; sv förvaltarregister) provides a method of tax evasion, especially with regards to stock investments. This system was created right before the recession in 1991. The book-entry register does not keep a record about the identity of the owner of the shares. Instead, it only registers the bank or body which keeps the shares in custody.

Hitherto, the book-entry services of Euroclear Finland (which has been trusted to keep the Finnish book-entry register) have been open only to foreigners, but now Mari Kiviniemi's government wants to allow also Finnish citizens to register their shares in this way, that is, anonymously and by proxy. Finnish journalists have deplored this, saying that it will become much more difficult than before to reveal Finnish tax evaders and to keep track of e.g. the corporate connections of the politicians. The existence of the book-entry register was already bad enough in itself. It has meant, for instance, that we hardly know who owns Nokia; 85 % of the shares of Nokia's shares are hidden in this register. An unknown number of these and other shares in the book-entry registry certainly also belongs, illegally, to Finns. Now, however, the government of Finland wants to make this kind of tax evasion legal.(1)

My first, spontaneous reaction to this reform, which has yet to be approved by the parliament, is to label it as criminal. Yet I have some difficulty in seeing how a young, vibrant, democratically elected female Prime Minister in a Nordic country could be a simple criminal.

What is and what is not an economic crime in "the era of free movement of capital", where "transferring sums of money from Helsinki to a region such as the Isle of Man requires only a few clicks of a mouse" (2)

Firstly, we would need to know how Mari Kiviniemi &Co are thinking and justifying their own actions. But here the difficulty is, that the present guard of career politicians like Mari Kiviniemi (Center Party), Jutta Urpilainen (Social Democratic Party) or Jyrki Katainen (Conservative Party) are not really supposed to express, or even to have, their own deeper ideas and beliefs. (Or, it is we who are not really supposed to know what the beliefs and ideas of the politicians are, or to require that they have them.)

Regardless of what these ministers and would-be ministers may be thinking in general, their way of thinking on tax justice is deeply problematic. Considering the planned extension of the book-entry services to Finnish nationals , we have to presume that they think like Mr Niclas Virin, the former head of department of the Swedish National Tax Board, who goes around repeating the phrase:

'Ceterum censeo contributum commercii esse delendum.'

In other words, they believe that corporate tax is always harmful and should therefore be got rid of altogether.

Needless to say, I do not agree. However, it is not about whether you or I agree or disagree with Mr Virin and Ms Kiviniemi. It is about how they manage to agree with themselves.

References:

(1) Voima magazine has an excellent article in Finnish about the book-entry register reform, see Jari Hanska: ''Veronkiertotemppu & kuinka se tehdään.'' Voima 3/2011.

(2) See the article Finns dodge taxes. Tax evasion costs Finland at least three billion euros annually, reports the online financial newspaper Taloussanomat. Helsinki Times 29 August 2009.

(3) See Mr Virin's 2006 speech in English ''Why? Why do we tax business income?''.

Libyan war and human (in)security

Mikael — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:11:00 +0300

In OpenDemocracy, Mary Kaldor analyses the ongoing Libyan war. The best scenario is that Gaddafi is removed and democracy is established, but a more likely scenario is a freezing of the current division between east and west Libya. A third possibiity is as in Iraq, a protracted ‘new war’, she writes, and goes on to criticize the military approach of the Western powers:

From a human security perspective, the appropriate course of action is to protect civilians throughout Libya and guarantee their right to peaceful protest. The first task should have been to declare Benghazi and the liberated areas a UN Protected Area or safe haven. International peace-keepers would have had to be deployed to help protect the liberated areas. Humanitarian and reconstruction assistance and support for a democratic political process would also have to be provided so that the liberated areas could provide poles of attraction for other parts of the country. (See Kaldor, Mary: "Libya: war or humanitarian intervention?", OpenDemocracy 29 March 2011)

Kaldor's analysis is sharp and revealing. However, it is one thing to say what should have been done instead of what was actually done, i.e. to deploy UN peace-keepers on the ground instead of starting a war from the air. But what should we do now to improve the worsening situation ? That is another question, and a very urgent one. Because, as Kaldor fears, the outcome of this military "Odyssey" will probably be something like her second, or third scenario.

A pessimist would say that there may be no such "we", which is able to intervene against the economic and political forces of war. Gone are the days of the European Nuclear Disarmament movement, of which Mary Kaldor was one of the most vibrant leaders back in the 1980ies.

But, instead of painting a bleak picture of ourselves, why do we not again boldly put the denuclearisation of Europe on the agenda?

In their article "Nuclear Follies" (OpenDemocracy 13 March 2011) Dan Plesch and Harald Heubaum, reminded the readers of Open Democracy about the the export of French nuclear reactors to Libya, which President Sarkozy and Colonel Gaddaffi agreed and publicized only a few years ago (in the summer of 2007).

"(t)he events in Libya and Japan have one thing in common", Plesch and Heubaum constated. "Each case serves as a powerful reminder of the dangers of nuclear power and the short-sighted, irrational risk analyses of those pursuing the technology."

This parallell between the recklessness of the Japanese nuclear reactor builders and the irresponsibiity of the European nuclear rector exporters also needs to be considered in the analysis of the Libyan war.

Mary Kaldor's article arrived while I was reading the book about human security which she has published together with the American military officer Shannon D. Beebe (The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon. Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace, N.Y. 2010). I was actually quoting some of the basic propositions of their excellent work in a message to the mailing list of the European Social Forum. I shall insert a glimpse of those principles here as well, with quotation marks around the words of Beebe and Kaldor. My own remarks I have put within parentheses:

"the primacy of human rights"; "the goal is protecting civilians, not defeating an enemy";

"legitimate political authority" (this has to be something else than presidents of the republic who gladly act as salesmen for the nuclear and military industries);

"a bottom-up approach"; "ultimately, the people who live in areas of insecurity must solve their own problems" ( Well, where I live is probably relatively secure, although the distance from here to the NPP Lovisa, which was built in the 1970ies, is only ca 15 kilometers. Still, I cannot but consider that NPP to be a human security risk) ;

"effective multilateralism" (this means yes to UN operations, OK, but humanity has already waited some sixty odd years for the UN to achieve the nuclear disarmament. It just has to start somewhere, has it not? So why not start the nuclear abolition *unilaterally* here in Europe, to begin with? In addition, the UN is part of the problem when it comes to dismantling the nuclear power plants; it is no secret that the IAEA is in favour of constructing more, not less, NPPs.)

"regional focus" (so let's focus on the denuclearisation of our region and on the dismantlement of our military-industrial-academic tentacles e.g. the military aircraft industries of the EADS complex);

"clear civil command", "this means that the military must operate in support of law and order and under rules of engagement that are more similar to those of police work than to the rules of armed combat" (but this can only be achieved if we strengthen a global offentlighetsprincip, which is the Swedish term for the Freedom Of Information, defend our internet and support WikiLeaks; I keep remembering their "Collateral Murder" movie).

The human security may not be so much about what President Obama or NATO should be doing. Rather, It is about how we, the citizens, could be the change.

Spinelli Group

Mikael — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:08:00 +0200

Happy New Year! The Spinelli Group arranges one of its first its event in Brussels tomorrow, January 12, 2011. The event is called « The United States of Europe – Towards a Transnational Society? », and the main speakers there will be Joschka FISCHER, ancien Ministre allemand des Affaires Étrangères, and Jean-Marc FERRY, Philosophe.

I saw the Spinelli Group on the Net a couple months ago, and decided to join it. Btw, you may want to join it yourself. At the time I joined, there were not many other Finns. MEP Satu Hassi (Green) had joined. She is good. I shall write to her about my group membership and interest in Spinelli's thoughts and legacy.

Another who has joined is Pier Virgilio Dastoli. As you may remember, Dastoli is the former secretary of Spinelli, and he used also to direct the EU's mission to Rome.

As a Spinelli Group member, I got an invitation to the above-mentioned event - from Daniel Cohn-Bendit. But I will not attend the event. Am preparing for a trip to West Africa and the world Social Forum in Dakar 6-11 Februar.

Hierarchies are fluid and merit-based, however and whatever merit means to the peers. This also makes it difficult for established members to continue to hold onto their positions when they stop making valuable contributions. In volunteer organizations, this is often a major problem, as early contributors sometimes try to base their influence on old contributions, rather than letting the organizations change and develop. (Stalder & Hirsch 2002)

Pessimism of the intelligence: It remains to be seen whether the founders of the new group are old authoritarians or capable of following the soft approach to collaborative intelligence.

WikiLeaks and The Library (continued)

Mikael — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:08:00 +0200

Dear fellow librarian,

thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I can understand and accept your refusal to attaching your library, or your library society, to any single movement, like the WikiLeaks. Also, I cannot but agree when you note that it is not up to the librarians to react to every single country, dilemma or violation of freedom of speech.

Yes, the responsibility "to react" in every single case, rather belongs to the journalists and the citizens than to the personnel of the library or archive.

In the case of WikiLeaks, the journalists have indeed reacted. Fortunately. The fact that they have published, and continue to publish the WikiLeaks, is perhaps their most important general "reaction". And that is how it is supposed to be. As was previously mentioned, the International Federation of Journalists and the Reporters sans frontières, too, have come out to condemn the "desperate and dangerous" backlash over WikiLeaks.

What worries me and a great many people is the general, or should I say, structural, threat to the intellectual freedom which is imminent in the present situation. This is to do with the digital revolution and the necessary transition to a new political world-system which should be as democratic as possible, and where the militancy and warfare of the national states should be stemmed, checked and balanced by the global civil society.

Some are prone to see the present situation as a "cyber war", and others happily haste to engage in the combat. However, the internet must not be conceived as, or become, a war-zone. If the internet ceases to be an open public space, like the library, we will witness a dangerous backlash of democracy both internationally, and within the single nations.

So what ought librarians to do? It is our obligation to maintain and to defend the openness and civic nature of the internet, and of the library itself. No internet sites, or servers, should be blocked, or denied of service, as long as their content is legal. The legality of of information, in so far as it needs to be defined at all, must be judged by independent courts of justice, not by political executives, private corporations or militant groups (not to speak of the military proper).

The above-mentioned decision of the American Library of Congress to block the content of the Wikileaks (or even parts of it, such as the US Diplomatic Cables) , has set a very bad example. Libraries, too, have to conform to the laws and the courts of justice, but they must not allow their intellectual freedom to be arbitrarily restricted and suppressed, nor must they engage in self-censorship.

The intellectual freedom and the freedom of speech are great to have and to celebrate, but only if we use them are they really worth anything. I wish you a good working-day.

- Mika

PS Two additional remarks for the analyses of the WikiLeaks phenomenon . 1) It may be interesting to compare WikiLeaks with Greeenpeace. Isn't WikiLeaks for the political crisis what Greenpeace has been for the ecological crisis? 2) WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks and, more in general, the extension of the public sphere brought by the computers and the internet, is not about a single state such as the USA. It is about the world political system, and every single state in the world. Most probably, its is also about the banks and the financial system. Finally, it is about the libraries, too.

WikiLeaks and The Library

Mikael — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 11:13:00 +0200

TRUTH WILL OUT (Julian Assange). Poster by By R_SH on Flickr

Dear librarians and other citizens,

greetings from Finland where I am trying to understand the world, and what I am.

I visit the library. Therefore, I am a citizen. But now my library has blocked WikiLeaks:

"The Library decided to block Wikileaks because applicable law obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. Unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents' classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents."

Thus blogged, on December 3, 2010, the Director of Communications of the US Library of Congress (http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2010/12/why-the-library-of-congress-is-blocking-wikileaks/).

My library? Yes, the US Library of Congress, one of the world's greatest and finest libraries, belongs to US, the peoples. It must not become the Ministry of Truth of the US Federal State!

We are looking for The New Universalism. Well, here it is, in a nutshell: it is the openness of the library.

On closer thought, however, the Universalism of the library is not precisely new. Indeed, it is as old as the famous ancient library which was located in Egypt, Africa, the library of Alexandria, of which we read: "Other than collecting works from the past, the library was also home to a host of international scholars, well-patronized by the Ptolemaic dynasty with travel, lodging and stipends for their whole families".

The open space of the Library of Congress must be re-opened! If it remains closed, our open space of the world social forum, also is in danger. This is the famous "clear and present danger" (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_present_danger)!

Of course, the censorship of the LOC is ridiculously easy to circumvent. Its staff and visitors just have to leave the reading rooms of the LOC, and visit the nearest internet café, in order to read the WikiLeaks. Or go to the nearest newsstand to read the the newspapers... However, it is the very principle of the library which has to be defended. Which is to serve us, the citizens, with all the documents, without delay.

On December 2, 2010, the International Federation of Journalists, and the Reporters sans frontières, condemned the desperate and dangerous blockades against WikiLeaks, and expressed its concern against the repressive measures taken against Julian Assange and Bradley Manning:

"The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today condemned the political backlash being mounted against the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks and accused the United States of attacking free speech after it put pressure on the website's host server to shut down the site yesterday. Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today condemned the political backlash being mounted against the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks and accused the United States of attacking free speech after it put pressure on the website's host server to shut down the site yesterday. " "The IFJ is also concerned about the welfare and well-being of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, and Bradley Manning, the United States soldier in Iraq who is under arrest and suspected of leaking the information. Both men are the target of a growing political campaign mounted by government officials and right-wing politicians". http://www.ifex.org/united_states/2010/12/02/wikileaks_backlash/

Now is the time for library and information professionals (LIS) everwhere to join the professional communicators in their defense of WikiLeaks and free speech. Libraries and social forums unite! Provide space forWikiLeaks on the Library's internet servers!

- Mikael

Update: It was asked how, precisely, we can support WikiLeaks. One immediate answer is Mass Mirroring its website.

Fighting Fire with Buckets

Mikael — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:34:00 +0300

Fighting Fire with Buckets is the title of an excellent WEED-paper by Peter Wahl on the attempts of the European Union to reform the financial sector. The text can be downloaded here as a PDF..

The EU itself, as a "frontrunner of the financialisation" of the world economy, "bears a certain co-responsibility for the crisis", which "has deepened the contradictions inside the EU culminating in the Greek crisis", it is constated in the introduction. The paper examines the measures and strategies whereby the EU tries to solve or alleviate the problems:

The directive on European supervision of banks, insurance, securities and systemic risk; a compromise "which strengthened the national component and weakened the supranational" was reached at the ECOFIN conference, and approved by the European Parliament in September 2010; it will enter into force in January 2011;

EU:s proposal on regulating the Credit Rating Agencies (EU 2009a:2);

The projected Directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers (EU 2009c), which refers to the regulation of Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, real estate funds, commodity funds and infrastructure funds;

Regulation of OTC-trading of derivatives like Credit Default Swaps (CDS) , which have been used for speculation at large scale, presented by Commissioner Barnier in September. "The basic idea of the regulation is to establish a central counterparty (CCP) for all trade with derivatives", Wahl writes. This "would be quite a strong instrument and it will be interesting to see, whether it will survive the further law making process" (p 27);

Discussion on the subject: Making the finance sector pay for the costs of the crisis. This could lead to the introduction of a Bank Levy, a Financial Activities Tax (FAT) or a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT), or a combination of these.

The forty-page analysis of the pros and cons of these proposals, and their deficiences, ends with these words:

Today, the world is confronted with historically exceptional challenges, such as climate change, hunger, poverty and increasing shortage of important raw materials. Under these circumstances, finance has to meet qualitatively new requirements. The world needs financial markets at the service of sustainable development, of social equity at global level for the coming decades. Tremendous efforts need to be financed. We cannot afford another crisis like the present one, and we cannot afford a financial system, which serves at first place the profit interests of a tiny minority. A new paradigm is needed with regard to finance. In the light of these realities, the EU regulation of finance is like fire fighting with buckets.

My comments:

One reflection which imposes itself on the reader is that 'the overall economic bias in the process of integration' (which Wahl rightly identifies as the main problem of the EU, p 12) cannot be fully understood with a purely economic analysis, which abstracts from the political and military reality. For instance: can we grasp the real significance of the Greek crisis without taking into account that country's huge imports of fighter jets and similar military hardware from the factories of the transatlantic military-industrial-academic complex? What restrictions did the EU impose - or is it planning to impose - on the military spending and the arms exports of its member countries?

Wahl's analysis admirably highlights the many economic "asymmetries and imbalances within the EU". Will the European integration continue? Or, are we already witnessing the disintegration of the Eurozone and the whole EU? To these questions an economic analysis can not provide any meaningful answers. The question of Europe's Union is, today more than hitherto, a question of its political and military independence from the USA. Will "Europeanism continue to be a relatively superfluous appendage to Atlanticism and will hardly go beyond the economic liberalization of the three Communities", as Altiero Spinelli wrote in Foreign Affairs, (July 1962), or will it become strong enough to create a democratic and independent Federal state?

One of the necessary conditions for a democratic European state is the unilateral denuclearization of Europe. As Spinelli wrote (in that same article): the Americans will have to accept it. So let us think and act as if a free and united Europe already existed.

Ufology

Mikael — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 07:15:00 +0300

Former Air Force Officers allege that UFOs have Tampered With Nuclear Missiles. This story at AOL is widely popular.

However, if we are rationalists, we use Occam's Razor which says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Therefore, I should like to cut short the explanations which are based on stories from former officers about UFOs, which have tampered with US nuclear missiles. Especially if the US authorities are alleged to have tried, or still try, to keep the stories secret.

When asked for simple explanations, I would present either one of the two following:

1. Sensations bring money to their vendors. There are media magnates out there who earn money on the ufology.

2. Ufology is used in a conspirative way by the military-industrial-academic complex in order to scare and control us, the people. In this particular case, yes, the extraterrestrials do provide an additional pretext, albeit only a vague and unofficial one, for the continuation and further development of the nuclear weapons systems.