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Sunday 24 May 2009

NIGD Reflections (contd.)

By Mikael on Sunday 24 May 2009, 11:50

Do we have common references? The answer is yes. Vashudhaiva kutumbakam, we are all one family. We are also an association and an organisation, the Network Institute for Global Democratization (NIGD). NIGD's present chairperson, Matti Kohonen, has sketched our agenda. That, obviously, is also a common reference.
But we need further ones, in particular, for our communication in the networked institute. Our communication is part of an effort to build a common culture, and I mentioned books, which in my view suit the purpose: H.G. Wells' "The Open Conspiracy"; I. Wallerstein's "European Universalism"; and M.K. Gandhi's "Hind Swaraj". These works are relatively short, which means that no researcher and/or a social activist can pretend that he or she does not have the time to read them. Each one relates strongly to global democratization. One difference is that Gandhi and Wells are precursors while Wallerstein is a living member. Gandhi, of course, is much more of a practitioner than Wells and Wallerstein, who are theorists. But Wallerstein strives to greater universality than Wells, who is limited to the European universalism. In the writings and speeches of NIGD members which I have seen or heard, you often find literal references to at least one of these three, very different, figures. I have not seen any references to the theory or praxis of Simone Weil, nor have I studied her works, but I have heard or read some very interesting quotations from them.

The network itself is also a common reference, and a new one, because never before has humanity had an internet. Yet the humanity is still divided in 190 and something so called soverign states. To hell with that sovereignty! 'The hell' is not a universal notion, though.

Previous NIGD Reflections:
http://blog.spinellisfootsteps.info/post/2008/12/09/NIGD-Reflections

Where the hell is that? Here:

Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn
Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire
That labours with the wind, then to and fro
Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds,
Threw out its voice, and spake: "When I escap'd
From Circe, who beyond a circling year
Had held me near Caieta, by her charms,
Ere thus Aeneas yet had nam'd the shore,
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
Of my old father, nor return of love,
That should have crown'd Penelope with joy,
Could overcome in me the zeal I had
T' explore the world, and search the ways of life,
Man's evil and his virtue.  Forth I sail'd
Into the deep illimitable main,
With but one bark, and the small faithful band
That yet cleav'd to me.  As Iberia far,
Far as Morocco either shore I saw,
And the Sardinian and each isle beside
Which round that ocean bathes.  Tardy with age
Were I and my companions, when we came
To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain'd
The bound'ries not to be o'erstepp'd by man.
The walls of Seville to my right I left,
On the' other hand already Ceuta past.
"O brothers!"  I began, "who to the west
Through perils without number now have reach'd,
To this the short remaining watch, that yet
Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof
Of the unpeopled world, following the track
Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence we sprang:
Ye were not form'd to live the life of brutes
But virtue to pursue and knowledge high."
With these few words I sharpen'd for the voyage
The mind of my associates, that I then
Could scarcely have withheld them.  To the dawn
Our poop we turn'd, and for the witless flight
Made our oars wings, still gaining on the left.
Each star of the' other pole night now beheld,
And ours so low, that from the ocean-floor
It rose not.  Five times re-illum'd, as oft
Vanish'd the light from underneath the moon
Since the deep way we enter'd, when from far
Appear'd a mountain dim, loftiest methought
Of all I e'er beheld.  Joy seiz'd us straight,
But soon to mourning changed.  From the new land
A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side
Did strike the vessel.  Thrice it whirl'd her round
With all the waves, the fourth time lifted up
The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
And over us the booming billow clos'd."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8789/8789-h/p8.htm#26

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Tuesday 9 December 2008

NIGD Reflections

By Mikael on Tuesday 9 December 2008, 10:00

The Network Institute for Global Democratization (NIGD) is a network of more or less academic researchers or social activists, and especially for persons who try to be both. In his Diario europeo, Spinelli mentions a conversation with Immanuel Wallerstein in Rome 11 January 1964. "Nel pomeriggio, visto i due prof. della Columbia, Frankel e Wallerstein, piacevoli conversazioni." Last March, at a social evening for NIGD members and supporters in Helsinki, I in my turn had the possibility to have a nice chat with prof. Wallerstein and other members of the network. Enclosed here are a couple of recent postings to NIGD's mailing list. My message can be summed up in two sentences. First: European nuclear disarmament. Then a positive change in the climate.

[Subject: open space vs. institutional power (4 Dec)]



Dear NIGD-members,

thanks for your reflections. Some of you have said much with few words. I shall try do the same. It will be in 3 parts, though. This is part 1.

Mikko Sauli (like others before him) pointed to the need to define the relation of the social forum to institutional power, and Tord Björk rejected (like he has done before) the basic 'open space'-concept of the forum. But the solution to the problem of the political power of the forum lies precisely in its being an 'open space'!

The social forum is an embryo of world society and "world government"; the most promising so far. So if the WSF fails to grow into a baby and an adolescent youth, it will have to be reinvented - as an open space. I put quotation marks around the not-yet-existing kind of "government", because "world government" cannot and will not be like the previous state government. H.G. Wells is one of the thinkers and visionaries who have had more than an inkling of how it is going to work:

" Existing states are primarily militant states, and a world state cannot be militant. There will be little need for president or king to lead the marshalled hosts of humanity, for where there is no war there is no need of any leader to lead hosts anywhere, and in a polyglot world a parliament of mankind or any sort of council that meets and talks is an inconceivable instrument of government. The voice will cease to be a suitable vehicle. World government, like scientific process, will be conducted by statement, criticism, and publication that will be capable of efficient translation".[1]

With his usual clout for anticipation of things to come, Wells wrote this already around 1930 ( in his political manifesto, called "The Open Conspiracy"; later also published under the title: What To Do with Our Lives?). Today it is easier to see what government 'conducted by statement, crticism and publication' means. It means cybernetic government, self-governing cyberspace, indeed, an open space. The institution in which this power must be rooted is, of course, the internet, which has in less than two decades spread to practically all peoples in all corners of the globe.

However, before the internet and its cyberspace can become established and sustainable, a leap forward is required in the emerging area of global power politics, which sofar has gone under the name of 'internet governance'. What is at stake here , if you like, is 'world governance' over 'world governance'.

Perry Barlow, in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996) issued a necessary warning:

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

So, if the state governments with their executive, legislative and judicial powers shall not run the net, then who shall?

Answer: Internet governance is like running a library. It consists, essentially, in keeping the books, and more precisely, in keeping the vast catalog of numbers and addresses which need to be matched in order to be readable by humans. This task, the task of the ICANN, is a typical task for librarians! Moreover, fino in fondo the internet is the new public library - the public external memory - of mankind. The internet is an extension of our literacy and of all our libraries.

Cyberspace, 'open space' - the difference between these two exists only in our heads. In reality, they are one and the same. However, in order to interpret their meaning in terms of social power structures, it is necessary to reconsider our traditional, Montesquiean doctrine on the division of statepowers. Cyberspace - the open space - is the Fourth state power, the Informational Power. It cannot but be global and cosmopolitan. It has to be free from the fetters of the military-industrial complexes, i.e. the hierarchical organization of empires and nation-states.

[1] See Wells, H.G.: The Open Conspiracy. H.G. Wells on World Revolution. Edited and with a Critical Introduction by W. Warren Wagar. Praeger 2002, p 70-71.

[2] From experience, I know that this formulation may invite an argument about 'Euro-centric' attitudes. The libraries of Sumer, however, precede the earliest evidence of the Greek myth about Europe with a couple of millennia. Hardly any social institution is more universal than the library.

Best wishes,

- Mikael



[Subject: the state of the movement (5 Dec)]

As in my preceding note, I start from the premise that we are trying to build an 'open space', that is, a world where the freedom of information reigns and where the peoples are in power (I refer, in other words, to our commitment to 'global democratization'). Tord Björk already commented that I omit the empirical evidence of the European and World Social Forums. No, I do not want to neglect the real experience and shortcomings of the forum process, but I think that our definition of the forum and its open space has been far too narrow. Above all, it must extend to the other 'open spaces', and therefore to the libraries and the internet, in the first place, because these (when combined as I sketched in part 1) may actually enable a common independent (from the resons of state) 'information' and thus 'human understanding' of mankind. But also to the 'open spaces' which are called universities (this word also refers to 'universal' as opposed to national or corporate), and, of course, to journalism and the free press. But these are all (we are all) still mental prisoners of the old system that has to go.

For years, the political 'line of demarcation' against 'Neoliberalism' enabled a broad union, but the crash of its casino economy has now practically deleted its significance. At the level of consciousness, we have moved from more or less peaceful times to a period of war and revolution. Thus questions which we 'normally' shunt aside, because of their terrible and/or confusing character, suddenly have to be answered and decided. These questions are not about 'isms'. They are about real things, such as atomic warheads, nuclear power plants and the radioactive waste, which was dumped in Somalia with the help of the mafia during the decades before the tsunami 26 December 2004 (as reported by UNEP, although the UNEP failed to mention the role of the mafia) [1]. If we do not manage to launch a common offensive for the abolition of the weapons of mas destruction and the dismantling of the nuclear power plants, then we might as well give up. The choice is, as Albert Camus wrote 8 August 1945, between "collective suicide" or "an intelligent use of the achievements of science" [2].

One of the intelligent uses of electronics, and thus of the atomic science, has already been mentioned and appraised: the internet, a technology, which can literally be (and which nearly is) owned by everybody, and which can literally govern itself, provided that the librarians keep the books with its names and numbers and secure its continuity.

Recently, a French anti-nuclear activist opened her speech at a demonstration in my home town Lovisa (which already has two Soviet type nuclear reactors, and a new 'western' NPP coming): - In the case of a leakage from the nuclear power plant, we may not smell or fell it, she said. Already for this reason, we are totally dependent upon the central political power for news and assessments of the accidents and catastrophes.

This state of absolute dependence is of course the same, or even worse, in the case of the the military applications, the missiles and the missile defence installations on the ground and in outer space: from its beginning, the nuclear state has been incompatible with democracy, with people power. Since 1945 when the war ended and the nuclear age begun, democracy is thus nothing but an illusion built on a fraud. And this is still our predicament because we have not felt compelled enough to make the choice which Camus immediately saw that we will have to make. The point I want to repeat, then, as far as our movement is concerned, is that the time for the choice is now or never, and that it is most naive and stupid to believe that the presidents of the republics, the ministers of the governments, and their diplomats are capable of solving this problem, which can only be solved from within our movement.

However, to return for a change to the positive and intelligent use of our knowledge: What happens when the connection to the internet is broken? Well, some irritation, at most. An expletive word about bad service. A healthy reminder of the fact that it is not absolutely necessary to be connected with all and everybody all the time! In sum, the problem with the lost connection bears no resemblance with the problem caused by a nuclear explosion or leakage; the connection can and it will be fixed by some simple computer assistants without help from any high political authorities -- that is, if we manage to keep the net off their criminal reasons of state.

Never were the reasons of state more criminal than they are in the age of the internet. Yet it seems that our movement for justice has sofar not had the guts to communicate and discuss openly about the 9/11-contradictions, and to demand an international judicial investigation of the 9/11-crimes, i.e. the destruction of the twin towers and the persons who happened to be inside them, the demolition of the third tower which was not even hit by a plane (and which had been evacuated) , the likewise spectacular "attack" on the Pentagon which succeeded under the nose of the whole imperial military machinery in spite of the collapse of the WTC being already shown on television, the mysterious fragmentation of the fourth plane, and then, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, backed up with the lies about 911 and ever new lies and the bogus "war on terror" ... And so it seems, that the task of bringing up the 9/11-issue, and keeping it alive in the public consciousness (via the internet, where else?), has been left to a special section called "Truth movement", as if it where possible to specialize in "the truth"!

A propos, I do not know how true this anecdote is (may the concerned persons answer themselves), but it is told that the great Noam Chomsky was approached by the leading figures of the movement for truth, among them the philosopher David Ray Griffin and the physicist Steven E. Jones. The latter asked, as I do you here, for Chomsky to join the appeal for an independent international investigation, and Chomsky, in turn, is reported to have suggested that the evidence (the evidence of the untruths, I may add) be submitted for publication in a couple of leading scientific journals. Which is precisely what Griffin, Jones et alios did hereupon. Moreover, their evidence was peer-reviewed and published in couple of scientific journals; not the most often quoted, perhaps, but what the heck, decide for yourself, and express your own honest opinion,perhaps there is still some time to do it. [3] Do you seriously believe that the present crisis can be solved if we decide to avoid and forget this necessary Auseinandersetzung with the lies on which the present order is based? What future order can be built on the current lies about 9/11?

To sum up: Resolute and unified action to abolish the vast weapons systems of mass destruction on the ground, in the seas, in the air and in space and to successively dismantle the existing nuclear power plants instead of planning and building new ones - "the social" of the social forum must include and constantly reveal this aspect of the real power politics. Otherwise, we are not even considering the real relations of force (the strentgh, but also the weakness, of our adversaries).

Secondly, 'a global justice movement' ought not to let the perpetrators of the 9/11 crimes go unpunished. [4]

And, thirdly, I have tried to formulate the need to give our movement a library dimension, which, when specified and concretized, means building the common library and external memory of mankind with the building blocks that are already at hand, namely, the existing public and academic libraries and the internet. This equals the extending and the guaranteeing of the continuity of the 'open space' of which the peoples of the social forum are speaking.

Having thus pointed to three crucial problems which arise when we take an inward look on our movement, one (the "library dimension") rather universal and timeless, the two others more specific and acute, I proceed to affirming my conviction that the agendas which our movement has already produced for the solution of the current crisis, are both relevant and realistic, and yet not viable, because too narrowly focussed on the financial system and the economy. For instance, the "Green New Deal" proposal, which was recently brought to my attention (actually via the seemingly harmless Facebook area of the Net) by German Attac and Tax Justice activist Sven Giegold, would be a very good one, but only if it would clearly indicate that we must take on the military-industrial complex, and especially the parts which keeps it all together, the aforementioned WMD systems. There can e.g. be no tax justice if we do not get rid of missile defence, because "under Bush the corruption has acquired Nigerian qualities", and

"Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding which won't run out however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work." [5]

In the third part of my analysis I shall take a closer look at the proposals I have been able to spot concerning the casino crash thanks to this nigd-list, and other social forum related net-forums.

All the best.

- Mikael



[1] See After the Tsunami. Rapid Environmental Assessment. UNEP 2005, p 134.

[2] See Camus: Actuelles. Ecrits politiques. Gallimard 1958, pp 67-69.

[3] In particular, see Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley: "Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction", In Open Civil Engineering Journal 2008:2, pp.35-40. (http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/gen.php?file=35TOCIEJ.pdf)

[4] Sofar, only the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq have been "punished", that is, by invasion and war. The actual trials and judgments are still ahead. By the way, did you notice that the evidence which the US police hase been able to produce against the main suspect, Mr Osama Bin Laden, has not even been enough to publish a warrant on him. See Chapter 18 of David Ray Griffin: 9/11 Contradictions. An Open Letter to Congress and the Press. 2008. The title of the chapter: "Is there hard evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility?"

[5] See George Monbiot's column "The Magic Pudding" , August 19, 2008. (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/08/19/the-magic-pudding/)



[Draft resolution on Sarkozy and Blair (6 Dec)]

Dear NIGD,

while preparing part 3 of my reflections about the situation and the future of NIGD (parts 1 and 2 were posted to this list yesterday, and the day before) , I receive a draft resolution, which my friend Wayne Hall and others (whose common denominator is membership in Attac Hellas) are proposing to the Greek EcoGreens, who meet in Athens this week-end. Although not a Greek EcoGreen myself, I feel that the resolution concerns me and us; indeed, I suggest that we all endorse it.

Best
- Mikael

--- start of draft resolution ---

The focus on positive programmatic proposals for environmentally and socially responsible solutions to today's financial crisis is admirable but we should never forget that we are engaged in politics, not academic discussion, and that we are up against opponents who are relentlessly political in everything they do.

French president Sarkozy's choice of Tony Blair to co-host with him in Paris in early January, AFTER the expiry of France's term in the EU presidency, a high-profile conference entitled "New World: Values, Development and Regulation"

http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=658

suggests that France has not given up on two ambitions that should be perceived as threatening: the ambition to shape Europe "in its own image" and the ambition to install Tony Blair in the position of first full-time president of the reformed European Council, a post created by the Treaty of Lisbon.

The organizers of the planned Paris conference have succeeded in securing the participation in it of prestigious names such as Joseph Stiglitz, names formerly associated with oppositional to neo-liberal economics and politics.

This means that a renewed respectability is going to be bestowed on Sarkozy's plans for Blair, which had received a setback last May when Angela Merkel refused to support them and Sarkozy was obliged to issue a retraction, acknowledging that "Blair's involvement in the Iraq war had damaged his standing among EU fellow members."

The European Greens must regain the political initiative on this question, which is in danger of being lost. The electoral campaign for the 2009 European elections is an opportunity to mount a counter-campaign to Sarkozy's attempt to construct a European Union in the image of the Bush administration that Americans have now voted out of office.

Let us recall the fact that the International Criminal Court in the Hague has been asked to probe war crimes allegations by Tony Blair. There is a standing demand in Britain that Blair be put on trial in the Hague as a war criminal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od_jdg7n6-s&feature=related

and it is time for it to become Europe-wide. The European Greens are in a position to spearhead a campaign centred on this demand.

--- end of draft resolution ---

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