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On Monday 14 November 2011 03:10 AM, Fouad Bajwa wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Parminder,
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<pre wrap="">Now, we of the global civil society have to make up our mind on this.> Unfortunately, most people in the IG related civil society still live in a> strong denial of this emerging global reality. It is surprising how many> among the IG civil society themselves seem to have little problem with US> taking the leading and defining role in shaping and enforcing this new> emerging regime, as it evidently is.
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<pre wrap="">What factors do you think are causing this misunderstanding?
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Fouad,<br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">One way to respond to your
question is to speak of new class struggles involving global tectonic
shifts in class structure as a major aspect of the emerging network
society. For the first time, the economically resurgent middle
classes of the developing world are developing common economic,
cultural, social and, consequently, <i>political </i>interest to an
extent that that has perhaps begun to exceed their 'common-ness' with
their compatriot lower classes in their respective countries. This
global (and the globalist) middle class distrusts and hates nation
based political systems, as something that seeks to pull them down
into some kind of a common destiny with masses who do not seem to them
to have much of a future. Not anytime soon in any case, and they are
in a hurry. At the very least, they – the lower classes – are not
really quite <i>interesting</i>, as the global middle class is, but I
suspect that the major reason is economic interest, over which
cultural, social etc interests are being built. (Though the cultural
attractions of a hyper stimulant-seeking society may, to a good
extent, be an independent factor as well.)</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">This is bit ironical
because the post-feudal professional/ business-based middle class in
the (then colonised) developing countries was born as a nationalist
group with strong
sentiment against imperialism (to which they are today so fatally
attracted). The lower classes were too busy with eking out, what was
certainly a meagre, living to bother much about nationalist
revolutions. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">Anyway, back to the
contemporary moment, this new global middle class is unable to put
its faith into traditional (or perhaps even any new) political
systems, for understandable reasons, They prefer to be led and guided
by the blind global economic/ market system, and to the extent that
it needs some basic minimum leadership and political direction (even
if mostly of a market-dynamism ensuring and enforcement kind) they
are not too averse to US and large corporates together providing
this. They do realize that this is not the best thing, but they see
no other option and therefore somewhat grudgingly accept it; because
the alternative is simply not acceptable to them. Governance, for
them, is largely reduced to a technical function, of which one sees so
many strong proofs in discussions on this list. They want to let
themselves loose from the shackles of politics at home; of which the
agenda they fear most is that they will have to share their wealth
and prosperity with the others. This is their escape to the developed
world even without their country needing to become developed. And
they are able to achieve this even without necessarily having to
leave the shores of the country of their, what may be called in this
context as, accidental habitation. A worthy network society
phenomenon. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">However, if I am to be
more generous to people in the IG civil society, and less into
cynical-sounding structural analysis, my response to your question
may be that people here are just too afraid of a fear that they can
instinctively feel and understand – of governments taking control
of the Internet, and kind of killing the most exciting socio-cultural
phenomenon since a long long time, which would of course be such a
pity, to put it mildly. However, perhaps, the issue of how the
phenomenon of the Internet is able to skew distribution of economic
and social well being – not necessarily in a positive manner, what
kind of structural changes may be underway, and what kind of
strategies are required to confront the negative developments in this
regard, may not professionally be the foremost agenda among most
civil society actors at present involved with the IG arena. And, those
civil society actors who are otherwise most involved with such
socio-economic struggles, do not have the resources and time, and
perhaps also the vision, to yet engage with the IG arena. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">While I have a proposed an
economic interest and class based analysis above, I do not think it
impossible, or even unlikely, that ethics and human values may still
overwhelm narrow economic interests to stem the tide of many current
negative global trends. 'Occupy the wall street' kind of social
movements may well become a deep cultural phenomenon that can force
far reaching changes. After all, basic democratic, one-person
one-vote, based systems are still alive in much of the world, and
properly inspired and organized people can yet direct our common
destines in the right directions. That would be a worthy struggle to
be part of. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span lang="en-US">Meanwhile I greatly
recommend this article on changing nature of civil society action in
the network age at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lisa-veneklasen/citizen-action-and-perverse-confluence-of-opposing-agendas?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=Nightly_2011-11-11%2005%3a30">http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lisa-veneklasen/citizen-action-and-perverse-confluence-of-opposing-agendas?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=Nightly_2011-11-11%2005%3a30</a> </span><a
href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/lisa-veneklasen/citizen-action-and-perverse-confluence-of-opposing-agendas"></a></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US"> </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">Apologies for the long
email, but I thought Fouad's question was important, and it would be
inappropriate for me to leave it unanswered after I had suggested
that there are structural issues about how much of the IG civil society
responds to the neo-imperialist agenda of the US together with its
digital mega corps. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm;" lang="en-US">Parminder </p>
<br>
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The basic objective for all business ventures/activities remains the
same, an activity that generates profit! Free flow of information,
information products etc all should result in increased revenues, more
market controls, more profits, period.
I am trying to understand this whole debate in another context that
may seem irrelevant. I know there is a significant difference in views
and opinions between CS actors from developed and developing nations.
Many don't have direction. Many cannot convince even their own policy
makers about who should control their Internet or even the fact that
can the Internet be controlled or not in the first place.
We here in Pakistan have a mixed feeling as well because pluralism and
tolerance stand at cross roads with the emergence and penetration of
the Internet in our lives. My region recently implemented a very large
ban on over 150,000 websites/addresses termed as
objectionable/pornographic content. To this end, this region is
strictly looking at more controls and access denial and this is being
done by the authorities with a great deal of citizen support and
requests. It remains that this process was not shared or input invited
from a broader audience or multistakeholder consultations. This is
single sided decision making that is actually prevalent in other areas
of governance in our society.
This filtering does not affect Pakistani citizens in any direct manner
but still its a display of unaccountable and non-transparent authority
that has been evident in the recent past across many other types of
content political or non-political. The question here is, when this
region has no direct role in the content produced and made available
to its citizens, or, when most of this information is flowing from the
US and other western countries, or, when almost none of the developing
countries have access or control over which domains are blocked
because of counterfeiting or violation of western trademarks and
products, then does it even make sense to publicize such documents and
papers by US digital corporations? They already have full control here
so whats the point?
On a separate note, it always raises an eyebrow that why Human Rights
remains a no-go-area in such papers/statements? A small example was
that during the Arab Spring in Egypt, a Google employee (though he
worked for google in the emirates) was abducted and restrained by the
Egyptian authorities...this individual was projected by media to have
played a significant role in helping gather people online and getting
the word out through facebook...and still no consideration of HR? So
its still a thin red line.......
So far, it seems like intellectual masturbation for the sake of it by
these corporations??? In a global environment where cultural diversity
and tolerance continue to remain an ever growing challenge, CS will
remain divided.....
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