Fwd: Re: [bestbits] Best Bits MAG nominations for your approval - URGENT

[parminder]

While I am more or less done with raising process issues about BestBits 
given that there is such an almost violent resistance from the 
'responsibility holders', following up on Guru's email, I cannot stop 
myself from observing how perspectives can change when it is about 'us' 
- something which is most unfortunate for civil society to do...

Many civil society persons, including you Jeremy, if I am not wrong, 
have been seriously objecting to how 1net has been organising itself, 
and also seeking to become 'the' non-gov front for the Brazil meeting... 
1net's prime-movers or  'owners' can also as well say - as you do - 
that, well, there are so many urgent issues at hand (which is an 
indisputable fact), lets not get into unnecessary process issues, we can 
always do it later... that unknown, and never to come, later time...

Civil society must always remain very vary of thinking of themselves as 
somehow so morally superior that they are exempt from normal 
accountability and transparency requirements.... All serious CS kinds I 
know and respect always think that civil society as the prime 'question 
asker' has to hold itself to much higher standards than what it seeks 
from others...

parminder

On Monday 02 December 2013 11:56 AM, Guru गुरु wrote:
> Dear Jeremy,
> I am forwarding my earlier mail on your 'now is not the right time' 
> argument.
> Guru
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	Re: [bestbits] Best Bits MAG nominations for your approval - 
> URGENT
> Date: 	Thu, 21 Nov 2013 16:39:17 +0530
> From: 	Guru गुरु <Guru at ITforChange.net>
> To: 	bestbits at lists.bestbits.net, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org>
>
>
>
> On 11/21/2013 01:54 PM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>> On 20 Nov 2013, at 10:59 pm, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>> Unfortunately in the post-Snowden world “trust us” is not a 
>>> sufficient answer—only transparency and accountability are.
>>> As long as the Steering Committee is self-appointed through murky 
>>> procedures and as long as this self-appointed (Interim or no) 
>>> Steering Committee chooses to act (and present itself to the world) 
>>> as though it has a mandate to act on behalf of the BB grouping 
>>> whatever that might be, there will necessarily and quite reasonably 
>>> be a lack of trust and questions as to legitimacy.
>>
>> Actually the only such questions are coming from within; we are 
>> undermining ourselves, and to my mind unnecessarily so.
>
> Jeremy,
>
> when questions regarding trust/credibility come from within, even more 
> reason to address it. Do you want to wait till outsiders (who are 
> perhaps relatively ignorant of the black box nature of the steering 
> committee working) raise this issue and sink BB credibility completely?
>
>>  Snowden did not tar civil society with the same brush as the NSA. 
>>  We have presented an interim procedure for democratising the 
>> steering committee in Bali, which remains open for discussion and 
>> will be implemented soon once finalised, but to rush its finalisation 
>> now at a time when leadership is required would be pointless and 
>> would simply remove us from some very important processes that are 
>> rolling along with or without us.
> you are making an assumption that this is binary - either we engage 
> with substantive issues or focus on process. Is is really possible to 
> separate the two so easily... What if BB's valuable contributions are 
> seen as tainted by 'murky' process later and hence not given their due?
>
> regards,
> Guru

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