[bestbits] OFF-TOPIC - Brazil: Return to Terror

Tue Nov 6 00:38:25 EST 2018

This connects to my below email and therefore posting it...

Iran to be choked by cutting if from global financial grids, at the whim
and fancy of the US President

https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1450521/swift-suspends-iran-banks

and hear the threat

"I promise you that doing business with Iran in defiance of our
sanctions will ultimately be a much more painful business decision than
pulling out of Iran and being connected to Iran entirely," says the US
Secretary of State ...
https://www.firstpost.com/business/us-warns-of-severe-swift-penalties-for-firms-continuing-sanctionable-commercial-transactions-with-iran-5509241.html

Simply bec though democrats under Obama were fine with getting along
with Iran, Trump is not, and so it is not even a bi-partisan US
decision, but then Iran is to be suffocated by de-linking it from global
financial grids.

The question for the IG-ians is: Why cant or wont the US do the same for
the Internet, its DNS and routing systems? That isnt much more drastic
than throwing a country off global financial grids .

Would those who have assiduously promoted and curated the US centred and
controlled global IG model explain, if indeed they think they owe any
explanation to anyone at all!

Or they can keep singing their UN-is-the-most-evil-tunes,

Well, if SWIFT system had been under a appropriate and legitimate
multilateral/ UN system, this atrocity would have been avoided.  But why
should people  here protest, they aren't from Iran . But you all that
famous saying, 'First they came for the...... '

parminder

On 05/11/18 10:49 PM, parminder wrote:
>
> Hi David
>
> Sorry for the delay, was busy. My responses are below ...
>
> On 30/10/18 8:31 AM, David Cake wrote:
>> snip
>>
>>
>> 	Thinking of it as left/right is simplistic. 
>
> Ian called it a lurch to the right, and I just followed up to ask --
> since this is an IG discussion list -- whether trying to take the
> epicentre of global IG to the WEF was not a lurch to the right? You
> dont think it is a fair question?
>
>> Authoritarian governments come in both left and right varieties.
>
> They absolutely do.... Left -- or starting as left -- has in fact much
> more than an equal share here.
>
>
>>  The UN has proved to be very good at providing a way for authoritarian governments, such as the Saudi and PRC regimes, to have strong international influence. 
>> 	The UN system has the Saudis as active, influential member of the Human Rights Council - do you think that Internet Governance would be better off if regimes like KSA were more influential? 
>> 	Following the UN system is to empower anti-democratic states, and thus weaken civil society. Why do you think that is leftist? 
>
> Why would I say the UN is leftist? Not sure how you are applying this
> terminology here . As for propping Saudi regimes -- dont tell me you
> dont know who really props the Saudi regime... Ok ,let me give a
> cue... It is the country that sits at the top of the global governance
> of the Internet, both formal kinds like the ICANN system, and informal
> kinds, like the private governance run by its global corporations.
> BTW, just the last month, Trump in his typically boorish way said that
> Saudi regime would not exist but for the US, and this was one of the
> rare moments of Trump speaking what is considerably true (with all
> respect to the Saudi people).
>
> So, my question is, why do you oppose the role of the UN in global IG
> just bec Saudi regime is one of about 190 members of the UN, and by
> turn participates in its bodies, but seem to have no opinion on the
> fact the global IG is today largely run by a country who fully props
> and keeps alive that regime (which will quite well survive without the
> UN but not without the US)...
>
> At least at the UN there is some logic for Saudi regime's
> participation. It is like, say, in India (as well many other
> democratic countries), there are people with criminal records in the
> parliament, but for that I do not oppose the institution of parliament
> itself but would like to see how at the electoral level in the
> districts such a selection or election does not take place..... But
> US's propping of the regime you seem to have great problem with is for
> the most narrow and selfish reasons, to get oil supplies, bec Saudi's
> the biggest buyers of US arms, and one of the biggest investors inside
> the US,  and so on.... When during the IANA transition, there was a
> demand at least to get immunity for ICANN from US jurisdiction (the
> one that props saudi regime), at least under its own immunity laws, I
> did not hear you , or other UN haters here, at all give any opinion,
> much less support.....
>
> Politics is an art of the possible, in choosing between the US and the
> UN to lead or anchor global IG (or, well, the WEF), my choice is
> clear... What is yours? (Pl dont give me any bottom-up fokllore, lets
> stay in an adults discussion, I mean lets stay real)
>
>> 	Or to put it another way - why are you still simplistically equating the UN system with ‘the left’ or ‘democracy’ after all these years, when the arguments that that is a simplistic and problematic position have been made again and again, and never really answered?
>
> I answered above, as I have often and always answered... To which
> answer I am eager to hear your response ... In fact, what you and
> others have never answered is how US, or global corporate, leadership
> of global IG is better than the UN's? Would you care to answer it now?
>
>>> The current Trumpian phenomenon is precisely the product of a trans-national elite seeking their common economic advantages often using the cover of social liberalism without economic egalitarianism -- where market without political governance was to be the defender of rights!
>> 	And you won’t find many defenders of neoliberalism here - but there is some value in defending actual liberalism, such as valuing democracy over authoritarian states.
>
>
> Absolutely so. Real liberalism is one the greatest achievements of
> human civilisation (I am currently reading the brilliant 'The liberal
> hour' by JK Galbraith) . And yes  democracy has to be valued over, and
> saved from, its political suppression in authoritarianism, as well as
> its economic suppression in neoliberalism. (There are people here who
> opposed putting the world 'democracy' in a UNESCO IG related
> declaration in 2015 claiming that it 'carries baggage'!
>
>
>>> This is a direct result of promotion of an one-sided talk of human rights -- only civil and political ones and not social and economic ones, which have openly been flouted even ridiculed on , yes, IG civil society lists.... Dot ask me for real examples, bec I have followed this and I know many….
>>> Ok, take two, the very concept and not just the real implementation of 'public interest' has been ridiculed on the NCUC (of ICANN's)website, to which many CS stalwarts of IG belong.
>> 	Indeed, because the concept of public interest has been coopted within ICANN to justify policies that have no real connection to the public interest, such as expansion of trademark interests. The PICS (Public Interest Commitment System) has been gravely abused to enforce policies like a globally protected trademark list that have been rejected through community policy processes. In other words, NCUC has doubts about the use of public interest arguments because they have been used to justify the sort of policies I expect you would oppose. 
>> 	It is fair to say that NCUC is divided over the question of whether the public interest can be defined in a useful manner that is meaningfully defined yet limits its potential for this form of abuse. But I don’t think you would be in disagreement over the problematic use of public interest arguments. 
>
> People have misused the concept of democracy, in fact many despots do
> so..... we do not therefore junk or question the very term or concept
> of 'democracy' but question how it is implemented or distorted...
> Similarly, 'public interest' is often mis-used, but in response one
> does not critique or junk the term 'public interest' but question its
> use or distortion, etc. My problem is that NCUC ridiculed the term
> 'public interest' on its website... To ridicule 'public interest', is
> to ridicule democracy.
>
>
>>
>>> And so lets not assume innocence about this creeping death of progressive and democratic ideals that the global trans-national elite has brought on us in blind pursuit of their global economic interests (Zizek's 'Clinton not Trump is the problem' precisely captures it). 
>> 	And that you find neoliberalism implicitly more problematic than authoritarianism is consistent with your positions in IG, and I will continue to find authoritarianism the bigger enemy. 
>
> Would you care to back your accusation please. I insist. Thanks.
>
> Meanwhile, let me tell what my position is: suppression of civil and
> political rights is much worse than denial of social and economic
> rights, and therefore authoritarianism much worse than market
> fundamentalism or neoliberalism.  And unlike civil society free
> lancers, I work full time with a CS organisation (IT for Change) and
> global networks like Just Net Coalition, Our World is Not for Sale,
> and a few others... And the positions of all these are very well
> explained in many documents publicly available on their websites.. So,
> perhaps you will like to educate yourself on these positions before
> making nasty allegations. I hate to be making defences of such a kind,
> but I have often said on lists like ISOC that for instance the social
> credit system of China, the perfect embodiment of digital
> governmentality, is the single biggest threat in the world right now....
>
>> Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t push away from neoliberalism back towards more liberal democratic ideas - but that is precisely why I support governance mechanisms in which civil society has a strong voice, because it allows us to have a voice in policy so it is not simply dominated by commercial and (early lobbied) government voices.
>
> That same multistakeholder system that stood silent when people
> proposed that ICANN be given jurisdictional immunity under US's own
> international organisations immunity act, and had not the guts to
> speak up in front of the master!? Or the one that happily tried to
> transport global IG's focal point to the WEF vis the NetMundial
> initiative? It is a joke..
>
> You want to know where civil society has voice... there is something
> called participatory democracy, a much older concept that
> multi-stakeholderism conveniently upstaged in the IG space. It has a
> rich history of both theory and practice.Going through a few pages of
> it will easily tell you what is wrong with IG's MSism..
>
> best, parminder
>
>
>>  
>>
>> 	Regards
>>
>> 	David
>>
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