[Fwd: [governance] Workshop proposal - Internationalisation of

[Parminder]

Hi Garth

Garth Graham wrote:
>
> I know this doesn't help at this late date, but I see international / 
> transnational / global as beside the point - which is the Internet's 
> inherent capacity to support distributed self-organizing 
> relationships.  All three of those words are hierarchical, and 
> therefore move  Internet governance out of the frying pan of first 
> principles about open relational choice and into the fire of closed 
> and absolute systems of political authority.

there is a whole world between 'open relational choice' and 'closed and 
absolute systems of political authority' and the tragedy about IG is 
that most of the civil society is struck between these two extremes. And 
consequently failing to provide lead for new possible institutional 
models that serve the pubic interest best. I fear that we will lose a 
lot because of this stance, and end up with default ITU kind of a model.

> Political governance that does not acknowledge a shift towards 
> relational self-organization as a different approach to governance is 
> not going to be good Internet Governance.  
Sorry to quote the unfortunate parallel, but the US finance system tried 
exactly that. A self-organizing approach! With regulation made into a 
dirty word. BTW remember that the financial sector did what it did using 
an ICT infrastructure, producing such an inhuman complexity of  
'self-organizing'.  Using an ICT framework with its often mythical 
self-management of complexity taking equal regard of all interests has 
produced untold misery, most of all for the world's poor. Financial 
sector was also trying to replace 'governance' (human and political) by 
ICT based self-organising. I don't know where all those who blithely 
sold this idea in the financial sector are hiding now. The least they 
can do is to show up and accept responsibility.

I also do hope this teaches all of us, in important global political 
spaces, and in many ways being able to influence things on behalf of the 
world's unorganized  mass, to  take  things more seriously.  Let us be 
sensitive to  our responsibilities that we may not end up contributing 
to the designs of the strong dominant forces that are at present using 
the Internet as a vehicle of unprecedented control and domination 
towards an even more un-eqaul world. Graham, I am conscious of your 
community based work, and your views and work in the area of community 
empowerment. But we are in a situation that many of the most important 
decisions today need to be taken by the world community together. And we 
need political processes that ensure that such decisions are democratic, 
fair and equitable.

> To put that another way, does anybody believe that "world" government 
> can be "accountable political governance?"
>
It isnt easy, and that is the challenge in front of all of us. and I 
believe that civil society should take the lead in developing and 
suggesting alternatives, and not remain caught in the paralysis it 
mostly seem to be stuck in at present. But to the put the question back 
to you, do you think a self-organizing governance at the global level 
can be accountable and fair governance. I am very sure that it cannot 
be. Quite the opposite; self-organizing is used as a ruse to discredit 
political governance, so that the march of the dominant forces toward 
even more absolute domination remains institutionally and morally 
unbridled.

parminder


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