[governance] IGF Cancelled

Sat Jul 27 02:13:25 EDT 2013

On Friday 26 July 2013 10:04 AM, parminder wrote:
>
> On Friday 26 July 2013 09:16 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>> On 26/07/13 11:31, Ang Peng Hwa (Prof) wrote:
>>> According to third party sources I asked, ie not the Indonesians, 
>>> one major item that added to the cost is that the UN had apparently 
>>> asked for US$900k to fly personnel and security equipment for the 
>>> event.
>>
>> Time to cut the UN apron strings.
>
> Why sure, we can check with Google. They will be quite happy to run 
> the global internet policy dialogue.... It is most astounding that 
> after subverting and ditching the tradition of strictly public funding 
> for policy spaces and activities,....

The game has in fact begun.......Google has already offered 20k..... now 
we can wait for Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T to come in too.. Inter alia 
it can be very useful to wash, or rather 'persuade' people to gloss 
over, their sins that we know from Snowden disclosures...

Next, the Indian parliament will fall short on budget and google with 
bankroll it too (dont consider it too far fetched, the ideology is fast 
catching) .... Do know the future that so many of us seem to so 
enthusiastically be rooting for....

And all this (public fund shortfalls) of course happens becuase in the 
first place google et al do not pay their taxes.... What a good use of 
the money saved in this way to bankroll policy spaces.... you can try 
and steer the debates away from any possible tax avoidance discussions, 
or from a discussion on the role of global Internet companies in using 
personal data for various kinds of control, political as well as economic...

ICANN had more than 50 million US dollars in cash reserve, coming from 
the Internet tax they collect from Internet users. This inflow/reserve 
is expected to balloon with the new gtld program.. It is this money  
that should be employed for funding the global IG policy dialogue, ie is 
the IGF.... Rather than just using it to build and cultivate a community 
of rather fanatic supporters of ICANN...

Such a proposal for using ICANN collected funds to support the IGF was 
put forward in the WG on IGF Improvements by my organisation as well as 
by India, and supported by developing countries. Why did other non gov 
stakeholders (including civil society) and developed countries oppose 
this proposal.... Can at least the civil society members of that group 
who are on this list explain.... I can see why private sector or 
corporate funded technical community did not want it... can also see the 
agenda of US supporting developed country constituency.... but why did 
civil society oppose it... If the IGF is really their most loved child...

All of them opposed UN funding for the IGF (which they will pass off as 
likely to increase US control - never mind corporate control).... but 
can they explain why they opposed 'committed' funding from ICANN 
collected Internet taxes, say of 2 million every year... Isnt that the 
right model of funding the IGF , keeping if safe from staist as well 
corporate controls....

To avoid such obvious models of 'public' funding for the IGF seems to me 
almost a certainly deliberate strategy to ensure corporatist control 
over the IGF... I am happy to hear argument against this proposition.

Can we have a discussion on this here - the appropriate model for 
funding the IGF... Can various actors present their arguments for and 
against the model I propose....

parminder

> and adopting the neoliberal and anti-democratic (and fancy) 
> multistakeholder funding model, now that it has collapsed one is to 
> blame the public systems for it....
>
> To repeat: this disaster occurred precisely because of cutting of the 
> apron strings that policy space should always have tied to public 
> funds and public systems. When Indonesian government said last year 
> that it was unable to fund the IGF, it should not have been handed 
> over to a private committee headed by a businessman. ... It should 
> have been shifted to another country willing to host it.... We are 
> participating in an absolute privatisation of governance and politics, 
> and simply following the neolib agenda that represents the interests 
> of the most powerful...
>
> And this is indeed sheer 'power' - that those who are responsible for 
> a 'failure' can so conveniently blame others for it, and employ their 
> own failure to further their cause....
>
> And why should this be seen as a 'failure'. See it as an opportunity 
> to completely do away with pulbic funded and pulbic systems supported 
> public spaces... Lets go over completely to corporate funded policy 
> spaces and policy making.... Why make these moves in such shifty 
> cautious ways. So at least we will all know what is that we are 
> contributing to building - what kind of society...
>
> (By the way, right now we have a full fledged experiment of this kind 
> - corporate run policy spaces - running in India, it shows the pattern 
> and the larger design of certain ideologies and forces, and the extent 
> to which they have been successful.)
>
> parminder
>
> (PS: This is a general response, not just to your email, Jeremy. And 
> please do excuse my cynical language. These anti-democratic shifts are 
> really disturbing.)
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> *Dr Jeremy Malcolm
>> Senior Policy Officer
>> Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers*
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