[governance] Ad hoc Best Bits strategy meeting tomorrow lunchtime

Mawaki Chango kichango at gmail.com
Fri Oct 25 20:00:14 EDT 2013 

Milton et al.,

Good to see you resurface, MM :-) Oh "Lawd"! What trouble have I got myself
into???
A reminder on context... I'm not in Bali. We received a note from one of us
leading the CS organizing in Bali that the dynamic in the i orgs was
essentially a power grabbing one, tech vs. govt-centric (was not clear
where the non-tech CS fits in all that.) Then we see another person
response asking (as I understood it then, but this has been corrected
since) whether CS shouldn't feel okay with that. So what I was reacting to,
basically, is the over simplification you're denouncing which precisely,
IMHO, leads to believe that "govts are so evil that just kicking them out
of the tent (and replacing them by tech or whoever, for that matter) would
resolve our problems." I didn't defined the terms of the discussion. But
since it was reportedly about tech (and)(vs) govt, I sought to (or at least
I thought I was trying) to bring some nuance in the discussion by saying on
the one hand govt is not all evil, may be useful to something and on the
other tech does not have solution for everything, can get it wrong. That's
not finger pointing or over simplified categorization. If anyone thought I
was bashing the tech community, please amend the record --that's just not
who I am. But I'm ready to tell them, no single stakeholder group is
perfect or can get it right by itself, and we need to do this together.
Actually, if you ask me, I believe we are more capable of effecting change
if tech and CS would work intelligently together, as opposed to being
anti-tech.

Now regarding the history lesson, yeah I learned a couple of things about
the history of the 20th century in junior high, in senior high, and had
read quite a bit about it at least for years into college, thank you! For
some of us in Africa, even our parents or grand parent also fought in the 2
big wars that shaped that century, particularly the WW2 in order to
liberate France and stem the tide of Nazism taking over UK. I guess that
might have been a good reason to justify those episodes in far-away lands
being featured so prominently in our curricula. So yes, I know a couple of
things about Pearl Harbor, the Manhattan Project and its result, Japan
devastated and Europe in ruins, the Marshall Plan, the Malta conference and
the beginning of the saga of the United Nations and related specialized
organizations, led by... the United States.

Let me just add this. The notion of HR was not new... English
revolutions... the French revolution... and the US founding fathers tapping
into the same ideas to shape their constitution... WW2 was the opportunity
to make those ideas universal, and the only large country that was standing
tall then, with a newly found unique power on the world stage as a
consequence of the war -- the US -- did just that and that was a good
thing. And guess what, they didn't do it by calling for another revolution
(I guess the war was enough) or for a multistakeholder summit with CS and
others. It was with its attributes and power as nation-state that the US
was able to "ram the UDHR down to everyone's throats," particularly the
other governments' and get them to sign a treaty! Can you believe that? An
international treaty, something that only sovereign governments sign into a
legal instrument. Now, I think the USG has always been one of the smartest
we've had around the world, in abstraction of whether you are on their side
or not (they just happen to do some dumb things once in a while, like any
other governments many of whom do worse, but that's another story.) So I
tend to believe they must have had some good reasons to spend their
political capital on getting a treaty that included HRs, as opposed to say,
making it just a plain, non-binding Declaration like in most previous
historical occurrences.

Epilogue: I haven't re-read myself in the email you are responding to, but
taking it from you MM, in my phrase "a world led by governments" referring
to UDHR, the plural for "governments" was meant to be generic --not that
all govts labored hard to give birth to UDHR as a gift to the world, but
something like the following: an era where national sovereigns were mostly
in charge of world affairs, the stage of world affairs was mainly organized
around them. USG is a govt -- one of them -- and it did some good things in
the aftermath of WW2. History didn't stop with the UDHR treaty however, and
USG is not the only govt in history which has done something good about or
with UDHR. I'm sure in the latter part of the 20th century, some govts who
caught up with the whole idea might have used their clout or some leverage
with weaker but less HR-friendly governments (for instance, the kind of
govts that wouldn't mind opening the fire on their citizens/CS in the
streets --does that ring a bell still in the 21st century?)  in order to
have them pay a little more regard to the HRs of their citizens. Hence, me
saying govts (the ones which are so willing), with the power or clout that
is only theirs, may also help "uphold" or respect HRs -- or whatever I
wrote along those lines that made you jump off your chair, MM.

Sorry folks for the length of my response. It really is a tough thing to
fully and accurately express what one means (as to avoid misunderstanding)
while keeping it short, when the language in use doesn't soar from one's
guts, i.e not one's natural first language. Bearing with this is part of
the small price you have to pay for a relatively inclusive and diverse
forum, to whatever degree, the highest price being borne by the writer. So
are my explanations clear enough, MM, or should I put together a commercial
a la Christine O'Donnell (the "I am not a witch" tea-partier) in order to
claim "I am not a government idolater, nor am I an anti-techies"?

mawaki



On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 6:05 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

>
>  All
>
>  It would be a mistake to let this discussion degenerate into
> categorizations of empty stakeholder abstractions: governments as
> "upholders of human rights" (cough!), technical community as good or bad,
> etc. This is one of the truly silly things about the decision the I*
> organizations made to label the proper approach to Internet governance as
> "the multistakeholder model." As if there were "the" single model (there
> isn't), as if multistakeholderism actually described IETF (it doesn't), as
> if the presence of multiple stakeholders in a process automatically means
> good, freedom and efficiency-enhancing governance (it doesn't).
>
>  Talking about "techies" - either pro or con - is just not helpful at
> this point. Same goes for claims regarding "civil society." Better to talk
> about specific values and objectives and how VERY SPECIFIC institutional
> mechanisms contribute to them, or not. There is some legitimate space for
> concern about who is represented in meetings and decision making, and I
> very much do share Jeremy's concern about the I* organizations running away
> with the ball, but finger-pointing regarding stakeholder categories is
> pointless.
>
>  A bit of a historical correction for you also, Mawaki. It was a world
> led by the _United States_ government that gave us the Universal
> Declaration of Human Rights. Not a world led by "governments." We rammed it
> down everyone's throats, and anyway the formulation of and advocacy for
> rights comes from a vibrant civil society under certain kinds of
> constitutional regimes, not from states as states. The US had just won WW2,
> and had unparalleled hegemony over Europe, Japan and many other parts of
> the world. It never would have happened otherwise. I don't think that
> lesson has any clear relevance to current discussions regarding IG, but if
> you think it does, perhaps you can explain in more detail.
>
>  --MM
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [
> governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Mawaki Chango [
> kichango at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, October 23, 2013 12:53 PM
> *To:* Internet Governance; McTim
> *Cc:* Jeremy Malcolm; Bits bestbits at lists.bestbits.net
> *Subject:* Re: [governance] Ad hoc Best Bits strategy meeting tomorrow
> lunchtime
>
>   Thanks, Jeremy, for alerting us about what is going on with the
> "technical" community.
> Personally, I'm okay with moving the call for endorsement to 24hrs earlier
> --just as I agree with the need for more private/f2f strategizing.
>
>  McTim, multistakeholder does not mean anti-governmentalism. Nor does it
> say the "technical community" takes over from government. It really means
> "on equal footing" etc., governments included, if you ask me. Furthermore,
> I do not think I have any track record for celebrating governments, but
> I'll say this. In some circumstances, governments may be evil, but it was
> also a world led by governments which gave us the Universal Declaration of
> Human Rights and related texts, which have served as formidable normative
> tools for social progress. And sometimes, some of them put a stake into
> seeing those norms upheld.
>
>  Left to their own devices, techies don't necessarily have the best
> interest of the user at heart (I suspect Vint Cerf would agree with me
> since while opposing the notion that Internet is a HR, he suggested that
> designers could do a better job in making the technology more HR-friendly,
> so to speak, in short.) While they do a lot of wonderful things --there's
> no denying that, not of my part anyway-- techies cannot write a clean and
> accurate user guide for... users! It is my sense that they are mostly
> impressed with impressing their peers, as is often the case with minority
> groups of meritocrats. So yes, seeing "multistakeholderism" as the
> opportunity to shift from "government-centric" to "techno-centric" should
> be a matter of concern to CS --or to any plain citizen, for that matter.
>
>  I'm just saying -- "on equal footing" my dear!
>
>  Mawaki
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 2:37 PM, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Jeremy,
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 4:57 AM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org>
>> wrote:
>> > I haven't had a chance to write about the technical community meeting
>> that
>> > took place at lunchtime today, but it felt (to me) like an astonishing
>> > power-grab in progress - they are forming a new coalition that will
>> create a
>> > "grassroots" campaign, with the pre-determined objective of reasserting
>> the
>> > primacy of "the" multi-stakeholder model against "government-centric"
>> > models.
>>
>>  CS should not have a problem with that, we should embrace it as it
>> gives CS more clout than a Inter-gov model, no?
>>
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>>
>> McTim
>> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
>> route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel
>>
>>
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>
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