The Good the Bad and the Ugly was Re: [governance] Internet Social Forum

[Norbert Bollow]

On Sun, 25 Jan 2015 10:10:39 -0400
Daniel Pimienta <pimienta at funredes.org> wrote:

> Why facing different 
> vision provokes that much rage is hard to 
> understand to me...

My understanding of the situation is that the strong negative emotions
which are in the above described as "rage" are not so much because of
our vision and views being different from his, but I see them as having
started from a particular event, which makes them understandable to
some degree at least.

In my view, we need to accept human nature for what it is, which
includes the reality that sometimes civil society colleagues will act in
a way that others consider unacceptable, while the questionable action
is undertaken for reasons that in the eyes of whoever takes that action
at least makes that conduct appear acceptable or even necessary and
appropriate. Only on such a basis of basic acceptance is it possible to
learn to generally interact in a constructive manner. While accepting
that even *generally* interacting in a constructive manner does not
exclude situations where one colleague feels compelled to act in a way
that the other finds unacceptable. Accepting anger-provoking actions may
become a bit easier when realizing that among the most anger-provoking
actions there are those that are born out of the motive of wanting to
point out something that (from the perspective of a particular
perception and understanding of incomplete information) might be a
seriously bad development under the umbrella of global civil society in
Internet governance.

From my perspective, Jeremy's recent text is a libelous rant full of
insinuations and distortions of the facts. Some of it being direct
libelous attacks on some of his civil society colleagues, and as such
totally and absolutely unacceptable. He would see this differently of
course, I'm sure that he would never post anything with an intention of
thereby committing libel which is after all a punishable offense.
(Although what he has written about me and others who are mentioned by
name is probably less insulting than the implied reference to all
others who are involved as them somehow having no significance at all,
while in fact quite a few of them are much more senior and more
experienced activists than for example I am.)

In fact now after a couple of days have allowed me to calm down a bit in
that respect, I think that Jeremy's motives in being alarmed at what he
sees (in my view, totally mistakenly) as something that might be bad and
dangerous are not totally different from what motivated me when I first
heard rumors about the funding situation of some projects represented
on the BestBits steering committee and then, after starting to ask
questions, I received strong evidence that BestBits itself was, at
least initially and from some perspective, a formal "capacity building"
project partly funded by the US government. Having been a BestBits
participant personally, I was totally shocked. I am not in principle
opposed to formal civil society capacity building projects being partly
funded by governments, or even a government with so many highly
problematic (and in fact in my eyes outright criminal and imperialistic)
actions as the US government. Accepting money from a government is not
wrong in itself. When a government gives money for a good thing, that
is not wrong, it might just be a matter of the government simply doing
what governments are supposed to do. But care must be taken especially
in civil society contexts that what was initially intended to be a
genuine civil society activity does not get unduly influenced, in other
words corrupted, by that government money. (The same kind of concerns of
course also potentially applies to all other sources of money.) At the
very least, the participants in what is in any respect a formal
capacity building project need to be informed about the existence of
that capacity building project together with its objectives and funding
sources. That had not happened in the case of BestBits. This was in my
eyes particularly shocking in view of a very significant part of the
first BestBits meeting having been spent on preparing an international
civil society stance in preparation for the 2012 World Conference on
International Telecommunications (WCIT) which turned out to be very
much aligned with the US government's objectives in those international
negotiations. If view of that context, together with the other aspects
of the situation (which include a previous, unsuccessful, good faith
attempt on my part to get the situation clarified in a less public
manner) I eventually resorted to asking pointed questions in public.
Jeremy obviously considers that to have been unacceptable. I still view
it as having been appropriate and necessary if I wanted to be "on the
right side of history". I did not want to risk losing a significant
part of my personal integrity through becoming an accomplice through
silence.

That said, Jeremy was never personally implicated in any of the rumors
that I heard nor in the evidence that I have. His funding situation has
to my best knowledge always been totally clear and above-board, and I
have no indications whatsoever of him having been involved personally
in that capacity building project side of BestBits (which was so
unacceptable in my eyes precisely because it was not disclosed to the
participants in general -- I have no indication of it ever having been
disclosed to Jeremy before I informed him of what I had learned.)

However, Jeremy being the founder of BestBits, I find it perfectly
understandable that he got angry about my decision to ask pointed
questions in public, especially if those questions ended up making his
work a bit more difficult for some time. Perhaps not totally unlike how
his recent blog post is making the work of getting an Internet Social
Forum off the ground more difficult. 

Now that he has had his revenge, and I have clarified my perspective on
what I suspect was the core point of contention, I would propose that
it is time to let bygones be bygones, and go back to interacting in a
more constructive manner.

Greetings,
Norbert

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