Society vs Dissociation

This article is part of a series: ‘Stigmergy: Systems of Mass Collaboration’.

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world. – Mary Wollstonecraft

In Individuals in Society I wrote of a state of nature where society did not exist. In truth, such a state has never existed outside of social contract theory because humans are social animals and we have always created societies. In today’s structure, society with its dependencies and relationships has been converted to a completely monetized system of dissociation. For the first time in human history, people have been effectively dissociated from each other and are living in a state of no society. [Side note: For those who ask what does Occupy want, this is one of my personal two answers. Humans are social animals; they want a society. The other answer is we want our human dignity, including the right to attain adulthood and achieve our full potential. Both of these are biological needs hardcoded into humans and we feel deep unrest at their removal.]

This image is a placeholder until I have time to make an image that describes what I am saying or some kind person contributes one.

In the diagram above, everything that people in society need is enclosed in the space called System. This can include food, housing, health care, education, lifework, and even family. These essential resources are separated from society and held in a space not accessible to the user group. If the resource is health care, a member of the public is not able to review the work of the health professionals; they do not have access to pharmaceutical studies, cannot choose the remedy they wish, and cannot assist others. All resources are funneled through the second space, called a leech. A leech is a blood sucking parasite that attaches itself to a host and drains the host while contributing nothing. In society, our leeches are financial institutions, old style media institutions (the ones internal to each system as well as public broadcasters), regulatory bodies, training and licensing institutions, and all other bodies set up to regulate the flow of resources to the society. None of these leeches contribute to society, they control access to resources.

In the food system, duty, trade restrictions and trade treaties control access to food and government regulatory bodies control both production and distribution, even preventing food sharing between people or scavenging from waste food (for example by requiring chlorine bleach to be poured over food in dumpsters). In the education system, the universities control who can learn, control their learning, and produce a credential that allows a person to perform work; the freedom to learn and the power of peer promotion is removed to an outside regulatory body in almost every profession. In science and art, intellectual property laws prevent collaboration, study and use of prior work and encourage secrecy and information hoarding. Even sport (games) are strictly controlled and entertainment is regulated by bylaws, causing both to be largely replaced by professionals with access funneled through leeches. Every conceivable resource has had access removed from the society and placed in the control of leeches.

This system of dissociation is so entrenched in society that it is very seldom questioned. Money for health care is equated to money for insurance, even though insurance companies do not provide health care. Banks need to be propped up to provide housing, even though banks do not provide housing. The almighty economy must be saved even at the cost of untold lives or life on earth itself; but we can’t eat the economy. Education and information are controlled, not produced, by existing institutions; both could and should be replaced by transparency and open access. Distributors should be replaced by farmgate importing, information wants and needs to be free, and choosing one’s own lifework is a basic right not to be removed by regulatory bodies.

In this system of dissociation, individuals have no societal protection. Each is dangling from the leech by their own little vein with a limited access to resources; there are no direct relationships or dependencies. Even if the access allows the person plentiful amounts of everything, there is a built in awareness of shortage and reliance on the system that strongly discourages sharing. If one person’s vein is broken, their need is met by hostility from the others dangling by their own veins; to rescue another is to weaken oneself. Predictably, rescuing those in need requires the creation of more leeches in the form of NGO’s and government regulatory bodies for people in crisis, resulting in a transference of responsibility that prevents society as a whole from spending much time considering those who their society fails.

Ironically, the individuals whose access to the leech is for some reason broken are referred to themselves as leeches. As discussed in The Financial System, The Tax Payer was invented to assert control over other members of society such as children, anyone in crisis, prisoners and anyone who dares to work outside a corporate approved role. The Tax Payer is encouraged by relentless propaganda and enabled by the financial system to consider themselves both the backbone of society (as evidenced on monetary flowcharts and nowhere else) and personally robbed by all others. When people look for the source of the obvious flaws in the systems of dissociation, they are always pointed to those that are not acting as The Tax Payer. Seldom does society look past the propaganda to the real leeches.

A society is formed by a mother* giving birth to a child. Once a mother becomes pregnant, dependency has been created and she must surround herself with a support network, or a society; at the very least, if her society is to survive, she must create a support network between herself and her child or find another caretaker for her child. A woman and a child is the basic unit of a society, a unit with dependencies and unequal ability working for a common goal. This is where a new society must start to plan a new direction.

In today’s un-society, the core element has been two or more men* shaking hands. That is not a society, that is a trade relationship. A trade relationship must occur among equally advantaged partners if one is not to be taken at a disadvantage. Dependencies are abhorrent in a trade relationship. Dependencies and sharing weaken a trading partner; ownership strengthens them.

There are many dependencies in a full society besides children. The reason children are the core is of course because without them, a society dies, but a full society will also have people with a variety of mental and physical limitations and gifts. In today’s society people with any dependencies are seen as worthless, or at best inferior, instead of different. Today’s ideal is a young, healthy, intelligent adult with no dependencies. The fallacy of equality for women is dependent on their simulation of that ideal; women have an equal opportunity to participate in trade relationships. As long as women or men perform society building roles such as child rearing, including protecting, feeding, educating, sheltering and clothing children, or all of the support services required in a healthy society, they are vilified and abused by the structure today. Educating children pays far less than educating adults who are perfectly capable of educating themselves; parenting usually pays nothing at all. Giving birth is a financial, health and social liability; killing people is a lucrative and highly respected career. Advocates for women seek to empower them to leave society building roles for corporate endorsed ones instead of creating a society that respects and values societal support as a role for all.

There have been several instances of people in the west today seeking to create a moneyless society, but these people are predominantly (exclusively?) healthy and male, or partnered with a healthy male. When a child, an elder, or someone with severe mental or physical dependencies can live in a money free society we can call it a society; until then it is a trade relationship. There is a great deal of work ahead before dependencies can be supported freely and with no real or implied charity.

This image is a placeholder until I have time to make an image that describes what I am saying or some kind person contributes one.

A true society is shown above which is starting to manifest in various forms around the world. In it, every system includes the entire user group and no one but the user group. No one outside the user group can control the activity inside. Access is restricted for none. Information is available to all through transparency. Education is available to all from their peers, and through epistemic communities with knowledge bridges, and anyone can submit work through concentric user groups or stigmergy.

* Women give birth. Women do not have control in trade relationships in places where men refuse to allow them control. The use of the words ‘mother’ and ‘men’ in these statements is factually correct.

Individuals in society

This article is part of a series: ‘Stigmergy: Systems of Mass Collaboration’.

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” John Stuart Mill, ‘On Liberty’

“Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.” ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’

Throughout these writings on collaboration it is assumed that individual rights are inherent in every system. As unhealthy cells can never create a healthy whole, a weakened people stripped of their basic rights will never create a healthy society.

In any system where groups have power, individual rights are always at risk. Both pure democracy and communism have brought human rights horrors every bit as reprehensible as fascist states; in order to guard against genocide, torture, and other persecution of individuals in the name of the greater good, a society must safeguard individual rights above all other authority.

In order for any society to ensure its survival without the use of tyrannical force, the members must be convinced that it is better than the alternative. If an alternative or no society at all appears more attractive than the current state, people will naturally be motivated to dismantle the current system. In order for a society to appear more attractive than no society at all, we need to consider the basic rights of individuals in no society. There are certain basic rights that we can see enjoyed by most mammals in their natural state; to ensure people do not need to resort to fighting for these basic rights, we can enshrine them in our social contract. If people can see their basic rights more attainable within the system than without, it will be in their best interests to protect the system.

Every undomesticated mammal will seek and sometimes fight for their basic needs: food, shelter, safety, the right to reproduce and to provide for and educate their young, the right to cohabit, at least with offspring, some measure of privacy, the right to associate or refuse to associate, the right to communicate, the right to explore and the right to learn. To some extent, all mammals have also the right to choose the time, place and method of their work within the bounds of nature and survival. Any interference with these basic rights is seen as an attack and will be greeted with whatever defence the mammal is capable of.

If an individual agrees to abide by the laws of a society and not attack it, it is reasonable that the society provides means for all members to attain the same advantages they would fight for in a state of nature. When a society refuses to allow its members to attain basic needs such as food, shelter and safety, and the deprivation is not caused by unavailability, only the most extreme repressive force and mass imprisonment will protect the society from revolution.

Given access to basic needs, the commonly recognized advantage undomesticated mammals have which their domesticated counterparts do not is freedom. Domesticated mammals are widely recognized as being in some sort of slavery, though it is popular lately to equate their status to a permanently infantilized ‘member of the family’ instead, unless they are destined to be eaten. In either case, they do not have the free will they would have in a state of nature. They will never attain an adult, autonomous status or the dignity of self actualization.

When speaking of both domesticated animals and humans, many people question why they would even want free will. They are, after all, completely taken care of, subject of course to the whims of their masters. Given proper laws to ensure benevolent masters, what is so bad about slavery or perpetual childhood? The idea that we are all entitled to our human dignity is perhaps more easily understood. We do not have human dignity when we lose not just our basic rights to survival but also our free will and our right to reach our full potential. We do not have human dignity when we are not treated as responsible, intelligent, participating members of society. We do not have human dignity when we are kept in a state below what we are capable of achieving or in a system which fails to recognize where we naturally excel. And we do not have human dignity in a system where our basic needs are treated not as a right but as a privilege which we must earn and be grateful for and which a higher parental authority can remove from us.

It has become a common and accepted part of society that when people reach an age where they ought to have attained adulthood, they frequently express ‘unreasonable’ dissatisfaction, in the form of riots or other violence against their society. Where a socioeconomic excuse for this behaviour can be found, this will be commonly used by sociologists to justify the incidents but when the perpetrators come from the most advantaged segments of society, puzzlement and frustration are typical. Rebellion is completely expected by childhood development experts when caregivers refuse to allow a child the independence required for them to attain adulthood; it is curious that the same expectation is not attached to a society that refuses to allow people to attain adult status and responsibility.

Current political systems around the world typically discuss individual rights from the role of either a ‘good’ parent or ‘bad’ parent. The harsh parent will argue that individuals must bear full responsibility for all that happens to them, in the form of severe punishment for infractions of rules and no aid in times of need, and the benevolent parent will argue for all encompassing care for each member of society. Neither argues for individual rights that would give not just responsibility but also authority to the people, as this would eliminate the political systems as they exist today.

The rights all individuals in a society are entitled to are typically enshrined in a constitutional or human rights document at a national or international level. Because these documents are frequently produced at times following revolution, newly won independence, or other periods of great awareness, they tend to reflect the ideals of the people in the society. They frequently include life, liberty, security of person, access to the basic essentials of life including knowledge, privacy and personal autonomy in matters not affecting the rest of society, free development of personality and potential, and an unbiased and accessible legal system which does not promote the wishes of the group over the rights of the individual. The rights in these documents form the social contract between individuals and society. Each individual agrees that they will work for the greater good of the society and protect the individual rights of others in exchange for having their own rights protected. This contract is essential in a system of governance that is not simply mob rule, or despotic rule.

If a governing authority were to pass laws in contradiction to the social contract, the government would be in breach of contract. The people in the society can then remove the authority given to the government or consider the contract null and void and declare a state of no governance from which a new social contact may or may not be formed. The governing body loses authority when it acts in contradiction to the social contract. A ruling such as that in the Supreme Court of Canada, which found that the government of Canada had violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the case of Omar Khadr and yet left the government with the authority to decide the remedy, while legally justifiable under current Canadian law, is a logically incorrect action in a society of free people.

If mob rule is allowed to change the social contract to remove rights from individuals in the name of the greater good, the social contract with each member of society is also null and void. If the point of a social contract is that each individual agrees that they will work for the greater good of the society and protect the individual rights of others in exchange for having their own rights protected, every violation of anyone’s rights needs to be of grave concern to the whole of society. The greater good has never and will never be served by laws which violate individual rights for the benefit of overall society.

Almost every law which violates a social contract is brought in as a one time exception that will only violate the rights of a certain minority group and will only apply in one or very few scenarios. It is usually presented as a protection of the rights of a highly sympathetic group with majority approval and accompanied by demonization of the target minority group. Sweeping surveillance of the internet is marketed as protecting children from pedosadists and to allow law enforcement to prevent child pornography, despite all evidence that it does nothing of the kind and is not actually intended to. Internet users are depicted as potential pedosadists and pirates of copyrighted material, particularly if they have privacy concerns or fight against censorship. Internment of all Japanese citizens in Canada during World War II, the USA Patriot Act which criminalized providing expert advice or assistance (including legal) to designated terrorists, the massive worldwide loss of rights and liberty, not to mention life, in the name of ‘counter terrorism’, the ‘state of emergency’ invoked around the world at various times which, once invoked, frequently becomes a permanent state, it is very easy to find countless examples of rights violations in law at this time. In every instance, these societies have broken their social contract; they have become coercive societies which now must rule by force.

These sweeping changes are usually preceded by creeping changes felt only by the marginalized in society and frequently billed as ‘for their own good’, such as various laws and regulations in both Canada and Holland which restrict legal prostitution in ways that would not be tolerated in other legal careers. In practice, the marginalized members of any society seldom enjoy the rights that form society’s contract with them. Until every member of society makes it their business to defend the rights of every member of society, no society will be safe from these encroachments.

If the marginalized group can be given a group name, anything from ‘Palestinians’ to ‘terrorists’ to’Anonymous’, the success of the violation of their rights is far more likely. If the majority of the population does not identify as part of the victimized group they are easily able to accept the loss of rights, especially if it is accompanied by propaganda to villainize the group. In this case, the entire society has broken their social contract and the society has lost legitimacy.

In the United States this concept of ‘other’ was carried to the entire rest of the world, and it was not until the government passed legislation in the form of the 2012 NDAA which attempted to treat US citizens in the same manner that illegal immigrants and the entire rest of the world were treated that the law was challenged. Such an extreme case suggests a strong need for a worldwide social contract which tolerates no ‘others’, particularly as states put defence of their citizens as their first priority. It is easy from there to justify defending citizens not by supporting them but instead by persecuting others. Individual rights must apply to every individual, and every law, including those of borders and nationality, which differentiate between groups will undermine individual rights.

Human Rights Law

Currently, the world has not fought for individual human rights in large numbers since the end of World War II which left us with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those rights have been subject to a guardian coup d’état, largely unnoticed by most of the world. Historically, a lack of awareness of violations to social contracts was both real and excusable, and the ability to organize in protest was severely hampered. That is no longer the case.

Since the UDHR was written in 1948 it has been under relentless attack as has every other documentation of rights before or since. Although the preamble clearly states the intent to “strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction” the text, widely distributed in early years, is now rarely seen. The Covenants adopted in 1966, law since 1976, billed as ‘clarifying the UDHR’ and written in far more convoluted terms, are one of the first significant examples of legal undermining which, if the principles of the UDHR had been followed, would never have passed.

For example:

UDHR Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

was completely negated by the Covenants, which start by adding the word ‘arbitrarily’, and then proceed to remove the right to life from everyone not under 18 or pregnant. (Even this was disregarded by the law in several countries, most notably the United States.):

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 6
1. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

2. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgement rendered by a competent court.

3. When deprivation of life constitutes the crime of genocide, it is understood that nothing in this article shall authorize any State Party to the present Covenant to derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

4. Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence. Amnesty, pardon or commutation of the sentence of death may be granted in all cases.

5. Sentence of death shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age and shall not be carried out on pregnant women.

6. Nothing in this article shall be invoked to delay or to prevent the abolition of capital punishment by any State Party to the present Covenant.

UDHR Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

was modified to separate “forced or compulsory labour” as somehow separate from “slavery or servitude” and allow prison labour, which has since become a thriving slave industry. It also includes enough vague generality to be very flexible in allowing any form of state slavery.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 8:
1. No one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited.
2. No one shall be held in servitude.
3. (a) No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour;
(b) Paragraph 3 (a) shall not be held to preclude, in countries where imprisonment with hard labour may be imposed as a punishment for a crime, the performance of hard labour in pursuance of a sentence to such punishment by a competent court;
(c) For the purpose of this paragraph the term “forced or compulsory labour” shall not include:
(i) Any work or service, not referred to in subparagraph (b), normally required of a person who is under detention in consequence of a lawful order of a court, or of a person during conditional release from such detention;
(ii) Any service of a military character and, in countries where conscientious objection is recognized, any national service required by law of conscientious objectors;
(iii) Any service exacted in cases of emergency or calamity threatening the life or well-being of the community;
(iv) Any work or service which forms part of normal civil obligations.

In case there was anything left of the UDHR that may hinder a state from doing exactly as they please, it is made clear that the state may limit any of these rights “solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society” which instantly renders the entire body of human rights law as, in the words of George W Bush describing the US constitution, “just a g-d piece of paper”.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Article 4:

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State in conformity with the present Covenant, the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law only in so far as this may be compatible with the nature of these rights and solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.

Building a New Society

I highly recommend clicking the link and reading the thirty UDHR articles. Most people today are suspicious, and rightly so, of any document from the UN, but this was the first document and, as a product of its time, it is shockingly complete and beautiful in its simplicity. That is not to argue that it does not need an update, but most of the updates suggested in the past detract by addition. The UDHR, while very improvable, is a model of how principles ought to be written, in simple, pure and universal terms upon which law can be based, with no vague Hallmark sounding generalities that require interpretation.

The idea that only a lawyer can understand the law was created to disguise the undermining of the basic principles of society. In order for a social contract to be binding, the principles must be easily taught to anyone, including children. No law must ever deviate from the principles of the social contract, therefore law ought to be largely intuitive. It is evident from the above that a vigilant society must audit, and indeed write, all new laws to prevent the undermining of principles.

Along with accessibility of the law, the inviolability of principles has also been under attack. A very short time ago (when the UDHR was written), principles were considered the foundations upon which everything must be built, as they are in every science and discipline. If someone said they were against your idea in principle, your task of convincing them became far harder as you must now first convince them that either your argument fit their principle, or their principle was wrong. If you succeeded at the latter, that person would have to rethink their values on everything, because morals and values were to be built upon core principles, as was the law. Today, if a politician says they are against something in principle, it means they have already agreed; principles have been designated as niceties that we all appreciate in theory but are impractical. This is an Orwellian attack on the structure of a society which clears the path for every oxymoronic law which has followed.

In order to stop the incessant flow of laws against the will of the people, core principles of society must be defined. When these principles are defined, it must be recognized that no law can ever be passed which contradicts these principles. In order for society to be stable, and allow a new and better system of collaboration, principles must apply equally to everyone, without exception.

The law must be accessible for all, not only the wealthy. Currently, NGO’s are required to fight for the rights of people and nature, but corporate rights are protected by their access to the expensive legal system. Legal remedies must be as immediate as possible as powerful interests can destroy lives just as surely be protracting a court case as they can by winning one. And the law must be intuitive, not up to the subjective judgement of an archaic legal system. Members of a society need to know before committing an act what the repercussions of that act will be, and the law must be applied equally to all. This requires a far more automated and accessible system than is currently available in any country. The fact that the legal system has remained so archaic strongly suggests that it is meant to remain inaccessible and subjective as that is best serving the interests of those in power.

The discouragement people once faced for obtaining online medical advice, particularly from their peers, is greatly compounded for legal advice. This must change. People must recreate the legal systems to work for them, and that requires direct involvement at every level in the creation and implementation of the laws. The law, more than any other part of society, must be transparent, accessible, equal, and created by and for the people.

Preface

This article is part of a series: ‘Stigmergy: Systems of Mass Collaboration’.

The world is long overdue for a completely new system of governance. If there was ever a need for political representation or a paternalistic and opaque authority it has been removed by technology. Governance by nation states is now as arbitrary and illogical as city states were earlier found to be. Corporations have the freedom to live in a world without borders or social responsibility, to own property no individual can claim and to control a one world government and legal system, with insupportable consequences for the world’s resources and individual rights. Every political system we have tried has proved incapable of protecting human rights and dignity. To effect the change we require immediately, to give individuals control and responsibility, to bring regional systems under regional governance, allow global collaboration and protect the heritage of future generations, we need a new political model.

This text is in no way meant to be a definitive answer to any of the questions before us. This is just a documentation of what seems apparent at this moment, what ideas have not worked and why, and what ideas seem to be working in isolated instances and may be able to scale to help us on a much wider basis in the future.

Many ideas in this text are far more easily understood by the free software and hacker community than the world offline. The internet created an environment where it was possible to collaborate in ways that had never been tried before, to experiment with global participation, anonymity, a money free society, idea driven projects and many other ideas that are impossible or difficult in physical life. While the internet has many current structural problems that are hindering collaboration, the internet community is yet a generation ahead in experimenting with many of these concepts.

There has been a deliberate attempt in most of this writing to not refer to ideological concepts or political models by name as there is such widespread disagreement as to what the names mean. For readability, each topic is presented in simplest terms in one section. An in depth discussion of the history of each topic, reference to all that has been written before, rebuttals and supporting quotes, would turn each section into a book, so further research and discussion is left to the comments.

World War III: A picture

Member and observer countries of Non-Aligned Movement plus Russia are in blue.

Exactly two years ago, I started this blog with a post about A Stateless War in which I discussed an upcoming conflict of “The military industrial complex against the anonymous cloud, with an ignorant populace as the prize.” That conflict is largely behind us: few in the world are as ignorant as they were two years ago, and we are beyond the point where information alone can correct the social and political disasters we see around us.

Based on our current still entirely alterable trajectory, by the end of 2012 it will be very apparent to all that we are in a new war, this time involving states. World War III will do as a name, or we can call it the Military States against the Resource States. Of course that sounds like something we’ve been in for decades; the difference is it is starting to look a lot more two sided.

Since the Cold War, the world has been socially controlled by methods which may have been lifted from Hollywood high school movies. The US state cables showed us a world in which the United States largely controls all international forums and debates with a mixture of threats and bribes and a circle of allies who do not dare risk expulsion from the inner circle by disagreement. The inner circle has largely echoed the previous imperial world, with IMF loans replacing direct occupation, but potential membership is held out as an incentive to others as well. Countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are invited to the bigger parties, and given trade deals, military sales and social protection in exchange for their support of the inner circle. The BRICS countries then wield their own social power in similar fashion in their own regions.

As in all Hollywood movies, stability for the inner circle ends when the bullying gets out of hand. When social ostracization becomes so extreme it threatens actual survival, as it does for Cuba, Palestine, Iran, Somalia, North Korea and others, when no negotiation short of complete obliteration of self is acceptable, the entire social structure is threatened, more so as more members are outcast. The world has watched as Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and many others have been inhumanely tormented with no possibility of reprieve or negotiation and no defence from any stronger nation. If extreme bullying such as that detailed in the Palestine Papers is combined with any sudden unexpected weakness in the bully or strength in the bullied, the result is predictable and instant.

And so it has been.

The weaknesses in the US and other NATO countries have been very well researched and documented in recent years, but except for the obvious economic collapse they have not received widespread discussion. Here are some other points that will become key very soon.

1. The US does not actually control their own military or intelligence and the private corporations that do, do not operate from patriotic loyalty and are available to the highest bidder. They do not work if they are not paid. Many are not even citizens of the US. Not just the people, at the highest ranks, but even the military hard assets are frequently privately owned.

2. US trade relies heavily on intellectual property and increasingly draconian laws to protect and increase the value of that property. Intellectual property is a concept, not a good, and it does not exist if trade partners do not acknowledge it. Even loan interest typically comes with a contract and some trust which will be lost if the contract is broken; there is nothing to be lost by people who refuse to pay for intellectual property. For years the industry has tried to make the case that if intellectual property were not copyrighted and patented, creative activity would halt, but the open source and pirate movements have proven the opposite to be true. Since it is very rarely the creators who control the intellectual property rights to their own work, or have the resources to fight infringement, the moral argument that creativity ought to be compensated by IP laws is also very weak. This leaves the G20 countries, US particularly, with no protection other than force and increasingly controversial extraditions to claim income from intellectual property. In a time of war, this would be a very precarious basis for trade, particularly since the US is the sole beneficiary of the extreme laws today and the rest of the G20 would benefit from a relaxation of IP law.

All of the statistics on this site are very interesting. Here are a few:

74% of exports– or $1 trillion– are driven by American IP-intensive industries. (Global Intellectual Property Center: “IP Creates Jobs for America,” NDP Consulting, May 2012.)

Among the 27 tradable industries, only six industries reported trade surpluses—five of which were IP-intensive industries, generating an average $14.6 billion in trade surplus each year. (“The Impact of Innovation and the Role of Intellectual Property Rights on U.S. Productivity, Competitiveness, Jobs, Wages and Exports,” NDP Consulting, 2010)

G20 economies have lost 2.5 million jobs to counterfeiting and piracy. (Frontier Economics, Estimating the Global Economic and Social Impacts of Counterfeiting and Piracy, February 2011.)

India and Pakistan both made the “Top Ten Source Countries” this year due to seizures of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceutical seizures accounted for 86% of the value of IPR seizures from India and 85% of the value of IPR seizures from Pakistan. (Customs and Border Protection, Intellectual Property Rights – Seizure Statistics: Fiscal Year 2011)

3. As the world’s most capitalist economy, the US has arguably the least societal support in the event of a collapse. Years of competitive and unhealthy consumerism, in which consumers are divorced from production, in the world’s most addicted and most incarcerated population create a societal helplessness not seen in most places. All of the G20 countries have favoured corporations over people to the extent that surviving in a collapsed economy is difficult to impossible without rewriting many property ownership and usage laws.

NATO countries are in green.

The Acronyms and Isolation

As in the prelude to the past world wars, many economic and defence treaties have been negotiated over the years to protect US dominance in each region. A favoured bullying tactic has been to exclude countries from these international clubs to cripple their economies and ability to defend themselves. There has been increasing activity to combat this practise.

The United Nations and all of its arms have served to protect the inner circle on a global level. In 1961 the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was formed to represent countries not aligned with either the US or the USSR. In the Havana Declaration of 1979, Fidel Castro identified the purpose of the organization to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics”.

The 120 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’s members and contain 55% of the world population before adding the 21 other observer countries. The Summit last week in Tehran included representatives from 130-150 countries, shown in the map at the top of this article. (There are only approximately 192 countries in the world.) Attendance at the highest level included 27 presidents, 2 kings and emirs, 7 prime ministers, 9 vice presidents, 2 parliament spokesmen and 5 special envoys as well as the Secretary-General of the UN. Resolutions included condemnation of the blockade of Cuba and the Paraguay coup, support to Argentina regarding the Malvinas, known in the UK as the Falklands, support to Ecuador over the UK’s threats to its embassy, calls for transformation of the United Nations, calls for the US to stop its illegal drone attacks in Pakistan, calls for disarmament and much more. The reaction in the NATO countries was to ignore the Summit except when deriding its relevance, but it is hardly possible to seriously deny the relevance of a gathering of over 7000 people from the top levels of approximately 150 countries creating a final resolution which included over 700 clauses on world policy. If these countries were all to leave the UN, or begin to vote as a bloc at the UN, there would be a split between NAM countries and NATO countries.

There are many lesser alliances that have worked to enable US and NATO domination in past decades. One of the oldest alliances, created in 1948 out of previous pan-American alliances formed since 1826, is the Organization of American States. This is the organization the US used to create an embargo on Cuba in 1962, an embargo refused only by Canada (who was not a member till 1990) and Mexico. In 2013 there will be 41 member states in the OAS. In 2004 the Cuba-Venezuela Agreement was signed and it proposed an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The alternative coming out of the Cuba-Venezuela Agreement is known as ALBA and now includes eight (soon to be eleven) countries. In 2008, the 12 member Unasur agreement, which includes a defence treaty, was signed, and in 2011 CELAC was created. CELAC members include all members of the OAS except the US and Canada.

In 1947 the Rio Treaty (TIAR) was signed for ‘hemispheric defense’ and was later invoked by the US against Cuba. During the Malvinas (Falklands) war, the US sided with the UK, and during the Iraq war only four countries joined the US. Mexico and Canada are not members, all members of ALBA withdrew in June of 2012, and the treaty is now largely ignored in favour of the Unasur defence agreement.

These new organizations come amid objections to the US and Canada preventing any resolutions from going through at the OAS. These two countries have repeatedly blocked resolutions agreed to by all of the rest of the 35, such as inclusion of Cuba, new solutions to the drug war and solidarity with Argentina over the Malvinas/Falklands. The OAS is a consensus based organization, so it can and has been run, in the words of Venezuela’s Chavez, as a ‘dictatorship’ by those who refuse to negotiate, the two NATO countries.

In August of 2012, an emergency meeting of the OAS was called to decide whether to hold a second meeting to discuss a resolution on the embassy dispute between Ecuador and the UK. The US and Canada (and Trinidad & Tobago) argued against a subsequent meeting and were overruled this time by a vote. After a weekend of hurried meetings of ALBA, Unasur, and others, the OAS meeting in Washington DC was held and also put to a vote. The US delivered a sullen agreement and Canada a more petulant refusal, but in a population of 33 the one consensus breaking vote was irrelevant. While media in NATO countries concentrated on the resolution itself, calling it largely ineffective, the resolution was not the point. The two countries which had ruled the 35 country bloc with their vetos were this time made irrelevant. The message in both the vote and the rhetoric was clear; if the OAS is to survive in any form and not be replaced by CELAC, the NATO countries will no longer be permitted to simply block resolutions.

The two countries which excluded Cuba from the OAS have become, as a direct result of an organization started by Fidel Castro, the two that are now themselves excluded. The countries that have lobbied for sanctions against Iran have been ignored by the 120 members and 21 observers of the NAM which have selected Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the current chairperson. In 2015 the chair will be handed over to Venezuela, another arch-enemy of the US as the organization continues to define itself along lines set out by Fidel Castro in 1979. Ecuador, a member of ALBA, Unasur, CELAC and NAM as well as many other alliances, has already threatened sanctions against the UK over the Malvinas/Falklands.

The NATO countries are suddenly in very real peril of having sanctions imposed against themselves. How real is the threat of solidarity among NAM members? Within days of the summit, Canada had closed the Iranian embassy in Canada and Netanyahu was berating Obama over not delivering stronger ultimatums to Iran. Iran does not think that is a coincidence.

NATO Partnerships

Does the 1% need the 99%?

It is very evident that in terms of population and resources the side I will call the NAM countries are in a superior position. It is equally evident that in terms of military, the NATO countries are vastly superior; NATO countries control over 70% of the world’s military spending. So while resource trade embargos could quickly plummet NATO countries into what they would probably consider dystopia, or a state resembling that of the global south, NATO countries could also use their military to wipe out populations in the NAM countries, using unmanned and even autonomous drones, and they could create embargos by blocking trade between NAM countries.

What is the loyalty between the NATO countries? How many will stand together in the face of embargos? In the case of the intelligence, defense science and technology sharing countries, particularly the countries known as the five eyes, their governments’ loyalty to each other has been shown to be similar to that of a gang or a cult. What they know of each other is probably enough to ensure allegiance unless their governments are completely taken over by new people and trials started for crimes against humanity and war crimes. More importantly, their corporate ties are far too strong to break. At the moment they are too invested in protecting each other for a split.

Japan’s spat with China coming at this time may put them firmly on the five eyes’ side. Or not. Japan rejected bilateral or regional agreements for many years and has far less explicit ties than most countries. As the third or fourth largest economy, they may also be able to afford independence. And their biggest trading partner is still China. Trade relationships are handy to help us make predictions, although they are by no means the whole story, potential trade relationships may be an even bigger influencer at this point as many countries try to back away from troubled economies.

The key then becomes whether individual NATO countries feel it is easier to back a new BRICS led empire, or back the existing US empire, since none of the core NATO countries is strong enough to build a new empire on its own and their corporate powers will not back a real democracy. At this moment, none have shown any inclination to prefer a BRICS led NAM alliance, but the EU members may be far too preoccupied with matters at home to involve themselves in global issues, on either side. Many NATO partners will choose individually as they have conflicting agreements, while some like Israel are easy to predict.

The corporations control the money and therefore the military and the NATO countries. The people provide labour for the corporations, including the military. There are far more people than the corporations and the few who control them actually need for labour, but the world in general is facing an imminent shortage of young people to care for their aging populations. Whether care for aging populations will be a priority remains to be seen. Automated warfare has made it much harder for people to regain control of their own military. The general populaton would have to track the few people who control the corporations, the governments and the military and regain control by removing control from those who hold it currently.

What is the power of the people over the corporations? On the NATO side, very little to none. On the NAM side, that is possibly the most interesting place to watch, which countries, if any, will attempt co-operative governance which benefits people ahead of corporations, and whether that will break the NAM alliance in two or even completely disintegrate it into many civil wars. Or even possibly work in some countries, and if some countries do implement governance by the people, will it look again like communism, with a corrupt central core and a corrupt military required to stop the capitalist imperialists from invading, or will there be a new model? If there is a new model, how will it stop the corporate invasion?

The NAM countries are hardly a unified bloc either. While they are largely all against NATO dominance, most of them (particularly BRICS countries) want a ‘multi-polar’ world, or a world with multiple tyrants including themselves. Outside of BRICS, the smaller countries want a place for the elite of every country. There is no real political representation of control by the people which has any power at this moment. How can governance by the people gain control in this conflict?

Who will win? At this point, it hardly matters. If NATO wins it is status quo, if some form of NAM wins it will quickly become the new NATO, using the threat of the old NATO to justify its own imperialism. This is the pattern we have seen in every revolution since the beginning of society, sometimes appearing instantly, sometimes edging forward in a few decades.

How can we create real governance by the people out of this conflict?

The word crisis is derived from a word meaning ‘turning point’. For all the crises we think the world has been through, there is very rarely a turn. Indeed, history can appear more like an inexorably straight path with predictable periodic bumps. The tools to effect a real change are available now, but real change would require a real direction and goals. Without these, this revolution will end as all the others eventually have, with new tyrants.

The latest crisis will disrupt every corner of the world. By the end of 2015 we will have either a new system or new tyrants. For us to create real change from this, there needs to be a working venue, an uncensorable place to communicate both locally in person and globally online. There needs to be a new system of collaboration that will be stronger than the systems of governance we have had so far. We need a system that can react quickly and powerfully enough, with enough knowledge and expertise, to allow collaboration on a massive scale and still provide enough autonomy for local governance.

I will be writing a lot about both the communication and the collaboration soon, starting here.

2012-02-14 TheGlobalSquare: Call for coders

 

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/14/2012 – 00:02

Submitted by The Global Square

TheGlobalSquare aims to be the first massive decentralized social network in the history of the Internet. We are aware of the difficulties we must overcome, but we believe the Internet Community has reached a point where such an initiative is possible. It is possible because we are more united; censorship and repression have created stronger bonds between those who care about freedom and the free flow of information. How can we achieve this goal?

Structure: Organizing humanity in a single collective

The Global Square is to be an easy to use social and work platform for individuals and groups. One of the main goals is that it should have very low barriers of entry for inexperienced users, making it as easy as possible for them to contribute work, interact and use the various tools at their disposal. Another goal is that the Global Square be expandable to allow global coordinated and efficient work in every system. TheGlobalSquare recognizes the principles of personal privacy as a basic right of individuals and transparency to all users as an obligation for public systems.

The Global Square is not exclusively for activists. While it will assist activists with the correct tools and virtual meeting areas, it will also be available to the global community. Although the structure is designed for organization and coordination of personal relationships, assemblies and action, the platform is also conceived for independent work systems, movements struggling for civil causes and more. As systems are added that encompass more aspects of daily life and political topics of wide interest, experts and users from all walks of life will be able to use the Global Square to discuss, create and learn. A first example of this is the News Commons, which will be a source of verified, crowd sourced and peer reviewed news on all topics. Other early basic systems to be created on the Global Square are the Global Market for establishing new methods of exchange and the Renaissance and Evolution Forums for testing principles for governance and law. Future systems could include topics such as communications, healing, food, arts, sports, sciences, trade, housing, and energy.

This is an open community where everyone is welcome. It is peer-to-peer, horizontal and non-hierarchical. This is a space where coders, designers, itechs, artists, activists and philosophers are invited to collaborate together. We believe it is necessary to concentrate and focus our energy, so if you are already in a group planning something similar or with the same objectives please participate to enrich both projects.

P2P based

With the support of Delft University of Technology, TheGlobalSquare will mainly be developed based on the existing peer to peer technology provided by the renowned file sharing software Tribler. Tribler is a project focused on decentralized social networks with years of expertise in peer-to-peer communication. By using this particular existing P2P technology it becomes virtually impossible to break or censor our network. The content files are not centralized in any physical server, so the network belongs to its users – a basic principle of participatory democracy applied to the on-line space. It encourages input from users from countries with censorship and blocking; with an ‘unblockable’ space to share all kinds of information and work collaboratively. It has been proven that WEB, as we know it, each day is more closed and subject to arbitrary and illegal blocking. A step beyond it is more than needed.

Open system

TheGlobalSquare will include authentication mechanisms, relational schema and communication protocols. Authentication and communications are up to whoever implements this specification to build a system. That will allow a project to be “TheGlobalSquare compatible” while supporting semantic data, currently visualized as RDF. The RDF vocabularies we develop to represent meaning and relationship are the common thread that enable uniting a variety of platforms. Any network is the sum of the technology supporting it as well as the actual connections made between individuals and groups within it. To succeed, we must be able to both leverage whatever currently exists as well as develop anything needed to build bridges between systems and people. There will be a blend of network protocols, web services, data stores, P2P clients etc. Tools for people across the planet to meet, share ideas and develop proposals must enable coordinated, effective, global action. TheGlobalSquare system will provide a unified way to manage communications between people within a radically heterogeneous vocabulary system.

Approach

Build something, get a real-world community to use it, and ask how we can improve it. Instead of detailing the design out from zero, we propose to build software and incrementally improve it. This requires a designed-for-evolution type of modern software engineering approach.

Our goal is to have a functional prototype by March 2012. The Global Square will be a featured project at the Berlin Bienale from April 27, 2012 until July 1, 2012. To have something working in March, we need to be modest. We will start with a simple PC app. The first feature to create is an operational skeleton for an attack resilient social network: Users can add friends and send them messages in private. You can also leave messages on the people’s public walls. This first prototype should already have robust security and use Elyptic Key Crypto to secure all communication. Each user creates a public key upon installation. All private messages are encrypted for that person only. All friendships are initiated using spoofing-free mechanisms.

Features after the March release

Using the Agile method we will focus on one feature or module for a few weeks, conduct tests, do a release and then focus on the next feature. By releasing in a 6-8 week cycle we can focus on coding and improvement.

A goal is to have a smartphone app later in the year plus a standalone app with a usable GUI. We will start with the stand alone PC app, which later can be turned into an .apk for mobiles. Once the basic prototype is up and running, we can add features beyond social networking, for instance, Squares, Task Groups or Events with communication systems. Once that is up and running the focus could be on “distributed decision making and voting” and the various Systems such as News Commons.

The global square needs developers to turn ideas and dreams in reality!

For such an effort, we must count on the community of coders and developers. We are going to use a Tribler kernel based on Python. We urgently need the help of the community in order to implement all the features planned for The Global Square. If you have expertise in Python and P2P protocols you still have time and opportunity to join our project, a project which will hopefully change the dynamics of interaction among global society.

Various jobs require a combination of the following:

• experience with Open Source project basic operation
• Python programming
• network protocols, UDP message transfers
• cryptography, pub/priv key management
• SQLight, performance, transactions
• epidemic gossip protocols, for global dissemination of crypted info
• self-organising network programming
• GUI in WxWindows
• Android developer, mixed .py build chain (for later smart phone .apk)

To join:

• Take a week to read the Global Square wiki and the other documents and understand the existing code.
• Possibly work for a few weeks on prototyping
• Feb – March 2012 availability
• Join the mailinglist: theglobalsquare@lists.takethesquare.net
• Introduce yourself

General-contact: Pedro Noel info@theglobalsquare.org 
Press Contact: Heather Marsh (spokesperson) press@theglobalsquare.org 
Developers Contact: Johan Pouwelse and Ed Knutson (development coordinators)dev@theglobalsquare.org

2011-12-24 A proposal for governance in the post 2011 world

Optimism is a political act. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience. – Alex Steffen

The world is long overdue for a completely new system of governance. The need for political representation or a paternalistic and opaque authority has been removed by technology. Governance by nation states is now as arbitrary and illogical as city states were earlier found to be. Corporations have the freedom to live in a world without borders or social responsibility, to own property no individual can claim and to control a one world government and legal system, with insupportable consequences for the world’s resources and individual rights. To effect the change we require in 2012, to give individuals control and responsibility, to bring regional systems under regional governance and protect the heritage of future generations, we need a new political model.

Individual Rights

In any system where groups have power, individual rights are always at risk. Both pure democracy and communism have brought human rights horrors every bit as reprehensible as fascist states; in order to guard against genocide, torture, and other persecution of individuals in the name of the greater good, a system must safeguard individual rights above all other authority.

Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies that individual rights are to be applied equally without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. With the addition of age, this would prevent discrimination against any group. Groups are not individuals and no group is entitled to special and further rights or protections under individual rights.

A recognition of individual rights will include life, liberty, security of person, access to the basic essentials of life including knowledge, privacy and personal autonomy in matters not affecting the rest of society, free development of personality and potential, and a fair legal system which does not promote wishes of the group over rights of the individual.

Autonomous peer to peer user groups for systems

Governments up till now have been run by hierarchical groups, which act as the final authority on all topics for an entire region for an arbitrarily specified length of time or until they are overthrown by another group. What these authorities govern is a series of systems, controlled by the state or corporations, and run as dictatorships where workers’ individual rights are exchanged for the basic necessities of life. These systems have profit for the top of the hierarchy as their objective; they are not set up to provide an efficient or superior service or product to the users.

If these systems were organized as autonomous, transparent, porous, peer to peer user groups, they would be far better governed by themselves. The current political structure does not recognize that every system is not of concern or interest to everyone in the region, or that some users have far greater knowledge and expertise in specific areas than others. We need a system where responsibility and control rests with the entire user group and expertise is acknowledged and put to best use.

Autonomous: each user group should consist of all people affected by the system and no people not affected by the system.

Transparent: all information related to the system must be fully transparent in order for users to participate in tasks or auditing.

Porous: contribution at all levels of each user group must be open to all users with acceptance by peer review.

Peer to peer: each user group should consist of users: audit and provide feedback,contributors: interested users who periodically present work for acceptance by the members,members: have acquired expertise and been accepted as full contributing members by the user group, and a core group: recognized by the group as having the necessary level of expertise to provide direction for the system.

Meritocracy: A side effect of these user groups is that they provide workers with the three motivators which provide the greatest job satisfaction, autonomy, mastery and purpose. People can work on anything they like, they are not required to submit resumes, acquire accreditation, seniority, or approval from an individual authority. If their work is good enough it will be accepted by the user group. Everyone can work on the system that interests them, doing the jobs at the level they are capable of, with as much or as little involvement as they choose.

Systems should be organized by user groups, not by nations or treaties. International systems would include things such as the internet, telecommunications and knowledge, local systems would include things such as transit, food production and social services, and in any situation where only one family or an individual is affected, the responsibility would lie with only them. Each local user group or individual would have access to outside user groups for trade, shared knowledge, disaster relief, etc., autonomous but networked.

Global commons

Anything which is not only of global interest but also does not belong to any one generation cannot be destroyed and cannot be claimed as the property of any individual, group, corporation or government. Global commons would include space, the atmosphere and electromagnetic field, deep sea ocean, land and water masses of sufficient size to have global impact, areas of the biosphere which are rare or important enough to be of global concern, and knowledge. Knowledge includes discoveries, history, creative works, and the information people require in order to govern themselves and excludes personal information regarding individuals. There should be no restriction on the use of ideas, although creativity needs to be compensated and credited.

Anything belonging to the global commons must be held under stewardship of a porous and transparent peer to peer organization set up for the purpose, and the mandate for all global commons must include the protection and preservation of the commons. All systems which affect the commons must work with the commons in their design and implementation.

 

2010 we woke up. 2011 we stood up. 2012 we take over.

 

 

Continuing articles:

The Financial System

Stigmergy

Needed now: A News Commons

Privacy and Transparency

Groups and Individuals

Concentric User Groups and Epistemic Communities

 

Resources:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Daniel Pink on the surprising science of motivation – TED Talk

Bettermeans: How does an open enterprise work?

P2P Foundation

Cooperative Economy in the Great Depression

 

Image credit MauroB

2011-11-05 The Global Square: an online platform for our movement

Submitted by FuturePress on Sat, 11/05/2011 – 22:57

A proposal on how to perpetuate the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations and transform them into lasting forms of social organization.

This is a proposal made by a group of concerned global citizens who also act as volunteers for Take the Square, United for Global Change, 15october.net, European Revolution, WL Central and Reflections on a Revolution (ROAR). We do not pretend to represent or speak on behalf of anyone but ourselves.

The Global Square: Towards an Online Platform for the Occupy Movement

In its most recent tactical briefing for the Occupy movement, Adbusters correctly pointed out that, “of the many questions swirling around #OCCUPY, the most challenging is how to gel into a global movement without sacrificing the decentralized, leaderless model.” In the wake of the global day of action on October 15, the question now arises how our movement can evolve new organizational structures that will allow the assemblies — and their highly innovative participatory model of decision-making — to survive beyond the occupations and become a permanent fixture of our emerging global society.

How, in other words, can we perpetuate the creative and cooperative spirit of the occupations and transform them into lasting forms of social organization — at the global as well as the local level?

Currently, the organization of the occupations and the collaboration between them rests in part upon the innovative use of social media. However, as a group of volunteers who were directly involved in the coordination of the worldwide protests of October 15, we have found the existing social media to be increasingly restrictive in their functionality. While Facebook and Twitter have been very helpful for disseminating basic information and aiding mass mobilization, they do not provide us with the tools for extending our participatory model of decision-making beyond the direct reach of the assemblies and up to the global level.

What we need, at this point, is a platform that allows us to radically democratize our global organizational efforts. In addition to the local squares, we now need a global square where people of all nations can come together as equals to participate in the coordination of collective actions and the formulation of common goals and aspirations. For this reason, we call upon the revolutionary wizkids of the world to unite and assist in the development of a new online platform – The Global Square – that combines the communicative functions of the existing social networks with the political functions of the assemblies to provide crucial new tools for the development of our global movement.

The aim of the platform, in this respect, should not be to replace the physical assemblies but rather to empower them by providing the online tools for (trans)national organization and collaboration. The ideal would be both to foster individual participation and to structure collective action. The Global Square could be our own virtual Zuccotti Park, serving as a public space where different groups can come together to organize their local assemblies — and where different assemblies can join hands to coordinate their collective projects. In a way, The Global Square could be a groundbreaking experiment in building a global participatory decision-making system from the grassroots up.

To be more precise, the specific tools provided by this online platform could include the following (note that this list is far from exhaustive and will grow organically to include many other functionalities):

An interactive map that lists all ongoing assemblies around the world;
A search option allowing users to find squares, events, working-groups, etc.;
An aggregated news feed that lists the most relevant ‘status updates’ shared by the various assemblies (à la Facebook);
Individual ‘pages’ for each local square/assembly where participants can organize collectively, including the following functionalities:
– A calendar with upcoming events/actions;
– A forum for public debate, with the ability to open different threads;
– A list of all relevant documents/minutes uploaded by the assembly;
– The ability to create and edit new documents collaboratively;
– The ability to vote on specific decisions;
– The ability to submit new proposals.
A public and private messaging system that allows all individual users and assemblies to communicate and exchange information, reinforcing solidarity and mutual collaboration;
The ability to ‘scale-up’ local decisions, actions, and initiatives to the global level through a ‘sharing’ system that allows local assemblies to pose ideas, votes, and proposals to other assemblies in a horizontal, non-hierarchical fashion (i.e., straight from the local to the global level).

Furthermore, The Global Square should be 100% multilingual and open-source, so a community of developers can continue to add languages as well as functions.

Facebook and the other social networks have until now only offered the possibility to share and promote content. The Global Square, by contrast, should encourage the active participation of citizens, the consolidation of online working groups, the collaborative scheduling of events, the establishment of consensus, the process of participatory budgeting, and the exchange of needs, proposals and ideas – in a local and a global context – between individuals and assemblies. Furthermore, to promote the widespread uptake of the platform, the creation of a minimalist, user-friendly and aesthetically-pleasing design is of the utmost importance.

We are aware of the existence of social platforms like n-1.cc, used by the Spanish movement, yet we feel that these have a number of shortcomings. They are not very user-friendly and not universally accessible for citizens from different national backgrounds. Also, resulting from a lack of funds and time, these platforms have not been able to develop the level of complexity required to provide all the functionalities listed above. We realize that the project we are proposing is a very ambitious one. But we hope that our movement can seize this opportunity to prove once and for all that creativity, innovation and dynamism can flourish in a collaborative, non-profit framework — and that it is possible to ensure a form of participatory democracy beyond the nation state.

We believe The Global Square could make a significant contribution to the consolidation of the assemblies and the development of our global movement. It is important to note, however, that the project will require significant funding, as well as a team of full-time professional developers. As we know that Occupy Wall Street plays an exemplary role within the movement, we are turning specifically to you for help in further refining this idea and initiating the search for funds and developers for a beta-version of the platform. We would be very interested to hear your ideas, suggestions and criticisms of this proposal. We can be reached atinfo@theglobalsquare.org.

Finally, we have registered a domain (theglobalsquare.org — not active yet) that we would happily share with the movement (other suggestions are, of course, very welcome too). We are looking forward to a public conversation with all of you on how to make this idea work in a way that involves and benefits all. From the local village square to the global village square — it is time for us to unite!

In solidarity,

The volunteers at:

Take the Square
WLCentral.org
United for Global Change
15october.net
European Revolution
Reflections on a Revolution

 

2011-01-11 Jacob Appelbaum on entering the US on Monday

Jacob Appelbaum is a security analyst who works onTor and Wikileaks, and has been very instrumental in discovering weaknesses in the Haystack system, among other things. He has gained notoriety with the US government through acting as a speaker and advocate of Wikileaks, and became widely known last fall after a Rolling Stone article calling him “The Most Dangerous Man in Cyberspace” and “The American hacker behind Wikileaks”. Recently he was one of the subjects of a subpoena from the US DoJ requesting information from Twitter.

While the Twitter story broke he was in Iceland, and he returned to the US on Monday. He has been the subject of repeated harassment at airports this year, and apparently Monday was no exception, despite members of the ACLU meeting him at the airport. He will be headed to Toronto this weekend and will be able to experience the independence (or not) of Canadian customs.

His tweets on his most recent experience arriving in the US:

Jan 7: 9:07PM - It seems quite wrong that I feel safe in Iceland while simultaneously having a sense of apprehension about returning to the USA next week.

Jan 7: 9:20PM – Motivation: …”I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.”…

Jan 7: 9:33PM – Now’s a good time to note that *the world* needs strong anonymity. Help out: https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en

Jan 9: 10:52AM – After a good deal of thought, I’ve decided to fly home from Iceland tomorrow to Seattle as planned. The ACLU will meet me at the airport.

Jan 9: 11:12AM – I am not practically able to transport electronic devices. I will be radio silent before, during, and for some time after my flight.

Jan 9: 11:31AM – I think that it is unlikely that there will be any serious trouble. With secret courts and sealed orders… the only way to know is to go.

Jan 10: 5:30AM – I’m heading to the airport from Reykjavik and expect to be in the US around 16:40 PST Monday afternoon. Perhaps everything will go smoothly.

Jan 10: 7:40PM – I am out of the airport and back in Seattle. Nothing more for now, sleep time.

Yesterday (January 12) he added:

- It’s very frustrating that I have to put so much consideration into talking about the kind of harassment that I am subjected to in airports.

- I was detained, searched, and CPB did attempt to question me about the nature of my vacation upon landing in Seattle.

- The CPB specifically wanted laptops and cell phones and were visibly unhappy when they discovered nothing of the sort.

- I did however have a few USB thumb drives with a copy of the Bill of Rights encoded into the block device. They were unable to copy it.

- The forensic specialist (who was friendly) explained that EnCase and FTK, with a write-blocker inline were unable to see the Bill of Rights.

- The CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) agent was waiting for me at the exit gate. Remember when it was our family and loved ones?

- When I handed over my customs declaration form, the female agent was initially friendly. After pulling my record, she had a sour face.

- She attempted to trick me by putting words into my mouth. She marked my card with a large box with the number 1 inside, sent me on my way.

- While waiting for my baggage, I noticed the CBP agent watching me and of course after my bag arrived, I was “randomly” selected for search.

- Only US customs has random number generator worse than a mid-2007 Debian random number generator. Random? Hardly.

- During the search, I made it quite clear that I had no laptop and no cell phone. Only USB drives with the Bill of Rights.

- The CBP agent stated that I had posted on Twitter before my flight and that slip ended the debate about their random selection process.

- The CBP agents in Seattle were nicer than ones in Newark. None of them implied I would be raped in prison for the rest of my life this time.

- The CBP agent asked if the ACLU was really waiting. I confirmed the ACLU was waiting and they again denied me contact with legal help.

- All in all, the detainment was around thirty minutes long. They all seemed quite distressed that I had no computer and no phone.

- They were quite surprised to learn that Iceland had computers and that I didn’t have to bring my own.

- There were of course the same lies and threats that I received last time. They even complemented me on work done regarding China and Iran.

- I think there’s a major disconnect required to do that job and to also complement me on what they consider to be work against police states.

- While it’s true that Communist China has never treated me as badly as CBP, I know this isn’t true for everyone who travels to China.

- All in all, if you’re going to be detained, searched, and harassed at the border in an extra-legal manner, I guess it’s Seattle over Newark.

- It took a great deal of thought before I posted about my experience because it honestly appears to make things worse for me in the future.

- Even if it makes things worse for me, I refuse to be silent about state sponsored systematic detainment, searching, and harassment.

- In case it is not abundantly clear: I have not been arrested, nor charged with any crime, nor indicted in any way. Land of the free? Hardly.

- I’m only counting from the time that we opened my luggage until it was closed. The airport was basically empty when I left.

- It’s funny that the forensics guy uses EnCase. As it, like CBP, apparently couldn’t find a copy of the Bill of Rights I dd’ed into the disk.

- The forensics guy apparently enjoyed the photo with my homeboy Knuth and he was really quite kind. The forensics guy in Newark? Not so much.

- The CBP agent asked me for data – was I bringing data into the country? Where was all my data from the trip? Names, numbers, receipts, etc.

- The mental environment that this creates for traveling is intense. Nothing is assured, nothing is secure, and nothing provides escape.

- I resisted the temptation to give them a disk filled with /dev/random because I knew that reading them the Bill of Rights was enough hassle.

- I’m flying to Toronto, Canada for work on Sunday and back through Seattle again a few days later. Should be a joy to meet these guys again.

- All of this impacts my ability to work and takes a serious emotional toll on me. It’s absolutely unacceptable.

- What happens if I take a device they can’t image? They take it. What about the stuff they give back? Back doored? Who knows?

- Does it void a warranty if your government inserts a backdoor into your computer or phone? It certainly voids the trust I have in all of it.

- I dread US Customs more than I dreaded walking across the border from Turkey to Iraq in 2005. That’s something worth noting.

- I will probably never feel safe about traveling internationally with a computer or phones again.

- None the less, safe or not, I won’t stop working on Tor. Nor will I cease traveling. I will adapt and I will win. A hard road worth taking.

- A solid argument for free software: To check the integrity of your hardware and your software against tampering. No binary (firmware) blobs.

- I’d like to think that when I visit my family in Canada this wekend and attend a work conference that Canada won’t hassle me. Am I dreaming?

- Will the Canadian government simply act as an arm of the US policy of detaining, searching, and harassing me? Oh Canada! I hope not.

- It’s interesting to note that some media initially reported that I had no trouble because I said nothing at all. Irony abounds.

- Why do we allow US Customs to lie and to threaten people? It’s a crime to lie to them and they do it as their day job. Why the inequality?

- A few points: I was not arrested, I did not consent to any searching, and of course – this isn’t about travel, this is about liberty

- @squeakie Yes, I was searched but I did not consent to this search.

- @tbeckett No, I asked if I was free to go and I was denied the ability to leave.

Our articles on the Twitter subpoena:

Twitter Details & Messages of Birgitta Jónsdóttir Subpoenaed.
2011-01-08: U.S. DOJ Twitter Subpoena Updates
2011-01-08: Twitter on censorship: No censorship on Twitter
2011-01-09: U.S. DOJ access to information on Twitter followers 
2011-01-09: DOJ subpoena applicable to non-Twitter users who viewed tweets?
2011-01-09 Government Requests for Twitter Users’ Personal Information Raise Serious Constitutional Concerns, Says ACLU

Look At What Just Happened

I just had to watch Fox News talking about how Wikileaks was promoting anarchy. It’s not my fault, I was looking for ghouls. Anyway, when I went back to twitter everyone I follow had linked the first video below. We had been talking a lot about how the behaviour of the MIC in the last year will radicalize a generation that has been widely regarded as being completely self absorbed, spoiled, etc., etc., all the things old people usually call young people who haven’t done anything yet. But look at this.

Nothing like this ever happened to me when I was growing up. Not even close. As I’m sure most of you can imagine, I was an idealistic child and not one that had a whole lot of innate respect for authority. There are a lot of people born like that. This generation has the added fuel of knowing their health has been destroyed by the pharmaceutical and food industries, their economy by the military-industry-government mafias, and their living environments by everyone. Their entertainment has been co-opted by industry to the point that youtube videos made by children are more popular and resonate more with their audiences than the professional entertainers. This is a generation that has watched everything get worse in their lifetimes. What happens when a generation like this sees a glimmer of light? When they see one person standing up to the people linked below? Who is promoting anarchy again?

I don’t think the great experiment has worked. No matter how you destroy the health of a population, no matter how you remove safety, dignity and self respect, no matter how much propaganda you produce and how many ways you feed it to them, people have never been permanently crushed by a dictatorship. They have never lost hope. And the more desperate they are, the more of them will follow the glimmer of light.

Another link I was sent today included this wonderful quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupery via Assange: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the seas.” That is what Wikileaks has done. That is all. To a people this oppressed, it is enough.

From Wikileaks to Wikileaks World

Now that most of the mainstream media have finally figured out who Anonymous is and that Wikileaks is not “one lone hacker”, some seem to think it is an organization populated by 16 year old boys shouting “Pew! Pew! Pewpewpew!” at their computer screens. And by “Wikileaks” they mean this whole movement we are watching.

We had a look at the origins of Wikileaks. It is possible to follow a shadowy tale from there to last summer, and watch journalists, IT people of all sorts, activists and politicians get involved. But the last three weeks have seen an absolute explosion in the numbers of people in this movement, and solidly in the movement, not just watching.

All of the support from people like EFF, Anonymous, the Pirate Party, etc., was pretty predictable, there is a lot of idealistic crossover and most people were already quiet supporters. But this is so much bigger. Last summer, there were really only a scant handful of people who were vocal supporters of Wikileaks. So scant that media could talk about a “microcosmic organization” and commenters could say “It’s always the same three names.” or “They’re like a cult”. It was truly scary on November 28th when Peter King decided he wanted the organization declared a terrorist organization like Al Qaeda and all of its supporters hunted down. Just 11 days later, that seems a laughable idea. Since the release of the cables, the Wikileaks twitter went from less than 200,000 followers to almost 500,000 and Wikileaks facebook went from 147,015 on November 23 to almost 1.2 million right now.

Who are all these people? Besides the usual internet suspects, all of the best journalists in the world have figured out which side they want to be standing on. Idealistic young people who want a job so righteous that it deserves to be protected by constitutions and laws. Also, journalists who want to work for Wikileaks, the new coolest media outlet in the world. And journalists who are just afraid of being shown up for the hypocrites they have been so far. But these were also the people we expected to join, sooner or later. It is still so much bigger.

One of the most wonderful additions I have seen is the amount of people from the legal profession getting on board. Possibly the world’s most hated profession is actually populated by a lot of very intelligent people of deep integrity and high ideals. People who believe in the law and everything it stands for, and people who have been horrified by the attitudes of politicians who think if something they don’t like isn’t against the law, then they’ll just change the law. The law is supposed to be above politics, it is not a political tool. When Assange said “It’s very important to remember the law is not what … powerful people would want others to believe it is. The law is not what a general says it is. The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is.” it seems to have struck a chord with many people in the legal profession who have been feeling that way for some time.

The other professionals that I have seen in overwhelming numbers are professors and others associated with academia. Again, this is probably something born of frustration, people who love knowledge and the transmission of knowledge who have had their profession, like the legal profession, curtailed and under attack. To suddenly be of use again, to find a movement that values truth and intelligence, is like finally coming home for a great many people who have been so frustrated with the anti-intellectual feeling of the last several decades. Academia has also been on the front lines of the attack from the US government, with students at Columbia University told by the US State Dept that discussing Wikileaks on Facebook or Twitter would hurt their chances of a job in the future. Joe McCarthy could not have said it better.

With the arrest of Assange, we are seeing human rights activists around the world, sympathetic and hopeful before, but genuinely concerned now. Today the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said “I am concerned about reports of pressure exerted on private companies including banks, credit card companies and Internet service providers to close down credit lines for donations to Wikileaks, as well as to stop hosting the website,” pointing out that this could be interpreted as an attempt to prevent Wikileaks from publishing, in violation of its right to freedom of expression.

We are at the point now where any petition in support of Wikileaks looks like a Who’s Who of intelligent thoughtful professionals the world over, while people of all ages around the world are engaged in any way they can. As the battle lines are being drawn, look around at who is standing where. It is a very interesting and telling thing to observe.