The curse of King Tantalus and the Internet
Here’s the rub, according to Greek legend, King Tantalus was condemned by the gods for file-sharing. Okay, its a modern version of the old legend. But this part is true. In one version, Tantalus (from whence the English language evolved the mythos related to the word Tantalising), was given an unusual punishment. Forced to stand in a pool of water, from which he could not drink, under an apple tree from whose fruit he could not eat, Tantalus found to his horror, that whenever he reached down, the waters receded, and whenever he reached up, the branches lifted so that whatever he did, his actions were thwarted by some unseen power he could not comprehend.
South Africa recently saw the commissioning of the 1.26Terabyte Seacom Cable. The service will only be officially launched later this month. If Seacom were the only cable connecting our continent to the rest of the world, we will have surpassed our previous national bandwidth capabilities by a thousand fold. Seacom has apparently 28times the capacity of Sat1. According to the laws of supply and demand, prices for connectivity are meant to come down. They have not.
This is not the only intercontinental fibre optic project to arrive on our shores. There are at least several other projects, each one, in and of itself, capable of reducing the digital divide to zero, as the Internet becomes a real-time event and no longer the World Wide Wait. The West Africa Cable System (WACS), previously known as Infraco, in which Government, Telkom, Vodacom, Nortel and MTN are investing, was recently extended to South Africa. WACS will link SA and West African coastal countries to Europe, offering the highest capacity of all the African undersea cables at 3.8 terabits per second.
Glo-1 another new west African undersea cable system that will connect Nigeria to the UK, with additional landing points in Portugal, Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa, has a capacity of 640 gigabits per second.
Another cable is MainOne, a 1.92 terabits per second line that will connect Portugal to Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Gabon, Senegal, Congo, Ivory Coast, Morocco and SA and which is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of next year.
In addition, France Telecom-Orange is building the African Coast to Europe (ACE) cable system, which will link 20 west African countries to France, with a possible extension to SA.
Then there is the EASSy cable, which will link SA and east Africa, with landing points in six countries, providing a capacity of 1.4 terabits per second and is expected to go live in the second half of 2010.
The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS) will link Mombassa on the cost of Kenya to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates will have no diret impact on SA but will increase the overall capacity of the African Internet.There is also a Far East Cable project linking the island of Mauritous, India and Kwazulu-Natal.
The mandarins in charge at Telkom and other telecommunications operators want us to continue thinking in terms of scarcity and Mbs per second. In fact estimates about the growth of web-use by South African’s over the next five years already seem like attempts to downplay the new capacity which is already available.
Lets take a step back. Verizon recently unveiled a 1gbs service in New York. Compared to the average 40Mps here this is more than quadruple the speed of you average household cable and as capacity increases, expect to see downloads occurring at light speed. Yes, that’s right , the difference between copper cabling and fibre optic is startling and represents not just a paradigm shift, but a quantum leap forward towards a post-scarcity economy, at least in terms of broadband connectivity.
The corporate executives however who wish to profit from their investments until the seventh generation, from a metred IP system based upon copper cable are keeping mum. Even though the the roll-out of fibre by companies such as Dark Wave Africa is creating expectations of immediate access to the African Information Superhighway, consumers are unlikely to see any of the benefits of realtime IP, because like King Tantalus, we are all being punished for file sharing, downloading, and expressing ourselves by the people in charge. Telkom know they have us by the balls.
South Africa has always suffered from geographic isolation. As a long-haul destination, most of the free World is a 14 hour flight away. Our neighbours such as Mocambique, Botswana, Namibia, the so-called Frontline states, are relatively underdeveloped and dependent upon us for exports. Worse, we have a basket-case Zimbabwe 0n our doorstep and a constant flow of immigrants, refugees and exiles fleeing repressive government, conflicts and wars up North.
The Internet is the only technology capable of changing this equation of underdevelopment, but by bringing the world closer, we will share both the benefits and the problems of West. Can South Africans cope with the inevitable culture shock? Can the rest of the world cope with digital Africans zipping around on the Information Superhighway and demanding goods and services?
The danger of doing this in a phased transition might outway the problems of a Big Bang. Imagine arriving your African destination from a first world country with progressive communications and open-access Internet services that run at light speed. You are likely to find the following;
1. Newspapers which are out-of-date by a quarter of a century.
2. Stagnating development in which most people cannot name the most important Scientific inventions
3. Technology which has long since been relegated to the arc or the city rubbish dump, still in service.
4. Inability to comprehend the global vernacular which is being created by services such as Twitter, Yahoo, Myspace and Facebook.
5. In our strange land, where none of the major innovations have reached the majority of citizens, a casual tourist from the future might relate the following story:
“[South Africa] is a beautiful country. Its citizens are like docile sheep. They willingly pay taxes to a telecommunications elite who control all the money and let them rule but without passing any of the benefits on to the majority who suffer and languish as is they were still caught-up in the 16th century.”
A pretty picture indeed. This is what the big media houses want, a phased transition that locks in profits while keeping consumers entertained with content that is created in Hollywood instead of being exported by the netizens of the future. Life goes on, profits are what is important, not people, and who are we to think different?
Tantalus is no longer King, but rather the tantalizing fate of everybody living in this transition to the light-age.
Medialternatives challenges you to question the status quo. Feel free to raise uncomfortable questions.
The pictures the Cape Times isn’t showing you
They banned the Anti-War movement, censored the 911 Truth and lied to us about Blackwater and Contra, now they are refusing to publish the whole story of the Tehran massacre and continuing to protect Independent News and Media business interests and the O’Reilly Clan base in the Middle East. Help us to expose the lies.
Protestor shot during June 16 uprising.
Man dead after clashes with riot police
Tehran burning as a result of civil unrest over the weekend
South Africa needs vision and great leap forward
It is pointless going back to the old way of doing things. The world has changed. We are so interconnected that the mere act of communication has ripples across the planet. Urgent possiblities resulting in unintended consequences, the pressing problems that refuse to go away. Here are some thoughts about the current state of the national crisis.
1. Worrying about recession is pointless. We have growth in areas that were never considered part of the real world. Our economic system is robust and there is more development going on now than there ever was. Rather, we have a recession in speculation. An end of hot money and non-productive capital going any which way. Money is now being spent on reconstruction, on social stability, on the next phase of development.
2. South Africa needs visionary projects like the Bus Rapid Transport System and National Health Insurance, but nothing will get off the ground unless there is serious debate. How dare the Taxi and Minibus industry hold us hostage. Surely this is about commuters, and what commuters want? Again, Health Insurance is about what we as a nation want, not what a few bankers think we ought to have or whether or not medical professionals should have a choice between socialism or free market capitalism.
3. Basic Income Grant = National Insurance = Second Economy. Imagine if we all received a guaranteed basic income as taxpayers. Even the lowest begger pays tax in some form or another via VAT so it is only fair that everybody is included. Now imagine, if the State put some of this aside, as Health Insurance, at very least Dental Plan that protects the smile of each individual. Freedom surely. Equal Opportunity.
Social media breaking iron grip of traditional media
THE news is no longer what it once was. Increasingly, news stories are being broken online and social media such as Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook, have become an important part in the new social discourse whose starting point is not the staid and dusty offices of Newspaper House or SABC, but rather, the web of interconnected relationships and electronic communication that we call the Internet.
Some glaringly obvious errors in how news is being conveyed are becoming apparent in the process. Take the Air France disaster. It took SA media two days to wake up, while online, the story about a South African man on the passenger list of the “missing plane” was already a day old, when the news broke in Paris. Or the Boyle entertainment story, written off as a purely British affair by local news editors until it turned into one of the top global stories of 2009 according to Mashable, then there’s the arrest of well-known activist Mzonke Poni, who became the subject of online email, Facebook updates and tweets, causing an international incident that was entirely skipped over by a racist media who cannot be bothered to get out of bed for anyone who happens to be black and homeless, least of all, an activist.
South Africa’s media has always suffered from parochialism and self-censorship. The media down here has never managed to escape the propaganda, restrictions and prohibitions of the eighties and now labour under the belief that the only good international South African story, is a story about one of the Big Five. Why should whales make the front page and not police brutality in Macasser?
Thanks to social media, however, the grey, old men at Newspaper House can no longer dictate which news story of the day is more important. In fact, the fabrications, concoctions and outright lies of brands like Independent News, SAPA and Associated Press, no longer influence a world which has grown up with social media and which has quickly learnt how to expose blatant distortion and outright mendacity in telling the truth. Social media is unhindered by self-appointed “gatekeepers” who are out of step with the times, who can’t be bothered to keep themselves informed.
This loss in prestige must surely way heavily on newsrooms, who fail to see the future is not simply online but social. Readers are not merely following whichever news source they happen to stumble upon, and relating this information to their peers who in turn share the information, but rather engaging in a collective storytelling and narration that involves newsgathering. Any restriction on such an activity which involves information sharing is bound to be unpopular. Take the way the P2P Pirate Bay story has played itself out in local newspapers (as a cautionary tale of what happens to those who disobey patents and copyright) verses the reality online and the truth which is Sweden’s Pirate Party has just gained a seat in the European Parliament, confounding the dumbest of critics at the Cape Times.
Editors of large and stuffy media organisations may therefore find themselves out of a job, especially if they continue to ignore the growing influence of social media.
The days when media proprietors could simply dictate news headlines to slavish hacks who in turn only showed us what they want to see on the front page are over.
Social media has even begun to exposes the shenanigans of the O’Reilly Clan and the Mulroney Clear Channel connection to Blackwater and like they say in Hollywood, the Emperor has no clothes.
SABC crisis protest march
Frankly, I am a bit tired of the rigged debates and bad programming on SABC. Save the public broadcaster from censorship through boredom. Stop SABC news from becoming His Masters Voice.
HOW TO HELP WITH THE TV CRISIS MARCH
As you all know, the television industry is staging a peaceful protest action against the SABC on 4 June 2009. The response to our call for companies and individuals to join us has been well received and our numbers are growing. Many unions, actors and musicians are on board and we will also be putting out a call to the public to get involved.
What can you do to make the protest a success?
1. Spread the word. Forward this mail to everyone you know who might want to join in the protest.
2. Dress in red. Turn up at the protest wearing red to signify the red tape that is strangling our industry.
3. Make bright, loud, witty banners and placards. Some of the slogans we are putting out there include: We Can’t Survive On Air; Save Our Shows; South Africa Is Watching You; Pay Up: It’s The Right Thing To Do; Roll Tape, Not Red Tape; Programs, Not Perks etcetera. Use your imagination and wit and tell the SABC what you think.
4. Send an SMS. We will be calling on South Africa to send an SMS that tells the SABC what people think of the current crisis. We will collate these comments and deliver them to the powers that be as well as the media. The number to send to: 31970. Your SMS must start with the word TV. SMS’s are charged at 50 cents.
5. Contribute to logistics. We are still asking for people to volunteer to serve as marshals at the protest. We are also still in need of loud hailers and of luminous bibs for marshals to wear. If you know of any suppliers who can donate these things for the protest, get in touch with them.
THE TV CRISIS MARCH
· Date: Thursday 4th June 2009
· 10.30: Joburg – Gather at Atlas Studios in Milpark for rally
· 12.00: Cape Town – Gather on grass in front of SABC
· 12.00: Joburg – March to SABC
· 13.00: Joburg and Cape Town – march and picket at SABC
· 13.45: Joburg – Hand over memorandum
OUR CONTACT: tvcrisis@gmail.com
The action will be a peaceful protest and will be controlled by marshals. It is important to stress that we are adopting a positive tone. The TVIEC is fighting FOR the SABC – for a transparent, fair and sustainable SABC that upholds the values of a credible and responsible public broadcaster, respectful of the South African public and its key partner in content supply – the local production sector, their casts and crews. Once again, please forward this communication to your employees, colleagues, members and industry acquaintances.
This letter is written on behalf of the TVIEC (Television Industry Emergency Coalition) which consists of: IPO (Independent Producers Organization), SASFED (South African Screen Federation), TPA (The Producers Alliance), DFA (Documentary Filmmakers Association), WGSA (Writers Guild of South Africa) as well as the CWU (Creative Workers Union).
SourceL http://www.urbanrenewal.co.za/uncategorized/sabc-crisis-protest-march/
Amagama closes chapter in blogging infamy
THE South African blogging platform which stripped the Creative Commons license from its users material and rebranded itself without bothering to consult or engage on the issue of copyright, has finally closed. The Mail and Guardian announced the closure of their blogging platform Amagama in a letter posted to remaining online users yesterday. This comes after a three year storm over the launch of the platform in which work published under the Creative Commons was hijacked from users accounts at the M&G Blogmark and moved without consultation.
Admittedly Amagama made history. In exchange for a free account (and ample writing space), users parted with their creativity, prose, opinion and banter. The M&G Blogmark had attracted some of South Africa’s liveliest and fresh online writing talent and even the likes of seasoned comedian and playwrite Ian Fraser. Unfortunately what had first appeared to be a welcoming, homespun and open space, where one could express ones deeper fears and anxieties, safe from editorial censorship, quickly turned nasty. M&G staff, unable to resist, began to interfere in the blogging process.
Ian Fraser was kicked off the platform for making weird comments about the President. A book review of A Secret Burden, which I had written to demonstrate the problem of embedded journalism during the Border War was deleted without my permission and access to the rest of my material was suddenly blocked without notice
I complained to M&G editor Ferial Hafagee and there was an exchange of emails on the subject. It eventually came down to my characterisation of a military journalist who cannot be named, as a spy working for people who cannot be mentioned. Hafagee refused to concede that this person was South Africa’s first official embedded journalist and that the review had any merit. The seized material was not returned and is still in the M&G possession.
Then without any warning, the M&G blogmark rebranded itself and moved over to the new Amagama platform causing a flurry of debate and users to leave in droves. The rest of my work, still under lock and key, was simply repackaged and press-ganged into service without any consultation, compensation or recognition of the Creative Commons license scheme under which the original work had been released, and so a new regime came into force.
Henceforth, the M&G would act like our online masters. Alienating a creative work from its original license is probably the greatest sin one can commit in today’s electronic age. Nevertheless handshakes were given all round, deals with Media24 were signed. Spin-doctors began congratulating themselves. All work posted online would now be exclusively under South Africa’s Copyright Act, a real chestnut of a law which still gives publishers exclusive use over any material submitted for publication.
After some six months in which I was effectively banned, I yet again requested the material to be returned. Vince Maher, the brains behind the Amagama launch made a number of promises. None of which were kept. I stood by and watched as my material ratcheted up clicks which were aggregated by the site and sold to its advertisers. We had all been nothing more than Guinea Pigs for an experiment in corporate capitalism. With still no sign of any resolution to the dispute I got legal opinion from an attorney at Mallenicks. It came down to “my rights under the Creative Commons vs their rights under the Terms and Conditions,” which as it turned out, like so many EULAs, could be changed and reinterpreted at any time.
Still feeling aggrieved by the lack of respect shown towards the subject matter, I consulted with a number of the key minds in electronic activism around the world, including Gwen Hinze of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Eventually my course was decided after I wrote to Joichi Ito of Creative Commons explaining my situation. Ito had been a long-time associate with a diverse range of net-heads whom I had grown to love and know through my association with the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) in San Francisco.*
The most cost-effective remedy for enforcement of the Creative Commons in South Africa, short of sending ninjas and spambots, appeared to be simply to issue a take-down notice, which could be made by filling in the correct forms and issuing a request via ISPA. The result was the ceremonious take-down of my own material. After having had my book review deleted, then being banned and having my remaining work seized for some 12-months, I was now compelling management to delete all the remaining material (which had been initially blocked) in a very public manner. Despite the negative publicity, the company continues to act as if nothing has happened.
* This is where I met the notorious hacker John Draper, aka Capn Crunch. I suggest Vince Maher read the forthcoming book. Seppuka – How to commit ritual suicide in a digital world.
Comment on mybroadband.co.za
Gympie Street Shame – Zille to blame?
I have just come from Gympie Street where Willie Heyn and his family and their belongings are on the street, forceably evicted by an apartheid-era injustice which continues to play itself out today. With no opportunity given to purchase their home, in which they lived for generations, the Heyn family are now in a scene straight out of Les Misrables as the DA-Lead City continues to protect the landed gentry.
That they are pawns in a wider battle involving the status of historically-disadvantaged persons, land-rights and the ownership of prime City real estate is clear. Gympie Street residents were originally evicted in 2006 but decided to cock a snook at the justice system by moving back into different dwellings in the same building. This might be construed as defeating the ends of justice if it were not for the fact that the situation arose out of an historical outrage, a crime against humanity in which the Heyns have borne the brunt of Afrikaner nationalism, and a racially biased economic system which turned them into tenants without any privileges.
About 10 residents of Gympie Street appear to have been illegally evicted yesterday by the sheriff of the court even though residents claim to have won their most recent court case against slumlord “Pastor Roberston”.
This was a surprise eviction with no advanced notice. The sheriff of the court was unable to provide a valid eviction order and residents were only given an ‘attachment order’ of an outdated eviction notice. When residents asked why they were being evicted, the sheriff told them that it was because they allegedly failed to appear in court on the 29th of April, and it would appear that there are parallel legal processes running which are set on a collision course, the aftermath of which will surely have to be decided in Bloemfontein or at the Constitutional Court.
However one feels about forced evictions and the legality of evictions under various Acts, including the constitution, the fact remains, the Heyns have been denied the right to claim damages and have yet to institute proceedings to restore their rights as equal citizens and to avail themselves of the same opportunities which were given to various landlords and developers, who now conveniently forget that racial segregation ever existed.
About 7 people are currently camped out on Main Road, Woodstock, on the corner of Gympie Street. While their children have been taken in by their neighbours, they have nowhere else to go and have resolved to stay on the pavement protecting their furniture until their lawyer overturns the illegal eviction. Private security thugs are currently in control of the homes in question and have bricked up the door to prevent entry.
Advocate Zehir Omar is in the process of bringing an urgent high court application on the grounds the landlord acted stealthily and unlawfully in evicting the Heyn and Petersen families. I spoke to Omar today and he assured me everything was being done to save the Heyns from poverty and life five feet away from the gutter. I fear however, that the nature of the legality of the issues at stake will not suffice in protecting the household from the weather. In a late afternoon conference with Heyn on the pavement surrounded by his worldly possessions and various members of the Heyn and Peterson family, I assured Willy that we had not forgotten the lessons of the past and come what may, an application to restore the status of both families would be made and hopefully justice would prevail.
For more information, please contact Willy at 073 144 3619, Margarete at 072 642 7386, and Mr Omar (lawyer) at 082 492 5207
Whistleblowers alert on cloak and dagger IP regulations
IN a series of blog posts emanating from various academic institutions and projects around the country, Medialternatives has been alerted to the draconian IP legislation making its way through South Africa’s legislature. The University of Cape Town’s Eve Gray writes “An article by Latha Jishnu in the Business Standard in India in mid 2008 provides a succinct account of the secretive progress of a piece of Bayh-Dole legislation in India. It sounds rather similar to our experience in South Africa.
We take this to mean that she is referring to the American Bayh-Dole Act which appears to be reproducing itself in other countries as well as our own without much consultation. According to Latha Jishnu , the “Bayh-Dole Act (BDA) because it is based on the American law of that name. Introduced in the US in 1980, that bit of legislation gave universities the IPR over results of federally-funded research. Academia was encouraged to commercialise its innovations through licensing, etc. The Economist gushed that it was “possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half-century,” inspiring several other countries to follow suit. China passed its own BDA towards the end of 2007, while India is among a group of developing countries that is hoping to make such a law the Open Sesame to an explosion of innovation.”
The BDA has subsequently been submitted to South African and Indian Parliament. The Bill was apparently being passed around the various ministries without much transparency when the text of the Bill was published on SpicyIP, an Oxford-based blog. “Similar secrecy seems to have been reflected in the South African, process. Although the original draft of the SA Bill was published for comment and the universities’ criticisms of what many considered an unworkable system were noted, it was very difficult to lay hands on subsequent drafts.”
“People I know trying to track the final draft only saw it after the (Indian) Act was passed, although it appears from personal accounts that industry players were probably consulted in a workshop (in India there appears to have been a workshop for the chambers of commerce and industry).”
Medialternatives has only become aware of these regulations this week via the Tectonic mailing list and are extremely concerned that not enough consultation has occurred. A variety of South African blogposts bare testimony to the problems surrounding the legislation and the manner in which draconian, foreign IP laws are making their way into our legal system under cloak and dagger and in an atmosphere of suspicion.
According to Gray Legal Brief only posted a brief referring to Andrew Rens of the African Commons Project arguing that the Draft Regulations for the implementation of the IPR Act of 2008 are unconstitutional in mid-April. Legal Brief quotes a telling passage from Andrew’s post:
Andrew Rens, Intellectual Property Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation in Cape Town, says in a blog on the Creative Commons blog site that the regulations ‘are simply unworkable, intending to funnel the entire research output of SA through a convoluted series of bureaucratic filters’. Rens points out that almost all advanced scientific research in SA takes place through multinational consortia. These consortia enable scientists to share data and to contribute their skills to complex research. ‘Taking part in international consortia is a minimum necessity for SA scientists,’ he says. However, the regulations ‘represent an attempt to squash multinational, multi-institutional research consortia into the form of agreements between a corporation and a research institution’. Rens says this is, in effect, a ban on participation in multinational research consortia, ’since research consortia have their own rules on how research may be used’. Says Rens: ‘In other words, researchers may not choose to join the only, or best research consortium in the world, but must instead cede their academic freedom to bureaucrats, and not only to bureaucrats but bureaucrats impelled by the single objective of patenting whatever they can.’ He says for this reason, the regulations are unconstitutional.
What Andrew’s comments highlight is that the Act and the Regulations designed to enforce them- and ‘force’ is an appropriate word here – are some 30 years out of date and completely out of tune with the way research is being conducted in the world’s leading universities in the 21st century, with high levels of collaboration. What is worse, they are out of line with the realities of how research can best contribute to the national good, through flexible strategies, effective and open dissemination and vehicles that are aligned with the needs of the poorest in our society, something that patents don’t always do well. I cannot help recalling Yochai Benkler’s striking indictment of the patent system, in his seminal book, The Wealth of Networks : ‘The above-marginal-cost prices paid in …. poorer countries [as a result of patents] are purely regressive redistribution. The morality of this redistribution from the world’s poor to the world’s rich has never been confronted or defended in the European or American public spheres. It simply goes unnoticed.’
It is certainly unnoticed in these Draft Regulations, which seem intent on forcing the maximum commericialisation of South African research, at whatever cost.
We therefore urge all concerned to call for a halt to the legislative process until adequate provision has been made for public participation in the process.
Stop! The Regulations Petition is ready for signing.
You can find it here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/StopTheRegs/
It takes less than a minute to sign. Let your voice be heard!
Open Source economics to rescue World banking system
THE “New Depression” has suddenly made poverty fashionable. After a decade in which wealth ruled and the needs of the majority succumbed to those on top of the pile — the elite few, capable of leveraging assets and staking future earnings against the bond market — the realisation has dawned — today’s economy no longer resembles the pyramid scheme invented by Capitalism. Power is no longer in the hands of stuffy bankers. There is a “new world order” and it is not based upon tangible assets, real-world property prices, or even monetary value inside the banking system. It is a virtual economy that includes the rest of us, and it is based upon a collective notion of the digital commons, advocated by electronic pioneers and visionaries like Lawrence Lessig, John Perry Barlow, Richard Stallman and Joichi Ito.
Whether or not you own a computer, enjoy your own Internet access or just know about the Net because of the prevalence of Internet Cafes, you undoubtedly share in the collective wealth of the millions of people who have chosen to share their Intellectual property via the Creative Commons and other forms of digital distribution systems. The GNU open source license advocated by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, for example, gives users of software carrying a free and open source logo, the ability to modify, redistribute and alter the software, which on the whole is freely available. The net worth of the free Linux computer system for instance has been estimated to run into the billions.(1) Ubuntu, a South African distribution of Linux which has taken the computer world by storm, is said to have increased the wealth of its billionaire founder, Mark Shuttleworth, a thousand-fold.
This is not value in any normal sense of the word. Neither the Creative Commons, nor the GNU-Linux scheme refer to actual monetary gain. Rather, they are what Lawrence Lessig refers to as the increasing prevalence and importance of non-rivelrous resources, a new social good that is infinitely reproducible and whose substance reflects a fundamental shift away from capitalist power relations which rely on scarcity (and rivalry) towards a new world in which abundance and post-scarcity have become buzz words.
The problem with our current banking system and financial markets which rely upon securities, stocks and bonds is that none of these terms reflect anything tangible in the real world. This is through no fault of our own, but rather the propensity to treat everything online, as somehow absent, as if it did not exist. As John Perry Barlow says, “there is no there over there in cyberspace”. The abolition of property in favour of a new virtual economy in which digital assets are freely available threatens to turn Capitalism on its head. How are we to value the entirety of the World Wide Web, the grand social project we call the NET without taking into account all those who stand to benefit in the future, as well as the current users of today?(2)
It was not so long ago that a part of the online world experienced what was known as the Dot.Com Bubble. For a short while, there was a rapid increase in stock prices associated with companies with online profiles such as Microsoft and Yahoo. The boom was short-lived. The first virtual economy based upon growth in terms of new electronic objects which were still valued in the old way (in which shares price was supposed to reflect consumer demand), turned out to be unsustainable.
Mulroney spindoctors move in as Oliphant cover-up begins
A friendship under the spotlight
IF YOU’RE one of those hacks whose interest in the scandal involving INM director Brian Mulroney has been pipped by the JZ scandal at home (of course JZ is innocent, he only took a shower with a member of his own family) then you may be wondering why the commission is suddenly doing its all to investigate a supposed “UN arms deal” involving Mulroney and German arms dealer Karlheinz Schrieber.
Well you guessed right – it is to deflect attention away from the real problem – a ten year saga involving Airbus in which the former PM apparently accepted bribes whilst in office. The terms of the commission have narrowed over the past months. What was hoped for and which promised to be a no-holds barred uncovering of the facts surrounding the allegations is now just a polite way of defusing public criticism.
Yes, that’s right, none of the allegations involving Airbus will actually be discussed in the inquiry. Is it any wonder that suspicion continues to dog Mulroney as spindoctors begin to paint him as an “innocent environmentalist doing legitimate business”, “a victim of circumstance and prey to Schrieber’s double dealing”. Mulroney will therefore, in all likelihood be cleared of any wrong-doing by the limited OIiphant Commission and will continue to hold onto his position as corporate honcho in a global multimedia empire.
As Canada’s Fifth Estate put it, the “Commission of Inquiry into Certain Allegations Respecting Business and Financial Dealings Between Karlheinz Schreiber and the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney,” or the “Oliphant Commission” as it will become to be known will NOT be dealing with the so-called “Airbus Affair.”
The award-winning investigative television news-hour, similar to South Africa’s own Third Degree, revealed in March, how the commission came to have such a limited mandate.
“For weeks, it was a daily spectacle that fascinated the country. In November, 2007, a Parliamentary Ethics Committee began to hear testimony that, many believed, would finally unlock the mysteries of what has become known as the Airbus scandal: who received secret commissions from the sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada?”
“Expectations were high; explosive testimony was anticipated, particularly from the man who has been at the centre of the Airbus scandal for more than two decades, German/Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber. What happened next confounded the Committee and everyone else watching.”
Reporter Linden MacIntyre shows in over 7 television documentaries how “Schreiber’s canny tactics manipulated the drama and the facts”. In documents gained by the fifth estate and in interviews with main players in this political drama, Fifth Estate’s The Chess Master apparently “shows how Schreiber devised a gambit to trap the other players in a political checkmate and set the course for the next chapter of this story.”
The fifth estate also revealed on its website that sworn testimony before a Parliamentary committee “contained manipulation and lies”. And this is all about a man who is still on the Independent Group’s crony board, the O’Reilly old guard, the dirty dozen still holding on to corporate and governmental power despite criticism from “dissident shareholder” and mobile communications magnate, Denis O’Brien.
