[p2p-research] 10 days to go...

Wed Nov 17 15:19:26 CET 2010

Smari, I started by inviting facebook friends to like your page ...

Chris, I hope you have some time for this, i.e. to publish the text below,
with the bio info of smari at http://p2pfoundation.net/Sm%C3%A1ri_McCarthy,
and an intro paragraph, first on Ning,

With this short intro text,

At the P2P Foundation, we want to fully support Smári
McCarthy<http://www.facebook.com/smarimc>'s candidate for the
Icelandic Constitutional Assembly. I consider him,
after the more single issue oriented Pirate Party (whose efforts we also
appreciate), to be the first 'full P2P-free cultural candidate", so this is
a historic occasion.

Suggested title: Smari McCarthy, P2P Candidate for Icelandic Constitutional
Assembly.

(smari, now is a good time to change anything on your bio page).

Smari, please also write, for future use, something on your policy approach,
and why people should support it, in english,

Once we have something more 'together', we can use the regular blog, which
has a much larger audience,

Smari, use our list to ask for support from other people, please DO NOT
HESITATE,

Michel

2010/11/17 Smári McCarthy <smari at immi.is>

> Hi Michel, Simona,
>
>  In reference to our conversation in Barcelona about my candidacy for
> the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly, I'm thinking that it's about time
> to invoke the P2P culture and try and rally some external awareness and
> support.
>
>  What I'd suggest is if we can draft some kind of letter of endorsement
> from the P2P community and get a bunch of signatures, then I could wave
> that around here.
>
>  A slightly more involved but potentially useful thing would be some
> kind of video clip, just a talking heads thing, with somebody speaking
> about the importance of understanding of networked societies and that
> this understanding be incorporated into modern state structure.
>
>  And then of course there's the easiest thing to do, which is to click
> the "like" button on my Facebook page. 97% of Icelandic adults use
> Facebook and various sites are using Facebook ranking as a measure of
> popularity, despite it being an incredibly skewed estimate.
>
> https://www.facebook.com/pages/Smari-McCarthy-a-stjornlagabing/161452417212255?ref=ts
>
>  Michel, could I request that you take initiative on this on the list?
> I can provide you with background information but I do feel very awkward
> about asking people to support me. :P
>
>  Here's some initial background [sharable]:
>
> ----------------------
>
>  In 1874 Iceland received its first constitution from the Danish king
> as a result of popular demand for increased home-rule. In 1918 the
> country became sovereign under the Danish crown, and in 1920 a new
> constitution to this effect was enacted.
>
>  In 1944, after being disconnected with Denmark for over a year,
> Iceland proclaimed independence. A temporary constitution, mostly based
> on the constitution of 1920, was accepted, with an article stating that
> it should be renewed within the year.
>
>  Now 66 years have passed without the constitution being reevaluated.
>
>  After the financial crash of 2008 the Icelandic people, understanding
> the need for democratic reform as well as economic reform, started to
> make demands for a constitutional assembly. After the government
> collapsed in early 2009 the new government coalition of the Social
> Democrat Party and the Left-Green Party agreed to organize a
> constitutional assembly, although for many months this idea looked like
> it would be buried.
>
>  In late October 2009 a national assembly was held in Iceland, where
> 1500 people were randomly selected from the census to work over the
> course of a day to create a new set of guiding principles for Iceland.
> In the aftermath it was decided in parliament that the popular demand
> for a constitutional assembly was so great that the issue could no
> longer be ignored.
>
>  On June 25th 2010 law 90/2010 was enacted creating a mandate for
> general elections for a constitutional assembly consisting of 25-31
> nonpartisan individuals, based on single transferable vote in addition
> to a gender quota rule. The elections for this assembly are to be held
> on November 27th 2010, 10 days from now.
>
>  The electorate is the roughly 228000 voters in Iceland, and there are
> 523 individual candidates running in the election, all as individuals
> although some have known connections with special interest groups,
> political parties, and such. These relationships have been mapped by
> various websites. Various other websites provide filtering mechanisms of
> various sorts in order to help people weed out the best 25 candidates to
> vote for.
>
>  After the elections the assembly will convene in February 2011 and
> operate for 2-4 months during that year to draft a new constitution and
> propose it to parliament, along with suggested adoption mechanisms and
> protocols. If parliament accepts the new constitution it will be put to
> a referendum.
>
>  There has been an alarming amount of P2P activity in relation to this
> election. Campaigns are primarily being operated through social
> networking sites, with a lot of pressure on candidates not to advertise
> in traditional media. A lot of individuals and organizations have been
> in direct contact with the various candidates in order to provide their
> own arbitrary filters, and in general there is a lot of buzz, but also a
> lot of uncertainty, as the number of candidates and the equidistribution
> of the attention is the source of great confusion.
>
>  To reduce this confusion somewhat and to promote the elections as an
> important step towards more direct democracy, a broad coalition of
> candidates from various political leanings has joined forces to raise
> awareness about the forthcoming elections, operating on amicable
> grounds, and further, there are discussions about creating a "shadow
> assembly" using the Shadow Parliament Project's software and
> organizational mechanisms, in order to facilitate broad discussions
> amongst the general public during the operation time of the assembly.
>
>  In short, it looks like the opportunity for Iceland is great, but
> there are still a number of hurdles. It will be interesting to see the
> results, and hopefully this will lead to a great democratic upheaval,
> promoting and protecting networked societies in the future.
>
> ------------------------------
>
>  Hope you can use some of that in some meaningful way.
>
>     - Smári
>
>
>

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