[p2p-research] 10 days to go... SUPPORTING Smari McCarthy's P2P Electoral Candidacy for the Icelandic Constitutional Assembly

Thu Nov 18 17:34:41 CET 2010

I did it. And if everyone likes what they see, I will post the same
thing to smartmobs.com

Plus, we'll let the following people know about it:

boingboing.net

Bruce Sterling (for his wired blog)

John Robb on global guerillas

The Espians

perhaps some of those folks would be willing to talk about it or link
to this on their blog

Smari, do you have a website for your campaign?

Please link to this in twitter, on facebook

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Michel Bauwens
<michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> THANKS simona,
>
> smari: we're doing what we can with the material available, but I suggest an
> english text on your motivation and policy proposals,
>
> Sam: would you consider writing something for our regular blog, based on
> your remark in facebook, which was well formulated I think,
>
> sorry, for the moment, still on the road and conferencing!
>
> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 1:58 AM, Simona Levi <info at conservas.tk> wrote:
>>
>> I'll do my best but i don't have much influence in Icelandic electors.
>> We will move it in the social network.
>> I'll also publish it the 25 in Catlan main news agency...
>>
>> El 17/11/10 14:48, Michel Bauwens escribió:
>>
>> Dear Smari,
>>
>> of course, I want to fully support you on this, but I have a serious issue
>> of timing, I just arrived in buenos aires, somewhat in a crisis mode as
>> something went wrong with the coordination, no pick up and no reservation at
>> the stated hotel, I need to solve this today, somewhat stressed you'll
>> understand, then, tomorrow, there is the keynote and 2 days of conferencing,
>> it's hard to say how much time I have.
>>
>> Most quickly, what I can do is just re-use what you write now, first at
>> Ning, wait for someone to re-write it with some info about YOU, I can then
>> always add a paragraph about why this is a truly historical occasion (a true
>> p2p candidate, broader than single-issue oriented Pirate Party) then we
>> publish it on the blog, and once it is there, we can repeat a few rounds of
>> facebooking/twittering around the link,
>>
>> If you want us to do more, feel free to ask, we'll try our best
>>
>> As I said, for me, it's just bad timing when I'm on the road like this,
>>
>> I copied the list, in the hope and confidence that others on the list
>> agree to support you even more, but I guess best is if you can provide
>> material we can work around by adding a supportive paragraph,
>>
>> Don't hesitate to ask for anything, the worse that can happen is that
>> people say no thanks <g>
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
>> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
>> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>> Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>
> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>
> Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
--
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://futureforwardinstitute.org
http://socialmediaclassroom.com
http://localfoodsystems.org
http://p2pfoundation.net

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan