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

Sat Nov 20 00:39:39 CET 2010

I'm sorry it's taken so long to hammer this together; most of my
material regarding the constitutional assembly is (understandably I
hope) in Icelandic and the emphasis has been there, but I took a bit of
time today to hack together a basic overview of the most important points...

It's nowhere near comprehensive, but I hope it gives people at least a
feel of what it is I'm trying to do. Please forgive shoddy formatting
and typos. :-)

http://www.smarimccarthy.com/issues_english.pdf

  - Smári

On 11/18/2010 04:30 PM, Samuel Rose wrote:
> I started with this on p2p foundation blog (a combo of what I posted
> to my facebook wall, plus Smari's text
> 
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/11763/2010/11/18
> 
> We can edit or refine it if necessary
> 
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 9:19 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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 '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
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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