Conspiracy as Governance
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
me @ iq.org
By Julian Assange, December 3, 2006
Original in: http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf
Conspiracy, Conspire: make secret plans jointly to commit
a harmful act; working together to bring about a particular
result, typically to someone’s detriment.
The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest
of the nation. (Lord Halifax)
Security gives way to conspiracy.
(Julius Caesar, act 2, sc. 3.
The soothsayer’s message, but Caesar is too busy to look at it)
Introduction
To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we
have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must
think beyond those who have gone before us and discover technological changes
that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.
We must understand the key generative structure of bad governance1
We must develop a way of thinking about this structure that is strong enough
to carry us through the mire of competing political moralities and into a position
of clarity.
Most importantly, we must use these insights to inspire within us and others
a course of ennobling and effective action to replace the structures that lead to
bad governance with something better.
----------------------------------
1 Everytime we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act we become a party to injustice. Those who are repeatedly passive in the face of injustice soon find their character corroded into servility. Most witnessed acts of injustice are associated with bad governance, since when governance is good, unanswered injustice is rare. By the progressive diminution of a people’s character, the impact of reported, but unanswered injustice is far greater than it may initially seem. Modern communications states through their scale, homogeneity and excesses provide their populace with an unprecidented deluge of witnessed, but seemingly unanswerable injustices.
------------------------------------------
Conspiracy as governance in authoritarian regimes
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes, we
see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite, not merely for preferment
or favor within the regime, but as the primary planning methodology
behind maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.
Authoritarian regimes create forces which oppose them by pushing against a
people’s will to truth, love and self-realization. Plans which assist authoritarian
rule, once discovered, induce further resistance. Hence such schemes are concealed
by successful authoritarian powers until resistance is futile or outweighed
by the efficiencies of naked power. This collaborative secrecy, working to the
detriment of a population, is enough to define their behavior as conspiratorial.
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which
it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing,
they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they
are allowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no
longer any remedy to be found.
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])
Terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs
Pre and post 9/11 the Maryland Procurement Office2 and others have funded
mathematicians to look at terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs (no mathematical
background is needed to follow this article).
We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the
likes of its paymasters; transforming it into a knife to dissect the conspiracies
used to maintain authoritarian power structures.
We will use connected graphs as a way to apply our spatial reasoning abilities
to political relationships. These graphs are very easy to visualize. First take
some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into a board at random. Then
take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail to nail without breaking.
Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken twine means it is possible
to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and intermediary nails.
Mathematicians say that this type of graph is connected.
Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator
trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some
are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with
many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a
bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.
Separating a conspiracy
If all conspirators are assassinated or all the links between them are destroyed,
then a conspiracy no longer exists. This is usually requires more resources than
2National Security Agency light cover for academic funding, google for grant code
“MDA904”
we can deploy, so we ask our first question: What is the minimum number
of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal
number? (divide and conquer). The answer depends on the structure of the
conspiracy. Sometimes there are no alternative paths for conspiratorial information
to flow between conspirators, othertimes there are many. This is a useful
and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For instance, by assassinating one
“bridge” conspirator, it may be possible to split a conspiracy. But we want to
say something about all conspiracies.
Some conspirators dance closer than others
Conspirators are often discerning, for some trust and depend each other, while
others say little. Important information flows frequently through some links,
trivial information through others. So we expand our simple connected graph
model to include not only links, but their “importance”.
Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between
some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness
or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate
the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a
link is difficult to evaluate apriori, since its true value depends on the outcome
of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication
contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a
link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across
it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight
of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.
Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to outthink
the same group of individuals acting alone
Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), pass through the conspirators and then act on the
result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information
about the environment), a computational network (the conspirators and their
links to each other) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain the
environment).
Deceiving conspiracies
Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired
from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on
them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect garbage in, garbage
out.
Usually the effect runs the other way; it is conspiracy that is the agent of
deception and information restriction. In the US, the programmer’s aphorism
is sometimes called “the Fox News effect”.
What does a conspiracy compute? It computes the next
action of the conspiracy
Now we ask the question: how effective is this device? Can we compare it to
itself at different times? Is the conspiracy growing stronger or is it weakening?
This question asks us to compare two values over time.
Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?
We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not capture the key
difference between a conspiracy and the individuals which comprise it. How do
they differ? In a conspiracy, individuals conspire, while when isolated they do
not. We can show most of this difference by adding up all the important communication
(weights) between all the conspirators. Call this total conspiratorial
power.
Total conspiratorial power
This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy is
usually unique. But by looking at a value that is independent of the arrangement
of connections between conspirators we can say something about conspiracies
in general.
If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no conspiracy
If total conspiratorial power is zero, then clearly there is no information flow
between the conspirators and hence no conspiracy.
A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always
means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the
conspiracy to think, act and adapt.
Separating weighted conspiracies
We now return to our earlier idea about cleaving a conspiracy into halves. Then
we looked at dividing a conspiracy into two groups of equal numbers by cutting
the links between conspirators. Now we see that a more interesting idea is to
split the total conspiratorial power in half. Since any isolated half can be viewed
as a conspiracy in its own right we can continue separating indefinitely.
Throttling weighted conspiracies
Instead of cutting links between conspirators so as to separate a weighted conspiracy
we can achieve a similar effect by throttling the conspiracy — constricting
(reducing the weight of) those high weight links which bridge regions of
equal total conspiratorial power.
Attacks on conspiratorial cognitive ability
A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence
the actions of the state is near its end. To deal with powerful conspiratorial
actions we must think ahead and attack the process that leads to them since
the actions themselves can not be dealt with.
We can deceive or blind a conspiracy by distorting or restricting the information
available to it.
We can reduce total conspiratorial power via unstructured attacks on links
or through throttling and separating.
A conspiracy sufficiently engaged in this manner is no longer able to comprehend
its environment and plan robust action.
Traditional vs. modern conspiracies
Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination,
cut many high weight links. The act of assassination — the targeting of visible
individuals, is the result of mental inclinations honed for the pre-literate societies in which our species evolved.
Literacy and the communications revolution have empowered conspirators
with new means to conspire, increasing the speed of accuracy of the their interactions and thereby the maximum size a conspiracy may achieve before it
breaks down.
Conspirators who have this technology are able to out conspire conspirators
without it. For the same costs they are able to achieve a higher total conspiratorial
power. That is why they adopt it.
For example, remembering Lord Halifax’s words, let us consider two closely
balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings, the US Democratic and
Republican parties.
Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile
phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which
manage their subscribes, donors, budgets, polling, call centres and direct mail
campaigns?
They would immediately fall into an organizational stupor and lose to the
other.
An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless
to preserve itself against the opponents it induces
When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of
interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened
and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control
the forces in its environment.
Later we will see how new technology and insights into the psychological
motivations of conspirators can give us practical methods for preventing or
reducing important communication between authoritarian conspirators, foment
strong resistance to authoritarian planning and create powerful incentives for
more humane forms of governance.
miércoles, 15 de diciembre de 2010
State and Terrorist Conspiracies
State and Terrorist Conspiracies
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
By Julian Assange, November 10, 2006
Original source: http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
Introduction
To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we
have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must
think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes
that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.
Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist
behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of
thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of
politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use
these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective
action.
Authoritarian power is maintained by conspiracy
Conspiracy, Conspire: make secret plans jointly to commit a harmful
act; working together to bring about a particular result, typically
to someone’s detriment. ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old
French conspirer, from Latin conspirare agree, plot, from con- together
with spirare breathe.
The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the
nation. (Lord Halifax)
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes,
we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind
maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.
Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing
against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization.
Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence
these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to
define their behavior as conspiratorial.
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which
it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing,
they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they
are allowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no
longer any remedy to be found.
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])
Terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs
Pre and post 9/11 the Maryland Procurement Office (National Security Agency
light cover for academic funding, google for grant code “MDA904”) and others
have funded mathematicians to look at terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs
(no mathematical background is needed to follow this article).
We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the
likes of its creators where it becomes a knife to dissect the power conspiracies
used to maintain authoritarian government.
We will use connected graphs as way to harness the spatial reasoning ability
of the brain to think in a new way about political relationships. These graphs are
easy to visualize. First take some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into
a board at random. Then take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail
to nail without breaking. Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken
twine means it is possible to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and
intermediary nails. Mathematicians say the this type of graph is connected.
Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator
trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some
are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with
many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a
bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.
Separating a conspiracy
If all links between conspirators are cut then there is no conspiracy. This is
usually hard to do, so we ask our first question: What is the minimum number
of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal
number? (divide and conquer). The answer depends on the structure of the
conspiracy. Sometimes there are no alternative paths for conspiratorial information
to flow between conspirators, othertimes there are many. This is a useful
and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For instance, by assassinating one
“bridge” conspirator, it may be possible to split the conspiracy. But we want
to say something about all conspiracies.
Some conspirators dance closer than others
Conspirators are discerning, some trust and depend each other, others say little.
Important information flows frequently through some links, trivial information
through others. So we expand our simple connected graph model to include not
only links, but their “importance”.
Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between
some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness
or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate
the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a
link difficult to evaluate apriori, since it its true value depends on the outcome
of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication
contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a
link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across
it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight
of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.
Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to out
think the same group of individuals acting alone
Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), pass it around the conspirators and then act on the
result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information
about the environment) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain
the environment).
What does a conspiracy compute? It computes the next
action of the conspiracy
Now I we ask the question: how effective is this device? Can we compare it to
itself at different times? Is the conspiracy growing stronger or weakening? This
is a question that asks us to compare two values.
Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?
We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not capture the
difference between a conspiracy and the individuals which comprise it. How do
they differ? Individuals in a conspiracy conspire. Isolated individuals do not.
We can capture that difference by adding up all the important communication
(weights) between the conspirators, we will call this the total conspiratorial
power.
Total conspiratorial power
This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy
is unusually unique. But by looking at this value which in indepndent of the
arrangement of conspiratorial connections we can make some generalisations.
If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no conspiracy
If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no information flow between the
conspirators and hence no conspiracy.
A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always
means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the
conspiracy to think, act and adapt.
Separating weighted conspiracies
I now return to our earlier idea about cleaving a conspiracy into halves. Then
we looked at dividing a conspiracy into two groups of equal numbers by cutting
the links between conspirators. Now we see that a more interesting idea is to
split the total conspiratorial power in half. Since any isolated half can be viewed
as a conspiracy in its own right we can continue splitting indefinitely.
How can we reduce the ability of a conspiracy to act?
We can marginalise a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial
power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively
to, its environment.
We can split the conspiracy, reduce or eliminating important communication
between a few high weight links or many low weight links.
Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination,
have cut high weight links by killing, kidnapping, blackmailing or otherwise
marginalizing or isolating some of the conspirators they were connected to.
An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently,
can not act to preserve itself against the opponents it induces
When we look at a conspiracy as an organic whole, we can see a system of
interacting organs, a body with arteries and veins whos blood may be thickened
and slowed till it falls, unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces
in its environment.
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
By Julian Assange, November 10, 2006
Original source: http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
Introduction
To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we
have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must
think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes
that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not.
Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist
behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of
thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of
politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use
these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective
action.
Authoritarian power is maintained by conspiracy
Conspiracy, Conspire: make secret plans jointly to commit a harmful
act; working together to bring about a particular result, typically
to someone’s detriment. ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old
French conspirer, from Latin conspirare agree, plot, from con- together
with spirare breathe.
The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the
nation. (Lord Halifax)
Where details are known as to the inner workings of authoritarian regimes,
we see conspiratorial interactions among the political elite not merely for preferment or favor within the regime but as the primary planning methodology behind
maintaining or strengthening authoritarian power.
Authoritarian regimes give rise to forces which oppose them by pushing
against the individual and collective will to freedom, truth and self realization.
Plans which assist authoritarian rule, once discovered, induce resistance. Hence
these plans are concealed by successful authoritarian powers. This is enough to
define their behavior as conspiratorial.
Thus it happens in matters of state; for knowing afar off (which
it is only given a prudent man to do) the evils that are brewing,
they are easily cured. But when, for want of such knowledge, they
are allowed to grow until everyone can recognize them, there is no
longer any remedy to be found.
(The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli [1469-1527])
Terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs
Pre and post 9/11 the Maryland Procurement Office (National Security Agency
light cover for academic funding, google for grant code “MDA904”) and others
have funded mathematicians to look at terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs
(no mathematical background is needed to follow this article).
We extend this understanding of terrorist organizations and turn it on the
likes of its creators where it becomes a knife to dissect the power conspiracies
used to maintain authoritarian government.
We will use connected graphs as way to harness the spatial reasoning ability
of the brain to think in a new way about political relationships. These graphs are
easy to visualize. First take some nails (“conspirators”) and hammer them into
a board at random. Then take twine (“communication”) and loop it from nail
to nail without breaking. Call the twine connecting two nails a link. Unbroken
twine means it is possible to travel from any nail to any other nail via twine and
intermediary nails. Mathematicians say the this type of graph is connected.
Information flows from conspirator to conspirator. Not every conspirator
trusts or knows every other conspirator even though all are connected. Some
are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with
many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators but be a
bridge between important sections or groupings of the conspiracy.
Separating a conspiracy
If all links between conspirators are cut then there is no conspiracy. This is
usually hard to do, so we ask our first question: What is the minimum number
of links that must be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups of equal
number? (divide and conquer). The answer depends on the structure of the
conspiracy. Sometimes there are no alternative paths for conspiratorial information
to flow between conspirators, othertimes there are many. This is a useful
and interesting characteristic of a conspiracy. For instance, by assassinating one
“bridge” conspirator, it may be possible to split the conspiracy. But we want
to say something about all conspiracies.
Some conspirators dance closer than others
Conspirators are discerning, some trust and depend each other, others say little.
Important information flows frequently through some links, trivial information
through others. So we expand our simple connected graph model to include not
only links, but their “importance”.
Return to our board-and-nails analogy. Imagine a thick heavy cord between
some nails and fine light thread between others. Call the importance, thickness
or heaviness of a link its weight. Between conspirators that never communicate
the weight is zero. The “importance” of communication passing through a
link difficult to evaluate apriori, since it its true value depends on the outcome
of the conspiracy. We simply say that the “importance” of communication
contributes to the weight of a link in the most obvious way; the weight of a
link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across
it. Questions about conspiracies in general won’t require us to know the weight
of any link, since that changes from conspiracy to conspiracy.
Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to out
think the same group of individuals acting alone
Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), pass it around the conspirators and then act on the
result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information
about the environment) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain
the environment).
What does a conspiracy compute? It computes the next
action of the conspiracy
Now I we ask the question: how effective is this device? Can we compare it to
itself at different times? Is the conspiracy growing stronger or weakening? This
is a question that asks us to compare two values.
Can we find a value that describes the power of a conspiracy?
We could count the number of conspirators, but that would not capture the
difference between a conspiracy and the individuals which comprise it. How do
they differ? Individuals in a conspiracy conspire. Isolated individuals do not.
We can capture that difference by adding up all the important communication
(weights) between the conspirators, we will call this the total conspiratorial
power.
Total conspiratorial power
This number is an abstraction. The pattern of connections in a conspiracy
is unusually unique. But by looking at this value which in indepndent of the
arrangement of conspiratorial connections we can make some generalisations.
If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no conspiracy
If total conspiratorial power is zero, there is no information flow between the
conspirators and hence no conspiracy.
A substantial increase or decrease in total conspiratorial power almost always
means what we expect it to mean; an increase or decrease in the ability of the
conspiracy to think, act and adapt.
Separating weighted conspiracies
I now return to our earlier idea about cleaving a conspiracy into halves. Then
we looked at dividing a conspiracy into two groups of equal numbers by cutting
the links between conspirators. Now we see that a more interesting idea is to
split the total conspiratorial power in half. Since any isolated half can be viewed
as a conspiracy in its own right we can continue splitting indefinitely.
How can we reduce the ability of a conspiracy to act?
We can marginalise a conspiracy’s ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial
power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively
to, its environment.
We can split the conspiracy, reduce or eliminating important communication
between a few high weight links or many low weight links.
Traditional attacks on conspiratorial power groupings, such as assassination,
have cut high weight links by killing, kidnapping, blackmailing or otherwise
marginalizing or isolating some of the conspirators they were connected to.
An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently,
can not act to preserve itself against the opponents it induces
When we look at a conspiracy as an organic whole, we can see a system of
interacting organs, a body with arteries and veins whos blood may be thickened
and slowed till it falls, unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces
in its environment.
John Pilger interview to Julian Assange, two audios
John Pilger interview to Julian Assange, two audios
To understand Assange you are invited to listen two audios here. Press download
John Pilger calls on Australians to defend WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/john-pilger-calls-on-australians-to-defend-wikileaks-editor-julian-assange
Audios: 3 December 2010 the 1st n 6 december the 2nd
In two ABC Radio Australia interviews, John Pilger asks Australians to break their silence and rally round compatriot Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
John Pilger's new film, 'The War You Don't See', due to be released in Australia in 2011, will feature an interview with Queensland born Assange.
First interview - Breakfast (3 Dec) | Second interview - Late Night Live (6 Dec)
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/john-pilger-calls-on-australians-to-defend-wikileaks-editor-julian-assange
first interview: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/3083583.htm
second interview: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2010/3086240.htm
Wikileaks part 1: Pilger
It is not enough for journalists to see themselves a mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the messages and the myths that surround it. John Pilger
Press download audio and listen it now
Joining the debate on Julian Assange
is John Pilger, who has a new documentary coming out in Britain later this month called The War You Don't See which features an interview with Julian Assange.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/3083583.htm
John Pilger movie-documentary “The war you do not see” is based on the 1st interview above. Here a comment on this movie in 2 parts:
JOHN PILGER THE WAR YOU DO NOT SEE movie now exhibit in Britain
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12391114
WikiLeaks, Web to Revolutionize Reporting: John Pilger
By Mike Collett-White, December 14, 2010
LONDON (Reuters) - Revelations on the WikiLeaks website which have enraged governments around the world should force the traditional media to rely less on official sources, award-winning journalist John Pilger said.
In an interview to discuss his film "The War You Don't See," the veteran Australian reporter told Reuters the Internet, and more specifically WikiLeaks, would bring about a "revolution" in journalism which too often failed to do its job properly.
One reason the media did not challenge the U.S. and British governments' justification for going to war in Iraq in 2003, later shown to be misplaced, was their eagerness to believe the official version of events, Pilger argued.
He said the same was true of television coverage of the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, when British broadcasters appeared willing only to use Israeli video rather than trawling the Internet for alternative footage.
"That mindset that only authority can really determine the 'truth' on the news, that's a form of embedding that really now has to change," said Pilger, who has covered conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia, written books and made several acclaimed documentaries.
"There's no question about the pressure on it to change coming from the Internet and coming from WikiLeaks -- it will change," he added in the interview ahead of Tuesday evening's broadcast of his new film.
"That is the canker in all of this, it's the compulsion to quote, not necessarily believing the authority source. But then once you quote it and you put it out on the wires or you broadcast it, it takes on a sort of mantle of fact and that's where the whole teaching of journalism is wrong.
"Authority has its place, but the skepticism about authority must be ingrained in people."
In The War You Don't See, Pilger interviews leading broadcast journalists including Dan Rather and Rageh Omaar, who agree that journalists failed in their basic duties during the build-up to the Iraq conflict.
Part 2. http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12391114&page=2
It seeks to highlight how British television reporters based in London were quick to accept what they were being told by officials in Westminster, which did not necessarily reflect what was happening on the ground in Iraq.
OTHER SIDE OF STORY
The film shows how independent journalists occasionally provided evidence that countered the official version, while WikiLeaks was a relatively new source of sometimes disturbing information with the potential to embarrass the authorities.
The documentary opens with extended clips from classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. WikiLeaks released the footage in April.
Pilger also interviews WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, remanded in custody in Britain last week after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant. Assange jokes that since it is officially wrong to retain information and to destroy it, his only choice was to publish.
Pilger, one of several prominent figures who offered a surety to secure bail for Assange, praised the recent publication of secret U.S. embassy documents which have attracted global media coverage.
"I think the WikiLeaks disclosures have been like watching a great parade of wonderful scoops," Pilger said in the interview.
"(It is) basic rich journalism that is telling people how the world works. It's not just telling them what a prime minister said. It's not framing it in how governments or other vested interests want us to think about something. "It's giving us the story in their words. I think it's a revolution in journalism."
The War You Don't see is aired on ITV on Tuesday evening and is being screened at select theatres across Britain.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato).
==================
John Pilger was interviewed in today’s Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. Open
www.democracynow.org Wednesday, December 15, 2010
John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
Amy Goodman: The award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger is one of many high-profile public supporters of Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks. Pilger has attended Assange’s court proceedings in London and has offered to contribute funds for his more than $300,000 bail. Pilger’s latest film, The War You Don’t See, includes interviews with Assange. Pilger says that WikiLeaks is revolutionizing journalism and galvanizing public opinion to stand up to global elites. To see the interview OPEN:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/john_pilger_journalists_must_support_julian
John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/john_pilger_journalists_must_support_julian
Read also:
Attorney: Swedish Case is a "Holding Charge" to Get Julian Assange Extradited to U.S.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains in a London prison after Swedish
authorities challenged the court’s decision to release him on bail with conditions. Assange’s attorney Mark Stephens joins us to discuss his possible extradition to Sweden for questioning on alleged sexual crimes amidst rumors the Obama administration has convened a grand jury to indict Assange in the United States.
IN http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/lawyer_alleged_swedish_sex_crime_is
To understand Assange you are invited to listen two audios here. Press download
John Pilger calls on Australians to defend WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/john-pilger-calls-on-australians-to-defend-wikileaks-editor-julian-assange
Audios: 3 December 2010 the 1st n 6 december the 2nd
In two ABC Radio Australia interviews, John Pilger asks Australians to break their silence and rally round compatriot Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
John Pilger's new film, 'The War You Don't See', due to be released in Australia in 2011, will feature an interview with Queensland born Assange.
First interview - Breakfast (3 Dec) | Second interview - Late Night Live (6 Dec)
http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/john-pilger-calls-on-australians-to-defend-wikileaks-editor-julian-assange
first interview: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/3083583.htm
second interview: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2010/3086240.htm
Wikileaks part 1: Pilger
It is not enough for journalists to see themselves a mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the messages and the myths that surround it. John Pilger
Press download audio and listen it now
Joining the debate on Julian Assange
is John Pilger, who has a new documentary coming out in Britain later this month called The War You Don't See which features an interview with Julian Assange.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/3083583.htm
John Pilger movie-documentary “The war you do not see” is based on the 1st interview above. Here a comment on this movie in 2 parts:
JOHN PILGER THE WAR YOU DO NOT SEE movie now exhibit in Britain
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12391114
WikiLeaks, Web to Revolutionize Reporting: John Pilger
By Mike Collett-White, December 14, 2010
LONDON (Reuters) - Revelations on the WikiLeaks website which have enraged governments around the world should force the traditional media to rely less on official sources, award-winning journalist John Pilger said.
In an interview to discuss his film "The War You Don't See," the veteran Australian reporter told Reuters the Internet, and more specifically WikiLeaks, would bring about a "revolution" in journalism which too often failed to do its job properly.
One reason the media did not challenge the U.S. and British governments' justification for going to war in Iraq in 2003, later shown to be misplaced, was their eagerness to believe the official version of events, Pilger argued.
He said the same was true of television coverage of the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, when British broadcasters appeared willing only to use Israeli video rather than trawling the Internet for alternative footage.
"That mindset that only authority can really determine the 'truth' on the news, that's a form of embedding that really now has to change," said Pilger, who has covered conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia, written books and made several acclaimed documentaries.
"There's no question about the pressure on it to change coming from the Internet and coming from WikiLeaks -- it will change," he added in the interview ahead of Tuesday evening's broadcast of his new film.
"That is the canker in all of this, it's the compulsion to quote, not necessarily believing the authority source. But then once you quote it and you put it out on the wires or you broadcast it, it takes on a sort of mantle of fact and that's where the whole teaching of journalism is wrong.
"Authority has its place, but the skepticism about authority must be ingrained in people."
In The War You Don't See, Pilger interviews leading broadcast journalists including Dan Rather and Rageh Omaar, who agree that journalists failed in their basic duties during the build-up to the Iraq conflict.
Part 2. http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=12391114&page=2
It seeks to highlight how British television reporters based in London were quick to accept what they were being told by officials in Westminster, which did not necessarily reflect what was happening on the ground in Iraq.
OTHER SIDE OF STORY
The film shows how independent journalists occasionally provided evidence that countered the official version, while WikiLeaks was a relatively new source of sometimes disturbing information with the potential to embarrass the authorities.
The documentary opens with extended clips from classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. WikiLeaks released the footage in April.
Pilger also interviews WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, remanded in custody in Britain last week after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant. Assange jokes that since it is officially wrong to retain information and to destroy it, his only choice was to publish.
Pilger, one of several prominent figures who offered a surety to secure bail for Assange, praised the recent publication of secret U.S. embassy documents which have attracted global media coverage.
"I think the WikiLeaks disclosures have been like watching a great parade of wonderful scoops," Pilger said in the interview.
"(It is) basic rich journalism that is telling people how the world works. It's not just telling them what a prime minister said. It's not framing it in how governments or other vested interests want us to think about something. "It's giving us the story in their words. I think it's a revolution in journalism."
The War You Don't see is aired on ITV on Tuesday evening and is being screened at select theatres across Britain.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato).
==================
John Pilger was interviewed in today’s Democracy Now by Amy Goodman. Open
www.democracynow.org Wednesday, December 15, 2010
John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
Amy Goodman: The award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger is one of many high-profile public supporters of Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks. Pilger has attended Assange’s court proceedings in London and has offered to contribute funds for his more than $300,000 bail. Pilger’s latest film, The War You Don’t See, includes interviews with Assange. Pilger says that WikiLeaks is revolutionizing journalism and galvanizing public opinion to stand up to global elites. To see the interview OPEN:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/john_pilger_journalists_must_support_julian
John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/john_pilger_journalists_must_support_julian
Read also:
Attorney: Swedish Case is a "Holding Charge" to Get Julian Assange Extradited to U.S.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains in a London prison after Swedish
authorities challenged the court’s decision to release him on bail with conditions. Assange’s attorney Mark Stephens joins us to discuss his possible extradition to Sweden for questioning on alleged sexual crimes amidst rumors the Obama administration has convened a grand jury to indict Assange in the United States.
IN http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/lawyer_alleged_swedish_sex_crime_is
Interview to Julian Assange by Forbes
Interview to Julian Assange by Forbes
HAZ, http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
Intrerview by ANDY GREENBERG. Nov. 29 2010. By FORBES magazine
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/
part 1
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/
Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago. Over the last year his information insurgency has dumped 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and another trove of 392,000 files from the Iraq war into the public domain–the largest classified military security breaches in history. Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike.
But, as Assange explained to me earlier this month, the Pentagon and State Department leaks are just the start.
In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”
Here is an edited transcript of that discussion:
Forbes: To start, is it true you’re sitting on trove of unpublished documents?
Julian Assange: Sure. That’s usually the case. As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.
You mean as your personal profile rises?
Yeah, the rising profile of the organization and my rising profile also. And there’s a network effect for anything to do with trust. Once something starts going around and being considered trustworthy in a particular arena, and you meet someone and they say “I heard this is trustworthy,” then all of a sudden it reconfirms your suspicion that the thing is trustworthy.
So that’s why brand is so important, just as it is with anything you have to trust.
And this gap between your publishing resources and your submissions is why the site’s submission function has been down since October?
We have too much.
Before you turned off submissions, how many leaks were you getting a day?
As I said, it was increasing exponentially. When we get lots of press, we can get a spike of hundreds or thousands. The quality is sometimes not as high. If the front page of the Pirate Bay links to us, as they have done on occasion, we can get a lot of submissions, but the quality is not as high.
How much of this trove of documents that you’re sitting on is related to the private sector?
About fifty percent.
You’ve been focused on the U.S. military mostly in the last year. Does that mean you have private sector-focused leaks in the works?
Yes. If you think about it, we have a publishing pipeline that’s increasing linearly, and an exponential number of leaks, so we’re in a position where we have to prioritize our resources so that the biggest impact stuff gets released first.
So do you have very high impact corporate stuff to release then?
Yes, but maybe not as high impact…I mean, it could take down a bank or two.
That sounds like high impact.
But not as big an impact as the history of a whole war. But it depends on how you measure these things.
Part 2
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/2/
When will WikiLeaks return to its older model of more frequent leaks of smaller amounts of material?
If you look at the average number of documents we’re releasing, we’re vastly exceeding what we did last year. These are huge datasets. So it’s actually very efficient for us to do that.
If you look at the number of packages, the number of packages has decreased. But if you look at the average number of documents, that’s tremendously increased.
So will you return to the model of higher number of targets and sources?
Yes. Though I do actually think…[pauses] These big package releases. There should be a cute name for them.
Megaleaks?
Megaleaks. That’s good. These megaleaks…They’re an important phenomenon, and they’re only going to increase. When there’s a tremendous dataset, covering a whole period of history or affecting a whole group of people, that’s worth specializing on and doing a unique production for each one, which is what we’ve done.
We’re totally source dependent. We get what we get. As our profile rises in a certain area, we get more in a particular area. People say, why don’t you release more leaks from the Taliban. So I say hey, help us, tell more Taliban dissidents about us.
These megaleaks, as you call them, we haven’t seen any of those from the private sector.
No, not at the same scale as for the military.
Will we?
Yes. We have one related to a bank coming up, that’s a megaleak. It’s not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it’s either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it.
Is it a U.S. bank?
Yes, it’s a U.S. bank.
One that still exists?
Yes, a big U.S. bank.
The biggest U.S. bank?
No comment.
When will it happen?
Early next year. I won’t say more.
What do you want to be the result of this release?
[Pauses] I’m not sure.
It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume.
Usually when you get leaks at this level, it’s about one particular case or one particular violation. For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails. Why were these so valuable?
When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.
This will be like that. Yes, there will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed, but it will also be all the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos that cames out, and that’s tremendously valuable. Like the Iraq War Logs, yes there were mass casualty incidents that were very newsworthy, but the great value is seeing the full spectrum of the war.
You could call it the ecosystem of corruption. But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest. The way they talk about it.
Part 3
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/3/
How many dollars were at stake in this?
We’re still investigating. All I can say is it’s clear there were unethical practices, but it’s too early to suggest there’s criminality. We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we’re very sure.
Can you tell me anything about what kind of unethical behavior we’re talking about?
No.
You once said to one of my colleagues that WikiLeaks has material on BP. What have you got?
We’ve got lots now, but we haven’t determined how much is original. There’s been a lot of press on the BP issue, and lawyers, and people are pulling out a lot of stuff. So I suspect the material we have on BP may not be that original. We’ll have to see whether our stuff is especially unique.
The Russian press has reported that you plan to target Russian companies and politicians. I’ve heard from other WikiLeaks sources that this was blown out of proportion.
It was blown out of proportion when the FSB reportedly said not to worry, that they could take us down. But yes, we have material on many business and governments, including in Russia. It’s not right to say there’s going to be a particular focus on Russia.
Let’s just walk through other industries. What about pharmaceutical companies?
Yes. To be clear, we have so much unprocessed stuff, I’m not even sure about all of it. These are just things I’ve briefly looked at or that one of our people have told me about.
How much stuff do you have? How many gigs or terabytes?
I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to calculate.
Continuing then: The tech industry?
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.
U.S.? China?
The U.S. is one of the victims.
What about the energy industry?
Yes.
Aside from BP?
Yes.
On environmental issues?
A whole range of issues.
Can you give me some examples?
One example: It began with something we released last year, quite an interesting case that wasn’t really picked up by anyone. There’s a Texas Canadian oil company whose name escapes me. And they had these wells in Albania that had been blowing. Quite serious. We got this report from a consultant engineer into what was happening, saying vans were turning up in the middle of the night doing something to them. They were being sabotaged. The Albanian government was involved with another company; There were two rival producers and one was government-owned and the other was privately owned.
So when we got this report; It didn’t have a header. It didn’t say the name of the firm, or even who the wells belonged to.
So it wasn’t picked up because it was missing key data.
At the time, yeah. So I said, what the hell do we do with this thing? It’s impossible to verify if we don’t even know who it came from. It could have been one company trying to frame the other one. So we did something very unusual, and published it and said “We’ve got this thing, looks like it could have been written by a rival company aiming to defame the other, but we can’t verify it. We want more information.” Whether it’s a fake document or real one, something was going on. Either one company is trying to frame the other, which is interesting, or it’s true, which is also very interesting.
That’s where the matter sat until we got a letter of inquiry from an engineering consulting company asking how to get rid of it. We demanded that they first prove that they were the owner.
Part 4
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/4/
It sounds like when Apple confirmed that the lost iPhone 4 was real, by demanding that Gizmodo return it.
Yes, like Apple and the iPhone. They sent us a screen capture with the missing header and other information.
What were they thinking?
I don’t know.
So the full publication is coming up?
Yes.
Do you have more on finance?
We have a lot of finance related things. Of the commercial sectors we’ve covered, finance is the most significant.
Before the banks went bust in Dubai, we put out a number of leaks showing they were unhealthy. They threatened to send us to prison in Dubai, which is a little serious, if we went there.
Just to review, what would you say are the biggest five private sector leaks in WikiLeaks’ history?
It depends on the importance of the material vs. the impact. Kaupthing was one of the most important, because of the chain of effects it set off, the scrutiny in Iceland and the rest of Scandinvia. The Bank Julius Baer case was also important.
The Kaupthing leak was a very good leak. The loanbook described in very frank terms the credit worthiness of all these big companies and billionaires and borrowers, not just internal to the bank, but a broad spectrum all over the world, an assessment of a whole bunch of businesses around the world. It was quite an interesting leak. It didn’t just expose Kaupthing, it exposed many companies.
The bank Julius Baer exposed high net worth individuals hiding assets in the Cayman Islands, and we went on to do a series that exposed bank Julius Baer’s own internal tax structure. It’s interesting that Swiss banks also hide their assets from the Swiss by using offshore bank structuring. We had some quite good stuff in there.
It set off a chain of regulatory investigations, possibly resulting in some changes. It triggered a lot of interesting scrutiny.
Regulation: Is that what you’re after?
I’m not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can’t be. But there are some abuses that should be regulated, and this is one.
With regard to these corporate leaks, I should say: There’s an overlap between corporate and government leaks. When we released the Kroll report on three to four billion smuggled out by the former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi and his cronies, where did the money go? There’s no megacorruption–as they call it in Africa, it’s a bit sensational but you’re talking about billions–without support from Western banks and companies.
That money went into London properties, Swiss banks, property in New York, companies that had been set up to move this money.
We had another interesting one from the pharmaceutical industry: It was quite self-referential. The lobbyists had been getting leaks from the WHO. They were getting their own internal intelligence report affecting investment regulation. We were leaked a copy. It was a meta-leak. That was quite influential, though it was a relatively small leak–it was published in Nature and other pharma journals.
Part 5
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/
What do you think WikiLeaks mean for business? How do businesses need to adjust to a world where WikiLeaks exists?
WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this. I think about the case in China where milk powder companies started cutting the protein in milk powder with plastics. That happened at a number of separate manufacturers.
Let’s say you want to run a good company. It’s nice to have an ethical workplace. Your employees are much less likely to screw you over if they’re not screwing other people over.
Then one company starts cutting their milk powder with melamine, and becomes more profitable. You can follow suit, or slowly go bankrupt and the one that’s cutting its milk powder will take you over. That’s the worst of all possible outcomes.
The other possibility is that the first one to cut its milk powder is exposed. Then you don’t have to cut your milk powder. There’s a threat of regulation that produces self-regulation.
It just means that it’s easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more effected negatively by leaks than honest businesses. That’s the whole idea. In the struggle between open and honest companies and dishonest and closed companies, we’re creating a tremendous reputational tax on the unethical companies.
No one wants to have their own things leaked. It pains us when we have internal leaks. But across any given industry, it is both good for the whole industry to have those leaks and it’s especially good for the good players.
But aside from the market as a whole, how should companies change their behavior understanding that leaks will increase?
Do things to encourage leaks from dishonest competitors. Be as open and honest as possible. Treat your employees well.
I think it’s extremely positive. You end up with a situation where honest companies producing quality products are more competitive than dishonest companies producing bad products. And companies that treat their employees well do better than those that treat them badly.
Would you call yourself a free market proponent?
Absolutely. I have mixed attitudes towards capitalism, but I love markets. Having lived and worked in many countries, I can see the tremendous vibrancy in, say, the Malaysian telecom sector compared to U.S. sector. In the U.S. everything is vertically integrated and sewn up, so you don’t have a free market. In Malaysia, you have a broad spectrum of players, and you can see the benefits for all as a result.
How do your leaks fit into that?
To put it simply, in order for there to be a market, there has to be information. A perfect market requires perfect information.
There’s the famous lemon example in the used car market. It’s hard for buyers to tell lemons from good cars, and sellers can’t get a good price, even when they have a good car.
By making it easier to see where the problems are inside of companies, we identify the lemons. That means there’s a better market for good companies. For a market to be free, people have to know who they’re dealing with.
You’ve developed a reputation as anti-establishment and anti-institution.
Not at all. Creating a well-run establishment is a difficult thing to do, and I’ve been in countries where institutions are in a state of collapse, so I understand the difficulty of running a company. Institutions don’t come from nowhere.
It’s not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because I’ve learned from many. But one is American libertarianism, market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned I’m a libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force them to be free.
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.
Part 6
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/6/
But in the meantime, there could be a lot of pain from these scandals, obviously.
Pain for the guilty.
Do you derive pleasure from these scandals that you expose and the companies you shame?
It’s tremendously satisfying work to see reforms being engaged in and stimulating those reforms. To see opportunists and abusers brought to account.
You were a traditional computer hacker. How did you find this new model of getting information out of companies?
It’s a bit annoying, actually. Because I cowrote a book about [being a hacker], there are documentaries about that, people talk about that a lot. They can cut and paste. But that was 20 years ago. It’s very annoying to see modern day articles calling me a computer hacker.
I’m not ashamed of it, I’m quite proud of it. But I understand the reason they suggest I’m a computer hacker now. There’s a very specific reason.
I started one of the first ISPs in Australia, known as Suburbia, in 1993. Since that time, I’ve been a publisher, and at various moments a journalist. There’s a deliberate attempt to redefine what we’re doing not as publishing, which is protected in many countries, or the journalist activities, which is protected in other ways, as something which doesn’t have a protection, like computer hacking, and to therefore split us off from the rest of the press and from these legal protections. It’s done quite deliberately by some of our opponents. It’s also done because of fear, from publishers like The New York Times that they’ll be regulated and investigated if they include our activities in publishing and journalism.
I’m not arguing you’re a hacker now. But if we say that both what you were doing then and now are both about gaining access to information, when did you change your strategy from going in and getting it to simply asking for it?
That hacker mindset was very valuable to me. But the insiders know where the bodies are. It’s much more efficient to have insiders. They know the problems, they understand how to expose them.
How did you start to approach your leak strategy?
When we started Suburbia in 1993, I knew that bringing information to the people was very important. We facilitated many groups: We were the electronic printer if you like for many companies and individuals who were using us to publish information. They were bringing us information, and some of them were activist groups, lawyers. And some bringing forth information about companies, like Telstra, the Australian telecommunications giant. We published information on them. That’s something I was doing in the 1990s.
We were the free speech ISP in Australia. An Australian Anti-church of Scientology website was hounded out of Victoria University by legal threats from California, and hounded out of a lot of places. Eventually they came to us.
People were fleeing from ISPs that would fold under legal threats, even from a cult in the U.S. That’s something I saw early on, without realizing it: potentiating people to reveal their information, creating a conduit. Without having any other robust publisher in the market, people came to us.
I wanted to ask you about [Peiter Zatko, a legendary hacker and security researcher who also goes by] “Mudge.”
Yeah, I know Mudge. He’s a very sharp guy.
Mudge is now leading a project at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to find a technology that can stop leaks, which seems pretty relative to your organization. Can you tell me about your past relationship with Mudge?
Well, I…no comment.
Part 7
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/7/
Were you part of the same scene of hackers? When you were a computer hacker, you must have known him well.
We were in the same milieu. I spoke with everyone in that milieu.
What do you think of his current work to prevent digital leaks inside of organizations, a project called Cyber Insider Threat or Cinder?
I know nothing about it.
But what do you of the potential of any technology designed to prevent leaks?
Marginal.
What do you mean?
New formats and new ways of communicating are constantly cropping up. Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship. And in the same manner that very significant resources spent on China’s firewall, the result is that anyone who’s motivated can work around it. Not just the small fraction of users, but anyone who really wants to can work around it.
Censorship circumvention tools [like the program Tor] also focus on leaks. They facilitate leaking.
Airgapped networks are different. Where there’s literally no connection between the network and the internet. You may need a human being to carry something. But they don’t have to intentionally carry it. It could be a virus on a USB stick, as the Stuxnet worm showed, though it went in the other direction. You could pass the information out via someone who doesn’t know they’re a mule.
Back to Mudge and Cinder: Do you think, knowing his intelligence personally, that he can solve the problem of leaks?
No, but that doesn’t mean that the difficulty can’t be increased. But I think it’s a very difficult case, and the reason I suggest it’s an impossible case to solve completely is that most people do not leak. And the various threats and penalties already mean they have to be highly motivated to deal with those threats and penalties. These are highly motivated people. Censoring might work for the average person, but not for highly motivated people. And our people are highly motivated.
Mudge is a clever guy, and he’s also highly ethical. I suspect he would have concerns about creating a system to conceal genuine abuses.
But his goal of preventing leaks doesn’t differentiate among different types of content. It would stop whistleblowers just as much as it stops exfiltration of data by foreign hackers.
I’m sure he’ll tell you China spies on the U.S., Russia, France. There are genuine concerns about those powers exfiltrating data. And it’s possibly ethical to combat that process. But spying is also stabilizing to relationships. Your fears about where a country is or is not are always worse than the reality. If you only have a black box, you can put all your fears into it, particularly opportunists in government or private industry who want to address a problem that may not exist. If you know what a government is doing, that can reduce tensions.
There have been reports that Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German who used to work with WikiLeaks, has left to create his own WikiLeaks-type organization. The Wall Street Journal described him as a “competitor” to WikiLeaks. Do you see him as competition?
The supply of leaks is very large. It’s helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It’s protective to us.
What do you think of the idea of WikiLeaks copycats and spinoffs?
There have been a few over time, and they’ve been very dangerous. It’s not something that’s easy to do right. That’s the problem. Recently we saw a Chinese WikiLeaks. We encouraged them to come to us to work with us. It would be nice to have more Chinese speakers working with us in a dedicated way. But what they’d set up had no meaningful security. They have no reputation you can trust. It’s very easy and very dangerous to do it wrong.
Part 8
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/8/
Do you think that the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative [a series of bills to make Iceland the most free-speech and whistleblower-protective country in the world] would make it easier to do this right if it passes?
Not at the highest level. We deal with organizations that do not obey the rule of law. So laws don’t matter.
Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.
What about corporate leaks?
For corporate leaks, yes, free speech laws could make things easier. Not for military contractors, because they’re in bed with intelligence agencies. If a spy agency’s involved, IMMI won’t help you. Except it may increase the diplomatic cost a little, if they’re caught.
That’s why our primary defense isn’t law, but technology.
Are there any other leaking organizations that you do endorse?
No, there are none.
Do you hope that IMMI will foster a new generation of WikiLeaks-type organizations?
More than WikiLeaks: general publishing. We’re the canary in the coalmine. We’re at the vanguard. But the attacks against publishers in general are severe.
If you had a wishlist of what industries or governments, what are you looking for from leakers?
All governments, all industries. We accept all material of diplomatic, historical or ethical significance that hasn’t been released before and is under active suppression.
There’s a question about which industries have the greatest potential for reform. Those may be the ones we haven’t heard about yet. So what’s the big thing around the corner? The real answer is I don’t know. No one in the public knows. But someone on the inside does know.
But there are also industries that just have more secrecy, so you must know there are things you want that you haven’t gotten.
That’s right. Within the intelligence industry is one example. They have a higher level of secrecy. And that’s also true of the banking industry.
Other industries that are extremely well paid, say Goldman Sachs, might have higher incentives not to lose their jobs.
So it’s only the obvious things that we want: Things concerning intelligence and war, and mass financial fraud. Because they affect so many people so severely.
And they’re harder leaks to get.
Intelligence particularly, because the penalties are so severe. Although very few people have been caught, it’s worth noting. The penalties may be severe, but nearly everyone gets away with it.
To keep people in control, you only need to make them scared. The CIA is not scared as an institution of people leaking. It’s scared that people will know that people are leaking and getting away with it. If that happens, the management loses control.
And WikiLeaks has the opposite strategy?
That’s right. It’s summed up by the phrase “courage is contagious.” If you demonstrate that individuals can leak something and go on to live a good life, it’s tremendously incentivizing to people.
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HAZ, http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
Intrerview by ANDY GREENBERG. Nov. 29 2010. By FORBES magazine
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/
part 1
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/
Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world’s secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago. Over the last year his information insurgency has dumped 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and another trove of 392,000 files from the Iraq war into the public domain–the largest classified military security breaches in history. Sunday, WikiLeaks made the first of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department cables public, offering an unprecedented view of how America’s top diplomats view enemies and friends alike.
But, as Assange explained to me earlier this month, the Pentagon and State Department leaks are just the start.
In a rare, two-hour interview conducted in London on November 11, Assange said that he’s still sitting on a trove of secret documents, about half of which relate to the private sector. And WikiLeaks’ next target will be a major American bank. “It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he said, adding: “For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails.”
Here is an edited transcript of that discussion:
Forbes: To start, is it true you’re sitting on trove of unpublished documents?
Julian Assange: Sure. That’s usually the case. As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly.
You mean as your personal profile rises?
Yeah, the rising profile of the organization and my rising profile also. And there’s a network effect for anything to do with trust. Once something starts going around and being considered trustworthy in a particular arena, and you meet someone and they say “I heard this is trustworthy,” then all of a sudden it reconfirms your suspicion that the thing is trustworthy.
So that’s why brand is so important, just as it is with anything you have to trust.
And this gap between your publishing resources and your submissions is why the site’s submission function has been down since October?
We have too much.
Before you turned off submissions, how many leaks were you getting a day?
As I said, it was increasing exponentially. When we get lots of press, we can get a spike of hundreds or thousands. The quality is sometimes not as high. If the front page of the Pirate Bay links to us, as they have done on occasion, we can get a lot of submissions, but the quality is not as high.
How much of this trove of documents that you’re sitting on is related to the private sector?
About fifty percent.
You’ve been focused on the U.S. military mostly in the last year. Does that mean you have private sector-focused leaks in the works?
Yes. If you think about it, we have a publishing pipeline that’s increasing linearly, and an exponential number of leaks, so we’re in a position where we have to prioritize our resources so that the biggest impact stuff gets released first.
So do you have very high impact corporate stuff to release then?
Yes, but maybe not as high impact…I mean, it could take down a bank or two.
That sounds like high impact.
But not as big an impact as the history of a whole war. But it depends on how you measure these things.
Part 2
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/2/
When will WikiLeaks return to its older model of more frequent leaks of smaller amounts of material?
If you look at the average number of documents we’re releasing, we’re vastly exceeding what we did last year. These are huge datasets. So it’s actually very efficient for us to do that.
If you look at the number of packages, the number of packages has decreased. But if you look at the average number of documents, that’s tremendously increased.
So will you return to the model of higher number of targets and sources?
Yes. Though I do actually think…[pauses] These big package releases. There should be a cute name for them.
Megaleaks?
Megaleaks. That’s good. These megaleaks…They’re an important phenomenon, and they’re only going to increase. When there’s a tremendous dataset, covering a whole period of history or affecting a whole group of people, that’s worth specializing on and doing a unique production for each one, which is what we’ve done.
We’re totally source dependent. We get what we get. As our profile rises in a certain area, we get more in a particular area. People say, why don’t you release more leaks from the Taliban. So I say hey, help us, tell more Taliban dissidents about us.
These megaleaks, as you call them, we haven’t seen any of those from the private sector.
No, not at the same scale as for the military.
Will we?
Yes. We have one related to a bank coming up, that’s a megaleak. It’s not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it’s either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it.
Is it a U.S. bank?
Yes, it’s a U.S. bank.
One that still exists?
Yes, a big U.S. bank.
The biggest U.S. bank?
No comment.
When will it happen?
Early next year. I won’t say more.
What do you want to be the result of this release?
[Pauses] I’m not sure.
It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume.
Usually when you get leaks at this level, it’s about one particular case or one particular violation. For this, there’s only one similar example. It’s like the Enron emails. Why were these so valuable?
When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.
This will be like that. Yes, there will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed, but it will also be all the supporting decision-making structures and the internal executive ethos that cames out, and that’s tremendously valuable. Like the Iraq War Logs, yes there were mass casualty incidents that were very newsworthy, but the great value is seeing the full spectrum of the war.
You could call it the ecosystem of corruption. But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest. The way they talk about it.
Part 3
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/3/
How many dollars were at stake in this?
We’re still investigating. All I can say is it’s clear there were unethical practices, but it’s too early to suggest there’s criminality. We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we’re very sure.
Can you tell me anything about what kind of unethical behavior we’re talking about?
No.
You once said to one of my colleagues that WikiLeaks has material on BP. What have you got?
We’ve got lots now, but we haven’t determined how much is original. There’s been a lot of press on the BP issue, and lawyers, and people are pulling out a lot of stuff. So I suspect the material we have on BP may not be that original. We’ll have to see whether our stuff is especially unique.
The Russian press has reported that you plan to target Russian companies and politicians. I’ve heard from other WikiLeaks sources that this was blown out of proportion.
It was blown out of proportion when the FSB reportedly said not to worry, that they could take us down. But yes, we have material on many business and governments, including in Russia. It’s not right to say there’s going to be a particular focus on Russia.
Let’s just walk through other industries. What about pharmaceutical companies?
Yes. To be clear, we have so much unprocessed stuff, I’m not even sure about all of it. These are just things I’ve briefly looked at or that one of our people have told me about.
How much stuff do you have? How many gigs or terabytes?
I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to calculate.
Continuing then: The tech industry?
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.
U.S.? China?
The U.S. is one of the victims.
What about the energy industry?
Yes.
Aside from BP?
Yes.
On environmental issues?
A whole range of issues.
Can you give me some examples?
One example: It began with something we released last year, quite an interesting case that wasn’t really picked up by anyone. There’s a Texas Canadian oil company whose name escapes me. And they had these wells in Albania that had been blowing. Quite serious. We got this report from a consultant engineer into what was happening, saying vans were turning up in the middle of the night doing something to them. They were being sabotaged. The Albanian government was involved with another company; There were two rival producers and one was government-owned and the other was privately owned.
So when we got this report; It didn’t have a header. It didn’t say the name of the firm, or even who the wells belonged to.
So it wasn’t picked up because it was missing key data.
At the time, yeah. So I said, what the hell do we do with this thing? It’s impossible to verify if we don’t even know who it came from. It could have been one company trying to frame the other one. So we did something very unusual, and published it and said “We’ve got this thing, looks like it could have been written by a rival company aiming to defame the other, but we can’t verify it. We want more information.” Whether it’s a fake document or real one, something was going on. Either one company is trying to frame the other, which is interesting, or it’s true, which is also very interesting.
That’s where the matter sat until we got a letter of inquiry from an engineering consulting company asking how to get rid of it. We demanded that they first prove that they were the owner.
Part 4
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/4/
It sounds like when Apple confirmed that the lost iPhone 4 was real, by demanding that Gizmodo return it.
Yes, like Apple and the iPhone. They sent us a screen capture with the missing header and other information.
What were they thinking?
I don’t know.
So the full publication is coming up?
Yes.
Do you have more on finance?
We have a lot of finance related things. Of the commercial sectors we’ve covered, finance is the most significant.
Before the banks went bust in Dubai, we put out a number of leaks showing they were unhealthy. They threatened to send us to prison in Dubai, which is a little serious, if we went there.
Just to review, what would you say are the biggest five private sector leaks in WikiLeaks’ history?
It depends on the importance of the material vs. the impact. Kaupthing was one of the most important, because of the chain of effects it set off, the scrutiny in Iceland and the rest of Scandinvia. The Bank Julius Baer case was also important.
The Kaupthing leak was a very good leak. The loanbook described in very frank terms the credit worthiness of all these big companies and billionaires and borrowers, not just internal to the bank, but a broad spectrum all over the world, an assessment of a whole bunch of businesses around the world. It was quite an interesting leak. It didn’t just expose Kaupthing, it exposed many companies.
The bank Julius Baer exposed high net worth individuals hiding assets in the Cayman Islands, and we went on to do a series that exposed bank Julius Baer’s own internal tax structure. It’s interesting that Swiss banks also hide their assets from the Swiss by using offshore bank structuring. We had some quite good stuff in there.
It set off a chain of regulatory investigations, possibly resulting in some changes. It triggered a lot of interesting scrutiny.
Regulation: Is that what you’re after?
I’m not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can’t be. But there are some abuses that should be regulated, and this is one.
With regard to these corporate leaks, I should say: There’s an overlap between corporate and government leaks. When we released the Kroll report on three to four billion smuggled out by the former Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi and his cronies, where did the money go? There’s no megacorruption–as they call it in Africa, it’s a bit sensational but you’re talking about billions–without support from Western banks and companies.
That money went into London properties, Swiss banks, property in New York, companies that had been set up to move this money.
We had another interesting one from the pharmaceutical industry: It was quite self-referential. The lobbyists had been getting leaks from the WHO. They were getting their own internal intelligence report affecting investment regulation. We were leaked a copy. It was a meta-leak. That was quite influential, though it was a relatively small leak–it was published in Nature and other pharma journals.
Part 5
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/
What do you think WikiLeaks mean for business? How do businesses need to adjust to a world where WikiLeaks exists?
WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this. I think about the case in China where milk powder companies started cutting the protein in milk powder with plastics. That happened at a number of separate manufacturers.
Let’s say you want to run a good company. It’s nice to have an ethical workplace. Your employees are much less likely to screw you over if they’re not screwing other people over.
Then one company starts cutting their milk powder with melamine, and becomes more profitable. You can follow suit, or slowly go bankrupt and the one that’s cutting its milk powder will take you over. That’s the worst of all possible outcomes.
The other possibility is that the first one to cut its milk powder is exposed. Then you don’t have to cut your milk powder. There’s a threat of regulation that produces self-regulation.
It just means that it’s easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more effected negatively by leaks than honest businesses. That’s the whole idea. In the struggle between open and honest companies and dishonest and closed companies, we’re creating a tremendous reputational tax on the unethical companies.
No one wants to have their own things leaked. It pains us when we have internal leaks. But across any given industry, it is both good for the whole industry to have those leaks and it’s especially good for the good players.
But aside from the market as a whole, how should companies change their behavior understanding that leaks will increase?
Do things to encourage leaks from dishonest competitors. Be as open and honest as possible. Treat your employees well.
I think it’s extremely positive. You end up with a situation where honest companies producing quality products are more competitive than dishonest companies producing bad products. And companies that treat their employees well do better than those that treat them badly.
Would you call yourself a free market proponent?
Absolutely. I have mixed attitudes towards capitalism, but I love markets. Having lived and worked in many countries, I can see the tremendous vibrancy in, say, the Malaysian telecom sector compared to U.S. sector. In the U.S. everything is vertically integrated and sewn up, so you don’t have a free market. In Malaysia, you have a broad spectrum of players, and you can see the benefits for all as a result.
How do your leaks fit into that?
To put it simply, in order for there to be a market, there has to be information. A perfect market requires perfect information.
There’s the famous lemon example in the used car market. It’s hard for buyers to tell lemons from good cars, and sellers can’t get a good price, even when they have a good car.
By making it easier to see where the problems are inside of companies, we identify the lemons. That means there’s a better market for good companies. For a market to be free, people have to know who they’re dealing with.
You’ve developed a reputation as anti-establishment and anti-institution.
Not at all. Creating a well-run establishment is a difficult thing to do, and I’ve been in countries where institutions are in a state of collapse, so I understand the difficulty of running a company. Institutions don’t come from nowhere.
It’s not correct to put me in any one philosophical or economic camp, because I’ve learned from many. But one is American libertarianism, market libertarianism. So as far as markets are concerned I’m a libertarian, but I have enough expertise in politics and history to understand that a free market ends up as monopoly unless you force them to be free.
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.
Part 6
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/6/
But in the meantime, there could be a lot of pain from these scandals, obviously.
Pain for the guilty.
Do you derive pleasure from these scandals that you expose and the companies you shame?
It’s tremendously satisfying work to see reforms being engaged in and stimulating those reforms. To see opportunists and abusers brought to account.
You were a traditional computer hacker. How did you find this new model of getting information out of companies?
It’s a bit annoying, actually. Because I cowrote a book about [being a hacker], there are documentaries about that, people talk about that a lot. They can cut and paste. But that was 20 years ago. It’s very annoying to see modern day articles calling me a computer hacker.
I’m not ashamed of it, I’m quite proud of it. But I understand the reason they suggest I’m a computer hacker now. There’s a very specific reason.
I started one of the first ISPs in Australia, known as Suburbia, in 1993. Since that time, I’ve been a publisher, and at various moments a journalist. There’s a deliberate attempt to redefine what we’re doing not as publishing, which is protected in many countries, or the journalist activities, which is protected in other ways, as something which doesn’t have a protection, like computer hacking, and to therefore split us off from the rest of the press and from these legal protections. It’s done quite deliberately by some of our opponents. It’s also done because of fear, from publishers like The New York Times that they’ll be regulated and investigated if they include our activities in publishing and journalism.
I’m not arguing you’re a hacker now. But if we say that both what you were doing then and now are both about gaining access to information, when did you change your strategy from going in and getting it to simply asking for it?
That hacker mindset was very valuable to me. But the insiders know where the bodies are. It’s much more efficient to have insiders. They know the problems, they understand how to expose them.
How did you start to approach your leak strategy?
When we started Suburbia in 1993, I knew that bringing information to the people was very important. We facilitated many groups: We were the electronic printer if you like for many companies and individuals who were using us to publish information. They were bringing us information, and some of them were activist groups, lawyers. And some bringing forth information about companies, like Telstra, the Australian telecommunications giant. We published information on them. That’s something I was doing in the 1990s.
We were the free speech ISP in Australia. An Australian Anti-church of Scientology website was hounded out of Victoria University by legal threats from California, and hounded out of a lot of places. Eventually they came to us.
People were fleeing from ISPs that would fold under legal threats, even from a cult in the U.S. That’s something I saw early on, without realizing it: potentiating people to reveal their information, creating a conduit. Without having any other robust publisher in the market, people came to us.
I wanted to ask you about [Peiter Zatko, a legendary hacker and security researcher who also goes by] “Mudge.”
Yeah, I know Mudge. He’s a very sharp guy.
Mudge is now leading a project at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to find a technology that can stop leaks, which seems pretty relative to your organization. Can you tell me about your past relationship with Mudge?
Well, I…no comment.
Part 7
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/7/
Were you part of the same scene of hackers? When you were a computer hacker, you must have known him well.
We were in the same milieu. I spoke with everyone in that milieu.
What do you think of his current work to prevent digital leaks inside of organizations, a project called Cyber Insider Threat or Cinder?
I know nothing about it.
But what do you of the potential of any technology designed to prevent leaks?
Marginal.
What do you mean?
New formats and new ways of communicating are constantly cropping up. Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship. And in the same manner that very significant resources spent on China’s firewall, the result is that anyone who’s motivated can work around it. Not just the small fraction of users, but anyone who really wants to can work around it.
Censorship circumvention tools [like the program Tor] also focus on leaks. They facilitate leaking.
Airgapped networks are different. Where there’s literally no connection between the network and the internet. You may need a human being to carry something. But they don’t have to intentionally carry it. It could be a virus on a USB stick, as the Stuxnet worm showed, though it went in the other direction. You could pass the information out via someone who doesn’t know they’re a mule.
Back to Mudge and Cinder: Do you think, knowing his intelligence personally, that he can solve the problem of leaks?
No, but that doesn’t mean that the difficulty can’t be increased. But I think it’s a very difficult case, and the reason I suggest it’s an impossible case to solve completely is that most people do not leak. And the various threats and penalties already mean they have to be highly motivated to deal with those threats and penalties. These are highly motivated people. Censoring might work for the average person, but not for highly motivated people. And our people are highly motivated.
Mudge is a clever guy, and he’s also highly ethical. I suspect he would have concerns about creating a system to conceal genuine abuses.
But his goal of preventing leaks doesn’t differentiate among different types of content. It would stop whistleblowers just as much as it stops exfiltration of data by foreign hackers.
I’m sure he’ll tell you China spies on the U.S., Russia, France. There are genuine concerns about those powers exfiltrating data. And it’s possibly ethical to combat that process. But spying is also stabilizing to relationships. Your fears about where a country is or is not are always worse than the reality. If you only have a black box, you can put all your fears into it, particularly opportunists in government or private industry who want to address a problem that may not exist. If you know what a government is doing, that can reduce tensions.
There have been reports that Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German who used to work with WikiLeaks, has left to create his own WikiLeaks-type organization. The Wall Street Journal described him as a “competitor” to WikiLeaks. Do you see him as competition?
The supply of leaks is very large. It’s helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It’s protective to us.
What do you think of the idea of WikiLeaks copycats and spinoffs?
There have been a few over time, and they’ve been very dangerous. It’s not something that’s easy to do right. That’s the problem. Recently we saw a Chinese WikiLeaks. We encouraged them to come to us to work with us. It would be nice to have more Chinese speakers working with us in a dedicated way. But what they’d set up had no meaningful security. They have no reputation you can trust. It’s very easy and very dangerous to do it wrong.
Part 8
http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/8/
Do you think that the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative [a series of bills to make Iceland the most free-speech and whistleblower-protective country in the world] would make it easier to do this right if it passes?
Not at the highest level. We deal with organizations that do not obey the rule of law. So laws don’t matter.
Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.
What about corporate leaks?
For corporate leaks, yes, free speech laws could make things easier. Not for military contractors, because they’re in bed with intelligence agencies. If a spy agency’s involved, IMMI won’t help you. Except it may increase the diplomatic cost a little, if they’re caught.
That’s why our primary defense isn’t law, but technology.
Are there any other leaking organizations that you do endorse?
No, there are none.
Do you hope that IMMI will foster a new generation of WikiLeaks-type organizations?
More than WikiLeaks: general publishing. We’re the canary in the coalmine. We’re at the vanguard. But the attacks against publishers in general are severe.
If you had a wishlist of what industries or governments, what are you looking for from leakers?
All governments, all industries. We accept all material of diplomatic, historical or ethical significance that hasn’t been released before and is under active suppression.
There’s a question about which industries have the greatest potential for reform. Those may be the ones we haven’t heard about yet. So what’s the big thing around the corner? The real answer is I don’t know. No one in the public knows. But someone on the inside does know.
But there are also industries that just have more secrecy, so you must know there are things you want that you haven’t gotten.
That’s right. Within the intelligence industry is one example. They have a higher level of secrecy. And that’s also true of the banking industry.
Other industries that are extremely well paid, say Goldman Sachs, might have higher incentives not to lose their jobs.
So it’s only the obvious things that we want: Things concerning intelligence and war, and mass financial fraud. Because they affect so many people so severely.
And they’re harder leaks to get.
Intelligence particularly, because the penalties are so severe. Although very few people have been caught, it’s worth noting. The penalties may be severe, but nearly everyone gets away with it.
To keep people in control, you only need to make them scared. The CIA is not scared as an institution of people leaking. It’s scared that people will know that people are leaking and getting away with it. If that happens, the management loses control.
And WikiLeaks has the opposite strategy?
That’s right. It’s summed up by the phrase “courage is contagious.” If you demonstrate that individuals can leak something and go on to live a good life, it’s tremendously incentivizing to people.
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TO READ n UNDERSTAND JULIAN ASSANGEs WORK
TO READ n UNDERSTAND JULIAN ASSANGEs WORKPARA LEER y ENTENDER EL TRABAJO DE JULIAN ASSANGE
HAZ, December 15, 2010
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
PARA ENTENDER A ASSANGE ES IMPORTANTE CONOCER LA TEORIA QUE ILUMINO SU TRABAJO EN WIKILEAKS y LAS ENTREVISTAS QUE OFRECIO EN LOS EU y UK.
Aqui van, empezamos con la breve introduccion y las entrevistas. Luego vienen dos textos de fondo escritos por J Assange (1 y 2 abajo). Para leer los leaks publicados antes de la reciente censura en los EU pueden abrirse los archivos de The Guardian y los de NY Times. Todo esto fue publicado antes de la censura.
La lista de los docts a publicarse aqui es la siguiente, la publico en caso los derechos que nos garantiza la Constitucion de los EU hayan sido abolidos completamente y me quieran silenciar con cualquier pretexto. Me defendere con la ley y con la prensa. Si eso ocurre, ustedes pueden abrir estos documentos por su cuenta y difundirlos lo mas que puedan. Aqui la lista:
1. State and Terrorist Conspiracies. (Estado y conspiraciones terroristas): http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
2. Conspiracy as Governance (La conspiración como modo de gobierno). http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf
3. Entrevista a Assange x la revista Forbes http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/
4. Entrevista a Assange by John Pilger n see his doct-movie “The War you cannot see”, based on this interview
RECOMENDAMOS LEER TAMBIEN los Textos y reflexiones de John Brown
1. Breve introducción a las nuevas teorías de la conspiración y de la transparencia
Wikileaks: Del abate Barruel a Jeremy Bentham. By John Brown
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118623
Original in Iohannes Maurus http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
2. Alarma de Estado: el plante de los controladores y la ficción de la soberanía
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/alarma-de-estado-el-plante-de-los.html
3. Wikileaks: ¿Existe un -obsceno- secreto del poder?
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-existe-un-obsceno-secreto-del.html
4. Felipe González: Más allá de la verdad y la mentira
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/11/felipe-gonzalez-mas-alla-de-la-verdad-y.html
==========================
INTRODUCCION A LA TEORIA DE ASSANGE By JOHN BROWN
Breve introducción a las nuevas teorías de la conspiración y de la transparencia
Wikileaks: Del abate Barruel a Jeremy Bentham.
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118623
By John Brown
Original in Iohannes Maurus http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
I. LA TRAMA Y EL HILO
Existe una teoría de Wikileaks, la producida por sus promotores y concretamente por Julian Assange en diversos escritos y entrevistas. Quizá el texto teórico más importante que hasta el momento ha producido y publicado el inspirador y fundador de Wikileaks sea State and Terrorist Conspiracies (Estado y conspiraciones terroristas: http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf), publicado en 2006 en su blog junto con otra versión reelaborada del mismo texto titulada Conspiracy as Governance (La conspiración como modo de gobierno. http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf).
En sustancia, la teoría del poder de Assange sostiene que existen unos poderes que, valiéndose del secreto, impiden que exista un buen gobierno (good governance) basado en la justicia y la transparencia: "Cuando se conocen detalles del funcionamiento interno de los regímenes autoritarios, vemos interacciones conspirativas entre la élite política, no sólo por obtener preferencias o favores dentro del régimen, sino como la principal metodología de planificación primaria que subyace al mantenimiento o el reforzamiento de un poder autoritario. Los regímenes autoritarios hacen surgir fuerzas que se oponen a ellos oprimiendo la voluntad individual y colectiva de libertad, verdad y autorrealización. Una vez descubiertos, los planes de los que se vale el gobierno autoritario suscitan resistencia. De ahí que los poderes autoritarios que logran sus fines oculten esos planes. Esto es suficiente para definir su conducta como conspirativa" (State and Terrorist Conspiracies).
Es sumamente interesante ver en el mismo texto cómo se analizan las redes conspirativas en términos casi idénticos (modelo matemático de los "grafos conectados" incluido) a los que emplean los organismos de seguridad antiterrorista y el ejército de los EEUU. La conspiración, según Wikileaks, se organiza así en redes organizadas alrededor de algunos nodos principales de comunicación que sólo funcionan mediante el secreto. Si se desvelan los secretos de la conspiración, o se filtra al menos una parte de ellos, la trama queda dividida y parcialmente neutralizada.
El objetivo es revelar el suficiente número de secretos para que la trama como tal deje de existir. La historia es así, básicamente la de dos fuerzas: una conspiración de los poderosos para mantener sus privilegios y su poder arbitrario y la resistencia de quienes persiguen la libertad, la verdad y la autorrealización. Detrás del poder existe pues una subjetividad ccon intenciones claras para ella misma, aunque ocultas al público. Lo que ocurre es que se trata de una subjetividad transindividual capaz de sumar distintas aportaciones de sus miembros (inputs) y producir como resultado (output) el siguiente acto de la conspiración.
El esquema es básicamente el desarrollado por John Boyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29 ) , el teórico norteamericano de la contrainsurgencia en su esquema del "OODA loop" y posteriormente aplicado por Arquilla y Ronfeldt en su teoría netwar (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerra_red) o "guerra red". El OODA loop (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucle_OODA) o "bucle de Observación-orientación-decisión-acción" parte de la idea de que la posibilidad de victoria se decide antes del combate. Es así necesario interrumpir el circuito OODA en la primera fase posible, para que el enemigo no pueda llegar a la siguiente y atacarnos.
Este esquema que posteriormente ha sido desarrollado por la doctrina militar y antiterrorista norteamericana -basándose también en el clásico taoísta de la guerra Sun Tzu- es esencial para actuar frente a un enemigo que funciona en red. Cortar la red es privarle de capacidad de observación (privándolo de fuentes de datos), orientación (perturbando la interpretación de los datos), decisión (cortando las cadenas fiables de mando) y acción.
Así, afirma Assange, fiel a esta teoría, aunque pretende utilizarla contra el propio poder que la formula y desarrolla, que: "Una conspiración autoritaria que no puede pensar eficazmente, no puede actuar para preservarse frente a los oponentes que genera. Cuando consideramos una conspiración como un conjunto orgánico, vemos un sistema de órganos que interactúan, un cuerpo con arterias y venas cuya sangre puede espesarse y fluir cada vez más lentamente hasta que el organismo cae, incapaz de comprender y controlar las fuerzas de su entorno."
La diferencia entre esta doctrina militar adaptada a los nuevos paradigmas biopolíticos y cognitivos y la doctrina anticonspirativa de Wikileaks es que en la primera no se parte de la idea de una conspiración , sino de una estructura cooperativa no necesariamente oculta. Ello se debe a que los teóricos militares omiten enteramente la dimensión política e ideológica de la soberanía para centrarse en los modos en que las relaciones de fuerzas se determinan en un marco de poder a todos los efectos post-soberano (y post-fordista).
La dimensión de la conspiración tiene, sin embargo, un papel fundamental en la teoría de Assange, pues, como ya señalábamos en este blog (Wikileaks: ¿Existe un -obsceno- secreto del poder? EN http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-existe-un-obsceno-secreto-del.html) , sólo el mantenimiento de la dimensión del secreto puede a la vez preservar las apariencias de la soberanía (el secreto de Estado) y justificar el programa de la leal oposición liberal de aumentar la transparencia de la vida pública.
El punto de vista de los gobernantes como el de la leal oposición parten de dos actitudes igualmente utópicas y complementaias frente a lo real del poder: quienes ostentan el poder piensan que es posible ocultar los resortes de su funcionamiento, que existen realmente unos "arcana imperii" o secretos de Estado, quienes buscan la transparencia y quieren desenmascarar el poder creen que se puede llegar a descubrir ese secreto, que puede saberse toda la verdad del poder.
¿Y si simplemente ese secreto no existiera? ¿Si la intimidad del poder se manifestara como su más completa exterioridad, como lo que Lacan denominaba su extimidad? ¿Si inversamente, por mucho que el poder se haga transparente, su exhibición no puede no dejar un residuo, una dimensión no simbolizable que constituye al poder como tal?
La obediencia al soberano, la servidumbre voluntaria en que La Boétie reconoció la clave del poder moderno, sólo pueden funcionar mediante la creencia en la excepcionalidad del soberano en el hecho de que este posea algo que los demás no tienen y que no es sino la oscura causa del deseo de obedecer. De este modo, tanto para el poder soberano como para su leal oposición liberal en la que milita Assange la creencia en el secreto de Estado es un dogma de fe. Del mismo modo que el blasfemo afirma a Dios con cada una de sus blasfemias, Wikileaks afirma y refuerza el mito de la soberanía en el momento en que todos los hechos desmienten la realidad de ésta.
En ese aspecto, Assange es un tal vez insospechado discípulo del gran autor moderno de la teoría de la conspiración, el abate Barruel. Barruel, un sacerdote contrarrevolucionario y legitimista publicó un largo memorial (Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du jacobinisme, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k49434c/f4.image.paginationHamburgo 1798) para demostrar que la revolución francesa había sido el resultado de una conspiración urdida por una secta, la de los jacobinos, y que esta secta, a su vez, formaba parte de una trama mucho más dilatada en el tiempo y el espacio cuyo punto inicial se sitúa en el asesinato por el rey de Francia Philippe le Bel de los principales dignatarios de los templarios. Los templarios supervivientes se mantuvieron ocultos en espera de su venganza y se unieron a otros enemigos del trono, del altar y la sociedad como los Illuminati de Baviera y los masones, para acabar haciendo ejecutar al rey de Francia. Desde el punto de vista novelesco, la narración de Barruel tiene mucho interés, pero aquí nos interesa su aspecto epistemológico.
La tesis principal de Barruel es que la historia tiene un sujeto, que detrás del carácter aparentemente aleatorio de los acontecimientos, existe una voluntad oculta que mueve los hilos y termina realizando su propósito. Los enfrenamientos sociales claros y abiertos que se produjeron en las distintas fases de la Revolución francesa no tienen así para Barruel la más mínima importancia: en realidad todos fueron inspirados por los jacobinos-templarios-iluminados: "Bajo el nombre desastroso de Jacobinos, ha surgido una secta en los primeros días de la revolución francesa, que enseña que todos los hombres son iguales y libres, pisoteando, en nombre de esa libertad, de esa igualdad desorganizadoras, altares y tronos, llamando en nombre de esa misma igualdad, de esa misma libertad, a todos los pueblos a los desastres de la rebelión y a los horrores de la anarquía.[...] En esta revolución francesa,todo, hasta sus crímenes más espantosos,todo ha sido previsto, meditado, combinado, resuelto, decidido: todo ha sido resultado de la más profunda inspiración criminal, pues todo ha sido preparado, impulsado, por hombres que eran los únicos que llevaban el hilo (le fil) de las conspiraciones ha tiempo urdidas en esas sociedades secretas y han sabido elegir y apresurar los momentos propicios para las conjuras."
Cabe destacar en el fragmento que acabamos de citar la curiosa coincidencia terminológica con los textos del siglo XXI a que nos hemos referido más arriba, pues nos encontramos incluso con la metáfora del hilo que en la problemática de Assange sirve de material para construir su ejemplo didáctico de la red en que consiste el grafo conectado de la conspiración. La conspiracióntiene que ver con los hilos, los hilos que constituyen ocultamente una trama o una red. La modernidad de Wikileaks coincide con el tradicionalismo del abate en considerar el poder como algo misterioso, algo que está en manos de algunos que mueven sus hilos. Con ello el abate y el hacker ignoran por igual las correlaciones de fuerzas que efectivamente constituyen el poder contribuyendo así eficazmente a la mistificación sobre su origen.
II. LA LIBERTAD DE PRENSA Y LA CASA DE CRISTAL
La teoría de Wikileaks tiene, sin embargo, otra vertiente, pues realiza, junto a su denuncia de la conspiración y del secreto una firme reivindicación de la transparencia en la vida social y política. Todo ello en nombre de una capacidad de autorregulación de la sociedad que exige como condición para su realización efectiva que cada uno de los sujetos disponga de los datos necesarios a fin de efectuar opciones racionales. El objetivo de Wikileaks es a corto plazo perturbar la opacidad de los gobiernos "autoritarios", a largo plazo, establecer una gobernanza basada en la transparencia. Esto es lo que explica el propio Assange en una entrevista a la revista Forbes http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/ :
"¿Diría de Vd. que es partidario del libre mercado?
Sin la menor duda (absolutely).Tengo una opinión menos definida respecto al capitalismo, pero me encantan los mercados. [...]
¿Cómo encajan las filtraciones dentro de todo ésto?
Dicho de manera sencilla, para que exista un mercado, tiene que existir información. Un mercado perfecto requiere una información perfecta".
En esta búsqueda de una utópica transparencia, Wikileaks no es sino el reverso progresista del proyecto TIA (Total Information Awareness- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office Conociemiento total de la Información) un plan de control absoluto de toda la información mundial formulado por el almirante Poindexter después del 11 de septiembre y hoy sólo parcialmente aplicado.
El proyecto TIA tenía la imposible misión de impedir que exista nigún tipo de secreto haciendo que todas las comunicaciones estén de un modo u otro interceptadas. El problema fundamental de ese proyecto es que, por un lado es imposible definir lo que es información y aún más qué es toda la información, por no hablar de lo que significa el "conocimiento" de la información y esa imposibilidad no es contingente, sino estructural, pues la lógica (Gödel) y el psicoanálisis (Lacan) demuestran que no existe ningún conocimiento que pueda aspirar a la totalidad..
Poindexter formula un proyecto que aspira a hacer a los súbditos transparentes en nombre la seguridad, mientras que Wikileaks pretende que el poder sea transparente en nombre de la libertad.
En realidad, no existe contradicción alguna entre las dos transparencias cruzadas: la del poder para el ciudadano y la del ciudadano para el poder. Jeremy Bentham, quien Marx considerara el epítome de las libertades de mercado (Libertad, igualdad, propiedad ...y Bentham) defendió con la máxima energía ambas transparencias, considerándolas no sólo compatibles sino claramente complementarias. Bentham no es sólo el diseñador del modelo formal de cárceles, escuelas y hospitales denominado "panóptico", sino también el utopista de la sociedad transparente en la cual todos los actos públicos deberían realizarse como si cualquiera los pudiera ver y todos los actos privados e incluso íntimos deberían suponerse observados por un poder transparente y benévolo. De ese modo, en dos párrafos memorables de su Deontology, que conviene transcribir sentará a la vez las bases de la libertad de prensa y de la sociedad de control:
"Cuanto más viven las personas en público, más sensibles son a la sanción moral. Cuanto mayor sea la dependencia en que se encuentran las personas cuando están en público, esto es cuanto mayor sea la igualdad que existe entre ellas, más claramente se abre paso la evidencia, mayor es la certeza de sus resultados. La libertad de prensa coloca a todos los hombres en presencia del público. La libertad de prensa es el mayor coadyuvante de la sanción moral." (J. Bentham, Deontology The Science of Morality. http://www.archive.org/stream/deontologyorthes01bentuoft#page/99/mode/2up)
De este modo, gracias a la transparencia que se obtiene en la esfera pública, la observación recíproca de sus conductas por parte de los hombres conduce a todos ellos a cumplir con su deber a la vez que realizan su interés bien entendido. En esto se inspira la idea liberal de la libertad de prensa: una libertad que facilita la autorregulación social y contribuye a la buena gobernanza. No es esto, sin embargo lo único que sostiene Bentham, pues, la transparencia, además de en esa dirección ascendente que, según la tradición liberal permite al ciudadano controlar al poder, puede también ejercitarse de arriba a abajo del gobernante al súbdito:
"Sería deseable que el nombre de cada hombre estuviera escrito en su frente así como en su puerta. Sería deseable que no exisitiera el secreto -que la casa de cada uno fuera de cristal, con ello necesitaríamos menos ventanas abiertas a su corazón. Las acciones son una interpretación tolerablemente adecuada de los sentimientos,.cuando la observación nos ha dado la llave de aquellas."
Este poder para el que las casas han de ser de cristal como la propia urna desde la que nos observa pótumamente Bentham, va imponiéndose cada vez más en numerosos países en nombre de la libertad, la seguridad y el respeto del consentimiento de los agentes del de mercado. Un lugar donde este tipo de poder que Michel Foucault denomina "pastoral" ha triunfado es Suecia, país donde los márgenes de libertad e inseguridad propios de la práctica sexual ya pueden ser objeto de una severa inspección por parte de la justicia. Puede someterse así a prueba si ha habido durante un acto sexual rotura del preservativo y si en todo y cada uno de los momentos de un coito se contaba con el consentimiento de ambas partes. En esto, la transparencia postmoderna coincide con el celo inquisidor de lo íntimo de los manuales de confesión católicos que son precisamente una de los instrumentos de ese poder pastoral. Julian Assange puede hoy verse en su propia piel como un apóstol y un mártir de la transparencia y como una víctima de la propia voluntad de transparencia del poder. Con todo, no hace falta estar de acuerdo con ellos para manifestar una activa solidaridad con Assange y con Wikileaks. Los amenaza toda la rabia de un poder impotente.
Fuente original: http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
PARA ENTENDER A ASSANGE ES IMPORTANTE CONOCER LA TEORIA QUE ILUMINO SU TRABAJO EN WIKILEAKS y LAS ENTREVISTAS QUE OFRECIO EN LOS EU y UK. Aqui van, empezamos por las entrevistas:
1. State and Terrorist Conspiracies. Estado y conspiraciones terroristas: http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
2. Conspiracy as Governance (La conspiración como modo de gobierno). http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf
3. Entrevista a Assange x la revista Forbes http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/
4. Entrevista a Assange by John Pilger n see his doct-movie “The War you cannot see”, based on this interview
RECOMENDAMOS LEER TAMBIEN los Textos y reflexiones de John Brown EN SPANISH
1. Breve introducción a las nuevas teorías de la conspiración y de la transparencia
Wikileaks: Del abate Barruel a Jeremy Bentham. By John Brown
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118623
Original in Iohannes Maurus http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
2. Alarma de Estado: el plante de los controladores y la ficción de la soberanía
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/alarma-de-estado-el-plante-de-los.html
3. Wikileaks: ¿Existe un -obsceno- secreto del poder?
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-existe-un-obsceno-secreto-del.html
4. Felipe González: Más allá de la verdad y la mentira
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/11/felipe-gonzalez-mas-alla-de-la-verdad-y.html
HAZ, December 15, 2010
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
PARA ENTENDER A ASSANGE ES IMPORTANTE CONOCER LA TEORIA QUE ILUMINO SU TRABAJO EN WIKILEAKS y LAS ENTREVISTAS QUE OFRECIO EN LOS EU y UK.
Aqui van, empezamos con la breve introduccion y las entrevistas. Luego vienen dos textos de fondo escritos por J Assange (1 y 2 abajo). Para leer los leaks publicados antes de la reciente censura en los EU pueden abrirse los archivos de The Guardian y los de NY Times. Todo esto fue publicado antes de la censura.
La lista de los docts a publicarse aqui es la siguiente, la publico en caso los derechos que nos garantiza la Constitucion de los EU hayan sido abolidos completamente y me quieran silenciar con cualquier pretexto. Me defendere con la ley y con la prensa. Si eso ocurre, ustedes pueden abrir estos documentos por su cuenta y difundirlos lo mas que puedan. Aqui la lista:
1. State and Terrorist Conspiracies. (Estado y conspiraciones terroristas): http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
2. Conspiracy as Governance (La conspiración como modo de gobierno). http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf
3. Entrevista a Assange x la revista Forbes http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/
4. Entrevista a Assange by John Pilger n see his doct-movie “The War you cannot see”, based on this interview
RECOMENDAMOS LEER TAMBIEN los Textos y reflexiones de John Brown
1. Breve introducción a las nuevas teorías de la conspiración y de la transparencia
Wikileaks: Del abate Barruel a Jeremy Bentham. By John Brown
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118623
Original in Iohannes Maurus http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
2. Alarma de Estado: el plante de los controladores y la ficción de la soberanía
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/alarma-de-estado-el-plante-de-los.html
3. Wikileaks: ¿Existe un -obsceno- secreto del poder?
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-existe-un-obsceno-secreto-del.html
4. Felipe González: Más allá de la verdad y la mentira
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/11/felipe-gonzalez-mas-alla-de-la-verdad-y.html
==========================
INTRODUCCION A LA TEORIA DE ASSANGE By JOHN BROWN
Breve introducción a las nuevas teorías de la conspiración y de la transparencia
Wikileaks: Del abate Barruel a Jeremy Bentham.
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118623
By John Brown
Original in Iohannes Maurus http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
I. LA TRAMA Y EL HILO
Existe una teoría de Wikileaks, la producida por sus promotores y concretamente por Julian Assange en diversos escritos y entrevistas. Quizá el texto teórico más importante que hasta el momento ha producido y publicado el inspirador y fundador de Wikileaks sea State and Terrorist Conspiracies (Estado y conspiraciones terroristas: http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf), publicado en 2006 en su blog junto con otra versión reelaborada del mismo texto titulada Conspiracy as Governance (La conspiración como modo de gobierno. http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf).
En sustancia, la teoría del poder de Assange sostiene que existen unos poderes que, valiéndose del secreto, impiden que exista un buen gobierno (good governance) basado en la justicia y la transparencia: "Cuando se conocen detalles del funcionamiento interno de los regímenes autoritarios, vemos interacciones conspirativas entre la élite política, no sólo por obtener preferencias o favores dentro del régimen, sino como la principal metodología de planificación primaria que subyace al mantenimiento o el reforzamiento de un poder autoritario. Los regímenes autoritarios hacen surgir fuerzas que se oponen a ellos oprimiendo la voluntad individual y colectiva de libertad, verdad y autorrealización. Una vez descubiertos, los planes de los que se vale el gobierno autoritario suscitan resistencia. De ahí que los poderes autoritarios que logran sus fines oculten esos planes. Esto es suficiente para definir su conducta como conspirativa" (State and Terrorist Conspiracies).
Es sumamente interesante ver en el mismo texto cómo se analizan las redes conspirativas en términos casi idénticos (modelo matemático de los "grafos conectados" incluido) a los que emplean los organismos de seguridad antiterrorista y el ejército de los EEUU. La conspiración, según Wikileaks, se organiza así en redes organizadas alrededor de algunos nodos principales de comunicación que sólo funcionan mediante el secreto. Si se desvelan los secretos de la conspiración, o se filtra al menos una parte de ellos, la trama queda dividida y parcialmente neutralizada.
El objetivo es revelar el suficiente número de secretos para que la trama como tal deje de existir. La historia es así, básicamente la de dos fuerzas: una conspiración de los poderosos para mantener sus privilegios y su poder arbitrario y la resistencia de quienes persiguen la libertad, la verdad y la autorrealización. Detrás del poder existe pues una subjetividad ccon intenciones claras para ella misma, aunque ocultas al público. Lo que ocurre es que se trata de una subjetividad transindividual capaz de sumar distintas aportaciones de sus miembros (inputs) y producir como resultado (output) el siguiente acto de la conspiración.
El esquema es básicamente el desarrollado por John Boyle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29 ) , el teórico norteamericano de la contrainsurgencia en su esquema del "OODA loop" y posteriormente aplicado por Arquilla y Ronfeldt en su teoría netwar (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerra_red) o "guerra red". El OODA loop (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucle_OODA) o "bucle de Observación-orientación-decisión-acción" parte de la idea de que la posibilidad de victoria se decide antes del combate. Es así necesario interrumpir el circuito OODA en la primera fase posible, para que el enemigo no pueda llegar a la siguiente y atacarnos.
Este esquema que posteriormente ha sido desarrollado por la doctrina militar y antiterrorista norteamericana -basándose también en el clásico taoísta de la guerra Sun Tzu- es esencial para actuar frente a un enemigo que funciona en red. Cortar la red es privarle de capacidad de observación (privándolo de fuentes de datos), orientación (perturbando la interpretación de los datos), decisión (cortando las cadenas fiables de mando) y acción.
Así, afirma Assange, fiel a esta teoría, aunque pretende utilizarla contra el propio poder que la formula y desarrolla, que: "Una conspiración autoritaria que no puede pensar eficazmente, no puede actuar para preservarse frente a los oponentes que genera. Cuando consideramos una conspiración como un conjunto orgánico, vemos un sistema de órganos que interactúan, un cuerpo con arterias y venas cuya sangre puede espesarse y fluir cada vez más lentamente hasta que el organismo cae, incapaz de comprender y controlar las fuerzas de su entorno."
La diferencia entre esta doctrina militar adaptada a los nuevos paradigmas biopolíticos y cognitivos y la doctrina anticonspirativa de Wikileaks es que en la primera no se parte de la idea de una conspiración , sino de una estructura cooperativa no necesariamente oculta. Ello se debe a que los teóricos militares omiten enteramente la dimensión política e ideológica de la soberanía para centrarse en los modos en que las relaciones de fuerzas se determinan en un marco de poder a todos los efectos post-soberano (y post-fordista).
La dimensión de la conspiración tiene, sin embargo, un papel fundamental en la teoría de Assange, pues, como ya señalábamos en este blog (Wikileaks: ¿Existe un -obsceno- secreto del poder? EN http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-existe-un-obsceno-secreto-del.html) , sólo el mantenimiento de la dimensión del secreto puede a la vez preservar las apariencias de la soberanía (el secreto de Estado) y justificar el programa de la leal oposición liberal de aumentar la transparencia de la vida pública.
El punto de vista de los gobernantes como el de la leal oposición parten de dos actitudes igualmente utópicas y complementaias frente a lo real del poder: quienes ostentan el poder piensan que es posible ocultar los resortes de su funcionamiento, que existen realmente unos "arcana imperii" o secretos de Estado, quienes buscan la transparencia y quieren desenmascarar el poder creen que se puede llegar a descubrir ese secreto, que puede saberse toda la verdad del poder.
¿Y si simplemente ese secreto no existiera? ¿Si la intimidad del poder se manifestara como su más completa exterioridad, como lo que Lacan denominaba su extimidad? ¿Si inversamente, por mucho que el poder se haga transparente, su exhibición no puede no dejar un residuo, una dimensión no simbolizable que constituye al poder como tal?
La obediencia al soberano, la servidumbre voluntaria en que La Boétie reconoció la clave del poder moderno, sólo pueden funcionar mediante la creencia en la excepcionalidad del soberano en el hecho de que este posea algo que los demás no tienen y que no es sino la oscura causa del deseo de obedecer. De este modo, tanto para el poder soberano como para su leal oposición liberal en la que milita Assange la creencia en el secreto de Estado es un dogma de fe. Del mismo modo que el blasfemo afirma a Dios con cada una de sus blasfemias, Wikileaks afirma y refuerza el mito de la soberanía en el momento en que todos los hechos desmienten la realidad de ésta.
En ese aspecto, Assange es un tal vez insospechado discípulo del gran autor moderno de la teoría de la conspiración, el abate Barruel. Barruel, un sacerdote contrarrevolucionario y legitimista publicó un largo memorial (Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du jacobinisme, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k49434c/f4.image.paginationHamburgo 1798) para demostrar que la revolución francesa había sido el resultado de una conspiración urdida por una secta, la de los jacobinos, y que esta secta, a su vez, formaba parte de una trama mucho más dilatada en el tiempo y el espacio cuyo punto inicial se sitúa en el asesinato por el rey de Francia Philippe le Bel de los principales dignatarios de los templarios. Los templarios supervivientes se mantuvieron ocultos en espera de su venganza y se unieron a otros enemigos del trono, del altar y la sociedad como los Illuminati de Baviera y los masones, para acabar haciendo ejecutar al rey de Francia. Desde el punto de vista novelesco, la narración de Barruel tiene mucho interés, pero aquí nos interesa su aspecto epistemológico.
La tesis principal de Barruel es que la historia tiene un sujeto, que detrás del carácter aparentemente aleatorio de los acontecimientos, existe una voluntad oculta que mueve los hilos y termina realizando su propósito. Los enfrenamientos sociales claros y abiertos que se produjeron en las distintas fases de la Revolución francesa no tienen así para Barruel la más mínima importancia: en realidad todos fueron inspirados por los jacobinos-templarios-iluminados: "Bajo el nombre desastroso de Jacobinos, ha surgido una secta en los primeros días de la revolución francesa, que enseña que todos los hombres son iguales y libres, pisoteando, en nombre de esa libertad, de esa igualdad desorganizadoras, altares y tronos, llamando en nombre de esa misma igualdad, de esa misma libertad, a todos los pueblos a los desastres de la rebelión y a los horrores de la anarquía.[...] En esta revolución francesa,todo, hasta sus crímenes más espantosos,todo ha sido previsto, meditado, combinado, resuelto, decidido: todo ha sido resultado de la más profunda inspiración criminal, pues todo ha sido preparado, impulsado, por hombres que eran los únicos que llevaban el hilo (le fil) de las conspiraciones ha tiempo urdidas en esas sociedades secretas y han sabido elegir y apresurar los momentos propicios para las conjuras."
Cabe destacar en el fragmento que acabamos de citar la curiosa coincidencia terminológica con los textos del siglo XXI a que nos hemos referido más arriba, pues nos encontramos incluso con la metáfora del hilo que en la problemática de Assange sirve de material para construir su ejemplo didáctico de la red en que consiste el grafo conectado de la conspiración. La conspiracióntiene que ver con los hilos, los hilos que constituyen ocultamente una trama o una red. La modernidad de Wikileaks coincide con el tradicionalismo del abate en considerar el poder como algo misterioso, algo que está en manos de algunos que mueven sus hilos. Con ello el abate y el hacker ignoran por igual las correlaciones de fuerzas que efectivamente constituyen el poder contribuyendo así eficazmente a la mistificación sobre su origen.
II. LA LIBERTAD DE PRENSA Y LA CASA DE CRISTAL
La teoría de Wikileaks tiene, sin embargo, otra vertiente, pues realiza, junto a su denuncia de la conspiración y del secreto una firme reivindicación de la transparencia en la vida social y política. Todo ello en nombre de una capacidad de autorregulación de la sociedad que exige como condición para su realización efectiva que cada uno de los sujetos disponga de los datos necesarios a fin de efectuar opciones racionales. El objetivo de Wikileaks es a corto plazo perturbar la opacidad de los gobiernos "autoritarios", a largo plazo, establecer una gobernanza basada en la transparencia. Esto es lo que explica el propio Assange en una entrevista a la revista Forbes http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/ :
"¿Diría de Vd. que es partidario del libre mercado?
Sin la menor duda (absolutely).Tengo una opinión menos definida respecto al capitalismo, pero me encantan los mercados. [...]
¿Cómo encajan las filtraciones dentro de todo ésto?
Dicho de manera sencilla, para que exista un mercado, tiene que existir información. Un mercado perfecto requiere una información perfecta".
En esta búsqueda de una utópica transparencia, Wikileaks no es sino el reverso progresista del proyecto TIA (Total Information Awareness- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office Conociemiento total de la Información) un plan de control absoluto de toda la información mundial formulado por el almirante Poindexter después del 11 de septiembre y hoy sólo parcialmente aplicado.
El proyecto TIA tenía la imposible misión de impedir que exista nigún tipo de secreto haciendo que todas las comunicaciones estén de un modo u otro interceptadas. El problema fundamental de ese proyecto es que, por un lado es imposible definir lo que es información y aún más qué es toda la información, por no hablar de lo que significa el "conocimiento" de la información y esa imposibilidad no es contingente, sino estructural, pues la lógica (Gödel) y el psicoanálisis (Lacan) demuestran que no existe ningún conocimiento que pueda aspirar a la totalidad..
Poindexter formula un proyecto que aspira a hacer a los súbditos transparentes en nombre la seguridad, mientras que Wikileaks pretende que el poder sea transparente en nombre de la libertad.
En realidad, no existe contradicción alguna entre las dos transparencias cruzadas: la del poder para el ciudadano y la del ciudadano para el poder. Jeremy Bentham, quien Marx considerara el epítome de las libertades de mercado (Libertad, igualdad, propiedad ...y Bentham) defendió con la máxima energía ambas transparencias, considerándolas no sólo compatibles sino claramente complementarias. Bentham no es sólo el diseñador del modelo formal de cárceles, escuelas y hospitales denominado "panóptico", sino también el utopista de la sociedad transparente en la cual todos los actos públicos deberían realizarse como si cualquiera los pudiera ver y todos los actos privados e incluso íntimos deberían suponerse observados por un poder transparente y benévolo. De ese modo, en dos párrafos memorables de su Deontology, que conviene transcribir sentará a la vez las bases de la libertad de prensa y de la sociedad de control:
"Cuanto más viven las personas en público, más sensibles son a la sanción moral. Cuanto mayor sea la dependencia en que se encuentran las personas cuando están en público, esto es cuanto mayor sea la igualdad que existe entre ellas, más claramente se abre paso la evidencia, mayor es la certeza de sus resultados. La libertad de prensa coloca a todos los hombres en presencia del público. La libertad de prensa es el mayor coadyuvante de la sanción moral." (J. Bentham, Deontology The Science of Morality. http://www.archive.org/stream/deontologyorthes01bentuoft#page/99/mode/2up)
De este modo, gracias a la transparencia que se obtiene en la esfera pública, la observación recíproca de sus conductas por parte de los hombres conduce a todos ellos a cumplir con su deber a la vez que realizan su interés bien entendido. En esto se inspira la idea liberal de la libertad de prensa: una libertad que facilita la autorregulación social y contribuye a la buena gobernanza. No es esto, sin embargo lo único que sostiene Bentham, pues, la transparencia, además de en esa dirección ascendente que, según la tradición liberal permite al ciudadano controlar al poder, puede también ejercitarse de arriba a abajo del gobernante al súbdito:
"Sería deseable que el nombre de cada hombre estuviera escrito en su frente así como en su puerta. Sería deseable que no exisitiera el secreto -que la casa de cada uno fuera de cristal, con ello necesitaríamos menos ventanas abiertas a su corazón. Las acciones son una interpretación tolerablemente adecuada de los sentimientos,.cuando la observación nos ha dado la llave de aquellas."
Este poder para el que las casas han de ser de cristal como la propia urna desde la que nos observa pótumamente Bentham, va imponiéndose cada vez más en numerosos países en nombre de la libertad, la seguridad y el respeto del consentimiento de los agentes del de mercado. Un lugar donde este tipo de poder que Michel Foucault denomina "pastoral" ha triunfado es Suecia, país donde los márgenes de libertad e inseguridad propios de la práctica sexual ya pueden ser objeto de una severa inspección por parte de la justicia. Puede someterse así a prueba si ha habido durante un acto sexual rotura del preservativo y si en todo y cada uno de los momentos de un coito se contaba con el consentimiento de ambas partes. En esto, la transparencia postmoderna coincide con el celo inquisidor de lo íntimo de los manuales de confesión católicos que son precisamente una de los instrumentos de ese poder pastoral. Julian Assange puede hoy verse en su propia piel como un apóstol y un mártir de la transparencia y como una víctima de la propia voluntad de transparencia del poder. Con todo, no hace falta estar de acuerdo con ellos para manifestar una activa solidaridad con Assange y con Wikileaks. Los amenaza toda la rabia de un poder impotente.
Fuente original: http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
PARA ENTENDER A ASSANGE ES IMPORTANTE CONOCER LA TEORIA QUE ILUMINO SU TRABAJO EN WIKILEAKS y LAS ENTREVISTAS QUE OFRECIO EN LOS EU y UK. Aqui van, empezamos por las entrevistas:
1. State and Terrorist Conspiracies. Estado y conspiraciones terroristas: http://iq.org/conspiracies.pdf
2. Conspiracy as Governance (La conspiración como modo de gobierno). http://estaticos.elmundo.es/documentos/2010/12/01/conspiracies.pdf
3. Entrevista a Assange x la revista Forbes http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/an-interview-with-wikileaks-julian-assange/5/
4. Entrevista a Assange by John Pilger n see his doct-movie “The War you cannot see”, based on this interview
RECOMENDAMOS LEER TAMBIEN los Textos y reflexiones de John Brown EN SPANISH
1. Breve introducción a las nuevas teorías de la conspiración y de la transparencia
Wikileaks: Del abate Barruel a Jeremy Bentham. By John Brown
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118623
Original in Iohannes Maurus http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-del-abate-barruel-jeremy.html
2. Alarma de Estado: el plante de los controladores y la ficción de la soberanía
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/alarma-de-estado-el-plante-de-los.html
3. Wikileaks: ¿Existe un -obsceno- secreto del poder?
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-existe-un-obsceno-secreto-del.html
4. Felipe González: Más allá de la verdad y la mentira
http://iohannesmaurus.blogspot.com/2010/11/felipe-gonzalez-mas-alla-de-la-verdad-y.html
domingo, 12 de diciembre de 2010
Cancun cambio vs continuismo climatico letal
Cancun cambio vs continuismo climatico letal.
HAZ, diciembre 12, 2010
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
Que se consensuo y que no? Consenso: acuerdo sobre puntos comunes entre partes en conflicto.
Si reducir las emisiones es el problema central, el como hacerlo hoy, debio ser eje del debate. En otras palabras, como todas las naciones del mundo deben contribuir a ese esfuerzo?. Es claro que no todas las naciones causaron el problema, unos son mas culpables que otros y debieran contribuir mas en su solucion. El caso es que todos estamos en el tren, saltar fuera de el es tan suicida como no hacer nada.
El meeting the Cancun termino, el pueblo dio calor al show y los ejecutivos del Banco Mundial y las ONU adresaron el ACUERDO -del ultimo minuto, pero que tenian bajo la manga- cuyo documento final aun no se conoce, pero que compromete la firma de mas de 190 naciones del mundo. Algo de este acuerdo reproducimos abajo de lo que las Naciones Unidas –principal sponsor del evento Cancun- a emitido en forma official.
Mas alla de las promesas que contiene el acuerdo, lo mas positivo es el hecho de que son ahora esas 190+ naciones las que van a chequear y monitorear la concresion de lo prometido. Los pasajeros del tren suicida -190+ naciones- estan ahora en alerta. Otra cosa positiva es que hay ya una voz disonante: Como se puede entregar el control del tren a quien han causado el problema (Evo vs el Banco Mundial)
Pero queda en suspenso la pregunta de fondo: Es posible reducir las Emisiones dejando intacto el modelo de crecimiento economico neoliberal basado en la energia contaminante que agravara las emisiones de carbono?. Que se hace por prohibir los carros poluters y las nuevas exploraciones de petroleo que agravan la deforestacion en el pulmon del mundo, el amazonas, por tomar un caso.
Por ahora revisemos los acuerdos, como fueron lograron y que reacciones generaron, en especial la de Bolivia.
=================
ACUERDOS LOGRADOS EN INGLES Y CASTELLANO:
Aun no se conoce el documento final, pero aqui van los preliminaries.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
Welcome to the official website of the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun
COP 16 / CMP 6, 29 November to 10 December 2010
The United Nations Climate Change Conference took place in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. It encompassed the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA.
UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun delivers balanced package of decisions, restores faith in multilateral process
Cancun, Mexico, 11 December 2010
The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, ended on Saturday with the adoption of a balanced package of decisions that set all governments more firmly on the path towards a low-emissions future and support enhanced action on climate change in the developing world.
Press release (191 kB) esp
PRESS RELEASE
UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún delivers balanced package of decisions, restores faith in multilateral process
http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/pr_20101211_cop16_closing.pdf
(Cancún, 11 December 2010) . The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, ended on Saturday with the adoption of a balanced package of decisions that set all governments more firmly on the path towards a low-emissions future and support enhanced action on climate change in the developing world.
The package, dubbed the .Cancún Agreements. was welcomed to repeated loud and prolonged applause and acclaim by Parties in the final plenary.
Cancún has done its job. The beacon of hope has been reignited and faith in the multilateral climate change process to deliver results has been restored,. said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. .Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause. They have shown that consensus in a transparent and inclusive process can create opportunity for all,. she said.
Governments have given a clear signal that they are headed towards a low-emissions future together, they have agreed to be accountable to each other for the actions they take to get there, and they have set it out in a way which encourages countries to be more ambitious over time,. she said.
Nations launched a set of initiatives and institutions to protect the poor and the vulnerable from climate change and to deploy the money and technology that developing countries need to plan and build their own sustainable futures. And they agreed to launch concrete action to preserve forests in developing nations, which will increase going forward.
They also agreed that countries need to work to stay below a two degree temperature rise and they set a clear timetable for review, to ensure that global action is adequate to meet the emerging reality of climate change.
.This is not the end, but it is a new beginning. It is not what is ultimately required but it is the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition,. said Ms. Figueres.
Elements of the Cancún Agreements include:
• Industrialised country targets are officially recognised under the multilateral process and these countries are to develop low-carbon development plans and strategies and assess how best to meet them, including through market mechanisms, and to report their inventories annually.
Mailing Address: CLIMATE CHANGE SECRETARIAT (UNFCCC), P.O. Box 260 124, D-53153 Bonn, Germany Office Location: Haus Carstanjen, Martin-Luther-King-Strasse 8, D-53175 Bonn, Germany Media Information Office: (49-228) 815-1005 Fax: (49-228) 815-1999 Email: press@unfccc.int Web: http://unfccc.int
Developing country actions to reduce emissions are officially recognised under the multilateral process. A registry is to be set up to record and match developing country mitigation actions to finance and technology support from by industrialised countries. Developing countries are to publish progress reports every two years.
• Parties meeting under the Kyoto Protocol agree to continue negotiations with the aim of completing their work and ensuring there is no gap between the first and second commitment periods of the treaty.
• The Kyoto Protocol.s Clean Development Mechanisms has been strengthened to drive more major investments and technology into environmentally sound and sustainable emission reduction projects in the developing world.
• Parties launched a set of initiatives and institutions to protect the vulnerable from climate change and to deploy the money and technology that developing countries need to plan and build their own sustainable futures.
• A total of $30 billion in fast start finance from industrialised countries to support climate action in the developing world up to 2012 and the intention to raise $100 billion in long-term funds by 2020 is included in the decisions.
• In the field of climate finance, a process to design a Green Climate Fund under the Conference of the Parties, with a board with equal representation from developed and developing countries, is established.
• A new .Cancún Adaptation Framework. is established to allow better planning and implementation of adaptation projects in developing countries through increased financial and technical support, including a clear process for continuing work on loss and damage.
• Governments agree to boost action to curb emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries with technological and financial support.
• Parties have established a technology mechanism with a Technology Executive Committee and Climate Technology Centre and Network to increase technology cooperation to support action on adaptation and mitigation.
The next Conference of the Parties is scheduled to take place in South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011.
About the UNFCCC
With 194 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 191 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
In Spanish
COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
La Conferencia de la ONU sobre Cambio Climático en Cancún da como resultado un paquete equilibrado de decisiones, restaura la fe en proceso multilateral
http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/pr_20101211_cop16_closing_esp.pdf
(Cancún, 11 de diciembre de 2010) . La Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Cambio Climático en Cancún, México, llegó a su fin el sábado con la adopción de un paquete equilibrado de decisiones que coloca a todos los gobiernos en una posición más firme en el camino hacia un futuro bajo en emisiones y apoya una mejor acción sobre cambio climático en el mundo en desarrollo.
Dicho paquete, llamado .Los Acuerdos de Cancún., fue recibido con un repetido, fuerte y prolongado aplauso y la aclamación de las Partes al final de la plenaria.
Cancún hizo su trabajo. La llama de la esperanza se ha reavivado y la fe en que el proceso multilateral sobre cambio climático dé resultados se ha restaurado., afirmó la Secretaria Ejecutiva de la CMNUCC, Christiana Figueres. .Las naciones han mostrado que pueden trabajar juntas bajo un mismo techo para lograr un consenso sobre una causa común. Han demostrado que el consenso en un proceso transparente e inclusivo puede crear oportunidades para todos., agregó.
.Los gobiernos han dado una clara señal de que se dirigen juntos hacia un futuro de bajas emisiones. Han acordado rendirse cuentas entre ellos sobre las acciones que lleven a cabo para lograr sus metas, y lo han expuesto de una manera en la que alientan a los países a ser más ambiciosos con el paso del tiempo., dijo la Secretaria Ejecutiva.
Las Naciones lanzaron un conjunto de iniciativas e instituciones para proteger del cambio climático a las personas vulnerables y a las que viven en la pobreza y para distribuir el dinero y la tecnología que los países en desarrollo necesitan para planear y construir sus propios futuros sostenibles. También acordaron lanzar acciones concretas para la preservación forestal en las naciones en desarrollo, lo cual aumentaría los avances.
De igual modo, reconocieron que los países necesitan trabajar para mantenerse por debajo de un aumento de temperatura de dos grados y establecieron un claro cuadro cronológico de revisión, con el fin de asegurar que la acción mundial es la adecuada para enfrentar la realidad emergente del cambio climático.
Este no es el final, sino un nuevo comienzo. No es lo que se necesitaba finalmente, pero sí representa los cimientos esenciales sobre los cuales se puede construir una mayor ambición colectiva., dijo la Dra. Figueres.
Mailing Address: CLIMATE CHANGE SECRETARIAT (UNFCCC), P.O. Box 260 124, D-53153 Bonn, Germany Office Location: Haus Carstanjen, Martin-Luther-King-Strasse 8, D-53175 Bonn, Germany Media Information Office: (49-228) 815-1005 Fax: (49-228) 815-1999 Email: press@unfccc.int Web: http://unfccc.int
Los elementos de los Acuerdos de Cancún incluyen los siguientes:
• Los objetivos de los países industrializados se reconocieron oficialmente bajo un proceso multilateral. Estos países crearán planes y estrategias de desarrollo bajo en carbono y evaluarán la mejor forma de hacerlo, incluyendo a través de mecanismos de mercado, y reportarán sus inventarios cada año.
• Las acciones de los países en desarrollo para reducir las emisiones se reconocieron oficialmente en el proceso multilateral. Se establecerá un registro con el fin de relacionar y registrar las acciones de mitigación de los países en desarrollo con el financiamiento y soporte tecnológico brindado por los países industrializados. Los países en desarrollo publicarán informes del progreso logrado cada dos años.
• Las Partes reunidas en el Protocolo de Kyoto aceptan continuar con las negociaciones con el propósito de completar su trabajo y asegurar que no hay brecha alguna entre el primer periodo de compromisos y el segundo del tratado.
• Los Mecanismos de Desarrollo Limpio del Protocolo de Kyoto se han reforzado para traducir más inversiones mayores y tecnología en proyectos ambientalmente seguros y sostenibles de reducción de emisiones en el mundo en desarrollo.
• Las partes lanzaron un conjunto de iniciativas e instituciones para proteger a las personas vulnerables del cambio climático y para distribuir el dinero y la tecnología que los países en desarrollo necesitan para planear y construir sus propios futuros sostenibles.
• En las decisiones se incluyó también un total de 30 mil millones de dólares en financiamiento de arranque rápido proveniente de los países industrializados para apoyar la acción sobre cambio climático en los países en desarrollo hasta el año 2012 y la intención de recaudar $100 mil millones de dólares en fondos a largo plazo para 2020.
• Respecto al financiamiento climático, se estableció un proceso para diseñar un Fondo Verde para el Clima bajo la Conferencia de las Partes que cuente con una junta con igual representación de los países en desarrollo y desarrollados.
• Se estableció un Nuevo .Marco de Adaptación de Cancún. con el objetivo de permitir una mejor planeación e implementación de los proyectos de adaptación en los países en desarrollo a través de un mayor financiamiento y soporte técnico, incluyendo un proceso claro para continuar con el trabajo en pérdidas y daños.
• Los gobiernos acordaron fomentar la acción para frenar las emisiones debidas a la deforestación y la degradación forestal en los países en desarrollo con soporte tecnológico y financiamiento.
• Las Partes establecieron un mecanismo de tecnología con un Comité Ejecutivo de Tecnología, así como con el Centro y la Red de Tecnología Climática para aumentar la cooperación tecnológica para apoyar la acción sobre adaptación y mitigación.
La próxima Conferencia de las Partes está programada del 28 de noviembre al 9 de diciembre de 2011 en Sudáfrica.
La CMNUCC
La Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC), con sus 194 Partes, cuenta entre sus miembros a casi todos los países del mundo y es el tratado que sirve de base al Protocolo de Kyoto de 1997. El Protocolo de Kyoto ha sido ratificado por 191 de las Partes en la CMNUCC. En el contexto del Protocolo, 37 Estados .Estados industrializados o en proceso de transición a una economía de mercado. tienen compromisos jurídicamente vinculantes de reducción de las emisiones. El objetivo último de ambos tratados es estabilizar las concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera situándolas en un nivel que impida interferencias humanas nocivas en el sistema climático.
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REACCIONES. LAS OBJECIONES DE BOLIVIA. 2 articulos
1.
Bolivia sola contra 193 países
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118508
Julián Miglierini.
BBC Mundo http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2010/12/101211_cumbre_cancun_bolivia_contra_193_paises_pl.shtml?print=1
La delegación boliviana en la cumbre de cambio climático que finalizó este sábado en Cancún fue la única en rechazar los acuerdos alcanzados por el pleno del foro y anunció que interpondrá un reclamo formal contra la manera en que se llegó al pacto global.
Al rechazarse al acuerdo, que pacta una futura renegociación del Protocolo de Kioto - a través del cual los países ricos limitan sus emisiones - y establece mecanismos de ayuda a países en desarrollo, entre otros temas, Bolivia quería evitar que el pleno apruebe un pacto que, según ese país, no es lo suficientemente enérgico en algunos temas que no se habían terminado de negociar.
Tradicionalmente las decisiones de la convención se toman por consenso unánime, por lo que la presencia de un sólo opositor puede hacer caer cualquier acuerdo alcanzado por los demás países.
Pero esa estrategia no pareció dar los resultados que la delegación boliviana esperaba - los acuerdos fueron aprobados con el acuerdo de los demás 193 países y sólo se "tomó nota" de las reservas de Bolivia.
Tras el fin de la última sesión plenaria, el embajador de Bolivia antes Naciones Unidas y jefe de la delegación, Pablo Solón, dijo que su país se va de esta cumbre "con la frente en alto; somos la delegación de un país que no se vende, no se arrodilla, tiene mucha dignidad y principios".
Solón agregó que el país hará una reclamación ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia por la manera en la que se adoptaron los acuerdos.
Tensión
Bolivia objetaba, por ejemplo, que en el primer texto no hay un firme compromiso de renovación del Protocolo de Kioto -que vence en 2012- y que los recortes contemplados en el acuerdo no son suficientemente profundos para evitar un marcado aumento de la temperatura global.
La posición de Bolivia dio lugar a una tensa ida y vuelta entre su embajador en Naciones Unidas y jefe de su delegación aquí, Pablo Solón, y la canciller mexicana y presidenta de la sesión, Patricia Espinosa, en la última sesión de la cumbre.
Los cientos de asistentes a la sesión plenaria aplaudían cada intervención de Espinosa y callaban ante los reclamos de Bolivia.
"Somos representantes de un país pequeño que tiene principios, pequeño pero con soberanía", dijo Solón en el plenario de la cumbre.
Al ver que la reunión plenaria procedía a aprobar los dos acuerdos sin contar con el respaldo de Bolivia, Solón advirtió sobre las implicaciones de semejante decisión.
"El precedente es funesto", dijo Solón. "Hoy será Bolivia y mañana será cualquier país; no podemos de ninguna manera acabar con lo que significa la regla de consenso".
Consenso, no unanimidad
Pero Espinosa les respondió con contundencia.
"La regla del consenso no significa la unanimidad" dijo Espinosa.
"Ni muchos menos que una delegación pretenda imponer el derecho de veto para romper la voluntad que con tanto trabajo han venido alcanzando los demás participantes", e hizo caer el martillo que marcaba la toma de una decisión.
Lo que muchos se preguntan en Cancún es cómo Bolivia pudo quedarse sola, sin el apoyo total en su posición de parte de ninguno de sus aliados del ALBA o del resto del mundo.
En entrevista con BBC Mundo al final de la reunión, la jefa de la delegación de Venezuela - un férreo aliado de La Paz -, Claudia Salerno, dijo que su país se solidarizaba con Bolivia.
"No es un buen precedente el que acaba de ocurrir", dijo sobre la aprobación del acuerdo sin apoyo boliviano, "no me voy con un sabor agradable en la boca, porque se violaron las reglas de procedimiento".
Postura extremista
Sin embargo, Salerno aseguró que en estos casos de negociaciones multilaterales, hay que mostrar flexibilidad.
"Nosotros éramos inflexibles con algunas cosas y esas las peleamos hasta el último minuto, pero este era el momento de la convergencia y la flexibilidad."
Desde otros países de la región hubo también comentarios respecto a Bolivia.
"Las reservas (de Bolivia) son obviamente válidas", dijo a BBC Mundo Sandra Bessudo, jefa de la delegación de Colombia, tras el fin de la reunión.
"Sin embargo esa posición tan extremista en un contexto como lo que se está intentando construir desde aquí hace que el proceso vaya hacia atrás", agregó.
La delegación de Bolivia, por su parte, aseguró que la historia les dará la razón.
"Lo que aquí (en Cancún) se ha acordado va a llevar a víctimas humanas y de la naturaleza", sentenció.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2010/12/101211_cumbre_cancun_bolivia_contra_193_paises_pl.shtml?print=1
2
Cancún cede al Banco Mundial la gestión del cambio climático
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118512
Gara. http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20101212/237516/es/Cancun-cede-Banco-Mundial-gestion-cambio-climatico
Cerca de 200 países reunidos en Cancún (México) adoptaron ayer una serie de mecanismos -todavía embrionarios- para luchar contra el cambio climático, un acuerdo que fue acogido con una ovación y que pasa página de la inmensa decepción de Copenhague, hace un año.
El texto prevé la creación de un fondo verde para ayudar a los países en desarrollo a hacer frente al calentamiento y pone en marcha un mecanismo para luchar contra la deforestación.
Sin embargo, este fondo estará controlado inicialmente por el Banco Mundial, un organismo que no se ha distinguido por su sensibilidad medioambiental. Al contrario, las exigencias neoliberales del Banco Mundial han impedido que numerosos países hayan tenido que suspender sus programas sociales, lo que ha generado también problemas medioambientales.
El objetivo de la cita mexicana -con ambiciones modestas- era resucitar el proceso de negociación impulsado por la ONU, fuertemente desprestigiado por la inmensa decepción que supuso la cumbre de Copenhague. Misión cumplida, según las delegaciones reunidas en pleno para adoptar el texto.
Con este acuerdo, «se ha salvado el fracaso del sistema multilateral de negociaciones sobre el cambio climático», declaró a France Presse la ministra francesa de Ecología, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
El texto adoptado tras doce jornadas de negociaciones intensas y en ocasiones tensas, «abre una nueva era para la cooperación internacional sobre el clima», aseguró la ministra mexicana de Exteriores, Patricia Espinosa, quien presidió los debates.
Algunas horas antes, el texto de compromiso puesto sobre la mesa por México recibió el apoyo de la mayoría de los 194 estados presentes en la Convención de la ONU sobre el Clima.
Este texto «evidentemente no resolverá la cuestión del cambio climático, pero pienso que es un verdadero paso adelante», señaló el principal negociador estadounidense, Todd Stern.
La principal virtud del texto, aprobado pese a la oposición de Bolivia, es oficializar numerosos puntos del acuerdo político de Copenhague, que no fue jamás adoptado por la Convención de la ONU.
De este modo, se fija el objetivo de limitar el alza de la temperatura media del planeta a dos grados por encima de los niveles preindustriales. «Las partes deben actuar de manera urgente para lograr este objetivo a largo plazo», indicó el acuerdo adoptado.
El texto permite asimismo salvar, al menos temporalmente, el futuro del Protocolo de Kioto, único tratado jurídicamente obligatorio sobre el clima que existe actualmente, pese a que no ha sido suscrito ni por EEUU ni por China, principales agentes contaminantes del mundo.
Esta cuestión deberá ser resuelta irremediablemente en la próxima cita sobre el clima, a finales de 2011 en Durban (Sudáfrica).
Los países desarrollados prometieron en Copenhague movilizar 100.000 millones de dólares [75.500 millones de euros]. El nuevo fondo verde, que gestionará una parte importante de esta cantidad, tendrá un consejo de administración con representación igualitaria entre estados desarrollados y en vías de desarrollo. El texto de Cancún prevé que el Banco Mundial actuará como administrador temporal durante tres años.
Las numerosas preguntas que surgen sobre la manera en la que se creará este fondo siguen sin respuesta. Un panel impulsado por la ONU sugirió la puesta en marcha de financiación alternativa, como tasas sobre el transporte y las transacciones financieras.
El texto aprobado en la Cumbre de Cancún establece, asimismo, las bases de un mecanismo para reducir la deforestación, que está en el origen del 15% al 20% de las emisiones globales de gases de efecto invernadero.
Bolivia recurrirá ante el Tribunal de La Haya
Bolivia anunció ayer que acudirá al Tribunal Internacional de La Haya para impugnar el resultado de la Cumbre de Cancún al considerar que violó el reglamento de la ONU en la aprobación de sus documentos finales.
El jefe de la delegación boliviana, Pablo Solón, señaló que la presidenta de la cumbre, Patricia Espinosa, violó el reglamento de la Convención, que establece que los acuerdos se adoptan con el consentimiento de los 194 países miembros.
Entre otras cosas, Bolivia rechazó el acuerdo de Cancún por considerar que abre las puertas a que se sustituya en un futuro el Protocolo de Kioto (1997), el único instrumento vinculante que hasta la fecha obliga a los países desarrollados a reducir sus emisiones.
También rechaza que se amplíe la posibilidad de aumentar el uso de nuevos mecanismos de mercado como si fueran «una varita mágica», así como que se otorgue un papel temporal al Banco Mundial para gestionar el nuevo fondo verde de ayudas a los países en desarrollo.
A juicio de Solón, la cumbre de Cancún «ha terminado muy mal» porque la Presidencia mexicana no respetó las reglas, «algo que ni siquiera ocurrió en Copenhague».
Países latinoamericanos aliados de Bolivia, como Venezuela, no apoyaron en esta ocasión la postura de La Paz. La delegada venezolana, Claudia Salerno, se congratuló por la creación del fondo y de los compromisos para frenar la deforestación.
El negociador cubano, Orlando Rey, señaló a Efe que el acuerdo «permite recobrar la confianza, el valor del multilateralismo y el basamento para empeños superiores».
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20101212/237516/es/Cancun-cede-Banco-Mundial-gestion-cambio-climatico
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Recent news sobre los acuerdos de Cancun in English
Telegraph report:
Cancun meeting reaches climate change agreement
The Cancun climate change talks closed in the early hours of Saturday morning with an agreement aimed at stopping climate change.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Cancun
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8196074/Cancun-meeting-reaches-climate-change-agreement.html
The new deal falls short of a global treaty. However it has progressed from Copenhagen by getting all countries, except Bolivia, to sign up to an official UN document.
The Cancun deal commits all countries to keeping temperature rise below 2C (3.6F) by reducing emissions. Rich countries have agreed to consider an extension of the Kyoto Protocol while poor countries will sign up to emission cuts for the first time. There are also a series of key decisions on setting up a green fund to help poor countries cope with climate change and halting deforestation.
Chris Huhne, the Climate Change and Energy Secretary, said the proposals did not give everybody everything they wanted but it was progress.
"We've made much more progress than anybody expected only weeks," he said.
"We have real commitments to reductions of greenhouse gases both by developed and developing countries."
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WASHINGTON POST REPORT:
Cancun Agreements put 193 nations on track to deal with climate change
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/11/AR2010121102308.html
By Juliet Eilperin and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 11, 2010; 7:07 PM
CANCUN, MEXICO - Delegates from 193 nations agreed Saturday on a new global framework to help developing countries curb their carbon output and cope with the effects of climate change, but they postponed the harder question of precisely how industrialized and major emerging economies will share the task of making deeper greenhouse-gas emission cuts in the coming decade.
The package known as the Cancun Agreements has salvaged a U.N.-backed process that was close to failure, delivering a diplomatic victory to the talks' Mexican hosts. But it also highlighted the obstacles that await as countries continue to grapple with climate change through broad international negotiations.
After an all-night session that included a face-off between Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa and Bolivia's U.N. ambassador, Pablo Solon, members of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) agreed to create a "Green Climate Fund" that will transfer money from rich countries to poor ones; research centers that will ease the transfer of clean-energy technology; and a system in which developing nations can be compensated for keeping rain forests intact.
"Cancun has done its job," UNFCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said in a statement. "Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause."
But the outcome left some gaping holes, including spelling out exactly how the new pot of international aid will be funded and whether the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the current global climate pact, will be extended once its first commitment period expires in 2012. Signatories such as Japan and Russia oppose an extension because the United States, China and India are not bound to mandatory emission reductions under Kyoto.
Akira Yamada, Japan's deputy director general for global issues, said the current Kyoto framework amounted to having big emitters act as "spectators" while the rest of the industrialized world played a soccer match. "We would hope they would come down to the field to play with us, to score against global warming," Yamada said.
The new framework encapsulates the current commitments that both industrialized and developing nations have made to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, though it notes that these will not meet the agreed-upon goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. To achieve that, industrialized countries would have cut their emissions between 25 and 40 percent compared with 1990 levels in the next decade, as opposed to the 16 percent they have promised.
Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said delegates have "bought themselves some time" but will face an even tougher negotiation next year in Durban, South Africa. "The big issues are still unaddressed," he said.
Still, the agreement cemented and fleshed out key elements of the Copenhagen Accord, the controversial deal brokered among President Obama and the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa in a closed meeting last year. That pact was not formally adopted by the U.N. body after a handful of Latin American countries raised objections, but it established the idea that major developing countries would subject voluntary emissions cuts to international scrutiny while the industrialized world would mobilize $100 billion in climate aid for poor nations by 2020.
"The reality is we really got what we were looking for," said U.S. special climate envoy Todd Stern in an interview Saturday. On issues such as forests, financing and scrutiny of major emitters' carbon reductions, he said, "we got good, substantive decisions on all of those things."
Michael Levi, senior follow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an e-mail that while "most of the important work of cutting emissions will be driven outside the U.N. process," the Cancun agreement "should be applauded not because it solves everything, but because it chooses not to: it focuses on those areas where the U.N. process has the most potential to be useful, and avoids others where the U.N. process is a dead end."
Some elements of the deal, including one known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, could have an immediate impact on curbing carbon emissions. The new language establishes rules for calculating how much carbon is stored in forest stocks vulnerable to logging or burning, along with safeguards for rain-forest dwellers and biodiversity.
Rebecca Chacko, who directs climate policy for the advocacy group Conservation International, said this "basic framework" is "going to inspire countries to really ramp up the financing immediately" for forest preservation, as well as open the door to more private funding.
In the end, Mexico was able to pull off what the president of the Center for Clean Air Policy, Ned Helme, called a negotiating "tour de force" by asking delegates what was most important to them and what they could compromise on. The Mexicans finally won over everyone - except Solon, who complained about everything from future climate targets to his treatment by checkpoint security guards.
In an interview, Espinosa said: "We were feeling very uncomfortable, because Bolivia is a very close friend to the Mexican people. We share a lot with Bolivia. Both countries have many indigenous peoples. We both have forests. So being so far apart was difficult for us."
President Felipe Calderon in an interview Saturday morning called the late-night conclusion, with its repeated applause for Mexico and its appeals to save humanity, "a very emotional night for all of us."
Minutes later, at a breakfast by the sea for the Mexican delegation, Calderon hoisted a cold beer and dug into his tacos, after being hailed as the world's new leader on climate change.
eilperinj@washpost.com boothb@washpost.com
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Cancun Climate Delegates Sign Off On Agreement
Posted on: Sunday, 12 December 2010
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1964927/cancun_climate_delegates_sign_off_on_agreement/
Delegates at the UN climate summit in Cancun have reached an agreement to curb climate change, including a massive fund to aid developing countries.
All participating nations endorsed the deal drawn up by the Mexican hosts, although Bolivia made some objections.
The draft says deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not establish a mechanism for achieving pledges made by countries. The Kyoto Protocol was a huge stumbling block for some countries that resisted it during the final week of negotiations. However, diplomats were able to come to a compromise.
Delegates applauded speeches from Japan, China and the US -- nations that had caused the most friction during negotiations -- as one by one they signed the draft.
BBC environment correspondent Richard Black said the meeting did not achieve the all-encompassing deal that many activists and governments were hoping for. But he said it was being “touted as a platform on which that comprehensive agreement can be built.”
“Now the world must deliver on its promises. There is more hard work to be done ahead of the climate change conference in South Africa next year,” UK Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC News.
The Green Climate Fund is expected to raise and disburse $100 billion per year by 2020 to protect the poorest nations against climate impacts and assist them with low-carbon development.
A newly appointed Adaptation Committee will support countries as they establish climate protection plans.
And partners for funding developing countries to reduce deforestation are outlined.
The deal is nowhere near the comprehensive plan that many countries backed at last year’s Copenhagen summit and continue to back now. It leaves open the question of whether any of its measures, including emission cuts, will be legally binding.
“What we have now is a text that, while not perfect, is certainly a good basis for moving forward,” said chief US negotiator Todd Stern.
“The negotiations in the future will continue to be difficult,” China’s chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, added.
Bolivia found faults with elements of the deal and with the way the texts were constructed through private conversations between small groups of countries.
Delegation chief Pablo Solon said what was most worrisome was that commitments would not be made under the Kyoto Protocol. “We're talking about a [combined] reduction in emissions of 13-16 percent, and what this means is an increase of more than 4C,” he said.
“Responsibly, we cannot go along with this - this would mean we went along with a situation that my president has termed 'ecocide and genocide',” said Solon.
But Clair Parker, senior climate policy adviser for the global conservation group IUCN, said: “We have moved away from the post-Copenhagen paralysis.”
“Developing countries can now see new money on the table which they can draw on to adapt to the impacts they're already facing and reduce emissions,” she said.
“There's enough in it that we can work towards next year's meeting in South Africa to get a legally binding agreement there,” commented Tara Rao, senior policy adviser with environmental group World Wildlife Fund.
The final day of the two-week climate change summit had begun with little hope of a deal. But ministers conducted intensive behind-the-scenes diplomacy to formulate texts that all parties could agree to, to some extent.
Both Russia and Japan secured wording that leaves them a possible route to escape extension of the Kyoto Protocol’s legally binding emission cuts, while strongly implying that the protocol will have a successful future - a key demand of developing countries.
The Green Climate Fund will initially utilize the World Bank as a trustee -- as the United States, European Union and Japan had demanded -- while giving oversight to a new body balanced between developed and developing nations.
Developing countries will be subject to international verification when they are funded by Western monies -- a formulation that seemed to satisfy both China, which had concerns on such verification procedures, and the US, which had demanded them.
HAZ, diciembre 12, 2010
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/
Que se consensuo y que no? Consenso: acuerdo sobre puntos comunes entre partes en conflicto.
Si reducir las emisiones es el problema central, el como hacerlo hoy, debio ser eje del debate. En otras palabras, como todas las naciones del mundo deben contribuir a ese esfuerzo?. Es claro que no todas las naciones causaron el problema, unos son mas culpables que otros y debieran contribuir mas en su solucion. El caso es que todos estamos en el tren, saltar fuera de el es tan suicida como no hacer nada.
El meeting the Cancun termino, el pueblo dio calor al show y los ejecutivos del Banco Mundial y las ONU adresaron el ACUERDO -del ultimo minuto, pero que tenian bajo la manga- cuyo documento final aun no se conoce, pero que compromete la firma de mas de 190 naciones del mundo. Algo de este acuerdo reproducimos abajo de lo que las Naciones Unidas –principal sponsor del evento Cancun- a emitido en forma official.
Mas alla de las promesas que contiene el acuerdo, lo mas positivo es el hecho de que son ahora esas 190+ naciones las que van a chequear y monitorear la concresion de lo prometido. Los pasajeros del tren suicida -190+ naciones- estan ahora en alerta. Otra cosa positiva es que hay ya una voz disonante: Como se puede entregar el control del tren a quien han causado el problema (Evo vs el Banco Mundial)
Pero queda en suspenso la pregunta de fondo: Es posible reducir las Emisiones dejando intacto el modelo de crecimiento economico neoliberal basado en la energia contaminante que agravara las emisiones de carbono?. Que se hace por prohibir los carros poluters y las nuevas exploraciones de petroleo que agravan la deforestacion en el pulmon del mundo, el amazonas, por tomar un caso.
Por ahora revisemos los acuerdos, como fueron lograron y que reacciones generaron, en especial la de Bolivia.
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ACUERDOS LOGRADOS EN INGLES Y CASTELLANO:
Aun no se conoce el documento final, pero aqui van los preliminaries.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
Welcome to the official website of the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun
COP 16 / CMP 6, 29 November to 10 December 2010
The United Nations Climate Change Conference took place in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. It encompassed the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA.
UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun delivers balanced package of decisions, restores faith in multilateral process
Cancun, Mexico, 11 December 2010
The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, ended on Saturday with the adoption of a balanced package of decisions that set all governments more firmly on the path towards a low-emissions future and support enhanced action on climate change in the developing world.
Press release (191 kB) esp
PRESS RELEASE
UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún delivers balanced package of decisions, restores faith in multilateral process
http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/pr_20101211_cop16_closing.pdf
(Cancún, 11 December 2010) . The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico, ended on Saturday with the adoption of a balanced package of decisions that set all governments more firmly on the path towards a low-emissions future and support enhanced action on climate change in the developing world.
The package, dubbed the .Cancún Agreements. was welcomed to repeated loud and prolonged applause and acclaim by Parties in the final plenary.
Cancún has done its job. The beacon of hope has been reignited and faith in the multilateral climate change process to deliver results has been restored,. said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres. .Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause. They have shown that consensus in a transparent and inclusive process can create opportunity for all,. she said.
Governments have given a clear signal that they are headed towards a low-emissions future together, they have agreed to be accountable to each other for the actions they take to get there, and they have set it out in a way which encourages countries to be more ambitious over time,. she said.
Nations launched a set of initiatives and institutions to protect the poor and the vulnerable from climate change and to deploy the money and technology that developing countries need to plan and build their own sustainable futures. And they agreed to launch concrete action to preserve forests in developing nations, which will increase going forward.
They also agreed that countries need to work to stay below a two degree temperature rise and they set a clear timetable for review, to ensure that global action is adequate to meet the emerging reality of climate change.
.This is not the end, but it is a new beginning. It is not what is ultimately required but it is the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition,. said Ms. Figueres.
Elements of the Cancún Agreements include:
• Industrialised country targets are officially recognised under the multilateral process and these countries are to develop low-carbon development plans and strategies and assess how best to meet them, including through market mechanisms, and to report their inventories annually.
Mailing Address: CLIMATE CHANGE SECRETARIAT (UNFCCC), P.O. Box 260 124, D-53153 Bonn, Germany Office Location: Haus Carstanjen, Martin-Luther-King-Strasse 8, D-53175 Bonn, Germany Media Information Office: (49-228) 815-1005 Fax: (49-228) 815-1999 Email: press@unfccc.int Web: http://unfccc.int
Developing country actions to reduce emissions are officially recognised under the multilateral process. A registry is to be set up to record and match developing country mitigation actions to finance and technology support from by industrialised countries. Developing countries are to publish progress reports every two years.
• Parties meeting under the Kyoto Protocol agree to continue negotiations with the aim of completing their work and ensuring there is no gap between the first and second commitment periods of the treaty.
• The Kyoto Protocol.s Clean Development Mechanisms has been strengthened to drive more major investments and technology into environmentally sound and sustainable emission reduction projects in the developing world.
• Parties launched a set of initiatives and institutions to protect the vulnerable from climate change and to deploy the money and technology that developing countries need to plan and build their own sustainable futures.
• A total of $30 billion in fast start finance from industrialised countries to support climate action in the developing world up to 2012 and the intention to raise $100 billion in long-term funds by 2020 is included in the decisions.
• In the field of climate finance, a process to design a Green Climate Fund under the Conference of the Parties, with a board with equal representation from developed and developing countries, is established.
• A new .Cancún Adaptation Framework. is established to allow better planning and implementation of adaptation projects in developing countries through increased financial and technical support, including a clear process for continuing work on loss and damage.
• Governments agree to boost action to curb emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries with technological and financial support.
• Parties have established a technology mechanism with a Technology Executive Committee and Climate Technology Centre and Network to increase technology cooperation to support action on adaptation and mitigation.
The next Conference of the Parties is scheduled to take place in South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011.
About the UNFCCC
With 194 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 191 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
In Spanish
COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
La Conferencia de la ONU sobre Cambio Climático en Cancún da como resultado un paquete equilibrado de decisiones, restaura la fe en proceso multilateral
http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/pr_20101211_cop16_closing_esp.pdf
(Cancún, 11 de diciembre de 2010) . La Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Cambio Climático en Cancún, México, llegó a su fin el sábado con la adopción de un paquete equilibrado de decisiones que coloca a todos los gobiernos en una posición más firme en el camino hacia un futuro bajo en emisiones y apoya una mejor acción sobre cambio climático en el mundo en desarrollo.
Dicho paquete, llamado .Los Acuerdos de Cancún., fue recibido con un repetido, fuerte y prolongado aplauso y la aclamación de las Partes al final de la plenaria.
Cancún hizo su trabajo. La llama de la esperanza se ha reavivado y la fe en que el proceso multilateral sobre cambio climático dé resultados se ha restaurado., afirmó la Secretaria Ejecutiva de la CMNUCC, Christiana Figueres. .Las naciones han mostrado que pueden trabajar juntas bajo un mismo techo para lograr un consenso sobre una causa común. Han demostrado que el consenso en un proceso transparente e inclusivo puede crear oportunidades para todos., agregó.
.Los gobiernos han dado una clara señal de que se dirigen juntos hacia un futuro de bajas emisiones. Han acordado rendirse cuentas entre ellos sobre las acciones que lleven a cabo para lograr sus metas, y lo han expuesto de una manera en la que alientan a los países a ser más ambiciosos con el paso del tiempo., dijo la Secretaria Ejecutiva.
Las Naciones lanzaron un conjunto de iniciativas e instituciones para proteger del cambio climático a las personas vulnerables y a las que viven en la pobreza y para distribuir el dinero y la tecnología que los países en desarrollo necesitan para planear y construir sus propios futuros sostenibles. También acordaron lanzar acciones concretas para la preservación forestal en las naciones en desarrollo, lo cual aumentaría los avances.
De igual modo, reconocieron que los países necesitan trabajar para mantenerse por debajo de un aumento de temperatura de dos grados y establecieron un claro cuadro cronológico de revisión, con el fin de asegurar que la acción mundial es la adecuada para enfrentar la realidad emergente del cambio climático.
Este no es el final, sino un nuevo comienzo. No es lo que se necesitaba finalmente, pero sí representa los cimientos esenciales sobre los cuales se puede construir una mayor ambición colectiva., dijo la Dra. Figueres.
Mailing Address: CLIMATE CHANGE SECRETARIAT (UNFCCC), P.O. Box 260 124, D-53153 Bonn, Germany Office Location: Haus Carstanjen, Martin-Luther-King-Strasse 8, D-53175 Bonn, Germany Media Information Office: (49-228) 815-1005 Fax: (49-228) 815-1999 Email: press@unfccc.int Web: http://unfccc.int
Los elementos de los Acuerdos de Cancún incluyen los siguientes:
• Los objetivos de los países industrializados se reconocieron oficialmente bajo un proceso multilateral. Estos países crearán planes y estrategias de desarrollo bajo en carbono y evaluarán la mejor forma de hacerlo, incluyendo a través de mecanismos de mercado, y reportarán sus inventarios cada año.
• Las acciones de los países en desarrollo para reducir las emisiones se reconocieron oficialmente en el proceso multilateral. Se establecerá un registro con el fin de relacionar y registrar las acciones de mitigación de los países en desarrollo con el financiamiento y soporte tecnológico brindado por los países industrializados. Los países en desarrollo publicarán informes del progreso logrado cada dos años.
• Las Partes reunidas en el Protocolo de Kyoto aceptan continuar con las negociaciones con el propósito de completar su trabajo y asegurar que no hay brecha alguna entre el primer periodo de compromisos y el segundo del tratado.
• Los Mecanismos de Desarrollo Limpio del Protocolo de Kyoto se han reforzado para traducir más inversiones mayores y tecnología en proyectos ambientalmente seguros y sostenibles de reducción de emisiones en el mundo en desarrollo.
• Las partes lanzaron un conjunto de iniciativas e instituciones para proteger a las personas vulnerables del cambio climático y para distribuir el dinero y la tecnología que los países en desarrollo necesitan para planear y construir sus propios futuros sostenibles.
• En las decisiones se incluyó también un total de 30 mil millones de dólares en financiamiento de arranque rápido proveniente de los países industrializados para apoyar la acción sobre cambio climático en los países en desarrollo hasta el año 2012 y la intención de recaudar $100 mil millones de dólares en fondos a largo plazo para 2020.
• Respecto al financiamiento climático, se estableció un proceso para diseñar un Fondo Verde para el Clima bajo la Conferencia de las Partes que cuente con una junta con igual representación de los países en desarrollo y desarrollados.
• Se estableció un Nuevo .Marco de Adaptación de Cancún. con el objetivo de permitir una mejor planeación e implementación de los proyectos de adaptación en los países en desarrollo a través de un mayor financiamiento y soporte técnico, incluyendo un proceso claro para continuar con el trabajo en pérdidas y daños.
• Los gobiernos acordaron fomentar la acción para frenar las emisiones debidas a la deforestación y la degradación forestal en los países en desarrollo con soporte tecnológico y financiamiento.
• Las Partes establecieron un mecanismo de tecnología con un Comité Ejecutivo de Tecnología, así como con el Centro y la Red de Tecnología Climática para aumentar la cooperación tecnológica para apoyar la acción sobre adaptación y mitigación.
La próxima Conferencia de las Partes está programada del 28 de noviembre al 9 de diciembre de 2011 en Sudáfrica.
La CMNUCC
La Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (CMNUCC), con sus 194 Partes, cuenta entre sus miembros a casi todos los países del mundo y es el tratado que sirve de base al Protocolo de Kyoto de 1997. El Protocolo de Kyoto ha sido ratificado por 191 de las Partes en la CMNUCC. En el contexto del Protocolo, 37 Estados .Estados industrializados o en proceso de transición a una economía de mercado. tienen compromisos jurídicamente vinculantes de reducción de las emisiones. El objetivo último de ambos tratados es estabilizar las concentraciones de gases de efecto invernadero en la atmósfera situándolas en un nivel que impida interferencias humanas nocivas en el sistema climático.
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REACCIONES. LAS OBJECIONES DE BOLIVIA. 2 articulos
1.
Bolivia sola contra 193 países
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118508
Julián Miglierini.
BBC Mundo http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2010/12/101211_cumbre_cancun_bolivia_contra_193_paises_pl.shtml?print=1
La delegación boliviana en la cumbre de cambio climático que finalizó este sábado en Cancún fue la única en rechazar los acuerdos alcanzados por el pleno del foro y anunció que interpondrá un reclamo formal contra la manera en que se llegó al pacto global.
Al rechazarse al acuerdo, que pacta una futura renegociación del Protocolo de Kioto - a través del cual los países ricos limitan sus emisiones - y establece mecanismos de ayuda a países en desarrollo, entre otros temas, Bolivia quería evitar que el pleno apruebe un pacto que, según ese país, no es lo suficientemente enérgico en algunos temas que no se habían terminado de negociar.
Tradicionalmente las decisiones de la convención se toman por consenso unánime, por lo que la presencia de un sólo opositor puede hacer caer cualquier acuerdo alcanzado por los demás países.
Pero esa estrategia no pareció dar los resultados que la delegación boliviana esperaba - los acuerdos fueron aprobados con el acuerdo de los demás 193 países y sólo se "tomó nota" de las reservas de Bolivia.
Tras el fin de la última sesión plenaria, el embajador de Bolivia antes Naciones Unidas y jefe de la delegación, Pablo Solón, dijo que su país se va de esta cumbre "con la frente en alto; somos la delegación de un país que no se vende, no se arrodilla, tiene mucha dignidad y principios".
Solón agregó que el país hará una reclamación ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia por la manera en la que se adoptaron los acuerdos.
Tensión
Bolivia objetaba, por ejemplo, que en el primer texto no hay un firme compromiso de renovación del Protocolo de Kioto -que vence en 2012- y que los recortes contemplados en el acuerdo no son suficientemente profundos para evitar un marcado aumento de la temperatura global.
La posición de Bolivia dio lugar a una tensa ida y vuelta entre su embajador en Naciones Unidas y jefe de su delegación aquí, Pablo Solón, y la canciller mexicana y presidenta de la sesión, Patricia Espinosa, en la última sesión de la cumbre.
Los cientos de asistentes a la sesión plenaria aplaudían cada intervención de Espinosa y callaban ante los reclamos de Bolivia.
"Somos representantes de un país pequeño que tiene principios, pequeño pero con soberanía", dijo Solón en el plenario de la cumbre.
Al ver que la reunión plenaria procedía a aprobar los dos acuerdos sin contar con el respaldo de Bolivia, Solón advirtió sobre las implicaciones de semejante decisión.
"El precedente es funesto", dijo Solón. "Hoy será Bolivia y mañana será cualquier país; no podemos de ninguna manera acabar con lo que significa la regla de consenso".
Consenso, no unanimidad
Pero Espinosa les respondió con contundencia.
"La regla del consenso no significa la unanimidad" dijo Espinosa.
"Ni muchos menos que una delegación pretenda imponer el derecho de veto para romper la voluntad que con tanto trabajo han venido alcanzando los demás participantes", e hizo caer el martillo que marcaba la toma de una decisión.
Lo que muchos se preguntan en Cancún es cómo Bolivia pudo quedarse sola, sin el apoyo total en su posición de parte de ninguno de sus aliados del ALBA o del resto del mundo.
En entrevista con BBC Mundo al final de la reunión, la jefa de la delegación de Venezuela - un férreo aliado de La Paz -, Claudia Salerno, dijo que su país se solidarizaba con Bolivia.
"No es un buen precedente el que acaba de ocurrir", dijo sobre la aprobación del acuerdo sin apoyo boliviano, "no me voy con un sabor agradable en la boca, porque se violaron las reglas de procedimiento".
Postura extremista
Sin embargo, Salerno aseguró que en estos casos de negociaciones multilaterales, hay que mostrar flexibilidad.
"Nosotros éramos inflexibles con algunas cosas y esas las peleamos hasta el último minuto, pero este era el momento de la convergencia y la flexibilidad."
Desde otros países de la región hubo también comentarios respecto a Bolivia.
"Las reservas (de Bolivia) son obviamente válidas", dijo a BBC Mundo Sandra Bessudo, jefa de la delegación de Colombia, tras el fin de la reunión.
"Sin embargo esa posición tan extremista en un contexto como lo que se está intentando construir desde aquí hace que el proceso vaya hacia atrás", agregó.
La delegación de Bolivia, por su parte, aseguró que la historia les dará la razón.
"Lo que aquí (en Cancún) se ha acordado va a llevar a víctimas humanas y de la naturaleza", sentenció.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2010/12/101211_cumbre_cancun_bolivia_contra_193_paises_pl.shtml?print=1
2
Cancún cede al Banco Mundial la gestión del cambio climático
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=118512
Gara. http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20101212/237516/es/Cancun-cede-Banco-Mundial-gestion-cambio-climatico
Cerca de 200 países reunidos en Cancún (México) adoptaron ayer una serie de mecanismos -todavía embrionarios- para luchar contra el cambio climático, un acuerdo que fue acogido con una ovación y que pasa página de la inmensa decepción de Copenhague, hace un año.
El texto prevé la creación de un fondo verde para ayudar a los países en desarrollo a hacer frente al calentamiento y pone en marcha un mecanismo para luchar contra la deforestación.
Sin embargo, este fondo estará controlado inicialmente por el Banco Mundial, un organismo que no se ha distinguido por su sensibilidad medioambiental. Al contrario, las exigencias neoliberales del Banco Mundial han impedido que numerosos países hayan tenido que suspender sus programas sociales, lo que ha generado también problemas medioambientales.
El objetivo de la cita mexicana -con ambiciones modestas- era resucitar el proceso de negociación impulsado por la ONU, fuertemente desprestigiado por la inmensa decepción que supuso la cumbre de Copenhague. Misión cumplida, según las delegaciones reunidas en pleno para adoptar el texto.
Con este acuerdo, «se ha salvado el fracaso del sistema multilateral de negociaciones sobre el cambio climático», declaró a France Presse la ministra francesa de Ecología, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
El texto adoptado tras doce jornadas de negociaciones intensas y en ocasiones tensas, «abre una nueva era para la cooperación internacional sobre el clima», aseguró la ministra mexicana de Exteriores, Patricia Espinosa, quien presidió los debates.
Algunas horas antes, el texto de compromiso puesto sobre la mesa por México recibió el apoyo de la mayoría de los 194 estados presentes en la Convención de la ONU sobre el Clima.
Este texto «evidentemente no resolverá la cuestión del cambio climático, pero pienso que es un verdadero paso adelante», señaló el principal negociador estadounidense, Todd Stern.
La principal virtud del texto, aprobado pese a la oposición de Bolivia, es oficializar numerosos puntos del acuerdo político de Copenhague, que no fue jamás adoptado por la Convención de la ONU.
De este modo, se fija el objetivo de limitar el alza de la temperatura media del planeta a dos grados por encima de los niveles preindustriales. «Las partes deben actuar de manera urgente para lograr este objetivo a largo plazo», indicó el acuerdo adoptado.
El texto permite asimismo salvar, al menos temporalmente, el futuro del Protocolo de Kioto, único tratado jurídicamente obligatorio sobre el clima que existe actualmente, pese a que no ha sido suscrito ni por EEUU ni por China, principales agentes contaminantes del mundo.
Esta cuestión deberá ser resuelta irremediablemente en la próxima cita sobre el clima, a finales de 2011 en Durban (Sudáfrica).
Los países desarrollados prometieron en Copenhague movilizar 100.000 millones de dólares [75.500 millones de euros]. El nuevo fondo verde, que gestionará una parte importante de esta cantidad, tendrá un consejo de administración con representación igualitaria entre estados desarrollados y en vías de desarrollo. El texto de Cancún prevé que el Banco Mundial actuará como administrador temporal durante tres años.
Las numerosas preguntas que surgen sobre la manera en la que se creará este fondo siguen sin respuesta. Un panel impulsado por la ONU sugirió la puesta en marcha de financiación alternativa, como tasas sobre el transporte y las transacciones financieras.
El texto aprobado en la Cumbre de Cancún establece, asimismo, las bases de un mecanismo para reducir la deforestación, que está en el origen del 15% al 20% de las emisiones globales de gases de efecto invernadero.
Bolivia recurrirá ante el Tribunal de La Haya
Bolivia anunció ayer que acudirá al Tribunal Internacional de La Haya para impugnar el resultado de la Cumbre de Cancún al considerar que violó el reglamento de la ONU en la aprobación de sus documentos finales.
El jefe de la delegación boliviana, Pablo Solón, señaló que la presidenta de la cumbre, Patricia Espinosa, violó el reglamento de la Convención, que establece que los acuerdos se adoptan con el consentimiento de los 194 países miembros.
Entre otras cosas, Bolivia rechazó el acuerdo de Cancún por considerar que abre las puertas a que se sustituya en un futuro el Protocolo de Kioto (1997), el único instrumento vinculante que hasta la fecha obliga a los países desarrollados a reducir sus emisiones.
También rechaza que se amplíe la posibilidad de aumentar el uso de nuevos mecanismos de mercado como si fueran «una varita mágica», así como que se otorgue un papel temporal al Banco Mundial para gestionar el nuevo fondo verde de ayudas a los países en desarrollo.
A juicio de Solón, la cumbre de Cancún «ha terminado muy mal» porque la Presidencia mexicana no respetó las reglas, «algo que ni siquiera ocurrió en Copenhague».
Países latinoamericanos aliados de Bolivia, como Venezuela, no apoyaron en esta ocasión la postura de La Paz. La delegada venezolana, Claudia Salerno, se congratuló por la creación del fondo y de los compromisos para frenar la deforestación.
El negociador cubano, Orlando Rey, señaló a Efe que el acuerdo «permite recobrar la confianza, el valor del multilateralismo y el basamento para empeños superiores».
http://www.gara.net/paperezkoa/20101212/237516/es/Cancun-cede-Banco-Mundial-gestion-cambio-climatico
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Recent news sobre los acuerdos de Cancun in English
Telegraph report:
Cancun meeting reaches climate change agreement
The Cancun climate change talks closed in the early hours of Saturday morning with an agreement aimed at stopping climate change.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Cancun
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8196074/Cancun-meeting-reaches-climate-change-agreement.html
The new deal falls short of a global treaty. However it has progressed from Copenhagen by getting all countries, except Bolivia, to sign up to an official UN document.
The Cancun deal commits all countries to keeping temperature rise below 2C (3.6F) by reducing emissions. Rich countries have agreed to consider an extension of the Kyoto Protocol while poor countries will sign up to emission cuts for the first time. There are also a series of key decisions on setting up a green fund to help poor countries cope with climate change and halting deforestation.
Chris Huhne, the Climate Change and Energy Secretary, said the proposals did not give everybody everything they wanted but it was progress.
"We've made much more progress than anybody expected only weeks," he said.
"We have real commitments to reductions of greenhouse gases both by developed and developing countries."
=================
WASHINGTON POST REPORT:
Cancun Agreements put 193 nations on track to deal with climate change
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/11/AR2010121102308.html
By Juliet Eilperin and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 11, 2010; 7:07 PM
CANCUN, MEXICO - Delegates from 193 nations agreed Saturday on a new global framework to help developing countries curb their carbon output and cope with the effects of climate change, but they postponed the harder question of precisely how industrialized and major emerging economies will share the task of making deeper greenhouse-gas emission cuts in the coming decade.
The package known as the Cancun Agreements has salvaged a U.N.-backed process that was close to failure, delivering a diplomatic victory to the talks' Mexican hosts. But it also highlighted the obstacles that await as countries continue to grapple with climate change through broad international negotiations.
After an all-night session that included a face-off between Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa and Bolivia's U.N. ambassador, Pablo Solon, members of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) agreed to create a "Green Climate Fund" that will transfer money from rich countries to poor ones; research centers that will ease the transfer of clean-energy technology; and a system in which developing nations can be compensated for keeping rain forests intact.
"Cancun has done its job," UNFCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said in a statement. "Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause."
But the outcome left some gaping holes, including spelling out exactly how the new pot of international aid will be funded and whether the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the current global climate pact, will be extended once its first commitment period expires in 2012. Signatories such as Japan and Russia oppose an extension because the United States, China and India are not bound to mandatory emission reductions under Kyoto.
Akira Yamada, Japan's deputy director general for global issues, said the current Kyoto framework amounted to having big emitters act as "spectators" while the rest of the industrialized world played a soccer match. "We would hope they would come down to the field to play with us, to score against global warming," Yamada said.
The new framework encapsulates the current commitments that both industrialized and developing nations have made to cut their carbon emissions over the next decade, though it notes that these will not meet the agreed-upon goal of keeping the rise in global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. To achieve that, industrialized countries would have cut their emissions between 25 and 40 percent compared with 1990 levels in the next decade, as opposed to the 16 percent they have promised.
Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said delegates have "bought themselves some time" but will face an even tougher negotiation next year in Durban, South Africa. "The big issues are still unaddressed," he said.
Still, the agreement cemented and fleshed out key elements of the Copenhagen Accord, the controversial deal brokered among President Obama and the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa in a closed meeting last year. That pact was not formally adopted by the U.N. body after a handful of Latin American countries raised objections, but it established the idea that major developing countries would subject voluntary emissions cuts to international scrutiny while the industrialized world would mobilize $100 billion in climate aid for poor nations by 2020.
"The reality is we really got what we were looking for," said U.S. special climate envoy Todd Stern in an interview Saturday. On issues such as forests, financing and scrutiny of major emitters' carbon reductions, he said, "we got good, substantive decisions on all of those things."
Michael Levi, senior follow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in an e-mail that while "most of the important work of cutting emissions will be driven outside the U.N. process," the Cancun agreement "should be applauded not because it solves everything, but because it chooses not to: it focuses on those areas where the U.N. process has the most potential to be useful, and avoids others where the U.N. process is a dead end."
Some elements of the deal, including one known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, could have an immediate impact on curbing carbon emissions. The new language establishes rules for calculating how much carbon is stored in forest stocks vulnerable to logging or burning, along with safeguards for rain-forest dwellers and biodiversity.
Rebecca Chacko, who directs climate policy for the advocacy group Conservation International, said this "basic framework" is "going to inspire countries to really ramp up the financing immediately" for forest preservation, as well as open the door to more private funding.
In the end, Mexico was able to pull off what the president of the Center for Clean Air Policy, Ned Helme, called a negotiating "tour de force" by asking delegates what was most important to them and what they could compromise on. The Mexicans finally won over everyone - except Solon, who complained about everything from future climate targets to his treatment by checkpoint security guards.
In an interview, Espinosa said: "We were feeling very uncomfortable, because Bolivia is a very close friend to the Mexican people. We share a lot with Bolivia. Both countries have many indigenous peoples. We both have forests. So being so far apart was difficult for us."
President Felipe Calderon in an interview Saturday morning called the late-night conclusion, with its repeated applause for Mexico and its appeals to save humanity, "a very emotional night for all of us."
Minutes later, at a breakfast by the sea for the Mexican delegation, Calderon hoisted a cold beer and dug into his tacos, after being hailed as the world's new leader on climate change.
eilperinj@washpost.com boothb@washpost.com
==================
Cancun Climate Delegates Sign Off On Agreement
Posted on: Sunday, 12 December 2010
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1964927/cancun_climate_delegates_sign_off_on_agreement/
Delegates at the UN climate summit in Cancun have reached an agreement to curb climate change, including a massive fund to aid developing countries.
All participating nations endorsed the deal drawn up by the Mexican hosts, although Bolivia made some objections.
The draft says deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not establish a mechanism for achieving pledges made by countries. The Kyoto Protocol was a huge stumbling block for some countries that resisted it during the final week of negotiations. However, diplomats were able to come to a compromise.
Delegates applauded speeches from Japan, China and the US -- nations that had caused the most friction during negotiations -- as one by one they signed the draft.
BBC environment correspondent Richard Black said the meeting did not achieve the all-encompassing deal that many activists and governments were hoping for. But he said it was being “touted as a platform on which that comprehensive agreement can be built.”
“Now the world must deliver on its promises. There is more hard work to be done ahead of the climate change conference in South Africa next year,” UK Prime Minister David Cameron told BBC News.
The Green Climate Fund is expected to raise and disburse $100 billion per year by 2020 to protect the poorest nations against climate impacts and assist them with low-carbon development.
A newly appointed Adaptation Committee will support countries as they establish climate protection plans.
And partners for funding developing countries to reduce deforestation are outlined.
The deal is nowhere near the comprehensive plan that many countries backed at last year’s Copenhagen summit and continue to back now. It leaves open the question of whether any of its measures, including emission cuts, will be legally binding.
“What we have now is a text that, while not perfect, is certainly a good basis for moving forward,” said chief US negotiator Todd Stern.
“The negotiations in the future will continue to be difficult,” China’s chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, added.
Bolivia found faults with elements of the deal and with the way the texts were constructed through private conversations between small groups of countries.
Delegation chief Pablo Solon said what was most worrisome was that commitments would not be made under the Kyoto Protocol. “We're talking about a [combined] reduction in emissions of 13-16 percent, and what this means is an increase of more than 4C,” he said.
“Responsibly, we cannot go along with this - this would mean we went along with a situation that my president has termed 'ecocide and genocide',” said Solon.
But Clair Parker, senior climate policy adviser for the global conservation group IUCN, said: “We have moved away from the post-Copenhagen paralysis.”
“Developing countries can now see new money on the table which they can draw on to adapt to the impacts they're already facing and reduce emissions,” she said.
“There's enough in it that we can work towards next year's meeting in South Africa to get a legally binding agreement there,” commented Tara Rao, senior policy adviser with environmental group World Wildlife Fund.
The final day of the two-week climate change summit had begun with little hope of a deal. But ministers conducted intensive behind-the-scenes diplomacy to formulate texts that all parties could agree to, to some extent.
Both Russia and Japan secured wording that leaves them a possible route to escape extension of the Kyoto Protocol’s legally binding emission cuts, while strongly implying that the protocol will have a successful future - a key demand of developing countries.
The Green Climate Fund will initially utilize the World Bank as a trustee -- as the United States, European Union and Japan had demanded -- while giving oversight to a new body balanced between developed and developing nations.
Developing countries will be subject to international verification when they are funded by Western monies -- a formulation that seemed to satisfy both China, which had concerns on such verification procedures, and the US, which had demanded them.
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