SACW - 1 May 2014 | Sri Lanka: Under which law did they deport the tattoed tourist / Bangladesh: A Left Alternative / Pakistani workers observe Rana Plaza anniversary / India: Notice Against Narendra Modi and the Media Networks; the Rashtra Sevikas; Delhi Declaration for a Just and Equitable Internet / Dark Google

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 1 May 2014 - No. 2820
[since 1996]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contents:
1. India: Text of Election Commission Complaint Notice Against
Narendra Modi and the Media Networks
2. Need to initiate exemplary action against Mr. Narendra Modi – PM
candidate of BJP for the violation of Model Code of Conduct of
Election Commission of India | Rohit Prajapati, Trupti Shah
3. India: CPI(M) in footsteps of the Communist Party of China’s Market
Socialism | Indranil Chakraborty
4. Bangladesh: A Left Alternative | Nayma Qayum
5. India: Opposition parties must support villagers of Mundra against
Adani’s shipbreaking project
6. End the Impunity of Transnational Corporations!
7. Sri Lanka: Under which law did the Magistrate make the order to
deport the lady tourist with the Tattoo of Lord Buddha?
8. India: What the Bankers Aren't Telling You! - An investigative report by PSA
9. India: SAHMAT Press Statement on Attack on Shabnam Hashmi
10. India: Repression on striking workers of Sriram Piston in Bhiwadi
(part of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor)
11. India: Winning against Odds - Upholding the Victory of Maruti Suzuki Workers
12. Delhi Declaration for a Just and Equitable Internet
13. Rationalist Challenge to Astrologers: Predict Indian Election
Results and win 1 Million Indian Rupees!
14. India: SVA's 1986 Appeal to the National Integration Council
15. First anniversary of Rana Plaza (Dhaka, Bangladesh) Incident
observed in Karachi
16. Selections from Communalism Watch:
  - India: Sins in the name of secularism | Hasan Suroor
  - The Polls Are Over | Research Unit for Political Economy (R.U.P.E.)
  - India: Hindutva’s other half - the Rashtra Sevikas
  - India - 2014 elections: BJP’s lessons in consolidating the Hindu
votebank | Saba Naqvi

:::Full Text:::
17. India: Hijras can do it, gays can’t. Which closet is India living
in? | Anahita Mukherji
18. India: Polls Driven By Bigotry & Big Money: Is the EC failing the
public? | Praful Bidwai
19. Sri Lanka: BBS leader Gnanassara gets automatic pistol from police
field HQ - Officially not recorded
20. Review:  Pack on Rodao, 'Franquistas sin Franco: Una historia
alternativa de la Guerra Civil Espanola desde Filipinas'
21. Dark Google | Shoshana Zuboff

=========================================
1. INDIA: TEXT OF ELECTION COMMISSION COMPLAINT NOTICE AGAINST
NARENDRA MODI AND THE MEDIA NETWORKS
=========================================
http://www.sacw.net/article8545.html

=========================================
2. NEED TO INITIATE EXEMPLARY ACTION AGAINST MR. NARENDRA MODI – PM
CANDIDATE OF BJP FOR THE VIOLATION OF MODEL CODE OF CONDUCT OF
ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA
by Rohit Prajapati, Trupti Shah
=========================================
It is undisputed fact that Mr. Narendra Modi – the Bhartiya Janta
Party’s prime ministerial candidate deliberately violated the Model
Code of Conduct of Election Commission of India in Ahmedabad, Gujarat
after casting his vote. His action wherein he addressed the people
present there and to others across Gujarat and India on polling day
via the press-media a people across by holding symbol of BJP “Lotus”
in his hand, delivering an election speech, demonstrates the impunity
with which he flouts rules and utter disregards for the constitutional
values. The act was telecasted live through television channels, which
is irreversible act affecting the free and fair election.
http://www.sacw.net/article8546.html

=========================================
3. INDIA: CPI(M) IN FOOTSTEPS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA’S MARKET
SOCIALISM | Indranil Chakraborty
=========================================
As one of the world‘s largest Communist parties, the Communist Party
of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] considered Deng Xiaoping‘s ̳socialist‘
engineering as an experiment to circumvent the purely ̳statist‘ model
of socialism that was failing to manage peoples‘ aspirations. The
CPI(M)`s experience of being in power in West Bengal from 1977 taught
the party that merely offering the people an ―intermittent relief
program‖ might not be enough to retain power. It therefore started its
search for reforms based on generating new industries and employment
through private capital around 1984-85. In the party‘s new discourse,
the market would take charge of building super markets and socialist
policies would look after the poor people. This new communication
narrative was constituted by three elements - the state, the party and
the market - instead of the old state-party model. This thesis is
based on conversations in 2010 with leading party thinkers, work in
party archives in 2009 and 2010, and ten years experience as a
journalist working in West Bengal as well as other parts of India.
http://www.sacw.net/article8539.html

=========================================
4. BANGLADESH: A LEFT ALTERNATIVE
by Nayma Qayum
=========================================
The left does not have a visible presence in contemporary Bangladeshi
politics. Perhaps its complex and somewhat unraveled history limits
the imagination of its possibilities. Or maybe it is held back by the
reputation that it has earned over the years. At least in popular
sentiment – dinner table and chayer-dokan conversations, popular
social media outlets, and even in think-tank scholarship –
Bangladeshis rarely envision the left as a viable political
alternative. Thus, the very thought of building a left alternative in
Bangladesh can be exhausting.
http://www.sacw.net/article8500.html

=========================================
5. INDIA: OPPOSITION PARTIES MUST SUPPORT VILLAGERS OF MUNDRA AGAINST
ADANI’S SHIPBREAKING PROJECT
=========================================
Aadni’s proposal for shipbreaking unit in Mundra disregards grave
lessons from Alang’s environmental crisis
http://www.sacw.net/article8534.html

=========================================
6. END THE IMPUNITY OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS!
=========================================
The time has come to unite the hundreds of struggles, campaigns,
networks, movements and organizations that are combating the different
ways transnational corporations are appropriating our destinies,
natural heritage and rights in every corner of the planet.
http://www.sacw.net/article8526.html

=========================================
7. SRI LANKA: UNDER WHICH LAW DID THE MAGISTRATE MAKE THE ORDER TO
DEPORT THE LADY TOURIST WITH THE TATTOO OF LORD BUDDHA?
=========================================
Naomi Coleman, 37, was arrested in Sri Lanka for 'hurting religious
feelings' with her Tattooed arm depicting Buddha on a lotus flower.
She was deported to New Delhi, from where she has arrived earlier.
http://www.sacw.net/article8525.html

=========================================
8. INDIA: WHAT THE BANKERS AREN'T TELLING YOU! - AN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT BY PSA
=========================================
a report of The Research Collective (PSA) which studies trends in
financing, project finance and performance of banks. This report
exposes the consequences of unaccountable lending, due diligence
oversights prior to sanctioning of loans to projects, social and
environmental issues impacting loan quality and other weak links in
the lending framework. The study analyses socio-environmental
violations by projects and their implication on the project loans
through thorough investigation into social, environmental, legal and
financial issues of six case study projects across India - GMR
Kamalanga Energy, Athena Demwe Lower HEP, Sasan UMPP, Lavasa Hill
City, Lafarge Surma and Krishnapatnam UMPP.
http://www.sacw.net/article8522.html

=========================================
9. INDIA: SAHMAT PRESS STATEMENT ON ATTACK ON SHABNAM HASHMI
=========================================
We condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack on Shabnam
Hashmi in Rai Barley. She was attacked at about 12.30 on April 28
while she with her associates was distributing leaflets brought out by
JAVAB- Janvadi Vichar Andolan Bharat barely 100 metres from the
Gadaganj Police Station in side the Rai-Barely constituency.
http://www.sacw.net/article8514.html

=========================================
10. INDIA: REPRESSION ON STRIKING WORKERS OF SRIRAM PISTON IN BHIWADI
(part of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor)
=========================================
The brutal police repression on the striking workers of Sriram Piston
on 26th April 28, 2014 in Pathredi industrial area of Bhiwadi, an
important part of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, exposes the
underbelly of so-called ‘development model' promised and show-cased by
the political parties and corporate media.
http://www.sacw.net/article8513.html

=========================================
11. INDIA: WINNING AGAINST ODDS - UPHOLDING THE VICTORY OF MARUTI SUZUKI WORKERS
=========================================
PUDR hails the victory of panels put up by the terminated and jailed
workers of the Maruti Suzuki Workers' Union in the elections of the
workers unions held at the Gurgaon plant and the Manesar plant on 26
April and 4 April, respectively. These victories are an extraordinary
assertion by workers of their right to elect their own representatives
and their ability to remain united in the face of insurmountable
obstacles and repression. The right to form a trade union, of their
choice, is necessary guarantee against violation of workers right to a
life of dignity and livelihood and one way in which workers can ensure
respect for their rights in an unequal battle against corporate
owners.
http://www.sacw.net/article8508.html

=========================================
12. DELHI DECLARATION FOR A JUST AND EQUITABLE INTERNET
=========================================
The Internet has become a vitally important social infrastructure that
profoundly impacts our societies. We are all citizens of an
Internet-mediated world whether as the minority who uses it or the
majority who does not. The Internet must advance human rights and
social justice. Internet governance must be truly democratic.
http://www.sacw.net/article8467.html

=========================================
13. RATIONALIST CHALLENGE TO ASTROLOGERS: PREDICT INDIAN ELECTION
RESULTS AND WIN 1 MILLION INDIAN RUPEES!
=========================================
FIRA, the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations is a Member
Organisation of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Prof.
Nayak plays a signal role in spreading the scientific temper in India
and is its President.
http://www.sacw.net/article8495.html

=========================================
14. INDIA: SVA'S 1986 APPEAL TO THE NATIONAL INTEGRATION COUNCIL
=========================================
This appeal was made in 1986 to the India's National Integration
Council by the Movement Against Communalism (Sampradayikta Virodhi
Andolan). It was published in Mainstream weekly on 26 April 1986.
http://www.sacw.net/article8493.html

=========================================
15. PAKISTAN: FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF RANA PLAZA (DHAKA, BANGLADESH)
INCIDENT OBSERVED IN KARACHI
=========================================
First anniversary of Rana Plaza building collapse, the worst
industrial accident in the history of textile sector of South Asia in
which around 1100 workers lost their lives and 2500 garments and
textile workers got injured, was also observed in Karachi Pakistan to
express solidarity with the victims' families and the survivors of the
building collapse incident happened a year on 24th April.
http://www.sacw.net/article8487.html

=========================================
16. SELECTIONS FROM COMMUNALISM WATCH
=========================================
India: Sins in the name of secularism | Hasan Suroor
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-sins-in-name-of-secularism-hasan.html

The Polls Are Over | Research Unit for Political Economy (R.U.P.E.)
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-polls-are-over-research-unit-for.html

India: Hindutva’s other half - the Rashtra Sevikas
http://communalism.blogspot.in/2014/04/india-hindutvas-other-half-rashtra.html

India - 2014 elections: BJP’s lessons in consolidating the Hindu
votebank | Saba Naqvi
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-2014-elections-bjps-lessons-in.html

Marching to a New Tune: Inside the RSS's biggest electoral push |
Front Cover India Today 5 May 2014
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/marching-to-new-tune-inside-rsss.html

India: RSS turns Arunachal tribals towards Hinduism
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-rss-turns-arunachal-tribals.html

India: Babasaheb and BJP - The party makes a bid for Dalit vote
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-babasaheb-and-bjp-party-makes-bid.html

India: Worshipping Gods in the times of Elections
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-worshipping-gods-in-times-of.html

India: Communal riots rose by 25 per cent in 2013, says MHA data
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-communal-riots-rose-by-25-per.html

India: So What does Swami Agnivesh Find Attractive About Narendra Modi ?
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-so-what-does-swami-agnivesh-find.html

RSS, BJP & Modi | A.G. Noorani
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/rss-bjp-modi-ag-noorani.html

US chai fundraisers help finance Modi wave
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/us-chai-fundraisers-help-finance-modi.html

India: Politics of identity and location | Patricia Mukhim
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2014/04/india-politics-of-identity-and-location.html

::: FULL TEXT :::
=========================================
17. INDIA: HIJRAS CAN DO IT, GAYS CAN’T. WHICH CLOSET IS INDIA LIVING IN?
by Anahita Mukherji
=========================================
(The Times of India, 21 April 2014)

The appendix is a useless organ lodged in the human body, one that we
inherited from a more primitive form of man, a vestige of human
evolution. Every time it explodes into a full-blow case of
appendicitis, we snip it out.

Homophobia is bit like that for society, a vestige of a colonial past
for countries like India and Uganda, and a Stalinist era for the likes
of Russia, which, every once in a while explodes onto the national
arena, forcing countries to repeal regressive laws.

India came a step closer to dealing with its appendix when the apex
court passed a landmark order last week providing constitutional
rights to the third gender, allowing transgender individuals the right
to marry, inherit property, divorce and adopt children.

The court spoke of the moral failure that lay in the unwillingness of
society to embrace alternate sexualities.

As transgender individuals were neither male nor female, the court
felt that treating them as such would be a denial of their
constitutional rights.

The judgment comes seven years too late for a young athlete called
Santhi who was stripped off a medal at the 2006 Asian Games for
failing a gender test by the Olympic Council of Asia. The incident
drove her to attempt suicide. She was later found working as a
labourer in a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu. A Supreme Court order such as
this, which provides legitimacy to a third gender, could have helped
the Indian authorities fight stigma in international sports
associations for which all athletes must either belong to 'gender no
1' or 'gender no 2'.

The new judgment brings India on par with Germany, the first country
in Europe to give parents the option of a third gender on birth
certificates.

Yet India’s stand on alternate sexualities is a trifle confusing.
While this week’s court order was a milestone for civil rights, it
comes in the wake of a spectacularly regressive order passed by
another bench of the same court which upheld an archaic colonial law
criminalizing homosexuality, or, to be more specific, “all acts
against the order of nature.” In other words, India bestows
constitutional rights to the third gender but punishes homosexual acts
with a life sentence.

Ironically, Russia, a country that’s far less plural and far more
regressive on gay rights than India, repealed Stalin's anti-sodomy law
in 1993 — a law that had once banned consensual sex between two men.
And yet, Russia, the host of the 2014 winter Olympics, came in for
much flak over a new law banning the spread of “gay propaganda”
through media or any event that acknowledges gay people exist.

In other words, Russia, a country that has repealed its “anti-sodomy”
law and legitimizes the existence of homosexuals, has banned pride
marches, whereas India allows pride marches but has upheld a law
criminalizing homosexuality. This has led to a legally absurd
situation, where homosexuality is a crime punishable with life
imprisonment in India, but those involved in pride marches are not
immediately arrested for confessing to the ‘crime.’ This could well be
a case of a more progressive society rendering a regressive law
legally untenable.

India’s contradictory views on gay rights could well be part of a
global phenomenon where progressive strands of civil society
world-over find themselves grappling with homophobia as countries
across the globe collectively work towards coming out of the closet.

India’s LGBT community points to a historic acceptance of alternate
sexualities in the country before colonization, attributing a bias
against homosexuality to Victorian mores transported to India during
colonial rule. While it has often been pointed out that our former
colonial masters repealed their own laws against homosexuality in
1967, it might be worth noting that gay marriage was legalized in
Britain only a month ago. So it took Britain a full 47 years to go
from being a country that tolerated the existence of the LGBT
community to one that gave them full citizenship rights.

While Britain may now be one of the world’s most gay-friendly
countries, it was once a place that severely punished, tortured and
executed gays. Oscar Wilde, whose writings are routinely trotted out
at high-school elocution competitions across Britain and her colonies,
was sentenced to two years imprisonment and hard labour in 1895 for
being gay. The last known execution of homosexuals in Britain has been
traced to 1836.

Victorian Britain may have found an echo in modern-day Iran. In 2007,
Iranian leader Mohsen Yahyavi told British MPs that homosexuals
deserve to be tortured and hanged (I will live with appendicitis,
never mind if it kills me) while Iran’s former president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad said his country did not have any homosexuals (I don't
have appendicitis because I can't see my appendix).

There may still be hope for Iran. World over, institutions that once
clamped down on alternate sexualities have now dramatically changed
their stance. After regarding homosexuality a sin for several
centuries, the Roman Catholic Church is in the process of altering its
views under Pope Francis, who was widely applauded for saying, “If
someone is gay and is sincerely seeking God who am I to judge?”

While the Vatican trims its list of sins, psychiatry trims its mental
disorders. Homosexuality has long been dropped from the list of
disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual brought out by the
American Psychiatric Association.

=========================================
18. INDIA: POLLS DRIVEN BY BIGOTRY & BIG MONEY: IS THE EC FAILING THE PUBLIC?
by Praful Bidwai
=========================================
(April 29 2014)
Two weeks ago, many public-spirited Indians complimented the Election
Commission for banning public speeches and rallies by the Bharatiya
Janata Party’s Uttar Pradesh chief campaign manager Amit Shah, and the
Samajwadi Party’s fiery Azam Khan, both of whom had made provocative
speeches for or against religious groups.

This action was seen as in keeping with the Commission’s mandate,
legally well-founded, even-handed, exemplary in punishing/deterring
the use of communal means during canvassing, and encouraging the
conduct of elections in a free and fair manner, as befits a democracy.

Less than a week later, however, the EC lifted the prohibition on Mr
Shah—merely because he claimed that his recent hate speech calling for
political “revenge” against Muslims was never intended to “violate the
election code of conduct”, and offered the vague assurance that he
would keep the EC’s “remarks in mind” and not use “abusive or
derogatory language” in future. The EC said it would video-track his
campaign.

The “revenge” that Mr Shah bloodthirstily demanded was for the
imagined “insult” to Jat Hindus by Muslims during the violence six
months ago in Western UP’s Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts, widely
reported as provoked by the BJP to undermine the region’s decades-long
Hindu-Muslim amity and political cooperation. Since the victims of the
violence were overwhelmingly Muslim, the alleged “insult” could only
have meant some resistance on their part to total subjugation.

The EC refused to lift the ban on Mr Khan—although his own
questionable speech was partly a reaction to Mr Shah—because he didn’t
accept the EC’s criticism or promise better conduct.

The message this sent was that legalistic deviousness and hypocrisy
pays: Mr Shah got out of a tricky situation which compromised the
BJP’s political legitimacy merely by proclaiming that his intentions
were honourable. But far greater damage was done in using communalism
for electoral gains.

Mr Shah is the BJP’s second most important leader after Narendra Modi,
and his trusted lieutenant or hatchet-man from even before the 2002
butchery. Mr Shah is on trial for extortion and ordering three “fake
encounter” killings in Gujarat, and was long exiled from the state by
the Supreme Court to prevent interference with investigation.

Mr Shah is out on bail. He’s adept at gaming the system, having held
10 or more portfolios simultaneously under Mr Modi during 12 years
which saw 32 police officers jailed for murder.

Within two days of Mr Shah being let off lightly by the EC, the BJP’s
Nawada candidate Giriraj Singh unleashed a hysterical tirade
demonising Mr Modi’s opponents as Pakistani agents who should be
exiled there. He said this in the presence of former BJP president
Nitin Gadkari and a party MP. Last October, Mr Singh had accused Bihar
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of engineering bomb blasts at a Modi rally
in Patna. Although the BJP’s national leadership has distanced itself
from his latest remarks, Mr Singh has refused to retract them. The
Congress and Janata Dal(United) have moved the Election Commission
against Mr Singh. Whether the EC acts firmly against him by
disqualifying him from the election, or lets him off as lightly as Mr
Shah, remains unclear.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad president Pravin Togadia has already taken the
cue from these episodes. He delivered a vile hate speech in Bhavnagar
in Gujarat on April 19, targeting Muslims for buying properties in
“Hindu areas”. If they don’t vacate these “in 48 hours”, he instigated
a charged-up Hindutva mob, to “go with stones, tyres and
tomatoes…There is nothing wrong in it…Rajiv Gandhi’s killers haven’t
been hanged…there is nothing to fear and the case will go on…”

Halfway into the elections, BJP leaders aren’t confident of victory.
It’s a sign of their desperation that they are trying to polarise
people along Hindu-Muslim lines to win votes. The EC would be failing
in its duty if it allows the election climate to be further vitiated
by crass appeals to communalism, followed by hollow or ineffectual
apologies.

The EC would be equally at fault in not enforcing its rules which
limit the expenditure by an individual Lok Sabha candidate to Rs 70
lakhs for the largest of constituencies. This is being flagrantly
violated by any number of political parties which are using vast
amounts of slush funds in their campaigns. It’s wrong in the first
place to set limits on individual candidates alone—when the real
critical actors in the electoral system are political parties.

Parties spend huge amounts on everything from hiring helicopters and
airplanes, renting fleets of vehicles, organising massive rallies,
providing food and drink, and paying cadres and motivators, to
producing campaign merchandise (including posters, caps, T-shirts,
masks, photos, etc), and buying expensive advertising space or TV
slots. Only a minuscule part of this is accounted for.

According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, which has done
outstanding work in documenting unethical electoral practices,
including candidates’ criminal records and their enormous financial
assets, parties receive up to three-fourths of their campaign funds
from unknown or anonymous sources: only donations above Rs 20,000 need
to be disclosed.

India is one of the few countries of the world, says the well-regarded
Stockholm-based International Institute of Democracy and Electoral
Assistance, which allows “parties or candidates to receive anonymous
donations”. Indian scholars like E Sreedharan and MV Rajeeva Gowda
have pointed to the widespread practice of parties receiving corporate
funds, some “round-tripped” from abroad.

The Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies estimates that as much as Rs
30,000 crores will be spent on the current elections, mostly by
political parties—a three-fold rise over 2009. This exceeds India’s
primary education allocation of Rs 27,000 crores, and is only slightly
lower than the 2012 US presidential campaign spending of Rs 42,000
crores. This is ethically repugnant by any criterion.

Even if we discount the CMS estimate, according to the
advertising-public relations industry, the big parties have an
advertising budget totalling Rs 8-10,000 crores, as reported in any
number of financial papers. Of this, the BJP alone, which is the
chosen party of Big Business, has a share estimated at Rs 5,000
crores, probably four times higher than the Congress’s advertising
kitty.

This is not as astronomical as it sounds. For instance, each of the
15,000 full-colour Modi hoardings the BJP is erecting for up to three
months costs Rs 2-3 lakhs per month in cheap locations, and as much as
Rs 20 lakhs at prime sites, totalling an expense of Rs 2,500 crores.
(www.hindustantimes.com/elections2014/state-of-the-states/advertisement-war-to-win-lok-sabha-elections-may-cost-bjp-whopping-rs-5-000-crore/article1-1207499.aspx)

The BJP has bought about 2,000 TV daily spots across Hindi, English
and regional channels broadcasting news, entertainment and sports. A
spot in prime entertainment channels costs about Rs. 80,000 per 30
seconds. This totals another Rs 800-1,000 crores. It spent another Rs
150 crores during the T-20 World Cup. Its online and radio budget is
about Rs 35 crores.

The BJP has bought top advertisement slots across national, regional
and vernacular newspapers for 40 days. “We have chosen 50 top national
and regional newspapers across India and plan to release about four to
five ads every day,” costing Rs. 500 crores, a BJP media planner is
quoted as saying. The advertisement budget for magazines is an
additional Rs 150 crores. The BJP is consciously modelling its
advertising along corporate lines, fashioning itself like a company
and Mr Modi as its CEO. It’s using corporate “story-telling
techniques”, with initial advertisements narrating a big theme
followed by shorter edited versions taking the story forward. The
party has also used “roadblocks”—in which one 75-second BJP ad ran on
nine Star Plus shows between 6 and 11 pm on specific days. The BJP,
closely linked to the RSS, has carried out “brand integration”
activities on Channel V, a youth channel which competes with MTV. All
this makes nonsense of the idea of a level playing-field which is at
the heart of free and fair elections, where small parties and
individuals have a more-or-less equal chance to compete with big party
machines. This ceased being the case when India Inc took over
elections starting in the 1990s when it declared Mr Vajpayee as “the
man India awaits” and pumped funds into the BJP. However, never before
has the field been as slanted as it is now in favour of monstrous
money power and cynical politicians high on the steroids of bigotry
and ruthless pursuit of power. The BJP represents a new perversion and
distortion of Indian democratic politics because of the sheer scale of
its campaign funding and its saturation coverage, which all but
squeezes out the competition. The real test for the Election
Commission lies here. To start with, it should ask all major parties
to disclose the sources and detailed breakdown of their campaign
expenditure, and divide their enormous advertising budgets by the
constituencies they are contesting from.

This will probably show the BJP exceeding the Rs 70-lakh ceiling by 20
multiples, and could enable the EC to force it to curb its spending in
the remaining phases of the election.

=========================================
19. SRI LANKA: BBS LEADER GNANASSARA GETS AUTOMATIC PISTOL FROM POLICE
FIELD HQ - OFFICIALLY NOT RECORDED
=========================================
(Lanka-e-News- 23 April 2014) The SL criminal defense secretary
Gotabaya Rajapakse had 21st Monday issued an automatic firearm and
matching bullets in compliance with the request made in writing by
Bebedhu Galagoda Aththe Gnanassara Thero, the leader of the Bodhu Bala
sena (BBS) which has by now been condemned and classified as a
terrorist organization internationally.

The firearm identified as Brownig 9 m,.m. automatic pistol of
Czechoslavakia , as well as 50 matching bullets have been issued.

Usually , firearms issued by the defense Ministry are from the armory
of the army, but the firearm issued to Gnanassara Thero is from the
stores of the Police field force headquarters . The weapon and bullets
have been issued out of those allotted to the VIPs. Gnanassara
collected them after signing , but the issue of the weapon and
bullets, and receipt of them had neither been recorded in the
registers nor signatures taken of the recipient .

The issue of arms and bullets just by taking signatures on a temporary
letter, without records being made in the official registers, to the
BBS which is operating as a paramilitary group of the lawless
Rajapakse regime is fraught with grave danger and holds out most
ominous portents to the peace loving and law abiding citizens of the
country , sources say.

It is the consensus that BBS is arming itself with weapons supplied by
the government but falsely declaring to the media that they are
subjected to threats by the government . It is also issuing bogus
media communiqués to that effect making loud announcements about the
letters sent to the President , in order to lead the gullible people
down the garden path.

=========================================
20. REVIEW:  PACK ON RODAO, 'FRANQUISTAS SIN FRANCO: UNA HISTORIA
ALTERNATIVA DE LA GUERRA CIVIL ESPANOLA DESDE FILIPINAS'
=========================================
(H-Spain (April, 2014))
Florentino Rodao. Franquistas sin Franco: Una historia alternativa de
la Guerra Civil Española desde Filipinas. Granada: Editorial Comares,
2012. xxviii + 355 pp. EUR 28.00 (paper), ISBN 978-84-9045-018-5.

Reviewed by Sasha D. Pack (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
Commissioned by David Jorge

Franquistas sin Franco: Una historia alternativa de la Guerra Civil
Espanola desde Filipinas

In his new study of the Spanish community in the Philippines during
the Spanish Civil War, Florentino Rodao sets out to show that the
definitive decline of Spanish influence in the western Pacific took
place in the late 1930s--not in 1898, as typically assumed. The
Spanish population in the Philippines had never been large, numbering
only a few thousand, mainly in Manila, even at its height in the
colonial period. The relatively small community’s disproportionate
influence was based on wealth, political sway, and cultural capital,
all of which helped preserve a broader “Fil-Hispanic” identity and
served as a check on American ascendency and Japanese expansionism
during the first decades of the twentieth century.

The outbreak of war on the distant Iberian Peninsula in 1936 initially
raised the profile of this community. The social composition of the
Spanish community predicted overall support for the Nationalist
rebellion, though there also existed a set of older liberal-bourgeois
families that supported the Republic. Pro-Republican activism was
limited, however. Its major organ, Pío Brun’s Democracia Española,
reintroduced Filipino society to Spain’s anti-clerical, socialist
currents hitherto invisible at so great a distance, but, according to
Rodao, the paper’s tendency to repeat “orientalist” stereotypes
prevented it from gaining broad appeal in the Philippines. Moreover,
the American authorities engaged in a kind of neutrality that worked
against the Republicans, banning films and other activities related to
the “diffusion of socialism and communism” (p. 64)--a dynamic similar
to other foreign venues, like Tangier, where the “two Spains” clashed.

The major part of Rodao’s study is devoted to the Right, which was far
more numerous and dynamic. As on the Peninsula, the pro-Franco camp
was split between the more traditional conservative anticommunist
coalition of business owners and conservative Catholics on the one
hand, and the more radical Falange party on the other. In contrast to
Spain, these “franquistas sin Franco” lacked the disciplining presence
of a military in wartime, and all sides were spared the traumas of
real political violence. Rather than attaining unity under Franco’s
leadership, the two factions engaged in a process of competitive
radicalization that proved acrimonious for the Spanish community and
off-putting to outside observers in Manila society. The strongest
sections of Rodao’s work focus on the institutional dynamics of this
process. He provides thorough analysis of organizations like the
Spanish Chamber of Commerce and Casa de España of Manila, the main
arenas in which ideological differences turned into political and
financial struggles. Readers may also be interested in Rodao’s rich
biographical portraits of several prominent Spaniards in the
Philippines. Figures like the Falangist leader Martín Pou, who made a
powerful but ultimately unsuccessful bid to turn the Manila Falange
into the official diplomatic liaison with Nationalist Spain, and
Andrés Soriano, a major industrialist (and founder of Philippine
Airlines) who sought to become a major financier of the Franco regime,
are but two examples of Spain’s global reach in this period.

After Rodao’s skillful analysis of politics within this community
numbering some three thousand, questions remains as to the
consequences for the war and for Spain’s position in Asia. Certainly,
finance played some role in the war, with the pro-Franco camp
providing about 10 million pesetas in donations and loans (about half
of amount given by Juan March, the rebellion’s greatest individual
financier). Possibly the most significant contribution from the
Philippines took the form of large cigarette shipments, which helped
to give the nacionales an immeasurable advantage in morale over
Republican forces. The Republican side generated much less, and much
of what was sent anyhow fell into the hands of Franco’s forces as they
swallowed the Republican zone. The Falange, though less significant as
a funding source, became the public face of the Nationalist side,
establishing the first Falangist social assistance programs outside
Spain (predating those of Tangier and Havana), mounting parades and
other public spectacles, and integrating Spanish women and children
into the movement. Yet the success of the Filipino Falange may have
undercut the legitimacy of the Francoist cause in a place where
Americans were watching; the party’s extreme Anglophobia and the
pro-Japanese gambit could not have helped.

Rodao’s accomplishment is considerable. The work not only presents an
exemplary analysis of political mobilization in an expatriate
community, but also alleviates what the author sees as the
“exaggerated ethnocentrism” present in contemporary Spanish
historiography (p. xvii). Although a certain amount of navel-gazing
may be understandable in any literature centered on a civil war, Rodao
opens many paths for more analyses of the Spanish Civil War as a
global event. This is not only the story of an internecine conflict
playing out among expatriates; it is also one of a political process
that was deeply engaged with Asian radicalisms of the late 1930s and
with Philippine politics during a pivotal moment in that country’s
transition to independence.

Regarding Hispano-Filipino relations, Rodao places responsibility for
the Filipino Spanish community’s definitive decline on the civil war
generation, rather than the American bogeyman of 1898. Through its
obsessive radicalization, the community thoroughly alienated itself
from Manila society while also failing to gain a significant position
with either the Francoist order or the Republican exile. Although not
unpersuasive, this argument would have come across more clearly if
Rodao had provided a fuller portrait of the Fil-Hispanic sociocultural
imaginary between 1898 and 1936, a topic that is relegated rather
inexplicably and incompletely to a final chapter that should have come
nearer to the beginning.  It is nevertheless a welcome addition to the
new, “post-memory” wave of Spanish Civil War scholarship, and should
be of particular interest to a larger project of understanding the
war’s global dimensions.

=========================================
21. DARK GOOGLE
by Shoshana Zuboff
=========================================
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - 30 April 2014)
http://tinyurl.com/pnbrlmy

We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its
radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money by
knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it into the
tiniest pieces.

Recall those fabled frogs happy in the magic pond. Playful.
Distracted. The water temperature slowly rises, but the frogs don’t
notice. By the time it reaches the boiling point, it’s too late to
leap to safety.  We are as frogs in the digital waters, and Springer
CEO Mathias Dopfner has just become our frog town crier.  Mr.
Dopfner’s „Why We Fear Google“ ( a response to Google Executive
Chairman Eric Schmidt’s open letter, „A Chance for Growth“) warns of
danger on the move: „The temperatures are rising fast.”  If his cry of
alarm scares you, that’s good. Why?

First, because there is a dawning awareness that Google is forging a
new kingdom on the strength of a different kind of power ––
ubiquitous, hidden, and unaccountable. If successful, the dominion of
this kingdom will exceed anything the world has known. The water is
close to boiling, because Google understands this statement more
profoundly than we do.

Second, because accessing the Web and the wider Internet have become
essential for effective social participation across much of the world.
A BBC poll conducted in 2010 found that 79% of people in 26 countries
considered access to the Internet to be a fundamental human right. We
rely on Google’s tools as we search, learn, connect, communicate, and
transact. The chilling irony is that we’ve become dependent on the
Internet to enhance our lives, but the very tools we use there
threaten to remake society in ways that we do not understand and have
not chosen.
Something new and dangerous

If there is a single word to describe Google, it is „absolute.” The
Britannica defines absolutism as a system in which „the ruling power
is not subject to regularized challenge or check by any other agency.”
 In ordinary affairs, absolutism is a moral attitude in which values
and principles are regarded as unchallengeable and universal. There is
no relativism, context-dependence, or openness to change.
Kopie von 29011336 © Russ Schleipman

Shoshana Zuboff warns of the radical vision of Google

Six years ago I asked Eric Schmidt what corporate innovations Google
was putting in place to ensure that its interests were aligned with
its end users. Would it betray their trust?  Back then his answer
stunned me. He and Google’s founders control the super-voting class B
stock. This allows them, he explained, to make decisions without
regard to short-term pressure from Wall Street. Of course, it also
insulates them from every other kind of influence. There was no
wrestling with the creation of an inclusive, trustworthy, and
transparent governance system.  There was no struggle to
institutionalize scrutiny and feedback.  Instead Schmidt’s answer was
the quintessence of absolutism: „trust me; I know best.” At that
moment I knew I was in the presence of something new and dangerous
whose effects reached beyond narrow economic contests and into the
heart of everyday life.
Google kills Innovation

Mr. Schmidt’s open letter to Europe shows evidence of such absolutism.
Democratic oversight is characterized as „heavy-handed regulation.”
The „Internet”, „Web”,  and „Google” are referenced interchangeably,
as if Goggle’s interests stand for the entire Web and Internet. That’s
a magician’s sleight of hand intended to distract from the real issue.
Google’s absolutist pursuit of its interests is now regarded by many
as responsible for the Web’s fading prospects as an open information
platform in which participants can agree on rules, rights, and choice.

Schmidt warns that were the E.U. to oppose Google’s practices, Europe
risks becoming „an innovation desert.”  Just the opposite is more
likely true. Thanks in part to Google’s exquisite genius in the
science of surveillance,  the audacity with which it has expropriated
users’ rights to privacy, and the aggressive tactics of the NSA,
people are losing trust in the entire digital medium. It is this loss
of trust that stands to kill innovation. To make some sense of our
predicament, let’s take a fresh look at how we got here, the nature of
the threats we face, and the stakes for the future.
Google Colonizes a Blank Area and the NSA Follows

In his extended essay, „The Loneliness of the Dying“, the sociologist
Norbert Elias observes that „dying is at present a largely unformed
situation, a blank area on the social map.”  Such „blanks” occur when
earlier meanings and practices no longer apply, but new ones have yet
to be created.  Google’s rapid rise to power was possible because it
ventured into this kind of blank area. It colonized the blank space at
high speed without challenge or impediment. Google did not ask
permission, seek consensus,  elicit opinion, or even make visible its
rules and ramparts. How did this occur?

Breaking the Rules of the "Old World“

The first key ingredient was demand. During the second half of the
twentieth century, more education and complex social experience
produced a new kind of individual. No longer content to conform to the
mass, more people sought their own unique paths to self-determination.
It was a period of growing frustration with existing institutions that
were still oriented toward the mass society of an earlier time. People
wanted to reinvent social experiences in ways that expressed their new
sensibilities. They wanted information on their own terms, not
controlled by the old norms, professional fortresses, and business
models.

The arrival of the Internet provided a new way forward. As web
browsers and search tools became available, the new individuals rushed
onto the Web with their pent up demands for genuine voice and
connection. Information access and communication could bypass old
boundaries and be reconfigured to suit any need.  Here finally was
experience  how I want it, where I want it, when I want it. There was
a presumption that the adversarial rules from the „old world” of 20th
century commerce did not apply. This was a new „networked public
sphere,” as legal scholar Yochai Benkler called it. There was no
looking back.

Google and other companies rushed into the new space too, and for a
while it seemed that they were aligned with the popular expectations
of trust and collaboration. But as pressures for profit increased,
Google, Facebook, and others shifted to an advertising model that
required the covert capture of user data as the currency for ad sales.
Profits rapidly materialized and motivated ever more ruthless and
determined data collection. The new science of data mining exploded,
driven in part by Google’s spectacular success.

Fighting the Law

The whole topography of cyberspace then began to morph as Google and
Facebook shifted away from the ethos of the public web, while
carefully retaining its rhetoric. They began to develop a new logic of
operations in what had until then been a blank area. The new zone
didn’t  resemble  the bricks and mortar world of commerce, but neither
did it follow the norms of the open web. This confused and distracted
users.  In fact, the firms were developing a wholly new business logic
that incorporated elements of the conventional logic  of corporate
capitalism –especially its adversarialism toward end consumers – along
with  elements from the new Internet world – especially its intimacy.
The outcome was the elaboration of  a new commercial logic based on
hidden surveillance. Most people did not understand that they and
their friends were being tracked, parsed, and mined without their
knowledge or consent.

A steady stream of eruptions from the new zone provides evidence of
this new logic of operations. For example, Google faces a series of
contentious lawsuits over its secret scanning of all Gmail, including
mail from non-Gmail accounts.  It first tried to conceal the scanning
procedures in 2010 and only fully acknowledged them after four years
of public outcry. In one „potentially explosive” lawsuit Google
acknowledged that it unilaterally scans millions of email messages
sent or received by  the 30 million student users of the the company’s
Apps for Education tools. In 2012 Google face more outrage and
lawsuits when it announced  that it would consolidate data about its
users from all its services without any mechanism of consent.

Google Street View launched in 2007 is another example of the
company’s absolutism. It didn’t ask if it could photograph  homes for
public consumption, it just took what it wanted and waited for any
resistance to exhaust itself in defeat. Ultimately Street View would
face protests and restrictions in many countries across the EU as well
as Japan, Greece, and Canada.

The Shared Interest of NSA and Google

By 2010 the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection announced
that Google’s Street View operation also camouflaged a covert data
sweep from users of private Wi-Fi networks. He called for an immediate
halt to Street View in Germany and erasure of all illegally captured
data. Other countries followed with their own investigations and
prosecutions.

The Electronic Privacy and Information Center has consistently pressed
the case. It maintains a detailed overview of the worldwide outrage,
protests, investigations, litigation, and settlements in response to
Google Street View and its secret data gathering tactics.

In 2010, Google established a partnership with the NSA that added to
the complexity and opacity of operations in the new zone. The
ostensible trigger for this public-private alliance was Google’s
discovery that the Chinese had hacked its infrastructure. However, the
NSA already had a keen interest in all things Google. It struggled
with the demands of tracking objects and discerning patterns in
Internet time. The NSA was actively developing  the same tools and
capabilities that allowed Google to search and analyze masses of data
at warp speed.

A New Business Model

The U.S. Justice Department kept the partnership secret,  but news
reports, court documents, and eventually the Snowden leaks reveals a
picture of interdependence and  collaboration. As former  director of
the NSA Mike McConnell put it, “ Recent reports of possible
partnership between Google and the government point to the kind of
joint efforts -- and shared challenges -- that we are likely to see in
the future...Cyberspace knows no borders, and our defensive efforts
must be similarly seamless.”  The NSA developed its own software to
mimic the Google infrastructure, uses Google “cookies” to identify
targets for hacking, and widely accesses emails and other data through
the PRISM program, the costs of which it covered for Google and other
Internet firms.

Google and Facebook had led the way in colonizing the new zone with a
commercial logic based on surveillance. Now the Google-NSA alliance
added new layers and capabilities, as well as a complex public-private
dimension that remains poorly understood.  Whatever the details might
be, the new logic spread to other companies and applications, driving
the growth and success of operations in the new zone.

Despite this growth, it’s been difficult to grasp the changing social
relations that are produced in the new zone. associated withi Google’s
new commercial logic.  There are two reasons for this. First, the
companies move faster than individuals or democratic public
institutions can follow.  Second, its operations are designed to be
undetectable.  It’s this later point that I want to focus on for a
moment.
Google’s Radical Politics

We often hear that our privacy rights have been eroded and secrecy has
grown. But that way of framing things obscures what’s really at stake.
Privacy hasn’t been eroded. It’s been expropriated.  The difference in
framing provides new ways to define the problem and consider
solutions.

In the conventional telling, privacy and secrecy are treated as
opposites. In fact, one is a cause and the other is an effect.
Exercising our right to privacy leads to choice. We can choose to keep
something secret or to share it, but we only have that choice when we
first have privacy.  Privacy rights confer decision rights.  Privacy
lets us decide where we want to be on the spectrum between secrecy and
transparency in each situation.  Secrecy is the effect; privacy is the
cause.

I suggest that privacy rights have not been eroded, if anything
they’ve multiplied.  The difference now is how these rights are
distributed. Instead of many people having some privacy rights, nearly
all the rights have been concentrated in the hands of a few.  On the
one hand, we have lost the ability to choose what we keep secret, and
what we share. On the other, Google, the NSA, and others in the new
zone have accumulated privacy rights. How?  Most of their rights have
come from taking ours without asking.  But they also manufactured new
rights for themselves, the way a forger might print currency.  They
assert a right to privacy with respect to their surveillance tactics
and then exercise their choice to keep those tactics secret.
A pre-modern absolutism

Finally - and this is key - the new concentration of privacy rights is
institutionalized in the automatic undetectable functions of a global
infrastructure that most of the world’s people also happen to think is
essential for basic social participation. This turns ordinary life
into the daily renewal of a 21st century Faustian pact.

It is difficult to appreciate the global reach and implications of
this rights grab.  Leaving aside whether or not it crosses the
threshold of „revolution,” it is a form of radical politics that has
engineered a significant redistribution of power in just a few years
based on the. Expropriation of widely held privacy rights and the
choices they entail. This has been accomplished through a unique
assembly of public and private actors and interests that operate
outside the auspices of legitimate democratic mechanisms. In some
respects, the social relations that emerge from this rights grab are
best compared to that of  a pre-modern absolutism.

We have been caught off guard. Neither we as individuals nor our
public institutions have a clear grasp of these new relationships,
their implications, the relevant paths to action, or the goals to
achieve. There are good reasons for so much confusion and dismay. The
dynamics I describe have occurred in a blank area that is not easily
captured by our existing social, economic, and political categories.
They extend far beyond the realm of economics and the old debates
about business monopolies and competitive practices. The new business
operations reach beyond our wallets into the very essence of our
lives. They elude our mental models and defy our rational expectations
to such an extent that we end up questioning our own witness and
powers of evaluation. Unfortunately, the situation is about to get
worse as Google’s radical politics spread from cyberspace to the real
world.
Reality is the Next Big Thing

What is Google up to next?  We know it’s secret, but here is how it
looks to me. Google is no longer content with the data business.  It’s
next step is to build an even more radical „reality business.”  Google
sees „reality” as the next big thing that it can carve up and sell. In
the data business, the payoff is in data patterns that help target
ads. In the reality business, the payoff is in shaping and
communicating real life behaviors of people and things in millions of
ways that drive revenue to Google. The business model is expanding to
encompass the digital you as well as the actual you. The scene is
changing from virtual reality to, well, reality. Unsurprisingly, the
two entities at the vanguard of this new wave are Google and the NSA.

Wants to reinvent societies’ systems within a control framework:
Professor Alex Pentland of MIT in September 2011

The „reality business” reflects a shift in the frontier of data
science from data mining to „reality mining.”  This new approach was
pioneered over the last decade at the MIT Media Lab. Now its migrating
to military intelligence and commercial applications.  In a 2011
paper,  MIT Professor Alex Pentland explains the value of reality
mining. „We must reinvent societies’ systems within a control
framework.” He notes that this will require „exponential growth in
data about human behavior.” In another paper, Pentland explains that
the proliferation of sensors, mobile phones, and other data capture
devices will provide the „eyes and ears” of a „world-spanning living
organism.”  „Where do people eat? Work? Hang out?” - „Distributed
sensor networks,” he observes, will provide „a God’s eye view of
ourselves. For the first time, we can precisely map the behavior of
large numbers of people as they go about their daily lives.”

The NSA and other intelligence agencies are already  using “pattern of
life analysis” to identify threats, including those that might
originate within the organization as they hope to head off the next
Edward Snowden.  A range of software companies, some spun off from or
funded by the intelligence agencies, provide capabilities in
patterns-of-life activity and activity-based intelligence analysis.
Reality is the new product

Google’s ambitions in this new arena appear to be limitless. In 2012
Brin/Page/Schmidt hired computer scientist Ray Kurzweil to lead
engineering. Kurzweil, a brilliant inventor,  is a proselytizer for
the idea that computers can develop consciousness. „Future machines
will be human,” he wrote, „Most of the intelligence of our
civilization will ultimately be nonbiological.”  Kurzweil wants to
turn “the next decade’s ‘unrealistic’ visions into reality” at Google.
 The firm has purchased most of the top machine learning and robotics
companies to build what has been described as the „greatest artificial
intelligence laboratory on earth.” It paid richly for a company that
produces high altitude drones as well as Nest Labs, a firm at the
forefront of smart devices for the home and considered essential in
the new Internet of Things.

All this suggests that Google is building capabilities even more
ambitious than reality „mining”. The aim is not merely the God’s eye
view, but the God’s eye power to shape and control reality. Google’s
glasses, wearables, or self-driving cars have a clear purpose: to
inform on where you’ve been, and where you are, and to influence where
you’re going. As one expert has suggested, third parties could pay for
programming that drives the car sends you to their restaurant,  store
or political rally .

There are vast opportunities for similar reality mining and shaping
through the Internet of Things. This refers to the growing network of
smart sensors and Internet enabled devices intended as an intelligent
infrastructure for all objects and even bodies. From your baby’s
diapers, to your refrigerator, heating system, mattress, lights,
walls,coffee mug, and artificial knee ––this will be the smart neural
network in which you breathe, eat, sleep, travel, and work.  It will
perform infinite configurations of actions, observations, suggestions,
communications, and interventions all geared to a new product
category: reality. Google and others will make money knowing,
manipulating, controlling, slicing, and dicing all of it.
Is Reality for Sale?

To make sense of this big puzzle, it helps to have some historical
perspective. There are two useful ideas for us in the work of
historian Karl Polanyi. He described the rise of a new human
conception: the self-regulating market economy.  He saw that the
market economies of the 19th and 20th centuries depended upon three
astonishing mental inventions.  He called them „fictions“. The first
was that human life can be subordinated to market dynamics and be
reborn as „labor.” Second,  nature can be subordinated and reborn as
„real estate.” Third, that purchasing power can be reborn as „money.”
The very possibility of industrial capitalism depended upon the
creation of  these  three critical  „fictional commodities.” Life,
nature, and exchange had to be turned into things that could be
profitably bought and sold.

Google brings us to the precipice of a new development in the scope of
the market economy. A fourth fictional commodity is emerging as a
dominant characteristic of market dynamics in the 21st century.
„Reality” is about to undergo the same kind of fictional
transformation and be reborn as „behavior.”  This includes the
behavior of  creatures, their bodies, and their things. It includes
actual behavior and data about behavior. It is the world-spanning
organism and all the tiniest elements within it.

Polanyi understood that the pure unimpeded operations of  a
self-regulating of the market were profoundly destructive. Society
required    countermeasures to avoid such danger. He called this the
„double movement”:  „a network of measures and policies...integrated
into powerful institutions designed to check the action of the market
relative to labor, land, and money.” Regulation, legislation,
democratic oversight...these are the critical responses necessary to
protect society from  a downward spiral. Anticipating the century to
come,  he urged the strengthening of the double movement, that  „every
increase in integration in society should thus be accompanied by an
increase of freedom...the strengthening of the rights of the
individual in society.”
Europe’s Task

This returns us to our starting point. Eric Schmidt and Mathias
Döpfners controversy in the F.A.Z.  is only the beginning of a
disruption that will shake industry, society and citizens. It is a
plea for the primacy, urgency, and necessity of a new double movement.
It must be stronger, more confident, and more deeply principled than
we have yet seen. It must provide a counterweight to a dangerous new
absolutism that relies on pervasive, secret, unaccountable power.

We are beyond the realm of economics here. This is not merely a
conversation about free  markets; it’s a conversation about free
people.

It’s an urgent new public conversation that can’t be reduced to 20th
century technical debates about Google’s monopoly status or
competitive practices. We tend to revert to these old categories in
the absence of ready language and law that can help us discern the
full implications of what is taking shape. But such specialized
professional arguments shift the Google debate from the realm of
everyday life and ordinary people to the arcane interests of
economists and bureaucrats. They obscure the fact that the issues have
shifted from monopolies of products or services to monopolies of
rights: rights to privacy and rights to reality.  These new forms of
power, poorly understood except by their own practitioners, threaten
the sovereignty of the democratic social contract.

We are powerful too. Our demands for self-determination are not easily
extinguished.  We made Google, perhaps by loving it too much.  We can
unmake it, if we must. The challenge is to understand what is at stake
and how quickly things are moving. The need is to come together in our
diversity to preserve a future in which many visions can thrive, not
just one –– Where many rights can flourish, not just some.

Things are moving fast. This is why the world now looks to the E.U. -
not to Google - to reverse the growing menace of absolutism and the
monopoly of rights. The EU can stand for the double movement. It can
represent the future and assert the dominion of  democratic rights and
the principles of a fair marketplace. These are the precious victories
of a centuries-long struggle, and we dare not abandon them now.

The author

Shoshana Zuboff is the author of The Summons: Our Fight for the Soul
of an Information Civilization (forthcoming, 2015). She is the Charles
Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration (retired) at the
Harvard Business School and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center
for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. @shoshanazuboff

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