The Daily Summit - December 2003 Archives

[NEWS AND VIEWS]

December 18, 2003

Our final thanks for the links for now goes to Internet Magazine, BBC Online, NTK Now, Louise Ferguson, Steve Hooker, Eamonn Fitzgerald, Grant Henninger, Office Jotter, Hub Project, OnlineJournalism.com, Davos Newbies, Terra Viva, Internet for Diplomats and Doug Kenline

Jane Frewer | 05:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the news, ZDnet discusses the outcome of the open source debate at WSIS, the Declaration of Principles are available on the official WSIS site along with the arrangements for Tunisia and some interesting facts on number of attendees at WSIS. The Cato Institute discusses Who Rules the Web?, whilst allAfrica joins in on the reviews of the summit.

Jane Frewer | 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 16, 2003

Back to blogging. Accounts suggest Sina Motallebi, the jailed Iranian journalist whose case we put to Iran's government, is blogging again. (Thanks Hoder.)

Aaron Scullion | 09:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

In WSIS news, summit organisers are attacked for sloppy security, and for too much security, but still Switzerland pats itself on the back. Our Iran investigation is followed up here and here, but strangely, ignored here. Finally, the BBC sums it all up, and has a bit of a think, Infoworld looks to Tunis, and the International Herald Tribune declares that the 'World' part of WWW is a misnomer.

Aaron Scullion | 07:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 14, 2003

Saddam Hussein. Information Technology has played a vital role in spreading the news across the globe of the arrest of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The press conference held in Baghdad was beamed across the world live, showing pictures of the captured leader. The news has spread like wildfire - and so has reaction to the news. Less than 2 hours since the confirmation from Paul Bremer, the BBC World Service Talking Point programme was broadcasting live emails and phone calls from people all over the world - ranging from Malaysia, Iran, the UK, Uganda and Iraq.

Cara Swift | 03:59 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack

December 12, 2003

"Citizens media meets bulldog journalism; finds the future of news," writes Jeff Jarvis

"I'm witnessing the future of journalism unfold over at www.DailySummit.net.

"There, a bunch of webloggers sent there by the British Council (can someone explain them to me?) are covering the U.N. World Summit on Information Society with a vibrancy, immediacy, passion, imagination, doggedness, and openness you simply won't find in big media...

"This is what journalism is meant to be.

"This isn't some new form of journalism. This is the result of a few centuries of the evolution of journalism.
We, the readers, get to ask the questions we want to ask of those in power and we get answers. That's what it's all about, isn't it?

"Now, it helps immensely that the people in Geneva for Daily Summit know their stuff and also ask the right questions at every opportunity.

"Give the chance to interview the man in charge of the Iranian Internet, they got to confront him and ask about the arrest of weblogger Sina Motallebi (the frightening event that first introduced me and many of us to the Iranian weblog revolution). The mullahs' bureacrat lied and shuffled away from the point. But the confrontation tells them: The whole world is watching, boys.

"You can call that advocacy journalism or bulldog journalism or just good reporting. It's all that."

Thanks. It's been fun. We'll keep you updated with all the post-WSIS reaction.

But first, a drink...

David Steven | 09:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Last word. It's a success, Jim, but not as we know it. Despite failing to discuss the most important issue (who governs the internet) and making limited progress on how change should be funded in the developing world (contributions are voluntary) the Summit's heads were cheerier than a lioness in heat.

Pascal Couchepin, the Swiss President, said that he was pleased that there was any agreement at all.

"Some feared that we were holding a shallow and empty shell of a meeting," said Moritz Leuenberger, the Swiss minister of communications. The fact that he thinks otherwise tells you more about the nature of United Nations summits than it does about the achievements at Geneva.

M Couchepin believes that despite an impasse so insurmountable that the subject could not even appear on the agenda, negotiations over who governs the internet had come along in leaps and bounds. "To begin with, [private companies] were not prepared to accept that they had any control over the internet at all," he said. "We did not reach an agreement but we were able to agree on the process. This is something positive that was not manageable two months ago."

As for the Global Solidarity Fund (the means through which non-Western countries envisioned that Western countries would help them to build their digital infrastructure) Summit leaders believed that they had not been compromised by their compromise. "Not all member governments are satisfied with the plan of actionâ€¦ but I believe that they are more or less satisfied," said Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union.

Scepticism aside, however, it was unrealistic to expect concrete results from this World Summit. Just because the digital world operates at such a rapid pace, one should not expect UN summits to keep up. Perhaps Nitin Desai, special assistant to Kofi Annan, got it right when he said: "I've been doing this for 10 years now. No UN conference is a pledging conference."

On a final note, Mr Utsimi revealed that he had once had a language test with the British Council as a foreign student. Did he pass? "No," he replied. From the closing press conference you would hardly have known.

Jack Malvern | 09:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Business as usual. Business knows to behave itself at UN conferences. Don't come in strength. Smile a lot. And use the word 'partnership' whenever things get dicey.

Its final statement came in the form of a speech from Richard McCormick, honorary chair of the ICC. In most part, it was another a plea for the status quo and also for patience.

Business will deliver ICTs, if government keeps out of the way. ICTs will change lives for the better, if people receive sufficient education and training.

Oh - and hands off the internet. "Do we want to blunt this remarkable tool at the precise moment it is poised to bring about the most positive change in people's lives?"

In the end, though, one should remember that few of the business leaders who really matter to ICT were here. No Larry Ellison. No Carly Fiorina. No Bill Gates (who, of course, is a huge donor, as well a business giant).

They're probably coming to Switzerland - but for the World Economic Forum in Davos early next year. Perhaps Daily Summit missed something, but WSIS seems to have passed well-below their radar.

David Steven | 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A quiet summit. Civil society has had a quiet summit. It has delivered few of the press conferences, eye-catching stunts and noisy demonstrations that normally keep the media entertained.

Its representatives adopted a counter-declaration, condemned the Swiss authories and summit organisers, but failed to provide a definitive assessment of the summit's outcome.

Instead, the human rights caucus delivered a somewhat lacklustre final press conference, expressing relief that "a major setback in the international consensus on human rights has been avoided in the final declaration."

After the conference, Diana Bronson said that WSIS had not been a waste of time, despite the brick wall activists had met on a number of issues.

"There is a sense of real frustration that there has been a lack of advance but it is never a waste of time for governments to sit down and talk," she said. "I am pleased that they understand that the information society is not just about laying a cable around the world."

Civil society's uncertainty has two causes. Invited into the WSIS process, it's now reluctant to stamp its feet when it doesn't get its own way. Also, it knows this is a summit of two halves. NGOs may well arrive in Tunis in much less compliant mood.

Written with Claire Regan.

David Steven | 08:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A parting shot. Civil Society wound up summit proceedings with a strongly worded statement condemning both the Swiss authorities and the summit organisers - a statement that caused Kofi Annan's special advisor, Nitin Desai, to erupt in fury when it was put to him by Daily Summit at WSIS's closing press conference.

Civil society activists, however, ducked questions over whether they would boycott the second part of the summit in Tunis, if Tunisia did not improve its human rights record. An indication, we suspect, of deep divisions within the lobby.

"We unanimously condemn the undemocratic actions of the Swiss authorities and the summit organisers in suppressing dissenting and alternative voices," the statement said.

It highlighted the eviction of Polymedia (previously reported as more cock-up than conspiracy), the alleged confiscation of newspapers, and the treatment of 50 protestors who were surrounded by 40 police officers, before being searched and taken to the police station if they refused to identify themselves.

“These events continue the pattern of political repression that has been a constant feature of public life in Geneva since the G-8 meeting early in 2003. We strongly condemn these violations of the right to assemble and freedom of expression that have cast a shadow of hypocrisy over the summit."

"I have a feeling that these people were at a different conference," Nitin Desai responded when we read extracts from the statement to him. "I would like to see who these people are, who they are speaking for, and what level of consensus there have behind them."

Civil society's troubles over Tunisia continue. Rights and democracy activist Diana Bronson said she was unable to speak on behalf of civil society, when asked whether NGOs would be prepared to go to Tunis. After the press conference, however, she told Daily Summit there was a boycott was on the cards.

“Speaking personally, I would say that there is possibility that civil society will not be going if there aren't improvements in Tunisia. But I would add that the chances of a boycott are not strong," she said.

President of Switzerland, Pascal Couchepin commented: "The decision [to go to Tunis] is absolutely clear. It was taken at international level by the United Nations. We know there are problems in Tunisia. We know progress is needed in human rights. But we don't think it is right for a single country to say anything against a decision taken by the international community."

Claire Regan | 07:27 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Good news travels fast. Digital Solidarity Day, invented by the President of Senegal little more than an hour ago, has already made it into a leading online encyclopedia...

David Steven | 06:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Mugabe tightens net. New Zimbawe has more on rumours that President Mugabe is planning to exert a stranglehold over the internet.

Daily Summit has just heard direct from an ISP in Zimbabwe. We are told that the government doesn't yet have the capacity to censor internet traffic, but that may change soon.

All Zimbabwean ISPs are forced to use bandwidth provided by TelOne, a government monopoly, for their outgoing traffic (although they use satellite links for incoming traffic, as Zimbabwean bandwidth is so limited).

Our source confirms strong rumours that Chinese equipment is now in place, which "would be capable of full monitoring of all Internet communications if all ISPs were forced to drop the use of the satellite downlinks that they currently use, and partial monitoring if the downlinks were left in place."

The equipment is not yet in use, however, because the government is not sure whether it is competent enough to run it. " A single point of failure for the whole Zimbabwe internet could result in catastrophic loss of communications, so they are reluctant to actually commission the equipment."

David Steven | 05:55 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Club sandwich. Rumour has it that when the Earl of Sandwich first ordered that his lunch be placed between two pieces of bread so his cards wouldn't get greasy, he added: "I'll wager that these 'sandwiches' will be so popular that, at UN conferences, they'll be eating 22,000 of them."

How could he have known? Read on for more astonishing facts to amaze your friends...

As the World Summit draws to a close, the dour citizens of Geneva are winding down their shutters in anticipation of the world's largest and most multicultural burp.

Over the last three days participants at the World Summit have drunk an estimated 38,000 cans and bottles of carbonated drinks. The spontaneous release of carbon dioxide threatens to put Switzerland in breach of its Kyoto commitments. Summit organisers who promised to make the event carbon dioxide neutral will be spending the rest of their careers planting saplings.

Government delegates feasted on 360 meals, while everyone else drank 26,000 cans of Coke. If the conference has achieved little else, [atrocious joke warning] it has at least reinforced the adage that Coca Cola is IT.

(Written with Erin Dean)

Jack Malvern | 05:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Get set for 12/12/2004. The President of Senegal has just declared that, from now on, December 12 every year will be celebrated as 'Digital Solidarity Day'.

We're not sure what that means, in practice, and he's not taking questions. A source tells us that, essentially, it's a fundraising exercise.

Update 1923 CET - In the closing press conferenece, ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi has confirmed that this is a "voluntary" celebration... phew.

The news has come as a shock to the people of Guadaloupe, however, who will now be torn between celebrating digital solidarity and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadeloupe. (It was on this day in 1531 that the Virgin Mary appeared before a Roman Catholic convert and told him, in his native Nahuatl language, to build a church.)

It is also tough luck for gardening fans in America who declared December 12 National Poinsettia Day (a poinsettia is a type of flower). Kenyans might also be too busy celebrating their independence day.

Honor Blackman, who will be celebrating her 77th birthday on December 12 2004, was not available for comment.

Aaron Scullion | 05:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Reporters excluded. Eight reporters were barred from the summit on Friday following a peaceful protest against Israel.

The correspondants from I'Lam - the media centre for Arabs48 (the Palestinians who stayed in their homes when Israel was created) - arranged their demonstration in advance with WSIS security.

They were granted permission to silently hold placards for 10 minutes saying "Free Israel", "Free Iraq" and "Stop the Wall" - the giant barrier currently being built by the Israeli government.

But when they passed through security barriers following the event they were refused re-entry. "The chief of security said that we were told there would be consequences to what we did and that it was illegal," Salma Khashiboum said.

"But we arranged it with them before the demonstration and they said we could come back in. They say that all our names have been sent to New York and we will never be allowed to another summit."

"We shouldn't be punished and treated as trouble makers or terrorists. This is a summit about information and the freedom of expression."

A spokesperson from the summit organisers told us that "the cancellation of the badges was a regrettable incident which was not intended and is the result of a misunderstanding in the agreement reached between the various parties".

Journalistic freedom has already been a controversial issue at the summit after Reporters Sans Frontiers were banned before the event even began.

Erin Dean | 04:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

We'll tell you why. Ahmad Motamedi, Iran's Minister of ICT, has been in the summit media centre, talking informally to Iranian journalists and bloggers.

Farshad, editor of Gooya and Gooya news, challenged the Minister directly to explain why one of his websites is blocked (and is only available to Iranians via a proxy server sponsored by the US government).

"We want to know what the limits are," he told the Minister. "You should tell us what causes a website to be blocked and how you make that decision."

Apparently, the Minister accepted this argument and took the name of Farshad's website away with a promise to email him telling him why they had been blocked. He has said he will also provide explanations to other bloggers.

Farshad, who lives in Belgium, described this as a positive step - a step closer to an informed dialogue about Iran's future.

"We're on the verge of something big," he told Daily Summit. " Weblogs are drawing on the huge energy of a new generation. This generation has changed already. In response, the regime has changed a little. If we keep changing, maybe they will keep changing too."

Farshad described President Khatami's press conference as typical of an Iranian politician. "The Iranian government has a very bad habit. They deny everything in public. But after the official press conference, in personal talks like the one we had today, they are more critical than you are of the situation in Iran!

He believes the President has limited room for manoeuvre in Iran, but he at least understands the challenges. "One of his closest advisors blogs, writing about serious issues, but also putting funny photos on his site."

A response to this story from our Arabic site - plus reaction from Iran (one, two).

David Steven | 04:47 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

UN believable (2) - JM (Jack Malvern) has been updating his list of UN acronyms..

Aaron Scullion | 04:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Academy Award goes to... anyone but the US media. Coverage of the Iraq war, and embedded reporters in particular, came under the spotlight at a workshop hosted by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

The event began with the screening of four nominees, all European, in the news coverage category at the Academy's prestigious Emmy awards earlier this year. Channel Four/ITN carried off the title but the content of the final four selections provided interesting fodder for the workshop discussion.

Co-incidentally all four entries emerged from the Gulf conflict. Channel 4's programme began from Baghdad on the day Saddam fell and covered events and atmosphere in the following days. It was joined on the short list by Germany's ARD for a report on the radioactive DU ammunition, France 2 Television for a powerful piece on looting at Baghdad Museum and footage from the UK's Associated Press Television News.

The workshop was chaired by International Academy executive director Georges Le Clere and president Fred Cohen. They explained that the awards were not open to American broadcasters but that didn't stop the audience having a go at the US media and the concept of embedded journalists. Many of the comments were aimed at war coverage in general with the consensus being that the truth had been the first casualty in Iraq. The most acerbic remarks were on US journalists 'sense of theatre' and even American speakers themselves offered no defence on the discussion.

Claire Regan | 04:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

On the web, WSIS pictures from Caravita, more moonlighting at BBC online, and loads of detailed reports from Andy Carvin.

Also: Wizzy Digital Courier (and Community Networking's take), powerful forces ranged against free software, and Paul Boutin and Nico MacDonald weigh in...

David Steven | 03:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Geneva v. Jo'burg. Daily Summit asked Mark Malloch Brown of the UNDP, on the third and closing day of WSIS, to compare it with last year's Earth Summit in Johannesburg - which his organisation was instrumental in running.

Earth Summit issues were "middle-aged", said Malloch Brown referring to the fact that climate change, health, education and environment had been discussed at the Stockholm (1972) and Rio (1992) Summits.

By comparison WSIS issues are "in the kindergarten stage". In Geneva we've been working on the ground floor, structuring and formulating issues: in Tunis we'll be one floor higher.

ICT introduces a whole set of new pressures, business interests, technical factors and civil society concerns.

Working out which projects add value is the name of the game.

A proper policy framework often delivers more than pouring in money. But, of course, money is needed too - "Policy should not be a fig leaf behind which we give the donors any easy ride".

Andrew Taussig | 03:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Just say no. In April 1986 a very fat Briton and his fellow actors from the BBC children's programme Grange Hill shot to the top of the pop music charts with the song Just Say No.

This afternoon Nick Thorne, the plump British Ambassador to the United Nations, sang a similar tune when he took to the podium at the World Summit, giving the British verdict on whether his government would be contributing to a Global Solidarity Fund (a UN body designed to build digital infrastructure in poorer countries).

Mr Thorne was frank about the British stance. "We do not believe that a new international fund could tackle the real underlying problems," he said. "It might even divert funds away [from existing aid channels]. A fund is not the answer."

The UK was happy to provide "technical assistance" to poorer countries, but will provide cash only though existing channels.

More worrying for countries seeking change is that Britain seems to be playing down the significance of the World Summit's sequel, Tunis 2005. The UK will hold the presidency of the EU in the latter half of 2005, and wants to avoid the preparatory committees (PREPCOMS for all you acronym lovers) that proved so contentious in the run up to Geneva. "The UK believes that a light preparatory process will create the right conditions for a conference," Mr Thorne said.

This will be a punch in the teeth for non-Western countries, who need all the discussion time they can get to lobby for a change in the status quo on two issues. First, they want to get a better deal on the Digital Solidarity Fund, or something very like it. Second, they want to break the Western grip on the internet and its development - an issue known as internet governance. Tunis is the only chance non-Western countries will get to debate internet governance, a topic so controversial that it was dropped from the Geneva summit's agenda.

If the UK succeeds in limiting the debate over these two issues then the Western governments can put up the bunting and gather round the piano. They want to keep the UN out of both issues and have done a reasonable job so far.

Jack Malvern | 02:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A vision of a future. Daily Summit has been hearing from a blind Ethiopian man who plans to help others overcome their loss of sight by helping them get access to screen readers and text-to-speech software.

Despite losing his sight when he was seven, Getu Mulatu from Ethiopia finished school and went to Univeristy where he gained two degrees.

Now he has co-founded the Adaptive Technology Centre for the Blind to make it easier for other people to follow in admirable footsteps.

Mr Getu told us about his scheme which gives blind people the "liberty" to work and learn. There are estimated to be at least 500,000 blind people in Ethiopia, not including people with partial sight problems. Their future is generally bleak with most either dependent on their families or begging on the streets, Mr Getu said.

Like many he lost his sight to an illness that could have been easily treated.
"With speaking screen reader and text-to-speech software I no longer have to rely on volunteers to read to me and attend my secretarial needs," Mr Getu said.
"I can send e-mails, write reports and invitations for the centre on my own."

They have already trained more than 70 people ranging from school children to doctors. The next stage is to reach more people, particularly in the remote areas of the country, and to introduce braille equipment. But, as ever, they need second hand computers, volunteers and funds...

Erin Dean | 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"Excellent, witty, well-informed" That's how Bill Thomson describes Daily Summit, while hitting the nail on the head with his WSIS review on BBC News.

Aaron Scullion | 02:24 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

The Arabic take. Arabic speakers (that's all of you, right?) shouldn't miss Ahmed Reda's coverage of yesterday's press conference with Iran's President Khatami.

Read Reda's take on Iran, Al Qaeda and Egypt, EU-Iran relations and the EU's role in defusing the recent nuclear crisis, Iranian censorship of the internet, and the heavy security cordon thrown around the press conference itself.

David Steven | 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EU leaders begin crunch summit. But in Brussels. Not Geneva.

David Steven | 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Future, Bright. Wear Shades. The Tunisian Foreign Minister Mr Habib Ben Yahia told the Daily Summit that he is "fully optimistic" about the second phase of WSIS to be held in his country in November 2005.

It would, he promised, be the "crowning of this process".

But is Tunisia an appropriate to hold a summit which should have freedom of expression?

"We have a lot at stake," the Foreign Minister told us. "We want to come out of 2005 with a consensus and a vision of what is the of Information Technology for our society."

Critics of Tunisia are not just interested in human rights, but have a hidden agenda, he suggested. However, he admitted that Tunisia still has problems it needs to address.

As a relatively new democracy, human rights pose formidable task and challenge for Tunisia, he explained. "We are not perfect, nobody's perfect in this world."

Journalists should come to Tunisia to see for themselves, he said. They would discover many websites and magazines, offering a variety of opinions. But also some of the best hotels in the world - and more sunshine than here in Geneva.

Cara Swift | 01:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Zimbabwe clamps down? News reaches Daily Summit that Zimbabwe has ambitious plans to route all email through a government-owned hub, allowing the Mugabe regime to tighten its grip on the internet.

Apparently, the necessary equipment has been purchased. However, technicians are nervous about installing it, afraid it will break down, Without money for spares, Zimbabwe could then be cut off from the web.

We were speaking to SW Radio Africa, "the independent voice of Zimbabwe", which broadcasts to southern Africa on short wave from its base in London. Their interview with Daily Summit is now online - it starts at around 6.40 on the Thursday 11 Nov, newsreel tape.

Developing...

David Steven | 01:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Don't need the sunshine. Apparently, the deaths of 150,000 people in 2000 was indirectly caused by global warming - which is also responsible for 2.4% of all cases of diarrhoea and 2% of cases of malaria. So says a major WHO report...

"The 1990s were the hottest decade on record and the upward trend in the world's temperature continues," the WHO said. "In Europe this past summer for example, an estimated 20,000 people died due to extremely hot temperatures."

"Rain can also have a major impact on health. When rainfall rises above normal levels, it can collect and stagnate, and the still water provides additional breeding grounds for mosquitoes and. other vectors which transmit diseases such as malaria and dengue fever."

The report was launched at 9th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Milan, Italy.

Erin Dean | 01:36 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Swedish massage. The Swedish delegation summed up the Western world's attitude towards funding poorer countries' digital infrastructure this morning.

When asked whether she was in favour of the Global Solidarity Fund, Astrid Dufborg said: "Perhaps we can divide this into two questions. We are in favour of solidarity: but we have another position when it comes to the fund."

She continued: "We don't believe there is one kind of global fund that is appropriate for dealing with the whole issue [of the disparity in technology between rich and poor countries]. Creating a single fund would not deal with the issue. It would be more appropriate to have bilateral relations between the countries."

This is the Western world's argument in a nutshell. While poorer countries bandy the name "Digital Solidarity Fund" about the World Summit, the richer countries they have in mind for bankrolling the project are uniformly sceptical. The message coming out of Western countries is clear: we will look at the digital divide, but only through our existing aid channels. We don't rule out acting multilaterally, but with a small number of partners who will be of our choosing.

In Ms Dufborg's case, her country has joined with Ireland and Canada to fund the Global eSchools and Communities Initiative, an $80 million programme to provide hi-tech education in Namibia, Ghana, Bolivia and Andhra Pradesh in India.

The advantages of this scheme over contributing to a Digital Solidarity Fund are twofold. First, Sweden can keep a close eye on where its money is going and expand or downgrade the project at will. Second, eSchools is politically more valuable than a Global Solidarity Fund because it enables both technology and education ministers to answer their critics with one scheme.

Jack Malvern | 01:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thanks for the links today goes to SWRadio Africa, The Guardian, Arash Arya, Sociopranos, National Institute for Technology & Liberal Education, Heinrich-Boll Foundation, Boing Boing, Notes from the Metaverse, Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog, Emergent Report, Fumacas, E-business Weblog, NetWMD, Iranian Truth, International e-government, David Fletcher, mymarkup.net, nodo.org and the many British Council sites that have linked to us also

Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia & Montenegro, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, UAE and Venezuela

Jane Frewer | 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nigeria in space. Nigeria launched black Africa's first satellite (Nigersat 1) into orbit a few months ago.

Talking exclusively to Daily Summit in his Mandarin hotel room, Nigeria's Minister of Science and Technology, Turner Isoun, had some exciting news. Nigeria now plans to launch its first communications satellite.

"Our strategy now is to go into communications satellites," he told us. "We missed the industrial revolution. We can not afford to miss the IT revolution."

"Now that the Federal Executive Council (the highest decision making body in the land) has approved the project, the satellite will be our IT infrastructure backbone.

His aim: "To be able to produce goods and services for the ICT market. To massively encourage training, capacity utilisation and software."

His plan: "Using this good beginning (WSIS) to transform the present environment ensuring that, in the next four years, at least 50 percent of all the children and youths in schools are signed up to the IT world."

The Science Minister spoke with real passion about the Nigerian dream. With a population of over 120 million, an ICT revolution in Nigeria could transform prospects for Africa. And provide a ray of hope for the continent.

Oghogho Obayu | 12:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Is Ben bothered? Tunisia's President Ben Ali may be weighing up worries about the way his country treats journalists ahead of WSIS Part Two, set for Tunis in November 2005. He should take note of what Mark Malloch Brown, the top UN man running the organization's Development Programme (UNDP) told Daily Summit earlier today, in response to a question on media freedom: "There is no excuse for any UN official being ambiguous on Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Andrew Taussig | 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Couch potatos rejoice - for sitting around watching TV is good for your health! So say the World Health Organisation, who told us "Soap operas, community radio programmes and entertainment TV have the power to mobilize people to take control of their health, both in terms of prevention and treatment."

Ary Rogerio Silva from Americas for World Health. added that "in 1985 when a famous actor used a wig on a very popular soap opera - the wig market saw a rise of 70 per cent that year."

Although this sounds frivilous, media, entertainment and ICTs can improve health.Unsurprisingly the AIDS epidemic was also high on the agenda. Advances had been made, said Mr Taiwo Allimi, Director General of Voice of Nigeria because every television and radio station in his country now has a health correspondant.
But he stressed that traditional methods of communication such as village meetings and town criers still needed to be used for an integrated communication approach.

Mr Allimi also said that the language used is very important as many villages don't know the disease as AIDS or HIV, but "blood eater".

Erin Dean | 12:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

After a UN/business love-in, Daily Summit asked Microsoft Managing Director for Global Affairs, Pamela Passman what the company hoped to achieve at the summit.

"It's been an incredible opportunity to put together all the stakeholders who are incredibly passionate about IT for development," Passman replied, in fluent NGO-speak. "We all have to do more. We need to engage in broader and deeper dialogue and partnerships. We have a milestone in 2005 in Tunis and we're very focused on ensuring there's some tangible developments for then."

She underlined Microsoft's "expanded relationship" with the UN (a double paranoia attack for those who worry about black helicopters or the evil empire) - especially work developing community technology centres in refugee camps in partnership with UNHCR.

Passman claimed that Microsoft had been working hard to ensure "all voices can be heard" on controversial issues such as internet governance, adding that "the focus on these issues is tremendous." And, with that, she slipped from the room...

David Steven | 10:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

In the news, dissenters feel ignored, Africa projects win awards, China will spare no efforts to accelerate the information society, and IT-literate children are "respected like village elders."

Also: a campaign for equal access to scientific knowledge, Zambia wants to build a self-renewing society, Geneva is agog (allegedly), and India's teaching software is revolutionary.

And, finally, no-one knows who uses the internet...

David Steven | 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Members-only? What is civil society? Do you have to join? Earlier in the week, an activist claimed civil society was 5 billion strong. What did the other 1 billion do wrong?

In Tunisia, it appears, civil society really is run like a club. And it has 8000 members - all of whom enthusiastically support Tunisian plans to host phase 2 of the summit:

"The 8000-member Tunisian civil society has declared it is ready to host the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS 2) in 2005," Roseleen Nzioka writes.

"Speaking exclusively to Highway Africa News Agency (HANA), the president of the giant society, Agrebi Saida, said it is because of the sheer political will and determination of the Tunisian government in partnership with the civil society that her country will host WSIS 2.

"Saida said no other country is better placed to host the second phase of the Summit, arguing that it was Tunisia that inspired the United Nations to consider hosting a summit of this nature in the first place."

David Steven | 08:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 11, 2003

Iran round-up - a long day, dominated by Iran and with lots more posting to come.

In a nutshell, we went to President Khatami's news conference, asked about Iran online, internet censorship, and find out what he knows about blogs (background).

Then we interviewed Iran's information minister.

Also - you can watch the press conference with Iran's President here - where you'll see the Daily Summit put your questions to Mr Khatami, just as we promised. And you can read a series of posts in Arabic too.

Aaron Scullion | 11:09 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Iran's ICT minister confronted. How does Ahmad Motamedi, Iran's minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT), explain the huge number of websites censored in his country? "Sometimes mistakes happen," he said.

Some mistake. In a rare interview, Mr Motamedi claimed that officially just 240 sites were banned in Iran and that no-one was punished for writing anti-government messages online.

He had a harder time explaining the arrest of Sina Motallebi, the journalist and blogger held earlier this year.

For other reports of President Khatami's press conference click here, here and here.

We questioned Dr Motamedi over his claim that only 240 websites were blocked - he insisted this was the correct number, and that all political sites were available - saying only that "if they are political and mixing in some contempts against our religions and our prophets, we cut them".

We asked him to officially publish the list of the sites his government admits to banning - the minister said "it has been published for the private sector, and insisted, "all the press know what it is".

We asked him what punishments would be handed out to people who published material the government didn't approve of - Dr Motamedi insisited that his government only blocks the sites within Iran, and that "there is no punishment".

So, obviously, we had to ask about Sina Motallebi - the journalist and blogger arrested in Iran earlier this year.

Mr Motamedi first insisted he knew nothing of the story, and then said, "He has been arrested but not in relation to weblogs." The minister offered an example - "If somebody is a weblog writer, and kills somebody - should they not be arrested?".

We had one final question. Earlier this year, the government said it was a 'technical mistake' when some websites became unavailable - we asked the minister how such a mistake could happen. He pointed out that "technical problems always happen", but that he didn't know why they happened so often. He concluded - "sometimes mistakes happen" - and was ushered away.

Transcript:

Ahmed Reda: Many reports are saying 15,000 sites are blocked.

A: Most of the sites are cut. They have themselves cut it - Most of the sites that are porno and unethical are cut. We have not given any names for that - we have given them the message you cut them yourself. So anti-ethics and pornos, they have themselves cut it.

From these 240 these are sites against religion. They are contempting Prophet Mohammed and other religious principles of the people. What do you call them, political, we do not know what names you have for this, but for us it is anti-religion.

Some of them they have not criticized them in charge and authorities.

Ahmed: But I'm not speaking about the nature of the sites, I'm speaking about the number.

They have themselves cut this. Only we have given the names of these 240. But for the sites by their names it indicates that they are anti-ethical and anti-religious. They have themselves cut it.

Ahmed: How many political sites are you banning?

A: What is your definition of political?

Ahmed: Criticizing the political system and the political organisations, the executive branch?

A: From our point of view all political sites are free. No news agency has reported, for example BBC, CNN - most of them are political and they have criticised the government, but we have not closed them - they are not prohibited. But if they are political and mixing in some contempts against our religions and our prophets, we cut them.

Cara Swift: Will you officially publish the list of the 240 sites that are banned?

A: Actually it has been published for the private sector. Most of them are private, and all the press know what it is.

Aaron Scullion: What punishments can people expect if they publish websites you do not agree with?

A: Only we cut the sites - from only access from Iran. There is no punishment defined for them.

Aaron: There were reports a few months ago that one weblogger was arrested.

A: No one has been arrested. If you have any name we can follow it. We give some loans to them and promote these weblogs and sites when they are good - especially when they are in Persian.

David Steven: I have the name of the weblogger that it was claimed was arrested. Sina Motallebi.

A: Actually, it is just now that I am hearing this from you. This is not substantial and it is not in relation to weblogs. What news agency?

David: The Colombia Journalism Review. Associated Press.

A: She has been arrested but not in relation to weblogs. If somebody is a weblog writer, and kills somebody - should they not be arrested?

Aaron: Previously, some web sites in Iran were taken off line and blocked - when the government was told of this, it said it was a mistake. How could such a mistake happen?

A: Technical problems always happen. But I don't know how this is being increased. Sometimes mistakes happen.

Aaron Scullion | 10:33 PM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Giving ICT a human face. Civil Society today delivered a counter-declaration to the World Summit, so Daily Summit talked to some leading civil society members about what they are unhappy about and why.

"Yes, WSIS has come up with certain things, but we are suspicious that a plan of action may not be able to match up our expectations," Kay Raseroka told us. "We also fear that at the end of the day market values are going to be imposed on people and this will definitely be a different kind of imperialism of ICT. This we can already see with the cell phone."

Chair of the Civil Society Coalition (CSC), Raseroka doubles as the president of the International Federation of Library Association and Institutions. "Civil society was forced to make its declaration because human issues have been left out at the summit. This is about linking people. It is the people's right to information that now seems to be surpassed by pipes and cables and all the stuff. We strongly feel that what UNESCO is trying to do is not enough."

The problem is money: "Implementation of any plan of action starts with money . Find out how much money is being put into this plan. That's a critical issues we are standing up for now."

In the same vein, USLA secretary-general Ross Shimmon said: "Look, there is too much emphasis on technology and not enough on contacts. We have discovered that some governments are more interested in controlling their population, than democratising it. We want this whole process to be more people-oriented."

Oghogho Obayu | 09:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

In the line of fire. Al Jazeera moderator Dr Faisal al-Kasim defended the station's decision to broadcast footage encouraging Muslims to rise up and attack Westerners, saying, "we are in the business of scoops, especially in times of war".

The presenter came under fire during a panel discussion on the role of the media in re-building post-conflict societies and in coping with a clash of cultures. But the focus of much of the discussion fell on how media coverage after some conflicts had incited further violence.

Dr al-Kasim said the US media's attitude towards the Arab world in the wake of September 11 had left tensions between the two cultures at their lowest point. He came under fire from one member of the audience concerned about their broadcasting of messages from terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden, encouraging murder.

Panel chair, BBC News anchor Mishal Husain, asked the guest if he felt responsible for carrying a message asking Muslims to rise up against the US and the West.

The West always brags about freedom of expression and then it starts to muffle others, he argued. The conflict was between Al Qaeda and the US. Why would you want to listen to only one side? Do you want us to forget about Osama bin Laden altogether? If the US had got hold of one tape or another first they would definitely have broadcast it. We are in the business of scoops, especially in times of war."

Claire Regan | 09:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ben's Best Bet. Ben - aka Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia's President for the past 16 years - is clearly working on the "publicly done deal" principle over hosting WSIS 2. Aware of mutterings during the WSIS 1 PREPCOMS about his record on journalistic freedom, he is ignoring them and devoting his time to selling his country as host-designate.

His sales pitch includes photo-calls of himself, "Tunis 2005" baseball caps and teashirts available in Tunisia's stand conveniently located in a prestige position and references to WSIS in major speeches, not just this week in Geneva but last week when welcoming French President Jacques Chirac to Tunis.

Full marks though, for for his campaign literature and his polite staff on the stand.

Andrew Taussig | 09:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Our space is open. At last, after a long search, Daily Summit tracked down Polymedia, renegade media outfit, evicted from their first home, but now resident in a Genevan cinema/theatre.

Harassed, harangued, haunted, but happy at last! And (there's no better way one can put it) these guys are weird...

First thing you notice: no telephones. But lots of computers, all set up to disseminate what they believe to be real information, the sort that should matter to people.

Polymedia has strong links to Indymedia - a group that has been in the thick of protest against the world order. Seattle, Evian, and now Geneva - the group has a record of reporting from the heart of the action.

Now, they have been forced to relocate to two bases. The Palladium is a brown building, from which thick black and blue smoke belches off the cigarette sticks of our famous journalists. A unused projection screen lies unused, and everywhere there are computers. Close by is the Theatre de la Usine - a larger space.

The Polymedians are busy - but not too busy to speak.

First, Annie, an academic: "We use the Usine for conference talks, discussion, and debates. And in the Palladium, we are experimenting with free software, sharing knowledge and experiences, and updating Polymedia web sites. Ours is a do it yourself movement, which is why I can't tell you my second name: I don't want to sound special. Here at Polymedia, people are simply trying to escape from the rat race. We simply want the freedom to live on our own terms. We are not worried by our problems with the police. We are used to being troubled. Its our sacrifice for a freer world.."

Then American, Sasha Chock: "We do not feel free with 2,000 military and 700 police at the Palexpo. To inform the people, we do not have to go through metal detectors and checkpoints every 200 feet! We do not want to be in a space of controlled information, where they held me up yesterday and divided my papers and leaflets into two piles. The ones I could take in and the ones I couldn't."

Chock's fellow country woman, who identified herself simply as Dee Dee concluded: "The difference between our world and yours is that this space is open. Yours is not."

Oghogho Obayu | 09:34 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Do you blog? After President Khatami mentions the explosion of weblogging in Iran, Cara Swift asks: do you use weblogs, Mr President?

"I do not use weblogs," the President replied. "But I do not use many good things. My own daughters do not have weblogs but they are very active in using the internet and chat. Our youth and adolescents during high school - and university - are using weblogs very extensively. In universities, there is a lot of access and there are many internet cafes in Iran. Access for youth to the internet is very satisfactory."

David Steven | 07:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Only 240 sites! Aaron Scullion asked President Khatami : "Will you pledge uncensored access to the internet or publish a list of sites deemed unacceptable?"

The President replied: "The BBC, Voice of America and other American sites will not be censored in Iran. Many things that are contrary to the policies of Iran are available in Iran. Even opposition websites are available. We are exerting greater control over pornographic and immoral websites that are not compatible with Islam. And even some political sites that are very insulting to religion. But we are not censoring criticism. Criticism is OK.

"The numbers are very few - it's only porn sites. (Asks Minister of ICT for a precise number) Altogether 240 sites, the Minister tells me. The majority are porn sites, not political sites. We hope to have a world where morality will prevail and we will not have to censor any sites."

Aaron pushed Mr Khatami to justify the comments he made on Wednesday - telling the summit's plenary session that a key requirement of a knowledge based society was a commitment to "principles of democracy".

"Democracy without free flow of information, and without access to the thoughts of others, is not possible - democracy runs in tandem with freedom of expression. This does not mean that everything goes. I think many Western countries will not allow fascists or nazis or racists to say whatever they think. Stopping such ideas does not mean restriction of freedom - freedom of expression and freedom of thought are the preconditions of a democratic society - but at the same time, freedom does not mean chaos, or the absence of law and order."

David Steven | 07:24 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

President mentions weblogs! Asked by Ahmed Reda of Daily Summit who controls internet censorship in Iran, Mr Khatami replied:

"I think there are hardly any countries in the developing world, or in Islamic countries, where you have such expanded ICT networks and ICT use. Of the weblogs that are created and generated - after those in English and French, we are number three.

"There are a lot of internet connections in Iran. All countries have certain reservations about the internet, but they are not about freedom of expression. They are only porn and immoral websites. Even political websites that are openly opposed to the Iranian government, and all other educational and scientific sites, are available to the Iranian people. But the expansion of digital expression should not harm the culture or identity of nations. We need new conventions, while allowing fair use of the internet.

"Of countries that have been very sensitive to the harm these communications can cause, we can use France, as an example. Its example shows we should not sacrifice the great benefit of these communications, but we should pay attention to the harms they can cause. The internet should not harm the fundamental freedoms of people. Within the framework, of law, we believe in Iran we have imposed the minimum restrictions. In other countries there are broader restrictions."

David Steven | 07:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Iranian President has just started speaking - "energetic and ready to answer our questions."

We start with a question about co-operation between Iran and Egypt (eh? relevant?). The President says he's had a good meeting with Mubarak.

At length. Eventually he gets onto the new Ministry of ICT, which was approved by Iran's parliament yesterday.

[BTW keep pressing F5 to get updates - this post is being updated as the president speaks!]

A question about Bosnia-Herzogovina (eh? relevant?). The president talks about the war in the Balkans and Iran's role in re-construction.

Another question about Egypt. "Have there been any specific results from the talks with Egypt?" (am I at the wrong summit?).

At last the big one: "who controls Internet censorship in Iran?"

David Steven | 06:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iran's president is going to speak any moment (watch here).

We've gone through an lot of security to get in, but we're in the front row. Metal detectors and sniffer dogs were used - no other news conference at the summit has had anything like this.

Aaron Scullion | 06:34 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Spam ain't cheap. The infuriating adverts that clog e-mail inboxes have cost the US economy $10 billion this year, apparently. "It is no longer just a nuisance but we have reached a tipping point when it could undermine the application of e-mail," US spam expert Scott Dalliard has said in a session.

The general consensus among the international panel was that spam will never be eradicated entirely but could be much controlled if existing and future legislation was used to it's full extent.

Despite the levity of the issue there was a ripple of laughter when the only spam that one of the speakers could find to use as an example emblazoned the giant screen with "Ultimate Colon Cleanser".

Erin Dean | 05:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Nothing much to say from the USA. There weren't even any protests as they had their say at the plenary session. Rumours were circulating the corridors of the media centre that John Marburger, George Bush's science and technical adviser, would be interrupted by campaigners. Many here are left disappointed by the lack of incident - even those in the room who continued talking during his speech.

The content was also characterized by lack of incident - by lack of key buzz phrases of this summit "digital divide" nor "digital solidarity fund" - on the lips of so many speakers at this summit. He said that investment in innovation must be a priority. I think others I have met here this week would argue that investment in the developing world should be higher up the list.

Cara Swift | 04:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

As Timms goes by... The UK government's top man at the World Summit - Stephen Timms - confirmed this morning what everyone suspected was the British attitude: stand well back and hang onto your purse strings. If Britain is going to hand out any more aid to poorer nations, Mr Timms suggested at a British Council event, it will be on its own terms and not through any of those spendthrift international agencies, thank you very much.

The most telling aspect of his speech, however, was that it appeared to be based entirely on a report written by the Institute of Public Policy Research, an independent think tank. Has the British government done no thinking of its own?

There is no question that Mr Timms understands the debate. He is certainly more informed than he was on December 1, when he took part in the IPPR meeting. The problem is that he appears to have consulted few, if any other sources since. Why else would his patter be so similar to the conclusions reached at that meeting?

There are two good reasons for this:
a) the IPPR meeting provided a very good bluffer's guide to the World Summit, and
b) the British government shares the American government's view that the World Summit is a talking shop for politicians and should not be considered a platform for solving technological issues.

So, Britain is cynical about the World Summit, but just how cynical? Daily Summit has obtained a leaked report of the IPPR meeting, from which Mr Timms seems to have formed the British government's policy.

See if you can spot the difference between the report and the statements Mr Timms made this morning:

IPPR: "While market forces will on the whole drive much of the technology forward it is necessary to clear some regulatory roadblocks."
Mr Timms: "It's absolutely essential we retain market dynamism."

IPPR: "Other concerns were that [a multilateral fund to help poorer countries build their digital infrastructure] was over-simplistic and would reinforce the culture of aid dependency."
Mr Timms: "The Global Solidarity Fund [a multilateral fund to help poorer countries build their digital infrastructure] would continue the aid dependency cycle."

The essence of the IPPR document (and thus probably British government policy) is that multilateral funds should not be trusted because no-one has adequately explained how the money will be spent. Worse still, cash could too easily fall into the hands of governments who would build their infrastructure in such a way as to limit freedom of expression.

However, it is not all doom and gloom. Britain is keen to provide funding on a more limited basis providing it promotes free market activity. There is only one caveat. It must first win the approval of the Department for International Development's notoriously prickly policy makers.

Jack Malvern | 04:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sing-along-summit. How do you make your press conference stand out from all the others?

Head of UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Ole-Henrik Magga decided to round his off with a song.

Without any backing, brave Mr Magga from the Sami reindeer hunting tribes of Northern Europe, trilled a song about a young reindeer meeting an early end in life.

Erin Dean | 03:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Access denied - we have photgraphic evidence of Iranian censorship of the net.

(Other Iran coverage, here, here, here and don't forget to tell us what you want us to ask Iran's President. And we think you'll be able to watch the press conference here).

Cara Swift | 03:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Indigenous ICT. The paradox of discussing computer access for people locked in a daily struggle to survive was pointed out by indigenous peoples today.

"People are sick, starving they are fighting day to day to survive. That is the situation in many indigenous communities," said Mr Ole-Henrik Magga,
chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. "It's not a question of whether we use a computer or not, because there are
no computers. It is not a question of seeing a television, because there isn't one."

"Now we are knocking at the door of the information society and the question is, will we get in?" said Mr Magga, a member of the reindeer herding people of Northern Europe.

His organisation was only invited to WSIS a couple of months ago - severly curtailing any influence they could have in the run-up to the summit. Ms Mililani Trafk, Permanent Forum Member for the Pacific ,said the references to indigenous peoples they had fought to get added to summit documents have been removed for the final versions.

But she said their struggle to access ICTs would continue as they could bring "housing, food, health services and peace."

Erin Dean | 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ugandan girl pleads for education. 15 year old Atwiine Cairo, representing the Girls' Education Movement , has confidently told why girls drop out of school in her country.

"Poor parents cannot afford the school materials, and the girls sometimes need to support the family." She added that girls can be sexually harassed at schools.

A brave individual is something of a rarity amongst the plethora of NGOs and government delegations here in Geneva...

"I dream of a country where all girls will be at school in a healthy environment where girls and boys are treated the same", she said.

Her speech was followed by one from a 14 year old boy scout from Pakistan..

Cara Swift | 01:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Thanks for the link today goes to Pejmanesque, Hootinan, seang.net, The Wireless, l'eta dell'innocenza, Blogs Canada, Tech Guru, Azar & her mirror, dDH, Voxpolitics, Open, eCuaderno, a preponderance of evidence, Iranian or Canadian, Kapingamarangi, Sobhaneh, Khorshid Hanoom, Metafilter and British Council Thailand

Jane Frewer | 01:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Girls Girls Girls, need education, education, education. That's the message from Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive eirector , launching their "State of the World's Children report 2004". She said the "leadweight holding back the progress of their own nations" is the sad reality is that 120 million children each year never see the inside of a classroom - and the majority of them are girls.

She also pointed out what a lot of people at WSIS seem to ignore - "ICTs cannot change people's lives if they can't read".

Cara Swift | 01:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Flying Bertie. Irish premier Bertie Ahern jetted in for a flying visit to address the plenary this morning - one of a few heads of state bothering to do so.

The Taoiseach squeezed the speech into a jam-packed day of engagements, which saw him flying out to Brussels less than two hours after he touched down in Geneva.

"We want to tap into the huge pool of ICT expertise in Irish industry in a new partnership in support of poverty reduction," the premier promised. "We will encourage and facilitate Irish ICT volunteers to use their skills in support of capacity building programmes in our partner countries. We will consult industry and Third Level institutions about new areas of research and ICT development. We will work to development new partnerships between Irish ICT companies and enterprises in developing countries."

He also described the digital divide in access to ICTs "as a symptom of a wider development divide". "Unless we tackle the root causes of global inequality and injustice, we will not bridge the digital divide, " he argued. "Fundamentally as we agreed at Monterrey, we need better governance, sound ecomomic management, more Overseas Development Aid, more debt relief, a fair world trade order and a relentless focus on the fight against HIV/Aids."

Claire Regan | 01:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Education on wheels. The rugged and beautiful mountains and of Cambodia are virtually inaccessible to the outside world - Education struggles to travel along the muddy potholed paths that only ox-cart and motorbikes can use.

But an organisation at one of the stalls buried among the hundreds of others at Geneva has penetrated the dense green heart of the Ratanakiri region.

With five little bright red motorbikes, they are taking e-mail and non-real-time internet access to the schools to, project organiser Neou Ty explained. The pilot scheme works through a receiver on the back of the bike, which picks up reception from a satellite dish.

According to Japan Relief for Cambodia: "Despite its charm life in the region is rough. During the rainy season, villages soon become inaccessible. Food and housing are inadequate. Disease is common and child mortality high. Most villagers lack even a basic education.

"No postal system, no telephones. People, goods or information could only be transported via ox-cart or motorcycle. The five motorbikes are a vital first step for these villages in gaining access to a new world of educational, medical and economic opportunity."

The charity has already built 14 schools and equipped them with a solar panel to run their computers. Now, e-mail and internet access provided from the bikes has connected the villages schools to each other and health clinics. But 3,000 villages in Cambodia don't have a school yet, let alone a computer.

Erin Dean | 01:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Don't Dump, is the message from Computer Aid International, which refurbishes unwanted computers and sends them from the UK to the developing world.

Tony Roberts, the charity's CEO, told Daily Summit that, this year, they have sent 12,000 computers to schools, women's groups and non-political organisations, mainly in Africa and Latin America.

The project has provided computers for blind children in the Caribbean and to the Kared-Fod Women's Group in Kenya.

In Zambia, their computers are used to inform the people about HIV/Aids, with a focus on at-risk groups, such as vulnerable children and commercial sex workers.

Next year, the charity hopes to double the number of computers it sends.

Cara Swift | 12:56 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The world currently has little defence against cyberterrorists, an expert has warned at WSIS.

"Anybody can be a cyberterrorist and hack into your system to find out how good the defences are. It is pretty scary," said Dr Eduardo Gelbstein.

Dr Gelbstein claimed the power cuts that swept the USA, Britain, Denmark and Italy in August and September last year were caused by a domino effect, triggered by the failure of ICT equipment that controls the US power system.

It was, he said, an alarming demonstration of how easily a cyberterrorist could bring life grinding to a halt by hacking into the relevant systems.

The solution? Lots of planning and security systems, apparently.

Erin Dean | 12:37 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

What summit security? Activists have managed to obtain an official pass for the summit using an assumed identiy and a fake plastic identity card - breaching the summit's supposedly tight security.

They are also furious that summit passes, which contain a radio chip, can be used to track the movements of delegates, with information stored in a central database - especially as the database could be transferred to the Tunisian authorities, who host WSIS 2 in 2005.

"The big problem is that system also fails to guarantee the promised high levels of security while introducing the possibility of constant surveillance of the representatives of civil society, many of whom are critical of certain governments and regimes.

"Sharing this data with any third party would be putting civil society participants at risk, but this threat is made concrete in the context of WSIS by considering the potential impact of sharing the data collected with the Tunisian government in charge of organizing the event in 2005."

David Steven | 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Competition! We've decided to give away our Tunisian goodie bag to one lucky reader. All you have to do is come up with the best alternative acronym for WSIS, and add it to our list of comments - we'll email the winner.

Two suggestions are..
We Suffer in Silence or West Suffocates its Subordinates.

Aaron Scullion | 12:10 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

Shashi Shocked. Kofi Annan's man for Communications and Public Information, Shashi Tharoor, got a bolt from the blue on Wednesday from Professor Annabelle Sreberny, visiting professor at SOAS, University of London.

She interrupted Shashi just as he was winding up a session called View from the Bridge and pointed out that none of the grandees on the bridge or the several voices called from the floor was female.

For the record the male grandees were:German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, the Chilean boss of the International Labour Organisation Juan Somavia and American armed forces consultant John Rendon - plus, on a big screen, BBC boss Greg Dyke detained in London by fog.

Claire Regan | 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ask the Iranian Government. Our post about Iranian censorship on the internet has created lots of discussion and comment. Later on Thursday in Geneva, Iran's President Mr Mohammad Khatami is scheduled to give a news conference.

We'll be there on the front row so please, use the comments box and send us the questions YOU would like us to put to him.

Cara Swift | 11:49 AM | Comments (59) | TrackBack

He gets it? "Up-to-down approaches based on concentration have often failed everywhere in the world," says Yahya Tabesh, member of the Supreme Council of Informatics.

"Internet itself has had an endogenous growth. Nobody is the owner. Anyone who has something to contribute, remains in the net, and others without contribution, will be erased...

"Issuing circulars and directions to cope with this phenomenon only increases the bureacracy. No real work...

"I remember that during the first Paqhlavi, there was a law that anyone who wanted to listen to the radio should request permission from the nearby police station. Now we have radios everywhere.

"What has remained now: only history that is laughing at us! Web is the same."

From the newsletter of Iran Civil Society Organisations Trainingn and Research Centre newsletter, which also has an article on Iranian blogs (covered by Daily Summit here).

I am sure our vociferous Iranian readership will have something to say about this...

David Steven | 10:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Thieves at work? Daily Summit receives an email from the people behind Terra Viva newspaper, accusing shadowy, and possibly Tunisian, figures of making off with huge numbers of their newspapers.

"A woman who identified herself as an architect from Tunisia took an estimated 1,000 copies "for her friends" and responded angrily when questioned...

"Two women stuffed plastic bags full of newspapers. They hurried away when questioned... Three people from Tunisia attacked [two of the papers journalists] saying that in the newspaper there were lots of lies about their country. Then tried to steal about three hundreds of copies."

Terra Viva has been quite critical of Tunisia - controversial host of WSIS-the-sequel in 2005. Perhaps this is a ham-fisted attempt to hush up criticism. Of course, it also excellent publicity for Terra Viva...

David Steven | 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

A new magna carta??? Lucio Stanca, Italian Minister for the Innovation and the Technologies, finally kicked off a delayed EU press conference (Italy holds the EU presidency and thus leads the European delegation).

This is the first world summit where there has been no need for late night and last minute negotiations to reach agreement. The result, he claimed, was "a magna carta for the information society."

Erikki Liikanen, European Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society, hailed the summit's commitment to the "enabling environment" - code speak for a light regulatory regime. "If you get the regulations right in a developing country, you have more competition. Price goes down and quality goes up."

David Steven | 09:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

We have a message from David Green, Director General of the British Council, who's been taking a look at Daily Summit, at an event where the head of the British delegation, DTI Minister Stephen Timms MP, was in attendence.

"I am delighted that the British Council is enabling people from around the world to participate in the debates emerging from this summit. This innovative bi-lingual English and Arabic weblog is an example of how the global information society works and of the exciting opportunities it offers in the future," Mr Green said.

dailysummit | 09:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Firm and unbending. "Studio 7 will die. It faces death. They think we are sleeping; we want to see where they are going," a typically subtle threat to media freedom from Zimbabwe Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo.

But Wilson Johwa reports that cyber cafes are doing well: "Devon, a cyber cafe assistant in Bulawayo, says there has been an upsurge in the number of people, "from school children to old men in their sixties", using the Internet. He says apart from checking mail and searching for jobs, users visit news portals and read online newspapers."

Great context for President Mugabe's speech yesterday.

The President claimed that the information society was built on the same platform and with the same technologies "through which virulent propaganda and misinformation are peddled to de legitimise our just struggles against vestigial colonialism, indeed to weaken national cohesion and efforts at forging a broad Third World front against what patently is a dangerous imperial world order led by warrior states and kingdoms."

In particular, he accused the United Kingdom and United States of "using their ICT superiority to challenge our sovereignty through hostile and malicious broadcasts calculated to foment instability and destroy the state through divisions."

Even the concept of a free-press should not be taken at face value: "The quest for an information society should not be at the expense of our efforts towards building sovereign national societies. Our national society does not exist to serve ICTs or information."

"Both must be instruments that serve our society as it seeks fullness through balanced development and self-determination. Both must express themselves within the parameters of our inviolate sovereignty represented by our democratic national will which expresses itself through our national laws, our national policies and our national institutions."

"On this we are firm and unbending."

David Steven | 09:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On the web, Andy Carvin blogs from the summit, Jeff Jarvis writes about how blogs are making possible the "first free and uncensored Iraqi news service," WIKIs continue to excite, Dana Blankenhorn says that the internet is too big (and encryption too powerful) for governments to control, KnowProSE is waiting for news from the Free Software Foundation,, Andy Oram demands some responsible journalism to untangle the spin about ICANN, and Microsoft's patch-free month lasted... one day.

David Steven | 09:02 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

In the news, Kofi Annan thinks "a lot of web-based information is simply not relevant to the real needs of people;" Protestors, Polymedia have finally found a new home (their old one was repossessed); and the EU describes the summit as "a new adventure" (rumours that Hollywood plans to make the film can probably be discounted, though).

Meanwhile, Egypt's Mubarak has used the summit to discuss Palestine with Iran's Khatami and co-operation with Bangladesh's Zia; regulators have said competitive markets are need to widen telecoms access; and Saudi Arabia has promised a "comprehensive national plan for the development of the sector of communications and information."

Finally, civil society detects backsliding, Sri Lanka wonders what it can gain from the summit, and Pakistan PM Jamali believes "the enormity of the digital opportunity is marred by a vast digital divide."

David Steven | 08:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 10, 2003

Habeas corpus? Tibetan demonstrators today added their voice to those protesting new and old methods of information control.

The Tibetans are furious that China is inside the summit, lobbying hard to commitments to enforcing freedom of expression - when Tibetans can be punished even for reading the UN declaration on human rights or listening to a radio broadcast in their own language.

"The world has to tell China," Tibetan activist, Nima Changten, told us, "that ifyou want to be a respected member of the international community, you have to live up to international standards."

According to Tibet News, China is in the midst of a new crackdown, "imposing restrictions on the use of internet and jamming Tibetan language foreign radio broadcasts (Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, Voice of Tibet). This new crackdown has created an atmosphere of fear and intimidation among Tibetans wishing to listen to overseas radio broadcasts.

"Electronic mail, news reports and postings from the Voice of America and popular chat rooms, which serve as forums for discussion on current issues, are monitored and filtered out... This summer, a massive internet campaign from inside China started to infect computer systems of Western supporters and Tibetans living in exile."

Changten, meanwhile, highlights the case of the Panchen Lama, arrested in 1995. At six years old, he was then the youngest political prisoner in the world. Since, there has been no news of the whereabouts of him or his family.

Daily Summit wonders how you say habeas corpus in Chinese...

David Steven | 08:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Africa's dicey situation. Africa fears being left behind as the world rushes into a high tech future, with a stunned audience hearing from the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) this evening, that New York has more telephone lines than the whole of Africa!

The Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo puts it bluntly. "We are still struggling to provide the basic necessities of life... While faced with these challenges, we are also confronted with the digital revolution. We are, therefore, placed in a dicey situation."

"Almost everyone in the developed countries has access to ICTs, whereas in sub-Saharan Africa, overall fixed line teledensity is about 1 to 130 inhabitants while internet, computers and television are available to only a handful of elites," he added.

Earlier, Senegalese strongman Abdulaye Wade had raised hopes of the emergence of a new concept of digital solidarity. But the Nigerian president seemed more downbeat, his baritone voice conveying the sad message that there appears to be a lack of political will to tackle a widening digital divide. He called, again, for a Digital Solidarity Fund, as "a practical measure for redressing the digital imbalance."

It was not all bad news. The President enthused about the strides which he says Nigeria has taken in catching up with the rest of the world. An independent telecoms regulatory is in place, which "has led to increased foreign investment as well as the intensification of competition. within the past four years, fixed telephone lines have increased from about 300,000 lines to 720,000 while mobile telephones increased fro m less than 50,000 to about 2,500,000. Direct foreign and domestic investment in the sector amounts to about four billion dollars."

More on this from Andy Carvin...

Oghogho Obayu | 08:12 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

In WSIS news, the gender caucus wants a fund set up to help women use information technologies; the Linux community is showcasing an open source translation system (the Economist explains why this matters); and others are noticing the US's strange defence of Status Quo.

David Steven | 07:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

UN believable. No money-guzzling bureaucrat is worth his attache case these days if he doesn't belong to an organisation with an acronym. Before you settle on yours, however, make sure it hasn't already been snaffled by someone else. Here is a handy guide to the 56 acro-fetishists attending the World Summit...

AIBD
full name: Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development
not to be confused with: American Institute of Building Design

APT
full name: Asia-Pacific Telecommunity
not to be confused with: Association for the Prevention of Torture

ASEAN
full name: Association of South-East Asian Nations
not to be confused with: Aslan, the lion from C.S. Lewis's books

ATU
full name: African Telecommunications Union
not to be confused with: Arkansas Technical University

CERN
full name: European Organisation for Nuclear Research
not to be confused with: Age Concern, a charity for the elderly

CTA
full name: Centre Technique de Cooperation Agricole et Rurale
not to be confused with: California Teachers' Association

CTO
full name: Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation
not to be confused with: Cato, Inspector Clouseau's assistant in the Pink Panther films played by Burt Kwouk

CITEL
full name: Inter-American Telecommunication Commission
not to be confused with: Harvey Keitel, an American actor

CEMAC
full name: Communaute Economique et Monetaire de l'Afrique Centrale
not to be confused with: Crisis and Emergency Management Centre, Belgium

ECA
full name: Economic Commission for Africa
not to be confused with: Edinburgh College of Art

ECE
full name: Economic Commission for Europe
not to be confused with: Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECLAC
full name: Comision Economica para America Latina y el Caribe
not to be confused with: with Exlax, the bowel-purging medicine

ESCAP
full name: Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
not to be confused with: the Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen

ESCWA
full name: Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia
not to be confused with: Executive Service Corps of Washington

FAO
full name: Food and Agriculture Organisation
not to be confused with: Falco, the germanic pop star who came to fame with Rock Me Amadeus

IAEA
full name: International Atomic Energy Agency
not to be confused with: Tarzan's cry

ICRC
full name: International Committee of the Red Cross
not to be confused with: International Cosmic Ray Conference

IEAD
full name: not sure. Most likely the Information And Emergency Aid Department
not to be confused with: Igreja Evangelica Assembleia de Deus

ILO
full name: International Labour Organisation
not to be confused with: ELO, the 1980s band the Electric Light Orchestra

ISESCO
full name: Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
not to be confused with: UNESCO

ITC
full name: International Trade Centre
not to be confused with: Independent Television Commission

ITU
full name: International Telecommunications Union
not to be confused with: International Triathlon Union

ITSO
full name: International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation
not to be confused with: Information Technology Student Organisation

RITLA
full name: Latin American Technological Information Network
not to be confused with: Rizla cigarette papers

UNAIDS
full name: United Nations programme on AIDS
not to be confused with: adenoids

UNCTAD
full name: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
not to be confused with: what a mathematician says if you punch him while he's doing sums

UNCSTD
full name: United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development
not to be confused with: STDs

UNDP
full name: United Nations Development Programme
not to be confused with: underpants

UNEP
full name: United Nations Environment Programme

UNESCO
full name: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
not to be confused with: Tesco, the British supermarket

UNFIP
full name: United Nations Fund for International Partnerships
not to be confused with: failure to go to the gym

UNFPA
full name: United Nations Population Fund
not to be confused with: a sound made by a Bavarian oompah band

UNHCR
full name: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
not to be confused with: UNCR, the United Nations Common Room at a hall of residence at Queens University, Ontario

UN-HABITAT
full name: United Nations Human Settlements Programme
not to be confused with: Habitat, the furniture shop founded by Sir Terence Conran

UNICEF
full name: United Nations Children's Fund
not to be confused with: Cif, the detergent

UNIDIR
full name: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
not to be confused with: Uni, the annoying unicorn from the children's cartoon Dungeons and Dragons

UNIDO
full name: United Nations Industrial Development Organisation
not to be confused with: a doo-doo

UNIFEM
full name: United Nations Development Fund for Women
not to be confused with: a femidom

UNISDR
full name: United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

UNITAR
full name: United Nations Institute for Training and Research
not to be confused with: an evil character from the children's cartoon He-Man

UNMIK
full name: United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
not to be confused with: Mick Hucknall, the ginger-haired singer from Simply Red

UNNGLS
full name: United Nations Non Governmental Liaison Service
not to be confused with: Friedrich Engels

UNOCHA
full name: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
not to be confused with: Gotcha!, the less than sensitive headline used by the Sun newspaper when the Royal Navy sank the Argentine warship the Belgrano

UNOG
full name: United Nations Office at Geneva
not to be confused with: Noggin the Nog

UNOPS
full name: United Nations Office for Project Services

UNRISD
full name: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

UNRWA
full name: United Nations Relief and Works Agency
not to be confused with: Niggaz With Attitude (NWA), a rap band formed in Compton, California in 1987

UNU
full name: United Nations University
not to be confused with: a type of Fiat car

UNV
full name: United Nations Volunteers

UPU
full name: Universal Postal Union
not to be confused with: Apu, from the Simpsons

WHO
full name: World Health Organisation
not to be confused with: The Who, the band that included the maniac drummer Keith Moon

WIPO
full name: World Intellectual Property Organisation
not to be confused with: wino, a persistently drunk man

WMO
full name: World Meteorological Organisation
not to be confused with: Worldwide Missionary Outreach

WTO
full name: World Trade Organisation
not to be confused with: World Tourism Organisation

Jack Malvern | 06:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Where's the alcohol? After dutifully attending the signing of the African, Caribbean and Pacific - European Union Joint Position on Information Society for Development as promised, I felt somewhat mislead when not a single cocktail, olive or tiny paper umbrella was to be seen.

The signing was unusual at the summit as the room was full with more people queuing outside. And the outcome of its five pages and the historic moment? A call for more talks...

Erin Dean | 06:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The blind address the world. With hands on the braille and an unsteady voice, Mrs. Kicki Nordstrom, the president of the World Blind Union, sought to draw the sympathy of the world leaders at WSIS today.

Nordstrom praised what she called an "open attitude" among governments to incorporate the disabled into the mainstream of information society.

As the world's leaders delivered their speeches, she received the loudest ovation of all, for these moving lines "I can't take away your printed materials now like everyone will do here today because I cannot read them...matters of the disabled have always been left in the hands of God, charity and superhuman beings...our abiding hope now is that you will do better for us after this summit"

Nordstram is in Geneva to represent to represent five billion civil society members and she minced no words, advocating that "new roles" should now be considered which allows civil society to participate in the formulation of ICT policies for the disabled and the disadvantaged.

"We cannot but have hope," she said. "That is what we live for...and now, the international civil society bureau has started engaging in coherent dialogue with various governments and coordinate interests of civil society movements"

Oghogho Obayu | 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mugabe speaks to WSIS. We live in a false and failed information society, where ICT's are used to impose global hegemony and dominance on the part of rich nations of the North, the Zimbabwean President has just told WSIS, in an impassioned speech.

Introduced by the red-haired, female President of Latvia, wearing a striking green suit, Mugabe clearly had his recent battles with the Commonwealth uppermost in his mind.

He didn't waste this opportunity to lambast the British and the colonial past - and those who now, he believes, use their control of the information society to promote "hostile and malicious broadcasts calculated to foment instability" in poor countries.

E-governance and e-education require "a sovereign national state whose preoccupation is its people first and foremost" - not the needs of the white warrior states (eg, the UK, the US, and Australia) who are using their technological superiority to drive through a "dangerous imperial world order."

It was a powerful piece of oratory and a hard act to follow - as the Head of Government of Liechtenstein discovered.

Cara Swift | 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Countdown to Mugabe. Mugabe will speak in just 15 minutes. And the media is clearly excited. Chairs had emptied as the Presidents of Latvia, Cape Verde, and Gabon gave their speeches. But people are filtering back into the room slowly but surely.

Daily Summit has stayed the course and will bring you news of what Mugabe has to say - as he says it.

Cara Swift | 05:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Mugabe attacks autocracy. As we wait for Robert Mugabe to deliver his speech (things are running late here), here are his thoughts on UN reform.

"At a time when citizens everywhere are pressing for a greater say in national governance, it is imperative for us as Heads of State and Government to seek, in turn, a fairer representation through the democratization of multilateral organisations... What is good for the goose must surely be good for the gander.

"The present autocracy in global governance must be challenged stoutly so all nations, big or small, have equal say and equal power in the way we govern world affairs."

David Steven | 05:02 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Modern day missionaries? The Irish and Swedes teamed up today to launch the UN's ICT Task Force's Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative. The initiative will be piloted in Bolivia, Ghana, Namibia and India between now and Tunis 2005, but run from Dublin.

"We've always been seen as missionaries with a love of education and knowledge and a willingness to bring it around the world," said Brendan Tuohy, Secretary General of Ireland's Ministry of Communication.

Claire Regan | 04:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Al-Jazeeran persecution? The treatment of Al-Jazeera correspondents came under the spotlight today, with Al-Jazeera journalist, Abdul Kaddah, talking live to a side meeting from Baghdad, claiming that he and his colleagues were under constant pressure from coalition forces.

Reporters are arrested, and some are still detained, on a regular basis, he said.

Managing director, Wadah Khanfar, spoke of the criticism Al-Jazeera receives from America.

The station has been accused of being agents for the CIA, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, he claimed. But the channel still represent the voice of the Arab world, he said, opening up real debate for the first time.

Erin Dean | 04:10 PM | Comments (1)

Thanks for the link today goes to Earth-Info.net, Globe of Blogs, University of Washington, Computerworld, Official site for Geneva, WSIS? We Seize, Veritas Online, Open Democracy, Human Rights Network, Ol'Man No Sword, Stop Censoring Us, Ad Usum Delphinorum, Pressepapiers.net, Cyberculture, Feetfirst, Bear Droppings, Network Games, Buzz Machine, APC, Ideas Bazaar, Nigeria Net, Blogzine, TVE, Blisspix, One World TV, Indymedia Switzerland, MzOSS and Oregand

Jane Frewer | 04:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

And the winner for the most confusing piece of jargon so far goes to:

"Following the adoption by the ACP-EC Council of Ministers of a Joint paper on the World Summit on Information Society (doc ACP-CE 2130/03) on 16 May 2003, which invited the ACP Secretariat and the European Commission to reflect on a possible joint ACP-EU Summit Initiative to be submitted to the Joint institutions for consideration, the Commission presented a draft ACP-EU Declaration on Information Society and Development to the ACP Working Party."

This is the appetising decription of a WSIS meeting today at 5pm. The only understandable bit is that there is a cocktail party at the end. I'll let you know what happens...

Erin Dean | 03:54 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Rules of the game. The opening session is over - and so begins the first plenary session, where government representatives have 5 minutes to have their say.

On their screens they have a succession of coloured lights to let them know when their time is up. It was also explained that a different set of lights would work for observers (they only get three minutes.) The rules are spelt out very clearly - as if it matters...

As the first speaker on the stage, the Finnish President Ms Tarja Halonen, a deluge of guests rose from their seats and left the room (despite clear instructions not to leave seats) - including the President of Senegal, Mr Abdoulaye Wade, who left the room conspicuously surrounded by his grand entourage.

Daily Summit is sticking it out though and will bring you more.

Cara Swift | 03:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In philosophical mood, Nitin Desai, Kofi Annan's special adviser to WSIS, commented in a press conference:

"It's all relative. When I was young nobody in my village had used a telephone."

Erin Dean | 03:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Scrum down. All is peace and harmony in the world, or so the Swiss president seemed to think as he read out his preposterously tedious speech. (It was one of those "peace is good, war is bad" speeches for which the United Nations is renowned.)

He might have thought differently had he been at the other end of the hall, where technocrat turned against bureaucrat as a scrum formed at the entrance.

Government officials swore in a hundred different languages, with one delegate offering a clearly discernible cry of "stronzo bestiali" as he was trampled underfoot. Now that's what I call freedom of expression.

Jack Malvern | 02:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

On the web, Glenn Reynolds accuses the human rights community of doing too little to fight internet censorship, while our own Aaron Scullion is moonlighting for the BBC, writing a summit diary.

David Steven | 02:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Let a million speeches bloom - His Excellency Mr. Pascal Couchepin, President of the Swiss Confederation, fresh from re-election, has kicked off a couple of days of speeches. He urged the world to bridge the digital divide - arguing that "if the rich countries do not keep their promises, they will plunge poor countries into despair."

Kofi Annan has now taken the floor, claiming that English-language websites are, at times, crowding out local views...

David Steven | 02:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Video diaries. One World TV are publishing a series of WSIS video diaries on their website.

Aaron Scullion | 02:06 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Are you sitting comfortably? If you get a queasy feeling upon entering the main hall at the World Summit, it might not just be because of the childish drawings projected onto the wobbly screen at the front. The seating plan requires a degree in Kremlinology to negotiate.

To settle most arguments, the seating plan is mainly based on the schoolroom system of alphabetical order (although presumably delegates will not be allowed to move desks to be near their friends in case they distract one another). This is a tremendous boon for states listed between Bahrain and Burkina Faso, who get to sit in the middle of the front row, but not such wonderful news for Singapore and Zimbabwe, who have to sit at the far extremes of the hall in seats that are the equivalent of being sat next to the lavatory in a restaurant.

A worse snub goes to Palestine, which as a troublemaker has to sit in the back row with all the dunces like the British Virgin Islands and the Military Order of Malta (which inexplicably gets its own seat in addition to the Maltese government's place between Mali and the Marshall Islands). It should not feel lonely, however. The row also contains an astonishing 58 supranational agencies, which we'll get to in a little bit...

Daily Summit would like to extend a warm welcome to East Timor's only representative, who asked its reporter to take a photo of him at his seat.

Jack Malvern | 01:54 PM | Comments (1)

Business has been clearing up the ICANN confusion - but bemusing me further.

At an International Chamber of Commerce press conference, ICC boss Maria Livanos Cattaui said "internet governance doesn't exist" - but then implied that she thought it should do.

It's a three step argument. Step one: ICANN doesn't, and shouldn't , govern the internet - "it's a very sophisticated directory." Step two: there are lots of complex "public policy" issues that someone needs to deal with (porn, spam, intellectual property etc). Step three: some mechanism is needed to increase co-operation in this area.

OK. But what mechanism? A "multi-stakeholder forum," a "platform," but something that stops short of an "organisation". I think.

David Steven | 01:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Mugabe is in town and due to speak this afternoon - we'll keep you posted.

David Steven | 01:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The internet fuels child sex tourism but can also combat it, according to international children's organisation Terre des Homme.

"A pornographer can go to Thailand and film pornographic actions, go to a cyber cafe and send the digital images to his own e-mail address," said activist Christa Dammerman. "Then when he goes through customs he has no pornographic pictures on him. Travellers are doing this more and more with mobiles and laptops."

Websites such as Please Disturb can help. It has picked up 103,000 visitors in the two weeks when it launched in 1999 and now receives 300-400 per day.

The speakers offered no tangible evidence, however, on just how effective it has proved in tackling the flourishing worldwide industry.

Claire Regan | 01:08 PM | Comments (0)

Tunisian PR. Further to our earlier post, the defiant Tunisians have firmly set out their 'stall' with a large and colourful stand, just outside the main hall, advertising their 2005 summit.

Erin Dean | 01:02 PM | Comments (0)

Optimism reigns. Well, cautious optimism anyway. An hour before the official opening of the summit, Daily Summit has been mingling with the thousands - who are themselves mingling around the hundreds of civil society stands - asked a handful for their view so far.

"I am relieved that the Declaration and Action Plan have arrived at last on the eve, and that they broadly express concerns about global society", one man said. Another was particularly glad with the recognition of libraries in the information society.

One woman told us that she was pleased to see so many organisations here, and that she believed there is a reasonable focus on using IT for development. But she added that she "would like to see the conference acknowledge that we need to address how people who can't get access to the internet can get connected".

Cara Swift | 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

Free goodies.

The Tunisian government are marketing themselves heavily in Geneva, almost as if they're trying to gather goodwill for the next stage of the Summit. Daily Summit has just been handed a large goodie bag, with a free t-shirt, hat, a badge and a key ring. As well as a CD of photos of Tunisia. Can't see how free stuff is going to make this go away.

Aaron Scullion | 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

US backtracking? At UN meetings, agreement is a relative term. Even though draft summit documents have been agreed by all countries, there's still room for wriggle room - or in UN jargon, "interpretative statements."

An interpretative statement allows a state to express reservations about parts of an agreement it is unhappy about (and does not intend to hold to!). They caused chaos at the end of WSSD, where no-one really knew whether last-minute US attempts to water down the text on corporate social responsibility had been successful. The signs are that they plan something similar here in Geneva...

Tucked away in any other business a few minutes ago, the US delegation checked with the summit chair that provision had been made for entering interprative statements in the record. It has replied, the organisers. But text must be submitted by Thursday 6 o'clock.

Daily Summit wonders which reservations the US wishes to express...

David Steven | 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The prickly dispute over the digital fund rumbles on (here, here, and here).

Nitin Desai, Kofi Annan's special adviser to WSIS, has suggested that a voluntary fund will be set up. Daily Summit asked him who had agreed to this. "All 192 countries," he replied.

Erin Dean | 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

Live hands? US journalist, Jeff Jarvis is not here - but we thought we knew what question he'd be asking the US Ambassador (and head of the US delegation to the summit) at today's press conference (and here) . So we asked it for him.

Daily Summit: "Ambassador Gross. There's a lot of anger back in the US about what are seen as predatory attempts by the UN to wrest control of the internet from ICANN. Jeff Jarvis yesterday said the UN would have to prise the internet out of 'dead American hands.' How do you reassure the folks back home that the internet is safe?" (laughter)

Ambassador Gross: "The documents reflect very much where we are on that subject. Under the Secretary-General's good offices, a study will be done to look at a variety of issues - but only a study will be done. That is the only action that is contemplated. There is really nothing other than that that will come out of these documents.

"Of course, the issue of how the internet will evolve is something that many people can play a role in today. I am always a little confused by statements [that suggest the US has exclusive control over the internet]. The way that it works now is that it is multi-stakeholder. There's a direct role for governments through ICANN and other processes. There's a direct role for individuals to play from around the world.

"In addition, it's important to realise that ICANN is a very important organisation, but it is merely one part of a much larger puzzle. It does certain technical things, but there are many things it doesn't do. It is a misperception on the part of many that ICANN is internet governance."

David Steven | 11:44 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Status quo rocks. America temporarily adopted a new anthem this morning as its ambassador David A. Gross reacted to the new diluted declaration of principles, upon which all negotiations at the World Summit will be based.

He sounded, to the untrained ear, like the chorus of the rock band Status Quo's Rockin' All Over the World. To paraphrase the ambassador: "I like it, I like it, I like it, I like it, I la-la-la like it."

Whether Mr Gross is a fan of Rick Parfitt remains unclear, but he is certainly in favour of the status quo (ie the power to control the future of the internet lies almost exclusively in American hands).

The failure of the new Draft Declaration of Principles, published at the eleventh hour last weekend, to address the issue of who governs the internet has made him very happy indeed.

"These are important documents, although they are not legally binding," Mr Gross noted with some satisfaction at the American press briefing. "They are important expressions of political will."

The ambassador was responding to a question on whether the US would renege on any agreement that was made in Geneva (as it did by withdrawing unilaterally from the Kyoto agreement on climate control, for example).

His answer was deft. While not actually saying the World Summit was a waste of time, he pointed out that the US was not bound to do anything decided by other governments at Geneva. America is listening, but more in the manner that a chiropodist listens to his bunion-afflicted patient than a chairman listens to his shareholders.

"It would be incorrect to see a political summit as a way to decide technological issues," he added with a diplomatic boot in the teeth to those who would like to see states have a say in the future of the internet. "A summit like this is [designed] to draw attention at the highest political level."

In any case, when it comes to the resolutions made at this conference, America has little to fear in terms of regulation of the internet. Thanks to a political stand-off at pre-summit meetings, that topic is off the agenda until the Tunis conference in 2005.

And what of the surprisingly low turnout of the largest, most technologically literate country in the world? What does the fact that America sent the same number of government officials as Gabon, and fewer journalists than Bangladesh, say about America's commitment to the World Summit?

"I don't think it says anything about our commitment," Mr Gross told Daily Summit. "Unlike other conferences where you have to be part of a delegation to participate, that is not the case here. If you walk around the conference centre I expect you'll find as many Americans here as any other nationality."

America is, Mr Gross seemed to be saying, rocking all over the world.

Jack Malvern | 11:40 AM | Comments (1)

Digital arts. UNESCO have been presenting their DigiArts destination, which aims at promoting arts and music through communication technology. Their online tutorials on digital music are quite interesting, but, again, for part of the presentation, the equipment wasn't working. Oh, and, when promoting an AV project like this, it's a good idea to connect the presentation up to some speakers.

Aaron Scullion | 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

US pledges millions at WSIS. The economic development agency of the US government, OPIC, has announced a $400 million finance facility in the telecommunications and IT sectors of 152 countries - this is on top of $5 billion of total support already spent. But this will be a private-public mechanism - NOT part of a digital solidarity fund.

The Daily Summit asked OPIC President Dr Peter Watson if support was dependent on a country's record on human rights. "We always respect international labour standards, environment and human rights as a condition to all of our projects" he said. So, we asked about Iran, which censors the internet. "We are not currently authorised to do business in Iran. Out of 152 countries, Iran is not one of them".

Cara Swift | 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

So what do we know about John Marburger, George Bush's science and technology adviser, and the man the US has just announced will speak for them at the summit (he replaces Mr Who)?

According to this profile, Marburger - an authority on nonlinear optics - is a natural shmoozer, whose influence has grown in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Apparently, "he volunteers that he is a lifelong Democrat. He is a supporter of nuclear power. He believes marshalling public support is vital to any civic enterprise. He tells associates he is an "incurable optimist," an outlook that the president shares...."

His strong points should overcome the obstacles [to gaining influence] - especially if Bush believes his new science adviser can strengthen or add new insights to the administration's battle against terrorism. Marburger's public relations skills will be invaluable.

"He's very friendly, very personable, a gentleman," said Connie Kepert, a member of the citizens' advisory council created by Marburger. Kepert told Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, "He really gave people the feeling that he really did care about their concerns." And Charles Shank, director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California said recently, "His real strength is as a communicator. There's a whole range of people who are great scientists but few who are great scientists and great communicators, too."

David Steven | 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

On the web, Will Wilkinson urges us to "get over stipulating ideal markets and ideal states, and work harder at understanding how even partially functional markets and states get to be partially functional, as opposed to fully non-functional, in the first place" (via Reason).

Meanwhile: Instapundit wants the summit to listen to Daily Summit's growing thread on censorship in Iran, Vox Pop is cross with Microsoft, Lextext is disturbed by African spin on the ICANN fudge, MobileWhack likes Hello World, and there's a worm in the money machine.

David Steven | 08:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More productive? An earlier Daily Summit piece on productivity led reader Chris Stokes to comment: "If we are indeed going to hear a lot about how ICTs are going to boost productivity, I do hope we hear first that the IT productivity paradox has been solved once and for all... the fact remains that over the period when investment in ICTs has shot up (since say the 60s), productivity has refused to follow suit and insisted instead on stagnating."

Maybe this McKinsey Global Institute study, reported in the Harvard Business Review, is relevant. It claims that a "new economy" does exist in the US - but it behaves differently from how many people think.

The authors base their findings on "a large body of statistical and experiental evidence... in-depth case studies of 20 industries, eight in the United States and six apiece in Germany and France... [and] extensive interviews with executives in each sector."

The US has recently enjoyed strong productivity growth in 1990s, the study claims, at a time when "in many industries, technology spending doubled as business wove computer and communication systems more deeply into the fabric of their operations."

But there was little correlation between productivity growth and IT investment. In fact most of the gain (76%) came from just six sectors - retailing, securities brokerage, wholesaling, semi-conductors, computer assembly. Other sectors saw little return for their investment in IT.

So what's going on? According to Diana Farrell, McKinsey Global Institute Director, highly competitive sectors did well, while more regulated ones did poorly. When competition was fierce, managers were forced to innovate, creating new products and services, adopting with new business processes, and introducing new technologies:

"There are many ways to innovate, of course," Farrell writes, "but during the 1990s information technology proved to be a particularly powerful tool. We found three reasons why that was so. First, IT enabled the development of both attractive new products and efficient new business processes. Second, it facilitated the rapid industrywide diffusion of innovations. And third, it exhibited strong scale economies - its benefits multiplied rapidly as its use expanded."

Successful IT investments differ greatly from industry to industry - indeed, Farrell says that "no general-purpose application had much effect on productivity." Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, for example, generally produced disappointing results, while highly-specialised applications peformed much more effectively.

Managerial and technological innovation must also be pursued in tandem. "Walmart, for instance, would have gained little from its investments in innovative information systems if it hadn't also refined its relationship with suppliers and dramatically simplified the logistics practices at its distribution centers."

"A critical dynamic of the new economy - the real new economy - is the virtuous cycle of competition, innovation and productivity growth," she concludes.

Daily Summit doesn't think the issue is settled, it's a data point...

David Steven | 08:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

'Domain Keys' the answer? Yahoo announces a new plan to get rid of spam, where emails will have to prove they've come from a real address. (Thanks to Online Blog).

Aaron Scullion | 07:29 AM | Comments (4)

Giant SMS. The Hello World project (which we told you about four weeks ago), is gathering a lot of momentum - and has even made it into Wired. We were in a taxi driving through Geneva Tuesday evening, and saw the sight for ourselves - it's pretty impressive. The giant neon green text messages scroll down the length of the water stream, hundreds of feet up in the air, and can be seen right across the city centre.

Aaron Scullion | 07:12 AM | Comments (0)

WSIS webcasts. If you're not with us in Geneva, there's a number of ways to see what's going on. The General Debate, as well as key press conferences, will be webcast and archived on the WSIS site. The World Electronic Media Forum (running parallel to WSIS) is also broadcasting its main sessions on the web.

If you come across any other good WSIS webcasts, publicise them by adding the link in the comments section below. Thanks.

Aaron Scullion | 06:35 AM | Comments (0)

Ireland - a country transformed by the power of information technologies, has launched a plan to help ensure those technologies are used to fight poverty in the world's poorest countries. Irish minister Tom Kitt said his country will "respond to requests for advice and information on the policies which underpin our move into a knowledge economy", in advance of the Irish PM's WSIS address on Thursday.

Aaron Scullion | 06:25 AM | Comments (0)

In the news, the Financial Times previews the summit, and highlights the Swiss Government's success in getting almost all groups "inside the tent" (although, frankly, the strain within the tent is starting to show). The Guardian promotes the role of the UN in a leader devoted to WSIS - but claims that "in this case it (the UN) starts with a clean sheet and an ocean of goodwill. Really?

Also, Wired News reports that Kofi Annan "reaffirmed media freedoms and the rights of ordinary people" in his address to WEMF. Plus Taiwan berates the UN for kow-towing to China, Open Democracy debates the summit, Botswana an ICT leader, and Switzerland is an honoured host.

Aaron Scullion | 06:03 AM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2003

An intense war between a bunch of girls. If you're tired of all this seriousness - why not take time out for a SISSYFIGHT - "an intense war between a bunch of girls who are all out to ruin each other's popularity and self-esteem."

Grab, scratch, tease, cower, tattle and lick your lollipop until you and your new best friend are the only two left standing. Along the way, pause to wonder how a game so simple - and one now bereft of sponsors or funding (god knows who pays the bandwidth bill) - can support such a vibrant and tight-knit community.

SISSYFIGHT was created by Eric Zimmerman - an academic as well as a game designer. Zimmerman started with a set of abstract principles - "a low technology barrier; a game that was easy to learn and play but deep and complex; gameplay that was intrinsically social; and finally, something that was... smart and ironic" - and built the game from there.

After a prototype played with Post-It notes around a board room table, a beta version was launched online with a tester community who eventually became "the core of the game community, easing new players into the game's social space".

Strikingly, that social space has survived the demise of Word.com - the site that commissioned and paid for the original version. Sissies now chat on over a dozen bulletin boards - the extracurricular board has over 10,000 posts discussing a world outside sissyfight, for example. They enforce an honor code, shun cheats and trolls, and regulate disputes. They also get together in real life - at so called sissy meats and I wouldn't be surprised if there are sissy couples (with sissy offspring) bitching at each other around the world as we speak.

So what's the meaning of this world that's built up round a gaggle of vicious cartoon avatars? If you've never played, you'll have to join in to find out... And if you meet a sissy, do what I do - cower!

David Steven | 10:30 PM | Comments (44)

First day... The summit hasn't even started properly yet, and already we've reported on tough security, Microsoft bloopers, meetings that were cancelled and cut short, technical failures (and again), as well as Robert Mugabe's impending visit , and Kofi Annan's first WSIS address.

We've got three big days ahead - so hit the comments, link, and tell all your friends. Go on - you know you want to!

Aaron Scullion | 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

Not just a UN face. Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information for the UN, joined Daily Summit fresh from his platform session accompanying his boss Kofi Annan.

Over a shared tin of mints he offered his reflections on media and violence - a main topic today (Dec 9) for the World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF).

The Bombay-born writer and biographer of Nehru, who has a life and a website apart from the UN, reflected on the need to balance frank portrayal against the dangers of inciting further violence.

"More information in generally better than less," he said.

Does it serve the public better to be as candid as you can be? "I think it does," said the Under-Secretary General; a final word on the subject that Daily Summit can easily live with.

Claire Regan | 08:32 PM | Comments (0)

On the web, Jeff Jarvis is not a happy man. "Instead of worrying about America and the Internet -- since we made it happen, after all -- maybe the U.N. should worry instead about Iran censoring the Internet. Yes, the U.N. would be a fine organization to run the technology future of the world. No f'ing way! They should pry the Internet out of our dead American hands." (Via Instapundit).

Meanwhile, our post on Iranian censorship has attracted a blizzard of comments. KnowProse wonders who the confusion benefits, and says WSIS technical is on the wrong side of the digital divide (protests from Veni Markovski on this).

David Steven | 08:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Right to dignity? Images of the rotting carcasses of murdered Africans left lying in the street were shown at the World Violence World Media panel discussion today.

"The pictures of these bodies were shown without restraint," said Professor Serge Theophile Balima of the University of Burkino Faso. "If they were American, there would have been a code of practice preventing that but not when you are dealing with the corpses of Africans."

His words echoed the debate which raged after the bodies of American soldiers, captured and killed by Iraqis during the war, were shown on Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi television. Western television channels had no qualms about showing the bodies of Iraqi victims, of course.

Jonah Goldberg brings another perspective, though - furious that US networks were no longer showing pictures of people leaping to death from the World Trade Center: "Well, I want to be disturbed. I say: Let's bring back the horror. Let's remind people what started this whole mess."

Claire Regan | 07:59 PM | Comments (1)

Looking for the good in bad news. Does reporting negative news reflect the world we live in or is it simply lazy journalism?

That was the weighty question debated at the Images and Voices of Hope workshop. Guest speaker, Jacqueline Berg, a freelance journalist from the Netherlands, accused journalists of reinforcing prejudies and fuelling fear - with the public becoming desensitised to human suffering as a result...

"The way people see the world is through our cameras and what we write," Berg told Daily Summit. "The impact of that is enormous and I don't think that the media realises the cause and effect of what it portrays.

"They shape people's beliefs and values but also fuel their fears and reinforce prejudices. If we only focus on the things that separate people, then we encourage animosity.There is so much bad news that people have become immune to it and the suffering of our fellow human beings. Life has become a movie and news is presented as entertainment."

She also called for the media to actively challenge stereotypes. "If prejudices are not denied then they are automatically confirmed," she argued. "If the media does not clear up these misunderstandings, then they are taken for granted."

A powerful corrective? Or a sentimental distraction? You decide...

Claire Regan | 07:48 PM | Comments (3)

Pulp nonfiction. Despite being regarded as a green and eco-friendly country, we are outraged to report that the Swiss have utterly neglected their duties in one respect.

In half a day (before things even start properly) the summit has gone through a fair-sized rain forest in hand-outs, press releases etc, and we've seen just one person collecting paper for recycling in a place big enough for 13,000 participants.

Plus there appear to be no recycling bins for public use and the staff don't have a clue about how you would go about it.

Despite this summit being about the future of cyberspace, the vast majority
of those here seem to prefer hardcopy. Why?

Erin Dean | 07:33 PM | Comments (5)

A classic "yes, but" press release, from the International Trade Union Movement. ICT jobs are good, but not the ones currently being created, they say.

"Millions of workers are being drafted into forms of new economy employment that are clearly unfit for the information age," says Philip Jennings, General Secretary of Union Network International. "But the question of action to ensure that fundamental workers' rights are respected has been side-stepped."

David Steven | 07:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Mr Who? The list of speakers in the General Debate is now on the WSIS website. Each country is, in theory, represented by the head of the national delegation.

Except... the US and the UK don't appear to have decided who's going to speak on their behalf. At 1900 CET - both countries are being represented by the same, nameless delegate - 'His Excellency Mr. '.

The only other country in this situation is Honduras.

Aaron Scullion | 07:07 PM | Comments (0)

Amour propre? It's not only journalists who are being treated like chewing gum on the sole of a security guard's jackboot. Lynn St Amour, president of the Internet Society (a body that plays a significant role in deciding the future of the net) was told that she could have 15 minutes of her hour long press conference because the timetable had been reorganised. Half way through her talk she was given throat-slitting signs from the back of the room telling her to stop and make way for the next press conference. Daily Summit spoke to one angry President...

Lynn St Amour is not at all keen on the ITU, who are, of course, the UN agency hosting this summit. "The internet was developed on academic principles of sharing information. The ITU's historical model shows that it doesn't have the same principles," she said. "Governments look towards regulatory methods to overcome problems, but that is not appropriate for the internet."

She is counting her lucky stars that the issue of who governs the internet has been all but dropped from the summit's agenda, although she won't relax until the conference is over.

So much for lofty issues. What can we do about spam? "I receive between 500 and 600 e-mails a day, and 50 per cent of that is spam," she said. "It's something that will always be with us. The forecast is that spam will increase until it comprises 95 per cent of all e-mail. My hope is that filtering agents will continue to get smarter and save us from it, but they will never be able to eradicate spam."

Jack Malvern | 07:07 PM | Comments (0)

Furrer solution or final solution? We reported that the Swiss government's information chief Marc Furrer had hammered out a compromise on the digital solidarity fund - based on Western leaders agreeing to look into the idea.

But the President of Senegal Abdoulaye Wade has just been laying on the line here at WSIS his view - the fund must be more than looked into, it must happen. He's asking for more clarification from sceptical countries who want to emphasise existing mechanisms, and wants a defninition of what these are, and what they are achieving.

Cara Swift | 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

Radio Ga-ga (2). We've talked about the role of radio at WSIS, but now we've discovered that Africa can expect a radio invasion, of sorts.

The radio may not be the top of the range kit, these days - but it is certainly a mighty weapon for rural folks in Africa hungry for information.

The glittering Geneva conference centre, the Palexpo where leaders from across the globe are gathering for WSIS has innumerable stands for ICT stakeholders but anyone who shares the vision of a people oriented communications policy for Africa will not fail to notice the combined back-facing-back stand(s) of the World Association of Community Radio And Broadcasters (AMARC), Catalysing access to ICT,s in Africa (CATIA) and PANOS.

Using the links of Inter world Radio (IWA), this team plan to have more community-based radio stations in Africa and they are serious about this.

Sameer Padania, network development manager with the Inter World Radio told Daily Summit "We believe that radio is the heart of information society". According to her, proliferation of rural radio has been pretty difficult in the past because "English is our medium but surely you know that you need local languages for this".

PANOS is currently building a network of stations in Africa after the Ugandan success. It is also working with two FM stations in Nigeria.

Speaking on the plan for Africa, the vice president of AMARC (north America) Elizabeth Robinson said the company is stepping up its media exchange programme throughout the continent. Its international office is based in Johannesburg, South Africa and is currently maintaining community radio stations in Mali, Senegal and some other countries in southern Africa. "Our plan now is to encourage more African countries to have community media", she added.

For Freda Werden, executive producer of Women International News Gathering Service, CATIA, AMARC, and PANOS working together now represents a positive sign for an African rural revolution.

Oghogho Obayu | 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

Kofi Annan speaks. The Daily Summit has been watching the UN Secretary General address the World Electronic Media Forum. He's been talking about the need to bridge the digital divide, and spoke of the power of the electronic media to educate and arouse the conscience, but stressed that the paradox is that it still doesn't reach millions around the world.

We've got his full address if you click on the following link.

He said the digital divide is not just digital, but reflects wide disparities in freedom, wealth and power, and ultimately in hope for a better future - and added that the delegates "are here together in Geneva to put power and paradox together and come up with a plan as partners".

---

Text of Kofi Annan's speech to the World Economic Forum at WSIS, Tuesday 9th December 2003.

"Ladies and Gentleman, we have just seen the voices and reports from around the world of the power and paradox facing us all. As producers and consumers of electronic media in the information age, the power is clear to educate and entertain, to inspire and inform, to sound the alarm and arouse the conscience, to bring people in places closer together, to shine light on injustice in the world. In the Information Age, electronic media are among the most important vehicles of peace, progress, and solidarity.

And yet there is a paradox. Electronic media may seek to be everywhere but there are many millions of people in the world who it still does not reach. Many do not have electricity let alone electronic media. Others are too poor to buy televisions, radios or satellite dishes. And barriers are not only technical signals, are broadcast in a limited number of languages. In some countries it is not legal to receive signals from around the world. Some programming can make people in rich countries more sensitive to the plight of the less fortunate.

But ownerships provoke envy and resentment on the part of the deprived. Media have also been used in Nazi Germany and in Rwanda, as elsewhere, to disseminate hatred via stereotyping and propaganda. And the consolidation of media ownership has sparked concern about lack of pluralism.

The digital divide is not just digital. It reflects wide disparities in freedom, wealth and in power, and ultimately in hope for a better future. We are here together in Geneva to put power and paradox together and come up with a plan as partners. The goal is not more information in more cases, but an information society open and inclusive in which knowledge can pass all people and serves a cause of improving the human condition.

The media are fellow stakeholders in that work, and freedom of the press is essential if you are to fulfil that vital role. It is one thing for governments to establish regulatory policy and framework, but when they go further down the slope to a censorship and harassment, all of us - and potentially all our rights are imperilled. The summit must reaffirm this fundamental freedom.

Information technologies have brought us into a new age, but also to a threshold, with the explosion of knowledge and capacity, we have more than ever before the ability to reach development goals we have never had before in goals we have sought in many, many years. Like those who witnessed the dawn of the Industrial Age, people around the world are being given their first glimpses of exciting new achievements ahead. All over the developing world, as antennas and satellite dishes sprout across a landscape - some of them placed there in defiance of the authorities - we can see the immense thirst for connection. Let us show that we are listening and we are going to help them fulfil their dream. Thank you very much."

Cara Swift | 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

"Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh....." We interrupt this post to bring you the sad news that David Steven, hyperactive blogger and aged resident of this site, has been incarcerated in a Swiss asylum, following a serious - and we fear irreversible - breakdown.

Steven was dragged away by a UN-seconded Swiss soldier, frothing at the mouth and clutching his beloved laptop to his chest. "All I want is an internet connection," he was heard to scream. "We're supposed to be at the heart of the internet revolution but everything's [bleeped] and no one has a [bleeping] idea what's going on."

Steven arrived in Switzerland lunchtime today after a short flight from Southampton in the UK. Witnesses said he appeared "jaunty" as he walked from the airport to Palexpo, the rather ugly conference centre where the summit is being held.

However, this veteran of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, who had survived Joburg's basic (but serviceable) dial-up connections, soon found the following:

Problem#1 - The security cordon is incapable of coping even with the few delegates who have already arrived. There are many many men with guns, but very few x-ray machines. Nor are there even trays in which to place coats/phones/cameras etc. - small cardboard box lids are used instead. Expect to wait 30 minutes or so today (and presumably many hours tomorrow).

Problem#2 - Switzerland's electric sockets are not compatible with the rest of Europe's - the UK's are different again. Adaptors are on sale - outside the security cordon. So there's a queue to buy the adaptor and another to get back into the summit.

Problem#3 - The wi-fi network is free, according to the media centre's information desk - but it isn't working. Try the wired LAN. Which isn't working either. "We don't know anything about computers here," says a lady, politely. "Why don't you phone technical support?"

Problem#4 - Technical support is dealing with overload by picking up the phone and slamming it straight back down. Persistence pays and only 4 (international) calls later, a man answers. "There's only two of us and we have to set up computers for the whole summit. The LAN may not be working, but I don't have time to help you. Why not call back tomorrow?"

Problem#5 - A breakthrough! Wi-fi isn't working, because wi-fi isn't free! It's only 200 swiss francs (170 US dollars or so)! And the cards are sold... outside the summit perimeter. So... there's a queue to buy the card... and another to get back into the summit.

Apparently, the final straw for the poor fellow was when he overheard the woman selling the cards telling the man in front of him that the wireless network wasn't working very well. "But it's not our problem. If you're unhappy, call Swisscom."

Steven is not expected to make a recovery. Please feel free to add any messages of sympathy for him - or his 9 now-destitute children - in the comments below...

David Steven | 05:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

The media workshop has been shut down by Geneva police, claims protest group, WSIS? We Seize.

Apparently, the group had been rented a building by a tenant who had no legal right to do so. "Subsequently, ten members of the Geneva police force arrived, outfitted in riot gear, demanding identification papers from all participants. At this time, the approximately fifteen participants inside the location have been informed that they will not be permitted to leave unless they bring all of their equipment with them. The locks of the building are currently being replaced, and no re-entry will be allowed."

David Steven | 05:24 PM | Comments (0)

Big bridge needed - as "the digital divide is massive". So says George Sciadas, a researcher who helped launch The Global Information Technology Report at WSIS. He added the divide "is closing at a hugely slow pace", which will take generations.

ICT's could stretch the gap - rather than breaching it - between the haves and have-nots, according to the report.

The have-nots in this case are Chad, Ethiopia, the Central Africa Republic, Eritrea, Malawi, Myanmar and Bangladesh, who bring up the rear of the list.

The discussion that went with the launch was called 'Who Is Winning and Who Is Losing in the Information Revolution'.

The upbeat chat from the panelists that it was a "win win situation" for every country fell flat in the face of the hard evidence.

Erin Dean | 04:44 PM | Comments (1)

Leopard changing spots? So, we were listening to experts discussing ways of bridging the digital divide... and one says "breaking monopolies" is a way forward.

The speaker was Jean-Philippe Courtois, senior vice president and CEO of Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa. You know, Microsoft.

He was cagey when we asked him to explain, and said when "the market was opened up" for telecoms companies in monopoly states, it seemed to be beneficial.

Erin Dean | 04:40 PM | Comments (1)

Mugabe storm - the summit is agog at the news that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has travelled to Geneva to attend WSIS - reports say there's confusion over whether he intends to address the summit. He's able to attend because the travel ban that stops him going to EU countries doesn't cover official UN functions. Plus, of course, Switzerland isn't in the EU...

Daily Summit has been reporting Mugabe's astonishing impact on last week's Commonwealth summit - an event he didn't even attend (see also our interview with Peter Tatchell, the man who has twice tried to arrest the Zimbabwean leader).

We also covered Mugabe's appearance at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Joburg, where his speech was greeted by laughter and cheers from members of the world's media.

David Steven | 02:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Ironic! The Daily Summit is currently sitting in a World Electronic Media Forum envelope event where we are all waiting with bated breath for Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations to address the room of distinguished guests and media.

They have just shown a video featuring Finland and Honduras as extremes of the digital divide, and what difference information technology can make to people's lives. When Christine Ockrent, one of France's most famous presenters, then cued in a live video link discussion from Venezuela - to demonstrate the wonders of technology - the line went down... and with it three disappointed faces in Caracas.

Cara Swift | 01:59 PM | Comments (1)

Aboard the Marie Celeste. Granted, some of the meetings advertised here seem boring, but you would have thought that the speakers would turn up, at least. Not so, according to one exasperated volunteer standing outside the Labour and Information Society meeting. "Speakers haven't been turning up to about 25 per cent of the meetings," she said. "I think it's because they are having trouble getting through registration. Hopefully it will be better tomorrow."

With queues getting longer by the minute, we think this is optimistic.

Speakerless meetings (no speaker turning up within half an hour of the scheduled start) have so far included:
Labour and Information Society
Software Libre para una Sociedad del Conoc Igualitaria y Multicultural

Anyone wanting to name and shame meetings that bear a passing resemblance to the Marie Celeste should comment below....

Jack Malvern | 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

Last minute agreement. Further to our earlier post, Marc Furrer, Swiss Secretary of State for WSIS, has just arrived, with PrepCom President Adama Samassekou - the latter resplendent in a blue turquoise robe. Mr Furrer apologised for his tardiness and for not having a copy of the draft text - so fresh is the ink on the new agreement.,

Key revelation - Mr Furrer said that the developed nations have agreed "at least to look into" the possibility of a global fund. Meanwhile the developing nations will each proceed with their various funds organised on a regional basis.

Cara Swift | 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

ITU Sec-Gen speaks. Mr Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General of the ITU, has been talking to the media. He's insisted that he wants to turn the Draft Declaration of Principles into a reality, and announced that the final agreement on the last contentious pre-summit issue - the digital solidarity fund - "is to be made very soon - so this summit will not be so disastrous".

Daily Summit asked him if the international fund being discussed would be dependent on their practices of human rights and freedom of expression, or will the money go to them free of charge? "I don't know at all" was his response.

He went on to explain that there are two trains of thought at WSIS. One is that many countries already have existing mechanisms to help bridge the digital divide and those mechanisms should be used to their full extent - and so they believe that if the creation of a new fund is necessary it should only be done after studying all existing mechanisms. Others argue that the creation of the new fund is necessary anyway, and this is a voluntary system - in fact some countries have already pledged money.

Cara Swift | 12:53 PM | Comments (3)

Gun count after 30 minutes at WSIS? Already in the dozens due to the various heavies, soldiers in full camouflage (not sure where they expect to find any trees in the sprawling concrete venue), and armed police.

Even as you approach the building armed guards peer down from the roof. And queues snake back from ranks of full body and bag scanners.

Erin Dean | 11:46 AM | Comments (3)

Arrival! The Daily Summit team has made it to Geneva! Given that the conference doesn't really get going until Wednesday, registration is pretty easy, right now, but give it a couple of hours and I think the queues may get a little out of hand. The Wi-Fi connections are working - more to follow on this - and I confidently predict that 'delegate using WI-FI laptop' will be the most popular snapshot of the summit. Our team has already been snapped twice by Japanese photographers..

Aaron Scullion | 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

Cyber Oscars - A Cambodian project connecting disadvantaged young people to the global market place has won the top award in this year's Cyber Oscars.

Digital Data Divide is a Cambodian-US company providing data entry services to US companies. It has turned over 140,000 US dollars and benefited over 80 Cambodians under the age of 25. We'll link to details of other projects honoured when the details go online...

David Steven | 08:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 08, 2003

The otherwise unclubbable. The Declaration of Aso Rock was swamped by Zimbabwe: the only live issue of this year's CHOGM (read all posts here). Just the same, Secretary General McKinnon's spokesman was buoyant afterwards, "The Commonwealth has been vindicated. We have stood firm on the Harare Principles."

President Obasanjo warned against talk of winners and losers, then proceeded to blame John Howard, Australian PM and Troika chair, for his role in the Zimbabwe issue...

Howard was in the air heading back to Australia and unlikely to reply. But like British PM Tony Blair, he cannot be said to have lost much in what is a faraway dispute. The real trouble lies for Mugabe's neighbours.

Mozambique's Chissano, a member of the committee of six, broke ranks almost as soon as the decision was announced. Along with Mbeki of South Africa and Mwanawasa of Zambia he's said to be furious. All are members of SADC, and it's here we may see the fallout from today's messy end.

McKinnon keeps his job after a fumbling attempt to unseat him by eleven out of the fifty four nations. Obasanjo gains greater influence as Chair-in-Council, and with some expectation that he may open up channels to Mugabe.

And CHOGM? We came expecting news on development, democracy and the Doha trade talks. Not only us, but the Nigerian press has been full of little else, while the business and people's forum all hosted lively debates.

But the heads of government produced little evidence that they had considered anything other than Zimbabwe, while quartered in the president's villa at Aso Rock. After all, can any of the Aso Rock's stated declarations (pdf) be achieved by what is, in Mugabe's words, little more than 'a mere club'?

The summit has depressed many observers. Is the Commonwealth a serious organization able to make a tangible difference - both locally and globally. Or is it an international society for the otherwise unclubbable?

Mick Fealty | 06:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Information? Society. We don't mean to go on, but the key summit documents still haven't been updated on the WSIS website, after the weekend's key negotiations - despite our calls and emails to the press office..

Update 2200 CET: The documents are now available. Thanks to Robert from the ITU for the link.

Aaron Scullion | 04:42 PM | Comments (6)

Daily Summit has written about the sheer number of government, NGO and media delegates attending WSIS - but Forbes has a different complaint. Too few business delegates:

"As of yesterday, the Geneva WSIS registered nearly 13,000 participants from 174 countries. More than 9,000 are from states or non-governmental organizations. Just 636 are from businesses. Business members include such companies as might be expected like Microsoft, IBM and Time Warner, as well as multinationals like Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola and McDonald's, not particularly known for their roles in the information society."

David Steven | 04:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Iranian censorship? Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, now based in Canada, reports that access to Google's cache has been blocked by Iran's biggest ISP - a way of stopping Iranians getting at Google's copy of sites that censors are preventing them from seeing.

Daily Summit asked an Iranian resident to try out the Google cache from a couple of ISPs (though not the one Hossein mentions). They were serving cached pages with no problem - but we'd be interested to know what you are finding if you're surfing from Iran...

Iranian Minister of Communications,Ahmad Motamedi recently said that Iranian ISPs should only block sites on an 'offical' blacklist.

But without access to a definitive blacklist, it is hard to tell which sites are being blocked legally or illegally. Furthermore, Reporters Without Borders says the Minister warned ISPs to install filters.

BBC Persian Service told us that certain sites, mainly news sites or opposition groups based abroad, have been blocked for some time. Radio Farda (also known as Radio Liberty) and the website for Voice of America were blocked at some point, for example.

Cara Swift | 04:30 PM | Comments (295)

AIDS in Nigeria: "Vivian Nyoko wears a low cut white top and tight denims as she perches on a dirty plastic chair outside a bar on a potholed rubbish-strewn dirt road in central Abuja, trying to lure clients...

"Of course I am scared of Aids. But what am I to do?" Nyoko says, sipping from a beer bottle... "Of course I must make sure that men wear condoms when we have sex. Some men don't want to wear a condom, but then I fight them - I am not stupid, I am not going to kill myself."

Read the whole thing.

David Steven | 02:59 PM | Comments (2)

CHOGM news - the summit's communique has been issued...

...but everyone's still talking about Mugabe. ABC news says CHOGM "limped to a close on a sour note of crisis and recrimination," the Age says Zimbabwe's withdrawal from the Commonwealth "stunned weary Commonwealth officials," while Channel News Asia points out that many countries, such as Singapore, have refused to give any opinion at all on the Mugabe issue.

The BBC's Paul Reynolds argues that many small countries have taken an anti-Mugabe stance, though some Africans are infuriated by the summit's outcome:

"The anger in southern Africa will no doubt persist. The memory of Robert Mugabe as the freedom fighter who overthrew the white minority regime of Ian Smith remains strong...

"But the attachment of some of the Commonwealth's smaller countries, especially those in the Caribbean and increasingly in Africa, to democratic values cannot be underestimated either."

There are some non-Mugabe stories... the President of Ghana has been talking about an African single currency; Commonwealth Foundation director, Colin Ball wants visa-free travel between Commonwealth countries; while Zenith Bank CEO, Jim Ovia has tried to focus attention on poverty...

David Steven | 02:44 PM | Comments (0)

In WSIS news, the Register and BBC catch up on progress on negotatiations (but you read that here first).

The excellent SciDev.net, meanwhile, reports efforts to get governments to support "initiatives that offer free access to research results published in the electronic versions of scientific journals."

You can read SciDev's coverage of the summit here - or divert to the BBC where SciDev director, David Dickson explores the digital divide, concluding:

"One of the most significant achievements of the WSIS could be an international commitment to significantly increasing the effort dedicated to research on ICTs for the poor.

This could have the same appeal as calls to shift the emphasis of medical research towards often-neglected tropical diseases.

Finally, more effort is needed in providing high-quality content directly relevant to the needs of the developing world.

The great promise of ICT is that it can deliver such information in a timely and efficient manner.

But that is only helpful if useful information is there to be delivered, and presented in a way that allows potential recipients to find it easily."

David Steven | 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

ICANN's first strike. The Register reports (scroll to the end) that ICANN is gearing up for the battle at WSIS by unveiling a trendy new site.

Erin Dean | 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

Stop the press. So, we know how many people each government is sending to the World Summit, but how many of their citizens know they are going? Daily Summit has compiled a league table of journalists accredited to each country.

Does it say something about the Malaysian government's attitude to free speech that it is sending 137 government officials but not one journalist (according to offical lists)?

Scroll down for table.

Switzerland is unsurprisingly top of the table with an army of 300 journalists (are there any Swiss hacks not going?), but it is the French, British and American results that are some of the most intriguing.

France has got a weasel up its trouser leg over the English language's supremacy on the internet and is clearly planning something.

Meanwhile the UK, a country whose government has so little interest in WSIS that it is only sending a junior minister, has a surprisingly high number of journalists attending. You certainly wouldn't have guessed from the advance coverage WSIS has received in the British press.

And the US? For somewhere that has more journalists than any country on the planet 20 doesn't seem that many...

Perhaps more interesting still is the absence of any journalists from Malaysia, despite having the largest government delegation with 137 officials. The only other country to have such a discrepancy between its government and press delegates is Gabon, where civil servants outnumber journos by 33 to 1.

And on a more quizzical note: who would have thought that Bangladesh had such a strong interest in the information society?

300 Switzerland (compared to 48 government officials)
70 France (108 gov't officials)
40 United Kingdom (34 gov't officials)
33 Bangladesh (61 gov't officials)
27 Tunisia (21 gov't officials)
26 Italy (36 gov't officials)
23 Germany (58 gov't officials)
20 United States (66 gov't officials)
18 Lebanon
17 Azerbaijan
17 Pakistan
16 Romania
16 South Africa
15 Japan
15 Nigeria
13 Iran
11 Cuba
11 Ghana
10 Belgium
9 Kenya
9 Netherlands
7 Cameroon
7 Canada
7 Morocco
7 Sri Lanka
6 Egypt
6 Spain
5 Portugal
4 Austria
4 Botswana
4 Haiti
4 Mozambique
4 Russian Federation
4 Senegal
4 Togo
3 Brazil
3 Costa Rica
3 Croatia
3 Dem. Rep. of the Congo
3 Ethiopia
3 Finland
3 Iraq
3 Nepal
3 Rwanda
3 Turkey
3 Uruguay
3 Zimbabwe
2 Algeria
2 Armenia
2 Colombia
2 Denmark
2 Gabon
2 Philippines
2 Thailand
2 Uganda
1 Argentina
1 Belarus
1 Benin
1 Bosnia and Herzegovina
1 Bulgaria
1 China
1 Czech Rep.
1 Ecuador
1 Georgia
1 Hungary
1 India
1 Kuwait
1 Latvia
1 Mexico
1 Moldova
1 Namibia
1 Serbia and Montenegro
1 Sierra Leone
1 Solomon Islands
1 Sudan
1 Sweden
1 Tanzania
1 Trinidad and Tobago
1 Yemen
1 Zambia

Jack Malvern | 12:27 PM | Comments (3)

US and Israel murdering journalists, claims BBC reporter. The US and Israeli governments are actively targeting journalists, according to a senior BBC reporter. Nik Gowing claims that the media is now seen as "a real time military threat that on some occasions justifies our removal by the application of deadly force."

Journalists are killed as part of a deliberate policy that is carried out without remorse, he believes. Dead reporters are of "barely marginal concern" to the governments, while US and Israeli action "is already encouraging others to believe they can get away with targeting and eliminating journalists."

Writing in the Royal Institute of International Affairs' World Today, Gowing suggests that US targeting of the media is rooted in a "massive overall change in culture and attitude to international law, especially by the US administration" that follows the terrorist attacks of September 11.

There is a sharp clash between "assertive, robust policies and doctrine to guarantee national survival for a country at war by all necessary means" and "the new technological capacity of news organisations to report, question and challenge from any location."

"The presence of a camera or reporter bearing witness, often with politically inconvenient information about dreadful events at a critical moment, can frequently be seen as a direct threat to be swiftly removed... The argument for neutralising any media presence is compelling and uncontestable."

Gowing also discusses a "huge growth" in attacks on the media by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), quoting the International Press Institute which believes there is a "concerted strategy by the Israeli army to control reports on the recent surge of hostilities in the region." International outrage at Israeli behaviour has not led to restraint. Instead it has "hardened" Israeli policy towards the media.

Gowing highlights the case of Mazen Dana, a Reuters TV cameraman, killed in Baghdad on August 17. He quotes unnamed "journalist colleagues" as confirming that US troops deliberately fired on Dana, knowing he was an unarmed journalist ("they saw us, and they knew about our identities and missions"). Dana had previously been targeted by Israeli forces, he claims. He "had already been hit sixty times by what he and witnesses said was Israeli Defence Force (IDF) targeting in the West Bank."

Gowing discusses two further cases (the death of ITN reporter Terry Lloyd and the bombing of Al-Jazeera's office in Baghdad) where, despite initial reports, "tragic bad luck" appears to be "the ultimate explanation, however sinister the immediate assumptions."

However, he concludes that "the growing overall picture is that some governments believe they can target anyone in the media who bears witness to their operations and reports them. Worse still, they believe they have the right to do so without investigation, apology or charging those military personnel involved with a possible war crime."

David Steven | 11:38 AM | Comments (3)

Thanks for the links today goes to Tim Blair, Instapundit, WSIS Newsfeed, TeleDynamics, i Hoder, E-cademy, Daniel W Drezner, Citizen Smash and more British Council sites.

Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia Herzegovina, Italy, Malaysia and Morooco

Jane Frewer | 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More bureaucrats, more blaggers. Daily Summit's league of ligging covered nations attending WSIS. Now, the ITU newsroom tell us that almost 13,000 people will be in Geneva for the summit.

Astonishingly, 663 Non-Governmental Organisations will be represented by 4898 people - that's 7 persons per NGO. This compares to 174 countries who are sending 4574 representatives - 26 people per country delegation!

Cara Swift | 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Mugabe withdrawal. Despite protestations from the New Zealand premier that "the Zimbabwe government's decision to withdraw is not a disaster for the Commonwealth," much of the press pack is obsessing over the issue.

"This is a disaster for Mbeki" said one South African journalist. "He's basically been in there trying to save Mugabe's ass, but he's ended up looking stupid."

Australian PM John Howard was sounding conciliatory, though: "It's always regrettable when a country decides to leave, but nothing is permanent. There is no reason why Zimbabwe won't come back into the Commonwealth".

Mick Fealty | 10:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Bureaucrats or blaggers? How can you tell which countries are taking the World Summit seriously? (Or, at least, which countries will be taking home the most goodie bags?) Daily Summit presents its very own League of (ligging) Nations.

Malaysia comes out on top with a magnificent 137 delegates, while Cameroon, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, San Marino, Seychelles, Sierra Leone and East Timor share the wooden spoon with just one representative apiece.

Special mention should go to Nigeria for including a driver in their delegation, and to Samoa for sending a dancer. Finally, Gabon, for a population of 1,321,560, are sending 66 delegates - one for every 20,000 citizens!

The full delegate list can be found here.

TOP 10
1. Malaysia 137
2. Romania 116
3. France 108
4. Canada 101
5. Cuba 88
6. Japan 85
7. Russia 80
8. Iran 79
9. Nigeria 69
10. Gabon 66

ONE DELEGATE WONDERS
Cameroon 1
Djibouti 1
Eritrea 1
Kazakhstan 1
Liberia 1
Palau 1
Papua New Guinea 1
San Marino 1
Seychelles 1
Sierra Leone 1
East Timor 1

Full league table

137 Malaysia
116 Romania
108 France
101 Canada
88 Cuba
85 Japan
80 Russian Federation
79 Iran
69 Nigeria
66 Gabon
66 United States
61 Bangladesh
60 Thailand
59 Ireland
58 Germany
50 Finland
48 Switzerland
47 Spain
45 Ukraine
44 Ghana
41 Egypt
40 Mozambique
39 Portugal
38 Austria
38 Pakistan
37 Sweden
36 Italy
36 Korea (south)
35 Azerbaijan
35 Kyrgyzstan
34 Norway
34 Sudan
34 United Kingdom
31 Belarus
31 Brazil
31 Greece
31 Mali
31 Zimbabwe
30 Argentina
30 Jordan
29 Bulgaria
29 Indonesia
29 Senegal
28 Bolivia
28 Rwanda
28 Saudi Arabia
25 Botswana
25 Israel
25 Netherlands
24 Kenya
23 Mauritania
23 Samoa
22 Armenia
22 Belgium
22 Congo
22 Cote d'ivoire
22 Czech
22 Slovakia
21 Phillippines
21 Tunisia
20 China
20 Serbia and Montenegro
19 Comoros
19 Croatia
19 Morocco
19 Qatar
18 Macedonia
18 Oman
18 Poland
18 Turkey
17 Iceland
17 Kuwait
17 Lesotho
17 Zambia
16 Angola
16 Benin
16 Denmark
16 Georgia
16 Lithuania
16 Venezuela
15 Brunei
15 Burundi
15 Latvia
15 Nicaragua
14 Australia
14 Chile
14 Singapore
14 Sri Lanka
14 Uganda
13 Bosnia
13 El Salvador
13 Gambia
13 Guatamala
13 Malawi
13 Mexico
13 Mongolia
13 South Africa
12 Ecuador
12 Estonia
12 Peru
12 Slovenia
12 Yemen
11 Mauritius
11 UAE
10 Andorra
10 Barbados
10 Colombia
10 Congo
10 Hungary
10 Iraq
10 Uruguay
10 Viet Nam
9 Algeria
9 Burkina Faso
9 Lebanon
9 Malta
9 Monaco
9 Nepal
9 Swaziland
9 Syrian Arab Republic
8 Cape verde
8 Luxembourg
8 Moldova
8 Namibia
8 New Zealand
8 Palestine
8 Uzbekistan
7 Jamaica
7 Madagascar
7 Niger
7 Togo
6 Bahrain
6 Korea (North)
6 Myanmar
6 Paraguay
6 Tanzania
6 Trinidad and Tobago
6 Vatican
5 Afghan
5 Bhutan
5 Cyprus
5 Guinea
5 Honduras
5 Panama
4 Belize
4 Central African Republic
4 Chad
4 Costa Rica
4 Ethiopia
4 Fiji
4 Haiti
4 Suriname
3 Cambodia
3 Libya
3 Liechtenstein
3 Micronesia
3 Vanuata
2 Albania
2 Laos
2 Maldives
2 Saint Kitts and Nevis
2 Tonga
1 Cameroon
1 Djibouti
1 Eritrea
1 Kazakhstan
1 Liberia
1 Palau
1 Papua New Guinea
1 San Marino
1 Seychelles
1 Sierra Leone
1 Timor-Leste

Additional reporting (counting) by Aaron Scullion.

Disclaimer - figures compiled by the Daily Summit team on Sunday 7th Dec - the list may have been updated since then, so feel free to let is know if your country's figure has changed!

Jack Malvern | 08:45 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

The Nollywood story - home video has revolutionised the film industry here. It's provided an alternative to the foreign dramas and soaps that still dominate network television. Daily Summit talked to Charles Ozoemena of the Vanguard.

"It started in the early nineties. The film which began the revolution was called Living in Bondage. It's the story of an ordinary man and his family. He does a business deal that results in the death of his wife. Her ghost comes back to haunt him. He has no peace until by the end the Church comes to his rescue.

Ozoemena argues, "it has established a recognisably African cinema with themes ranging through romance, friendship and family. In a country with an estimated population of 120 million the market is large. Nearly every home has a TV and video player. Even if they cannot afford to buy the films there are rental outlets in all of the urban areas".

The films are largely made in Lagos but the commercial city of Onitsha is the nerve centre for the distribution system of this flourishing industry. "Production values remain a long way behind the foreign imports" says Ozoemena, "but they are beginning to catch up and investing in the right technological materials. Some of the actors and actresses can earn up to 1.5 million Naire (6500 pounds) per movie".

While it may not yet have found a comfortable home within the mainstream, the Nigerian Film Board has not been able to ignore it. The films are now examined before general release, and pornographic or violent scenes excised. Classifications are applied. Many hope that within the next fifteen to twenty years it will close the gap with the film industries of the developed world.

Mick Fealty | 07:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Zimbabwe out? Last night the BBC reported Robert Mugabe's intention to pull Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth. Additional reporting from Barnaby Mason.

Mick Fealty | 06:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 07, 2003

A NZ radio journalist, sitting beside me, took these slightly undignifed photographs of this senior member of the New Zealand delegation. As a veteran of every CHOGM since 1989 he has his own description of the typical debate: full, frank and meaningless.

Mick Fealty | 08:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Zimbabwe, a decision at last. A committee (yes, another one), chaired by Jamaica, and with Australia, New Zealand, Mozambique and South Africa as members, has been mandated by the Commonwealth Secretary General "to encourage and facilitate progress and the return of Zimbabwe."

If 'sufficient progress' is made, the Heads of Government will be consulted on whether Zimbabwe should be allowed back into the club. There is no further detail - but it looks like an inelegant fudge to me. I'll try and get some reaction...

Mick Fealty | 07:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

In WSIS news, there's little interest in the summit in the Philippines, despite the country's role as an exporter of software professionals, while Israel and Jamaica are gearing up for the summit.

David Steven | 07:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CHOGM news: the Queen apparently cancelled her trip to Kano and the Kano Commissioner of Information believes Kano is being punished for being a 'sharia state'; while the panel considering Zimbabwe's fate may or may not be deadlocked; and Nasir Danbatta has an excellent round-up of Nigerian reaction to the summit.

"With the nation's currency value on an unprecedented downward slide, a missing N300 billion annually from the coffers of Nigeria's economic live-wire (the NNPC), hostile living conditions; a debt profile of more than 30 billion US dollars and the N1.5 trillion owed indigenous contractors, the amount committed to CHOGM may have merely added salt to injury," he writes.

"It is widely-believed that the ongoing CHOGM is just another jamboree," he concludes, "exerting further pressure on the country's economy, while the citizenry pay the price."

David Steven | 07:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On the web, the digital divide is 'little more than a marketing campaign for Internet service providers' and KnowProSE compares Trinidad and Tobago to Nigeria...

David Steven | 06:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Amnesty calls for Human Rights commitment Amnesty International pulled off the coup of holding a press conference in the Media Centre - civil society actors are generally keep well away from the press breifing areas. Their spokesman Ced Simpson called for CHOGM to agree that all member countries commit to setting up national Human Rights Commissions to monitor in-country Human Rights violations.

Mick Fealty | 04:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Agreement Reached? Reuters have reported that the path has been cleared for an agreement to be reached at WSIS - well almost. The spokesman for Marc Furrer, the senior Swiss government official who chaired the meeting told Daily Summit how they steered the delegates around the stumbling blocks.

Government representatives from almost 200 countries hammered out the sticking points and have come up with a draft text which they will recommend to the heads of each national delegation in Geneva. The Swiss acted as chair for the meeting and divided the meeting into strategic sub-groups in the hope of reaching agreement on the main issues i.e. freedom of speech, internet governance and security, and intellectual property rights.

The use of sub-groups seems to have been crucial, leaving Mr Furrer able to say he was "very gratified by how much progress has been made towards an agreed text". He hopes the one outstanding issue - the idea of a digital "solidarity fund" - will be sorted out at a further set of meetings planned for Tuesday morning.

We're pleased, but sceptical. Has China really agreed to incorporate articles 19 and 29 of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights in the WSIS Declaration of Principles? There have been so many disagreements up to this point, we wonder how so much has been overcome so quickly.

We look forward to seeing the new draft declaration when it makes it to the ITU
website (later on Sunday, apparently).

Cara Swift | 03:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Egyptian Perspectives - President Hosni Mubarak heads the Egyptian delegation to WSIS along with several delegations from the Middle East and North Africa. Cairo has gone a long way in ICT during the past decade but several problems still exist and some are saying it is not about money.

"WSIS comes at a crucial time as the development of international relations depends on abolishing barriers between nations that help communities to better understand each other", says Nabil Ahmed Helmi Dean of the law school, Zagazig University in Egypt.

Helmi stressed to dailysummit that abolishing these barriers resulted in a considerable flow of information despite efforts by certain governments to restrict it. He views WSIS as an "important step towards coordinating the flow of information and finding best ways to use ICT especially in developing countries and Arab ones. "

Helmi argues that the spread of information and communications technologies in the developing countries and the Middle East is closely linked to the question of money.

He explains that larger poor populations can not gain much from ICT unless there are real efforts to enhance the economic conditions in their respective countries. He cites the Egyptian initiative (pc for every student) as an example of governmental procedures designed to spread the use of computers.

Dr. Saad El-Din Ibrahim, founding director of Ibn Khaldun center for social and development studies and the controversial Egyptian human rights activist sees the initiative similarly but says that the Egyptian society is gaining from ICT through 15% of its population.

Ibrahim explains that this percentage owns satellite dishes or have direct contact with the internet and he calls it the "strategic minority". In an interview with dailysummit, Ibrahim acknowledged that the Egyptian society has a long way to go to benefit from ICT.

For him, "85% of the adult Egyptian population is deprived from information". Ibrahim notes that official newspapers in Egypt sell around 5 million copies and claims "that around 10 million adult Egyptians are reading newspapers which means there are large sectors of the society out of the information business altogether".

Accordingly, they do not have an exact opinion on certain issues and do not have a medium to even express their ideas. His words are possibly right but there are certain pages in Egyptian newspapers that are allocated to information and communications technology but it seems that the larger sector of the country is not reading because simply it cant afford or do not have the tools for buying a computer and knowing what it offers.

The Egyptian government has initiated a number of programs to enhance the awareness of young students regarding computers and embarked on an ambitious project to provide PCs to large number of schools.

But Dr. Kamal Mougheeth, a researcher in the Center for Educational Research, says "there should a be a system and a scientific measurable method to assess the accessibility of these students to ICT." He says that computers are installed in a limited number of schools but the major obstacle is that lack of information on everything. Mougheeth stresses the need for numbers on "how many computers are there in schools and homes".

As for the students, he says they are "willing to embrace ICT but they do not have time because of the hardships imposed by the educational system in Egypt." He concludes that even the" Ministry of Education seems to miss the ideology behind the information revolution and tend to view the computer only as a machine not as a world filled with opportunities."

He is right and people will not experience the endless bless of information and communications technology unless they are free to acquire information and taught in schools what is the importance of this information.

Ahmed Reda | 03:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Human rights portal "NigeriaNet is a powerful instrument that will give access to ideas and fight the battle for knowledge". Jack Straw, the UK's Foreign Minister launched a new online human rights project at the British Council in Abuja.

It's the result of a two year process. Karinne Sanders of the British Council, "we started from scratch and consulted with about three hundred NGOs. We've developed an online platform for people working in human rights all over Nigeria".

Web manager Toyin Oyenkenu, "it is a learning resource above all else. We have written guides on how to source and apply for agricultural subsidies. It also contains a comprehensive guide to legitimate Human Rights organization".

With original articles being added every fortnight, it is hoped that the site will become an important portal for Human Rights organisations throughout Nigeria.

NigeriaNet is a partner of the One World Human Rights portal.

Mick Fealty | 01:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Heard in the press centre - CHOGM = Cheery Holidays on government money.

Mick Fealty | 12:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Indigenous Tribes. Further to Erin's entry, there will also be representatives from the world's indigenous communities at the summit.

One of them, David Laughing Horse Robinson, is Chairman of the Kawaiisu Tribe in Southern California and he recently ran for Governor in the California, USA recall election. During the week he will be talking about the use of modern technologies in reconciliation movements, political lobbying and public education on indigenous issues.

Cara Swift | 12:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Blair speaks right now as the panel of leaders meets to decide the fate of Zimbabwe. One Independent on Sunday journalist reckons he knew the outcome last night.

On Sky TV Tony Blair insists that the impasse is not a black versus white issue and names Kenya, Ghana and The Gambia as being in favour of continued suspension. He could have included most sub-Saharan countries. If anything this is shaping up as a north versus south Africa problem, with a sprinkling of discontent from some of the smaller island states.

Last word on the Blair toilet story to Cathy Buckle.

Mick Fealty | 10:00 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Broadband tribes. A company that has brought the internet to some of the world's most remote communities is coming to WSIS - where they'll outline the impact communications technology has had on the health, education and economic development of remote indigenous Canadian communities.

The 25,000 indigenous Keewaytinook Okimakanak people are scattered in tribal communities across a huge swathe of Northern Canada. Tribes with 400 people were sharing one phone and the inhospitable landscape meant that the area was only accessible by plane.

But K-Net say that broadband technology has bought improvements such as medical services and education without people having to undertake arduous trips to urban areas. Around 25 per cent of medical diagnosis can be made over the Internet and children who used to have to board at school during term time can learn at home.

Find them in the Canadian Pavilion at the summit.

Erin Dean | 09:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Understanding CHOGM is not easy. According to one Commonwealth insider "it is increasingly difficult to explain to the outside world precisely what the Commonwealth is, does and can do."

In its final communique, the People's Forum stated that "the Commonwealth could play a powerful leadership role on issues such as development, security, and globalization, but only if its principles were to be most closely matched by practice".

But can it? One Australian delegate suggested, "there is more than a hint of truth in Mugabe's jibe that the Commonwealth is little more than 'a mere club'. The trouble is that now they have to prove to the rest of the world that it is serious".

The communique also hints at the frustration felt by some delegates, "the principles of transparency, participation and accountability must also apply to CHOGM itself. Civil society representatives have less access to these meetings than they have to meetings of the World".

However, the same Australian source suggested that this was a misreading of the nature of the beast, "If members of civil society want to make impacts on the leaders at CHOGM, the lobbying has to be done well in advance in order to get their concerns and agendas onto the programme".

But getting an agenda addressed here is not easy, even for the Heads of Government inside the retreat. The Australian delegation is one of the largest attending the Meeting, and was prepared to push for some breakthrough on trade, particularly in light of the breakdown of the WTO talks in Cancun.

But so far, according to Prime Minster John Howard, trade has not yet been discussed.

Mick Fealty | 09:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 06, 2003

Kofi comes home. As Geneva makes last minute preparations for this week's World Information Summit, being held under what's called the "High Patronage" of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the great man reminded the world - in a CNN interview with Inside Africa - that it was in Geneva he first joined the United Nations family as a project officer in the World Health Organization in 1962. That was the year of the Cuban missile crisis.

The Secretary General, who jointly with the U.N. itself won the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, credited his father and grandfather, tribal chiefs in Ghana, with teaching him some of the skills of conciliation. He made no apology for his non-combative style. "I do it my way", he said; "the U.N. has no army, it must win with the support of governments".

With so many WSIS issues unresolved, the Secretary-General and his team will need all his conciliation skills this week.

Andrew Taussig | 07:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

From Zimbabwe, mildly feverish reports of unilateral withdrawal proved to be no more than speculation. Still, it gave a little relief to the ennui pervading the media centre. The BBC's veteran foreign correspondent, Brian Hanrahan, was seen at the People's Forum today in search of a story, any story to pep the news, or lack of news, from CHOGM.

With the leaders in retreat at Aso Rock, the Presidential Villa, and public briefings few and far between, most hacks are happy the Zimbabwe issue has given them an line or two for tomorrow's papers.

I expected chaos and confusion. But in fact it's been rather stately and slow. If you miss the intermittant briefings by Tony Blair's soft spoken official spokesman, that's it. The well equipped briefing rooms (two of them) have yet to be fully worked. Maybe we'll get more on Sunday and Monday when the communique breaks and the delegates are released from their collective vows of silence.

In the meantime, it seems that any quote will do to beef out the column inches being sent home. New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark's annoyance at the absence of Zimbabwe from the Leaders' meeting is lept on with gusto. One UK journalist compares it to the time he spent in Qatar during the Iraq war, which was worse and for six weeks.

The Canadian Prime Minister Chretien was a hit and widely appreciated for the wit and humour of his floorshow. "They seem to be more open in direct relation to their lack of importance", remarked another. "The Bush Whitehouse is notoriously difficult, and extremely unleaky. Though the Pentagon is less so for some reason."

Mick Fealty | 07:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

More credit please. Vincent Del Buono, co-ordinator of the Access to Justice programme for the British Council, outlines how law reform can promote economic growth.

"Yes there are real problems here in Nigeria, but it also has the talents of its people and enough resources to turn things around. The people are natural entrepreneurs. They put a huge amount of energy into their small and medium sized enterprises".

"Most of the country's growth is based on oil. It creates good revenues but some also refer to it as the 'curse of oil'. The few industries that existed here before the oil boom, such as an extremely vibrant textile industry in the north, have all but disappeared."

"One of the most important things to note about Nigeria is that no one uses credit cards. In effect we have a cash economy, which in turn means there is little planning for the future whatever the pressing need of the day is attracts resources."

"Further, it means people will only do business with people they know, which immediately limits the number of people they can do business with. There is no effective consumer protection and no sense that there is someone they can complain to, or in extreme circumstances sue."

"Legislation is needed but in a country as diverse as Nigeria it needs to more precisely accord with local practices. It needs also to be timely, efficient and get results. And it needs to be fair and transparent."

"What consumer legislation there has been has proved ineffective, largely because of lack of enforcement. It makes people leery of being cheated. The result is that we have a restricted rather than a closed community".

Mick Fealty | 03:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Daily Summit highlights: internet killed the radio star; Tatchell slams Mugabe, Mbeki; a 419 scammer speaks; children and the net; Nigerian opposition; McKinnon under the spotlight; your digital IQ; African women online; Arthur C. Clarke, genocide by word of mouth; and a tax on telephones.

David Steven | 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On the web, the computer science of gerrymandering (via slashdot) and the Economist internet security special (Lawrence Lessig's comments linked to here) has kicked up a storm.

David Steven | 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

One world weary journalist at breakfast this morning: "There are no truly global events anymore. You have to wonder whether the only news worthy aspect of CHOGM is just the sheer numbers of the heads of state here. Take development for instance. Clearly it is a crucial issue for Mozambique, but does anyone in Malaysia really care? There is no common interest in any of these themes."

Meanwhile, in CHOGM news, Malta is bidding for the next summit, the Indian prime minister is in a hurry to get home, Kofi Annan wants the Commonwealth to focus on AIDS, Pakistan's suspension is to continue, and Nigeria's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom collapsed in session and had to be rushed to hospital.

Mick Fealty | 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nigerian opposition leader, Chief Don Obot Etiebet has hit out at Commonwealth aid to poor countries and suggested his country's human rights record is little better than Zimbabwe's, in an interview with Daily Summit.

The Chief is national chairman of the conservative All Nigeria People's Party, which has links with the Abacha regime and is currently Nigeria's second party behind the ruling People's Democratic Party.

"It is baffling to see the Commonwealth is treating Nigeria differently from Zimbabwe," the Chief told us. "As noted by international observers in our last general elections in April and May, the scale of rigging far surpassed that of Zimbabwe."

He also called for an end to development aid to countries like Nigeria. "The developed countries of the Commonwealth should realise by now that no amount of hand outs from them to underdeveloped countries have made them change or prosper over all these years.

"In fact, in Nigeria we do not believe that development or democracy will change anything if the abuses of the electoral system in the country are not put in check".

Chief Etiebet accused the Obasanjo government of multiple breaches of human rights, including the assassination of Chief Bola Ige, the former Minister of Justice. Why, he asked, has Commonwealth chosen to come to Nigeria, when it continues to exclude Zimbabwe?

Mick Fealty | 10:19 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Radio ga-ga. Talk on WSIS tends to focus on the benefits of the internet, but some feel that the importance of radio - which remains a vital source of communication and information - is being overshadowed. Daily Summit has been speaking to some of the organisations working to have radio's role pushed harder at the summit.

"Radio is at the heart of the Information Society" - that's the message from one NGO attending the summit, Panos. There has been a lot of interest and investment in the new information and communication technologies, but Francesca Silvani, Panos Director of Radio argues that radio should be higher up the agenda at WSIS - saying "radio is still the most accessed information and communication technology. It reaches an estimated 80% of the global population - which is far above the percentage of internet penetration". She explained, "radio is still the cheapest and most easily accessible way for people to access the media - it provides a platform for ordinary people and is a powerful medium for generating discussion and debate".

As a producer for the BBC World Service, I was recently in South Africa where we were producing reports about HIV/Aids. One morning, whilst setting up our broadcast equipment outside of Johannesburg, a man came up to me to ask what we were doing. I told him we were about to do a live interview for the World Service. His eyes lit up and he touched my shoulder and said "thank you" - he was from Bulgaria, and he explained to me how the World Service Radio had been the only source of information he could trust during the 1980s before the fall of the Soviet Union. "It was our lifeline", he explained.

And he is just one of over 150 million listeners which the BBC World Service Radio reaches, in 43 different languages. The largest audiences are based in Africa for both the BBC World Service, and for another international broadcaster - Voice of America. VOA has 94 million people tuning into its 1,000 hours a week of news and information broadcasts in 55 different languages. Tish King, spokesperson for VOA, told Daily Summit, "radio is the backbone of our broadcasting network, and is the critical way for us to reach our audience around the world". And it's not just developing countries which tune into the radio. In the UK for example, radio audiences are reaching a record high level with almost 44 million adult listeners a week which, according to a Rajar spokesman, means that around 90% of the British population tune into some form of radio programme each week.

The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters will also be present at WSIS and are pushing for strong community media support at the summit and have asked that the Draft Declaration of Principles be amended to include the paragraph: "Community, independent and plural mass media are important means of providing access to public information, fostering public involvement and promoting societal development and social cohesion".

Cara Swift | 09:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Zimbabwe could prolong PM's visit Tony Blair's spokesman, asked whether the PM is prepared to return from Abuja even if there is no resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis, has said that the UK government is "instantly adaptable." We could see an extension to his stay here: a technique of flexible deadlines honed to perfection in Northern Ireland...

Mick Fealty | 09:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 05, 2003

As a panel is set up to decide Zimbabwe's fate, Daily Summit has talked to Peter Tatchell, who has twice tried to arrest President Mugabe. First, in London in 1999, then in Brussels in 2001, where he was severely beaten by the dictator's bodyguards, as Belgian secret service agents looked on.

Tatchell was on typically passionate form - accusing Thabo Mbeki of standing aside while South African electricity is used in Zimbabwe torture chambers; describing Mugabe as Ian Smith with a black face; and calling for an armed struggle against the Mugabe regime...

"Suspending Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth is a waste of time," Tatchell told us. "It hasn't caused Mugabe to lose a single night's sleep - let alone done anything to halt his human rights abuses. Since Zimbabwe was suspended, Mugabe's reign of terror has got worse - not better. International pressure has been a total failure."

He describes President Mbeki's 'quiet diplomacy' as an abysmal failure - a policy of collusion with dictatorship. But South Africa could do much more, forcing Mugabe to the negotiating table by cutting off its electricity.

"That kind of threat was instrumental in forcing Ian Smith to negotiate majority rule in the late 1970s," says Tatchell, who campaigned against the white Rhodesian regime. "It worked then. It can work now. It's outrageous to think that South Africa's electricity is being used by Zimbabwean torturers to electrocute political prisoners."

So why has Mugabe remained so popular within Africa? Tatchell believes Mugabe continues to live off his legacy as a liberation hero. "Many Africans are unwilling to now acknowledge that he has turned into Ian Smith with a black face.

"Like Joseph Goebbels, he's a master of propaganda and manipulation, successfully hoodwinking many Africans that he's fighting against colonialism. In fact, he's murdering his own black African people, orchestrating a phoney land reform programme that is mostly redistributing seized white farms to his own government and party cronies."

Peaceful change is no longer an option. "The Zimbabwe Freedom Movement has announced its intention to begin a new war of liberation to restore democracy and human rights. The ZFM doesn't want external help. It is determined that the liberation of Zimbabwe will be achieved by its efforts alone.

"On two occasions, in London in 1999 and Brussels in 2001, I attempted a citizen's arrest of President Mugabe on charges of torture under international human rights law. What's the point of having these laws if the Commonwealth and the rest of the international community refuses to use them?"

--------
Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe itself, a rally of the party faithful has been held. Among the protest signs, a stark - but puzzling - one could be spotted. "Blair the Toilet," it said. Eh?

David Steven | 10:36 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

McKinnon talks the talk. Commonwealth secretary-general, Don McKinnon made some populist statements at the opening of CHOGM this morning. "To bring sustainable peace and security to our peoples," he said. "We must address the imbalances of wealth and power and ensure that more people are part of more decisions."

But can he walk the walk?

Oghogho Obayu | 09:55 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

More CHOGM news: Don McKinnon, once New Zealand's foreign minister, has just been re-elected as Commonwealth secretary general, despite facing opposition from a dozen or so African countries.

They - with South Africa's Thabo Mbeki to the fore - are angry about Commonwealth treatment of Robert Mugabe. Unusually, the Sri Lankans forced a vote, with their candidate, former foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, also in the ring.

"They usually like to conduct these things honourably. The vote was held in the afternoon during the second session so that Sri Lanka could withdraw their candidate, but they did not," says an unnamed Commonwealth source.

David Steven | 07:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On the web, open source software in Africa, and at WSIS (more at KnowProSE); Blog.org urges us to see how rich we are, in global terms, while linking to excellent lists of English language weblogs about/from China and Africa; while Many to Many reports that BlogShares is for sale and Notebook Africa is appalled by a two-year wait for a cellphone.

David Steven | 06:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Canadian compromise? The Canadians are apparently trying to broker a compromise to get Zimbabwe back into the Commonwealth within the next two years...

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is desperately short of food (via mostly Africa - required reading!)

David Steven | 06:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Squadrons of new readers are hitting our server today - thanks in the most part to Instapundit, Tim Blair and Al Jazeera (how's that for an eclectic list?)...

Welcome. Much of the action will be from Abuja over the weekend, where the Commonwealth is (mostly) arguing with itself. Next week - the main course - when we'll be live from Geneva with all the news from the World Summit on Information Society. Have a look around. Hit the comments. Enjoy!

David Steven | 06:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ICANN chair, Vinton "father of the internet" Cerf is defending his organisation's role in The Washington Post: "The bizarre argument that gets made: What ICANN does is Internet governance, and since ICANN doesn't deal with all those other issues, it's not doing its job and let's replace it with the ITU."

Via Lextext.

David Steven | 05:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Child power on the internet. The internet has the potential to be used as a powerful tool for the development and safety of our children, a leading campaigner has said. Logging on is often portrayed as a dangerous activity for children with exposure to paedophile groomers and pop-up pornography among the real risks.

But Northern Ireland Children's Commissioner Nigel Williams believes the internet is a largely untapped resource through which youngsters can learn and express themselves in a way like no other. And in some cases it could even save their lives, he said.

Mr Williams, who took up the new watchdog post in October, was previously chief executive of Childnet International. This charity has the two-pronged approach of both specialising in protecting children from abuse on the internet and encouraging its positive use. During his time at the head of the organisation, the father-of-four said he saw chilling examples of how young people can be abused through the internet but added he is keen to stress that the dangers are outweighed by the positive opportunities the medium offers.

The commissioner drew attention to a website recently launched in Northern Ireland by the NSPCC. There4me.com is a confidential website, targeting 12 to 16 year-olds, which offers on-line advice, information and support on a broad range of issues important to teenagers. The service is the result of research that shows as many as two in three youngsters feel unable to talk directly about personal problems. The NSPCC said other research showed that 75% of children have access to the internet and feel comfortable using it. Originally piloted in England and Wales, There4me.com says it has heard from children needing advice on issues such as sexual and physical abuse, bullying at school and relationships.

In the development of the site, the NSPCC sought help from other organisations to ensure that it was able to offer the best advice and remain safe for its users. Microsoft and the National High Technology Crime Unit were consulted to make sure that the site would be accessible to a 12-year-old, but safe from even the most determined hacker. Data encryption, firewalling and some radically new techniques are used to provide the most secure environment possible.

Belfast-born Radio 1 DJ Colin Murray lent his voice to a series of harrowing radio advertisements featuring young people writing a suicide note.He said he believes the internet is a very effective tool to encourage children to seek advice."It is a service that young people will value and use because it provides them with a way to talk on their own terms about things that are worrying them," he said.

Mr Williams said he believed an internet resource such as the website had the potential to save a child's life by offering confidential advice on how to work through a problem before it gets too much to cope with. "This is a great example of how one can use the internet effectively. And it is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential positive uses," he said. "By providing children and young people with this kind of information and confidential advice on-line, There4me.com reaches out to them through a medium we know they use and like. It's easily accessible and many children find it easier to send a short e-mail than to lift the phone and speak to someone. Boys are more likely to make use of a medium like this as they are not as accomplished as girls in talking about how they feel. We have got to use every possible medium we have to reach out to children."

Mr Williams said he thought using the internet also gave children the chance to develop their creativity."There is a great example of 13-year-old Sarah Bowler in England who became very concerned about damage to our environment. She decided to use a website to promote the idea of planting trees to compensate for the amount of pollution caused by different modes of transport. She set one up herself and came up with the idea of including a calculator to count up the number of trees. It was very successful. That's an opportunity that didn't exist before and there should be more of it."

The children's campaigner recommended www.childnetacademy. org as a useful place to see the kinds of positive and fun uses youngsters are finding for the internet.

The NSPCC has released anonymous details of some of the cases dealt with in England and Wales as an illustration of how There4me.com helps children. The charity said one 13-year-old boy contacted the site to talk about the physical abuse he was being subjected to by his father. During these contacts he was encouraged to tell his teacher who was able to help him to contact social services. A transcript from one of his e-mails said: "You're the first person I've told. I find it extremely difficult to talk to people on the phone and even my friends. That's why I'm glad I found this site. I just wish he'd stop hurting me."

Another case cited was that of a young girl whose stepfather was sexually abusing her and possibly her younger siblings too. The NSPCC said that through using the site, the child was able to talk about her ordeal. Through the support of an adviser, the girl was also able to talk to her teacher which resulted in an investigation. The children are now being looked after by the local authority and the matter has gone to court. The girl continues to use the site for support, they said.

Claire Regan | 03:37 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Official reaction in Nigeria to Human Rights Watch's latest paper, which claims that "Nigerians still cannot express themselves freely without fear of grave consequences" has been swift and indignant.

Earlier this week, Ms Remi Oyo, Special Assistant to the President (Media) attacked the HRW's decision to release Nigeria: Freedom of Expression Under Attack on December 2nd (neatly missing World AIDS Day) as a ploy to stir up trouble at CHOGM in Abuja this week.

Moreover, Ms Oyo vehemently defended the Obasanjo administration's record on freedom of speech, claiming that "a cursory look at any Nigerian newspaper or magazine will reveal in stark terms, a vibrant culture of journalism that stretches the boundaries of press freedom."

Mick Fealty | 03:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thanks to reader, Mike McCallister for pointing out that the executive summary of the ITU World Telecommunication Development Report is now online. The full report will be available from Tuesday - expect a third launch...

We really value your thoughts, comments, tips, hints, brickbats, corrections etc. (hold fire on the abuse though!). So hit the comments or email info -at- www.dailysummit.net...

David Steven | 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The "A" list excludes Princesses. One of the most interesting documents to come out of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is not one of the many drafts of principles or action plan for Tunis 2005.

No the key document, in my opinion, is the draft list of participants who will be admitted to some, not all, events in this carnival. The 229 page document cautions "This list does not include VIPs (Heads of State, Heads of Government, Vice-Presidents, Crown Princes and Princesses)" but it contains a fascinating look at who has been chosen to represent your nation at the summit.

More than half then entries are for non-profits or NGO's which are said to constitute the Civil Society. The uncivil society will be in Geneva; they will also be taking part but outside the highly guarded walls of Geneva's Palexpo and other conference venues, and they are not on the list.

There are also large numbers of UN attendees from all the related divisions and specialized agencies: ILO, UNIFEM, UNDP, etc, a few other international organizations like the development banks, and then commercial firms. Here's the breakdown:

There are about 40-60 names per page.
State representatives: 61 pages
UN and specialized agencies: 24 pages
Other Intl. organizations: 5 pages
NGOs: 122 pages
Business: 17 pages
Total: 229 pages

I know a few people who are attending, so I began looking at the country lists. The US has 53 delegates, all but one from government agencies. I found the librarians and USAID employees I know. Most of the small nations have small contingents--but not all.

No official reps. from North Korea, Somalia, Guinea, Sierra Leone.
LAO P.D.R. has one rep.
Maldives has two.
Timor has one
Tonga has two
Malta has nine
Kyrgyzstan has 33 reps including two presidential photographers
Malaysia tops the list with 129.
Canada is close behind with 94 plus dozens more flying under the government-
funded IDRC banner.

There are some special organizations that have quasi-government status like Palestine (7). Knights of Malta whose geographic domain is about 3 acres (1+ hectares) has 5 reps. l'Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie: 35 (they promote French culture and language in France and former colonies)

However, the long list of NGOs makes me wonder, "What do these groups do from day to day?" Some might ask that of the government reps too.

I can recognize some but many others are obscure. I found many organizations providing a "flag of convenience" for attendees from other foundations, universities, the street who needed to have some official affiliation in order to take part.

A sampling of the NGOs:
Cameroon Assn. of Women Engineers
African Youth for Transparency
Amitie Pologne Congo
Amnesty International
ATTAC
APRIL - Association for Promotion and Research in Libre Computing
Article 19
Art-Law Foundation
Axe Formation
Benfam Institute of Natural Living (with 50+ 'reps' with Iranian surnames sharing
[email protected]) Anyone know what they do?
Forum of the Friends of the Net
Institute for Planetary Synthesis
International Possibilities Unlimited
Internet Society Wallonie
Les indigents et les avocats face aux procedures judiciaires devant la cour
supreme de justice
Molecular Diversity Preservation International
Oppressed Society Deliverance Organization
Temple of Understanding
Terre sans frontieres
Transnational Radical Party
Utmost Caring World

The largest delegation of all was from the World Electronic Media Forum with more than 550 attendees! What was surprising was the small size of the business sector --Hitachi, Alcatel, Cisco, Intl. Chamber of Commerce. Microsoft was not represented but I'm sure the World Bank was please to sponsor an African listed as "Mr Jacques BONJAWO, Chairman Board of Directors, Microsoft"

So perhaps the influence of the business sector will not be that great if they are this disinterested in the event.

Steve Cisler

Go here to search for someone by name, organization, or country

-------------------------------
Steve Cisler joins the Daily Summit as a guest reporter

Steve Cisler | 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Sci-fi legend, Arthur C. Clarke speaks to One World:

"Because we frequently suffer from the scourge of information pollution, we find it hard to imagine its even deadlier opposite - information starvation. I get very annoyed when I hear arguments - usually from those who have been educated beyond their intelligence - about the virtues of keeping happy, backwards people in ignorance. Such an attitude seems like that of a fat man preaching the benefits of fasting to a starving beggar!

"On the idea of keeping television out, let me quote from an unexpected source. During the late 1950s, South Africa was the only wealthy country in the world that did not have a national television service. The minister in charge of broadcasting adamantly refused to permit one. 'Television will mean the end of the white man in Africa', he said. That was an extremely perceptive remark. From his point of view, the minister was perfectly right."

Read the whole thing...

David Steven | 01:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The BBC is blogging CHOGM, too. Reporting from the opening ceremony, Peter Biles ticks off the world's leaders for being too smartly dressed: "The dark suited leaders of Commonwealth countries looked sombre and incongruous as they watched the actors and dancers in the most extravagant Nigerian costumes."

He doesn't like Abuja much either - "a town planners nightmare, with hardly anything - buildings, roads or bridges - that looks even vaguely complete."

David Steven | 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

From the department of the bleeding obvious, IT firms use jargon 'to deceive'.

David Steven | 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Reporters without Borders, banned from the summit and harrying IT giants, is also protesting the arrest of a Bangladeshi editor as he left for Israel to deliver a speech on the role of the media in Muslim-Jewish dialogue; defending a Romanian journalist beaten unconscious when investigating corruption; urging the authorities to investigate an explosion at a Georgian TV station; and expressing outrage at the death sentences passed down on the editor of a Burmese sports magazine and eight other Burmese citizens.

David Steven | 01:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thanks for the links today goes to Al Jazeera, Bebedjia, Kenyan Pundit, For the People and the many British Council sites that have linked to us

Nigeria, Switzerland, Egypt, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Southern Africa, Botswana, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia Herzegovina, Italy, Malaysia and Morocco

Jane Frewer | 01:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Good governance comes to the fore at people's forum. Delegates to the Commonwealth People's Forum were yesterday asked to consider drastic measures to institutionalise good governance and develop the role of women in government in the developing world.

Speaking in Abuja at the conference of civil society organisations that is running in parallel with CHOGM, two female participants spoke up in favour of the use of sanctions and affirmative action to hasten change.

The president of the National Council of Women's Societies of Nigeria Mrs Sarah Jibril, announced that a committee has been established to represent women who feel they currently lose elections because of their gender. "We will be sending a representation to the president to demand that women constitute 30 percent of all appointments made both at federal and state levels," she said.

Mrs Ad Abu Obe called for international bodies to consider using sanctions against administrations that simply pay lip-service to dealing with corruption. By way of an example, she pointed to the establishment of the Independent Corrupt Practices Council in Nigeria, claiming that 'not a single big fish has been successfully prosecuted' since its establishment four years ago.

She said, "We in Nigeria live as though in a strange dream world, where laudable objectives are never attained. We have to start calling on the outside world to bail us out in earnest."

But perhaps the country is already waking up. President Obasanjo yesterday fired Labour and Productivity Minister, Mr. Husaini Akwanga, who is currently under investigation concerning the $214 million national identity card contract. Ironically, the Permanent Secretary to the ex-Minister, one of the seven senior figures arrested earlier this week, is female.

Oghogho Obayu | 01:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Daily Summit spoke to one former member of the Global Internet Policy Initiative who expressed some doubts that WSIS would address the concerns of developing countries.

"At the level of examining what we are currently doing and deciding what we should be doing and even how we move forward in a global setting, WSIS is fine. My worry is that the politics of how it is to be conducted will reduce it to a power play between the G7 countries. In which case, does our presence add up to much, or are we there simply to make up the numbers?"

Mick Fealty | 11:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

419 exclusive - the scammer speaks! A few days ago, Daily Summit covered what people claim is one of Nigeria's biggest industries - separating gullible foreigners from their money.

Now, we have an interview with an ex-fraudster - a motor mechanic by trade, who left Benin for Lagos in the hope of making bigger money. Here's what he has to say:

"It is about greed, yes. But it was also the economic situation. I was asked by a friend to get involved in a scam. There is so much unemployment, that it seemed to be a quick way to make money. If we had jobs we would not be doing it. Even so, there are also students at university doing it and even civil servants who want to make more money."

"Whatever you get from it, it can take months and years before you get a client. And it has to be somewhere like Lagos or Port Harcourt where you can easily make country to country calls."

"We usually did it teams. It might be one or two people. Or if it was very successful, you might have a team of eight, nine or ten. It means that when a client rings up he can speak to the 'Manager' one time, and then the next time it would be the 'Public Relations officer'."

"Some of the big boys make millions every year. For instance if you have a small team, and you can make two to three million in one go. You only need to do it two or three times a year and you are living very well. Some of them even have big company holdings, factories and filling stations to cover it up."

"When we began, we used letters. The important thing was to get genuine letterheads. Oil companies were good because everybody knows about Nigerian oil. The internet makes it much easier. You can get long lists and pick the email addresses that suit you."

"But then you would have to send out maybe 500 letters before you would get a reply. Sometimes people would get the same letter from different people and the game would be up."

"If we sense danger we lock up the premises and watch for security men. And if it gets hot, we quickly put some money aside to pay the security men. $1,000 for a policeman who earns about $100 dollars a month is hard to resist."

"Then you are in a better position. He may come to you and give a warning, 'that game is up, don't keep on with it'. Some who are caught have 'godfathers' in the government, who can shield you and provide a distraction to any investigation."

More from Daily Summit on 419 scams here...

Mick Fealty | 10:01 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack

In WSIS news, the ITU is determined to wring every last drop of publicity from their flagship World Telecommunication Development Report. After one release last month, yesterday saw a re-release (what next: a re-mix?).

The focus this time is on the Millennium Development Goals. The news is unsurprising - ICT's biggest contribution is to MDG#18, which deals with access to ICTs and information. The news is dutifully picked up here and here, though this takes a different angle).

Bizarrely, the report itself doesn't yet appear to be online...

David Steven | 08:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

CHOGM news: the Commonwealth Business Forum has adopted the "Abuja Manifesto on Business-Government Partnerships for Removing Practical Obstacles to Wealth and Job Creation," while civil society continues to call for more robust engagement with the intergovernmental process. But as leaders arrive in Nigeria, President Mugabe - who is not invited - continues to dominate media coverage

David Steven | 08:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The privacy/security kaleidoscope is being given a shake by the growth of internet telephony, as we reported yesterday. Via John Robb, some interesting thoughts from Skype founder, Niklas Zennstrom:

"The landscape is changing. In the old world you had issues like lawful interception of telephone calls. [But] We cannot do anything because we don't have access to the data stream. The old way of thinking was easy. You'd go to the local telephone company and they'd get a wiretap. That's not a problem because the telephone service owns the infrastructure, provides the service, and operates in one country. The Internet is a bit different."

David Steven | 08:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

As if IP in the real world wasn't complex enough, there's a lot of chatter at the moment about intellectual property in virtual worlds (Second Life, There or agoraXchange, for example). James Grimmelmann has a superb (but long!) introduction to the issues...

David Steven | 08:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 04, 2003

Hold your hats, as Daily Summit gets technical, dipping into the exciting world of ENUM, our attention piqued by a post from Tim Denton, a Canadian lawyer specialising in telecommunications and the internet, and "with a strong concentration on explaining what the technology is and what it means."

Tim is worked up by Canadian reactions to Enum, a system which aims to let users call existing telephone numbers - over the Internet. As I wasn't quite sure what the issues were, I picked up the phone and Tim helped me out...

Making voice calls over the net has long been hyped as the next big thing, but widespread usage now finally seems to be only just over the horizon. Skype, for example, describes itself as "the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA. Just like KaZaA, Skype uses P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you to other users, not to share files this time, but to talk for free with your friends."

It sounds cool. Free calls over the web - and there's a corresponding amount of hype (rhymes with Skype?). In the words of Associated Press, the service is "tantalizingly telephone-like." But it's only that - telephone-like, not yet as good as the telephone.

The big problem is that you can't yet dial any of the world's vast number of existing telephone numbers over the web. And that's where Enum is supposed to come in.

In a nutshell, the ITU, who are running WSIS, have the task of deciding how telephone numbers will be translated onto the internet, and who will hold and update the vast "look-up tables" needed to make the system work. They then need to persuade a significant number of countries to implement the system and make it work.

Privacy is a big concern. As Tim puts it, "will there be caller-party control or called-party control?" In other words, if a phone number is effectively given a global identity, what will the caller be able to find out about the person they are calling?

With a simple whois search, for example, I can quickly discover a lot about the person behind the Instapundit domain - name, address, phone number, fax numbers, shoe size (joke) etc. Would you want someone to be able to find out all this about you from your phone number?

The other issue is how to mesh together the "systems and culture of telephony" (hierarchical, highly-regulated) with the "systems and culture of the internet" (less hierachical, less-regulated).

Within the Canadian context, Tim believes, government's instinct is "the usual Canadian 'Why are you thinking fifteen minutes ahead of fashion?', or worse, 'Why are you thinking at all, when you could Wait for Orders from the Authorities?'."

It may be hard to slow Enum's momentum down, though. "Those who have had some experience in the domain name game are familiar with how an industry can self-organize, how industry groups are established, how websites are set up, and we are highly aware that we do not need permission from government to think, foresee and act," Tim writes. "Order liberty is the name of this game."

So does this all matter to the ordinary user? Well, not right now, but maybe sooner than you think. Tim predicts "significant Enum usage within 2 years." Early adopters are undoubtedly already licking their lips...

David Steven | 06:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Three Rwandan media executives have received long prison sentences from a UN Tribunal for inciting genocide through radio stations (Radio Hate, Radio Machete etc) and tabloid papers "filled with cartoons and pictures that targeted for extermination all Tutsis, especially women."

The journalists were convicted for the use of words alone, with the presiding judge telling them that "without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians."

Human rights activists seem pleased by the verdict, despite the freedom of speech implications. Libertarians are less impressed.

David Steven | 05:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tech giants slammed. Reporters Without Borders, pressure group currently barred from WSIS, challenges 14 major Internet and computer firms about their activity in China, raising interesting questions about the responsibilities of the gatekeepers of the information society in advance of WSIS.

Amnesty International did something similar in 2002.

Aaron Scullion | 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nice idea... Britain's top e-Minister, Stephen Timms, says he plans to make every public library in the UK a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Aaron Scullion | 05:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CHOGM news. The Mugabe issue is going away? Yeah, right.

Readers with long memories may recall Daily Summit's coverage of the Zimbabwean President's performance at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, when his speech was met with laughter and applause from many of the world's journalists (the only leader to get any reaction from the hard-bitten media).

What South Africa's News 24 dubs a "quasi-racial divide" between the "white Commonwealth" and African countries seems certain to remain a major talking point in Abuja.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that support for Mugabe is growing with Zambia's President, Levy Mwanawasa, lobbying hard on Mugabe's behalf. Tanzania, meanwhile, is threatening only to send a low-level delegation to CHOGM in protest, while South Africa continues to argue for a rapprochement with Zimbabwe.

There is undoubted support for the President in Africa, with one commentator praising the "commendable bold steps taken by President Mugabe to free his people from serfdom and bondage," steps which "did not go down well with Britain, the so-called mother of all Commonwealth countries."

Just as Britain has ganged up with "other white supremacist countries," so should African countries "unite, put their heads together, be strong and never let that old wolf Britain dictate to them who to invite and who not to invite to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM)."

More fireworks expected...

David Steven | 03:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

CHOGM brings together forty heads of Government, 10 Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Ministers or senior Ministers and 1000 members of the press. But what for?

Secretary General, Don McKinnon has been battling to get his agenda across (although the press mostly wants to bait him over Robert Mugabe). McKinnon believes the Commonwealth could help break the logjam over the failed WTO talks held in Cancun in September.

McKinnon reckons the talks can be hauled back on track if consensus between developing and developing nations can be brokered within a Commonwealth framework.

Pakistan is likely to dominate the first key meeting this evening of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) (more here and here). The Secretary General made some pointed remarks on the issue, suggesting democratic reforms will get Pakistan back into the Commonwealth club, not its contribution to the war against terror.

Mick Fealty | 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nigerian schools are going online, with SchoolNet Nigeria aiming to get schools on the net, sharing information with other schools, and using IT to enrich the school curriculum.

Under the DigiLab programme, thirty-five schools should be live by the end
of December, with each having 20 PCs, powered by diesel generators and/or solar power.

Gbenga Arolasafe, project head, tells Daily Summit that: "Before now everything was text book based. We are having to work hard to get ICT accepted by our teachers as a legitimate form of education. It also poses challenges for the way that they teach. Our teachers are not used to the informal collaborative approach, where they are no standing in front of the class."

But the early results are encouraging. "In the Diginet schools we've seen ICT awareness increase enormously. The students no longer see it as something that comes out of the blue. It's there in their school. And they have free access to the Internet; although only to a limited number of sites. They do most of the collaborative learning on their own."

Mick Fealty | 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the news, online women demand better access, while the US has no intention of giving ground on control of the Internet or the digital solidarity fund.

David Steven | 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On the web, Karl Auerbach asks which is the real ICANN: "Is ICANN the sword-bearing guardian of the internet as described in ICANN's MoU (and amendments) with the United States and in ICANN's own bylaws? Or is ICANN merely an impotent 'coordinator' that has no power over the IP address allocation systems and DNS root servers except to make suggestions and hope that those who really operate those systems might heed ICANN's non-binding advice?"

David Steven | 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Foresight needed. In the FT, the ITU attacks an article which claimed that WSIS should focus on universal connectivity, rather than broadband, for being remarkably shortsighted. We said pretty much the same thing last week...

Aaron Scullion | 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Privacy or security? The Economist suggests you can't have both in its special report on internet security. Novell's chief technologist, Alan Nugent is quoted. "I'm kind of a fan of eliminating anonymity if that is the price of security," he says. But then we all know who he is...

David Steven | 09:07 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Thanks for the links today goes to BBC Online, Harvard Law School, ITU Strategy and Policy Unit, Environment & ICT Working Group, Movable Type, SmartMobs and MostlyAfrica

Jane Frewer | 09:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 03, 2003

We're going to hear a lot at WSIS about how the information society can boost productivity - so why not mug up on how productivity is measured (at least by the Americans)?

David Steven | 09:01 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Some highlights you may have missed - Sony's downfall, WSIS unzipped, the church volunteer, freedom of expression, and the battle for the internet.

There's also news on Nigerian hopes, arrests and scams.

David Steven | 08:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Civil Society makes us nervous, admits Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon.

"I have to face fifty four governments, the people who pay for CHOGM. They are very keen to tell me what they want - but, in fact, they are more keen to tell me what they don't want. They want to know who is coming, and whether they are going to do what they say they are going to do. Above all, they want to keep control of the situation."

Well there's a surprise...

Mick Fealty | 08:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Open source works, according to University of California research.

"Free and open-source software development is faster, better and cheaper in building a community and at reinforcing and institutionalizing a culture for how to develop software," says lead researcher Walt Scacchi. "We're not ready to assert that open-source development is the be-all end-all for software engineering practice, but there's something going on in open-source development that is different from what we see in the textbooks."

David Steven | 08:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Nigerian spam scam. According to the Register, Nigeria is once again cracking down on so-called 419 fraud, setting up a new commission to tackle fraudsters who lure the gullible through emails promising millions of dollars to victims who pay an up-front fee (examples here, here and here).

President Obasanjo is determined to stamp out a fraud he believes is giving Nigeria a bad name, the BBC reports. He has promised "the government will step up measures against these criminal activities."

Apparently, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has already recovered 200 million US dollars from fraudsters, with 200 suspects under arrest. But this is a drop in the ocean, if the Register's figures are to be believed. It claims the 419 "industry" earns Nigeria 5 billion dollars a year, making it one of the country's most successful export earners. (You're advised to handle these figures with care!)

Daily Summit remembers an article that Slate published around a year ago, which traces the roots of the 419 fraud back to "The Spanish Prisoner" scam of the 1920s (or even earlier according to a reader).

Author, Brendan Koerner concludes that there may be a silver lining to the fraud - it's helping Nigeria power into the online era:

"The proliferation of cybercafes in Nigeria can be linked directly to the demand supplied by 419ers, who form the establishments' core clientele. Walk into an Internet cafe in Lagos, and chances are that a good percentage of the terminals are occupied by men masquerading as Laurent Kabila's long-lost son or as a rogue official at the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The wiring of Nigeria is being propelled by 419 - much as America's appetite for porn helped shepherd the commercial Internet through its infancy. AOL made it through its lean, early years only because of adult chat rooms and spicy picture downloads (which kept the meter running during the era of per-hour access fees)."

There are those who take a less sanguine view, however - and who are aggressively trying to scam the scammers. Check out this ongoing exchange between a spammer and his victim, who is pretending to be Father Ted from the Church of the Holy Cow.

Father Ted promises to release a small sum of money (say, 274,330 US dollars), but only if the recipient will take the following steps:

"You will need to print out the church logo as large as you can (holycowlogo.jpg). Then you must find either a BOTTLE OF MILK or a CARTON OF MILK. Sit in a chair and place the bottle or carton of milk ON YOUR HEAD and also hold the picture of the CHURCH LOGO. Then get someone to take a photograph of you in this pose. One you have had the photograph taken of yourself with the MILK ON YOUR HEAD and HOLDING THE LOGO, please send it back to me."

Developing...

David Steven | 07:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

McKinnon rejects Mugabe's criticism. Commonwealth secretary-general Mr. Don McKinnon reacted fiercely today to Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe's claim that the UK, Australia and New Zealand have formed an unholy alliance against his country.

McKinnon was terse in his response: "I have not met with Mr. Mugabe for 18 months. I have tried to raise a team to hold talks with him, they were denied visas. Within the last six months, I have talked at least once with every Commonwealth leader." Intrigued, Daily Summit pushed him further...

"I have spoken most of the 54 heads of government at least once in the last six or eight months," he told us, "and there is certainly more that one view on how the Commonwealth should lead on the issue of Zimbabwe. But this is by no means a question of an Afirca versus the rest of the world split."

Oghogho Obayu | 05:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

In the US, Howard Dean - front-running Democratic presidential candidate - has caused a stir by suggesting he'd break up big media corporations.

"Yes, we're going to break up giant media enterprises," Dean promised. "What we're going to do is say that media enterprises can't be as big as they are today."

Dean claimed that "11 companies in this country control 90 percent of what ordinary people are able to read and watch on their television," adding that "We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont [the state he governs] where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP."

Many commentators sniff blood. CK Rairden, writing in the Washington Dispatch, claims that Dean is unravelling, as the "real Howard Dean is revealed," while James Lileks asks: "does Dean really want to be President?" Answering his own question: "one wonders, when he opens his mouth."

It remains to be seen if going after big media will prove a good campaign tactic but, as yet, there is no word on this story on Dean's own blog.

Dean is getting a lot of international coverage not just for what he is saying, but for the way he is trying to use the web to build a grassroots campaign (see also here, here, here and here).

Worth watching...

David Steven | 05:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Enter the Queen. The Queen of England, Elizabeth II, arrives in Abuja today, with the little children who presented flowers to Her Majesty when she first stepped her feet on Nigerian soil now grandmothers themselves.

The Queen will be kept away from the nitty gritty of CHOGM's politics, but will be kept busy all the same. She will get the chance to see a few of the rustic villages just outside the city, including the settlement of Karu, whose orphanage is under the patronage of the wife of the late dictator, general Sani Abacha.

260 stranded children live in the home, which is the biggest such charity etablished for children in Abuja. The wife of the late general Abacha, Mariam provided the initial funding for the home with money realise from her pet project - the Family Support Programme (FSP).

For security reasons, the Queen's itinerary remains under wraps for security reasons, but we hear that, as soon as she is through with CHOGM's opening ceremony , the queen may also be visiting the settlement of Jiwa, where there is HIV/AIDS management centre run by NGO, ActionAid.

If she goes, she'll be following in the footsteps of Princess Anne, who visited by centre in October 2001. Princess Anne also visited the British Council, and we suspect her mother is going there too.

Council officials seem to be spending a lot of time tidying up their offices, indicating Her Majesty may be planning a courtesy call. More on the Queen on arrival...

Oghogho Obayu | 04:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Unemployment... Outside the media centre, we were surrounded by a group of people desperate for work -most of them graduates.

Precious had slept rough for two months in the shell of a luxury hotel before it was refurbished for CHOGM. She came to Abuja to pick up work two months ago and she's getting increasingly desperate.

Others included graduates in economics, physics, finance and marketing. But within a few minutes, the scrum around us had attracted the attention of police and nervous security officials. They quickly moved the us - and the graduates - on.

Mick Fealty | 04:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

e-Evaluation. As if WSIS didn't have enough problems, civil society and private sector representatives are starting to question the role of communication technology in development. Speaking this week to representatives of the UK delegation, Daily Summit was surprised at the frustration felt at the lack of evidence proving the information society benefits places where even electricity is hard to come by.

The problem of evaluation is unlikely to be solved in the short-term, but media coverage in advance of the summit is illustrating real world appplications of these technologies. The BBC (more below), is looking at tangible benefits of both the serious and social aspects of the new society, while the summit organisers are working to gain publicity for successful real-world projects. But ungrounded talk of one-off applications of technology preaches only to the converted - will WSIS be the point where the technology industry realises that the rest of the world needs cold, hard facts?

Aaron Scullion | 12:40 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Civil society leader arrested. Activists hope that the global media attention around CHOGM will lead to a marked improvement in Nigeria's human rights record.

Change may not come overnight, however. According to The Punch, Osita Ike, chair of the partnership for Sustainable Development, was "whisked away to an unknown destination by 'four men in dark suits' who came in a convoy of two cars." as he travelled to a pre-CHOGM forum in Lagos.

According to the paper, Ike's whereabouts are still unknown, with campaigners accusing the "government of intolerance and adopting strong-arm tactics, inimical to the creation of an enabling environment for sustainable development in the country."

Ike apparently received two anonymous telephone calls wanring him that "his civil society people [should] not upset anyone." Ironically, the forum was due to discuss "Citizenship and Good Governance." As a result of Ike's arrest, it was cancelled.

Mick Fealty | 10:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

"Political wrangling". BBC News Online neatly explains why WSIS is important, and why so many people fear "the talks will result in a bland declaration with no real political or funding commitments". While this is all true, WSIS is about much more than the main talks - indeed, Daily Summit recently heard one highly placed British official say, "I'm looking forward to WSIS, but I'm not attending any of the main meetings"!

The BBC's WSIS special - The iGeneration - is also well worth a look.

Aaron Scullion | 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 02, 2003

Arrested? Well not quite, but nearly. We certainly caused a bit of a stir outside the Sheraton Hotel today where many of the senior delegates to CHOGM are staying.

Oghogho's car ran out of fuel just opposite the main entrance, after a day chasing around after visas for WSIS in Geneva. The police were not happy and it took half an hour for him to persuade a Deputy Inspector General that it was just an innocent mistake...

Mick Fealty | 05:11 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Never be afraid of being lost. Abuja, federal capital city of Nigeria, is wearing a new look as it prepares to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which kicks off in earnest in a three days.

And why shouldn't it? 54 world leaders are expected - head of countries where 30% of the world's population live. Many who live in the satellite settlements of Kubwa, Nyaya, Karu, and Gwagwa may be apathetic, as they have been ever since the government became addicted to hosting lavish international meetings. But for the army of unemployed, CHOGM spells one thing - opportunity.

For weeks now, they have besieged the CHOGM task force secretariat. Hordes of energetic university graduates, currently doing their National Youth Service programme, have been engaged in traffic control.

An array of beautiful ladies are now trained as ushers, while many diggers, painters and horticulturists are having a field day.

"Now we are having visitors, take them without arguing," advises Salisu Ahmed, a taxi driver. "You know our people will normally argue with you over money, so now I concentrate mostly in picking up these visitors. I have been plying the Conference centre route for quite some time now. It is better for me that way"

Commercial motorcyclists around the city have also caught the fever; in a different kind of way. Usually seen as nuisance, they are now being told that they cannot ply certain routes while the summit lasts. Apparently, international visitors cannot be allowed to witness the menace of these riders who glide through the city's roads without protective helmets for themselves and their passengers!

The hospitality industry is also at top gear, with the Hilton expecting all 54 world leaders. Other visitors have been moved out and security beefed up. It's much the same at the Sheraton, where "normal" visitors are not welcome for the duration of the summit.

Addressing civil society groups yesterday, the minister of the federal capital territory, Mallam Nasir El Rufai, guaranteed security for all visitors. He did not stop there:" You can take time out to savour the beauty of our city. Everywhere, there are enchanting rocks and hills. The people are friendly. Never be afraid of getting lost."

One person who will certainly be kept safe is the Commonwealth's titular head: the Queen of England, Elizabeth II. She will be quartered at Aguda House, within the precincts of the well-protected Presidential Villa at Asokoro.

Oghogho Obayu | 04:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

'All-new' protest. Reporters Without Borders, smarting at their exclusion from WSIS, (discussed here), have told journalists that "an original and news-worthy form of protest" is to be announced one day before the summit starts. I'm looking forward to their news conference, but a cynic reading the press release might suggest they haven't yet decided what form the protest will take...

Aaron Scullion | 04:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

On the web, Esther Dyson worries about social networking, wondering whether services like Plaxo, Friendster, Spoke and LinkedIn are taking us towards "a world of surveillance, not just on the part of governments or even corporations, but widespread peer-to-peer surveillance." Via Many to Many, where David Weinberger argues that "these social networks are debasing the words 'friend' and 'social'."

Jim Moore, meanwhile, believes that technology is giving birth to a "second superpower" dedicated to opposing the United States (see also Eric, Taran and the Register), while First Monday compares how two very different social movements (Stormfront and MoveOn use the net.

David Steven | 02:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Triumph of Hope over Organisation. The spanking new International Conference Centre is an impressive sight - but will be more so when it's finished.

As I wandered around over the weekend, there were armies of people scrambling around, applying the finishing touches. Carpets were still being laid and rendering was being slapped onto bare brick walls.

Every so often I'd come across a room packed with boxes of television sets, or computers. At the media centre, in search of my pass, I met the man charged with pulling things together, crammed into the back of a tiny prefab office.

He welcomes me to CHOGM with a smile and a handshake but, no, the passes are not ready yet. In fact, neither is the media centre. I met delegates who had spent all day in the search for accreditation.

One described the summit sadly to me as "the triumph of hope over organisation."

Mick Fealty | 11:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

"The meeting becomes a marketplace, where marketing decisions are taken and affairs discussed," the head of media for CHOGM, Otumba Olusegun Runsewe, told the Vanguard. "We deal in oil for instance, others deal in agricultural materials etc, the interaction is enormous and it will help our economy."

Mick Fealty | 11:51 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Thanks for the links today goes to Blogosphere.us, Geneva 03, Global CN, Digital Opportunity Channel, British Council Romania, ICANN Aggregated News, Slugger OToole, too many topics, too little time, TWBlog.net, and Actu-blogs

Jane Frewer | 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Shame and Ridicule. A few weeks ago, Sony was brought low by the power of distributed computing. Allow Ghenwivar to tell the story: "On monday November 17th, in the most amazing and exciting battle ever, Ascending Dawn, Wudan and Magus Imperialis Magicus defeated Kerafyrm, also known as The Sleeper, for the first time ever on an EverQuest server."

For the unitiated, Everquest is "the world's #1 massively multiplayer online game" and recently its owner, Sony Online Entertainment, decided to spice things up by creating an "unkillable" monster. Big mistake.

People love a challenge - and many full-on gamers have (an at least slightly) obsessive nature. So 200 players, from the world's top guilds, clubbed together and spent four hours... clubbing the thing to the ground.

And they had to do it twice - because the first time Sony couldn't believe what was happening and simply pulled the plug.

So why does this matter? Well two reasons that I can see. First, as Reason's Hit and Run points out, it demonstrates how powerful networks can be: "The basic problem for any central entity trying to cope with a very distributed computing network. Anything you build will face tens of thousands of man hours dedicated to taking it apart."

And second, as Andrew Phelps (a technology professor and hardcore gamer) puts it, Sony's reaction to challenge (if you don't play by our rules, then we'll change them) shows how little big companies understand about the forces they've unleashed.

"We thought you understood us better," Andy admonishes. "The fact you let it happen the next night means very little - the point is on that first magical evening when warriors rode off to battle the supreme, you meddled. They thought of something you didn't, something legal by the rules of the game you set forward, and you meddled. In the parlance of the world you created: 'shame & ridicule'."

David Steven | 10:48 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

CHOGM news - Will India use CHOGM to continue to campaign for Pakistan's exclusion from the Commonwealth? And how will a "livid" Robert Mugabe react his exclusion from the Abuja meeting?

Meanwhile, Nigerian troops say that they will "decisively crush" anyone causing trouble at the summit; the Commonwealth Business Forum has been opened, while the African diaspora (which sends USÂ£3 billion every year) is being discussed; and President Obasanjo cannot escape domestic troubles - he is defending himself, as the naira continues to slide.

David Steven | 09:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

AIDS in Nigeria. Yesterday was World AIDS Day and, although Nigeria's epidemic is not of the same intensity at that found in some African hotspots, nearly 6% of Nigerian adults are now thought to be HIV positive.

This is a society still in denial. According to Professor Babtunde Osotimehin, chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS, only 100,000 of the four million or so people carrying the virus openly admit their HIV status. Only 60% of Nigerians, meanwhile, have even heard of the disease.

"My husband is a typical Nigerian," the matron at a Lagos hospital told one of the Nigerian newspapers. "He does not believe that AIDS is real and he would say 'kan kan lo ma paniyan' [death is certain to come through any cause]."

"When AIDS just broke we organized lectures and seminars for the youths. He attended and when it was question time he would stand up and say it was an oyinbo [white man's] disease that is not for Africans. He was only convinced when he lost a friend to AIDS."

Fiona Duby, from the UK's Department for International Development, told me that leadership was desperately needed. "We can go on putting in money and expertise, but if things here are not going to change if people in charge are not going to make them change" she argues.

Paul Okwulehie, National Co-ordinator of Workplace Response in the Ministry of Labour, is one of the more dynamic figures driving the Nigerian's government's campaign against the epidemic. Under his direction, his department is taking a more strategic and hands-on approach.

"We are running the largest single support programme for people living with HIV and AIDS in the country," he told Daily Summit. "Here in Abuja, we are running a programme over two weeks. In the first session, we discuss the condition in general, good nutrition, and the positive effects of multivitamins. The second session focuses on personal counselling."

"We even bury people when they die, as many don't have anyone else to do it for them."

Mick Fealty | 09:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

No summit in a developing country would be complete without arguments about whether the money it costs could be better spent.

As Hamidele Aturu put it in Sunday's local Guardian, "Right now most Nigerians cannot afford three square meals a day or other basic necessities which have been priced out of their reach. More than 70 per cent of them live below the poverty line. Unemployment continues to soar."

However the project is clearly dear to President Obasanjo's heart. He wants to increase Nigeria's profile in West Africa and further afield. He claimed in his monthly interactive radio broadcast that the cost of holding the event has been exaggerated by critics.

It will only cost 3 billion Naira (1.2 million UK pounds).

Mick Fealty | 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

First impressions. I have just arrived in Abuja to spend ten days covering CHOGM 2003 and find myself in one of Africa's newest, and most unusual, capital cities.

Abuja was conceived in 1976, with work only starting in 1981 to build a city that would better serve Nigeria's diverse population than the vast and unsettled coastal metropolis of Lagos.

Slowly a new capital has grown from the wilderness inhabited by the semi-nomadic Fulani people, who still tend their cattle by the busy dual carriageways. The city has a broadly regular road network, but I was warned to beware of maps. "It is hard to find one that is reliable. Roads are marked that simply haven't been built."

The city is gradually filling up (and out), as the government moves its workforce to the city. Land prices are astronomical - with plots changing hand for as much as 40-45 million Naira (approximately 160,000 UK pounds) and rents are too high for most local wage earners.

"Abuja is now the fastest growing city in the world," said Mallam Nasir El Rufai, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, yesterday, as he opened the Commonwealth People's Market.

As across Africa, wealth sits beside poverty. In between the grand houses, farmers tend small patches of ground. Though at this time of the year, just after the rains, there are few crops still to be harvested.

Life is quieter than in Lagos, with Adeoluwa Akomolafe, an IT administrator, telling me he was glad to have escaped the stress of Nigeria's biggest city. "Here in Abuja," he says, "You can drive around the city and visit all the clubs and fish bars in one evening."

As I woke up on my first morning, I thought about the city's failure to yet banish the countryside. In bed, in the posh Rockview Hotel, I heard a cockerel crowing from the small holding next door.

Mick Fealty | 09:28 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

E-commerce and development? UNCTAD's E-Commerce and Development Report is out. The report claims that "while the Internet euphoria of the late 1990s may have subsided, the economic gains of ICT have broadly permeated business and society alike."

It also identifies what impact the growth of the digitial economy is likely to have on developing countries, with India's experience showing that "the growing market for IT services and business process outsourcing offers poor countries a new development opportunity."

Ahmed Reda | 01:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 01, 2003

Buy 1 summit, get 1 free. From tomorrow (Tuesday), Daily Summit will be reporting from CHOGM, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which is taking place this year in Abuja.

Our reporter, Mick Fealty - of noted blog Slugger O'Toole - will be online soon, bring you all the news from the summit.

For the uninitiated, the Commonwealth is an association of former British colonies, dependencies and other territories (as well as Mozambique).

Recently, the key issue for Commonwealth countries has been Zimbabwe, and the activities of Robert Mugabe's government there. Last week, Secretary General Don McKinnon told the BBC that the Commonwealth had failed in its efforts to engage with the Zimbabwean President - and the issue isn't going to go away at this summit.

However, the host country - Nigeria - isn't without its problems either.

You may ask while Daily Summit is looking at two summits at once.. well, alongside CHOGM, the Commonwealth People's Forum is taking place. It's a major civil society summit, and we feel that those attending WSIS and those attending the people's forum will have similar aims - so, ultimately, we're getting a headstart on WSIS.

Aaron Scullion | 07:39 PM | TrackBack

Teach your Granny. Young people are going to get the older generation online - at least, that's what BT hopes! They've launched a campaign, Internet Rangers, in the hope of tackling digital exclusion. According to BT, "one third of parents and grandparents have been encouraged to surf the internet by a teenager".

Cara Swift | 06:10 PM | TrackBack

Can the 'Can-Spam' Act work? The New York Times casts doubt on the effectiveness of the US's recently up-dated 'Can-Spam' Act, although bill sponsor, New York Senator Charles Schumer promises that the bill will mean that "if you're a spammer, you could wind up in the slammer." The senator also calls for an international approach, with spammers pursued with the same vigour as drug dealers or money launderers

Meanwhile, the Australian Government's Spam Bill is expected to face a set-back tonight, before being passed later this week.

Claire Regan | 03:03 PM | TrackBack

On the web, jailed Chinese blogger Liu Di, aka the Stainless Steel Mouse, has been freed from jail; John Robb is wowed by another Chinese weblog that receives 10 million visitors a day; Instapundit continues to follow rows over the outsourcing of IT jobs; KnowProSE has more to say about the digital divide; and David Wilcox links to a new academic network for those interested in the internet and development.

David Steven | 01:50 PM | TrackBack

Internet governance continues to excite us here at Daily Summit (no, really!).

In an Op-Ed for the Toronto Star today, Michael Geist pushes the debate along with the results of a survey he conducted for the ITU on the role of national governments in administering national internet domains (.sc for the Seychelles, for example).

"Contrary to most expectations," he writes, "the study finds virtually every government that responded to the survey either manages, retains direct control, or is contemplating formalizing its relationship with its ccTLD. This is true even for governments, such as the United States, that generally adopt a free-market approach to Internet matters."

47% of governments control their domain, 25% are attempting to assert ultimate authority, 20% are in the process of "formalizing their relationship" with the domain registrar, while only 7% plan to continue with a hands-off role.

Susan Crawford, meanwhile, has been listening in to the deliberations of ICANN's Names Council (sound file here), where Christopher Wilkinson (from the GAC secretariat) tells other participants "it is not helpful to tell the world that ICANN has no regulatory authority. If that's the message from the private sector, then many governments will say that the existing public/private partnership is not enough."

Crawford's take: ICANN knows that someone must be in charge of the various domain registries, but it can only pretend to be a regulator, as it doesn't really have the powers to insist on anything.

"At the moment, no one governs the Internet. ICANN isn't about Internet governance (whatever that means). ICANN worries about registries and number allocation. That's it. If the world wants to make rules about content and identity and intellectual property and cybercrime, the world will have to find another vessel. ICANN cannot bear that burden."

And one last point. Isn't it ironic that ICANN - which can at least lay claim to administering the internet - has one of the most confusing and difficult to navigate websites the world has seen?

Update: KnowProSE says the answer is simple: "An autonomous eGovernment for the Internet which comprises representatives from every country."

David Steven | 11:13 AM | TrackBack

Private or Public? The idea of putting the internet under UN control continues to be resisted by the United States (more here).

Ambassador David Gross will be leading the US delegation at the summit and, in an interview with Foxnews.com, he said "We will continue to fight hard to ensure that the Internet remains a balanced enterprise among all stakeholders - one of these stakeholders is government, but it is one of many stakeholders," adding that "it must be private sector-led. That is very important to us."

Cara Swift | 09:24 AM | TrackBack

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