Tr-Ac-Net

MY POST IN S-ASIA-IT@LISTS.APNIC.NET ON WSIS, TUNIS

2005-11-20T20:17:00.000-08:00

Shahzad,

To comment on what you have written about WSIS Tunis not attracting many celebraties, it would not have also attracted, many common men and women who are doing silent, but exemplary work in ICT, as they just cannot afford to travel at their own cost. So WSIS creates a new digital divide, those who could afford to participate either on public money or private
money and those who cannot afford to participate.

In these days of great advancement in DGroups and virtual meetings in ICT, it would have been in the interest of the majority of the citizens of the world, if the WSIS was a Virtual Conference.

The conference can be held in many languages and many communities could have been encouraged to participate to tell the world, what they expect ICT to do.

Someone from Sierra Leone wrote, when we have no water, food, clothing and shelter, where do we have the time to think of ICT and what it can do to help us!!

International conferences are good; but at what cost and ultimately to whom is the question. The tax payer is the answer. Every common man subsidises such national and international conferences.

WSIS should carry out a transparent audit of the cost-benefit analysis of such programmes held in the past and to set a new direction for the future.

This is not a denouncement of the good interactions individuals and groups would have had at Tunis, for the common benefit of mankind. It's just a personal opinion, as an individual, not working for a Govt. organization or an international agency, who could not afford to attend the programme.

Kris Dev
Intnl. Transparency andn Accountability Network.
http://Tr-Ac-Net.org.
.

- Hide quoted text -

On 11/20/05, Shahzad Ahmad <shahzad@isb.sdnpk.org> wrote:

Blog from Tunis:
http://www.apc.org/english/wsis/blog
------------------------------------

Few hours with Richard Stallman
By Shahzad (Bytesforall, Pakistan) writing from Tunis • 20/11/2005 07:07 •
[Software, WSIS implementation] (0 Comments)

This crazy summit, which will be remembered as WSIS, is finally over... but
the official summit frankly, ended with agreements on further meetings and
conferences... and watch out folks... don't rise your expectations anymore
as nothing will happen. I infact, saw two official delegates, at the closing
ceremony with good bye handshakes, saying "see you in Greece".

These summits and meetings, probably will continue to produce vague
commitments, and at least in developing countries all of us know that who
cares for such commitments and declarations. May not be at the scale of
WSIS, but still there is quite a lot of opportunities for those who already
live on the airports to travel and continue the "discourse".

In my personal opinion, the Tunis phase was largely unable to attract many
celebrities from the ICT4D scene. However, the superstars and most sought
after people at the summit were Ms. Shirin Ebadi (Nobel prize laureate and
Human Rights activist), Ambassador Masood Khan (WGIG), Prof. Negroponte (one
laptop per child fame), and Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation).

Maxigas was well connected with Richard Stallman, and since I had live
network with him so was invited to a trip to Carthage in Tunis accompanying
Richard. I found him to be an interesting but a person with some rather
strange individuality.

Richard, www.stallman.org is no more a programmer because he is so busy, and
spends his time preaching free/freedom of software all over the world. Only
uses computer for emails, listening to music, and text editing in GNU Emacs.
He just does not trust any other software which is not written by him. Since
he is a Unix person so connects with graphical interface only to look at
images.

He has written his own Operating System and Text Editor and various other
software. Can you believe that Richard does not use any browser, probably
because he has not written one yet. If he has to look at some webpages, he
emails to daemon, and daemon writes him back the text. Doesn't upgrade Linux
because he worries that something will happen to his system. He doesn't
backup, for he has no time.

When I asked him that where you live, smilingly he said, "on the airports
all over the world".

At the summit venue, I saw him with his registration badge, all wrapped in
aluminum foil. It was in protest to block the RFID. Actually, he was
concerned that people are tracking him.

While reading his emails he keeps biting his nails. He would read his emails
even standing on the roadside waiting for taxi or bus. He can hang his
computer around his neck and works quite comfortably. He had this badge on
his chest "Impeach the God". For this he has his own philosophy, which I
don't wish to comment here.

His travel costs and funding comes from donations and foundation members. He
is happy with what he is doing and since he has set a trend to follow by
many, and now he puts all his efforts in preaching free software.

I personally think that he has created his own bubble and he can't see
beyond that. There was this discussion that even his followers also are sort
of fundamentalists and strict to their own ideology.

In the end, I thank you all those who sent me kind messages of liking my
posts/blogs. Actually, this was the purpose i was here for. Hope to see many
more faces behind the email addresses in future.

Signing off from Tunis.

Shahzad

_______________________________________________
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s-asia-it@lists.apnic.net
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My post in Karuthu.com on Transparency and Accountability

2005-11-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

I am very glad to communicate to all of you thro' this august forum, Karuthu.com, my thoughts on Transparency and Accountability, a topic dear to me.

I strongly believe, all progress the human race has made over the animal race, over the generations, from time immemorial, is through the positive and progressive use of our sixth sense.

Conversely, we can attribute all the owes of the human race to the negative and improper use of the sixth sense.

Lack of Honesty, Transparency and Accountability leading to moral hypocrisy, in any / all our thoughts and actions, has led to the degeneration of our society, to its present state, despite the advancement in culture, arts, science and technology, etc.

The word Secret and all its derivatives have come to take center seat and all our lives are determined by secrecy of some form or other.

We need to get away from the shackles of this moral and ethical hypocrisy which is due to lack of Transparency and Accountability in our thoughts and actions, first and foremost to ourselves, and then to others.

Each human being needs to live for his / her own happiness and prosperity. The success or failure in life can be judged by self only and not by others. So it is of paramount importance that each one chooses those activities that would give them / lead them to a life of peace, happiness and prosperity.

Moral and ethical corruption is the worst form of corruption and is basically due to greed to possess / enjoy life or secure for future, beyond what one deserves, based on their contribution to society.

If every individual, community, organization, state, nation and society as a whole, turns a new leaf, there can be all round peace, plenty and prosperity for all.

The narrow divisions of mankind such as race, sex, religion, etc. should not come in the way of society.

We all should discuss this freely and frankly to transform our society from negative to positive, decay to growth, divisions to unity, poverty to plenty, unhappines s to happiness, etc.

Kris Dev
krisdev@gmail.com
http://ll2c.blogspot.com

Transparency and Accountability for transforming society

2005-11-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

It is common knowledge that total transparency and Accountability are the two pillars on which society can stand tall.

But unfortunately, over the generations, secrecy has overtaken transparency and has practically won over transparency.

Today, there is hardly any activity in life, which is totally transparent. Lack of transparency can lead to lack of accountability, resulting in corruption of the mind. This can lead to serious consequences, detrimental to the growth of the society.

Leading Governments, politicians, bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, scientists, educationists, doctors, professionals, religious men, parents, etc. resort to secrecy as a way of life. This has degenerated society over the generations. Today there is a competition, as to who is more dishonest.

Every nation, organization, group, family and individual tries to survive at the cost of the other. This has resulted in a rat race and has made life most insecure and devoid of peavce and prosperity, despite advancement in science and technology. Instead of saying despite advancement in science and technology, it may be apt to say, thanks to advancement in science and technology, the human mind has been corrupted to such an extent, hat it now refuses to accept, a open way of life. We tend to doubt everyone else.

ICT can be used a s a real tool to throw away the cloud of secrecy and make all transactions transparent for the whole world to see. Does anyone truly know the amount of gold locked-up in Swiss bank vaults with no claimants? Does anyone know the amount of ill gotten wealth amassed and stored in various bank lockers around the globe?

It is time, we drastically redeem ourselves from the clutches of unscrupulous men and women wholived in the past and are living now, so that we can leave a better world for our future generations.

This si not a utopian idea and is certainly possible now, thanks to the advancement of ICT in making the whole world, a small village. Sitting in my room, I can communicate silently or thro' voice or video, with anyone, anywhere in the world, thanks to the internet.

We need to ban currency circulation the worldover and make all assets worthless by not attaching any value to them.All transactions shall be done transparently thro' a single genuine bank account for every inividul or organization, anywhere in the world. This would rid the world of nuclear trade, drug trade, arms trade, and the various cartels that operate around the globe.

Make all transactions transparent thro' bio-metric. No one should be able to do anything clandestinely. There should be no seperate law enforcing agency, which ends-up as law agrandizing agency. There should be no bureaucracy or police or judiciary, as the community and society would take care of its own administration thro' volunteers of the society in a transparent way.

We should create heaven on earth and undo the present form of living in hell on earth.

Self-Administration, of the people, by the people, for the people, in a transparent and accuntable way to self first, then to family, friends and community, should our goal.

Kris Dev (Krishnan)
http://ll2c.blogspot.com
krisdev@gmail.com

New website

2005-11-02T03:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.TrAcNet.org is the new website created by Peter for Transparency and Accountability.

Terrorism, transparency and accountability

2005-10-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

It's now clear beyond doubt, that no amount of so called security can prevent bomb blasts and terrorism.

The only way such dastardly attacks can be totally stopped is to ban currency circulation the worldover and make all transactions of all individuals, organizations and governments transparent on the web.

By this all spending on arms and terrorism - state sponserod or terrorist groups sponsored can be totally eliminated and true all round peace and prosperity can prevail.

It is ultimately the inequalities that create people to resort to terrorism. To counter terrorism, we need more military and police and they are a drain on any national resource.

Instead we can spend on peace, alleviating poverty, enriching the lives of citizens, etc.Lest we have to live in constant fear of life, despite the advancements in science and technology.

We need to transform our society into a peace loving society and it must begin with the leading nations of the world in not spreading the arms race!!

Kris Dev
http://bancurrency.blogspot.com

Transparency and Accountability Network

2005-01-18T02:46:00.000-08:00

About Tr-Ac-Net

The International Transparency and Accountability Network (Tr-Ac-Net) is emerging as a professional independent response to weakness in transparency and accountability (Tr-Ac) that is evident in modern society at almost all levels, including corporate organizations, governments, multilateral organizations, other entities in the official relief and development assistance (ORDA) community, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), faith base organizations (FBOs) and so on. There is no part of society that is not being adversely affected by the weakness of Tr-Ac in the modern era.

The failure of organizations to have a high standard of Tr-Ac has allowed a global mis-management and mis-appropriate of financial resources that is measured in billions of dollars, if not trillions over the past decade. There are powerful forces that have taken advantage of Tr-Ac weakness and would prefer that the weakness remains.

The international accounting firms, the professional institutions of the accountancy profession and the regulatory authorities should have addressed the issue of weakness in Tr-Ac way before it reached the present state, but they have not done so. Since 1995 there have been major scandals arising from Tr-Ac weakness, and little has been done. Though people are outraged, there is no mechanism for this outrage to be channeled into productive response. Tr-Ac-Net starts to make it possible for anyone anywhere to become a part of feedback mechanism that will make it more and more difficult for organizations to operate without a high standard of Tr-Ac.

The first goal of Tr-Ac-Net is to have organizations commit to the concept of operating with a high standard of transparency and accountability (Tr-Ac). Not surprisingly, many organizations are uncomfortable making such a commitment. There are too many implications ... and of course this is exactly why orgnizations should be called upon to make a commitment to high standard Tr-Ac, and then should engage in internal organization and operation so that they are able to operate with full Tr-Ac.

Tr-Ac-Net is establishing a database of organizations to put on the record the status they have with respect to Tr-Ac. This database will be made Internet accessible by the end of the first quarter 2005.

The database will also serve as a repository of feedback from Tr-Ac-Net supporters who identify various forms of scams, rip-offs and obscene profiteering arising anywhere in the world, and especially related to ORDA resources.

Within Tr-Ac-Net's capacity, Tr-Ac-Net professionals will help organizations that want to improve their capacity to have high quality Tr-Ac. This can be simple advice, or full system development assistance using Tr-Ac software applications that have been developed.

Tr-Ac-Net encourages media attention about issues relating to Tr-Ac.

Feedback and information should be sent to tracnet@gmail.com