[P2P-F] Fwd: CSG news to ECC participants about a case of manipulation

Wed Sep 4 08:12:45 CEST 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Silke Helfrich <silke.helfrich at gmx.de>
Date: Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 5:45 AM
Subject: CSG news to ECC participants about a case of manipulation
To: Silke.Helfrich at gmx.de

Dear ECC participants and other friends,

We wish to share with you some shocking news that affects all of us.

We recently learned that a person working closely with the Commons
Strategies Group, especially in connection with the Economics and the
Commons Conference (ECC) in May 2013, had been manipulating ECC planning
and intercepting our email communications for at least 18 months.

Through traces of IP addresses and partial confessions, both oral and
written, we have confirmed that Franco Iacomella made it impossible for a
colleague to attend the conference and had been blocking selected email
communications to Michel Bauwens, CSG co-founder and head of the P2P
Foundation.  He was interfering with email sent to Michel from 55 email
addresses, many of them used by ECC participants.  (A full list is included
at the end of this letter.  We apologize for sharing the email addresses,
but the issue deserves detailed attention.)

Emails from these people were either deleted, leading many people to
conclude that Michel had simply ignored them, or selectively filtered. Some
were diverted by Iacomella and given phony responses.  As one might expect,
these revolting manipulations made it extremely difficult for people to
cooperate in reliable ways.  Iacomella’s filtering also sowed seeds of
confusion and distrust among people working with Michel, and among members
of the Commons Strategies Group and the ECC team.

We sincerely hope that throughout the conference you did not feel too much
of the impact.

These actions also cast a new light on Iacomella’s role in suggesting and
volunteering to set up a communications platform for the ECC --
http://economicsandcommons.org – which in fact went online shortly before
the conference. You might wonder why we were first encouraging you to use
the platform for beyond-ECC communication and in the aftermath did not
manage to really make it a lively place.  This relates directly to our
conclusion that Iacomella's  goal may well have been to oversee and control
communication more than to enable it among ECC participants.  This may be
also one of the reasons why the platform was not perceived as easy
accessible and as facilitating networking.

Just to give you an example of what this meant to us, and especially to
Michel Bauwens in real life: On some occasions, Iacomella wrote phony
recommendations for himself, using the P2P Foundation’s name, in order to
secure speaking engagements, advisory board memberships, and other roles
for himself, when it was Michel who was initially invited.  We have also
documented that Iacomella forged letters purporting to be from the Right
Livelihood Award Foundation as part of a successful attempt to prevent an
invited keynote speaker from attending the ECC.
In a series of deceptions unrelated to ECC and CSG, Iacomella
misrepresented his academic credentials, job titles and organizational
affiliations in Argentina for several years now.

We do not know the actual motivations behind all of these acts or whether
there were third parties involved.  However, the apparent goals were to
promote Iacomella’s visibility in free software, tech and commons circles;
to interfere with the activities and growth of the P2P Foundation and the
Commons Movement; and to actively undermine the working relationships of
Commons Strategies Group members as they planned the ECC.

While the effects of some of the email manipulations were subtle or
invisible, other results – personal tensions, mistakes, misunderstandings –
often were not.  We therefore wish to share these recently discovered facts
with you to help shed new light on the past year and a half of the
activities by the CSG and P2P Foundation.  It is important for us to let
you know: if some communications or exchanges felt amiss, confusing or
somehow offensive, they may have been related to these hidden interferences
with our emails.  Please be assured that we have now secured control over
the ECC communications platform and its contents and will soon make a
decision about how to move forward.

For now, the three of us with the Commons Strategies Group – Michel, Silke
and David – are relieved to have discovered what was behind so many
misunderstandings and problems.  We are now re-committing ourselves to
working together and developing new strategic priorities for commoning.  We
are starting afresh at a time when so many important commons initiatives
are bursting forth.

This strange, outrageous episode underscores the real significance of our
commons work:  it is becoming more politically consequential.  The commons
is a threatening alternative to some people.  Now that we know how truly
insecure electronic communications are – thanks to the revelations about
the US National Security Administration’s routine spying on ordinary
citizens – it is clear that the future of our commons movement depends upon
direct, trustworthy communications, and whenever possible, face to face
communication.  The real power of the commons is the incorruptibility of
our relationships:  something that we must work hard to protect.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in
touch with us.

Sincerely,

The Commons Strategies Group:
David Bollier
Silke Helfrich
Michel Bauwens

Below is the list of 55 email addresses that were being blocked or diverted
on Michel Bauwens’ email account by Franco Iacomella:

wouter at freeknowledge.eu,
sp.travlou at gmail.com,
digital-manual at jiscmail.ac.uk,
digital-manual at jiscmail.ac.uk,
sp.travlou at gmail.com,
massimo.menichinelli at aalto.fi,
whoesch at truman.edu,
aysegulguzel at zumbara.com,
nancy at kosmosjournal.org,
juha.huuskonen at finnish-**institute.org.uk<juha.huuskonen at finnish-institute.org.uk>
,
daniel at jgse.org,
ruche_alain at yahoo.fr,
p.travlou at ed.ac.uk,
rachel.odwyer at gmail.com,
ciaranmoore at dctv.ie,
hdieterich at gmail.com,
stian at fripost.org,
kat.braybrooke at okfn.org,
amaia.arcos at googlemail.com,
hfinidori at yahoo.com,
nicolasmendo at gmail.com,
hfinidori at gmail.com,
brendan at eventures.vc,
Carolyn.Stephens at lshtm.ac.uk,
projectluz at gmail.com,
bernardobrasil at gmail.com,
gorenflo at gmail.com,
neal at shareable.net,
aysegulguzel at zumbara.com,
eloste at uoc.edu,
danaklisanin at aol.com,
petermerry at ubiquityuniversity.**org <petermerry at ubiquityuniversity.org>,
p2p-econ2013 at lists.ourproject.**org <p2p-econ2013 at lists.ourproject.org>,
whoesch at truman.edu,
lifesized at gmail.com,
guido.ruivenkamp at wur.nl,
rubyvdwekken at gmail.com,
aysegulguzel at gmail.com,
Loeschmann at boell.de,
david at bollier.org,
silke.helfrich at gmx.de,
petermerry at ubiquityuniversity.**org <petermerry at ubiquityuniversity.org>,
mfotaki at mbs.ac.uk,
heikeloschmann at gmail.com,
info at sciencegallery.com,
michel at eCommMedia.com, ken at evolver.net

-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

<http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates:
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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