[P2P-F] to Andreas - the p2p community should call on the Correa administration to do a full scale audit of the FLOK project funds was an evaluation of the flok as colonialist

[Gordon Cook]

On Jul 9, 2014, at 5:33 AM, Andreas Wittel <andreas.wittel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Gordon,
> 
> thank you for this very interesting comment. I have also read the first half of your report: excellent and very important information. This i a must read for everyone who is interested in the background of the flok project.
The first 60 or so pages?
If any one wants the full smart side of the picture i recommend the connectivity paper as well.  The premise was based on strengthening the tiny ecuadoran research and education network to get the country decent connectivity to the science of what is referred to as the fourth paradigm.  That network Cedes gets zero money from the government.  What it does get is outrageous prices from the state owned telco CNT.  Of course it is just coincidence that CNT was established circa 2010 or 2011 by jorge glas who was in the same buy scout group with the current president when both were teen agers.  Read glasses wikipedia entry its quite interest.  Now effective roughly 2008 glass started going to mainland china to sign loans on behalf of ecuador.  Part of these were hydro power projects and glass built up a company clec transelectric with its own national fiber infrastructure and a company now getting into using the fiber strung behind high voltage towers that carry the electricity.

the assigned premise for my paper was to uses strengthening of the Rand E network to bring fiber to Yachay along with the the other 30 current universities and to insist that CNT permit open access to its fiber in the 100 towns into which it extended to permit local citizens to build out  guifi.net approach to link the commons groups together and to link all that to global R and e activities. The goal to set conditions to make ramirezes Toward intellectual independence possible. but the countries rulers see telecom as a profit center so what i was told to work on need had a chance.  an IRU?  impossible not sold.  although telco net the privet company that did win the business of the R and e network but is owned by neo colonial interests n wall street indicates that it will sell them beginning with the opening of the new carabean undersea cable that it has a 25 or 26% interest in.

But as michel indicated yesterday Yachay is a sick neo colonial joke.  And no one down there had a clue about the role of telecom in global scientific research.  This also goes for jorge andrade the ecuadoran full professor of mechanical engineering at Cal tech.  See the details of my  interview with him in the first ecuador issue of april 1.
> 
> I agree that a full scale audit of the project funds is needed. I am sure that this very much in the interest of those who have participated in this project, I am sure they will push for such an audit.

I very much doubt that it will happen bless the presidents office starts to probe Daniels activity very very closely.


> 
> Some comments inserted below, sorry have to keep them brief.
> 
> On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 6:32 PM, Gordon Cook <cook at cookreport.com> wrote:
> quickly followed by the attack of Franco Iacomella. And it was less than 10 days after that was announced Daniel Vasquez summoned Michelle Quito to "remake" the entire Ecuadorian nation state.  He went and evidently did not even meet Carlos Prieto the Spanish rector of IAEN and budgetary authority for the $700,000 .  He had a teleconference with Carlos where Carlos presumably backed up whatever it was that Daniel was telling him.  Did michel do any due diligence on carlos and renee ramirez?  He has told me that he did not.  He felt he could trust these people and that it was not necessary. ….
> 
> If this description is correct, the whole framing on this research project is dodgy, to put it mildly.
> I would like to know more about the terms and conditions of this project. $700k just based on a handshake? Hard to believe. There must a contract somewhere.

one would have hoped but circa november 12th-14 when the research team arrived in quito there was references in the mumble session into which i plugged that the contracts were not signed…. what were they?  what did they specify i don't know.  I am pretty sure flok  management would not permit their release.  was it done on a handshake?  I think so but michel has first hand knowledge that i do not - so its up to him to say.  There was one researcher i think his name was paul bouchard who got so disgusted that he returned to canada in january 2014.  what was remarkable was the silence of the research team about their treatment by daniel vazquez.

> A research proposal with aims and objectives, no?

oh while michel stayed in quito he worked out a research project proposal that was placed on the folk wiki.  In was rather short and not terribly detailed but it was there and followed as best i could tell.  until at the very end just a few days before the summit it was replaced by the very sophomoric essay of daniel and xabier  that announced the project.


> Also how much of this was framed as research, how much as consultancy?

as far as i know it was all research

> 
> Normally research projects start with a poposal. Normally these proposals are either  accepted or rejected by funding bodies.

quite true.  But this project was not normal.  To the extent that there was a funding "body" it was Carlos prieto.   Supposedly ramirez's sensecyt was a funder and well as the ministry of human talent.  It would help the credibility of a project that looks more and more like the bureaucratic premises underlying  Gogols Dead Souls if michel would release any documents that he has or if he has none he would at least comment of what he understood to be the monetary commitment from the other two agencies.  I do know that michel told me in January that the 700,000 had been cut in half to 350,000.  What funds were really there and with whose knowledge is a very interesting question.

> Normally the research director manages the budget.

yes indeed but as well know this was not normal and in the end michel had no power, not even any power over the research content.  What became official was only  that which daniel approved.

 I still do not understand what daniel was holding over michel's head besides a threat to withhold his pay and knowing his precarious financial situation THAT was and is a despicable act.
> 
> But with that last phrase "help" i think Andreas that we get to the critical issue on which you were focusing.  Who gets to define what help is or the conditions under which should be offered? Throughout the history of the last two centuries at least if not more this is a question most always faced by movements that proclaimed they want to help the people against an oppressive government. 
> 
> Indeed.
>  
> I suspect that the most important learning from Ecuador is that the idea of transforming an entire nation state into the abstract idealized nirvana of a commons is sheer lunacy.  
> 
> Spot on.
>  
> Looking at the USA I had a naïve hope  that if you just bring Internet access to enough poor people who could not afford Google fiber some how you would get a brilliant person in emerging from the shadows who, knowing how to use the appropriate databases,  would find out where the wealth was in Kansas City and having found out would show their neighbors what the problem was.  Now that is possible but before anything like that has a prayer of happening there are a huge amount of other tasks needing to be done in these tasks can only be done by an alliance of Kansas Cityians working together on the ground day after day and week after week.
> 
> Everyone who works in local neighborhoods and communities, in NGOs, trade unions, polical parties etc knows how damn hard, time-consuming, and long-term it is to initiate even little changes.
> 
> This is one of the things I was trying to bring across in my first post. Digital technologies with all their global reach somehow make us think that we can circumvent local engagement, that the revolution will happen online. Not sure it will.
> 
> all best,
> andreas (in world cup fever)
> 
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