[lac-discuss-en] Response to Susannah Clark - GNSO Global Outreach Initiative

[Carlton Samuels]

In her response to the ALAC’s draft comments on the GNSO’s proposal for a
Global Outreach initiative, one Susannah Clark bemoaned the ALAC’s loss of
way and the urgent need to remedy it by talking to end users without
filters.


See http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-global-outreach/msg00001.html



If the comment rested there, one could be philosophical and treat it as fair
comment in a political 3-card game.  But then it went on to wax nostalgic
for the good old days when the At-Large was simply bursting at its vibrant
seams with all those participants.  She mourned the pricked virtue that was
the last  ‘democratic At large elections of 2000’ and the equality of access
to millions of ordinary Internet users now lost, encumbered as it were by
these new and altogether pointless structures.  It was this reference that
shed the skin to the game.


The facts tend to illuminate the author's view of 'democracy' as
situational; good only when we like the results.  But absent a certain
emotional intelligence, one might confuse this screed with a high-minded
regard for the poor unheralded Internet users of Africa, Asia, Latin America
and the Caribbean.  Scratch the subtext however and what you find is the
rancid swill it covers.  Her real endeavour is to question the legitimacy of
current actors in the ICANN community not domiciled in the United States.  Its
contemporary – and topical – analogue is “birtherism”.


Dear Susannah should know that I, for one, shall not be presenting a pass or
any other paper to buttress any claim to legitimacy.  For that would be an
indignity bordering on the obscene.  I shall rather simply assert my
unfettered right to be involved and engaged.


 I willingly concede that neither the ALAC nor, for that matter, the
At-Large, are all that they could be.  But, thankfully, they ain’t all that
they “used to was”! However Susannah and fellow travelers would have you
believe the golden age of the At-Large coincided with the ascendancy of a
small cabal, largely domiciled in the United States, as the representatives
of global Internet users.


Memories, and remembrance of things past, are tricky things in and of
themselves.  Because our existence in time and space, our acculturation and
such things define how and what we remember.  In fact, these largely govern
what we don’t know..or forget.   They temper how we see the world.  Sometimes
falsely, depending on which side you find yourself.


Case in point.  Those halcyon days being mourned tend to discount….really
forget… that a view from China or India, Tunisia and Senegal, Brazil or
Venezuela, could be construed as important to the grave and heavy
responsibilities of Names and Numbers policy development.  In this their
consciousness, the Caribbean remains a place of beaches, rum and cola only.


Now, don’t get me wrong.  I really don’t believe that Susannah …or the folks
she seemingly memorialize…. thinks Fatimata Seye Sella, Cheryl
Langdon-Orr, Sivasubramanian
Muthusamy, Charles Mok, Didier Casole, V.C.Vivekanandan and Tijani Ben Jemaa
have nothing to say they are bound to respect.  Not hardly.  I further
strongly doubt if this sentiment is singly or severally applicable to Hong
Xue, Jose Ovidio Salgueiro, Edmon Carlos Dionisio Aguirre, Darlene Thompson,
Fouad Bajwa, Jacqueline Morris, Edmon Chung, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Cintra
Sooknanan, Sebastien Bachollet, Evan Leibovitch, Andres Piazza, Wolf Ludwig,
Lance Hinds, Rudi Vasnick and/or Baudouin Schombe.  For this would be
overweening and uncharitable.  But what is coming thru however is a view
that says in the context of names and numbers policy, these good people are
illegitimate, seeing as they are not ‘elected’ by the “our” kind of end
users, the ones that Susannah ‘elect’ to represent.


What bothers them even more about this new set is that their collective
contributions is definitively not commensurate in value with the charge to
the ICANN purse.


As is the usual case in the United States, the good thing is that there are
thoughtful folks like Lawrence Strickland who thankfully have a different
view, even if that view is tightly coupled to and designed to advance the
permanent interests of the state.

See http://www.ntia.doc.gov/presentations/2011/Strickling_
GigaNet_05052011.html


They understand that today’s world is rendered flat by the
interconnectedness of things.  They further understand that what with the
Internet being one of the great enablers of the ‘flattening’ process, it is
not only strategic but useful to involve others in the governance
arrangements, if only to preserve one global interconnected Internet. We
also understand that a fragmented Internet - and all that this implies -
undermines its value to all of us and is inimical to the US national
security interests.  Internationalizing ICANN takes some of this pressure
away.


What we don’t know makes for caution in our actions.  But we are clear eyed
that the At-Large community may very well be a fig leaf, providing cover for
a whole lot of interests.  And some of us know that even with this hand to
play, being in the room and at the table can inure to some other interests
we hold as important to our local civil societies and interests.


To say it another way and with tongue firmly in cheek, we do know the
difference when we feel the hand of Esau even as we hear the voice of Jacob.
Our involvement, in context, is just as nuanced.


Carlton Samuels

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Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
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