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

[Jacqueline Morris]

Carlton,
You were amazing. Totally on a roll. Nothing to add, subtract or comment
except to say
ME TOO!
Applause!

Jacqueline A. Morris
Technology should be like oxygen: Ubiquitous, Necessary, Invisible and Free.
(after Chris Lehmann <http://twitter.com/chrislehmann> )



On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 9:30 PM, Carlton Samuels
<carlton.samuels at gmail.com>wrote:

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