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

[Cintra Sooknanan]

Thanks for this note Carlton, it is certainly an alarming perspective that
we need to consider but oppose in moving forward with the GNSO and in ICANN
generally.

I don't think it's memory that is muddling this, rather the evolution of the
Animal Farm. It seems perhaps we have reached the point where "All animals
are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"

Regards
Cintra Sooknanan



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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