Re: [ga] Re: "political advantage"

["Roberto Gaetano" <ga_list@hotmail.com>]

Mike,

I did not reply to your first message (on ICANN-EU) as I thought it was just 
an emotional reaction to facts. I do reply now, because I believe that there 
is a difference in the approach to the terrible events of last week, and 
more important to the road ahead.

Mike Roberts wrote:

><snip>
>
>In the last great challenge to American freedoms in the 50's and
>60's, I gave three years of my career and my marriage to military
>service.  Today, I am sad for the losses sustained last week in New
>York and all across the country and I am even sadder that another
>young generation of Americans is about to suffer loss of life in
>defending them again.

I am skeptical on the rhetoric of freedom, as on the manicheism intrinsinc 
in the "fight of the good against the evil". Too often the proclaimed fight 
for freedom (or the proclaimed fight for religion) has produced many 
innocent victims, that were all but enemies of the freedom (or of the 
religion).


>
>So if I sound angry and self-righteous about the all-too-frequent
>trash on this list, I am.  This anonymous narcissistic garbage is not
>an exercise of freedom, it is an abuse of freedom.
>
>Life at ICANN isn't going to be the same either.  Given the military
>mindset and anti-terrorist measures in Washington and other capitals,
>there is going to be a much greater stress on operational oversight
>of the DNS, on stability and on synchronization with related Internet
>security steps. There is going to be much less interest in who is
>represented by whom on the Board.

Let me tell you that, much to my surprise, the reaction so far has been 
extremely positive.
I am impressed by how the message of "life continues" goes across, on how 
after the initial moments of panic a cold-blooded attitude has taken over.
I admire how President Bush has taken again his place in his office after 
just few hours, giving a strong sign that terrorism would not change his 
life too much. I admire how, with the possible exception of few dangerous 
idiots, that exist everywhere and are not exclusive feature of a country, 
the American people have not fallen into the trap of terrorist=foreigner. I 
admire how the market has reacted keeping the stock exchange substantially 
solid (even if with an unusual sustaining intervention of the Government).

This is the only possible answer to the terrorism.
Their target was not to make few thousand deaths, but to undermine the 
economic and political system, pushing it to a reaction that would have 
provoked a further deterioration of the situation. Following that, the 
terrorists could have had an easy task in recruiting further supporters, for 
instance among the relatives and acquaintances of the victims of a possible 
US bombing.
This is what the American country (people and government) have understood 
(incidentally, what Israel has not [yet] understood, methinks).
The key is to be able to use with terrorists the methods of the 
international cooperation and the courts of justice and not with the blind 
retaliation, to be able to undermine the support to the terrorists by the 
populations that may be tempted to do so by their desperate situation, to be 
able to go back to everyday's business with a broken hart for the victims, 
but with the additional strength given by the belief that the terrorists 
will not win.

>
>The GA, bastion of rugged individualism, has an opportunity to
>contribute to the solutions to these challenges.  But if you're not
>interested in being part of common solutions and the compromises
>involved in them, and if throwing rocks at me for being the messenger
>of the new reality gives you a bigger thrill, go right ahead and lay
>a claim to irrelevance.

And I believe that the GA *is* contributing to the solutions to these 
challenges, but with the limits that the GA has had since the beginning.
There is no way to eliminate individualism from the GA, nor would it be 
adviseable. Given the current structure of ICANN and the DNSO, I do not 
think that the the GA can reasonably have the role of a body that has to 
express the consensus of the community on the different subjects: there is 
neither extensive "popular" support, nor extensive representation of all the 
interests at stake for doing so.
In an ideal world, maybe. In my original idea of what the GA should have 
been, it surely was. But now, we have to face reality and take the GA for 
what it can reasonably express (I repeat, for the time being): a forum where 
everybody can express his/her opinion and where ideas can be circulated.
Let's go back to work to achieve this.
Then, once we will have a proven track of constructive dialogue with civil 
discourse rules, we can go to the next step and give ourselves more advanced 
and challenging targets.

Best regards
Roberto



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