Hi In the event anyone was puzzled by EC Commissioner de Graaf's pronouncement in Singapore that we were all engaged in "a discussion between the deaf and the stupid" and has not already seen this, thanks to Kieren we now know what hearing and smart looks like. http://news.dot-nxt.com/2011/08/31/ec-greater-government-control http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/4/4893009.html http://www.circleid.com/posts/print/20110905_icanns_unelected_crisis/ The Commission's six “informal background papers” envision a future in which the bylaws change to make GAC advice pretty much mandatory, there are various changes to the IANA contract including NTIA's proposal on 'consensus & public interest', and governments can easily kill new gTLDs, create a reference list of censored terms, and on and on...all to begin being discussed in Dakar. BTW has there been any further consideration of the ideas floated in SF concerning Council/GAC interfacing etc? Cheers, Bill *************************************************** William J. Drake International Fellow Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ University of Zurich, Switzerland william.drake@uzh.ch www.mediachange.ch/people/william-j-drake www.williamdrake.org ****************************************************