So Paul Twomey believes that for some years ICANN was seen as a proxy for US foreign policy in some parts of the world. What if I tell you I will give you even odds he excluded the European part of the world from this assessment? According to him, the views regarding a G12 for ICANN oversight as expressed by Madame Reding was "personal'. The feedback from the Brussels meeting took a similar explanatory line; purely one view "for discussion" and entirely "personal". I hope Dr. Twomey's objective was to remain "on message". Because if he genuinely believes this, I have a bridge to sell him. Barely used, been in the family for at least a century and going for a knock-down price! Call me a skeptic. For one, this is not the way it works in any serious organization with foreign policy remit and with an official at that level. Yes, the most simple explanation - an over zealous officer who misspoke - is indeed attractive if you don't want to think. But what we have here on display is called "plausible deniability" in statecraft. Madame was not off on a frolic of her own but was fronting a position that was deliberately floated into the public domain, more than likely with the tacit approval of the Commission and the EU. What was said defines the tension of the "other side" regarding the post-JPA future. Allow me to position the view conservative of the existing order. There are Americans who genuinely believe that the Internet is an American thing, property of the United States of America. Some are politicians with influence. And no, they are not the ones you usually associate with this subject like the congressman from Massachussetts, Edward Markey. These others come from places that most of you have never heard of, places where there are more cattle than people as constituents. But they have real power to place anything in DC on "hold". As an old Washington DC hand, I can tell you that almost every government bureacrat fear being called to Capitol Hill to be grilled by some congressman willing to beat you up to show his constituents that he stands for the American people and the conservation of American property. Worse yet, you'd hate to be the recepient of his attention when you're going to be accused as being in favour of giving American property away to "furriners". That is one way. By far the easiest thing to do is to declare any change a threat to the national security interests of the United States of America. Which, incidently, has already been floated in the policy development circles in the U.S. If that takes root, you can kiss an "independent" ICANN goodbye. When you pull these strands together, it will lead you to where I am: the At-Large constituency in ICANN will have more influence on ICANN's future that they would care to admit. For now. Because we give ICANN - the organisation - cover from both extremes. Carlton Samuels On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 8:21 AM, Dev Anand Teelucksingh <admin@ttcsweb.org>wrote:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/09/BU0117E65J.DTL
DevT
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