<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Jeremy</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I did go to your site and admit to being puzzled by the comments. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Neither Richard Hill, yourself nor the U.S. government can redefine the meaning of terms like "democracy,<span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">" "social rights" and "economic rights." If you think that Richard's proposals to achieve "democracy" are wrong, you're free to say so. Many of us thought the name "German Democratic Republic" absurd. East Germany was nothing like my idea of democracy. That didn't negate the meaning of the word "democracy." Just because an authoritarian state misuses the term doesn't make the idea invalid.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">There are many ways to come closer to democracy beyond the statist suggestions you attribute to the people you disagree with here. </span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">For example, Net Mundial created an initial board with 3 Africans. 3 Asians, 3 Latin Americans, 3 North Americans and Three Europeans, as well as a few self-appointed initiators. That's far from representative democracy but it's much closer than most other groups making rules for the Internet.</span><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">We all know a very heavy majority of the decisionmakers in the "internet governance" groups are from America and her allies. The majority of Internet users are not; China already has twice the INternet users as the U.S. or Europe. Africa will have more Internet users than the U.S. by ~2017. These folks have mostly been excluded </span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8000001907349px"> No matter how dedicated the individuals are, a system that virtually locks out the majority of Internet users will be very hard to sustain. </span>So I strongly support "democracy" because without more representative bodies I believe the system will fail. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"> Democracy, and economic justice, are good things.</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">Dave Burstein</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(80,0,80);font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:arial,sans-serif">p.s. Your site registration has a captcha but the picture doesn't show.</span></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 8:27 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jmalcolm@eff.org" target="_blank">jmalcolm@eff.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On Mar 4, 2015, at 7:54 PM, Michael Gurstein <<a href="mailto:gurstein@gmail.com">gurstein@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> Perhaps we could have an explanation from Jeremy and others on the drafting committee as to when and how "democracy" and "social and economic rights' became unacceptable terms in a document meant to have global significance?<br>
<br>
<br>
</span>With pleasure. This is why:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/unesco-resists-jncs-attempt-to-turn-democracy-against-ordinary-internet-users" target="_blank">http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/unesco-resists-jncs-attempt-to-turn-democracy-against-ordinary-internet-users</a><br>
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