[governance] USG on ICANN - no movement here

[Parminder]

> There's an distinction between disagreeing with someone's views and
> personal
> attacks with epithets etc.  If we maintain it probably most will be
> happier
> here and the conversation more productive. Pretty obvious.

Yes. Sure, Bill. But what is less obvious is why such pally-ness with Milton
on this subject right at the time he wrote that email to Rui I quoted in my
last email. How is "more dangerous than a clear authoritarian" kind of
description/ labelling more acceptable that "professes to a neo-imperialist
ideology".
 
Can you make that too obvious to all of us please?

Let us know why and how Milton's is a legitimate political critique, and
mine is reprehensible 'labeling'. Please specifically reply to this. Because
you tend to ignore such stuff when it suits you, and normally don't response
to such direct queries.

Also I ask you again (you didnt respond when I asked earlier) how is your
labeling my behavior as Spartacus Youth Club-ish not similar ideological
'labeling' against which practice you speak so strongly. 

Especially when such labeling is done in the language and idiom of an
in-group with no reason to expect that either the person at which it is
aimed, or the vast majority of the IGC members, are likely to know what it
means/ connotes (I haven't till now been able to get the exact connotations
of the labelling, but that hardly matters, right, because the in-group got
it and can have a chuckle over it.)

(And if, as you said, a coordinator has to be extra careful in such
labeling, don't you think the logic also extends in the reverse direction
and more restraint may be needed in labeling the co-coordinator's behavior??
Please reply.)

I repeat that my use of the expression 'neo-imperialist view' was clearly a
part of a political critique which I strongly believe in and hold to, and I
consider the kind of personal language you have been using against me in
this regard - "dipping in the gutter" and that "belligerent fight-picking" -
very objectionable. I specifically ask you to desist from such language or
you could be leading both of us towards the 'gutter'. But if you insist and
persist, I am game.

These are what are personal attacks and not the political critiques that my
email offered.

I have asked you a few times earlier to avoid superiority- posturing on this
list (yes, this is a personal reference as the ones you used against me),
which kind of behavior is more subtly (but strongly) and sustained-ly
'excluding and offensive' than the 'behavior' you came out against.  

Parminder 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch]
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 12:03 PM
> To: Mueller, Milton; Governance
> Subject: Re: [governance] USG on ICANN - no movement here
> 
> Hi MM,
> 
> On 8/7/08 3:49 AM, "Milton L Mueller" <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> 
> > While the epithet "neo-imperialist" may not be a productive way to move
> > forward, Levine did not just talk about "powerful political forces in
> > DC," he tried to defend the arrangement, and when asked what value US
> > oversight added, he replied in a dismissive way that anyone who had been
> > at an ICANN meeting had to conclude that it needed "adult supervision."
> > Why is he exempt from criticism here?
> 
> There's an distinction between disagreeing with someone's views and
> personal
> attacks with epithets etc.  If we maintain it probably most will be
> happier
> here and the conversation more productive. Pretty obvious.
> 
> > That is why, ahem, IGP developed and proposed a workshop on the JPA for
> > the Hyderabad IGF. Keep in mind that the progression is clear. USG can
> > start by terminating the JPA, which doesn't cost it control of the root
> > and still gives it life or death power over ICANN, but ending the JPA
> > removes the most direct and egregious forms of US intervention. And we
> > have made very specific proposals as to what conditions would justify
> > termination of the JPA, although, like you, we are routinely
> > disappointed with the level of attention those issues tend to draw from
> > this crowd.
> 
> While Iike all good citizens I normally commit all IGP utterances to
> memory
> (just kidding), and recall reading your NTIA submission, I can't say that
> I've ever seen anyone really make the sort of case I was asking for.
> There
> is for example a difference between saying the JPA should be ended in
> order
> to depoliticize things and bring cheer to people who just don't like the
> USG
> role, and making a case that will resonate in the beltway, Silicon Valley,
> etc that there are no significant risks to doing so in terms of security,
> stability, 'foreign dictators asserting control,' etc.  WSIS-speak etc
> won't
> cut it, there are probably like five people on K St. or Capitol Hill who
> could tell you what the Tunis Agenda says.  A compelling case would need
> to
> be anthropologically attuned to the tribal customs, communicative
> practices
> and collective memories of the target audiences, and promoted in a manner
> that works in the local institutional ecology.  Or, we can just stand back
> and say screw 'em, they're insular and don't get what people elsewhere are
> thinking, in which case the prospects for change remain dim.
> 
> Not defending it, just saying that's how it is.  There's an almost total
> disjuncture between life worlds here.
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
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