[governance] IANA contract to be opened for competitive bidding on November 4

[Norbert Bollow]

KovenRonald at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/25/11 9:31:20 PM, ian.peter at ianpeter.com writes:
> 
> > Mahatma Ghandi
> > famously said words to the British along the lines of "we would rather 
> > have
> > our own poor government than your very good government". I think that
> > applies here, and indeed getting rid of the USG contract might just be a
> > catalyst for some ICANN improvements and better levels of involvement.
> > 
> 
> In other words.you'd rather let China and Russia dictate "our own poor 
> government" than continue to put up with "very good government" by the US ? 
> Really ?

In the Mahatma Ghandi quote, "our" means something along the lines of
"the people here feel that it belongs to us".

So the requirement is for a form of governance which people all
around the world would describe as "ours". No particular national
government, no matter how democratic and well-intentioned, can
fulfil this requirement. Nor would anything under the umbrella of
the UN fulfil this requirement, IMO. When I took a tour of the UN
facilities in Geneva with my family some time back, the guide
"explained" the UN General Assembly as the "parliament of the UN".
Sorry but a parliament is something very different. Of course that
was just a guide, but the UN is also failing to use so many other
opportunities to demonstrate understanding of the fundamentals of
democratic and participatory decision-making. It could be argued
that the UN fulfils a different function, that it's intended mainly
to prevent powerful countries from making war with each other.
That's ok, I'm quite ok with the UN continuing to fulfil this role,
but then when we want to build some kind of governance that people
all around the world can describe with the word "our", those
governance institutions will have to be build outside the umbrella
of the UN, IMO.

Something new needs to be created. I'd suggest creating an
International Parliament and giving it enough funding to not only
hold reasonably fair elections woldwide (in all countries where the
national government does not prevent that from happening) but also to
do some substantive work of some kind. In would be then up to that
parliament to decide in what areas it wants to be active, but I would
have some suggestions related to the need for resolving some of the
messes that national governments have created with regard to some
Internet governance topics. Initially the only authority of the
International Parliament would be on how to spend the money that has
been put under its authority, and to make recommendations otherwise.
After some time, some countries may decide to automatically recognize
some kinds of decisions of the International Parliament as a form of
binding law that can be enforced in court.

Initial funding could come from any source, UN, governmental or
non-governmental, it doesn't really matter too much for getting
started. In the long run though it'll be important to establish
a sustainable funding mechanism that avoids giving anyone undue
leverage.

Greetings,
Norbert.
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t