Paul Hjul has posted to this mailing list a number of well-reasoned and eloquently articulated arguments that are more than sensible, and with which I agree wholeheartedly. The quotes below are not among them.
In message <caf4kypvn-oqth1-jbc5kctg4vc6wum62dtp8ayj+vj9+v6k...@mail.gmail.com> Paul Hjul <[email protected]> wrote: >Hopefully the Board and management will quickly >make it very clear that partnership in "building Africa's digital future" >means collaboration of a global nature. It means devising consensus and >action that is aimed at promoting a true digital future and distancing from >the deleterious xenophobic and regionalist attitudes and discourse that >flares up. Paul, this is the second time that you have injected these dual epithets, "xenophobic" and "regionalist" into the conversation here. I personally feel that these terms are both distracting and beneath the otherwise admirable level of your discourse. Further, I am not even persuaded that the term "regionalist" even is an epithet, even though it is clear that you intend us to interpret it that way. What is the opposite of "regionalist"? "Globalist"? Assuming so, I would be more than happy to debate you, ad infinitum, on the question of whether "globalism", writ large, has or has not improved the lot of the lower classes globally, and specifically in the third world, or whether its primary economic effects have been to make mega-billionaries even richer to the point where they can now commute to space via their own private rocket ships. Paul, if you're going to trumpet the beneficial effects of globalist capitalism, then you had best be prepared also to defend its less desirable effects as well. Is it right or proper or fair that a poor sharecropper in Kenya should go hungry or that his daughter should lose an eye for want of a surgeon, all because speculators in New York have decided amongst themselves that the global price of bulk coffee should be cut in half this week? >This brings me back to the fact that the best way to manage the risk which >is plaguing the organization is to get as much dispute resolution handled >outside of potentially organization shattering litigation. So you are in favor of unilateral disarmament on the part of AFRINIC? You want them to go cap in hand to all three of the parties that are current suing them and beg for a negotiated settlement in each case? Maybe we should make you the next U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. >The membership >simply do not know how many litigants there are knocking at Afrinic Objection your honor! Speculative. Calls for a conclusion not based on the facts in evidence. I might as well speculate that there are just oodles and oodles of people and companies lining up, as we speak, to sue -you-. (How do we know there aren't? Can you prove that there aren't any such?) >but it >is quite clear that there are several cases that need to be handled >appropriately and to date the organization has crafted an environment >favouring a litigious approach. I'll be blunt. That is utter rubbish. AFRINIC did the Right Thing by reclaiming blocks of IP addresses which had been -provably- stolen from its free pool. Two of those thieving companies sued, apparently based on nothing other than bogus disinformation that they themselves had manufactured out of their... well... out of thin air. Nothing AFRINIC did in either of those two cases consitutes "crafting an environment favouring a litigious approach". That is an utterly false, disingenuous, and slanderous claim with no basis in fact and I encourage yoy to retract it. More recently, AFRINIC, acting on information that none of us has yet even seen, made a decision to reclaim a great deal of IPv4 space from a different party. In the wake of that decision, THE OTHER PARTY initiated legal action. Once again, your narrative of AFRINIC "crafting an environment favouring a litigious approach" falls flat in the cold light of day and the actual facts. I'm damn glad that you are not the CEO of my bank. It seems that if you were, and if the place got robbed, you would just throw up your hands and say "Oh well! Boys will be boys!" If the bank got robbed three times in a row, you would blame it on the bank and urge the bank president to sit down in arbitration with the various robbers. We've seen this kind of thing where I live. Not recently but in the past. Some people occasionally claim that women who have been molested have only themselves to blame because they were wearing skirts that were too short. Blame the victim. We don't do this too much here in the U.S. anymore, as the practice has been well and widely discredited. The blame now properly goes to the perpetrators, NOT to the victims. Let's be clear about who, exactly, has "crafted an environment favouring a litigious approach". AFRINIC is currently facing three legal actions against it. Who initiated each and all of those? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't AFRINIC. What AFRINIC has done may be right or may be wrong, but AFRINIC is not the party that has initiated these legal actions, two of which, at least, are based on some of the most provably outrageous frauds ever conceived by the mind of man. It seems however that you want AFRINIC to sit down amicably with those thieves and negotiate with them so that they each get to keep half of what they have provably stolen. Doing so would only add disgrace to dishonor, and I, for one, sincerly hope that AFRINIC does not do so. Regards, rfg _______________________________________________ Community-Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/community-discuss
