[Community-Discuss] Correction to my previous email

[Noah]

On Thu, 29 Jul 2021, 08:50 Ronald F. Guilmette, <rfg at tristatelogic.com>
wrote:


> 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+V6Kbrw at mail.gmail.com>

> Paul Hjul <hjul.paul at gmail.com> 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.

>



Well thought out submission Ronald.


Cheers
Noah
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