ICANN Update

[Jay Fenello <Jay@Fenello.com>]

Here's an update on the ICANN situation:

Jay.


 >At 10:17 PM 11/22/99 , msondow@iciiu.org wrote:
 >
 >At a National Press Club conference transmitted today by NPR, John Sweeney,
 >President of the AF of L-CIO, said that the WTO was a world government whose
 >laws, made without the consultation or participation of workers, are
 >establishing a world oligarchy of transnational corporations that will throw
 >back workers' rights and environmental protection to the union-busting days
 >of the nineteenth century.
 >
 >Is the Internet to be the mechanism for WTO world government? Is this why
 >the U.S. Department of Commerce has created ICANN? What role are MCI and
 >Vinton Cerf supposed to play in it? Was Jones Day selected as ICANN's
 >lawfirm because of their connection with the transnational corporations
 >controlling the WTO and benefitting from the GATT? Under what law will we
 >live in the 21st century, constitutional  democracy or the dictatorship of
 >ICANN and the WTO?


[Note:  Jamie Love is the Director of Ralph
Nader's Consumer Project on Technology]

At 11:18 PM 11/22/99 , James Love wrote:

>Funny you should say this.  I was just at a Department of State briefing
>on information policy last week, and when discussing a the need for new
>global rules on consumer protection, Don Heath suggested ICANN as a
>model, where NGOs (he meant business NGOs like MPAA and the BSA) played
>a role.


At 09:50 AM 11/23/99 , msondow@iciiu.org wrote:

>Jones Day would not have lent its foremost international antitrust lawyer 
>to create ICANN for any other reason than that ICANN should be the 
>communications tool for the trade hegemony of its transnational clients 
>through the WTO and GATT. The DOC would not have gone to the lengths it 
>has to protect ICANN, even to violating its own charter, nor would it have 
>run the risks of dissembling in congressional testimony, for a lesser purpose.
>
>Why has the Antitrust Division of the DOJ refused to investigate and 
>pursue ICANN? Merely because Joe Sims used to work there and is a friend 
>of the Division's counsel? If that were so, then Scott Sacks, to whom I 
>supplied the same information I gave James Tierney, and who is supposedly 
>beyond the influence of the Division's counsel, would have acted on it, 
>and the same goes for the Division's director, Joel Klein, and Janet Reno, 
>who have been apprised of the situation by Tom Bliley. Yet nothing has 
>been done by them to change it.
>
>Clearly, ICANN is an integral part of the U.S. Government's plans to 
>control world trade through the pseudo-world government of WTO. Don Heath 
>is no doubt privy to those plans, as are also the ICANN board and the 
>Berkman Center. Why else would the DOC have allowed the ICANN board and 
>staff to give ISOC and CORE control of the DNSO and, through the IETF, the 
>PSO as well? But it is Vinton Cerf and MCI who are the key. Mr. Cerf's 
>characterization of the Internet as the device of world trade in the 21st 
>century, in his "Internet Is For Everyone" paper, was no exaggeration. In 
>the Western power-block politics of the cold war period, it was ITT that 
>provided U.S. communication and control; in the coming period of unopposed 
>U.S. domination, it will be MCI, through the Internet.
>
>John Sweeney, because he has learned the effect of U.S.-controlled foreign 
>industrial production on American workers, understands what is at stake.


At 04:16 PM 11/12/99 , Jay Fenello wrote:

>The way I see it, we have a
>confluence of activities that paint a very
>interesting picture.
>
>Specifically, we have presidential candidate
>and senator John McCain saying that soft money
>is a legalized form of graft.  And he's right,
>especially if you look at the totally unfair
>process used to put in place ICANN.  But with
>literally 100s of millions of dollars being
>funnelled into Washington on behalf of those
>supporting ICANN, what could be expected?
>
>We have presidential candidate Pat Buchanan
>saying that this may be the last election where
>the people have any chance of getting back their
>government.  Funny, while the White Paper expresses
>concern over capture of the Internet, the capture
>of Washington goes unabated.
>
>And we have a U.S. Air Force report that does
>a scenario analysis of the next 25 years:
>    http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usaf/2025/af/a-f.htm
>I'd say we are already pretty far into the scenario
>where multinational corporations exceed the power
>of sovereign nations.
>
>Throughout this debate, we've had to constantly
>up the ante when it came to describing the meta
>issue that we are all fighting about.  And this
>leads me to former ambassador and presidential
>candidate Alan Keyes.  He believes that the U.S.
>Constitution requires a moral citizenry, and
>without morality, even the Constitution can't
>help us.
>
>In other words, when all is said and done,
>this is a fight over morals and values.
>
>Some people say (I think it's the Buddhists),
>that awareness is the first step on the road
>to enlightenment.  I believe that the Internet
>can be the vehicle that leads to the awareness
>that leads to the enlightenment, that allows
>humanity to evolve to the next level.
>
>Unfortunately, the Trademark lobby's "deal with
>ICANN" is a serious threat to *that* scenario.


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.


Respectfully,

Jay Fenello,
New Media Relations
------------------------------------
http://www.fenello.com  770-392-9480

"We are creating the most significant new jurisdiction
we've known since the Louisiana purchase, yet we are
building it just outside the constitution's review."
   --  Larry Lessig, Harvard Law School, on ICANN