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Netizens-Digest Volume 1 Number 425
Netizens-Digest Friday, March 7 2003 Volume 01 : Number 425
Netizens Association Discussion List Digest
In this issue:
Re: [netz] Thirty Year Itch - article from Mother Jones on U.S. policy on Iraq
[netz] Representation (was: Thirty Year Itch - article from Mother Jones on U.S. policy on Iraq)
Re: [netz] Representation (was: Thirty Year Itch - article from Mother Jones on U.S. policy on Iraq)
[netz] Some work on Internet scalability
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 09:46:32 -0500
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Thirty Year Itch - article from Mother Jones on U.S. policy on Iraq
>On Wed, 5 Mar 2003 AGENTKUENSTLER@aol.com wrote:
>
>> In a message dated 3/5/03 8:54:40 AM Eastern Standard Time, ronda@panix.com
>> writes:
>>
>> > I am not proposing such discussion for the Netizens list,
>> > though if there are others who feel it would be good to
>> > have such discussion, we should figure out where and how
>> > online this would be possible.
>> >
>>
>> In my opinion, this discussion of Politics, wherever it is to occur, is
>> meaningful only when you consider it within the context of Netizen
>> constructive 'proactivity.'
>>
>> To clarify, 'What are Netizens going to do about present day
>>issues i.e. fair
>> political representation and civil liberties?' It would be interesting to
>
>You might find it useful to look at the online version of Netizens
>(http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/)
>
>Some of Michael's insight was that representation was needed when there
>weren't the online means of communication. But that now there are
>means of communicating that make the old system of representation
>outmoded.
>
>It would be useful to explore this.
>
>> see some solutions. We must, of course, first clearly define the problems.
>> Here is a general statement of a 'problem' to start: If anything has been
>> clearly demonstrated over the past few months, it has been that there is a
>> lack of 'quality' communication between legislators and their
>>constituencies,
>> at least in the US. I argue that if there had been better communication
>> between elected officials and 'the people,' there would have been
>>no need for
>> protests to begin with.
>
>That seems to assume that the legislators would respond to better
>communication.
My direct experience with US legislators, over a period of 30 years
or so, is they do -- IF the communication is formed in a way they
find useful. "Useful" can range from ensuring reelection, to helping
them support their own legislative positions, to arming them better
in debate.
>When I gave a talk in Finland at an EU sponsored
>conference on how citizens can have more of a part in the decision
>making of government, Finishish researchers reported how all their
>efforts at communication were stymed. One government official
>explained that representatives feel that after they are elected
>they can decide whatever they want. They can respond to whatever
>interests they want. They are not obligated in any way to
>respond to their constituents desires.
I have no personal experience with Finland, although I know a few
very vocal Finns. I will admit the singular of data is not anecdote.
If your statement is literally true, however, it would seem that the
only option is overthrow of the government, by violent means as
necessary. If less drastic measures are feasible, it's citing
dissatisfaction without solutions. If truly no solutions are
available, then massive regime change would seem needed, rather than
talking generically about network-enabled communications.
>
>And in the circumstances where there are those who have money and
>power, the legislators seem to have lots of pressure on them.
I contend that "efficiency of argument" is a power of its own.
>
>Under such a situation it doesn't seem to me that communication
>with legislators is enough.
>
>Before the Congress gave up its constitutional obligation to
>hold onto the fact that has the obligation to debate any plan
>of the US government to wage war, and the power resides with
>Congress, many called or communicated with their legislators
>asking them not to vote away their constitional obligation.
First, there is no Constitutional obligation to debate even a formal
declaration of war, only to approve or disapprove it. Give me a
specific reference if such is not the case.
Second, and I'm not saying this is a good thing, the entire area of
formal declarations of war seems to be considered obsolete in modern
geopolitics.
Third, there has been very intense discussion at the committee level.
>
>The legislators voted it away anyway.
>
>>
>> Let us begin to talk about what steps that Netizens can take to make change
>> as opposed to acting like victims. Analysis or discussion for any other
>> purpose than to plan proactive strategy is really not going to help anyone.
>> Let's talk about solutions.
>
>I agree that it is ok to discuss what people can do, but don't agree
>that discussion or analysis in itself is useless. Actually discussion
>or analysis is critical to be able to decided what to do. Otherwise
>one doesn't know who are allies or foes, or even what the fight is
>over.
There is no reason not to discuss, but do that discussion of position
on a different list, improving the signal to noise ratio both on this
list, a rare place to discuss Internet-specific issues, and other
lists that can deal with a particular issue. Bluntly, I will not stay
on this list if a significant content of its content becomes
diatribes against one issue or the other. I will go off and find
additional and multiple focused lists so I can keep my discussions
straight. I won't stay on any list where the discussion of positions
is largely a series of diatribes, or quotes of secondary or tertiary
sources, and has very little focused, objective analysis. Oh -- and
also lists that actively welcome people that politely and objectively
present opposing views.
In an ideal net community, I would hear all discussions of Saddam,
Bush, Chirac, Hitler, etc., free of pejoratives and focusing on
positions and actions.
>
>
>>
>> Many of us in this thread live in America. Here, we vote for people at
>> various levels of government who represent us. To these people, called
>> politicians, we have ceded our power. They make the laws. It seems to me
>> that change begins there -- at the door of our local government officials.
>
>Actually in the US a very small percentage of the population votes.
>
>That is because of a number of reason, but a main one is that the
>two parties more and more act as the same party. In a one party
>state there is no reason to vote. A vote does no good.
>
>Also in the past election it was clear that the results were not
>determined by anyone's vote.
I will admit that I don't particularly find my vote makes much
difference -- and I do find I have the ability to affect decisions at
all leves from neighborhood on up. In other words, I feel quite
enfranchised, but in a nontraditional manner. The net makes the
associated policy research much easier.
>
>
>We didn't cede power.
>
>That is what we inherited.
>
>What we do about it is indeed an important question.
>
>This is an issue for citizens in the US or other countries where they
>don't have the ability to affect decisions of government.
>
>When I was at the EU conference in December 1999, just after the
>Seattle protests, it was clear that in many countries around the
>world the people do not have the ability to affect their government
>based on how they vote.
>
>What then can be done? This is an important question.
>
>Some of what I have found is that with communication and collaboration
>between netizens from different countries it is possible for each of
>us to have more clout in dealing with our respective governments.
>
>Also by understanding the situation and views of people around the
>world (and around one's country) one is in a stronger position to
>understand what activities are possible.
>
>So discussion and communication among netizens is important. Not only
>among citizens and their government officials.
I agree completely. But this process of communication is independent
of the specific issue.
>
>>
>> How can Netizens exploit the Internet to facilitate communication between
>> government officials and their constituencies?
>
>This is a helpful question to pose.
>
>>
>> In my opinion both sides, the government and the citizenry, are responsible
>> for the current state of affairs. Let us try to understand where the injury
>> began and meaningfully pursue an artful employment of suture to close the
>> wound.
>>
>
>I don't agree that the responsibility is totally the same on both sides.
>
>Government is obligated to act according to the constitution setting it
>up.
>
>Citizens have to find a way to enforce that, but the government officials
>who take up to act outside of their constraints also make it difficult
>for citizens to act.
>
>> What do you think?
>
>It is worth discussing this.
>>
>> Would you like to inform, to complain, and to construct? Participants here
>> are doing a truly laudable job of the first two, but the last
>>choice is being
>> sadly neglected.
>>
>
>Informing and analyzing is necessary, and it didn't seem that
>constructing was neglected, as the world wide demonstrations saying
>something constructive.
Since we have no way of proving it, I'll make the observation, stated
purely as a subjective observation, that mass demonstrations.
>
>The people demonstrating on Febuary 15 were in support of the international
>law principle that it is illegal to declare war against another government
>or country if there has not been an attack by that other country on your
>country.
Please cite that principle, and balance it against the perceived
national rights of sovereignty and self-defense in the UN charter.
Also identify specific legal prohibitions against preemptive actions,
at least prohibitions much more recent than the Congress of Vienna.
It must be noted that the International Military Tribunals after WWII
were not making true international law, but merely establishing their
own ground rules. I can think of no independent international
organization that even worked on codifying these rules.
>
>The reasons that the US government gives for waging war against Iraq
are reasons contrary to international law.
>
>There is no right under international law to go into another country
>to wage war if there is no attack on your country.
This is quite arguable, even in the context of the UN charter, and
even more so in the context of WMD, unless the attacker has a
survivable second-strike force and is willing to accept the damage
done to its citizen by what seems a serious risk of a first strike.
>
>The UN was formed to prevent such attacks. It can only harm the
>UN to allow the US to act in a way contrary to international law.
It may also not harm the US to ignore the UN. I am _not_ suggesting
that, but that is a significant sentiment in large parts of the US
electorate.
>
>There is no basis in international law for one country to decide what
>is in its security interests and then to attack another on that basis.
>
>This is contrary to international law.
I simply do not read the UN charter to say that. But I also consider
such a discussion outside the list scope. I might be very willing to
discuss it on a network-enabled list about international law, as long
as the people on that list don't decide they want long discussions
about Internet governance, privacy and accountability, Internet
access and Internet survivability and scalability.
>
>And the US constitution requires that the US government act according
>to the treaties it signs.
Partially true. But that also assumes there are relevant treaties in
place to cover specific incidents. Now, I happen to consider the Gulf
of Tonkin resolution and its aftermath to be incredibly ill-advised.
But it's not that hard to come up with a legal basis under the SEATO
treaty.
>
>But the US press doesn't take up to raise any of these issues.
>
>It seems there is a need for a press that does its work, not a press
>of those who are egging on the government to ignore international and
>constitutional law.
>
>So it is helpful to say communicate with representatives. But also
>unless there is a press watching what government does, and overseeing
>it, government ends up corrupt. Michael wrote a chapter of Netizens
>about this.
>
>So the ability of the Internet to make a better press available to
>people and to make it possible for people to discuss the issues
>of the day is important.
THEN LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT ABILITY AND IMPROVING THAT ABILITY, NOT
THE SPECIFIC ISSUES THAT CAN BE DISCUSSED ELSEWHERE.
>
>> Larry
>>
>I wondered if anyone on the netizens list knows of Usenet newsgroups,
>mailing lists, web sites, etc where valuable discussion is ongoing about
>the issues in the US trying to wage war on Iraq.
I belong to a couple of newsgroups that might not seem immediate
candidates, and, indeed, might seem biased. Neither turns out to be
the case, say, in alt.books.tom-clancy or alt.fan.heinlein. I should
not that these have extended beyond the virtual community level -- I
just had lunch with several of the locals (there's a lot of
crossover between the group memberships).
Those, especially those that haven't built up a personal reputation,
who dash in and either say bomb everything to the stone age, OR
ignore the situation, get a cold reception. One discussion thread at
the moment is systematically looking at Scott Ritter's claims, and
analysing them objectively to see if some of the inspection claims do
make engineering sense--is there sufficient proof? Not all minds are
made up, but the people arguing mostly have intimate knowledge of the
weapon and intelligence systems.
Unfortunately, alt.war.nuclear-chemical-biological-radiological
hasn't reached current mass.
Some of the distinctly military newsgroups, such as
sci.military.naval, have their lunatic fringers on both sides, but
also a group of well-informed people trying to understand.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:32:09 -0500
From: Mark Lindeman <lindeman@bard.edu>
Subject: [netz] Representation (was: Thirty Year Itch - article from Mother Jones on U.S. policy on Iraq)
Exercising ruthless self-discipline, I won't say anything about
international law or Iraq in this message. I personally do not object
to discussion of those topics on this list -- in fact, I enjoy it,
within bounds. But the Thirty Year Itch thread seems too broad even if
it were all indisputably germane to the list.
Ronda poses a big question:
>> You might find it useful to look at the online version of Netizens
>> (http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/)
>>
>> Some of Michael's insight was that representation was needed when there
>> weren't the online means of communication. But that now there are
>> means of communicating that make the old system of representation
>> outmoded.
>>
>> It would be useful to explore this.
>
Ronda, if you could narrow the citation somewhat, since alas! my time
for reading and thinking is so limited these days. What you've written
here seems to imply that, at least in Michael's view, the only
justification for representation is that limits on communications made
it necessary. I would not agree with that. But then I'm not at all
sure that it is what he or you meant. Do you have a 'new system of
representation' in mind, or a system of direct democracy, and in either
case, can you tell us anything about how it would work?
Maybe my second point belongs in yet another thread.... Was it Howard
who wrote,
>>> If anything has been
>>> clearly demonstrated over the past few months, it has been that
>>> there is a
>>> lack of 'quality' communication between legislators and their
>>> constituencies,
>>> at least in the US. I argue that if there had been better
>>> communication
>>> between elected officials and 'the people,' there would have been
>>> no need for
>>> protests to begin with.
>>
Without getting into the merits of the issue, there seems to be an
irreconcilable disagreement between the Bush administration and the
folks who felt the need to protest. I'm all for improving
communication, and I agree with Howard that US legislators can be
influenced by careful communication -- but I sense (perhaps wrongly) a
utopian undercurrent in this statement that again makes me uneasy. I'm
not convinced that we can do away with protests _or_ representation.
Mark
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 10:42:43 -0500
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Subject: Re: [netz] Representation (was: Thirty Year Itch - article from Mother Jones on U.S. policy on Iraq)
>Exercising ruthless self-discipline, I won't say anything about
>international law or Iraq in this message. I personally do not
>object to discussion of those topics on this list -- in fact, I
>enjoy it, within bounds. But the Thirty Year Itch thread seems too
>broad even if it were all indisputably germane to the list.
>
>Ronda poses a big question:
>
>>>You might find it useful to look at the online version of Netizens
>>>(http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/)
>>>
>>>Some of Michael's insight was that representation was needed when there
>>>weren't the online means of communication. But that now there are
>>>means of communicating that make the old system of representation
>>>outmoded.
>>>
>>>It would be useful to explore this.
>>
>Ronda, if you could narrow the citation somewhat, since alas! my
>time for reading and thinking is so limited these days. What you've
>written here seems to imply that, at least in Michael's view, the
>only justification for representation is that limits on
>communications made it necessary. I would not agree with that. But
>then I'm not at all sure that it is what he or you meant. Do you
>have a 'new system of representation' in mind, or a system of direct
>democracy, and in either case, can you tell us anything about how it
>would work?
>
>Maybe my second point belongs in yet another thread.... Was it
>Howard who wrote,
>
>>>>If anything has been
>>>> clearly demonstrated over the past few months, it has been that there is a
>>>> lack of 'quality' communication between legislators and their
>>>>constituencies,
>>>> at least in the US. I argue that if there had been better communication
>>>> between elected officials and 'the people,' there would have
>>>>been no need for
>>>> protests to begin with.
Not me. Might have been Larry, but I'm not sure.
>>>>
>>>
>Without getting into the merits of the issue, there seems to be an
>irreconcilable disagreement between the Bush administration and the
>folks who felt the need to protest. I'm all for improving
>communication, and I agree with Howard that US legislators can be
>influenced by careful communication -- but I sense (perhaps wrongly)
>a utopian undercurrent in this statement that again makes me uneasy.
>I'm not convinced that we can do away with protests _or_
>representation.
>
>Mark
No disagreement, Mark. It's just that I was seeing what seemed an
overemphasis on using the net to organized demonstrations, and
perhaps a certain degree of contempt for working inside the system.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 15:59:14 -0500
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Subject: [netz] Some work on Internet scalability
We've spent a fair bit of time refining some of the BGP definitions
in this document, and they might help with some confusing points.
They do represent a consensus among Cisco, Juniper, NextHop and
Nortel. One of my coauthors, Sue Hares, is cochair of the main BGP
committee and we are anticipating some of the RFC 1771 cleanup terms
(now in draft 19).
>
>A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts
>directories.
>This draft is a work item of the Benchmarking Methodology Working
>Group of the IETF.
>
> Title : Terminology for Benchmarking BGP Device
>Convergence in
> the Control Plane
> Author(s) : H. Berkowitz et al.
> Filename : draft-ietf-bmwg-conterm-04.txt
> Pages : 42
> Date : 2003-3-7
>
>This draft establishes terminology to standardize the description of
>benchmarking methodology for measuring eBGP convergence in the
>control plane of a single BGP device. Future documents will address
>iBGP convergence, the initiation of forwarding based on converged
>control plane information and multiple interacting BGP devices. This
>terminology is applicable to both IPv4 and IPv6. Illustrative
>examples of each version are included where relevant.
>
>
>
>Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP. Login with the username
>"anonymous" and a password of your e-mail address. After logging in,
>type "cd internet-drafts" and then
> "get draft-ietf-bmwg-conterm-04.txt".
>
>A list of Internet-Drafts directories can be found in
>http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
>or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
>
>
>Internet-Drafts can also be obtained by e-mail.
>
>Send a message to:
> mailserv@ietf.org.
>In the body type:
> "FILE /internet-drafts/draft-ietf-bmwg-conterm-04.txt".
>
>NOTE: The mail server at ietf.org can return the document in
> MIME-encoded form by using the "mpack" utility. To use this
> feature, insert the command "ENCODING mime" before the "FILE"
> command. To decode the response(s), you will need "munpack" or
> a MIME-compliant mail reader. Different MIME-compliant mail readers
> exhibit different behavior, especially when dealing with
> "multipart" MIME messages (i.e. documents which have been split
> up into multiple messages), so check your local documentation on
> how to manipulate these messages.
>
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End of Netizens-Digest V1 #425
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