Many of you here may be dues-paying members of both ARIN and RIPE.
Those of you who are may wish to be aware of the fact that there will
be an election held on (I believe) May 14th, just a day or two from
now, for three open RIPE NCC Executive Board seats.
I have it on good authority that one of the candidates running for
the open RIPE NCC board seats in this election has hired legal
counsel in South Africa, and that said legal counsel has then
proceeded to threaten various officials of the City of Cape Town,
South Africa with possible legal action if they do not relinquish
to him their rights in and title to the 165.25.0.0/16 block, a
block that all historical records, including even ARIN "WhoWas"
historical records show, clearly and unambiguously, has been
legally registered to the City of Cape Town for over twenty years.
(I am assured that at no time did the City of Cape Town ever sell,
trade, or barter away their rights to this valuable IPv4 block,
and that they are defending themselves, as best as they can, against
this attempt to extort them out of their rightful prooperty.)
Where I come from, this kind of thing is called barratry, but you
be the judge.
In any case, prior to the RIPE election, I wanted to let you all
know these facts about the candidate in question, as well as a
number of additional startling facts relating to the people who
nominated this candidate for a RIPE NCC Executive board seat, as
documented by my friend, South African journalist Jan Vermeulen:
I could go into more detail about many of the nominators mentioned
in the above article, but I don't want to make this email too long,
so I'll await some explict request for that additional info. For now
it should suffice to make at least some of the basic facts more widely
available, a task which is accomplished just by sharing the above link,
IMHO.
Regards,
rfg
P.S. I have been specifically and explicitly enjoined and constrained
from posting here anything at all that might smack of being either
partisan or of an even vaguely "political" nature, and thus, I will
refrain from doing so. I would be remiss hoever if I did not at least
note in passing that history records that in times such as these, when
people of good character and good intent are, as they rightly should be,
focused on the health and safety of themselves, their loved ones, and
their professional collegues, and when the gaze of the world is elsewhere,
persons of less than honorable intent reach for power and, with unfortunate
regularity, obtain it.
I cannot and do not ask that those of you who have been saddled with
personal or local crises during this sad time turn away from those
responsibilities to give attention to matters of Internet governance,
however urgent those may appear at the moment. For all of us, our first-
order duty lies nearby, with family, friends, and collegues. But for
those of you who still have a few cycles to spare, I do ask that you
consider carefully the newfound and critical importance of this tool,
this Internet, in the lives of so many millions, all around the world,
and the self-evident risks of its governance being handed over, by default
or otherwise, to persons with an interest only in what is best for them
personally, to the exclusion of all else.
P.P.S. I would be posting this info and the above link also to the
very relevant RIPE members-discuss mailing list, but as I am not a
due-paying member of RIPE, I have no ability to do so. Separately,
due in no small part to the candidate's own recent and manifest on-list
transgressions on that very list, that list has recently been switched
to a heavy-handed moderation, under which, it seems, even discussion of
the pros and cons of candidates in the upcoming RIPE NCC Executive Board
election are now categorized as "too controversial" and thus, themselves,
are now entirely off-limits.
I cannot help but be reminded of a catch-phrase that I saw somewhere,
not too long ago:
"Democracy dies in darkness."
-- anon