Re: IETF Adelaide and interim meetings for APPS WGs

[Vernon Schryver <vjs at calcite.rhyolite.com>]

> From: Graham Klyne <GK at Dial.pipex.com>

> >In other words and politically correct pretense asside, the IETF is not
> >an international organization.  ...

> As a non-US IETF participant, I found this statement mildly insulting.  But 
> then I have to ask myself "why?".  It is true that a majority of IETF 
> participation is US-based.  It is true that the IETF secretariat is wholly 
> US-based.  It is true that the IETF is an outgrowth of a US national 
> organization.  So on the face of it, your statement appears entirely true.
>
> But I am still uncomfortable with it.

Except for the cognitive dissonance caused by the political fiction,
why feel insulted?  There are many non-U.S. institutions that variously
refuse, deign to allow, or eagerly invite and encourage participation
by U.S. citizens.  If the IETF only grudgingly allowed non-U.S.
participation, you might have reason to feel insulted.

The purpose of political correctness is to allow people to ignore and
not deal with inconvenient facts.  That more than one person found my
statement offensive instead of silly shows its accuracy.  Indignation
is the mildest reaction to attacks on political correctness.  In the
U.S. we laws against disturbing some fig leaves, the Constitution not
withstanding.  I'll not be specific, since those messes are irrelevant,
and I don't want to be lynched.

>                                      It implies that, somehow, any non-US 
> participant is somehow a second class citizen, who is permitted to attend 
> purely as a concession by the US elite whose organization this is.  Maybe 
> that also is true -- but I don't have to like it.