Elad Cohen (was: Re: Cogent sales reps who actually respond)

Thu Sep 19 22:50:05 UTC 2019

In message <20190919084649.GC30112 at jima.tpb.net>, 
niels=nanog at bakker.net wrote:

>* rfg at tristatelogic.com (Ronald F. Guilmette) [Thu 19 Sep 2019, 10:05 CEST]:
>>I never like to generalize to entire populations, and I will 
>>therefore refrain from suggesting any endemic or widespread defect 
>>in the Dutch national psyche, but I cannot help but note that, as 
>>pointed out in the MyBroadband.co.za news report, a gentleman named 
>>Maikel Uerlings, who is also Dutch, and who presently appears to be 
>>notably absent from the Netherlands, perhaps due to certain 
>>less-than-friendly legal entanglements, is also, it appears, 
>>intimately connected to Mr. Cohen and to his business, such as it 
>>is.  It would be entirely improper for me to say or even to suggest 
>>that the Dutch are any more inclined toward cybercrime, or toward 
>>looking the other way while it takes place, than anyone else.  I 
>>will instead only paraphrase William Shakespeare and say that there 
>>is something rotten in the Netherlands, and that whatever it is, it 
>>ain't doing their national reputation any good at all.
>
>Couching your racism in some faux plausible deniability by using 
>phrases such as "It would be entirely improper of me to" or "I will 
>refrain from [making a certain racist suggestion]" and then immediately 
>making that racist suggestion, doesn't make your remarks not racist.  
>Nor can you hide behind the classics.
>
>Racism has no place in this community and you would do well to refrain 
>from posting any more such remarks.

Leaving aside the minor quibble that "Dutch" is not, as far as I am aware,
a "race" per se, I do apologize for having improperly and quite wrongly
generalized the apparent confluence of of certain events and actions to
the Dutch people generally.  That was entirely incorrect and improper on
my part and I do sincerly apologize.

Looking back now at one of my own posts here from a couple of years ago,
I do see that at the time, there did seem to be some similar sorts of
undesirable and arguably untowards routing events which were emmanating
from AS260, Xconnect24 Inc., which at the time appeared to me to be an
Amsterdam-based networking company:

    https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2017-August/091821.html

(The company still does appear to have some footprint in Amsterdam.)

Obviously, those historical events have no relation whatsoever to present
circumstances or to recent events, but given that I've not generally seen
much of this kind of stuff from other European locales... with the
exception of Ukraine... it's difficult for me not to infer a possible
pattern.

That having been said, the "pattern" such as it is, is quite obviously
not one that can or should be attributed to the Dutch people generally,
who make the world's best and most admirable chocolate, wooden shoes,
and windmills, by the way.  Rather, the pattern, if there even is one,
seems to be confined exclusively and only to the networking community
and its associated professionals within the city limits of Amsterdam.
And furthermore, I am quite entirely sure that even the majority of this
small group are admirable and honorable people, doing their level best,
day in and day out, to provide quality and honest service to their
neighbors, their countrymen, and to the people of Europe generally.

My hope is that it will not be inappropriate for me to simply express my
sincere desire that this overwehlming majority, i.e. the good men and
women of the Amsterdam networking community will, over time, work to
insure that that all members of their community adhere to the highest
ethical standards in all respects and at all times.

Regards,
rfg