Well, apart from various theoretical speculations about the nature of the human mind and political power structures, I do not normally interest myself much with the former red block countries, but being an inhabitant of this mailing list, I have now followed this thread all the way. The discussion has dragged on far too long, and it must be about now that we can reach some kind of conclusions: 1. Various people/countries/ethnic groups from the former red block countries have very great distrust in each other. 2. Various people/countries/ethnic groups from the rest of the world have various levels of distrust in the ability of any group in the former red block countries to remain fair, unbiased and non-bribable in the face of 1. and the general situation(s) "over there". With that in mind, I think the most sensible thing is to continue to serve the entire former red block of countries from RIPE in Amsterdam because: A. If support in a particular language is needed in sufficient degree they can hire somebody with that language to do so. B. They are not in any way part in any of the uncountable conflicts of interest which plaque the former red block countries, and are consequently not likely to give preferential treatement. C. They have infrastructure, experience, tools and procedures in place already. D. They have a proven track record which is a lot better than the initial suspicion which will be leveled at any new registry. Lets have a show of hands, who couldn't live with this, and why ? Poul-Henning Kamp, from Denmark, who still remember when you had to stay up late in order to be able to call the SRI-NIC in their timezone and consequently doesn't see this as much of an issue anyway... -- Poul-Henning Kamp FreeBSD coreteam member phk@FreeBSD.ORG "Real hackers run -current on their laptop." "Drink MONO-tonic, it goes down but it will NEVER come back up!"