First of all, for what I see, the Board did not act in a certain way because of political pressures - it did so because the proposal was evaluated and found lacking the requirements for approval according to the RFP. Of course the Board listened to everyone who gave advice including the GAC, and who knows how each Director received that, but that's not the core reason for the decision. Shooting at governments is an easy way to get an applause at ICANN, but that's unjustified, at least for the tiny final part of the process that I observed. I think that you mistake as undue governmental pressure the fact that there are parts of the world where this proposal is widely considered unacceptable - and their mindset is as valid as yours (which I share in many ways). While I share your frustration with ICANN getting in the way of new TLDs - and I agree with you that ICANN should finally and promptly have a process to create plenty of them - I don't think that any TLD proposal should be accepted just because it exists. I also think that the comments that were made to ICANN show that the world expects ICANN to make partly political judgements, not purely technical ones. Many wouldn't give a damn on whether .xxx met the RFP requirements or not, they just agreed or disagreed with the idea, and very strongly. ICANN cannot tell them "you are wrong, go away" - either it can convince them that this should be a purely technical evaluation, or it must accept that there need to be political evaluations as well: I'd expect this process to become more political, not less. Generally speaking, there was never a discussion on principles, and while I share the principle that "if it does no harm then it should be approved" (though thinking that, in this case, .xxx would do harm), that's never been agreed by everyone, right? Perhaps we need to agree on that first? On an interpersonal basis, I find that you have been a bit too hard on those who drew different conclusions than yours. It might be a matter of cultural diversity, but what you intend to be normal disagreement or statement of personal opinions, is insulting to people from other cultures. Sometimes you seem to be implying that those who disagree with you are either stupid, incompetent to serve as ICANN Directors, or in bad faith, and even if I guess that this was not your intention, that's how it is received by some.