Posted on 11/18/2005 11:18:20 AM PST by F14 Pilot
Cuba, Iran and African governments lashed out at the U.S. government this week, charging that the Internet permits too much free speech and that the way it is managed must be reformed immediately.
The U.S. and other Western nations "insist on being world policemen on the management of the Internet," Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who has been the country's leader since 1987, said at a United Nations information society summit here.
"Those who have supported nihilistic and disorderly freedom of expression are beginning to see the fruits" of their efforts, Mugabe said, adding that Zimbabwe will be "challenging the bully-boy mentality that has driven the unipolar world."
These criticisms demonstrate that a detente reached at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on domain name management has hardly resolved long-running disputes about Internet management, the primacy of the English language online, and the so-called digital divide between nations with functioning economies and those with dysfunctional ones. The deal resulted in the creation of a U.N. Internet Governance Forum expected to meet in Greece in 2006.
"Fidel Castro, the unflinching promoter of the use of new technologies," believes "it is necessary to create a multinational democratic (institution) which administers this network of networks," said the WSIS delegate from Cuba.
In Cuba, only people with government permission can access the Internet, owning computer equipment is prohibited, and online writers have been imprisoned, according to Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based free speech watchdog group.
Too often, the Internet is used for the "propagation of falsehoods," said Mohammad Soleymani, Iran's minister of communication and information technology.
Soleymani called for the elimination of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)--which approves new top-level domain names--in favor of United Nations control.
"Changing the current Internet governance to a participatory, legitimate and accountable system under an international authority is imperative," he said.
Previous Next But changes proposed by Third World countries that would give them more influence are "being rejected because they are not facilities managed by the Breton Woods institution by the West's neo-colonial desires," charged Zimbabwe's Mugabe, referring to a post-World War II agreement that led to the creation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Mozambique Prime Minister Luisa Diogo predicted the struggles to replace ICANN were not over, saying that "it is a matter of justice and legitimacy that all people must have a say in the way the Internet is governed." ICANN does have an international board of directors, including members from Senegal, Morocco, and Nairobi, but critics say that's not enough.
A recurring criticism of the WSIS summit was that wealthier nations had not done enough to help poorer ones take advantage of the Internet.
"The proceeds have not been equally shared by developing and developed countries," said Sudan President Omar Ahmad al-Bashir. "The digital divide is growing between the rich and the poor countries."
Economists generally agree, however, that investors prefer nations with a respect for property rights, the rule of law and a functioning court system--which means that few African nations make the list.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, offers an Index of Economic Freedom. The index finds a close correlation between wealth and a stable, functioning government. Wealthy regions like Hong Kong, the U.S., and Switzerland respect economic rights, the index shows, while poor nations like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Iran and Cuba show the least respect for them.
I'm not Irish, but to quote Mike Moran, they can all kiss my royal Irish ass.
'Sides, by the time these turds figure out how to "take over" control of the internet, it will by then have become an anachronism, replaced by some sort of privately organized decentralized wireless system that they can't get their filthy hands on. Plus, they'll all probably be dead by then.
The Internet will play a key part in bringing down the brutal dictatorships of both Cuba & Iran.
What these birds had in mind was nothing more than the same theft to which they've grown accustomed in their own countries. The scam supposedly would have started with replacing ICANN with a UN-related body for distributing IP addresses. It would have gone from there to dividing the address pool among developing countries and forcing the ones who needed addresses to pay just as the Kyoto agreement was structured with respect to emissions. From there an international internet tax would have been easy to institute, first for addresses and then for the passage of content, and so would monitoring and censorship of that content. Anyone who thinks this is an exaggeration may look at the people who are bleating here: Sudan, Cuba, Iran, China, Zimbabwe. To whose numbers we may add the European Union. That isn't a compliment.
Only the conservative side.
Cuba, Zimbabwe and Iran walk into a bar ...
"the Internet permits too much free speech and that the way it is managed must be reformed immediately"
Yea, well come on over and try and do something about it. We'll be waiting...
...walk into a COUNTRY BAR full of War on Terror vets...
Socialism is NOTHING but theft.
Think about it: when was the last time a socialist produced something on his own?
I can't wait to go to the workers paradise!
Someone should do a "Weekend at Bernie's" type of parody movie, dealing with Fidel Castro as a corpse-like moron still nominally in charge of his country....
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