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November 08, 2005
A Republican fighting a Republican fight
Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) has taken on the role of Paul Revere in exposing the "grave threat" posed by U.N.-ization of the Internet:
It sounds like a Tom Clancy plot. An anonymous group of international technocrats holds secretive meetings in Geneva. Their cover story: devising a blueprint to help the developing world more fully participate in the digital revolution. Their real mission: strategizing to take over management of the Internet from the U.S. and enable the United Nations to dominate and politicize the World Wide Web. Does it sound too bizarre to be true? Regrettably, much of what emanates these days from the U.N. does....
The low point...was the European Union's shameful endorsement of a plan favored by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Cuba that would terminate the historic U.S. role in Internet government oversight, relegate both private enterprise and non-governmental organizations to the sidelines, and place a U.N.-dominated group in charge of the Internet's operation and future. The EU's declaration was a "political coup," according to London's Guardian newspaper, which predicted that once the world's governments awarded themselves control of the Internet, the U.S. would be able to do little but acquiesce.
This issue validates, I think, suspicions many hold about internationalists who seek to cede Ameriacn sovereignty to unaccountable, non-governments. The U.S., we're asked to believe, is no more moral than the "international community" and thus, no more capable of responsibly regulating the Internet (or waging war, etc.). And what to make of the fact that among the American left, despite plenty of opposition (much of it fair) to Washington's regulation of Internet speech, there's been virtually no dissent from the UN's plans to impose a system that wouldn't care a whit about, much less be accountable to the 1st Amendment.
Posted by bill at November 8, 2005 03:54 PM
