Battleangel

If it isn’t our old buddy Sen. Norm Coleman again. Must be a great career move for him to constantly take on the windmills of the world. I guess he didn’t learn anything from getting his ass handed to him by George Galloway earlier this year.

Slashdot - Sen. Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said his nonbinding resolution would protect the Internet from a takeover by the United Nations that’s scheduled to be discussed at a summit in Tunisia next month.

If ratified, Coleman’s resolution would assure the Bush administration and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) of political support on Capitol Hill during the negotiations at the World Summit on the Information Society. Similar support has already come from both senior Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Coleman sums up his irrational fears and those of the US corporate-fascist state in the following cliché.

“The Internet is likely to face a grave threat” at the summit, Coleman said in a statement on Monday. “If we fail to respond appropriately, we risk the freedom and enterprise fostered by this informational marvel and end up sacrificing access to information, privacy and protection of intellectual property we have all depended on.”

“Intellectual property” and “freedom” no doubt sell like hotcakes in these circles. I’m amazed he didn’t add “terrorism” and “molestation of girl scouts” to the list as well.

I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again. I’d rather take my chances with the multilateral approach, even with a theocratic, authoritarian state (Iran) than I’d leave the root servers in the hands of a theocratic, authoritarian state (USA). Even the usually apt Slashdot readers, many of whom are American, fail miserably to “get it.” Many spouting irrational anti-UN propaganda, using the idea that no one would set up their own DNS and expect people to use them because they would be “controlled,” while being conveniently unaware that the root servers are controlled as it is. Others still refute that ICANN is a form of control and that it doesn’t matter who watches over the root servers (as long as it is the US). One doesn’t have to go further than the .XXX example to dismiss that notion. One even compares the UN to Al Qaeda and amidst this runs a broad stream of general paranoia, xenophobia and racism. Americans at their best, showing their true face indeed.