Should the United Nations control the Internet? That’s the subject of a heated debate slated to take place at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis later this month. The European Union is pressing for a UN role in governing the Internet, which is currently in the hands of a US nonprofit. Lawrence Lessig breaks down the debate and offers his views.

The largest cause of this rift is European distrust of the United States. It’s not particularly related to the Internet. The Europeans are eager to stand up to the Americans, and that I think has been produced by the last five years of U.S. foreign policy. It’s not really a cyberlaw problem.

I am English and a strong supporter of European integration. However another reason for the problem is that a lot of the EU is very undemoractic and run entirely by bureaucrats and they love to have their fingers in every pie and consequently some of the things that come out of Brussels are full of shit.
I hate US foreign policy regarding Iraq but I have no problem with some US non-profit organisation running the internet. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Foreign policy is no excuse for anti-Americanism.
However although in part it may be anti-Americanism I think it is mostly the bureauocrats wanting a piece of the pie. Run a search on some of the things they have passed legislation on.

Larry Lessig, on Battling for Control of the Internet

Made for the women in South Africa, it hooks into an assailant (assailant's penis, that is) and disables them...or does it perhaps only enrages them?

anti-rape device spurs controversy

"They [the ads] expose the nasty inverse of "the beauty standard," which is the belief, held by some men, that women who don't look like fantasy material aren't just unworthy of their attention but are actually offensive, or even menacing. It's worth noting that none of the complainers goes so far as to call the Dove models ugly, yet they consider these women visual nuisances, annoying as litter, sour eye candy, gross. "

Men objecting to the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

The default reaction to the Rave bust in Utah from a number of people has been of the form "blah, blah, Republicans, blah, blah, Bush, blah, blah, Police State." This is more then a little annoying. Raves have been targetted federally by a bipartisan coallition led by Democrats. Yes, Virginia, Democrats have jack boots too.

In 2002 Democratic senators Biden, Leahy, and Durbin along with Republicans Grassley and Hatch proposed the Rave Act of 2002. Biden was the primary sponsor.

This law included a findings section, essentially a list of justifications, which is basically a collection of paranoid rantings that have little or no connection to reality. For example:

Many rave promoters go to great lengths to try to portray their events as alcohol-free parties that are safe places for young adults to go to dance with friends, and some even go so far as to hire off-duty, uniformed police officers to patrol outside of the venue to give parents the impression that the event is safe.

There is no way they might actually have a legitimate interest in hiring security guards!

Because rave promoters know that Ecstasy causes the body temperature in a user to rise and as a result causes the user to become very thirsty, many rave promoters facilitate and profit from flagrant drug use at rave parties or events by selling over-priced bottles of water and charging entrance fees to 'chill-rooms' where users can cool down.

You'd think maybe people who were dancing at an all night party would, you know, not want to drink a lot of alcohol, need bottles of water, and want to chill out, irrespective of whether or not they were on drugs, wouldn't you? Furthermore, I've been to a LOT of raves and I have never ever seen a separate fee charged for access to a chill room!

Apparently Leahy and Durbin dropped their cosponsorship, possibly when they started getting angry faxes. But Biden pushed on. He was joined by Presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and everyone's favorite Democratic Senator, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The thing was rolled up into s.151, an omnibus protect the children law that, among many other things, calls for 2-4 year prison terms for anyone who puts sexually explicit material on a "misleading" internet domain name. It is now law.

Now, yeah, people do drugs at Raves. Some aspects of the rave culture are drug related. However, the same thing can be said of any pop culture in the past 50-80 years including Rock, Jazz, HipHop, etc... These laws don't target drugs specifically. They target Raves. They specifically target culture.

When I left Atlanta in the late 90s there was a vibrant rave culture in the city with a real community that corrdinated online and threw parties. Its completely gone. There is nothing left but a few high priced clubs that play similar music. This website stub is all thats left of a once vibrant mailing list of people who threw parties on a regular basis that I participated in for years. The police wiped it out. They wiped out a culture. They did it with strong support from the Democrats.

Yep, the left side of the fence is guilty on lots of things like this. People forget that the PMRC came out of Tipper Gore. They've done all sorts of other stupid things too. Political Correctness came from the left. Hillary is currently leading the screaming about GTA:SA. None of those was a good thing. No one is especially innocent when it comes to the culture fight.

FOXNews.com - Views - Straight Talk - Raving Lunacy

According to Love in Action's rules, posted on Zach's blog, clients must report sexual fantasies to the staff. The program specifies the exact length of haircuts and how many times men must shave each week (seven). Love in Action bars jewelry and clothing by Abercrombie and Fitch. The rules prohibit "campy gay/lesbian behavior and talk." New clients are not allowed to talk to or make eye contact with anyone for the first three days. Clients have to wear pajamas to bed and if they get too cozy they "must always have exactly one person between them." Clients cannot keep a diary, and all their belongings are searched every morning by the "Chain of Command." All secular media, including music and movies, are forbidden. Also, during counseling -- no "disgusting" faces.

The Refuge program is "like a boot camp, but worse," Zach wrote. "What is it with these people? How could you support a program like this?"

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services investigated the Love in Action facility for possible child abuse but discontinued it because of lack of evidence. The brouhaha exposed an oddity of the ex-gay ministries, which is that they are largely unregulated. Ministries claim they are not hospitals or any other facility that would typically require regulatory oversight or licensing. Love in Action spokesman Tommy Corman says the facility does not need to be licensed by the state at all because it is not doing anything "therapeutic." A bold declaration, considering the group promotes "the prevention or treatment of unhealthy and destructive behaviors facing families, adults, and adolescents," according to its Web site.

Nevertheless, the ministries fall into a regulatory blind spot. "There has been some question of who licenses that facility," said K. Danielle Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services. "This would not be under our jurisdiction. I have not been able to ascertain who licenses that facility." On July 11, the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities sent a letter to Love in Action, warning the facility that it may be operating without a required license. Results of the investigation are pending.

This is the first really in-depth story that I've read about the Christian Conservative's movement to "deprogram" gays. No matter what stance you take on the matter, I highly recommend the article just so that you can know what it is that the group is trying to accomplish and what the hindsight view of some who have been through the program is.

There are four parts to this story - I linked to the final installment since it has links to the first three at the top of the article.

Turning off gays

This is worth pulling out the paypal for.

Thanks for posting this.

RE: Slashdot | Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided

Was it the intellectuals who replaced Toscanini and "Playhouse 90" with "Mr. Ed" and "Gilligan's Island"? Was it the intellectuals who shifted resources away from opera reviews in Time magazine and toward celebrity puff pieces in People and its various epigones?

Ultimately, it was the bottom line that destroyed American middlebrow culture.

I have to wonder how many questions on standardized tests are devoted to appreciating the works of Faulkner or Hemingway. How can we expect children to establish a love of learning when we take all of the exploratory fun out of it? Not everything can be boiled down to a multiple-choice question.

In the 1950's and 60's, the middle class looked longingly at the upper class. Now, the American middle class aspires not to the values and sensibilities of the privileged classes of half a century ago, but to the wealth and power of the new class of celebrity rich.

The Decline of Middlebrow Culture

I'll take a vintage diamond anyday. Better yet, a very big, vintage, natural alexandrite.

Ten reasons why you should never accept a diamond ring

] A 5-year-old girl was arrested, cuffed and put in back of
] a police cruiser after an outburst at school where she
] threw books and boxes, kicked a teacher in the shins,
] smashed a candy dish, hit an assistant principal in the
] stomach and drew on the walls.
]
]
]
] The students were counting jelly beans as part of a math
] exercise at Fairmount Park Elementary School when the
] little girl began acting silly. That's when her teacher
] took away her jelly beans, outraging the child.
]
]
]
] Minutes later, the 40-pound girl was in the back of a
] police cruiser, under arrest for battery. Her hands were
] bound with plastic ties, her ankles in handcuffs.

Who in their right mind would call the cops to a 5 year old anyway?

5-Year-Old Cuffed, Arrested in Florida

The illustration alone is worth posting this article. I won't comment as I might be a bit too lengthy. Draw your own conclusions. Cheers, -Pk

Capitalism and its Role in American Society’s Plunge into the Abyss.