United Nations Wants to Control the Internet, It's "Like Handing a Stradivarius to a Gorilla" Says WSJ

In addition to the UN-operated drones, we may get the UN-managed Internet. Good luck, people.

From Wall Street Journal's Gordon Crovitz (11/25/2012):

Who runs the Internet? For now, the answer remains no one, or at least no government, which explains the Web's success as a new technology. But as of next week, unless the U.S. gets serious, the answer could be the United Nations.

Many of the U.N.'s 193 member states oppose the open, uncontrolled nature of the Internet. Its interconnected global networks ignore national boundaries, making it hard for governments to censor or tax. And so, to send the freewheeling digital world back to the state control of the analog era, China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are trying to hijack a U.N. agency that has nothing to do with the Internet.

For more than a year, these countries have lobbied an agency called the International Telecommunications Union to take over the rules and workings of the Internet. Created in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, the ITU last drafted a treaty on communications in 1988, before the commercial Internet, when telecommunications meant voice telephone calls via national telephone monopolies.

Next week the ITU holds a negotiating conference in Dubai, and past months have brought many leaks of proposals for a new treaty. U.S. congressional resolutions and much of the commentary, including in this column, have focused on proposals by authoritarian governments to censor the Internet. Just as objectionable are proposals that ignore how the Internet works, threatening its smooth and open operations.

Having the Internet rewired by bureaucrats would be like handing a Stradivarius to a gorilla. The Internet is made up of 40,000 networks that interconnect among 425,000 global routes, cheaply and efficiently delivering messages and other digital content among more than two billion people around the world, with some 500,000 new users a day.

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Google has started an online petition for a "free and open Internet" saying: "Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future." The State Department's top delegate to the Dubai conference, Terry Kramer, has pledged that the U.S. won't let the ITU expand its authority to the Internet. But he hedged his warning in a recent presentation in Washington: "We don't want to come across like we're preaching to others."

To the contrary, the top job for the U.S. delegation at the ITU conference is to preach the virtues of the open Internet as forcefully as possible. Billions of online users are counting on America to make sure that their Internet is never handed over to authoritarian governments or to the U.N.

(Full article at the link)

Dont want to come across like we're preaching to others?? It looks Mr. Kramer would rather fit in with the UN crowd. The US has had no problem spreading so-called democracy at gun-point (or by drone bombing) in many places in the world, increasingly so under the current regime. But it shies away from making the point in a peaceful manner. Interesting.

Mr. Crovitz says dictatorial governments like China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries want to control and censor the net. President Obama signed the executive order in July this year "to empower certain governmental agencies with control over telecommunications and the Web during natural disasters and security emergencies" (CNET). I have a feeling that China, Russia, Iran and Arab countries are thinking about the same thing anyway, "natural disasters and security emergencies".

"Proposals for the new ITU treaty run to more than 200 pages", according to the article. I wonder who wrote it.

Here's the link to Google's Take Action page.

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Bloomberg News: Philippines, China Agree to Preserve Ties as They Repeat Claims

The Philippines' president says "back-door talks with China helped ease tensions". (Do you hear that, Mr. Ishihara and Mr. Noda?)

From Bloomberg News (9/24/2012):

Philippines, China Agree to Preserve Ties as They Repeat Claims

The Philippines and China agreed to prevent further worsening of their relations even as both reiterated claims on a disputed territory, the Southeast Asian nation’s Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said today.

“Irritants continue to be present,” Roxas told a televised briefing in Manila, adding Chinese ships remain in Scarborough Shoal, an area being claimed by both nations. Roxas met with Vice President Xi Jinping last week and he said the discussions ended with a mutual expression of sovereignty. Back- door talks with China helped ease tensions, President Benigno Aquino said on Sept. 21.

“I don’t expect much progress in the interim until that leadership change has been completed,” Roxas said, referring to China’s leadership transition.

China also says it is cooperating with South Korea to further pressure Japan on the territorial claims, according to Nikkei Shinbun (9/25/2012). According to the paper, the foreign ministers from China and Korea got together and talked in New York as they were in town for the UN General Assembly. They agreed to put pressure on Japan by let the whole wide world know the "correct history" at the UN meeting. Japan's Prime Minister Noda will address the assembly on September 26. The Korean foreign minister says his country will see what kind of speech PM Noda will make, and will respond accordingly in the Korea's speech on September 28.

Nikkei's article on September 14 says Noda will speak about "the rule of law" at the UN. His "law" is "international law", as if international law is fairer. (Sigh...)

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UN Committee: "6 Deaths at #Fukushima I Nuke Plant Have Nothing to Do with Radiation"

That's the conclusion of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). TEPCO and the Japanese government have said as much already.

Yomiuri Shinbun reports (5/24/2012):

東京電力福島第一原子力発電所事故で放出された放射線が環境や人体に及ぼす影響について調査している国連放射線影響科学委員会（事務局・ウィーン）は２３日、「作業員６人が事故後に死亡しているが、いずれも放射線被曝(ひばく)とは関係していない」との初期評価を発表した。

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Secretariat in Vienna) has been studying the effect of radiation from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident on the environment and humans. The Committee announced its initial evaluation on May 23 that even though 6 workers have died since the start of the accident, the deaths have nothing to do with radiation exposure".

初期評価は、ウォルフガング・ワイス委員長の声明の形で出された。死亡した６人のうち、昨年８月に急性白血病で死亡した東電協力企業の４０歳代男性については、「作業開始から死亡までの期間が短く、被曝との因果関係はない」とした。

The initial assessment was announced as the statement from Committee Chairman Wolfgang Weiss. As to the worker from a TEPCO affiliate company in his 40s who died of acute leukemia in August last year, UNSCEAR said, "The time was too short between the start of the work and his death, so there was no causal relationship between the death and radiation exposure."

同委員会は、さらに分析を進め、来年末までに国連総会に報告書を提出する。

The Committee will conduct further analysis, and will submit its report to the United Nations General Assembly by the end of next year.

UNSCEAR's statements are as follows:

Press release (5/23/2012) "Interim Findings of Fukushima-Daiichi Assessment presented at the Annual Meeting of UNSCEAR"

Background information for journalists (PDF; 5/23/2012)

UNSCEAR's annual meeting started on May 21 in Vienna, and will last till May 25.

Committee Chairman Weiss says in the press release:

"We have been given information about measurements made on the thyroids of over 1,000 children in Iitate village, Kawamata town and Iwaki city," said Weiss. "Also, a survey in Fukushima prefecture is aiming to evaluate irradiation levels for some 2 million people living in the prefecture at the time of the accident. The results of the UNSCEAR assessment for these areas will be compared with the Japanese measurements and analysis, and any differences will be highlighted and addressed," said Weiss.

The backgrounder for the press makes it clear that UNSCEAR will have to rely on the data to be further submitted by the Japanese government, particularly regarding the radiation dose assessment of the general public in Fukushima. To further assess the dose for the Fukushima I Nuke Plant workers, it will have to rely on the data from TEPCO. To assess the impact of radiation on the environment, all it has had so far is only a small number of published studies.

For the past year, the Japanese government has been busy telling the world everything is fine, nothing to worry about, Japan has recovered from the disaster (by which they mostly mean the earthquake and tsunami, and it is not really true). They seem to have taken their own words too literally and it seems they have neglected to collect data on radiation. Oh well. Until next time, I suppose.

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UN Passes Resolution from Japan to "Adopt Women's Points of View" in Disaster Recovery

The occasion was the 56th Session of UN Commission on the Status of Women.

The government of Japan (represented by Hiroko Hashimoto) submitted a resolution ("Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women in Natural Disaster") urging the world to adopt women's points of view in emergency disaster response, recovery and reconstruction like Japan is doing, including measures for empowering women in rural areas and compulsory quota for women's participation in committees that formulate master plans for local agriculture.

Jiji Tsushin (3/9/2012) reports the resolution was unanimously adopted. As Jiji reports it, the resolution was:

妊産婦や授乳を行う女性のニーズに配慮しながら、支援に取り組むよう各国政府や市民社会に促している

to urge the governments in the world and in the community to support the disaster recovery with the needs of pregnant women and breast-feeding women

I read the statement that explains the resolution, and I didn't find anything about needs of pregnant and breast-feeding women. I didn't find any "urging" of the international community. It is quite possible that the statement I read is different from the resolution.

The purpose of the resolution, crafted with all the "right" words, is to describe what the Japanese government has been doing and is planning to do in the "gender equality" and have a stamp of approval from the UN, so that the government can say to the Japanese citizens, "See, UN approved it, so we will implement it." Much like the Finance Minister promised the consumption tax hike at an IMF meeting first, and used the promise as Japan's "obligation" to carry it out.

And this is a country governed by the politicians and so-called experts who have ridiculed, even excoriated women who want to protect their children or anybody's children from radiation as "monster" mothers, calling their fears as "irrational, women's fears".

So much for appreciation for women's points of view.

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What Does U.N. Have to Do with U.S. Housing Crisis?

According to New York Times, the United Nations has assigned an official to investigate the U.S. housing crisis. Ms. Raquel Rolink, UN Rapporteur on Housing, is to make sure people have "adequate" housing in the on-going crisis, particularly in places like New York City.

Affordable? U.N. Puts a Questioning Eye on New York’s Housing
(10/23/09 New York Times)

"Everybody knows New York City is an expensive place to live. But the United Nations wants to know if affordable housing is so tough to come by that it actually violates human rights.

"The United Nations has assigned an official, “a special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing,” to check the city’s affordable housing. The rapporteur, Raquel Rolnik, is to tour the city for the next three days with housing advocates and city officials to “hear the voices of those who are suffering on the ground,” she said.

"The United Nations Human Rights Council appoints a rapporteur, or independent experts, to investigate human rights conditions around the world. In the case of Ms. Rolnik, a professor of urban planning at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, her “mission” is to tour New York City and six other places in the United States and to report back to the United Nations General Assembly about housing rights violations and advances.

"After that, “We send off letters to governments to ask, ‘Is this true? What’s going on?’ and to please intervene,” she said."

(You can read the entire incredible article by clicking on the link above.)

The United Nations, after her reportage, will formally declare housing as a basic human right in the United States and elsewhere (Ms. Rolink is already saying that, as you see in the video below). That's my guess. Just like health care is a basic human right, as some people claim. Therefore, the state has to step in to ensure everyone has the equal right to housing and punish the violators, regardless of the economic situation.

What I want to know is: Who invites these people like her?

You can see Ms. Rolink in this video clip. She seems to have a bubbly personality (or her meds are conflicting with each other).

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