Maria Farrell, who works as a lobbyist for an undisclosed international membership organization based in Paris (OECD? ICC?) writes a great account of WSIS at Crooked Timber. Below I include a sampler, but it’s worth clicking the link to get the whole thing.
Other interesting WSIS links include:
[Links snagged from all over, espeically Lextext]
Here are some choice quotes from Maria Farrell:
The developing countries, led by Senegal, came to the table wanting a Digital Solidarity Fund, and went away with their begging bowls empty. …… I personally believe a proposal to control the DNS which both China and Egypt can agree on is not something those who value freedom of communication could support. …
Finally, freedom of expression. Well, here’s where I lost my remaining patience for the WSIS as a worthwhile political process. The final summit declaration was a wash-out which you can read for yourselves (page 8). But let me describe a high level round table I attended which gives an idea of just how these things run. It was called ‘diversity in cyberspace’(list of participants available here) and was chaired by the president of Latvia and moderated by BBC newsreader Nick Gowing. President Freiburga said the 2 hour session would cover three aspects of diversity; cultural diversity (preserving and digitalizing cultural heritage, diversity of languages), freedom of expression and media ownership, and law and ethics on the internet (censorship).
After an hour or so on cultural heritage and language diversity, Gowing said that he’d get to the other two topics in 20 minutes. He didn’t. No one objected. At the 90 minute mark, he still hadn’t. And, with 20 minutes to go, Gowing finally introduced the broad area of freedom of expression as one topic, at which point the Chair left the room and skipped half the remaining discussion. The discussion consisted of the journalists’ federation piping up on press freedom, and the governments of Morocco, Tunisia and Uganda rejoining that it was all very well, but just not for them, thank you. So a three-topic round table was chaired to ensure there was no meaningful discussion on two key topics that might prove uncomfortable to the country delegates. No one apart from civil society representatives spoke in favour of freedom of expression. A shaft if ever there was, and a telling one too.
Brad DeLong’s Request for help
My two children get what the payoff to reading well is immediately and completely. My two children get what the payoff to writing well is as well: they understand that it is fun now and it will be important later on if they want to have options to be able to write quickly, clearly, and coherently.But math. Math textbooks are remarkably dry. How can I persuade them that math can be fun, that they will be able to learn and calculate interesting things if math is their friend, and that their options later on will be much, much greater if only they apply themselves to math now?
So far, I only have twenty-three problems that I regard as interesting and amusing enough to hand them in an attempt to propagandize for math. But I want more: I want to have one hundred…
Have a look at Brad DeLong’s Collaborative Website: OneHundredInterestingMathCalculations.
Belarus KGB chief: Internet should be brought under control (10/12/2003):
KGB should exert control over Internet, because international terrorism and organized crime more and more often use WWW. “We are trying to provide all the possibilities, and legal - fist of all, in order to be able to control Internet, “- said Mr. Leonid Erin, chief of Belarusian KGB.Mr. Erin emphasizes that he understands criticism of this position, especially in connection with human rights violation. But he insists that prior to that are state interests and secret services activities.
Note that although the underlying motives may differ substantially, one hopes, the official position as to what should happen is not that different from that of many governments, including several democracies.