BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance. A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over. EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important "because the Internet is a global resource." A stalemate over who should serve as the principal traffic cops for Internet routing and addressing could derail the summit, which aims to ensure a fair sharing of the Internet for the benefit of the whole world. At issue is who would have ultimate authority over the Internet's master directories, which tell Web browsers and e-mail programs how to direct traffic. That role has historically gone to the United States, which created the Internet as a Pentagon project and funded much of its early development. The U.S. Commerce Department has delegated much of that responsibility to a U.S.-based private organization with international board members, but Commerce ultimately retains veto power. Some countries have been frustrated that the United States and European countries that got on the Internet first gobbled up most of the available addresses required for computers to connect, leaving developing nations with a limited supply to share.

IRVINE, CA-- A cabal of countries, including Cuba, Syria, China and Iran--now backed by the European Union--is demanding that control of the Internet be surrendered to the United Nations.
       
These and other thug-nations restrict their own citizens' ability to receive and broadcast news and grievances from inside their blood-soaked walls. China, for instance, currently has many individuals jailed for being "cyber-dissidents" and it engages in massive censorship of the Internet. It recently passed a law mandating that only "healthy and civilized" news may be read by its citizens--to be determined, of course, by the same "civilized" officials who brought us Tiananmen Square.

This world-wide web of evil nations, hiding behind the veneer of technical complaints, now seeks to control not just what its own citizens are able to see and say on the Internet, but what every individual on the face of the planet is able to see and say. If the UN is given control of the Internet, we can expect free trade and freedom of speech to be crushed.
       
The Internet was created in and by the land of the free, America. It has now become the object of an alarming power-grab by the world's dictatorships and their puppet, the UN. America must not surrender its citizens' freedom to the mercy of a debating society for dictators. 

It's the criminalization of price hikes -- not the hikes themselves -- that's immoral. The moral premise behind price-gouging laws is summed up in the altruistic injunction, "People before profits" -- as if merchants aren't people. What this "ethical" position really boils down to, then, is that the needs and desires of some people (consumers) trump the needs and desires of other people (businessmen) and that in a pinch government should sacrifice the latter to the former.

 

[...] The high prices oblige consumers to economize. Artificially low prices, by contrast, invite hoarding and frivolous buying, emptying shelves sooner. For instance, someone able or willing to purchase only 10 jugs of water at a "gouged" price might've bought 30 if the price were "normal," leaving less for others customers.

 

 

One thing is certain: oil companies are not to blame for high gas prices. These companies are responsible for producing the gasoline we need. In California, where gas prices are among the highest in the nation, the oil industry has been repeatedly investigated to find evidence of "price manipulation" (four times in 2003 alone) and none has ever been found.

Although there are other causes of high gas prices, such as high gasoline taxes, the primary cause is environmental regulation. For example, environmental regulation significantly restricts drilling for oil in Alaska and on the continental shelf. More drilling could considerably increase the gasoline supply (up to 20% from greater Alaskan drilling alone) and thus lower prices.

A CIA Intelligence Memorandum discusses what analysts perceive as Che Guevara's fall from power within the Cuban government beginning in 1964. It states that at the end of 1963, Guevara's plan of "rapid industrialization and centralization during the first years of the Revolution brought the economy to its lowest point since Castro came to power." "Guevara's outlook, which approximated present -day Chinese--rather than Soviet--economic practice, was behind the controversy." In July 1964, "two important cabinet appointments signaled the power struggle over internal economic policy which culminated in Guevara's elimination." Another conflict was that Guevara wanted to export the Cuban Revolution to different parts of Latin America and Africa, while "other Cuban leaders began to devote most of their attention to the internal problems of the Revolution." In December, 1964, Guevara departed on a three-month trip to the United States, Africa, and China. When he returned, according to the CIA report, his economic and foreign policies were in disfavor and he left to start revolutionary struggles in other parts of the world. (CIA Intelligence Memorandum, "The Fall of Che Guevara and the Changing Face of the Cuban Revolution," 10/18/65)

Che's final battle commences in Quebrada del Yuro. Simon Cuba (Willy) Sarabia, a Bolivian miner, leads the rebel group. Che is behind him and is shot in the leg several times. Sarabia picks up Che and tries to carry him away from the line of fire. The firing starts again and Che's beret is knocked off. Sarabia sits Che on the ground so he can return the fire. Encircled at less than ten yards distance, the Rangers concentrate their fire on him, riddling him with bullets. Che attempts to keep firing, but cannot keep his gun up with only one arm. He is hit again on his right leg, his gun is knocked out of his hand and his right forearm is pierced. As soldiers approach Che he shouts, "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead." The battle ends at approximately 3:30 p.m. Che is taken prisoner.

 

[...] Félix Rodríguez arrives by helicopter in La Higuera, along with Colonel Joaquín Zenteno Anaya. Rodríguez brings a powerful portable field radio and a camera with a special four-footed stand used to photograph documents. He quietly observes the scene in the schoolhouse, and records what he sees, finding the situation "gruesome" with Che lying in dirt, his arms tied behind his back and his feet bound together, next to the bodies of his friends. He looks "like a piece of trash" with matted hair, torn clothes, and wearing only pieces of leather on his feet for shoes. In one interview, Rodríguez states that, " I had mixed emotions when I first arrived there. Here was the man who had assassinated many of my countrymen. And nevertheless, when I saw him, the way he looked....I felt really sorry for him." (Rodríguez:2)

The Objective Standard is a quarterly journal of culture and politics written from the perspective that man's life on earth is the proper standard of morality. According to this principle, that which supports or promotes an individual's life is good, that which retards or destroys it is evil. The purpose of the journal is to analyze and evaluate ideas, trends, events, and policies with respect to this standard.

The Objective Standard provides a rational, principled alternative to the ideas of both liberalism and conservatism. Whereas liberals hold that morality is subjective (i.e., feeling-based), that majority opinion is the standard of value, that sacrifice for the common good is noble, and that rights are social conventions; and whereas conservatives hold that morality is grounded in religion (i.e., faith-based), that God's will is the standard of value, that sacrifice in obedience to His commands is good, and that rights are divine decrees; we hold that morality is grounded in the objective requirements of human life (i.e., reason-based), that man's life is the standard of value, that the selfish pursuit of one's life-serving goals is good, and that individual rights are moral principles defining the basic requirements of a civilized society. Ours is a philosophy of reason, egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism. In a word, we advocate Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and we apply this philosophy to the cultural and political issues of the day.

Contributing writers include Craig Biddle, Yaron Brook, Alex Epstein, Elan Journo, John Lewis, Keith Lockitch, Larry Salzman, and Lisa VanDamme.

Reporters Without Borders voiced deep shock today at the public beating which pro-government paramilitaries gave Guillermo Fariñas, the editor of the independent Cubanacán Press agency, in the central city of Santa Clara on 16 September after he took part in a protest against the arrest of a dissident. "This extremely violent attack on Fariñas shows that Cuban independent journalists are not just under threat from the government but also from ultra-revolutionaries, who in this case vented their anger on Fariñas as the political police looked on," the press freedom organisation said. The attack came after Fariñas and some 15 other government opponents demonstrated outside a police station to demand the release of Noelia Pedraza Jiménez, a fellow dissident who had just been arrested. About 100 paramilitaries watched the demonstration.

After announcing to the demonstrators that Pedraza would shortly be released pending trial, Vladimir Méndez Mauad, a captain with the state security department, offered to drive Fariña home as he currently has to use crutches because of a disability and, until recently, had to use a wheelchair. However, as Fariñas left the police station, a police officer warned him that whatever happened to him outside at the hands of the paramilitaries "will be your problem."

According to Fariñas, the approximately 60 paramilitaries armed with clubs who were still outside then challenged him, asking him if he had the courage to repeat to them what he had said on Radio Martí (the Miami-based Cuban exile radio station). Kneeling and with his hands behind his head, Fariñas replied : "Why do you listen to Radio Martí if you are revolutionaries ?" After Fariñas refused to say, "Long live Fidel Castro," they began to insult him and hit him with their clubs until one of them call a halt, fearing that they would kill him in public. Political instructors with the ruling Communist Party of Cuba then drove him to a deserted spot 23 km outside the city and dumped him there. Fariñas told Reporters Without Borders his arms and hands are so swollen from the beating that he can no longer write or use a computer keyboard. He added that he thought he was now top of the list of people to be arrested in "the next crackdown."

"One is the moral point and that is if somebody owns property that I don't own, they have a right to ask any price for what they want just as I have the right to refuse that price.  Also, the practical point is that on a free market when the price rises, what that does is enables the producer to make more profit giving them more motivation... to increase the supply."--Andrew Bernstein

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has spotted new gullies and a fresh crater – in astronomical terms – etched into the red planet's surface, mission scientists said Tuesday. Now in its eighth year in orbit around Mars, the MGS spacecraft found the new gullies cutting through a sand dune, as well as numerous other signs that the planet is far from a static, unchanging world. "[The gullies] are probably not the result of water action on the sand dune," said Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard MGS, during teleconference with reporters. "What we think is going on here is that carbon dioxide snow has been incorporated into the sand dune." As the snow melts and evaporates into gas, it allows the sand around it to fluidize and run down the dune slope, Malin added.

[..] The spacecraft also observed a gradual evaporation of carbon dioxide ice in one of Mars' polar caps, pointing to a slowly changing Mars climate. "They way these polar pits are retreating is absolutely astounding," Mustard said. But like the rockfalls, researchers were unable to account for the gradual climate change. "Why is Mars warmer today that it was in the past, we really have no way of knowing why," Malin said. ["Mars Probe Finds New Gullies, Crater at Red Planet"]

Let's see:

1. Earth getting warmer.
2. Mars getting warmer.
3. Increased solar activity.

Gotta be those fossil fuels.

Consider, for instance, the beleaguered UN Human Rights Commission, ostensibly responsible for protecting rights across the world. On the principle of neutrality, a country's brutal practices are no disqualification from joining this commission. Indeed, it has become infested with tyrannies; Syria and Cuba, two blood-soaked dictatorships, have each served as its chairman. And through the commission, notorious violators of individual rights scheme to bury any criticism of themselves. A bloc of Islamic countries, for example, self-righteously defends barbaric practices--stoning to death, crucifixion--carried out in certain states governed by Sharia. When a proposal was drafted to censure North Korea, which arbitrarily executes its enslaved citizens, the motion was soundly defeated thanks to Cuba, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and others all guilty of similar and worse atrocities. (The toothless proposal to replace the commission with a new council on rights was foreseeable. Since tyrannies have voting prerogatives on UN "reforms," they will sink any proposed council or mold it into a new shield to deflect censure of them.)

Or consider the money corrupt regimes gain access to. For years the UN has showered millions of dollars in aid on the Palestinian Authority, the interim government in Gaza and the West Bank. That aid, mostly swallowed up by the leadership, has buoyed up a brutal regime that strips its people of their rights, their wealth, their dignity, and foments terrorism against Israel. UN aid has also flowed into North Korea's belligerent Stalinist dictatorship, which starves its people in order to fund an enormous military machine and a nuclear-weapons program. What these handouts do is reinforce the walls of prison regimes like North Korea, exacerbate the misery of their citizens, and arm corrupt rulers. [Elan Journo, The UN's "Virtue" Is Its Vice]

The 840-page Oil-for-Food report released last week by the Volcker Independent Inquiry Commission is a damning document: It demonstrates as clearly as possible that not only is the United Nations broken, but that present management -- specifically, Kofi Annan -- is ill-equipped to fix it.

Related:

The Volcker Oil-for-Food Interim Reports: No Exoneration for U.N. Corruption (April 20, 2005)
Contrary to Annan's claims, the reports do not in any way vindicate him or the United Nations.

United Nations Scandal: Kofi Annan Aide Shredded Thousands of Documents (April 9, 2005)
The destruction of highly sensitive documents by Kofi Annan's chief aide is a massive obstruction of justice that demands major congressional investigation. It gives the impression of a huge cover-up at the very heart of the United Nations, and casts a dark cloud over the credibility of the UN secretary-general. It projects an image of impunity, arrogance and unaccountability on the part of the leadership of the United Nations.

In a fiery speech to the U.N. General Assembly, [Iranian] President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied his nation had any intention of producing nuclear weapons. To prove that, he offered foreign countries and companies a role in Iran's nuclear energy production. The Iranian leader lashed out at the United States for its insistence on keeping its nuclear weapons even as it rejected Iran's efforts to build a peaceful energy program.

He said Iran has a right to produce nuclear fuel under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and implicitly accused the Europeans and Americans of "misrepresenting" Iran's desire for civilian nuclear energy "as the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

"This is nothing more than a pure propaganda ploy," he said.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates its previously and repeatedly declared position that in accordance with our religious principles, pursuit of nuclear weapons is prohibited," Ahmadinejad said.