The John Batchelor Show

Claudia Rosett, Journalist in Residence at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, in re: UN telecom conference to censor, monitor, and control the Internet.  ITU (International Telecommunication Union) spent $900K to help Saddam, racked up $10mil in administrative costs. ITU demands to be toll-keeper for global Net activity. A complete perversion of the original intent in designing the United Nations.  Conference has already overridden a joint proposal by US and Canada simply to keep the Internet out of it.   Best move for the US: simply withdraw from and leave the ITU. (Precedent: US withdrew from UNESCO some years ago when it became visibly, incorrigibly corrupt. “It should be recalled Ronald Reagan withdrew the United States from UNESCO in the 1980s because it was among the worst examples of the world body’s incompetence.”)