Russia and China Withdraw Bid For Internet Control 115
judgecorp writes "Russia, China and other nations have withdrawn proposals to take control over the Internet within their borders. The proposals, handed to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) on Friday, caused widespread dismay and protest. The WCIT event in Dubai, run by the UN agency ITU, is working on new International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) which are due for their first revision since the emergence of the mass Internet. The line-up of nations wanting to formalize their power to restrict the Internet included Russia, China, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan and Egypt. Their proposal has been withdrawn without explanation, an ITU spokesperson confirmed."
Re:Close shave (Score:5, Informative)
Peace means more than just "no major wars"
Wikipedia has a nice list of conflicts that are still ongoing (be it cold, warm or hot conflicts): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_military_conflicts [wikipedia.org]
And just stay tuned, more are sure to come!
Re:Close shave (Score:4, Informative)
There are definitely some nasty little meatgrinders going on(and, depending on how exactly you want to tot them up, a fair amount of violence-application by internal security forces whose targets are mostly too outmatched for it to even count as 'conflict'); but by historical standards that's pretty good.
The Syrian civil war, for instance, killed about as many people, per year, as motor vehicle accidents do in the US(the US population is higher, obviously, so the individual risk of death is lower).
Re:The Pattern (Score:4, Informative)
"they?" A Conspiracy!! Yep, that's it, numerous oil companies, some nationalized and some privatized, shipping companies, refiners, governments, etc. all got together and decided that you needed to have higher prices, and kept the manipulation secret...those sneaky bastards. You know, the Sun keeps rising and falling in the sky....a Conspiracy!!
Right, because price fixing never happens and every bad act is eventually found out. No one ever gets away with anything, and the Authorities are always on the up and up. How could it be otherwise? After all, wealthy powerful people usually come to and maintain their power through honesty and transparency.
Really, there is no conspiracy necessary for those with like interests to work together to forward those interests. It's quite natural. However, contrary to your insinuation, conspiracies do happen and some are actually kept secret. It's really not that hard. The people involved just have to all benefit from the secret. If you were making billions of dollars through some conspiracy, why on earth would you ever tell anyone?