Informed Speculation

Peng Hwa Ang of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance responds to Claudia Rosett’s call for keeping the notoriously corrupt ‘world government’ out of the most successful innovation of the last 50 years. The Professor helpfully frames the debate in just the right terms:

It is important to note that the United Nations is not Kofi Annan. Neither is it 10, 20 or 30 countries. It is an institution made up of almost all the countries on the planet that has done good work on healthcare, education, development etc. I speak not from the experience of someone in Singapore because the UN is invisible to many in Singapore, but from talking to others in the region. The oil-for-food programme, as Mr Annan admits, should not have come under the UN. But I can understand why it did. Only the UN has the credibility as a third-party to be acceptable by Most of the Rest of the World (MRW).

That credibility is reflected in the Internet Governance Forum. In the end, after looking around, MRW decided to park it under the UN Secretary General.

Given the choice—trust the US or trust the UN—unlike Ms Rosett from the USA, MRW chose the latter.

Given the choice as framed here, I will take the US over the UN 1,000 out of 1,000 times…and if anyone really believes differently, given the UN’s recent proclivity for scandal, I will immediate suspect them of sharing the anti-US (and anti-Israel) bias so inherent in the world body. And that’s precisely the reason the UN should – how should I put this delicately – keep the hell away from my Internet…