Freedom

The Net Delusion

The Dark Side of
Internet Freedom

The Chronicle of Philanthropy writes up the boss's remarks at a philanthropic conference:

Making the case that philanthropic dollars do good and benefit society isn’t going to be enough to convince lawmakers and the public that foundations deserve the freedom and tax benefits they now enjoy, William Kristol, the conservative commentator, told an audience at the Philanthropy Roundtable’s annual meeting.

Penetrating commentary on President Obama's remarks last night on Islam, 9/11, and Ground Zero is already available.

Last week, Chinese novelist Yu Jie was taken into custody and interrogated by the State Security Bureau after announcing that he would soon be publishing a book, titled China's Best Actor: Wen Jiabao, about China's premier.

Over in the New Republic, Jack Goldsmith has an essay that cuts through the fog surrounding the subject of cyber warfare. The piece's occasion is a new book on the subject by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake that sounds the alarm about the danger we might face one day from a concerted attack on the computer systems that underpin our economic and military infrastructure.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recently detailed a new approach to warfare that's worth a look. In two speeches at Kansas State University and Fort Leavenworth, Mullen talked up a massive doctrinal shift in America's approach to warfighting.

So says Newsweek:

Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And yet it has to be said and it should be understood—now, almost seven hellish years later—that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.

The elections to be held in Iraq on March 7 feature 6,100 parliamentary candidates from all of the country's major sects and many different parties. They have wildly conflicting interests and ambitions. Yet in the past couple of years, these politicians have come to see themselves as part of the same club, where hardball political debate has supplanted civil war and legislation is hammered out, however slowly and painfully, through compromises—not dictatorial decrees or, for that matter, the executive fiats of U.S. occupiers. Although protected, encouraged, and sometimes tutored by Washington, Iraq's political class is now shaping its own system—what Gen. David Petraeus calls "Iraqracy." With luck, the politics will bolster the institutions through which true democracy thrives.

In case you missed it, veteran David Bellavia recently wrote a moving piece on the fight for Iraq and democracy.

On Christmas Day 2009, the Chinese regime sentenced writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for "incitement to subvert state power."  His crime was co-authoring and circulating on-line a manifesto for democratic change in China called Charter 08, an intentional homage to the Czech dissident movement's Charter 77.  Charter 08 got Mr. Liu into trouble because it challenged the legitimacy of one-party rule by the Chinese Communist Party.