Control of the Internet, Part II...or, "Where's YOUR Science, Dude?"

It is with much disbelief that some people (primarily international, or "Internationalists") seem to actually think that America should willfully hand over control of the internet simply because the rest of the world says we should do so. I barked about it here http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2005/10/eu-to-usa-all-your-internet-belong-to.html ; I wanted to add the thoughts of the unnamed ladyblogger posting as Atlas Shrugs:

This is a distinctly American invention. It is ours. We chose to share it with the world. And frankly, it's the last vestige of free speech left. The Fifth Column doesn't like what we are doing? Clearly!...

I think we have tolerated and absorbed enough of the evil that the United Nations and the world community at large has perpetrated on America and free peoples everywhere.
It was one thing when we all believed their ineptitude and ill effects of their action(s) were a result of a naivety and "good will" - as in the road to hell is paved with good intentions ...

The UN on the other [hand] is evil, not "enlightened". We know this. We have empirical evidence.
[here: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2005/10/un_world_body_t.html ]

It is ours. I suggested that if the brilliant "international community" could equal our innovation, or even competently mimic it, by all means they should. But what happens when the international community tries that science thingy? Well, let's look at just today's headlines:

Euro Satellite Said to Break Up in Flight
MOSCOW - A European Space Agency satellite that was to have collected data on polar ice broke up in flight after being launched on a converted ballistic missile, a Russian space agency official said Saturday.
Remnants of the satellite crashed into the ocean, Vyacheslav Davidenko, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency, told The Associated Press.
The loss of the CryoSat satellite is a major blow to the agency, which had hoped to conduct a three-year mapping of polar sea ice and provide more reliable data for the study of global warming.
[here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051008/ap_on_sc/russia_polar_satellite ]

And to think this is where your "global warming" data is coming from, friends...anyway, agian from today's front pages:

Experimental Russian Spacecraft Missing
MOSCOW - Russian and European teams searched for an experimental mini-spacecraft on the eastern peninsula of Kamchatka on Saturday, a day after the prototype was test-launched from a nuclear submarine thousands of miles away, news reports said
The Demonstrator spacecraft — designed to carry cargo and passengers from the international space station to Earth — was launched from the submarine Borisoglebsk in the Barents Sea on Friday and was reported to have descended toward its target on time.
Russian news agencies and television, however, later reported that engineers had no communication with the craft and had to call off the search at nightfall.
[here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051008/ap_on_sc/russia_spacecraft]

Now, in contrast:

Four Robotic Vehicles Finish Desert Race
PRIMM, Nev. - Four robotic vehicles finished a
Pentagon sponsored race across the Mojave desert Saturday and achieved a technological milestone by conquering steep drop-offs, obstacles and tunnels over a rugged 132-mile course without a single human command
The impossible has been achieved," cried Stanford University's Sebastian Thrun, after the university's customized Volkswagen crossed first. Students cheered, hoisting Thrun atop their shoulders.
Also finishing was a converted red Hummer named H1ghlander and a Humvee called Sandstorm from Carnegie Mellon University. The Stanford robot dubbed Stanley overtook the top-seeded H1ghlander at the 102-mile mark.
"I'm on top of the world," said Carnegie Mellon robotics professor William "Red" Whittaker, who said a mechanical glitch allowed Stanley to pass H1ghlander.
The sentimental favorite, a Ford Escape Hybrid by students in Metarie, La., was the fourth vehicle to finish Saturday. The team lost about a week of practice and some lost their homes when Hurricane Katrina blew into the Gulf Coast.
[here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051009/ap_on_hi_te/robot_race ]

How about that - all done by American amateurs, no less. I understand why the Louisiana team was the sentimental favorite - imagine, rather then claim victim status and whine for government assistance, they simply went ahead and did what they had to do. That's American pluck, boys and girls. In the meantime, remind me again why we must comply with the international community's claims upon our internet technology?

Any Rand claimed (in Atlas Shrugged http://www.atlasshrugged.tv/, ironically) that the desire to appropriate the work of another intelligent mind and bestow it as a "gift to the peoples of the world" was the mentality of an intellectual looter - a type who could not equal the achievements of others, so simply stole their work instead, under the guise of "equality", "global rights" , or the like. In Rand's novels, this intellectual thievery was usually followed by economic disruption and social chaos, as the corrupt wielders of new technologies did not understand the forces they were bringing to bear.

Kinda sound like what the EU/UN are trying to pull off now, right? Rand saw the base evil of it, way back when, and that's why her books and theories still carry so much intellectual heft today. Hands off our internet, you second-raters, and don't come back until you can accomplish something on your own...

UPDATE: An applicable excerpt from Atlas Shrugged - Francisco D'anconia explains how our morality is being corrupted by the rule of "the looter" (substitute the UN, EU, etc...):

...the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide— as, I think, he will.