From the halls of Montezuma to the World Wide Web

In a piece for WSJ.com (which non-subscribers can read thanks to David Farber), Norm Coleman, a Republican senator from Minnesota, has compared the attempt by the rest of the world to get a share of control of the net to the 1938 Munich agreement which betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

So let's get this clear: there's a global communication system. It's run by one country. Other countries want to be involved in running it. Wow, the similarities with the rise of Nazism are indeed striking. Thanks to the cogent arguments of Norm, I am now convinced that the UN is building cyber death camps as we speak. At least, Soviet Russia cannot be invaded this time as it now longer exists. But Tony Blair must act now to remove the British Expeditionary Force from ... err ... the web.

Joking apart, isn't it interesting that if an institution answerable to the US government controls something then it's the embodiment of free enterprise. But if the rest of us get involved it's "politicisation".