New Left or "Neo-Comm"? Capitalism or Social Democracy? Co-existence or Containment? The routes open are many - but no one, least of all China, seems to know which way it will go ...   more »

At least three explosions have hit the Indonesian island of Bali   more »

Who should govern the net - the US commerce department or a global, accountable public body? After the WSIS Geneva summit split, read Bill Thompson's prescient argument for a "democratic republic of cyberspace"

New: Marcus J Gilroy-Ware, a proud citizen of Wikipedia, describes his passion for open source

More from our peer power debate:
Miriam Clinton on the rule of law

Stephen Howe, 28 - 9 - 2005

Behind recent violent unrest in Loyalist working-class communities in Northern Ireland is a story of promiscuous cultural borrowings attempting to shore up a collapsed political identity, says Stephen Howe. In the first part of a two-part essay, he examines their manifestations in music, visual display and political rhetoric.

By Xiao Qiang :: 2005-09-30, 09:14 PM :: Human Rights
The Asian Wall Street Journal publishes Xiao Qiang's commentary on the recent Internet Regulations.   more »

Gangtok - China’s sudden decision to defer the opening of border trade through Nathu La pass has come as a jarring note in the improvement of relations on the Sino-Indian border.   more »

Oneworld: Recent investigations by wildlife organisations reveal that a new breed of wealthy Tibetans who prize tiger skins as trimmings for their traditional costumes pose the latest and biggest ...   more »

"I just want a search engine that works," laments Chris Roddy, a politics and linguistics undergraduate at the University of Emory.

"I can get a Google search with porn turned ...   more »

Internet Governance and Follow-Up after Summit still open [Smoke on the Water mix]

30 September 2005. The last preparatory conference, less than 60 days before the Tunis summit, ended tonight at 21:00 without an agreement. The open questions will have to be dealt with in the time before Tunis – and basically without civil society participation.


Internet Governance: from no text to ten proposals

The Internet Governance subcommittee A, chaired by the focused Pakistani Masood Khan, managed to come from a blank sheet of paper to agreed text on most aspects within a week. The only paragraphs still in brackets in the first four parts are related to cybercrime and cybersecurity, where an old battle between the United States and Russia is blocking progress. This will probably be resolved quickly before the summit, with reference to agreed language from the Geneva Declaration. Another smaller fight is taking place around the issue of interconnection costs, where the Bangladesh government wants negotiations on better conditions not only for least developed countries.

Dir. Muhammed Rum, USA, 2004, 110mins,
Cast: Edgar Oliver, Waleed Zuaiter, Hussam Hamadeh, James Arnold   more »