With one of its own agents leading the United Nations agency that globalists hope will regulate the Internet, the communist dictatorship ruling mainland China is now calling on the dictator-dominated global body to impose an online “code of conduct” for all of humanity. Speaking at the UN General Assembly last week, a top arms-control bureaucrat for the autocracy in Beijing — the world’s leading threat to cybersecurity — said the time had come for a planetary Internet regime to regulate the World Wide Web under the guise of “peace” and “security.” The UN, of course, is totally committed to the anti-Internet freedom agenda, as are regimes ranging from Vladimir Putin’s in Russia to the mullahs in Iran. Even more alarming to analysts, though, is that the Obama administration appears to be supporting the idea and even collaborating with Beijing and the UN on advancing it.
In a broad speech focusing on what he called “new frontiers” — “outer space, cyberspace, deep sea and polar regions” — Beijing’s Wang Qun claimed “international cooperation” would be crucial to everything from peace and security to development. Especially important, he suggested, was a global Internet regime. “The cybersecurity has now become such a prominent and sensitive issue which is increasingly higher on international security agenda with a closer link between the cyberspace and the real world we are living [in],” declared Wang, whose formal title is “director-general of the Arms Control Department” at the Communist Chinese regime’s Foreign Ministry. “Against such a backdrop, it is highly necessary and pressing for the international community to jointly bring about an international code of conduct on cyberspace at an early date.”
In other words, in Beijing’s view, a global Internet regime is not optional, and it must be imposed at the global level, as quickly as possible — certainly before the Western world has time to understand the implications of handing control over the world’s final bastion of unrestrained free expression to the “dictators club,” as UN critics often refer to the autocrat-dominated outfit. “The cyberspace is an anonymous and flat space with no borders,” Wang continued, echoing standard globalist rhetoric about “global problems” allegedly requiring “global solutions.” “But such a character has not changed the international law and basic norms governing international relations which have underpinned international peace and security for 70 years.”
Wang then proceeded to outline the five planks that mainland China’s brutal rulers hope to see in the emerging global Internet regime. He explained: “China [the regime enslaving China] believes that, for an international code of conduct on cyberspace acceptable to all, the following principles are very important: first, to comply with the UN Charter and other universally recognized basic norms governing international relations; second, to respect the cyberspace sovereignty of each state; third, to resolve the international disputes in this field by peaceful means; forth, [sic] to ensure the cyberspace only to be utilized for activities for the maintenance of international peace and security; fifth, cyberspace should not be used as a means to interfere in the internal affairs of other states or to the detriment of the latter’s national interests.”
Reading between the lines, it is clear that the dictatorship’s vision for the Internet is fundamentally at odds with traditional Western notions of freedom. Consider, for instance, the fifth plank declaring that cyberspace should not be used to the “detriment” of “national interests.” When the Communist regime refers to “national interests,” it refers, of course, to its own interests. And the fact is that truth and facts runs counter to its interests. For evidence, just look up the so-called “Great Firewall of China,” the world’s most Orwellian censorship regime that employs legions of censors who fanatically seek to purge and conceal the truth from Beijing’s victims. Everything from the Tiananmen Square massacre and Chairman Mao’s unprecedented mass-murder spree to foreign uprisings against dictatorships and Western notions of individual liberty is strictly off limits to Chinese Internet users. “Spreading rumors” online, or facts, often results in swift and brutal punishment for the perpetrators.
Wang also praised a recent report released by the UN’s self-styled “Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security” (UN GGE) that also, unsurprisingly, called for “international law” to govern the Internet. “China commands [sic] the work of the UN GGE on information security, and welcomes its latest report,” Wang said. “China expects that this cooperative mechanism will keep its momentum by focusing its work at the next stage on working out something in a nature of an international code of conduct on cyberspace. China, for its part, will continue to commit itself to establishing a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyberspace and pushing for an early international code of conduct acceptable to all.” Apparently he said all that with a straight face.
The UN GGE “consensus” report celebrated by Wang, released in late August, also calls for a global “code of conduct” and claims cyberspace can “only” be made stable and secure through “international cooperation.” The “foundation of this cooperation must be international law and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations,” the report argued, echoing Wang’s comments. The UN document also called for the UN to play a “leading role in promoting dialogue” on everything from “the application of international law” online to the “norms, rules and principles for responsible State behavior.” In a somewhat ironic twist for a report that received so much praise and input from the censorship-obsessed Chinese regime, the UN roadmap also called on nations to “comply with their obligations under international law to respect and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Of course, that becomes less surprising when one considers the UN’s Orwellian vision of “human rights,” which includes, among other schemes, demands for criminalizing free speech worldwide and curtailing a broad range of actual rights guaranteed to Americans in the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, as the UN’s so-called “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” states explicitly in Article 29, the supposed “rights” — really revocable, government-granted privileges — may “in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” Those supposed “rights” can also be limited or abolished under virtually any pretext, as the declaration itself makes clear as well. The Communist Chinese and Kremlin proposal for the global online “code of conduct,” released earlier this year, specifically emphasizes that fact, too, claiming free expression is subject to “limitations.”
The Obama administration, perhaps hoping to appear hopelessly naïve about the prospects of Beijing actually obeying any global “Internet rules,” has been playing along with the Chinese Communists, according to news reports. An article last month in the New York Times, for instance, reported that the White House was working with Beijing to start regulating the Internet as a weapon similar to nuclear, chemical, or biological arms. Meanwhile, speaking in South Korea this summer as the UN GGE was preparing its report, Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry similarly demanded global Internet rules. “As I’ve mentioned, the basic rules of international law apply in cyberspace,” Kerry claimed. “We also support a set of additional principles that, if observed, can contribute substantially to conflict prevention and stability in time of peace.” He outlined five planks for the global Internet regime that were remarkably similar to those described by Beijing’s Wang. And, like Wang, Kerry demanded that Internet governance be “based on international law” — in other words, “law” created by the UN and its largely despotic member regimes rather than the American people’s elected representatives.
Ironically, perhaps, Beijing is the most flagrant abuser when it comes to many of its most important stated reasons for demanding a global Internet regime in the first place. Just this summer, the communist dictatorship was exposed hacking into U.S. government systems and gathering sensitive data on virtually every federal employee and the millions of people with security clearances. As The New American has documented extensively over the years, the Chinese dictatorship is also the world’s leading threat when it comes to online espionage, routinely stealing trade secrets from Western companies and military secrets from Western governments, spying on dissidents worldwide, and much more. Anybody who believes Beijing will stop its criminal activities online because the Obama administration agrees to help impose a “code of conduct” on the Internet is in for major disappointment.
Still, Obama seems to be fully onboard. Deputy Director Tang Lan with the Institute of Information and Social Development at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, an arm of Beijing’s ruthless “Ministry of State Security” (MSS) that is overseen by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, praised the Obama administration’s support for Beijing’s agenda. In an article headlined “Crucial Step Taken for Sino-U.S. Cyber Cooperation” published by the Huffington Post, Tang said the Beijing-Obama cooperation on “cybersecurity” will be “very extensive.” Among other schemes, she touted “establishing high-level mechanisms and a hotline,” “information sharing and jointly meeting major online threats to strategic cooperation aimed at shaping the future of cyberspace,” as well as “making and promoting an international code of conduct in cyberspace.” Why the left-wing Huffington Post was publishing Communist Chinese propaganda was not immediately clear, but despite failing to mention Tang’s affiliation with Beijing’s ruthless “security” services, the piece was quite revealing.
Meanwhile, the very UN agency that hopes to play the lead role in global Internet regulation is currently under the control of a Chinese Communist agent. As The New American reported last year, the UN International Telecommunications Union (ITU) recently installed Houlin Zhao as secretary general. Among other controversies, even before he took his position, Zhao claimed to believe that censorship is in the eye of the beholder. “We [at the ITU] don’t have a common interpretation of what censorship means,” he was quoted by the Korean Yonhap news agency as saying. When asked about China’s censorship regime, he responded: “Some kind of censorship may not be strange to other countries.” Zhao, of course, joins a growing roster of Chinese Communist operatives in charge of powerful UN agencies.
Rather than cooperating in the development of global rules for the Internet to be enforced by the UN and dictatorial foreign regimes, Congress should completely sever the U.S. government’s membership in and funding of the global outfit. It should also stop the Obama administration from lawlessly handing over control of the architecture of the Internet — an American creation — to the UN and other foreign entities. As the Russian and Chinese governments made clear in their proposed UN “code of conduct,” free expression is “subject to certain restrictions,” and “additional norms” will “be developed over time.” The White House must not, under any circumstances, be permitted to sacrifice Internet freedom, U.S. national sovereignty, and Americans’ individual rights on the globalist altar of the UN and its oppressive member regimes.
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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