Delegation From US Visited North Korea (Comrades Bill Richardson and Eric Schmidt)

Bill Richardson and Eric Schmidt Leave North Korea as Everyone Sheds Tears of Great Dignity

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/01/Bill-Richardson-and-Eric-Schmidt-Leave-North-Korea-as-Everyone-Sheds-Tears-of-Great-Dignity

By Juli Weiner

11:50 AM, January 10 2013

After a profound and enlightening journey, Comrades Bill Richardson and Eric Schmidt have left North Korea. Both men agreed the trip was an experience of peerless fun, enriching visits to Kim Jong-un’s many great museums and palaces, and powerful displays of brilliant leadership and vision.

But Kim Jong-un’s enemies in the West continue to spread lies about the proud and economically prosperous North Korean empire. The American publication The Wall Street Journal is writing vicious and unprovoked slander that Comrades Richardson and Schmidt “urged North Korea’s government to drop barriers to Internet access to boost its impoverished economy.” This is a stupid and foolish untruth, as Kim Jong-un has created a thriving empire full of Internet!

Workers of great dignity and skill in both factories and farms praise Kim Jong-un’s Internet, saying it is the biggest, strongest, and most glorious Internet they could hope for. North Korea’s top scientists at universities have research studies about the superiority of Internet and have found it capable of destroying the Internets of China, the West, and South Korea. North Korea has no plans to launch long-range Internet against its enemies, but is building up an arsenal of Internet in case of provocation from war-loving traitors abroad.  See a profound and enlightening journey, vicious and unprovoked slander below:

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Eric Schmidt and Bill Richardson’s First E-Mail from the Glorious Empire of North Korea!

(A profound and enlightening journey)

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/01/Eric-Schmidt-and-Bill-Richardsons-First-E-Mail-from-the-Glorious-Empire-of-North-Korea

By Juli Weiner

12:50 PM, January 7 2013

Greetings Americans!

This is an electronic letter from your Comrades Bill Richardson and Eric Schmidt. We arrived in North Korea today, via vehicle! There are many motorized devices in North Korea, all of them highly advanced and functioning very well.

Esteemed representatives from the Workers’ Party of Korea met us when we arrived, each bearing magnificent gifts of food, extension cords (helpful because there are so many outlets here, for electricity!), and copies of Freedom, Kim Jong-un’s significant contribution to the Western canon. We were very impressed. In return, we gratefully lavished our hosts with appreciation, respect, and the normal amount of excitement about consuming food.

After consuming the ripe bread and hearty fruits we had been given, we had the great fortune of touring some of North Korea’s most splendid national monuments. We rode in the vehicle to a factory where new and useful goods were being produced. All of North Korea will soon share in the profits of the North Korean military uniforms being manufactured and distributed to North Koreans! We then went to the restaurant, where more food was offered. It was delicious and prepared with heat.

Our accommodations are the most luxurious in the entire world—but we hesitate to speak too much of the fine linens, silks, and and plastics Kim Jong-un has so generously given to us as a gesture of his superlative hospitality. We do not want to make our peers in the impoverished West jealous, which is one of the delicately and acutely explored themes of Kim Jong-un’s pseudonymously written book Freedom.

Until tomorrow!

United in deference to Kim Jong-un,
Bill Richardson and Eric Schdmidt

P.S. Do not write us back at our usual Web @-names. Use “theemailaddress@dprk.dprk.”

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Google Chief Presses North Korea on Internet Access

Click on the link to get more news and video from original source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324442304578233232453563520.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By BRIAN SPEGELE And CARLOS TEJADA

BEIJING—Google Inc. GOOG -0.30% executive chairman Eric Schmidt and former Gov. Bill Richardson said they urged North Korea’s government to drop barriers to Internet access to boost its impoverished economy. Officials in the isolated country, they added, appeared open to technological exchanges.

However, Mr. Richardson reported little progress in talks on military issues. North Korea triggered further international alarm about its military intentions in December after a successful rocket launch demonstrated advancing missile capabilities.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world,” Mr. Schmidt said in Beijing on Thursday, as he returned from a three-day trip to North Korea with Mr. Richardson, a former New Mexico governor. He added that it would “make it harder for them to catch up economically. We made that alternative very, very clear.”

North Korea has an Internet infrastructure, but it is accessible only to the government, the military and universities, not the general population, according to Mr. Schmidt. Its use is monitored by authorities. The country’s cellular network doesn’t carry Internet data, which means that the Internet can’t be accessed via mobile phones and other devices.

The trip to North Korea was billed as a humanitarian mission. Mr. Schmidt said it was “a private visit to North Korea to talk about the free and open Internet.” Mr. Richardson described the discussions with North Koreans on technology as the most productive talks of the trip.

Mr. Richardson said the delegation didn’t meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Eun. He said he urged others in the government to move toward a moratorium on ballistic missile tests. “We need dialogue on the peninsula, not confrontation,” he said.

The North Koreans maintained that the December rocket launch was for peaceful and scientific purposes. “I must say I personally disagree,” Mr. Richardson said.

Mr. Richardson also said he pressed North Korean officials about an American who is being detained there, and was encouraged by their statements that judicial proceedings will begin soon and that the detainee’s health is good. Kenneth Bae, 44 years old, has been held since late last year on unspecified charges.

Mr. Richardson said North Korean officials had expressed encouragement at statements from South Korea’s President-elect Park Geun-hye, but didn’t elaborate.

He said leadership transitions in the region provided an opportunity for a reset in relations with North Korea. In addition to Ms. Park’s election, regional powerhouses Japan and China both have new leaders. Mr. Kim, North Korea’s leader, recently marked his anniversary in power following the December 2011 death of his father. Mr. Richardson said the naming of a new U.S. secretary of state could also help reset dialogue.

Google’s advocacy of global free speech has put it at loggerheads with governments in some markets. Google essentially pulled out of the mainland China market in 2010 over concerns about censorship and cyberattacks. Asked whether Google had aspirations in North Korea, Mr. Schmidt said the government first needed to open its Internet further.

The delegation went to North Korea over the objections of the U.S. State Department. In addition to Messrs. Schmidt and Richardson, the group included Jared Cohen, a former State Department official who founded Google’s think tank, Google Ideas, and Tony Namkung, a longtime adviser to Mr. Richardson who has previously traveled with him to North Korea.

Write to Brian Spegele at brian.spegele@wsj.com and Carlos Tejada at carlos.tejada@wsj.com

FCC set to enact new rules affecting Internet access

washingtonpost.com

Cached:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/20/AR2010122005769.html

By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 21, 2010; 2:03 AM

 

Federal regulators are poised to enact controversial new rules affecting Internet access, marking the government’s strongest move yet to ensure that Facebook updates, Google searches and Skype calls reach consumers’ homes unimpeded.

Under the regulations, companies that carry the Internet into American homes would not be allowed to block Web sites that offer rival services, nor would they be permitted to play favorites by dividing delivery of Internet content into fast and slow lanes.

The rules are set to win passage in a vote Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission, after a majority of the panel’s five members said they planned to vote in favor of the measure.

The proposal, pushed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, seeks to add teeth to a principle known as net neutrality, which calls for all legal Internet traffic to be treated equally. It means that a cable company such as Comcast could not slow traffic of Netflix video, while a wireless carrier such as Verizon Wireless could not block competing Web voice services, such as Vonage.

The FCC’s move comes amid a broad shift in consumer habits, as people gradually replace traditional phone and cable television services with comparable services offered via the Internet. Public interest groups have urged regulators to stay abreast of this change, arguing that major phone and cable companies could use their control of broadband networks to stifle those upstart rivals and limit consumers’ options.

“While not as strong as they could be, [the rules] will nonetheless protect consumers as they explore, learn and innovate online,” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, said in a statement announcing that she will vote in favor of the regulations.

However, the FCC’s authority over broadband networks remains uncertain. A federal court ruling in May cast doubt on whether Internet access fell within the agency’s jurisdiction. The net-neutrality rules subject to Tuesday’s vote are widely expected to face a court test, and they could be challenged on Capitol Hill by the Republicans who will assume control of the House in January.

The proposal falls short of what some consumer advocates had sought. Although it would prevent wireless carriers from blocking competing voice services on smartphones, it would allow them to charge more for other types of Internet applications, such as video or social networking services.

The rules would prohibit Internet providers from arbitrarily blocking or slowing delivery of online services, but they could strike business deals in which a company might pay extra for faster access to consumers.

The proposal marks a compromise after more than a year of wrangling by the FCC, phone and cable giants, and brand-name Internet firms such as Google and Facebook. Some carriers and high-tech firms say the proposal strikes a good balance between protecting consumers and preserving the ability to compete.

“These rules will increase certainty in the marketplace; spur investment both at the edge and in the core of our broadband networks, and contribute to a 21st century job-creation engine in the United States,” Genachowski said in an excerpt of prepared remarks released Monday night.

But some Internet companies and Republican lawmakers say the FCC’s new regulations will restrict network operators, making it harder for Internet service providers to invest in faster networks that reach more homes.

Rebecca Arbogast, an investment analyst for Stifel Nicolaus, said that the rules are written so they can be broadly interpreted and that questions remain about the real impact on Internet video. It’s unclear whether a company such as Comcast could in effect give its video-on-demand service priority over competitors such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon by charging them more to transmit high volumes of data, she said.

“I think there is a lot of hard work ahead that will be over these kinds of issues,” she said. The FCC is deliberating a proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal that will deal with some of the same matters.

Wireless networks aren’t covered as broadly by the rules, and that worries public interest groups as more people turn to smartphones and tablets to watch TV shows, do research for homework and find news.

“The inadequate protections for wireless technologies are especially troublesome, as wireless services provide an onramp to the Internet for many of the nation’s poor and minority citizens,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, policy director for the Media Access Project.

But some FCC members said the regulations, which won’t be fully public for at least a few days after the vote, are an important first step for the government.

“If vigilantly and vigorously implemented by the Commission – and if upheld by the courts – it could represent an important milestone in the ongoing struggle to safeguard the awesome opportunity-creating power of the open Internet,” Democratic Commissioner Michael J. Copps said in a statement.