
One of the things that you are probably not aware of is that your government tracks every phone call you make and has a complete list of everyone who you comunicate with. This information is then used to identify potential dissidents who can be "monitored" - just like in the old USSR. I know that this is a fact because I know people in the business. They also tell me that they prefer to dissuade people from entertaining guests at home. The assumption being that the more private conversations take place the more opportunities to criticise the government there are.
Now, what makes you think that citizen of Country A has the power or rights to tell politicians of Country B what to do and what they cannot >do?
What makes you think that the concept "country" has any legitimacy whatsoever? The Web is not politically neutral. I intended the Web to be an agent of social change. The corruption of the present social order should be apparent from the fact that we destroy food while people starve, the majority of the worlds population have no political rights and political participation is only available to a tiny minority. The Web will have an effect whenever there is an internal inconsistency within a social order. The interaction of opposed cultures via the Web will reveal these inconsistencies in a manner that requires them to be resolved. The people of Singapore are not going to change their government because the US people convince them of the superiority of US culture. While it is patriotic for a US citizen to believe a-priori in US superiority it is unpatriotic for anyone else. What will change the government of Singapore is revealing the internal inconsistencies of the governments claims. Phill