Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad refuses to take the bait:

I shall also not respond, unless absolutely necessary, to issues that have been raised and answered by me in other forums, especially those pertaining to unsubstantiated allegations.

I find it interesting, by the way, that the pro-Western Anwar Ibrahim blogs in Malay and the generally anti-Western Mahathir blogs in English.

ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images

Malaysia's former prime minister of 22 years, Mahathir Mohamad, has a blog in English. It's named "Chedet" after his pen name, "Che Det" or "Mr. Det," from his days as a journalist. "Det" is short for "Mahadet," another way to pronounce his name.

Most new bloggers start out by welcoming their readers, explaining why they are blogging, and giving an overview of the subjects they plan to write about. Not so Mahathir, who gives the impression of a man who doesn't think he has to explain himself to anyone. (He was probably motivated by the blogging success of opposition politicians and the fact that the media has been ignoring his escalating criticisms of the current prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.)

If you're hoping for some of Mahathir's signature anti-Western rants, you'll be sorely disappointed. His first and so far only post is a rather boring critique of Abdullah's judicial reforms, though this is some quality armchair quarterbacking:

Is the Government proposing to work with the opposition on this issue, and so display its weakness? Will there be a quid pro quo, a bargain with the opposition? It would be interesting to see how the PM proposes to deal with this.

My humble blogging advice for you, Dr. Mahathir? Respond to FP's interview with your estranged protégé Anwar Ibrahim, who says you "underestimated" him and wrongly thought you could break him in prison. Blog readers always love a good controversy, and I promise we will link to you.

Amr Khaled, an Egyptian televangelist and media celebrity across the Arab and Muslim worlds, jumped dramatically in the rankings today of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals.

Why is that?

His fans have begun a vote drive on AmrKhaled.net and on Facebook, which FP noted earlier this year was a surprising force for activism in the Arab world. Interestingly, the more controversial Yusuf al-Qaradawi saw a boost in his numbers as well, even though Khaled and Qaradawi haven't always seen eye to eye. Qaradawi and Khaled got into a huge spat over the Danish cartoons issue, with Khaled calling for dialogue and Qaradawi basically calling him a big pansy.

VALERY MELNIKOV/AFP/Getty Images

Do you find Vanity Fair and Vogue just a bit too bourgeois? Are you tired of lumpen-proletarians who don't know their place trying to friend you on Facebook? Can you never find anything on TV classy enough to show on that sweet plasma screen you had installed in your breakfast nook? Well then Snob may be for you!

"Bad-boy oligarch" Mikhail Prokhorov, who at 42 is Russia's fifth-richest man and the country's "most eligible bachelor," is investing $150 million in a new lifestyle media brand called Snob. The brand will include an exclusive social networking site, magazine, and TV station, all aimed at upwardly mobile young Russians.

Prokohorov, who made his fortune by investing in nickel and gold during the 1990s, is a kind of poster boy for the champagne-drinking, Mercedes-driving set that Russians derisively refer to as "new Russians." His motivtion for this project, he says, is to reclaim the word "snob" from its connotations of unearned privilege and make it a kind of rallying cry for Russia's nouveau riche:

Snob to us means a person who is a 'self-made man', a person who has gained a right to snobbishness," he said emphasizing the main difference with the British meaning which he said referred to inherited wealth.

The Snob media empire aims to focus on "lifestyle features, business news and travel." If Prokohorov's personal hobbies are any indication, the snob lifestyle also includes skiing, art collecting and upscale prostitution rings.

This week's Tuesday Map illustrates the fragile and spotty nature of Africa’s "Internet Weather" -- or "teledensity" as tracked by Internet monitoring technology.

Researchers at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, tracked Internet connectivity at points in more than 40 African countries, whose populations make up more than 80 percent of the continent's inhabitants. Their findings (pdf) are sad, though not surprising: "Africa's network performance is over 10 years behind that of Europe and the U.S. and falling further behind," and among African countries "performances in developing regions are a factor of 5-20 times worse than that in developed regions."

This video maps daily connectivity and explains each dot's meaning (in a funny British accent):

Hat tip: Today's Tuesday Map has been made possible by the PingER (Ping End-to-end Reporting) project of the Internet End-to-end Performance Measurement (IEPM) group at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC).

Once again, Hillary's campaign is running up against what may be its most formidable adversary: Bill Clinton.

First, he flubbed big time last week by reviving -- and inaccurately describing -- the Bosnia sniper controversy. And now, just when Hillary wants to be seen as tough on China, comes an LAT piece yesterday that Bill's foundation has taken an undisclosed sum from a Chinese company accused of helping the government censor the Internet and crack down on Tibetan activists.

Alibaba, which owns Yahoo! China, asked Bill to speak at a 2005 executives' conference in China. In lieu of his usual speaking fee, often as high as $400,000, Bill asked for an undisclosed donation to his foundation. Last month, Yahoo! China's homepage ran "Wanted" posters of Tibetan activists the government accused of spreading unrest. Rebecca MacKinnon wrote recently of experiments she ran on Chinese search engines: Yahoo! China's was censored the most.

On the campaign trail, Hillary has gotten out in front of her opponents on the Olympics issue by calling on Bush to boycott the opening ceremony, "absent major changes by the Chinese government." But it certainly doesn't play well for her position when her husband's foundation receives large checks from a company so closely aligned with Beijing.

Recently, a colleague turned me on to Vice Magazine, a Brooklyn-based project that writes about the underground music scene, extreme sports, and all things counterculture. Increasingly though, as Vice's notoriety grows, it's venturing into territory that is decidedly less fluffy. Incorporating international reporting on areas most people only hear about in wonkier publications like The Economist or The Washington Post, Vice manages to open up new worlds to its urban hipster clientele by maintaining a cynical and subversive edge.

Through print features such as "Moldova: Mental Asylums and Psychadelic Gravestones," their recent interview with the Iraqi Minister of Tourism (um, Iraqi tourism?) and now their new online venture VBS.tv, Vice founders Suroosh Alvi, Eddy Moretti, and Shane Smith have moved into territory previously uncharted, something they themselves have summed up best as "60 Minutes meets Jackass." 

VBS.tv's slogan is "Rescuing you from television's deathlike grip," and features mini-documentaries by staff members exploring news-y topics such as the lost boys of Sudan, or Palestinian media campaigns aimed at luring women and children into committing acts of terror. A documentary of their trip to North Korea features comical mash-ups of North Korean propaganda with creepily orchestrated Pyongyang tour stops and drunken noribong with government chaperones. It is at once inane and fascinating -- the Vice trademark. Check it out.

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

Back in November, Passport noted that urban Indian hospitals were developing their telemedicine capabilities in order to cater to the country's rural citizens. Now, that expertise is set to benefit patients all across Africa. As the first India-Africa summit kicks off in Delhi, India's efforts build and expand its ties across the African continent are already underway.

Last July, the Indian government -- working with the African Union -- launched the 542 crore ($135.6 million) Pan-African E-network project. The initiative has been called Africa's largest infrastructure project in history, and is designed to develop Africa's information and satellite communications technologies. It aims to connect 53 African countries to a satellite and fiber-optic network. Telemedicine is just one component of this broader scheme, and African countries are already seeing the results. The Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for instance, is connected to the Care Group of Hospitals (cardiac specialists) in Hyderabad, where Indian doctors can advise Ethiopian doctors on X-ray and laboratory test result interpretation via a high-speed internet connection. During its year-long pilot run, Black Lion doctors have used the link more than 50 times, and Indian officials estimate the E-network project has helped 100 patients. Telemedicine programs are set to expand across the continent.

The Indian government hopes to increase its sales in information and communication technologies to Africa, and gain a foothold in this sector before China can dominate. In addition to helping patients and developing African countries' ICT infrastructure, projects such as the telemedicine venture will also create goodwill between India and the continent -- a sentiment often lacking in China-Africa relations.

With India also hungry for resources that Africa can provide, developing these types of mutually-beneficial linkages could favor India in the long run. And through its relatively long history with Africa, India has been able to take advantage of existing cultural and commercial affinities to expand the relationship. As a result, trade between India and Africa has ballooned to $20 billion (2006/2007) from $967 million in 1991 (when India began its economic reforms). But whether these efforts, and India's attempts at creating goodwill, can compete with China's cash and favors remains to be seen.

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A piece in the USA Today this week highlights the use of open-source information in the U.S. intelligence community. As more information is available on the Web, it is becoming an increasingly important piece of the intel pie -- even making the President's morning briefing. There's a clash since some in the intelligence community feel that the classified sources are the most reliable, but others argue you can learn about your enemy by what he or she says in sources available for all to read. Robert David Steele, ex-CIA and Marine officer, advocates a flip-flop of spending in favor of open-source over more hush-hush sources:

I'm not a librarian saying open sources are cool and we can do this...I'm a very good former spy saying open sources are cool and we can do this."

Though it's always a battle to tell fact from fiction online, it's sure easier than getting access to classified material. Given that 19,000 FBI personnel are still waiting for desktop Internet access, it seems reasonable to devote some more resources to this type of intelligence.

In his piece "The Next Generation of Terror" for the current issue of FP, Marc Sageman describes the new reality of "leaderless jihad," in which extremist ideology and terrorist tactics spread through online social networks rather than hierarchical organizations. In light of this, it's encouraging to see some intelligence professionals shifting their focus to the dangers in plain view.

For this week's Seven Questions, "Waiting for a Cyber Pearl Harbor," FP asked Richard A. Clarke, former U.S. counterterrorism chief and former special advisor to the president on cybersecurity, about what offensive capabilities the new U.S. Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) should have. He succinctly replied: "Highly classified ones."

Though Clarke isn't interested in mentioning specifics, someone else is. Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder of the U.S. 8th Air Force, under which AFCYBER will be housed once it's officially launched this fall, has revealed how the United States plans to "hit back" in cyberspace.

In an interview with ZDNet.co.uk, he said offensive capabilities that AFCYBER is working on include denial of service, confidential data loss, data manipulation, and system integrity loss. These "cyberpunches" will be paired with kinetic (physical) attacks. Elder said:

Offensive cyberattacks in network warfare make kinetic attacks more effective, [for example] if we take out an adversary's integrated defence systems or weapons systems. This is exploiting cyber to achieve our objectives.

Now that the U.S. military has put on its cyber boxing gloves, it looks like it'll be no holds barred in the online world.

With everyone else distracted by the financial crisis, high oil prices, the Iraq war, and the battle against al Qaeda, it is a relief to know that some folks in the U.S. Congress have their priorities straight. Right now, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet is hosting a hearing entitled "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium." Watch it live here.

Facebook has become Shaitan incarnate for many preachers in Saudi Arabia, not least of all because six in 10 users of the social networking site in the country are women. This apparently makes Saudi men nervous. Influential cleric Sheikh Ali al-Maliki, for instance, has derided Facebook as a "a door to lust" and warned against "the accession of women to it."

Now, it appears, some Saudi men are taking matters into their own hands. London's Daily Telegraph reports:

A young Saudi Arabian woman was murdered by her father for chatting on the social network site Facebook, it has emerged. The unnamed woman from Riyadh was beaten and shot after she was discovered in the middle of an online conversation with a man...."

Shocking, but then again we're talking about a country that arrests American women for sitting with their male colleagues at the local Starbucks.

You might very well assume that most Chinese people are angry about the Great Firewall of China. But if this new poll highlighted by Pew researcher Deborah Fallows is accurate, you are dead wrong:

[I]n a new survey, most Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007, over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

One major reason for this overall finding, I'd have to think, is that 93 percent of respondents say that "much of internet content to be unsuitable for children."

When asked which online content they thought should be controlled, more internet users targeted the most offensive or annoying content: 87% of internet users would control or manage pornography; 86% violent content; 83% spam or junk mail; 66% advertisements; 64% slander against individuals.

But what about political content? Actually, a growing number of people think that is a problem, too:

Since 2005, the percentage of users who say that online content about "politics" should be controlled or managed jumped from 8% to 41%, by far the biggest increase of any items tested.

[Guo Liang, deputy director of the Research Center for Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences] said that the explanation for this increase probably lies in the spate of widely publicized incidents of fraud, blackmail, sensationalism, and other abuse of Chinese citizens via the internet. The Chinese word used for "politics" in this survey, zhengzhi, is not confined simply to political rights or competition for political control but may be understood to include larger questions of public morality and social values.

There are plenty of other fascinating findings in Pew's report, so read the whole thing.

Getty Images

Whether it's videos of him acting drunk or angry, or Web sites publishing reports of text messages he may or may not have sent his ex-wife, the Internet has not always been kind to Nicolas Sarkozy. But with all that he has on his plate, how can the French president possibly keep track of all the possibly damaging material about him that circulates on the web?

That's where Nicolas Princen comes in. Nicknamed "Sarkozy's eye,"  the 24-year-old has been hired to act as "a sort of Internet early warning system, surveying everything that is making a buzz regarding the President." Princen cut his chops maintaining this online video site for Sarkozy, which includes an intro that would make Kim Jong-il blush. While I understand that life can be rough for public figures in the YouTube era, a better strategy for Sarkozy might just be to stop making a fool of himself in public.

Last month, pro-Palestinians, who hope Jerusalem will be the capital of a future Palestinian state, were angered when the board game Monopoly listed "Jerusalem, Israel," as a candidate city for its world edition. Recently, though, the controversy went the other way around at Facebook, the social-networking site.

Jewish settlers living in the occupied West Bank, in places such as Maale Adumin and Ariel, were angered when Facebook automatically listed their hometowns as being located in Palestine. Facebook heard their outcry, however, and now residents in Israeli West Bank settlements can choose between with Israel and Palestine.

Of course, opposing Facebook groups are now looking for members. The group "ITS [sic] NOT 'PALESTINE'- IT'S 'ISRAEL'" has nearly 14,000 members, while the group "If Palestine is removed from Facebook... Im [sic] closing my account." has around 4,600 members.

It all goes to show that on the Web, nobody has a monopoly on outrage.

Should we be worried that the Web site for Iraq's Ministry of Health has turned into a conglomeration of dating websites and online car-insurance deals?

The U.S. Department of Commerce and the Library of Congress still link to it, while the World Health Organization offers its own link farm of choice:

Warning: Passport recommends against exploring these Web sites, as your computer could become infested with spyware, or worse.

Since it's the fifth anniversary of the DHS, we've got homeland security on the brain today. So it was fitting that this terrifying little tidbit just came over the AP:

The Pentagon has banned Google Earth teams from making detailed street-level video maps of U.S. military bases.... Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base. He said military officials were concerned that allowing the 360-degree, street-level video could provide sensitive information to potential adversaries and endanger base personnel."

Um, no duh. Considering that Google Earth is a favorite tool of terrorist groups -- including the Palestinian al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which uses it to target and kill Israeli civilians -- this strikes me as a pretty common sense decision.

And it begs the question: Who the heck allowed a team from Google Earth, presumably carrying all sorts of video and mapping equipment, access to a U.S. military base in the first place?

With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination entering the homestretch, more and more people are talking about superdelegates, who may be crucial in determining whether the party's choice will be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But what are these superdelegates? Who gets to be one? Are you as confused about them as I am?

Rick Klau, an employee at Google, took on a personal project to help clarify things. He set up SuperDelegates.org, a wiki-style Web site that not only tells you how the Democratic Party's superdelegate system was developed, but also lists who all 795 of them are and whether or not they've pledged their vote to Clinton or Obama. Even cooler, Klau has done an overlay on Google Maps, so you can see where they're from and whether they're still undecided or are leaning toward one of the candidates. Check it out here.

We tend to imagine Hong Kong as a free-wheeling, anything goes kind of place. But in many ways, it still reflects the conservatism of the mainland, as a recent sex scandal reminds us. Edison Chen, a Canadian-born star who has done movies, albums, ad campaigns (I first got to known him as the face on my Pepsi cans in China) is now finito in the Hong Kong entertainment industry after indecent, OK, overtly pornographic, pictures of him and fellow female stars rocked the Special Administrative Region and spilled into the mainland and Taiwan. Here's the basic rundown.

When Edison took his laptop to get serviced, somebody found extremely graphic photos of sexual encounters with various actresses on his hard drive and published them on the Internet. Various local newspapers then splashed partially censored photos on their front pages for 10 days straight (the uncensored versions were accessible online, in separate magazine supplements, and were passed around on mobile phones or e-mail). What made the scandal especially shocking was that some of the female stars in the photos have built their careers on "innocent girl" images. The damaging coverage of the starlets has led to alleged death threats against Edison, and odd Hong Kong gang bounties like HK $500,000 (about USD $91,000) to chop off his hand, leading some to speculate that the women's management has mob ties.

While the overwhelming majority of people in Hong Kong didn't approve of the photos, polls also show that those who did see them sure seemed to keep clicking as they voiced their disapproval.

Edison has apologized and said he's stepping out of the industry once his current obligations are complete. Given the public outrage over "Sexy Photos Gate," saving face is probably the wise move for now. But I don't foresee a young star with so much of his career ahead of him staying away for that long. Something tells me he'll come through.

FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím weighs in on Fidel Castro's retirement:

About a year ago Fidel Castro started blogging. Every week or so he posted his “Reflections of the Commander in Chief”. While not strictly a blog, in his internet musings “El Comandante” does what bloggers do: he comments on the news, chastises enemies (Bush, Aznar), extols friends (Hugo!) or rambles on subjects he cares about (sport and politics).

On Tuesday his most recent post, which as usual was also published in Granma, Cuba's leading newspaper, was a bit different: “I will neither aspire to nor will I accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor will I accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief”, Castro wrote. Not many bloggers make history with their early morning postings. Moreover, in this history-making post El Comandante did reassure his readers that while he was relinquishing power they should not worry: he was keeping his blog. He would just change its name to “Reflections of El Compañero Fidel”.