The authors contend that China’s ambitions in Africa are grandly geopolitical as well as economic. As Jacob Wood, a Shanghai-born housing developer based in Africa for more than 30 years, tells them: “I’m going to be honest with you, China is using Africa to get where the United States is now, and surpass it.”

On the one hand, the Chinese invest heavily in infrastructure projects and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in return for being granted oil, mining and other concessions by African nations. According to the authors, Chinese “discretion and humility” are a breath of fresh air against a backdrop of “colonial arrogance” by France, Britain and other nations. In addition, the authors say, “Africa welcomes any competition that shakes up the Western, Lebanese and Indian business monopolies.”

Despite the recitations of socioeconomic and cultural disruptions and workplace abuses, the authors reach what may be an overly sanguine conclusion. They contend that “China’s arrival has been a boon for a continent adrift,” adding that the Chinese have “given Africa a real sense of worth, as much in the eyes of Africans themselves as in the eyes of foreigners.”

• The end of due process: arbitrarily seizing domain names without notification or trial, often from non-Americans.  Of course, it's being sold as an anti-counterfeiting measure, which is why they're going after search engines and copyright infringers.

• The end of reality: The FBI creates criminal plots and celebrates the capture of its own victims.  When law enforcement entices people to commit crimes and provides the means to do them, they just might be part of the problem.

• Petty revenge: The American feds are basically looking at changing the law to make what Wikileaks (and specifically, Julian Assange) has done illegal.  It wasn't illegal when they did it; the American laws that deal with these things apply only to American citizens or to the original leakers, not the republishers.  As the linked article states, "It's difficult to think of a more ridiculous and simply petty response from the feds." It won't un-leak what's already out there, and it'll just make future leaks harder to stop.