There’s an interesting battle brewing that may decide the fate of Facebook, the hugely popular social networking site. The country network of which I’m a member, South Africa, has tripled in size to 300 000 in just three months. I didn’t know there were that many internet connections over here.

However, there’s a dark cloud on the horizon. A very dark cloud. Microsoft is, according to the Wall Street Journal, in talks to buy a stake in the startup:

Microsoft in recent weeks approached Facebook with proposals to invest in the startup that could value the fast-growing site at $10 billion or higher, said people familiar with the matter. If those talks bear fruit, Microsoft could purchase a stake of up to 5% in the closely held startup, at a cost in the range of $300 million to $500 million, the people said.

But Microsoft must first outgun Google, which has also expressed strong interest in a Facebook stake, according to people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft’s Passport signon technology (now rebranded as Live ID) has proved to be wide open to abuse, and not only by external miscreants. When Microsoft bought Hotmail almost ten years ago, the webmail pioneer turned into a sluggish performer and a hotbed of spam. As this page documents, Microsoft itself had for years been both negligent and willfully complicit in some of the abuse. On one occasion it changed, without notification, all users’ preferences to share information with third parties, for example. On another, it tried to claim copyright on everything sent via Hotmail. It certainly has not been particularly respectful of users’ privacy, and has burned its trust relationship with its more savvy customers.

I’m sure Microsoft has tightened up its privacy policies by now. It’s appointed a Chief Privacy Officer and its PR machine makes all the right defensive noises. However, a 3 500 word policy can hide many secrets. My reading of its copyright notice suggests that it still claims an exceptionally broad licence to copy, use and sublicence anything you post on any Microsoft service, even if it is intended only for a private community.

So I vowed never to use any Microsoft-owned online service — MSN Messenger, Windows Live, Hotmail — ever again. Publications that required Passport Network registration were simply dropped from my reading list.

Facebook is already over-cluttered with applications. Some are useful, some cool, some annoying, and some just downright offensive. I don’t mean in the prurient sense; I mean in the spam hotbed sense. I usually decline to install them, but I accepted a fun one involving beer just yesterday. Contrary to explicit instructions not to, it invited a random selection of friends, some of which I really didn’t want invited. This kind of spamware can kill Facebook.

But not as quickly as Microsoft can. If Google buys Facebook, I’ll live with it. The Googleplex 0wnz me already, and I’m not even a heavy user of its services. However, it has yet to show the kind of negligence or nefarious activity that will compromise my trust. For now, the convenience of its online tools outweigh the very real privacy risks. But if Microsoft buys Facebook, I’m outta there like a shot. The Hotmail fiasco alone was enough for me to never trust Microsoft with private information of any sort again. Through negligence, incompetence and deliberate action, Microsoft has abused the trust of users too often in the past. Here’s hoping Facebook doesn’t become the latest victim.

Update: In good Facebook tradition, I’ve created a group: If Facebook sells to Microsoft, we’re leaving.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s talk at Columbia University was a wonderful comedy show. But while his reception at Columbia is one thing, the respect the United Nations accords him is quite another.

He started with a pathetic complaint about being treated rudely, because Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, introduced him by reading his CV. It includes such items as the imprisonment of journalists, sponsoring terror, executing children, threatening the destruction of a nation-state, fighting a proxy war against the United States and hosting a Holocaust denial conference. A rush transcript of the introduction, the speech, and the Q&A session is here.

Ahmadinejad proceeded with his usual deranged notions about global politics and made an asinine appeal to fellow academics for further research into the veracity of the Holocaust. He points out that, “the key to the understanding of the realities around us rests in the hands of the researchers, those who seek to undiscover (sic) areas that are hidden, the unknown sciences.” Here’s to undiscovery, indeed. Perhaps if we undiscover the Holocaust, or Apartheid, or the Inquisition, or the Crusades, or the present Jihad, they will never have happened. Wouldn’t that be nice?

He tells us, “Nobody should interfere in the affairs of the Palestinian nation. Nobody should sow the seeds of discord. Nobody should spend tens of billions of dollars equipping and arming one group there.” Something about a mote and a splinter comes to mind — I’m sure our Hizbollah-sponsoring friend knows the holy texts well enough to understand.

He used this rhetorical trick of inversion often. If such tactics fooled anyone (and judging by the applause in the audience it did), he finished with an enlightening flourish: there are no homosexuals in Iran. Granted, in a country where homosexuality is punishable by lashes or execution, I guess gay pride marches, burlesque cabaret and rainbow bumper stickers aren’t really all that popular.

Perhaps his Columbia address, as Bollinger said he hoped, brings home to a few naïve listeners the absurd regime over which he presides, and the nature of the enemy that faces those who love freedom and cherish civilisation.

What is less easy to accept is that this man remains — along with dozens of other leaders of unfree countries — a respected member of the United Nations. An excellent editorial at Investor’s Business Daily points this out, and calls for the failed global body to be closed for good.

The World Stage: Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, sponsors terrorism and colludes in the murder of American troops. So why is he given the honor of addressing the United Nations on U.S. soil?

To us, the answer is clear. The U.N. is as corrupt, brutal and morally compromised as Ahmadinejad himself. In its many affronts to civilization and decency, the U.N. has long since outlived its usefulness and reason for being. Time to shut it down.

Sounds harsh, we know. Isn’t it better, you ask, to have a place where people can peaceably gather and talk out their problems?

Sad as it is to say, the answer is no. For the U.N. has been hijacked by a rather diverse group of kleptocrats, dictators and fanatics who have successfully used it to their own rather nefarious ends.

An old proposal, put forward by Sen. John McCain a while back, would scrap the U.N. and replace it with a “league of democracies.” Great idea. Let that be the starting point for reform talks. Given the U.N.’s abysmal record and its epic depravity, there is no choice.

It cites numbers specific reasons, including the perversity that the worst tyrants and kleptocrats in the world get to chair commissions on human rights, nuclear disarmament and sustainable development.

It revives an excellent proposal by McCain, to establish a club of free nations. Membership would be by invitation only, and would be subject to adherence to minimum standards of liberty, democracy and human rights. Member countries would agree a common defence and military support arrangement, much like the North-Atlantic Treaty Organisation. As an inducement to non-members, member countries would agree to dismantle all trade barriers among them, but would not be so bound vis-a-vis non-members.

It is a capital solution to a huge and expensive problem the world has created in the U.N. It was created for a different world. Its costs, morally and financially, far outweigh the limited benefits it has brought in that time. It’s time to end the perverse charade.