Iran Provides a Good Lesson
Jun 23, 2009 Political
” When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another….”
This is the beginning of our Declaration of Independence, one of the seminal documents of the past three centuries regarding government and its powers and limitations over the people government presides over. The other major document, The Constitution, delineates the powers and the limits of those powers the government may impose.
One of the rights the Constitution provides is Freedom of Speech- a “right” the Iranians are really trying to exercise, through networking, the Facebook and MySpace sites, twitter, and text messaging. Because the Iranian government is a totalitarian regime, and seeks to control their people, they have been busy censoring these various messaging mediums as soon as they can.
Luckily for the Iranians, this is tantamount to plugging holes in a dyke with a finger- it won’t hold for long before another hole springs up.
These people are truly brave- here in our country, if you protest, you might be called a bad name- there, you might be shot, or worse. What’s worse than being shot? Would you really want to know first hand? I doubt it- I know that I would not, but these people risk worse than being shot just by protesting their governments stolen election.
Shortly after Neda Agha-Soltan bled her life out on the Tehran pavement, the man whose 40-second video of her death has ricocheted around the world made a somber calculation in what has become the cat-and-mouse game of evading Iran’s censors. He knew that the government had been blocking Web sites like YouTube andFacebook. Trying to send the video there could have exposed him and his family.
Instead, he e-mailed the two-megabyte video to a nearby friend, who quickly forwarded it to the Voice of America, the newspaper The Guardian in London and five online friends in Europe, with a message that read, “Please let the world know.” It was one of those friends, an Iranian expatriate in the Netherlands, who posted it on Facebook, weeping as he did so, he recalled.
nytimes.com
Yep, these Iranian thugs of the government would have gone after not only the people texting and taking videos, but also their families. What a free and fair government they are. This is stifling free speech on a grand scale, over the little matter of a stolen election. Jimmy Carter would have said it was a fair and free election, but Iran is one country where he has not the fortitude to travel to, even if they would let him.
What is truly disheartening, is the fact that despite all of Hussein’s high and mighty rhetoric on freedoms that he espoused in Cairo, there has not been a statement coming from the White House that could be said to even remotely have a spine to it.
I understand that Hussein has a calculating mind, but it seems that he wants the current regime to stay in power, thus the limp- wristed commentary he has issued. Perhaps he has more in common with the current dictators than first appears to meet the eye. I hope not, but there could be at least a statement of solidarity with all who seek freedom- but nooooooo.
At least the Internet, and all its permutations, make free speech more possible, and not less so, and this is a good thing- now, if only the President might use his personal bully pulpit, employ his freedom of speech, and at least get his butt off of the fence long enough to say something substantial about a peoples struggle for freedom.
Perhaps he could use his powers to Twitter.
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The Wild West
May 27, 2009 Political
Well, it’s coming, there’s going to be a new sheriff in town, and he’s going to want to regulate the Internet in such a way as to ostensibly “protect the public interest”, but in reality, find a way to suck money from the interactions of the internet , whether it’s chat rooms, blogs, or internet commerce. Everything will become regulated, and because it will be regulated, it will also be monitored for threats, for content, and for bias (against the regulators, of course).
I am not a lawyer, and do not claim to be prescient, but with Barama taxing the snot out of everything else, including the 95% he said would get a tax break, it stands to reason that the internet, which has remained like the wild west, relatively free, would fall under his money grubbing scrutiny sooner rather than later. How else does he think he can fund his health care, and begin to muzzle criticism of his policies?
The FCC will soon have a 3-2 Democrat majority. It’s no secret that two of the Democrats serving on the FCC favor restoring balance to talk radio – in other words, they would move conservatives out and balance them with liberals. They call it balance and diversity, but whenever government regulates free speech, it is censorship. Whenever government proscribes a certain amount of speech, it is speech control. John Madison who helped craft the First Amendment would roll over in his grave.
This debate is one of the hottest topics on radio today and with the White House declaration of war on Rush Limbaugh there is almost a fever pitch in Washington by Democrats to take back the airwaves because they think conservatives dominate talk radio and Fox News. That’s true. But, we don’t dominate the rest of the media which includes hundreds of NPR stations, the liberal network Air America, dozens of cable news and public affairs channels, dozens of magazines, 1400 newspapers, and tens of thousands of Internet sites.
On any given day, Americans can get any point of view anywhere which makes the argument for control of American airwaves moot, at best. Yet, the debate is moving ahead and Democrats are carefully writing language for regulation of our broadcast media. It is personal for them. They want to control it all and they want to eliminate conservative views from the media. Big Hollywood
This will of course, include the media known as the Internet- where Barama’s most vociferous critics reside, as well as many of his most ardent supporters. It’s a constant give and take on the blog sites, but how much tamer will it be when the regulators come in and write their rules for this free speech media? How much will this cost to send information or opinion out into the ether?
As it stands right now, the spirited discussion can sometimes get out of hand and off topic, but I know I would rather have that than to be told what to do or say, or how many words I was allotted. This will change, and not for the better if Skinny B and his Chicago posse get their way.
With Democratic majorities in Congress and a liberal Democratic administration we can blunt the political influence of media conglomerates and the Right. That is why the Republicans and their corporate media sponsors want to destroy Net Neutrality. They know from their experience with talk radio and the creation of Fox News that corporate absorption of the Internet and ending net neutrality would be a propaganda coup.
The Obama Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a revivified Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice could pursue all sorts of reforms that would open up the nation’s political discourse. A few minor changes in the rules and regulations governing the public airwaves and corporate media consolidation could transform the political economy of the media sector. Such reforms would make it more difficult for networks to shove people like Cheney, Rove, and Fleischer down our throats because enhanced competition would mean that rivals might be broadcasting more attractive fare. Breaking up Rupert Murdoch’s empire (starting with revoking the waiver that allows him to own the New York Post), and busting up Clear Channel’s monopoly of radio would be a good place to start. Congress, working with the Obama Administration, could then revisit the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996 and remove or rework its worst provisions. Huffington Post
Yep- this is just a start on the Brave, New World of the Liberal- speak. Note that they say that the “fairness doctrine”, or as they speak of it,”Net Neutrality”, in their minds, is being threatened by the big, bad Murdoch and his Fox News, and ownership of the New York Post- because these entities say things Liberals don’t like. It doesn’t matter that these things are true, they are unpleasant for these lotus- eating libs, and they must be regulated for more “attractive fare” Lovely.
What I find funny is that the author of this article in the Huffington Post, Jim Palermo, feels as though ALL the media is like Fox News- how absurd. a five minute viewing on virtually any other channel would reveal the liberal bias of those networks, but that’s not enough for Skinny B- no, he wants it all, and no criticism of his teleprompter either. Perhaps that is what is behind the creation of his little OTV station. State- run Television- oh boy, doesn’t that send a tingle up YOUR leg?
Liberals are so consumed with (still) trashing any possible revival of the Bush name and all associated with it, that they are almost cross-eyed , like a cat that was dunked in cold water. Any possible network, whether it be radio, TV, or Internet, will be controlled by these people through these laws, so as to silence dissent from any quarter.
But what happens when the libs begin to dissent? As they will- they are so quarrelsome that when there are no voices from the right left to be heard, they will turn on themselves in a remarkable display of backbiting.
That is, if Barama allows them to.
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Tags: censorship, fox news, internet, liberals, talk radio
Obama’s New Ad Invites Scrutiny
Sep 12, 2008 Political
Barack Obama and his campaign have vowed to come out swinging and put up a more aggressive fight. Obama feels that the Republicans are liars and that he must defend his honor and his chances by hitting them hard. His newest “hard hit” is an ad that makes a bad attempt at painting John McCain as someone who has not changed.
The ad starts off with the year 1982 emblazoned on the screen and McCain with a pair of big out of style glasses and says that in 1982 McCain went to Washington. Then we see a disco ball, a huge cell phone, Rubik’s Cube, and a computer with an email icon. The narrator explains that a lot has changed since then but McCain has not. Then it disparages him because he does not use a computer and does not know how to send email.
I think the ad will backfire. I know Obama is trying to hit the younger crowd. You know that crowd. It is full of self absorbed people who seek instant gratification and who always have to have the latest and greatest electronic gadget and can’t function without a cell phone stuck in their ears. This is the crowd that cannot find Vietnam (or many countries including the US) on a globe. Obama is appealing to them by deriding a man who is of a generation that is the least tech savvy. The ad is trying to show McCain has not changed but many elderly will see it as an attack on senior citizens. Obama might lose a number of people from a generation that is the most reliable voting block by trying to appeal to those who traditionally do not show up on election day.
That is a possibility but I think Obama has made a much more serious error. He has opened up the past as an avenue for exploration. Of course he has had his army of dirt bags in Alaska trying to dig up dirt from Sarah Palin’s past but Barry does not like to discuss his own past. We know the buzz words; too young, in the past, distraction, yada, yada, yada. The past is probably on the list of things Barry will not allow to be discussed but he has opened that door.
Obama opened up his past by discussing McCain’s and he could pay for that. It will now be fair to question Obama about his drug use when he used all kinds of drugs and used them a lot. He has stated that his drug use was his greatest moral failure and that it was a bad choice. Since Joe Biden said Hillary would have been a better pick than he, we can make the case that Obama made bad choices then and he makes bad choices now.
The first pinhead who talks about McCain being stuck in the past and not about change can expect to be asked about Obama’s drug use and how he can possibly be change we can believe in when he still makes bad choices.
BTW, McCain reads email but does not send it and he knows how to use a computer (not terribly well). The Obama ad does not mention that Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails during his term and said he did not understand the internet (and the inventor of it was his VP). McCain said he talks to people by phone and that he uses the internet to read his daughter’s blog and the news. However, he is unable to type effectively because of his war injuries. NRO reports this from a story that appeared in the Boston Globe in 2000. NRO also makes this point:
Oh one last point for now: Lord knows I think the chicken-hawk arguments are stupid. And I don’t think the fact that Obama never served in the military should count against him in and of itself. But how stupid is it for the Obama campaign to claim that McCain is unqualified to be president because he can’t grasp cyber-security issues based on the fact he has never sent an email when the McCain campaign can just as easily say Obama can’t understand first order national security issues because he’s never fired a rife, flown a plane, commanded men in battle, or faced an enemy? I mean which prepares someone to be commander in chief better, hitting “send” on AOL or fighting a war? [emphasis mine]
