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Protecting the Internet Is Akin To, Protecting America
by James Glaser
I did write a column for Monday, but I couldn't get it posted because my server was down. That can be so frustrating, and if server down-time increased to any extent, it could hurt our country's new found media freedom. When I got up this morning and found I still couldn't get on the net I was a little frustrated. When I stopped at the bank on the way to my studio, I found out their computers were off-line too. The head teller, a woman about my age told me that the bank would not be able to function without computer help. She said years ago she would have to figure out principal and interest payments on a calculator, but she doubted any of the younger employees could do the same. Now it is all done by the computer. Every monthly statement, payments, money transfers, and a multitude of other jobs are done with the computer, and much of that information is sent out on the net. Mainstream media, television, radio, and print has been taken over by large corporations, in some cases international corporations. These media outlets may have a left or right bent to their output, but all of them have the same bottom line, and that is the desire to make money. There would be few if any "independent" sources of news if the internet could be controlled. Think how much everyone in Washington would like it if sites like Lewrockwell.com. Anti-war.com or the Future Freedom Foundation was all of a sudden shut down. There would be no one and no way to get a different point of view about daily happenings going on in Washington America would once again be controlled by media giants whose only allegiance is to their stock holders. The internet gives us information that is of interest to a wide spectrum of our citizens. Pro-life/pro-choice both have the ability to reach an audience. Those who want to protect the Constitution, and those who will do anything to feel secure can get their message out. Without the internet large corporations would control everything we would be allowed to learn. Another reason to protect the net, is that American business would turn to chaos in just a couple of days with internet access. We have gone so far into the computer age, and business is so interlinked on the web, our economy would fall to pieces without it. Yes that is a scary thought. Well here is yesterday's column:
It bothers me a lot to write that my government lies to me and everyone else in this country. I have tried for years to think that the people in Washington just have a different opinion of what is going on in this world. Since Bill Clinton got elected, and now with George Bush in office, I can no longer believe that. There just isn't any way around it—the people elected and appointed in Washington lie to us, and they do it often. They do it so much now, and get caught in lies so much, all I can figure is that they just don't care. When I say Washington, I mean the Bush administration and Congress too. The Left and the Right, Democrat and Republican, and add to that our main-stream media too. As an example, how long are they going to keep telling us that things are getting better in Iraq? For about a year now they have been saying, "When the Iraqis stand up, American troops can stand down." Well, you know what? The first and only Iraqi battalion that could "stand up" has been told by the Pentagon to stand down. Now Iraq has not even one battalion capable of fighting the insurgency on its own. Way back in 2004, during the last election, George Bush was telling us about the tens of thousands of Iraqi men we had trained. That was a lie, because so far we haven't been able to train even one unit, and we have been working on that for over a year. It isn't just Bush, Congressmen on the left and right keep telling us things are getting better over there. In the February 25th edition of Stars and Stripes, Lisa Burgess and Jeff Schogol write, "Insurgent attacks in Iraq reached a postwar high in the four months preceding Jan.20, according to a [sic] Iraq progress report issued Friday by the Pentagon." You must know by now that if the Pentagon, Congress or the White House is going to issue a report that makes them look bad, it will come out late on a Friday, and you better know a really bad one like this, will come out when something else is capturing the headlines. This week it was the story about giving Arabs control of our ports, and the chance of civil war breaking out in Iraq. Those stories made the "attack story" fade off the front page and not even make the nightly news shows. With all of that bad news, Washington tries to slip in a report like this, because it tells us they have been lying to us for months. George Bush and any body else who backs this war has been saying that things are getting better. Now they tell us that attacks against our troops are at the highest level of the war. They want it both ways, and they are willing to lie in order to have it both ways. The sad thing is that so many Americans believe the lies, and never connect the dots when reports of the truth come out. In case you missed it, 50 American troops have been killed so far this month, and another three to four hundred have been wounded. That wound number is a guess based on the number of wounded so far in this war, as our leaders refuse to keep us updated on the number of our troops maimed. To be counted, an American Soldier or Marine must die, losing a leg or legs or any amount of limbs does not count. Things are going bad in Iraq, but you will never hear that from our government or from our media. According to them things are looking up. Many the world over think that Iraq is in a civil war right now, with death squads, private religious armies, and the constant flow of dead bodies turning up execution style, but you didn't hear that from Washington or the American media. Meanwhile, tax money keeps flowing to defense contractors, and some Americans are getting very rich. In past wars those making that blood money were called, Merchants of Death. |
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