May 17, 2006

Internet Neutrality - A frightening future

The upcoming House Bill on telecommunications will have a major impact on us all – including this little pro-democracy blog. It will, in essence, shut us all down.

Why? Because the new bill will allow phone and cable companies to decide which sites can be accessed at what speed and at what cost. This is far from democratic. It is commerce at its worst.

Now, how does this little ole bill threaten Internet neutrality? Let me count the ways.

1. Only giant corporations like Walmart, McDonald’s and Exxon will have dedicated high speed access.
a. Poor little bloggers like me will be sidelined, our voices drowned out.
b. Non-profits like moveon.org will have their metaphoric hands cut off.
c. Traffic will be directed to the same portals that television and radio funnel us through – in other words, the big black hole of corporate advertising and media spin.
2. The cost of internet surfing will spike to prohibitive levels.
a. Students will find less information at their fingertips – how sad in a democracy.
b. The poor will, as predicted, continue to be sidelined and held in poverty, and will be marketed to in the same gruesome way that they are now: by fast food, quick loans, check cashing and other unsavory companies.
c. Bloggers will be eliminated – no one will be able to access their pages.
3. Once again, we will have access only to the regurgitated crap that Fox News wants us to have.
a. Forget looking at foreign news sites – and shame on you for wanting to, you unpatriotic, left-wing, activist-thinking piece of garbage!
b. Fox will most likely buy Verizon, or will make them an internet offer they can’t refuse.
c. There will be little chance of citizen-based, grass roots movements against the growing authoritarian state ushered in by Bush-Cheney. If you weren’t afraid of loosing your civil rights, you now should be.

Remember, those who want to choke off the flow of information and the conversations between human beings are those who fear the information and the conversations. Also – there is corporate greed – how best to squeeze every penny out of every single American, and put it in the coffers of companies where the CEO holds half a billion in stock and makes 25 million a year. That’s right, you sorry-ass worker bee with your less-than-highly-compensated salary! You will forever be stuck where you are. Better join a union fast! You are about to become the working poor.



Visit

http://www.slate.com/id/2140850/fr/rss/

http://www.freepress.net/netfreedom/

http://www.itworld.com/Man/2681/060118netneut/

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/18/74297_HNnetneutrality_1.html

http://rhizome.org/fp.rhiz?id=1457

http://www.networkworld.com/edge/news/2006/030206-internet-neutrality.html?fsrc=rss-bigfeed

http://www.savetheinternet.com

And read full text of:

How does this threat to Internet freedom affect you?
• Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.
• Innovators with the "next big idea"—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
• Ipod listeners—A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.
• Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their websites and online features to work correctly.
• Nonprofits—A charity's website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can't pay dominant Internet providers for access to "the fast lane" of Internet service.
• Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.
• Small businesses and tele-commuters—When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.
• Parents and retirees—Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.
• Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.
Blocking Innovation
The threat to an open internet isn't just speculation -- we've seen what happens when the Internet's gatekeepers get too much control.
Corporate control of the Web would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we've come to expect online. It would throw the digital revolution into reverse. Internet gatekeepers are already discriminating against Web sites and services they don't like:
• In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.
• In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.
• Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the "quality and reliability" of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose -- driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.
• In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.
This is just the beginning. Cable and telco giants want to eliminate the Internet's open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling new ideas and innovation. If they get their way, they'll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how you use the Internet.

Tags:   congress, internet neutrality

May 05, 2006

Rumsfeld Gets Heckled – McGovern a New Citizen Hero

We’ve all wanted to do it – stand up and tell Rumsfeld to shut the hell up. But, since in our progressive climate of keeping Public Officials far away from the organs of Free Speech (i.e, the People), few of us are allowed anywhere near an official, unless we pas a background and credit check and have someone on the far right vouch for us. But somehow, down at the Southern Center for International Studies, where xenophobia is de rigueur, a handful of so-called anti-war protestors got into the room.

First of all, the media spin always calls a dissenting voice an “anti-war protestor” or an “activist”, terms meant to be pejorative and to leave a negative impression in the mind of a viewer. God forbid anyone should think that a regular Joe citizen might stand up and give Rumsfeld a piece of his mind. I suppose it is unthinkable that someone, sitting there listening to Rumsfeld drone on as if he had never fucked anything up, might suddenly be fed up. Doesn’t it stand to reason that we as a nation, and as individuals, have breaking points?

But the best part of the ordeal, from this viewer’s perspective, was that Rumsfeld’s best heckler was a former CIA Analyst, Ray McGovern, who asked Rumsfeld why he has repeatedly lied about the goings on in Iraq.

Now we have all wanted to ask the White House that same question, but no one ever lets any of us get close enough to do it. Rumsfeld began splitting hairs – what hair is there left to be split on this issue? They all told us that there were WMDs, that they knew exactly where they were and that they had evidence that Saddam was courting Bin laden. We all know now that none of those things were true, yet Rumsfeld tried the old “I never said I ‘knew’” routine that we all used back in Junior High School when our parents caught us lying for a sibling. His escape hatch is “I said I ‘suspected’”. Well I suspect that he has his head up his ass.

McGovern’s move was ballsey – like Colbert’s – although in his case it was not satire but outright indignation. Colbert will live to see another day and will no doubt see an improvement in his ratings. But McGovern faces different challenges, and if something untoward happens to him, well, I think we will all know why.

For now, we can thank him and ask to shake his hand, and we can look forward to more and more of the exasperated citizenry standing up and telling Washington what is exactly on our minds.

Tags:   bush, bush lied, kecling, rumsfeld, war

May 04, 2006

Ode to Stephen Colbert (or, Balls of Steel for the 21st Century)

For all those who saw COlbert's Historical Speech, and for those who did not, here is a tribute to the only man in AMerica who can look into the faces of the "deciders" and mock them openly and without mercy.

Ode to Stephen Colbert

O Stephen, of the steely balls and snappy phrase
You are not afraid when duty calls to raise a glass to freedom
To praise Washington’s hallowed halls and days of yore
When honor was the only key to the kingdom

No navel gazer you, O Stephen of the angry gut
Fearless you strut before the hounds hungry for me-dom
Those mangy mutts pleased only by the more
Not Moore, but the more of the nothing they bring us

What intrepid wit, O warrior of the free word
Not an insipid bit of spin spun to be heard by the mediums
Those lured by the promise of wicked swag or open doors
But the Word, the One Truth so long kept from us

Stand tall, O ballsey one, and speak your words
They will certainly be heard around the world and maybe here
And we will answer the call to go and explore
The options for the screenplay and all options set forth…..

Seriously, we need more balls in Washington and fewer pricks.

Tags:   colbert, ode, pricks, washington

May 03, 2006

Brooklyn is Burning (Suspiciously)

Watching the thick plume of black smoke wafting towards Willy B, I suspected that something untoward had happened. And it came as no surprise to me that the old Greenpoint Terminal Building had been the victim of the incendiary mystery unfolding on the waterfront. Recently, the landlord had replaced the glass window with concrete blocks, despite his permit to demolish part of it.

The Waterfront in this part of Brooklyn is one hotly contested piece of prime real estate, so hot in fact that I am surprised that there has not been more spontaneous combustion.

If your google “Greenpoint Terminal Building” you will see that, in addition to some snappy websites with nice photos, the property is owned by Guttman. For those not from DUMBO in Brooklyn, or not in the real estate game, this name probably means nothing. For those artists previously burned out of their DUMBO digs on Water Street (oddly, just after the community voted no for his request to re-zone), this name means anything but “good man” – it means reckless and virtually pathological exploitation of the city’s underbelly. You will also see that people of Brooklyn were pushing forward a request that part of the Terminal Building be slated for “historic preservation”.

You will also see that the DUMBO fire has left many open wounds.

While the previous fire in DUMBO may have been “suspicious”, that suspicion faded away after all the glad-handing and campaign contributions and dinners with so-and-so and such-and-such. After all, the DUMBO incident, along with other acts that one can follow in the court records, involved “urban squatters”, which is not exactly true since many of the artists who were described as wanton reprobates actually had had agreements as to the space they occupied. Of course, those agreements turned out to be no more valid than if they had been written on water.

The irony here is that slumlords-turned-real-estate-developers encourage artists to move in and to make a previously undesirable area interesting. Artists come, cafes open up, interesting shops, photo journalists come by, and so on and so forth. Suddenly, everyone wants of piece of the art – everyone wants to feel that living among the artists is the only real urban experience. We all want to be edgy, hip and anti-corporate. It makes us feel better about paying 1500 dollars a month for less than 500 square feet of apartment. After all, it’s “a virtual artist’s colony”. And so we all run out to these new “undiscovered” neighborhoods, where the artists are, only to have those same artists burned out of the buildings, while pricey condos go up for the benefit of Wall Street’s up and coming bookies.

The old Greenpoint Terminal Building did have its squatters – they were well known and had signs over the doors. And the neighborhood in fact had been a wasteland of toxic leftovers, drug dealers and prostitutes. There was literally nothing to see, except for that spectacular view of Manhattan. Ah, yes, this is what all the fuss is about. It’s about the view. That’s right, the view that will soon be obstructed by a glut of Trump-like, kitsch condominium towers, with multimillion dollar shoeboxes staring longingly across the water at Manhattan *sigh*. ( But the affordable housing that has been mandated for the buildings will have no view, no loft ceilings and no private access to the waterfront. (Too bad, so sad, lottery winners!)

The fire has served to remind artists that their role in the real estate game is to make things seem gentile enough on the surface to attract developers, and then to get the hell out. It has also sped up the process for the development by simultaneously providing cheap demolition (well, cheap for the developer – the FDNY we pay for) and skirting the touchy topics of any sort of “historic preservation” or “green space”. In other words, once again Guttman is free to do as he pleases after a suspicious fire has mysteriously demolished a contested piece of property. It wouldn’t surprise me if the city just gave the rest of the area to Guttman, for his pain and suffering.

Tags:   brooklyn, guttman, real esate, suspicious fire