--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CONGRESS POISED TO UNRAVEL THE INTERNET
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082006b.shtml
"Lured by huge checks handed out by the country's top lobbyists,
members of
Congress could soon strike a blow against Internet freedom as they
seek to
resolve the hot-button controversy over preserving 'network
neutrality.' The
telecommunications reform bill...sets the stage for the privatized,
consolidated and unregulated communications system that is at the
core of
the phone and cable lobbies' political agenda," says Jeffrey Chester.
Commentary
"Terra, terra, terra!" but "where's the beef?"
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
Aug 14, 2006, 00:43
Clair Pellar may have gone to that big Wendy's hamburger joint in
the sky,
but the question that brought her 15 minutes of fame is more
relevant today
with each "terror" scare: Where's the beef?
The latest "terror plot" is the most preposterous of all. Yet, the
corporate
media have taken to it like flies to honey while the sheeple are
dumping all
their liquids and gels into airport trash bins for the "privilege" of
boarding an airliner, after waiting in interminable queues to be
grotesquely
searched and groped by perverse airport security personnel.
Imagine, we're being told that "terrorists" were plotting to blow up
airliners by mixing liquid chemicals in the planes' bathroom
cubicles, then
detonating them, therefore, travelers will not be allowed to bring
any
liquids -- with a few exceptions and at the discretion of the
perverse
security personnel -- gels or toothpaste aboard the planes.
Instead, the potentially explosive stuff must be dumped in trash
bins right
in the airport terminals. Got it? You are to dump and pour your
liquids and
gels into trash bins, allowing the possibly deadly stuff to mix and
go BOOM
right in the terminal. It's for your own safety. Right? Perhaps you
should
consider that in the Bush-Blair-neocons' bizarro world it is less
messy to
blow you and the terminal up, rather than have all this debris
raining down
from the sky. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, however,
plans to
give 11 boxes of unopened, potentially explosive, items to the city's
homeless shelters. Homeless population control?
You would think this would have raised some suspicions among
passengers-in-waiting and the corporate media. But no. Not a peep.
Certainly
not by the media and the passengers they chose to quote or put on
the air.
Okay, there haven't been any explosions in the terminals. But George
W. and
Poodle Blair must be laughing themselves silly over the stupidity of
the
"keep us safe at any price" crowd. You can visualize
*Saturday Night Live* Bush impersonator Will Ferrell gleefully
saying,
"Terra, terra, terra!"
This latest absurdity, allegedly hatched by Blair and his cohorts,
would
have us believe that a bunch of guys (the number of which keep
changing),
none of whom had airline tickets, some of whom had no passports and
none of
whom had whatever substances to make their bombs, were going to blow
up 10
airliners. Despite that, according to the Brits, the Bushies
conveniently
messed them up by insisting the would-be perpetrators be grabbed now,
despite the absence of hard evidence, making it nigh on to
impossible under
UK courts' evidentiary rules to convict the alleged
wannabe "terrorists."
But does any of this bother the corporate media that regurgitates ad
nauseum
whatever "officials" (unnamed, of course) tell them? Have they all
been
lobotomized so that they are incapable of asking, "Where's the beef?"
Of course, it wouldn't occur to them that these "terror" alerts are
trotted
out whenever Bush and Blair need to divert attention from their
current evil
or their evil yet to come. Skepticism requires critical thinking and
the
ability to connect the dots -- none of which the corporate media
mavens,
most of whom also have erased the word alleged from their
vocabularies, are
capable of doing.
So to pile on, knowing there will be no questions asked by the media
regurgitators, Blair and his home secretary, John Reid, have flipped
out
another fear card -- just in case the current one blows up, so to
speak, in
their faces. Why there are 24 more "conspiracy plots" under
surveillance in
the UK. Does this mean that Bush, who has vowed to preemptively
strike
"terr'ists" wherever they are, is going to have to do a "shock &
awe" number
on the British Isles?
Imagine what would have happened if they had thought of the
"terrorist-terrorism" angle some 60 years ago, instead of
the "godless
Communist" one that vaporized with the fall of the Soviet Union. By
now,
every nation that didn't bow down to the fascist powers would be
flattened.
As for any real terrorists who may be out there, they don't have to
blow up
anything. All they have to do is gather in Internet chat rooms,
shoot off
their mouths, then sit back and enjoy watching us lose more freedom
in the
name of "security." H
