The End Of The Internet - Revisited

by Bluebear2


The illustrious Agent 99 has forwarded me an article which is disturbing to say the least, and over which I am extremely mad. Mad I tell you.

I have touched upon the subject of government control over the free flow of information on the internet here. Now it seems our government is trying to bring to fruition their plan to take over the internet and force the end to free speech in this wonderful medium.

Chairman Richard A. Vigueie of grassrootsfreedom.com had this to say about this portion of the lobbying reform bill:

Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself.

Did you get that? - they are trying to redefine “Lobbyist” to include bloggers:

Under current law any 'lobbyist’ who 'knowingly and willingly fails to file or report’ quarterly to the government faces criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year.

Must I therefore install some utility to log all unique IP addresses which access my blog and have some kind of alarm to let me know when it reaches 500 so I can rush out and register? Or do I need to make it a subscription only site? If I sign a petition to my Senator I'm now a lobbyist? Give me a break! It is the right of citizens in this country to petition the government! Hell - it is the RESPONSIBILITY of the citizens to petition the government when it is not performing the will of the people!

In this article by Mark Fitzgibbons at GrassrootsFreedom.com, Mark lays out the ways under which this legislation applies to bloggers, not only true lobbyists.

Mark points to the disturbing fact that it is the Democrats who are pushing this new definition of Lobbyist while trying to clean up the corruption of the Lobbying profession. While that goal is admirable, it has nothing to do with expressing one’s political gripes in an open forum. The internet is today's soap box, a once revered item in every town square! This legislation along with the proposals by John McCain to fine bloggers and website owners up to $300,000 for offensive statements posted in their message boards will put a huge damper on the free flow of information which is critical of any member of, or action taken by, the government.

Even my Sister Sites are facing their own internet censorship. In Sydney a recent court case has opened the specter of simply linking to another site as being a copyright infringement and piracy. And in Iran the bloggers were recently required to register with the government.

Dissent and the questioning of our government were once the Honorable and Patriotic things to do, but now this government wants to control every aspect of our lives while keeping all their actions secret. Paul Joseph Watson of Prison Planet sums it up this way:

It is also a callous reminder that the administration that has been the progenitor of the most heinous and deliberate campaign to mislead and lie to its own people is so transfixed by its own hubris that it has the temerity to accuse others of propagating deceptive information.

This is the same administration that deliberately included the Niger yellow cake fraud in a state of the union speech to sell a war - knowing that the information was completely bogus.

How dare they threaten us with the very defining characteristic of their black legacy and equate us with terrorists?

This is a direct assault on the alternative media and a continuation of the twilight zone rhetoric that saw the administration attempt to link its critics with Fascists and Hitler appeasers. The only fascists that should really concern us are not imaginary 'Blogofascists' or 'Islamofascists' but the Neo-Fascist slugs that occupy the White House and their cheerleading sycophants in the mainstream media and congress.

How dare they indeed!

If you haven't read my original article as linked above, take a glance there and then be sure to check out the other links - too many to list here - at Agent 99's Link.

Finally, go to GrassRootsFreedom.com and sign the Petition so that lowly bloggers such as myself and my blogging friends can continue to spread a little bit of the truth.

UPDATE 1/30/07 12:00PM:

No sooner had I posted this article than this news hit the headlines:

FBI turns to broad new wiretap method.

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

This method is being called "The Vacumn Cleaner Method" since it collects all the information going through it and stores it for filtering at a later date.

Such a technique is broader and potentially more intrusive than the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, later renamed DCS1000. It raises concerns similar to those stirred by widespread Internet monitoring that the National Security Agency is said to have done, according to documents that have surfaced in one federal lawsuit, and may stretch the bounds of what's legally permissible.

This administration has stretched the bounds of what's legally permissible until they snapped, yet I am still waiting for some form of action to stop them!

You Gotta Speak Their Language

by Agent 99
China has very recently seen fit to shoot one of their own weather satellites out of orbit, and the more I think about it, the better I like it. I like it even more because I'm certain it has bunched the undies of our military/industrial complex, and the government officials who serve them. It tickles me to finally find evidence of a language * and Vice-Fuhrer Darth Fudd can understand.

So many times I have been hopping around with fists full of my own hair, exclaiming to the walls about how in the living hell can these pigs not grasp the English language. How can they take perfectly clearly written law and turn it into so much Silly Putty, pronounce upon it in ways that would make the most shameless ambulance chaser blush? They do it over and over and over again, and every time I am horrified that anyone listens, that anyone lets it pass. I become convinced that all our judges and legislators must have relatives being held hostage at Gitmo. I can't figure another explanation for it. I really do fret myself silly about how to overcome this, dreaming up noise machines that can blast their foul articulations back into their filthy criminal minds, back past that into the anti-universe of perversity, where their multifarious evil concepts and acts do U-turns. In fact, all day I have been obsessing on U-turns for all acts of aggression.

Tonight I found out that China spoke.

What a relief.

No matter what kind of hissies they're pitching out there about this, no matter how intensely they may try to vilify China for this, I say it was bodhisattva work. They finally just came out and put it in terms the greedheads understand. Yanked their attention right off their juggernaut of destruction for fun and profit. As of now, * and the gang -- and don't forget the psychopathic Mr. Olmert -- can no longer feel certain of anything they try to do on the world stage.

Oh. Darn.

Changing Perspectives

by Bluebear2

Sacramento Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 11/29/01.

Within moments of the events of 9/11/2001, the people of this country united in a surge of nationalism. Flags came out everywhere. Doorsteps, car antennas, advertising, clothes, key chains, mailboxes, fence posts. We were united to the cause of defeating those who had done this awful thing. Our government claimed to be on top of everything and let us know within hours exactly who had done this and why. They were going to track them down and bring them to justice. They declared war on terrorism. The very unpopular appointed President's approval ratings soared to 80%.

It was Osama; al-Qaeda, a bunch of Muslims, did it; Saddam was in on it too (and he had weapons of mass destruction just waiting to be used on us over here!); they hated our Freedom (and would do anything to take it away from us!). First we must go to Afghanistan, take out the Taliban for harboring Osama, then quickly on to Iraq before he can turn that yellowcake into nukes, and before he can break out his stash of WMD to unleash on us.

Then with Shock and Awe we watched as our air force dropped bombs and rockets, distant shots of explosions. Cool videos of missiles approaching and demolishing their targets! Chunks of concrete flying in the air! Flames and smoke! Helicopters and jets swooping and firing! All the action we could ever want from the best that Hollywood could ever produce in a movie. On our TVs -- live -- morning, noon and night!

No photos of dead people; no bodies flying through the air; no body parts scattered in the street; no coverage of the flag-draped coffins of our soldiers being shipped home; no photos of soldiers with their legs and parts of their skulls blown off. It was all a warped reality brought to us by our government with the help and blessing of the press.

No asking questions! If you’re not with us, you're one of them!

Now the people are finding out there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction; the yellowcake document was a forgery; the aluminum tubes were not suitable for centrifuges; the mobile chemical weapons labs were trailers for weather balloons; there was no relationship between Saddam and Osama; Osama and al-Qaeda were originally supported by the CIA while fighting with the mujahideen against Russia in Afghanistan. We’re finding out it really all has been about oil, and it isn’t stopping: casualties continue to mount, and the pace is escalating; over 600,000 Iraqis and 3,000 Americans dead; $11 million in contracts with an airline to bring home the dead; new weapons based on microwaves and continuing use of weapons that spray Depleted Uranium everywhere they’re used; infrastructure destroyed; tribal and religious extremists rule the streets in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Iraq has slipped into all out Civil War.

Now the appointed President stands in front of us, with his smug sneer and flipped finger, telling us he is The Decider. And what has he decided? To send even more men into the thrashing machine. The Decider tells us he doesn't even have to listen to the will of Congress. Congress represents the will of the people and is a co-equal branch of the federal government with the administration and the judiciary. He does too have to listen to Congress. The last election was an indictment of this appointed President's actions. The people of this country have spoken.

WE WANT CHANGE!

John Dean has laid out a brilliant path for us to follow. It is a novel approach of starting from the bottom and working our way up to the top. We've mentioned it here before. If you haven't already read it, you must Read John Dean Here! Then pass it on to your friends and relatives.

And, most of all, do as the Beach Impeach people (below) have done -- shout it out to your representatives as loudly as you can!

Ocean Beach San Francisco - Within Nancy Pelosi's District 1/6/07

Storm Clouds

by Agent 99

Man, this weight just doesn't drop, no matter how hard it rains. I want to find the biggest font in the galaxy to write NO MORE WAR! No. Maybe just STOP!!! It has to stop. This is completely antithetical to anything we were ever brought up to believe. People say Congress cannot stop * in his filthy war-presidenting -- only defund it and watch him find the money other ways. I don't think that's right. He was given authorization to use force, based on information of imminent danger from weapons of mass destruction. That's been proven false. It no longer applies. It never applied. Forget hassling over making that lie merely a mistake. There is no more even imaginary basis for that authorization.

REVOKE IT!!!

We are starstuff, all, identical. A drop of seawater. A fleck of Oberon dust. A whisp of Saturn ring. Any human. How much having makes up for the agony inflicted, the fathers, snapped, shrieking in the streets for just a moment's respite from fear?

God. It's so much worse when it is fathers, too. Mothers and children wailing are generic heartbreak, aren't they? A man gone mad with the incessant murder and torture and rape he must stave off to get food for his family, the inability to relax through so much as one little thump from something dropped by a neighbor, endured 24/7/365 for how many years now? And what did he ever do to us? He's living twelve hours ahead of me and he is a spirit hanging on my heart. Some kind of millions of him hanging on my chest because my shopping countrymen can't be turned from their own concerns.

We have a new Congress. I think we have to drive them mad now. And you should bookmark John Dean. He keeps coming up with ways to help get rid of the culprits. Maybe if they will not listen to me, they will listen to him. Maybe if they will not listen to him, they will listen to all of us shrieking in the streets.

I'm writing across the galaxy: I WANT YOU TO GET MAD!!!