We just recently tried to congressionally undo the Barack Obama Administration’s egregious and illegal Internet-Network Neutrality power grab to keep the government out of what has become – in the Leviathan’s absence – a free speech, free market Xanadu.
(Hope for continuing Internet freedom now lies in the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court.)
During our year-plus long push to try to stave off the Obama administration’s huge overreach, we pointed out that if one looks around the planet, one sees time and time and time again – in China, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia,… – it is the government that is the threat to Internet and communications freedom, and not the eeeee-vil corporations that the Media Marxist Left shake as their Shibboleth to allegedly justify our government taking over the Web.
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Of course, governments lord over not just the Internet, but all forms of communications (and, of course, everywhere and everything else).
Prior to the fall, Egypt President Hosni Mubarak’s regime commandeered control of some of their nation’s cellular phone networks – so as to force feed the people propaganda.
Over the past five days, Egyptians have been hit with a steady stream of pro-Mubarak text messages.
“Youth of Egypt, beware rumors and listen to the sound of reason — Egypt is above all so preserve it,” read one text, according to a photograph and translation posted on this Flickr account. Another, received Sunday by an Associated Press reporter in the country, called on “honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honor.”
And now we have yet another example of government being the wireless authoritarian problem. Behold Pakistan.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority told mobile carriers to begin blocking text messages Nov. 21 containing words from a list of more than 1,600 “obscene” terms….
The list met widespread Internet criticism, in part for including believed benign words such as “Jesus Christ,” “athlete’s foot,” “poop,” “fairy” and “harder.” An unconfirmed version of the list has been circulating online. Some 1,100 of the words are in English, while less than 600 are in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language….
Pakistan is no stranger to digital bans from the government. In May 2010, the country blocked Facebook for two weeks after a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed sparked controversy. YouTube was blocked temporarily in 2008 following news that images from a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed had leaked onto the site.
Despite all of this government wireless authoritarianism all around the world, our Media Marxist Left is suing to…increase our government’s control over cell phones and the wireless Web because they deem it a failing that our government now only has said totalitarian sway over the wired Web.
All of this despite the fact that when cornered, these Media Marxists begrudgingly admit they can’t cite a single example of a single private corporation – their psychosomatic bete noir – currently doing anything even remotely similar to what governments all around the world are doing all the time.
As always, Leftists never allow facts to get in the way of a good beating.
These Media Marxists at Free Press aren’t “public interest groups” – they are government interest groups. They are interested only in dramatically increasing the Leviathan’s size, scope and sphere of influence on all things Internet and communications (and anywhere else they can get).
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The First Amendment was written to stop the government – and only the government – from censoring us.
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….
The word “corporation” (or “company,” or any variation on that theme) does not appear anywhere within said Amendment.
And as we’ve seen over and over – the world over – it is government that is far and away the largest problem, and the entity against which we need the Amendment’s protections.
It is thus a perverse, fundamentally warped and disingenuous effort by the Media Marxists – and anyone else – to cite protection of the First Amendment as a pseudo-justification for jamming the government into what has always been a government-free zone.
The Internet in all its forms – wired, wireless and on your cell phone – was here in America just such a government-free zone until the Media Marxists led the illegal government charge to impose Net Neutrality. Again, in the erroneous name of “protecting” the First Amendment.
As always, we need protection from the “Protectors” – Leftists and Big Government – far more than we do from anyone or anything else.
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