The power to tax is the power to control — or destroy. Any third grader knows this which is why the United Nation’s efforts to slap a tax on internet usage is a thinly disguised campaign to wrest control of the web from those much more inclined to allow for total freedom, and put it in the hands of nations who would employ censorship to achieve political ends.
U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer warned on Friday that a proposal to give a United Nations agency more control over the Internet is gaining momentum in other countries.
Proposals to expand the U.N.’s International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) authority over the Internet could come up at a treaty conference in Dubai in December. European telecommunications companies are pushing a plan that would create new rules that would allow them to charge more to carry international traffic.
The proposal by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association could force websites like Google, Facebook and Netflix to pay fees to network operators around the world.
Kramer said the idea of an international Internet fee is “gaining more interest in the African states and also in the Arab states.”
He said the United States delegation to the conference will have to redouble its efforts to convince other countries that the proposal would only stifle innovation and economic growth.
We support efforts to grow broadband markets—not just divvying a static pie of revenue between operators and governments,” Kramer said in a speech in Washington hosted by the Telecommunications Industry Association.
Democrats and Republicans in the United States are united against proposals to increase international control of the Internet. Congress passed a non-binding resolution earlier this year urging the United States delegation to “promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet today.”
But Kramer warned that the United States is gaining a reputation of stubbornly opposing any changes to the ITU treaty. He said the United States will have to engage in negotiations with other countries to address their concerns.
A question for internet users: Who would you rather be appointing our “negotiators” in this matter? Mitt Romney, or the self-conscious internationalist Barack Obama?
No doubt Obama negotiators could find “common ground” with the cutthroats of the world and give a little to get a little in talks aimed at “reforming” the ITU. Just what freedoms would they be likely to negotiate away in the interest of international comity?
Do you want to find out?
Those backward thirdworld hellholes interested in a tax are the same one who hate the Internet for letting their people speak and learn freely about what their rulers are doing on it.
Never forget the hierarchical overtones of the cultures of a majority of the rest of the world. You sometimes see it with an immigrant owner of a gas station or two who now thinks he’s lord of the manse and county squire, with deference expected.
You want to put an axe in the back of the yeoman-based egalitarian society, where merit is the ultimate arbiter, not pedigree–financial, educational, skin color, or otherwise? Start letting the rest of the world box you in. You’ll get there.
For a quick proof of the theorem, I point you to the EU, both in the way it was ratified and how it operates.
“Those backward thirdworld hellholes interested in a tax are the same ones who hate the Internet for letting their people speak and learn freely about what their rulers are doing on it.”
Yep. They see a potential goldmine they can exploit to keep their lavish lifestyles afloat, among other things, I’m guessing such as funding terrorist activities against the U.S. Millions of U.S. foreign aid dollars are already being used against us, purchasing newer & better weapons, and recruiting armies, which are in turn, used to kill our soldiers & ambassadors.
The irony is most of these ‘backward thirdworld hellholes’ are incapable of setting up internet networks (they ‘didn’t build that’). Now, they want to tax technology developed by America (thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet!) and use it against us. Vote Romney/Ryan to stop the insanity.
Yes, such a tax would relinquish some unacceptable control to our cultural enemies, but it would also institutionalize another safe sinecure for Leftist parasites to plot against us. From their unaccountable perch in the UN, this money would only serve to perpetuate a food source for another tumor of Marxist cancer.
Attention U.N. Member States:
What happens when the United States (….I wish….) withdraws from your top heavy Organization and your revenue drops precipitously, and then you are forced to gradually raise your “Tax” to where you’ll have other drop-outs, and then little or no tax base?…and your Third World, Muslim Division, finds itself increasingly isolated?