ntil yesterday, I had never called the Federal Communications Commission on the telephone, or, as it is better known, the FCC. I learned in my college level Communications courses that the FCC is a very powerful agency which holds the airwaves in public trust. But then, during the Bush administration, the chairmanship of the FCC was held by Michael Powell, yes, the son of Colin Powell. Funny, how the FCC seemed to lose all its clout and quick as a wink, the FCC was snugly ensconced in corporate pockets, granting outrageous favors to corporate media. Whereas previously, one corporation was not allowed to control all the media venues in one town regardless of size, suddenly just one or two corporations were given rights to own all the media in one town, regardless of size. Make that all across the nation and we, the citizenry, no longer have access to objective information. Then, before we know it, we are no longer a nation with an educated citizenry.The Founders of America were adamant that each and every citizen must have a good education; otherwise, Freedom and Democracy are lost. And once lost, they will never be recovered. More than a few philosophers have been very clear about that. Nobody possessed of a little bit of power would ever willingly give up their empire, however small.
What the giant corporations really want is a dumbed-down worker public which hears only corporate messages, and works for slave wages. Aldous Huxley, in his prophetic novel, Brave New World, envisioned a rigid class system with what he called, Alphas, the ruling class. Betas, middle management, and Deltas, workers, and on the very bottom, the happiest of all, the Delta Minuses. And everyone is born into their class and raised with little or no encouragement concerning the possibility of moving up. David Rockefeller has been very upfront about his own tampering with the process of education in America. Rockefeller is all for engineering the dumbing down of the working class and the eradication of a middle class. After all, corporations need workers who won't make intolerable demands; like a living wage, safe working conditions, and pension. And apparently the only people listening to Mister Rockefeller are the giant corporations. The corporations have a policy called Worker Productivity. In order to fulfill the expectations of Worker Productivity, one is required to work overtime without pay, and on a fairly regular basis, and to come in on Saturday and perhaps half a day on Sunday.
Only three basic things can help in the fight against such negative social engineering
- the free flow of real information
- the kind of education which creates strong critical thinking
- Diversity and competing sources of media which feature legitimate investigative journalism.
Some new developments threaten to destroy the possibility of these points.
- The news that Rupert Murdock is no longer content to own FOX, his own personal extreme right wing tool. Murdock has now announced plans to buy up all the local media broadcasting stations in America.
- Together, media giants Google and Verizon met behind closed doors with the chairman of the FCC, which resulted in the announcement of their plans to seize control of the Internet and eradicate the what is known as Net Neutrality, or the free and open Internet. They propose to destroy the Net as we know it, so that they will become the Gatekeepers. Thus the giant corporations will have control all information on the Internet.
- This last is in direct opposition to a massive outpouring of protest from the public. You can find a video on YouTube.com, of Tim Berners Lee, the genius who actually created the Internet. In the video, Berners-Lee strongly condemns the privatization of the Net which he created specifically with the intention of Net Neutrality.
- The ruling by the Federal judge, an obvious Bush appointee, who claimed that the FCC had no jurisdiction in this matter
- The deafening silence on the part of the FCC on the above issues.
Move-On.org sent an email asking members and anyone who is interested, to call the White House about the Net Neutrality issue. So I was thinking about that, and suddenly the thought crossed my mind, that government, from the Congress, and that includes the House and the Senate, both Democrats and Republicans, the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, the entire Department of Defense, and yes, the White House, have their fingers in their ears when it comes to hearing not only my voice, but the voices of many Americans. We are being routinely ignored.
The task of government, as I see it, is to respond, quickly, to the voices of the majority of Americans. This has not happened in many years. Instead what we have is the people living in fear of the government, instead of government in fear of the people. It seems to me that the Federal government has it all backwards. And I want something done about it.
But if we had a net worth of bazillions you bet they couldn't move fast enough to lick our private parts with more than the usual fondness, care and skill. In fact, I would say with little fear of credible rebuttal, that there are now, as Shirley Sherrod has seen with great clarity, 2 kinds of justice in America. There is Justice for the rich upper 2% power elite, who seem to get away with murder all the time. And I do mean murder. For which they never seem to be brought to trial.
And then there is the justice for you and me: Best characterized by the Red Queen's most famous pronouncement of justice: "Off with his head!" No matter who it may be or what the offense. Or at least 20 twenty years in jail for smoking marijuana. Mere possession of less than a couple of ounces, got how many years for one former Harvard Professor named Timothy Leary. And would somebody like to tell me exactly who are these so called gatekeepers. We now know that that marijuana as a plant is perhaps one of the most prodigiously useful plants of all. It produces hemp which has innumerable uses. And then the buds produce the drug which happens to be medicinal as a non-addictive pain killer. More than seventy percent of Americans now actively want marijuana legalized, at the very least, decriminalized. But the States legislatures and the Federal government do not seem at all disposed to carry out the wishes of the people.
The stance, here, loudly proclaims that we, citizens, are children, and they, the government, are grownups. And we may not have marijuana because the grownups say it isn't good for us. If that is the view they stand on dangerous ground. Certainly as far as the US Constitution goes they go more than one step beyond the Social Compact. We, the governed, give the power to those who govern. But am I the only one who sees that those who govern seem to take power and give nothing back. So they have violated the Social Compact.
That speaks of trouble.
If I recall rightly, the Tenth Amendment says that all rights not enumerated herein, belong to the people. And yet I have yet to meet anyone who is willing to fight for marijuana. Perhaps because it has a shady reputation. There is something too sexy about it. What if I were to smoke it and lost control?
What if, indeed!
Then, too, there is the man languishing in jail on Death Row in an Arizona prison for about 30 years, and new DNA tests have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that he is innocent of all the charges. But Governor Jan Brewer, you know, the jerk who signed the unconstitutional immigration law, will not allow him to be released nor will she allow the press or anyone else to speak to him. And conservative Arizonians seem quite happy with her way of doing things.
verybody relax for a minute: frightening as the world has become, what with the New World Order conspiracy turning out to be more truth than fiction, the 9/11 Truthers, the neocon PNAC conspirators, Bechtel and Halliburton trying to buy up every drop of water on the planet; even so, every now and again, it's good to slow down for a minute. With what the Evil Empire, the oil companies and multinational corporations are doing to us and the entire planet, certainly we need to fight back the forces of evil. But some of us are more graceful about it than others.