Net neutral

I have to give a shout out to Leslie at Smoke Rings and Coffee Stains (lovely website, by the way) and her impassioned campaigning for Net Neutrality. She really has been on top of this. Sadly, too many of us spend too much time carping about everything else wrong, but if this situation is settled to the satisfaction of the telecom industry, we're all dead doing this. Which is exactly why they want to do it.

We have watched the telecom industry balled up in the hands of a few since Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Today, there are five corporations that control the media. One of them is about to broadcast -- as a "world wide event" -- a film that will portray the the Clinton administration, and by extension any Democratic government, as bumbling and incompetent when it comes to al Qaeda, the big bad boogey monster that had once been funded by Ronald Reagan (yeah, remember that?) And they will do this less than two months before an election that has the potential to change the leadership of the House, maybe the Senate. This is no accident. The message is clear: Disney/ABC want a Republican House. And Senate.

In resisting this overt corporate bias toward the GOP, the internet has provided a media stream that the telecoms currently do not control and it is, right now, almost the only thing calling to task the mainstream media itself. How could telecom not want to shut this down?

Sadly, I don't hold much hope for the preservation of Net Neutrality. While the Democrats dawdle around in the background seemingly unaware of what is going on, the Republicans are benefitting from having the corporate backing of the telecoms, who are doing what they can to keep the GOP in power, which in turn will allow the telecoms to start exercising the control they want on the internet. Good for them and the GOP. It's a synergy. It is also fascism.