In another column, I wrote about the “Summit to Suppress Internet Freedom.” Quoted is another important point. “Surrendering the Internet might also increase America’s vulnerability to on-line security threats. It could be difficult to guard against cyber-terrorism or to pursue terrorists on-line. If the Internet were under the supervision of a body unsure of what terrorism is, but quite sure that it does not like the United States.” www.democracy-project.com/archives/001894.html.
European bureaucrats in the mold of France’s Chirac or now former-chancellor Schroeder fantasize that they can act out their faded glory by tearing down the U.S., regardless of its consequences on world order, security or prosperity, not to mention the stagnation of their own economies. The former Swedish prime minister, Carl Bildt (quoted at the above Belmont link), politely demurs: “It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours.” Indeed, the interests, which are associated with the world’s oppressors.
There are those in the United States who shamelessly profiteer at the expense of the oppressed. I wrote elsewhere that “Bubba Yahoos for yen, and doesn’t ‘feel your pain’ ” about former President Clinton’s huge fee to speak at the 2005 China Internet Summit celebrating Yahoo’s $1 billion investment there, but his failure to mention that Yahoo!, like Google, Cisco and Microsoft, have profited by aiding the Chinese rulers find, and imprison, Internet dissidents. www.democracy-project.com/archives/001848.html.
Human Rights Watch blisters such profiteering at the expense of suppressing freedom. “When companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google decide to put profits from their Chinese operations over the free exchange of information, they are helping to kill that dream.” www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/d04f251c81860f30ccd515681ee41ab9.htm.
Closer to home, and just as much to be feared and condemned, is the move to, in effect, have the federal government license journalists and free speech.
Ryan Sager writes of the “Cybercrackdown” in The New York Post: “These folks, the ones who fought so hard for the McCain-Feingold law, believe that political speech on the Internet threatens the purged-of-money paradise they think they’ve created in the non-digital world – and they’re willing to squelch the speech of every blogger in the land in their quest to tame the cyber-Wild West.”
Sager continues: “The FEC (Federal Elections Commission) has ruled that big-media companies … enjoy what’s called a ‘press exemption’ from McCain-Feingold – allowing them to support or attack candidates without being prosecuted for making illegal corporate campaign contributions. But it has yet to grant any such protection to blogs and other Web sites not considered part of the traditional media. The ‘cleanies’ want to make sure they never get it. Thus, the country’s leading campaign-finance-reform groups … all recipients of millions of dollars from left-wing foundations – are lining up.” www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/53480.htm.
The blog of former FEC attorney, Allison Hayward, is invaluable to tracking the twists and turns of this battle for freedom of speech, another example of how blogs are essential to pierce the miasma of government. (www.skepticseye.com) Ms. Hayward led me to this editorial in the Washington Times about “Suffocating the First Amendment.”
The editorial quotes a leading blogger testifying before Congress: “Bloggers don’t have influence because they start with large chunks of capital – in fact, most if not all start out as relatively lonely voices with tiny audiences. By delivering credible, interesting and valuable content, their audience and influence grows over time.”
The editorial concludes: “In other words, blogging is an endeavor subject to the rules of the free market. Inside this unbridled exercise in free speech, the good rise to the top, while the hacks and frauds go ignored or quickly disappear … applying McCain-Feingold to the Internet, even if diluted to protect bloggers, would mean that only millionnaires … or those funded by them, could afford to start a blog. Everyone else, like those who pay nothing for a site at Blogger.com, would have to have some way of knowing if their blogging is violating the briar patch of campaign-finance laws which only lawyers know how to navigate.” http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051011-092709-1577r.htm.
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