Your Friday (Flip-Off)

The weekly flip-off from your public servants in Washington D.C

Hey America, Net Neutrality may be good for democracy, but it's bad for business. Therefore, if it's bad for business it's bad for democracy.

Got it. Good.

Senate panel rejects amendment to protect Net Neutrality

This is not just about making money for big telecom and cable companies. This would effectively enable the strangulation of those of us working via the internet to organize and oppose the right wing agenda.

But the fight is not over yet! Senator Ron Wyden has the balls to stand up for internet freedom. Please follow the links in this post to support him in his efforts to keep the internet free of content discrimination.

Wyden to Block Telecom Bill Without Net Neutrality

June 28th, 2006 by tkarr

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has placed a “hold” on major telecommunications legislation recently approved by the Senate Commerce Committee until clear language is included in the legislation that prevents discrimination in Internet access.

Immediately following the Commerce Committee’s vote against a Net Neutrality amendment, Senator Wyden marched onto the floor of the Senate to demand that the legislation include stronger safeguards against phone and cable company discrimination.

“The major telecommunications legislation reported today by the Senate Commerce Committee is badly flawed,” Wyden told the Senate, according to the transcript of his speech:
“The bill makes a number of major changes in the country’s telecommunications law but there is one provision that is nothing more than a license to discriminate. Without a clear policy preserving the neutrality of the Internet and without tough sanctions against those who would discriminate, the Internet will be forever changed for the worse.”

A hold signals his intent to filibuster until certain issues in the Stevens’ bill are cleared up. Stevens is uncertain that he has the 60 votes to break a filibuster. If at least 41 Senators stand strong behind Net Neutrality, then Wyden’s hold could keep the Telecom bill from the floor.

The legislation that passed through committee today has toothless provisions on net neutrality, and instead opens the way for companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to charge consumers and small businesses new and discriminatory fees on top of those they already charge for Internet access.

“The Internet has thrived precisely because it is neutral,” Wyden said. “It has thrived because consumers, and not some giant cable or phone company, get to choose what they want to see and how quickly they get to see it. I am not going to allow a bill to go forward that is going to end surfing the web free of discrimination.”
Watch the video of Wyden’s speech at the Agonist. The full text of Wyden’s statement is available online at Salem-News.com

Source: Save the Internet

Please visit Save the Inernet for ways you can help win this fight.

A Time for Consciousness

Standing amid the swirling ashes of our own destruction, we deny the cinders of the charred bodies even as we try in vain to wipe them from our eyes. We deny the blood dripping from our hands while telling ourselves lies about which of the dead count and which do not.
Behold the peacemaker who knows not the consciousness of peace.

Freedom is ringing with the sound of children gasping and crying, writhing and dying, burning from white powder they will never know the name of. We deny them the very sanctity of life itself even as we boldly declare their liberation from tyranny to the entire world. We hide behind our shield of noble ideals as we drive deep the point of our own tyranny.
Behold the liberator who knows not the consciousness of liberation.

Death has called at the door of a mother. We expect her to accept, without question, the flag of our righteousness. We demand that she allow us to honor her sacrifice so that we may hold onto the illusion of our dignity.

This post is dedicated to:
Gold Star Families For Peace

Sunday Poetry: He Murders

Our poem for this week comes from poet Vivienne Glance.
Source:Poets Union-Vivienne Glance


He murders

He murders words like startled innocents
He cracks a grin like a sloping desert
He pursues an abstraction
He feasts on fearful dreams
He points accusingly across reason
He serves at the table of avarice
He appeals to the lesser part of us
He wins the vote of chaos
He struts in the ruins of civilisation
He drinks the dew of morning tears
He devours the cry of desperation
He whispers the wind of uncertainty
He preaches the litany of occupation
He scratches the sore of hate
He winds up the window against wisdom
He thrashes in the mire of dispossession
He aims at the centre of peace
He embraces the moment of action
He leads the world to watching skies
He jabs at our peaceful sleep
He strides relentlessly towards his purpose
He is the blind man who believes he sees

Your Friday Flip-Off

The weekly flip-off from your public servants in Washington D.C

Hey America, pay attention to what we say, not what we do.

Senate Rejects Minimum Wage Increase

Back in the United States, the Senate rejected a measure Wednesday that would have raised the minimum wage for the first time in nearly a decade. The proposal called for a 40 percent increase from the current wage of Five Dollars and Fifteen cents an hour. A study released this week by the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the real-dollar value of the minimum wage is now at its lowest level in more than fifty years. But Congress has not rejected all federal pay hikes: last week, House lawmakers voted to increase their salaries by more than Three Thousand Dollars. It was their seventh straight pay raise.
Source Democracy Now!

The vote was split largely along party lines. But thanks to what Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) called the “parliamentary gymnastics” of Senate Republican leaders, his minimum wage increase amendment to the U.S. Department of Defense Authorization bill needed 60 votes rather than a simple majority to pass.

Find out if your Senator is flipping off the working poor.

How your senator voted here---> Senate Roll Call on Minmum Wage

Sunday poetry: Here's Your Helmet

Greetings All,

The Sunday Poetry Series:

Here’s Your Helmet

He was just a kid on a dead end street.
The houses were boarded, the sky was bleak.
His grandmother raised him and remembers

when there was a dream or two left for kids like him.

He stayed in school but it’s over now.
He just graduated into the faceless crowd.

Here’s your helmet
Here’s you gun
War is the duty of the poor woman’s son.
The poor woman’s child is the chosen one

who will defend the wealth of the rich man’s son.

We can say it’s for freedom
we can say it’s for peace.
But the sad truth is he will die for greed.

Here’s you helmet
Here’s your gun
We send you to do what should not be done.

copyright 2006

Kim Gongre

Where do we go from here?

Greetings All,

It has been said the truth will set you free. The trick with truth is you have to actually care about it, seek it out and then be willing to accept the often devastating things it can reveal. Despite the efforts of our government to conceal the truth from it's citizens many courageous people from all walks of life have dared to care, question the motives of authority and then report the findings. For example, more people than ever are now aware of the undisputed fact that our government engages in torture.
Excerpt from a news report today :

Pentagon won't hide interrogation tactics
By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Military leaders have argued that disclosing all the interrogation techniques public would make it easier for enemy prisoners to resist questioning.
As originally planned, the classified section would have included details such as how long prisoners can be forced to sit or stand in certain positions or how hot or cold their holding areas can be kept. The defense officials did not say which interrogation techniques would be included in the manual.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said for the first time last month that officials were at odds over whether the manual should endorse different interrogation techniques for enemy insurgents than are allowed for regular prisoners of war.
There are concerns such a distinction could violate a law enacted last year that explicitly banned cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners by U.S. troops.

Donald Rumsfeld is concerned over who we can torture and not with the fact that we do? God help us all.

The types of "interrogation techniques" have already been widely reported by those who have been subjected to it. We know of these techniques because they were fortunate enough to have people on the outside who could pressure the government for contact with them and for their release. America is bringing a chilling new meaning to the term false arrest.

Let's say you're a terror suspect being held at the hell on earth known as Abu Ghraib. You have not been charged with any crime because you did not commit one. Do these military leaders really think knowing in advance how cold or hot your solitarty confinement cell will be, exactly how you will be hog tied and in which stress position, or how long your sleep deprivation will last will actually enable you to better resist them? That excuse is on the same level as "my dog ate my homework". Are we as a nation really going to accept this nonsense?

It is a post 9-11 world after all, where the war on terror mentality has taken us to straight the level of terrorism. What's next beheading of terror suspects in the Wal-Mart parking lot? Call me crazy, but I am not so sure that would be considered a bad idea in some places in America. We did it with public hanging and witch burning, are those really so different?

Would the three Guantanamo Bay suspects/detainees who committed suicide have been more hopeful after four years of these "interrogation techniques" that they would survive the ordeal if they had known what to expect before they arrived. Too bad the innocent guy who was set to be released didn't know it, but then why on earth would he have any hope of that after four years in Gitmo? Would you? Who is responsible for his death? Will they be subjected to sleep deprivation or any other form of American justice/revenge? Not likely.

The next time you see someone get up and turn their back on Rumsfeld, Condi or George, rise up and join them and take a stand against the barbaric brand of freedom they promote.