Moyers tonight … on blocking the cyber-road where we meet

October 18th, 2006

I don’t think I have to convince you how important Internet freedom is … the corporate and/or government takeover of the web would put an end to our conversation. Don’t think so? Check out the last couple of articles indicating Mr. Chertoff’s interest in our doings.

By the way, Chertoff is warning right now about possible terrorism at NFL stadiums — dirty bombs, evidently, to be set off this weekend. Threats were discovered on an Islamic website, I guess … with a title including the words Be Afraid. But both Homeland Security and NFL representatives are encouraging people to go on with their plans, that the threats aren’t credible. Soooooo — my question would be [duh, duh, duh!] WHY warn about them to begin with? [Be afraid? Be VERY afraid!!] In case you’re a ticket holder and worried — that’s Miami, New York, Houston, Oakland, Cleveland, Seattle and Atlanta. In interest to fairness, the pundits are saying that if anything DID happen and the public wasn’t warned, there would be finger pointing; on the other hand, thanks to corporate television, we’re getting pounded with Fear Messages over the airwaves … but no color alert. Funny how that’s all but disappeared, huh?!

I added a recent op/ed to the end … one I didn’t post yesterday in respect to the proposed spiritual aspects of the day … but one that you should read in case you think you might bypass Moyers on PBS, tonight — important viewing isn’t strong enough a word. If you can’t watch, you might want to set to record.

Jude

Against An Imperial Internet
Bill Moyers and Scott Fogdall
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 by TomPaine.com
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1017-28.htm

It was said that all roads led to Rome. However exaggerated, the image is imprinted in our imagination, reminding us of the relentless ingenuity of the ancient Romans and their will to control an empire.

For centuries Roman highways linked far-flung provinces with a centralized web of power. The might of the imperial legions was for naught without the means to transport them. The flow of trade—the bloodstream of the empire’s wealth—also depended on the integrity of the roadways. And because Roman citizens could pass everywhere, more or less unfettered on their travels, ideas and cultural elements circulated with the same fluidity as commerce.

Like the Romans, we Americans have used our technology to build a sprawling infrastructure of ports, railroads and interstates which serves the strength of our economy and the mobility of our society. Yet as significant as these have been, they pale beside the potential of the Internet.

Almost overnight, it has made sending and receiving information easier than ever. It has opened a vast new marketplace of ideas, and it is transforming commerce and culture.

It may also revitalize democracy.

“Wait a minute!” you say. “You can’t compare the Internet to the Roman empire. There’s no electronic Caesar, no center, controlling how the World Wide Web is used.”

Right you are—so far. The Internet is revolutionary because it is the most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer and a connection. We don’t just watch; we participate, collaborate and create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.

That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age.

The Internet has become the foremost testing ground where the forces of innovation, corporate power, the public interest and government regulation converge. Already, the notion of a level playing field—what’s called network neutrality—is under siege by powerful forces trying to tilt the field to their advantage. The Bush majority on the FCC has bowed to the interests of the big cable and telephone companies to strip away, or undo, the Internet’s basic DNA of openness and non-discrimination. When some members of Congress set out to restore network neutrality, they were thwarted by the industry’s high spending lobbyists. This happened according to the standard practices of a rented Congress—with little public awareness and scarce attention from the press. There had been a similar blackout 10 years ago, when, in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress carved up our media landscape. They drove a dagger in the heart of radio, triggered a wave of consolidation that let the big media companies get bigger, and gave away to rich corporations—for free—public airwaves worth billions.

This time, they couldn’t keep secret what they were doing. Word got around that without public participation these changes could lead to unsettling phenomenon—the rise of digital empires that limit, or even destroy, the capabilities of small Internet users. Organizations across the political spectrum—from the Christian Coalition to MoveOn.org —rallied in protest, flooding Congress with more than a million letters and petitions to restore network neutrality. Enough politicians have responded to keep the outcome in play.

At the core this is a struggle about the role and dimensions of human freedom and free speech. But it is also a contemporary clash of a centuries-old debate over free-market economics and governmental regulation, one that finds Adam Smith invoked both by advocates for government action to protect the average online wayfarer and by opponents of any regulation at all.

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith argued that only the unfettered dealings of merchants and customers could ensure economic prosperity. But he also warned against the formation of monopolies—mighty behemoths that face little or no competition. Our history brims with his legacy. Consider the explosion of industry and the reign of the robber barons during the first Gilded Age in the last decades of the 19th century. Settlements and cities began to fill the continent, spirited by a crucial technological advance: the railroad. As railroad companies sprang up, they merged into monopolies. Merchants and farmers were often charged outlandish freight prices—until the 1870s, when the Granger Laws and other forms of public regulation provided some protection to customers.

At about the same time, chemist Samuel Andrews—inventor of a new method for refining oil into kerosene—partnered with John D. Rockefeller to create the Standard Oil Company. By century’s end Standard Oil had forged a monopoly, controlling a network of pipelines and railways that spanned the country. Competition became practically impossible as the mammoth company manipulated prices and crushed rival after hapless rival. Only with the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 did the public have hope of recourse against the overwhelming might of concentrated economic and political power. But, less than a century later a relative handful of large companies would assemble monopolies over broadcasting, newspapers, cable and even the operating system of computers, and their rule would go essentially unchallenged by the U.S. government.

Now we have an Internet infrastructure that is rapidly evolving, in more ways than one. As often occurred on Rome’s ancient highways, cyber-sojourners could soon find themselves paying up in order to travel freely. Our new digital monopolists want to use their new power to reverse the way the Internet now works for us: allowing those with the largest bankrolls to route their content on fast lanes, while placing others in a congested thoroughfare. If they succeed in taking a medium that has an essential democratic nature and monetizing every aspect of it, America will divide further between the rich and poor and between those who have access to knowledge and those who do not.

The companies point out that there have been few Internet neutrality violations. Don’t mess with something that’s been working for everyone, they say; don’t add safeguards when none have so far been needed. But the emerging generation, which will inherit the results of this Washington battle, gets it. Writing in The Yale Daily News, Dariush Nothaft, a college junior, after hearing with respect the industry’s case, argues that: Nevertheless, the Internet’s power as a social force counters these arguments….A non-neutral Internet would discourage competition, thereby costing consumers money and diminishing the benefits of lower subscription prices for Internet access. More importantly, people today pay for Internet access with the understanding that they are accessing a wide, level field of sites where only their preferences will guide them.

Non-neutrality changes the very essence of the Internet, thereby making the product provided to users less valuable.

So the Internet is reaching a crucial crossroads in its astonishing evolution. Will we shape it to enlarge democracy in the digital era? Will we assure that commerce is not its only contribution to the American experience?

The monopolists tell us not to worry: They will take care of us, and see to it that the public interest is honored and democracy served by this most remarkable of technologies.

They said the same thing about radio.

And about television.

And about cable.

Will future historians speak of an Internet Golden Age that ended when the 21st century began? ++

Bill Moyers is host of “The Net At Risk,” a documentary special airing Wednesday, October 18 at 9 p.m. on PBS. Scott Fogdall is with Films Media Group.

Bill Moyers: The Net at Risk
Moyers on America
t r u t h o u t | Programming Note
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101706U.shtml

Airdate: Wednesday, October 18, 2006, at 9:00 p.m. on PBS. Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers.

“The Net at Risk” reports on what could happen if a few mega-media corporations get their way in Washington.

The future of the Internet is up for grabs. Big corporations are lobbying Washington to turn the gateway to the Web into a toll road. Yet the public knows little about what’s happening behind closed doors where the future of democracy’s newest forum is being decided. If a few mega media giants own the content and control the delivery of radio, television, telephone services and the Internet, they’ll make a killing and citizens will pay for it. America’s ability to compete in the global marketplace, the unfettered exchange of ideas online, and broadband services that could improve quality of life for millions are at stake. Some say the very future of democracy itself may hang in the balance. In “The Net at Risk,” Bill Moyers and journalist Rick Karr report on the wannabe “lords of the Internet” and examine how promises by the big tel-co companies of a super-high speed Internet in return for deregulation and tax breaks have gone unfulfilled while the public has paid the price. After the documentary, Moyers leads a discussion on media reform to explore the real-world impact of deregulation on communities and citizen participation in democracy. ++

Marc Ash Interviews Bill Moyers - Part III:
“The Net@Risk”
10.16.06
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101606Q.shtml

Will Google Take the Internet Over the Cliff?
Jeffrey Chester, The Nation
October 14, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/42988/

The Google/YouTube merger is more than a big media deal: It’s the leading edge of a data-driven marketing system that will subvert the Internet as we know it.

Under the radar of all but the most savvy Internet users, powerful commercial forces are rapidly creating a digital media system for the United States that threatens to undermine our ability to create a civil and just society. The takeover of YouTube by Google announced October 9 and the 2005 buyout by Rupert Murdoch of MySpace are not just about mega-deals for new media. They are the leading edge of a powerful interactive system that is being designed to serve the interests of some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet.

Aware that social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube are attracting the key youth audience, and aiming to maintain their influence over future generations of consumers, marketers are aggressively seizing the initiative. Leveraging existing relationships with Yahoo!, Microsoft, the phone and cable companies, Google and the other large players, the advertising industry are developing an array of immersive online experiences–like MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach and Studio.com’s Go Deep–that seamlessly blend relationships with products and brands.

Advertisers are harnessing technology that targets and follows Internet users on their journeys through cyberspace, collecting data and tracking behavior. Virtual software marketing tools will be deployed across the digital landscape so that wherever we go, whatever we do do–e-mail, instant messaging, mobile communications or searches–we will be immersed in enticing content for the lifelong sell: Witness the work of Oddcast, a New York-based immersive media company, whose “conversational character products” represent a new medium for marketing to get inside consumers’ heads.

YouTube capitalizes on the growing proclivity of Internet users to be creators of information as well as consumers. And as the network television and cable audiences age, advertisers are increasingly aware that “user-created content”–be it a cute kitty video or clips from The Daily Show–are key to attracting young audiences. But as the Goo-Tube model develops, behind each video will be a powerful connection to an ad, targeted to the user’s online behavior, as well as the stealth collection of personal data. As Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive, noted about his company’s acquisition of MySpace, “the digital gold inside of MySpace wasn’t the number of users, but the information they’re providing.” [Google, it should be noted, now also represents the interests of Rupert Murdoch's US empire. In August Google became Fox's principal online advertising agent for MySpace, Fox TV and Fox Interactive.]

Given this emerging marketing model, the US broadband infrastructure may well become one giant “brandwashing” machine. The most powerful communications system ever developed by humans is increasingly being put in the service of selling, commercialization and commodification. And it will lead to an inherently conservative and narcissistic political culture, in which the interests of the self and the consumption of products are the primary, most visible, media messages. And unless we begin to challenge it now, the emerging digital culture will seriously challenge our ability to effectively communicate, inform and organize.

A handful of companies now dominate much of the US new-media market. Five corporations–Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon and Qwest–control the wires and cable lines delivering us broadband, digital TV and, soon, much wireless service. The viral “Singing Puppy” campaign from Nokia is an early warning that soon even our phone calls will become platforms for commercials. A few other major players–especially Google, News Corp., Viacom and Microsoft–have done the necessary deals to strategically grow their broadband content businesses (buying gaming sites and other programming to insure they ensnare the key youth market). Even if the pending update to the Communications Act of 1996 preserves the core principle of network neutrality, the voices of these most powerful media companies are likely to be the loudest.

More mergers in coming years will continue the consolidation of old media giants with the new. It’s only a matter of time before a handful of companies will own TV, radio and newspaper properties along with key online services. This further interferes with the ability of mainstream news media to serve as an effective watchdog on government and big business.

Though the Internet was originally envisioned to serve the public interest, there is no guarantee it will continue to do so. Like radio, broadcast TV and cable, it will continue to be shaped by politics, telecommunication policies and the market. Web activists envision a medium that will always support social change and can serve as a platform to distribute diverse points of view.

But if the economic relationships between the old and new media are allowed to dominate online culture, what guarantees do we have that the Internet will continue to be the “people’s” medium? Events are moving quickly; media and telecommunications giants already have a powerful hold on members of Congress; regardless of which party is in power, it is unlikely our elected officials will deliver a federal policy that that puts the needs of citizens ahead of corporations.

That’s why I suggest that progressives begin to get real–and get smart–about digital media. While we have a few reliable outlets–Democracy Now!, Alternet, Huffington Post and The Nation–the progressive community lacks a reliable well-connected broadband infrastructure that will deliver an array of news and cultural content to national and community audiences. I’m not talking about the wires and connections but about building a coalition of tech-savvy content providers that will deliver to PCs, TVs and cellphones a flow of alternative news and information challenging the status quo.

Imagine progressive organizations making smart deals with a variety of providers to carry this content deep in the heart of the digital distribution system. Imagine nimble, creative enterprises willing to experiment with new business models. Imagine having the courage to go beyond foundation grants and pledge drives and becoming adept at paying your own way. Imagine developing socially responsible advertising that respects personal privacy, is transparent about how data is collected and used, allows consumers to opt out of immersive experiences, fosters independent identity, builds community and supports social justice.

Foundations and the so-called Democracy Alliance have the potential to be the economic engines for such experiments and do the organizing necessary to patch together a content-challenge to the status quo.

As YouTube, Google, MySpace and immersive media marketing reshape the digital landscape, we need to be sure that public interest remains in the picture. And as tech-savvy progressive media find their place in that landscape, we must work together to build an online culture that not only pitches products but works for equity, social justice and the riches of a civil society. ++

Jeffrey Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy http://www.democraticmedia.org

~ from Wayne Madsen Report
October 18, 2006
http://waynemadsenreport.com/

America’s KGB chief derides the Internet as breeding ground for the development of radical ideologies. Speaking in Boston Monday before the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a longtime front for the CIA, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warned about radicals using the Internet. Chertoff said, “We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet.”

It is clear that the Internet is the final target of the neocon fascists to seize total control over information dissemination here and abroad.

One of the first acts of a Democratic Congress should be to change the name of the fascist-sounding Department of Homeland Security to the Department of Civil Defense and Preparedness. ++

Web could be terror training camp: Chertoff
Raw Story
Tue Oct 17
http://tinyurl.com/ydra67

BOSTON (Reuters) - Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff said on Monday.

“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

“They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said.

“Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”

Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London’s transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat.

To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.

By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers. ++

Fear of Tyranny Sweeping America
Sherwood Ross
Oct 16 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1774

Fear for an individual’s personal security common to a people whose leaders are taking their nation down the road to dictatorship has begun to grip America.

In church this Sunday one man said only half in jest, “When the arrests begin I will probably be the first one picked up.” He told of a woman he knew personally just released from a mental institution in Texas where, he said, the Federal government had locked her up for a year after she tried to show officials “proof” Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had no WMD.

I found this anecdote incredible until I recalled a recent reliable press account of a man arrested by the Secret Service merely for politely telling Vice President Cheney after hearing him speak that he disagreed with his policies.

Whether the story of the woman tossed into an asylum is factual, there are growing numbers of people who fear retribution for exercising their right of free speech. People warn their friends: Better not say that in public. Better not put that in writing.

After hearing the story of the woman’s arrest, a second congregation member stood up to warn dictatorships commit their dark deeds out of sight of the general public. He told of growing up in Argentina under the junta, oblivious to the fact the torture barracks was within blocks of his home. Life went on normally even as people were murdered, and he prayed America would not suffer a like fate.

After the service, another church-goer circulated a petition seeking signatures in opposition to the Administration’s Military Commissions Act that Amnesty International warned strips arrested captives of “any opportunity for meaningful judicial review.”
The petition reflects the palpable fear the misery President Bush has inflicted upon military detainees in Guantanamo and elsewhere may soon become the fate of Americans as well.

This fear is spurred by a growing mistrust of, and anger towards, government. A majority of Americans, polls now tell us, think President Bush knew Iraq had no WMD when he made the war. In short, they regard the man as deceitful. And when people do not trust their leaders, they fear them and what they fear they also hate.

Columnist Molly Ivins long ago wrote in The Progressive magazine why she felt justified in hating President Bush. That feeling is spreading. Automobile bumper strips declare “Enough Bushit.” People commonly refer to Bush in conversation as “King George.” One Website dubs him, “The Smirking Chimp.”

(During the Civil War, when anti-Administration newspapers compared President Lincoln to an ape it was based on their view he was a bungler rather than of any personal fear of the man.)

Among Democrats — as among some conservative Republicans who feel their principles have been betrayed — anger against the president is palpable. The New York Times reported Sunday, October 15th, “48 percent of Democrats say they are ‘more enthusiastic about voting than usual’” in the midterm elections. “Enthusiastic,” yes, as so many are actually furious. Much of what they write Congress is vitriolic.

Gays are among the more apprehensive. Their concern is heightened by GOP-sponsored referendums, such as the one on the Virginia ballot next month, prohibiting gay marriage. They worry about being officially stigmatized as second-class citizens. Liberals are also apprehensive. After all, right-wing radio talk personalities have long used the word “liberal” much as Hitler used the word “Jews.”

Fear is also spread by press reports of people being denied civil liberties, such as being kept from boarding an airliner without an explanation; of foreign scholars denied teaching opportunities here because of their views; of foreign students denied the right to study here by State Department officials who give no reason for refusing visas.

Fear also spreads when those in government positions who speak the truth are demoted or dismissed. Public confidence is shaken when a general who disagrees on tactics in Iraq is dismissed and a high Army Corps of Engineers official is demoted for charging contracts are being let without competitive bids. There is a growing conviction a vindictive Bush regime will punish anyone who opposes it. This has a chilling impact on free expression.

My recollection is fear of President Bush today is infinitely greater than fear of Senator Joe McCarthy back in the Fifties. McCarthy whipped anti-Communist sentiment to paranoid heights but he was only a Senator. He couldn’t start a war on his own or reach out and have people arrested under any Patriot Act.

Now there is a president wielding virtual dictatorial powers who has deceitfully invaded Iraq, where reportedly 650,000 civilians have been killed, has threatened the use of nuclear weapons, operates secret prisons around the world, and implies his critics are unpatriotic. What’s his next step?

Yes, it is happening before our eyes: the nation that gave the world the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Four Freedoms, and played an historic role in framing the UN Charter, is witnessing the evisceration of its civil liberties.

Administration officials beating the war drums about terrorism abroad are widely suspected of being capable of unleashing it at home.

Am I scared? You betcha. Gangrene spreads. ++

What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves