Daily Archives: 15 October 2008

Censoring the Internet

–Verizon shuts down access to Usenet
   “Verizon has announced that they will be stopping access to tens of thousands of Usenet discussion areas including the very popular alt.* groups that have been around since the late 1980s.
   Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said only a select few newsgroups/discussion groups would be offered to customers going into the future. It appears the decision is in response to political ‘strong-arming’ from New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who wants strong restrictions on all newsgroups.
   Cuomo added that his office had found child porn on at least 88 newsgroups, although that percentage is tiny compared to the over 90,000 newsgroups that exist.”

–Free Nationwide Wi-Fi Network To Censor Political Websites
“Two competing parties, M2Z Networks and the FCC, are jockeying for the rights to roll out the network, but both have already stated their intent to install filters that block out pornography and anything else deemed ‘harmful’.
According to a Daily Tech report, ‘Both proposals stipulate that any free wireless offerings have mandatory content filters, preventing users from viewing any material that ‘would be harmful to teens and adolescents,’ including pornography and anything ‘contemporary community standardsï¿½ deem as obscene. Free-speech advocates call this condition unconstitutional.'”

I predicted this in my Five Predictions for 2008.

Saudi Prince to Build World’s Tallest Building

Is the Income Tax legal?

2003 – NY Times tax reporter David Cay Johnston asks THE income tax question to then-commissioner Mark Everson. Watch his complete evasion:

I’ve concluded that the IRS is like a criminal gang that intimidates people into paying up.

Troops Deploying to America???

“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT [of 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” (Read more from armytimes.com)

My reaction:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . .