Long time no write. Along with not being a fat pig, being productive at work, and not getting beat down at Facebook chess, my goal is to actually update this thing more regularly. I need to write more and watch tv less. Speaking of which, one of my poems was selected for the literary journal at UWB. Not the greatest accolade, but odds are I'm the only scientist and one of the few freelancers that isn't an English major. So I'm pretty happy about it. Since putting poems on a blog technically counts as published, I can't really put them up here if I want to get them in magazines or journals. So I'll start putting up song lyrics instead. Stay tuned if you care.
As you know, I love to find things that are inconsistent with other things. It's part of being a scientist and a nitpicker. So here's a good one. Congress is busily passing a bill, blessed by your good friend and mine George W., that would make it illegal for American companies (namely Google, Yahoo, and the like) to aid internet censorship in foreign countries (namely China, Korea, and the like). Are you fucking kidding me? Bush is busy refusing every FOIA (that's Freedom of Information Act) request this side of Pyrenees, is actively appointing FCC and FTC cronies that want to kill net neutrality, is asking for protection for American phone companies that illegally spied on Americans, and has not taken a stance against the fact that American internet companies are actively censoring our own internet (ahem...Comcast..I'm looking at you). And now, once again, our "leaders" have climbed up on their high horses and decided to tell the rest of the world (via our search engines) what they should and should not be allowed to do. In this case, what they should or shouldn't see on their internet.
I'm no fan of the kind of internet censorship practiced in China or North Korea or any other country. But I'm more incensed by the fact that our own internet is being censored and spied on yet we still want to tell other governments not to do the same thing. The last time I checked, China's government was the one that got to decide what Chinese citizens can and can't do, not ours. When the Chinese get fed up with their government and its decrees, they'll do something about it. Until then, it's perfectly legitimate for the Chinese authorities to ask American companies operating in their territorial boundaries to abide by their laws and their rules.
If China had an internet portal that sold drugs, hookers, and gambling services, do you really think the U.S. government would allow that to be used here? Hell no. So what makes it ok for us to block content but not other governments? This is why the rest of the world hates us.
And when 5 or 6 billion out of 7 billion don't like you, you should start to wonder if maybe it's you and not them.
As the song goes- "The ignorance is killing me; the violence and the greed. Hypocrisy don't mean a thing when you believe both sides of the story."
No comments:
Post a Comment