Trump and Imprisoning the Internet

A year ago in early December, Donald Trump called for shutting down the Internet “in certain areas” to fight terrorism. He expressed alarm about young Americans drawn to fight for ISIS.

CNN at that time quoted Trump as saying:

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

CNN’s reporter David Goldman responded that totalitarian governments may do that. The U.S., however, regulates the Internet “very loosely”, with only rare censorship to stop an activity such as child pornography. Goldman added:

“But a full-on ‘closing up’ of the Internet ‘in certain areas’ would be an impossible task. There are so many players with so much redundancy built into the system, that the Internet is not just something that can be turned off with a wave of a magic wand.”

Fast-forward to now, a year later. Donald Trump is the United States’ president-elect, according to calculated electoral votes, but not the popular vote. He’s now in a position to act on his “closing” idea, and appears ready to challenge that “impossible task”.

This has led The Atlantic, a moderate review magazine, to publish a Dec. 5 article questioning “Will Donald Trump Dismantle the Internet as We Know It?” The publication is predicting a coming policy war between Trump’s administration and open-web advocates, particularly over net neutrality: i.e. open access to all content and applications regardless of source, without favor or blocking of websites or the products they advertise.

Early actions by Trump show that the coming conflict is real. Trump’s FCC transition team includes three heavy opponents of net neutrality. And while the Federal Communications Commission does not directly control the Internet, it does oversee the mammoth phone utilities like AT&T and Verizon that link millions of customers to the web. And, of course, Trump will command the National Security Agency (NSA) and Justice Department's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), two agencies craving to spy on the Internet.

The Big Five Plus Two

In an effort to firm up his position, Trump summoned Silicon Valley’s largest tech firms to New York for a meeting next Wednesday, Dec. 14.  It’s being coordinated by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and Facebook board member, who supported Trump.  Invitations to the private meeting appear to have gone to Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle.  According to The New York Times’s Dec. 6 article: 

"Two Silicon Valley chief executives appeared willing to test the waters: Safra Catz, of the software maker Oracle, confirmed her participation in next week’s meeting with Mr. Trump. So did Chuck Robbins of Cisco Systems, the networking gear maker. 

"Representatives for other leading tech companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Apple, declined to comment. A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment."

Meanwhile, according to the UK’s The Guardian newspaper, Facebook, Google, Microsoft , and Twitter are uniting to “tackle extremist content”:

"[The four firms] have pledged to work together to identify and remove extremist content on their platforms through an information-sharing initiative.

"The companies are to create a shared database of unique digital fingerprints – known as “hashes” – for images and videos that promote terrorism. This could include recruitment videos or violent terrorist imagery or memes. When one company identifies and removes such a piece of content, the others will be able to use the hash to identify and remove the same piece of content from their own network."

Such actions immediately concern public-access advocates, including no mention by the corporations of an impartial body to monitor the database.

This effort at corporate control of the Internet should fit right in with Trump and his picks for his potential cabinet. They are all big-money corporate execs who want to privatize everything. And, once in power, they will try to, with little concern for the public or the Constitution.

We detailed this Trump attitude in our November column for The Clyde Fitch Report: “Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond”. We expressed specific concern about the Bill of Rights, including freedom of the press and freedom of expression. We pointed, for starters, to Trump’s trying to control the press by banning certain reporters from his campaign. Most recently, we saw his knee-jerk over-reaction to the TV program “Saturday Night Live” satirizing him.

Come January, expect his efforts to control the press, public expression, and the Internet to expand.

Big Brother: Welcome the College Professor Watch List

Happy Thanksgiving. Honoring the fascist tradition, a new online watch list has just formed to target liberal college professors in the United States, urging students and others to hunt them out and spotlight them.

According to insidehighered.com: 

A new website is asking students and others to “expose and document” professors who “discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

The site, called Professor Watchlist, is not without precedent -- predecessors include the now-defunct NoIndoctrination.org, which logged accounts of alleged bias in the classroom. There's also David Horowitz's 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. But such efforts arguably have new meaning in an era of talk about registering certain social groups and concerns about free speech…

Professor Watchlist, launched Monday, is a project of Turning Point USA. The group’s mission is to “identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government.” Its national college and university field program works to “identify young conservative activists, build and maintain effective student groups, advertise and rebrand conservative values, engage in face-to-face and peer-to-peer conversations about the pressing issues facing our country,” according to its website.

The watch-list website should be a natural playground for the likes of the National Security Agency, which licks up every bit of online data it can on American citizens and the world.

Also, nyulocal.com, which reports on activities at New York University in Manhattan, wrote of Professor Watchlist: 

The site’s founder, Charlie Kirk, is a rising star in the conservative party. He was profiled by The Atlantic in 2015 as young, smart, and inspiring, a spokesperson for the GOP who had a firm grasp on policy and who was an incredibly rousing and charismatic speaker. He, along with Bill Montgomery, founded Turning Point USA, which has a presence in high school and college campuses all over the country. They aim to “re-brand free market values” through grass roots movements. 

In its report, nyulocal.com called the website’s founding “disturbing news”, noting that it so far already lists three NYU professors: Frank Roberts, Arthur Caplan, and Mark Crispin Miller. 

 

The article, as student-aimed writings often do, mixes a little tongue-in-cheek along with serious concerns, noting: 

We at Local were actually a little insulted, because for the number of times we’ve heard that NYU was a petri dish filled with liberal zombies, we were really expecting more of our commie hero professors to be featured. A junior majoring in sociology and philosophy in CAS was genuinely surprised when none of their professors were listed on the website. 

What’s more upsetting however, is that the website features full names and photos of the professors they accuse, and list the University they teach at as well as their supposed offenses.  

The close of the Local article includes an email interview with Turning Point USA. In the interview, TP USA states: 

In order to be included on the list, the story must be documented by a news source or otherwise documented (i.e. a syllabus or powerpoint slides). Hearsay accusations will not be accepted. 

Of course, there are a number of right-wing publications which cater to such “news”. So “documenting a news source” may not be that hard.

You can read the Local article, including the interview here.

Meanwhile, America’s president-elect Donald Trump has picked a billionaire as Secretary of Education: Betsy DeVos. The Washington Post reports: 

Betsy DeVos is hardly a household name, but the Michigan billionaire and conservative activist has quietly helped change the education landscape in many states, spending millions of dollars in a successful push to expand voucher programs that give families taxpayer dollars to pay for private and religious schools. 

This should expand the conservative push to privatize everything from molding young minds to water supply.

If you agree with this, then have a good life. If you disagree, you might want to get organized (you can’t do it alone), get educated, and get active.

Trump, Sensing Deals, Softens on Scrapping Climate Accord

Donald Trump moved toward his presidential election shouting how he denied climate change and would rip the U.S. away from the Paris Agreement. But today, in a meeting with The New York Times editorial staff, he backtracked, “pledging to have an open mind about climate change.”

What caused the pirouette? Why, because he’s a business mogul, of course. He must be seeing some way where his corporate enterprises might make money off the international climate deal.

And why do we say this? Because Trump made it very clear he sees no conflict of interest in owning corporations and being president. As the Times reported this evening about the one-hour interview with Trump:

…Mr. Trump was fiercely unapologetic about repeatedly flouting the traditional ethical and political conventions that have long shaped the American presidency.

 He said he had no obligation to establish boundaries between his business empire and his White House, conceding that the Trump brand ‘is certainly a hotter brand than it was before.’

So the president-elect -- as we predicted in our column “Prepare to Fight Fascism:2017 and Beyond” for The Clyde Fitch Report – will continue his greedy what’s-in-it-for-me corporate attitude.

What probably helped encourage his swayback: Last week he received a joint letter from 365 companies and major investors stressing a “deep commitment to addressing climate change”. According to a Nov. 16 Times article:

‘Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk,’ the companies said in a joint letter announced on Wednesday in Marrakesh, Morocco, where global leaders are determining the next steps for the Paris deal. ‘But the right action now will create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness.’

The companies also said that they would push ahead with their own targets to reduce their carbon footprints regardless of steps taken by Mr. Trump once he is in office.

Also, Trump saw on Friday that 48 nations at the Marrakesh meeting pledged to turn to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. These are primarily countries “disproportionately affected by global warming such as Ethiopia and the Maldives,” according to the UK Independent newspaper.

Trump’s motivation throughout his career has been to “make a deal”. It’s hard to see him not sitting in private with these countries’ heads of state, finagling some way to make each side some bucks off their renewable energy efforts.

Too, Trump must be seeing what’s happening at home. He may have investments in the highly conflictive Dakota Access Pipeline, but he also knows that U.S. renewable energy is moving ahead despite his energy stance. As Bloomberg predicted tonight in its article “Economics Will Keep Wind and Solar Energy Thriving Under Trump”:

On the plains of West Texas, new wind farms can be built for just $22 a megawatt-hour. In the Arizona and Nevada deserts, solar projects are less than $40 a megawatt-hour. Compare those figures with the U.S. average lifetime cost of $52 for natural gas plants and about $65 for coal.

Environmental rules and government subsidies are no longer the key drivers for clean power. Economics are.

That’s why Donald Trump will have limited influence on the U.S. utility industry’s push toward renewable energy, according to executives and investors. Companies including NextEra Energy Inc., Duke Energy Corp. and others that invest billions in power plants are already moving forward with long-term plans to generate electricity with cleaner and more economic alternatives.

Time will tell if Trump has “limited influence” on the renewable-energy push. It will be intriguing to see -- with his sloughing of any interest conflicts between his corporate holdings and his presidency – if he secretly works out deals to benefit from the push. Or if he might just openly say his family is forming new firms to invest in renewables and “help grow the national and global economy”. 

Meanwhile, he has announced he wants to shake up the federal Environmental Protection Agency. As the Times reported:

The president-elect has heightened environmentalists’ fears that his administration will take on an anti-climate, anti-environment bent by appointing the climate contrarian Myron Ebell to lead the E.P.A. transition. Climate change activists have denounced Mr. Ebell, whose Competitive Enterprise Institute has received funding from oil and gas interest groups.

Trump has made clear he wants to make the presidency a new ball game, and craves to form the new rules along with it. With a Millionaire Congress whose members want to become billionaires, and a conservative Supreme Court which Trump desires to make more conservative with at least one new appointment, he might just pull it off.

In Vietnam and U.S., Millions Still Affected by Agent Orange

April 30, 2015 marked the 40-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon, bringing an end to the Vietnam War.  Four decades later, the U.S. spraying of Agent Orange for 10 years there, still affects the health of as many as 3 million Vietnamese. Health problems range from cancer to birth defects.

U.S. military veterans and their offspring also remain affected, with the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, as recently as March 10, 2015, placing on its website an article headlined “10 Things Every Veteran Should Know About Agent Orange”.

Background

Agent Orange, also called Herbicide Orange (HO), is produced by mixing two herbicides: 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. Manufactured for the U.S. Defense Department primarily by Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical, Agent Orange’s 2,4,5-T reportedly “was contaminated with 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic dioxin compound. In some areas, TCDD concentrations in soil and water were hundreds of times greater than the levels considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.^[5][6]”

The U.S. military used Agent Orange for a major defoliation program (Operation Ranch Hand) in Vietnam from 1961-1972. According to history.com:

U.S. aircraft were deployed to spray powerful mixtures of herbicides around roads, rivers, canals and military bases, as well as on crops that might be used to supply enemy troops. During this process, crops and water sources used by the non-combatant peasant population of South Vietnam could also be hit. In all, Operation Ranch Hand deployed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides over 4.5 million acres of land.

By 1979, four years after Saigon’s fall and the war’s close, a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of U.S. veterans who served in Vietnam for health issues resulting from Agent Orange. By 1984, seven major chemical companies reached an out-of-court settlement in the suit, agreeing to pay $180 million to veterans or their next of kin. That amount was raised later to $240 million including interest.

A group of Vietnamese citizens filed a class-action lawsuit against more than 30 chemical companies in 2004, but it was thrown out of two courts.

Current Results

As far as detrimental effects on the Vietnamese, history.com notes:

In addition to the massive environmental impact of the U.S. defoliation program in Vietnam, that nation has reported that some 400,000 people were killed or maimed as a result of exposure to herbicides like Agent Orange. In addition, Vietnam claims half a million children have been born with serious birth defects, while as many 2 million people are suffering from cancer or other illness caused by Agent Orange.

A report on Germany’s Deutsche Weille Television stated that as many as 3 million Vietnamese are still suffering from results of Agent Orange. The report specifically showed a couple with two children suffering from birth defects. The father had been exposed to Agent Orange as a boy.

Also today, in an interview on Chinese America TV (CCTV), New York University professor Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990, said that Agent Orange is the major problem Vietnam still faces from America’s presence there.

The news reports noted that in 2012, the U.S. and Vietnam began a toxic cleanup effort to reduce soil contamination levels.

In its March 2015 article, the VA cites the following 10 points veterans should be aware of regarding Agent Orange, following each point with paragraphs of more specific information:

1.    Agent Orange was a herbicide and defoliant used in Vietnam.

2.    Any Veteran who served anywhere in Vietnam during the war is presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange.

3.    VA has linked several diseases and health conditions to Agent Orange exposure.

4.    Veterans who want to be considered for disability compensation must file a claim.

5.    VA offers health care benefits for Veterans who may have been exposed to Agent Orange and other herbicides during military service.

6.    Participating in an Agent Orange Registry health exam helps you, other Veterans and VA.

7.    VA recognizes and offers support for the children of Veterans affected by Agent Orange who have birth defects.

8.    Vietnam Veterans are not the only Veterans who may have been exposed to Agent Orange.

9.    VA continues to conduct research on the long-term health effects of Agent Orange in order to better care for all Veterans.

10. VA contracts with an independent, non-governmental organization to review the scientific and medical information on the health effects of Agent Orange.

 (This column originally ran on reality: a world of views.)

Two Flags Gone Bad: Say It Ain’t So, Uncle Sam

The Confederate flags surrounding me as I grew up in Arkansas may still represent states' rights and revolution against a dictatorial national government to some folks. But they lost that battle.

That stubborn symbol now supports a far wider vision global in scope. It’s the effort to sustain in the 21^st century the pseudo-Christian White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) passion born in factories and plantations: to make slaves again of African-American men, women and children; to segregate and control Jews, the Middle-East Muslims, the Asian Buddhists, the Mexican and Latin American Catholics; to enslave again all women, keep ‘em in the kitchen, and rip from them their hard-fought rights to property, to own businesses, and to vote, and to the respect and care of their own bodies. And to crush the LGBT community who surely can't help the PCWASPS propagate.

It represents the rich, pseudo-Christian WASP effort to keep poor white trash as poor white trash, and slowly devolve the American Middle Class into that unsustainable income bracket. Today we politely call them the One Percent: conniving to cast the 99 Percent as Property…to use or condemn at will.

It’s the neo-con/corporate-state/oligarchic philosophy of Exceptionalism to control and enslave the globe. To make international corporations more powerful than sovereign nations. The Exceptionalists wave the American flag in their hands, but in their hearts it’s the Confederate flag calling for world control and economic enslavement through the Racket of War.

The Confederate flag and American flag are no longer symbols of supposed higher causes. They’re now Advertising Logos which in reality represent fear, greed, and the lust to poison earth, air, water, and food for the Profit of the Few.

In short, it’s the pseudo-Christian WASP futile effort to oppose Integration (strange for folks who integrated two Germanic tribes and adore a crucified Jewish carpenter). The PCWASPs are terrified of Integration with Anybody but their Minority Own. To them, the 99 Percent are all Terrorists challenging their Right to Rule, handed down by a materialistic god who created the Industrial Revolution and put them in charge of it in their pseudo-Christian WASP “City upon a Hill”.

Dwight David Eisenhower, the American Army general, war hero, and Republican President of the United States, saw this coming. He warned of the rise of the Military-Industrial Complex. He realized that a dedicated military itself – bound by a vow to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic – could fall prey to the pseudo-Christian WASP, amoral rich and their Wall Street Banksters as they took control of Congress, the White House, and the courts. And indeed the military has fallen prey. We all have.

Of course, most folks don’t want to realize it, and sure won’t admit it. They’ve been victims of pseudo-Christian WASP corporate education from primary schools through a higher-education system that exists -- not to educate -- but to economically sustain its own One Percent. It’s an education which demands we fall into assembly lines or fade away into slums or private prisons.

We’re now a public who has forsaken classic, literate education and settled for entertainment/sports television and small arsenic doses of Internet and i-Phones with emphasis on gut music and texting. The just-right uneducated public the politicians and corporate cronies love.

In the 21^st century, Education is a Racket. Scientific research is a Racket. War is a Racket. Wall Street is a Racket. Corporations are Rackets, tragically led by Corporate Media. All this resulting in a nation of fantasy Exceptionalism cowed into Blind Acceptance and Belligerent Denial: historic signs of an ignorant, fearful civilization eventually to dissolve.

Of course, none of these descriptions are new. They’re just reality. The reality that consistently leads this columnist to challenge you -- if you comprehend the reality -- to get organized, get educated, and get active to bring about positive change.

But, hey. If you disagree, and don’t consider them your reality, then write your own column.

(This column originally ran in reality: a world of views.)

Obama Widens Carter’s, Bush’s Global-Rule Policies

To understand President Barack Obama’s determination at using military force to assure chaos in the Middle East and to challenge China and Russia – furthering the threat of world war – we need to look back to the Brzezinski Plan under President Carter and the Wolfowitz Doctrine under George W. Bush.

The effort of the exceptionalist neoconservatives within Obama’s administration to advance endless war, to economically feed the military-industrial complex, and continue a military reason for NATO’s existence are all based on both the Brzezinski and Wolfowitz design to make and maintain the United States as the world’s lone superpower.

Zbigniew Brzenzinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor from 1977-81, believed that causing the decline of the Soviet Union would assure American global supremacy. Paul Wolfowitz, serving under both Bush administrations, posed a policy that pre-emptive military action would keep at bay any potential foe to American world power.

Brzenzinski’s Design

We pointed out in a 2012 column for The Clyde Fitch Report that Brzenzinski has for decades espoused the need for America to control Eurasia: i.e. the uninterrupted landmass of Europe and Asia. To have this occur, he knew in the late '70s the Soviets needed to be weakened. He encouraged and got Carter to sign a directive to provide secret support to opponents of Afghanistan’s Soviet-supported regime, leading America’s chief foe to intervene in Afghanistan in 1979. Brzezinski has called that the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam,” meaning the aid to the Soviets decline through a military quagmire.

Brzenzinski also has recognized the importance of controlling the flow of energy as the key to power in Eurasia. He reviews this within three paragraphs of his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives:

About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources. (p. 31)

The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea. (p. 125)

America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and to America’s historical legacy. (p. 194)

Wolfowitz Doctrine

Wolfowitz was working as an undersecretary of defense for policy in the George H.W. Bush administration, and under Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. By February 1992  Wolfowitz had initiated, and his deputy Scooter Libby had overseen, preparation of  the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years.  Less than a month later, it was leaked to The New York Times, leading to widespread criticism of U.S. efforts at imperialism.

Here are four of the 46-page document’s most inflammatory paragraphs that aroused opposition:

To keep the U.S. as the world’s lone superpower:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

U.S. leadership in a new world order:

The U.S. must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.

The U.S. should strive for unilateralism:

Like the coalition that opposed Iraqi aggression, we should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished. Nevertheless, the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S. will be an important stabilizing factor.

Pre-emptive intervention, i.e. aggressive war:

While the U.S. cannot become the world's policeman, by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.

Following the heavy negative reaction to the article, Cheney oversaw the rewriting of the document, watering down the highly aggressive language Wolfowitz and Libby had developed, making the U.S. seem more friendly toward other nations.

After George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the original Wolfowitz plan appears to have been resurrected as the basis of the Bush Doctrine. As you can see from U.S. military actions under Bush and then Obama, recorded on Wikipedia, the Wolfowitz neocon attitude and aggressive foreign invasions have been implemented, including:

War in Afghanistan
(2001–2014)
Part of the War on Terror

Iraq War
(2003–2011)
Part of the Iraqi Insurgency and War on Terror

War in North-West Pakistan
(2004–present)
Part of the War on Terror

2011 military intervention in Libya
(2011, renewed U.S. involvement 2015)
Part of the Libyan Crisis

War on ISIL (Operation Inherent Resolve)
(2014–present)
Part of the Iraqi Civil War, Syrian Civil War, Second Libyan Civil War,
Boko Haram insurgency, and the War on Terror

Location: Iraq, Syria, Libya and Nigeria

War in Afghanistan
(2015–present)

Yemeni Crisis

Yemeni Civil War (2015–present)

(This column originally ran in reality: a world of views)