Deja Vu All Over Again

So the Trump administration, that's Donald Trump the billionaire with the superiority complex, has proposed to end Net Neutrality as we know it

"Wednesday’s move by the Trump administration to end net neutrality marks a milestone in the offensive by the US government and major corporations to put an end to the free and open internet, paving the way for widespread government censorship of oppositional news and analysis."

Here it comes folks. Hey, what ever happened to Medicare for All and socialism and all that crap?

""The draft proposal published by FCC chairman Ajit Pai Wednesday, and expected to sail through the approval process next month, would put an end to the decades-long treatment of internet services as a public utility, allowing the internet monopolies Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon full ability to block, throttle and promote internet traffic at will."

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/25/pers-n25.html

That means our political representatives (because they are our representatives, right?) will permit those corporations to block or limit access to websites, jack up prices for consumers with tiered services, of which only the well off (i.e., upper middle to upper class) will be able to afford "premium" services, and use their monopoly leverage, control of 75 percent of high speed internet service with absolute monopolies in over half the country, to aid the ruling class to control political discourse and the dispensing of propaganda on the internet.

Trump also wants to end welfare with the intention to present plans for "welfare reform". Like his tax "reform" plan intended to transfer trillions to the rich, cut medicare and screw the middle, working and lower classes.

"He intends pushing for greater welfare cutbacks once tax cuts for corporate predators and super-rich Americans are enacted into law - provided House and Senate members agree on so-called tax reform, likely but not certain, plenty of opposition flack to deal with, whether enough to kill it remains to be seen.

Likely early next year, details on Trump’s welfare cuts will be announced. According to his Domestic Policy Council director Paul Winfree, he and another staffer are “working on a major welfare reform program.”

Their proposal will be included in a 2018 Trump executive order, outlining administration principles, directing federal agencies to draft recommendations for federal legislation."

http://stephenlendman.org/2017/11/trump-wants-welfare-america-ended/

Damn. That's depressing. I could say I'm amazed at the serfs/peasants who still support Trump but it's really the same thing we saw with Obama. A big part of it is people hate the other side so much that they're willing to completely overlook anything negative with their hero crusader against those they hate. Those of us that don't want to play that stupid ass game are stuck with watching in abject horror as humans act like, eh, humans I guess.

We're wasting time. We do need leaders, somebody has to lead a movement against these assholes. But who? I keep asking. People on this blog had their hopes on Bernie Sanders, some still do. It's hard to convince people who only see the system as their salvation to consider other options.

I'm sad tonight. It's almost December 2017, Trump has been president for over ten months. And just look at us. Look what's become of America. Shit, look what's become of the human race. Heh.

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Pricknick's picture

but I just recently got the highest speed available in my area. 1.4 mb. It's gonna suck when it goes back to .70 mb.
On the plus side, I have no cap because I can't use shit.
On the minus side, my so-called representatives will not have to worry about me. I won't be able to get through.
Hangs head and rolls a fatty.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Lenzabi's picture

If it goes through, it may well trigger some negative impacts for those in power, that they insisted on these stupid things that triggered the negatives well and truly deserve the fate they have sown. If the populace does not fight this, and allows it to happen w/o repercussions to these ass-hats, then the people deserve the tyranny they let take over.

The fact that the People have spoken and said leave our Net Neutrality alone yet they used fraud to have comments favoring this plan by the FCC head, well, the Constitution has an article stating that if the gov't(Little g on purpose), refuses to represent We the People, they can be removed, and by force if necessary. I would prefer a more peaceful method, but the fucktards in charge have shown that peaceful means will not budge them sadly.

I may not use violence, but neither am I inclined to help those who are of the political and wealthy class if a mob devours them in righteous anger tat their attempts at tyranny over the populace that has had enough of the BS they have inflicted on us, BUT I do not see that such will occur as the American populace will roll over as always and let them fuck them yet again.

I am finding myself worn out by the news of how we are seeing our nation become more a joke and meme in the world, and true live Idiocracy.

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So long, and thanks for all the fish

Dr Helen Caldicott: North Korea, Donald Trump And The Threat Of Nuclear War

Dr. Caldicott begins at 6m23s and ends at 26m16s.
direct download: https://cpa.ds.npr.org/kzyx/audio/2017/11/helen_caldicott_korea_trump_nuclear_war_2017.mp3

The End:

You've got to have the guts to stand up, and if America doesn't change, I kid you not, we're doomed.

---
https://nwtrcc.org/resist/how-to-resist/

Methods of Resistance
Summarized below are a few war tax resistance methods. Some are more convenient to some people than to others. And some methods are better than others at meeting particular goals. Each method also has a different set of risks associated with it.
...

Lots of inadvertent tax resisters already!

  • Earn less than the taxable income.

peacemakers rock

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Big Al's picture

@eyo Hard to argue with that. Big time change too. Ending net neutrality is just one of the many efforts the ruling class are trying to make and have made to try to prevent that change from happening.

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@Big Al that's my advice. Get off the monopoly crack and feed the environment with community, not corporate software, spyware devices. No one needs Windows or Apple or Google crapplications to communicate effectively, that is obvious. There is some other mental block, always some other excuse "not enough time", "not interested", "not technical", or my all time favorite, "it's too hard".

https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v8/

Give the gift of freedom!

A new phone or computer can be the highlight of the holidays, but with proprietary software lurking under the wrapping paper, your thoughtful gift may be more naughty than nice.

This guide replaces these holiday humbugs with better devices from ethical companies—no creepy remote deletion of files or punitive and mean rules about copying and sharing. Just products and software that respect the freedom and privacy of your loved ones: gifts you can feel good about.

Plus, our crib notes below will help you explain why this version is better than the one they've heard of (and spread the word about software freedom, too).

good luck

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Hillbilly Dem's picture

@Big Al

There is so much wrong with this country. It's the "black sky" theory. There are so many targets in the air, that the sky looks black. Where do we train our sights first? Where do we even start? Do we triage? Start with climate change, the biggest threat to our existence, then work "downwards" in descending priority?

As a citizen (now there's a quaint and outdated term) in his 60s, I've become quite cynical and discouraged; but I'm not ready to give up or give in.

Climate change, followed by -in no particular order of threat: gun violence, race relations, money in politics/oligarchy, poverty, no universal health care for Americans, our systemic drug problem (mostly 'legal' drugs, too), the M.I.C., endless war, U.S. colonialism, police militarization and brutality, unchained capitalism, hunger, homelessness, our fossil fuel addiction, income inequality, crumbling infrastructure (highways, bridges, sewer and water delivery systems, electrical grid, etc), net neutrality and so on.

The above were issues off the top of my head. There are so many gigantic problems in this country that I'm sure I omitted some of the biggest. If I thought all day and wrote down the list of serious problems in this country, I'd probably throw up for a week. It's bad. So bad I don't even know where we start, let alone 'how'.

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"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey

Kept hearing one line of a song in my head (ear worm) over and over "we have got to get it together" but couldn't place the tune until now. It was "Something in the Air" Thunderclap Newman.

Hand out the arms and ammo
We're going to blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the moment will arrive, and you know its right
Because the revolution's here, and you know it's right
And you know that it's right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now

co inkydink
Guns were Black Friday must-haves, judging by the record number of FBI background-check requests

The FBI didn’t provide any analysis behind the spike, but the biggest shopping day of the year may come at a moment of worry for people who fear someone from the government may knock on their door someday and confiscate their guns.

On Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed the FBI and ATF to look at potential problems in the National Instant Criminal Background Check system (NICS).

Sessions wants the agencies to fix problems with how the military and other federal entities report convictions that could keep someone from having a gun.

Must be Opposite Day over on the right, or maybe the left?
"I know nothing" --Sergeant Schultz

Guns and ammo versus a twenty ton hydrogen bomb. Hm, yeah I'm not following that madness.

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the first casualty will be places like this. If you know about it, it'll be slow. If you don't know about it, well why upset the status quo.

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Big Al's picture

@Snode search engines like google will make sure you can't find it. That's already happening.

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It will be too easy to keep "the poors" off the internet.
This is a perfect class warfare weapon.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@divineorder @divineorder @divineorder
Deb Fischer is not allowing messages from the EFF currently. Big surprise.

I’ll email the wretch directly. But here in Lower Hooverville, we love corporate America. That’s why Omaha and Council Bluffs, IA are where places like Google are opening facilities here and expanding.

EDIT: just called her D.C. office. The flunky that answers the phone let out a loud long *sigh* when I told him why I was calling. At the end of the call I (disingenuously) asked “isn’t she up for re-election”?

She’s never going to vote against corporate ‘interests’. This is a backward, red-neck, Repubbie backwater state. That’s why my vote for Stein was simply a protest vote against the corrupt shits we were given as candidates.

EDIT EDIT: typo

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

earthling1's picture

Before we lose all communications.
Never vote for any incumbent. Always vote for the candidate with the LEAST money.
Keeping a wrench firmly in the gears is the only resistance we will have left. Until they completely outlaw voting, and drop all pretense of democracy.
IMHO.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Pluto's Republic's picture

@earthling1

Or they will destroy us. They are both mortally wounded and they are trying as hard as they can to commit suicide. This can be done.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic

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O.k. When is the next meeting for the revolution?
-FuturePassed on Sunday, November 25, 2018 10:22 p.m.

It's possible that if they kill net neutrality they will ultimately be killing Verizon, ATT and Comcast.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Amanda Matthews's picture

Not at all. So they’re going to destroy the internet. They have seen how powerful a tool it is for the plebs to learn what they’re up to, so they’ve got to destroy it. And ‘our’ reps are more than willing to help.

Maybe once it’s gone people will finally get the message that the 1% don’t want us to have anything that allows us any freedom. Maybe people will come out of the complacent coma then. From food to clean water to even our physic MONEY (what little money we have), they Control of it ALL. A cashless society will enslave us. That’s the next thing they take from us. We can just go back to the feudal system of lord and vassal. Push IS coming to shove. A day of reckoning cannot be avoided.

And we’ll probably have to communicate the way we did when I was young.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Pluto's Republic's picture

So, the egalatarian Internet has to go — jettisoned into the free-market to be regulated by the Wolves of Wallstreet. The US government will privatize the People's utility of self-generated content and hand it over to the media monopolies to extract the highest profits they can from those who can afford subscriptions. At the same time, they will suppress any news, information, or subversive discussions that are deemed troublesome to the State or bad for business. In this way, American Corporations are exercising their Right to exploit the nation's natural resources and to mine the People's bounty of human-generated knowledge — the Internet — for their exclusive private profits. But the United States can stand tall, because unlike other dictatorships, the US does not impose unconstitutional censorship upon the People. No. Our Corporate Overlords will do that for them, thus maintaining the illusion of a free society.

More important, this seizure/capture is a Human Rights violation and a theft of our generational inheritance of civilization from all those who came before us. The Internet is a treasury created by a voluntary gathering of millions of human minds. It is public utility build on a concentrated platform of human experience, knowledge, social development, and social progress. It is every generation's right to access and interact with this pool of knowledge and to communicate with fellow humans in an online environment that is completely free of government censorship and free from corporate wealth extraction and predatory capitalism. We are merely the shepherds of this treasure of collected knowledge and human experience, and it must be passed on to the next generation, unencumbered. This is the covenant under which all civilizations are built and occupied by the generations that follow. Civilizations do not belong to some temporary government. They were not built to be given away to aggressive corporations to exploit and corrupt, as they do; or to pollute and destroy. The civilization of the Internet belongs to humanity. It is their inheritance, and not the inheritance of a few greedy self-serving bureaucrats.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Pluto's Republic's picture

The FCC theft of the People's Intellectual Property, that is.

I've written a dozen essays about the living disaster that was caused by the revocation of the Fairness Doctrine. I am the sole voice of protest in America on that matter, as far as I know. The loss of the Internet is an identical item in the evolution of the media monopolies. Thirty years later, a few more seem to care about the loss of the people's Rights on the Internet, But, in two weeks, it will still be a done deal.

As for the Rights involved, Americans have never enjoyed a single human right — not one — that was not subsequently restricted or withdrawn. The UN names over thirty of them. The US Constitution does not directly grant the people any such rights. The American coma over human rights will be maintained, certainly, through the loss of this one, too.

The only way that people keep rights is by demanding them.

It's all a shame, but it didn't happen because Donald Trump is the President.

@Pluto's Republic

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
divineorder's picture

@Pluto's Republic

...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@Pluto's Republic But as we all talk about out here, he's such a great excuse for them to do what they have waited for decades to do. He's the gift that keeps on giving and he and they will Make America Pay for that gift until we have nothing left to pay them with. I did read in The Intercept that some of the right wing is pushing back on killing the net though, FWIW.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Amanda Matthews's picture

@lizzyh7
re-election in 18. I think this issue can hurt them if they vote against net neutrality.

How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service

When you live somewhere with slow and unreliable Internet access, it usually seems like there’s nothing to do but complain. And that's exactly what residents of Orcas Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, were doing in late 2013. Faced with CenturyLink service that was slow and outage-prone, residents gathered at a community potluck and lamented their current connectivity.
“Everyone was asking, 'what can we do?'” resident Chris Brems recalls. “Then [Chris] Sutton stands up and says, ‘Well, we can do it ourselves.’”

Faced with a local ISP that couldn’t provide modern broadband, Orcas Island residents designed their own network and built it themselves. The nonprofit Doe Bay Internet Users Association (DBIUA), founded by Sutton, Brems, and a few friends, now provide Internet service to a portion of the island. It’s a wireless network with radios installed on trees and houses in the Doe Bay portion of Orcas Island. Those radios get signals from radios on top of a water tower, which in turn receive a signal from a microwave tower across the water in Mount Vernon, Washington.

*

Unlike many satellite and cellular networks, there is no monthly data cap for DBIUA users.

Sutton, a software developer who has experience in server and network management, says he’s amazed how rare projects like DBIUA are, claiming “it wasn’t that hard.” But from what he and Brems told Ars, it seems like it took a lot of work and creative thinking to get DBIUA off the ground.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015...

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Amanda Matthews

I found this quite hopeful:

‘By the people, for the people’: Kim Dotcom to launch alternative internet

THE DEBATE about net neutrality - something that really shouldn't need a debate at all - was reignited this week, but MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom has an idea for a new version of the internet.

Dotcom plans to build an alternative internet that would be impervious to government and corporations' control or censorship. The current corporate Internet will be replaced by a better Internet, running on the idle capacity of hundreds of millions of mobile devices. Run by the people for the people, MegaNet will operate without IP addresses and offer an unobstructed and encrypted internet. "I have been working on this for a long time," says Dotcom. "Mobile networks and devices will be ready for this in just a few years, and when it goes live our dream of true Internet Freedom shall become reality."

His announcement comes as the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moves to kill net neutrality in December. "Breaking net-neutrality will only accelerate the adoption of a new Internet network," he pointed out.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@lizzyh7

there is no way that she would be able to do what Trump is doing. From his cabinet picks who have been put in the regulatory agencies that they have been at war with to knowing that he will sign whatever legislation republicans push through.
The Clintons destroyed welfare already and they know that people wouldn't give her a second pass for doing it again.
People say that she would have started her wars already, but the Russian buildup is still happening, the wars that he inherited are still going on and he might start one with North Korea.

How will the companies like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon make their profits if people can't afford to keep their internet? This goes for every company that relies on internet traffic.

I wish I had an answer for how we fight back against them, but I think it's coming because they are turning up that water faster and faster instead of their slower boil.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.

divineorder's picture

@Pluto's Republic

...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

@Pluto's Republic I showed it to my paralegal, and she printed it so she could read it aloud when she called our reps an Senators to complain.
She is weaning away from Maddow and NPR.
Thanks for this.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Pluto's Republic's picture

Thanks, @on the cusp , for the kind words.

I was actually inspired by George Orwell. I have been reading him all weekend. His cynicism, when peeled aside, reveals the respect that humanity should muster for itself.

“If leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.”
― George Orwell, 1984

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

I'd say acting 'inhuman', myself - inhumanely so...

But the monopolistic US internet providers had already started ripping off customers some time back, as I expect that we all know, although there's never enough to satisfy the pathologically greedy, is there?

I came across this site tonight in my slooooow search for anything that might bring some enlightenment regarding my sucky connection and this article from several years ago, although containing no surprises, happened to be on one of many related links on a page regarding internet connection/bandwidth issues.

Does everyone remember this?

https://www.komando.com/happening-now/251763/net-neutrality-5-isps-are-a...

May 6, 2014

Net Neutrality: 5 ISPs are holding Web speed hostage

By Komando Staff, Komando.com

...These allegations come from Level 3, one of the largest providers of long-distance Internet connectivity in the world. Level 3 is saying that companies putting the squeeze on their consumers' bandwidth are "large Broadband consumer networks with a dominant or exclusive market share in their local market."

That's a pretty serious allegation. But there's more:

"Level 3 says its links to these customers suffer from "congestion that is permanent, has been in place for well over a year and where our peer refuses to augment capacity. They are deliberately harming the service they deliver to their paying customers. They are not allowing us to fulfill the requests their customers make for content."

"The basic problem is those six [international] broadband providers want Level 3 to pay them to deliver traffic. Level 3 believes that's unreasonable. After all, the ISPs' own customers have already paid these ISPs to deliver the traffic to them. And the long-standing norm on the internet is that endpoint ISPs pay intermediaries, not the other way around. Level 3 notes that "in countries or markets where consumers have multiple broadband choices (like the UK) there are no congested peers." In short, broadband providers that face serious competition don't engage in this kind of brinksmanship." ...

Now the blatant industrial criminality which the corporate politicians/parties permitted is being 'legalized' as with government propagandizing and censorship of its own citizens and everything else, including the reckless endangerment-for-profit of Non-Billionaire-Americans at work, at meals and product usage as protective regulations if all kinds are being stripped...

Who needs gas chambers to reduce the excess population? You just have to believe them when they tell you they can write whatever law they like to suit themselves, even when it sickens/injures/kills you, because 'Simon Says' So.

Still wondering what the very lengthy, huge-but-distant-sounding rumbling I recently heard outside was; hope it wasn't Russia being nuked, but I suppose the world would have burst into flames by now, if so... maybe one hell of a plane? Never heard anything like it before, at any rate.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.