That's the title of a classic science fiction novel from many years ago by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. On its face, it is a fairly standard thriller, but the assumptions (the "What if?") are stunning. The world is run by corporations -- openly: senators in Washington no longer represent states, but major companies. The story revolves around the plan to market Venus, and a counterplan to withhold the planet from exploitation.
So look what's hapening now. From TPM Cafe:
Congress is going to hand the operation of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Democrats are helping. It's a shame.
Don’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it.
Do we see the first signs of it happening in the Bush administration? He's given Iraq to Halliburton, wants to give ANWR to Exxon-Mobil, and now seems to want to give the Internet to AT&T. I can't lay the blame at his feet completely, of course: the Democrats, as noted, are helping. (It occurs to me that one reason the Democrats can't establish an identity is that they don't have one: they're just the Republicans that the Christianists hate.)
OK -- you obviously use the Internet. Keep up with this at Save the Internet. Write your congresscritter, and your senators. And blast the FCC -- it's their fault. Bury them with complaints.
(I've just e-mailed my own rep, and included some not-very-complimentary comments on the performance of the Democratic Party over the past five years.)
Stuffy, post-cold/allergies (maybe -- not sure which), cough, icky, and of course it's turned cold and rainy. Feh!
3 comments:
Bush and his gang are also preparing to turn the national parks system and the national forest reserves over to corporate sponsorships with signage, like turning Wrigley Field into a BellSouth Ball Park or the Shedd Aquarium into the ExxonMobil International Aquarium. Gale Norton, always a friend of corporate interests, has resigned and is being replaced by Idaho's former governor Kempthorne, even more friendly to corporate interests, while the parks/forests budgets are being cut by 30% over the next five years and management regulations are being rewritten to permit corporate donor signage. Disgusting.
Hope you're feeling better.
the Shedd Aquarium into the ExxonMobil International Aquarium.
Don't you mean the ExxonMobil International Oil Spill Museum?
Of course -- and Joseph Hazelwood as director.
Post a Comment