Is the FCC trying to take over the internet? Is this the end of the net for all?The FCC deserves praise for acknowledging the importance of competition among technologies as a key ingredient for promoting a national broadband policy. At the same time, unfortunately, the Commission’s plan seeks new realms to rule even as the very need for regulation evaporates.
America’s challenge is not for the FCC to ‘do something’ in the communications and Internet realm, but rather to dismantle obsolete regulatory impediments that constrain the market’s freedom to expand infrastructure and content access. If we were starting from a clean slate in today’s world, we wouldn’t create a Federal Communications Commission with command over price, entry and services.
If ever an economic sector needed a coherent vision for substantial liberalization, broadband is it. The Internet has been among mankind’s most liberating technologies, erasing the constraints of distance and information scarcity while making broadcasters out of billions of people. Today’s communications landscape has empowered individuals to speak and exchange ideas in ways that our nation’s framers could never have imagined.
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Indonesian activists display posters of U.S. President Barack Obama during a protest against his planned visit in June in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, March 20, 2010. Obama put off a trip to Indonesia until this summer as the health care overhaul gained steam in Congress this week. The poster reads., 'Reject Obama's Visit in Indonesia', and 'Obama, Imperialist President of the World'. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)According to senior Indonesian officials and police and details from government files, the US-backed Indonesian armed forces (TNI), now due for fresh American aid, assassinated a series of civilian activists during 2009.
The killings were part of a secret government program, authorized from Jakarta, and were coordinated in part by an active-duty, US-trained Kopassus special forces General who has just acknowledged on the record that his TNI men had a role in the killings.
The news comes as US President Barack Obama is reportedly due to announce that he is reversing longstanding US policy - imposed by Congress in response to grassroots pressure - of restricting categories of US assistance to TNI, a force which, during its years of US training, has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The revelation could prove problematic for Obama since his rationale for restoring the aid has been the claim that TNI no longer murders civilians. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress that the the issue is whether there is a "resumption" of atrocities, but, in fact, they have not stopped: TNI still practices political murder.
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