My good friend and unindicted co-conspirator in all things writing, Jane Gaffin, sent me an interesting link last night.  The  headline of the article read “Egypt’s Internet Kill Switch: Coming To America“, and linked to an article on Alex Jones’ website InfoWars.com.

http://www.infowars.com/egypts-internet-kill-switch-coming-to-america/

Love Alex or hate him, one thing is pretty undeniable: Alex will shine the light of truth on government tyranny wherever he finds it.  He is shameless, fearless, and totally committed to freedom, as far as I can tell.  And he’s willing to use any and every tool he can find to make sure freedom stands.

The article on Egypt flipping the kill-switch on their internet service was shocking.  Shocking for a few reasons.  One: I hadn’t heard anything about it from any major news source.  Two: that Senator Joe Lieberman thinks this is a really good idea, and introduced legislation in the United States Senate to give President Obama exactly that power.

For more information about the shut-down of Egypt’s entire internet service, now in its second full day, read this article on Renesys.com, titled “Egypt Leaves the Internet”.  It’s as detailed as it is shocking.

There was a link to Lieberman’s legislation provided in a link on the InfoWars.com website, but when I opened the linked pdf file, something immediately set my warning antennae on high alert.  It immediately struck me as a fake.  Something, and I can’t even tell you what, just seemed wrong.

That sent me on a chase for the actual legislation.  So while the document links from Alex Jones’ site may not be a fake, it’s certainly not the official version of
the bill, which can be found here:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111s3480rs/pdf/BILLS-111s3480rs.pdf

Like all things that are hideously anti-Freedom, it’s got such an innocuous title: “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010”.  Unfortunately, “protecting”, in good Orwellian double-speak fashion, doesn’t mean what the dictionary says, but exactly the opposite.  “Protecting”, in Lieberman-speak, means “to give me total control”.   President Obama can’t even obey his own Constitution (you know, that silly bit about proving he’s actually an American?), but we want to give him personal and total control over the financial and freedom of speech power of an entire continent?  God help us all if that’s the choice that’s made.

I’ve not gotten through all of Lieberman’s bill yet. Everything is strike-out text until Page 197, which would lead me to believe that the strike-out text is the first version, with everything from Page 197 to the end of the document being the revised 2nd version text.

Tyrants.  Gotta love tyrants.  It’s so easy to see when they’re losing control.  Does the Egyptian government really believe they can survive such a monumentally disastrous move?

But then I start thinking about North America and how we’re moving faster and faster every day toward exactly this sort of tyrannical government response to criticism.  5-year-old kids being put on “watch lists”, strip-searches at airports, governments criminally charging people for defending themselves, while they let the actual violent criminals roam free…

Ian Thomson’s ordeal is bizarre beyond belief in that regard.  Three masked men firebomb his home, yet when he pulls out his handgun to defend himself, HE is the one that gets charged for being dangerous.  Apparently the police and Crown counsel believe he was just supposed to huddle inside like a good little Canadian and burn to death instead of fighting back.

Sure, we haven’t begun hunting down bloggers and sending them off to the gulag (yet), but at the rate we’re going, that’s not far off.  On the bright side, I’ll finally get to meet some of the people I most admire on the ‘net when they do, because we’ll all be in the same camp!

But back to the issue at hand…

When the likes of Joe Lieberman can say he admires the way the Chinese government controls the internet, and thinks the United States should do the same, and NOBODY CARES?  This moron just keeps getting re-elected?  Is anybody paying attention?

Sadly, it doesn’t seem like it.  Lieberman’s Internet Kill Switch bill is still alive and moving through the US Senate.

Which really gets me thinking… if they actually did shut down the internet in the United States (which for all practical purposes shuts it down here in Canada too),
would anyone actually care?

Would there be an uprising in the streets to finally kick these illegitimate bastards out of office? Or would three days of CNN over-coverage put it all to rest, with talk of a “Brave New America” and “the hard choices we must make” or some such crap?

Something to wonder about, isn’t it.

When you’re done pondering, call and write your Congress-critters and Senate-critters and demand they keep their filthy paws off the Internet.