Eric Blair
Activist Post
November 25, 2010
When most of us think about “lame duck” Congressional sessions we think of a “do-nothing” government. However, this so-called lame duck session appears to be a time where legislation that has the most restrictions to individual rights is being rammed through.
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| Both of these bills will likely become laws given their overwhelming support in Congress. | |
It seems the members of government who have been recently voted out of office are vying for corporate jobs by pushing such legislation as the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act which are now on the fast track to becoming law. Both of these laws reek of tyranny for the citizens and a means of corporate consolidation for the big boys.
It seems whenever a piece of legislation has the word “safety” in it we can expect to lose our right to make our own decisions. For example, consumer protection groups pushed hard for the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act in 2008 after large numbers of Chinese-made toys and other products proved to have dangerously unhealthy toxins.
Consequently, the bill was passed with 407 Ayes, 0 Nays in the House. Only later did the public find out that the bill did more to regulate, tax, and impose fines on neighborhood garage sales than it did to stop dangerous Chinese imports. Clearly, the bill is used to clamp down on an individual’s right to sell their used items without governmental oversight. In other words, the corporate-government will not allow any form of black market to threaten their cartel control of consumerism.
The Food Safety Modernization Act has the backing of establishment liberals who think more big government regulation will protect us from food-borne diseases derived from factory farming. Their heart seems to be in the right place, but placing trust in this horribly corrupt government to “protect” us makes them utterly gullible. The vote of 74-25 in the Senate proves the bill was more broadly supported than just with progressives, indicating strong corporate support from the Big-Agri lobby that wrote the bill. According to Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, the bill purports to:
• Preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes.
• It will more than likely make Michael Taylor (former Monsanto executive) the Food Czar.
• End U.S. sovereignty over its own food supply by forcing compliance with WTO guidelines.
• Even direct sales of food between individuals could be defined as smuggling under the language of the bill.
• Codex Alimentarius, a global system of control over food and food supplements, would control all U.S. food and supplements. Access to nat ural food supplements would be removed under Codex rules.
• Control of all seeds would transfer to Monsanto and other global multinationals.
• The National Animal Identification System ( NAIS ) would be enacted, forcing bio-chipping and other identification and tracking methods for all animals, whether food or pets.
• What is left of the American food system would be transferred into total control of Multinational Corporations under the guise of global governance.
Despite the draconian intentions of the bill, many respected alternative agriculture experts like Michael Pollan and Grist have given their lukewarm blessing to the bill as “as step in the right direction.” Controversial bills typically have enough seemingly logical solutions that become the focus of selling new regulations. This bill is no different, as it gives the appearance of cracking down on large factory farms, exempting small family farms, creating better tracing methods for the origin of food-borne diseases, and certainly injects more financial resources into government agencies tasked with regulating food. All of these were sold to the public amidst the fear of massive egg and meat recalls because of E. coli and Salmonella contamination.
We should know by now that nearly all legislation is not written or read by our elected officials, but rather by heavy-handed corporate interests who seek nothing less than total domination over their industries. Yet, the public is still easily swayed.
The second piece of legislation that was flushed out of the Judiciary Committee last week with a 19-0 vote is the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). This bill is pure tyranny against Internet freedom. In other words, they’re not even using the guise of protecting the people to hammer this one home. This bill seeks to arbitrarily create an Internet “Blacklist” of domains, much like the arbitrary “Terror Watch List.” The government is seeking the power to shut access to sites it flags . . . no judge, no evidence, no jury. The law will also apply to websites hosted outside the U.S. where the corporate-government will claim global control over information on the Internet. The government plans to enforce the blocking of these Blacklisted websites by using major Internet service providers (ISPs).
To demonstrate how draconian this bill is, Copyright Laws are already very clear where if a media corporation can demonstrate that a given website used their material against Fair Use rights, they can be sued individually for damages. This new law will bypass the current legal system of innocent until proven guilty with no warnings, presentation of evidence of wrong-doing, or determination of fault by a jury of peers. Although the legislation is said to be focused on sharing movies, music, and television shows; the copyright violations are defined very broadly and will surely extend to any usage of Associated Press or Reuters stories (or the like) and/or images.
This broad definition will essentially put all alternative news websites in violation despite their Fair Use rights. In fact, nearly every article or commentary about world events that is covered by independent news organizations that quote or link to mainstream media stories as a reference may be in violation (including this article you’re reading). The COICA will effectively crush any opposition to the mainstream media’s domination on the currently free and open world wide web. If properly debated and dissected there is no way this bill would be passed, hence the rushing to pass it under a quiet Congressional session.
Both of these bills will likely become laws given their overwhelming support in Congress. When enacted, the corporate-government tyranny will begin to work stealthily to regulate their competition out of the marketplace. By the time the vast majority of people realize this tyranny, it will be too late to complain as the independent voices will assuredly be Blacklisted from any debate.
