The Daily Kos has created a web page, Write and send an email to the FCC: Create real net neutrality rules, to facilitate your sending a message to the FCC.

Two months ago, because of enormous amounts of grassroots activism opposed to FCC Chairman Tim Wheeler’s proposal to allow internet “fast lanes,” the Chairman held a small meeting with open internet advocates, including Daily Kos.

In that meeting, Chairman Wheeler made it clear that personal comments from real people, telling real stories about how the end of net neutrality would impact them personally, are the comments he reads and gives the most credence to.

The deadline for comments is July 15, 2014.  If you don’t want to use the web page on The Daily Kos, you can write or email by yourself.

Open Internet Comments
Phone:1-888-225-5322
Email:openinternet@fcc.gov
Docket number: 14-28 protecting an open internet

Below is the comment that I sent.

Net neutrality is absolutely essential for the survival of this country.  I am able to read news from a wide variety of sources that only publish on the internet.  These are independent sources of the news that are not focused on promoting corporate interests.

These are the only sources that can check the power of corporations to control our laws and our economy.

If we let corporations decide who gets access and who does not on the internet just as they have managed to do in the print and broadcast media, then any chance of rescuing this nation by non-violent means may be lost.

Does the FCC realize the important balance that they hold in their hands?  You might be able to tell your children  and grandchildren that you were the last bastion, you stood for the people, and you saved the nation.

An email from Elizabeth Warren sent me to her web page, Fight back against Hobby Lobby: Support the Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act.

If we’re going to respond to Hobby Lobby, it’s got to be through a legislative fix. Today, my Democratic colleagues and I are fighting to do what the Supreme Court failed to do: to protect the basic rights of American women and families.

Led by Senators Patty Murray and Mark Udall, we’ve just introduced a new bill – the Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act.

The bill reverses the Supreme Court’s decision by making it clear that employers cannot deny access to any of the health benefits required by the ACA – not immunizations, not blood transfusions, not HIV treatments, and not birth control – while preserving reasonable accommodations for religiously exempt employers.

It’s about time we had a bunch of progressive Senators who did not give up just because there was a minor setback.  They are starting to realize that you can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  The way you do it is  to use the opposition’s tactical advances against them.  They may have won 5 votes in the Supreme Court, but they haven’t seen how many votes they will lose in November.

The Real News Network has the interview Growing Up Privileged in Apartheid, Colonial Israel – Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (1/5).

Mr. Hever says he became politically active after the Second Intifada was repressed with extreme violence by the Israeli military and police –   July 9, 2014

Note: We are in the process of fixing the audio issue that appears around the 20 minute mark. Thank you for your patience

Note: I have update the video. Presumably this version has the audio problem fixed.

The discussion of some history in around 1920 in Israel, I found particularly interesting. This history contradicts a response I got from a comment I made on the Jerusalem Post web site on the article Iron Dome intercepts rocket over central Israel, sirens sound in Tel Aviv.

The response I received was a quote from David Ben Gurion:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti – Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
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David Ben-Gurion quotes (Polish born Israeli Statesman and Prime Minister (1948-53, 1955-63). Chief architect of the state of Israel and revered as Father of the Nation, 1886-1973)

Perhaps mistakenly, I took this as an attempt to connect Hitler and anti-Semitism to the Palestinians’ behavior with regard to Israel.

The Real News Network shows some of the reasons for the Arab residents of what is now Israel to dislike what was being done to them already in the 1920s. This is not part of the story I learned about Israeli history from my family and from my Hebrew school.

On of the concepts mentioned in the video was Hebrew Labor. The previous entry is to the Wikipedia entry on the topic. You can apply as many grains of salt as you apply to anything you read about the middle east. The article seems pretty even handed, but how do I really know what the reality was?

If we could only get passed the who did what to whom in the past, we might be able to get to everyone is a human being now and should be treated as such.

July 10, 2014

Here is the second segment of the interview – Fear and Loathing in Israel – Shir Hever on Reality Asserts Itself (2/5). The title more reflects the interviewers preconceived notions than it does the notions of the interviewee.

The interviewee’s understanding is far more nuanced than the interviewer’s. Perhaps the impact of this interview on Paul Jay will occur later as he has a chance to mull over what he heard. I guess it is too much to expect him to change his point of view while the interview is being conducted.

I think it is too easy to decry the racism of a person who is mortally afraid of an existential threat when you are able to view the situation from the relative safety of living in another country. This is not a defense of the racism, but a statement on being so disingenuous about its existence. Perhaps a minor quibble? However, still one that bothers me.

Patient:

It hurts when I touch my toes without bending my knees

Doctor:

So, bend your knees.

Patient:

Yeah, why didn’t I think of that? You idiot, I am trying to talk about my symptoms, but you only care about making sarcastic remarks.