Figurehead of America’s 2-party dictatorship, President Barack Obama, announced plans today to impose sanctions against any regime caught stifling protests by blocking Internet access. That is, any regime except their own.
See, when Iran and Syria squash digitized dissent, it’s a terrible thing and adds to the pretense that these Arab states are most certainly evil. But if the God-blessed United States of America opts to do the same to its own people, well, that is simply protection of the nation’s interests.
Like last year when San Fransisco police blocked mobile service to quell a peaceful protest.
Or how about the hundreds of web pages censored by the US, many of which were non-US sites, taken offline by seizing control of international DNS servers – the address book of the web.
And don’t forget about PIPA (now defunct), ACTA (on the ropes), SOPA (shutdown by protests), and the new CISPA (aka SOPA 2.0), all of which are clumsy bills designed to put ultimate control over the Internet in the hands of a few government agents with no public oversight.
But it doesn’t matter if America censors Americans, because America is exempt from the same expectations they demand from the rest of the world. It’s called good, old-fashioned exceptionalism, and it’s what lets questionable nations judge others without first being judged themselves.
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Tags: acta, censorship, CISPA, hypocrisy, sopa, states, united