U.S. And Indian Blogs Censored

The Indian government has blocked all bloggers including blogspot.com.

Officials are answering no questions as to why all blogs have been blocked. There is no estimate in regard to when or if blogs will be allowed and freedom of opinion on the Internet restored.

When the New York Times called India's secretary for telecommunications, D. S. Mathur, he hung up the phone.

The Indian government is citing "security" reasons and alluding to the possibility that something in one of the blogs could be used by terrorists. For that they blocked them all.

Tell me this couldn't happen in the United States and I have a bridge you can buy.

Notably, the United States government just fired Christine Axsmith on Monday after C.I.A. officials objected to a message she posted - on an internal blog - that criticized the interrogation technique called "waterboarding.

[This from an anonymous post: "The modern practice of waterboarding involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation."]

In March 2005 J. Porter Goss - the incompetent flack Bush appointed to head the C.I.A. - described waterboarding as a "professional interrogation technique."

Ms. Axsmith expressed the opinion on an interdepartmental C.I.A. blog - not accessible by the public or news media - that "waterboarding is torture and torture is wrong."

She is of the opinion that the majority of C.I.A. employees are against torture. She also believes that if they are allowed to express their frustrations on the blog - since C.I.A. workers are often prohibited from discussing their work (and their opinions about their work) even with other agency officials - they may have less desire to go public with their concerns.

[Imagine not being able to talk about things that bother you at work. That's the pressure employees of the C.I.A. are under.]

"The blogs are a safety valve for people to discuss controversial topics," she said. "It reduces the chances that people may leak to the press."

I'm sure she's sincere in that opinion. However, there is always the possibility that they could realize they are, virtually, of one mind and decide they are not going to be puppets of a government that is acting immorally.

They might unite and rebel and threaten to walk out en mass. What would BushCo do? Fire them all? They might be able to exert power and say: stop the torture or we're walking out; we're going to the media.

After all, these people are highly educated, experienced and they see the inside picture. They know what's going on. They have high morals and no one can question their loyalty. They went into the C.I.A. to protect their country.

Yet all these people are faced with a moral question of how do I keep quiet and how do I allow myself to be used by an immoral administration? Yet they know they have to, not just to keep their jobs but to get any job after they're fired.

Like Ms. Axsmith, they can - acting individually - have their careers and security clearances erased in a nanosecond. That is a horrible dilemna and one, I'm sure, that this government doesn't want them acknowledging or discussing among themselves.

BushCo and his puppets at the C.I.A. want to keep people divided, uncertain, cowed.

Bottom line, these two examples just add evidence to why Net Neutrality is so important. Censorship is just waiting to happen. And once this Bush loving Congress sells us out, telecos will be able to block blogs, news, sites - anything they don't like or which doesn't pay them enough.

By the way, Ms. Axsmith has a public blog here on blogspot.com entitled Econo-Girl.

She says she guesses she has too big a mouth to be affiliated with the C.I.A. I say the mouths of the others are too small.

When we are judged as a nation - as Germany was for the Holocaust - Bush isn't the only one who is going to be held accountable for the war in Iraq, torture, etc. Our entire nation - and all of us - will be indicted by history, that is if there is any history after Global Warming sets in.

Which creates a segueway for the last story.

Bush ordered a change in NASA's mission statement.

He had "to protect and understand our home planet" deleted in order to stop NASA's involvement in gathering information on Global Warming, among other environmental concerns. He obviously intends to continue destroying Earth - and us - full speed ahead.