Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese at Popular Resistance write about the essential need to keep fighting for net neutrality:
A critical fight in the next two weeks is net neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is scheduled to vote to dismantle net neutrality on December 14 at its public hearing. This effort, led by Verizon lawyer and current FCC chair Ajit Pai, is likely to succeed unless we escalate our actions leading up to the vote. Even one of the sitting FCC commissioners is asking for the public to stop the FCC from passing Pai’s plan.
Net neutrality is fundamental. The Internet has become an integral part of our lives and critical for Freedom of Speech and political organizing in the 21st Century. [...]
A large coalition of organizations worked together in 2014 and 2015 to win net neutrality. That coalition came together again this year after Pai announced his plans. Activity in favor of net neutrality is rapidly growing and the coalition is expanding through the efforts of thousands of concerned people. [...]
Here is a list of actions you can take to save net neutrality:
1. Visit BattlefortheNet.com to contact your member of Congress. Congress can pressure the FCC to slow or stop the vote. Spread the word to others and encourage them to call too. Already, over 700,000 have called.
2. On December 7, join the national day of protests at Verizon stores. Visit VerizonProtests.com to find an action near you or to plan one. You will be provided with tools for your action. December 7 is also the night of the “Telecom Prom.” If you are in the Washington, DC area, consider joining the rally that evening outside of it. Contact Eleanor@PopularResistance.org for more information.
3. On December 13 and 14, join the actions to #StopTheVote. A march is planned in the morning at 10:00 starting at the FCC (12th St and Maine Ave., SW, near L’Enfant Plaza). Click here for the march Facebook page. After the march, we will continue to rally at the FCC all night and into the morning to send a strong message to the commissioners and to stop the vote. We will do light projection, leaflet employees and have other activities through the night and morning. Visit the Facebook page here.
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QUOTATION
“The land belongs to the future … that’s the way it seems to me. How many names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.”
~Willa Cather, 1913
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2008—KBR, Halliburton sued for sickening U.S. troops:
KBR and Halliburton are the targets of a new class-action lawsuit alleging that U.S. troops have been sickened by water, food and fumes produced by the two massive private contractors, according to the Army Times. The details of the charges laid out in the lawsuit are macabre:
The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that "still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces."
Eller also accuses KBR of failing to maintain a medical incinerator at Joint Base Balad, which has been confirmed by two surgeons in interviews with Military Times about the Balad burn pit. Instead, according to the lawsuit and the physicians, medical waste, such as needles, amputated body parts and bloody bandages were burned in the open-air pit.
"Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains," the lawsuit states. "The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths, to the great distress of the U.S. forces."
The troops that the contractors so love to claim to support are not only being exposed to toxic fumes and scenes of wild dogs dragging off body parts. No, they're getting extra treats in their rotten food as well