A lesson for Rep. Smith on net
I can explain to Rep. Lamar Smith what net neutrality means, since he indicated he did not understand it (Firing Line, April 9). Net neutrality is the underlying principle of a free and open Internet that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. These Internet Service Provider companies, from whom you took at least $10,000 each from Verizon and AT&T just last year, will take away our ability to access information by charging higher prices and essentially squeezing out the "little guy" content providers who can't afford to pay. These companies had nothing to do with inventing the Internet, the World Wide Web or Web browsers. While their infrastructure costs money, they were heavily subsidized for this with our tax dollars, and they already charge for both bandwidth and access. Don't be fooled into thinking that these companies would not continue to provide these services and innovate if they did not have this additional revenue stream, which will only serve to enrich their shockingly high level of profits.
Here in Texas, the big telecoms lobbied and passed through bad legislation in 2005 that ensured they wouldn't have to provide access for poor communities. And there is more proposed legislation this session providing additional subsidies to entice these companies to provide the access they should have been providing in the first place.
The reason the Internet has succeeded is precisely because of net neutrality, not in spite of it. This standard has been in place since the Internet's inception, and allowing these companies to decide what information we can and cannot access by being a gatekeeper goes against First Amendment principles.
As for your laying claim to subjecting AT&T to the same antitrust laws that apply to every other company in our country, I am confused as to why that required an amendment to the telecom bill, since supposedly they are already subject to those laws. The number of available options we have as consumers for Internet service providers is dismal. This and the rising costs of Internet service are indicators of an oligopoly.
While the FCC may be undertaking studies of this issue, the quality of that research is often questionable. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin controls who takes on those studies, and he has proven that he has much more time to spend with telecom lobbyists than in town hall meetings regarding communications issues. You said you would prefer to leave matters of net neutrality to the courts and the FCC to decide on a case-by-case basis, but our legislation guiding these new technologies is far outdated. Congress needs to overhaul the Telecommunications Act in a way that recognizes information as a public resource, instead of treating it as any other commodity to be exploited in the free market.
Angie Yowell Public affairs graduate student April 9, 2007
Phone, cable lines already laid
Lamar Smith seems to think that the telecom industry has come upon hard times. The fact of the matter is that everyone gets their Internet one of three ways: dial-up or DSL over phone lines or cable. Both cable lines and phone lines exist to serve a pre-existing purpose, and having the Internet flow through them is a lucky strike for telecom companies. Allowing these companies to charge for access to sites, as would be allowed without net neutrality, is like saying if you convert an old lawn mower engine to power your home-built go-kart, you should have to pay the lawn mower's manufacturer again for something they already built. Granted the Internet is a heck of a go-kart, but it's still an entity cobbled together from pre-existing parts - namely PCs and the lines that now connect them. Also, most companies who have laid down cable or phone line have some ISP within them, so they are already getting paid for this secondary use of their product.
There's also the basic fairness argument presented in the column Smith attempts to rebut. The information on the Internet should be treated the same. Even opening the door to a possibility of companies charging people to access certain sites and outright denying access to others is equivalent to being an accessory to extortion. While such behavior may not occur if net neutrality is removed, it's a distinct (and given the monopolistic tendencies of the telecom industry lately, more than likely) possibility.
So with these companies already receiving a payment for their services as an ISP, the one basic premise Smith supposes in his letter is void. But then again, Smith is a politician, and they follow their bribers' - I mean contributors' - wishes well.
Hopefully, Smith can learn to be the exception rather than the rule, but if not, hopefully UT students will wise-up and vote out their representative, as he's not representing their views and interests.
Jason Michael Actuarial sciences Junior April 10, 2007
No consensus on human impact
Contrary to what Chris Jones claims in his column ("Ignoring warning signs as world warms," April 10), nearly all scientists and political figures agree global warming is occurring. He uses the misleading term "anti-global warming," which is not what these people are. They question the anthropogenic (human-caused) theory of why it is occurring, not the planet's actual warming.
What these scientists are questioning is the "fact" that humans are, without a doubt, the entire cause of global warming, which is what Al Gore's alarmist propaganda leads the average citizen to believe. I encourage everyone to watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle," available for free online. It is a response to Gore that carefully dissects the claim of carbon dioxide causing global warming and gives reasons why everyone has suddenly jumped on the bandwagon.
As proper reading of the "hockey stick" graph Gore depends so heavily on will show, carbon dioxide levels rise as a result of global warming, not the other way around. There is a lag of roughly 800 years between warming trends and rising carbon dioxide levels. In addition, humans account for only 3 percent of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year. Calculate this into the percentage of the atmosphere that is carbon dioxide (0.035 percent), and you see how big of an effect humans have on the weather. The primary greenhouse gas isn't even carbon dioxide - it is, in fact, water vapor. Should we drain the oceans to stop global warming?
My liberal counterpart might say yes.
Chris Jones Economics and government sophomore April 10, 2007
U.S. indeed armed Hussein
Salil Puri writes, "The U.S. did not provide Iraq with any weapons" ("Revising history on U.S. and Iraq," April 6). He makes just two tenuous citations to back his assertion, one of which was debunked by a graduate student in Monday's Firing Line. The other is a reference to a "1990 episode of PBS' 'Frontline', 'The Long Road to War.'" That episode is from 2003, not 1990, and it does not probe the arming of Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, except to quote an earlier episode of 'Frontline' titled "The Arming of Iraq," in which a retired CIA officer says, "We would go to an office, and we would sit down with our Iraqi military friends, and they would give us tea and sometimes a nice lunch. And they had no illusions about us, and we had certainly had no illusions about them."
A cursory browsing of the Internet turns up mountains of evidence revealing how the United States sent weapons to Iraq. Either Puri is intentionally lying as he crusades against the left, or he does not know how to research. Award-winning journalist Alan Friedman wrote the 455-page "Spider's Web: the Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq." In it, Friedman documents how the highest levels of the U.S. government knew Saddam Hussein was more than willing to use germ and poisonous weapons against the Iranian military and the Iraqi population. The former director of the Centers for Disease Control admitted in a 1995 letter that "the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985 - samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases."
The Los Angeles Times reported in 1991 that Hussein bought dozens of U.S. helicopters, transferred them to his military, used them to drop gas bombs on Kurdish civilians in 1988, and that U.S. intelligence sources "believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs." In that massacre's aftermath, the Reagan administration killed a Senate measure that would have outlawed the sale of U.S. technology to Iraq. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Even the right-wing New York Times columnist William Safire wrote in 1992 that "Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [the U.S., Britain and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
Though ineffective in its tactics to dismantle the war machine or end the occupation, the anti-war movement has been right from day one about the role the United States has played in supporting Hussein's military apparatus, in contributing to the suffering of Iraqis under his dictatorship and post-Gulf War sanctions and in perpetuating that oppression in the form of military occupation (including the use of cluster bombs and white phosphorous) today. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead and their country in shambles because of the willful distortions of U.S. leaders and the ignorance of those who believe them. I submit that The Daily Texan should not be filling its pages with Puri's dishonest tirades, but instead should more forcefully confront the brutality of the U.S. corporate-state here and abroad.
Ansel Herz Journalism junior April 9, 2007
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