Posted by elsi

@all the guys saying that the Houthies hit a nuclear reactor:

Please, stop spreading that lie!

Inform yourself a bit (in case you are not willingly disinforming here and infiltrating in your posts the typical sentence you are responsible for leaking today/ this week…, as I have witnessed is the custom in all the so called “US alt-media” by “commenters” and “analysts” ) to know that the nuclear central that was hit in UAE is still under construction and so there was no nuclear reactor there. The attack was made as a warning to the UAE for them to avoid meddling to provoke divisions and seditions amongst Yemeni resistance, since most probably the Houthis saw the move by Saleh, trying to turn the military against them, as a plot coming from his former companion of cabinet Hadi ( who is supported by UAE ) from Aden. The blockade was planned to prepare the field, debilitating the Houthies for the following coup by Saleh in Sana´a, which would be followed by the offensive coming from Aden by Hadi and his proxies to take over Sana´a and the North.

The leader of Ansarolah, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, explains everything that happened here ( In Spanish).

http://www.hispantv.com/noticias/yemen/361519/muerte-abdula-saleh-ansarola-huties

Related to the guy who has doubts about B´s analyses, I cannot but agree. First, on what facts/ sources does he base his statements that Saleh was operated on by the Russians?… Is it not a way to connect the Russians with Saleh and try to bring them into the Yemeni conflict, where they are not taking part in any way? The same way attempts are made to bring them into every conflict in the world so as to get them deep in the mud? Fortunately, they have avoided it in Ukraine, Syria and so on. From my point of view, the fact that the Russians could mantain their embassy at Sana´a could well be due to the more trust they have from all the Yemeni people based on their history of not meddling in the country, and support received from the USSR. Just they are not so hated as the US Americans and full stop.

Second, we have this insistence on Saleh as an “agent of peace”, which today fits perfectly with the MSM tune,in spite of him being such a “snake”….

Third, for two or three days I have spent here, I have met at least one article praising Flynn, who was of the same ideology as all the alt-righters and nazis who constituted the Trump initial administration. He was at the head of Breitbart Journalism and co-authored a book, with a certain Ledeen, promoting war on Iran and Islam, the same Ledeen who also wrote another book about spreading International Fascism to achieve a New Fascist World Order…

Last but not least, I am finding amongst this charming commentariat the same flatterers I have met at The Saker, Fort Russ, The Duran, and so on…Curiously, or not so, they never disagree with anything the “analysts” at every one of those sites could wrote, which leads me to think that they are nothing but ‘bots’. Curiously, or not so, they are expanding here more than usual, this time by linking Twitter comments by supposed Yemenis who are all pro-Saleh…. Well, yesterday, I took the trouble to read a bit along one of the Twitters linked here, that of “Ammar Aulaqi”, offered here as a reliable source on events in Yemen, and got to understand that the guy has double US and Yemeni citizenship…Despite seeming to love very much his country by publishing beautiful photos and worrynig a lot about the children, he was in support of Saleh all the way, to the extent that, in front of a photo of a table full of bottles of vodka which was taken at Saleh´s hideout after it was taken over by the Houthies, he found such a habit “cool”…It is beyond me why a double nationalized US citizen could anytime consider anything good could come for the Yemeni people so loved by him from a traitor who left its people languish in poverty for decades and besides swallowed about 10 or more bottles of vodka daily with his peers…. Of course, seeing his photo in profile, disguised as a prince of KSA and the kind of Yemeni “diwans” he post as a sample of Yemeni homes ( huge, ugly and extravagant westernized diwans not in the reach, and mainly not in the taste, of most of the Yemeni people ) one cannot but conclude that, in any case, he is most probably one of the few who benefitted from Saleh´s long rule and so had the opportunity to go studying in the US, if not because of, besides, sharing the same ideology and plans for the future of Yemen….

Of course, all these Twitter accounts could well also be fake….

Is peace plan based on the Trump’s peace plan which is derived from the Saudi peace plan? Thanks Mr. Trump.

A diplomatic plan being formulated by the United States to renew the peace process between Israel and the PA, according to Yisrael Hayom. According the London-based Arabic-language Al-Arabi Al-Jadid, American diplomats in Cairo, who wished to remain anonymous, have confirmed the reports.

Under the temporary plan, said to be acceptable to Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, there would first be reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas that will allow the PA to hold power in Gaza. Israel and the PA would discuss the gradual establishment of full PA control of Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria. In accordance with the progress of the political process and the negotiations between the sides, a summit would be held in Cairo, with the participation of Egypt, Jordan, the United States, Israel and the PA, in which the parties would discuss ways to facilitate the continuation of the diplomatic process and expand the authority of the independent state to Gaza.

In the last stage of the plan, discussions would begin on a predefined timetable regarding core issues, such as the status of eastern Jerusalem, the annexation of large blocs of Jewish communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Line, the complete freeze of construction in isolated communities and the uprooting of communities that are not part of the blocs based on land swaps and a solution to the refugee issue.

Report: Secret Saudi plan includes Israeli nuclear disarmament

Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar says it has received a letter from Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to Crown Prince Muhammad Salman in which he summarizes discussions and recommendations on a project to establish relations between the Saudis and Israel, according to what he called the strategic partnership agreement with the United States.

Citing Al-Akhbar, Maariv reports the document, which includes Israeli nuclear disarmament, proves what has been leaked since US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia last May, according to which Washington will begin efforts to sign a peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel, including reciprocal visits, to Tel Aviv, headed by a recent secret visit by the crown prince. The document also includes “the size of the concessions that Riyadh will present in order to end the Palestinian issue,” as well as “its concerns about receiving support against Iran and Hezbollah.”

Just reported by HispanTV News : “The Yemeni popular movement Ansarolah accuses former President Ali Abdullah Saleh of organizing a coup against his alliance. Call on all groups to maintain the unity and stability of the country”.

It seems that the clashes between the two factions are circunscribed to the city of Sana´a.

Yemeni people should learn from the Lebanese people on how mantaining the unity of the country is a must to avoid being exterminated by the “Axis of Evil”.
Of course, something must be done for the relief of the suffering of the civil population and achieve the rising of blockade, but to give up the fight just to get Saleh at the helms again is like if all this years of sacrifice would have bee for nothing.

When I visited Yemen, almost a decade and a half ago, under Saleh rule, poverty was widespread there, people was said to eat only one meal a day, and the only people who had a university degree were those original from former Popular Democratic Republic in the South, who had had the opportunity to study in Cuba and the USSR, being at that time no opportunity for nothing except allowing them working as travel guides, with the most ambitious amongst them wishing to leave the country not seeing any future at all there.
I can remember people affected by Poliomyelitis, a disase already erradicated in our developed world, like that man who was oblied to walk bent, like an animal, with two wooden blocks in his hands as if they were shoes…..Also I remember getting very impressed by a little girl playing with other children in the old city of Saada, who had one of her eyes completely in process of destruction by a serious infection,..Both her and the other children seemed to accept such a tragic destiny as a natural curse….

Before my travel, as usual, I had read a bit about the country, and amongst the things I had read was about some kidnapping of tourists which were taken place for to exert pressure on the government for providing electricity or water to the village or any other thing like this. They were adding at those readings that the kidnapped tourists were always so well treated that there had been cases where the tourists had asked for remaining some aditional days in the village when their liberation was about to come….Such friendly, warm and kindhearted is the people living in Arabia Félix….They do not deserve such a leader as Saleh who, most probably, will loot all the funds coming for reconstruction….

During this travel, my group, as the proletarian travelers we were, stayed at humble hotels and people´s homes, but, for one day we stayed in a four stars hotel at Maareb, most probably because there was no other option in that conflictive zone very hostile to the government, only for four hours of sleep before starting the crossing of Ramlat Al Sab´atayn desert to get to Hadramawt valley, the only guests I could see at that hotel were a group of about four tall anglosaxon guys wearing caps….Although at that time I was very young and ignorant about what was being cooked around the world, while I was having a funny time with my travel companions,they did not go unnoticed by me and I got to think that they only could be CIA agents…well, they were not tourists, I can asure you…..I really wondered what the hell they were doing there….

“QUESTION: I’m Marek Walkuski, Polish Public Radio.

MS NAUERT: Okay. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the State Department.

QUESTION: Deputy Assistant Secretary McCarrick told a group of European journalists that, I quote, “We don’t see the possibility that Nord Stream 2 is going to be built. That is not something that we are going to assume is going to happen.” Could you explain what is the statement based on? And I’m wondering if the topic has been discussed during the meeting between Secretary Tillerson and German foreign minister and what’s the conclusion of their discussion if, in fact, it was one of the topics.

MS NAUERT: Yeah. I can tell you that that conversation did not come up. The Secretary and the foreign minister had a very positive meeting in which they talked about the DPRK, North Korea. They talked about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the importance of Saudi Arabia opening additional ports and ways that we can get humanitarian aid into Yemen. They talked about a few other matters as well. Nord Stream 2 was not one of the topics that came up in my presence. Now, they may have had a separate sideline conversation that I did not witness, so that may have come up.

In terms of where exactly we are on Nord Stream 2 – pardon me one second – another topic related to that is the multi-line Turkish Stream, as I understand it. So our position on this would be that Europe is certainly working to try to diversify where it gets its energy. I’ve spoken with some of your colleagues before, people from that part of the world as well, and recognizing that there should be and could be more sources of energy. We have seen in the very cold winter months where Vladimir Putin – which is where a lot of your energy comes from in particular in Poland – where he will turn down, turn off those energy supplies, causing costs to go up and causing people to lose heat on occasion. So we know that Europe is working to diversify its energy sector overall. It’s also assessing projects that would undermine some of these efforts.

We agree with many of our European partners that Nord Stream 2 and a multi-line Turkish Stream would reinforce Russian dominance in Europe’s gas markets. It would reduce opportunities for diversification of energy sources. It would pose security risks in an already tense Baltic Sea region and it would advance Russia’s goal of undermining Ukraine – that’s a particular concern of ours – by ending Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Russian gas exports to get to Europe. Construction of Nord Stream 2 would concentrate about 75 percent of Russian gas imports to the EU through a single route, creating a potential checkpoint that would significantly increase Europe’s vulnerability to a supply disruption. So we believe that these two projects would enable Gazprom to cut off transit via Ukraine and still meet demand in Western Europe, which would economically undermine Ukraine by depriving it of about $2 billion in annual transit revenue. Okay?

QUESTION: But is this statement correct, that you don’t believe that the project would be built, that Nord Stream 2 would be built? And Secretary Tillerson called recently the Nord Stream 2 unwise. What are you doing to stop this unwise project?

MS NAUERT: So, sir, I don’t have the Secretary’s comments in front of me, so I hesitate to comment on having something that I —

QUESTION: Two days ago at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

MS NAUERT: I understand. I understand. I just don’t have the exact quote in front of me.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS NAUERT: So I’m not – I’m just not going to comment on that. And the other person who made a remark, I don’t – I’m afraid I don’t have that with me either, so – okay?

QUESTION: Yes.

QUESTION: Can we move on? Heather, can we move on please?

MS NAUERT: Thanks. Yeah, North Korea.”

Question 1:

…’The only thing Iran has done was loft a satellite into low earth orbit at 300 miles altitude and the neocons freak that this is a cover for an ICBM program, uh-no. That doesn’t get you much…

Question 2:

Iran is propelling the rocket up to an altitude of 300 miles, so even if you double it to guesstimate the horizontal range, that’s only 600 miles…
…They are pushing satellites into orbit but that doesn’t allow them to test warhead reentry technology.
…Other than the general connection to rocketry, is there anything unique to launching satellites that makes it ICBM specific…’

I understand your desire to keep some here from deflecting this ‘rocket’ issue onto Iran…and that is commendable…

However…your complete lack of any technical knowledge about space flight does not help the discussion…

For one thing…putting a spacecraft into orbit is a Very Big Deal…
Once a spacecraft is in low earth orbit…it flies around the earth about once every 90 minutes…
That means it could hit anywhere on earth within 90 minutes…
Your second comment about the altitude reached has absolutely nothing to do with orbit…
In a nutshell…it’s not about altitude…it’s all about speed…
Here is a simple primer in physics that even high-school students should know…and surely do in countries like North Korea…
Question…how does a satellite in orbit…i.e. flying around the earth…stay there…?
It is explained by two forces pulling in opposite directions being in equilibrium…as per Newton’s Third Law…
In the case of a satellite the force pulling it to the earth is the acceleration of earth’s gravity…which is 9.8 meters per second squared…[32.2 ft/s^2]
Obviously if there is no equal and opposite force to counter earth’s gravitational pull…the satellite will come down instead of staying in orbit…
That equal and opposite force is the centrifugal force acting on the satellite…
We all know what centrifugal force is…remember the spinning a water bucket around demonstration…or the hammer throw in Olympics…where that guy spins a heavy ball on the end of a chain around and then releases it…
Well…that satellite flying around earth at Very High Speed is exactly like that ball…
The chain is like the force of gravity holding it in an ‘orbit’ as the guy spins around…
While he’s holding on to it the two forces are in equilibrium…but at some point the centrifugal force overcomes his ability to hold on…and off she goes…
With a spacecraft in orbit we want to achieve just the right speed in order to keep the centrifugal force in equilibrium with the earth’s gravitational pull…
It is a simple calculation of basic algebra…

Centrifugal force = mass x velocity squared / radius…
The gravitational pull on the vehicle = mass x g
where g is the acceleration of gravity…i.e. 9.8 m/s^2…
since the two are in equilibrium we get…
m x V^2 / r = mass x 9.8 m/s
where m is mass of the vehicle…r is earth’s radius…and V is velocity of the vehicle…
since the mass of the vehicle is the same value…it cancels out on both sides of the equation and we are left with…
V^2 / r = 9.8
We can now solve for the velocity of the vehicle by rearranging that equation…
i.e….V = sqrt(r x 9.8)
the radius of the earth is roughly 6,000 km [or six million meters]
So now we find the velocity required to reach orbit…
V = sqrt( 6,000,000 x 9.8) = 7,668 m/s…or 7.67 km/s…

that’s 17,153 mph…
Why is this a big deal…?
…because it has to do with the capability of the rocket propulsion to reach that Speed…
We recall from the early days of the space race that the Russians launched the first satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957…
The US launched its first satellite in 1958…Explorer 1…but we note that its mass was less than one fifth that of sputnik…[14 kg vs 84 kg]…
…which means the Russian rocket was more than five times as powerful…
Then in 1961…the Russians launched the first man into ORBIT…on the Vostok 1…
Then just weeks later…the US launched its first man into space…But Not Orbit…
Alan Shepard’s Mercury Redstone 3 Rocket was able to achieve a maximum speed of only 5,134 mph…
…which is less than one-third the Velocity needed to reach ORBIT…
We also note the launch mass of the MR3 vehicle was less than half that of the Vostok…
It wasn’t until a year later, 1962, that John Glenn became the first US man in Orbit…on the Mercury Atlas 6 rocket…
We note again that the mass of the MA6 vehicle was only 1,300 kg…barely a quarter that of the 4,700 kg Vostok 1…
those two cardinal parameters…ie Orbital Velocity…and Payload…speak directly to the rocket capability…
It was crystal clear that the Russians had a big lead in rocket engine technology…
The fact that the Iranians can put a vehicle in orbit…no matter its mass…also speaks to an advanced rocket capability…ie being able to reach Orbital Velocity…
The North Koreans are in a different league now…this is an impressive rocket and there can be little doubt that it has intercontinental range…
Incidentally ICBMs aren’t designed to reach orbital velocity…there is a tradeoff between payload and maximum velocity…i.e….cut down the payload and you get more velocity…which is what the US did in the early years to try to keep up…
A Typical ICBM will only need to reach as little as 4 to 5 km/s…but modern Russian and US typically go to over 6 km/s…
They do not enter orbit because there is a prohibition on weapons in orbit that everyone has signed…but the US considers that it is within the law if it launches a weapon that does not make one full orbit…
Of course the Russians can play that game too… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System
B brought to light some good technical points here including the details on the rocket engine turbo-pump…which is the heart of the machine…
Their progress has been incredible. I didn’t get a good view of this new rocket, but their previous liquid fuel rockets burned extremely cleanly. After initial launch there was virtually no smoke at all. Even stranger is the precision that they achieved with the guidance systems; the things went exactly where they wanted them to go. This is all very mystifying.

Russia will build an alternative to the system of Domain Name Servers, sanctions-proofing its internet

RT

The Russian Security Council has asked the country’s government to develop an independent internet infrastructure for BRICS nations, which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions.

The initiative was discussed at the October meeting of the Security Council, which is Russia’s top consultative body on national security. President Vladimir Putin personally set a deadline of August 1, 2018 for the completion of the task, the RBC news agency reported.

While discussing the issue, members of the council noted that “the increased capabilities of western nations to conduct offensive operations in the informational space as well as the increased readiness to exercise these capabilities pose a serious threat to Russia’s security.”

They decided that the problem should be addressed by creating a separate backup system of Domain Name Servers (DNS), which would not be subject to control by international organizations. This system would be used by countries of the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

The issue of excessive dependency on global DNS has previously been addressed by Russia. In 2014, the Russian Communications Ministry conducted a major exercise in which it simulated the “switching off” of global internet services and used a Russian backup system to successfully support web operations inside the country.

However, when reporters asked Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov if the country’s authorities had been considering disconnecting from the global internet in 2014, Peskov dismissed these allegations as false.

“Russia’s disconnection from the global internet is of course out of the question,” Peskov told the Interfax news agency. However, the official also emphasized that “recently, a fair share of unpredictability is present in the actions of our partners both in the US and the EU, and we [Russia] must be prepared for any turn of events.”

“We all know who the chief administrator of the global internet is. And due to its volatility, we have to think about how to ensure our national security,” said Peskov. It’s not about disconnecting Russia from the World Wide Web, he added, but about “protecting it from possible external influence.”

Sent from my iPad

Patrick Buchanan: The US-Saudi Starvation Blockade

By Patrick J. Buchanan | November 27, 2017 |

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (Screenshot)

Our aim is to “starve the whole population — men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound — into submission,” said First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.

He was speaking of Germany at the outset of the Great War of 1914-1918. Americans denounced as inhumane this starvation blockade that would eventually take the lives of a million German civilians.

Yet when we went to war in 1917, a U.S. admiral told British Prime Minister Lloyd George, “You will find that it will take us only two months to become as great criminals as you are.”

After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, however, the starvation blockade was not lifted until Germany capitulated to all Allied demands in the Treaty of Versailles.

As late as March 1919, four months after the Germans laid down their arms, Churchill arose in Parliament to exult, “We are enforcing the blockade with rigor, and Germany is very near starvation.”

So grave were conditions in Germany that Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer protested to Lloyd George in Paris that morale among his troops on the Rhine was sinking from seeing “hordes of skinny and bloated children pawing over the offal from British cantonments.”

The starvation blockade was a war crime and a crime against humanity. But the horrors of the Second World War made people forget this milestone on the Western road to barbarism.

A comparable crime is being committed today against the poorest people in the Arab world — and with the complicity of the United States.

Saudi Arabia, which attacked and invaded Yemen in 2015 after Houthi rebels dumped over a pro-Saudi regime in Sanaa and overran much of the country, has imposed a land, sea and air blockade, after the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh this month that was shot down.

The Saudis say it was an Iranian missile, fired with the aid of Hezbollah, and an “act of war” against the kingdom. The Houthis admit to firing the missile, but all three deny Iran and Hezbollah had any role.

Whatever the facts of the attack, what the Saudis, with U.S. support, are doing today with this total blockade of that impoverished country appears to be both inhumane and indefensible.

Almost 90 percent of Yemen’s food, fuel and medicine is imported, and these imports are being cut off. The largest cities under Houthi control, the port of Hodaida and Sanaa, the capital, have lost access to drinking water because the fuel needed to purify the water is not there.

Thousands have died of cholera. Hundreds of thousands are at risk. Children are in danger from a diphtheria epidemic. Critical drugs and medicines have stopped coming in, a death sentence for diabetics and cancer patients.

If airfields and ports under Houthi control are not allowed to open and the necessities of life and humanitarian aid are not allowed to flow in, the Yemenis face famine and starvation.

What did these people do to deserve this? What did they do to us that we would assist the Saudis in doing this to them?

The Houthis are not al-Qaida or ISIS. Those are Sunni terrorist groups, and the Houthis detest them.

Is this now the American way of war? Are we Americans, this Thanksgiving and Christmas, prepared to collude in a human rights catastrophe that will engender a hatred of us among generations of Yemeni and stain the name of our country?

Saudis argue that the specter of starvation will turn the Yemeni people against the rebels and force the Houthi to submit. But what if the policy fails. What if the Houthis, who have held the northern half of the country for more than two years, do not yield? What then?

Are we willing to play passive observer as thousands and then tens of thousands of innocent civilians — the old, sick, weak, and infants and toddlers first — die from a starvation blockade supported by the mighty United States of America?

Without U.S. targeting and refueling, Saudi planes could not attack the Houthis effectively and Riyadh could not win this war. But when did Congress authorize this war on a nation that never attacked us?

President Obama first approved U.S. support for the Saudi war effort. President Trump has continued the Obama policy, and the war in Yemen has now become his war, and his human rights catastrophe.

Yemen today is arguably the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, and America’s role in it is undeniable and indispensable.

If the United States were to tell Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that we were no longer going to support his war in Yemen, the Saudis would have to accept the reality that they have lost this war.

Indeed, given Riyadh’s failure in the Syria civil war, its failure to discipline rebellious Qatar, its stalemated war and human rights disaster in Yemen, Trump might take a hard second look at the Sunni monarchy that is the pillar of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

“Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep. We want to accomplish three things:

One, we want the Americans to withdraw conventional forces from Europe. Two, we want them to withdraw nuclear forces from Europe. Three, we want the Americans to stop proceeding with Strategic Defense Initiative.”

Quote by: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931- ) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the last head of state of the USSR (1985-1991) Date: November 1987 Source: speech to the Soviet Politburo, November 1987

“The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe.”

– Mikhail Gorbachev

Net neutrality and the drive to censor the internet

Andre Damon, WSWS, Nov 25 2017

25 November 2017

Wednesday’s move by the Trump administration to end net neutrality marks a milestone in the offensive by the US government and major corporations to put an end to the free and open internet, paving the way for widespread government censorship of oppositional news and analysis.

Under the current law, upheld by numerous court decisions and reaffirmed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2015, companies that provide internet access to users, known as internet service providers (ISPs), cannot block or impede their users’ access to any website or service.

But the draft proposal published by FCC chairman Ajit Pai Wednesday, and expected to sail through the approval process next month, would put an end to the decades-long treatment of internet services as a public utility, allowing the internet monopolies Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon full ability to block, throttle and promote internet traffic at will.

This will allow them to block or limit access to websites, such as the World Socialist Web Site, WikiLeaks and other sources of politically critical news, entirely at their discretion, as well as peer-to-peer file sharing networks, which were used by news outlets to bypass censorship in the past.

The ending of net neutrality will also have a substantial economic impact. By scrapping most government regulation of the internet giants, the ISPs will be able to use their monopoly power to jack up prices for consumers. While most people will be relegated to a slow and largely censored internet, the ability to communicate information freely will be reserved for those who can pay exorbitant premium rates.

Moreover, by forcing content providers to pay for premium access, the ending of net neutrality threatens to massively entrench existing communications monopolies, while restricting access to smaller businesses and user-supported sites and services, which will not have the financial resources to compete with the technology and media giants. ISPs will be free to increase costs for smaller sites and services, potentially driving them out of business.

Major media outlets, which have for years been inveighing against the independent blogs, websites and other news outlets that gained readership at their expense, will no doubt seek to use the ruling to bring to bear their economic leverage to regain their former control over the political discourse.

The power that is being handed to a few corporations is staggering. The four largest telecommunications companies control more than 75 percent of high-speed internet service. More than half of American households have only one ISP to chose from, and most other households have only two providers to choose from.

Now, these giant monopolies, which have already demonstrated that they act as proxies for the government by collaborating in the NSA’s illegal mass surveillance programs, will be able to block access to entire websites.

While the major social media and content distribution companies, including Facebook and Google, have claimed to oppose the move, they do so entirely from the standpoint that ending net neutrality will give internet service providers greater power to compete with their businesses.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which owns YouTube, have made clear that they fully support internet censorship, which is the essential content of the ending of net neutrality.

This week, Facebook announced that it would notify users when they read content from accounts accused by US intelligence agencies of spreading “Russian propaganda,” creating a backlist of outlets presenting critical sources of news and analysis.

This followed the announcement by Google executive Eric Schmidt that the company would “de-rank” RT, Sputnik and what it called “those kinds of sites,” in its search and news products. This is an open-ended statement of intent to censor not just Russia-connected news sites, but effectively all political opposition. Schmidt’s comments were a confirmation of statements by the World Socialist Web Site that Google is seeking to limit access to sites based on political criteria.

Google’s YouTube, meanwhile, has gone on a censorship spree, taking down videos and banning and demonetizing channels it claims are spreading “extremist” views.

The ending of net neutrality plays a key role in this censorship drive. Under conditions that existed prior to the ending of net neutrality, users were able to bypass these forms of heavy-handed censorship by turning to smaller and more open platforms to find and share information.

But with the ending of net neutrality, the social media and streaming monopolies will be able, by cutting deals with the ISPs, to strangle their upstart competitors, keeping users locked into platforms that increasingly serve as little more than distribution networks for state-approved propaganda.

Billions of people all over the world have embraced the internet precisely because it promised a free and unimpeded way to access and share information. Oppositional and socialist organizations, excluded for decades from the public discourse by the effective monopoly exercised by major newspapers, TV, and radio stations, found an audience hungry for information suppressed by the increasingly discredited establishment media.

The government’s lies—from the “weapons of mass destruction” that justified the invasion of Iraq, to government complicity with Islamist organizations it was supposedly fighting in the “war on terror,” to mass surveillance and the corrupt and oligarchic nature of American politics—have been exposed by internet publications.

Now, under conditions of a mounting war threat and soaring social inequality, public access to alternative sources of information is seen as an intolerable threat, to be shut off and suppressed.

Internet communications are not a luxury, but a vital social need and should be treated as a public utility. However, under conditions in which three billionaires control as much wealth as half the US population, and all of social and economic life is controlled by a shrinking number of powerful corporations, the provision of all social rights, from communications to the most basic necessities of public infrastructure, are treated as privileges available only to the increasingly small sliver of the population that is able to pay for them.

The demand for the most basic social rights, including the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech, comes into conflict with the capitalist system.

The defense of a free and open internet is inseparably bound up with the struggle against capitalism, based on the independent and international mobilization of the working class around a socialist program.

The massive and bloated technology monopolies, who now see their primary function as being the blocking, not the dissemination, of information, must be seized and turned into publicly owned utilities, with the aim of providing the entire world’s combined knowledge to the whole global population.

Andre Damon