Well, let's take a trip around Google and Alternet and catch up with recent developments in The George W. Bush World Conquest Tour, Shall we?

Former FCC chairman: Deregulation is a right-wing power grab

The Federal Communications Commission will meet in Washington on Monday for a historic vote on the future of media ownership in the United States. By all accounts, the Republican-dominated commission will ease long-standing rules so that more and more of the nations newspapers and broadcast stations can be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.

Underlying that agenda, Clinton-era FCC chairman Reed Hundt sees something more primal unfolding: an extraordinary conservative power grab that could shape the political landscape for generations.

For all the philosophical conflict over diversity in the media and the efficiency of the free market, Hunt told Salon this week, the vote is really about an alliance of interests between the political right and the corporate media. "Conservatives," he said, "hope � that the major media will be their friends."

- Salon -

According to The Center for Public Integrity Bush's FCC is already pretty friendly with the media:

Well Connected: FCC and Industry Maintain Cozy Relationship on Many Levels

Those findings come from the Center for Public Integrity�s unprecedented examination of the telecommunications industry, the centerpiece of which is a first-of-its-kind, 65,000 record, searchable database containing ownership information on virtually every radio station, television station, cable television system and telephone company in America.

The database reveals that broadcasting and cable behemoths such as Viacom, Clear Channel and Comcast already dominate many of the nation�s media markets, even as the Federal Communications Commission moves to further relax media ownership rules at a meeting scheduled for June 2.

*
The report also explores the close relationship between the FCC and the interests it regulates. FCC officials have taken more than 2,500 trips paid for by companies and trade groups from the telecommunications and broadcasting industries, and the agency increasingly relies on industry-generated data to justify sweeping deregulation proposals.

- The Center for Public Integrity -

The loss of the ether to the corporate Beast will be experienced by the oft evoked entity known as The American People as nothing but a burst of data from the flickering, ever flashing TV screen. A tiny fact, maybe, passing soon into memory and then into nothing at all. If The American People happen to read about the passage of what is rightfully theirs into the hands of The Wealthy Elite in a newspaper, the memory may linger a bit via the medium of newsprint smudged blackly on the fingers. Perhaps they will experience the tragic loss of information as nothing more than a slight touch of dyspepsia disturbing, a moment only, dreams of Freedom.

Ah yes, freedom . . .

Privacy wanes with Patriot Act

Under the USA Patriot Act, signed in 2001 by President Bush in the aftermath of Sept. 11, police agencies now can pry, sometimes without legal probable cause, into personal computer hard drives, request private and personal business and bank records and can solicit a patron's list of library books.

*

The act states that the person under investigation does not have to be a suspect in a crime or the target of an investigation. The act requires that all requested records must be rendered to investigators without a court hearing.

Domestic and international intelligence agencies have these surveillance powers. The act also allows the FBI and CIA to tap into telephones and computers without a court order.

- Venicegondolier.com -

Your Rights: Use 'Em or Lose 'Em

Under current legislation, if you are "suspected" of terrorist activity, you can be picked up and held indefinitely, without charges and without access to a lawyer. If your loved ones call to find out where you are or if you are okay, they will be told nothing. After all, to disclose your whereabouts would infringe on your right to privacy. Don't bother clutching your passport to your chest; this law applies to all U.S. citizens.

And, if currently proposed legislation � PATRIOT Act II � passes, you may no longer even be a citizen. Under PATRIOT II, if you attend a legal protest sponsored by an organization the government has listed as "terrorist," you may be deported and your citizenship revoked. This is true even if you are only suspected of terrorist activity and nothing has been proven. More specifically, according to FindLaw's Anita Ramasastry, a U.S. citizen may be expatriated "if, with the intent to relinquish his nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United Stated has designated as a 'terrorist organization.'"

*
If all this weren't enough, currently proposed legislation would increase the PATRIOT Act's powers. The Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org) lists the full provisions of the act, which include, beside the deportation of citizens who are suspected of consorting with or supporting terrorists:

Immunity from liability for law enforcement engaging in spying operations against the American people;

Immunity from liability for businesses and employees that report "suspected terrorists" to the federal government, no matter how unfounded, racist, or malicious the tip may be.

Furthermore, PATRIOT II explicitly allows the indefinite detention of citizens, incommunicado, without charges, and without releasing their names to their own family members.

- Alternet -

Bullets and bombs liberated many Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and some from their lives. Fearmongering and sneaky politics (is that redundant?) are the order of the day here in The Homeland, where The American People, that oft quoted but seldom seen creature, are being liberated from Democracy while they dream of protecting it, all the time not even knowing what it means.

Stone upon stone I see piled upon the fair chest of Lady Liberty.

But wait, what is this I see? Ah, it is that one last in Pandora's box, Hope. . .

100th Civil Liberties Safe Zone!
Hawaii Is the First State to Defy Ashcroft

On May 6, the commissioners of Broward County, Florida, in a unanimous vote, passed the 100th local resolution in the United States proclaiming "a civil liberties safe zone."

These resolutions are directed at the Bush-Ashcroft war on the Bill of Rights. However, the undeterred Attorney General is planning to introduce in Congress USA Patriot Act II, which would much more radically reduce individual liberties in the holy name of national security.

*

In the spirit of Jefferson, on the same day that Broward County became part of the Resistance, it was joined by San Mateo, Marin, and Sausalito counties, all in California. On April 25, Hawaii's legislature passed the first statewide resolution to preserve and protect the Bill of Rights. Alaska followed on May 22. On May 29, Philadelphia became the 116th town or city to pass one of these resolutions.

According to Nancy Talanian, director of the original Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Northampton, Massachusetts�where this grassroots renewal of constitutional democracy started�the term civil liberties zone means "a locale whose local government has passed a resolution declaring its commitment to protect the civil liberties of its residents."

- Nat Hentoff, The Village Voice -