Internet Surrender Just Days Away?

Frank Gaffney on Obama’s Attempt to Slip Irreversible Internet Surrender Under the Radar: ‘We’ve Got Three Days to Fix This’

John Hayward 

Center for Security Policy president and founder Frank Gaffney joined Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday to offer his thoughts on the first presidential debate and a vitally important topic that was not addressed, the impending surrender of U.S. control of Internet registration.

 

Gaffney recalled a discussion with Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas, in which Pompeo told him:

Hillary Clinton made the case – I think pretty well, actually – for more of the same, and if you really want more of the same, whether it’s in immigration, whether it’s in trade policy, whether it’s in national security or generally, whether it’s on jobs or anything else, she’s the clear choice. I don’t think there’s any getting around it.

“What I thought Trump could have done better at was making clear how stark his differences are with her on several of those issues – notably, as you’ve been talking about, immigration. It’s better on trade, I guess,” Gaffney said. “This is the moment where the alternative of change, which is clearly what the American people are looking for, is on offer. And I think if he makes that case even better, in debates to come, he’s gonna do fine.”
Marlow suggested Trump’s slam of the Iran nuclear deal as “one of the worst in history” was the sort of moment Trump needs more of, given Clinton’s inability to respond effectively to the criticism.
“There were a number of places where he would have had her really on the ropes, had he pressed the attack or been given the opportunity by Lester Holt to press the attack,” Gaffney agreed.
“Look, the Iran deal, as you know, Alex – Breitbart News has done a wonderful job covering this, as has my colleague Fred Fleitz at the Center for Security Policy,” he said, continuing:

This is national security fraud, of an epic character. And Hillary Clinton’s involvement in it, her support for it, her complicity in the Congress going along with it, in a fashion – I mean, these are very powerful indictments, I believe, for a woman who runs on her record of having been this great maven of national security. Ain’t so.

The conversation turned to the impending handover of Internet control to a foreign body, a topic that should be of major concern to American voters, although Marlow sarcastically observed there was no time for it during the debate because moderator Lester Holt thought it was more important to discuss Donald Trump’s thoughts on Barack Obama’s birth certificate.
“A lot of people in this audience have absolutely no clue why we would do this and can’t even interpret what Obama and the globalists are thinking,” Marlow said.
“Well, quite frankly, I’m among them. I can’t figure out what the argument is for doing this,” Gaffney replied. He went on to explain the situation:

What they’re preparing to do is to cede, or surrender, the last vestige of American control, or even influence, over what is done with critical functions of the Internet. It gets pretty arcane, but the point is, if you think that the freedom of the Internet – whether it’s the ability of people to communicate freely information on it, or whether you think of it as an engine for free enterprise, let alone if you understand the contribution that it makes these days to national security – including, by the way, the operations of our critical infrastructure – you will understand that the United States retaining a measure of quality control as to what’s going on with how the Internet is populated with names and numbers, domains, websites and the like, is a very important thing.
And for absolutely no good reason, other than people – or countries, I should say, like Russia, and China, and Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and North Korea – don’t want us to have any say in this and would like to be able to change things around so that they cannot only restrict all the things the Internet does to help their own people become familiar with the terrible they’re being subjected to, at the hands of their totalitarian or authoritarian regimes, but they want to take those freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of enterprise – away from us, as well.
So this is what it comes down to, Alex: there’s no good reason for doing this, certainly not in the next three days, which is what’s going to happen unless Congress intervenes.
And there’s an interesting point here: Hillary Clinton could make all the difference on whether that happens or not.

Gaffney agreed with Marlow’s criticism of how this vital issue was bypassed at the debate, adding that he was hoping Trump would “jump in on it because he’s taken the right line.”
“He said don’t give this up. Don’t surrender something that is really an instrument of American power – really, when you think of it, sovereignty – especially for no good reason,” Gaffney noted. “He didn’t go there, and Hillary didn’t get asked.”
“If Hillary Clinton agrees with Donald Trump, on this issue at least, they ought to take a look. Whoever is president next, they ought to take a look at whether we ought to surrender our last vestiges of control over the Internet,” he advised. “Then the Democrats in the United States Senate won’t do what they’re doing now, which is blocking an effort to stop that, to stop this on something called the Continuing Resolution.”
Gaffney pleaded:

If every one of your impressive audience – and I do think of you as a hotshot, I don’t care what they say – this audience is important, and if they will come up on the net, today, with calls into Mitch McConnell urging him not to give up the Internet – don’t let this happen, make sure the Continuing Resolution doesn’t permit that.

He recommended bringing pressure to bear on the Democrats through their presidential candidate:

Let’s call out Hillary Clinton, to find out whether she supports Barack Obama in diminishing our country, undermining our friends and our own interests, and emboldening our enemies. I call that the Obama Doctrine – whether she’s actually gonna stand with Donald Trump and say, “Don’t give up the Internet.”
We need her help on this, and if she does it, I think most, if not all, of the Democrats in the Senate will agree, and will stop being obstructionists, will support a sound measure on this count, at least, on the Continuing Resolution.
And again, we’ve got three days to fix this, folks. This is no drill. This is a live-fire exercise. We need your help, now.
I think the more people understand what’s going on here, the more we’re gonna have the right outcome. The challenge, as with so much of the Obama agenda, as you know, Alex, is trying to slip it under the radar. Keep people from figuring it out until it’s done.
And this is the real hook. This will be irreversible. Once this so-called mechanism known as the numbering and naming function is permanently and irreversibly to some multinational non-profit – which will, trust me, be dominated in due course, if not right away, by the Russians, and the Chinese, and the Saudis, and so on – we’re not getting that back. There’s not anything a President Trump is gonna be able to do about it, if he does, in fact, become president.
It’s three days from now. It’s October 1st, the end of the fiscal year. It’s what Obama’s been striving for, is to jam this thing through, while nobody’s paying attention. We can’t let that happen.

“Come up on the net, folks. Call other talk radio show hosts, other folks that you’re dealing with, your editorial boards. Get engaged in this thing,” Gaffney implored, concluding:

It’s one of those places where your own equities – your freedom of expression, your right to use the Internet for small-business innovation and enterprise in the future, and so on – is going to be on the line because we’re going to turn it over to people who don’t want us to do that sort of thing. We mustn’t let that happen.