From: John Smith on Wed 17 Aug 2005 09:06

AOF:

The fcc has an avenue where ideas for change, restructuring and progress
can be introduced.

Er, John, the FCC is the ONLY avenue to travel. :-)

In the past, the ARRL seems to quickly leap to the forefront of this
process, claim they represent all amateurs and lobby for the issues in the
way they would them implemented...

Before about 1993 (give or take), the only effective
organization for anything before the government was the one
with a lobbyist or legal representative IN the DC area. The
ARRL has TWO, a legal firm and a lobbying firm (its on their
federal tax forms filed with the government...public documents,
not privileged).

The GPO printed up the Federal Register in the late night
before and in the wee small hours of the morning of the day
a Register was released. Wasn't like a magazine printed one
to two months before its issue date. Postal service was only
as swift as anyone could afford: USPS, FedEx, UPS all charged
more for overnight delivery...but otherwise were the same
speed for regular surface mail - at least three days. If you
didn't have anyone able to get into the FCC Reading Room then
you waited days and days to get news or information.

After the Internet went public in 1991, the U.S. government
jumped onto the Internet (with the help of leadership for that
from Algore) with all four paws. Suddenly the government AND
the military was all over the 'Net. What we got (in what seems
like "overnight") was something we did NOT have befo Instant
access to OUR government from our homes and businesses with none
of the (formerly) necessary middleman to go through like a
membership organization or special interest group. NO waiting
for days and days to get a response by mail, NO need to rack
up expensive minutes waiting for some long-distance telephonic
answers, NO possible distortion of news through anyone. The
information was now THERE...from the agency/office that created
the news! Remarkable stuff!

In one way, it was like the maritime world of 1900. Ships at
sea just did NOT have any way to communicate over the horizon
quickly before radio. Suddenly they GOT a means to do that
and it was ten kinds of wonderful, even if the average rate
was 10 words per minute (faster than signal flags and semaphores
in optical sighting to the horizon). In the same way, we
citizens (in many lands) can communicate DIRECTLY with OUR
governments. No "horizon blockage" from middlemen groups that
acted as quasi-governmental "representatives" (which weren't
government and thus without any security that they were honest).

a vast influx of new people may be
able to knock that strangle hold which a few at the bottle-neck were able
to achieve--loose... change appears on the way, time will tell... after
decades of decline and stagnation, cures are not to had over-night.

What MUST be done is to de-brainwash, de-toxify all that
conditioned thinking put there by special interest groups.
To those NOT of the congregation of the Church of St. Hiram,
we can see the fantastic propaganda opportunity of having a
combination PUBLISHING HOUSE and a membership organization.
It's a guaranteed built-in brainwashing attachment to have
almost COMPLETE control of that publishing output. The ARRL
has been doing publishing - with complete CONTROL of ALL
contents - since the end of World War One, roughly 85 years
or more than four generations and longer than most folks'
lifespan. With such a long-running TOTALLY CONTROLLED
information source, the League has established themselves
as a virtual monopoly on "what is good for amateurism."
[the League knows what is best for you...etc., etc., etc]

With such a fantastic environment for conditioned thinking,
it is NOT remarkable that lots of folks Believe in all that
the ARRL dictates. They became a virtual Big Brother for
U.S. amateur radio, a personification of Orwell's "1984"
novel of the 1920s. It's not a "conspiracy theory." It is
out in the open and has been for years. Before the Internet
went public in 1991 the ARRL was *the* interface for the
radio amateur and his/her government radio regulating agency.

Times have changed remarkably. First of all, the REST of
the radio world wasn't looking to any ARRL to advance the
state of the art of radio communication...they simply went
ahead and DID it. The REST OF THE RADIO WORLD pioneered
the "shortwaves", SSB radio, TTY-RTTY-RATT, FM voice, TV
and facsimile, microwave and orbiting satellite radio
relay, moon bounce...and international networks as public
access communications providers before the amateur "NTS"
became successful. The maritime world now uses SSB voice
and TOR data on open water...and VHF voice on inland,
in-shore communications...the "sparkies" are a memory.
Police departments were testing FM voice radios before
we got into WW2 and set the pattern for ALL public safety
agencies' mobile radio communications; they just didn't
bother with any morsemanship (except in certain reported
midwestern states) for 24/7 emergency communications (that
happen every day across the country). The brainwashing
that "CW is necessary for emergency comms" is TOTAL MORSE
MYTH a la conditioned thinking in this new millennium; the
Titanic tragedy happened 93 years ago, two years before the
ARRL was ever formed (originally as a private group to
hack telegraphic providers by doing their own "message
relay" - from ARRL's own history).

The history of the REST of the radio world has been made
and is documented fact for anyone who bothers to look...
there's an enormous amount of it. The ARRL, if it bothers
to mention any of it at all, will gloss over that and
imply that "amateurs pioneered it all" which is patently
untrue. But, the myths still exist in many minds who
accept the conditioned thinking wash-and-scrub as "fact"
because anything else is Against what they WANT to Believe.

Some want the amateur radio hobby to be something noble,
glorious, and IMPORTANT...perhaps with TITLES so that they
can be "better" than others. They are wannabe SERVICEMEN
in some imaginary uniform "serving their country" by doing
a radio hobby! [they are either on a round-the-world
ego trip or need to rationalize all the money and time
spent on the hobby] THAT sort of thinking can't be over-
come by logic or normal reasoning...without having the
medical psychiatric smarts to restore sanity. Ain't
enough gray-cell soap in the world to make them come
clean in a short time. Gonna take a lonnnnng period of
scrubbing.

boo ego