There's a power grab taking place under the not-so-watchful eyes of the U.S. electorate -- by that I mean the same people who voted to re-elect President Barack Obama despite overwhelming evidence that he did a miserable job during his first term in office.  Thomas Lifson at American Thinker wrote about it on Monday:

Next week, the UN's International Telecommunications Union will convene a meeting [in] Dubai aimed at grabbing control of and taxing the internet, all in the name of global peace, justice, and harmony. The revolutionary interactive telecommunications medium is simply too useful for ordinary people to inform and express themselves, and too democratic for the majority of regimes that comprise the United Nations. Far from being a democratic institution devoted to peace, the UN represents the interests of its members, whose numbers are overwhelmingly comprised of repressive third world regimes.

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Regrettably for freedom-loving Americans, President Obama has indicated that he favors "multilateral solutions" to international issues, which includes empowering the United Nations.  Those who favor a new dark age of socialism and jihad have every reason to hate the internet. They have their eyes focused on methods to tax and regulate it as a prelude to controlling your right to read and write what you wish.

Lifson is not a right-wing wacko conspiracy theorist.  He's a responsible journalist who is concerned about the direction of our nation and our world, and he's doing what he can to prevent from happening something that will forever change life as we know it on planet earth. 

I wrote about the same problem in American Thinker back in February, only I took it one step further than the meeting in Dubai:

May come from a world tax?  Try will come from a world tax.  When the internet was in its infancy -- actually, it's still in its infancy, but it's growing like gangbusters -- I used to tell my strategy students at the University of Virginia to keep their eyes on the internet.  At the time, our elected officials had decided not to tax purchases made over the internet to permit it to grow unhindered by cumbersome government restrictions, specifically taxes. 

I told my students that one day, governments around the world would demand the creation of an internet tax to fund various things such as a global welfare system like the one that we have in the United States and a global police force/army with enforcement powers.  The internet is the perfect vehicle to fund such programs because it's global in nature and it's easily accessible to anyone with a computer or a smartphone no matter where he or she lives.

What does that mean in practical terms?  It means that we are moving toward a global government with teeth.  By that I mean a global political body with taxing and enforcement powers.  As things stand now, the U.N. is a paper tiger because it depends on the goodwill of governments around the world to operate, but if a global governing authority had direct access to a substantial tax revenue stream, things would change with lightning speed.

That's where the internet comes in.  By keeping their hands off the internet, our elected officials left the door open for some group (i.e., the U.N. or some other global organization) to claim the authority to use its tax revenue-generation potential.  That day has arrived.  When our elected officials decide that it's time to give the U.N. or any other global group taxing authority, said group will go after the internet with reckless abandon, and the world as we know it will change forever.

I bring this up not to say "I told you so" but to point out that the underlying movement that's afoot, the one that's driving world leaders to attempt to latch onto the internet's enormous revenue generation potential, is the creation of a global governing authority with teeth -- i.e., a police force/army.  Don't be deceived: that day will come.  In fact, it may have arrived.

I'm not a conspiracy nut either.  I'm simply pointing out something that's difficult for most people to see.  Even so, that won't prevent politicians who stand to benefit from movement in this direction from labeling people like Lifson and me as wild-eyed lunatics who have gone off the deep end.

Candidly, I had trouble convincing many of my students that we were on this path in the 1990s when I first pointed it out.  In their minds, I was just speculating.  Truth is, the inevitable is merely speculation until it happens.

I used a simple exercise to drive my point home: I asked my students to describe what they saw in the picture below.  Their responses ran the gamut.  Some of them saw a kitten; others saw a satellite photograph of the earth; still others saw a telescopic photograph of the moon; while others saw a lady's face.

Then I would ask, "Does anyone see a cow in the picture?"  Typically, 1 in 10 people can see the cow in the picture on their own, and 1 in 10 people will never see it.  I can't explain why.  After I outlined the cow for them, 8 out of 10 people who could not see it on their own would say, "I see it; I see it."

Once you've seen the cow in the picture, it's virtually impossible not to see it, and it really is a picture of a cow.  It's not a good picture, though.  If it were, the exercise wouldn't work.  You'll find the picture at the end of this article with the cow's face outlined and circled.

It took one more question to make my point.  I asked someone in the class who thought she saw a satellite photograph, for instance, what the picture was before she saw the cow.  Without fail, she (or he) would say, "Before I saw the cow, it was a satellite photograph."

My response was slow and deliberate: "It was a picture of a cow all the time, and your seeing it did not make it what it is."

This exercise had a powerful impact.  There is a reality that is not dependent on our seeing it.

As a nation, we are headed for something that most people fear and do not want -- i.e. the subordination of U.S. sovereignty to a global governing authority.  It is virtually impossible for most people to comprehend that we are literally on the doorstep of it actually happening.

Again, I don't bring this up to say, "I told you so."  I bring it up to alert you to a development that will forever change life as we know it and usher in a new world order that many have speculated about for a very long time. 

That day is on the verge of arrival, and there isn't much time left to prevent it from happening.  In fact, it could take place before Barack Obama's second term in office is completed.

Neil Snyder is the Ralph A. Beeton Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia.  His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily.  The exercise described in this article also appears in his book What Will You Do with the Rest of Your Life?