I hope this is the best forum for this topic....
Lately, I've stopped bothering with "conspiracy theory" websites. I had found a few that at least reported the more noteworthy "underreported" stories out there, but about six months ago, pablum (if even that) is all they really offer now.
It seems lately that anything important that I would want to know is now burried in so much monkey poo that it is a waste of my time to try and distill it to a worthwhile product.
Then....
Quote:
The Pentagon’s War on the Internet
Mike Whitney | February 14 2006
The Pentagon has developed a comprehensive strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the free flow of information. The plan appears in a recently declassified document, “The Information Operations Roadmap”, which was provided under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and revealed in an article by the BBC.
The Pentagon sees the internet in terms of a military adversary that poses a vital threat to its stated mission of global domination. This explains the confrontational language in the document which speaks of “fighting the net”; implying that the internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system."
The Defense Dept. places a high-value on controlling information. The new program illustrates their determination to establish the parameters of free speech.
The Pentagon sees information as essential in manipulating public perceptions and, thus, a crucial tool in eliciting support for unpopular policies. The recent revelations of the military placing propaganda in the foreign press demonstrate the importance that is given to co-opting public opinion.
Information-warfare is used to create an impenetrable cloud around the activities of government so that decisions can be made without dissent. The smokescreen of deception that encompasses the Bush administration has less to do with prevaricating politicians than it does with a clearly articulated policy of obfuscation. “The Information Operations Roadmap” is solely intended to undermine the principle of an informed citizenry....
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I've suspected that it was just a matter of time before the military-industrial complex found a way to catch up/compensate for the unchained freedom the Internet offered. In my opinion, the "truth" is now so burried in monkey poo/disinformation that you have to be a zealot to have any chance of finding it under all the garbage the Internet is flooded with.
Likewise, I've noticed that search engines are more and more NOT producing results I remember them producing a year ago....as if they only give you the links that are approved of. Given how well Yahoo, Google, and others are catering to despots like China, perhaps a less extreme version is going on the rest of the world now.
Finally, I saw this the other day....
Quote:
Bush Tags Bloggers As Terrorists
Patriot Daily | February 13 2006
Homeland Security completed its “Cyber Storm” wargame to test how our government “would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.” Given that homeland security ran the “wargame,” one may infer that the nature of the attacks by bloggers must be national security related. And, given that the major national security fear of our government is terrorists, then it looks like bloggers have made our government’s hit list of potential terrorists. But, what is the nature of this “terrorist crime” that was the subject of these wargames?
“Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.”
There are other indications that the Bush administration deems bloggers well within the reach of any definition of terrorist, if for no other reason than the crime of dissent and criticism. There are also indicators that relevant parties would be somewhat prepared to assist in the nabbing of terrorist bloggers:
(1) In what may have been a precursor to US bloggers, the US military and government apparently were not offended (at least did not take any publicly disclosed action to free the blogger) when an Iraqi blogger was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned for the crime of reading comments on another blogger’s website at a public café:
“Then finally I understood why I was there, after few hours. Security guards at the university had printed out all the websites I was reading while I was online there. They were accusing me of “reading terrorism sites” and “having communications with foreign terrorists”.
“Do you know what these pages are?”
I looked at them and figured out they were the comment section of Raed in the Middle!!
I opened the comments section while browsing in the university, read some comments, and didn’t even post anything. But these people don’t seem to know what the internet is, and they don’t speak English, so I was a major suspect of being an assistant of al Zarqawi maybe! Or that I have a terrorist group of my own, with foreign connections!
I was accused of terrorism, and sent to jail after they decided that I’m not helping myself because I am not helping them!!!
(2) US plans to data mine blogs for stated purpose of finding terrorist information to connect the dots to prevent a terrorist attack:
“The U.S. government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.”
(3) “The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chat rooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal.”
(4) American Internet providers have assisted foreign countries to jail bloggers for substantive content posted on their blogs:
“Last December, Microsoft shut down the Web site of a dissident Chinese blogger. A few months earlier, Yahoo gave Beijing the name of a dissident Chinese journalist. He got ten years in jail for his Web postings. Ironically, Google's Chinese kowtow comes as the company is resisting efforts by the U.S. government for access to its records.”
(5) Indymedia was a subject of a secret, international terrorism investigation in which US government seized its hard drives. A Texas Internet company turned over hard drives pursuant to a court order under an international treaty governing crimes of terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering.
(6) The MSM has shown its willingness to paint bloggers and any lefty journalists as the domestic evil axis of treasonists so that the American people will understand the need to arrest bloggers to make this country safe from terrorists.
(7) The CIA now has its own bloggers and a government website that are part of a revised CIA office for monitoring, translating and analyzing publicly available information. It is good news that the CIA is evaluating publicly available information in the fight against terrorism. The problem is we now know that when our government says “monitoring,” it’s not just al-Qaeda.
(8) The Bush administration refused to turn over control of the Internet to an international body, preferring to maintain unilateral control over the Internet. The fear is that “policy decisions could at a stroke make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable.”
It should be noted that some of these indicators on their face are equivocal, but perhaps should be considered in the context of actions and policies of this administration. In this context, the Bush wagons are circling bloggers. And, once the perception is created that bloggers are a danger to national security, that perception is hard to unravel. The danger is that the American people will continue to follow Bush’s lead like sheep frightened by the terrorist wolf.
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I'm not surprised by this article, BUT now they're openly setting the stage to make anyone who questions the party line a "enemy combatant".
If you haven't read the book "How To Be Invisible," you need to read it.
If you've been foolish enough to do things online in your real name....stop right now. Make a new ID.
Don't surf for anything you do for research from your own computer (best option is to have a cheap second computer reserved for interacting on the Internet).
Take all personal information OFF all of your computers. Either replace your hard drives or reformat and use a wipe protocol MULTIPLE TIMES so that nothing that could identify you or incriminate you in the eyes of a paranoid police state can be retrieved without first spending thousands of dollars in an effort to try and find it.
I suspect a year from now, the Internet will be fairly useless for a lot of research purposes. When the crackdown happens, it will be on those who are still going about as if they still have freedom of speech.
Start watching your backs with what you do and what you post.
