They will never take the Internet from us.

[RagAss]

It keeps us home. One big electronic pacifier that gives us the false impression of broadcast power and control. A forum for our message. A mass audience to educate.....maybe...

In my opinion, we sit in a virtual free speech zone. Fenced off and out of the faces of most Americans. In the 60's we gave them no choice. There we were in the flesh. Love us or hate us, they saw us! They had to look into our eyes, read our signs, sense our passion and deal with our message.

Your thoughts on this subject, which has been kicked around from time to time in recent years.

[leftofthedial]

1. it's also a great way to collect intelligence on us

it's the new electronic nipple

BUT

it allows actual communication

BUT

that communication, being virtual, is also easy to monitor and to falsify in any number of ways

if I worked for the NSA, or any of a dozen other security agencies, I'd be monitoring DU 100%

[RagAss]

4. True that....

political sites are targets I'm sure....we rely on our site management to see to it that our posts are not modified and twisted.....we're in good hands here.... :hi:

[sofa king]

9. No doubt.

The moral progenitor of the people who control our lives now is Allan Dulles. Dulles proposed, presided over, and often actively pursued overthrowing foreign governments, controlling behavior with drugs, influencing the American media, and preparing false-flag operations against American citizens. We should be unsurprised to see all of those things return, and in fact they have.

Allan Dulles also, I vaguely recall, had a peculiar interest in the counterrevolutionary efforts of Tsarist Russia, which involved infiltration of the leadership of subversive (or otherwise undesirable) groups until those groups were effectively controlled by the very people those groups opposed.

But here's the thing: in that first paragraph I provided links to lots of information, and that information is in turn linked to a myriad more pieces of information. Spend a week reading stuff like that and you will find yourself better informed about those subjects than virtually all of the antiwar activists of the 1960s could have ever hoped to be.

The rising tide of information (and disinformation) is probably already too large for those people to fully or effectively control. At the same time that they are collecting information on us, a small but solid minority is learning far more information about them and the way they work--and hopefully how best to herd them back into the cage.

[leftofthedial]

10. "...find yourself better informed..."

and I will smile smugly, secure that I know--I *know*--as they pull the black hood down over my head.

[mike_c]

2. maybe-- but real "free speech zones" serve multiple purposes....

One is to segregate dissidents, as you suggest in your OP, but another is to limit the propagation of dissent by hiding discontented people from one another, making them feel more isolated. If you don't see the dissenters in their hidden free speech zone, you won't know there are others who share your views. I think the internet as a "virtual free speech zone" fails in that respect-- the web has fostered a great deal of community among dissenters.

[RagAss]

3. Agreed.....

but that community is virtual in many respects.....of course it serves as a great bulletin board to announce actual events of political action on both sides, but for many it is the beginning and end of their political involvement...they feel that a few hours on DU or that other place is their commitment to democracy....I just keep thinking we've been had into thinking we have this great tool....bits and bytes in space...not flesh and blood on pavement....

[neoblues]

5. The will claw my mouse from my...

cold dead hand. Not because they came to take the internet away--they can do that without messing with my mouse, no, but because just as you suggest... it's all one great big electronic alternate world, and it's becoming more and more desirable to avoid the real one (for some people, depending on lifestyles and other factors) all the time, and as likely as not, they'll just find me expired in front of my computer with my mouse in my hand!

Nevertheless, it is useful as a medium for mass communications. Better than tradional mass media in terms of interactivity/two-way participation, but much worse in terms of consistently reaching (or manipulating) the vast majority of people in a unidirectional/one-way manner.

Alas, it's been left as our last refuge... in that sense, it's both still a useful tool and an illusion. The illusion is that it probably makes us feel more connected, organized and active than we are (much of what we do here barely touches anyone, and even when it does, it's far less effective than similar face-to-face communications would have been). Probably even more incidious is that it's not the threat we think it is, because the minute it's percieved as being a real problem or at the moment the naked oppression is to begin, it's gone. "They", the government (at the behest of those in control) can shut the whole thing down so fast it would make our collective heads spin (imagine that for a moment; how disoriented, disorganized and disconnected you would feel if you woke up tomorrow and the internet had nothing but Wal-Mart, Disney, and FOX if anything remains at all?).

How would we even organize a protest? Spontaneous demonstrations of twenty or thirty people, here or there isn't going to be hard to suppress. Heck, this government would have no problem ignoring (or worse dispersing) large, organized protests--and without the internet, almost nobody would ever hear.

Yes, I suspect that things are alot worse than even we realize. I suspect there will be a 'point of no return' by which time, if we haven't changed something important, there will be no way to avoid some of the worst outcomes. It's sufficiently complex, with hidden activities and many different groups and motivations that I don't think we'll recognize that point when we reach it. It will come and go unnoticed; only in hindsight will historians be able to say "if only they'd...".

I suppose, though, if I do think we're further along than we realize, and that our reliance on the internet is both intentional/allowed and a weakness, I should be thinking of ways we can work around the loss of it--or at least suggesting to everyone who will listen (to someone who sounds like an alarmist replete with tin-foil hat) that we need to make advance plans for such adverse events. Develop group phone lists, snail-mail lists... Even that's questionable since the government would be able to collect our lists from us, and just add our phone lists to some priority 'terrorist watch (listen?)' list in the NSA computer system. What to do...

Return to the 1960's; use the internet to organize real live protests en-masse. Do it over every serious issue, too--not just a few. Tax-Cuts/National Debt::>Protest! Electoral Reform::>Protest! Patriot Act::>Protest! Conservative Judges::>Protest! Corporate Corruption & Corporate Welfare (Halliburton-KBR|Exxon|Enron)::>Protest! Oil Prices::>Protest! Health Insurance/National Healthcare::>Protest! Living Wage/Minimum Wage::>Protest! Wealth Gap/Class War::>Protest!... of course, but NOT exclusively, actual "War"/"Beligerant Foreign Policy"::>Protest!

As you say, we need the actual "action" to build energy, cohesiveness, connection... and we need everybody to "see us" and look us in the eyes!

Good Post!

Edit: fix unintended appearance of smiley's and clarify a sentence or two.

[RagAss]

8. Great Points

[Benfea]

6. Virtual free speech zone, my ass.

Ask people in China about "virtual free speech zone."

The Internet doesn't stay free unless we actively work to keep it that way.

[originalpckelly]

7. If net neutrality is not enforced, we WILL create our own internet...

Indienet. I am thinking about it now. People could use high power WiFi routers. There is already a project called Mesh, but it is designed to eventually connect to the internet. Indienet would be a free speech internet. People would have to pay for the hardware and that is it.