The Issue is National Sovereignty, not “Freedom”
It is an accepted principle that each and every nation controls its own airwaves and internal communication systems. Broadcasting, telephone and other such media are accepted without question as under the sovereignty of each nation.
The Internet is not different in this regard. It’s true that this medium has transfigured itself into an international communications and information system, but that was neither by intent nor design. It happened because of advances in communications technology and from great convenience.
We could just as easily have developed videophones or other systems instead. An accident of communications history does not alter the basic sovereignty of nations.
All of the arguments against firewalls, censorship of external products or influences, or other interference in the international flow of communications and information emanates entirely from the US, and the reason is clear.
The Great US Gold Rush
In its quest for worldwide hegemony and its frantic search for new and better methods of infiltrating and influencing the peoples of other nations, the US stumbled upon a gold mine of opportunity – the Internet, and its social media – Twitter, Facebook, etc.
The very existence of these avenues is coupled with the ease with which the US government and all its agencies – CIA, FBI, NSA, the State Department – can gain (and do gain) instant access to billions of messages daily for surveillance.
It can (and does) now manipulate communications, create fake persona, flood cyberspace with all manner of information and disinformation.
It can, and does, use these media to probe for weaknesses in political opponents in any nation in the world, and to source and obtain useful contacts for its destabilisation efforts in dozens of countries around the globe.
The process began with Jugoslavia, moved to Eastern Europe and all the “Color Revolutions”, the destabilisation of Iraq, Libya and now Iran, the tragic “Arab Spring” of which the Americans are so proud, China’s stillborn “Jasmine Revolution”, and much more.
Its success has been outstanding – even in the UK, proving that your own weapons can sometimes backfire on you.
The internet is indeed a treasure for the US in its push for global domination, and the one thing standing in its way is the excercise by nations of their sovereignty over this cyberspace, and their limitations on US interference.
Hence the Great Propaganda Campaign
And that is the source of the incessant flood of propaganda emanating from the US government and frenetically hyped by all American media. It is an attempt to redefine the broadcasting and communication systems as a “universal human right”, and therefore beyond the control of any nation – except, of course, the USA.
During China’s recent insistence on Google’s behavioral mode, the US State Department and the US media were breathlessly rushing the high moral ground to tell us that Google was “a human right”, and no nation could justify circumscribing its activities.
Of course, the close connections between Google and the CIA, including exchanges of staff, and Google’s role as a tool of US foreign destabilisation policy, were quietly ignored. As were the unfortunately well-publicised joint meetings between the staff of Google, the US State Department, and the CIA.
And the US State Department found itself caught between the temptation to proudly boast about its effective use of Twitter to destabilise the Arab countries, and the need to maintain a pretense of the “indigenous and spontaneous nature” of that same destabilisation.
The other US social media and the Internet itself have all morphed into a ball of “human rights”, included in the Americans’ ever-expanding definition of “democracy”, and we now have a propaganda war between US world domination on one hand and those not wishing to be dominated on the other.
Already, all of the good words have been conscripted in the service of the US and its quest, and all the bad words saved for those nations unwilling to permit the US free and mischievous access to their populations.
And as with all good propaganda, the underlying principles are ignored and the main tenets of the propaganda are not stated openly – because to do so would leave them open to critical examination, debate and, often, ridicule.
So the US media carry no discussions about national sovereignty over communications and broadcasting, nor even about the right of every nation to restrict harmful interference from outside its borders.
Instead, we hear only about these greatly-expanded “human rights”, the devastating effects of “censorship”, pushing us to accept that the Internet is some kind of supra-national hydra, above and beyond the control of any nation.
It isn’t anything like that, of course, but the US’ only hope is to overwhelm the ignorant and simple-minded into believing that any nation acting to protect itself by controlling its own airwaves, its own broadcasting and communications, is somehow “bad”.
The Quest for Global Domination
And the major underlying truth of all this, is that if the US were not bent on global domination and on using the Internet as a main tool to destabilise unwilling colonies, this entire subject would not even be in our consciousness.
It should not go unnoticed that the US controls the vast bulk of the Internet system, including naming and technology, and that the preponderance of routers and other technology are physically within the USA.
And this means that converting the Internet to a worldwide “universal human right” accomplishes only one thing – for all nations to surrender the sovereignty of their cyberspace to the US. And, with the power of the Internet, to eventually surrender all of their sovereignty to the US – at least potentially.
Except for those nations already influenced by the US beyond recall, we should not expect any other countries to go quietly.
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