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Abstract:
Many millions of people hold conspiracy theories; they believe that powerful people have worked together in order to withhold the truth about some important practice or some terrible event. A recent example is the belief, widespread in some parts of the world, that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out not by Al Qaeda, but by Israel or the United States. Those who subscribe to conspiracy theories may create serious risks, including risks of violence, and the existence of such theories raises significant challenges for policy and law. The first challenge is to understand the mechanisms by which conspiracy theories prosper; the second challenge is to understand how such theories might be undermined. Such theories typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy. Because those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology, in accordance with which it is rational to hold such theories, the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups. Various policy dilemmas, such as the question whether it is better for government to rebut conspiracy theories or to ignore them, are explored in this light.
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Paul Joseph Watson
Monday, February 8, 2010
With influential proponents recently calling for a newly regulated world wide web, we got a preview of how that might look this past weekend after both Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com were completely blocked to many Internet users in New Zealand.
The block was only removed early this morning following a raft of complaints after both websites were unavailable on many ISP’s since Friday.
As the New Zealand based InfoNews website reported yesterday, both of Alex Jones’ flagship websites were blocked by ISPs using Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic.
It is important to stress that we receive emails on a weekly basis informing us that our websites have been blocked as “hate speech” or “offensive material” at Internet cafes, libraries, transport hubs, workplaces, and numerous other buildings not only in the United States but across the world. The censorship is being done at the ISP level, so whereas some people in a particular country will still have access, others will be blocked.
As we reported in 2008, London’s St. Pancras International, which millions of people traveling across mainland Europe pass through every year, completely blocks Prison Planet, Infowars and even more mainstream political websites as a matter of course.
In 2007, MySpace admitted their policy to censor and filter out posts containing links to the Prison Planet.com website, adding that the MySpace server automatically blocks such information. The social networking giant, as well as others such as Facebook, periodically block links to Alex Jones material and only revoke such filters when people complain.
In 2005, Time Warner subscribers from New York to California reported that their access to Infowars and Prison Planet had been blocked due to “hate speech,” before their access was restored.
UK ISP Tiscali also blocked the websites following the 7/7 London bombings in 2005.
Infowars’ social network was also blocked by libraries in the U.S. in 2008 using Safesquid and Google filtering software.
We receive numerous reports every single week of Alex Jones’ websites being blocked by ISPs and by filtering software in public buildings.
The block was only removed early this morning following a raft of complaints after both websites were unavailable on many ISP’s since Friday.
As the New Zealand based InfoNews website reported yesterday, both of Alex Jones’ flagship websites were blocked by ISPs using Asia Netcom for their international internet traffic.
It is important to stress that we receive emails on a weekly basis informing us that our websites have been blocked as “hate speech” or “offensive material” at Internet cafes, libraries, transport hubs, workplaces, and numerous other buildings not only in the United States but across the world. The censorship is being done at the ISP level, so whereas some people in a particular country will still have access, others will be blocked.
As we reported in 2008, London’s St. Pancras International, which millions of people traveling across mainland Europe pass through every year, completely blocks Prison Planet, Infowars and even more mainstream political websites as a matter of course.
In 2007, MySpace admitted their policy to censor and filter out posts containing links to the Prison Planet.com website, adding that the MySpace server automatically blocks such information. The social networking giant, as well as others such as Facebook, periodically block links to Alex Jones material and only revoke such filters when people complain.
In 2005, Time Warner subscribers from New York to California reported that their access to Infowars and Prison Planet had been blocked due to “hate speech,” before their access was restored.
UK ISP Tiscali also blocked the websites following the 7/7 London bombings in 2005.
Infowars’ social network was also blocked by libraries in the U.S. in 2008 using Safesquid and Google filtering software.
We receive numerous reports every single week of Alex Jones’ websites being blocked by ISPs and by filtering software in public buildings.
“An avid fan of Infowars.com and a 9/11 truth activist, Jeff Mitchell, reported on Saturday that he contacted his ISP, Orcon, to establish what was causing the block, and was advised by a computer technician who did a trace route, that the break in traffic to the two websites was found to be occurring at Asia Netcom’s router in Sydney,” stated the report.
The websites were blocked on every ISP that relied on Asia Netcom as its upstream provider, including Woosh, Telecom, Slingshot and Orcon.
According to Duncan Blair, Head of Brand and Communications at Orcon, access to content hosted on the Limelight content distribution network, including Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com, was blocked as a result of a “technical issue”.
“I’m the person who half-made this story possible by calling my ISP,” wrote Jeff Mitchell in a comment on Prison Planet. “Just want to report that infowars.com is now working for me, even though it was down all weekend! We complained to ISPs and they were “very concerned” about censorship; that, combined with this article on prisonplanet could very well have been the reason for us regaining access.”
Whether the problem was down to technical issues or deliberate censorship, the fact that ISP’s can selectively block certain websites at the flick of a switch gives us a frightening preview of what a Chinese-style government regulated Internet would look like, which is exactly what influential insiders are calling for.
The move to impose centralized government control and regulation of the free Internet has accelerated over the past 12 months.
Last week, Time Magazine enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.
During a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
Internet censorship bills currently working their way into law in the UK, Australia and the U.S. legislate for government powers to restrict and filter any website that it deems to be undesirable for public consumption. In Italy, new rules to be imposed by government decree force anyone who wishes to upload a video to the web to get permission from the government’s Communications Ministry.
Power brokers in the White House have openly declared war on free speech and targeted Internet “conspiracy theorists” as the main threat to their agenda.
In a 2008 white paper, Obama’s Regulation Czar Cass Sunstein called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
The ominous spectacle of major free speech websites going dark in supposedly democratic countries is a shocking portend of what the establishment wants to impose on a widespread basis. Only by screaming bloody murder in defense of the last true outpost of free speech – the Internet – and threatening boycotts and aggressive public relations campaigns can we counter the insidious move to silence the only remaining open forum of lawful dissent.
The websites were blocked on every ISP that relied on Asia Netcom as its upstream provider, including Woosh, Telecom, Slingshot and Orcon.
According to Duncan Blair, Head of Brand and Communications at Orcon, access to content hosted on the Limelight content distribution network, including Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com, was blocked as a result of a “technical issue”.
“I’m the person who half-made this story possible by calling my ISP,” wrote Jeff Mitchell in a comment on Prison Planet. “Just want to report that infowars.com is now working for me, even though it was down all weekend! We complained to ISPs and they were “very concerned” about censorship; that, combined with this article on prisonplanet could very well have been the reason for us regaining access.”
Whether the problem was down to technical issues or deliberate censorship, the fact that ISP’s can selectively block certain websites at the flick of a switch gives us a frightening preview of what a Chinese-style government regulated Internet would look like, which is exactly what influential insiders are calling for.
The move to impose centralized government control and regulation of the free Internet has accelerated over the past 12 months.
Last week, Time Magazine enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.
During a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.
Internet censorship bills currently working their way into law in the UK, Australia and the U.S. legislate for government powers to restrict and filter any website that it deems to be undesirable for public consumption. In Italy, new rules to be imposed by government decree force anyone who wishes to upload a video to the web to get permission from the government’s Communications Ministry.
Power brokers in the White House have openly declared war on free speech and targeted Internet “conspiracy theorists” as the main threat to their agenda.
In a 2008 white paper, Obama’s Regulation Czar Cass Sunstein called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions of which it disapproved.
On page 14 of Sunstein’s January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the man who is now Obama’s head of information technology in the White House proposed that each of the following measures “will have a place under imaginable conditions” according to the strategy detailed in the essay.
1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
The ominous spectacle of major free speech websites going dark in supposedly democratic countries is a shocking portend of what the establishment wants to impose on a widespread basis. Only by screaming bloody murder in defense of the last true outpost of free speech – the Internet – and threatening boycotts and aggressive public relations campaigns can we counter the insidious move to silence the only remaining open forum of lawful dissent.
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