Does The West Have A Future?

By Paul Craig Roberts
May 11, 2012
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

 Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they buil[t] one, they probably built more.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder women and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect--what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.

Even alternative news media initially fell for this fake plot. Apparently, no one stops to wonder how al-Qaeda, which has become so disorganized and helpless that it is on the run and left its revered leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistan village alone and unguarded to be murdered by US Navy Seals, could catch the CIA off guard with an “undetectable” bomb, to use the description provided by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the device by US intelligence personnel.

Notice that the Secretary of State has committed the bankrupt US and its unravelling social safety net to the protection of “India and others” from terrorists. But the real significance of this latest hoax is to introduce into the fearful American public the idea of an undetectable underwear bomb.

What does this bring to mind? Anyone of my generation or any science fiction aficionado immediately thinks of Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.

Written in 1951 but set in our time, Earth is invaded by small creatures that attach to the human body and take over the person. The humans become the puppets of their masters. Large areas of America succumb to the invaders before the morons in Washington understand that the invasion is real and not a conspiracy theory.

On clothed humans, the creatures cannot be detected, and the edict goes out that anyone clothed is a suspect. Everyone must go about naked. Women are not even allowed to carry purses in their hand, because the creature can be in the purse attached to the woman’s hand.

Obviously, if the CIA, the news sources, and Dianne Feinstein’s briefers are correct that defeated al-Qaeda has come up with an “undetectable” bomb, we will have to pass through airport security naked.

If so, how will this be possible? If each airline passenger must go through a personal screening by disrobing in a room, how long will it take to clear “airport security”? I doubt there is any place in North or South America that the traveller couldn’t drive there faster. Or perhaps this is an answer to depression level US unemployment. Millions of unemployed Americans will be hired to view naked people before they board airliners.

As the Transportation Safety Administration division of Homeland Security has taken its intrusions, unchallenged, into train, bus, and highway travel, are we faced with the total collapse of the clothing industry? Stay tuned.

A couple of years ago a noted philosopher wrote an article in which he suggested that Americans live in an artificial or virtual reality. Another noted philosopher said that he thought there was a 25% chance that the philosopher was right. I am convinced that he is right. Americans live in the Matrix. Nothing that they know or think that they know is correct.

For example, our non-truth-telling “leaders” continually declare that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This myth is one of the many reasons rolled out to justify American taxpayers’ declining incomes being taxed to provide the Israeli government with the means to murder Palestinians and steal their country.

Israeli democracy a myth you say? Yes, a myth. According to news reports compiled and reported by Antiwar.com (May 8), the September 4 Israeli elections have been cancelled, because the “opposition leader Shaul Mofaz is joining the government.”

Mofaz sold out his party for personal power, a typical politician’s behavior.

Mofaz’s treachery produced protests from his followers, but, according to news reports, “Israeli police were quick to crack down on the protest, terming it ‘illegal’ and arresting a number of journalists.”

Ah, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

In truth Israel is a fascist state, one that has been in violation of international law and Christian morality during the entirety of its existence. Yet, in America Israel is a hallowed icon. Like Bush, Cheney, and Obama, millions of American “christians” worship Israel and believe it is “God’s calling” for Americans to die for Israel.

If you believe in murdering your opponents, not debating with them, dispossessing the powerless, creating a fictional world based on lies and paying the corporate media to uphold the lies and fictional world, you are part of what the rest of the world perceives as “The West.”

Let me back off from being too hard on The West. The French and Greek peoples have shown in the recent elections that they are unplugging from the Matrix and understand that they, the 99%, are being put by their elites in a position to be the sacrificial lambs for the mistakes of the 1% mega-rich, who compete with one another in terms of how many billions of dollars or euros, how many yachts, collections of exotic cars, and exotic Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds they have as personal possessions.

The central banks of the West--the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the UK bank--are totally committed to the prosperity of the mega-rich. No one else counts. Marx and Lenin never had a target as exists today. Yet, the left-wing is today so feeble and brainwashed that it does not exist as even a minor countervailing power. The American left-wing has even accepted the absurd official account of 9/11 and of Osama bin Laden’s murder in Pakistan by Navy Seals. A movement so devoid of mental and emotional strength is useless. It might as well not exist.

People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are. The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. www.paulcraigroberts.org

How The West Was Lost

Posted by "Sayf Maslul" 

Courtesy Of "BBC Newsnight"



Dambisa Moyo discusses the thesis of her new book "How The West Was Lost: 50 Years of Economic Folly - And the Stark Choices Ahead" with host Kirsty Wark and Dr Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute (10 Jan 2011).

The West & The Rest In A One-Model-Fits-All World

The Decline and Fall Of Just About Everyone

By Pepe Escobar
At 5:33pm, September 25, 2011.
Courtesy Of "Tom Dispatch"

More than 10 years ago, before 9/11, Goldman Sachs was predicting that the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) would make the world economy’s top ten -- but not until 2040.  Skip a decade and the Chinese economy already has the number two spot all to itself, Brazil is number seven, India 10, and even Russia is creeping closer. In purchasing power parity, or PPP, things look even better.  There, China is in second place, India is now fourth, Russia sixth, and Brazil seventh.

No wonder Jim O’Neill, who coined the neologism BRIC and is now chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been stressing that “the world is no longer dependent on the leadership of the U.S. and Europe.”  After all, since 2007, China’s economy has grown by 45%, the American economy by less than 1% -- figures startling enough to make anyone take back their predictions. American anxiety and puzzlement reached new heights when the latest International Monetary Fund projections indicated that, at least by certain measurements, the Chinese economy would overtake the U.S. by 2016.  (Until recently, Goldman Sachs was pointing towards 2050 for that first-place exchange.)

Within the next 30 years, the top five will, according to Goldman Sachs, likely be China, the U.S., India, Brazil, and Mexico. Western Europe?  Bye-bye!

A System Stripped To Its Essence

Increasing numbers of experts agree that Asia is now leading the way for the world, even as it lays bare glaring gaps in the West’s narrative of civilization.  Yet to talk about “the decline of the West” is a dangerous proposition. A key historical reference is Oswald Spengler’s 1918 essay with that title. Spengler, a man of his times, thought that humanity functioned through unique cultural systems, and that Western ideas would not be pertinent for, or transferable to, other regions of the planet. (Tell that howler to the young Egyptians in Tahrir Square.)

Spengler, of course, captured the Western-dominated zeitgeist of another century. He saw cultures as living and dying organisms, each with a unique soul. The East or Orient was “magical,” while the West was “Faustian.” A reactionary misanthrope, he was convinced that the West had already reached the supreme status available to a democratic civilization -- and so was destined to experience the “decline” of his title.

If you’re thinking that this sounds like an avant-la-lettre Huntingtonesque “clash of civilizations,” you can be excused, because that’s exactly what it was.

Speaking of civilizational clashes, did anyone notice that “maybe” in a recent TIMEcover story picking up on Spenglerian themes and headlined “The Decline and Fall of Europe (and Maybe the West)”?  In our post-Spenglerian moment, the “West” is surely the United States, and how could that magazine get it so wrong? Maybe? After all, a Europe now in deep financial crisis will be “in decline” as long as it remains inextricably intertwined with and continues to defer to “the West” -- that is, Washington -- even as it witnesses the simultaneous economic ascent of what’s sometimes derisively referred to as “the South.”

Think of the present global capitalist moment not as a "clash," but a “cash of civilizations.”

If Washington is now stunned and operating on autopilot, that’s in part because, historically speaking, its moment as the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower” barely outlasted Andy Warhol’s notorious 15 minutes of fame -- from the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union to 9/11 and the Bush doctrine. The new American century was swiftly throttled in three hubris-filled stages: 9/11 (blowback); the invasion of Iraq (preemptive war); and the 2008 Wall Street meltdown (casino capitalism).

Meanwhile, one may argue that Europe still has its non-Western opportunities, that, in fact, the periphery increasingly dreams with European -- not American -- subtitles. The Arab Spring, for instance, was focused on European-style parliamentary democracies, not an American presidential system. In addition, however financially anxious it may be, Europe remains the world’s largest market. In an array of technological fields, it now rivals or outpaces the U.S., while regressive Persian Gulf monarchies splurge on euros (and prime real estate in Paris and London) to diversify their portfolios.

Yet, with “leaders” like the neo-Napoleonic Nicolas Sarkozy, David (of Arabia) Cameron, Silvio (“bunga bunga”) Berlusconi, and Angela (“Dear Prudence”) Merkel largely lacking imagination or striking competence, Europe certainly doesn’t need enemies.  Decline or not, it might find a whole new lease on life by sidelining its Atlanticism and boldly betting on its Euro-Asian destiny.  It could open up its societies, economies, and cultures to China, India, and Russia, while pushing southern Europe to connect far more deeply with a rising Turkey, the rest of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa (and not via further NATO “humanitarian” bombings either).

Otherwise, the facts on the ground spell out something that goes well beyond the decline of the West: it’s the decline of a system in the West that, in these last years, is being stripped to its grim essence. Historian Eric Hobsbawm caught the mood of the moment when he wrote in his book How to Change the World that “the world transformed by capitalism,” which Karl Marx described in 1848 “in passages of dark, laconic eloquence is recognisably the world of the early twenty-first century.”

In a landscape in which politics is being reduced to a (broken) mirror reflecting finance, and in which producing and saving have been superseded by consuming, something systemic comes into view. As in the famous line of poet William Butler Yeats, “the center cannot hold” -- and it won’t either.

If the West ceases to be the center, what exactly went wrong?

Are You With Me Or Against Me?

It’s worth remembering that capitalism was “civilized” thanks to the unrelenting pressure of gritty working-class movements and the ever-present threat of strikes and even revolutions. The existence of the Soviet bloc, an alternate model of economic development (however warped), also helped.  To counteract the USSR, Washington’s and Europe’s ruling groups had to buy the support of their masses in defending what no one blushed about calling “the Western way of life.”  A complex social contract was forged, and it involved capital making concessions.

No more.  Not in Washington, that’s obvious.  And increasingly, not in Europe either.  That system started breaking down as soon as -- talk about total ideological triumph! -- neoliberalism became the only show in town.  There was a single superhighway from there and it swept the most fragile strands of the middle class directly into a new post-industrial proletariat, or simply into unemployable status.

If neoliberalism is the victor for now, it’s because no realist, alternative developmental model exists, and yet what it has won is ever more in question. Meanwhile, except in the Middle East, progressives the world over are paralyzed, as if expecting the old order to dissolve by itself. Unfortunately, history teaches us that, at similar crossroads in the past, you are as likely to find the grapes of wrath, right-wing populist-style, as anything else -- or worse yet, outright fascism.

“The West against the rest” is a simplistic formula that doesn’t begin to describe such a world. Imagine instead, a planet in which “the rest” are trying to step beyond the West in a variety of ways, but also have absorbed that West in ways too deep to describe.  Here’s the irony, then: Yes, the West will “decline,” Washington included, and still it will leave itself behind everywhere.

Sorry, Your Model Sucks

Suppose you’re a developing country, shopping in the developmental supermarket.  You look at China and think you see something new -- a consensus model that’s turning on the lights everywhere -- or do you?  After all, the Chinese version of an economic boom with no political freedom may not turn out to be much of a model for other countries to follow. In many ways, it may be more like an inapplicable lethal artifact, a cluster bomb made up of shards of the Western concept of modernity married to a Leninist-based formula where a single party controls personnel, propaganda, and -- crucially -- the People’s Liberation Army.

At the same time, this is a system evidently trying to prove that, even though the West unified the world -- from neocolonialism to globalization -- that shouldn’t imply it’s bound to rule forever in material or intellectual terms.

For its part, Europe is hawking a model of supra-national integration as a means of solving problems and conflicts from the Middle East to Africa. But any shopper can now see evidence of a European Union on the verge of cracking amid non-stop inter-European bickering that includes national revolts against the euro, discontent over NATO’s role as a global Robocop, and a style of ongoing European cultural arrogance that makes it incapable of recognizing, to take one example, why the Chinese model is so successful in Africa.

Or let’s say our shopper looks to the United States, that country still being, after all, the world’s number one economy, its dollar still the world’s reserve currency, and its military still number one in destructive power and still garrisoning much of the globe.  That would indeed seem impressive, if it weren’t for the fact that Washington is visibly on the decline, oscillating wildly between a lame populism and a stale orthodoxy, and shilling for casino capitalism on a side street in its spare time.  It’s a giant power enveloped in political and economic paralysis for all the world to see, and no less visibly incapable of coming up with an exit strategy.

Really, would you buy a model from any of them?  In fact, where in a world in escalating disarray is anyone supposed to look these days when it comes to models?

One of the key reasons for the Arab Spring was out-of-control food prices, driven significantly by speculation. Protests and riots in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Austria, and Turkey were direct consequences of the global recession. In Spain, nearly half of 16- to 29-year-olds -- an overeducated “lost generation” -- are now out of jobs, a European record.

That may be the worst in Europe, but in Britain, 20% of 16- to 24-year-olds are unemployed, about average for the rest of the European Union. In London, almost 25% of working-age people are unemployed.  In France, 13.5% of the population is now officially poor -- that is, living on less than $1,300 a month.

As many across Western Europe see it, the state has already breached the social contract. The indignados of Madrid have caught the spirit of the moment perfectly: “We’re not against the system, it’s the system that is against us."

This spells out the essence of the abject failure of neoliberal capitalism, as David Harvey explained in his latest book, The Enigma of Capital.  He makes clear how a political economy “of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day.”

Will Asia Save Global Capitalism?

Meanwhile Beijing is too busy remixing its destiny as the global Middle Kingdom -- deploying engineers, architects, and infrastructure workers of the non-bombing variety from Canada to Brazil, Cuba to Angola -- to be much distracted by the Atlanticist travails in MENA (aka the region that includes the Middle East and Northern Africa).

If the West is in trouble, global capitalism is being given a reprieve -- how brief we don’t know -- by the emergence of an Asian middle class, not only in China and India, but also in Indonesia (240 million people in boom mode) and Vietnam (85 million). I never cease to marvel when I compare the instant wonders and real-estate bubble of the present moment in Asia to my first experiences living there in 1994, when such countries were still in the “Asian tiger,” pre-1997-financial-crisis years.

In China alone 300 million people -- “only” 23% of the total population -- now live in medium-sized to major urban areas and enjoy what’s always called “disposable incomes.”  They, in fact, constitute something like a nation unto themselves, an economy already two-thirds that of Germany’s.

The McKinsey Global Institute notes that the Chinese middle class now comprises 29% of the Middle Kingdom’s 190 million households, and will reach a staggering 75% of 372 million households by 2025 (if, of course, China’s capitalist experiment hasn’t gone off some cliff by then and its potential real-estate/finance bubble hasn’t popped and drowned the society).

In India, with its population of 1.2 billion, there are already, according to McKinsey, 15 million households with an annual income of up to $10,000; in five years, a projected 40 million households, or 200 million people, will be in that income range. And in India in 2011, as in China in 2001, the only way is up (again as long as that reprieve lasts).

Americans may find it surreal (or start packing their expat bags), but an annual income of less than $10,000 means a comfortable life in China or Indonesia, while in the United States, with a median household income of roughly $50,000, one is practically poor.

Nomura Securities predicts that in a mere three years, retail sales in China will overtake the U.S. and that, in this way, the Asian middle class may indeed “save” global capitalism for a time -- but at a price so steep that Mother Nature is plotting some seriously catastrophic revenge in the form of what used to be called climate change and is now more vividly known simply as “weird weather.”

Back In The USA

Meanwhile, in the United States, Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama continues to insist that we all live on an American planet, exceptionally so.  If that line still resonates at home, though, it’s an ever harder sell in a world in which the first Chinese stealth fighter jet goes for a test spin while the American Secretary of Defense is visiting China. Or when the news agency Xinhua, echoing its master Beijing, fumes against the “irresponsible” Washington politicians who starred in the recent debt-ceiling circus, and points to the fragility of a system “saved “ from free fall by the Fed’s promise to shower free money on banks for at least two years.

Nor is Washington being exactly clever in confronting the leadership of its largest creditor, which holds $3.2 trillion in U.S. currency reserves, 40% of the global total, and is always puzzled by the continued lethal export of “democracy for dummies” from American shores to the Af-Pak war zones, Iraq, Libya, and other hot spots in the Greater Middle East.  Beijing knows well that any further U.S.-generated turbulence in global capitalism could slash its exports, collapse its property bubble, and throw the Chinese working classes into a pretty hardcore revolutionary mode.

This means -- despite rising voices of the Rick Perry/Michele Bachmann variety in the U.S. -- that there’s no “evil” Chinese conspiracy against Washington or the West. In fact, behind China’s leap beyond Germany as the world’s top exporter and its designation as the factory of the world lies a significant amount of production that’s actually controlled by American, European, and Japanese companies.  Again, the decline of the West, yes --  but the West is already so deep in China that it’s not going away any time soon.  Whoever rises or falls, there remains, as of this moment, only a one-stop-shopping developmental system in the world, fraying in the Atlantic, booming in the Pacific.

If any Washington hopes about “changing” China are a mirage, when it comes to capitalism’s global monopoly, who knows what reality may turn out to be?

Wasteland Redux

The proverbial bogeymen of our world -- Osama, Saddam, Gaddafi, Ahmadinejad (how curious, all Muslims!) -- are clearly meant to act like so many mini-black holes absorbing all our fears.  But they won’t save the West from its decline, or the former sole superpower from its comeuppance.

Yale’s Paul Kennedy, that historian of decline, would undoubtedly remind us that history will sweep away American hegemony as surely as autumn replaces summer (as surely as European colonialism was swept away, NATO’s “humanitarian” wars notwithstanding).  Already in 2002, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, world-system expert Immanuel Wallerstein was framing the debate this way in his bookThe Decline of American Power: the question wasn’t whether the United States was in decline, but if it could find a way to fall gracefully, without too much damage to itself or the world.  The answer in the years since has been clear enough: no.

Who can doubt that, 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, the great global story of 2011 has been the Arab Spring, itself certainly a subplot in the decline of the West?  As the West wallowed in a mire of fear, Islamophobia, financial and economic crisis, and even, in Britain, riots and looting, from Northern Africa to the Middle East, people risked their lives to have a crack at Western democracy.

Of course, that dream has been at least partially derailed, thanks to the medieval House of Saud and its Persian Gulf minions barging in with a ruthless strategy of counter-revolution, while NATO lent a helping hand by changing the narrative to a “humanitarian” bombing campaign meant to reassert Western greatness.  As NATO’s secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen put the matter bluntly, “If you’re not able to deploy troops beyond your borders, then you can’t exert influence internationally, and then that gap will be filled by emerging powers that don’t necessarily share your values and thinking.”

So let’s break the situation down as 2011 heads for winter. As far as MENA is concerned, NATO’s business is to keep the U.S. and Europe in the game, the BRICS members out of it, and the “natives” in their places.  Meanwhile, in the Atlantic world, the middle classes barely hang on in quiet desperation, even as, in the Pacific, China booms, and globally the whole world holds its breath for the next economic shoe to drop in the West (and then the one after that).

Pity there’s no neo-T.S. Eliot to chronicle this shabby, neo-medievalist wasteland taking over the Atlanticist axis. When capitalism hits the intensive care unit, the ones who pay the hospital bill are always the most vulnerable -- and the bill is invariably paid in blood.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and aTomDispatch.com regular. His latest book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Escobar reflects on the fate of the global economy click here, or download it to your iPod here. He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Copyright 2011 Pepe Escobar

Debt Crisis In West Is Just A 'Prelude To War'

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, 1780-1831: The German military strategist once said that 'War is the continuation of politics by other means.' Given the political dead-end the West seems to be on, his maxim may once again prove all too true.
"How can an empire in decline impose its views? The U.S. not only shows obvious signs of economic collapse, but also of genuine regression: the American dream no longer exists. The U.S. establishment, Democratic or Republican, is not prepared to cash in its last major comparative advantage - military supremacy."

By K. Selim
Translated By Mary Kenney
August 10, 2011
Courtesy Of "The World Meets"

Western governments appear powerless to confront the current crisis and the looming threat of a depression, with all of the serious consequences that implies. The colossal debt of nations and bleak prospects for growth are creating a panic situation on financial markets around the world. A crash is not a figment of the imagination. The one in 1929 paved the way for the rise of  fascism and the Second World War.

It is futile to expect a paradigm shift from the established order. Since the sub-prime crisis in 2008, there has been much talk of market regulation. The noble ideas that accompanied the latest international joint financial agreement have been quickly abandoned. The leaders of Western states, starting with the president of the United States, have failed to develop a clear and convincing way to discuss economic policy options, let alone take strong measures. Markets are stronger than states. It is they that are ultimately the masters - and they impose their own logic.

With the sub-prime crisis in 2008, the markets forced taxpayers to foot the bill. The "banksters"- an-oh-so-eloquent neologism combining banker with gangster - reminds us once again of where the real power lies. Today they continue to demonstrate this by attacking public debt incurred in part to save the day. The big banks were never going to go bankrupt; the states were! 

Posted by WORLDMEETS.US

Contrary to what one would like to admit, isn't economics more than just a set of mathematical formulas and theories? It is politics. And policy now sits in the hands of people that have no real accountability. The state of the political elite is such that it seems inconceivable that governments could engage in the kind of reorientation of economic policy characterized by the  New Deal.

What we should fear is that war may become - as history attests - the last recourse of capitalism in crisis. "Common sense" might call for a significant reduction in the U.S. military budget as a path toward effective treatment of America's gigantic debt. But the cynicism of short-term interests is little concerned with common sense. How can an empire in decline impose its views? The U.S. not only shows obvious signs of economic collapse, but also of genuine regression: the American dream no longer exists. The U.S. establishment, Democratic or Republican, is not prepared to cash in its last major comparative advantage - military supremacy.

A New History Of Censorship In The West?

The Stream Looks At The Debate Over Freedom vs. Safety On The Net. Should Governments Be Allowed To Cut Off Social Networks Or Cell Service In The Interest Of Public Order?

Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Social media and mobile communication tools have come under increased scrutiny after web-savvy protesters took to Twitter, Facebook and BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) to organise demonstrations, riots, and even looting.

BBM, the private mobile phone messaging service, was targeted in particular because looters and rioters used it to organise acts of violence and theft in several UK cities.

In response, governments and civil-service authorities in the UK and US have begun to consider measures that would allow them to restrict access to internet and mobile networks, as well as services and applications in times of civil disturbance.

British Prime Minister David Cameron proposed measures that would allow the government to restrict users’ access to websites and services if they are being used to incite violence.

In San Francisco last week, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) authorities unilaterally shut down mobile phone reception in underground stations to hinder would-be protesters. Crowds had assembled in the stations protest a BART officer’s fatal shooting of a man authorities claimed was armed with a knife.

Australia is also considering measures that include ISP filtering, a minimum age for Facebook users, and mandatory parental access to kids’ online social network profiles to protect minors from online predators.

Supporters of such restrictions argue that abuse of communication tools like Twitter and BBM threatens public safety.

But opponents counter that restrictions on digital communications tools, including social networking sites and mobile networks, restrict civil liberties and are fundamentally undemocratic.

Today on The Stream, John Perry Barlow will join the show via Skype to discuss censorship. He is the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is an author and expert on cyberspace and digital rights. Also on the programme is Mike Butcher of the technology news website Tech Crunch. Butcher advises the mayor of London on technology issues.

These are some of the social media elements featured in this episode of The Stream.

• A video released by the BART includes footage of demonstrators disrupting access to trains and eventually leading to a temporary shutdown of one transit station on Aug. 15. This time around, BART says their response did not involve disabling mobile communications.

  
  

  • 

     

    BARTable

    2 days 4 hours ago
  • BART's decision to cut off phone service in tunnels drew comparisons to former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's crackdown on pro-democracy activists earlier this year. 
  • In Egypt, it takes a mass uprising to bring down a phone network - in the US, it takes rumors of a protest. #OpBART

    

    kaepora

    2 days 2 hours ago
  • 

    

     

    flickr.com

    1 day 14 hours ago
  • In the UK, looters organising via social media and mobile networks prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to consider initiatives that could give the government power to block or limit access to social media. 

    
    

    Below, is a mashup video, including music, of on-the-ground footage of the London riots. 
  • 

     

    LukeSimms

    1 week 2 days ago
  • Additional scenes of looting at night: 
  • 

     

    alexhamelart

    1 week 2 days ago
  • Some Twitter users supported shutting down BlackBerry Messenger during the London riots, saying that the heavily encrypted mobile messaging service was being used by rioters and looters to target shops and neighbourhoods.

    
    

    Below, a self-described "crime blogger" solicited support from Twitter users. Hundreds re-tweeted the message.
  • Please RT to get @UK_blackberry to shut down #BBM till riots end#BlockBBM let's get it trending #LondonRiots

    

    policeuk

    1 week 2 days ago
  • Critics of such proposals say the BBM platform shouldn't be blamed for the crimes themselves.
  • No point in blaming #BBM for arranging #LondonRiots. Its patheticness like someone blaming roads if the enemy came via them

    

    nkumar_

    1 week 1 day ago
  • I have a Blackberry and I use BBM, I don't loot and riot like the scum. It's not always used for bad things. Don't block BBM. #BlockBBM

    

    jackmp123

    1 week 13 hours ago
  • Others question what else might be blocked if the BBM service is blamed for events in London. 
  • blockbbm? If that doesn't work, maybe #blocktwitter, #blocksms,#blockfacebook, #blockgoogle, #blockphone, #blockspeech? Hmmm.

    

    lindoncollins

    1 week 1 day ago
  • In China, the government has a history of restricting citizens' access to mobile and web services with the intent to suppress political dissent. 
  • Chinese censors blocked mobile services and internet access to reports about dangers at a chemical plant in the north-east city of Dailin on Saturday at the same time the official Xinhua news agency endorsed British Prime Minister, David Cameron’s, suggestion that some people be banned from social media sites in the UK.

    rfaunplugged.org

    1 day 14 hours ago
  • Thumbnail image: A protester uses a mobile phone during a demonstration at the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Civic Center Station in San Francisco, California August 15, 2011. Protesters demonstrated on Monday against the subway system after BART turned off cell phone service in stations last week to foil a protest over a police shooting. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith (UNITED STATES - Tags: CIVIL UNREST CRIME LAW BUSINESS TRANSPORT)

The Booming Business Of Internet Censorship

Internet Companies Based In The West Are Used To Censor Content In The Arab world, and Sometimes Manipulated Maliciously

By Jillian C. York
Last Modified: 29 Mar 2011 15:25
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Throughout most of the Middle East and North Africa, online censorship is the norm.

The level of censorship varies; in Morocco, only a handful of sites relating to the Western Sahara, Google Earth, and Livejournal are deemed offencive enough to ban, while other countries – like Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria – filter the internet pervasively, banning political sites as well as social content.

Though the filtering itself is conducted by the governments of each country, it is made possible by technology imported mainly from the United States and Canada. 

A new report from the OpenNet Initiative, which I authored with my colleague Helmi Noman, outlines the various countries in the region utilising these tools: In Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Sudan, and Kuwait, the censors prefer McAfee's SmartFilter technology.

In Yemen, until recently, Websense was the software of choice; the government has since switched to Canadian-built Netsweeper, also used by Qatar and the UAE.

Tunisia has used SmartFilter in the past, but has recently loosened up on its internet controls.

Tools like Websense, SmartFilter, and Netsweeper – as well as Cisco, a favourite of China – make it easier for government censors to do their jobs.

Rather than blocking URLs individually, they can check a single category (like pornography, drugs, or provocative attire) and block thousands of sites in one fell swoop.

Unsurprisingly, the categorisation system is imperfect, sometimes causing innocuous sites to get caught in the mix.

The OpenNet Initiative's website, as well as my own, were both blocked by the government of Yemen which at the time used Websense (it has since switched to Netsweeper), allegedly for containing pornography. 

Neither site contained pornographic material, and when pressed, Websense admitted that sites with significant amounts of spam containing outlinks to porn sites – such as comments left by third-party spammers – can cause a site to be erroneously categorised.

Problematically, this system means that, by throwing up a few blog comments with links to offencive content, virtually anyone can manipulate these systems to get content blocked, having a chilling effect on free speech.

The Web filtering technologies used by Middle Eastern and North African governments are also commonly used by schools, libraries, and offices, where blocking pornography is the norm.

While blocking profane content in such locations is justifiable, there is potential for massive overblocking.

The fact that Websense and SmartFilter are American-made is perhaps of greater concern: the US department of state's internet freedom agenda funds, among other initiatives, circumvention technology to get around the very same filtering systems exported by the companies.

This is not a new problem; in 2006, popular blog BoingBoing found itself blocked in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both of which used SmartFilter at the time.

The reason? The company, then owned by Secure Computing (and now by Intel), wouldn't say, but told Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing that "even thumbnails of Michelangelo's 'David' could land a site on the forbidden 'nudity' list".

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton mentioned US companies in her first speech on internet freedom in January 2010, stating that American companies "need to make a principled stand". No public action has been taken to curb the export of filtering software.

Aside from Websense – which states that its software is prohibited for use by governments, except to filter illegal pornographic content – none of the companies mentioned have policies prohibiting the use of their software by foreign governments, or to block political content.

If the goal of the internet freedom agenda is, as stated by secretary of state Clinton, to "export Net freedom", then first we must stop exporting net censorship.

Jillian York is a writer, blogger, and activist based in Boston. She works at Harvard Law School's Berkman Centre for Internet & Society and is involved with Global Voices Online.