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Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent
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Digital Kill Switches: How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent
By John & Nisha Whitehead
January 19, 2024


“No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”—Senator Rand Paul

What’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis?

After all, it’s happening all over the world.

Communications kill switches have become tyrannical tools of domination and oppression to stifle political dissent, shut down resistance, forestall election losses, reinforce military coups, and keep the populace isolated, disconnected and in the dark, literally and figuratively.

As the Guardian reports, “From Ukraine to Myanmar, government-run internet outages are picking up pace around the world. In 2021, there were 182 shutdowns in 34 countries… Countries across Africa and Asia have turned to shutdowns in a bid to control behaviour, while India, largely in the conflict-ridden region of Jammu and Kashmir, plunged into digital darkness more times than any other last year… Civil unrest in Ethiopia and Kazakhstan has triggered internet shutdowns as governments try to prevent political mobilisation and stop news about military suppression from emerging.”

In an internet-connected age, killing the internet is tantamount to bringing everything—communications, commerce, travel, the power grid—to a standstill.

Tyrants and would-be tyrants rely on this “cloak of darkness” to advance their agendas.

In Myanmar, for example, the internet shutdown came on the day a newly elected government was to have been sworn in. That’s when the military staged a digital coup and seized power. Under cover of a communications blackout that cut off the populace from the outside world and each other, the junta “carried out nightly raids, smashing down doors to drag out high-profile politicians, activists and celebrities.”

These government-imposed communications shutdowns serve to not only isolate, terrorize and control the populace, but also underscore the citizenry’s lack of freedom in the face of the government’s limitless power.

Yet as University of California Irvine law professor David Kaye explains, these kill switches are no longer exclusive to despotic regimes. They have “migrated into a toolbox for governments that actually do have the rule of law.”

This is what digital authoritarianism looks like in a technological age.

Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

For those who insist that it can’t happen here, it can and it has.

In 2005, cell service was disabled in four major New York tunnels, reportedly to avert potential bomb detonations via cell phone.

In 2009, those attending President Obama’s inauguration had their cell signals blocked—again, same rationale.

And in 2011, San Francisco commuters had their cell phone signals shut down, this time, to thwart any possible protests over a police shooting of a homeless man.

With shutdowns becoming harder to detect, who’s to say it’s not still happening?

Although an internet kill switch is broadly understood to be a complete internet shutdown, it can also include a broad range of restrictions such as content blocking, throttling, filtering, complete shutdowns, and cable cutting.

As Global Risk Intel explains:

“Content blocking is a relatively moderate method that blocks access to a list of selected websites or applications. When users access these sites and apps, they receive notifications that the server could not be found or that access was denied by the network administrator. A more subtle method is throttling. Authorities decrease the bandwidth to slow down the speed at which specific websites can be accessed. A slow internet connection discourages users to connect to certain websites and does not arouse immediate suspicion. Users may assume that connection service is slow but may not conclude that this circumstance was authorized by the government. Filtering is another tool to censor targeted content and erases specific messages and terms that the government does not approve of.”

How often do most people, experiencing server errors and slow internet speeds, chalk it up to poor service? Who would suspect the government of being behind server errors and slow internet speeds?

Then again, this is the same government that has subjected us to all manner of encroachments on our freedoms (lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, shadow banning, etc.) in order to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, preserve the integrity of elections, and combat disinformation.

These tactics have become the tools of domination and oppression in an internet-dependent age.

It really doesn’t matter what the justifications are for such lockdowns. No matter the rationale, the end result is the same: an expansion of government power in direct proportion to the government’s oppression of the citizenry.

According to Global Risk Intel, there are many motives behind such restrictions:

“For instance, the kill switch serves to censor content and constrain the spread of news. This particularly concerns news reports that cover police brutality, human rights abuses, or educational information. Governments may also utilize the kill switch to prevent government-critical protestors from communicating through message applications like WhatsApp, Facebook, or Twitter and organizing mass demonstrations. Therefore, internet restrictions can provide a way of regulating the flow of information and hindering dissent. Governments reason that internet limitations help stop the spread of fake news and strengthen national security and public safety in times of unrest.”

In this age of manufactured crises, emergency powers and technofascism, the government already has the know-how, the technology and the authority.

Now all it needs is the “right” crisis to flip the kill switch.

This particular kill switch can be traced back to the Communications Act of 1934. Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Act empowers the president to suspend wireless radio and phone services “if he deems it necessary in the interest of national security or defense” during a time of “war or a threat of war, or a state of public peril or disaster or other national emergency, or in order to preserve the neutrality of the United States.”

In the event of a national crisis, the president has a veritable arsenal of emergency powers that override the Constitution and can be activated at a moment’s notice. These range from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, restricting travel and implementing a communications kill switch.

That national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The seeds of this ongoing madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a perceived national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

The internet kill switch is just one piece of the government’s blueprint for locking down the nation and instituting martial law.

There may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public. These powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

Given the government’s penchant for weaponizing one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security, it’s only a matter of time before this particular emergency power to shut down the internet is activated.

Then again, an all-out communications blackout is just a more extreme version of the technocensorship that we’ve already been experiencing at the hands of the government and its corporate allies.

Packaged as an effort to control the spread of speculative or false information in the name of national security, restricting access to social media has become a popular means of internet censorship.

In fact, these tactics are at the heart of several critical cases before the U.S. Supreme Court over who gets to control, regulate or remove what content is shared on the internet: the individual, corporate censors or the police state.

Nothing good can come from techno-censorship.

As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

“The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.“

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, these censors are laying the groundwork to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now, whatever the reason might be, will at some point in the future be abused and used against you by tyrants of your own making.

By the time you add AI technologies, social credit systems, and wall-to-wall surveillance into the mix, you don’t even have to be a critic of the government to get snared in the web of digital censorship.

Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/01/no_a...l-dissent/

WEF Discuss’s Artificial Intelligence Amidst Disinformation
By Helena Glass
January 23, 2024


At the World Economic Forum, Ukraine is adamant that they will be a leader in the conversion to “Renewable Energy”.  In a bombshell revelation, The World Trade Organization declared that ‘trade drives growth’…  But given all the wars, that might not be a feasible outcome…  Antonio Guterres and Klaus Schwab, aged 72 and 85 respectively said the current global system is an aging grandparent and a ‘networked multilateralism of the 2030 Agenda must be implemented wherein ‘all relevant players’ across all sectors should be mobilized for inclusivity…  What the fark does that mean?

Networked Multilateralism:  is gob speak for globalization via coups.

Relevant Players:  is gob speak for those western coup countries and their minion governments who can serve the West.

All while Israel obliterates Palestinians, Syrians, & Yemeni’s, and Ukraine targets civilians and children.  Without impunity.  And the Western  relevant players decry that “Trust” must be reaffirmed, in social, economic and political spectrums in an equitable transition.  While being responsible for all the bombing and wars.

What are they really pursuing?

Re-creation of countries into a globalized colony.  As populations age the economic security of the future becomes unstable.  Twofold measures became the solution:  1.  death of the elderly via Big Pharma,  2.  immigration of the young male populations of third world countries.  Death was used to eliminate large swathes of those considered nonproductive weights on society.  Due to Big Pharma infertility rates of the educated population, uneducated young males are needed to ‘pick crops’ work in fast food restaurants and fill the void in our militaries.

The women and children of these immigrant males are left behind to serve the masters who have taken over their countries;  Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras.  All these countries boast vast resources, unparalleled beauty, rainforests, beaches and poverty.  Making them the perfect enclave for the western elite ‘relevant players’.

Although Germany’s means and outcome for training their immigrants failed miserably, it would appear the elite have no Plan B.

Despite the millions of immigrants pouring unfettered into the US, Biden still maintains his Delaware enclave, Soros still lives in his New York compound and Obama enjoys his oceanfront walled estate.  They are not moving.  In fact, North Salem, New York, continues to attract the uber wealthy including;  Larry Fink, Bill Gates daughter, Bloomberg, Gere, Letterman, Jamie Dinan of Milwaukee Bucks co-owner, and Glenn Dubin.  All billionaires.  All living in an inequitable, non-diverse, non-inclusive town where 96% of the residents are white, and with properties valued over $35 million+.  All members of the World Economic Forum –

Which would indicate that communities that are rural and high-end suburban are insulated from the chaos that is destined to plague the cities.  Whether Trump wins or loses, inner city riots are a high likelihood.  The cities will be the cesspools of plague, diseases, and violence as in a Mad Max scenario wherein the police will simply vacate.

Many billionaires have already bought their ‘get-out-of-jail-free Bunker card’.  Some of these massive structures are large enough to house horses and pools.  Other bunkers are connected by tunnels and advertise facilities for congregation, bars, movie theatres and wine vaults.  How safe they are and who will be responsible for ‘repairs and maintenance’  are seemingly benign questions with no real answers.  Given billionaires don’t even know how to dress themselves, cook, or launder are also subjects not discussed.  Where Bezos plans to dock his 400’ ocean voyaging sailboat is also not discussed…

As such, the same billionaires devoted to DEI for the peasants are not overly concerned about paying $100 million for an unprotected house or a bunker that could rival Epstein Island.  Instead, like Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, they continue to double their wealth – which would have zero value in a world of bunkers…  ODD.

Within this maze of lies, hype, and hyperbole, the most pressing issue the WEF declares to be at stake is Truth.  As such, they want to further close the disinformation campaign through further censorship and punishment.  And that is what we can expect to unravel in 2024 via AI.  Because the first disinformation the media will parlay is that AI cannot lie and therefore anything AI says is Factual.

“According to McKinsey & Company, AI applications have the potential to contribute between USD 2.6 trillion and 4.4 trillion annually to the global economy through various business scenarios.”  But if AI is replacing jobs – that $4.4 trillion will NOT trickle down anywhere – it will remain within the grasp of the few – and only the few.  Extending vast poverty and suffering.

To placate the peasants, AI has created AI safety wherein AI will program safety protocols into itself, to promote ‘diversity & inclusivity’.    Of course at that point, diversity means that the uneducated, untrained immigrants coming into the US will be the unpaid labourors for AI.  Programmed for punishment should the worker bee’s productivity fall below an AI determined level.  ZAP!

All it takes is for a few hackers to get into the mix to reprogram AI into militaristic mode for the elites to completely lose control and be subject to the same protocols as the peasants.  An outcome their ego’s cannot embrace.

For the immediate future, we are being warned that AI has already reached the point where it can not be distinguished from reality.  In other words, videos, people, scenes, audio, events and wars  generated by AI could create a major false flag that could disrupt global reality and frame an allusion – such as a catastrophic event – war, earthquake, nuke, etc…

Yet the WEF is more concerned with Twitter Disinformation…  Because the vast majority of WEF Leaders are still learning how to use laptops and word docs much less understand the remote complexities of AI.  In their end-stage formative years.  60 world leaders attended the 2024 Davos ~ they boast.  However, the vast majority are corporate CEO’s, aka stakeholders,  as governments secede from pretending they have any power, while the Bidens of the world stayed home and watched Daffy Duck and The Road Runner.

The grift and graft that has caused so many CEO’s and government officials to be caught in a lie, to pretend to be knowledgeable, has reached a pinnacle as social media users are able to disseminate the crystal ball theories within minutes instead of days, has left elite humans in the dumpster.  The Zuckerberg who ‘created Facebook’, the Altman who created AI Chat, the Gates who created home computers, and the Musk who is creating space travel – have no expertise in these fields.  They are Deep Fakes.

They were chosen to host the 4th Industrial Revolution as faces.

From 500 BC to 1,000 AD = people lived the same without relative innovation across the globe.  From 1,000 to 1800 = people lived without innovation across the globe.  From 1890 to 2020, a span of 130 years, innovation exploded.  As though suddenly – a few became inductees into technology to create a false human interface. 

And The Greatest Lie Was BORN.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/01/no_a...formation/
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