Patrolling the Information Superhighway

On the heels of the Munich Security Conference, which many have compared to the Congress of Vienna in 1814 or the Conference of Berlin in 1884, many from the Hill to Hong Kong are all aglow at the prospect of truly global century. Among the topics on the agenda were the prolonged occupation of Afghanistan, a united attack on Iran's nuclear aspirations, and the first arms-sharing agreement between the U.S. and Russia. However, the most important collaboration to come out of the conference will be the first concerted effort by international magnates to monopolize and control the internet and permanently push back the ground lost in the past years through lack of focus on cyber-security issues.

While the blogger in me can't help but mourn the end of an era of n'er to be repeated net free-for-all, nobody can deny the immense benefit of laying down a few stop lights and sending out a few traffic cops on the information superhighway. Doing so will ensure that popular uprisings such as those in Tunisia, Egypt and Iran in the past year will not arise spontaneously or spiral out of control, meaning that we will be better able to transition regimes when necessary all while keeping a tighter grip on the transaction of goods.

There was, however, one point of concern that comes out of the global internet manifesto laid down by the major powers at the Munich Security Conference, and that is the persistent use of the archaic rhetoric of "terrorism" as a chief strategy for securing the internet. While the term terrorist when applied specifically to Muslim militants still has a little currency for some, in general, the public has gradually realized that this empty term is nothing more than a pretext or justification for otherwise illegitimate actions against states and free individuals. What's worse is that it has drawn attention to the plain fact that managing the globe does require killing innocent people. In this way, world governments have become trapped in their own venus fly trap of anti-terrorist rhetoric which technically brands them as terrorist regimes. While there had been a small push-back against the rhetoric of the war on terror in recent months, the Munich Security Conference and the internet debate have proven that many in the community are still unable to move past this old paradigm. Instead many are still echoing the tired words of Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "We're in a new world. We're in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn't act." Indeed, it is a new, global world, and it is good that we are acting, but can't these measures be justified in some rational framework that will convince the bourgeoisie of where their collective interest lies?

Comcast, Comdown

While the recent WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic wires has revealed absolutely no information that would shock or surprise even the most naive of Americans, the reaction by those embarrassed by the contents of the leak has raised some concern. A few hours after the new diplomatic documents were released, Comcast internet was knocked out across most of the Northeastern United States. This questionable choice has raised an eyebrow or two. Of course, the region from New England to  NorthernVirginia remains the only part of the country where anyone really still believes in the state as a positive social institution, and it makes sense that those impacted by the leak would instinctively seek to plug the ears of America's would-be middle class. However, this was a foolish decision for a number of reasons. First of all, we should not fear losing the allegiance of those who still believe in the state at this point, since there have been much more damaging leaks of information in the past. For example, the WikiLeaks documents on Iraq that made public the fact that the majority of those killed by U.S. troops were civilians was quite damning, yet they received little attention. These diplomatic wires are nothing more than celebrity gossip, so what's the fuss?

I've made this criticism many times, and I'll undoubtedly make it again. Many of us wealthy elites still have no concept of how the lower classes think, and thus, we are always foolishly trying to pull the wool over their eyes when something goes wrong. This is highly counterproductive and it is an insult to the human intelligence of the average American. I think it is clear that Americans - far from being ignorant - are completely aware of the reality and remain cynically complicit because they feel for any number of reasons that it remains in their best interest. Moreover, because most do not feel they are directly harmed or impacted by the scandals of state, they simply do not pay attention. 

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the Comcast outage, but unless it was Julian Assange himself, whoever pulled the trigger has made a foolish error with potentially severe consequences. It was a very selfish and shortsighted move. Knocking out the internet may have delayed the spread of the WikiLeaks news and even distracted a few people from it; however, it grabbed the attention of millions of otherwise disinterested Americans who lost internet for a few hours. The last thing any of us need is for someone to start caring about these issues because it suddenly affects them personally. Moreover, this display of muscle, while somewhat threatening, was completely inappropriate. Now is not the time. Americans do not care that the state's actions actually oppose things like democracy, equality, etc. because most of them never really wanted or believed in that. Basically, whoever was behind the shutdown at Comcast needs to calm down. Much worse leaks concerning Xe, Mossad, and Saudi support for Al Qaeda are likely to surface, and it is imperative that we exercise extreme caution in responding so as not to alienate our cynical allies of the masses.