When I wrote about Facebook testing new censoring tools before, during, and after the French election process, only a few thousand readers took notice. The main reason the public seems so disinterested is that the sensational news and events, fake and real, over the past four or five years have left them numb. When Edward Snowden revealed the NSA is spying on everybody, the news cycle quickly diverted our attention away from the reality the Obama White House tore up the US Constitution.
The aforementioned report of mine, influenced in part on a Stefan Frank story at the Gatestone Institute, showed evidence Germany and/or EU efforts to get Facebook to “filter” the truth are already in play. But this story is merely the continuation of earlier reports like the one republished at The News Doctors from February, 2016, and the latter June, 2016 story of corporate/governmental control of media and Google’s Digital News Initiative, followed by our tips and stories to Sputnik and other media on the so-called EU Counter Propaganda Unit show the progression of message control mechanisms being set in place. Now we see the final phases of idea control being put in place on hearing the US will make visa applicants submit their social media handles and accounts for scrutiny before allowing entry.
Today, the London Bridge terror attack is the excuse British Prime Minister Theresa May is using to demand strict internet regulation she says will eliminate “safe zones” for terrorists. With real people, being run over by solid automobiles and trucks, and being stabbed with steel knives, the fear of social media and free voices has led us into the waiting arms of Big Brother and 1984. Anyone who cannot see this by now is certainly blind, stupid, or working for “the man”. Here is what May offered by way of a warning:
“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed – yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide. We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements to regulate cyberspace to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.”
Reading what the European Commission has to say on cyber-propaganda, it’s clear the perpetrators of the real “fake news” intend to put the blame on their opponents, those who would voice any opposition. Those same parliamentarians that suck up tax money and solve nothing, now they intend to create yet another bureaucracy to “help us understand” fake news. I quote from a recent commission PDF:
“Whereas recent research indicates that a majority of people have difficulties determining when news is fake, the EU’s steps towards countering this growing information challenge are still tentative.”
Reading between the lines it’s fair to say the Brussels geniuses were apparently to nearsighted to fear fake news and social media beforehand, and now they’re begging for more extreme controls over what people see, hear, read, and believe. Further along in the document the essence of our collective stupidity comes out:
“US research has shown that most young, digital-savvy school and college students have difficulties in identifying fake news.”
What this means is, if you are not tethered to a smart-device, you are even more susceptible Putin puppets. The study referred to is from brilliant Stanford students who discovered “amazingly” that the same age group that cannot name the first president of the United States or find Canada on a map, also cannot figure the truth from fiction. The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) released yet another useless report showing how lame American students are these days. Interestingly, one of the most liberal and most anti-Trump publications in the world, The Atlantic also blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump on a lack of civics education. As far back as 2000 education reports revealed that 65 percent of college seniors surveyed failed to pass a high-school level American history test, while this recent National Association of Scholars (NAS) study revealed that college student knowledge of Western Civilization and the so-called “Big Picture” has practically vanished. Vanished knowledge! And it takes Stanford studies to show young people cannot discern?
People, what we are witnessing is not our elected and appointed leadership protecting us from the Ruskies or Chinese, and especially not from knife wielding Islamic extremists bent on murder. What we are witnessing is Big Brother hurriedly and desperately stamping out the small wildfires of dissident voices with his great-big-black jackboots. At the same time, Vladimir Putin and his new soviets are blamed for everything from poisoning Roundup weed killer to killing JFK, the renewed Nazi threat gets ready to goose step all over what’s left of freedom. This is becoming an unarguable point, and a horrendous eventuality. I suggest you pay close attention, and get ready for the unimaginable.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
