Centralized world power and Net censorship

Centralized world power and Freedom of Speech cannot coexist!

We live in a small world where the actual power structure is hidden and centralized. On the other hand, the Net is all about freedom of speech. Clearly, centralized power and the Net cannot coexist. It is obvious that centralized power is well entrenched so naturally it is the Net that has to back off. This backing off manifests itself in many ways such as malware, P2P clogging, complexity and cost of Internet access, sluggish roll-out, non standard components, obsolescence, information overload, lack of customization and so on.

But the most sinister factor is Google's dominance. The lack of competition allows Google to stick to its keyword centric syntactic strategy where it is able to censor websites much more easily. This SIGNAL vs NOISE kind of censorship is able to confuse even the most determined searchers. In any case, Google is more about Ads than about Search.

The only way to bypass such censorship seems to be to search on the basis of authors as opposed to keywords. This is the only way to keep the SIGNAL NOISE ratio from getting out of control. What is more worrying is not ideology, it is spin. This is the reason we should give up even on authors and follow only individual commenters. The logic is that authors are looking for numbers and only spins see propagation.

To follow individual commenters, we can click on their names, which is usually a link to their website or a page containing other comments made by them. We can also try and Google their name. Savvy commenters pick quirky (hopefully unique) screen names for this very purpose.

But never mind, here too, our rulers have found a way out: botnets. The common perception is that botnets are moronic spreaders of spam and some of the less moronic botnets even try and phish out our passwords. To a certain extent this is true because email is the purest form of addressability so our rulers need spam to dilute it. And also financial scams and economic hardship have forever been used to keep people under control. That such actions keep the insurance and security companies humming is welcome too.

In actual fact, botnets are highly sophisticated networks which are not only able to unceasingly dodge detection but also troll ALL forums and add to the NOISE everywhere. Even complex captchas are no deterrents to these sophisticated bots. It is amazing how many of the comments posted are actually from sophisticated trolls that never be exposed because these behave like human commenters and come from innocent IPs. Recent studies have confirmed that botnets use SEO techniques to capture search engine traffic on controversial keywords.

Moral of the story: Suspect anything and everything because PERCEPTION CONTROL is the biggest game in town.

Internet Censorship Alert

Internet Censorship Alert: Alex Jones exposes agenda to 'blacklist' dissenting sites (March 14, 2010) As I predicted, the Obama Administration is trying to shut down the Internet - at least the parts he doesn't like. Barack Obamas regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein has stated that he wants to ban conspiracy theories from the internet. Think about what this means - Every video, every website, every blog, every email, that exposes or just criticizes the government for any reason whatsoever could be labeled a "conspiracy" and taken down. Your home could be raided in the middle of the night, and you could be carted of to jail for criticizing the government. All they have to do is call it a "conspiracy theory". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAWmBLFodE

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Will this be a depression?

Will this be a depression?
Anthony Mirhaydari
Oct 07, 2008

http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/
2008/10/07/are-we-facing-a-depression.aspx

Americans sure are in a gloomy mood. A recent poll finds that 60% of us believe that a full-blown depression is somewhat or very likely.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/06/news/economy/depression_poll/

Since a depression has no official qualities (besides being worse than recession), the pollsters cited a few economic measures from the 1930s during their survey: A 25% unemployment rate, widespread bank failures, and millions of people homeless and unable to afford basic necessities. Other measures of consumer sentiment corroborate these findings.

Before you blow all this off as the irrational rumblings of an unhappy electorate, know that Wall Street's economists are starting to see a similarly dour picture. David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch penned the following comment in a note to clients on Monday:

"It truly is a modern-day depression, in our view -- what else do you call it when an entire industry vanishes (investment banks) in less than a year; the ranks of the unemployed soared more than 30%; and nearly one in ten homeowners with a mortgage are either in arrears or foreclosure?"

While a repeat of the Great Depression isn't likely -- automatic stabilizers like welfare and unemployment insurance are in place, the government and the Federal Reserve are accommodating -- the present situation needs to be put into perspective. After the successive failures of two of the largest asset bubbles in history, our present situation is an outlier; that is, it isn't a normal cyclical downturn of the business cycle.

Morgan Stanley economist Richard Berner is looking at two "adverse feedback loops" that could pull things lower:

"Spreading weakness beyond housing to consumer and capital spending, and from a global slowdown to U.S. exports, will promote further declines in employment, in turn pressuring income, consumers, and their lenders. A second vicious circle runs from tighter credit to a weaker economy, then to a deterioration in credit quality, in turn increasing reluctance to lend."

The depth and length of this downturn now depends on the policy response out of Washington D.C. and the willingness of foreign governments and investment pools to fund the resulting budgetary deficit.

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