IT IS CHEAP, FAST AND EFFICIENT.
Information technologies used for supporting "freedom and democracy" allow the
USA to spend less on its military
When you hear that Twitter or mobile phones are essential for
democracy and that they give a chance to Iranian or Burmese
or Cuban or Zimbabwean "tyranny fighters", give yourself
a moment and think about the persons using such a chance and the ways
they use it. By the way, some examples of that can be found
at not so distant places: the scenario described was frequently used
at the post-Soviet space, and last time it was Chisinau,
2009.
If you are not in the crowd exactly where it happened, then
probably the fastest way for you to get information nowadays is the
Internet. You can reach it even using your mobile phone, and if you
missed the moment somehow, your boy- or girlfriend would care of you
so much that they would send you a text message re-telling you the
news read by them in the virtual space. For example, they may text
you something about the clashes between police forces and demonstrators that
led to numerous casualties and horrible damages that were described
by some "eye-witnesses" in their blogs; after some time, you will
find out that these were just rumors and provocations, multiplied by the
yellow press bots, programmed to collect such information, and by the
"well-wishers" of the "Internet population". But that would be too
late — necessary political steps would be taken and the process would
get beyond authorities’ control. Some people then would rub heir hands, looking
forward to their’ capturing power.
That’s the real example of information technologies’ being far from
absolute impartiality, we have seen it lately. So when you hear
that Twitter or mobile phones are essential for democracy and that they
give a chance to Iranian or Burmese or Cuban
or Zimbabwean "tyranny fighters", give yourself a moment and think
about the persons using such a chance and the ways they use it.
By the way, some examples of that can be found at not
so distant places: the scenario described was frequently used at the
post-Soviet space, and last time it was Chisinau, 2009.
Beside the fact that communication technologies and their space and the
Internet in general and Twitter in particular were created the
Western companies and are to the great extent controlled by them,
it is admitted that the US government and some trans-national
corporations are directly involved in financing the seminars dedicated
to how the "activists" should use the information technologies for the
sake of "promoting democracy" and "economic development" in the
"third world" countries.
What are these seminars? Let’s take Stanford university’s Рrogram
on liberation technology (this university is located right near the
Silicon valley in California) as an example. This program
is developed by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International
Studies, named after Mr. Freeman and Mr. Spogli, two prominent managers
of the Morgan Stanley financial group. The abbreviated name of this
institution is the Freeman Spogli Institute, FSI.
The pictures of Ayatollah, ordering beating the "independent" Iranian
bloggers up, in addition to some theses like "using
of information technologies can help in changing the closed societies
such as Cuban, North Korean and Burmese" make us quite sure that this
program is totally innocent of political impartiality. But,
of course, the problem of "promoting democracy" cannot be solved
just by bloggers and some enthusiasts who photograph poll stations with
their mobile phones’ cameras. In addition to them, they need
journalists.
This program’s developers are really full of very positive anticipations:
"In future we expect synergy (sounds like "harmony, not just some
"synthesis") of the various forms of the communication technologies
and the electronic media". "Through these technologies, the new civil society
emerges: partly virtual, partly face-to-face, that makes each one much more
capable and audible. The great potential of democracy is in the
cooperation between virtual realm and reality".
The program will also "seek to evaluate (through experiment and other
empirical methods) some technologies and methods that can bring us the
highest degree of success as well as how we can re-achieve
such success and how we can improve the less successful technologies
in order to achieve real economic, social and political positive
result". The only question remaining is: where will they hold the
experiments announced above and who will become objects of that? It’s
clear that such experiments are not going to be held in Stanford
University campus. It seems that such experiment will
go in parallel with the well known "promoting democracy on the
global scale".
The experts responsible for this program’s implementation were picked exactly
in accordance with the target chosen. The person in charge
of the "Liberation program" is Mr. Joshua Cohen, Professor
of Law, Political Science and Philosophy, a "prominent expert
in the field of democracy theory", who manages the FSI program
entitled "Global justice". His colleague is Mr. Larry Diamond, senior
fellow of the FSI and Hoover Institution, co-editor of "Journal
of Democracy", senior scientific consultant of the International
Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy,
former employee of the World Bank, UN and the State Department. They
are helped by Mr. Terry Winograd, Professor of Computer Science
at Stanford University, a co-founder of the foundation named
"Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility".
The project managers’ curriculums vitae — and they are renowned experts
in political and computer science as well as in "worldwide
expansion of democracy", in addition to being governmental and
non-governmental organizations veterans — can’t leave any doubts that the
reason of launching this program in January 2009 was the higher
establishment’s interest towards the informational technologies’ potential
in the field of social engineering and promoting
of democracy.
Despite Stanford university’s declaring itself "research-only institution out
of any political ideology" it hosts numerous seminars and workshops
for the interested parties from all over the world, and not the least reason
of their interest is the funds distributed there.
As for the handout materials for the "Liberation Technologies" briefings,
they are really amazing. It appears that their target audience is not
only the one consisting of the native speakers of Arabic, Korean,
Burmese, Farsi and Swahili. Russian is also included, and besides some
Iranian, African and Asian issues we can read about Russia, Ukraine and
Belarus.
What’s the reason for that? What’s the strange coincidence that put Russia and
Belarus on the list that included, say, Somali?! It turns out that
everything can be easily explained. The present FSI chief — Dr. Coit
Blacker, the chief of the above-mentioned persons,
is "a well-known expert on USSR/Russia and national security
matters". In 2005 — when John Hennessy, Stanford university
President, announced an "international initiative" for promoting peace and
security, improving governing on every level and increasing social
well-being — Dr. Blacker became a co-chairman of its executive
committee. In 2007, he participated in the "US Council
on Foreign Relations" group of experts’ research on the Russian
politics which resulted in publishing a book bearing
a significant title: "Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can
and Should Do".
In this book the prominent theoretician didn’t make secret of the
means that were to be used by the USA to push Russia that
"went the wrong way" toward the desired path of historical
development — information means were to come first.
Within just two years after this book was published, the wide distribution
of the "Liberation technologies" began. They have chosen just the right
moment for that: President Obama, busy with solving domestic problems
(healthcare system reforming is quite a maze!), is not ready
to spend much money on wide-scale "world justice" actions,
as the Bush-Cheney administration did. And so, here we see
cost-effective, yet so promising methods, and the above-mentioned
"technologies" of Stanford university are an example
of that.
By Vyacheslav Klimov
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