Wednesday 8 December 2010

Information Warfare


I think I first mentioned information warfare on this blog in January 2008 though if you scout around a bit I've been talking about it quite a bit longer than that. I was first alerted to the idea of it by Marshal McLuhan and subsequently learned that Churchill also predicted the third world war would be an information war too from his learnings about the Engima code cracking at Bletchey Park.

Talking with a friend of mine in Hong Kong last year she believed it had already commenced, and of course it makes perfect sense within the context of information war that nobody actually declares it. They just get on with it. That's quite an important point now that information is so easy to discredit. Judge people on what they do and not on what they say.

It's for this reason that as soon as America starts to talk about absolutely anything being against its interests, then by and large I assume it's in my interest to take a contrarian stance. I've long given up the assumption that the nation state is going to take care of our generation in any meaningful way when they prosecute illegal wars, manipulate mainstream media and generally mortgage off to the future, any value that can be extracted today. 


I see that smaller countries all over the world genuflect subserviently when asked to carry out the wishes of the auto aspyxiating American Empire. That includes Australia, "Special Needs" UK and now Spineless Sweden. Only the New Bolivarian Latin Americans  have drawn a line in the sand to IMF and World Bank cripple-loans coupled with Shock Doctrine  economic restructuring that pays for the subsidies on all aspects of our Northern Hemisphere consumption lifestyles. It's for this reason the parasitic adjective is by no means melodramatic, though of course you could enlighten yourself and listen to Susan George on this subject if your courage hasn't still utterly failed you.



By now we all know that Julian Assange is under arrest for the Wikileaks of State Department cables detailing; nothing of danger to human life, exposing cyber security issues within the United States and most importantly telling the truth that is largely a story of deception by our so called enlightened and liberal governments. A truth that has me shaking my head when I see otherwise grown up people applaud being treated like a child by the nanny state.


In principal the people who are most diligent about secrecy have the most to hide. I've no problem with the individuals right to privacy but the transparency being imposed on the State Department is a good thing. Particularly in light of a century of exploitation in countries I've noticed the same finger wagging people are bottom-line clueless on. People who demand and are unwavering on privacy yet don't mind using the courts to drag a man's privacy through the mud. Where's your gestalt? Is this how you define your weltanschuung? On CIA inspired charges of trivial post coital rape?

I'm disgusted that my instinct about Julia Gillard was bang on the money revealing her to be a drawling mutt of an Aussie woman with clear as daylight ugly ambitions. I'd like to think Kevin Rudd was different but I've watched as he lead the way for restricted internet freedoms in Australia as the Canary in the Western world digital coal mine. No he's just as transparent and superficial. A lightweight leader deservingly slapped into place by a woman with greedier power ambition than he. Serves him right..... No worries as they say in Australia.

However if you insist, then of course the due course of law must be pursued through normal channel,s though I claim that the persecution of Julian Assange is for false allegations of rape. The timing is odd, the filing of the case and the speed with which it has been processed is highly unusual and then there's the abnormality of the girl who claims to be exploiting this post coital rape legislation that is unique to Sweden on her blog when the matter is ostensibly an ambiguous (and private argument) of prophylactic use


I don't mind if the domestic law dramatises its international servility by following it's masters wishes for pursuing proxy revenge instead of justice, but the silence on the part of people about any other (and there are many) important political issues currently framing our complex and morally challenging daily lives is deafening (and insulting). It points towards a triviality and ignorance that is missing from the even handedness that righteous justice demands. So let's have our Kangaroo court case. 

And be done with it.