UN Control Of The Internet Would Mean UN Control Of Free Speech

By Michael, on December 3rd, 2012

 

   

If the UN is given control of the Internet, that would be a massive step toward making the UN a true global government.  The Internet is the number one venue for free speech and freedom of expression on the planet today, and if the UN is given authority over the Internet it would only be a matter of time before free speech is severely cracked down on.  Of course it would not happen immediately.  At first, UN officials would likely mostly keep their promises of maintaining a "free and open Internet".  But inevitably you would see them act to remove "terrorists" from the Internet, to crack down on "hate speech" and to repress any "politically incorrect" speech that is likely to insult anyone in any way.  If you were censored or banned from the Internet, you could scream about the 1st Amendment all you want, but the United Nations is not bound by the 1st Amendment.  The UN is not there to protect you or your freedoms.  If the UN becomes "the government of the Internet", you can essentially kiss freedom of speech goodbye.  If you do not believe that this could ever happen, you might want to pay close attention to a UN conference that is being held over in Dubai starting on Monday.  It is called "the World Conference on International Telecommunications", and it is scheduled to last for two weeks.  During this conference, Russia, China and a number of Islamic nations plan to make a hard push to have the Internet formally placed under the authority of the United Nations.  Right now, a non-profit organization that is based in California is primarily in charge of running the Internet.  The organization is known as ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).  But now there is going to be a huge effort to take authority away from ICANN and give it to the United Nations.  China, Russia and a number of Islamic nations are arguing that the Internet is a global asset and that it should be governed by a global authority.  However, if the UN is given authority over the Internet, not only will they inevitably kill the "free and open Internet", it will also be a huge leap for the UN toward becoming the government of the world.
Other nations participating in the conference want to tax the Internet and use it as a way to transfer money from the wealthy nations to the poor nations.  Fortunately, the United States does not have to go along with this treaty if it does not want to.  The treaty is entirely voluntary, and the U.S. could decide to opt out.
But is there anyone out there that is actually willing to trust that our politicians will do the right thing on this treaty or on any other major issue?
Even if the U.S. did opt out, we could see a "Balkanization of the Internet" in which the "U.S. Internet" is largely cut off from the "UN Internet" that most of the rest of the world is using.
So even though this conference over in Dubai is not getting a lot of attention in the mainstream media, the stakes are huge.
Even Google is concerned.  Google is asking users to sign a petition supporting the free and open Internet...

"A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice."

Fortunately, at least some of our politicians are aware of what is going on.  Once in a while, one of our lawmakers says something that is right on the money.  This was true of U.S. Representative Greg Walden the other day...

“The ability of the Internet to grow is due largely to the flexibility of the multi-stakeholder approach that governs the Internet today,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.). Government intervention would not only harm the Web but “endanger the global economy and freedom on a much larger scale," he said.

But the way that the Internet works now does not work for repressive governments such as China and Russia.  Repressive regimes don't do well when there is freedom of speech and freedom of expression.  There are a lot of nations out there that would love to use the UN as a tool to crack down on speech that they do not like.
And we have certainly seen repressive governments crack down on Internet speech in recent years.  All over the world average citizens are getting into trouble for exercising free speech on the Internet.  A recent CBC article included some recent examples...

Last month in Iran, four people were arrested for posting messages on Facebook that were deemed insulting to officials. Four Kuwaitis were jailed for purportedly using Twitter to criticize the country’s ruler earlier in November. And in the most publicized recent case, two women in Mumbai were arrested for posting and “liking” a comment on Facebook admonishing supporters of late nationalist Hindu politician Bal Thackeray.

Can you imagine how bad things would get if the UN developed a global "Internet speech policy"?
Already the UN is expressing concern about how "terrorists" are able to use the Internet to "spread propaganda".  The following is from a recent article by Kurt Nimmo...

Terrorists are exploiting Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Dropbox, to spread “propaganda” and open Wi-Fi networks in airports and libraries pose a threat to national security and enable “perpetrators,” according to “The Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes,” a PDF released at a conference in Vienna held by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The globalist organization claims terrorists are running rampant on the internet and leveraging social networks because there “is the lack of an internationally agreed framework for retention of data held by ISPs,” particularly in the United States.
The United Nations report was produced in collaboration with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force. Members include the World Bank, Interpol, the World Health Organization, and the International Monetary Fund.

This may sound harmless to you, but what if they decide that you are a "terrorist" if you oppose the United Nations?  How would you feel if you were permanently banned from the Internet and thrown in jail for writing a blog post about how evil the United Nations is?
Are you starting to get an idea of how this kind of power could be horribly abused?
Even now we are seeing law enforcement authorities all over the world enforce the "rules of the Internet" in an iron-fisted manner.  For example, according to NBC News a 10-year-old girl in Finland recently had her laptop confiscated by authorities for simply trying to download one single album...

Last year, 9-year-old Julietta came across a torrent on The Pirate Bay after searching on Google for Finnish pop star Chisu's latest album. The download failed to work, and she and her father went and bought the album together shortly afterwards. Unbeknownst to them, Finland's Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (known as CIAPC, as well as its Finnish acronym, TTVK) had already taken notice.

This incident resulted in Finnish police standing at the front door of the home of this little girl and taking her laptop away...

Last Tuesday morning, he found a pair of Finnish police officers standing at his doorstep.
The police presented a search warrant, entered, and identified the now 10-year-old girl's Winnie the Pooh-decorated laptop as the object of their search, and confiscated it.

If you think that is bad, then you definitely would not want the UN implementing and enforcing global Internet laws.
You see, the United States is one of the only nations on the face of the earth that still guarantees freedom of speech.  Of course that freedom of speech is now greatly limited and is being eroded with each passing day, but in most other nations things are even worse.
As I have noted previously, in the UK it is now against the law to insult someone with your speech.  Many other nations have similar restrictions on freedom of speech.
So what would you do if the UN started implementing "global speech codes" for the entire Internet?
How would you fight back?
Are you starting to get an idea of how dangerous all of this could potentially be?
A free and open Internet is one of the greatest assets that we have.  It has enabled regular people to communicate with each other on a massive scale unlike anything we have ever seen before in human history.
In the years ahead there are going to be constant efforts to restrict our ability to communicate with one another on the Internet.  It is imperative that we oppose those efforts.
Please share this article with as many people as you can.  The free and open Internet is under attack, and we must speak up while we still can.

9/11 Widow Dies, Maury Island, and JFK

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2012/05/famed-911-widow-dies.html                 

Saturday, May 26, 2012

9/11 Widow Dies, Maury Island, and JFK

"Just coincidence. That's the way it goes sometimes." 

~ Mark Mulder in The X-Files

Sandy Dahl Dies

News outlets are reporting that Sandy Dahl, 52, the widowed wife of United Flight 93's Captain Jason Dahl, died on Friday, May 25, 2012. Dahl was found dead in her Jefferson County, Colorado, but the details of her death were not formally released. Her charity is reporting she died in her sleep of "natural causes."

Sandy Dahl had worked intensively running the Captain Jason Dahl Scholarship Fund and her death was a surprise, said David Dosch, a family friend. The scholarship fund gives money to aspiring pilots to help attend commercial flight training schools.

"Sandy and Jason Dahl were my best friends," said Dosch, who also works at the scholarship fund.

Jason Dahl was piloting United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, which crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It is believed that passengers aboard United Flight 93 stopped a plot by terrorists to pilot the plane through the U.S. Capitol dome. The passengers' and surviving crew members' efforts are credited with eventually causing the plane to ditch and crash in the Pennsylvania field.

In an interview last year on the anniversary of 9/11, Stacy Dahl wore their wedding ring.

"I do think about him every day," she told KMGH. "The reason I am doing this (interview) today and the reason that I do this at all is to make sure he is never forgotten."


Jason Dahl and 9/11's Flight 93
Stacy Dahl and her husband lived in Colorado. But Jason Dahl grew up in California. He learned to fly early. At 13, the San Jose, California, native joined the Civil Air Patrol and earned a scholarship for flying lessons. He was flying solo before he was 16, and while working at the municipal airport he grabbed all the flight time he could, including flying photographers over the area.

Immediately following his graduation from San Jose State University in 1980 with a degree in aeronautical engineering, he became a corporate pilot. By 1984, he was a pilot with United Airlines.

Popular with his fellow pilots, Dahl endured good-natured teasing about his height -- he stood a shade under 5 feet, 6 inches. He and another pilot used to stand on the tips of their toes for photos to make themselves appear taller.

Dahl Name Game

You may vaguely remember the name "Dahl" as being a significant one in the early history of ufology, linked to what is called the "Maury Island Incident," as well as connected to the JFK assassination.

The incident took place shortly after June 21, 1947. On that date, seaman Harold A. Dahl, out scavenging for drifting logs, claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury Island (which is now a peninsula of Vashon Island, in Puget Sound, near Tacoma, Washington, United States; Maury Island is located directly across a narrow section of Puget Sound from Sea-Tac International Airport and Boeing Field). 

Dahl, his son Charles, an unnamed hand and Dahl's dog were on the boat. Dahl reported seeing four, five or six (the initial FBI report says four or five) "doughnut-shaped objects" flying in formation over the area where his boat was. He said he could see blue sky through the holes in the center of the discs, and that there appeared to be port holes lining the inside of the ring. One of the craft appeared to be malfunctioning, Dahl reported, and another craft edged up to it, then retreated. 

At this point the troubled craft began ejecting objects through the inner port holes. Slag-like material began hitting the boat and damaged the windshield, the wheel house and a light fixture, and killed his dog on the deck. He said his son was also slightly injured by falling debris. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and recovered some type of slag ejected from the craft that malfunctioned. Dahl also recovered samples of sheaves of lightweight white sheets of metal that fluttered like "newspapers" out from the inner ring of the troubled UFO to the ground.

The next morning, Dahl reported a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner; Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as wearing a black suit and driving a new 1947 Buick (classic Men in Black details). Dahl assumed he was a military or government representative. Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting while they ate, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also allegedly gave Dahl a non-specific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.

Some confusion and debate over Dahl's statements have occurred. Dahl later claimed the UFO sighting was a hoax, but has also claimed the sighting was accurate, but he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family. There also was the crash of a military plane allegedly carrying the ufo/slag sample, and the death of military personnel. It is a complex story.

Dahl had involved his boss, Fred Crisman in looking into the matter. Dahl brought his partner, Fred Crisman, down the next day to see yet another UFO. The Maury Island incident, even before the Kenneth Arnold "flying saucer" sighting on June 24, 1947, became the first UFO event of the modern era.

In 1968, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed Fred Crisman as part of his investigation into the JFK assassination, which became the subject of Oliver Stone's 1992 movie JFK. Garrison believed that Crisman was the infamous grassy knoll shooter. He's also the central figure in the "Mystery Tramp" photo of the Dallas rail yard hobos, according to some researchers.

Investigator and author Kenn Thomas (pictured above) brought the story of Dahl and Crisman together in his books, Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy (Illuminet Press, October 1, 1999) and JFK & UFO (Feral House, rev. ed., 2011). 

By coincidence, on Thursday, May 23rd, Thomas and I were discussing the overlap between the Men in Black motif and the historical links to Dahl-Crisman and the "three tramps" picked up near Dealey Plaza and the Grassy Knoll on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, immediately after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Thomas emailed me late on Thursday: "Last footnote for today: one of the three tramps in Dealey Plaza, officially, was named Harold Doyle--sounds like 'Dahl' when spoken with a Texas accent. And there were three tramps, as in the MIBs who travel in threes. So it's truly a weird connection that the victim of the first MIB encounter, Harold Doyle, is suspected of being part of the three man team at Dealey Plaza."

On Friday, Sanday Dahl, widow of 9/11 pilot Jason Dahl, died. 

"Is it possible that there are no coincidences? " ~ Signs (2002)

Synchromystic Men In Black

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2012/05/synchromystic-mib3.html                   

Friday, May 25, 2012

Synchromystic Men In Black

by Loren Coleman ©2012

The posters are a pun. The message they portray is a serious one. But the reality is one of a comedy. If we are to believe the new movie, Men In Black 3 (2012), the darkly-clad government or whatever agents are rather cheerful and go about their jobs with good humor and paronomasia aplenty.


Three Is More Than A Trinity


In this 2012 incarnation of MIB3, there are clearly three men in black, following the motif of the sightings. Of course, within this trio, two of the individuals are the same person, merely in different times. Very synchromystic, actually.

But for anyone who truly understands the darker history of "Men in Black" (MIBs), before their modern deep involvement in Ufology, they were anything but funny.


Three has always been the key. What took them so long?

One of the earliest stories ~ whether it was true or not ~ was of the three silencers who visited Albert Bender. Here is a summary of that case from the Pelicanist:

1953, 16 September: Albert Bender, founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, told Gray Barker in a letter, “do not accept any more memberships until after the October issue of Space Review is in your hands.” About the same time Bender told August Roberts that “three men had visited him, and in effect shut him up completely as far as saucer investigation is concerned!” On 4 October Roberts and Dominick C. Lucchesi interviewed Barker, who said that the three men wore “Dark clothes and black hats”, but his usual response to questions was: “I can’t answer that,” e.g. “Q. Do the saucers come from Venus as stated in Adamski’s book? A. I can’t answer that. Q. Do they come from Mars? A. I can’t answer that.” The final (15 October) issue of Space Review contained the statement: “The mystery of the flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by orders from a higher source.” Barker, They Knew Too Much, pp.109-110, 114, 138. In 1962 Bender would relate that three men with glowing eyes had materialised in his bedroom: “All of them were dressed in black clothes. They looked like clergymen, but wore hats similar to Homburg style.” Later he was teleported to a secret Antarctic saucer base. They told him that they were from another star system, they had merely assumed human bodies, being hideous monsters in reality, and were here to extract a chemical from our seawater. Once they had finished this mission Bender would be free to tell his story, as he duly did. Bender, Flying Saucers, pp.74.

One of the most frequent “MIB origins” sentences you will find online is this one: “In 1967, [John A.] Keel coined the term ‘Men In Black’ in an article for the men's adventure magazine Saga, entitled ‘UFO Agents of Terror’.” 

But the facts are a bit more complex. West Virginia UFO researcher Gary Barker’s book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (which was published by University Books in 1956) introduced the notion of the Men in Black to UFO folklore. The follow-up book Flying Saucers and the Three Men (NY: Paperback Library, 1968) by Albert K. Bender, was published by Gray Barker (with Barker’s input and words) through his own Saucerian Books at Clarksburg, West Virginia, in 1962. (The title is infrequently incorrectly given as “Flying Saucers and the Three Men in Black.”)


As Jerome Clark personally told me, regarding the question of "origins": "It is my view that 'men in black' were what Gray Barker wrote about, and that's what he called them. Keel coined the acronym 'MIB' -- different from Barker's enforcers in being otherworldly in appearance and behavior."

For our examination here, it is not important if the Bender story actually happened. In this example, what is more significant is its place in the folkloric men in black accounts, sightings, encounters, and then the chronicles and writings that followed in the wake of this telling of the tale, which evolved into the MIBs.

The world's most thorough ufological historian, Jerome Clark, author of The UFO Book (1997) and his forthcoming Unexplained! (3rd Ed., 2012), has studied the phenomenon of men in black/MIBs for over 40 years. He had this to say about the topic:

First-generation American ufologists' experiences of men in black - as opposed to the MIB who came along later - were the extremely dubious cases of Maury Island and Al Bender, along with the even more questionable Edgar Jarrold "mystery" and Stuart/Wilkinson affair (in both senses of the word "affair"). In retrospect, the bulk of what Gray Barker wrote in the one men-in-black book of the 1950s (They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, 1956) has been discredited. Beyond that, contactee writers such as Adamski and Williamson were using men in black to weave conspiracy theories, based in anti-Semitic literature, about the so-called Silence Group. No wonder sensible ufologists were sensibly suspicious of men-in-black notions.

From Clark's grounded awareness of the MIB "problem," through John A. Keel's demonic view of them, we end up today finding ourselves confronted with a popular culture version of the Men in Black as captured for us by such authors as the late Jim Keith (Casebook on the Men In Black), Jenny Randles (The Truth Behind Men in Black) and Nick Redfern (The Real Men In Black).

The "real Men in Black" or MIBs are not friendly. Not funny. Not full of puns. 

MIBs on Television

One of the earliest televised nonfiction notions of the Men in Black was seen on April 18, 1997, on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries. (It is to be recalled that the first Men in Black movie appeared in 1997, and the sequel Men in Black II, in 2002.)

Staying with television, how did the MIBs become manifest on the highly symbolic program, The X-Files?

Men in Black appeared in The X-Files as the serious "Cigarette Smoking Man" (played by William B. Davis, from September 10, 1993 to May 19, 2002) and as the more comedic MIBs (played by ex-wrestler and former governor Jesse Ventura and, yes, Jeopardy's Alex Trebek) in the dreamlike episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," (1995-96 season).

Also on The X-Files were the Men in Black operatives for an agency known as Majestic 12. One character was named “Morris Fletcher,” played by Michael McKean (who was just critically injured when hit by a car at West 86th Street and Broadway on the upper West Side, New York City, on May 22, 2012). 

“Morris Fletcher” (above) was in charge of keeping Area 51 information secret from the American people, and was credited with coining the term “Bermuda Triangle.” 

The X-Files’ Fletcher also claimed that in 1979, he found a young dinner theater actor named John Gillnitz in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He set him up as the President of Iraq under the name Saddam Hussein in order to distract the American public.

MIBs in Movies

How then has the more sinister form of Men in Black been translated, in this era of synchromystic visualizations, to the canvas of fictional narratives at the movies?

Martin Balsam

An early effort showing the MIBs motif is the Italian movie (set in England) Eyes Behind The Stars (1978). It involves a UFO abduction, a model with photos, and a reporter. What transpires almost immediately is the "Silencers" -- an international secret police force of Men In Black -- try to steal the negatives from the reporter. American actor Martin Balsam plays Inspector Jim Grant of Scotland Yard, sporting, what has been called, "a rather jarring, broad Yorkshire accent." Sergio Rossi, an actor with the same moniker as the fashion designer, plays the leader of the Silencers, and Victor Valente plays antique dealer turned ufo expert with the curious name Coleman Perry. The film's wider impact was small, if none at all.

In the following year, the B-movie The Alien Encounters (1979) appeared with little plot and slower action. Astronomer Alan Reed (played by Augie Tribach) is the focus of the ufo incident. Two Men in Black were included; one was played by the actor Gene Davis (above) and the other by Mark Purdy (also above), who went on to be a well-known sports columnist for the Mercury News in San Jose. Allegedly, the actors were not even required to dress in black for their roles.

Another of the earliest representations of the Men in Black in film is in the underrated, highly political film, The Brother from Another Planet (1984), written, directed and edited by John Sayles. Sayles (on the left) actually plays one of the two on-screen MIBs.  Joe Morton plays the three-toed extraterrestrial who has escaped to Earth and who hides from the MIBs in New York City. It is aliens chasing aliens, and employs a more twisted plot than most other MIBs film detailed here.

MIBs have usually been shown as sinister and foreboding. Here is a quick survey of imagery from a few other fictional motion pictures demonstrating the darker side of MIBs in cinema.

In the movie The Silencers (1996), the Men In Black are depicted as cryptic characters dressed in black, wearing reflective sunglasses, and having pale skin and hypnotic black eyes. They secretly threaten the lives of those who have witnessed UFOs, and then target US Senator Rawlings (played by Madison Mason) who dies despite the best efforts by Secret Service agent Rafferty (played by Jack Scalia) to prevent the assassination.

Soon after the release of The Silencers, The Shadow Men (1997) appeared. It is about three MIBs (played by Andrew Prine, Chris McCarty, and Tom Poster) who visit the happily married couple Bob and Dez Wilson and their 12-year-old son Andy (played by Eric Roberts, Sherilyn Fenn, and Brendon Ryan Barrett) who have had an alien encounter. The Wilsons, after suffering maddening nightmares and more MIB terrors, find refuge at the home of sf-writer Stan Mills (played by Dean Stockwell).

The Strangers in the strange film, Dark City (1998), are the embodiment of the darkest of the dark Men in Black. The appearance of these men dressed in black look hauntingly like John A. Keel's other worldly descriptions of his MIBs.

The next year, the first The Matrix (1999) film appeared. What is often forgotten is that Neo (Keanu Reeves) was first confronted and arrested by three sinister Agents, led by Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) and his two sidekicks, Agent Jones (Robert Taylor) and Agent Brown (Paul Goddard).

The Matrix franchise released (first in 1999 and then again in 2003) an army of Men in Black agents who dominated the screen seemingly temporarily. However, the imagery went on to influence human consciousness for years, including at your local high school and college, from Columbine to VA Tech.

The strong twilight language of The Matrix also projects three humans in black as the force to overthrow the Agents.  Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), known as "Neo," Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) make up the triad. Of course, Trinity's name is significant, as, no doubt, are all names in this movie.

What's next? Being in control? Losing control? Being guided? Regaining control?

The Adjustment Bureau (2011), based on Philip K. Dick's 1954 story, "The Adjustment Team," presented a movie with legions of MIBs attempting to have things run the way they want them run. ("Richardson," played by John Slattery, is visible, second from the left in the lower photo of the two directly above.)

MIBs in Mad Men?

The reach of the Men in Black in our popular culture is great. The conditioning is widespread. Several television series have embedded Men in Black characters. They include agents from the following super-secret organizations: NID (in Stargate), Section 31 (in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise), Silence (in Doctor Who), and The Observer (in Fringe). The Gentlemen in black terrorize in Bluffy the Vampire Killer. In the comics and movies, there is S.H.I.E.L.D. 

There are even hints of MIBs imagery and singlemindedness in Mad Men, of course.

A MIB face in the crowd in The Adjustment Bureau turns up as Mad Men's "Roger Sterling" (played by John Slattery, on the right). Subtle scenes are designed with a sense of iconic Men in Black styling.

MIB3 will open to huge audiences, probably because people want a break from the sinister. But remember, deep down, the Men in Black - in the real world, whatever that is - are hardly ever comedians.

First posted on May 23, 2012; updated and revised on May 25, 2012.

"Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see." 

~ Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 - June 6, 1961)