Why is the Internet not controlled by the authorities?
Author: Peter Offermann,
A Canadian in
On the surface the internet seems a
powerful communications tool useful for the masses to receive information
without the filters applied by the authorities to other media sources like TV,
Radio, and Newspapers. Why is this freedom on the internet allowed when all
other media outlets are being rigidly controlled? The same people (elite) who
own the bulk of media outlets also own the infrastructure of the
internet and could easily control it’s content, why don’t they?
Are the elite too dumb to see the
internet’s potential for countering their objectives?
This is not likely considering their
ability to plan and control in other aspects of society.
Our world is controlled by a small group
of people (elite) who feel entitled to decide what happens in the world without
regard for the desires of the masses. The democratic process that is supposed
to allow the participation of the masses in the decision making process has
been rendered inoperative through the control of the political process by the
elite.
Public Relations (propaganda) is the tool that won the elite their victory over the
masses. PR convinced the masses to accept the current situation one step at a
time. PR also made the masses more and more ineffective over time.
The term “Public Relations” was coined by
Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995) to replace the more sinister sounding
“Propaganda”.
Bernays is on the list of the 100 most
influential people of the 20th century. [1]
Born
in
Bernays
was also a far-sighted architect of modern propaganda techniques who,
dramatically, from the early 192Os onward, helped to consolidate a fateful
marriage between theories of mass psychology and schemes of corporate and
political persuasion.
During
the First World War, Bernays served as a foot soldier for the U.S. Committee on
Public Information (CPI) -- the vast American propaganda apparatus that was
mobilized, in 1917, to package, advertise and sell the war as one that would
"Make the World Safe for Democracy." The CPI would become the mold in
which marketing strategies for future wars, on to the present, would be shaped.
In
the twenties, Bernays fathered the link between corporate sales campaigns and
popular social causes, when while working for the American Tobacco Company he
persuaded women's rights marchers in New York City to hold up Lucky Strike
cigarettes as symbolic "Torches of Freedom." In October of 1929,
Bernays also originated the now familiar "global media event," when
he dreamed up "Light's Golden Jubilee" a worldwide celebration
commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the electric light bulb, sponsored
behind-the-scenes -- by the General Electric Corporation.
While
Bernays was, by birth, an Austrian Jew, public relations folklore records that
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the notorious Nazi propaganda
minister, looked to Bernays' work, and to his vivid writings, for inspiration.
Bernays
influence would continue to hold sway well into the post-World War II era. To
put it simply, Edward Bernays' career -- more than that of any other individual
-- roughed out what have become the strategies and practices of public
relations in the
Public Relations is
not the same as Advertising.
Advertising is paid promotion that is
clearly understood to be non-partisan.
Public Relations poses
as independent newsworthy information. [2]
Bernays defined the profession of "counsel on public
relations" as a "practicing social scientist” whose "competence
is like that of the industrial engineer, the management engineer, or the
investment counselor in their respective fields." To assist clients, PR
counselors used "understanding of the behavioral sciences and applying
them—sociology, social psychology, anthropology, history, etc." In Propaganda, his most important book,
Bernays argued that the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary
to overcome chaos and conflict in society: "The conscious and intelligent
manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important
element in democratic society.
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our
country. ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our
ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical
result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of
human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a
smoothly functioning society. ... In almost every act of our daily lives,
whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our
ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons
... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It
is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
For Public
Relations to be successful it must be perceived as information independent from
the originator. This gives it credibility not there if it is perceived as self
promotion.
The reason
there is so much promotion of the “free press” is because if it was widely
known that the “free press” was really advertising the concepts of the
elite the masses would be more suspicious of the content. The media does allow
some miscellaneous uncontrolled content but only to maintain credibility.
Examples from
Propaganda Critic
Wartime propaganda (Public
Relations)
World War I
The
drift towards war
The
Committee on Public Information
Demons,
atrocities, and lies
Post-war
propaganda
Examples
America
First Party
Anti-American
propaganda from Afghanistan
Enron
Corporation
International
Workers Organization
John
Birch Society
Maoist
International Movement
Newt
Gingrich
Gingrich's
glittering generalities
Newt's
name-calling words
Office
of Strategic Information
Today Public Relations is the ruling
force in TV, Radio, and Newspapers, any content that is impartial is only there
for protective cover and is usually harmless. PR has been used ruthlessly in
these media to form public opinion to suit the elite’s purposes.
Is the internet any different than these
media?
The internet has all the capabilities of
the above media plus the added benefit of being much more cost effective and
anonymous than any of them.
Do the PR specialists have access to the
internet?
http://www.prfirms.org/findafirm/Find-A-Firm.asp
(select “internet” and click [find])
Do PR specialists act ethically on the
internet? [3]
The
Fake Persuaders
Corporations
are inventing people to rubbish their opponents on the internet
George Monbiot
Guardian
Persuasion works best when it's invisible. The most effective marketing worms
its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached
our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been
refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called "viral
marketing". Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host.
One of the world's foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something
it had never done before, and retract a paper it had published.
While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign in
favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now
they create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested
punters are planted on listservers at critical
moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope of recruiting real
people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the
freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech
company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping
scientific discourse. Monsanto knows better than any other corporation the
costs of visibility. Its clumsy attempts, in 1997, to persuade people that they
wanted to eat GM food all but destroyed the market for its crops. Determined
never to make that mistake again, it has engaged the services of a firm which
knows how to persuade without being seen to persuade. The Bivings
Group specialises in internet lobbying.
An article on its website, entitled Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World,
warns that "there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even
disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation
is directly involved... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such
as this, it is important to first 'listen' to what is being said online... Once
you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these
outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party... Perhaps the
greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a
context where it is more likely to be considered seriously." A senior
executive from Monsanto is quoted on the Bivings site
thanking the PR firm for its "outstanding work".
On November 29 last year, two researchers at the University of California,
Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize
in Mexico had been contaminated, across vast distances, by GM pollen. The paper
was a disaster for the biotech companies seeking to persuade
On the day the paper was published, messages started to appear on a
biotechnology listserver used by more than 3,000
scientists, called AgBioWorld. The first came from a
correspondent named "Mary Murphy". Chapela
is on the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network, and therefore,
she claimed, "not exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer". Her
posting was followed by a message from an "Andura
Smetacek", claiming, falsely, that Chapela's paper had not been peer-reviewed, that he was
"first and foremost an activist" and that the research had been
published in collusion with environmentalists. The next day, another email from
"Smetacek" asked "how much money does Chapela take in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and
other donations... for his help in misleading fear-based marketing
campaigns?"
The messages from Murphy and Smetacek stimulated
hundreds of others, some of which repeated or embellished the accusations they
had made. Senior biotechnologists called for Chapela
to be sacked from
So the campaign against the researchers was extraordinarily successful; but who
precisely started it? Who are "Mary Murphy" and "Andura Smetacek"? Both claim
to be ordinary citizens, without any corporate links. The Bivings
Group says it has "no knowledge of them". "Mary Murphy"
uses a hotmail account for posting messages to AgBioWorld.
But a message satirising the opponents of biotech,
sent by "Mary Murphy" from the same hotmail account to another server
two years ago, contains the identification bw6.bivwood.com. Bivwood.com is the
property of Bivings Woodell,
which is part of the Bivings Group.
When I wrote to her to ask whether she was employed by Bivings
and whether Mary Murphy was her real name, she replied that she had "no
ties to industry". But she refused to answer my questions on the grounds
that "I can see by your articles that you made your mind up long ago about
biotech". The interesting thing about this response is that my message to
her did not mention biotechnology. I told her only that I was researching an
article about internet lobbying.
Smetacek has, on different occasions, given her address as "
Even the website on which the campaign against the paper in Nature was launched
has attracted suspicion. Its moderator, the biotech enthusiast Professor CS Prakash, claims to have no connection to the Bivings Group. But when Jonathan Matthews was searching the
site's archives he received the following error message: "can't connect to
MySQL server on apollo.bivings.com".
Apollo.bivings.com is the main server of the Bivings
Group.
"Sometimes," Bivings boasts, "we win
awards. Sometimes only the client knows the precise role we played."
Sometimes, in other words, real people have no idea that they are being managed
by fake ones. http://www.monbiot.com
Why is the Internet not controlled by the
authorities?
Because the internet is a much more
effective propaganda tool if the users believe it’s
content is of their own creation rather than Public Relations created by the
elite. If there are no laws regarding truth or ethics then the elite have free
reign to do whatever they desire. As shown in other media and systems such as
voting, vast numbers don’t guarantee impartiality or freedom. Those that
control the medium control the content. A voice of danger to the elite on the
internet can be shut out by a number of well established PR techniques. The
average user of the internet is only a target for the elite’s PR and no real
threat to them.
I believe there are genuine alternative
information portals on the internet but even they inadvertently forward the
aims of the elite. Much of PR involves very obscure psychological techniques
beyond the scope of this discussion. I will briefly outline one. The intent of
much of the elite’s PR is to keep the masses ineffective through inaction. Introducing
confusion is a good way to accomplish this. A logical device called a “double
bind” is the perfect tool for this. [4]
The theory
of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and
specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from
observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the
necessary conditions for, a situation called the 'double bind' - a situation in
which no matter what a person does, he 'can't win'. It is hypothesized that a
person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms.
The lengthy article quoted in the above
paragraph is worth reading to help understand the manipulation that is
happening on a massive scale in all media.
Another reason the internet is not
regulated is that if people thought the elite controlled the internet they
would be more careful about what they say online. As it is it’s a perfect place
to identify potential protesters. Looking at the Elite’s track record of
respecting the laws regarding privacy elsewhere are you comfortable they are
respecting your privacy online?
[1]
Visiting Edward Bernays by
Stuart Ewen
[2]
Edward Bernays
[3]
Media Lens Article / The Fake Persuaders
[4]
CONSCIOUSNESS Part 3 - East and West