Who am I trusting?
: . : Politics : . :
Am I being deceived?
: . : Now, I know what you're thinking: you're thinking that this is going to be the grandest of the grand when it comes to my 'conspiracy theories', that I'm just going to start ranting about aliens, computers, indoctrination and the like all rolled into one. Well, . . . am I? Why don't you just stick around and find out? One thing that I can tell you that I am going to do is say it like it is. I'm not very afraid of getting pinned by the government for not obeying my manners and being kind about the things that I say to their tarnished face, because this site is quite anonymous. Heck, I'm not even using my own webspace, I'm borrowing it from someone who's just getting it for free anyway. Enough of the chit chat, let's get down to what is on everyone's minds right now: the 'war' in Iraq. Controvertial? Yes. Bring on the pain.
: . : So how did all of this begin, this whole Taliban terrorism thing anyway? For the sake of space and efficacy I'm going to get right to the beginning of the story. You see, many years ago, Russia (or what sortof was Russia/USSR at the time) was invading Afghanistan. Now, Russia (as I will call it furthermore, because I'm not too fond of acronyms) was known to be a 'communist regime'. While I'll get more into what that really means, to the U.S. all it means, and have ever meant since the big Wars, was baby killing animals (or something much like that). The U.S. then decided that it was their responsibility to help Afghanistan defend itself, and so got together some people who weren't afraid of defying the Russians, gave them some training, and armed them. Naturally, these people who they got together were generally defiant, and confident, since they thought they could fight off Russia, a huge, powerful country that had already completely laid waste to their country. Soon after, Russia fell on hard times and left Afghanistan alone. So, these Muslums with guns had very little to do, but use what they had to their advantage, and make a little money. This included a little hostage taking, drug running, you know, that kind of thing. The problem was, they soon grew even more confident, and took their Muslum ideologies and decided that the United States was actually the greatest source of evil in the world, and turned on them in a carefully planned assault. Yes, you understood that right, the United States created, armed, and trained the Taliban. They just turned on them unexpectedly.
: . : So, how do you fight a terrorist organization that lives in no one place, and is small and clever? You simply can't, it's not really possibly. So, Bush needed a new opponent, one that had a face, and a place: Saddam Hussein. He was accused of working with the Taliban. Well, although the Taliban probably moved through his country a few times, so did a lot of people, and even if they did help them out a bit, they definitely didn't give them as much help as the U.S. did when they created them. But they have chemical and nuclear weapons, and that's a no no. So we pick Iraq to be attacked, almost as a scapegoat. Some people say that the U.S. has no proof that Iraq has chemical or nuclear weapons, but they do, oh do they ever. The problem is, their best proofs are those which they do not want anyone to know about. The chemical and biological weapons were sold to them by none other than the U.S. It's hard to believe that they would do something that dumb, but I would assume that Iraq paid a pretty penny for it all. Once again, the U.S. created it's own monster to hunt. I'm sure that they didn't do it one purpose, but it is highly unfortunate nonetheless.
: . : That is the present situation of world events, which will no longer be present in a little while, but this article won't be updated anyway, just so you know, and won't hold me accoutable to updates, which I despise, mostly because I'm lazy. Anyway, enough about me, back to the government. The United States has a long history of intervening on the political affairs of other countries when they think that it best suits their interests. This can manifest itself in many ways, whether a mere political alliance, some under the table money transfers, or even undercover military ops, usually executed by the CIA. One such instance of this would be the bay of pigs incident. The CIA recruited hundreds of Cubans who were unhappy with the Castro regime, trained them a little, gave them lots of guns, and sent them in to invade Cuba. Since they were all legally Cubans, no one could say that the U.S. was invading Cuba. In any case, the date and place of the attack was somehow leaked, and the anti-Cuban Cuban army was slaughtered horribly, while the U.S. tried (and failed) to cover up its having any involvement in the affair. This goes on a lot more often than most people realise. The thing is that if this happened every time the CIA tried to do something, the CIA would be replaced. Since it is not, then one would stand to deduce that it is one failed incident in many. There are many more documented incidents, but I won't be getting in to those. What must be gotten into is how this all effects you. That's why you're reading these things, right? Good, let's move on.
: . : When I speak of "the government", I'm mostly just referring to the United States government. The Canadian government really isn't capable of pulling off anything that's all that sneaky. They operate on much less money, have a much smaller federal sector, and smaller engagement in the political actions of other countries. The Canadian government operates with a 'laisse fair' attitude, assuming that if the populace just does whatever it wants, and thinks whatever it wants, aside from hurting each other, they will be happy. The United States is much more idealistic in its governmental affairs. They feel that they have something to protect, a way of life, a system of belief and values that is superior to those exhibited by other countries. They believe that a person should believe in one God, and that all people are entitled to their own belief (contradiction? maybe). They believe in a right to bear arms, and in the right to have a private life in which you can do whatever pleases you (except if you're the president, it would seem). It is this system of belief that offends the Muslums, who believe that people must be governed constantly by the law of Allah (God), and anyone outside of that should be shot (a loose translation perhaps), thus causing their Jihad (holy struggle) against the States. The States believe that the Muslum system of forced belief is wrong, and also frowns upon the killing of U.S. citizens, so they retaliate, based on their own belief system. Since their retaliation is based on belief, it should also be equally considered Jihad. Really, though, that's way off the topic at hand. We need to talk about the everyday person, because that's what politics are about, right?
: . : Wrong. Politics are a show put on to make people vote and keep a person in power. It's all lies and games. In the States, the senate can overrule any vote that the public makes anyway, so does it really have anything to do with the public? Even in Canada, once a person is voted in, it doesn't seem to matter what they said they would do, they just go off on their merry political way. We only pretend that we are in control of these things, because it makes us secure. The government is what really decides what is right and wrong for our country, and they then procede to try to convince us of that, so that we will think that it is us who decided it in the first place. Public opinion is monitored, and propaganda (information bound for the public which has the intention of changing ones belief or opinion) is spread without our knowing, and we think that it is the result of the majority, and not the government. How well are we monitored? Much better than you would suspect. For some reason, many people seem to think that the internet is a place where people can express their opinions without being censored. This is completely incorrect. The government has many people working round the clock on the net, using automated computer programs to monitor the content of the internet. When something is found to be out of allignment with their belief, or if information is being divulged that they don't want to be, they find out who is making it, put a law suit against them, and delete the website. How? It's not nearly as hard as you may think.
: . : Every computer accessing the internet has an IP address that is unique to their computer at the time of connecting. It's like a phone number. It can be tracked if you are interacting with the data on the net. If you're just accessing it, it's harder, but if you're uploading info, i.e. making a website, it is easy to trace. So, they find your location, call you or send you a letter, bury you in court fees, and tell you to delete the site. What happens if you don't comply? They'll lock the site. This is done the same way that hackers do it, they'll either overload your site's bandwidth restrictions (how much information it is capable of giving out at one time), or hack into the server it is located on and delete it themselves. This is all if your web page provider doesn't comply with their orders and delete it themselves. And trust me, this can all happen in a matter of a couple of days. So why, you may ask, isn't this website censored? The information here is quite tame and inconclusive compared to some sites. The sites that are censored are ones containing detailed info on conspiracies that obviously were true, or information on banned or confidential information, such as how to build a nuclear weapon (confidential) or mustard gas (banned by the Geneva convention). While I could tell you such things, I really see no reason for the trouble. You'll just have to build your nuclear weapons through your own research.
: . : Then there is e-mail. All of this personal information being sent around the world. What if that was being watched? Well, it is. It's all being watched and read. Well over half of the e-mails sent in the U.S., and consequently in Canada (many of our internet lines are provided through united states servers, providers, and satellites), are scanned for content of political interest. Such things as mentioned before that are banned on the net, are also searched for in our e-mails. This is done by monitoring communications between servers, tracing IPs, setting up intercepts between servers, and even just buggin service providers. What about encryption? This is where things get tricky. An encrypted e-mail is very, very hard to read or open, even for the government. They realized this problem a few years ago, and decided to do something about it. Almost three years ago, the U.S. government started a program to find a way to hack into every person's computer in the U.S., and insert an untracable program to monitor incrypted transmissions and hard data on computers. This was to be done through infected e-mails and downloads, just like any other virus, except there would be no symptoms for the virus. They also tried to get computer companies to insert their program as a built in hardware feature, although most said no, as far as we know. So, have they succeeded? I really don't know. I'm sure that some people's computers (such as mine) would give them a really hard time. I have two firewalls, a strong virus program, and a spybot scanning program running (a spybot is a program that sends information found in your computer to someone else without asking you, just like what the government whats to do) but there would be many computers out there that would be easy pickings. Just think, there could be a program on your computer right now that traces your every move, records everything you type and read, dates it, and sends it out to the government computers for automated analysis. Intel got away with it briefly with their pentium III chip. It has a built in function that tracked all of your internet activity and reported it to Intel. They said it was so they could better understand the needs of the consumer, and that the consumer was well aware of its existence and how to 'easily' deactivate it if they didn't want it on. Do you know how? Probably not. It you have one and haven't thrown the little toggle next to the chip inside your computer, then you're still being tracked. It's just that easy to get into a person's life. By the way, don't try fixing your chip yourself.
: . : This doesn't just happen in the virtual realm, either. In the real world there are censuses, and much more intrusive things. Like government spy satellites. They're always up there watching us. One would assume, though, that they would spend all their time watching the 'enemies'. While this is their main objective, a satellite that is close enough to the earth to take good pictures of it orbits rather quickly, and cannot keep looking at one place for very long. Sure, they can be placed in geosynchronous orbit, so that they're always over the same point on the earth, but there is a problem with this and spy satellites: geosynchronous orbit is very far away, it's the farthest orbit we use for earth related satellites. When it comes to spying visually, you don't want to be that far away. But that is besides the point. The point is that they have satellites that are powerful enough to read a large print book in your hand (if in fact you are reading outside, and holding very still). So why would they want to do that? Well, I'll let your imagination carry that little question away. As a matter of fact, if you have enough money, the government doesn't have to be the only one using these satellites. You can rent time on them and do a little spying of your own. Walmart is one such corporation that does this. They say that they use it for demographic purposes, to find the best location to place a new store, by monitoring traffic habits and the like. Although I would like to build a conspiracy out of this, I really doubt that there is one. You'll just have to wait until my next article on multinational corporations to find out more of the evils of Walmart. Oh yes, there are many evils indeed.
: . : Luckily, a very careful person can avoid having their online activities tracked, but there are other ways around that. There is a new, and highly expensive device out on the undermarket now that can analyse the glow coming from a person's window, and use it to reconstruct the contents of the computer screen in the room. Sound hokey to you? Well it sounds hokey to me, and I'm not entirely sure how it would work, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it did. I'm willing to bet that if the text is small enough, though, it would be unreadable. Much like this page.
: . : In all of this paranoia about the government, I feel that the question must be asked: Even if they do 'catch' me doing things that they disagree with, what are they going to do, we live in a free country, right? Now there's an interesting idea: a free country. A lot of things go on around here that you don't hear about. One of the reasons for that is that broadcasts and internet content is in fact closely monitored, and that which is disagreeable is removed. Take for example a man who was a popular news anchor and was reporting on the war in Iraq. He made the comment that maybe, just maybe, the U.S. was doing this with multiple motives, like gaining control of the crude oil industry. It wasn't an attack on the moral purposes of the states, it was just a weak postulation. His network was forced to fire him within two days. Take for another example three scientists who were working in a government funded operation, trying to find a cure/vaccine for biological weapons, to be distributed for public use. Their labs were raided, and they were thrown in jail for possession of illegal biological substances. Of course they were in possession of them, they were trying to cure them. Why were they locked up anyway? There's another unanswered question. Maybe they were selling the toxins to other countries - no, they wouldn't have enough for it to be useful, or the means to produce that much. Maybe they were using human experimentation - not likely, it was government run. Maybe they got too close to actually curing one of the United States' best weapons, and had intentions of sharing it with the world - perhaps. In any case, we'll probably never know.
: . : What's the point of all this? Watch your back, and be careful what you're doing; you never know who's going to be watching you. The government is only one. There are other people/groups out there with the same means too, and with motives that don't even pretend to be wholesome.
