UK's net radicalization plans are 'crude, costly, counter-productive'
Negative government measures to counter online radicalisation are crude, costly and counter-productive, says a report released yesterday - if it's serious about the issue, it needs to harness the positive. Present measures designed to deny access to radical content on the web or restrict its availability are crude, costly and …
Mike Whine? Really?
If so, he should become a professional blogger immediately.
'empower rather than control'
not a chance then!
"Wacky Jacqui and Culture Secretary Andy Burnham ... their speeches suggest ... the exact antithesis of what this report suggests."
Since when did the government listen to people who know what they are talking about?
The current government have a history of appointing experts to get their opinions and then ignoring them when they realise that the Daily Mail won't like it.
The more they tighten their grip, the more people will move to darknets, where stopping the flow of ideas is impossible.
Not that I'm saying it's great that "radicalisation" or other such material is available, I'm just saying that the cat is out of the bag now, and you can't put it back in.
Indeed, their collective cluelessness WRT to IT in general, and the Internet in particular, never ceases to amaze me.
Surely someone *must* have told Wacqui about the sheer futility of trying to control the Internet and, more particularly, trying to control and monitor the information people exchange on it.
I am at a complete loss to understand how even Squealer (as in the character from Animal Farm) Smith can be that mindblowingly *stupid*.
It's all to sensible therefore the government will ignore it.
Conveyor belts normally only lead to a *single* destination...one that leads to several 'potential' oucomes would be a strange beastie indeed!
- Deterring producers: if you disagree with us vehemently, we will arrest you. We won't tell you how much you're allowed to disagree
- Empowering online communities: j'accuse!
- Reducing the appeal: ensure that the media receives the correct propoganda
- Promoting positive messages: we'll spend $15m on a web site with an unpatched phpbb
"- Deterring producers: the selective use of takedowns in conjunction with prosecutions would signal that individuals engaged in online extremism were not beyond the law"
Censorship is not a positive.
"- Empowering online communities: the creation of an internet users' panel to strengthen reporting mechanisms and complaints procedures would enable individual voices to be heard"
Stasi whistleblowers are not a positive.
"- Reducing the appeal: more attention must be paid to media literacy and a comprehensive approach in this area is needed"
Propaganda is not a positive.
"- Promoting positive messages: the establishment of an independent start-up fund would provide seed money for grassroots online projects aimed at countering extremism."
Astroturf is not a positive. There is not such thing as a centrally funded and organised 'grassroots' campaign.
You have nothing to fear from words.
We've heard of it.
It doesn't agree with our agenda.
To mis-quote a Philip K Dick story title:
"We can control you wholesale!"
please turn out the lights.
after all this 'censoring' and 'monitoring' is done what will be left? one 'official' site?
..reminds me of when a government(s) burned the 'evil' books which were most of them, (and more than a few people also prior to that). but now people are more 'civilized' innit? to me it really doesn't seem that way. all i can see is more bullshit, killing and suppression of people than ever before. oh how wise we must be after all we've been through as a species..not !! you would've thought people would have learned by now from our own history. sigh.
As a Lib-Dem voter, this talk and stuff about "radicalization" really scares me.
What do they mean by "radicalization", "radicalize" and "radical"? How "radical"?
It increasingly sounds to me like a way of trying to scare people away from non-mainstream thinking. Be part of the mainstream, the sheep in Orwell's Animal Farm, and you'll be safe. Otherwise, if you're a bit "radical", you're under suspicion of being, well, "radical". That might be dangerous! After all, those Islamist terrorists are "radicalized", so being "radical" is obviously cause for alarm. Play it safe; don't stray from the mainstream.
Well, while not a paid-up member of the Liberal Democrats, I do identify quite a lot with their underlying political philosophy. And I'm strongly in favour of replacing this broken political system, the "political establishment", with something that actually works, and is truly democratic. I want our democracy, our State, to be re-founded, re-built, re-established. And I'm thinking of reform, rather than revolution.
Is this enough to make me "radical"? Some might say I want to tear down the State!
According to The Political Compass (http://politicalcompass.org/), I'm two-thirds of the way to being a total anarchist. It consistently places me at about two-thirds of the way from the horizontal axis to the bottom of the graph. Is that enough for me to count as "radical"? I don't even consider myself an anarchist!
With increasing frequency I feel nervous about just expressing my political views about this Stalinesque government, etc, for fear that I will genuinely come under suspicion. Am I safe even admitting this? I'm no "bomb-tossing anarchist", but I'm genuinely reluctant to express the view that our broken democracy might not be sufficient for the job of actually restoring democratic power to the people.
What's more, my position on the political map probably hasn't changed that much over the years. I'm not really any more radical than I was ten or twenty years ago. But the State has certainly moved in the authoritarian direction, and is moving further and faster than I can ever remember. As a result of the government becoming more and more extremist, I'm left seeming more and more radical relative to the government and the State.
The government is "radicalizing" me not by moving me, but simply by moving itself towards totalitarianism - and it scares me!
But I won't let them stop me this way. Despite their efforts to scare me away from my radical position, I will defy them - yes, I will continue to vote Liberal Democrat!
"Promoting positive messages: we'll spend $15m on a web site with an unpatched phpbb"
LOL
Re AC @ 21:13: You are correct in your perception. Your perception is inherently trustworthy. Those who seek to advance their own agenda over your own best interest by means of the abuse of their power are many and clever. They have college educations. The unstated but entirely real goal is to (by any means necessary) remove from your life the very Things Worth Keeping in this life.
Such subtle-though-deadly bullies as those always start by insisting that the target population's very sound *perception* itself is (softly) mistaken, (now louder) wrong, then (full cry) "Radical" with a capital R. It has to do with the means of effectively boiling a frog, actually. (I for one think that Britain and the US have both already been boiled quite nearly to a fare-thee-well.)
Politicalized animals the world around all seem to harbor this odd tendency to treat all others as well as their own kind with basic inhumanity, reducing all to the animal level whenever the oppoprtunity may emerge. The National Hegelian Dialectic of any nation is reliably furthered by all such "emergency" situations, colluded or otherwise.
In the larger sense, this animalizing/dehumanizing behavior is called, "denying the Spirit". Think about it: Is not the contemporary spectrum of no-difference distinctions in modern political ideology indeed a massively dispirited thing? Indeed, who in their right mind would willingly VOTE for it? Odd that the voting turnout is still dwindling, ain't it? (Hardly, sez I.)
That is why I for one think it is entirely fair play to tag those who embrace such perception-numbing practices (media saturation, contrived doubletalk, idology posed as science, Stasi-fication of OUR Internet etc) on the way to fulfilling their innate agenda as fundamentally "deceptive" and treat them all according to their agenda and works. All such as those will reliably deny and attempt to nullify all that normal and (to their kind) inconvenient perceptive ability which we use within our own selves every day in order to survive and even <shout!> LIVE QUITE WELL INDEED WITHOUT THEM. </shout!>
They are predators. But are we all rabbits, chickens and sheep here? (I think not.)
To all such essentially criminal attempts at political and/or moral deception I, for one, must perforce respond in the only manner that I think a fully functional adult human being honestly can. This is to instruct, implore and insist to all comers that I, even if nobody else in this nobbled and axis-blinded world does so, at all times conduct my own self in ways that:
Increase the Peace. Thus to...
Reverse the Curse. Which is best done by one first determining to...
Reject ALL terror. Besides,
(You KNOW you WANT to.)
John 8:32 is STILL Just All Right by ME, no matter what (or whose) cultural icon, Holy Book or Manual of Engineering may embody it.
Kindly DO feel free to go forth and do likewise at all times. You shall find that you are in the funnniest-hatted and very best of company of all.
Fscking radical as all Heaven, that core notion, eh? But crush Heaven's *fully informed* harmony, even in a velvet glove like that fscking "kinder, gentler" ICSR report of current note suggests be attempted (instead of gunning down every dissident Web site operator in the world+dog in the high-handed Pinochet+Reagan/Duhbya/WackyJacqui style), and what have you got left on earth then, hm?
Look around you. Your perception is trustworthy; that is the point. Well then. Sorted!
Take a look at any website that has the government behind it, either in insipration (I use that loosely), funding or authorship, and you can see the degree to which they just don't 'get' the internet, any more than they 'get' young people etc etc.
I think their problem started years ago when Blair made it abundantly clear that technology was beyond him and he was perversely proud of the fact. Which rather sent the message to political wannabes that being digitally clueless was rather cool. Now we have the second/third generation NuLab ministers who learned this well, and thus have quite unbelievable morons like Burnham pronouncing on tech matters as if having read the "which" guide to choosing an ISP qualified you to preside over policy relating to the online world.
I would say "I despair" but frankly I've run out of despair entirely and just can't think of a stronger word.
Paris, cos Burnham appear to be that clueless.
The suggestions are actually pretty smart. Infiltrate the Internet groups and subvert their logic to achieve your goal. Spy stuff.
Jacqui won't see the subtlety and will blast ahead with government at full throttle.
based on that test http://politicalcompass.org/
I think out of principle you should not be anonymous when posting here unless hiding from your employer, the police or criminals. It's important to let the government know who you are and how you feel. Lets face it if you write to your MP directly they hardly read the letter properly so they are not likely to go reading your stuff on here.
I agree with what you are saying except for the bit about being scared and being reluctant to express your views. You believe in what you are saying so thats reason to say it. The fact that it might make you a radical is even MORE reason to say it.
As for the Internet radicalizing people, the government have had it too easy with TV and Radio. Due to technical restrictions it's not been posssible for everyone to run a TV station with global reach. With the Internet this is now possible. Yes anyone can see your website buut if everyone did then it would crash. With P2P the more people who look at something then the stronger it's 'signal' becomes.
We are truley in a race between Freedom and Tyranny. The tyrants simply must get a grip on the net (and everything else) before they lose their chance. We must not let them win.
I honestly can't say who's going to win but right now we are.
Back when the might of the US intelligence services and the Shah's security forces succeeded in preventing Ayatollah Khomeini from broadcasting propaganda to Iran, he simply had his followers record his speeches on audio cassettes and take them into Iran as hand luggage. Islam, both extremist and moderate, has been spread by word of mouth for centuries. So go ahead and block the entire internet if you like - the radicals already know how to get around it.
"The process kicked off almost 14 months ago, with an address by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who declared that the internet was no longer a "no-go area for government and the law".
Radicalism in all its forms, political, economic, and religious, simply means a departure from the common centre, shared by many, to the extremes occupied by the few. If a left-of-centre political party under the banner of the New Labour Project enthusiastically embraces and extends the wilder excesses of Thatcherism does that not represent political extremism of the worst kind? And when the same party joins hands with a bunch of god-botherers and neo-conservatives to wage unprovoked war on another country, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, what do we call that? A crusade, an oil-grab or a pre-emptive security strike?
Who knows, but maybe if NuLabour hadn't decided that Iraq was no longer a "no-go area ".they wouldn't have provoked the most radical backlash of extremism we've ever seen. NuLab should take note of recent history before embarking on another crusade to take ownership of the internet. The backlash is pending, Jacqui.
Thankfully the Americans have taken their country back from the crazies and are now embarked on cleaning up the mess that they inherited. High time we too took back our country. The Raving Loony mob have had their chance.
RE: @Walking Turtle (@AC 12:27)
> That was pretty radical.
Indeed. But things were not so far removed from where I was "at" when it all started, fifty-odd years back. Successive successors to the Big Chair in the Oval Office and entire scads and hordes of Congress-dwelling critters over time just sort of walked away from me, apparently in order to leave a trail of public destruction and impunity in their high-handed wake. All making things up as they went along, and no particular regard for any objective science or for that matter reality Itself.
IMHO the USDC thingie has indeed degenerated to the level that of late only force, fraud and bribery seem to be allowed to prevail under the present cluster of fscks all sticking together in order to stick it to us all, off and away in the upper right quadrant of that *excellent* mapping-out on http://www.politicalcompass.org.
In fact, not entirely unlike many others, I have stood my ground for decades on end and watched in horror while striving to adjust to the changes. I think the normal adjustment process that normal peoiple undergo on the realizeation that the bullies just are not going to stop robbing and beating up on the skinny kids unless someone strong and beautiful tells them again and again in a strong and beautiful language that they ALL both understand and respect to STOP IT NOW.
This adjustment having been accomplished, so much the better. I for one do aver that I, too, am still re-composing that language - it seems to have been extinguished on this peace-forsaking planet of late.
A BIG tip o' th' Funny Hat BTW to yourself (you alone should know who you are!) and the http://www.politicalcompass.org site crew as well! That bit of Webwork strikes me as nothing but genuine Poly Sci polling done right. Not that how I mapped out has anythng to do with that; indeed it does not. BUT:
I do suppose ones' having grown to know that one stands 50% to the left of (and on the same level with) His Holiness the Dalai Lama (and these days can prove it, no less) is perfectly adequate "radicalization" for one lifetime. I'm satisfied, anyway.
Nothing but the best of company. You know what to do with the terror. :)
