The fake cop again
Old-fashioned scams often used a fake cop to persuade you that one part of the scam was illegal. The next step varied. Sometimes you "paid off" the fake cop to avoid prosecution.



Sometimes you were steered into the supposedly "legal" part of the scam. Sometimes the fake cop was warning you against fake "enemies" of the original scam to strengthen your faith in the original scam.

The latter trick seems to be most common in modern political scams. Warn people that the original swindle is being "corrupted" by evildoers so you'll put all your faith in the swindle.

Here's a classic example from Phillip Giraldi, who is a "former" CIA agent accustomed to playing fake cop games.

Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.

NO. The internet was NOT originally conceived as a free platform. The internet was developed by NSA to make its spying more focused and cost-effective. When most communication runs through NSA's own wires, NSA doesn't need to tap the phone company's wires or intercept paper mail or pay human spies or plant hidden microphones.

That's all. That's the sole solitary entire purpose of the net. It was clear in the '80s, and it hasn't changed since. Now everyone willingly buys and carries and installs hidden microphones for NSA, which is even more cost-effective. Old-fashioned spies could only dream about planting a microphone in every pocket and room and body part.

Those "corporate and government interests" are not "enemies" of the "free" net, they're the owners of the real spy network.

Before the net this particular scam didn't work.

Nobody believed that newspapers were an open and free medium. Everyone knew that you could write a letter to the editor, which might be approved if it served the editor's purposes. Smart advocates figured out how to use the editor's criteria to get their message through, by satire or poetry or indirection.

Nobody believed that TV and radio were an open and free medium. Radio was strictly supervised by the FCC. Fairness rules required balanced presentation of opinions, and FCC was FEROCIOUS about enforcing the rules. Most stations simply avoided opinions and stuck to verifiable facts.



And that was a GOOD THING.

Aside from the prevalence of FACTS, there was more room for genuine differences in attitude and worldview, as I've noted often.

When you KNOW that the public channels are not free, you don't waste energy and passion on prepackaged TidePod opinions designed to get you hooked on "free expression". True dissidents find or create truly non-public channels.

Giraldi wants us to continue "expressing" our "opinions" through NSA's own channels.
  ¶ 11:56 PM