In much the same way as most of the British colonies across Africa sowed the seeds of their own destruction, the Internet has a similar ability to alter world society. Thanks to the Internet, the disenfranchised can now communicate with each other directly, and begin to throw out the outdated notions of government, ‘national identity’, ‘national borders’ and other social control mechanisms that have divided people for so long. To see how the Internet works as a weapon against governments, read Spooks On The Net.
Here are sites with valuable, interesting and dangerous information that Those In Power don’t really want you to see, use regularly, or think about.
Some useful tips for online security: intelligence and government agencies are routinely creating “honey pots” – fake websites to attract surfers, whose IP addresses are then stored and investigated. You can avoid this entrapment easily – if you suspect that a site might be in place to capture your info – by accessing sites through Anonymiser. And also keep a sharp eye on new developments at Windows Security.
One of the first doctrines of warfare is to Know Thy Enemy – and so, for all the curious as well as the would-be undercover operatives out there – browse through a large digital library online, featuring official US Military Training and Doctrine Manuals.
Then, for huge amounts of downloadable manuals – US Army Engineering Corporation Technical Manuals. If you’re interested in covert material, download the resources at Intelligence and Surveillance Reference Documents. To hone up on the bloody history behind secret/declassified CIA manuals for overthrowing governments, read Textbook Repression.
For fiction, featuring writers from across the globe with information and approaches that their governments wouldn’t like (including one or two very interesting South African stories), take a look at Auto Da Fe – The Censored Library. Also try the Electronic Literature database. Then for the classics, there’s Online Books.
A sidetrack into history, see the types of books provided to the Armed Forces in WW2, at Books Go To War.
or a massive collection of online libraries on different topics, bookmark ThinkQuest Libraries. And consider the lessons to be learned via War-Past-Present-Future.
Then, for a daily check-in point, to sniff through classified and declassified government documents and lots of archived information – there’s none better than the site the FBI repeatedly ‘accidentally’ nukes, dip into Cryptome. Take a look at local spies emails, as they try to get surveillance equipment to snoop on local users at SA Spies Emails.
A large quantity of information on subjects you may not have run across before, is also lurking at Covert Ops and Secret Documents.
People rather ignorantly tend to laugh when you mention spies or CIA – forgetting that a large number of ex-intelligence operatives (spies) are online, and a few ex-spies even host websites featuring information and resources. Look at Kim Soft.
And beyond that, those names you only know from the movies, such as the CIA, FBI, MI5 and others – can be reached via their official websites. Unlike South Africa, Democracy allows for freedom of access to at least some information. Here’s the CIA and here’s their site with declassified documents to read, at CIA Reading Room. (Check out their ‘special collections’ area, as well as ‘frequently requested records’ for a huge quantity of downloadable documents.)
For the FBI and their archive of thousands of pages of detailed reports on events and famous celebs, go to the Reading Room. Across the big pond, go look at the official, bland face of the British spy home known as MI5.
Then to read a lot of information and genuine news reports dealing with MI5, go to The Secret State.
And, for a site featuring a book by an ex-MI5 agent that’s been banned in the US, Germany and a number of other countries, go browse through The Big Breach.
Staying in the UK, for data that you won’t read about elsewhere, mostly dealing with the murder of Lady Di, but also demonstrating the absence of hard journalism in the mass media, go to Al Fayed.
For a one-stop look at the public intelligence agencies operating from the US (along with links to all non-secret intelligence departments), go to the Director of Central Intelligence.
Also, just to get into the spying game a fraction further, try The Pentagon’s Spies.
To give you a sense of the behind-the-scenes warfare going on, here’s a short, little-covered article showing that ex-spies are now in control of Internet Domain Name Registration.
In case you’re wondering, here’s the homepage of our own official spies, the National Intelligence Agency.
It’s also odd, if you believe the stories about this country being a democracy, that there are almost no ex-SA spy sites, or sites providing information on our own spies – fear maybe? (This news report on a NIA agent who was inside Pagad – note paragraph four – does seem to indicate that the NIA doesn’t mind planting bombs to kill its own people, if it will help its own secret agenda’s – “Former South African policeman reveals plot against PAGAD”.
Information is power, and if you tend to rely only on local newspapers and local TV and radio, for your information, then you’re way behind in getting a good understanding of events as they unfold in the global arena. So bookmark the following sites and check in once or twice daily, to get the news long before Reuters or Sapa bother to feed them to local news distribution outlets.
There’s the daily news site, which culls useful information from the world’s media, called Trufax. (You might want to read the article, for instance, which pretty much proves that the WTC attack planes were flown by remote control – given that both planes exceeded their computer-controlled software barriers – which cannot be done by human pilots in cockpits. – 9/11 Smoking Gun).
And another updated daily hardcore news site, is Cursor.
And there’s even more data culled from global news, at Buzz Flash: www.buzzflash.com/ Whereas if you’re after alternative news specifically dealing with the US, head to the very respected Mother Jones.
Then, for daily articles, taken from world media, dip into the highly readable Alter.Net. And finally, the mother of all daily news sites, Rense – which combines everything from UFO’s and repression, to strange items like the killer disease rampaging through Madagascar, (22 000 infected, 700 dead: Influenza in Madagascar.
Until the next time, if my own paranoia doesn’t get me.
Websurfing Supplied by Megawan: http://www.megawan.net/
Ian Fraser is a playwright, author, comedian, conspiracy nut, old-time radio collector and self-confessed data-junkie. Winner of numerous Vita and Amstel Awards, he’s been an Internet addict and games-fanatic since around 1995, when the Internet began to make much more sense than theatre.