"Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country," wrote Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco in his 1967 essay,
Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare, "you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'etat, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high level of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of
Pravda,
Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications."
In 2011, "the person who controls communications" can be a blogger with a million readers, a multinational CEO with newspapers in several countries, or an online news anchor with a million dollar studio.
Believe it or not, but bloggers and online journalists can change the world. We are not laboring in vain. We are helping to establish a much-needed political dialogue between the West and the East which can lead to a genuine and just peace in the future.
Peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved without dialogue and debate.
Online civil society has a great and historic responsibility to use the power of a free press to create understanding and peace, because the establishment media has used its power to create misunderstanding and war.
There isn't a
"dialogue among civilizations" in the establishment media because the internationalist
pundit class doesn't respect the rights of countries like Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Israel, America, Canada, England, Australia, France, Germany; basically every country.
Online news anchor Alex Jones is doing important humanitarian work by hosting people like Pakistani General Hamid Gul and American counter-terrorism specialist Steve Pieczenik and simply talking about civilization-threatening issues like the war on terror, 9/11, the U.S.-Pakistan conflict, and World War III.
Holding a conversation with someone, even someone who is considered an "enemy," means that you respect their God-given rights and their opinions.
We are at a critical point in history in which people from the East and the West must come together and talk to each other around a common fire of truth and understanding.
Conversations can change the world. Dutch-American psychoanalyst Joost A. M. Meerloo wrote in his essay, "Conversation and Communication":
"If there is no free conversation human aggression accumulates. A man who listens only to his radio, or is caught by the hypnotism of the movies must discharge his aggression somewhere else. But the civilizing sublimation of conversation does not reach him, so he cannot get rid of his aggression.
People have learned to be silent listeners. Dictatorship asks only for silent citizens. If man cannot redeem himself of his everyday tensions through words, the archaic primitive demands within him grow more and more awake. The world falls prey to his accumulated obsessions, and in the end collective madness breaks through. Let us talk now, so that we do not become mad animals!" (This essay is featured in the 1967 book "The Human Dialogue: Perspectives on Communication," edited by Floyd M. Watson and Ashley Montagu).
The Internet Revolution has changed politics forever because dictatorships can no longer contain populations within a rigid ideology and a limited point of view.
Rigid political ideologies are defunct. The Almighty State, which depends on deceptions, acts of terrorism, and psychological operations, is collapsing around the world. It collapsed in Russia. And it will collapse in Iran, Israel, England, and the United States. The Mullahs in Iran will find this out the hard way, and so will the Bankers and National Security Priests in America and the West.
Bloggers and online news anchors are undermining the power of anti-democratic elites from America to the Middle East by opening up the worldwide debate about the 9/11 attacks and the global war on terror. They are giving free speech a chance.
In America, silencing patriots like Ron Paul is a lot harder than it was in 1988, when he first ran for President, because of the Internet Revolution. Dr. Paul's rise would not have been possible without blogs, alternative news sites, message boards, YouTube, online fundraising drives, and online news anchors like Alex Jones who spread the word.
The editors of The Daily Bell have written consistently about the transformative power of the Internet and how it will change national and global politics. In November, they
wrote:
The power elite virtually controlled the flow of information in the 20th century and in the 21st they've lost this ability. They have lost their information monopoly thanks to the Internet. This is a devastating blow.
The response by dictatorships to the Internet has been the same:
Kill it,
before it destroys us.
Dictatorships in Washington, Beijing, Tehran, Tel Aviv, and London are losing credibility with their people and their solutions are tyranny at home and war abroad.
They're scared because they know the game is up. Slavery and death is all they know, and all they can offer.
As the liberating power of the Internet continues to manifest itself, citizens around the world will be offered new narratives of history, and alternative futures.
The world is wide open. We are entering a period of flux in which these dark dictatorships will either evolve or collapse. So far, it appears they will all go the way of the Soviet Union. 
