http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20070687-503544.html
The New York Times reports that U.S. government funding is helping to develop and deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems to undermine repressive regimes that seek to prevent dissidents from getting their stories out to the world.
Cool.
This is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing to help dissidents. We should be smuggling millions of these into North Korea. If this is really Hillary’s brainchild, then I’m voting for her in 2016.
Heard about this on Tech News Today. Pretty cool!
Agreed. This sort of thing is far more useful – and probably a lot less expensive – than sending in the Marines.
It’s also getting people killed (indirectly). That’s a pretty profound decision & action [on our part] to take.
I know it’s not going to be a popular stance around here, but who are we to play god with other countries dictators?
If free information leads to revolution, the natural conclusion is that the regime being revolted against is repressive, that the citizens have no legal or non-revolutionary means of redress, and the regime deserves to fall.
If the citizens of that regime choose to take the risk of that revolution, based on that information, that is their choice. No-one is forcing them.
If an outside agency is taking action to promote more free flow of information in a repressive regime, I think that is deserving of praise.
Roddy
And if that info is slanted?
All info is slanted. But it doesn’t matter what info the U.S. sends out, or what communication channels it opens: the people involved will only get punished by the repressive regime if they pick up what the U.S. sends out. So, it’s really up to the people living in these countries to decide what to do: the U.S. is not forcing anyone to do anything.
So if the Bush Administration sends out to Iraqi citizens that Sadaam is evil because he has secret weapons of mass destruction, and is recklessly threatening its neighbors, and some folks choose to revolt, and a couple hundred thousand die, no fault of Bush?
All I am saying is “be very carefull what you wish for”.
No one is the final arbitor of “the Truth”. Not even the Internet.
On the North Korea idea, I don’t think smuggling in a bunch of blackberries would work. I doubt the cell-tower-network infrastructure is very well developed.
That’s a hypothetical. The first part is true – the Bush Administration did day those things about Iraq, and some of the things that were said were false. However, the second part did not happen in real life.
And since it’s a hypothetical, I don’t think I to say whether those hypothetical deaths were Bush’s fault. The thing is, people don’t revolt because of foreign propaganda. They revolt based on their own assessment of the situation: is the regime bad enough? do many other people feel like me? what will happen if I take action? could a revolution be successful here and now? The people in Iraq didn’t revolt for various reasons: the regime wasn’t that bad from their point of view, and if they had revolted, the revolution would have been unsuccessful and they would have suffered because of that. No amount of American propaganda about WMDs was ever going to change that. The Iraqi people made their own decisions.
I think you’re changing my premise. I asked “what if they revolted based on a lie”?
And you are answering that they revolt for their own reasons (and hence, not on a lie, but their own reasons).
You state that people don’t revolt because of foreign propaganda (or info, if you will), but that statement goes against what the OP’s suggestion is proposing: To encourage people to take an action that they are not now doing, based on info that the foreign entity is providing.
What the U.S. is providing is not information but an information channel. That means that people living under a repressive regime will be able to communicate with each other (as well as finding out information from outside the country). They will be able to hear dissident voices, and plan action against the regime, which they can’t do through a phone system and an internet controlled by the regime.
That… or porn.
You stated a couple posts ago that a population won’t be persuaded by outside propaganda. Now you’re saying that “information from outside” is going to be persuasive.
I dunno. I can’t really seem to get the difference that you see, here.
Is providing would be dissidents with an uninterruptable form of communications? I guess. But this is not a game, and it seems to me that they, not us, are going to be suffering the consequences of the policy. Even people who had not chosen to get involved may die. “Collatoral damage”?
I don’t see the difference between inserting a CIA operative who stirs up trouble, and using a CIA operative who stirs up trouble remotely. 
Wasn’t the US sticking it’s fingers into other (smaller) countries and putting “our man on the throne” a bad thing?
Actually, in the latest examples of people in repressive countries pushing out leaders, “our man on the throne” has not been installed. What Secretary Clinton and others are effectively saying is that if people want to push out leaders who abuse their power, whether they are our friends or not, that the United States is willing to side with the people.
Of course, this is a rather obvious warning to foreign leaders that the US isn’t going to stand by leaders who repress their people… but I think you are looking at this from the exactly wrong direction. It isn’t to give the US more power to install dictators, it is giving the US less power to keep them in office.
Of course, the US is going to decide which dictators need kicking, and which don’t. Right? We’re not going to be dropping Nextels into Saudi Arabia, are we?
Of course this is partly determined by the American world view. It’s not perfect – Realpolitik never is – but it’s an improvement on the past. The U.S. is not choosing who will lead the new regime or how the revolution is carried out, and it’s using much more limited military intervention than in the past.
Ah. Cutthroat diplomacy. I assumed that “Realpolitik” was a bad thing on the dope. 
All right, this isn’t GD. If anyone wants to debate the the effects of the OP, take it to a topic there.
Idle
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