The Objective of Clinton’s So-Called Freedom

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken about Internet freedom continuously over the past two years. She has promoted the U.S.’s Internet freedom and condemned many countries that practice monitoring of the Internet. Comparing her two speeches and consolidating all the Internet incidents in many countries recently, it is not difficult to spot the ugly hidden agenda in Clinton’s speech and unmask Clinton’s so-called “freedom.”

The American government always likes to talk about democracy, human rights and freedom, and uses this to criticize other governments for having no democracy, exploiting human rights and limiting freedom. When she talked about the recent incidents in the Middle East, Clinton said: “It is our values that cause these actions to inspire or outrage us, our sense of human dignity, the rights that flow from it and the principles that ground it.” The values she was talking about were the ones that meet the U.S. government’s interest; they could not represent Middle Eastern people or the general American public. “Inspire or outrage” was only the U.S. government’s reaction to the incidents in the Middle East.

In recent years, the U.S. has always used its own advantages to promote the American ideology to other countries. However, the U.S. government is deceiving others with its double standards. Let’s see what the American government has done:

During the Iraq war in 2003, Iraq’s domain and analysis work were terminated by the U.S., who holds their servers. Iraq was “erased” from the cyber world by the U.S.

In April 2004, due to a disagreement in domain management, “.ly” (Libya's domain) was cut off. Libya disappeared on the Internet for three days.

In May 2009, authorized by the U.S. government, Microsoft cut off MSN instant messaging service in Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea. The U.S. gave a simple reason — these five “hostile countries” could somehow jeopardize U.S. national interests.

In June 2009, Iran fell into chaos after the presidential election. The U.S. government ordered Twitter to delay maintenance time to allow the opposition to transfer information, in order to aggravate the situation in Iran.

In January 2010, the U.S. Congress passed a bill to blacklist three Middle Eastern television stations, in order to boycott all Middle Eastern television stations that promote anti-American sentiment.

Aren’t you promoting freedom? Why did you use special measures to interfere with other countries’ freedom? The blacklisted Al-Manar TV said: “Democracy and freedom of expression are two slogans that have always been used by the United States in its campaign against the Arab world... Yet, democracy and freedom of expression seem to be just another American illusion and fantasy.”

The double standard has not only shown in the U.S.’s stringent requirements of other countries, but also in the U.S.’s management of the networks in the country. On February 17, merely 48 hours before Clinton’s second Internet freedom speech, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Senator Joseph Lieberman and Senators Susan Collins and Tom Carper jointly submitted a revised Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act. The act authorized the president to declare an “information space emergency,” in which the government can take over or prohibit certain site visits.

Moreover, the U.S. is the first country in the world to implement network warfare. On June 23, 2009, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered formation of a network command department to overlook network warfare, claiming that the U.S., which is frequently attacked, is the biggest hacker kingdom in the world.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other websites have played a significant role in the Middle East and North Africa. These American commercial companies are closely linked to the U.S. government and have become a hegemonic diplomacy tool for the U.S. government. Hillary’s speech in 2009 openly referred to “using this (Internet) technology to advance our foreign policy objectives,” exposing their hegemonic intentions.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other global sites have become an extension of the U.S. government to a certain extent. They are transmitting the U.S. ideology through technology and inciting the people in other countries to illegally assemble, which eventually led to the outbreaks in many countries and even brought large-scale killings.

Didn’t the U.S. government say Internet freedom brought rationality and democracy? Why did it bring death and chaos? Middle Eastern and North African countries are in turmoil and the people are suffering, and the motive behind the U.S. government was to overthrow hostile regimes in order to gain more oil and strategic interests.

Clinton’s first speech was delivered during the time when Google wanted to leave China. Even an ordinary company could make the top gun in the country help them. The main reason is simply the intimate relationship between the U.S. government and Google. According to the U.S.’s politicians’ website, Google is Obama’s fourth largest sponsor. Clinton therefore needed to help their “sponsor.” Moreover, the fact that Google did not want to accept censorship had also become a tool for the U.S. government to exert pressure on China.

During her speech this year, she said that in addition to French and Spanish, Twitter feeds would also launch in Arabic and Persian, followed by Chinese, Russian and Hindi. The U.S. has deployed a new diplomacy strategy — using the Internet as a “weapon.” Through dissemination of its propaganda to the general public, the U.S. wants to create internal warfare in hostile countries in order to achieve its objective.

Using social networking sites is apparently the U.S.’s most subtle and threatening form of weapon. And Clinton’s “Internet freedom” theory has obviously given the best reason for Facebook, Twitter, Google and other websites to expand globally.