Establishment Control Mechanisms in Cryptocurrency, Internet, and Protest

This is an opinion piece. The world was changing in ways that made governments very insecure in the late 1990s. From 1997–2001, what has come to be known as the ‘dotcom bubble’ went boom and bust, the internet and decentralized media came of age, and terrorism and protest movements both grew far more powerful went mainstream. It has long been my opinion, that these seemingly unconnected changes are intimately connected by one thing — the response of governments around the world. While there are other events over the next decade which are intimately connected — such as the Arab Spring, the War on Terror, and the rise and fall of the Housing Bubble and the great recession of 2007–2008, an in-depth look at those events and connections goes beyond the scope of this current article. Instead, it is my hope to point out the similarity of response and timeline to the current rise of cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology, and the dawn of artificial intelligence and the internet of things (IOT). I am painting with a broad brush right now, but will likely explore these and other concepts in much great depth in the near future.

During the late 1990s — there were more millionaires being created by the dotcom boom than at any point in US History. At one point, new paper-millionaires — those who held enough stock options in highly valued companies to potentially cash out and join the millionaire club — outnumbered actual millionaires — those who held cash or assets in excess of a million dollars. This upending of the system promised to create chaos and the governments of the world had to do something to upend it. The U.S. Gov’t took the most drastic step by filing an anti-trust case against Microsoft, one of the largest, most visable, and most profitable of the new internet companies. The U.S. Department of Justice filed the suit in May of 1998. While it took nearly two and a half years to bring the new internet economy to its knees — it has long been my opinion that if this filing had not occurred — the internet bubble would not have popped and a decentralized and user controlled internet would have emerged. I must point out that a decentralized and user controlled internet would be a very different creature from what we call the internet today. Here is why that is important.

During this same period — a protest movement was resurgent in the United States. Protests which were unmatched by anything since the 1960s were growing in intensity and much of the organizing was being done online. In fact, an entire new aspect of journalism was born during this period and it terrified the established governements, presscorps, and economic leaders. IndyMedia.org — don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of it. Indymedia was established in early 1999 and quickly grew to more than 175 worldwide sites where activists, protestors, journalists, and free speech & global justice activists engaged in citizen journalism. IndyMedia was a primary tool of the organizers and activists who shut down the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in November of 1999. Don’t believe the revisionist history of the WTO protests — here is what happened. 100,000 peaceful protestors gathered in Seattle to protest and shut down the meetings and bring attention to modern slavery, unfair trade, sweat shops, environmental degradation, and putting profits ahead of people on a global scale. It was the largest protest in the history of the USA aimed at disrupting a global meeting and it worked. The government used agents provacateur along with heavy handed police with batons, rubber bullets, and teargas to clear people off the streets — eventually the numbers were reduced to 40,000 or less — which is the official highest count of the government — and which is a lie. At this point, the government quickly learned how to scuttle protests, marginalize movements, and create dissension between potential allies — such as the unheralded and magnificent alliance between unions and environmentalists which the WTO protests had seen.

Over the next two years, the US government and governments around the world attacked the independent base of the new internet economy and shoved huge allocations of capital into creating a centralized and establishment controlled internet — AOL/Time Warner is a good example. The new internet economy was castrated and the paper millionaires and potential economic disruptors were wiped out in the dotcom bust — which I have always contended was orchestrated by the US Government and establishment banking and media organizations for that very purpose. One of the least talked about movements (of many) at the WTO was the outrage at what the Israeli government called ‘Pre-emptive Strikes’ against targets that were potentially hostile towards the Jewish state in Palestine and Lebanon. The US was considering a similar position to be used against a growing jihadist threat in Yemen called Al-Qaeda. Activists were demanding less hawk like behaviour on the basis that pre-emptive violence would encourage reruitment among such organizations and completely destabilize large regions of the Middle East.

Ultimately, the activists lost. The decentralized internet was destroyed. The paper millionaires were mostly bankrupted. IndyMedia’s servers were seized by the FBI in 2004. The attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 gave the most invasive and heavy handed powers to the US Government that any country had ever possessed. The Middle East was destabilized (which was a major objective of Karl Rove, one of the most influential members of the Bush administration) and the US government and governments around the world were empowered to take any measures they deemed necessary to prevent terrorist attacks including illegal internment and spying on their own (or other nations) citizens. The Housing Bubble/Mortgage Crisis were a further consolidation of economic wealth and power and the centralization of the internet under a handful of government trusted (and to some extent controlled) companies put the power of the media back in the hands of the power brokers.

There have been disruptions — Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and the mysterious creation of Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptocurrencies. In fact, Cryptocurrency — Bitcoin and Blockchain tech — are the reason I am writing this now. Governments, banks, power brokers, and those in control are in a panic right now…they are doing everything in their power to neutralize this threat to their control. The DOJ filing suit against Microsoft was the opening Salvo in the last disruption of the power structure — in that struggle — the establishment powers won. This — the dawn of the crypto-age, is a brand new opportunity to overturn the control mechanisms. The powers that be are doing everything they can to discredit, disempower, and ultimately to take control of this technology — because if they do not — power is going to shift away from them. Keep that in mind when you read the news. Keep that in mind when you hear establishment types discrediting or downplaying the importance of blockchain technology. None of this is made up. Do your due dilligence, read in detail about what I’ve written above, and most important — pay attention to the timeline. 1998 to 2001 was three years.

I realize that I have not connected all the dots here — they can be connected — but it would take a much larger piece — consider this an introduction. I look forward to interacting with your thoughts or ideas about all of this.