Ok, as a 50 something I can tell you that the internet has produced vast volumes of uncontrollable information and because of this totalitarian governments have sought to control and reign in this new found freedom with this media.

Do not be surprised if you see a further consolidation of Internet Service Providers, such as at&t/Time Warner and the like. Outside of the US the perception is very different on what it is to be a blind 'Merican.

The sovereign nation of Great Britain just invaded the sovereign nation of Ecuador by illegally breaking into their embassy in London in an attempt to shut down Julian and Wikileaks. This is not reported by any media outlet. It happened and is a clear violation of International Law. If the US Embassy in Ecuador was raided like that it may be considered an act of war...but you know...optics.

This forum exists and it has become heavily diluted as of late, and certainly there are state sponsored representatives lurking about on this thread and many others. You can say what you want, but in this brave new age, what you say and think is a known value to those who would want to control you. The trouble they have is the access you currently have to the information they don't want you to have.

It is my belief they are working on that fix as we speak, and because of that it looks pretty messy right now because the mute button isn't fully functional on dissenting opinion.

after all, even the OP may be state sponsored. Who really knows for sure? Maybe I am?

Enjoy the ride. My two cents

They just "look" bleak because the sunglasses we wear are not so much tinted anymore. TPTB are working on a solution, to be sure.

What were some of the most important events that you saw in your lifetime (in your opinion) that lead to the current state of the powerful U.S. Gov?

In my opinion. In my lifetime. That's rather constricting, as the United States involvement in "winning" World War II and the lend lease strategy globalized us as a world power. That A Bomb/Nuke reaction invention was pretty instrumental, but again before my lifetime.

There was the invention of the Internet by Al Gore. Or was it when ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983?

9/11 & "War on Terror"

The gradual consolidation of industry/media, much of which William Randolph Hearst (again before my lifetime) perfected the use of propaganda. You can poke around here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_propaganda

The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan...kinda goes along with 9/11 stuff.

The "War on Drugs" ala Ronnie and Nancy Reagan.

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, looking at you Clintons, which lead to stealing a bunch of the little guy's money (I'm one of those little guys) and creating false financial flags and further consolidation of central banks into governing our currency. Prior to that, Richard nixon creating the Petrodollar backed by the US Federal Reserve and the implications that other currencies are now vying for that position.

2000 Presidential election being decided by the Supreme Court.

Invention of the "European Union" and broadening of NATO Membership.

To name a few...

Sorry, I know it was a narrow question but I wanted to follow up on OP's theme. Highly apreciate your response.

I'm 35 and I wholeheartedly agree. "Politically Correct" culture is extremely hard to moderate on the internet. The anonymous nature(well except to big brother) of the internet permits people to discuss things that they wouldn't risk mentioning in public. It's quite clear the internet is an imminent threat to TPTB because never before have people been able to access so much information and discuss things freely with out the fear of being immediately punished in one form or another. Things are definetly worth justifying putting together several months(more if you can) or food, water, medical supplies and means of defending yourself/supplies. It's kind of like an insurance policy, you feel like your throwing money away, until one day something devastating happens and would have otherwise ruined you. Speaking of, unrelated to SHTF, research Renters Insurance in you don't own a home(otherwise Homeowners) it's 20$ per month or less, and great piece of mind against burglary, fire, lawsuits from injury. There is also coverage availability for earthquake, flood etc. but depending on your state these may or may not be included in a basic policy and might require a separate policy.

The sovereign nation of Great Britain just invaded the sovereign nation of Ecuador by illegally breaking into their embassy in London in an attempt to shut down Julian and Wikileaks.

If this has happened as you describe, Ecuador would have made vociferous and public complaints about it. It would be a PR catastrophe for the UK, which prides itself on being a diplomatic big player, and it would never risk sullying that reputation by entering an embassy without being invited to do so.

If Assange was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy, it can really only be because President Correa secretly revoked Assange's asylum status, (presumably under pressure from John Kerry, and threats from "President-in-waiting" Hillary Clinton) and gave permission to the UK (and/or US) government to send in a team and capture him.

Ok ok...apparently the video is dated from 2012 here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu7UXuBCL2s it was reposted "published" October 22 2016, however I have since learned and researched it is from 2012. That being said, I reckon I'm ill informed and stand corrected. However they did do this shit back in 2012...apparently. That does support my heavily diluted comment of the content that now exists here on r/conspiracy My bad...let the beatings continue until morale improves...

This is slightly misleading, because Assange mentions that the UK police were "in the building". This sounds dramatic, however, at no point did the police enter the Ecuadorian embassy. The Embassy is just a small apartment, in a block with a number of other private properties. The police were in the common parts of the building which were not part of the Embassy, and not sovereign Ecuadorian property.

I did not know that. I thought the Embassy was the entire building or at least according to this, shared with the Embassy of Columbia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_Ecuador,_London

So technically, if they do not "own" the building, then I suppose stuff like the fire escapes could be very loosely interpreted as not Sovern ground but some kind of common area.

TL;DR below

"The embassy is a suite of rooms occupying part of the ground floor of the building, which has been described as an "apartment block".[5]" Neuman, William; Ayala, Maggy (16 August 2012). "Ecuador Grants Asylum to Assange, Defying Britain" . New York Times. Retrieved 16 August 2012

Thanks for the clarification

Wow, 30+. Watch it there man. The idea that dinosaurs lived side by side with humans is a Conspiracy Theory. ;uD

Things have always been screwed, but they are getting ridiculously blatant at this point. I would say things have always been headed toward the fan but sloppiness of the establishment like we are seeing can only mean its about to hit and they most likely mean it to

Dude I'm in the 30+ range. All i remember is Clinton bombing Iraq and getting a blowy.

Basically my political awakening was during the Lewinsky scandal and we suddenly bombed Sudan, taking the headlines momentarily away from Lewinsky's deep connection to big tobacco.

I thought. Hmmm. I wonder if Bill just bombed Sudan in order to shift the media away from his philandering.

A couple of years later I read that the factory Clinton bombed had manufactured something like 1/2 the medicine for the country and its destruction had caused much suffering and death.

Then during Bush's reign there was of course 9/11 and the aftermath wars. I remember walking through Seattle past a demonstration (I was in a hurry or else I would've been at it). I saw a very peculiar looking, well dressed gentleman in the back of a gold Cadillac drive by the place where the police were staging give some signal to someone with the staging police. Moments later they mobilized and started out to the protest. This guy looked like power. It was very bizarre. I couldn't figure why they would be acting based on this guy as opposed to a more obvious chain of command.

At another protest, a very large march through the city (on a day when literally millions were marching around the world against the war) I remember seeing a guy walk up to the cutest little old lady in the whole parade, get right up in her face and start screaming at her, obviously trying to get others around to give him the beating his actions warranted. He was an obvious agent provocateur.

I wasn't so politically active during the first Clinton reign because I was still young and innocent, but from the little bit I picked up at the time yes, he was very corrupt. The Bush administration was outrageously corrupt, from the rigged elections to the crazy, fake justifications for invading Iraq that were then as obviously wrong as they are now. Those that called this out were fired or our outed.

Since at least the WWI we have been manipulated into pointless wars by an Elite that believe it is their democratic duty to give us our opinions.

I do think that the only real difference is that it's no longer possible to manufacture consent because the the information landscape has become decentralized. When each town has it's own paper and they're all taking their cues from the Washington Post and the New York Times, there are much easier choke points to control the flow of information. This being said, we really have no idea where the ideas and opinions we find online come from. We have no way of knowing who is getting checks from the CIA, FSB, MI5, Oil Industry, etc. This is the thing that scares me about Trump. There is obviously some large, well organized force behind the attempted takedown of Clinton. It's obvious what the large, well organized force behind the Trump takedowns are. It is not so obvious what the force behind the Clinton takedowns are. I don't buy the idea that it's just concerned citizens or justice seeking hackers. It feels more like two different contingents of the deep state battling it out. All these leaks feel like the attempted takedown of Erdogan by airing his incredibly disturbing private conversations on Twitter. Are we better off for knowing how the sausage is made? Absolutely. Is this information being used to further manipulate us? I would say, absolutely.

Time will tell, unless it won't.

I just turned 38 and I've fallen and I can't get up

Databases, the biggest tool of oppression and the start of the surveillance state. From the outside it seems like a fucking great idea at first, everything linked together for easy access. That was how it was touted until you realise that massive linked databases from different departments can be correlated together and tell you way more than individually examining each. Then TPTB decided to open parts up to private industry and that's where the commodification of personal data started. It's completely invasive and fucking absolutely everywhere today.

Cameras, everywhere with the cameras. If you ever go to London you'll understand just how insane it is. It never used to be that way. You always feel like you're being watched now and that's because you pretty much are ALWAYS being watched in public. Now you can't even take a piss after a heavy night boozing without some cunt screaming at you over loudspeakers! No bullshit they have 2 way communications wired to control rooms! So not only are they always watching they're always fucking listening too! I shit you not the UK nowadays has batshit crazy levels surveillance. 1984 has nothing on the society that's been created here.

I am almost 40, and I have never seen the world this fucked. Things really started to go sideways in 1999. The dotcom bubble gave way to 9/11, then came subprime, followed by the commodities boom, and we are sitting on the precipice of a derivatives banking collapse masked by a world war. People are out protesting the right to wear yoga pants as Russia unveils a nuke that can wipe out Texas. Maybe the internet expands our awareness of events, so it gives the impression that the world is more fucked than it has ever been, when in fact, we simply have a larger shit nozzle of happenings being sprayed at our collective consciousness. To be honest, I think it's a bit of both. Our ability to get info on happenings is higher, but the happenings are more WTF. Most people retreat into their echo chambers of twitter or facebook cat memes to act as a buffer against information that causes cognitive dissonance or discomfort. In doing so, we each create our own little fake reality to shield us from the constant barrage of happenings. Adam Curtis calls it Hypernormalisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation

Corruption has always been present, but it is worse than usual at the moment. In the past, while people still bribed each other etc, there was at least a pretense of rules. If you look at the Wikileaks emails, however, you can see fairly clearly that everyone there views even basic etiquette (let alone the law or genuine morality) as a handicap and an impediment to them doing exactly what they like, when they like.

Psychopaths don't generally understand why rules exist; that we have them not merely in order to protect others, but ourselves as well. If it is an act of fraud to sell goods which are not fit for purpose, then that ensures that everyone is able to buy goods which are fit for purpose. Without that level of trust, economies can not function. Psychopaths do not generally understand reciprocity, and so they also don't understand or care that if there are no rules for them, then there will eventually be no rules for anyone else either, which means that they can die themselves as well.

I remember being in 1st grade, and I was really pissed that the Watergate hearings were preempting the after-school lineup of Bugs Bunny, Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch. What the hell are these old guys talking about?

There were many many people and researchers, going back to the 1800s who knew that there was a power center behind the culture and the politics, but it was hard for them to have a voice – both because our human nature seeks pleasure and shuns the uncomfortable, and because any source of such information has been very controlled for a long time (publishing houses, magazines, etc.). After Kennedy, the questions and the askers became more earnest, numerous, and more out in the open. Anyone who started to look at that event seriously had a hard time stopping, realizing that the players had a long lineage of hidden power, rooted in interconnected families and money – and they were still in the game.

I'm with u/aboxoffrogs and will add (in reference to your question) that the shit's gone global in a way that it certainly had to, and there are two very powerful vectors at play: 1.) The internet as a relatively new media and means of spreading information, and 2.) the opposing vector from TPTB to dumb us down, make us sick, brainwash, terrify and confuse. In a way, it's a race to see if we can raise our consciousness enough to stop them before humans and the planet are irrevocably fucked. Stuff has been slowly inching towards the fan for decades, but both the stuff and the fan are now global. Even those who are still clinging to the sold-out values of Western politics/culture are having a hard enough time ignoring what's going on (especially after Ron Paul). The more TPTB inch towards global control, the more they have to expose themselves.

I want a shout out to Michael Rivero at whatreallyhappened.com and Sherman Skolnick (RIP) (http://www.skolnicksreport.org/) for being two very influential gentlemen who used the internet early on as a way to get the truth out. There are others, but I spent a lot of time with those two.

It's funny you mention Watergate u/MrMarmot . I was visiting my grandparents with my family when those hearings were going on. At the time my Grandpa was a retired Lt. Col Engineer from the 101st Airborne, jumped over Normandy, fought and wounded (Purple Heart) in the Battle of the Bulge. He was teaching pioneering Computer Science courses at Penn State Harrisburg and Carlisle Army War College. I'm talking stacks of punch cards to regulate fire accuracy of artillery (Army and Navy). This guy was a really balls on genius. He helped rebuild France after the war and in the suburb of Harrisburg, in which you could clearly see the cooling towers from Three Mile Island (He died of melanoma in early 60's). He had a reel to reel "portable" tape recorder pushed up to the front of that ole 25" Zenith Console TV and he was recording every bit of that congressional Watergate hearings shit. I mean, he was a hard ass anyway, so me getting any Bugs Bunny time was totally out, but you could tell he was totally pissed and simply could not believe that the commander in chief of the democracy he fought for could actually do these petty criminal things. The shocking thing is, we take these things for granted now. Back then this was black and white and you towed the line, now it's 50 shades of grey and we are all seemingly fucked. I gotta work my ass off to live marginally well (solid middle class) but you can bet your bottom dollar that what I pay in taxes and what I sacrifice for my country's coffers is nothing compared to what our elite get away with.

I'm pissed really, and all along my Grandpa was right and I feel bad for him because I know now that bit of history really hurt him and tore his world apart. It was his framework and reference point on reality. It was simply torn apart.

I was raised a military brat. I've lived the military industrial complex for all my childhood. I reckon I'm a bit jaded. I don't have months of beans and rice, or any stocks of ammo horded away. I'm just not into all that. I'm not saying if we, as a human race, hit the fan I won't be screwed. Maybe I will and maybe I wont. Like my Grandpa, I've got some knowledge of stuff and if my knowledge can't get me by, then I reckon I'm just part of that herd that's gonna be thinned. because...math, not so much the boogie man. Idiot elites just hasten the inevitable imho.

https://agoodhuman.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/environment-1-the-issue-of-human-population-growth/

There is little more heartbreaking than the betrayal of our military, of those who believed they were acting on the highest good, the pinnacle of moral principle, giving the ultimate sacrifice, suffering life-long wounds, watching innocents and comrades die... Only to find that they've been deliberately poisoned (agent orange, depleted uranium...), used as pawns for lies, greed and selfishness – then denied benefits, and now asked to refund signing bonuses?!? It's just incredible.

I purposefully suspend my opinion on population growth. I've heard so many different theories and estimates – accusations of manipulated data that would support a mass culling, when, in reality the rate has declined and/or zeroed-out in most countries. Stuff like that. I honestly don't know.

30 + is really old?

It seemed like it when I was 22. I miss 35 now.

I'm 35 and already realizing that I will be 40 quite soon. The older you get, the less time you have left and the more you begin to value it. At 20, I was like many, in the mentality of I have my whole life to figure it out. At 35, I'm in the mindset of I don't have enough time to accomplish everything I want in life. To be frank, I've got 500k in cash/ equivalents(bonds, certificates, gold, etc.) and 2 homes currently worth 450k(paid in full) I would eagerly give it away if I could be 20 again and keep the knowledge I have acquired in the last 15 years.

I think these people would always commit outrageous acts for their personal gain but it's now gotten to the level where they are selling the actual sovereignty of the United States and that is way over the line

Well I feel as though that should be implied.

Another 50+ person here. For perspective, I served for five years in the Army (Crypto/COMSEC/TS-SBI) under Reagan, three of which were in West Berlin 85-88. My wife is 32, Russian and has been here in the States for 10 years. So I've got the young/old, East/West, military/civilian experience base.

The Internet has unleashed a tidal wave of information. However, it isn't necessarily easier to put puzzles together. There's so much erroneous click-bait false misleading garbage you have to work through to get the truth. Even then you aren't sure what the real answers are.

I don't believe the World is any more fucked than it used to be. The one thing that has changed is the increase in the World's population. The people who truly control the World's governments and economies, whatever name you give that group, realized that the population was outpacing their ability to monitor and control them.

I believe the Internet was created for the purpose of thought monitoring and control. The populous is asleep at the switch. The upper echelon figured they could control or deflate any information that came out that wasn't in their favor. False flags were then created to strip liberties and increase monitoring of the worker ants.

What better way to identify dissidents than through data mining of social media, emails, phone records, etc? It is an easy way for a few to control the masses. Even when diligent people figure out different agendas, nobody really cares or does anything about it.

The crap hitting the fan is a possibility. The thing that fascinates me, is that people really believe this war on terror. We keep giving up liberties for protection. Who really wants war? I haven't met a muslim yet that didn't just want to raise their family.

You and I have the same genetics of all the other people in the World. Think about your individual wants and desires. It's the same thing we all want, peace and prosperity.

The Military Industrial Complexes of the World eventually just serve to keep the populous working and paying taxes. If we save too much money the bureaucrats just create financial instability and reset our balances.

I'm neither mad or happy about the situation. It is what it is. It's the same as it ever was. Samey same IMHO

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/33732

http://us.worldviewbank.com/tw/

34 here. From my perspective there is just so much MORE information to process now than there was back in 2000 when I first started really paying attention to these things. The Internet has created a double edged sword. Information availability is exponentially greater now. It's hard to cut through the noise to see what's relevant, what's fluff, misdirection, and what's dangerous.

it used to be info came from group meetings, pamphlets and books.

1967-1983 was an era of riots, social cohesion strained to the point of societal breakdown, illegal & secret wars, illegal surveillance being revealed, fake whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg, and the beginning of false-flag terrorism.

LBJ greenlighted the JFK assassination, like Bush greenlighted 9/11.

Nixon took the fall for LBJ's sins, much like HRC is going to take the fall for 9/11.

Watergate was a coup, for those who are looking. Hillary's death will be a coup.

Both Nixon & Hillary were groomed to be patsy presidents, both were selected for their unlikeability, both were criminals but small-time crooks, neither a mastermind or ringleader or architect of the widespread pedophocracy.

The criminals got away scot-free when Nixon resigned. The criminals will toast champagne and drink from Hillary's skull after the planes crash into the Capitol Dome.

Mark Twain allegedly said "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."