V For Vendetta - Scariest Movie Ever?

I just got back from seeing V For Vendetta, which I thoroughly enjoyed but which scared the crap out of me. The poster below is a link to a trailer.



The eerie familiarity of some of the government propaganda in the film left me with a bit of a pit in my stomach. Then I got home and found this article, America's War On The Web, in Scotland's Sunday Herald. Now I'm seriously freaked. An excerpt:

IMAGINE a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will.

In 2006, we are just about to enter such a world. This is the age of information warfare, and details of how this new military doctrine will affect everyone on the planet are contained in a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld and seen by the Sunday Herald.

The article goes on to describe three major initiatives outlined in the Roadmap. Two involve dominating the internet and controlling the earth's electromagnetic spectrum. All communication would be under US control. The other initiative is even more chilling, especially after seeing V For Vendetta.

After electronic warfare, the US war planners turn their attention to psychological operations: “Military forces must be better prepared to use psyops in support of military operations.” The State Department, which carries out US diplomatic functions, is known to be worried that the rise of such operations could undermine American diplomacy if uncovered by foreign states. Other examples of information war listed in the report include the creation of “Truth Squads” to provide public information when negative publicity, such as the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, hits US operations, and the establishment of “Humanitarian Road Shows”, which will talk up American support for democracy and freedom.

Frack me.