Editor, RE: “Will the West ever allow Africa to create her own pictures?” (The New Times, September 20). It will be very interesting to see how they will try to wiggle out of this. They didn’t see this coming way back in 1967 when the CIA cobbled together their infamous Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Initially intended as a covet spying packet switching network that later grew into our modern day Internet, currently more openly administered albeit Vladimir Putin insists it is still essentially a “CIA Project”, Mr. Butamire’s systematic stripping apart of Espen’s drivel has only been made possible by the vast amounts of information data from which we can all nowadays glean from all manner of knowledge and intelligence. This only serves to prove the hackneyed phrase “Knowledge is Power”. Africa has in the past been under the cosh due to her lack of knowledge, “intel”, so to speak. And now from information asymmetry, the good internet has ushered in what one can refer to as information blow-back. All of the sudden we are all so much wiser and clued up, awash with so much knowledge and power the Western bullies don’t know where to hide. Alas the law of unintended consequences: they didn’t see the unintended consequences ARPANET would spin off back in the days of the Cold War and Space Race with the USSR. Now Mr. Butamire can so very easily tear apart their “PR/spin”, discrediting all their “alt-truths” so convincingly Espen can’t save face. Such a pity really.
