As decent people try to sift through all the revelations about the fast-rising for-profit, corporate-run, total-information-awareness surveillance police state, there seems to be a persistent misunderstanding about the nature of the challenge.
Of course, by now many are realizing that what's behind the confusion and the misunderstanding is the massive propaganda we are being exposed to.
This is an attempt to cut through all the bullshit and get to the bottom line of what's going on. The most fundamental thing to keep in mind is that there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest built-in our national security apparatus. The profit interests of corporations have become the driving force behind the national security mission, thus totally subverting and corrupting that mission.
At the top echelon of leadership you have shifty, fast-talking corporate profiteers with one foot in the for-profit corporate-run side of the system, and the other in the government side.
Within this arrangement, what keeps the profits flowing to the system is a state of constant war, and constant danger. In this model, there is no incentive to operate in a way to diminish the threat because if the threat diminishes, then profits diminish along with it.
Here's an example of this type of crass profiteering mentality (my interpretation), as reported by The Huffington Post: "Michael Hayden, Former NSA Chief: After A Major Attack, U.S. Likely To Seize More Surveillance Powers."
In an appearance on CBS' "Face The Nation," Hayden -- also the former head of the CIA -- unintentionally opened a window into just how that evolution will likely unfold.
Asked by host Bob Schieffer about the president's proposal for a civil liberties advocate to argue on behalf of the Constitution in the secret court that oversees the NSA, Hayden said that such a setup would be inappropriate for fast-moving investigations. But he did float a hypothetical scenario in which such a safeguard might be appropriate: After an attack, he said, the NSA would want to use the vast store of information it has been collecting in more aggressive ways.
The emphasis is mine
This is basically in the same vein of "If you build it, they will come."
There are parallel tracks here... Supra-national corporations are currently negotiating secret trade deals that will strip citizens off a host of hard-fought rights. As this happens, naturally, there is going to be resistance by segments of the population, and just like in any other times in history, the tyrants will need to have the tools in place to rapidly and effectively suppress that resistance.
So they need to institute a repressive (fascistic) legal, technological, and security framework to maintain their domination over the population.
But they need the justification to do so, and that's where fear-mongering and "shock doctrine" tactics come into place.
The national security apparatus then has an incentive to create the conditions that maintain a constant environment of fear and threat in order to shock the population into acquiescing to giving up their rights, purportedly in the name of security.
But this is a bait-and-switch. The real reason they want you to give up your rights is because they want to enslave you and and manipulate you and subjugate you and exploit you. Thus far, they're getting away with it, masterfully.
By the time Obama was elected this monstrosity of a total-information-awareness surveillance fascistic police state infrastructure had already been built and operating at capacity, i.e., indiscriminately collecting huge amounts of information on hundreds of millions of Americans, including all members of Congress, their families, spouses, friends, and associates. I don't think I need to elaborate about the implications of that... Do I?
Some could argue that this much information in the hands of nebulous networks of corporations (military and security industrial complex) means that this Frankenstein has actually taken over our government. If that's a plausible argument (I'm aware many would object to it), then what we're talking about is in essence a Silent Coup D'Etat.
Therefore, no one in government is going to help you address this situation; they are either on the take, or too intimidated to do anything of substance about it. Obama is not going to do it; Nancy Pelosi is not going to do it; Chuck Schumer is not going to do it; Dianne Feinstein. Nobody within the Democratic party establishment is going to do anything substantive about it.
COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.
The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."
The emphasis is mine
And thus all the practices revealed by Edward Snowden (as well as the ones that have not been revealed yet) will not only continue, but they will accelerate, and become eve more dangerous and oppressive.
Everything you do... Calls (metadata and content), Internet activity, your involvement with activist groups, your indiscretions, where your drive, where you shop, what you read, the time and location of your movements, everything will continue to be indiscriminately collected, and warehoused in huge databases ready to be accessed at any time.
In other words, and reposting a little interaction I had in another diary:
It's tantamount to somebody building a guillotine in the public square and when some curious passers by ask the people building it what is it going to be used for, and them answering "that is just to give people neck messages." -- Ray Pensador
[Responses]
I fully expect a reclist diary Neck Massages were common in Revolutionary France -- GideonAB
The basket sitting in front of the neck massager was only used to collect meta-laundry. -- DeadHead
Oh, that big blade? Don't worry, it's got safeguards on it. -- turn blue
Let Me Tell You How's Going to Be
It's up to you, each one of the people reading this, to stop this abuse. I'd like to use the following metaphor to illustrate this point:
As a social justice and privacy activist you were granted a hearing with one of these corporatist hucksters running things, and you sit there nicely, respectfully listening to all the bullshit:
And as he talks about security, and dangers of attack, etc., and says "After an attack [] the NSA would want to use the vast store of information it has been collecting in more aggressive ways.
After he finishes, you ask him: "Are you done?" He says, "Yes." Then you said: "Okay, listen you POS moth%$#%cker, this is the way is going to be... Walk out to that window over there. Do you see that massive crowd? That's a million people and they are not going to go anywhere until this entire illegal and oppressive machine is taken down, completely. It's coming down one way or another, and the only thing you may have some influence over is whether it's going to be today or tomorrow. It's up to you to make that decision." Then you you stand up, and exit the room.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal...
- Frederick Douglass
We are on our own... But we are the 99 percent. That should count for something. Actually, all it will take is 5 percent, since we're only talking about between 1 percent and .01 percent of would-be tyrants. The numbers are on our side. All we need to do is organize in solidarity against the imposition of tyranny.