Snowden, Surveillance And The Secret State- Media Alert
Snowden, Surveillance And The Secret State
By David Cromwell and David Edwards
Reports of Washington's anger directed at surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden indicate a basic truth about power. Noam Chomsky has expressed it as the underlying problem for genuine democracy, even in so-called 'free' societies:
'Remember, any state, any state, has a primary enemy: its own population.' (Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power, edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, The New Press, 2002, p. 70.)
Anyone who steps out of line, especially if they defy authority's attempts to apprehend them, risks severe punishment. All the more so because it is important to publicly discipline miscreants, lest the threat of a 'bad' example become a contagion sweeping through society.
Snowden was denounced by Dick Cheney, the warmongering former US vice-president, as a 'traitor' and a possible spy for China. Senator Dianne Feinsten, chair of the US Senate intelligence committee, told reporters that Snowden had committed an 'act of treason'. There was 'undisguised fury' amongst many US politicians at Snowden's slipping away from Hong Kong and arriving at Moscow airport where he continued to evade detection. General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, complained that Snowden 'is clearly an individual who's betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This is an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent.'
Given the source of such accusations – largely senior officials in the current and previous US administrations - rational observers will be unimpressed. As Norman Solomon correctly points out:
'The state of surveillance and perpetual war are one and the same. The U.S. government's rationale for pervasive snooping is the "war on terror," the warfare state under whatever name.'
Solomon issues a warning:
'The central issue is our dire shortage of democracy. How can we have real consent of the governed when the government is entrenched with extreme secrecy, surveillance and contempt for privacy?'
Washington and its allies, sold to the public by the media as 'the international community', are well aware of the stakes. The general population must be subdued and kept in its place. Obama and his officials in the government, and the US intelligence community, need to assert strenuously that Snowden's exposure of the massive US secret surveillance programme aids and abets 'the enemy', and damages international relations.
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The Primary Function Of The State
As important as the revelations of Edward Snowden are, the bigger picture is the overwhelming drive by state power to pursue its own strategic designs, to promote the corporate and financial interests with which it is in league, and to protect itself from any threat from the general population to make government truly work for the public.
The independent journalist Jonathan Cook makes the same point (via Facebook, June 26, 2013) that this is the real significance of the recent shocking revelations about surveillance:
'I've been saying since the first Snowden revelations about the NSA that the goal of all this mass surveillance is not to foil terrorism; it's to prevent all challenges to, or efforts to hold accountable, the corporate elites who are plundering our communities and the planet to enrich themselves.'
Cook quotes from a Guardian article which reveals that a UK police unit called the National Domestic Extremism Unit is monitoring 9,000 political activists:
'In recent years the unit is known to have focused its resources on spying on environmental campaigners, particularly those engaged in direct action and civil disobedience to protest against climate change.'
Cook concludes:
'The tapping of our phone calls and internet activity is being used for exactly the same nefarious purposes: to ensure we remain either docile or intimidated as our political and financial elites grow ever more ostentatious in their depravity and corruption.'
Historian Mark Curtis, who has extensively analysed formerly secret government records for several groundbreaking books, has noted that the primary function of the British state, 'virtually its raison d'être for several centuries – is to aid British companies in getting their hands on other countries' resources.' The British security services have an important role to play in support of 'the national interest':
'As Lord Mackay, then Lord Chancellor, revealed in the mid-1990s, the role of MI6 is to protect Britain's "economic well-being" by keeping "a particular eye on Britain's access to key commodities, like oil or metals [and] the profits of Britain's myriad of international business interests".' (Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World, Vintage, 2003, pp. 210-211.)
A similar picture could be painted of all the major 'democracies', not least the United States.
The shocking extent of the corruption of democracy by big business and its political allies remains mostly off the corporate media's agenda. And corporate-employed reporters and commentators have mastered the art of not making painful connections; painful for powerful interests, that is. No wonder, too, that our major political parties offer no real choice: they all represent essentially the same interests crushing any moves towards meaningful public participation in the shaping of policy.
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The framework of global capitalism – its reigning institutions, policies and practices - tends to be taken for granted in the corporate media. Media academic and activist Robert McChesney points to the 'persistent reluctance' of commentators to 'make a no-holds-barred assessment' of capitalism. He makes a revealing comparison to illustrate this absurdity:
'A scholar studying the Soviet Union would never discount the monopoly of economic and political power held by the Communist Party and the state and then focus on other matters. The political economy would be central to any credible analysis, or the scholar would be dismissed as a charlatan. The same is true of any academic study of any ancient civilization.' (Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning The Internet Against Democracy, The New Press, New York, 2013, p. 17)
But on the rare occasion when the system is questioned, notes McChesney, even critical writers feel obliged to provide a 'loyalty oath' to capitalism:
'whenever scholars examine their own society, it is generally taboo to challenge the prerogatives and privileges of those who stand atop it and benefit from the status quo, even in political democracies. This may be nearly as true of the United States as it was of the old Soviet Union.' (Ibid., p. 17)
McChesney's observations about 'scholars' extend to media professionals, as he makes clear in his book. As we have often said, one cannot expect a corporate media system to report honestly or accurately about the corporate world.
Fisher rightly warns that the corporate system 'cannot co-exist with genuine democracy', adding:
'the emergence and predominance of the corporation has facilitated the emergence of a form of democracy – liberal democracy – which, by careful processes of management is made safe for corporations to dominate society, and for the capitalist system to reap enormous human and environmental damage.'
In other words, so-called 'liberal democracy' has become a lethal shield that protects capitalism from the threat of proper democracy based on meaningful participation by the general population. As we have explained in numerous books andmedia alerts, corporate power has for decades carried out huge campaigns of disinformation - called 'public relations' - and political lobbying to create the illusion of 'consensus' required to pursue its own selfish aims.
Fortunately, there is an inherent weakness here, because the system is maintained only so long as there is large-scale public acceptance of the status quo. Noam Chomsky puts it well when he says that:
'even the most efficient propaganda system is unable to maintain the proper attitudes among the population for long. [...] fundamental social and economic problems cannot be swept under the rug for ever.' (Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Vintage, 1993, pp. 134-135)
There is thus plenty to be said about living under a giant system of government surveillance. Just don't expect the corporate media to explore the full extent of what it really all means.
posted by Satish Sharma at
15:17
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