by HarryStottle » Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:45 pm
Greetings Sallice and welcome on board.
Your pessimism is, of course, more than justified by the scale of the problems we're up against. My own optimism is probably more genetic than rational. Nevertheless, we can glean some straws of comfort even from the "bad news" we're enduring at the moment.
For instance, Snowden's revelations about the extent of NSA surveillance on its own citizens may look like bad news. But for those of us who have been reading the runes (and James Bamford's books) for the last few decades, they're not really news at all, just confirmation of detail. And from my point of view, the revelations actually constitute good news, because it has massively increased awareness of the extent of corruption and abuse of power by government. (and please, dear reader, always remember that America isn't the only - or even the worst - abuser. It is, though, probably the most "professional")
The never-ending stream of revelations have definitely had the effect of making more and more punters take seriously my proposals (which are still the only serious and practical proposals I know of, which offer a serious prospect of reigning in the abuse of authority - whatever its source or ideology).
Elsewhere, look at what's happening in Egypt.
The main point is - you can.
Look at it, that is.
In other words, we're now seeing the story, in real time, often direct from some of the victims or those close to them. The mainstream media - who have sustained the existing corrupt hierarchies around the world for the last couple of centuries - are no longer able to filter out what the powers that be prefer us to see. This is even true for the most effectively authoritarian regimes like China.
The same transparency in Syria, for example, is probably what will stop our own corrupt regimes lending assistance either to the corrupt regime in Syria, or to its opponents. Why? Because the footage we're seeing makes it very clear that both sides contain really nasty people and we don't have any interest in getting involved. Prior to this kind of clarity, the warmongers would just send in the troops and manufacture the storyline to suit.
Iraq II is probably the last occasion on which they will ever get away with that bullshit. And look how much "leaked" from that criminal enterprise, despite their mammoth efforts at controlling the message (embedding journalists, imprisoning whistleblowers, scapegoating perpetrators etc)
My concern is not for all the batshit crazy stuff going on around the world. My concern is for how "We The People" react when they learn about it. And I have to admit, I'm not happy, so far, with what I'm seeing so far.
Why, for example, have we not seen at least one American police station torched? There have been plenty of publicly visible provocations which, in times past, would (and arguably should) have triggered such a response. I collected a couple of hundred examples for my Police State of America page (which I stopped updating when Obama was elected, stupidly believing he'd roll back the PSA) and on one classic example only a few days back.
The public response to the Snowden revelations ought to have been a wave of street protests and, at the very least, abandonment of google, facebook etc and mass migration to genuinely secure email (using pgp or similar); but no, "meek and obedient, they follow their leaders, down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel..."
My own efforts include trying to persuade the likes of Google/Amazon/Microsoft etc that, in the context of their coerced compliance with State demands for private data, there are plausible controls they can insist on (because they have the financial clout and potential customer support to win the public argument) which can be shown not to compromise the legitimate security concerns of the PSA but to make the NSA and it's subcontractors truly accountable. This alone has the potential to control the worst abuses. So wish me luck...