DANGEROUS AND TROUBLING TIMES

The stupid lie spouted by the Obama administration, the NSA and various other apologists for the American administration, that by exposing the mass surveillance of US citizens, and indeed the citizens of states across the world, Edward Snowden has assisted the terrorists is risable. Any self respecting Jihadist who does not work on the assumption that he or she is being monitored, that their e-mails are opened, phone calls listened to and apartments bugged should give up the job and go into some other line of work. We have all assumed that security services were doing just that. If they were not what the hell were we paying them for? What most people did not assume was that we are all being monitored in this way.
It is even possible that this side of the pond the situation is even worse, that we have all been monitored much more closely than we imagined for years, and that the so called ‘snoopers charter’ was simply designed to place this on a legal footing.

No, the real basis for this need by ruling elites to hoover up the maximum possible data on all citizens is exposed by the events in Turkey, Egypt, Brazil, Greece, Bulgaria and a range of other locations across the world. For ruling elites everywhere these are dangerous and troubling times.
In this country alone we have already experienced widespread rioting; Occupy dominated the news for a period, and whilst the power behind the movement appears to have subsided, events overseas demonstrate the need for continued vigilance.
The recent revelations about police spies demonstrate the greatest fear of the ruling elite, not Al Qaeda but those elements in society unwilling to accept the settled order of things.

A number of years ago someone I knew who was active in the anarchist movement informed me that his phone was bugged. I saw no reason to disbelieve him, but could not help wondering whether or not he was jacking up his own importance. Now if anyone politically active informed me that they did not believe themselves to be monitored I would think them impossibly naïve.
For my self I believe that my interest in the Litvinenko case, see:-http://alextalbot.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/never-smile-at-crocodile.html, which the government regards as highly sensitive, makes me a target. I may of course be wrong, paranoid, delusional, but could you safely bet on it? This is the state of affairs to which we have come. For once it is permissible to use the much overused term, Orwellian, and for it not to be hyperbole.
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