Spying

Governments always spy. They have traditionally used  , among others ,  ambassadors  and business people  as spies, even though they were guests in other peoples’ countries. The excuse is that everybody does it and therefore….Which in  turn means that their morality is governed by business and politics ( which often is another name for business).

What still surprises us though is the amount of spying governments do. Not content with scraping in  rubbish bins on the ground, they send spies into space. And the result  is sixty million emails spied on per month in one country alone. What other spying is done we can imagine judging by  the technology available .

However there is no  use in  throwing up hands and lamenting. After all we did bring it on ourselves. We did it by saying nothing as one invasion after another was made into our personal privacy. We did not object when the cameras went up in  hotel lobbies, in the streets, even in the washrooms. We did not object when a sacred moment in human life, the moment of birth  began to be  portrayed in television  programmes not to show the sacredness of it but to give a thrill to watchers  of soap operas. There were  a few shudders of apprehensiveness when we saw the first portrayal of someone in  a  confessional box, another of those private moments in life which somebody decided should be private no longer, thus causing us no surprise when the spies bugged the boxes.

There seemed to be a grim determination  to seek out and destroy every moment which  centuries of  human delicacy  had  declared sacred,  to eliminate privacy and the  dignity of having one’s own space. We allowed it all to be invaded. And said nothing

We were told, of course , If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to fear. Nonsense. Those who do nothing wrong probably have more to fear than anyone  else.  

Nobody seems to see the connection between the depersonalising of soldiers by giving them no privacy even in the privy – a strange perversion – and having them watched and noted and recorded on their own  approach to  warehouse, witness box or washroom. We did not object to  millions being able to  zoom in to the exact spot where we lived, did not wonder why we should allow this to be done on  us,  or on a villager in Afghanistan seconds before the drones explode. But then we did not object when the technological advance of splitting the atom  was used to eliminate Hiroshima. Now we have allowed the president of a country  to use our technology – our technology – to enable  his henchmen – and  henchwomen , sad to say – to eliminate someone thousands of miles away whom the  droning president has decided without trial is an enemy of his state. Is it really possible for the  United States of America to  stay united in their  desire to let  this abomination  continue ?

Yes, it is.  Until eventually  the united states  disintegrate just as every empire on the face of the earth disintegrates. To forecast that disintegration , or to wish it for the world’s safety is not being un-American.  It is being so pro-American as to believe that no Washington government for decades has been worthy of the American people.

When Mr Obama was elected we all hoped  the  people would have  a  renewed life in which what we called the American dream would be fulfilled for everybody.  

Our thoughts  are different now. More modest . Thoughts about  curbing this  lust for power rather than  giving more authority to the same people for more of the same.

With a mixture of horror and hope we remember the childhood fable of the Frog that proudly swelled  up so much  that………………..