These Romans are crazy
The US government’s response to the Snowden case has made one thing abundantly clear: Washington’s fear of a change in the way that the world judges the way it behaves.
At this point we can stop talking about technology and move on to much more serious issues; to genuinely hair-raising matters. Please read and reflect on this terrifying article by Arianna Huffington, ‘Signature strikes and the President’s empty rhetoric on drones’, which outlines US policy in a growing number of countries: computer directed missiles sent from unmanned aircraft aimed at any group of people suspected of any activity that might be considered suspicious, whether that is a neighborhood meeting (jirga) that might appear to be subversive, or an informal sporting competition (“three guys doing jumping jacks”) that might appear to be a training camp.
This isn’t about anti-Americanism: Arianna Huffington cannot be accused of that, at worst she is guilty of the pragmatism of those who, although not born in the United States, have lived and made a success of their lives there. My case is similar: I could never be accused of being anti-American, rather, the opposite. I have tended to think that anti-Americanism is largely an invention of Americans themselves: after living for several years there teaching North American students, I was able on several occasions to establish to what extent the US media suffered from a hostility complex that in all sincerity is rarely to be found in Spain, and among those who do feel that way, limit themselves to expressing their fears among friends, and usually with a significant dose of irony.
Unsurprisingly, in Pakistan, where it is possible to come across an “uninvited missile” at any social event, people tend to think otherwise, and the number of people who see the United States in favorable terms has fallen from 19% during the second mandate of George W. Bush to 12% in 2012.
Defending our societies against terrorism is simply an excuse: when it isn’t terrorism, it is intellectual property or child pornography. At the end of the day, we are talking about preserving US domination over a range of international activities. Edward Snowden’s revelations have made US attitudes all too clear the reality of Pax Americana: a peace that is nothing of the sort, and that accumulates dead bodies in the same way that children collect bubble gum cards, based on the permanent eavesdropping not only of the general public, but also of anybody that uses any service or product provided by a US company, embassy, company, government office, or decision-making center. The National Security Administration (NSA) is out of control, and with a mission to: process all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital ‘pocket litter’”
A US president elected thanks to his ability to analyze data is now dedicated to using the same weapons to pursue his foreign and security policy. The difference between living in Pakistan or Yemen and any country in the EU is the extent to which one is watched and the actions taken in pursuit of that goal: there is little internet activity in Yemen or Pakistan; what is under surveillance are gatherings, behavior patterns, and indications that would lead the other side to believe that you are engaged in some kind of terrorist activity.
The fact that Pakistan or Yemen are sovereign states, that they have their own democratically elected governments, is irrelevant: they are countries to which at any moment we can send drones, missiles, or whatever is needed, countries where we can do whatever we think appropriate, without submitting ourselves to any higher authority, on the basis of our interpretation of some kind of suspicious behavior. A military “expert” interprets some kind of suspicious behavior and the suspicion is eliminated immediately, eliminating in the process the lives of dozens of men, women, and children. For the moment, we can safely assume that our governments will not be sending missiles anywhere. But we now know that without any kind of warning, your movements, conversations, emails, search histories, updates, etc, are being monitored. Equally, you can be stopped upon entry into the United States on the basis of our activities. The outcome may be different, but the modus operandi is the same.
Edward Snowden’s revelations are giving the world new insight into the reality of Pax Americana, and showing us, as the Asterix comics used to, that “these Romans are crazy.” The next question surely is, following Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”: what have the Americans ever done for us?
