A call to artists

Latest news of just how far the Empire was willing to go to secure world ascension to its plans for destroying Iraq leaves us wondering: What in the world are we supposed to do?

At a critical point during the lead-up to the American pre-emptive war on Iraq last spring, US National Security Agency officials, working under Condaleezza Rice, recruited British intelligence officers to spy on UN diplomats and key United Nations officials, including Kofi Annan, the UN's Secretary General.

The revelation came after the British government last week dropped charges against Katherine Gun, an intelligence worker who leaked to reporters a document containing an American request to spy on UN officials. Former British cabinet member Clare Short confirmed to reporters that prior to quitting Tony Blair's government over the issue of war in Iraq, she was given transcripts of confidential negotiations conducted by Annan in his offices, courtesy of British spies. Too bad for Iraqis, and the world, that Short didn't feel it was worthwhile to reveal this fact back when it might have counted for something.

At the time, nine non-permanent members of the UN Security Council were to vote on whether to pass a resolution tabled by the Americans authorizing war on Iraq. Sensing they would not win the vote, at the last minute, the US withdrew the resolution and avoided the embarrassment of the vote going against them. They then launched the war anyway, without UN authorization.

Short herself suspected her own conversations with Annan were bugged by spies, even while she was conducting them. She says she had been thinking "Oh dear, there will be a transcript of this, and people will see what he and I are saying," Short told reporters. Officials of both the Chilean and Mexican governments, two of the nine non-permanent members whose vote was being courted, suggested last spring that their UN diplomats' confidential conversations were being bugged by US and British spies, but the allegations were casually dismissed as garden variety paranoia by US, British, and UN officials.

Reporters have suggested the eavesdropping at Kofi Annan's office could have been accomplished using "complex electronic intercepts-sophisticated listening devices can be trained on windows from outside" to record voices that slightly vibrate the window, according to the Globe and Mail. "Radio beams can be bounced off the glass to detect the vibrations caused by the noise inside," adds the National Post.

Latest surveillance watchdogs say that cellphones need only be powered up to allow spies to eavesdrop on any conversations taking place nearby. Recently, the FBI was found to be secretly activating "OnStar" on-board tracking devices installed in Cadillacs and other luxury General Motors vehicles in order to listen in on conversations taking place inside the cars.

The problems confronting the engaged and interested Canadian citizen are these: in a few months no one will remember all this, so that, to remind anyone in a discussion that, for example, the White House bugged the UN offices of Kofi Annan, will run the risk of appearing to be a rabid paranoid anti-American, instead of just someone who notes the interesting parts in the passing news.

One doesn't look any better by going further to tell how cell phones, even when not in use, provide spies a means to listen to private conservations, or how all new cars are themselves pre-wired for easy bugging.

It's not likely any of this technology, nor the urge to develop it, will ever go away. It will only become more and more invasive and controlling. Legislation to curtail the development of these technologies and their use and abuse by intelligence gatherers would only succeed in pushing the activity further out of view.

But at the same time, to find ways of coping with the technology and getting around it and the spooks employing it only hands the enemies of the people an easy victory on something that should be fought.

What is more, if this technology already exists, and if the authorities are willing to do what they already do in plain view, namely, kidnap people and hide them away, as in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, what chances does one have of getting away with success at curtailing the technology and those who employ it? They kill for far less pretense than that.

The Republic doesn't know the answer here. Again, we repeat our call to all artists to help us understand the nature of the problem, and provide us the means to imagine the solution.

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