So, my friend The Talking Dog is back with a reflection on Guantanamo and our fucked up country.
So here we are. What is really going on? I submit to you that Guantanamo ain’t just a ̶r̶i̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶E̶g̶y̶p̶t̶ bay in Cuba. The aftermath of September 11th was an extremely useful excuse to change paradigms, and once and for all, alter even the perception that the United States was some kind of “free country.” In conjunction with a suite of technologies made available as a result of the internet age, the same security and intelligence agencies that were widely [and rightly] blamed for the failures that led directly to the September 11th events were revitalized and reconstituted in various ways (“innovations” included the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence). There were, of course, massive increases in budgets of the Defense Department and the “intelligence community” agencies to “fight the global war on terror,” and of course, to spy on every aspect of our lives (often with the help of such useful technological developments as “social media” and the “smart phone,” serving as rocket fuel for Silicon Valley and Wall Street, and resulting in tech behemoths that, by market capitalization, are the largest business enterprises in the history of the universe.) As September 11th fades from memory over the years (and the rationale for GTMO with it), the surveillance state just gets more robust with each passing year, as do the technical means of maintaining control over us (as if employment at will and permanently precarious “health insurance” aren’t already doing the heavy lifting of suppression).
READ THE WHOLE THING HERE.
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