It's a Milestone: The US Spies on the World

The political, and apparently the non-political, world is shocked, stunned almost to the point of suffering a heart attack, over the United States government’s spying on the entire planet through specialized organizations of national and international security. This is how it knows in which moment Putin or Xi Jinping sit on a toilet to perform a physiological necessity or read or write a secret document; it knows which princess farts at a royal party and who she puts the blame on; it knows which government authority is passing a bad check or who is receiving a suitcase filled with dollars for having awarded a one-sided contract to an economic monopoly; it knows which children kick the ball well in a soccer game or make spectacular plays in baseball or at what distance they’re able to dunk the ball in the basket; it knows how much salt a cook puts in a beef broth or on liver and onions; it knows what a left-wing radical or a depressed person who anxiously wants to know if his or her soul is bound for heaven or hell is writing; it knows what color the urine is of the presidents who pass their time talking nonsense about the immaculate President of the United States … And so on; let’s stop counting.

In this world there are technologies that are almost totally secret, used precisely for discovering secrets. And these technologies are not within the reach of the nations referred to as Third World, nor are they within reach of the few developed capitalist countries. This is the privilege of imperialism. Currently, as a result of the revelations made by Assange and now Snowden, there is a wave of protests throughout the world over the espionage done by the U.S. government which gives irrefutable proof that not even its best and most sycophantic lackeys are safe from it. However, none of the protests will go beyond simple verbal objections. The world is dominated by American imperialism, and that’s that. Many governments will get riled up but none are capable of giving a lesson that will send imperialism to its final resting place. That moment has not yet arrived mainly because the American blue collar workers in particular, as well as the working class of other imperialist nations in general, enjoy the side benefits of pragmatism and for now aren’t going to even give a second thought to doing what they feel in their gut: Emancipate the world from all exploitation and class oppression.

I believe it was more than two decades ago that Pablo Medina, when he was General Secretary of the PPT, publicly denounced that in Texas or in Massachusetts, I don’t remember exactly which of the two, there was a technology center that — without the overwhelming majority of the planet wanting it — received, compiled and classified all the telephone calls made on the planet. This was and is and will be top secret espionage technology. Practically no one paid any attention to Pablo Medina’s accusation. Of course he wasn’t Assange or Snowden. And many decades ago, comrade Lenin denounced the imperialists as a kitchen of thieves. And thieves of this nature spy before committing their robberies, because they rob large and valuable things; they never do small-time crimes. They leave that to the low class thugs, or petty thieves as they’re commonly known.

A few years later the kind of espionage that affected, primarily, the conversations between revolutionaries was brought into the spotlight. Agreements were made during secret talks that had to be made public deliberately, which set out the need for all revolutionaries to use common words as they wrote on the Internet or spoke on the telephone (words like revolution, rebellion, insurrection, communism, socialism, guerrilla, insurgency, weapons, bullets, bombs, dynamite, road blocks, war plans and other words such as these) in order to clog up the technology center and make some of the officials run the risk of blowing their minds and going mad. But somehow it became understood that the gringo officials weren’t as stupid as some believed. Nobody lost their mind; I imagine that they figured out the revolutionaries’ scheme and invented ways to combat it. The technology center also had psychology experts to differentiate between those who wrote about nonsense and fantasies and who were writing seriously and for real.

Today’s world can’t be any other way. The market economy and the ostentatious desires of imperialist expansionism place espionage as a primary necessity of secret diplomacy. Capitalism would be too mystical without the powerful spying on the weak. It is the powerful, after all, who end up ruining or collapsing it all because they are too large a force. Getting angry over that isn’t the ideal thing to do. The ideal thing is to create a huge unity among all the nations that truly defend their people’s interests and, by believing in international solidarity, are able to establish measures that have a considerable effect on the economic interests of the imperialists. Otherwise, everything is reduced to just reciting slogans, beating one’s chest, and making the sign of the cross only to keep sinning. Let’s take an example: The governments of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal just committed an insulting and flagrant violation of the rules of international law by denying President Evo entry into their nation’s airspace, alleging that Snowden was one of his passengers. Just as imperialists plant drugs in a country, they are equally capable of planting an invisible person in an airplane.

A Latin American integration policy, either in general or ALBA in particular,* is not limited to verbal protest requesting an explanation after receiving a notice of rejection. That’s not bad and it is very necessary, but it won’t even scratch the executioner’s skin. The correct thing to do is put our cards on the table and seriously threaten the executioners with bringing an end to economic agreements where they have been favored. This is not radicalism but the exercising of proletariat internationalism. Our people will not die of hunger if some large French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese corporations that operate in the region are nationalized or expropriated. This surely will hurt them because the governments of Portugal, Italy, Spain and France, like all capitalist states, govern not by obeying the dictates of their people but instead of the large economic monopolies that have carried their businesses way beyond their borders. The crux lies in whether the governments of Brazil and Argentina, who always criticize imperialism and wild capitalism, are capable of carrying out measures of this nature.

Let them threaten to invade us. Let them try. Invading a country that does not have international solidarity with which to respond to the impostor is not the same as invading a region where the impostor will meet the tough resistance of various nations united by the same ideals. An example: If the Arab countries had responded to the invasion of Iraq by America and its allies, there would not now remain a single mercenary in the Middle East Arab territory and they would have left utterly humiliated. But the majority of the Arab governments senselessly and cruelly lent themselves to this violent act. This is a very difficult way to defeat an aggressor in a short time. Another example: If the American Empire were to invade a Latin American country, all of us would have the duty to declare armed resistance against the impostors. To do otherwise would make us nothing more than phony blowhards.

Now, to be honest, there does not exist a single government on this planet, from the most advanced to the most backward, that does not spy on its toughest adversaries — those who go about day and night proposing or planning actions that could lead to the defeat of the ones in power. Revolutionaries and comrades also spy, we can easily admit, although they don’t have the technology of the imperialists. Otherwise, plans for coups would never be discovered and no one would be able to prevent them from materializing. Of course, it’s never at the level of the imperialists, who end up spying on their own children, grandchildren, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers and partners in crime. My God! I prefer the Devil a thousand times more.

*Editor’s note: ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) is a regional block organized by Venezuela aiming for social, political and economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean.