By John Galt
July 5, 2011
The scenes from the movie THX 1138 are foreign to many of my readers but for those that remember George Lucas’ look at a bleak, impersonal future managed by computers and enforced with brutal robotic killers, that reality moves closer every day. The definitive police state wet dream is what I would title that movie and based on the actions and desires of the Department of Homeland Security and American corporations, that reality is accelerating into our homes and neighborhoods at lightening speed. So what better place for Cisco Systems to test out a massive new surveillance system than in the largest dictatorship in the world?
From the July 5th Wall Street Journal:
Cisco Poised to Help China Keep an Eye on Its Citizens
The program as described in the story even has a catchy Newspeak terminology (in bold by me) included by the ChiComs:
The system, being built in the city of Chongqing over the next two to three years, is among the largest and most sophisticated video-surveillance projects of its kind in China, and perhaps the world. Dubbed “Peaceful Chongqing,” it is planned to cover a half-million intersections, neighborhoods and parks over nearly 400 square miles, an area more than 25% larger than New York City.
Not so shockingly, the Obama administration nor the Republicrats in Congress outside of Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) has any commentary critical of this deal. While the program can be sold as it is not against the export rules of the U.S. imposed since the Tienanmen Square massacre, it demonstrates that the corporate community’s deaf ear to the cruelty inflicted by the communists against dissenters is of secondary concern since the excuse of “well, if we don’t do it someone else will” would be tossed about as it has been throughout history.
The excuse does not hold water and while I do not agree with everything some of the human rights advocates have engaged in, a valid point is raised in the article:
Corinna-Barbara Francis, a researcher at Amnesty International, said surveillance footage has been used to identify and apprehend peaceful protesters in China, including in Xinjiang and Tibet. “In China there’s ample evidence that they use” video surveillance “to crack down and then criminalize activity which should not be criminalized,” Ms. Francis said.
In other words the ChiComs might as well go ahead and contact G.E. so they can build ovens for the dissenters or Halliburton so they can start building concentration camps for the “party” because if they don’t bid on the project, someone else will. I highly recommend registering at the WSJ website and reading the entire article to grasp the slippery slope Americans who lived in the early 1930′s went through as corporations aided dictatorships that committed atrocities in the past. There are the patent excuses made by one of the other companies bidding for the project through Cisco, Intergraph, along with the stone cold wall of silence from Chinese authorities. The police state technology tested in China is important for these corporations as the U.S. government has been implementing smaller versions in our own communities and without a doubt DHS will continue to fund larger, more integrated platforms.
After all, profit before principle is the new American way.
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