Spies In The Skies

by digby

As we contemplate once again the disturbing notion that the political establishment seems to have no problem granting more and more unaccountable power to the homeland security apparatus, perhaps we should focus on what happens when these incremental steps are taken all the way to their natural end…

Twenty years after Ceausescu’s execution his secret service is still active. For the first time, Romanian-German writer Herta Müller describes her ongoing experience of Securitate terror.

For me each journey to Romania is also a journey into another time, in which I never knew which events in my life were coincidence and which were staged. This is why I have, in each and every public statement I have made, demanded access to the secret files kept on me which, under various pretexts, has invariably been denied me. Instead, each time there was signs that I was once again, that is to say, still under observation.

Müller is the recent winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, which I’m pretty sure means (among right wing circles anyway) that she is a communist or fascist or somehow both.

But she actually knows what she’s talking about when it comes to living in a police state. And I would guess that she’s less likely to see the bigger threat to liberty in America coming from someone who wants to spend money to put people to work than someone who wants to give the domestic security services ever more power to spy on its own citizens. (Unfortunately, that would be the same person at the moment… but I guess the silver lining for liberals is that he won the Nobel Peace prize?)

Read the whole thing. It’s a very timely reminder.

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