p> In 1928, Ho Chi Minh was in Thailand while his Chinese wife, Zeng Xueming, remained in Canton. He sent her this letter:
"From the day we parted, already more than a year.
I miss you with such anguish, it needn't be said.
Borrowing rosy wings, I send a few lines to reassure you.
Such is my desire, and I wish your mother ten thousand good lucks.
Clumsily yours."
Translating, I've kept intact Ho's tone and "rosy wings" image, which indicates a high flying, red colored bird, but also implies rose petals. Though it sounds weird in English, it does convey his sweetness and anguish. Ho's letter never made it to his beloved, however, for it was intercepted by French intelligence and is now stored at the Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence.
Ho never saw his wife again. Considering all the turbulences and dangers Ho encountered, this episode may come across as so minor, an interesting footnote in a life defined by cataclysmic upheavals, but it is still a disturbing example of how the state, with its despotic power, guns and spooks, can so casually yet completely disrupt lives. Zeng Xueming simply assumed her husband had abandoned her. After reading this intercepted letter, the French could still allow it to be sent, but why bother? Ho was their enemy, after all, and though this missive had no value as intelligence, it was still carefully stashed away, while in Canton, a young woman pined. She never remarried, by the way.
With its army of hackers, the NSA can penetrate just about any computer, but occasionally a more direct molestation is required. In a December 30, 2013 article, Der Spiegel points out that the NSA sometimes intercept brand new computers as they're being delivered, so malicious software and/or hardware can be inserted into them. These are then used to track targeted individuals. Of course, our criminally complicit media ignored this bombshell completely, as if it's Norman Rockwell-OK that our postal service is in cahoots with the monstrous NSA, and that our possessions can be tampered with by our sneeringly lawless government.
We're still in the early stage of our Fascist transformation, so until the jackboots step on their ituned heads, many Americans will dismiss talks of Big Brother as mere paranoia. To these folks, systematic evil is always somewhere else, in Iran, Syria, China, North Korea or Russia, not here, and so any closer look at who killed Gary Webb or Michael Hasting, for example, is instantly dismissed as conspiracy lunacy. Other regimes harass, arrest, torture or kill truth seekers, but somehow not this one, they will insist, and so they would not believe that Tom Feely of Information Clearing House was threatened by two thugs in a parking lot, with one saying, "You need to stop what you are doing on the web," or that three well-dressed men barged into Tom's house to terrorize his wife. Again, the message was that he must "stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!" Reporting this 2008 incident, Mike Whitney said that Tom's wife then contacted the FBI, but of course they did nothing. I'm inclined to think that all of these enforcers were from the FBI, or at least one of our other intelligence agencies. We've got so damn many. For his part, Tom wondered why "They are reaching down SO far to get someone who just runs a web site."
The more oppressive a government, the more it seeks to monopolize information, but totalitarianism has progressed from simple censorship to one that relies mostly on nonstop distraction. With so much crap addling each brain, a dissident doesn't necessarily have to be arrested, since he's already being ignored by nearly everyone. The trouble maker still needs to be watched, however, and since any oppressive government is essentially a control freak, it will monitor an irrationally huge number of people, and will reach very far down indeed. None, however, has attempted such a comprehensive dragnet as the United States of America, for it's attempting to spy on, literally, the entire world, and won't stop until it has achieved full spectrum peeping tomism.
This past week, there was some irregularity with my email account. On Wednesday, Press TV sent me an email before noon, but it only arrived seven hours later. I thus missed my interview with the Iranian station. That same day, an organizer of a poetry festival at the Lincoln Center sent me an invitation to participate, but this email only showed up 26 hours later and, most curiously, it came as a "Forwarded message." When I asked the sender how this could happen, she couldn't answer. Now, these two instances might just be technical glitches, but perhaps not, especially the delayed message from Press TV. A thorn in the side of the US Empire, Press TV has been removed from the American, European and even East Asian markets, and it's fair to assume that all communications to and from Press TV are being monitored by American intelligence, and since I've been providing political commentaries on Press TV for over three years now, it's a safe bet that I'm also on the NSA's radar. In fact, it would be very naïve of me to think otherwise.
When I ruminated on my blog about the NSA, Press TV and your lowly self, I received this comment, "Is this a sly attempt at humor? Do you think US Intelligence agencies really would jam up your email based on your intelligent writing and commentary on world events? You're not that important in the multi-decade schemes of these systems." His mocking tone made me suspect he might be a government troll, for they will routinely mock all opponents while taking them very seriously. Just think of Occupy, for example. Even as the government spent lots of money and time to infiltrate that movement, it made them out to be incoherent freaks with poor hygiene whose ideas should just be ignored. Every protest movement in the US has been mocked and caricatured. Left or right, it doesn't matter, they have all been turned into freaks should they dare to doubt the righteousness of their criminal rulers, but this can only mean the government takes dissent most seriously, with trolls even sent into forums to disrupt debates among ordinary, "unimportant" citizens.
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