Who's Guaranteed To Win The Summer Olympics? The Secret Police.

In the lead-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, being held in London, we can already discern a clear winner: the secret police of "Great" Britain, and to a lesser degree their foreign partners, "other Western intelligence agencies." (Of which the CIA and FBI are first and foremost.)


Before the Olympics even begin, we're getting a steady stream of pro-secret police propaganda, planted by them in the corporate media, about foiled "plots" and "security preparations." The British domestic secret police, MI5, and overseas secret police, MI6, are assiduously working the UK media- with spillover into U.S. media, like the NY TImes- to burnish their image and position themselves ahead of the Olympics.


There are only 2 basic possibilities vis a vis "terrorism" at the Games: Number One, no "major terrorist incident" occurs, or a "plot" is "foiled," or only minor incidents occur. In that case, the gestapos will boast or their great prowess and competence, while also making the point that there is still Great Danger and thus a need for vigilance (and big budgets and lots of repressive powers for the secret police). This propaganda message will be dutifully transmitted to the public by their stooges in the establishment media, the reliable aiders and abettors of the     
secret police state. (The secret police might even create some "plots" to "foil," for propaganda use. Years later, the "cases" can be quietly dropped, with little media notice. The losers will be the pawns who spent a few years in jail.)


Possibility Number Two: there is a "major terrorist incident." Does that then prove the opposite, namely the incompetence of the secret police?


Not at all, you simplistic thinker you. It "proves" the need for yet more "resources" - money, and, especially more repressive power for the secret police. 


That propaganda message will then be dutifully transmitted to the public by their stooges in the establishment media, those, yes, still reliable aiders and abettors of the secret police state.


It's heads they win, tails we lose.


And anyway, pity the poor secret policemen, because, as they are regularly quoted in the media saying, year after year, mantra-like, "we have to succeed every time, the terrorists only have to succeed once." I.e. expect terrorist attacks to occur, and don't blame us the guardians if they do. Thus does the media inoculate the public, with regular booster shots, against thinking the "security services" should be held responsible for their failures. (Much less for attacks they deliberately allow to occur, like the seminal 9/11/01 attacks that birthed the never-to-end War On Terror, which is the second never-to-end war on human rights being waged by the bourgeoisie, joining the War On Drugs. (Really, the war on getting high. There's certainly no war on the products of the pharmaceutical industry, which are frequently dangerous and/or ineffective and fraudulently and corruptly marketed.)


Now why does the establishment media so assiduously safeguard and promote the interests of the secret police? Well of course both media and secret police are arms of the same system. That is the most basic reason. While there are occasional conflicts, which sometimes even rise to the level of "scandal," for the most part they are allies, if somewhat wary ones. (By the way, the monstrous crimes of the secret police, programs of mass murder and torture, are never the scandals, but are in fact kept hidden, briefly noted, and buried in the memory hole. LIke the Phoenix mass murder program in Vietnam, overseen by one William Colby, who later was ironically drowned by his former colleagues for telling too much to Congress, in their eyes. Gangsters killing gangsters- it happens a lot in crime organizations.)

Typically for a power structure, the corporate oligarchy needs secret police organizations to guard and advance its interests domestically and globally. Note that notorious coups have occurred in the interests of large transnational corporations, such as in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973 (ITT unnecessarily tried to bribe the U.S. government to overthrow Allende), and so on. A secret police state keeps the populace in line, monitors any incipient resistance to their rule or to particular policies/crimes they carry out, infiltrates dissident groups and movements to misdirect, subvert, and destroy them, and generally acts to prevent the development of groups and movements that corporate capital finds noxious. Hence the need for a Total Surveillance State, to nip in the bud any germinating seeds of opposition and resistance. 


Abroad, the secret police are part of the structure of force and violence to check, deter, and exterminate external enemies- whether or not those "enemies" realize they are enemies of the corporate oligarchy. (Naive democracy advocates and various labor and human rights workers and their lawyers frequently fall into this category and are exterminated. Oh, and academics who think bad thoughts. And "communist" church people- i.e. real Christians who understand Christ's gospel as meaning standing with the poor. And since U.S. power is the friend of the rich everywhere and enemy of the poor everywhere, this means they too have to be eliminated. And since most people on the planet are poor, being the enemy of the poor means that the U.S. is fundamentally an enemy of humanity. Wow, does that truth ever conflict with official propaganda!) 


So why exactly should the establishment media, the voicebox of corporate oligarchy, not support ever increasing powers for their secret police? Is it not the interests of the oligarchy that the secret police serve? Well, sometimes the possibilities of the secret police trampling on bourgeois privileges (which are called "rights" or "freedoms" or "liberties," but they're really privileges, because only some people have them) makes elements of the propaganda system a tad nervous. So they try and draw lines with editorials "warning" the secret police not to go too far. It's rather like tectonic plates bumping up against one another, forces pressed together in intimate contact. Mostly there is gradual shifting, sometimes an abrupt movement.


One more, somewhat minor point. The expansion of secret police repression largely bypasses right wing terrorists. Such as the recent case in Germany, where a neoNazi group was allowed to murder Turks for a decade, and even a policewoman. The day after it all blew up, the German secret police were burning their files on the group! (Reports BBC. Didn't see that in U.S. media.)  Or the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The government had advance notice from its informers, and allowed the bombing to occur, then covered up the extent of the conspiracy, pretending it was the doing of just two men. Right. Or the mostly free rein given to anti-abortion terrorists. There are numerous other examples that could be cited.