Intelligence Snowed In

The whole US system of spying and snooping that is supposed to protect the world from terrorists and terrorist attacks had fallen under an ugly cloud of bad publicity ever since the Snowden affair hit the news. Only this week Germany cancelled a spy pact that it had enjoyed with the US and UK ever since the Cold War years. Suddenly the allies were not being seen in such a good light after all. The outrage had followed revelations that the US had bugged its allies embassies and although there were reassurances that this was quite normal in the spying game it could be safely said that once again US Big Brother methodology was under scrutiny.

Which is when all of a sudden we get the US State Department issuing queer warnings.

“Our spies report suspicious activity that might lead to a terrorist attack”.

“Yeah? Where?”

“Uhm. Africa. All of it. And uhm the Middle East.”

“Who?”

“Al Qaeda of course”

“When and what?”

“Uhm. Transport stuff. And uhm Embassies”.

Really Uncle Sam? They are reporting “the biggest chatter since 9/11”. How abso-fuckin-lutely convenient. (That’s a Tmesis by the way). So just as your whole network of spying and intrusion in private lives comes into question you conveniently find a way to tell us that it is working. Sort of. After all the US reaction has been described as “an abundance of caution”  and not a reaction to a new threat.

It’s the US that came up with “Warning Hot Beverage” on coffee cups. Now we have a sophisticated “intelligence” network that has been shown to be used to spy on allies being justified by the apparent “smart reading” that al Qaeda operatives might be up to something generally in the Middle East/African region. Cry wolf?