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10:21

(In »The free and open Internet versus the ecological apocalypse«)

In October 2013, it was revealed that the US intelligence organisation NSA had bugged, among many others, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, continuously for five years without the knowledge of the US President Barack Obama. It is difficult to think of a clearer illustration of how the democratic system de facto has collapsed under late capitalism and has now definitively morphed into a chaotic plurarchy. If an intelligence agency can grab the power from elected representatives, the word democracy loses all meaning. This is no longer about a democracy but about a massive, paranoid bureaucracy that does not need to take into account at all any form of democratic or even judicial influence over how certain State agencies operate. Late capitalism’s obsession with security, which is constantly mistaken for safety, could hardly have been exposed any more clearly. Therefore the capitalist power complex of nation states and major corporations has only one priority for the future: commandeering and controlling the Internet.