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The Entertainment Superpower and the American Theater of Cruelty at Guantanamo

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The Mercury Computer's CELL based blade server, for example, can handle the requirements of sonar and radar computation for military or scientific applications, because of its ability to process real time data streams. "The Cell BE processor was originally designed for the volume home entertainment market," says Craig Lund, chief technology officer of Mercury Computer Systems, "but its architecture of nine heterogeneous on-chip cores is well-suited to the type of distributed, real-time processing that will power tomorrow's digital battlefield."

The US military hegemony is based on the ability of the US Navy to dominate the world's oceans - due partially to the superior numbers and technology of US naval vessels, which are augmented significantly by US dominance in space-based reconnaissance technology, and made possible by entertainment software consumers and movie goers world-wide.

Transfer of Human Capital

The overlap between digital technology - which by its nature erodes market boundaries - and defense is driven by myriad forces: the economics of the global marketplace; the instinct for self-preservation and for power by business, bureaucrat, and tyrant alike; and even by the social instincts and amusements of consumers. In like manner to, the former Executive President of Egypt's National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, Dr. Amr Badawi, spent nine years at GTE & General Dynamics before he became a Senior Advisor to the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology. He held this position when the Internet went down during the Egyptian revolution. And, he represents a common transfer of human and intellectual capital across sectors of the US military industrial and entertainment complex.

Misdiagnosing the Problem

In his book, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents , political scientist and founder of the Kennedy School of Government, Richard Neustadt describes the erosion of the executive branch that began when Woodrow Wilson made a direct appeal to the populace in his quest to ratify the Fourteen Points  after World War I. Prior to that event, American presidents had delivered their 'State of the Unions' in written letters to Congress. Neustadt considered this act a usurpation of legislative power by executive power, and the beginning of a mutation of the executive branch that has weakened the American presidency.

The former official in the United States Department of Justice during the Bush administration,John Yoo , who became known as the author of the Torture Memos, on which unhallowed ground the CIA based the 'legality' of enhanced interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay and CIA black sites, can find the roots of his advocacy for strengthening executive power in a battle between executive and congressional power that dates to the Nixon White House and the War Powers Act. Not surprisingly, many of the officials in the Bush administration were former aids to President Nixon.

But there is no use in strengthening executive power, when legislative power is incapacitated and corrupted by the same corporate interests that own the former. The problem has been misdiagnosed. As Dr. Lawrence Lessig  said in a presentation I attended for Fix Congress First  this past Friday in New York City, "There will be nothing for the right and nothing for the left until we fix our broken government."

And the beginning of a solution to the host of ills and the abuses of a corrupt and illegitimate government which preys on the resources and spirits of citizens, and which has established systems like Guantanamo Bay, is re-establishing government's right dependence on 'the people' in free and fair elections devoid of corporate influence.

Tyranny is not 'going' to happen in the USA, it is happening now.

Institutional Corruption and the Post-Totalitarian State

Neither technology, nor the instincts towards self-preservation, power, or social amusement are good or evil in themselves. They arise naturally in every man and every nation. The causes of faction cannot be removed, writes Madison in Federalist 10 . The only relief "sought is in the means of controlling its effects."

The Federalists control effect through structuring institutions that are capable of decentralizing the concentration of power in the hands of dominant factions or interests. The authors of Federalist 52  write:

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The 'independence' of government, according to the Federalists, as Dr. Lawrence Lessig points out, is government's 'dependence' on 'the people':

The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress, would have been improper for the reason just mentioned. To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States, would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone.(Source: Federalist 52)

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Alexa O'Brien is a writer for WikiLeaks Central (wlcentral.org). She can be found on Twitter @carwinb
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