[Dailydave] INFILTRATE 2014 Movie Release: Dickie George

[Haroon Meer]

Heya(s)

On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Kristian Erik Hermansen
<kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> This was a really insightful keynote and is important. Of particular
> importance is the fact that Dickie George confirms the NSA performs
> routine economic espionage to win contractual international bids,
> despite all the rebuttals from NSA and their champions.

I'm pretty sure that this trope is well & truly put to bed (and has
been for a while).

In a recent (excellent) Risky Business podcast
[http://risky.biz/RB322] Dr Hugh White (former Senior Adviser to
Defence Minister and Prime Minister && Deputy Secretary for Strategy,
Department of Defence) added:

[35:46s] "The argument that the Americans are making, that is that we
may collect economic intelligence but that we don't do it for the
commercial benefit of our companies, would not actually stand, i
think, a very solid scrutiny over history"
"if you look at the role of the United States government in supporting
US commercial interests, for example, US oil companies, over the
decades, i think the proposition that the United States never uses
national intelligence assets to support american companies will be
very hard to sustain"

It's kinda interesting, that when we talk of the IC not being used
_that_ way in the US, we ignore documented cases like the 1953 Iranian
Coup [1] where the CIA led operation TPAJAX, to overthrow the
democratically elected prime minister and his cabinet (installing an
absolute monarch instead) to protect its oil interests in the region

These events (as far as i know) are not contested..

I think, as always, Thucydides holds true: "Right, as the world goes,
is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what
they can and the weak suffer what they must" - This is the way of the
world and always has been, but understanding it should not be confused
with justifying it (or whitewashing it).

/mh

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
-- 
Haroon Meer | Thinkst Applied Research
http://thinkst.com/pgp/haroon.txt
Tel: +27 83 786 6637