Following Paris attacks the National Security State is passé, welcome to the International Security World

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

The New York Times is full of all the news fit to print this morning. I can only imagine the news that isn’t fit to print.

Front and center is a report on the study of life in the oceans. The take away: mass extinction of ocean life possible. But right across the dire news about the ocean is a report about the new draconian laws in France limiting speech “supporting terrorism.”  The Times sites incidents where individuals who praised the terrorists were sentenced to six months and four years in prison. The most prominent case, though, is that of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a provocative humorist and symbol in the contested arena of free speech and public safety. The Times reports that M’bala has been arrested dozens of times on suspicion of violating anti-hate laws. Most of his statements have been directed at Jews, but on Wednesday he was arrested on the charge of condoning terrorism.

I doubt it will end there.

Buried deeper in the Times is an article about news organizations, including the Times,the Washington Post and the Associated Press, that have banded together to test the capability of drones for news gathering. The Times report cites the possible benefits of drones, quoting Rose Mooney, Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership at Virginia Tech: “Unmanned aircraft systems can provide this industry a safe, efficient, timely and affordable way to gather and disseminate information and keep journalists out of harm’s way.”

Yes, I can see it now, news-gathering drones filing flight patterns with powerful countries who are themselves using drones to gather “news” on their subjects. Or making sure that, like the journalists, news-collecting drones are kept out of harm’s way when the military news-gathering drones are used to rocket “terror” targets.

These reports from the field are further warning of where we’re headed. Soon we’ll have pilotless military drones reported on by reporterless news-gathering drones, all making sure that surveilled civilian populations have less and less interaction with those who oppress them – and those who report on their oppression.

Our future: Oppression planned and delivered without messy and risky human contact.

It seems that the conflagration and its aftermath in Paris is just another step beyond the National Security State to the International Security World.

Vigilance is the name of the game here. As our oceans face mass extinction, our freedom to speak, report and judge continues to be under assault. As with the oceans, there may be a tipping point. We may have reached that point already.

While heartfelt, the various “Je suis” campaigns are diversions that draw us deeper into the international security abyss. When soon reporterless drones, having been cleared, say by the state of Israel, monitor the effects of homelessness and other bombing maladies on the people of Gaza now suffering under a winter siege, we have reached an end from which a new beginning is difficult to fathom.

Years ago I attended a lecture on the Holocaust where the speaker championed the digitizing of information on the Nazi oppression of European Jews. When he boasted of the computerized possibility of tracing, for example, starvation in various European ghettos and concentration camps in the winter of 1943, I walked out of the lecture. I did not return.

The Charlie Hebdo cover with the prophet Muhammad caricature crying behind the sign, “Je suis Charlie,” that reached millions in France a few days ago, isn’t part of a larger false flag operation that conspiracy buffs on the internet love to covet. The situation is far too complex for this charge to be taken seriously. What is at stake here is the future which has already come into being.