Connect Eddie HoltGeorge Bush authorised secret surveillance of phone calls and e-mails as part of his "war on terror". Michael McDowell has suggested that Frank Connolly may constitute a threat to the State. Denis Donaldson, a leading Sinn Féin official, has for more than 20 years been working as a British agent.
Is it really possible for citizens to penetrate power and know what's going on? Most people rely on the media - newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, internet - to uncover information for them. The media does a variable job - occasionally superb but often not - in finding and presenting relevant information. Increasingly, however, there is a sense of puppeteers at work and it seems as though the most telling string-pullers get away with their manipulations for too long.
Mind you, an overdeveloped suspicion of political puppeteering can lead to paranoia and absurd conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, denunciation of all conspiracy theories as pie-eyed - though many doubtless are - is, in its blindness, as ignorant as crediting the most farcical theory. We know that power plays a game with the truth and sometimes simply lies when it feels it's necessary.
Consider Bush's surveillance of phone calls and e-mails. He has not yet convinced Americans he was right to authorise these. His spying targeted hundreds of people suspected of having al-Qaeda links. In doing so, however, he is widely considered to have compromised cherished freedoms in the name of defending the US. It's an American version of the McDowell spat.
After all, both Bush and McDowell cited as justification for their actions the possibility of threats to the states they represent. But many people are made uncomfortable by such a use (or abuse) of power. They realise that for concocted reasons they might have their phones tapped or e-mails intercepted. They know they might be "outed" as threats to the state.
It really does depend on definitions of "the state". It also depends on the degrees of authoritarianism some people will condone. Furthermore, are we all not ultimately in danger of agreeing with some authoritarian control when it satisfies our ideological predilections?
If, for instance, a British cabinet minister were unmasked as a Sinn Féin spy, what reaction should we expect?
Spying - whether it be through strategically-placed agents, phone taps, intercepted e-mails or leaks to "friendly" journalists - has had an extraordinarily good press. Its clandestine nature gives it frissons of glamour, danger, sexiness, cool and even altruism. James Bond, for instance, is a "sophisticated" (good grief!) consumer - wine, women, cars, boats, gadgets - who protects "civilisation".
But he's also the most dreadful prat. He has, for instance, a "licence to kill", but who has the right to give him such a licence? The British state? The queen of England? The British secret service? Clearly, nobody has the "right" to license him for such brutality. But the myth of "the state" means that although Bond is a fictional character, he's accepted as having a "right" very few can obtain.
"The state within the state," has long been a feared notion. McDowell's recent denunciation of Frank Connolly and the Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI) makes many people fear that "the state" his actions are designed to protect is not synonymous with the larger entity to which we all belong. Likewise Bush's behaviour and that of Denis Donaldson.
There always is, of course, a trade-off between liberties and national security. At times of danger to "the state" - whether it be genuine or just a hyping by the "state within the state" - it is in the interests of power to convince as many people as possible of the reality of that danger. That way, the "state within the state" may strengthen itself while weakening the rest of us.
That is the great danger. It's notable that the "free market" that allegedly guides such politicians as Bush and McDowell should also work to strengthen the "state within the state". Traditional liberties are traduced as unwelcome dangers - infrequently fairly but often not - and despite guff about "freedom" and "little government", many citizens feel increasingly vulnerable and nervous.
The former governor of Louisiana and US senator Huey Long, who was assassinated in 1935 at the age of 42, once said: "Of course we will have fascism in America, but we will call it democracy." Since the second World War the word "fascism" is, of course, so charged that, rather like "democracy", it has become largely meaningless. But there is an authoritarianism at home and abroad that needs to be examined.
In Ireland, the management of Irish Ferries and McDowell's pre-emptive strike against Frank Connolly and the CPI represent this authoritarianism in action. In the US, Bush's regular heightening of public fear, phone-tapping and e-mail interception show a similar trend. The Denis Donaldson story shows that elements within the British state have, as ever, been equally autocratic.
It's likely that attempts to continue the corporatising of power will persist in the New Year. These will, however, meet stern if periodic resistance. It's really a matter of realising that nobody - not George Bush, not Michael McDowell, not Denis Donaldson - knows the full story. Happy Christmas.