Behavior Modification

A must read about Surveillance by Alternet's  Lynn Stuart Parramore. Chilling to say the least.

When I moved to a Czech village in 1994 to teach English, I was fascinated by the cultural difference between Americans like me and my new community. At that time, the oppressive memory of the dreaded Communist secret police, the StB [3], was still fresh. (Check out a haunting series of street photos [4] snapped by agents in their heyday.) As a brash young ex-pat, born after the era of McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, I understood little of what it felt like to live under constant surveillance.

The Czechs knew better. Several decades under the watchful eyes of the StB (and before that, the spies of the Habsburg Empire) had molded their attitudes and behavior in ways that were both subtle and profound. They were on their guard with newcomers. When you got to know them, you might sense a tendency toward fatalism about the future. Signature Czech traits included a sophisticated gallows humor and a sharp sense of the absurd, honed by a lifetime of experiencing Kafka-esque political conditions (Kafka himself was a Czech).

Then there was that subversive streak. When you gained their trust, Czechs would often gleefully show you their old smuggled rock-and-roll records or describe a forbidden radio set up in some corner of the house. These proud tales of rebellious triumph over the StB were cast against stories of horror, like a student who told me of the day her daddy disappeared after “talking to the oven” where a radio was hidden. For most Czechs, the salient lesson of the police state was an us-against-them mentality. Only sometimes you didn’t know who “they” were.

Seen below is a pix taken by the former Czech Secret Police. Gives you the warm fuzzies don't you think?