Human Nature Foils Authoritarian Bloc

China and Israel peddle surveillance equipment to willing authoritarian regimes around the world. An University of Toronto report, mentioned in the February 23, 2021 issue of AFRICAN ARGUMENTS (africanarguments.org), found Israel's government authorized export licenses for a telecom company, Circles, to provide spying equipment to at least 25 foreign governments, including those in Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya and Botswana. A current exhibit at MoMA should give pause to those who rely on constant scrutiny. The MoMA exhibit reveals what artists created while under the watchful eyes of guards at a federal US prison. One inmate not only transformed 39 prison bedsheets into the monumental collage of heaven, earth and hell pictured in THE ATLANTIC magazine (March, 2021) but also mailed his masterpiece home sheet by sheet. The stability strongmen represent and their lack of accountabiity for corrupting bribes make them attractive allies to some. During the Cold War, for example, the US identified Iran's Shah as a bulwark against Communism in the region. Known as Persia until 1935, Iran practices Shia Islam, different from its Sunni Muslim Arab neighbors like Iraq, which Iran fought in a bloody 20th century 8-year war. Earlier in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Britain and Russia vied for control of Iran, Tehran invited a US attorney to help straighten out its finances. But in 1953, the US Central Intelligence Agency protected the Shah's growingly repressive rule from a coup staged by a popular prime minister. By 1979, when President Carter's administration invited the ailing Shah to come to the US for medical treatment, the Islamic Revolution was ready to take over Iran. Supporters stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held US officials captive for 14 months. China and Israel currently both have reasons to make friends in Asia and Africa. Beijing views a coalition of authorian countries as a hedge against UN sanctions for its human rights' abuses. Meanwhile, Israel is willing to help authoritanian rulers stay in power as a way to wean their support away from Palestine. As tempting as it is in the short run, assuming authoritarian regimes can maintain permanent control is not a safe bet. Facial identification systems cannot reveal what people are thinking. Smiles conceal as well as reveal. Given enough time in prison, under a dictator or anywhere, the impossible becomes possible. Dental floss was once woven into an escape rope. Muslim women sneak out of China's slave camps; male North Korean workers loaned to Russia disappear. Somethings are innate to human nature. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, truths, such as liberty, are self evident.