Imperial Hubris

WikiLeaks Launches Criminal Investigation ahead of Obama Visit to Sweden

"WikiLeaks will file a criminal complaint in Sweden, ahead of the arrival of President Obama. The complaint concerns the seizure of WikiLeaks property on 27 September 2010, following its publication of thousands of classified US intelligence documents on the war in Afghanistan. WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange said: 'Swedish authorities have the opportunity to demonstrate that no one, including state officials, is above the law.' The property seized included evidence of a war crime perpetrated by US forces in Afganistan in which more than sixty women and children were killed, known as the Garani massacre." Continue reading →

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With Enemies Like This, Who Needs Friends?

"The U.S. government pursued its vindictive course against Manning to send a message to other potential whistleblowers. The problem is, those whistleblowers — among them Snowden — got the message loud and clear. What Snowden learned is, you don’t work within the system through normal channels, and you don’t play the 'civil disobedience' game and take your punishment, unless you want to spend years naked in solitary awaiting trial and then be sentenced to most of your life in prison. You get the information distributed in secure places, get yourself safely out of the country, and then make your move. The next whistleblower will do it even bigger and better, and learn from Snowden’s example." Continue reading →

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U.S. Officials Are Above the Law of Nations and Ordinary Laws

"With regard to Nuremberg ideas of law and sanctions against aggressive war, the U.S. government considers itself above all that. It’s a case of 'now you see it, now you don’t'. If the U.S. decides to bomb somebody and wants to mention Nuremberg as a justification (or its equivalent like a charge of killing one’s own people), now you see it. If it decides its own officials can get away with aggression against Iraq, now you don’t. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. government regards itself as a law unto itself. It is the supreme and only superpower, by virtue of which what it says, goes. And what it says is law, it also claims." Continue reading →

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The Compulsion To Rule

"A system that insists on controlling others through increasing levels of systematic violence; that loots the many for the aggrandizement of the few; that regulates any expressions of human behavior that are not of service to the rulers; that presumes the power to wage wars against any nation of its choosing, a principle that got a number of men hanged at the Nuremberg trials; and finally, criminalizes those who would speak the truth to its victims, has no moral energy remaining with which to sustain itself. The treatment accorded private Manning may have been the final nail driven into the coffin of the American state." Continue reading →

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Murray Rothbard: And Now Afghanistan [1980]

"Afghanistan has no resources, has no treaties with the U.S., no historic ties, there are none of the flimsy but popular excuses that we have used for over a century to throw our weight around across the earth. But here we go, intervening anyway, loudly proclaiming that Russia’s actions in Afghanistan are 'unacceptable', and for which we are ready to scrap SALT, detente, and the feeble past attempts of the Carter administration to shuck off the Cold War. The conservatives, the Pentagon, the Social Democrats, the neo-conservatives, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority [..] have been yearning to smash detente, and to accelerate an already swollen arms budget and heat up the Cold War." Continue reading →

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How to Start a War by the Bootstrap Method

"The U.S. need never again be at peace, because it has so many ways to get war going. There is now a new way to create a war. Obama has invented it. At this point in its history, the empire no longer needs to be attacked, by an actual or fabricated attack. It no longer needs to manufacture a pretext. It no longer needs to say that there is a threat of a threat. It no longer needs to suspect weapons of mass destruction. It no longer needs to point to an humanitarian concern. It no longer needs to mention national security. Obama’s method is simple. Make a threat by drawing a red line. There need be no relation of that line to any U.S. interest or to national defense or an attack on America." Continue reading →

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Saudi Arabia Pushes US Toward Military Strike in Syria

"Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal urged the Arab League to back a military strike against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after the chemical attack on Ghouta in which hundreds of Syrians were killed. Away from humanitarian concerns over the Syrian victims of chemical attacks, the Saudi antagonism to Assad’s regime started in 2006, when it appeared that together with Iraq, Syria was beginning to drift even more toward the Iranian sphere of influence and away from the Saudi-led Arab position, causing discomfort in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia aims to return Syria to its fold after years of estrangement and even hostility." Continue reading →

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Obama Refers to U.S. Armed Forces as ‘My Military’

"In case you missed it, President Obama referred to the United States armed forces as 'my military' during a statement to the media regarding the Syrian crisis Friday. 'But as I’ve already said,' Obama noted, 'I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options.' And Twitter users went and got themselves into a bit of a twist. What do you think? Innocent semantics, a slip of the tongue…or something else?" Continue reading →

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Gorbachev warns of Syrian intervention risks

"Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in Geneva on Monday that US President Barack Obama was right to seek backing from Congress for military action in Syria, but he warned that intervening raised dire risks. 'If he's not decisive enough in shooting and bombing, I think it's a good kind of indecisiveness,' Gorbachev told a conference of Green Cross International, a peace and environmental organisation he founded in 1993, two years after his Kremlin ouster. 'If, however, they decide to shoot without regard for the opinion of the people everywhere, including the United States, then I think the consequences could be very bad,' he warned." Continue reading →

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