When whistleblowers expose government wrongdoing and abuses, the procedure is always the same: the regime's defenders focus on the whistleblower's alleged personality defects and smear him within an inch of his life. They did it with Dan Ellsberg, they did it with...
Iraq: 22 Killed in Attacks, Including 7 Kidnapped Truck Drivers
Historic Challenge to Support the Moral Actions of Edward Snowden
In Washington, where the state of war and the surveillance state are one and the same, top officials have begun to call for Edward Snowden’s head. His moral action of whistleblowing — a clarion call for democracy — now awaits our responses. After nearly 12 years of...
Assange + Manning: Sacrifices Bearing Fruit
It may be ironic, that as one major whistleblower stands trial on espionage charges, another stands before television cameras to declare his deed to the world, most assuredly sealing his own fate as a free man for some time to come. But it should come as no surprise....
Another Bloody Monday in Iraq: 94 Killed, 289 Wounded
Edward Snowden, American Hero
At the end of the eighteenth century, the laissez-faire-philosopher-turned-statist Jeremy Bentham devised a scheme for the design of a prison he called the Panopticon: a circular building at the center of which is a watchtower made of glass from which it is possible...
Government Spying: Should We Be Shocked?
Last week we saw dramatic new evidence of illegal government surveillance of our telephone calls, and of the National Security Agency’s deep penetration into American companies such as Facebook and Microsoft to spy on us. The media seemed shocked. Many of us are not...
Miscarriages of Justice
Sometimes, when you watch the strange, repetitive political dance that swirls around the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — the president announcing yet again that he plans to “close” it and the Republicans in Congress swearing that they won’t let him — it’s hard...