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 Julian Assange, they did it with Bradley Manning, and that all too familiar …
Continue reading “Smear Brigade Goes After Snowden”
At least 22 people were killed and 13 more were wounded in the latest round of Iraq violence.
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 the “war on terror,” the revelations of recent …
Continue reading “Historic Challenge to Support the Moral Actions of Edward Snowden”
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. Bradley Manning, and to the same extent, …
Continue reading “Assange + Manning: Sacrifices Bearing Fruit”
The number of attacks surged dramatically today, with Mosul and northern Iraq taking the brunt of the violence. Overall, at least 94 Iraqis were killed and 289 more were wounded.
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 to observe the inmates at all times. If we look at America …
Continue reading “Edward Snowden, American Hero”
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 so surprised. Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with …
Continue reading “Government Spying: Should We Be Shocked?”
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 not to wonder what alternative universe we live in. The …
Continue reading “Miscarriages of Justice”
At least 12 Iraqis were killed and 29 more were wounded in today’s violence. In one attack, Syrian rebels shot across the border.
At least 23 Iraqis were killed and 78 more were wounded, mostly in Baghdad and Mosul. Two Iranians were also killed and seven more were wounded in eastern Iraq.
