Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington’s huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is the enemy of all humanity.
When whistleblowers come forward we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged. When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth is not a crime. This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.
Courage is contagious.
There is no credible choice or meaningful alternative under this sovereign political-corporate order. It’s not just Hobbes’s political Leviathan. It’s Hobson’s political choice: ConDem neoliberalism and austerity or New Improved Labour (NIL) neoliberalism and austerity.
Russell Brand’s recent political essay, viral BBC interview, and ongoing comedy tour – The Messiah Complex – raise important political and philosophical questions concerning, among other issues, the nature of justice, the importance of voting, and the need for radical, revolutionary change. These deserve serious consideration.
“Citizens have to fight against the suppression of information about affairs of essential importance for the public. Those who speak the truth are not committing a crime.”
Bob Baer, CNN National Security Analyst and Former CIA operative and Ray McGovern is a former CIA analyst.
An apathetic mainstream media, an ambivalent political class and a broad populace who have become spectators rather than actors in their daily lives, have created the mistaken impression that Britain is taking its austerity hammering lying down. This could not be further from the truth. Many of the most disenfranchised groups in UK society are rising, rebellion is fomenting, and flames of dissidence are licking the powder keg of mainstream mood. So why doesn’t it feel like it?
The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don’t think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty, when they hop a few inches left or right. The lazily duplicitous servants of The City expect us to gratefully participate in what amounts to little more than a political hokey cokey where every four years we get to choose what colour tie the liar who leads us wears.
While the President must surely realize that History will judge him more harshly rather than less for letting concerns of this sort color his supervision of the national-security apparatus, from a human standpoint, it’s easy to understand why he might feel that he “is not the right president” to take this on. Can you imagine what Lindsay Graham would say if the President took the position that the “Never Again’ mission should be ratcheted down a notch?
The UK government’s response to revelations of mass surveillance leaked by Edward Snowden is leading to the erosion of fundamental rights and freedoms in Britain, said a letter sent to PM David Cameron on behalf of global human rights organizations.
Palestine is an isolated prison. Besieged Gaza is the world’s largest open-air one. An entire population is being suffocated out of existence.
Since 1948, Palestinians endured virtually every form of indignity, degradation and crime against humanity. They face daily abuses too great to ignore.
Israeli viciousness is unrelenting. Its HRC presentation mocked reality. It made painful listening. In text form, it ran 25 pages. It includes one lie and distortion after another. It bears no relation to truth.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. In Russell Brand’s case, of course, they paid to laugh. But the fighting has now begun in earnest.
Note that it hasn’t come primarily from the direction one might have expected. The ever-dignified Tory MP Michael Fabricant labels him a ‘twat’ (a badge of honour, surely?), but apart from that, politicians have been pretty quiet. It is mostly journalists, commentators and assorted pundits who really have the knives out for Brand.
“Remember, Dick Cheney is a politician who engaged in some of the worst, most radical and criminal conduct in the last century in the United States and did it all in secret — from lying about the war in Iraq to torturing people, to putting people in cages with no lawyers, to eavesdropping on the American people without the warrants required by law”
