TGIF: What's a Secular Heretic to Do?

Secular and religion-based political systems can bear an uncanny resemblance. Observing their respective dogmas, catechisms, and sacraments, we might even wonder, with William Cavanaugh, whether the divide is as sharp as we commonly think. Recent events certainly call the distinction into question. We see that a secularist can be as much a fanatic who is willing to denounce heresy and impose his will through violence as any religionist.

Read the article here.

TGIF (The Goal Is Freedom) appears on Fridays. Sheldon Richman, author of America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited, keeps the blog Free Association and is executive editor of The Libertarian Institute. He is also a senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. Become a Free Association patron today!

The Russians and the Election

According to the New York Times and CNN, the FBI has been looking for links between Donald Trump and the Russians. So far, these news outlets report, no links have been found. Sources also tell the NYT and CNN that Russia's alleged meddling in the election through email hacks has not be intended to help Trump win but only to sow, in CNN's Evan Perez's words, "confusion and chaos."

If that's so, the Russians are incompetent. How would disclosing emails from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta or the Democratic National Committee sow confusion or chaos? We're learning things about the inner workings of the campaign that we all ought to want to know, and so far not one of the emails has been shown to be phony. Considering that Podesta and the DNC have the original emails, it is hilarious that they refuse to confirm or deny the authenticity of the leak materials. I take that as confirmation.

By the way, we have been given no reason to believe the Russian government is the source of the emails that WikiLeaks has disclosed. Clinton may say, and the news media may parrot, that 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia and Putin were behind the hacks, but this is untrue -- those agencies have not done so. If you want to see why I say this, read Jeremy R. Hammond's "Is Russia Interfering in the US Election? Why You Can’t Believe the NYT."

It is hard to square two things: 1) that Putin is a crafty ambitious ruler bent on undermining American democracy and 2) that his cyber experts "broke into" the DNC and Clinton campaign and left their "fingerprints" and "calling cards" all over the place. What is more likely: that Putin is trying -- in an insanely obvious way -- to influence the election, or that someone is trying to make it look as though he is trying to influence the election?

As judges tell jurors, don't leave your common sense outside the deliberation room.

[Cross-posted at The Libertarian Institute.]

TGIF: Heroic

Chelsea Manning deserves our admiration. Here's hoping her prison stay is short and easy.

Read TGIF: Heroic here.

Op-ed: Why WikiLeaks Leaks Matter

Why should anyone care about the secret diplomatic cables WikiLeaks has disclosed? So what if State Department bureaucrats say unflattering things about other world “leaders”? Some people may be asking those questions in response to WikiLeaks’s latest disclosures. Okay, they say, leaks about atrocities on the battlefield (such as the first WikiLeaks disclosure, the “Collateral Murder” video) tell us something we should know about — the gross misconduct by U.S. military forces, condoned by the command all the way up to the president of the United States.

But diplomatic cables? Who cares?

We all should care. The documents serve as a timely reminder that the people who collectively call themselves “the government” are professional liars.

Read the rest of "The WikiLeaks Leaks Matter."

Beware the Campaign for War against Iran

The American people were stampeded into war against Iraq through a shameless propaganda and disinformation campaign led by government officials and facilitated by prominent newspapers. We must not let the same thing happen with Iran.

Read the full op-ed here.

Anarchists Launch WikiLeaks Mirror, Assistance Program

For Immediate Release

12/05/10
POC Thomas L. Knapp

Media Contact:
media@c4ss.org
530-618-C4SS

Technical Contact:
admin@c4ss.org

ANARCHISTS LAUNCH WIKILEAKS MIRROR, ASSISTANCE PROGRAM

December 5th — “Censorship has always been wrong and irresponsible,” says Brad Spangler. “Now it’s another thing: Impossible.”

Spangler, director of the Center for a Stateless Society, announced on Sunday that the Center is now mirroring Wikileaks — an international whistle-blower site which reactionary elements in the US government have worked assiduously to suppress over the last week — and encouraging and assisting others in doing likewise.

“I feel [US Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton’s pain,” says Spangler. “Wikileaks’ release of 250,000 diplomatic cables previously hidden behind a state secrets wall has been tremendously embarrassing to her, not to mention implicating her in an international identity theft scheme that looks a lot like Watergate and the Zimmerman Telegram rolled into one.

“But embarrassment or not, state officials have no right to hide their misdeeds from the people who foot the bill, in money and blood, for government actions. Nor, now, do they have the power to do so.”

Using custom software developed by C4SS web administrator Mike Gogulski, the mirror site (wikileaks.c4ss.org) updates daily from Wikileaks’ servers regardless of where those servers are located.

C4SS is also making the software publicly available and encouraging others to mirror Wikileaks as well. “This is an opportunity for those who support freedom of information to take action,” says Gogulski. “We particularly hope to see people and organizations with greater resources than we dispose of — the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for example, or US Representative Ron Paul’s IT staff — making use of those resources, and of the tool we’re offering, to settle this issue once and for all.”

“The toothpaste is out of the tube and we intend to keep it out of the tube,” says Spangler. “This information will remain publicly available to anyone who cares to look it over.”

Why the Latest WikiLeaks Leaks Matter

Why should anyone care about diplomatic cables? So what if State Department bureaucrats say unflattering things about other world “leaders"? Some people may be asking this in response to WikiLeaks' latest disclosures. Okay, they say, leaks about atrocities on the battlefield (such as the first WikiLeaks disclosure, “Collateral Murder,”) tell us something we should know about – the gross misconduct by U.S. military forces, condoned by the command all the way up to the president of the United States.

But diplomatic cables? Who cares?

We all should care. The 250,000 documents serve as a timely reminder that the people who call themselves “the government” are professional liars. Lying is what they are paid to do. The biggest lie of all is that they do it in the people's interest. U.S. government officials have reacted to the latest document dump as though Julian Assange has struck at the very heart of the State. No surprise there -- because he has! When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the disclosures are an "attack on the world," she is really saying it's an attack on her world -- the world of power, of legal murder and plunder.

When American (mis)leaders profess confidence in the Afghan president and his government, while saying privately they are incompetent and corrupt -- stealing hundreds of millions of Americans' dollars -- that’s the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll the government’s lethal adventures.

When American (mis)leaders praise and encourage the Mexican government’s efforts in the criminal “war on drugs,” while privately believing they're practically worthless, that’s the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll that evil crusade, which harms Mexicans and Americans.

When American (mis)leaders bomb Yemen while conspiring with the Yemeni dictator to portray the murderous campaign as the act of Yemen’s government in order to make it more palatable to the Yemeni people, that’s the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll that imperialist policy.

When other countries' officials implore American (mis)leaders to bomb Iran, that is the people’s business – at least as long as they are compelled to bankroll militarism and suffer the “blowback” such an action would produce.

And on and on and on.

Sure, the American people already “know” at some level that their (mis)leaders and (mis)representatives are liars. Everyone laughs at the riddle asking how you know when a politician is lying: “His lips are moving.” But that knowledge too often fades deep into the background as the people are distracted or put to sleep by the solemn mendacity that issues from the politicians mouths on a daily basis.

So WikiLeaks performs a critical service by reminding us what those sanctimonious mountebanks really are. (The Guardian lists the key points of the cables here.)

Some will say that government couldn't exist without duplicity. I take them at their word.

Why Not, Indeed!

 If all our emails, however personal, are to become subject to the scrutiny of the government, why shouldn’t all the government’s emails, however sensitive, become subject to the scrutiny of us? If we can’t plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament without their knowledge, why can they and Saudi Arabia plot to blow up Iran without ours?

Allan Baker

Kettering, Northamptonshire

Published in the Guardian.

HT: Jim Bovard

WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning Is No Criminal

My take on WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, and the cost of Empire is in today's Christian Science Monitor.

Jonah Goldberg and Julian Assange

Jonah Goldberg, who claims to be against fascism (at least when it originates on the left), wants to know why Julian Assange of WikiLeaks "isn't dead." In case you missed it, he asks again, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?"

Why would he expect (and apparently approve of) Assange's assassination? Because Assange has the nerve to provide the public information about the U.S. government's illegal wars -- information the government doesn't see fit to share with the American people or the world. So Goldberg reveals himself (if he had not done so earlier) as a State worshiper, with war as the State's most glorious activity.

Which prompts me to ask: Why would anyone be interested in anything Goldberg has to say from here on out?

Op-Ed: Thank Goodness for WikiLeaks

Thanks to WikiLeaks we know more now than we did before about the the consequences of the U.S. government’s criminal conduct. Like the Bush administration before it, the Obama administration would rather have the American people ignorant of the truth about its military operations. But we have a right to this information. If the government won’t give it up, we are justified in getting it by other means.

Read the rest here.

Op-Ed: What They Do in Our Name

The U.S. government goes to appalling lengths to deny this truth. It is about to try before a military commission a young Canadian, Omar Ahmed Khadr, who was taken into custody in Afghanistan eight years ago when he was 15 years old. The charge? War crimes, among them “murder in violation of the rules of war,” which lawyer Chase Madar calls “a newly minted war crime novel to the history of armed conflict.”

The rest of the op-ed is here.

All in Favor?

All in favor of giving Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize to Julian Assange of Wikileaks, say aye.

Stop the Lies! Stop the Aggression!

The massive documentation about the bloody occupation of Afghanistan, made available by Wikileaks, once against makes abundantly clear that the government -- no matter who's in power -- will lie shamelessly to the American people in pursuing the Empire's objectives. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way. The truth is deadly to its aims, so the truth must be kept from the people.

Well, the truth is now out. Your move, people.

Heroes Walk Among Us

Bravo, Wikileaks!