by Jeremy Weiland
The collective responses to the dramatic revelations of NSA mass surveillance feel like the well-worn plot of a classic movie. The story reminds me of the government’s admission a few years back that Iraq did not, after all, have weapons of More…
by Rachel Haywire
What’s the difference between a redneck and a yoga-scenester?
Nothing. They are both degenerate subcultures. The yoga-scenesters think they are better than the rednecks, prancing themselves above More…
Keith Preston explains how concerns about the surveillance state are creating opportunities for new political realignments. More…
Keith discusses the process of revolutionary build up that must occur in the decades ahead for the System to be effectively challenged by mid-century.. More…
The widely noted poll showing Democrats are now the biggest cheerleaders for the Surveillance State has conservatives delightedly calling out the left for “hypocrisy,” noting with glee the leftie pundits who denounced George W. Bush’s administration for trampling on our civil liberties and are now defending the Regime against the Snowden-Greenwald revelations. Their liberal targets come out swinging, however, rightly pointing out that that PRISM and the phone collection program originated under George W. Bush’s watch, back when all these born-again civil libertarians of the right were either silent or supportive of these measures.
May 14, 2008
It’s not unusual to see here on Strike The Root articles defending or promoting anarchy, particularly the anarcho-capitalist variety. Yay, team!
Anarcho-capitalism is a good answer–for anarcho-capitalists. Not so good for, say, communitarians, though; nor for liberals, conservatives, or even anarcho-other-than-capitalists.
It’s an answer, not the answer.
It’s not even a perfect answer for me, since my eyes start rolling whenever an-caps go on about religious notions such as “rights.” I’m not religious. However, I am quite religiously tolerant; so yeah, I could live pretty well in an an-cap community.
Nationalism, as it was originally envisioned by Enlightenment thinkers, was conceived of as a system composed of individuals bound together in a social contract with one another. However, this ideal was never fully achieved in the real world. Both in the West as well as in the Non-West, nationhood has always been more than just about individuals and their collective self-interests.
Beneath liberalism’s appeals to individualism and social contracts, nationhood remained synonymous with tribe and community. This is not surprising because modern nation-states did not arise out of thin air or at the end of the nose of some 17th-century philosopher. They are are built upon the base of organic societies that have preceded them.
More than a decade ago, Osama bin Laden appeared in a brief video to speak about several issues. One of them was to advise the Islamic world that they should expect the U.S. military to be defeated by Islam, the Taleban, and its allies in Afghanistan. The other was to suggest that Muslims should be prepared to watch the U.S. government strangle the civil liberties of Americans in the name of prosecuting its war against the Islamist mujahedin.
A dozen years on, the late-al-Qaeda chief’s first prediction has come true. The U.S. military is leaving Afghanistan after an utter defeat inflicted on it by America’s two most lethal enemies, the Islamist Mujahedin and Barack Obama’s administration.
In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.
Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.
There is a deep and abiding sense of unease permeating American society. From the IRS targeting politically conservative groups to the Department of Justice targeting journalists for surveillance, from the revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) is tracking the telephone calls of most Americans to the public spectacle of whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial, in recent weeks there has been no shortage of evidence that the new “normal” in the United States is not friendly to freedom.
Is there a Left in America today?
There is, of course, a Left ideology, a Left of the mind, a Left of theory and critique. But is there a Left movement?
Does the Left exist as an oppositional political, cultural or economic force? Is anyone intimidated or restrained by the Left? Is there a counterforce to the grinding machinery neoliberal capitalism and its political managers?
We can and do at CounterPunch and in similar publications, such as Monthly Review and the New Left Review, publish analyses of capitalism and its inherent vulnerabilities, catalogue its predations and wars of military conquest and imperial exploitation. But where is our capacity to confront the daily horrors of drone strikes, kill lists, mass layoffs, pension raids and the looming nightmare of climate change
It is a bitter reality, brought into vivid focus by five years of Obama, that the Left is an immobilized and politically impotent force at the very moment when the economic inequalities engineered by our overlords at Goldman Sachs who manage the global economy, should have recharged a long-moribund resistance movement back to life.
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things’The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.
ATS News of the Week Commentary with Keith Preston.
Topics include:
-The participants in the current Bilderberg gathering.
-The shooting in Santa Monica.
-The parole hearing of former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten.
-The death of a young Antifa in France.
-Obama’s culpability in the growth of the surveillance state.
-A discussion of Jeffrey St. Clair’s article on the decline of the American Left.
-Scott Locklin’s article on why Americans are too fat and lazy for a revolution.
-The need for an American Hezbollah.
More…
forbes.com
Andy Greenberg
Icelandic legislator and Icelandic Modern Media Initiative co-founder Birgitta Jonsdottir
When WikiLeaks burst onto the international stage in 2010, the small Nordic nation of Iceland offered it a safe haven. Now American whistleblower Edward Snowden may be seeking that country’s protection, and at least one member of its parliament says she’s ready to help.
More…
Last week saw not one but two gynocentric moral panics, with the forces of femiternalism once more waging their holy war, or shehad, against the tentacles of the todgerarchy .
