The Obama administration has announced the formation of a panel of “outside experts” to review the NSA’s surveillance practices. And a wide-ranging, diverse collection of experts they are; when it comes to institutional backgrounds and viewpoints, they span the entire spectrum from A to B. They remind me a bit of the space shuttle crew…

Parece que apenas fornecer armas aos rebeldes síriosnão basta. O governo dos Estados Unidos e seus aliados ocidentais estão prestes a empregar força militar diretanaquele pequeno país do Oriente Médio. Já vimos ouvindo os tambores de guerra há longo tempo – e agora tão cedo quanto na quinta-feira bombas poderão a começar a cair sobre a Síria. Em vez…

Across the world, people are protesting against US intervention in Syria. Polls show widespread skepticism of the impending war. Rather than making Americans safer, intervention is likely to support forces connected to al Qaeda. Yet it still seems inevitable that the US government will launch cruise missiles at Syria, escalating the country’s bloody civil war….

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that when a garment gets so old, attempting to patch it with new cloth will just tear it up worse. The authoritarian state seems to be reaching that point, beyond which any attempt to patch it up or prolong its life just inflict new damage and hasten…

Desde o início do julgamento de fachada de Bradley Manning ficou patente que o criminoso é o estado, não o Pfc. Manning. Apesar disso, o denunciante via Wikileaks acaba de ser sentenciado a 35 anos de prisão. Manning está sendo punido por expor crimes do governo, mais famosamente soldados dos Estados Unidos atingindo civis inocentes,…

“Conversa aberta, pública, com conhecimento de causa, acerca de escuta/grampo,” escreve Philip Bump em The Atlantic Wire, “tem sido meta declarada pelo presidente desde pouco depois de terem começado os vazamentos de Edward Snowden” (“Não é Considerado Excesso Obama Falar acerca da NSA em Segredo,” 9 de agosto). Numa sociedade governada pelo “império da lei” como retratada por…

“As decisões que tomei em 2010 nasceram de preocupação com meu país e com o mundo no qual vivemos. Desde os trágicos eventos do 11/9, nosso país está em guerra. Estamos em guerra com um inimigo que opta por não enfrentar-nos em qualquer campo de batalha tradicional, e devido a esse fato tivemos de alterar nossos…

In response to Bashir Assad’s crossing of a “red line” by allegedly using chemical weapons against his own people, Secretary of State John Kerry cites his own fatherly feelings as justification for the all-but-inevitable looming US military intervention in Syria. “As a father, I can’t get the image out of my head, of a father…

Whether or not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, President Obama has no legitimate grounds to intervene. U.S. airstrikes, intended to punish and deter Assad and degrade his military but not overthrow his regime, would deepen the U.S. investment in the Syrian civil war and increase the chances of further intervention. Obama’s previous intervention is what…

Seems as if supplying Syrian rebels with arms just isn’t enough. The US government and its Western allies are about to unleash direct military force in the small Middle Eastern country. We have heard the drumbeat of war for a long time – now as early as Thursday bombs may start falling on Syria. Instead of regime change, we are told,…

As the US government ramps up toward war on Syria’s regime, a sense of puzzlement seems to have descended upon America. Politicians can’t seem to identify any “legitimate” US “interest” that war would serve; polls show that the public opposes the project; military leaders, when pressed to propagandize for intervention, have instead repeatedly cautioned that…

“The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in. Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional battlefield, and due to…

Trigger warning: The following article discusses rape, sexual assault, and transphobic violence Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower who released evidence of US war crimes to WikiLeaks, has announced that she identifies as a woman. “Given the way I feel and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible,” she wrote…

The U.S. government’s persecution of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning (who came out publicly as a transgender woman after sentencing) is the latest example of a general rule: In the transitional struggle between networks and hierarchies, sometimes networks’ most powerful weapons are the hierarchies themselves. You spend a few thousand bucks to yank a network’s…

At a 2011 press conference President Obama, in response to a question about Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, said “We are a nation of laws. We don’t let individuals make decisions about how the law operates.“ Is this really a nation of laws, though? There’s an old legal principle, “nemo iudex in causa sua,” which translated…

From the beginning of the Bradley Manning show trial, it has been apparent that the state is the criminal, not Pfc. Manning. Yet the WikiLeaks whistleblower was just sentenced to 35 years in prison. Manning is being punished for exposing government crimes, most famously U.S. troops shooting innocent civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the Collateral Murder video….

On Wednesday, we learned the fate of American whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning. Manning was sentenced to  35 years in prison for leaking documentation of war crimes to Wikileaks, after conviction on violating key provisions of the Espionage Act (an act which is in and of itself an offense to liberty and repeatedly abused by the…

In theater productions of Peter Pan, there’s a scene where Tinkerbell is dying. Peter exhorts the audience to clap their hands to save her. If everyone just claps harder and says “I believe in fairies!” Tink will be restored to life by the power of faith and love. Progressive calls to defeat corporate power and…

Em 2006 Ori Brafman e Rod Beckstrom, em A Estrela-do-Mar e a Aranha, contrastaram o modo pelo qual redes e hierarquias reagem a ataques vindos de fora. As redes, quando atacadas, tornam-se ainda mais descentralizadas e capazes de pronta recuperação. Bom exemplo são Napster e sucessores, cada um dos quais aproximou-se mais estreitamente de modelo ideal de ponto-a-ponto,…

Egypt is in turmoil. As I write this, more than 500 people have been killed and thousands wounded in an ongoing conflict between the Egyptian military (on behalf of a coup-installed junta) and supporters of the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood regime (supporters of the Brotherhood believably claim the death toll is probably much higher). In the…