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…

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…

Most people take it for granted — because they’ve heard it so many times from politicians and pundits — that they must trade some privacy for security in this dangerous world. The challenge, we’re told, is to find the right “balance.” Let’s examine this. On its face the idea seems reasonable. I can imagine hiring…

Estou chocado — chocado! — com o fato de a Coronela Denise Lind, juíza militar que sentenciou, em fevereiro, que Bradley Manning poderia ser julgado em função de diversas acusações mesmo depois de ter ficado preso antes de ser denunciado por mais do que cinco vezes o período mais longo total especificado nas regras das Forças…

Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after…

Imagine if you had to fight in a court of law in order to be permitted to move in with friends, go to work, and make basic decisions about your daily life. Jenny Hatch doesn’t have to imagine, because she just fought and won that battle for her basic liberties. Hatch has volunteered for political…

Lately, it hasn’t been clear what exactly the First Amendment protects. Between whistleblowers PFC Manning and Edward Snowden, one awaits a sentencing of potentially 90 years in prison, and the other finds himself trapped in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. Perhaps it’s time to find a better way to protect free speech….

Major Ashlend Fein, US Army prosecutor in Bradley Manning’s court martial, caught my attention when he referred to Manning as an “anarchist” in closing arguments. As an anarchist, I’d be proud to share that label with Manning. But I’ve never heard from any reliable source that he considers himself one. Manning — if indeed guilty…

Everything was going well for the al-Assad regime as it basked in 40 years of rule — until what started as a peaceful demonstration against the Baathist dictatorship violently escalated into full-blown civil war. Another war in the Middle East? Uncle Sam wants you! US president Barack Obama can now green-light his administration’s plan to…

I’m shocked — shocked! — that Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who ruled in February that Bradley Manning could be tried on various charges even after being held prior to arraignment for more than five times the absolute longest time specified in the US Armed Forces’ “speedy trial” rules, has now also ruled that…

Esperado e oficial – o estado de escuta global. O vazamento de Edward Snowden para The Guardian mostrou à escâncara o quanto os Estados Unidos foram longe em nome da “segurança nacional”. O que os vazamentos revelaram foi um governo fora dos limites de sua constituição, dedicado à coleta secreta de informações, e incrivelmente intrometido. Nos recintos do poder…

Expected and official – the global surveillance state. Edward Snowden’s leak to The Guardian blew wide open just how far the United States has gone in the name of “national security”. What has been revealed by the leaks is a government outside the limits of its constitution, dedicated to intelligence, and incredibly intrusive. With in…

WHEN THINGS get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are…

Last Thursday, the US Senate passed an expansive “immigration reform” bill. The bill’s Hoeven-Corker Amendment would increase the US government’s “border security” spending to $46.3 billion. This money will be used to create what John McCain calls “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” staffed by at least 38,405 Border Patrol agents….

Today I had the great pleasure of appearing on my friend Jake Shannon’s radio show. Mostly we discussed WikiLeaks whistleblower Pfc. Manning, and the work I’m doing with Freedom Torch in Salt Lake to stand in solidarity with Manning and other whistleblowers. C4SS was one of the first sponsors of the Freedom Torch Parade. While whistleblowers were the…

É importante, ao ouvirmos os formadores oficiais de opinião na mídia, perguntarmo-nos o que eles realmente querem dizer com as palavras que usam. Como Orwell destacou em “A Política e a Língua Inglesa,” aqueles no poder usam a linguagem para obscurecer o significado, mais amiúde do que para torná-lo inteligível. Bom exemplo é a recorrência…