But there's a reason why we have 50 states instead of the original 13. There's a reason why we have military bases around the world and so-called secret wars going on in countries most Americans have never heard of. There's a reason why US corporations like Walmart and Target are in Bangladesh killing hundreds of workers through a deliberate policy of exploitation and neglect.

It's because it's the nature of capitalism to expand and American capitalism expanded across this continent and throughout much of the planet in its drive for profit. Much of that expansion was conducted with extreme violence. It meant starting wars around the world, supporting cruel dictators who literally massacred their own people and yes, supporting terrorism against individuals who resisted US global domination.

This empire of ours requires hundreds of military bases. So many that nobody seems to know exactly how many there are. It also means very nasty dirty work done in secret by Americans without names or serial numbers. Our government calls that covert action or SpecialOps. A lot of people would call that terrorism.

So we have a global empire defended by the most powerful military machine in the history of the world and a veritable army of covert action and intelligence people organized into a vast National Security State whose reach is global. The trouble is that much of the violence our government does abroad is very bad public relations. Mass murder is hard to spin. So the worst of it is hidden under layers of official secrecy.

I'm old enough to remember Nixon's so-called secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War years. Well that certainly wasn't a secret to the Cambodian people with saturation bombing destroying their impoverished country. It was supposed to be kept a secret from the American people who already were upset about the endless wars in Southeast Asia.

In 1984 I was in Nicaragua during Reagan's so-called secret war against that Central American nation. I attended a graduation at a teachers college there. Before the students received their diplomas, the students called out a long list of names. These were the names of teachers who had been killed by the contra terrorists armed and supported by the USA. Yes, Reagan’s secret war was targeting teachers among so many others. Again, it was no secret in Nicaragua what was going on. But it was supposed to be kept a secret from the American people.

The National Security State creates a dense blinding cloud of secrets and lies…as thick as the teargas over a certain park in Istanbul. It was secrets and lies that enabled Bush to invade Iraq in a war whose aftermath is still killing people. Secrets and lies enable Obama to continue his drone war in Pakistan and elsewhere, killing many civilians along with whoever they claim are terrorists.

When the USA goes into somebody's else's country and does evil things, it's a good chance it is going to make enemies. Some of these enemies become real terrorists---the kind of coldblooded killers who fly planes into buildings crowded mostly with civilians and kill 3000 people.

Call me crazy, but why don't we start dismantling this bloated expensive military empire and stop making so many damned enemies? Most countries don't worry about foreign terrorists because they don't go around making foreign enemies.

The irony is that those who oppose the madness of empire have a plan to reduce terrorism that could actually be effective. Stop making enemies. So let’s get serious about stopping all forms of terrorism, whether committed by our own government or by what is left of Al Queda and other likeminded groups. Empire is the root cause of international terrorism. Our terrorism and theirs.

So that's one reason why we need whistleblowers. That is what Bradley Manning was trying to do--- reveal truths about US crimes abroad so maybe the American people would finally wake up to this madness of empire. He did us a great service and he has paid a terrible price for that.

Edward Snowden's leak of the NSA data serves a somewhat different purpose. Does anyone seriously think the NSA is collecting all of this data solely to stop terrorist plots?

Especially since many of these terrorist plots are the government finding emotionally disturbed individuals, probably using electronic surveillance, recruiting them into a plot that is solely a government invention, arresting these delusional persons and then crowing about stopping a terrorist plot that the government concocted in the first place.

This NSA data mining is mostly intended to identify current and potential dissidents for the purposes of political repression. Remember, dissidents are opposing a very powerful empire that makes a few people very wealthy. And we know how dangerous people can get about serious amounts of money.

And what good does this empire do for the average American? The bloated military-security state costs us billions of dollars that could be used to reduce poverty, build affordable housing, fix our healthcare system and the list goes on.

But wait, there's more. The large US based companies like Apple, Google, & Facebook are now tainted by their association with this NSA spying. People around the world now know the USA is spying on them. To them the USA is just a foreign country with a dubious reputation for respecting the rights of others.

There are computer and Internet companies based in other nations that would love to to eat Facebook's lunch and cut the core out of Apple. What if these non-US based companies built social media systems to resist American spying by all available means? Perhaps they could find much more than just a niche market. Now think of what the fall of US Internet companies could mean for the US economy.

The following appeared in the conservative Forbes business magazine, the one that advertises itself as a “capitalist tool” :



“Simply put, the US government has failed in its role as the “caretaker” of the internet. Although this was never an official designation, America controls much of the infrastructure, and many of the most popular services online are provided by a handful of American companies. The world is starting to sober up to the fact that much of what they’ve done online in the last decade is now cataloged in a top-secret facility somewhere in the United States…. ...Not only were the American people kept in the dark – they were lied to by intelligence officials, misled about possible constitutional violations, and potentially undermined by the very courts that were supposed to protect their rights.”

This is Forbes, a hard headed business magazine. Even Forbes get it to some degree.

So where does that leave us. I say we stick with the good old fashioned principles that are enshrined in our Bill of Rights. Those include a right to privacy and the right to speak, write and assemble freely without fear of reprisal. But there are other principles that the USA also should be adhering to; principles that the USA played an important role in developing.

Those are the Nuremburg Principles. Bradley Manning hoped to use the Nuremburg Principles as part of his defense, but the court has denied him that right. The Nuremburg Principles were established in the wake of the Nazi war crime trials held after WWII.

That was where the concept “I was just following orders” would no longer excuse people for their actions. That just because your government says its ok, does not make it ok under international law. There are moral principles more important than the realpolitik of imperial powers.

In the case of Bradley Manning, the Iraq War was clearly a case of a “crime against the peace” and as well as a “war of aggression.” The Iraq War also involved murder of civilians and mistreatment of POW’s. All of these are war crimes prohibited under the Nuremburg Principles.

There you have it. No wonder the court denied him the right to bring that to his defense. They would have to find him innocent under the very principles the US helped to establish.

In the case of Edward Snowden I will quote from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:



“Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence.”

Edward Snowden presented evidence to the world that the US government was in violation of international law by its massive global spying program. Our government would never admit to illegal spying on its own. So what else could he do but release the evidence himself?

In addition, given the history of the USA and its own record of aggressive wars, human rights violations and collaboration with cruel dictators, the collection of this secret data clearly puts people around the world at risk.

What Edward Snowden did was fully in the tradition of the Nuremburg principles. He disobeyed an order to keep that data secret because its very collection was an monstrous crime. It was a courageous act when you think about the immense power of the nation which committed the crimes he reported.

I will end with the words of Robert Jackson a US Supreme Court Justice and a chief architect of the Nuremburg principles.



"The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it. It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

Leak risk: So many security clearances by Leigh Munsil

NSA Surveillance May Have Dealt Major Blow To Global Internet Freedom Effort by Tarun Wadhwa

Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning by Chris Hedges

Fundamental Liberties of a Free People: Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly by Milton Konwitz