Memorial Day What Ifs

What if Memorial Day reminds us of times when we had more freedom? What if the memory of the past is more fulfilling than the reality of the present? What if the federal government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, no matter what the Constitution authorized? What if the House […]

Protesting the US Homeland Battlefield Bill

A group of political activists and journalists launched a legal challenge to stop an American law they say allows the US military to arrest civilians anywhere in the world and detain them without trial as accused supporters of terrorism. The seven figures, who include ex-New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, professor Noam Chomsky and Icelandic […]

For Bradley Manning and his fellow Truth Tellers

Chris Floyd writes: If any one person can be said to have ended the direct involvement of the United States military in Iraq, it is not the man whose champions claim this deed as one of his glorious accomplishments: Barack Obama. No, if you had to choose one person whose actions were the most instrumental […]

Osama Bin Laden what really happened to his body?

Internal emails from the intelligence firm Stratfor, which offers services to major international corporations, as published by WikiLeaks, suggest that Osama bin Laden’s body may have been brought to America after he was killed by US Navy Seals. The emails were obtained in an attack on Stratfor’s servers by the Anonymous movement. In one email, […]

Julian Assange the man and the sound of suffering

Though Julian Assange is a household name now, little was known about him before July 2010, when he dominated breaking international headlines when his site WikiLeaks published a trove of classified U.S. documents about the Afghanistan war. What kind of man is Assange, who founded WikiLeaks in 2006, and in 2010, was voted Person of […]

Julian Assange WikiLeaks hero or hellion?

Since the summer of 2010, Julian Assange has become a pop culture fixture, a self-appointed champion of free speech, the suspect in a Swedish sex crimes investigation and a man who says he’s keeping afloat a financially strapped Web operation that has mightily ticked off the U.S. government. Assange’s final stage in an extradition fight […]

Spanish judge reopens Guantanamo torture probe

A Spanish judge re-launched an investigation into the alleged torture of detainees held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one day after a British authorities launched a probe into CIA renditions to Libya. The twin developments demonstrated that while the Obama administration has stuck to its promise not to investigate whether Bush […]

The irony of Bradley Manning and his act of conscience

President Obama tried for months to extend U.S. military involvement in Iraq beyond the December 31, 2011 deadline. Negotiations between Obama and the Iraqi government broke down when Iraq refused to grant criminal and civil immunity to U.S. troops. It was after seeing evidence of war crimes such as those depicted in “Collateral Murder” and […]

Wikileaks – Bradley Manning calls for a new judge

A hearing for Bradley Manning, the Army private suspected of being behind the biggest intelligence leak in U.S. history, began Friday morning but almost immediately went into recess after Manning’s attorney asked the investigating officer to recuse himself. Attorney David Coombs said Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, the presiding officer, should step down. Among Coombs four […]

Your Tweets and Emails in the Library of Congress

Tweets, emails and other electronic communications can be considered “government documents” and must be preserved. The National Archives handles official government materials, while the Library of Congress’ mandate is to deal with anything that may have long-term historical interest. But how much digital information are we talking about? How about all of the tweets from […]