whistleblowing

The candidate I’m voting for acknowledges that forgiving and forgetting U.S. war crimes has not worked. They continue to haunt and hamper us. Former administration officials who lied us into war in Afghanistan and Iraq must be brought to justice. We need to know who falsified the intelligence and why. Remember their catchy slogan: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”?
Hundreds of thousands have died and many innocents continue to suffer for this cynical deception.

In the week beginning April 20, 2015, the American people got three object lessons about equal treatment and the stratification of status in the twenty-first century.
Three events in the week beginning April 20, 2015, show convincingly that the American promise of national and global societal justice is a lie. They specifically show that in this new American century, one’s economic status, access to power, and place of birth determine one’s access to human rights and equal protection under the law. Any illusions to the contrary are just that.

Graeme MacQueen’s 2014 book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, has been vindicated by the head of the FBI’s Anthrax Investigation.

John W. Whitehead is a constitutional attorney. As head of the Rutherford Institute he is actively involved in defending our civil liberties. Being actively involved in legal cases, he experiences first hand the transformation of law from a shield of the American people into a weapon in the hands of the government.

Cold War 2.0, part I
In last month’s Anti-Empire Report I brought you the latest adventure of US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki trying to defend the indefensible. She said then: “As a matter of longstanding policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means,” which prompted me to inform my readers: “If you know how to contact Ms. Psaki, tell her to have a look at my list of more than 50 governments the United States has attempted to overthrow since the end of the Second World War.”

At the Green Party of England and Wales’ recent spring conference in Liverpool an item titled “Constitutional Reform” appeared about half way down the policy agenda. It had been proposed by a small group of Green Party members hailing mostly from the East Midlands. Its position on the agenda had been determined by a “prioritisation ballot” — a good device used by the Party whereby any Party member can vote for the order in which they think agenda items should be discussed.

Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño responds to recent reports Swedish prosecutors will seek to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Assange has never been charged over allegations of sexual assault, yet he has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, fearing that if he steps outside, he will be arrested and extradited to Sweden, which could lead to his extradition to the United States — which is investigating Assange over WikiLeaks publishing classified documents.

March 16 marked the 1,000th day WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spent in political asylum inside Ecuador’s London embassy. For the first time, Swedish prosecutors have opened the door to Assange’s departure with a request to question him in London. Assange has never been charged over allegations of sexual assault, but has been holed up in the embassy since 2012, fearing a Swedish arrest warrant could lead to his extradition to the United States. We speak with one of Assange’s lawyers, Michael Ratner, who argues the alleged sexual assault case is not strong enough to go forward.

Like a neutrino bomb on the landscape of banking, regulation and journalism, the HSBC tax evasion story via its Swiss subsidiary keeps spreading with devastating effect – at least for those whose careers concern it.  According to investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who managed to get hold of rather golden whistleblower material from Nicholas Wilson, a “conspiracy of silence” has characterised the treatment of HSBC within the regulatory community, law-enforcement authorities and the media generally.

Recently, Greece’s radical leftist party Syriza claimed victory in their national election. The party vowed to break ties with the European Central bank and roll back the EU’s neoliberal economic agenda. True to their word, they are already implementing some of those changes. From the birthplace of democracy, excitement is spreading across Europe and revitalizing the hope that real change may still be possible through the electoral arena.