Rotten. To the core.

Change cannot come from within.

Get It Try It

The politics of the 'united States of America' are rotten to the core. The agenda of the current administration of Barack Obama is worse than that of Bush/Rove/Cheney by an order of magnitude. No regime change in the US will help. It's all rotten. To the core.

Last night the US pressured 'allies' in NATO to deny passage for Bolivian president Evo Morales who was en route from Moscow home to La Paz. This was a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention which guarantees safe passage for heads of state no matter the circumstances. President Morales' life was put in jeopardy.

Morales was able to find sanctuary in Austria and has now continued his flight home, but the import of what the world witnessed yesterday remains. The United States will not only claim the right to murder anyone, anywhere, for any reason whatsoever, will not only institute murderous drone attacks on innocent people. They now show they will overrun international law at will. It's as if they're paraphrasing the infamous quote of Richard Nixon to read:

'If the United States does it, it's not a crime anywhere.'

The United States has never been a benevolent country. The image has persevered through deft marketing, but the truth has always been otherwise. The sheeple on the home front are inculcated with propaganda and media assaults intended to make them silly and irrelevant. Their personal situations are so insecure that they have no time to think of other matters, and their media systematically hide the truth from them at every turn. US media have long ago begun cooperating with US intelligence agencies to spoon feed the local populace with obnoxious pabulum. And all this in the guise of a supposed democracy.

The rot extends across party boundaries. The one side is always worse than the other, and then vice versa. It's rotten. To the core. And the solution to this terrible miasma is not something that can come from within. The solution must be in the nations of the world standing up to the bully and getting the bully to back down.

South America has been a shining example of how this is done. After hundreds of years of systematic repression, things are finally changing in South America. Leaders like Kirchner, Morales, Correa are showing how it's supposed to be done.

Yet the boot-licking lackeys of the EU continue to lick boots. Four countries where the air force jet of Evo Morales could have touched into airspace were quick in letting the pilot know they were not welcome. Flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet. And in strict violation of the Vienna Convention.

Clearly the junta in the White House feel as if their word is law. It's up to the nations of the world to show them it is not.

Swing

Comments at the Guardian's live coverage of the incident show there's been a decided swing in public opinion. The world gawked at Collateral Murder, felt shock with the Afghan War Diaries, felt still more shock with the Iraq War Logs, enjoyed a big collective Schadenfreude with Cablegate, then quieted down as the Arab Spring went centre stage. The Snowden affair revived the outrage, and now that outrage has reached critical mass.

Note that cherry-picking isn't needed to extract the following. Almost all comments are of this sentiment. The arrogant head of state of the US has gone too far.

'The ancient Assyrians and Babylonians could only dream of having such cringing subservient client states.'

'If the UN was a legitimate body both nations would be punished for this.'

'America lost the plot long before the present administration. Try Nixon onward (and that is being charitable).'

'Disgusting overreach. Where the hell do Obama and his pals get off?'

'Over-reach by the americans & complete surrender by France - again....... they fought harder against McDonalds'

'Controlling the Air with a no fly zone bastards'

'Let's cease with the pretense about being sovereign states. It's clear that the United States on behalf of the corporations it represents is sovereign over the rest of us.'

'That is absolute nonsense! What is wrong with the world!'

'The USligarchs want information on the rest of the world to make money. We all just found out how they did it, thanks to the incredibly brave Edward Snowden, so now he and anyone who helps him needs to be taught a colossal lesson. Don't get in the way of power, and the means to make copious amounts of money.'

'Just another Yankee muppet.'

'Next, Atlantis reemerges from the waves to deny passage over the Atlantic. Rumours that its queen looks remarkably like Karl Rove in a toga are strenuously denied.'

'We all know who the stinker is. The US.'

'All I can say is: exactly right. Daniel Ellsberg calls Snowden a hero and Obama snidely refers to him as a 29 year old hacker. I believe I need asylum too.'

'Well yes... But isn't it even worse that these craven cowardly toadies will deny overflight to a diplomatic aircraft carrying a head of state to try and catch someone who's only crime is to embarrass the US government by exposing its crimes. And why? The EU is enormously powerful. There is no reason that they should crawl and grovel before the US government.'

The world doesn't need a superpower. The world can't afford one.

Postscript: The Whistleblower Protection Act

The US has a law that's supposed to protect whistleblowers, commonly known as the Whistleblower Protection Act. It was enacted in 1989. It protects whistleblowers who work for the government and report agency misconduct such as NSA PRISM projects.

Important in the formulation of the Whistleblower Protection Act is the way it's meant to protect whistleblowers. Wikipedia:

'A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if agency authorities take (or threaten to take) retaliatory personnel action against any employee or applicant because of disclosure of information by that employee or applicant.'

One need only look to the cases of Snowden, Drake, Kiriakou, Manning, Hammond, and more to see that the Whistleblower Protection Act has been systematically violated by Barack Obama.

A Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act was introduced in 2009. It was meant to enhance whistleblower protections so they applied to any disclosure of any violation of law, save for minor inadvertent mishaps. What's interesting in this context is the way Barack Obama abused it.

'During the 2008 presidential campaign, several candidates including then-senator Barack Obama pledged to support the stronger House version of the bill (HR 985) if elected president.'

But Obama pledged a lot of things. Lots of politicians pledge a lot of things and people are used to this (numbed by it) but Obama goes further than anyone else has dared up to now.

When an amendment to the new bill was proposed, an amendment that severely weakened the Whistleblower Protection Act, Obama, now president, put his weight behind it, thus betraying his campaign pledge.

'Despite campaign promises to support the stronger House bill, President Obama disappointed many when his administration actively supported the weaker Senate bill, and Obama administration officials helped craft some of the controversial provisions contained in the Senate markup version in 2009. The sponsors of S 372 delayed presenting the controversial bill for full senate approval until the latter stage of the lame duck session.'

In other words: they tried to 'sneak' the bill through by giving their colleagues too little time to see what they'd done.

'The Senate version of the WPEA contained only modest reforms of whistleblower rights and actually contained a few provisions that would have made it more difficult for federal employees to bring whistleblower claims. The Senate bill differed substantially from the House version and the delay tactics by the Senate sponsors ensured that the House was given only a 'take it or leave it' option.'

Then things got even worse.

'When the House finally considered the weaker Senate bill on the last day of the 111th Congress, the bill's sponsors needed a two-thirds vote to pass the bill on the House suspension calendar. Lacking the votes necessary to pass the weaker Senate bill, and to avoid objections raised by Republicans to the intelligence agency protections, the House sponsors of the Senate bill stripped out all protections for intelligence agency and FBI employees.'

Thankfully the bill never passed, but it's the thought that counts, and Obama had been exposed: promise and pledge anything in the campaign, do anything you want once elected.

Does anyone remember that Obama promised the most transparent government ever? Here he's given tacit authorisation for the NSA to spy on the entire world and no one even knew about it.

The irony is that today Obama is himself transparent.