Shrien Dewani, Julian Assange, and British Justice

 

 

“…[V]iolence… threatens [the law] not by the ends that it may pursue but by its mere existence outside the law.  The same may be…suggested, if one reflects how often the figure of the “great” criminal, however, repellent his ends may have been, has aroused the secret admiration of the public.”

Walter Benjamin, The Critique of Violence

 

 

In December 2010, we saw the British justice system take action in two separate events related to crimes against Swedish women.  In the first Shrien Dewani, a British citizen of Indian descent, was accused of soliciting, paying for, and coordinating the horrific murder of his Swedish bride of two weeks, Anni Dewani, while on their honeymoon in South Africa the November prior. Anni Dewani was kidnapped at gunpoint, and was later found naked, beaten, and dead from a bullet through the neck after a dinner trip to the Gugulethu township in Cape Town.   Three men, including the driver of the limo, have been charged. Two have already begun long prison terms. One of them had his sentence reduced after implicating Dewani, a multimillionaire.  Detained in England at the request of the South African government, Dewani was released after his family put up £250,000 bail several days later.  He was tagged with an electronic ankle bracelet, subjected to curfews, his movements restricted, and required to report to the police daily.

At almost the same time, Julian Assange was also detained in England at the request of another government. He was (and is still) wanted for questioning in Sweden in the course of an investigation into possible sexual misconduct.  Since, even 18 months later, charges have still not been filed, we cannot be certain of the offense, but early indications were that he could be charged with continuing to have sex with one woman despite a broken condom,* and having failed to answer a police summons to be tested for STD’s; this crime is punishable by up to two years in prison.  He is also being investigated for a second crime, namely of having “sex by surprise” with another woman; this charge, if he were to be arrested and convicted, would carry a fine of 5,000 kronor, or $715.  While the circumstances surrounding these events are murky; at least one of the possible victims told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet in an interview that, “It is quite wrong that we were afraid of him. He is not violent, and I do not feel threatened by him.”  She elaborated that, “The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl lies with a man who had attitude problems with women.” Assange was initially denied bail, but at a later hearing was allowed £200,000 bail, with the additional requirement of  £40,000 in two separate sureties of  £20,000 each.  Released after nine days in jail, he faced an extradition hearing.  Like Dewani, he had to wear an electronic bracelet that monitored his movement.  His movements were restricted in house arrest fashion; he had curfews, and, had to report to the police daily.

All of this, of course, until his stay of execution ran out in June 2012. Assange then sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the UK, and requested political asylum. As of today, we know the upshot: The Brits threatened to invade the Ecuadorian Embassy. The Ecuadorian Embassy decided to give Assange asylum. The Brits refuse to give Assange safe passage to Ecuador, and remain outside the Ecuadorian Embassy ready to arrest him should he step outside.

It is rather interesting that Assange and Dewani had nearly identical conditions surrounding their detention.  Certainly, sexual abuse and murder are each serious charges; neither Dewani nor Assange should be exculpated without a proper judicial process.  However, there is a bizarre contrast in the treatment accorded to each when comparing the substance of the crimes in question. Dewani’s appear to be about coordinating and paying for the vicious murder of his own wife; still, he was almost immediately able to qualify for bail. Moreover, despite the vigorous protests of the South African national prosecutors office — an office that has already gained convictions in the case — he was released pending an extradition hearing. In March 2012, despite promises on the part of the South African prosecutor in charge of Dewani’s hearing, he was granted a stay by the London’s High Court. Why? Because “High Court judge Sir John Thomas said it would be unjust and oppressive to send Dewani back to South Africa in his present condition.” That is to say, Dewani was heard telling family that he would kill himself if extradited. As we all know, threats to self-inflicted harm are a fairly popular way to persuade the judge not to send you somewhere you don’t want to go: like to jail, to stand trial, or to be extradited to South Africa.**

As of today, Dewani is still in England, while two of his accomplices have been convicted, and sentenced to 18 and 25 years in prison, respectively, and the trial of one other accomplice in South Africa goes on.

I am thrilled by the UK’s zeal in wanting to protect the sexual rights of women. Seriously, it is a delight to know that the UK, like the US, and of course like that bastion of women’s rights, Sweden, has the interests of women at heart. But I wish that they could apply consistent, or even proportional standards to suspects like Dewani—as they do to Julian Assange. But as we know, perhaps all isn’t as it seems; this situation reminds me human rights activists like Former First Lady Laura Bush, who pointed out her deep concern for the rights of women in Afghanistan—coincidentally around the same time as Hubby Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan.

Whatever Assange’s crimes, unlike the US and the UK, they do not appear to include premeditated violence. It is not irrelevant that Assange is being sought after for some of the most daring non-violent ‘crimes’ that the world has seen since Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers: exposing the reckless and remorseless criminal actions of the United States and allied governments as they collectively pursue their “War on Terror.”  Its name aside, this war is not being conducted against a noun.  It includes real violence towards real people in real countries, with terrible effects on civilian populations; unsavory engagements with odious dictators; and sundry violations of long-standing agreements in favor of human rights and against arbitrary search, seizure, and torture.

Let’s consider the argument that Moe Tkacik made about the relevance of the suspicions about Assange to his position as Wikileaks courier. She points out that Assange is accused by two women for trying the sleazy trick of pulling off his condom in the middle of sex—and pretending it was an accident. As she argued shortly before she left the Washington City Paper:

The question of whether Assange is an incorrigible douchebag (and also, a liar) would only decisively matter if he was asking (or more likely knowing what we know, presumptuously expecting) us to take his word for it that Muammar Gaddafi doesn’t travel anywhere without his Bedouin tents and voluptuous Ukrainian nurse or the Arab Gulf states are privately rooting for the us to start shooting missiles at Iran, etc. etc. But trusting the judgment of those who impart information is actually the precise opposite of the point of Wikileaks; the organization he founded is by design merely a high-profile courier; what impact would have on your credit card bills if it turned out that your letter carrier was into child porn?\

 

Which is why all the media deconstruction of Assange’s seemingly well-cultivated mystique seems so suspiciously irrelevant to begin with: wouldn’t a ludicrously secretive network of ultra-sophisticated hackers be structurally impervious to any character assassination attempts on its weird-looking white-haired mascot? (Her links)

 

The actual threat posed by Julian Assange and his organization, Wikileaks, is the audacity of truth.  It is not the non-consensual (and as far as we know, non-violent) sexual acts presumably committed against two women that is source of the great criminality of Assange.  From the perspective of those who rule over us, Assange’s offense is exacerbated by the—not-so-secret—admiration of an international public, of billions of civilians across the globe who have watched in frustration as the flexing of sovereign and unchecked muscles have resulted in the widescale and often fatal bullying of innocents — women and men alike– with no repercussions, no contrition, and ultimately, no self-awareness of the fact that in the hands of Presidents Bush and Obama the rule of law has been transformed into the illusion of law: We—the US, Great Britain, France, and others in the Global North—will decide what law is, what crime is, what violence is, and you—citizens of the world will accept it, all of it, and like it.  Until, that is, great criminals like Julian Assange come along and remind us that there is a power greater than the violence of the state—a power to resist and challenge the pure acts of hooliganism, plunder, and plutocracy that the United States government and its allies defend as righteous acts of “spreading democracy.”

Does that mean that we should condone sexual deception? Not at all. Still:

1. Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden.
2. Assange has still not been charged.
3. It’s not clear that sexual deception, however vicious, is equivalent to sexual assault. Perhaps Sweden could accuse him of negligence or some equivalent charge. But let’s preserve the respect for victims of acquaintance rape and other forms of rape by recognizing the distinction between coercion and sexual assholishness. We might be able to construct a framework for the latter in its relationship to coercion. Still, as of yet, we don’t have a strong one, so let’s not elevate it to the complex category of rape.

Why is it that Dewani, A British citizen accused of plotting to murder his wife is receiving more lenient treatment than a man who has not yet been charged with rape?  If in fact Assange is only wanted by the Swedish authorities for questioning, they could have found some way to accommodate the very real concerns that Assange, once in Sweden, could be rushed to the United States to face an unfair trial. It’s too late for that. But perhaps, now that Ecuador has stood up to the British government, the UK might find some way to show its “honorable” intentions–by negotiating for an independent third-country investigator for Assange. And by insisting that Dewani be extradited to South Africa for the–substantive–charges that he faces.

Perhaps—even though Assange may be the great criminal, and Dewani may be a heinous criminal, too much of the world is aware of the United States and the British governments as the real—and systemic—threats to the safety of men and women around the world. Until the UK can show that it can play fair, those  perceptions will continue.

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*Or not wearing a condom.

**The last three sentences were accidentally omitted from an earlier version of this column.

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Update: Here is the judgement of the London High Court in the dispute between Assange and the Swedish Prosecution Authority, July 12, 2011. Notice especially paragraphs 149-153: The decision has been taken not to charge him at this stage. As the High Court admits, had the same set of facts occurred in England or Wales, he would have already been charged. Still, the extradition order is not yet in order to prosecute him, but to interrogate him further.

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Mosques, Temples, and Theaters: We Need to Change the Script

Yesterday, less than 48 hours after the shootings in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a mosque in Joplin, Missouri was burned to the ground. It was the second time that someone had tried to burn the mosque down in a month, and the third time that the mosque has had a fire on its property.  A suspect hasn’t been found.    The FBI suspects arson. The mosque is completely gone. It was burned during the month of Ramadan. Gee. The third fire on its property, and the second in less than a month. The third time. Arson? Really, you think?

I only happened to come across this news as I was perusing some comments regarding the Sikh Temple shooting. There has been virtually no reporting on it. Let me look into my political crystal ball:  A mosque gets burned to the ground, after two previous attempts: The perpetrator will be a white, angry young man, possibly part of a crowd of young angry white men.  I will predict a “white supremacist organization.”

Am I a genius? Maybe.  After all, some of us in the South Asian community understood well before the media confirmed it: the shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin was the work of a white supremacist whose name, Wade Michael Page, would only be released hours later And some of us in the progressive pundosphere anticipated well before most details came out about the Aurora, Colorado shootings by James Holmes, that he would be characterized as a quiet, loner type. And at least some of us understood in the hours after the shooting at the United States Army Base in Fort Hood, Texas, that the shooter, because he wasn’t white and because he was remotely “Arab”—and even though he was a soldier and an Army psychiatrist–that his actions would be characterized as those of a “terrorist.”

Why did we know? It’s not that we were psychic or we had a direct line to God. Rather, we have become accustomed to the scripts that American law enforcement, the FBI, and the media run in the aftermath of (too) many mass shootings:

A group of Sikhs shot by a white man? A white supremacist. A group of (mostly) white Americans shot by a white man in the Midwest? In a theater? A loner. In a high school by two white boys/men? Troubled loners. By a man of East Asian origin on a college campus? A deranged loner. An Army base shot up by a Palestinian-American (US Army psychiatrist)? A terrorist (by definition deranged and ideologically zealous). A black man is repeatedly run over by two white boys in a truck? So strange; racism is gone. We have a black president. A black boy gets shot by a white man? Random and probably deserved. Black men on death row for crimes they didn’t commit? Justice prevails. So say the governors who allow them to be executed, and so follow our media.

These scripts are pulled out so neatly, one marvels at the level of organization that allow them to be read out so easily. And yet, like most scripts, they are edited to provide a clear, easy-to-follow narrative that appeals to the audience’s most intimately held beliefs. Those beliefs are drawn out, and impressed again to memorize what our irrational sides fear: those white guys are loners; those young white/Asian men are troubled and deranged loners. Those brown men are terrorists. Those black men are hoodlums and gangmembers.

The Oak Creek Police held a press conference after the shooting at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, where they declared that the shooting was an act of domestic terrorism. How did they define an act of domestic terrorism, a reporter asked. The Chief of Police declared that it was an act of terrorism done within the confines of the country, by a person who was not from another country. In fact, domestic terrorism does not exclude acts committed by foreign nationals according to Sec. 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act, one of the first and overarching bills that was passed to combat terrorism after September 11, 2001.

Though his definition was incorrect, his answer was illuminating—because it reflected the fiction that Americans have been trained, through these repeating scripts, to believe: most evil against Americans is committed by foreign (and usually Muslim) men, and most Americans are white.

But part of the newsworthiness of the shooting was that another massacre (and so soon after Aurora) was occurring, but this time against “foreigners.” And so the media became obsessively focused on the non-Muslim brownness of the victims. Perhaps a bit far-fetched.  But how else can we explain the obsessive focus on the “Sikh-ness” of the victims? Or the questions about whether Sikhs as a group have enemies (Didn’t the victims of Aurora, Colorado have enemies?) Or whether “anti-Semitic” acts have been committed against Sikhs in the past? Yes. This was asked by a Fox News broadcaster.

When the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting happened the week before, there was no discussion of the “whiteness” or the “Americanness” the victims, even though every one who died was white and American.  In fact, the focus was on how “normal,” how kind, how loving, how smart they were in their roles as children, soldiers, parents, and students. Aren’t the temple-goers also “normal,” kind, and loving? They are a religious people, like so many Americans. Many of them are Americans, like the victims in Aurora, Colorado.

James Holmes, the shooter in Aurora, was also white and American. And so media turned to its usual, Ted Kaczynski script: genius, troubled, loner.  In the case of Oak, Creek, the shooter was white, but since the victims were brown, the shooter had to have been a white supremacist. According to Chauncey DeVega, even white supremacists were hoping he wasn’t one of them.

And now that a mosque has been burned to the ground, we barely hear anything about it. That’s part of the script, too: A mosque? Muslims? Not that interesting. After all, how can Muslims be peace-loving? Don’t they want to kill Americans? They attacked America.

Like most scripts, these are fictional.  But unlike most movies and novels, the FBI and the media outlets that draw on these scripts claim to be reporting the truth. And to move from novelistic narratives to more accurate, documentarian narratives, it is necessary to confront the ideological truths that underlie the mass epidemic of violence that America is confronting. Yes, better gun control can help to manage the violence. Page’s gun was the same type used in Aurora, and in the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords last year. It was a 9 mm semiautomatic, and it was legal. And it would have been legal even under President Clinton’s 1994 Assault Weapon ban. But the Joplin mosque was burned down. I doubt that banning matches will solve the problem at hand.

Other truths must also be confronted. In large part, the shooters and arsonists who are behind many, if not most of these events in America, are white men.  In large part, these men have either come of age in the shadow of September 11. They have watched the media, heard Department of Homeland Security officials, and followed as mostly white male (and some female) politicians have given the anxious go ahead to wage an enormous war against Muslims abroad (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan) or at home (in the form of the War on Terror).  Several of them have served in a military that follows the orders of two U.S. Presidential administrations by training their men to shoot, invade, drop rockets from helicopters, and drones controlled remotely from Syracuse, NY and other air force bases in the United States.

These white men have learned their lessons well, whether in the military or from hours of media news: the frustrations of a scared (white) America can be dealt with waging a war using guns, bombs, chemicals, and drones.  They have learned that it is ok to kill those who you believe to be behind threats to your comfort. They have internalized the message that those you fear can be addressed without words, without dialogue, but with violence, with power, with coercion. They have learned that some religions are automatically evil and that those who adhere to those religions must be destroyed.  And these white men reflect an ideology of violence that has permeated America in the name of the War on Terror. Sadly, that ideology, perpetuated by our white men and women in power, carried out by American soldiers, and endorsed by a lapdog media, isn’t fading away. It’s becoming bigger, stronger, and more murderous.

These men are not mad or crazy.  They are the well-trained students of American foreign and domestic policies. They have learned well the United States’ message: that violence and mayhem are the answer.  We need to change the scripts, and confront the fallout of a decade of the War on Terror—and other excuses for state-led violence quickly, before the chickens come home to roost.

The Power of Arrogance: the US and the Terrorism Card

Besides marking the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo Bay, Wednesday was notable for the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Mustafa Ahmadi-Roshan.  The NYT reported that, “The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on Wednesday when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran’s morning rush hour.”

“Mainly by Israel.” Who else would help Israel…but the US, its closest ally?  Before I go on, just want to note here that the NYT reported it, which means that it is a fact that Israel (and a good probability that the US) murdered an Iranian national.  Why?  Because if the NYT is reporting it, it must have been confirmed by US and Israeli government officials.  We know that the NYT’s model of reportage, despite their claims to publish All the News That is Fit to Print, is more Pravda than Colorlines. We also know the NYT reports only what the US state approves for reporting (remember this? Scroll down to paragraph #9).

[NB: Here is a terrific sardonic analysis by Jay Rosen which I read after writing this post, which refers to a query of NYT readers by its Public Blog editor about whether the media should prioritize truth-telling! And here I worried that readers would decide I was a conspiracy theorist. I can’t even make this stuff up.]

Glenn Greenwald asks why, when a Saudi official is targeted for murder by Iranian agents, the US denounces that action as terrorism, but when the US and Israel are found to have collaborated on murdering an Iranian nuclear scientist, it’s called a covert or a targeted killing by most major media outlets.  Greenwald offered ample evidence of the double standards of the mainstream media (MSM) by pointing to clips from ABC News, AP, CNN, Washington Post, Council of Foreign Relations, and the US’ very own office of obfuscation, the Department of Justice, all of whom point to Iran’s actions in terms of terrorism, but find the Israeli/US hit to be merely a covert or targeted killing.

Why the double standard? The obvious, if too simple, answer is because the US has shifted from being an “superpower” to an Empire. And we know that Empires call the shots when they please, as they please, and how they please. And as importantly, Empires can choose which strategy they want to take: Shall “we” engage in direct brute violence and just kill folks en masse and openly (such as the German genocide of the Herero Tribe in Namibia)? Or should “we” codify our violence through the rule of law (such as the British massacre in Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919), and insist that it follows from the word of God, of Nature, or from an obvious consensus of “right-thinking” peoples in our midst at home and internationally?

Of course, Empires don’t have to choose. That is, after all, what it means to be an Empire. I mean, if Empires chose strategies, that might indicate that they were worried about public perceptions, backlash, or reprimands from other superpowers. As in the instances of Guantanamo, renditions, the National Security Entry –Exit System (NSEERS) (used to round up thousands of Muslim men residing in the states after 9/11), material support statutes which can retroactively name former allies as terrorists or terrorist organizations (PKK), the creation of enemy combatants, warrantless wiretapping, pre-emptive and indefinite detention of foreign nationals (and now, of US nationals)–ALL of these can be done under the aegis of the Rule of Law, while also engaging in overt and direct violence without a direct mandate, approval or review from Congress or the Courts.  We see this charade in the decision to attack Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the assassination of Terrorist #1 Osama Bin Laden, the assassination of Terrorist #2, US national Anwar Al-Awlaki (see the absolute absence of evidence of Awlaki’s terrorist credentials even in response to repeated questioning by ABC News’ Jake Tapper. Tune in at 2:24), and the assassination of Roshan.  Now we hear increasing murmurs of an impending attack on Iran.

Again, I know it’s too trite and obvious to reiterate that these actions are all being done in the name of fighting the “War Against Terror,” but let me do so anyway.  I don’t think Greenwald goes far enough when he says,

the fact that Terrorism has no fixed meaning does not mean it is inconsequential. The opposite is true. Terrorism is one of the most consequential words in our political lexicon. The term designates Supreme, Unmitigated Evil. Once someone is successfully branded a Terrorist, it means that anything and everything can and should be done to them without constraints.

The advantage of being an Empire is that we codify the terms we like to use in ways that can be deployed against dissenters, agitators, or racial threats. And that’s precisely the beauty of the seeming ambiguity of the word “Terrorist.”

The most recent definition of “terrorism” according to US Code, Title 18, § 2331, states that

 

‘international terrorism’ means activities that involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State

and

“appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce” civilian populations, influence government policies, affect government conduct, or “occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.”

If we substitute “Iran” for the United States in the above definition, it seems fairly easy to apply this definition to the assassination of Mustafa Ahmadi-Roshan. The definition of terrorism as a federal crime, as expressed a decade ago in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, was even less artful. Among other things, a terrorist act included injury or death of US nationals outside US boundaries (Sec 808). This definition might have repositioned the murder of Al-Awlaki in a starkly different light. Coincidentally, the PATRIOT Act doesn’t discuss the killing of US nationals outside the confines of the US….by the US.

Legal exegesis is probably best left to (progressive) lawyers, which I am not, and it’s fairly boring outside of a classroom or courtroom, so I’ll stop. But it seems that the definition of terrorism is a little less ambiguous than Greenwald suggests. As we have come to learn especially vividly in the last year, it’s not a terrorist act if a foreign national is murdered, and especially not if the US is doing the murdering.

In many ways, the Patriot Act is not “new” law. Its path was paved by any number of older laws, such as the the 1917 Espionage Act, Executive Order 9066 (signed by Pres. Roosevelt to authorize the internment of migrants and citizens of Japanese descent), 1978 FISA (defanged in 2008), and 1996 Anti-terrorist Act. The ability to circumvent judicial review for “aliens” is also found in various laws over the last decade and before. That circumvention was, again, paved by numerous older laws. See Daniel Kantstroom’s brilliant book, Deportation Nation, for a comprehensive, if turgid, list and discussion of laws that manage, regulated, and criminalized non-“Americans” since the late 1700’s. Nothing new, perhaps.

Still the Patriot Act, at least for those of us born in the last 50 years, felt like a game-changer in terms of highlighting ways to circumvent Constitutional safeguards under the auspices of “fighting” terror. “Terror” became the legalized name for newly visible racial threats (like Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners, South Asians), and of course, we know that the echo chamber called the MSM is very useful in furthering the State’s purposes by helping disseminate its propaganda with images, fear-mongering, heightened hysteria-turned cultural-status quo.

Now, let’s be clear: the notion of racial threats have been long associated with some US populations of color; the legalized names for long-standing racial threats (mostly African American men and women) have been articulated along the lines of violent offenders, murderers, rapists, drug addicts, prostitutes, etc.  So, the notion of constitutional reliability has never been a solid concept for the US black population. Today, the reliability of Constitutional rights evaporates for many more folks, some of whom previously depended on being able to slip into the “good” minority category (Legal scholar Karen Engle has an old but great piece on this).

Another (interesting?) point: the racial threat of terror has been conjoined with the threat of the undocumented. It’s not uncoincidental that the war on migrants has revved up within the discourse of the War on Terror. So, while terror was re-instituted in a legal definition in 2001, the war on the undocumented also dovetails with it through the language of “defending the Homeland” (Seriously? We’re resorting to Nazi terminology?), “our” borders, along with the usual nationalist trash about defending our liberty and way of life, etc. As is always the case with fear-mongering, the law eventually becomes invisible, expressed instead through popular and cultural discourses.

Greenwald’s point remains: Terror is an ambiguous term, but its use is anything but ambiguous: it’s a tool of the US Empire and its allies, deployed against those who go against the mainstream national grain either through their express actions (dissent or protest) or through their racial presence.

It is, as I’ve mentioned before, an Empire State of mind. The state’s response to the Occupy protests around the country stunned many people who had accepted the US line that violence is justly and exclusively directed against those who threaten our way of life. They were surprised to see the authoritarian hand of the state brought out in response to their middle-class college- or  law-school-going children, their professional-class neighbors, and even their grandparents. The passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), perhaps coincidentally, now legalizes the arrest of those same college students, professionals, and grandparents without cause. The arrest of your sweet liberal neighbors has been facilitated by the Patriot Act, but also by the expansions of FISA and the widespread collaboration of the telecommunication companies. Revolt, protest, dissent (whether by challenging the banks or by insistently living as an undocumented migrant in order to achieve…what?…political, economic, religious, sexual, security): these have been long-standing terrorist acts, but typically associated with visible racial threats. When your financially secure children, friends, neighbors are being targeted, that should be an important clue that those that the US Empire deems “terrorists” may be scapegoats or targets in a larger ideological struggle over the hearts and minds of Americans.  These random murders and promiscuous state violence are the consequence of unchecked arrogance couple with unrestrained power.

What’s the antidote to Empire? Unchecked arrogance–in the form of uninhibited state power–requires critical scrutiny, oversight and strict (i.e. not Bush-like) judicial accountability. If we have a state that insists that it knows best regardless of public outrage, then it’s time to jump off the righteous “war on terror” bandwagon.