"US foreign policy is akin to Government-sponsored terrorism these days …"
Who said that ?
Gary McKinnon, the Aspergers guy who hacked into US military computers. There was a Trojan War of a battle to extradite him to the US, but finally he was spared American justice.
What seemed to infuriate the US government about Gary McKinnon was not the minimal damage he did, but rather the fact that he had the temerity and skill to hack into their computers, which they considered sacrosanct. Worse, he was able to post messages deploring their level of security.
A decade later there are so many daily revelations of people the US have monitored on an industrial scale that it would be easier to list those few remaining on the planet whom the US have NOT bugged. From Angela Merkel to millions of ordinary phone calls across Europe, from Pakistani Taleban leaders to French politicians, the US have been enthusiastically hacking into phone calls and internet traffic to such an extent that there are now ideas to break up the internet and have nationally-based, safe internettes.
The arrogance of the US in effectively viewing anything they wish to hack as a fair target, whether industrial, personal, political, private or privileged is breath-taking.
But it should not be.
The real problem here is the failure, no, the refusal, of the US to work and play well with others. The Pax Americana, it turns out, means American justice rules. And American justice is quixotic if not capricious.
Drone strikes against 'terrorists' deal out summary execution rather than justice around trhe world. In dong so they demonstrate a thinly veiled threat that the US has the capability and will to eliminate anyone, anywhere, at any time. It's a powerful message that winners' justice prevails.
Guantanamo is still open for business, in spite of Obama's apparent promise to shut it down. Redefined as illegal combatants, those wasting their lives in Guantanamo have has access to no justice, nor even a pretence of justice. Arriving there in secret, snatched on whatever pretext the US thought acceptable, they hang like the Sybil in the bottle.
Extraordinary renditions continue with or without the connivance of foreign governments against their own people and in favour of the US. A recent variation was the unsuccessful attempt by US Navy Seals to seize a target from the streets in broad daylight.
Edward Snowden is holed up in Moscow and may never again be a truly free man. His crime ? Exposing the unsuspected scale and breadth and depth of the NSA's tentacles. The man deserves the highest commendation.
And when it comes to extradition, US citizens have nothing to fear from the demands of foreign justice, while the Gary McKinnons must fight tooth and nail to avoid disappearing over the event horizon of an American oubliette.
Meanwhile, US soldiers accused of crimes and atrocities around the planet are not subject to international justice, as the US does not recognise the court's jurisdiction.
What is clear here is that the US has the power to ignore the rights of others. In the past it has supported a strange bunch of nasty right-wing regimes and sought actively to undermine those with policies more enlightened than its own. While protesting its pre-eminent democratic credentials, it happy to continue with hanging chads or whatever other electoral chicanery will get the result the winners want, however many ordinary people find themselves disenfranchised in the process.
In the past, the US has been the bully in the playground, adept at picking on the smaller guy. Now, emboldened by its successes, it sees every other state, every other population, every identifiable individual as a fair target if it deems fit.
While supposedly defending freedom, it (and, of course, enthusiastic supporters like the UK) employs methods and approaches which are of such feral toxicity that the concept of freedom dies unnoticed.
Justice, if there is such a thing, has to be more than merely what the Americans want. The assumption that what is good for America is good for the world has been disastrous, and poorly resisted by more enlightened but less powerful nations.
That needs to change.
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