"'One also has to wonder how an American traveler in Europe would react if he were denied boarding on a flight from London to Rome because the German government had not received sufficient data from him.'
"Tony Wheeler, founder of Lonely Planet travel guides, said 'This extension of the rule to include flights that never enter US airspace is scarcely credible. What on earth right does the US have to ask for passenger information if you're flying London-Havana?'"
What right indeed? What right does the United States have to punish
businesses in foreign countries who do business with another foreign
country, as in the case of the ever-spreading sanctions on yet another
state outside the imperial system, Iran? (And again: the same caveat
offered above on Cuba applies here as well.) What right does it have to
fire drone missiles into sovereign nations and kill their citizens? What
right does it have to assassinate its own citizens and imprison them
indefinitely without charges, trial or due process? What right does it
have to invade and destroy entire nations which have not attacked or
threatened the United States?
Rights don't enter into it. Power
doesn't need rights; it "creates its own reality," its own rights. The
right of British citizens to fly unfettered to Canada and Cuba is in
itself a minor matter (and rather darkly ironic, given Britain's own
imperial history and its much-reduced but still persistent continuance);
but it is a reflection of larger reality -- the power-created reality
-- of the very real American Empire.
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