This recognition of criminality clearly extends to the current US President. When Barack Obama recently traveled to South Africa, the Muslim Lawyers Association filed a demand in court to have him arrested for genocide. Irish Parliamentarian Claire Daily outlined in a speech at the G8 meeting in Ireland how Obama's deeds meet the classic definitions of a war criminal: killing children indiscriminately with drones and sending arms and other aid to Syrian Jihadists. Former US Intelligence officer Scott Rickard pointed out that the US public, without even knowing it, has been funding wars for four years in Africa that have been responsible for killing tens of thousands whose food and water have been cut off so that Western companies can access natural resources.
If the American Declaration were written today, what indictments would it include? Let Facts be submitted to a candid World:
"-- He has waged illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, conducting wars of aggression. -- He has implemented torture, stripped innocent men naked, humiliated and water-boarded them. -- He has committed war crimes by targeting civilians, such as in the Haditha and Fallujah Massacres. -- He has made a prison Camp in Guantanamo, stripping men of due process, force-feeding detainees who remain innocent until proven guilty. -- He has implemented a spying program with illegal wiretapping that has put the entire world population under illegal surveillance. -- He has refused to follow the laws written by Congress, sidestepping them with signing statements or secret interpretations. -- He has declared the world a battlefield, drone-killing innocent people and asserting the right to kill anyone, including US citizens by assassination. -- He has declared the right to kidnap and indefinitely detain any US or World citizen with no given reason or due process."
Who
would have imagined that we would need to declare independence from the
US government? We are seeing it act like a tyrannical King of the
world, ignoring all but the semblance of the rule of law when it suits
them. Its leaders bully and undermine the sovereignty of other nations whenever
they feel the need.
Now, however, in the face of the undeniable illegitimate power of the US empire, more and more people around the world are uniting. As of July 27, half a million people have now joined a campaign to rein in NSA spying.
One day after Bolivian President Morales's flight was searched, Bolivia rejected the U.S. extradition request for Snowden, with the Foreign Minister stating that the U.S. request was "strange, illegal and unfounded." In retaliation for this US-triggered transgression of its national sovereignty, Bolivia has threatened to close the US embassy.
In a colder part of the world, Iceland's lawmakers made a proposal to grant Snowden citizenship. And, while many countries have already denied Snowden asylum, the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, acknowledged that the whistle-blower had done something very important for humanity. He asked: "What has he done? Did he launch a missile and kill someone? Did he rig a bomb and kill someone? No. He is preventing war." Maduro said Snowden "deserves the world's protection.".
In America itself, from Los Angeles to Dallas, demonstrations were held on the Fourth of July to re-found a commitment to the Constitution. Protesters marched in San Francisco and New York. At the rally in Washington DC, former senior executive and NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake declared, "On this day, the 4th of July, 2013, I call for a new American Revolution declaring our independence from the surveillance state and government control of information." He reminded citizens that the US has become, "the secret undemocratic authoritarian imperialist nation against whom we fought the first American revolution."
Perhaps we are now seeing the beginnings of a second American revolution. This time, though, it is being fought not only for US
citizens, but for all the people of the world. In his most recent statement,
Snowden wrote that the Obama administration is not afraid of whistle-blowers like him,
but of ordinary people like you and me. "It is afraid of an
informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was
promised, and it should be."
There is nothing more powerful than informed citizens standing up for themselves. Every government should be afraid of its own people. The beginning is near. In the wake of this year's Independence Day, people are truly waking up to their own power.
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