It is not news that the US government systematically abuses its secrecy powers to shield its actions from public scrutiny, democratic accountability, and judicial review. But sometimes that abuse is so extreme, so glaring, that it is worth taking note of, as it reveals its purported concern over national security to be a complete sham.

As many people have heard by now, a whistleblower sent to NBC News a couple of days ago a confidential DOJ memo that provides justifications for the government to use drones to assassinate Americans. This is extrajudicial action carried out by the White House alone. If individuals were to do it it would be called vigilantism and/or murder. I want to put this all into a larger context to illuminate what has been afoot. But before doing that, a hypothetical scenario:

In his essay “A Hanging,” George Orwell recounts, in great detail, the events he witnessed leading up to the execution of a man. It is important to note that before becoming an outspoken critic of the hypocrisy of Governments, George Orwell worked for one. He was a member of the Indian Imperial Police, having served in Burma, a British colony at the time.

by Paul Harris

The nomination of President Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan to head the CIA has sparked outrage and concern about America’s growing drones programme and its use for targeted killings of suspected Islamic militants.

The US wants Pakistan to do more in its fight against the Taliban in Waziristan. But the Pakistan soldiers maimed in the war on terror might argue they have already given enough. Chris Woods reports.

Ironies of living in the post-Bush world:

1. The only CIA operative connected to waterboarding and torture during the Bush regime to be jailed, John Kiriakou, will go to prison for giving an agent's name to reporters in connection with an investigation aimed at exposing enhanced interrogation techniques. The agents who did the torture face no sanctions at all, and in fact are glorified in popular culture, like the new film Zero Dark Thirty.

From the Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars

Join us as we walk from Hancock Airfield to the Onondaga County Jail on January 11th beginning at 12 noon at the Main gate on East Malloy Road.

When its critics looked to define everything they saw as wrong with the Bush Administration, they frequently turned to the so-called "Torture Memos". Penned by John Yoo, now unaccountably a Law professor at UC Berkeley, these memos represented a calculated effort to take advantage of a crisis situation to re-interpret executive power and privilege. Needless to say, that reinterpretation tended towards a dramatic expansion and abuse of that power.

Early in the morning on December 6, two missiles, fired without warning from an unmanned U.S. drone, struck a house in the small village of Mubarak Shahi in northwest Pakistan. A Pakistani security official told the press that three “militants” had been killed. Another official reported four dead. There was no independent verification of the victims’ identities. (“US drone kills at least 3 militants in Pakistan,” AFP, December 6, 2012)

This news generated only a faint ripple in the U.S. media.

by Jeff Bachman

The United States has a long history of violating international law when its leaders believe foreign policy objectives justify doing so. The belief in the right of the United States to overthrow democratically elected governments (Guatemala, Iran, Congo), to train and arm insurgencies (Nicaragua), and to launch aggressive wars (Iraq) free of the inconvenience of the law grows out of the nationalistic fervor of “American Exceptionalism.