Back in in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR …

The tenor of our times can largely be personified in the form of people who walk free, attend banquets, and enjoy easy access to a clueless and compliant media. George (HW and W) Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Barack Obama, David Petraeus, Robert Ford and a host of others are men and women who should be put on trial for war crimes, walk free and enjoy privileged lives. They will never see the inside of a court room, much less a jail, as they live in a system where only injustice is served.

In the meantime, the following people either sit in prison, or are dead:

• Dan Seigelman: His crime was minor, to say the least, and suggests a railroad job by Karl Rove. The 2002 Alabama election saw him declared winner, and then during the night lose the contest to an electronic voting machine. This was in the early days of the new voting machine regime. Perhaps to hammer the point hard, Seigelman, after complaining about the outcome and questioning the new method of counting, found himself accused of bribery on the most specious of charges, a “bribe” from which he gained no benefit. It was Karl Rove’s handiwork.

  I don’t lose sleep over Seigelman, as he’s just a Democrat and was not liberal crusader, but the issue here and the reason, I believe, for his prison sentence, was that electronic voting, where any election can be easily stolen, was to be the wave of the future, and any who stood in its way would be crushed.

• Rachel Corrie: Just an idealistic youth, she had the temerity to stand before an Israeli (read: American) tank, Tiananmen style, as it bulldozed Palestinian houses. She got bulldozed. Maybe it was an accident, but with the Israeli army, in which terrorism is the norm, there will always be suspicion. Most importantly, she’s dead, no one paid a price, there was never a serious investigation.
• Julian Assange: One of the more noxious side effects of being a pro-liberty citizen is that we must often ally ourselves with unsavory people who serve our cause. Assange is an arrogant man. He could well be a mole or a tool, as the “Arab Spring” he fostered appears to have served imperialist interests far more than any Arabs. The information he exposed seems mostly insignificant.

  Wikileaks did expose one importation facet our current state of affairs: The web of corruption that exists in the guise of “government” are really corporations running that show. It wasn’t the Justice Department that attacked Wikileaks. It was PayPal, MasterCard, VISA, AMEX.

  Assange operated from a cave, and it seems all would have been allowed except for the video “Collateral Murder,” which exposed real crimes. The most heinous of crimes are allowed, exposing them will bring you down in a shit storm.

  Assange quickly found that the tentacles of the National Security State extend far. He was accused of rape via Sweden, and the whole of the establishment media had to stand up and pretend the charges had merit. It’s their job. He sits now in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a prisoner, perhaps. Tool? Dupe? Agent? Who knows.

• Aaron Schwartz: Co-founder of Reddit, defender of individual freedom, enemy of SOPA, is dead of suicide after relentless prosecution by our “Justice” Department. I’m always suspicious of suicides that serve state interests, as with David Kelly, Bruce Ivins, Gary Webb, and a long, long list of various witnesses to the JFK assassinations and 9/11. But assume for convenience that this really was suicide. Real or fake, death has gagged accusations.
• Bradley Manning: We debate now whether he should get 35, 60, 90- or 130 years for exposing state crimes. Views differ.
• Michael Hastings: Perhaps the only organization more corrupt than the LAPD is the Mafia, but set that aside. They “investigated” the accidental death of Michael Hastings, and found, surprise, that it was an accident. As with the RFK murder, I think it is safe now to assume the evidence has been destroyed, as they are just short of space, you see.

  Hastings is said to have brought down General Stanley McCrystal, though more likely he was set up to be the point man. Lowly journalists do not bring down mighty generals without serious muscle behind them, though Hastings probably did not know it. Nonetheless, he seems to have taken the notion of serious journalism to heart. He’s dead now.

• Barrett Brown:The reckless youth now faces as much as 105 years in prison though no one seems quite certain that he is guilty of anything more than contempt of the National Security State. Rolling Stone has a nice writeup by Alexander Zaitchik, probably behind subscription wall.

These are just a few of the names in our brief and troubled times. Every age before us has similar victims.

Bear in mind that in the National Security State anyone can be a friend or an enemy. Any of these people could have been marshaled, used, spit out. Perhaps they are all true victims, as Bradley Manning surely is. Maybe they are just incautious, as Hastings appears to have been. The important point is this: Criminals, murderers, slime and human garbage occupy high office, and are serious people to be taken seriously as they make serious observations on serious news shows, and who walk free knowing they’ll never pay a price for real crimes.

In the meantime, innocent people of high character die or waste their lives away in jail. That’s what it’s like in totalitarian states.