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Rule of Law: It's All Over Now

'It's all over now.'
- The Glimmer Twins

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It's all over now. Many won't see it yet, but the signs are there. The bubble's burst. That carefully curated illusion was bound to crash anyway, sooner or later. But now that it's happened, there's no turning back. There is no rule of law. Edward Snowden did us a favour. An extremely thoughtful individual, he flew to Hong Kong and began giving us information about a nightmarish worldwide Orwellian operation by the NSA. We should be grateful. Snowden and the world at large have been bullied by the US ever since. The US sent clumsily formulated extradition requests and bullied their NATO vassals to stop the airplane of Bolivian president Evo Morales, protected by the Vienna Convention much as Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy is also protected, from entering their airspace on the mere suspicion Snowden was on board - an act of provocation that endangered lives and quickly caused global outrage. The latest faux pax occurred when a theoretically sober Joe Biden barked down the horn at Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, threatening that the US would again block any airplane suspected of flying Snowden to South America. But then the unexpected happened. Panama nabbed one of the CIA agents involved in the Italian rendition scandal where an arabic cleric was kidnapped to be sent to Mubarak's torture chambers. The US got their team out of Italy fast at the time, but the Italians continued with the investigation and ended up convicting the lot of them in absentia. The agents face up to nine years in prison if brought to justice on Italian soil. So while Italy waited to receive their CIA agent, the US made a new phone call, and now magically the agent, surname Lady, was en route to the US, escaping justice. Of course there's nothing new here. The US will categorically refuse to honour requests for extradition if their friends are targeted. And those friends aren't conscience-ridden whistleblowers, but often thugs and mass murderers doing the bidding of the Obama White House and the CIA. The US will only honour rule of law when it's to their benefit. Otherwise rule of law counts for nothing. The juxtaposition of these two ongoing stories - whistleblower Snowden and CIA agent Lady - puts things in profound relief for the unwashed and shows that rule of law doesn't apply in their country. Roosevelt's vice president Henry Wallace warned of such developments over sixty years ago, explaining that if the bully government of Harry Truman didn't change tack, the whole world would end up hating the US. The prophecy of Wallace has now come to pass. Not much spin is needed to cover things up with the sheeple at home, everything being drowned out for now by the Trayvon Martin story. There are legal experts who coldly insist the ruling in the trial of Martin's killer was correct, no matter the sentiments involved, but people are still going haywire and there are riots and demonstrations everywhere. And #Zimmerman has been a hot trending topic on Twitter. This was an excellent opportunity for Barack Obama to grab the limelight. But it's not working anymore. Obama's schtick simply doesn't wash. The sheeple have been lied to time and again. Too many times now. They voted in a complete unknown, much like Harry Truman. Obama was going to be so good, the unwashed thought. But of course Obama turned out to be a husk, riding into town on the promise he'd not be another Dubya. Obama turned out to be a Dubya on steroids. Those who'd actually taken the time to dig into Obama's questionable past - and they were few - of course knew what to expect. But the sheeple in the US didn't dig. Only 50% of them vote anyway. The hype surrounding Obama during the campaign reached a nauseating level, but the sheeple didn't react, they didn't wake up. Many of them may have reasoned that Obama was still better than the competition, and that may have been true, but that doesn't say much about the general state of affairs, for the Obama presidency is in many ways one of the worst ever. Obama was chosen as the next recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after entering office. Even some of Obama's most ardent supporters reacted with alarm. And in the ultimate Doublethink two-step, he accepted the prize and at the same time sent 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Alfred Nobel wrote in his will that a prize should go to the individual who had done the most to 'reduce standing armies'. There was no longer any doubt who controlled the selection of the Peace Prize laureate. Most of us need to believe rule of law exists and works. We need to believe that justice is not something that threatens us but protects us. We can conceive of bad situations born out of misunderstandings and mistakes - we see them happening all the time - but we need to believe that we can trust that sooner or later the truth will out and that those situations will right themselves and things will be OK again. But that's never been more than an illusion - it's only been a pabulum for the sheeple. The very idea of rule of law is something a few innocents believe in and fight for, but for the great majority of those in positions of power, it's never been something to take seriously. Some of us have seen evidence of this up close at first hand, and yet we still may not want to fully grasp what's really going on. The truth is that might makes right. The belief that there is rule of law is something engendered to keep the sheeple calm. These are uneasy times. Today's been an uneasy day. Thinking people wonder if things have always been this bad and if the only difference is that they're now gifted with an Internet that gives them more unfettered access to the truth. They've seen the world's only superpower abuse that power for far too long. There is no right and wrong. There is only might. And the worst of it: there's no way to undo the damage. People can no longer claim to not know. People can no longer go back to their banter on Twitter, waste their lives away sexting and living out of their buckets of KFC, gormandising themselves on blue pills from their family size prescriptions. Now when they look up from their dazed stupor, they will see the truth. And most of them will be at a loss for words and not know how to react, as richly remunerated spin doctors will do their best to control each new situation as it slips out of control. The spin doctors will do their utmost to restore the illusion of rule of law. For the alternative, in a country like the US, would be a new war of independence, an outright revolution. There were some thoughtful people in North America a few hundred years ago. But thankfully for those in power, there are too few of that caliber around today. It's all over now.

Postscript: It's Uglier Still

From the WikiLeaks Twitter account 21 July. What's that all about?

Start with the highlighted text in the PlusD link.

Abu Omar - Pre-emptive Letters ------------------------------ 8. (S/NF) D'Alema closed the hour-long meeting by noting that he had asked the Secretary if the Department could send something in writing to him explaining that the U.S. would not act on extradition requests in the Abu Omar case if tendered. This, he explained, could be used pre-emptively by the GOI to fend off action by Italian magistrates to seek the extradition of the implicated Americans. D'Alema said he understood that L had discussed this with the Italian Ambassador in Washington. Amb. Spogli explained that we were waiting for the constitutional court to decide on the merits of the case before deciding on our next steps, because Min. of Justice Mastella had suspended action until that court rendered a decision. The FM noted that there was still the risk of action by the magistrates at any time. The Ambassador agreed that we should work to avoid having extradition requests forwarded. SPOGLI

So:

There's a special extralegal agreement in place to sidestep rule of law.
Guaranteeing no extradition is not only not uncommon, it's practiced by the US.