General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: So let me see if I understand the 2 biggest hot button topics on DU [View all]JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)It's the visible and extra-constitutional multi-part state of the banks, the biggest corporations and the national security complex. Its precise workings of course are opaque to us, but it's not like its existence can be hidden by any power other than ideologically induced blindness and wishful thinking. So you can call it a shadow government, if you like. It's better than any of the more obviously mystical attack phrases you've deployed ("global conspiracy," "shadowy cabal," demonic etc. etc.). I know, it's easier if you think that obvious observations about the nature of power in a capitalist and imperialist state are something crazy and right wing.
Of course extradition orders are going to come through the constitutional authorities. The useful exercise is in asking where the pressures come from that guarantee the US will make an enemy of the state out of Assange -- a journalist who exposed US war criminality and in a moral universe should therefore be invited to testify in war crimes trials against the perpetrators. The reaction to Assange would happen in any administration, because the fetish for secrecy, even when used to cover up crime by any code of law, is paramount. More often than not, it's not a secret controller but a herd mentality at work. The ruling herd follows the structural imperatives of empire -- that's right, the thing that everyone in the world sees as an empire, including the neocons, and which is invisible only to an idealistic segment of the US establishment center-left. I'd love to see Obama stand up to it. He's about 1.3% more likely to do so than Bush, so I voted for him.