Eric Peters

Sanity still exists, it’s just not consistently applied.

For instance, consider marriage. It is generally agreed that it ought to be voluntary – that both parties should be mutually consenting. And not just to the initial union, either – but to the union on an ongoing basis. If at any point the union is no longer satisfactory, the couple’s right to part from one another is rarely questioned. This is sane. The idea that they should be forced at gunpoint to stay together is (rightly) regarded by most people as insane.

Yet the same principle is rarely translated over to the realm of politics. We are told as children by our teachers about the “consent of the governed.” But when that consent is withdrawn, why is it that most people recoil from the idea of peaceful separation? Why do most people celebrate the forcible “union” of unwilling partners? How is it different to be told you must accept being lorded over by a certain form of government – or else – vs. being told you must stay with your husband or wife – or else? Is it a function of numbers? That is, because more than just two people are involved, it becomes ok to force some to be bound by others? Is it because of “process”? What makes that any different from a husband declaring he has a piece of paper in his hand that entitles him to “perpetual union” with his unwilling wife? Society, after all, is just intellectual shorthand for all the people in a given area. “Society” does not consent to anything because society does not exist. Only individual people exist – and do – or do not consent.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Strange, isn’t it, that freedom was gained in East Germany and lost in America.

On June 19, 2013, US President Obama, hoping to raise himself above the developing National Security Agency (NSA) spy scandals, sought to associate himself with two iconic speeches made at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy pledged: “Ich bin ein Berliner”. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan challenged: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Obama’s speech was delivered to a relatively small, specially selected audience of invitees. Even so, Obama spoke from behind bullet proof glass.

Obama’s speech will go down in history as the most hypocritical of all time. Little wonder that the audience was there by invitation only. A real audience would have hooted Obama out of Berlin.

Perhaps the most hypocritical of all of Obama’s statements was his proposal that the US and Russia reduce their nuclear weapons by one-third. The entire world, and certainly the Russians, saw through this ploy. The US is currently surrounding Russia with anti-ballistic missiles on Russia’s borders and hopes to leverage this advantage by talking Russia into reducing its weapons, thereby making it easier for Washington to target them. Obama’s proposal is clearly intended to weaken Russia’s nuclear deterrent and ability to resist US hegemony.

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Pepe Escobar

The film Shanghai starring Gong Li and John Cusack was
a successful collaboration between China and Hollywood.
But now, China wants to do more than just provide the
pretty faces. (Provided to China Daily)

Sun Tzu, the ancient author of The Art of War, must be throwing a rice wine party in his heavenly tomb in the wake of the shirtsleeves California love-in between President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping. "Know your enemy" was, it seems, the theme of the meeting. Beijing was very much aware of - and had furiously protested - Washington's deep plunge into China's computer networks over the past 15 years via a secretive unit of the National Security Agency, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (with the apt acronym TAO). Yet Xi merrily allowed Obama to pontificate on hacking and cyber-theft as if China were alone on such a stage.

Enter - with perfect timing - Edward Snowden, the spy who came in from Hawaii and who has been holed up in Hong Kong since May 20. And cut to the wickedly straight-faced, no-commentary-needed take on Obama's hacker army by Xinhua, the Chinese Communist Party's official press service. With America's dark-side-of-the-moon surveillance programs like Prism suddenly in the global spotlight, the Chinese, long blistered by Washington's charges about hacking American corporate and military websites, were polite enough. They didn't even bother to mention that Prism was just another node in the Pentagon's Joint Vision 2020 dream of "full spectrum dominance".

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