It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Fresh news this morning of the Bush-Blair Axis of Blunder: It appears that, before the war against Iraq, as Bush and Blair were trying to get a United Nations resolution in favor of war passed, British agents were engaged in a prolonged mission to spy on United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, recording all his private conversations.

It has been known for some months that the Bush Administration requested the British government to spy on delegations to the United Nations Security Council, including Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan. A memo acknowledging this American request for espionage at the UN Headquarters in New York City was leaked to the press by a translator who felt ethically unable to be complicit in the spy mission.

Now, Clare Short, who was the Secretary of International Development in UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's government at the time of the buildup to war in Iraq, has revealed that the British spy mission included not just espionage against Security Council delegations, but also the break-in and bugging of the office of the Secretary General himself. Short reports having read transcripts of Kofi Annan's private, confidential conversations herself.

If, as it appears, this espionage was done at the request and with the knowledge of the Bush Administration, then President George W. Bush has committed a crime quite similar to the one at the center of the Watergate scandal that led Richard M. Nixon to resign: A break-in and spying effort in order to gain political advantage. It's important to keep in mind that the United Nations Headquarters is on American soil, in downtown Manhattan. There are no overseas exemptions to U.S. law there.

This would certainly be an impeachable offense, but let us not drag America through another impeachment. Instead, we need an independent investigation of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the leaders of the American intelligence community. If a crime has been committed, the responsible parties in the Bush Administration, including the President, should resign.

You can help this take place by calling your Congressional representatives and demanding that an independent investigation of the American role in espionage at the United Nations. Visit Congress.org, where you can find the contact information for your senators and representative. Call today!

Posted by J. Clifford Cook at 9:41 AM. # (permalink)  




Return to the Irregular Times Main Page

Read our Blog Archives