Class B felonies are the second highest level of felonies, reserved for some of the more serious crimes such as:

• Manslaughter
• Robbery
• Aggravated sexual assault

Class B felonies carry with them a minimum jail sentence of two years and a maximum sentence of 20 years.

All of that is fine and dandy but United States has no legal basis for an attack on Syria the United Nations Charter is unambiguous on this, the United States cannot use military force without a full Security Council vote, and the UN Charter supersedes all the lower level rulings the US may use including, but not limited to:

• Geneva Protocol of 1925
• Chemical Weapons Convention of 1933
• The precedent set by the war crimes in Kosovo
• “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine

None of these doctrines by the way give authority to attack if the treaties are broken or if chemical weapons are used. The Kosovo precedent is funny seeing as how the whole world, both then and now, calls Kosovo an illegal affair and the R2P doctrine is an idea, not a ratified, binding law.

Not that this matters, international law is broken as all major powers break the laws then enforce them when lesser nations or non-client states follow their lead.

For some further reading into this issue, Michael J. Glennon–Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University–has put forth an excellent book on the subject called “Limits of Law, Perogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo”. It details how the world disregarded international law during and after Kosovo (nevermind the US had been doing so for decades beforehand).

A very powerful statement which would do well to be reiterated in today’s age of moral relativism.

One of the main arguments against Edward Snowden is that his leaks have compromised national security and are thus traitorous. It has yet to be coherently argued how these leaks will compromise national security, the only point of contention (a very weak one) being that armed with this new information terrorists can evade surveillance. Ignoring the fact that any terrorist alive today has understood for years to decades that they are under possible surveillance, the system is all encompassing so the only way they can avoid it is to completely drop their usage of the Internet and of telecommunication mediums.

However, if we really want to talk about what is compromising the national security of Americans then let’s talk.

Currently we are carrying out a drone assassination campaign which kills 36 civilians for every militant. Such a campaign, with the high civilian death toll, casts a dark shadow on the peoples of the Middle East previously unaffiliated with extremist groups. Now, not only do they live under perpetual terror of being bombed at any second but they also feel intense anger towards the bombings being carried out against them indiscriminately. This serves to turn previously “pro-America” or neutral areas towards the jihadi extremists which deem America a target, thus making Americans less safe.

Shortly put…

It seems the programs that are put forth publicly to ensure “national security” do more damage to it than the leaks of whistle-blowers such as Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning ever will.

Especially to the United States

Home to the largest military spending budget in the world (larger than the next 20 largest spenders), war and all industries related to war are sacks of easy money in a system called the military-industrial complex (think hundreds of billions). Such money will not be removed from private pockets (contractors and arms manufacturers like Blackwater and Boeing) without a qualm, there will be fights where the powers that be make it painfully clear what the consequences of threatening these subsidies and cash cows are.

But it can be done with strong links to organic movements and groups of like-minded people, as King repeatedly showed.

Fitting nicely into the Chomsky-Herman propaganda model of the mass media, the media and intellectual culture fail to point out our crimes and instead march happily to the beat of the war drums. With the media and most of the intellectual elites “manufacturing consent” (a longtime tendency of Western society, most of the public silently or acquiescently supported the incredibly aggressive invasion of South Vietnam for lack of facts about the situation or of its resulting atrocities.

The reality of the situation began to leak outwards, with news coverage, leaks such as the infamous Pentagon Papers, and such. Massive civil action (dwarfed by the Iraq War’s protests of upwards 15 million) eventually led to the end of this war crime, at great cost to the Indochina region perhaps permanently.

King found himself in the sights of the government for his conscious–COINTELPRO specficially not only for his opposition to imperialist war(s) but to the domestic class war(s) that prompted the 1963 March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom where he gave his uplifting “I Have A Dream” speech.