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Upset about troop movements and diplomatic cables being exposed to the public? Accountability and public oversight is *such* a pain. Notice how much coverage Wikileaks has been receiving from the media as of late, close to zero-ish, by my accounting and it is not accidental. Reporting actual news and happenings is dangerous and requires dedication to qualities other than the corporate bottom line.
Do your part to help keep Wikileaks alive and well, as it is a source of what is actually happening in our world, as opposed to the carefully crafted image we are constantly bombarded with.
A big thanks to Moe for posting this video :) Visit her blog Whatever Works when you can, it is most worth your while.
Justice, like our society, is stratified. The type and response of the legal system depends very much on what class you are in and who you have managed to piss off.
“Bradley Manning is accused of humiliating the political establishment by revealing the complicity of top US officials in carrying out and covering up war crimes. In return for his act of conscience, the US government is torturing him, humiliating him and trying to keep him behind bars for life.
The lesson is clear, and soldiers take note: You’re better off committing a war crime than exposing one.
An Army intelligence officer stationed in Kuwait, the 23-year-old Manning – outraged at what he saw – allegedly leaked tens of thousands of State Department cables to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. These cables – cables that show US officials covering up everything from child rape in Afghanistan to an illegal, unauthorised bombing in Yemen.
Manning is also accused of leaking video evidence of US pilots gunning down more than a dozen Iraqis in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists – and then killing a man who stopped to help them. The two young children of the passerby were also severely wounded.
“Well, it’s their fault for bringing kids into a battle,” a not-terribly-remorseful US pilot can be heard remarking in the July 2007 “Collateral Murder” video.”
Being the one small citizen has distinct disadvantages when attempting to do what is ethically correct. Bradley 
Manning is being punished for exposing his state’s wrongdoings to the public. Raping children and illegally bombing nations gives Uncle Sam a black eye and for the bad PR Mr.Manning has to pay. Consider those responsible for the actions, what justice are they being dispensed? The wrathful vengeance that Mr.Manning is enduring? Hardly.
“None of the soldiers who carried out that war crime [the collateral murder video] have been punished, nor have any of the high-ranking officials who authorised it. And that’s par for the course. Indeed, committing war crimes is more likely to get a soldier a medal than a prison term. And authorising them? Well, that’ll get you a book deal and a six-digit speaking fee. Just ask George W Bush. Or Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld or Condoleezza Rice. Or the inexplicably “respectable” Colin Powell.
In fact, the record indicates Manning would today be far better off if he’d killed those men in Baghdad himself – and on the lecture circuit, rather than in solitary confinement.”
The funny thing is that we accept this as normal and mundane. The idea that the elite could be held responsible for their decisions is quite absurd, observe the justification:
“Almost five years later, not one of the men involved in the incident is behind bars. And despite an Army investigation revealing that statements made by the chain of command suggest they “believe Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as US lives”, with the murder of brown-skinned innocents considered “just the cost of doing business” – a direct quote from Maj Gen Eldon Bargewell’s 2006 investigation into the killings – none of their superiors are behind bars either.”
Yeppers, I’m glad I’m on the side of Justice and Accountability… meanwhile back in prison hell Mr.Manning continues to rot.
“Meanwhile, the Obama administration has decided to make Manning’s pre-trial existence as torturous as possible, holding him in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day since his arrested ten months ago – treatment which Psychologists for Social Responsibility notes is, “at the very least, a form of cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment in violation of US law”.
In addition to the horror of long-term solitary confinement, Manning is barred from exercising in his cell and is denied bed sheets or a pillow. And every five minutes, he must respond in the affirmative when asked by a guard if he’s “okay”.
Presumably he lies.
It gets worse. On his blog, Manning’s military lawyer, Lt Col David Coombs, reveals his client is now stripped of his clothing at night, left naked under careful surveillance for seven hours, and, when the 5:00am wake-up call comes, he’s then “forced to stand naked at the front of the cell”.
I’m sure Mr.Manning is embracing ‘hope & change’ wholeheartedly. This leads to a very interesting parallel with the Nixon governement.
“Remember back when Obama campaigned against such Bush-league torture tactics? Recall when candidate Obama said “government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal”? It appears his opposition to torture and support for whistleblowers was mere rhetoric. And then he took office.
Indeed, despite the grand promises and soaring oratory, Obama’s treatment of Manning is starkly reminiscent of none other than Richard Nixon.
Like Obama – who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any president in history – Nixon had no sympathy for “snitches”, and no interest in the US public learning the truth about their government. And he likewise argued that Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, had given “aid and comfort to the enemy” for revealing the facts about the war in Vietnam.
But there’s a difference. Richard Nixon never had the heroic whistleblower of his day thrown in solitary confinement and tortured. If only the same could be said for Barack Obama.”
I’m thinking that electing the best of the worst strategy is not really paying of for the citizens of the United States. I think that they need to find an independent candidate and throw the support of the people behind him or her because the Democrats and Republicans have nothing more than contempt and scorn to offer to the people of America.
Governments keep secrets. Some important, some not so important. Hopefully with the ushering in of a second major “leaks” site governments around the world will begin to revise their agendas with the threat of pubic examination of the actions they commit and suppress “for interests of the state”.
“A former co-worker of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to launch a rival website Monday called Openleaks that will help anonymous sources deliver sensitive material to public attention.
In a documentary by Swedish broadcaster SVT, to be aired Sunday and obtained in advance by The Associated Press, former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg said the new website will work as an outlet for anonymous sources.”
More is better. The efforts to smear/silence Julian Assange have kicked into overdrive and rest assured, Berg will be under similar pressure as well.
“The WikiLeaks site has come under attack, while Assange, who is now in a British jail fighting extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations, has been threatened. Swiss Postfinance, MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., PayPal Inc. and others have cut ways to send donations to the group, impairing its ability to raise money.”
Clearly, you can see which side Corporate interests lie. It is unsurprising, as Corporations like States have many ugly secrets that they do not want the public to know about. Wikileaks is a grassroots organization, and I suggest you support an agency (see the side bar for links to the main and mirror wikileaks sites)that is dedicated to increasing the publics knowledge of the workings of their governments. The idea of government for the people by the people should be more than just a mumbled platitude.
Update: Find the openleaks page here, nothing to see yet but a logo.
The Swiss, being sensible, have denied the US and France’s requests to shut down WikiLeaks.
“The site’s new Swiss registrar, Switch, today said there was “no reason” why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.”
Pretty embarrassing, but hardly surprising, when the “land of the free and home of the brave” do their utmost to destroy the very lifeblood democracies thrive on, namely information. Hey of course, it is ‘sensitive state information’. You can find it on google now, perhaps like other state apparatus google should be censored as well. Back in the ‘home of the brave’ the censorship is not so obvious:
“The reassurances [from the Swiss] come just hours after eBay-owned PayPal, the primary donation channel to WikiLeaks, terminated its links with the site, citing “illegal activity”. France yesterday added to US calls for all companies and organisations to terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks following the release of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.”
Of course, you target the infrastructure that keeps WikiLeaks afloat. The Americans, let their poor die in natural disasters (Katrina anyone?), but watch the organization and money being spent when an attack on the elite happens. The response to Wikileaks is a case study in who has the power in the US and who is really driving that national agenda.
It makes one wonder, with all the furor, what is still classified and quietly festering in the background on a hard drive somewhere of actions that our governments take in our name.
The George Orwell quotations are being dusted off again and rightfully so – consider…
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
This quote prefaces the video, also released on WikiLeaks, of the American Army gunning down men and children while in Iraq. Does anyone, anymore have the gall anymore to say “why do they hate us?”
Busy weekend folks, blogging was low on the list of priorities. Therefore I steal the Media Lens Email alert and repost it for your viewing pleasure. It is a meaty one, many links and a nice take down of the corporate media.
MEDIA ALERT: WIKILEAKS – THE SMEAR AND THE DENIAL
PART 1 – THE SMEAR
“Journalists don’t like WikiLeaks”, Hugo Rifkind notes in The Times, but “the people who comment online under articles do… Maybe you’ve noticed, and been wondering why. I certainly have.” (Hugo Rifkind Notebook, ‘Remind me. It’s the red one I mustn’t press, right?,’ The Times, October 26, 2010)
Rifkind is right. The internet has revealed a chasm separating the corporate media from readers and viewers. Previously, the divide was hidden by the simple fact that Rifkind’s journalists – described accurately by Peter Wilby as the “unskilled middle class” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/10/comment.pressandpublishing) – monopolised the means of mass communication. Dissent was restricted to a few lonely lines on the letter’s page, if that. Readers were free to vote with their notes and coins, of course. But in reality, when it comes to the mainstream media, the public has always been free to choose any colour it likes, so long as it’s corporate ‘black’. The internet is beginning to offer some brighter colours.
If Rifkind is confused, answers can be found between the lines of his own analysis:
“With WikiLeaks, with the internet at large, power is democratised, but responsibility remains the preserve of professionals.”
This echoes Lord Castlereagh’s insistence that “persons exercising the power of the press” should be “men of some respectability and property”. (Quoted, James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility – The Press And Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, 1991, p.13)
And it is with exactly this version of “responsibility” that non-corporate commentators are utterly fed up. We are, for example, tired of the way even the most courageous individuals challenging even the most appalling crimes of state are smeared as “irresponsible”.
Thus, Rifkind describes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as “a frighteningly amoral figure”. In truth, journalists find Assange a frighteningly +moral+ figure. Someone willing to make an enemy of the world’s leading rogue state in order to expose the truth about the horrors it has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq is frightening to the compromised, semi-autonomous employees of corporate power. Assange’s courage is the antidote to their poison.
A separate Times editorial comments:
“Nowhere in WikiLeaks’s self-serving self publicity is there a judgment of what the organisation is achieving for the Iraqi nation, and what it hopes to achieve… Its personnel are partisans intervening in the security affairs of Western democracies and their allies, with a culpable heedlessness of human life.” (Leader, ‘Exercise in Sanctimony; The release of military files by WikiLeaks is partisan and irresponsible,’ The Times, October 25, 2010)
Again, the truth is reversed – it is The Times, together with virtually the entire mass media, that is notable for its “heedlessness of human life”, for its endorsement of the West’s perennial policy: attack, bomb, invade, torture, kill based on any crass pretext that can be got past the public. As WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson politely told the WSWS website this week:
“The media is getting much too close to the military industry. They are not following the changing moods of the general public who are increasingly opposed to the wars.” (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/wiki-n02.shtml)
In the Daily Mail, Edward Heathcoat-Amory’s article raised the important question:
“Paranoid, anarchic. Is WikiLeaks boss a force for good or chaos?”
After all, “The Wikileaks supremo lives a bizarre peripatetic life, with no house and few belongings…” He also has “disciples” whom “he ruthlessly manipulates”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297917/Is-Wikileaks-boss-Julian-Assange-force-good-chaos.html)
As for Assange’s motivation: “His critics says he’s motivated by a desire for personal publicity.”
Like Rifkind, Heathcoat-Amory is appalled by Assange’s lack of “ethical judgments”, his “cult of secrecy, with no accountability to anyone”. Lack of accountability can indeed be a problem. Heathcoat-Amory, it should be mentioned, is of the Heathcoat-Amory Baronetcy, whose humble “family seat” was at Knightshayes Court in Tiverton, Devon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightshayes_Court
In The Times, passionately pro-Iraq war commentator David Aaronovitch recalls the main theme of his questions to Assange: “from where did WikiLeaks derive its authority and to whom was it accountable”. And from where exactly does The Times derive its authority? To whom is +it+ responsible? Its advertisers? Rupert Murdoch? Aaronovitch continued:
“And this is where something strange happened. Questioners wanted to know from Assange just how he and his team decided which documents to publish, which to redact, which to leave unpublished… Not only would Assange not answer these questions, it was almost as though he regarded them as illegitimate… I could tell that the overwhelming reaction was surprise at Assange’s refusal to engage in any discussion about himself as anything other than an uncaped crusader.” (Aaronovitch, ‘Enigmatic WikiLeaks chief keeps his guard up,’ The Times, October 2, 2010)
Strange indeed, because in fact Assange has addressed these questions numerous times (See here for a recent example: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/26/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_on_iraq). Aaronovitch focused on Assange’s jacket, his shirt, his shoes – “incredibly long and pointy black winkle pickers”. The very fact of the focus suggested something was not quite right. The unsubtle implication: Assange was unsavoury, strange, sinister.
A Daily Mail reporter described Assange as “somewhat bizarre-looking”.
An Independent news report referred to the “sometimes erratic behaviour of Wikileaks’ founder”. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/secret-war-at-the-heart-of-wikileaks-2115637.html)
In an interview with ABC News (Australia), the Independent’s Robert Fisk derided Assange as “some strange code-breaker from Australia”. (http://is.gd/gzdKc)
Dan Jones wrote in the Evening Standard: “Assange is slippery. He is a master of the moral non sequitur… Do we really want the definition of what constitutes the public interest resting in the hands of a highly politicised neo-anarchist like Assange?” (Jones, ’There are limits to the freedom of the internet,’ Evening Standard, August 2, 2010)
Again, the level of self-awareness hovered around zero.
The Daily Telegraph observed: “the publication of classified documents risks endangering the lives of both soldiers and those who collaborate with them.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8084891/Wikileaks-A-very-leaky-argument.html)
+Failure+ to publish the documents risks the lives of the inevitable next target of the US-UK killing machine in Iran, or Yemen, or Syria, or Venezuela. At this point, the only people capable of stopping the “coalition” is the public they are supposed to represent.
The New York Times’ Hit Piece Read the rest of this entry »
The blatant obfuscation and chicanery that were hallmarks of the Bush Era (or any Presidential reign) continues to taint America and her armed forces. More evidence of torture, abuse and human rights violations against the US have been uncovered via Wikileaks. The mythological barrier that separates “us” and “them” grows ever thinner. The war mongers hide the facts from the people because they know that the population of the US would not permit these acts to be carried out in their name if they knew about them.
“Americans turned a blind eye to hundreds of reports of abuse, torture and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers, according to reports in nearly 392,000 documents related to the Iraq war and released Friday by WikiLeaks.
The documents say the detainees were whipped, punched, kicked or subjected to electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee’s apparent death.”
The idea that we have some sort of moral superiority or higher ethical calling will still go on, it always does, but hopefully less people will believe the mendacity that is so kindly spun for them everyday.
“The Times said the reports indicate that while some abuse cases were investigated by the Americans, most were ignored. The reports released by WikiLeaks and dubbed “The Iraq War Logs,” cover the period from Jan. 1, 2004, to Dec. 31, 2009. WikiLeaks said the files detail more than 109,000 deaths in Iraq, including 66,081 civilians. The reports also document the deaths of almost 24,000 people labelled as insurgents, more than 15,000 Iraqi government troops and almost 3,800 coalition forces.”
The death tolls for Iraq civilians were kept. One of the more egregious ‘oversights’ of the American military during their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. When humanity is stripped from an enemy, so much easier it is to do horrendous things to them. For instance:
“In one case, Americans suspected Iraqi army officers of cutting off a detainee’s fingers and burning him with acid, the New York Times reported. Two other cases produced accounts of the executions of bound detainees.”
Embracing torture is yet another important milestone in unravelling of the rule of law and civilized society. How can we accuse others of gross violations of international law when we (all along) violate those same laws with such impunity?
“The documents, according to the Times, also claim that Americans sometimes used the threat of abuse by Iraqi authorities to get information out of prisoners. For example, one report said an American threatened to send a detainee to the notorious Wolf Brigade if he did not supply information.
But the report also said Americans often intervened when Iraqis were being tortured”
Is there any way to deny culpability now? The various departments of defense and state are now in their beset PR mode attempting to ameliorate the effects of these rather perverse revelations.
“U.S. Secretary of States Hillary Clinton slammed the release of the files.
“We should condemn in the most clear terms the disclosure of any classified information by individuals and organizations which puts the lives of United States and partner service members and civilians at risk,” she said in Washington, D.C.”
Thanks Hillary. Nothing said toward what the reports actually say, or the actions of the people we are responsible for. Just the wagging finger giving us the ‘secrets of the state’ lecture and how this may negatively effect people as a result. How about standing up for what is right and condemning the apparatus that has allowed such egregious actions to happen in the first place.
No, that would be entirely too much to expect from an elected official as the state as opposed to the people are the interests that count.
Behaving as media should.
Whistle-blowers usually take great risks to get out information to the public. I suspect that it was not WikiLeaks fault that this individual has been arrested, but rather a reverse engineering by the US military of who had access to what and where.
“The army intelligence specialist charged with leaking U.S. military secrets to the WikiLeaks website has been moved from Kuwait to a military jail in Virginia.
In a statement issued Friday, the U.S. army said Pte. Bradley Manning was flown Thursday to Quantico Marine Base, where he will be held while awaiting trial for leaking top-secret military intelligence to WikiLeaks, a site devoted to publishing leaked government and other sensitive documents.”
Mr. Manning, allegedly, has been a very naughty and very busy bee, apparently he is also responsible for the video from the gun cameras of attack helicopters shooting up civilians in Iraq along with the thousands of documents made available on WikiLeaks.
“White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the leak of tens of thousands of secret military documents already has jeopardized the lives of Afghans working with the U.S. and its war allies.”
If our media had actually been doing its job and reporting about what was happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, we would not have had the need for this particular leak. Instead through our journalistic mandarins continue to go meekly through their routines of obedience toward elite power. Journalism is not performing its original function any more, that is bringing the news to the people. Battered by calls for “objectivity” and “balance” what we get is a tendentious smear of propaganda; this vile pap masquarading as “news” for consumption by the public.
A side note, Mr.Manning will probably be publicly drawn and quartered for his heroic actions Al Jazeera opines in their article about the WikiLeaks source:
“In a statement, the defence department said Manning was transfered to the US “due to a potentially lengthy pre-trail confinement because of the complexity of the charges and an ongoing investigation.”
Our correspondent said that the US military wants to use Manning to send a message to future whistleblowers.
“If you violate the trust of security clearance, you will be prosecuted,” she said.”
A rational decision by the US military, but I do not think it will really help their security situation much in the long run. Too much malfeasance, for too long involving so many individuals, one will always have the temerity to challenge the system. This may not have happened if our media was less complacent when it came to analyzing and presenting facts about the current military imbroglios. There is some hope though.
The media is being slowly replaced, people can see the inherent bias in the system and now are cross checking and consulting many sources for a better view of what is happening in the world. So when I hear the newspapers bleating about their costs going up and advertisers leaving them I have no sympathy. If they did their job, people would buy their product. As is, who needs to see elite opinion reiterated for the nth time only in a different medium?
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