Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden Working class Americans to be proud of

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment" *

The release of secret National Security Administration documents revealing the US government agency’s extensive spying and surveillance apparatus has thrown the US capitalist class in to deeper crisis.  Billions of e mails and other private communications between Americans are being stored and processed by the NSA.

Edward Snowden, the young man who revealed himself as the source of the leaks in an interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, is presently in hiding and no doubt fearing for his life.  Snowden’s actions come during the trial of Bradley Manning, the young US soldier facing a life sentence for sharing with the US public, information about US government war crimes and dirty diplomatic deals and as Julian Assange, a founder of the Wikileaks news service that published the material, is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The NSA’s gathering of the personal information of tens of millions of Americans and others, has been made possible in part by the agency having access to the “systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants” according to a top secret document obtained and verified by the Guardian. The access to all this information was made possible through what the media has described as a “previously undisclosed program” called Prism.

The official line is that Prism functions with the assistance of these companies but all the companies involved have so far denied it.  Officials at Apple have said they never heard of Prism. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," some execs have stated.  That is highly unlikely.

We should not underestimate the severity of this crisis coming on the heels of the Wikileaks/Manning revelations which shed light on their phony diplomacy, a diplomacy rooted in lies and thievery. The extent to which this affects million of ordinary US citizens adds much more fuel to the fire.

Amid the turmoil, the profiteers and their representatives in Congress and the White House have condemned Snowden much as they have Manning and Assange.  Barack Obama has defended the massive surveillance network begun under his predecessor, the Imbecile Bush saying, "that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing" because "they help us prevent terrorist attacks."

Dianne Feinstein, a one-time darling of the liberals denied Snowden was a whistleblower, and publicly accused him of committing “an act of treason.”

The Wall Street Journal responded in much the same way pointing out sarcastically that, “At least Mr. Snowden has the courage of his misguided convictions” because he publicly identified himself as the source of the leak rather than remaining anonymous although his motives “..appear to be political paranoia and righteous good intentions.”

After all, the Journal adds, “If he did discover abuses, he could have gone to the multiple layers of oversight including congressional committees.”. These “multiple layers” are actually multiple obstacle courses, hoops for people to jump through until they become so fatigued and demoralized they cannot go on and the secrecy and phony façade of government is maintained. The objection to allowing any undermining of military commanders control over rape allegations in their units is motivated by the same concerns.

The Journal then went on to discredit Snowden personally, “His likely career path took him from community college washout to NSA security guard to Central Intelligence Agency IT consultant…”  Normally, a guy who never graduated high school ending up as a well-paid specialist for a major government agency would be good news for Wall Street Journal readers.  But you have to be on the team, you have to be prepared to suppress democracy and keep from millions of Americans information they have a right to know. 

US capitalism is experiencing a political as well as an economic crisis.  We have here a situation where its own internal regime is breaking down. US capitalism, the sole global superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union is spreading itself very thin as it is forced to defend its global influence and the struggle for resources and has to put the US working class on rations to finance it. The self-proclaimed American Century lasted barely a decade. 

After the collapse of Stalinism, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “We Won.”  The society the US capitalist class referred to as “Communism” had fallen under the weight of its own parasitic bureaucracy; the bi-polar world was no more and the US stood alone as the most powerful economic and military force on earth. Full Spectrum Dominance was the new mantra.

Officially known as full-spectrum superiority this term was defined by the U.S. military as:
“The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”,  “Full Spectrum Dominance” became the new order.  US capitalism must be free to travel the world uninhibited.  Even cyberspace must come under US capitalism’s control.  In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid technological advances and the events of 911, cyberspace has become the battleground of the future.

With the official goal of making the world “Safe for Democracy” after the events of September 11^th 2003, the US increased its military presence throughout the world and beefed up it security and surveillance forces at home and abroad to the point that some five million Americans hold US government security clearances. But the wars in cyberspace are real, despite possessing billions of dollars worth of military hardware, the right hacker with the right program can create havoc with a nation’s defense/offense system. The huge increase in private contractors having access to secret information is a product of the increasing cyber warfare and, as the WSJ points out, large US companies are lobbying the government to grant more security clearances for their employees, in part to, “..fend off hackers from Iran, China and elsewhere.”

The changed global relations since the collapse of the Soviets and the bi-polar world has increased tensions between nation states particularly with the rise of China and the Russian Federation.  The rising social movements from Egypt to Greece, Latin America, China and South Africa, very much aided by social media, have increased the need for surveillance and control of the Internet as well as increased police and security presence on the ground.  The US War on Terror is an announcement to the world that US capitalism has the right to wage war anywhere it wants.  Waged under the banner of saving the world for democracy it is a war for global domination and the plundering of global markets and resources; it is a war without end until the planet can no longer sustain it.

Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, are heroic figures.  The war to criminalize investigative journalism, another by-product of the War on Terror also has its heroic figures like Glenn Greenwald and others who refuse to “embed” their journalistic integrity in the cesspool of bourgeois politics.

Apologists for the 1%, as they do with Bradley Manning, claim Snowden is aiding terrorists and placing US troops in harms way.  But it is not terrorists (a term that encompasses any person or persons that oppose US imperialism’s agenda) that Snowden’s leaks were being kept from.  So-called terrorists know full well they are being tracked; the US has been imposing such measure like retina scans on civilian populations outside its borders for years.  It is the US population that was unaware of this extensive invasion of our privacy until Snowden revealed it to us. 

Snowden made it quite clear that had he wanted to harm the US as a nation he could  have. “If I had just wanted to harm the US, then you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon, but that’s not my intention.” He said in his interview with Greenwald.  He has made his intentions very clear:

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy, privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,"

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.”  he said, and that he would be satisfied, “if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

“I’m no different than anybody else…”he went on,  “I don’t have special skills, I’m just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what’s happening and goes, ‘This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs are right or wrong.’”

As this crisis deepens it is forcing some in the US Congress to try and cover their asses and question the level of surveillance activities in the US and a review of the Patriot act has been suggested.  Internationally, Obama and all US government officials will be facing questions form their counterparts throughout the world. They are all involved in this cyber warfare but the US has the big stick.

It is likely we will see more of this in the future and one can only wonder at this point what effect this will have on the Manning Trial.  There is no doubt Snowden has increased his chances of survival by coming out in to the open although the US state apparatus are masters of assassination.  It is the US working class that they are afraid of here; they have become a little overconfident and overconfidence in politics can lead to severe mistakes, even catastrophic ones.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have stood up against the most powerful militaristic force on the planet, two working class young men against the US state.  They are truly heroic figures in every sense of the word. By comparison, if we go to the official website of the AFL-CIO we will see nothing, not a word about this episode that is being talked about across the globe (if there is anything it is hidden). The stifling bureaucracy that sits at the head of the largest national labor organization in the US is best described as similar to the old soviet bureaucracy without state power. For those of us proud of US working class history and those heroic figures who built our movement, the present heads of organized labor are nothing less than criminal in their cowardly retreat in the face of the bosses’ offensive. For organized workers, we are in a war on two fronts, one with the bosses and the other more difficult one with their allies who lead our movement.

Despite this, Republican Rep. Peter King’s statement that  “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”,  belongs in a time passed. US capitalism has limited credibility abroad as its allies are unreliable lackeys, bought, cajoled and bribed in to their camp and its representatives at home among the most hated and distrusted figures in society.

The world has changed much in the past 20 years. These developments are very positive and reflect the growing frustration and opposition to a bankrupt economic system that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. Workers throughout the world should support Snowden, Bradley Manning and others like them, actively where we can. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

It is a good time to be alive. 

*Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds an expert consultant to the US and UK governments on psychological operations, propagandaand diplomacy. source

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Free Bradley Manning: An American Hero

Bradley Manning has served three years in prison for informing the US public about war crimes the US government is committing in our name. We owe him a debt of gratitude for having the courage it took to do this. The White House and the few thousand unelected people that make the decisions that affect all our lives, including those outside our borders, are moving to impose further restrictions on our civil rights including making investigative journalism a crime. Their treatment of Manning is directed at the rest of us: "keep your mouths shut" is the message. Don't wait until your back is against the wall before you fight back.

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Bradley Manning: US government moving to make journalism a crime

We are sharing this as we read about the US government's claim in the Bradley Manning trial that Manning was basically receiving instructions from Assange.  This is in order to legalise their pursuit of Assange for espionage.  As this piece points out, pursuing information which is a journalists job, can and will be considered criminal activity.  They are moving to criminalize investigative journalism.

Reprinted from The Daily Beast

Pentagon Papers Lawyer James Goodale: It’s Time for Eric Holder to Resign

by James C. Goodale May 30, 2013 11:13 AM EDT

The attorney general’s conduct in trying to pass off the James Rosen subpoena as falling under the Espionage Act proves that he is abusing his office. Pentagon papers lawyer James Goodale has seen this before—in Richard Nixon.

Attorney General Eric Holder should resign for his role in the James Rosen case. He signed off on a search warrant to Rosen, a Fox News reporter. This warrant treated Rosen as a common criminal. It sets a terrible precedent. Holder should resign to erase this precedent.

Attorney General Eric Holder during the Office of Inspector General’s annual awards ceremony May 29. Holder should resign, Pentagon papers lawyer James Goodale says. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department adviser, had leaked to Rosen information about North Korea’s nuclear plans. The Justice Department sought the source of this leak by obtaining a search warrant for Rosen’s emails and other records. Fox News believes the search warrant even sought records from Rosen’s parents, who live in Staten Island, New York.

The basis for obtaining the warrant was that Rosen had conspired with Kim to violate the Espionage Act. That act does not apply to Rosen. It does however, in the government’s view, apply to Kim. It should be clear to anyone that Holder has run an end run around the Espionage Act by his actions. While Rosen is not subject to the Espionage Act, Kim is. But Rosen might as well be subject to the act if he can be held responsible for Kim’s actions.

The reason the Espionage Act does not apply to Rosen is that it does not apply to those who publish (or broadcast) information leaked to them. In the Pentagon papers case, the government asserted initially the Espionage Act did apply to The New York Times, the paper that published parts of the Vietnam archives leaked to it by Daniel Ellsberg.

If a reporter steps over the line drawn by the Justice Department, he or she may become a criminal. In short, the government has criminalized the news-gathering process.

When, however, the Times proved to the district court Judge Murray Gurfein that the word “publish” had intentionally been left out of the act, Gurfein concluded that the act was inapplicable. Thereafter, the government dropped its use of the Espionage Act, and it never appeared in its case again—even at the Supreme Court.

In its affidavit for a search warrant, the government asserted that Rosen had cajoled Kim into violating the act by trying to get Kim’s story out of him. Any reporter will quickly recognize that Rosen’s efforts are customary news-gathering practices used by all reporters. News does not come over the transom; reporters have to work hard to get it.

The government has now put itself in the position of setting standards for what reporters can and cannot do when they talk to those who have access to classified information. If a reporter steps over the line drawn by the Justice Department, he or she may become a criminal.  In short, the government has criminalized the news-gathering process.

Holder’s actions should come as no surprise to those who have been following him closely.  Rosen is not the only journalist Holder thinks is a criminal.  He is also pursuing Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. Pfc. Bradley Manning leaked classified information to Assange.

While little noticed, a grand jury was empanelled to indict Assange in 2010,  initially seeking charges under the Espionage Act. Holder however, later announced “there were problems” with using the Espionage Act for this purpose. Presumably Holder’s problem was that the Espionage Act did not apply to the publication by Assange of Manning’s leaked information on Assange’s website.

Thereafter, Justice Department officials let it be known that the grand jury was proceeding on a theory that Assange conspired with  Manning to leak to Assange. Assange had also made the leaked information available to Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País, and The Guardian. Later The Guardian shared this information with The New York Times, and all of them published parts of the leaked information, as did Assange on his website.

In December 2010, when the Committee to Protect Journalists learned that Holder had switched to a conspiracy theory, it wrote a letter to President Obama not to prosecute Assange, because such prosecution would criminalize news gathering. The committee pointed out to Obama that Assange was a journalist protected under the First Amendment and should not be treated as a co-conspirator. But little did the Committee to Protect Journalists know that Holder had used the conspiracy theory seven months before in May 2010, when he approved the use of the search warrant for Rosen’s records.

As far as anyone can tell, this grand jury is still alive. Assange’s lawyers believe it has already secretly indicted him. They think that as soon as Assange leaves the Ecuadoran Embassy where he is holed up, he will be faced with the indictment in the U.S. for conspiring with Manning.

Asking courts to treat journalists as criminals under the Espionage Act has only been asserted once before Holder started using it. President Richard M. Nixon used it against New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, who obtained the Vietnam archives from Daniel Ellsberg.  Following the Pentagon papers case, Nixon convened a grand jury to indict Sheehan for conspiring to cause the leak of the Pentagon papers. Nixon failed in this effort, and the grand jury disbanded after 17 months.

The difference between Nixon and Holder is that Nixon failed in his effort to treat Sheehan as a co-conspirator.  Nixon therefore could not create the precedent that reporters could be treated as criminals.  Holder has.  He should resign.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.

James C. Goodale is a First Amendment lawyer and was chief counsel for the New York Times during the Pentagon Papers. He is the author of “Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of the Pentago Papers and Other Battles.”

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

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US capitalism's war crimes at the root of anti-Americanism: Thank you Wikileaks and Bradley Manning

" Note, the above video was aired by Channel 4 and is based on investigations into Iraq War deaths using material analysed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in partnership with Wikileaks and which, in turn, is gleaned from information provided by whistleblower Bradley Manning (currently facing a possible life sentence for revealing war crimes). This must-watch video not only examines the actual numbers of those killed, but the proportion of civilians, how deaths occurred, as well as the use of unorthodox methods by US military, including torture."  Read more here: http://darkernet.in/the-iraq-killing-fields-the-untold-genocide-us-war-crimes-tribunal-investigation-8/

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Arab and Muslim anger toward the US government throughout the world has a source. It is not a hatred of American people because we are who we are or because most of us are Christians. It is not the ridiculous idea put forward by the US mass media that we are hated because we are "free" as the imbecile Bush used to say and the much slicker bourgeois Obama repeats. It is US foreign policy, the war crimes committed in our name that are at the root of this anger.  We become partners in crime if we don't openly condemn it and act in some way to halt it.

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To those Americans who take the time to investigate what our government does in other countries, this comes as no surprise.  US capitalism has a long history of  interference in nations whose governments do not wish to be mere conduits for US foreign policy and US hegemony as the piece below points out.  The first US personnel in Vietnam were CIA operatives whose task it was to destabilize that country.  The coup that overthrew the democratic secular regime of Mossadegh in Iran, the assassinations of Latin American leaders including the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende is well documented.

It is no wonder so many nations struggling to make their own way in the global community are so paranoid about US presence, not just its raw military presence but organizations from the US that claim to be otherwise.  The CIA has used religious organizations and NGO's as fronts for their its destabilization efforts.  I was in Macedonia at the end of the nineties and there were numerous evangelical missionary groups there, spreading the gospel apparently.  But many Macedonians I met were very suspicious of them, thought they were fronts for CIA activity.  They are not wrong.

The piece below is from the Green left Weekly.

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Venezuela: WikiLeaks shows US use 'human rights' to cover imperialist aims

Monday, April 15, 2013

By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, Merida

Former US ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield.

Cables leaked by WikiLeaks show Brownfield's role in promoting opposition groups to oppose Venezuela's government.

In the week leading up to Venezuela’s April 14 presidential elections, whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks published a classified cable indicating that US-based aid organisations were working to overthrow the government and defend US corporate interests in the Andean country.

Sent from the US embassy in Caracas on November 2006, the cable details how dozens of non-government organisations (NGOs) are financially maintained by US government-funded US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). This includes “over 300 Venezuelan civil society organizations”, ranging from disability advocates to education programs.

Many of the initiatives sound well-intentioned, such as ones supporting an environmental lobby group and a garbage collection program in Caracas.
However, USAID/OTI support for these benign-sounding groups was part of a larger, four-pronged project.

The ultimate aims of the embassy were described by then-US ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield as “penetrating Chavez’s political base ... dividing Chavismo ... protecting vital US business ...[and] isolating Chavez internationally”.

According to Brownfield, the “strategic objective” of developing opposition-aligned “civil society organizations[sic] ... represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela”. However, among the dozens of groups mentioned in the document, the usual suspects of US interventionism also make appearances.

According to the document, OTI funded a Freedom House program in Venezuela with US$1.1 million, while Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) provided grants totalling $726,000 on behalf of OTI.

DAI has a long history of working to undermine governments that oppose US hegemony, and this isn't the only time its operations in Venezuela have raised questions.
In 2002, DAI worked with the National Endowment for Democracy to fund a right-wing propaganda campaign during the 2002 oil industry lockout that sought to bring down Chavez’s government.
The groups is now being sued by the family of a subcontractor who was jailed in 2009 while working in Cuba.

Alan Gross was working with a USAID initiative to install satellite communication systems for civil use, when he was arrested by Cuban authorities for “acts against the integrity of the state”, and is now serving a 15-year prison term. His wife, Judy Gross has accused DAI of misleading him, and failing to provide adequate training.

Documents released by DAI in court certainly indicate that there was more to the initiative than DAI and USAID previously admitted. On January 18, DAI submitted records in the case that state the communications equipment was being provided to communities to “provide a base from which Cubans can 'develop alternative visions of the future'”.

In its court filing, DAI further stated that it is “deeply concerned that the development of the record in this case over the course of litigation could create significant risks to the U.S. government's national security, foreign policy, and human rights interests”.
In other words, DAI would rather keep its agenda in Cuba secret, because national security takes priority over a jailed subcontractor.

Like DAI, Freedom House prioritises US geopolitical concerns over human rights.
Some of Freedom House's past exploits include supporting the Vietnam War, opposing calls for the US to join the International Criminal Court, failing to condemn Guantanamo Bay and receiving funds from far-right groups such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
However, Freedom House really shines when it comes to interfering in elections, like it did in 2004 in Ukraine.

During the Ukrainian presidential campaign, it administered funds to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which allegedly financed groups campaigning for presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko.

At the time, the US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher responded to allegations that government funds were being poured into Yushchenko's campaign, telling media: “Our money doesn't go to candidates. It goes to the institutions that it takes to run a free and fair election”.
One such US-funded NGO was the International Centre for Policy Studies — of which Yushchenko was a board member.

When Brownfield wrote the leaked cable in 2006, Freedom House had $1.1 million in USAID/OTI funding to play with in Venezuela.
According to its website, Freedom House still operates in Venezuela to “strength[en] democratic institutions in order to improve democratic governance”.

Its more recent activities include contradicting Supreme Court rulings in both January and March.
On both occasions, Freedom House uncritically regurgitated interpretations of the Venezuelan constitution from the main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).
Like in the 2004 Ukrainian elections, it appears that Freedom House has chosen to focus its efforts on backing its preferred candidate, rather than pursue its stated goal to “strength[en] democratic institutions”.

As illustrated by the WikiLeaks document, the relationship between the US embassy in Caracas and groups such as Freedom House and DAI is close. In 2007, Brownfield was accused by the Chavez administration of interfering in internal affairs. On March 5 this year, the day Chavez died, two US embassy officials were expelled after the government accused them of trying to ferment another coup.

Indeed, there is a shared imperative to end the revolution, whether through violence or seemingly innocent “civil society” activities.

Though the methods vary, there is one constant in Washington's approach to Venezuela; regime change at all costs, and regression to the neo-colonial relationship of the pre-Chavez years. [Ryan Mallett-Outtrim is a Green Left Weekly journalist living in Merida, Venezuela.]

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Wikileaks cables reveal extent of US government's lying to its own people and the world

Readers will no doubt remember the famous and impassioned speech by Colin Powell at the United Nations Security Council where he justified the invasion and subsequent massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s because the US’s old pal Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  

We now know this to have been a lie in order to allow the US to remove Hussein who was becoming more unreliable in the pursuit of US capitalism’s interests in the region.  Iraqi oil was a nationalized industry for example.

Here is one of the cables released by Wikileaks last week.  If there is any doubt that the roots of terrorism or antagonism to the US government and it’s policies is based on the brutal and violent imposition of US imperial policies this should clear it up. Iraq was telling the truth, Powell and the US lied.  Millions of people around the world know this.  Americans too often tend to ignore it. Hundreds of thousands of people including thousands of young Americans have died as US politicians lied.

Powell, Bush, Blair, Rumsefeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Hilary Clinton , Obama are a all bunch of murderers and war criminals.  Is there any doubt what is at the root of extreme paranoia at the sight of US presence on the part of N. Korea and Iran?   It is US capitalism that is the most destructive and destabilizing force in the world today; it is the duty of American workers and the middle class to put a stop to it; surely, if we know the truth, we cannot remain silent. The policies of the US government are designed to advance the interest of the multinational corporations and those who profit from this situation.  As we read this, and with an upcoming Grand Prix expected to take place in Bahrain, people are being tortured and imprisoned for protesting against an absolute monarch and for democratic reforms and a republic.  This is all in the presence of 30,000 US troops. The original is here

Thank you Bradley Manning

The bold emphasis below we added.

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UN/IRAQ: IRAQ SENDS LETTER PRE-EMPTIVELY TAKING ISSUE WITH THE SECRETARY'S FEBRUARY 5 PRESENTATION
Date: 2003 February 6, 00:21 (Thursday)	Canonical ID: 03USUNNEWYORK298_a
Original Classification: UNCLASSIFIED	Current Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Handling Restrictions: -- Not Assigned --	Character Count: 4562
Executive Order: -- Not Assigned --	Locator: TEXT ONLINE
TAGS: IZ - Iraq | PARM - Political Affairs--Arms Controls and Disarmament | PREL - Political Affairs--External Political Relations | UNSC - UN Security Council	Concepts: -- Not Assigned --
Enclosure: -- Not Assigned --	Type: TE
Office Origin: -- N/A or Blank -- Office Action: -- N/A or Blank --

From: United Nations (New York)	Markings: -- Not Assigned --
To: Central Intelligence Agency | Defense Intelligence Agency | Department of Defense | Department of State | Iraq Iraq Collective | Joint Chiefs of Staff | National Security Council | United Nations Security Council | White House

Issue with the secretary's February 5 presentation

1. (u) Iraqi FM Naji Sabri submitted the following letter to the Security Council (s/2003/132), concerning the us presentation to the council on February 5. The full text of the letter follows in para 2.

2. (u) begin text. The government of the United States has announced that it has called for a meeting of the Security Council on 5 February 2003 at which United States secretary of state Colin Powell will present what has been dubbed "evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction."

This play-acting has become transparent after the submission by the united states of more than one report filled with allegations and accusations devoid of any evidence to substantiate them, such as the report annexed to the speech of united states president Bush before the general assembly on 12 September 2002, entitled "a decade of deception and defiance," and the report of the central intelligence agency (CIA) of October 2002, entitled "Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs." In both those reports, the bush administration accused Iraq of developing weapons of mass destruction at more than 50 sites. British prime minister tony Blair has played a supporting role in this regard, publishing a similar report in October 2002 in which he claimed that there existed specific sites in Iraq at which weapons of mass destruction were being developed.

 After Iraq accepted the return of the inspectors on 16 September 2002 and agreed to deal with security council resolution 1441 (2002), the united nations monitoring, verification and inspection commission (unmovic) and the international atomic energy agency (iaea) were requested to accord priority, in resuming inspections, to sites alleged by the united states and Britain to be developing weapons of mass destruction programmes.

Inspection work began on 27 November 2002. After two months of intensive inspections involving the use of state-of-the-art equipment for detecting any proscribed nuclear, chemical or biological activity and the analysis of water, soil and air samples all over Iraq during 518 tours of inspection comprising all the sites that were the object of president bush's and prime minister Blair’s accusations, as well as numerous other sites, including residential quarters in Iraqi cities, the report of Messrs.’ Blix and ElBaradei, submitted to the security council on 27 January 2003, substantiated Iraq’s declarations and consequently confirmed that the reports of president bush and prime minister Blair were devoid of truth and had been drafted in order to distort the picture of Iraq and create pretexts for aggression against Iraq and against the region as a whole.

Perhaps this fact explains the urgent requests addressed to states by Messrs.’ Blix and ElBaradei to provide unmovic and iaea with verifiable evidence of any proscribed activities, substances or materials in Iraq and the insistence of states members of the security council that those states which are alleging that Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction submit their evidence to unmovic and iaea pursuant to paragraph 10 of resolution 1441 (2002), which reads, "requests all member states to give full support to unmovic and the iaea in the discharge of their mandates, including by providing any information related to prohibited programmes or other aspects of their mandates ..."

On the basis of the above text, contained in the security council resolution, we request the government of the united states, through you, to submit immediately its alleged evidence to the technical committee entrusted by the united nations with verifying such allegations, namely unmovic (if they relate to proscribed activities in the chemical, biological or missile fields) or iaea (if they relate to proscribed activities in the nuclear field), so as to enable the two organizations to begin their investigations immediately and inform the security council and the international community of the extent to which those allegations are correct.

In this connection, we caution against using the general assembly or the security council as forums for spreading false accusations and fabricated evidence in open disregard for the mechanisms prescribed by the security council

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Wikileaks reveals Kissinger the War Criminal. Free Bradley Manning

Wikileaks has released some 1.7 million archived records and cables from the 1970's, many of them written by the war criminal Henry Kissinger.  Kissinger is complicit in the murder of Rene Schneider, the Chilean constitutionalist general and Salvadore Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile who was overthrown by a US supported coup in 1973. He is also responsible for the murder of millions of Vietnamese people.

Cables also reveal that in order to justify sending the Brazilian dictatorship money and military aid in the mid-seventies, the US government gave Brazil a "torture exemption".

The information also reveals that the Vatican's response to claims of mass killings and torture by general Pinochet who the US favored over the democratically elected Allende was that the claims were "communist propaganda".

The journalist interviewed above who has looked at some of the documents points out:

We’re talking about 1969, for example, the bombing of Cambodia; this is secret policies, which were going on from the White House in the 1970s; the South American Operation Condor; death squads running around in South America, killing thousands and disappearing thousands of people; 1973, [Salvador] Allende’s Chile, where Henry Kissinger ordered the assassination of the president of Chile because he wasn’t going in the [desired] political direction and installed General Pinochet; 1974, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. There are little bits of details on all of these, in which Kissinger was involved. I mean Kissinger basically gave a green light to Turkey to invade Cyprus. So once there was an official foreign policy going on, which was quite, you know, nice from the US, going alone with human rights – there was unofficial police going on, with Henry Kissinger in the White House, with all those kinds of human right abuses and war crimes going on.

During a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Turkey in 1975 Kissinger gave a little glimpse in to his world view when he said,  "Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, 'The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.' [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that."

Kissinger is a mass murder of some stature.   An excellent little book sharing some examples of his murderous activity is The Trial of Henry Kissinger by the late Christopher Hitchens

So many Americans have no idea of the role our government has played internationally, the assassinations, coups, supporting some of the most notorious mass killers in history on behalf of the US corporations.  Part of it is that so many feel there is absolutely nothing that we can do, so they bury their head in the sand and keep plodding along.  Our media is very controlled and they saturate the airwaves with sports and mind numbing entertainment.  But this cannot continue indefinitely as American are finding out through declining living standards, a bankrupt infrastructure and eternal insecurity. 

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Audio recording of Bradley Manning’s statement leaked

The Freedom of the Press Foundation published a full audio recording of Bradley Manning’s statement to the court taking responsibility for WikiLeaks’ releases.

Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images / AFP
By the Bradley Manning Support Network. March 12, 2013.

The transparency group Freedom of the Press Foundation has published an illicit audio recording of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s full statement on releasing classified documents to WikiLeaks as an act of conscience.
Despite this being among the most important trials in America today, journalists are not allowed to record any audio or video of the proceedings.

In the statement, Bradley describes joining the Army as an intelligence analyst, discovering and investigating grave abuses like the ‘Collateral Murder’ video and Garani air strike, and concluding that the American public deserved to know about how their government operates abroad.
He details his decisions to release the Iraq and Afghan war databases, the Collateral Murder video, Department of State diplomatic cables. He said he hoped these releases would “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.” Glenn Greenwald breaks down the statement in several audio segments here.
Upon hearing the audio recording, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg said, “I believe Bradley Manning is the personification of the word whistleblower.”

Prior to this release, the public and press at large have never been able to hear Bradley Manning’s voice. They’ve also been unable to see basic rulings, transcripts of the proceedings, and legal motions, as the military withholds all of these documents, severely hampering the press’ ability to follow and cover this case. The Center for Constitutional Rights, along with several media organizations, has sued the military to make documents in Manning’s proceedings public.
The Department of Defense just last month finally began releasing judicial notices and rulings, but most are several months old and don’t provide the press with contemporaneous access to the case. Reporters have become increasingly frustrated with their access to these proceedings.
As the Freedom of the Press’s announcement reads,

Freedom of the Press Foundation is dedicated to supporting journalism that combats overreaching government secrecy. We have been disturbed that Manning’s pre-trial hearings have been hampered by the kind of extreme government secrecy that his releases to WikiLeaks were intended to protest. While reporters are allowed in the courtroom, no audio or visual recordings are permitted by the judge, no transcripts of the proceedings or any motions by the prosecution have been released, and lengthy court orders read on the stand by the judge have not been published for public review.

The press and public should be allowed full access to Bradley’s proceedings. This recording is a welcome development toward that end, as it finally broadcasts Bradley’s voice and whistle-blowing motivations to the world.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras made a five-minute documentary using Bradley’s own words describing the Collateral Murder video here:

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Senator Julian Assange?

From The Sydney Morning Herald

Assange electoral boost
February 25, 2013 - 2:58PM

Julian Assange.Julian Assange’s plans to run as a Senate candidate have taken a step forward with his successful enrolment on the federal and state electoral rolls in Victoria.

Contrary to the expectations of a number of political commentators, the Australian Electoral Commission has accepted Mr Assange’s enrollment as an eligible overseas elector in the Victorian federal seat of Isaacs, the seat of Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

The WikiLeaks publisher plans to run for the Senate in Victoria as the lead candidate of a newly formed WikiLeaks Party at the September 14 federal election.

The new party, which is not yet registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, has an initial ten member national council comprised of close associates of Mr Assange and pro-WikiLeaks activists.

In addition to Mr Assange, the party’s national council compises Mr Assange’s father, Sydney architect John Shipton; one of the original founders of WikiLeaks, Melbourne mathematician Daniel Mathews; Australian National University physicist Niraj Lal; Maitland lawyer, political activist and former independent candidate Kellie Tranter;

Sydney based digital archivist and freedom of information activist Cassie Findlay; Gold Coast based information technology blogger Gary Lord; Dandenong women’s refuge manager and WikiLeaks Australian Citizens Alliance co-convener Kaz Cochrane; indigenous education consultant and activist Luke Pearson; and Oman Todd, cyber security and social media consultant with the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group.

It is understood Ms Tranter is likely to be the WikiLeaks Party’s Senate candidate in NSW.

Mr Assange currently resides in the Embassy of Ecuador in London where he has been granted political asylum on the grounds he is at risk of extradition to the United States to face conspiracy or other charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining thousands of secret US military and diplomatic reports leaked by US Army soldier Bradley Manning.

Swedish prosecutors wish to extradite Mr Assange to have him questioned in Stockholm in relation to sexual assault allegations by two women.  Mr Assange claims that extradition to Sweden would facilitate his eventual extradition  to the United States.

Mr Assange has indicated that if elected and unable to return to Australia to take up a seat in the Senate, a WikiLeaks Party nominee would fill the vacancy.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/assange-electoral-boost-20130225-2f1dw.html#ixzz2LsmpAgKM

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Julian Assange on War with Iran

While Assange fails to see the role of the working class in the struggle against global capitalism and putting faith in "decent" people to do the right thing and become whistleblowers, this is an interesting and valuable contribution. The previous blog showed the map of Iran and its encirclement by the US military. Assange correctly points out the fear and paranoia that must arise from such a situation and having the crazed Israeli's threatening to attack all the time. It's worth watching.
"Like" the FFWP page on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/FactsForWorkingPeople

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Free Bradley Manning: Transparency isn’t treason

Transparency isn’t treason: New York Times journalists criticize “aiding the enemy” charge

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. January 18, 2013.

PFC Bradley Manning. Photograph: AFP/Brendan Smialowski/Getty

Last week in Fort Meade, MD, government prosecutors said that if PFC Bradley Manning had released documents to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, they would still charge him with indirectly ‘aiding the enemy,’ which carries a life sentence.

This would be unprecedented: never before has a soldier been sent to jail for ‘aiding the enemy’ as a result of giving information to a news outlet. Government prosecutors argue that Manning needn’t have intended to aid the enemy; merely that he knew Al Qaeda could use the information is enough. This would turn all government whistle-blowing into treason: a grave threat to both potential sources and American journalism.

Following this contention in court, the Los Angeles Times called on the government to drop the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge, writing in an editorial, “That charge strikes us as excessive in the absence of evidence that Manning consciously colluded with hostile nations or terrorists.” Since then, even higher-profile media members have condemned the military’s pernicious claim and the precedent it would set. In an email in which she explained she couldn’t speak on behalf of her newspaper but could comment as a lifelong journalist and a former newspaper editor, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said,

“The implications for press freedom in the Bradley Manning prosecution trouble me, as does the federal government’s unprecedented targeting, in recent years, of whistleblowers and those who leak to the press.  The issues certainly aren’t black and white, but if the public expects the press to do its crucial job in our democracy, people ought to be more worried than they apparently are.  And I agree with the Los Angeles Times editorial that the “aiding the enemy” charge, which could result in a life sentence, is excessive.”

New York Times columnist and former executive editor Bill Keller said, “I think the treatment of Manning feels heavy-handed and out of proportion to actual harm done.”
In Michael Calderone’s story for the Huffington Post, “Manning Case Raises Troubling Questions For Journalists,” about the implications of this argument, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest said, “they don’t want other people to get the idea that they should be doing this,” and that it’ll have a “chilling effect on sources.”
Glenn Greenwald wrote for the Guardian, “[the government’s argument] can be – and almost certainly will be – just as easily applied to the vast majority of leaks on which investigative journalism has always relied.”
Mainstream news outlets, Greenwald said,

“might want to take a serious interest in this fact and marshal opposition to what is being done to Bradley Manning: if not out of concern for the injustices to which he is being subjected, then out of self-interest, to ensure that their reporters and their past and future whistle-blowing sources cannot be similarly persecuted.”

So why does the government continue to prosecute this way? Keller said, “It’s been clear from the outset that the government decided to make a lesson of Bradley Manning,” and that “the extreme conditions of his early confinement and the aiding-the-enemy charges suggest a deep animus toward Bradley.”

As the government works to discourage future leakers and to tighten security, it also classifies exponentially more documents every day. This harms the very people Bradley Manning wanted to inform in the first place: the American people.

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Bradley Manning's attorney gives public speech about Wikileaks Case

Bradley Manning Support Network

http://www.bradleymanning.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 4, 2012

Contact: Nathan Fuller, (516) 578-2628
press@Bradleymanning.org

Bradley Manning's attorney gives public speech about Wikileaks case

Last night, David Coombs, defense attorney in the WikiLeaks case, US. v. Bradley Manning, gave his first public presentation to an audience of over 100 at All Souls Church in Washington DC. In addition to being defense attorney in one of the most controversial and important ongoing cases today, Coombs was described as being a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves having done 12 years of active duty, with 15 years experience practicing and teaching law.  Additional speakers included Emma Cape and Kevin Zeese of the Bradley Manning Support Network, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, and Marsha Coleman-Adebayo of the National Whistleblower Center.

Mr. Coombs spoke on topics including Bradley's mistreatment at Quantico and Bradley's personality and future dreams, as well as Mr. Coombs own opinion of the military, and how having supporters worldwide inspired him and gave him hope.  Bradley Manning spent the first nine months of his pretrial incarceration in a 6x8 ft cell in solitary conditions described as "degrading and inhuman" by the UN Chief Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez.  Regarding Coombs' lengthy ongoing motion to have Bradley's charges dismissed due to 'unlawful pretrial punishment,' he explained, "I’m enjoying my opportunity to cross-examine those who had Bradley Manning in those conditions for nine months"

The audience was particularly excited to hear Coombs talk about Bradley as a person.  Coombs said that Brad is one of the smartest young men he'd ever met, who does things from the heart, and relayed a conversation he had about Bradley's future goals:  "And he told me that his dream would be to go to college, go into public service, and perhaps one day, run for public office.  And I asked Brad, why would he want to do that? And he said, 'I want to make a difference. I want to make a difference in this world.'"

While Coombs acknowledged he has been intimidated facing off against a government prosecution with "unlimited resources and personnel," he relayed that actions by supporters gave him hope. He also acknowledged the political significance of his case, "It is by far the most important military case, but it's a case that is significant for all of us," says Coombs. "We live in a country that is built on freedom of speech. We live in a country that is built on government accountability and informed citizens."  He said that Bradley is "excited" his case is finally going forward.

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has launched a lawsuit against the US military demanding Bradley Manning's court documents be made public.  He is available for interviews.

You can watch the first hour of the presentation on CSPAN's website:
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Attorney-for-Alleged-WikiLeaks-Source-Discusses-Case/10737436204/

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