This might also come in handy for the Harper Government™ hacks and apologists lurking here, seeing as you’re all trying to turn us into Yanks Lite with your dirty, smear-mongering politics. BTW, if you want to know where to start for Venezuela, it’s on the LEFT. Pay attention and memorize this, because you never know when reality will throw you a pop quiz. This concludes today’s tutorial. Any questions?
A group of Icelandic parliamentarians has nominated the world’s most famous whistleblower for one of the world’s most prestigious prizes. Undoubtedly he deserves it, but that probably means he won’t get it. After all, look who got it before him.
A useful primer to keep in mind, seeing how the war drums are beating louder these days.
Bonus: Something even MORE disturbing about Iran:
A couple of days ago, Bradley Manning celebrated his birthday behind bars for the second year in a row. He’s still awaiting trial, with no word on when it will begin. But the outcome of the trial looks to be a foregone conclusion already. Wired, which also broke the story about Adrian Lamo turning Bradley Manning in, today claims to have found the definitive link between Manning and the man who published all the shocking classified materials Manning gave him:
A government digital forensic examiner retrieved communications between accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning and an online chat user identified on Manning’s computer as “Julian Assange,” the name of the founder of the secret-spilling site that published hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables.
Investigators also found an Icelandic phone number for Assange, and a chat with another hacker located in the U.S., in which Manning says he’s responsible for the leaking of the “Collateral Murder” Apache helicopter video released by WikiLeaks in spring 2010.
Until Monday’s revelation, there’s been no reports that the government had evidence linking the two men, other than chat logs provided to the FBI by hacker Adrian Lamo. Assange is being investigated by a federal grand jury, but has not been charged with any crime, as publishing classified information is not generally considered a crime in the U.S. But if prosecutors could show that Assange directed Manning, that could complicate Assange’s defense that WikiLeaks is simply a journalistic endeavor.
The news of the chat logs came on the fourth day of Manning’s Army hearing being held to determine whether he’ll face court martial on 22 charges of violating military law for allegedly abusing his position as an intelligence analyst in Iraq to feed a treasure trove of classified and sensitive documents to WikiLeaks.
Mark Johnson, a digital forensics contractor for ManTech International who works for the Army’s Computer Crime Investigative Unit, examined an image of Manning’s personal MacBook Pro and said he found 14 to 15 pages of chats in unallocated space on the hard drive that were discussions of unspecified government info, and specifically referred to re-sending info.
Pretty damning stuff, eh?
Yeah, I’ll admit it doesn’t look good for Bradley Manning, or Julian Assange either. If you believe that the two of them should be tried for espionage, this certainly seems to bolster that contention. But the real point of the story, which would blow the whole “espionage” theory out of the water, has been missed: It’s not how Manning got his hands on all that data (which we’ve already known about for quite some time), nor how he fed it to Julian Assange.
The real story, the part Wired isn’t reporting, is not the HOW, but the WHY.
And the WHY is no secret. It has already been reported elsewhere, but bears reiterating here. Bradley Manning saw what the US was really up to in its many overseas missions, diplomatic and military, and that it was all rotten. He hated what he saw, and he wanted to make sure everyone, no matter who or where they were, knew what he knew. He didn’t spy for any foreign government; he blew the whistle on his own. He wanted the whole world to know what was really going on in Iraq, because horrible, graphic footage like this…
…was obviously not going to make it onto any nightly newscast.
Mainstream media would only spin that video, at best; at worst, they would censor it altogether. The Internet is the only place that would disseminate a video as damaging to the US’s international reputation as Collateral Murder has turned out to be. And the Internet is the only place where such a video would be mirrored, as many times as needed, so that censorship could never take hold of it.
That’s why Bradley Manning leaked the classified materials to Julian Assange, and why Julian Assange posted it to Wikileaks.
It’s not that the two of them are spies. Spies, by definition, work for somebody else, an outside entity. An outside enemy. Neither Bradley Manning nor Julian Assange can be demonstrated in a court of law to be in the employ of an enemy, so espionage charges would make no sense (although I’m sure the US government is looking to press them anyhow). They were neither working for the enemy nor seeking to BE the enemy. Their only crime, if a crime indeed it was, was exposing the unattractive truth about US foreign policy. A truth which foreign nationals have long known, and which complicit media in the US and elsewhere have long covered up.
And for that awful truth, Bradley Manning may hang. Literally.
I don’t think he did anything wrong, myself. What is wrong with telling the truth, even when powerful interests don’t want it known?
NOTHING.
But there is plenty wrong with what we see in the Collateral Murder video. And if anyone in uniform should go on trial for anything, let it be the as-yet-unnamed helicopter pilots, “Bushmaster” and “Crazyhorse”, who deliberately and coldly killed the Iraqi journalist for Reuters, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh. And who also fired on innocent Iraqi civilians, including some kids in a van, who stopped to try to help the two wounded men.
And while we’re at it, let’s send the entire Bush Administration to The Hague. After all, they are the ones who sent “Bushmaster” and “Crazyhorse” to Iraq to play real-life shooter games with innocent Iraqis as targets. The war is now officially over. How about prosecuting those who declared it, on a false pretext, and for greed?
Oh yeah, I forgot. High-ranking criminals can’t be prosecuted. And Barack Obama has already (shamefully) taken that option off the table. So unless someone stages a citizen’s arrest of any of those thugs while they’re visiting a foreign country, it’s unlikely that we’ll see any of THEM subjected to the abuses and indignities that have befallen Assange and Manning. Much less any legal prosecution.
The shameful complicity of the US government, corporations, and media in crimes against humanity just never seems to end. And that’s the real story that Wired, like other mainstream sources, will never print.
How do you justify police brutality on the level of last year’s G20 summit? And how do you justify turning Canada into a most unCanadian police state? Well, it helps if you get the media on side, as whoever infiltrated an “anarchist” gathering and took this top-seekwit hidden recording found out. And the Toronto Star was only too happy to run with the (very lame) bait:
It was the final meeting of the top anti-G20 anarchists in Toronto last year.
They were putting the finishing touches to a variety of anti-summit strategies, and were especially concerned about how to accommodate “smashy smashy” vandalism without endangering peaceful demonstrators.
“We believe in diversity of tactics,” said participant Julia Kerr.
“Anything goes,” said Adam Lewis, one of the leading speakers. “Like do what you need to do to bring the heat down on the security state and the security apparatus.”
On Friday, a provincial court judge allowed media access to a CD and transcript of the meeting, surreptitiously taped by an undercover OPP officer, Brenda Carey, who posed as a dedicated activist and won their trust.
[...]
The Spokes Council of the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance meeting at 519 Church Community Centre at 6 p.m., Friday, June 25, 2010, took place the day before rioters smashed store windows and torched cop cars in downtown Toronto.
At the meeting, participants were checked at the door and instructed by facilitator Adamiak to remove batteries from their cellphones, a security precaution.
Prychitka gave the rundown on Saturday Night Fever, a roaming dance party to “take back the streets,” starting in the Church St. gay village. “We’re looking for a lot of disco balls. We have a shipment of glow sticks. Bring banners and get ready to dance.”
Lewis outlined a plan to create “checkpoints” to prevent G20 delegates and support workers from entering the security fence surrounding the area downtown where the summit meetings were to take place. “It’s time to take back the city,” he said.
There was much talk of zones: green zones were to be safe areas for peaceful marchers; red zones for aggressive “direct action” for masked activists dressed in black — a tactic called black bloc; and orange zones were for people who wanted to support the black bloc without themselves being violent.
Gee, that sounds awfully incriminating and impressively planned, doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more:
But meeting participants had trouble coming to a consensus about how black bloc activists were to blend in with the peaceful Saturday afternoon march organized by the Canadian Labour Congress, and when they would break away to “smash or break” things.
Meghan Lankin said her group would be “marching sort of peacefully with the march,” but, if police interfered, “we will respond and do our f—ing s—”
One scenario outlined by a woman was to “bring a riot into the green zone, like we break s—, and then we have the cops that are f—ing running after us and then we run into a green zone of people and use them as cover.”
There was much talk of escape routes if police closed in.
Cadorette said it was “highly probable” they would have to “punch through a line of cops trying to encircle us.” He wanted to know how many affinity groups, small gatherings of protesters, were committed to doing this.
Cadorette also mused about going to Bloor St. to “smash it up, which in my mind is beautiful.”
Peters ventured some marchers would stay at Queen and John Sts. “to do smashy smashy.”
“The rest of the people can . . . stay with the march and bloc up after the end and then go off and do smashy smashy if they want to,” she added. “I just love to say smashy, smashy,” she confessed, to much laughter.
Tom Malleson complained activists were discussing tactics for “hours and hours and hours and we always come back to the same things.”
“Smashy smashy”? A few silly giggles over two silly words, and that’s supposed to convince us that a mass-destruction scheme was going down? FAIL.
Actually, it sounds like they were far from agreed as to what would actually happen. NOT that they had agreed to co-ordinate and carry out anything so violent as to justify the fascist crackdown you see in the video I posted above. In other words: Just like real anarchists anywhere, they have no real leadership and no real consensus. And thus, no real power to do any serious damage. (Except, of course, to the reputations of those who frankly deserve it.)
And this is what our media want us to fear and hate. This is the anarchist boogyman, people. It’s coming for us with glowsticks and disco balls! It’s gonna set fire to a few bait cars and do a little smashy-smashy! Booga, booga, booga…
Okay, here are a few OTHER things our fearless reporter forgot to mention:
“We believe in a diversity of tactics” is standard protest-speak for “You do your thing, I do my thing, and we don’t interfere in each other’s thing.” Doesn’t mean destruction and mayhem are actually about to go down, let alone on a grand scale.
And it doesn’t mean that they are terrorists, or a crack insurgency, or anything else that would justify a fascist crackdown on the level of what we saw.
But this chilling incident should make a few things clear: The cops aren’t above planting infiltrators. Or provocateurs, which I’m pretty sure the guys who did “smashy smashy” actually were. And the so-called liberal media isn’t above blowing up a chaotic, disagreement-filled meeting at a gay community centre into a veritable terror cell planning the next 9-11, either. The one hand washes the other. Media access is guaranteed by reporting things from the “right” angle. Meaning, “smashy smashy” dominates the headlines and the six-o’clock news. Even though the overwhelming majority of the protest was peaceful, and it was the COPS who were violent.
I have a few hints for the anarchists: Stop leaving yourselves so open to infiltration and abuse. Next time, strip-search everyone before EVERY meeting. Leave no earlobe unturned. Anyone who’s not willing to get naked to prove they’re not an infiltrator, gets tossed out on their ass, and never gets back in. No matter how dedicated and trustworthy they seem. And if you see someone doing smashy-smashy, don’t assume they’re really one of yours. Tackle the fucker and body-slam him, preferably while cameras are rolling. That’ll fuck the police’s (and the media’s, and the police state’s) shit right up.
You’re welcome.
An only slightly fanciful version of how stupid the Cold War mentality could get. Germany was caught in the middle of it all, and Germans (including this Canadian one) were heartily sick of the posturing, brinksmanship, and general nonsense from both sides. Only now, much later, can we see why: Given that the NORAD jets on 9-11 were still following instructions more than a decade out of date (to disastrous effect), it’s not much of a stretch to say that cold wars could turn hot over next to nothing, and innocent people would always pay the cost while the real villains hunkered safely in their bunkers. (Or, if you prefer, an Undisclosed Location.)
The English translation isn’t as witty and biting as the original (ah, the joys of multilingualism!), but it’s not bad, and it still gets the basic gist across:
Mike Ruppert, a former drug-enforcement cop from Los Angeles who helped expose the CIA’s role in drug smuggling to the US, analyzes the London riots. These riots have an economic root, and it’s NOT what the conservatives of the British parliament would have us believe. This is actually global in nature, and the Arab Spring has demonstrated as much, as have the anti-austerity protests in Greece and Spain. Watch and listen, you’ll learn a LOT.
(Thanks to Corey for the video!)
Hiroshima Day was yesterday. This great Canadian song from yesteryear comes to mind:
Watch the video closely and you’ll see some real live World War II vets marching in.
