Journalist calls power to affirm, adhere to rule of law, justice, human rights

Julian Assange’s Sunday speech at Ecuadorian Embassy in London
From today's Democracy Now! transcript

Excerpted by Carolyn Bennett

“On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and the police descended on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it, and you brought the world’s eyes with you. Inside this embassy, after dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through its internal fire escape.

“But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you. If the U.K. did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.

“.… The next time somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the embassy of Ecuador, remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous Latin America nation took a stand for justice.… 

As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America.

Will it return to and reaffirm the values, the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark? 

I say it must turn back.

I ask President Obama to do the right thing. The United States must renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks. The United States must dissolve its FBI investigation. The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters.

The United States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful. There must be no more foolish talk about prosecuting any media organization, be it WikiLeaks or be it the New York Times.… 

“This Friday [August 24, 2012], there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington, D.C., to address this very situation. And so─ 

I am grateful to those people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and to all other Latin American countries who have come out to defend the right to asylum; 

and to the people of the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia who have supported me in strength, even when their governments have not;  

and to those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice—your day will come; to the staff, supporters and sources of WikiLeaks, whose courage and commitment and loyalty has seen no equal. To my family and to my children, who have been denied their father, forgive me, we will be reunited soon.…Source 

“End the WikiLeaks Witch Hunt: Julian Assange’s Full Address from the Ecuadorean Embassy,” August 20, 2012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/20/end_the_wikileaks_witch_hunt_julian

 AMY GOODMAN: We begin today with the words of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. On Sunday, he made his first public appearance since he took refuge two months ago inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, just days after he was granted asylum

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Socialist Equality Party rallies Julian Assange defense

Aussie Labor, Greens plot with Washington to silence speech, press, deny right to know

Excerpt by Carolyn Bennett

Washington has sought to destroy Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the organization he founded, WSWS reports. The motive behind this is the  courageous release of videos and diplomatic cables exposing to world audiences “the daily criminality of the U.S. government and the anti-democratic machinations and intrigues of governments around the world, including Canberra,” the Commonwealth of Australia’s federal capital.

As many as 40 people associated with WikiLeaks have been pursued by intelligence and police agencies internationally. The organization also remains subjected to unprecedented financial blockades.

Alleged WikiLeaks’ whistleblower, U.S. Army private Bradley Manning has been held for more than 740 days without trial. In September, he will face a military court martial.

Labor Party (Australia)

“The Australian Labor government is intimately involved in the vendetta against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

“In 2010, under conditions where American politicians were calling for the execution of an Australian citizen and labeling Assange a ‘high-tech terrorist,’ the Australian prime minister, Julie Gillard, vilified Assange’s actions as illegal.

“She established a taskforce of Australian intelligence and police officers to actively aid U.S. efforts to fabricate criminal charges against Assange and others.”

Green Party (Australia)

“With the support of the Greens, Labor enacted new legislation this year that is designed to ensure the WikiLeaks’ editor can be extradited to the United States for ‘political offenses’ if he returns to Australia.”

Responsible for keeping the minority Labor government in power, the Greens “have played an utterly cynical and duplicitous role throughout the entire persecution of Assange.

“Backed by various pseudo-left protest groups, the Greens have sought to turn popular opposition into the dead end of appeals directed to the prime minister and Labor to do more on Assange’s behalf; thus promoting false illusions in the very forces that are collaborating with Washington to criminalize WikiLeaks, crush freedom of speech, and intimidate political dissent.”

 

Socialist Equality Party (Australia)

In response, the SEP (Australia) has scheduled a series of public meetings (Sunday, June 10 in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth) “to discuss the perspective that is urgently required to defend Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and the fundamental democratic rights of the working class.”

They are urging World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) readers and SEP supporters and concerned professionals, workers and young people to advertise the meetings as widely as possible and attend on June 10.

Sources

“SEP public meetings in Australia, Defend WikiLeaks’ editor Julian Assange, June 2, 2012, http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/mtgs-j02.shtml

“SEP Public Meetings: Defend WikiLeaks’ editor Julian Assange, http://www.sep.org.au/website/meetings

http://www.sep.org.au/website/

Images


People again gathered in Melbourne to show their support for Wikileaks, indymedia.org.au.


Free Speech paper at http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20024973-503543.html


WikiLeaks' Assange under fire as U.S. power groups show their thin skin - RT, identi.ca

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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"Speech Acts" under law

U.S. Ayatollahs’ prosecutable offenses

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

“Protections afforded by the First Amendment are not absolute, and we have long recognized that the government may regulate certain categories of expression consistent with the Constitution....” [Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003]

Charles Glass writes in “The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange.”

The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in February of 1989 inciting the faithful to murder author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy.  Professional writers convened in London, New York, and elsewhere within a few days of this action to discuss countering the threat.…

Recent incitements from politicians, journalists, and pundits to murder [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange are a new, secular fatwa threatening the freedom to disseminate information.… Calls for the death of Assange are incitements to murder as much as was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa.

The question is whether such speech is protectable under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Those demanding murder [e.g., “Assange ‘should be assassinated’ and (the U.S. president) ‘should put out a contract and maybe use a drone’ to kill him] are not merely stating facts or lies, opinions or observations.… [T]hey are acting — their statements are ‘speech acts.’ …

“If someone comes to your house with a firing squad and declares, ‘Ready, aim, fire’ — when the case comes before the court, the First Amendment would provide no defense against a charge of murder.…”

The [U.S.] Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in July 2003 expressly condemned “the idea that incitement to murder is permissible free speech.” The CPA “shut down the Al Mustaqila newspaper for urging death to ‘spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.’”

Again, Justice O’Connor writes for the Court.

“...a State may punish those words “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” We have consequently held that fighting words — ‘those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction’ — are generally proscribable [prohibited, impermissible] under the First Amendment [of the United States Constitution].”

Therefore, Glass concludes, U.S. Attorneys General in the states where public figures have demanded the killing of Julian Assange must investigate whether these incitements to murder may be prosecutable.

Sources and notes

“The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange” (Charles Glass), December 14, 2010,  pranvera.smith2@frontlineclub.com. Full article in Takimag.com, edited and published by Taki Theodoracopulos, http://takimag.com/article/the_secular_fatwa_on_julian_assange

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, VIRGINIA, PETITIONER v. BARRY ELTON BLACK, ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF VIRGINIA , April 7, 2003,

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/virginiavblack.html

Also Case Summary for Virginia v. Black Argued: December 11, 2002 Decided: April 7, 2003, http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/faclibrary/casesummary.aspx?case=Virginia_v_Black

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Touch of the REAL...

Journalists, feminists, progressives…
Beware those who conveniently pretend
Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

“It is too easy for Western journalists to see humanity in terms of its usefulness to ‘our’ interests and to follow government agendas that ordain good and bad tyrants, worthy and unworthy victims and present ‘our’ policies as always benign when the opposite is usually true. It is the journalist’s job, first of all, to look in the mirror of his own society.” John Pilger

“Rape is being used in the Assange prosecution in the same way that women’s freedom was used to invade Afghanistan.”  Naomi Klein

From Pilger’s Wednesday U.S. v. WikiLeaks-era article “Protect Assange, don’t abuse him”

Back in the day
“Political action had failed and only ‘culture’ and introspection could change the world,” journalist and filmmaker John Pilger writes of an intellectual dictum, a creed that permeated the land forty years ago.

“This merged with an insidious corporate public relations campaign aimed at reclaiming western capitalism from the sense of freedom inspired by the civil rights and anti-war movements,” he writes.

“The new propaganda’s euphemisms were postmodernism, consumerism and ‘me-ism.’ … Driven by the forces of profit and the media, the search for individual consciousness all but overwhelmed the spirit of social justice and internationalism. Proclaimed was a new deity; the personal was the political.…”

Regress
Post-Cold War — “The revival of militarism in the west and the search for a new ‘threat’ following the end of the cold war depended on the political disorientation of those who, 20 years earlier, would have formed a vehement opposition.” On September 11 2001, the nail drove deep into the coffin. Those who would have opposed militarism’s revival “were silenced, finally. Many were co-opted into the ‘war on terror.’”

Fake “feminists”
“The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was supported by leading feminists, especially in the United States, where Hillary Clinton and other false tribunes of feminism made the Taliban’s treatment of Afghan women the rationale for attacking a stricken country and causing the deaths of at least 20,000 people while giving the Taliban new life.

“That the warlords — backed by America were as medievalist as the Taliban — was not allowed to interrupt such a right-on cause.

“… The years of ‘personal’ depoliticizing and distracting true radicalism, had worked. Nine years later, the disaster that is Afghanistan is the consequence.

Rights abolished—slay the messenger
“It seems the lesson must be learned all over again as a group of media feminists joins the assault on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks…. From the Times to the New Statesman, apparent feminist credence is given to the chaotic, incompetent and contradictory accusations against Assange in Sweden…

“The Australian barrister, James Catlin, who acted for Assange in October, says that both women in the case told prosecutors that they consented to have sex with Assange. Following the ‘crime,’ one of the women threw a party in honor of Assange. …

Assange has been charged with nothing. “He has never been a ‘fugitive.’ He sought and got permission to leave Sweden. British police have known his whereabouts since his arrival. [However, this] did not stop a London magistrate on December 7 ignoring seven sureties and sending [Assange] to solitary confinement in Wandsworth Prison.…”

At every turn, there has been a breach of Assange’s basic human rights… “In her public remarks, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has shamefully torn up the presumption of innocence that underpins Australian law. …”

Lone Feminist
However, despite governments’ human rights abuses, “vast numbers of decent people all over the world have rallied to Assange’s support — among them, people who are neither misogynists nor ‘internet attack dogs’ …”  Distinguished feminist Naomi Klein wrote —

“‘Rape is being used in the Assange prosecution in the same way that women’s freedom was used to invade Afghanistan.  

“‘Wake up!’”

Sources and notes
“Protect Assange, don’t abuse him” (John Pilger in New Statesman), December 15, 2010, http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2010/12/women-rights-pilger-assange

John Pilger
World-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker John Pilger began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia (moved to London in the 1960s). His work as foreign correspondent and front-line war reporter began in 1967 with the Vietnam War.

Pilger regards eye-witness as the essence of good journalism and is an impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adventures by Western governments.

“It is too easy for Western journalists to see humanity in terms of its usefulness to ‘our’ interests and to follow government agendas that ordain good and bad tyrants, worthy and unworthy victims and present ‘our’ policies as always benign when the opposite is usually true. It is the journalist’s job, first of all, to look in the mirror of his own society.” http://www.johnpilger.com/biography

“John Pilger: ‘The War You Don’t See’” (ITV1, by Jane Simon, Daily Mirror) December 14, 2010,
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv-entertainment/tv/todays-tv/2010/12/14/john-pilger-the-war-you-don-t-see-itv1-10-35pm-115875-22782231/

“Rape is being used in the Assange prosecution in the same way that women’s freedom was used to invade Afghanistan. Wake up! [Naomi Klein, wikilieaks 4:12 AM December 8, 2010 via web, http://twitter.com/NaomiAKlein/statuses/12479573723709440

Naomi Klein
Journalist and syndicated columnist Naomi Klein is author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released on bail” Deutsche Welle, December 16, 2010, http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6346863,00.html

Julian Assange was released from jail in London today. British High Court Judge Duncan Ouseley handed down his decision, confirming a lower court’s ruling that the 39-year-old Australian could be freed on 200,000 GBP bail (236,000 euros, $317,000) under strict conditions.”

The WikiLeaks founder is reported saying, “‘I hope to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence in this matter and to reveal, as we get it, which we have not yet, the evidence from these allegations.’…

“British prosecutors have been trying to keep Assange behind bars until his extradition hearing, arguing that there was a risk he would flee the country. … Assange has been in jail since December 7, after he turned himself in to British police over a Swedish sex crimes warrant. Two women in Sweden, who are WikiLeaks volunteers, have accused him of rape and sexual molestation.” Assange’s release is under strict conditions and until a ruling is made on a Swedish extradition warrant.

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Australian Assange, meet American Margaret Chase Smith

“ … Freedom of speech is not what it used to be … The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.” [U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience,” June 1950]

Excerpting, editing, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

In this new age, U.S. McCarthyism “High-Tech’ed” stomps the globe. Publisher meets politician: 21st century Assange meets 20th century Chase Smith

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
“WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the U.S. embassy cables. Other media outlets, including The Guardian in Britain, The New York Times in the U.S., El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

“[But Australian] Prime Minister [Julia] Gillard and U.S. Secretary of State [former U.S. Senator] Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organizations … because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large; WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as … Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America .… The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.”

 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
“We are the underdogs [and] as the co-coordinator of … other groups, WikiLeaks has [undergone] the most vicious attacks and accusations from the U.S. government and its acolytes.

“I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a U.S., citizen
There have been dozens of serious calls in the U.S. for me to be ‘taken out’ by U.S. special forces
Sarah Palin says I should be ‘hunted down like Osama bin Laden’
A Republican bill seeking to have me declared a ‘transnational threat’ and disposed of accordingly sits before the U.S. Senate
An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office, speaking on national television, has called for me to be assassinated
An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor. Surely, the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal. Surely, we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we ‘dish out’ to outsiders.…”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
“[In WikiLeaks’ four-year publishing history] … not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the Congress of the United States that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it could not find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defense said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

“[However] the United States, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“I speak as briefly as possible because too much harm has already been done with irresponsible words of bitterness and selfish political opportunism. I speak as briefly as possible because the issue is too great to be obscured by eloquence. I speak simply and briefly in the hope that my words will be taken to heart.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (December 2010)
WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption….Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that [institution]. The [estate or institution of] media helps keep government honest.”

U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith (June 1950)
“… It is high time we remembered that … the Constitution [of the United States], as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

“Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined. Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism…”

Sources and notes
“Don’t shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths” (Julian Assange writing in The Australian), December 8, 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/wikileaks/dont-shoot-messenger-for-revealing-uncomfortable-truths/story-fn775xjq-1225967241332

“Declaration of Conscience” — Senator Margaret Chase Smith spoke June 1 1950, in the dark days of Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism, witch hunts of the mid 20th century, archives at American Rhetoric, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/margaretchasesmithconscience.html

Assange recapped in his December article in The Australian: “The U.S. diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The U.S. asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably, Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too
► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the U.S. to attack Iran
► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran’s nuclear program stopped by any means available
► Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect ‘U.S. interests’
► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and U.S. intelligence sharing is kept from parliament
► The U.S. is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbor Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

“In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the U.S. Supreme Court said, ‘only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.’ The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.”


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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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U.S.- Afghanistan leaks

WikiLeaks’ latest ─ “What the files reveal”
Excerpting and editing by Carolyn Bennett

UPDATE By Thursday, the U.S. Defense Secretary was “[asking] the FBI to help investigate the leak of more than 90,000 classified military documents.”  In a Pentagon news conference, a seemingly angry Robert Gates threatened retribution and called the WikiLeaks’ releases “‘potentially severe and dangerous.’” “Pentagon asks FBI to probe leaks,” Al Jazeera reported their time July 30, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010729192033991507.html

UPDATE Friday July 30: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange responds to Gates:

“[U.S. Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates could have used his time, as other nations have done, to announce a broad inquiry into these killings. …

He could have announced specific criminal investigations into the deaths we have exposed.
He could have announced a panel to hear the heartfelt dissent of U.S. soldiers, who know this war from the ground.
He could have apologized to the Afghani people.…

“He did none of these things. He decided to treat these issues and the countries affected by them with contempt. Instead of explaining how he would address these issues, he decided to announce how he would suppress them.

“This behavior is unacceptable. We will not be suppressed. We will continue to expose abuses by this administration and others.” [Source and link: “Julian Assange Responds to Robert Gates Remarks,” Posted by admin on Jul 30th, 2010 and filed under North & South America, Morrison World Media Morning Post, http://morrisonworldnews.com/?p=20381; Also note: Letters to Washington program on KPFA, July 30, 2010, http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/62941]


The 90,000 secret U.S. military files released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks present a powerful indictment of the Pentagon, the Obama administration and the former Bush administration for failing to tell the truth about the war on Afghanistan. These files document U.S. and NATO troops’ killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands of civilians.

The files reveal that the Pentagon set up what amounts to a “death squad,” a secret commando unit called Task Force 373, made up of Army and Navy Special Operatives who seek to assassinate individuals from a list of 2,000 targets.

The released documents show a grim and repeating film of previously unknown incidents where U.S. and NATO troops have shot and murdered unarmed drivers and motorcyclists.

The documents reveal another incident from 2008 in which French troops used machine guns to strafe a busload of children. A military patrol machine-gunned another bus and wounded or killed 15 civilian passengers. In a revenge attack for an earlier insurgent assault, Polish troops in 2007 rained mortar fire on an Afghan village, killing members of a wedding party among them pregnant women.

WikiLeaks’ release confirms an obvious pattern of intensifying retaliatory bomb attacks against U.S. and NATO forces.

The decision by the Obama administration to send 60,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009 is exposed as nothing other than a decision to send more human beings to their death in an ongoing war … avoiding political responsibility for military setback. All U.S. policymakers use the tactic: No matter what, avoid the appearance of military defeat at the hands of an armed resistance.

The web of lies spun for months by the White House and Pentagon about the Afghan war has started to come undone.

Al Jazeera reports that the leaked U.S. military documents reveal “a worrying culture of ill-discipline and incompetence within Afghan ranks.”Afghan security forces have shot civilians, launched attacks on each other, held drug fuelled parties and stolen vehicles in mass desertions. The documents contain more than 70 records of so-called ‘Green on Green’ incidents in which Afghan security forces have not fought the Taliban but each other.

Dozens of reports in the leaked documents describe incidents suggesting the challenge in preparing Afghan forces to take the lead in the country’s security is larger than previously thought. Though Afghan president Hamid Karzai “wants his forces to take responsibility for his country’s security by 2014, the documents posted by WikiLeaks on Monday reveal a worrying culture of ill-discipline and incompetence within their ranks.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:

“What we see is that the U.S. Army is an enormous boat that is extremely hard to turn around, and the cover-up of those sorts of crimes begins at the bottom and moves its way to the top so it is quite hard to enact a new policy and have it filtered down to a change in practice. A new policy by [President Barack] Obama does not mean a change of practice by the U.S. military any more than a new policy by [former U.S. Army General Stanley] McChrystal meant a change in practice by U.S. forces.…

“It’s important to understand, this material doesn’t just reveal abuses. This material describes the past six years of war, every major attack that resulted in someone being detained or someone being killed. That tells you how the war is going, where this happened, in what different parts of Afghanistan, what sort of weapon systems were used, which particular military units.

“Is there a killer—is there a killer unit in the United States military? Because there’s been histories of that. You can find out using this data. You can create a simple computer program. We haven’t done it yet, but any one of your technical staff can create a simple computer program to add up the kills by unit and get—and find a top kill unit so that’s an example of something that can be immediately extracted from this.

“You can really see how the war in Afghanistan is going and then compare that to government statements and government policy. This is the raw material that ends up on the big boards on the war room.…

“This is the raw ingredients that lead to Pentagon statistics about civilian casualties; that lead to graphs about how many insurgents are killed.

“We only ever normally see those figures in aggregate, but now we have all the events that are used to create those figures, and we can understand whether those aggregate figures are in fact accurate or are they distortions.

“We can see in many cases where we know what’s in this database and we have press sourcing or Afghan government investigation; we can see the disparity between these two so we can see, in fact, the aggregate figures are based on faulty data.”

Source
“What the WikiLeaks files TRULY reveal,” ANSWER Coalition interview on breaking Wikileaks story, July 26, 2010, http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9719&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=ANS_
“Afghan forces’ flaws exposed” (Andrew Wander, Al Jazeera English) July 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/201072613456286509.html

Today July 27, 2010 on Democracy Now highlights from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s Monday press conference in London at the Frontline Club.
“WikiLeaks Founder Says ‘Evidence of War Crimes’ in Afghan War Logs, White House Downplays Leak, Claiming ‘No Broad New Revelations,’” http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/27/wikileaks_founder_says_afghan_war_logs