A key to successful propaganda is having the appearance of knowledge and authority while disseminating falsehoods and misrepresentations.
A key ingredient to the success of US corporate news broadcasts in their spreading of government-backed lies is their use of “expert” commentators. These talking-heads, periodically trotted out for their supposed expertise on a subject, are typically former members of the US military, the intelligence community, and political leaders waiting for their next government gig.
Invariably these professional commentators provide off-the-cuff “analysis” which, in one way or another, endorses the worldview necessary for the expansion of American empire.
Whether that requires more bombing, another invasion, a tighter security apparatus, a larger military budget, you name it, these folks make a living by persuading the public that more American aggression is essential to peace and prosperity around the world.
We recently heard Donald Trump say that he bombed Qassam Soleimani, not to start a war, but to prevent a war.
Right.
Just as George W. Bush was forced to start a war in order to prevent the mythical mushroom cloud.
I am old enough to remember the Army’s justification of free-fire zones in the Vietnam war, where soldiers were free to kill anything on sight and destroy entire villages, by saying that “we had to destroy the village in order to save the village.”
Give me a break.
I wasn’t stupid enough to believe the propaganda then. And I’m not stupid enough to swallow it now.
What our TV news networks never disclose to us is that virtually ALL of these so-called expert commentators maintain profession relationships with the military-security-intelligence-industrial complex while working for the corporate news media.
After all, they have invested their entire professional lives into climbing the ladders of power inside the war rooms of the American empire. They are not about to give that up now.
So, it is not surprising that this class of propagandist is invariably are on the payroll of weapons manufacturers, military consulting firms, and surveillance companies, etc. Just as the execution of Gen. Soleimani sent the stock prices of Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers through the roof, so these talking-heads work to further enhance the financial and ideological investments that they have spent their entire lives helping to construct.
Below is a video report by The Intercept explaining only a few of these corrupt financial connections. Of course, none of the networks ever mention these connections to their viewers.
For instance, Fox News hired a retired general who naturally justifies US military strikes, but never mentions that he is a partner at SCP Partners, a venture capital fund that invests in defense contractors.
Similarly CBS hired another retired general who now works for Kohlberg Kravis Robers & Co., an investment firm with major holdings in some of the largest US defense contractors.
These men and women do offer expert analysis. They are trying to sell us more snake oil at the very high cost of human lives around the globe.
My regular readers will remember that I always value the insights of retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Col. Wilkerson was the Chief of Staff for Colin Powell when Powell was the Secretary of State under President George
Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
W. Bush.
Col. Wilkerson is also the only official from the Bush administration who has come clean about the consistent stream of lies we were fed by the Bush administration about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The CIA lied to him and General Powell.
Why in the world should anyone believe what US intelligence spokespeople are telling us today about Iranian General Qassem Soleimani or the Iranian
Soleimani’s burning body lies next to his car
government?
Since the catastrophic war in Iraq, which continues to this day, Col. Wilkerson has devoted himself to speaking out, working to ensure that there won’t be any more US wars based on lies.
Here he explains how the government lie-factory is again working overtime as it promotes war with Iran. As he says, “[American leaders] will lie, cheat, and steal to promote American empire.”
Watch the interview by journalist Amy Goodman discussing the current state of US/Iran relations with Col Wilkerson on the program Democracy Now. It is 17 minutes long and well worth your time.
That fact is a given and must be accepted by any adult who wants to understand politics and foreign relations in this world of ours.
For Christians who understand that their primary allegiance is to Jesus Christ, and that they are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of God NOT their temporal country, embracing this truth need not be difficult.
Not only is the government of the United States not an exception to this rule, we in many ways we have perfected the practice of lying, deception and misinformation to a fine art — perhaps a crude, vulgar and vile norm would be a more accurate way to describe it.
The recent release of the Afghanistan Papers by the Washington Post is only one recent demonstration of this age-old truism about government lies. US military leaders, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, our intelligence services, and the vast majority of our elected politicians have all been lying to the American public about the 18 year long war in Afghanistan for….wait for it…the entire 18 years.
When interviewed behind closed doors, over 400 American leaders, both military and civilian, in nearly 700 separate interviews, confessed that the military has never had a coherent strategy for pursuing this wasteful war. Nor did they have the slightest hope that the US could accomplish anything resembling “victory,” whatever that might look like.
In short, everyone admitted that no one in the US government had any idea what we were doing in Afghanistan.
Yet, when speaking in public we heard lie after lie after lie — “we are moving toward victory,” “our new strategy is working,” “we see light at the end of the tunnel.”
All the lies have been revealed in black and white.
Yet, not long after the publication of these Afghanistan Papers, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a press conference where he deliberately mischaracterized the information contained in these interviews and then glibly dismissed their significance out of hand.
Watch the oh-so noble general continue spinning more public lies in the video below:
The US corporate media perpetuates US government lies by repeating them mindlessly, without challenge or correction. Major developments that indict our government by uncovering the truth are conveniently ignored by the corporate press.
Truth remains unreported because real journalism is dead in this country. The American people may well be the most ideologically narrow, as well as the most thoroughly propagandized population in the “civilized” world.
Of course, the truth is also ignored by the bought-and-paid-for money grubbers in Washington DC whose silence indicts them, too, as co-conspirators in the deception of the American people.
How many major, investigative reports have you seen about the Afghanistan Papers on corporate news programs?
I have not seen any.
Has anyone heard even a hint about a possible Congressional investigation into the negligence, gross malfeasance and moral decay festering at the heart of our military-industrial-security complex laid bare for all to see by the Afghanistan Papers?
I haven’t.
We, the American public, including the Christian church, must share in this corporate guilt.
We are a major portion of the gullible and/or disinterested public that conveniently believes the government lies, ignores contrary evidence, and cheers patriotically for the endless bloodshed unleashed by America’s selfish addiction to imperial power around the world.
As usual it was the less powerful nation who exercised restraint, with Iran skillfully targeting the bases’ military capabilities but taking measures to successfully avoid any casualties. The two nations de-escalated back down to their previous high level of dangerous hostilities with an understanding between them that neither side wants a full-scale war. Both sides played “chicken” and both sides swerved, and they know that about each other now.
So that was a relief. We were all forced to hold our breath and hope against hope that cooler heads would prevail after the senseless assassination of a sovereign nation’s top military official, and they did. A full-scale war that would have dwarfed Iraq and Vietnam in terms of death, destruction and destabilization was averted.
And then Trump immediately went right back to warmongering…
The entire piece is well worth reading. Just click on the title above.
In 2009 the Obama administration, led by the full-throated imperialist war-monger, Hillary Clinton, facilitated a military coup against the
Former Honduran president Manuel Zalaya
democratically elected, and wildly popular, Honduran president, Manuel Zalaya (see here, here, here and here).
Since then, Honduras has descended into a horrific maelstrom of drug-trafficking, gang warfare, murder, and economic collapse for the common people.
But little of this matters to the U.S. government because our hand-picked replacement for Zalaya, the current president Juan Orlando Hernandez, has implemented the malicious, neo-liberal economic practices well-suited to the expansion of American multi-national corporations.
Never mind that Hernandez and his family are all up to their eyeballs in the
Current Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez
drug trade. Together with his wife and brother, they have all been indicted by U.S. attorneys for drug trafficking (see here, here, here and here).
Under Hernandez’s watch, Honduran democracy has been crushed and the gates of hell-on-earth opened up. It is now one of the most violent nations in the western hemisphere with a sky-rocketing murder rate.
The greatest factor driving this scourge of nation-wide violence is the shocking growth of drug-cartel related gang violence. These brutal gangs literally run the country, at least for the average man and woman in the street.
So, the people literally flee for their lives, especially the lives of their children.
Honduran migrants take part in a caravan heading to the US, on the road linking Ciudad Hidalgo and Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico, on October 21, 2018. – Thousands of Honduran migrants resumed their march toward the United States on Sunday from the southern Mexican city of Ciudad Hidalgo, AFP journalists at the scene said. (Photo by Pedro Pardo / AFP) (Photo credit should read PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images)
And they flee to the United States, NOT as “illegal immigrants” (whatever you think of that label) but as legal asylum seekers.
What does America do — after we have destroyed their homeland?
We refuse to give them the humanitarian assistance that they deserve.
In other words, first we burn their house down, and then we refuse to give them shelter.
Instead, we take away their children, put them in detention camps or foster homes and lose track of where we put them.
Please watch the video links below for more information about the current immigration debate that rarely if ever receives the attention it deserves from the media or our politicians. Have you ever heard an intelligent conversation or debate about our current immigration policies that included this issue of U.S. interference abroad?
I haven’t.
First, an interview with Pulitzer-Prize winning author/journalist, Sonia Nazario. She describes her recent investigative visits to Honduras, and what she witnessed there (about 18 min.).
Hondudran gang members. Enforcers for drug cartels propped up by the U..S.
She describes Honduras today as “a narco-state supported by the United States.”
Second, a two-part interview (part 1, part 2) with former president Zalaya where he discusses the U.S. backed coup that forced him to flee the country.
He aptly describes Hillary Clinton as a “mafia boss.”
Everyone seeking refuge in our country after escaping the violent landscape
Clinton, the “mafia boss”
left to them by U.S. interventionism, deserves asylum here.
Christians especially ought to be knowledgeable and filled with empathy over the plight of those refugees who suffer because of American meddling in their homelands.
Include these crucial facts in your next conversation with anyone ignorantly chanting, “Send them back.”
I tried listening to a conservative, call-in radio program last night. Five to ten minutes was all I could take before my bleeding ears forced me to change the station.
The topic of conversation was the “invasion” of immigrants “flooding” across America’s southern border.
The first thing I noticed was the ignorance on display about the average person’s living circumstances in Central American countries where the U.S. has toppled governments in the recent past. The second and most prominent factor was the hard-hearted lack of empathy or compassion voiced by both the bloviating host and his lynch-mob minded callers.
It was painful to listen.
The ability to empathize – that is, feel an impulse for putting ourselves in another person’s place, to understand their pain, to try to feel what they are feeling as they are feeling it – is an important trait for every human being to possess. Some would say it is part of what makes us human.
Unfortunately, not everyone can do it. Many don’t ever try.
Both sociopaths and psychopaths can be identified by their inability, or well-practiced disinterest, in feeling empathy. So, they can skin cats alive and watch other people suffer without experiencing a twinge of concern or human kindness.
I can only hope that a high percentage of psychopaths make evening calls to conservative radio talk shows . Otherwise, America really is in deep trouble.
Perhaps you have heard the old saying about empathy: Before you criticize another person first walk a mile in his shoes. Then when you do criticize him you will be a mile away AND have his shoes.
At least, that seems to be the American, conservative understanding of empathy nowadays.
These children came home from school only to learn that their parents had been arrested by ICE. ICE agents say they are not responsible for the children
The painful lack of public empathy that I witnessed last night is also glaring evidence that many Americans who call themselves Christians do not know Jesus Christ from a hole in the ground, no matter what their “testimony.”
Empathy is THE cardinal Christian virtue.
The incarnation of Jesus Christ was/is the supreme demonstration of divine empathy. The Father’s empathy for us, lost sinners, motivated him to send
His parents have vanished and ICE made no allowances for what to do with him or dozens of other minor children
his one and only eternal Son into this world. Empathy for humanity moved the Son to become fully human; to experience all that we experience; and to stick with it for an entire lifetime. He walked in our shoes, carried our burdens, suffered injustice, died our death, and finally experienced resurrection as our Precursor.
To know Jesus is to know empathy.
To be like Jesus is to demonstrate empathy for others, but especially for those who are the most “unlike” us. The Son of God was UTTERLY unlike sinful humanity in every way. Yet, He set aside all privilege in order to rescue undeserving, ungrateful, self-destructive people like you and me.
The kingdom of God is a kingdom founded on empathy for others unlike ourselves.
It is a kingdom founded upon practical action to meet others in their suffering and to alleviate their distress, to bring practical solutions to human dilemmas, to save life, to make more room for those seeking safety, to share whatever we have with those who have lost everything.
Without empathy there is no such thing as Christianity.
Without empathy there is no discipleship.
Without visible demonstrations of practical empathy there is no Christian Church.
Without empathy there is no hope for the human race or the planet.
Years ago I came across a great book written by Douglas Hyde entitled Dedication and Leadership. Hyde was a former Communist turned Roman Catholic who wondered why his Communist comrades had uniformly displayed deeper levels of commitment to world revolution than the typical Christian had for the gospel of Christ.
One of his suggestions for explaining this disparity focused on the church’s lack of anything resembling Bolshevik self-criticism. Recognizing that Communism required a complete reconstruction of the way people think about and interpret their world, the movement gathered members together into small groups for discussion and “self-criticism.”
Together these Communist study groups held each other accountable to purging old ways of thinking and behaving, while assembling, piece by piece, the renewed mind of a faithful, Communist ideologue.
Hyde laments that it is a rare church indeed that invests any deliberate effort into helping its members cultivate disciplines of healthy spiritual introspection, self-examination, and Christ-like self-criticism. Yet, this is precisely what Paul expects every Christian to be doing as a part of their daily discipleship. In Romans 12:2 the apostle says,
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is…
Fallen, sinful minds like ours (you will understand, dear reader, that I assume you too are a guilty sinner like me) do not renew themselves automatically. Yes, every Christian has the Holy Spirit to turn the impossible into the actual, but personal effort is the required fuel for all personal transformation.
Thus, far too many folks who call themselves Christians fail to think or to behave like people directed by the mind of God.
I was reminded of this personally a while back when talking with a friend about my time visiting my youngest daughter as she worked in the Kenyan slums surrounding Nairobi. I was struck by the near universal happiness regularly on display in the lives of these people living in the most squalid poverty imaginable.
I couldn’t get over the beautiful smiles and the hearty laughter that I saw spontaneously erupting from the poor and destitute.
My friend listened to me and then quietly asked – with a beautiful smile on his face – David, why is it surprising that the poor would be happy?
That sentence hit me like a ton of bricks. Good question, I said to myself. Why indeed?
I suddenly realized, with the help of a friend exercising some good Christian/Bolshevik self-criticism, that I harbored an unrecognized prejudice.
I had spent my entire life in Christian ministry teaching people that money cannot buy happiness; that the love of money is the root of great evil; yet burrowed deep inside my brain remained this hidden assumption that people who lack money certainly can’t be truly happy and content.
Figuratively speaking (I hate it when people say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”), this moment of critical self-awareness blew my mind.
It also reminded me that cultivating the mind of Christ is a life-time process that demands daily self-criticism as well as good friends who are in the habit of similarly criticizing themselves.
Only such genuine disciples can make other disciples.
Getting together in small groups to socialize and hang out together is all well and good, but in and of itself, socialization it is a not an effective recipe for growing serious followers of Jesus.
I was thinking about this particular problem as I attended a Saturday morning men’s breakfast at a nearby church.
The speaker began by deriding what he believed were secular society’s efforts at emasculating, even feminizing, modern men. The church needed to help men to proudly reassert their masculinity. Or so we were told.
(I found this a very strange thing to be saying in the age of the #MeToo movement. But evangelicals have lived in a cultural ghetto for a long time.)
To facilitate the growth of masculine, godly men, the speaker announced that he was starting a new men’s Bible study for the church. A handy video played on a big screen up front introduced the study’s content.
The 300 or so men present in the auditorium with me were all treated to a 5-minute action movie showing Navy SEALS fully armed, wading through water, jumping out of helicopters, and firing their weapons at (and undoubtedly killing) unseen enemies. A very masculine sounding narrator described how this new study (now available nation-wide) would teach us vital principles for godly manhood from the Navy SEALS handbook.
I groaned audibly and nearly regurgitated my breakfast.
I had spent my entire life thinking that Jesus of Nazareth was our perfect model for godliness. Silly me!
Worse yet, I now discovered that my personal Bible study needed to be directed by a military training manual. Rats!
Those of you who know me will not be surprised to learn that it took all the self-control I could muster to remain seated. Every fiber of my being wanted to stand up and loudly denounce the secular, unthinking, anti-Christian rubbish being shoveled out from the stage.
Sadly, I was witnessing another instance of American evangelicalism’s cultural captivity to the godless forces of social conformity. Political conservatism, militarism, patriotism, the myth of American exceptionalism, and gross nationalism had all conspired to trample the gospel of Jesus Christ into the ground, buried beneath the spit-polish black boots worn by “Christian soldiers” LITERALLY marching off to war.
And THAT is godly manhood?
We had been divided into groups of 10 sitting at circular tables. As the meeting drew to a close, we were encouraged to talk among ourselves about the morning’s lessons.
I believed that it would be irresponsible of me to say nothing. I had to speak my mind, fully convinced that I was speaking with the mind of Christ.
So, I grabbed the moment and told the other men at my table that this was a horrible example of un-Christian, anti-Biblical thinking infiltrating the church. I will spare you all the details of my little speech condemning everything we had just been subjected to, but I will mention the response of a young man sitting opposite me at the table.
This young man in his 20s had accompanied his father to the breakfast. As I spoke, his head began to nod heartily in agreement. As I finished, he said that he was glad I had spoken up. He told us all about how difficult it had been to grow up in Montana where everything in the surrounding society insisted that he become a tough guy, a macho-man, a fighter.
Not even the church provided any refuge from the cultural conditioning of a male dominated society where rugged individualism depended on a daily overdose of testosterone.
This young man, quite rightly, wanted to become more and more like Jesus, not a Navy SEAL. He finds words of life in the holy Scriptures, not in a military training handbook.
He was fighting against his church’s cultural captivity, not surrender to it.
So, why was the “men’s pastor” employed by the church promoting a program developed by a nationally known evangelical media organization that will teach men to conform to American culture rather than stand against it?
“Senate panel rejects requiring Congress sign off before Iran strike.”
That is the headline at The Hill this afternoon. Below is an excerpt:
“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday rejected a Democratic proposal to require congressional approval before the U.S. can take military action against Iran.
“The panel voted 13-9 against a proposal blocking the administration from using funding to carry out a military strike in or against Iran without congressional signoff, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the committee.
“Murphy and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said earlier Wednesday that they were going to bring up their proposal for a vote in the committee as an amendment to a Syrian foreign policy bill.
“‘Congress is a co-equal branch that has the sole authority to declare war – so we don’t have to sit around and watch this administration spiral us into another endless conflict in the Middle East,’ Udall said in a statement.
“Murphy added that Congress should ‘remind this administration that they do not have legal authorization to launch a war against Iran without our consent and that no one else is responsible but Trump for putting us on this blind campaign of escalation with no off-ramp.'”
Every Republican member of this Committee, with the exception of Rand Paul, voted against this important Democratic proposal. Here are their names:
If any of these politicians represent you, or if you simply want to speak out as an American citizen, please contact their offices and reprimand them. Scold them, first, for abdicating their congressional responsibilities, and second, for making it that much easier for men without conscience like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to begin another cruel, disastrous, unnecessary war in the Middle East.
Those of you who have read this blog for sometime will know that I try to keep track of Lawrence Wilkerson, his interviews, lectures and writings, as
Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
diligently as possible.
You may recall that Wilkerson is a retired Army colonel, former chief of staff to Colin Powell during the Bush Jr. administration. He is now a regular contributor to The Real News Network.
He is a rare breed. As far as I know, he is the only member of that administration to have promptly admitted to the wrongheadedness, stupidity, deception, illegality, and wholesale systemic, political failure that led up to the disastrous and immoral Iraq war.
The United States is now teetering on the brink of a major conflict, perhaps even an outright war, with Iran. Those of you who have followed the recent history of US relations with Iran will not be surprised to hear Col. Wilkerson describe this administration’s current anti-Iran saber rattling as a repetition of the horrific boondoggle that led us into the Iraq war.
I won’t take the time to rehearse that sorry story-line here, rather I will simply quote a few of the more telling words from Col. Wilkerson in the hopes that you will be motivated to watch the entire 17 minute interview available here and here.
Below are a few gems from Wilkerson:
“I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that we [the US government] would manufacture another Gulf of Tonkin incident…” [Remember, the Gulf of
Vietnamese children fleeing their village; it had just been hit with napalm.
Tonkin incident was a fictitious “attack” on an American ship that became the official excuse for US military action in Vietnam.]
We are being governed “by clowns and baboons in Washington…”
“The world now sees the US as insane…warmongers…”
I believe that every follower of Jesus is called to be a pacifist. Consequently, the Christian’s public posture must always be in favor of peace, combating war and violence whenever, wherever it tries to raise its ugly head.
The necessity of public, anti-war protest is especially urgent when our “leaders” agitate for war on the basis of lies, misinformation and propaganda.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the United States to see Iran as a hostile power, much less an enemy in need of a good bombing.
Know this: You and I are being lied to regularly by the MSM every time they discuss Iran.
I urge you to please do what I have done — call and/or write your elected officials and urge them to say NO to any and all efforts to attack Iran.
Only Congress has the Constitutional authority to declare war. Tell your senators and representatives, at the very least, to insist on the enforcement of the War Powers Resolutions of 1973.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was arrested by British police yesterday after 7 years of refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.
Julian Assange at Ecuadoran embassy
It’s another sad day for the freedom of the press worldwide, and one more example of the way the U.S. bullies other nations around the world, forcing them to do America’s dirty work. (Watch reports here, and here.)
The United States is undoubtedly seeking Assange’s extradition to this country where the Trump administration is eager to charge him with conspiring to hack U.S. computers and stealing military intelligence in 2010.
A number of pundits are also linking Assange to the debunked and moribund Russia-gate conspiracy because they apparently don’t have anything better to do with their useless careers.
The entire affair would all be a colossal joke were it not for the extraordinary abuse suffered by Mr. Assange and the horrendous consequences entailed for a free press.
Here are just a few of the problems:
To begin with, the Obama Justice department worked for years to dig up enough evidence to charge Assange with the very same crime that the Trump administration wants to charge him with today. Yet, they failed to discover a scrap of incriminating evidence.
Assange is the victim of an American vendetta. Wikileaks has embarrassed the world’s sole super-power, and super-powers don’t take their humiliations lying down.
None of this should be happening. If Trump’s Justice Department has found the evidence that eluded all of the Obama administration’s best efforts, then they should make it public, pronto.
Furthermore, Assange is not an American citizen, so it’s impossible for him to commit “treason” against the U.S., despite the many accusations made by ignorant U.S. officials.
Assange is an Australian.
For the U.S. to put a foreign national on trial for supposedly breaking U.S. security laws would set a dangerous precedent to set. But then, no one has ever accused American politicians, including Donald Trump, of excessively long-range thinking.
Many American journalists regularly print stories that rely on the breach of foreign intelligence laws. Is Trump, or any other president, going to hand U.S. journalists over to China or North Korea or Russia or whoever else wants them when that foreign country accuses them of printing stories that reveal their foreign state secrets?
I don’t think so.
Ahem….why, then, should an American president think he has the right to do this to an Australian who has never lived in the U.S.?
Wikileaks is a publication outlet for whistle-blowers around the world. If you are unfamiliar with the types of materials they have published in the past, check out the the following report from RT with Dan Cohen to hear about only a few of the many valuable “secrets” that have been exposed through Wikileaks.
Both Assange and others who work with Wikileaks have always maintained that they are not hackers. Yet, the U.S. continues to accuse Assange of hacking, which he obviously denies. Naturally, he could be lying, but then why has no one ever produced the kind of evidence needed to prove Assange a liar?
Wikileaks has always described itself as a publishing clearinghouse, of
Assange taken from the embassy
sorts, for the documents obtained by whistle-blowers around the world. It will accept such material, review it with the help of other intelligence agencies, make their own editorial decisions, and then release the (redacted) material for world consumption.
Their publications typically expose the corruption and criminality of governments and world leaders. In this regard, Wikileaks provides an extremely valuable service to the world.
This means that Wikileaks is a journalistic enterprise; it is a news outlet. As many others have pointed out, prosecuting Julian Assange and Wikileaks is the equivalent of prosecuting the New York Times or the Washington Post or Fox News for publishing and/or broadcasting government documents that have been “leaking” to them.
The establishment press’s insistence that Wikileaks is not a journalism organization is absolute rubbish, plain and simple. Many of these other journalists and newspapers have happily printed leaked intelligence information that was first handed over to them by Wikileaks.
If Assange is prosecuted, then the editors of all those newspapers, magazines and TV networks should be next in line, and the conservative pundits who actually believe that such prosecutions would be a good thing haven’t the foggiest notion of what it means to be truly “un-American.”
Both Assange and the numerous whistle-blowers from whom he has received documents over the years all insist that neither he nor anyone affiliated with Wikileaks have been involved in obtaining documents themselves by computer hacking.
The two best known whistle-blowers have been Edward Snowden and
FORT MEADE, MD – JULY 30: U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is escorted by military police as he leaves his military trial after he was found guilty of 20 out of 21 charges, July 30, 2013 Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. Manning, was found not guilty of aiding the enemy, was convicted of wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet, is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of classified Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and more than 250,000 diplomatic cables to the website WikiLeaks while he was working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad in 2009 and 2010. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Bradley (now Chelsey) Manning. They both insist that Wikileaks received their hacked intelligence documents when they were offered to them but had nothing to do with taking the information from government computers.
Frankly, I view both Snowden and Manning as national heroes. The American public only knows about the U.S. government’s illegal, anti-Constitutional programs of warrantless, worldwide wire-tapping and surveillance because of the material Snowden handed over to Wikileaks and other outlets.
Similarly, we only learned the truth about U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan
Edward Snowden
and Iraq, including the astonishing levels of civilian casualties during the Iraq War, because of Manning’s communications with Wikileaks.
American citizens have a right to know about the crimes committed by their government.
Despite the repeated hue and cry about these whistle-blowers “having American blood on their hands,” no one has ever produced a single piece of evidence to show that these leaks actually put a single American life “at risk” anywhere in the world. Sure, the accusation makes for a dramatic propaganda talking-point, but in the words of a well-known T.V. commercial, no one has ever been able to produce the beef.
The collaboration between conscientious whistle-blowers like Snowden and Manning together with publication outlets like Wikileaks, provide an essential service to all the people of the world who care about freedom, democracy, justice and accountability.
Finally, since Assange is being accused of conspiring to hack U.S. intelligence computers with Bradley Manning in 2010, let’s recall what all of that entailed.
Remember, first, that Manning has always denied any involvement by Assange. His military trial, where he was convicted, failed to produce any evidence to the contrary.
Manning was working with military intelligence in Iraq when his superior officers ordered him to investigate and arrest the Iraqi “insurgents” distributing anti-American, “terrorist” leaflets allegedly fomenting violence against the new U.S. backed government.
Child wounded by U.S. forces
When Manning had the leaflets translated, he discovered that they were not advocating terrorism or violence of any sort. They were actually political fliers offering legitimate criticisms of the new government.
Manning went to his superior officers with this information and informed them that the group was not threatening violence or terrorism. Rather, they were merely an opposition political party doing what politicians do in a democracy – arguing against the establishment. The leaflets were simply an example of democracy in action.
Manning’s superiors told him to be quiet and do what he was ordered to do; namely, find the critics, confiscate their materials, have them arrested and thrown into jail.
That was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
Manning disobeyed his orders, downloaded a treasure-trove of classified material documenting American crimes, atrocities and mismanagement. He then handed it all over to Wikileaks.
One of the pieces of information released by Wikileaks was the now famous film from an Apache helicopter that came to be called the “Collateral Damage” video. I used to show it to my classes at Calvin College.
“Collateral Damage” was filmed through a helicopter gun site. It shows the indiscriminate slaughter of over a dozen civilians, including two Reuters
** EDS NOTE GRAHPHIC CONTENTS ** This is an image obtained by The Associated Press which shows naked detainees with bags placed over their heads placed into a human pyramid as Spc. Sabrina Harman, middle and Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., above, pose behind them in late 2003 at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo)
journalists, walking in an Iraqi suburb. The film concludes with the murder of a father and child who were gunned down when the father stopped his van in order to pick up the wounded and take them to a local hospital.
The family’s van was riddled with bullets. Fortunately, one of the two children inside survived. You can hear the helicopter pilot talking with someone at ground control as he gets the van in his sights. After unleashing the storm of lethal bullets, one of them notes that the pilot had just shot an innocent family with children.
The pilot responds by saying, “Well, that’s what happens when you bring your kids into a war zone.”
The man’s callousness is stunning. His arrogance and stupidity, remarkable.
Never mind that it was actually America that brought the war zone into this family’s backyard; that this father was picking up his children from school when he saw strangers bleeding to death on the side of the road; that he was the Good Samaritan riddled with bullets by the heartless Pharisees of American imperialism.
The Collateral Damage video was only the tip of Manning’s iceberg of previously concealed U.S intelligence, demonstrating once again that both the secrecy and the national security designations are typically used to hide national embarrassments and conceal government crimes.
People like Chelsey Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange deserve medals of honor, not senseless, interminable persecution by abusive governments hell-bent on hiding their flagrant crimes against humanity behind a bogus curtain of national security.
Every world citizen who cares about democracy, truth and equal justice for all must protest and stand against Julian Assange’s illegal arrest.
Otherwise, Assange’s eventual trial and certain conviction on Trumped-up charges will be one more nail in the coffin of a free press.
has toppled governments in the recent past. The second and most prominent factor was the hard-hearted lack of empathy or compassion voiced by both the bloviating host and his lynch-mob minded callers.
those who are the most “unlike” us. The Son of God was UTTERLY unlike sinful humanity in every way. Yet, He set aside all privilege in order to rescue undeserving, ungrateful, self-destructive people like you and me.
Catholic who wondered why his Communist comrades had uniformly displayed deeper levels of commitment to world revolution than the typical Christian had for the gospel of Christ.
about my time visiting my youngest daughter as she worked in the Kenyan slums surrounding Nairobi. I was struck by the near universal happiness regularly on display in the lives of these people living in the most squalid poverty imaginable.
water, jumping out of helicopters, and firing their weapons at (and undoubtedly killing) unseen enemies. A very masculine sounding narrator described how this new study (now available nation-wide) would teach us vital principles for godly manhood from the Navy SEALS handbook.
humiliations lying down.
pundits who actually believe that such prosecutions would be a good thing haven’t the foggiest notion of what it means to be truly “un-American.”
