A World Revolution Is On
A world revolution is on. And although there have been no major incidents, this information revolution has touched upon almost every country.
So far it has been relatively harmless — no lives lost or major disasters caused by revelations of American State Department’s confidential communications — released by a mere army private to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks which in turn had also distributed it to five liberal mass circulating newspapers. But it has caused great embarrassment to the mighty State Department which has its embassies or representatives in almost every country.
Julian Assange and Whistleblower Bradley Manning
Sex and cyberspace
Last week the tension heightened and the war stepped up. WikiLeaks founder and head Julian Assange voluntarily surrendered himself at a London police station, after a warrant was issued against him by the Swedish government on sex charges! Assange denied the charges but the British court refused granting bail and he is behind bars. But his organisation’s executives vowed that their activities would continue despite the arrest and threatened to release even more of the 250,000 documents in their possession. The State Department hit back. It is believed that those organisations such as Master Card and Visa terminated their financial dealings with WikiLeaks at the behest of the US government. Idealistic supporters who have designated themselves ‘hacktivists’ ganged up under an organisation styled Operation Payback and launched cyber attacks on the websites of companies that are boycotting WikiLeaks. The US Justice Department is believed to be making attempts to have Julian Assange extradited to America with the intention of prosecuting him on espionage charges. Assange is determined to go ahead with his project and the mighty global defender of freedom of expression is in a very embarrassing position, to say the least. If confidential documents on military secrets and strategies are in the possession of the whistleblowers and if they are released on Internet, what would follow is unpredictable.
Boomerang
This plight of the American government is ironically a result of one of their main policies after World War II, particularly during the Cold War boomeranging. In their ideological battle against the Soviet Union and its allies, the biggest propaganda thrust made was on the closed secretive system of the Soviets. It was a case of America, the land of the free, where freedom of expression was guaranteed by the Constitution as against the closed system of the Soviet Union and their allies where all forms of media were under rigid control of the Communist Party apparatus and any attempts to make criticisms of the ruling regimes resulted in executions or being sent to gulags in freezing Siberia. It was also the plight of leading writers and intellectuals like Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sarkhov.
The Americans bombarded the Soviet Union and allies with their radio stations such as Radio Free Europe that ringed these countries in order to make the Communist empire crumble from within. Crumble it did because of the collapse of the socialist economies, propaganda no doubt helping in the process.
Information super highway
After the end of the Cold War, there developed the information ‘super highway’ which the Americans took to with glee. Developed initially as a secret mode of communication for the defence services, when the potentialities of Internet was realised it was soon made available for commercial purposes and to inform the public both at home and abroad. The American belief was that free flow of information strengthened societies, even those of poor countries and was counter-productive to authoritarian regimes.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was cited quoting President Obama: ‘The more information flows the stronger society becomes’. Even in China it was making Communist rulers more accountable to the people, it was claimed. Transparency in affairs of state was one prong of democracy, which American institutions like the State Department pushed for.
It has been claimed that after 9/11 it was realised that the US government had information that could have prevented the strikes on New York and Washington by terrorists. Compartmentalization of the security institutions involved prevented the vital information being collated and the objectives of the terrorists realised. The result has been the pooling of confidential information, but the security net has apparently been made wide open even for a private in the army to download almost 250,000 documents onto a disc and release it to the whistleblower WikiLeaks.
Enter Frankenstein
Last week the debate between pro and anti WikiLeaks raged over the Internet. It was being described as the ‘biggest free speech battle in our life time’. There is even a larger debate over the Internet itself. Has America created a Frankenstein monster that is threatening to devour America itself? The WikiLeaks reports are now more embarrassing to American officials than foreign dictators. American officials are being held responsible for exposures in WikiLeaks and not authoritarian foreign rulers. America cannot now go against a free Internet on the grounds that it undermines American power.
The plight of America in this Internet fiasco was best described by the Soviet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week: ‘They say in the countryside that some people’s cows may moo, but yours should keep quiet.’
Why Assange Should Go Free
By Joseph Zrnchik (Reporter)
Contributor profile | More stories
Saturday, December 11, 2010 1:17
If Nazi Germany, Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba or Saddam’s Iraq had documents transferred to an American journalist living abroad, and the journalist decided to publish the material on the internet to expose the crimes of the above named countries’ regimes, would any U.S. politicians be calling for that journalist’s death?
If China decided to invade a country and every single premise upon which the aggressive war was based proved to be in error, and lies regarding WMDs had been exposed through the most intrusive international weapons inspection programs in the history of the world , and a complete accounting for 99% of all proved no stockpiles, would the U.S. be negotiating with China on how to allow a third country to render the American journalist to China?
Imagine if the lies China then used to execute an illegal invasion were based on Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine, that being a doctrine that says even if another country has only a one percent chance of carrying out a terrorist attack against China, China has the right to conduct and invasion, occupation, and replacement of that nation’s government.
Imagine if all of China’s reasons to invade were proven to be wildly overstated by China’s own intelligence services and the costs to that nation were wildly understated while being hidden from their citizens, would the U.S. conclude that China’s secretiveness and security should be respected?
And, for once, please don’t bring up 9/11. The secret documents have already exposed that there was no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda, 9/11, or bin Laden. In fact, the intelligence documents prove that Bush’s bedfellows, the Saudis, were the culprits not only behind 9/11, but also are main source of terror in Iraq. Now let me ask you this question: As a nation, are we better off or worse off to know this actual fact, that fact being it is the Saudi’s whom are our enemy. The only ones who want this fact hidden and are better off for having it hid are the elite who are in bed with the House of Saud.
Meanwhile, the State Department cables show that there had been even more lies being forged by the ruling class for another false casus belli, that being the blaming of Iran for attacks against U.S. soldiers by Iran. It seems Americans want, in fact need and demand, to be lied to.
Now imagine China engaged in deception and disinformation operations to fool its own citizens so as to be able to garner mass public support for a world-wide campaign to engage in terror and military strikes against Christian nations because some terror group from a Western nation engaged in a terror strike against China. While attacking Christian nations, let’s say China decided to conduct regime change in Mexico and overthrow their government to install a pro-Chinese government that allowed military bases for China and was anti-American to its core. Isn’t this exactly what we are doing to Iran through Iraq?
Let’s imagine the U.S. then began to protest these moves as aggressive and hostile, and while the U.S. was allowing U.N. investigators to monitor its military to prove the U.S. was not going to attack China, China decided to fund terrorist groups of the variety that America has unleashed on Iran, groups like the MEK and Jundullah whom then begin to carry out a national terror campaign. While this is going on, imagine China began assassinating American scientists whose expertise was considered great economic and strategic assets.
Now imagine if China’s ruling elites were all heavily invested in the defense industry and it was apparent that war was in their economic interest at the expense of the rest of the nation. Would the U.S. be charging an Australian with treason for pointing such facts to the world and the Chinese people? The paradigm the U.S is establishing is straight out of Orwell’s 1984. It seems it is true that those whom control imperial power who seek to manipulate the masses so that indeed war is peace, freedom is slavery and most importantly, ignorance is strength. Libertarians have held that all government is inherently alike when push comes to shove. It seems this maxim tenet is proving to be a tenet in the new world order. Americans show be embarrassed that our rulers feed us such waste and we clamor for more.
It defies belief that our media refuses to allow citizens to the opportunity to expose and comment on the criminality of our government. The partnership between the media and the government goes far beyond any model Goebbels could have envisioned let alone implement. The voluntary manipulations of seamless filtering, self-censorship, media manipulation, framing of debate and outright execution of disinformation and propaganda campaigns directed against the American people through a centralized media conglomeration are something that could never be centrally directed. It model works because those whom control it are acting in unison toward the exact same goals, that being the domination of economic, political and social order.
Future generations of Americans will look back on this episode of American history and wonder why we destroyed their future. Hey will wonder how an country supposedly steeped in the tradition of self-government could not have seen such disaster coming. We have allowed our government to turn us into little children whom believe whatever lie the grownups profess. We believe their every promise and worship them through the eyes of little children seeking to believe in their omnipotence and infallibility. And, they have played us like suckers. One would think grown-ups would seek to put away their beliefs in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. But, it seems as the world crumbles around us, a crumbling caused by a refusal to acknowledge the fact that we turned our backs on the responsibility of being an informed, as opposed to propagandized citizenry.
Why is it that Americans want to think the paradigms put in place by our elite have any semblance to reality? The institutions and power we have allowed to collude against us and limit our debate, and thusly our very thought processes and perception of reality, have not been organized by a supreme being, but were the result of elites sitting together deciding on how best to maintain wealth, power and privilege.
It would only take an opening of our eyes to see the truth, which is why our elite and those who seek to continue to clutch on to the child-parent relationship between themselves and government see Wikileaks as such a threat. Americans should think of Wikileaks as Reality Government since “Reality TV” seems to hold so much facination for so many.
Our founders thought of government as fire. They found it to be a useful servant, but a terrible master. Yet, we allow politicians who have lied to us so grotesquely for so long to now be the arbiters of life and death mete out punishment based on the crime of Americans’ eyes being opened to the inner workings of our government.
To read the Wikileaks documents one needs a strong background in history, philosophy, economics, psychology, government and current events to correctly understand the implication of our representatives lying to us, to each other and to themselves. But, how can any foundation be built on such nonsense. We attack countries that did nothing to us while using the attacks upon us that were funded by our own allies to blame others in an effort to foment more armed conflict that has already destroyed most of our middle class wealth. Then we insist our government maintain the right to lie to us and protect this prerogative so strongly that we demand that those telling the truth be executed. An Iraqi official stated, “America’s problem is that its friends are friends with its enemies, and its enemies are friends with its friends. In such a state of cognitive dissonance we attempt to build a coherent foreign policy while ideological paradoxes create schizophrenic constructs. Moreover, it seems we have developed a unique talent for existing in such a world as this even though such a reality can only be held together through violence, lies and thought control.
We revel in being able to hold two opposing beliefs, that being that government is our servant while also seeking for it to be master. We want the rule of law, yet we insist that this rule be maintained by imperial edicts, elite lawlessness, torture and murder. We want to know the truth about matters that are inconsequential, but we remain willfully ignorant of matters that involve trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives. We extol the virtues of self-government yet elect elites who constantly subvert our interests. We know we are lied to about everything, but hold on to these lies with the fervent hope of a dying man who has just found religion. We complain about corporate crooks and crooked politicians and then believe every lie they utter as they walk away with trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. Then, when someone tells us the truth about such crimes we call that person a kook and his label his accurate assessments as radical and ridiculous. We know that our current situation is unsustainable and yet we continue to elect the same people to do the same things while expecting a different outcome. We continue to hold on to a status quo that is obviously taking us over a cliff and leading to our ruin. We laugh at accurate predictions for the future in which the outcomes were demonstrably inevitable and a mathematical certainty, yet we continue to take the word of charlatans whose predictions, prescriptions, and assessments have proven to be the fantasy of a bizarre-world and ideology of a dystopia. Our crimes are always legitimate and others legal actions become illegal attacks upon our nation. The incongruence seems to know no limits.
At such a point, when reality can no longer be discussed, we hold on to our false reality as it slips through our hands. We seem not to understand why things are getting worse while we listen to the demagoguery of the Limbaughs and Hannities, and the envy and discontent of Obama and Hillary.
The last desperate act of a falling empire is to try to kill its way to utopia. If we can kill those who expose us, oppose us and refuse to support us, we will eventually be happy and prosperous again. Yet, we refuse to accept that by striking out at reality we are only delaying an outcome that will not get better with denial and time. So, as we plan Assange’s imprisonment and murder, there are realities that we need to accept for which killing the messenger will only make matter worse.
US and UK has been killing innocent, unarmed civilians in Afghanistan for the past 9 years, in Iraq for the past 7 years and in Pakistan for the past 2 years. They have been doing the same thing in Yemen which is leaked by Wikileaks only now. Yemeni Government bore responsibility for the murder of civilians in Yemen, whihc was in fact committed by USA.
Bush and Blair are stained in blood. Blair claimed that he had “overwhelming evidence for the weapons of mass destruction to invade Iraq. Bush said that the onus of proof of WMD is with Iraq. The result is that Iraq after 7 years of illegal occupation is on the verge of dismemberment.
Pakistan will soon disintegrate and USA and Israel either jointly or singly will bomb and invade Iran for which media propaganda is now staged.
The duplicity is when US President Jimmy Crater said that Israel is in possession of over 200 nuclear bombs, western countries had raised no alarm. Whereas when Iran signed the NPT and said that it is pursuing nuclear research only for peaceful purposes, the west does not want to trust it.
Should we now trust Wikileaks or the west, the so called civilized world?