Tag Archives: Wikileaks

Political transparency is for meddlers

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Vladimir Putin apparently hacked the presidential election. So say intelligence pundits estranged by Tump’s Washington brain-trust transplant. True or not, what they’re saying is that bringing transparency to the election process and the behind the scenes emails which affirm its undemocratic nature, is meddling. What a laugh to hear DNC operatives say they feel “sucker-punched” that their off-the-record slurs of condescention were made public. And of course how rich of the US regime to accuse anyone of meddling in another country’s elections.

FBI says Hillary Clinton was “careless” with classified secrets, not treasonous for evading public record.

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Pundits are decrying the unfair scrutiny on the presumptive successor-in-chief, pointing out that Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell were never called out for using private servers. Other miscreants too, who should have been hauled before the justice department, tarred and feathered and pilloried. Carl Rove and Dubya Bush purged email records. Are they the new role models for what behavior is acceptable?!
 
And all that is missing the point. Hillary’s use of a private server for state department emails was more than a security breach, it was an avoidance of keeping a public record. It was evasion of accountability. It was treasonable. Richard Nixon was in touble for erasing 18 minutes of taped conversation in the White House. Hillary has deleted millions of records in flagrant violation of rules of transparency meant to check government corruption. Fortunately Wikileaks snagged a bunch of them, and presumedly the NSA has archived them all, with the entirety of everyone’s public and private record. Funny no one is reopening that can of worms.

Panama Papers expose only foes of US. Source unknown. Smells like Ickyleaks.

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All the usual suspects villains
Out of nowhere come the “Panama Papers” leaked from a lawfirm that assists money launderers and offshore investors of embezzled wealth. It’s great to see international corruption exposed. Apparently it’s rife only among world leaders adversarial to Washington DC. For example, Russia, Iran, Syria, etc, no usual suspect left ungathered. Aaaand.. the Prime Minister of Iceland is implicated! A new villain! This has prompted demonstrations in the tiny nation and bank-bailout holdout. Iceland is global banking’s public enemy number one. What do you bet those protests are backed by the same “pro-democracy” NGOs that fomented state-failure in Libya, Syria and Ukraine? There’s something fishy about leaked documents that taint only enemies of the New World Order.

Even if the Panama Papers have a second act wherein Western luminaries are revealed to be crooks, there’s something very convenient about their curation.

Now the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has dissed Wikileaks, explaining that their controlled release of information will harm fewer innocents. Except Wikileaks didn’t produce any casualties and two, can any of the tax avoiders and public wealth pilferers be innocent?

Ickyleaks is an apt name for the ICIJ.leaks sneaks.

American drone pilots eat massacres like the Boston Marathon for breakfast. Let all bombers share Tsarnaev’s fate.

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Wikileaks Collateral MurderShould Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get the death penalty? Should Aurora’s James Holmes or Charleston’s Dylann Roof? How about American sniper Chris Kyle or the Apache gunship assholes exposed by Wikileaks in “Collateral Murder”? Videos abound of US airstrikes and drone strikes far more deadly and indiscriminate than the Boston Marathon Bombing. I don’t agree with capital punishment, as deterrent or justice, but if cultural arbiters want to cry for the blood of terrorists there are a lot of offenders in line before 21-year-old Tsarnaev. I say let he who has bombed fewer innocent people cast the first stone.

Film critics toe corporate line to re-kill messenger Gary Webb, after Hollywood

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Gary Webb
AT BEST “KILL THE MESSENGER” portrays suspiciously deceased journalist Gary Webb as a heroic sleuth who refused to compromise his principles. At best, the film re-reports the enormous crime which Webb exposed in his series DARK ALLIANCE, that the CIA’s support of the Nicaraguan CONTRAs in the 1980s involved facilitating the smuggling of drugs into the US, in such large quantities as to precipitate the crack cocaine epidemic, delivered to our major inner cities by the CIA. UNFORTUNATELY the film muddies the crack connection, as Webb’s detractors did back then. Two deliberate plot omissions suggest this is probably not a coincidence.

Conveniently the screenplay ends before the years when Gary Webb was able to elaborate on those links. By then he’d lost his audience. Unfortunately the film that might have given his life’s work a main stage reprise chose not to go that far. Does it matter anymore? These days the CIA and its covert cohorts are understood to have authored a litany of unimaginable evils. So it’s not too early to demonize the CIA. Evidently someone thinks the American public is not ready to be shown the racist stratagems of corportate class war.

Exposing the genesis of the crack attack on African American ghettos is clearly a missed opportunity for a film in 2014. Given Ferguson. Given the rising awareness of our government’s coordinated and premeditated containment and criminalization of dark-skinned populations. Let’s remember that while the US was fighting Nicaraguan rebels, it was also at war with the Black Liberation Army. Funding and arming drug warlords was the same strategy Brazil used to administrate the favelas, via proxy gangs. One might say that LA’s Bloods and Crips played domestic Contras set loose to destabilize community building efforts by militant Black Power.

UNPARDONABLE however are the film’s departures from the truth, which paint a curious fiction as if to indemnify the national press from its complicity with the intelligence community. Two lies will stand out to anyone who was there. (Did the filmmakers think their audience would be only millennials?)

First, the San Jose Mercury News was hardly a “local news outlet” unfamiliar with handling national stories and unknown to the average reader. The Mercury News was an award winning paper which competed with metropolitan mastheads. I can’t imagine its employees aren’t indignant by the film’s yokel characterization. The Los Angeles Times’ vindictive campaign to defame Gary Webb was hardly driven by professional embarassment over a missed scoop.

Second, the Contra-CIA drug smuggling link was suspected well before Gary Webb brought it to the mainstream. I remember during the Iran-Contra Hearings a decade earlier, the alternative media often lamented that the official investigation had been narrowed to exclude mention of the cocaine connection.

These amendments might be excused for simplifying the plot except that they minimize the breadth of the corporate identity of Webb’s censors. How very 90s of this narrative to pretend that Capitalist media outlets compete for news scoops like highschoolers at a science olympics. Newspapers and networks have always only ever peddled the themes their owners dictate. Media consolidation has only meant the manufacturing of public consent has become more uniform, perfectly illustrated by the collusion of the tag-team that hit Gary Webb.

AND AFTER HOLLYWOOD FAILED GARY WEBB, the film critics were waiting with daggers.

David Denby begins his New Yorker review by associating KTM with other crusading journalist thrillers, “some depicting real events, some not”, then pointing to director Michael Cuesta’s “paranoid” TV work, finally contriving that the film botches “many contraditory assertions.” Um, sorry, neither. But I do worry that giving all thumbs down will succeed in scaring away viewers. Denby finishes by making it all about actor Jeremy Renner, un-ironically aping the campaign waged on Gary Webb, overtly described in the film, shifting the focus from the story to all about the messenger.

The Washington Post dispatched one-time Webb adversary Jeff Leen to reprise the hatchet job begun when Gary Webb broke the story. Labeling Webb as “no journalism hero”, Leen’s rebuttal hangs on the technicality that no CIA “employees” were implicated, ignoring what everyone knows post-Blackwater, post-Wikileaks, that the US has long outsourced its crimes, from torture to food service. Dimwit.

WWII air veterans of Doolittle Raiders celebrate 71 years of bombing civilians

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Doolittle nose-art
I read 30 Seconds Over Tokyo when I was still a war-playing kid, before I would understand the mischievous consequences of the Doolittle Raiders B-25 bombers deploying without their bombsights. This was to prevent US war-making advantages falling into enemy hands but it also precluded dropping bombs with accuracy. I’m pretty certain the account for young readers also didn’t explain why over a quarter of the squadron’s bombs were of the incidiary cluster variety. Readers today know what those are for. Doolittle claimed to be targeting military sites in Japan’s capitol, but “invariably” hit civilian areas including four schools and a hospital. Of the American fliers captured, three were tried and executed by the despicable “Japs”, who considered the straffing of civilians to be war crimes. After the war, the US judged the Japanese officers responsible, as if their verdict was a greater injustice against our aviators’ “honest errors”. Today we rationalize our systemic overshoot policy as “collateral damage”.

Every year since WWII, Doolittle’s commandos are feted for their milestone bombing mission. This Veterans Day is to be the last due to their advanced ages. But it is fitting, because isn’t it time Americans faced what we’re celebrating? There’s no denying it took suicidal daring, but the Doolittle Raid inaugurated what became a staple of US warfare, the wholesale terrorizing of civilians from on high, with impunity and indifference. To be fair, the American public has always been kept in the dark. American aircraft have fire-bombed civilians at every diplomatic opportunity since 1942, and a Private Manning sits in the brig for trying to give us a chance to object.

We now know that the Doolittle Raid didn’t turn the tide, nor shake Japanese resolve. It was a retalliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, intended to boost US morale as if to say, America wasn’t defeated. Kinda like why and how we struck back at Afghanistan after 9/11, just as indiscriminately.

The “Mark Twain” ersatz bombsight
substitute bombsightThe Norden bombsight was a closely guarded US secret weapon. An airstrike without it would today be like lobotomizing so-called smart bombs, and deciding to opt for imprecision bombing. The official army record recounts that a subsitute sighting mechanism was improvised for the raid, dubbed the “Mark Twain” and judged to be effective enough. Now a bad joke. Indochina and Wikileaks-wisened, we know the mendacity of that assessment. The vehemently anti-imperialist, anti-racist Twain would not have been honored.

Twain satirized Western so-called Enlightenment thus: “good to fire villages with, upon occasion”.

Post-postwar hagiographies of the raid have suggested the improvised bombsight was better suited to low-altitude missions than the Norden model. That conclusion is easily dismissed because the device was used only for the Doolittle run and never after. The sight’s designer, mission aviator C. Ross Greening, offered a explanation for why he named the device after Mark Twain in his pothumously published memoir Not As Briefed. He didn’t.

The bombsight is named the “Mark Twain” in reference to the “lead line” depth finder used on the Mississippi River paddle wheelers in bygone days.

Because its design was so simple, we’re left to suppose. Greening’s bombsight was named for the same “mark” which Samuel Langhorne Clemens adopted as his celebrated pen name. I find it disingeneous to pretend to repurpose an archaic expression whose meaning was already eclipsed by the household name of America’s most outspoken anti-imperialist. Who would believe you named your dog “Napoleon” after a French pastry?

We are given another glimpse into Greening’s sense of humor by how he named his plane, the “Hari-Kari-er” ready to deal death by bomb-induced suicide. Greening’s B-25 is the one pictured above, with the angelic tart holding a bomb aloft. Greening’s plane was another that carried only incendiary ordnance.

Much was made of the sight’s two-piece aluminum construction, reportedly costing 20 cents at the time compared to the $10,000 Norden. This provided the jingoist homefront the smug satisfaction perhaps, combining a frugality born of the Depression with the American tradition of racism, that only pennies were expensed and or risked on Japanese lives.

War Crimes
Targeting civilians, taking insufficient care to avoid civilian casualties, using disproportunate force, acts of wanton retaliation, and the use of collective punishment are all prohibited by international convention. They are war crimes for which the US prosecutes adversaries but with which our own military refuses to abide. Americans make much of terrorism, yet remain blind to state terrorism. Doolittle’s historic raid, judged by the objective against which it is celebrated as a success, was an act of deliberate terrorism.

Forcing the Japanese to deploy more of their military assets to protect the mainland sounds like a legitimate strategy, except not by targeting civilians to illustrate the vulnerability, nor by terrorizing the population, one of Doolittle’s stated aims. He called it a “fear complex”.

It was hoped that the damage done would be both material and psychological. Material damage was to be the destruction of specific targets with ensuing confusion and retardation of production. The psychological results, it was hoped, would be the recalling of combat equipment from other theaters for home defense, the development of a fear complex in Japan, improved relationships with our Allies, and a favorable reaction in the American people.

There is no defending Japan’s imperialist expansion in the Pacific, and certainly not its own inhumanity. The Japanese treated fellow Asians with the same racist disregard with which we dispatched Filipinos. While Americans point in horror at how the Japanese retalliated against the Chinese population for the Doolittle Raid, we ignore that Doolittle purposely obscured from where our bombers were launched, leaving China’s coast as the only probably suspect.

To be fair, most of Doolittle’s team was kept in the dark about the mission until they were already deployed. I hardly want to detract from the courage they showed to undertake a project that seemed virtually suicidal. But how long should all of us remain in the dark about the true character of the Doolittle Raid?

Out of deference for the earlier generation of WWII veterans, those in leadership, certain intelligence secrets were kept until thirty years after the war. Unveiled, they paint a very different picture of what transpired. The fact that the US knew the German and Japanese codes from early on revealed an imbalance not previously admitted, as an example.

About the Doolittle Raid, much is already openly documented, if not widely known. The impetus for the raid was public knowledge, the evidence of its intent in full view.

BY DESIGN
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, American newspapers were already touting offers of cash rewards for whoever would be the first to strike back at Japan. President Roosevelt expressed a deliberate interest in hitting the Japanese mainland, in particular Tokyo, to retaliate for the Japanese strike against Pearl Harbor, never mind it had been a solely military target.

Plans were made to exploit the Japanese homeland’s vulnerability to fire, as ninety percent of urban structures were made of paper and wood. Writes historian William Bruce Jenson:

In his “confidential” meeting with reporters back in November, Marshall had declared that the US would have no cavil about burning Japan’s paper cities.

For the Doolittle Raid, a bombing strategy was developed to overwhelm the fire department of his target, the Shiba ward.

A former naval attache in Tokyo told Doolittle: “I know that Tokyp fire department very well. Seven big scattered fires would be too much for it to cope with.”

As lead plane, Doolittle’s role was to literally blaze the way. Fellow pilot Richard Joyce told Nebraska History Magazine in 1995:

The lead airplane, which was going to have Doolittle on board as the airplane commander, was going to be loaded with nothing but incendiaries -2.2­ pound thermite incendiaries- in clus­ters. They drop these big clusters and then the straps break and they spray, so they set a whole bunch of fires. He was to be the pathfinder and set a whole bunch of fires in Tokyo for pathfinding purposes.

Doolittle’s report outlined his objective more formally:

one plane was to take off ahead of the others, arrive over Tokyo at dusk and fire the most inflammable part of the city with incendiary bombs. This minimized the overall hazard and assured that the target would be lighted up for following airplanes.

Greening paints the most vivid picture, of burning the Japanese paper houses to light the way:

Doolittle planned to leave a couple of hours early, and in the dark set fire to Tokyo’s Shiba ward … the mission’s basic tactic had been that Doolittle would proceed alone and bomb a flammable section of Tokyo, creating a beacon in the night to help guide following planes to their targets.

Doolittle’s copilot Lt Richard Cole, told this to interviews in 1957:

Since we had a load of incendiaries, our target was the populated areas of the west and northwest parts of Tokyo.

After the bombers had left on their raid, and before news got back about whether or not they accomplished it, the Navy crew on the carrier USS Hornet already sang this song, which went in part:

Little did Hiro think that night
The skies above Tokyo would be alight
With the fires that Jimmy started in Tokyo’s dives
To guide to their targets the B-25s.
When all of a sudden from out of the skies
Came a basket of eggs for the little slant eyes

Incendiaries

Most of the bombers were loaded with three demolition bombs and an incendiary cluster bomb. Some of the planes carried only incendiaries. According to Doolittle’s official report of the raid, here were some of their stated objectives:

Plane no. 40-2270, piloted by Lt. Robert Gray:
thickly populated small factories district. … Fourth scattered incendiary over the correct area

Plane No. 40-2250, Lt. Richard Joyce:
Incendiary cluster dropped over thickly populated and dense industrial residential sector immediately inshore from primary target. (Shiba Ward)

“The third dem. bomb and the incendiary were dropped in the heavy industrial and residential section in the Shiba Ward 1/4 of a mile in shore from the bay and my tat.”

Aircraft 40-2303, Lt Harold Watson:
the congested industrial districts near the railroad station south of the Imperial Palace

AC 40-2283, David Jones:
the congested area Southeast of the Imperial Palace

Even though the planned night raid became a daytime mission, Doolittle did not alter his original role, intended to light the way for the following planes. His target remained the Shiba District of Tokyo. His own plane: “changed course to the southwest and incendiary-bombed highly inflammable section.”

Doolittle’s report included a description of the incendiary bombs:

The Chemical Warfare Service provided special 500 incendiary clusters each containing 128 incendiary bombs. These clusters were developed at the Edgewood Arsenal and test dropped by the Air Corps test group at Aberdeen. Several tests were carried on to assure their proper functioning and to determine the dropping angle and dispersion. Experimental work on and production of these clusters was carried on most efficiently.

As has become an aerial bombardment tradition, crews were let to inscribe messages on the bombs about to be dropped. Accounts made the most of these chestnuts: “You’ll get a BANG out of this.” And “I don’t want to set the world on fire –only Tokyo.”

These details, which reveal the intentions of the raid, were not made known to the public immediately. The Doolittle Raid was planned and executed in secret, with US government and military spokesmen denying knowledge of the operation even in its aftermath. The first word to reach the American public came from the New York Times, citing Japanese sources:

Enemy bombers appeared over Tokyo for the first time in the current war, inflicting damage on schools and hospitals. Invading planes failed to cause and damage on military establishments, although casualties in the schools and hospitals were as yet unknown. This inhuman attack on these cultural establishments and on residential districts is causing widespread indignation among the populace.

This report was dismissed as propaganda. When Japan declared its intention to charge the airman it had taken captive with war crimes, the US protestations redoubled. The accusations were belittled even as our own reports conceded to the possibilities.

Lieutenant Dawson’s Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was the first published account of the raid. Printed less than a year after the event, wartime-sensitive details such as the phony guns made of broomstick handles poking out the back were left out. Targets were also not specified, but a candor remained, probably intended to be threatening. Lawson described the 500-pound incendiaries as “something like the old Russian Molotov Breadbasket”, and related US naval attache Jurika’s advice:

“If you can start seven good fires in Tokyo, they’ll never put them out,” Jurika promised us. … “I wouldn’t worry too much about setting fires in flimsy-looking sections of Tokyo,” he said. “The Japanese have done an amazing job of spreading out some of their industries, instead of concentrating them in large buildings. There’s probably a small machine shop under half of these fragile-looking roofs.”

“Flimsy” became Lawson’s keyword for the residential areas. Here Lawson described dropping his third and fourth bombs, when he saw their corresponding red light indicators:

The third red light flickered, and, since we were now over a flimsy area in the southern part of the city, the fourth light blinked. That was the incendiary, which I knew would separate as soon as it hit the wind and that dozens of small fire bombs would molt from it.

I was satisfied about the steel-smelter and hoped the other bombs had done as well. There was no way of telling, but I was positive that Tokyo could have been damaged that day with a rock.

Our actual bombing operation, from the time the first one went until the dive, consumed not more than thirty seconds.

Thus: Chance of hitting civilian homes: 50/50.
Charges of Excessive Force could be expected, because
blame the victim for being weaker than: a rock.
Care taken to avoid innocent casualties: 30 seconds.

In a later afterword, Lawson blamed Tokyo for having insufficient bomb shelters.

After the war, US occupation forces recovered Japanese records which documented the losses attributed to the Doolittle Raid: fifty dead, 252 wounded, ninety buildings. Besides military or strategic targets, that number included nine electric power buildings, a garment factory, a food storage warehouse, a gas company, two misc factories, six wards of Nagoya 2nd Temporary Army Hospital, six elementary or secondary schools, and “innumerable nonmilitary residences”.

Strafing
Japan accused the fliers of indescriminate strafing civilians. The US countered that defending fighters were responsible for stray bullets when their gunfire missed the bombers. That’s very likely, except the raiders were candid about their strafing too. Lawson:

I nosed down a railroad track on the outskirts of the city and passed a locomotive close enough to see the surprised face of the engineer. As I went by I could have kicked myself for not giving the locomotive’s boiler a burst of our forward 30-calibre guns, then I remembered that we might have better use for the ammunition.

A big yacht loomed up ahead of us and, figuring it must be armed, I told Thatcher to give it a burst. We went over it, lifted our nose to put the tail down and Thatcher sprayed its deck with our 50-calibre stingers.

Greening’s account of firing on a sailor, raises the moral ambiguity of air warfare with which few airmen grapple. By virtue that technology allows it, combatants become slave to a predetermined outcome:

When we attacked the next patrol boat, a Japanese sailor threw his hands up as if to surrender. I guess he expected us to stop and take him prisoner. We shot him and left this boat smoking too.

The Medals
Friendship Medals exchanged between Japan and the US found themselves requisitioned for Doolittle’s Raid:

Several years prior to the war, medals of friendship and good relationship were awarded to several people of the United States by the Japanese government.  In substance these medals were symbolic of the friendship and cooperation between the nations and were to represent the duration of this attitude.  It was decided by the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Frank Knox, that the time was appropriate to have these medals returned.  They had been awarded to Mr. Daniel J. Quigley, Mr. John D. Laurey, Mr. H. Vormstein and Lt. Stephen Jurkis.

After arrangements had been made and the medals secured, a ceremony was held on the deck of the Hornet during which the medals were wired to a 500 lb. bomb to be carried by Lt. Ted Lawson and returned to the Japanese government in an appropriate fashion.

Lawson’s plane no 40-2261 dropped that bomb on an “industrial section of Tokyo” omitting to mention that Japan’s industry was still a post-feudal cottage industry.

“The medals were subsequently delivered in small pieces to their donors in Tokyo by Lt. Ted Lawson at about noon, Saturday, April 18, 1942.”

–Mitscher, M.A. Letter Report to Commander Pacific Fleet.

“Through the courtesy of the War Department your Japanese medal and similar medals, turned in for shipment, were returned to His Royal Highness, The Emperor of Japan on April 18, 1942.”

–Knox, F. Letter Report to Mr. H. Vormstein

Empire says behave or the next Bradley Manning or Hugo Chavez will be you

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Indefinite detention, solitary confinement, torture, and assassination are tools America does not hesitate to use to enforce its feudal corporate agenda. That the US didn’t dispatch Bolivarian hero Hugo Chavez like they did Yasser Arafat is belied by their protestation that such accusations would be far fetched. Wikileaks has already documented ceaseless US plots to eradicate Chavez, second only perhaps to their attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, whose last years bear a resemblance to what befell Chavez. It’s a testament to the magnanimity of both leaders that they didn’t immediately finger US dirty deeds. Because proved or not, it’s dispiriting and serves empire’s purpose that dissenters should take heed: you can spend the foreseeable future tortured behind bars, gunned down by a mob, under house arrest in London, incinerated via drone or LAPD’s “burner”, or tagged with carcinogens. The long arm of Western injustice gets their man.

Gary McKinnon escapes US torturers, by staying outside US borders

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US efforts to extradite Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange and UK hacker Gary McKinnon, the latter thwarted today by UK courts, point to a puzzling question. Should it matter where accused are charged or tried if the US is looking for justice? The activities of both men are essentially curtailed by house arrest, so why is a timetable frustrated? Probably what the US can only achieve by extradition, where the public eye prevents CIA rendition, is INDEFINITE DETENTION. In American hands, that also includes psychologist-crafted “we don’t torture” torture. In effect, the Department of Justice has defined being within US borders as differential enough in the correctional scheme of things. House arrest in the UK is not a sufficient deterrent to would-be leakers and hackers apparently, US declared adversaries must be remanded to where the Empire already has its dissidents contained, in the custody of US borders.

Let’s not forget Wikileaks snitch Adrian Lamo, saboteur Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Swedish Woman in Red Anna Ardin

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While we’re praising Wikileaks and its impact on our revolutionary times, let’s call out those who betrayed the cause, they’re already erasing their tracks on Wikipedia. First there’s hackster-confidant Adrian Lamo who turned in Bradley Manning; there’s fired Wikileaks volunteer Daniel Domscheit-Berg who permanently dismantled the anonymous leak submission mechanism; there’s jilted neoliberal faketivist Anna Ardin who schemed to bring Julian Assange to an ultra-right prosecutor’s attention in Sweden; there’s de facto honeypot Sofia Wilen whose complicity is still a mystery; and there’s President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder who persist in persecuting whistleblowers, who’ve empaneled a grand jury against Assange and who consider Wikileaks a terrorist enterprise.

Julian Assange and Bradley Manning put lie to Western pretense of freedom and rule of law

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The UK wouldn’t extradite Pinochet, but they’re threatening to storm the Ecuadorian embassy in London to see that Wikileaks impresario Julian Assange is extradited to Sweden where a prosecutor wants to decide whether to charge him for sexual violations, more likely so that the Australian can then be rendered to the US to be imprisoned like Bradley Manning and face the death penalty for espionage. The US denies this intention, though it voted against Ecuador’s allies to hold a meeting about the continuing US-UK assault on journalism and whistleblowers. Can the Western empire let Assange and Manning escape severe reprimand? The two are only the mastermind and the alleged-source who’ve ignited the global uprising behind the anti- austerity movements, Arab Spring, and Occupy. President Obama cannot leave either off the hook without encouraging a deluge of more insider defections. Bradley Manning is already under torture in military custody, but Assange continues to evade US clutches. Should he escape to asylum in Ecuador where Obama’s exterminator drones can deal “American Justice”? The US has yet to condemn a white man to targeted assassination, but in the Global South, in darker-skinned populations, who will know? I favor Ecuador expanding its embassy to more than the first floor office, to offer Wikileaks an entire center of operations for as long as Julian Assange is confined under virtual house arrest. In Assange’s speech from the embassy balcony he repeated three times: “Bradley Manning must be released.” Journalists must be free to expose the crimes of the rich. Citing prison sentences for a Bahrain dissident and Russia’s Pussy Riot, Assange concluded: “There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.”

Here’s the full text of Assange’s statement:

“I am here today because I cannot be there with you today. But thank you for coming. Thank you for your resolve and your generosity of spirit.

“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 UK 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.

“So, 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.

And so, to those brave people. I thank President Correa for the courage he has shown in considering and in granting me political asylum.

“And I also thank the government, and in particular Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, who upheld the Ecuadorian constitution and its notion of universal rights in their consideration of my asylum. And to the Ecuadorian people for supporting and defending this constitution.

“And I also have a debt of gratitude to the staff of this embassy, whose families live in London and who have shown me the hospitality and kindness despite the threats we all received.

“This Friday, there will be an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers of Latin America in Washington DC to address this very situation.

“And so, I am grateful to those people and governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, 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, 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.

“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-hunts 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 organisation; be it Wikileaks, or be it the New York Times.

“The US administration’s war on whistleblowers must end.

“Thomas Drake, William Binney and John Kirakou and the other heroic whistleblowers must – they must – be pardoned or compensated for the hardships they have endured as servants of the public record.

“And to the Army Private who remains in a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, who was found by the United Nations to have endured months of torturous detention in Quantico, Virginia and who has yet – after two years in prison – to see a trial: he must be released.

“Bradley Manning must be released.

“And if Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and an example to us all and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.

“Bradley Manning must be released.

“On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial. The legal maximum is 120 days.

“On Thursday, my friend Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Human Rights Centre, was sentenced to three years in prison for a tweet. On Friday, a Russian band were sentenced to two years in jail for a political performance.

“There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.

“Thank you.”

How to testify at a grand jury: David House “invokes” on Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, & taking illegal notes

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Bradley Manning supporter David House was called last year before the grand jury preparing charges against Julian Assange, in the event Assange is successfully remanded to Sweden. Despite being told a transcript was forbidden, House took notes which have now found themselves (A)nonymously online, reproduced here with David House’s refrain in bold. Here’s Grand Jury, a comedy:  

1. Record of proceedings
2. As recorded by David House
3. Grand Jury, Alexandria VA
4. 15 June 2011, 4:10pm to 5pm
5.  
6. Inside the Grand Jury:
7. DOJ Counterespionage Section: Attorney Patrick Murphy *
8. DOJ Counterespionage Section: Attorney Deborah Curtis *
9. Eastern District of Virginia: AUSA Bob Wiechering
10. Eastern District of Virginia: AUSA Tracy McCormick
11. Eastern District of Virginia: AUSA Karen Dunn
12. Unspecified number of Grand Jurors
13. Court Steganographer
14. David House
15.  
16. Directly outside the Grand Jury:
17. Mike Condon, FBI Agent from Washington, D.C. field office
18. James Farmer, Chief of Anti-Terrorism and National Security Unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D. Mass
19. Peter Krupp, David House’s attorney
20.  
21.  
22. Record begins: 4:10pm
23. [David House is sworn in and informed of his rights]
24. Patrick Murphy: Would you please state your full name for the record?
25. David House: My name is David House.
26. PM: Did you meet Bradley Manning in January 2010?
27. DH: On the advice of counsel, I invoke my right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I am concerned that this grand jury is seeking information designed to infringe or chill my associational privacy, and that of others, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and that it is using information obtained without a search warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I define the preceding statement as “invoke”, and when I say “I invoke” in the future I am referring to this statement.
28. Deborah Curtis: Exhibit 1-A?
29. PM: Mr. House, please direct your attention to the screen behind you, exhibit 1-A.
30. DC: I can’t make it bigger.
31. PM: Try… here, remove that bar on the side.
32. DC: That didn’t work.
33. DH: Do you guys need help?
34. DC: We just need to make it bigger. Can everyone see this okay?
35. PM: Ok… we’re going to continue.
36.  
37. [A still image from the Frontline PBS special is displayed on the screen. Four figures are standing in front of the BUILDS logo, one figure has her back turned.]
38.  
39. PM: Mr. House, can you identify the man on the right?
40. DH: I invoke.
41. PM: Can you identify the man standing second from right?
42. DH: I invoke.
43. PM: Ok, can you identify the person with bright-colored hair, standing here?
44. DH: I invoke.
45. PM: Are we to believe that identifying that individual would somehow incriminate you?
46. DH: On the advice of counsel, I invoke my right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I am concerned that this grand jury is seeking information designed to infringe or chill my associational privacy, and that of others, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and that it is using information obtained without a search warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
47. PM: Ok, can you identify the man on the left?
48. PM: I would like to observe for the record that Mr. House is taking notes.
49. DH: As to the previous question, I invoke.
50. PM: Why are you taking notes?
51. DH: Invoke.
52. Bob Wiechering: I’d like to recommend, at this point, that we take a break and talk to your counsel.
53.  
54. [AUSAs and House leave the grand jury]
55. [Peter Krupp, House’s attorney, asserts House’s right to invoke]
56. [AUSAs and House return to the grand jury]
57.  
58. PM: What is your birthdate?
59. DH: March 14, 1987
60. PM: Where do you live?
61. DH: Can you restate the question?
62. PM: What is your address?
63. DH: I invoke.
64. PM: What is your current occupation?
65. DH: I invoke.
66. PM: Were you a senior in computer science at Boston University in January 2010?
67. DH: I invoke.
68. PM: Isn’t it true that you told PBS Frontline that you were a senior at Boston University in January 2010?
69. DH: I invoke.
70. PM: Do you know what a hackerspace is?
71. DH: I invoke.
72. PM: Do you know what BUILDS is, the acronym?
73. DH: I invoke.
74. Bob Wiechering: Mr. House, I notice you are taking notes. Attempting to create your own transcript is a violation of rule 6(e) of this grand jury. We have brought this to the attention of your counsel, and although he feels differently on the matter, we assert that you must stop taking notes at this time.
75. DH: Let me consult with my attorney.
76. [House leaves the grand jury room and returns one minute later]
77. DH: My lawyer asks that you refer all questions about notes to him.
78. BW: Let’s continue.
79. PM: Mr. House, are you involved with the Bradley Manning Support Network?
80. DH: I invoke.
81. PM: Did you respond in the affirmative when asked by the FBI if you had heard of known WikiLeaks associate Jacob Appelbaum?
82. PM: I would like to state for the record that Mr. House is not answering the question and is instead taking notes.
83. DH: I invoke.
84. PM: Do you intend to answer any of my questions, aside from your date of birth and your name?
85. DH: I invoke.
86. PM: Is that because of the phalanx of attorneys present here today?
87. Court Stenographer: I’m sorry, the what of attorneys?
88. PM: Phalanx… the phalanx of attorneys.
89. DH: As to the phalanx of attorneys, I invoke.
90. PM: At this time, I will let Deborah Curtis ask a few questions.
91. DC: Mr. House, have you ever been to the Oxford Spa restaurant in Cambridge, MA?
92. DH: Allow me to consult with my attorney.
93. [House leaves the grand jury and returns one minute later.]
94. DH: As to the previous question, I invoke.
95. DC: You admitted to federal agents in Boston that you had met Bradley Manning in January 2010, is that correct?
96. DH: I invoke.
97. DC: Isn’t it true that you spent the night of January 27 2010 with Daniel Clark and Bradley Manning?
98. DH: Can you repeat the question?
99. DC: Isn’t it true that you spent the night of January 27 2010 with Daniel Clark and Bradley Manning?
100. DH: One more time.
101. DC: Isn’t it true that you spent the night of January 27 2010 with Daniel Clark and Bradley Manning?
102. PM: He’s writing it down.
103. DC: Are you getting this, are you writing it all down?
104. DH: Was the last question a question to be answered?
105. DC: Yes.
106. DH: I invoke.
107. DC: And the question before?
108. DH: I also invoke.
109. DC: Where did Danny Clark have breakfast on the morning of January 28, 2010?
110. DH: Allow me to consult with my attorney.
111. [House leaves the grand jury and returns one minute later.]
112. DH: As to the previous question, I invoke.
113. DC: Do you intend to answer any questions about Daniel Clark?
114. DH: Invoke.
115. DC: Do you intend to answer any questions about Bradley Manning?
116. DH: [Writing] Could you please repeat the question?
117. DC: Do you intend to answer any questions about Jacob Appelbaum?
118. DH: I invoke.
119. DC: At this time, we’d like to stop the proceedings. You are free to leave.

Wikileaks to release Syria Files, but to whose fortuity, and whose Wikileaks?

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At first glance it looks like the Wikileaks cavalry to the rescue! Wikileaks and embattled Julian Assange back in the saddle, to expose the behind-the-scenes on Syria, to undermine the shelf-worn NATO Powerpoint Presentation, this time against Syria, the NATO powers’ prelude to war. YAY WIKILEAKS! But there are interesting anomalies: the leaked correspondence is as recent as March, yet Wikicreep Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged the group’s anonymous leak gathering system a year ago, and so far the files purport to embarrass Assad… Were these leaked by the CIA-backed rebels? Stay tuned.

Bradley Manning, Guy Fawkes, and the star chamber awaiting Julian Assange

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You wonder what Elizabethan era failed coup plotter Guy Fawkes means to Anonymous. Their now iconic mask is actually an image under license from the film V FOR VENDETTA. The mask’s smirk connotes an elusive rabble-rouser and perhaps mocks Guy’s namesake bonfire holiday in Britain, meant to commemorate the burning of the would-be king-killer but ambiguously may also celebrate his near success. Anonymous wants to project an indomitable rebellious spirit, omniscient and untouchable, but Guy Fawkes most certainly met the death of revolutionaries immemorial.

If Fawkes had any reason to smirk it was because he was able to leap to his death to avoid the fate of his fellow conspirators, each hung until half dead, then castrated, disemboweled and dismembered while still conscious. Their torture was as much a punishment as a deterrent to anyone who would emulate their populist heroics. Today of course I think of the punitive treatment being meted to accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning, whose abuse would seem to be wholly unwarranted, considering he stands accused, not convicted, and for most of his detention, not even charged.

Guy Fawkes and his colleagues were found guilty by the Star Chamber, now the sinister pejorative for all subsequent secretive quasi-courts. It’s something akin to the Grand Jury mechanism being contrived to finagle the extradition of Julian Assange. Not to stop Wikileaks, but to bodily hurt Assange, have him drawn and quartered figuratively whatever, that the four corners of the kingdom bear the message, dare to defy authority and we’ll wipe that smirk off your face.

The Guy mask reminds me of the masks worn in the interrogation scenes of Terry Gilliam’s dystopian classic BRAZIL where the cherubic smiles masked unspeakably vile tortures.

Semantics aside, Bradley Manning must be freed, and Julian Assange protected. Why should our heroes be martyrs?

Even unmasked, alleged Anonymous hactivists sport heroic Guy Fawkes grin

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Donald Husband, accused Paypal attacker, alleged member of Anonymous, heroic hacktivistTPM and Gawker are getting lots of mileage from unveiling the mugs behind “Anonymous,” the alleged members accused of the DoS attacks on Paypal, targeted for its financial disruption of Wikileaks. As comment threads are yucking it up with the usual anti-geek jokes, ha ha they’re no longer anonymous, I couldn’t help but think of a chapter from Michael Moore’s upcoming HERE COMES TROUBLE excerpted for the Guardian, in which Moore recounts the ostracism he felt after his Oscar acceptance speech when he denounced the illegal invasion of Iraq. Though so many of us cheered, it turned out the critical derision quickly overwhelmed Moore. I can only hope that those recently arrested by the FBI for computer activism under the collective pseudonym “Anonymous” have the fortitude of spirit to see past their antagonists. Without inferring their guilt or direct responsibility for interrupting the mercenary Paypal, I’d like to recap the obvious, that Wikileaks and Bradley Manning are worthy of support, and we can bicker about Anonymous’ declared strategies, but anyone with guts enough to get off the proverbial fence is fighting the good fight. Theirs was a virtual picketing of an internet business acting politically, their protest was protected free speech. The penalties they face, up to 15 years it’s threatened, reflect the only rights the USG holds inviolate: financial transactions. The faces of Anonymous are heroes.

Wikileaked: US soldiers are babykillers

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A document released last week by Wikileaks tells of a 2006 raid by US troops on a farmhouse near Balad, Iraq, where the American soldiers handcuffed a household of ten, and executed them with gunshots to the head. Killed: one male adult, three female relatives, an elderly woman, four children aged 3-5, and a 5 month-old infant. Then the raiding party called in an airstrike to cover the crime. Perhaps cross referenced with the Iraq War Logs, reporters will identify which outfit committed the murders, because that’s the only way light is being shed on US war crimes, via Wikileaks. Incidentally, the Ishaqi Incident was reported on in 2006 with the Pentagon dismissing accusations that its actions were anything but appropriate. But this recent cable reveals that the USG knew what they’d done. You’d think the Department of Defense would have an interest in cooperating, because until the killers of zip-tied babies are fingered, all American soldiers are babykillers.

Tom Hayden says there’s nothing to a US conspiracy against Julian Assange, and he’s got the nothing to confirm it

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What an ugly hit piece against Julian Assange, by Tom Hayden in The Nation. Formerly of the American Left, Hayden used to need no introduction, now he mistakenly cross-posts assignments for the State Department (see A view from Sweden). Hayden dismisses notions of a US-led conspiracy to render the Wikileaks mastermind from the UK to Sweden and thence into the US torture system, along the logic that such accusations only anger the Swedes and make the outcome self-fulfilling. Hayden’s argument is to shoehorn Assange to Sweden now, to take his licks, before you make Dad really angry.
 
Based on everyone he’s talked to, Hayden says there’s no conspiracy. Seriously, that’s his logic. And he admonishes us against speculating wildly about unknowns. Whenever a writer prefaces their investigation with “some facts will never be known” I can picture them already leaning on the shovel. Even if Hayden intended to dig, it’s like he’s come upon a suspect’s backyard full of holes. Glancing into each one he concludes, yep, no evidence here.

You wonder what Hayden would make of a document completely redacted.

That’s right, what the Swedish prosecutors won’t tell us, what the USG won’t say, the extraordinarily swift synchronicity of legal actions against Assange kept under a veil? Not even question marks. More important to Hayden are questions he can load, like this one:

Why is the United States pursuing Assange as the conspiratorial mastermind of WikiLeaks, when his reputation, credibility and organization have been so damaged?

I think Assange’s reluctance to be sucked into the black hole that Sweden has become, is reinforced by the fact that the Nation Magazine has to get its “view from Sweden” from an American.

My best clue about Hayden’s focus is when he pretends to restore perspective by reflecting that aspersions cast against Assange (each with an assist by Hayden, if you’re keeping score), be weighed against the good which Wikileaks has done. Thereupon Hayden lists revelations we owe to Wikileaks. But they’re body counts from the Iraq and Afghan documents and nothing from the diplomatic cables, about the Middle East, North Africa, etc. I guess that underlies why Hayden can’t find probable cause for US forces to ally against Assange. It’s the “nothing new here” talking point.

Based on everyone I’ve talked to, Hayden’s an idiot. I’d rather give him less credit.

At the Frontline Club forum on Saturday, Assange said what’s needed now are troves of files from the CIA and FBI, and he added temptingly, the New York Times, the pace car of American media. Assange related that he’d just learned from Daniel Ellsberg that the NYT had 1,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers one month before Ellsberg leaked them. We know the corporate press prints “all the news that’s fit” but wouldn’t it be great to get confirmation?

Don’t worry about Hayden’s nothing, he already has all the confirmation he wants.

Slavoj Zizek Not Gaga for Pop

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Slovenian philosopher Slovaj Zizek has a cult following like Lady Gaga, but denied this weekend any romantic connection. I write this with tongue in cheek, Slavoj’s, because of his comic protestations. Zizek was cajoled by Amy Goodman at Saturday’s London Fronline Club event: did he categorically denied the rumor? Zizek said “Absolute denial on everything.” But he wasn’t dissing Gaga or the notoriety of the mischievous meme, even as he protested: “I didn’t even listen to not one of her songs!” The audience ate it up; how total a rejection. Except Zizek continued playfully: “My God, I listen to Schubert and Schumann songs. Sorry, I’m a conservative.” And there you have the reigning academic of pop cultural references, who cannot make a point without recalling a movie scene, rejecting not Lady Gaga, but Pop. Obviously Zizek’s pop culture isn’t yours.

It may escape the notice of average film goers that when themes evoke cinematic moments to Zizek’s memory, they’re not from There’s Something About Mary. Saturday’s discussion brought up Marx Brothers, yes, in the company of Lubitsch and Truffaut, moments of cinema verité, touches of social comment with Zizek’s nuance already scripted. Yes he’s famously evoked Tom & Jerry, and more recently tried to project Hosni Mubarak’s attention to Wiley Coyote’s fatal overrun of the cliff, but I think it’s clear, like Schubert and Schumann, we’re talking about classics. Academia may like to paint Zizek a populist, but his material is not plebeian.

For the curious, from the Marx Brothers: “My client may look like an idiot, and act like an idiot. That shouldn’t distract you, he is an idiot.” (About Rumsfeld being a liar.)

From Night And Day: A young lover finally yields unceremoniously to her suitor’s whining entreaties, to which he puts on the brakes like a reluctant prude. (About the West’s rejection of what it’s always pretended to want, a secular revolution in Egypt.)

From Ninotchka: Customer “May I have a coffee with cream?” Waiter: “We don’t have cream, we have milk. May I offer you a coffee without milk?” (About speaking the unspoken pretense.)

Where Zizek hits low perhaps are his wildly off-color jokes, gleaned from friends over drinks –I like to imagine– as opposed to circulated in morning emails. Zizek was full of sexism-loaded analogies on Saturday, and one joke in particular looks to have fallen between the edits which Democracy Now is re-airing, and even off the published transcript of the full event.

So I’ll retell it, and you tell me if Zizek could have made his point without getting so obscene. He’s addressing human nature’s desire for favorable news, even as by definition it masks atrocity.

A man’s wife is treated in the hospital for a potentially fatal condition. The doctor comes out and tells the husband, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, we saved your wife, she will live. The bad news is, well, due to circumstances we couldn’t avoid, her rectal muscles no longer function, so she’ll be shitting uncontrollably the rest of her life, and her vagina will be secreting a substance, very unpleasant, and so on, her mouth, her nose, disgusting, and so on. Noticing the husband’s discomfort increasing to an unbearable pitch, the doctor tells him: Relax, I’m kidding, don’t worry, your wife died.

Zizek was illustrating the new Wikileaks state of affairs, our corporate government and its press rejecting the truths which emerged from the leaks, preferring the more palatable, no matter the horrors it perpetuates. Between reality and Zizek’s joke, which was the more obscene?

I also love Zizek’s propensity to drop “and so on” between statements, like verbal checkmarks on the points he’s hit. It’s post-graduate lecture shorthand for “you know the rest.” Chomsky does it too, by fading into mumbles, and it is frustrating to those of us who haven’t covered the assigned reading. But it’s a reminder too, of how much out there we cannot hope to master. That shouldn’t stand in our way of trying to grasp the bigger picture.

Am I right, Slavoj Zizek big picture speaks to us using the vocabulary of the big picture show? It’s the silver screen to be precise, and as yet he’s limited himself to visuals, not lyrics. I think Zizek’s candid revelation about his musical preferences leaves a hint for us that the bigger picture isn’t to be found in today’s compression sculpted pop sound, no matter how politically clever or Gaga the music.

A face to launch a thousand protests. Leak your trophy footage you cowards

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Young Iraqi watching as US soldiers raid her home
This is a still from John Pilger’s THE WAR YOU DON’T SEE, recently blocked from its US debut in Santa Fe. Why? Because such images will stop war. In particular this shows a terrified Iraqi girl held at gunpoint as her home is searched. I wonder how many such scenes have been captured by embed cameras or GI cellphones. Western eyes are being inoculated to violence and gore, our victims dehumanized, foreign civilians reduced to collateral, but it appears our media managers worry Americans cannot yet resist the ordinary tears of children. Imagine such scenes of heartbreak gone viral across the web. Never mind atrocity or war crime, show us emotional responses with which we can identify. The mass of digital records could doubtless overwhelm Wikileaks. These are not top secret, yet nearly any have been leaked. My appeal to the cowardly US soldier, or the damnable media embed, leak the footage which haunts you already, your PTSD may be the contagion to end public support for our state sponsored terrorism.

Navy Seals Death Squids

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It does seem unfair to conclude, after the US special forces operation to hunt and kill Osama bin Laden, that all Navy SEAL teams are death squads, but is it a logical fallacy? No one is now pretending there was any other objective but to kill the al-Qaeda leader and everyone who stood in our path, preferably unarmed. Now the latest revelation is that a duplicate assault team was kept at the ready. That’s how many executioners ready? The question becomes, are all Navy Seals trained to kill in cold blood? The answer could lay with the instructors at Fort Benning, the notorious “School of the Americas” where it used to be understood the death squads of South American dictators learned their trade, although now torture is taught at military camps and private contractor schools literally coast to coast, so isn’t that the problem? Torture being among other unsavory practices we say we do not do, while simultaneously forbidding revelations to come from Wikileaks.

When the Germans set their minds to liquidate civilians as their Operation Barbarossa drove toward Russia, they dedicated “special forces” called the “Einsatzgruppen” to do the deed. One because the task detracted from the forward advance, and two, because executing unarmed civilians proved a demoralizing task for the ordinary soldier. On the other hand, gathering noncombatants and shooting them in the back of the head didn’t require combat skills either, so the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from the police force of German cities like Hamburg, where the principle skill was exerting authority and pulling the trigger where others might flinch.

The Einsatzgruppen present vexing evidence for Holocaust deniers. Skeptics can point to inconsistencies about the function of gas chambers in the concentration camps, to suggest that the Nazis might have managed to work their prison laborers to death, but never intended to exterminate them. That argument fails when considering the role of the Einsatzgruppen, to hunt down Jewish civilians, take them to where no one is looking and shoot them. Prisoners of war, yes, and Slavs too, but by primary directive, the Jews.

When partisan acts of sabotage necessitated disciplinary retribution, the Germans had other squads to raze entire villages, these soldiers were chosen from the military brig or from convicts offered a military probation from civilian prison.

In either case the German Wehrmacht chose to match the criminal mindset to the crime. Though overwhelming in its savagery, WWII predated the “Free Fire Zone” where civilians are pretended to be adversaries and/or dismissed as collateral damage.

That’s not to say that today’s soldiers are all bad, many of them I’m sure are earnest peacekeepers determined to win hearts to Pax Americana. I’m sure your average Navy SEAL has rescued his share of kittens from trees.

So which is it, do the Navy SEALs train every member not to shy from shooting defenseless people at point-blank range, or are there designated specialists? Are those chosen based on excellence of performance, as the PR has it, or from among the sailors with disciplinary troubles? Because it’s looking like the bin Laden raid was not out of the ordinary, and no one’s defending it as such.

Bin Laden’s assassination offered a curious ray of hope for me when President Obama’s mission accomplished message was “justice has been served.” Might I dream that bankers and the world’s biggest criminals could feel a draft of discomfort at the idea that no one is untouchable, and the Commander in Chief’s idea of serving justice means a hail of bullets to whomever’s home he chooses.

Don’t worry, there are unspecial forces enough to go around. When Wikileaks released the video of unarmed Iraqis being gunned down by relentless, trigger-giddy helicopter crews, most soldiers acknowledged that such events were commonplace. In the US military, you don’t even have to be a specially rated soldier to rank as Einsatzgruppen.

In my 20-year experience with local policemen, owning two retail stores, soliciting their help with shoplifters, vandals, and whatever disturbances, I can honestly report that all were professional, competent, and very pleasant. That’s 100% of them, very nice people. I can also say that in my experiences protesting, those police-persons who arrested me were unwavering bastards. Also 100%. Not in any particular case the same officers, but statistically, if you compare the two absolute groups, they’re the same people.

Crowd builds in Al Tahrir Square, Cairo, two million defy Mubarak intimidation

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Al Jazeera has reasserted live footage in Cairo today, for the Friday demonstration billed as “Day of Departure” meant to depose dictator Mubarak. Already gone are the US major network talking heads, fleeing in advance the predicted mayhem as if to dot the exclamation point of their Chaos in Egypt meme. Alas, they won’t be here to offer color commentary on the hundreds of dozens of demonstrators of indeterminate religious-political orientation massing for Egyptian on Egyptian rioting. For the rest of us, this is a veritable revolution before our eyes. Perhaps the monumental event of our lifetime. Regardless the outcome, most of us are probably so estranged from reality to recognize it. This is what Democracy looks like.

We only know representative democracy, warped beyond recognition by an electoral college system only a statistician’s mother could love. Switzerland is the only direct democracy we’re taught in school. But democratic participation in Switzerland is not much more complicated than a homeowners association in an affluent neighborhood. People power taking to the street, denouncing the illegitimacy of its authoritarian masters, leaderless, allied, that’s real democracy.

What a shame the American celebrities are missing the party. Williams and Couric fled with the expat community, Amanpour is already giving her veneer of respectability to the next interviewee, Zuckerberg not Assange, because the corporate media wants to call this a Facebook revolution sooner than Wikileaks’. Anderson Cooper is cowering on the hotel floor of an undisclosed location, unafraid to confess that he’s fearing for his life, working that [brown] people-are-revolting angle.

On the heroic independent media side, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous spent the night in Tahrir Square, sleeping among the activists, half of them with bandaged heads, waking at intervals by the alarm sounding for anticipated stone-throwers.

None of the network journos showed any hesitation to criticize the harassment they encountered on the streets, though blaming Mubarak’s thugs was never explicit, and none of them veered from celebrating the riots as “Egypts killing each other.” Even Al Jazeera pretended to confuse the Pro and Anti sides, failing to discriminate between the side which was armed from the side taking cover, the knife wielders from desperate stone throwers trying to keep their attackers at bay.

Finally this morning an AJ text crawl mentioned 300 fatalities since the protests began January 25th, otherwise there has been scant mention of innocent civilians killed, some of them shot in the head by nighttime snipers.

All of the networks, even Al Jazeera express their incredulity that the demonstrators project no central leadership, failing to speculate why that may be.

Al Jazeera takes care to mention, every time they consult one of their three correspondents on the ground, that they omit speaker identities “for their own safety.” Even when they interview activists, the AJ anchors thank them for being brave enough to reveal their real names. Not discussed is the certain probability that calling out a demonstration leader will direct the security apparatus to deploy their snipers, summary arrest, or detention of family members. As the media wax horrific the barbarity of Cairo’s street culture chaos, they maintain a rudely unrealistic civil pretense to mask Egypt’s cruel police state.

My nightmare scenario, now that I’m looking over millions of peaceful undaunted Egyptians chanting for deliverance from their uncaring dictator? I worry about the US advisors reported to have flown into Cairo this morning, reassuring their cabby, it was reported, that everything was going to be fine.

I worry that Washington has spot on advice to offer Mubarak about how to respond to a “million man march.” After all, that’s old hat for DC. Let ’em eat waffle cake.

American protesters get the same response from Obama as they did from Bush 43. Praise for the glorious display of citizens exercising their constitutional rights. Talk away, shout it to the rooftops. Feel better? I hear you America. Thank you for your faith in the system. You are the change you’ve been waiting for. Please collect your refuse on the way out. Be sure to leave something in the hat to cover the expense of the Port-a-Johns. Thank you America, I’m honored, really. Yes we can, see you at the polls in 2012. Thank you for flying Air of Democracy. Bu’bye.

Bradley Manning’s heroism magnified

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PFC Bradley Manning’s last approved visitor David House was denied access to visit the Adrian-Lamo-named Wikileaks source, in this eighth month of solitary confinement without charges. Last week Manning’s lawyer described the conditions endured by his client: For 23 hours per day, he will sit in his cell. The guards will check on him every five minutes by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning will be required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see him clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure that he is okay. He will receive each of his meals in his cell. He will not be allowed to have a pillow or sheets. He will not be allowed to have any personal items in his cell. … He will be prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop. He will receive one hour of exercise outside of his cell daily. The guards will take him to an empty room and allow him to walk. He will usually just walk in figure eights around the room until his hour is complete. When he goes to sleep, he will be required to strip down to his underwear and surrender his clothing to the guards.

Wikileaks tests domino theory: Tunisia

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In my imagination the Wikileaks war room in Ellington Hall, the Suffolk manor where Julian Assange is under house arrest, is not a book club reading circle racing through the “not much new” of Cablegate waiting for someone to cry BINGO. It’s a war room. The wiki drip is not which diplomatic cables are the juiciest, or which can be released to garner the maximum exposure. Wikileaks is dropping the cables like depth charges, calibrated to explode where the enemy hull is the weakest. Who is trying to sink the great American ship of state terror? With our traditional adversaries won over to Capitalism, the American empire found wars it could pick safely, damn the collateral civilians, full speed ahead. But with Wikileaks it looks to me the US has finally met its match. Forget the communist peril attempting to topple regional dominoes, this is the barbarity of real Democracy at our gates. Attribute the Tunisian revolution to Wikileaks, or color-code it Jasmine to pretend it was USAIDed, I believe the first domino has fallen.

Dutch TV interview with Julian Assange

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Julian Assange has been doing lots of interviews –strange the US media isn’t asking. We’d rather dissect the minutia of Loughner’s rants, to an incomprehensible end, rather than connect the dots with Wikileaks. What pretext do Americans grant the corporate media that we do not expect them to seek out and interview Assange?

Wikileaks Jacob Appelbaum confounds US customs w Bill of Rights thumbdrive

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US-based Wikileaks colleague Jacob Appelbaum has a humorous account of his reentry yesterday to the US. Flying into Newark last July his laptop was searched and his cell phones confiscated. This time Appelbaum tweeted ahead that the ACLU would be his welcoming party, among other measures, recounted through Twitter:

Tweets by ioerror

I am not practically able to transport electronic devices. I will be radio silent before, during, and for some time after my flight.

I think that it is unlikely that there will be any serious trouble. With secret courts and sealed orders… the only way to know is to go.

I’m heading to the airport from Reykjavik and expect to be in the US around 16:40 PST Monday afternoon. Perhaps everything will go smoothly.

I am out of the airport and back in Seattle. Nothing more for now, sleep time.

It’s very frustrating that I have to put so much consideration into talking about the kind of harassment that I am subjected to in airports.

I was detained, searched, and CBP did attempt to question me about the nature of my vacation upon landing in Seattle.

The CBP specifically wanted laptops and cell phones and were visibly unhappy when they discovered nothing of the sort.

I did however have a few USB thumb drives with a copy of the Bill of Rights encoded into the block device. They were unable to copy it.

The forensic specialist (who was friendly) explained that EnCase and FTK, with a write-blocker inline were unable to see the Bill of Rights.

I requested access my lawyer and was again denied. They stated I was I wasn’t under arrest and so I was not able to contact my lawyer.

The CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) agent was waiting for me at the exit gate. Remember when it was our family and loved ones?

When I handed over my customs declaration form, the female agent was initially friendly. After pulling my record, she had a sour face.

She attempted to trick me by putting words into my mouth. She marked my card with a large box with the number 1 inside, sent me on my way.

While waiting for my baggage, I noticed the CBP agent watching me and of course after my bag arrived, I was “randomly” selected for search.

Only US customs has a random number generator worse than a mid-2007 Debian random number generator. Random? Hardly.

During the search, I made it quite clear that I had no laptop and no cell phone. Only USB drives with the Bill of Rights.

The CBP agent stated that I had posted on Twitter before my flight and that slip ended the debate about their random selection process.

The CBP agents in Seattle were nicer than ones in Newark. None of them implied I would be raped in prison for the rest of my life this time.

The CBP agent asked if the ACLU was really waiting. I confirmed the ACLU was waiting and they again denied me contact with legal help.

All in all, the detainment was around thirty minutes long. They all seemed quite distressed that I had no computer and no phone.

They were quite surprised to learn that Iceland had computers and that I didn’t have to bring my own.

There were of course the same lies and threats that I received last time. They even complemented me on work done regarding China and Iran.

I think there’s a major disconnect required to do that job and to also complement me on what they consider to be work against police states.

While it’s true that Communist China has never treated me as badly as CBP, I know this isn’t true for everyone who travels to China.

All in all, if you’re going to be detained, search, and harassed at the border in an extra-legal manner, I guess it’s Seattle over Newark.

It tok a great deal of thought before I posted about my experience because it honestly appears to make things worse for me in the future.

Even if it makes things worse for me, I refuse to be silent about state sponsored systematic detainment, searching, and harassment.

In case it is not abundantly clear: I have not ben arrested, nor charged with any crime, nor indicted in any way. Land of the free? Hardly.

I’m only counting from the time that we opened my luggage until it was closed. The airport was basically empty when I left.

It’s funny that the forensics guy uses EnCase. As it, like CBP, apparently couldn’t find a copy of the Bill of Rights I dd’ed into the disk.

The forensics guy apparently enjoyed the photo with my homeboy Knuth and he was really quite kind. The forensics guy in Newark? Not so much.

The CBP agent asked me for data – was I bringing data into the country? Where was all my data from the trip? Names, numbers, receipts, etc.

The mental environment that this creates for traveling is intense. Nothing is assured, nothing is secure, and nothing provides escape.

I resisted the temptation to give them a disk filled with /dev/random because I knew that reading them the Bill of Rights was enough hassle.

I’m flying to Toronto, Canada for work on Sunday and back through Seattle again a few days later. Should be a joy to meet these guys again.

All of this impacts my ability to work and takes a serious emotional toll on me. It’s absolutely unacceptable.

What happens if I take a device they can’t image? They take it. What about the stuff they give back? Back doored? Who knows?

Does it void a warranty if your government inserts a backdoor into your computer or phone? It certainly voids the trust I have in all of it.

I dread US Customs more than I dreaded walking across the border from Turkey to Iraq in 2005. That’s something worth noting.

I will probably never feel safe about traveling internationally with a computer or phones again.

None the less, safe or not, I won’t stop working on Tor. Nor will I cease traveling. I will adapt and I will win. A hard road worth taking.

A solid argument for free software: To check the integrity of your hardware and your software against tampering. No binary (firmware) blobs.

I’d like to think that when I visit my family in Canada this weekend and attend a work conference that Canada won’t hassle me. Am I dreaming?

Will the Canadian government simply act as an arm of the US policy of detaining, searching, and harassing me? Oh Canada! I hope not.

It’s interesting to note that some media initially reported that I had no trouble because I said nothing at all. Irony abounds.

My border experience reminds me of the old monochrome quote: “Land of the Free? Land of the Free Refill!”

Why do we allow US Customs to lie and to threaten people? It’s a crime to lie to them and they do it as their day job. Why the inequality?

Guardian redacts from Wikileaks cables not only names, critique of Capitalism

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The beauty of the Wikileaks model is simultaneous releases through multiple news outlets as well as on its own site to keep them honest. The Guardian has been caught redacting not just names, but entire passages which would be unflattering to British politicians, oil companies and CAPITALISM. About corruption in Uzbekistan, they excised what would seem to be a succinct definition of “capitalism … means large bribes to the best connected.”