Whistleblower Bradley Manning Has Zero Chance of Recieving a Fair Trial.

US Army Private Bradley Manning, accused of leaking large numbers of classified documents to WikiLeaks, including the video now entitled, "Collateral Murder" (below) said he wanted to "spark a public debate on the role of US military and foreign policy."  He pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him, pleading not guilty to the most serious charge of all, aiding the enemy, an enemy that is classified, even to Bradley Manning. A classified enemy?  Don't feel bad, it even stumps legal scholars.

“The "classified enemy" designation attached to one of the three entities that WikiLeaker Bradley Manning is accused of aiding has perplexed and divided professors of military law.
Manning, a 25-year-old former intelligence specialist, has been incarcerated for more than three years in connection with the largest intelligence disclosure in U.S. history. He recently admitted that he leaked hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, incident reports from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Guantanamo detainee profiles, and, most famously, footage of a Baghdad airstrike.

In a statement he prepared in prison, Manning said that he exposed what he believed to be low-sensitivity files to promote a global dialogue about how the United States conducts war and diplomacy.

Prosecutors accuse him of "aiding the enemy," and three in particular: al-Qaida, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and a "classified enemy" referred to by a Bates number, which is a form of legal document identification.

Three professors of military law - Yale Law School's Eugene Fidell, Duke University School of Law's Scott Silliman and Texas Tech University School of Law's Richard Rosen - told Courthouse News they had never heard of a case involving a "classified enemy."

Considering all of the documents were released publicly, that enemy must be us, we, the enemies people.  Right?  Because that charge is for directly handing information to an enemy, not leaking it to the public.

So, what are his chances of recieving a fair trial? Well, President Obama has already said he "broke the law."

"President Barack Obama made stunning accusations about accused Wikileaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, directly asserting that Manning “broke the law.” Apparently the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.

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Why Are We So Vulnerable to Propaganda?

The best defense against the deliberately cloaked propaganda in the mass media is recognizing our susceptibility to it. If we refuse to believe that we are vulnerable, we are much more likely to succumb to propaganda's compelling force. And, it's not always the ignorant and uneducated masses who succumb most easily. Very often, the arrogance of the educated and/or "privileged" class renders them defenseless to its insidious pressure; thus, allowing the propaganda to inform and permeate their psyche.

Jacques Ellul on propaganda:

The average citizen wants to have opinions on domestic and foreign issues. But in reality, he can’t. He is caught between his desire and his inability, which he refuses to accept. For no citizen will believe that he is unable to have opinions. Public opinion surveys always reveal that people have opinions even on the most complicated questions, except for a small minority (usually the better informed and those who have reflected the most). The majority prefers expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion.

For this they need simple thoughts, elementary explanations, a “key” that will permit them to take a position, and even ready-made opinions. As most people have the desire and at the same time the incapacity to participate, they are ready to accept a propaganda that will permit them to participate, and which hides their incapacity beneath explanations, judgments, and news, enabling them to satisfy their desire without eliminating their incompetence.

The individual does not want information, but only value judgments and preconceived positions. Here one must also take into account the individual’s laziness, which plays a decisive role in the entire propaganda phenomenon, and the impossibility of transmitting all information fast enough to keep up with developments in the modern world.

Besides, the developments are not only beyond man’s intellectual scope; they are also beyond him in volume and intensity; he simply cannot grasp the world’s economic and political problems.

Faced with such matters, he feels his weakness, his inconsistency, his lack of effectiveness. He realizes that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives him to despair. Man cannot stay in this situation too long. He needs an ideological veil to cover the harsh reality, some consolation, a purpose, a sense of values. Only propaganda offers him a remedy for a basically intolerable situation …

If we look at the average man, and not at those few intellectuals whose special business it is to be informed, what do we actually mean when we say this man is informed? It means that, aside from spending eight hours at work and two more commuting, this man reads a newspaper or, more precisely, looks at the headlines and glances at a few stories. He may also listen to news broadcasts, or watch it on TV; and once a week, he will look at the pictures in some kind of news magazine (Time, Newsweek, etc.). This is the case of the reasonably well-informed man, that is, of 98% of all people.

Now, what happens next to a man who wishes to be informed and receives a great deal of news each day? First, straight news reporting never gives him anything but factual details; the event of the day is only always a part, for news can never deal with the whole. Theoretically, the reporter could relate these details to other details, put them into context and even provide certain interpretations–but that would no longer be pure information. Besides, this could only be done for the most important events, whereas most news items deal with less important matters.

But if you shower the public with the thousands of items that occur in the course of a day or week, the average person, even if he tries hard, will simply retain thousands of items which mean nothing to him. He would need a remarkable memory to tie some event to another that happened three weeks or three months ago.

Moreover, the array of categories is bewildering — economics, politics, geography, and so on — and topics and categories change every day. To be sure, certain major stories occasionally become the subject of continuous reporting for several weeks or months, but that is not typical.

Ordinarily, a follow-up story on a previous news item appears two weeks to a month later. To obtain a rounded picture, one would have to do research, but the average person has neither the time or desire for it. As a result, he finds himself in a kaleidoscope in which thousands of unconnected images follow each other rapidly. His attention is continually diverted to new matters, new centers of interest, and is dissipated on a thousand things, which disappear from one day to the next.

The world becomes remarkably changeable and uncertain; he feels as though he is at the hub of a merry-go-round, and can find no fixed point or continuity; this is the effect information has on him. Even with major events, an immense effort is required to get a proper broad view from the thousand little strokes, the variations of color, intensity, and dimension the paper gives him. The world thus looks like a pointilliste canvas — a thousand details make a thousand points. Moreover, blank spots on the canvas also prevent a coherent view.

Our reader would then have to be able to stand back and get a panoramic view from a distance; but the law of news is that it is a daily affair. Man can never stand back to get a broad view because he immediately receives a new batch of news, which supersedes the old and demands a new point of focus, for which our reader has no time.

To the average man who tries to keep informed, a world emerges that is astonishingly incoherent, absurd, and irrational, which changes rapidly and constantly for reasons that he cannot understand. And as the most frequent news story is about an accident or calamity, our reader takes a catastrophic view of the world around him. What he learns from the paper is inevitably the event that disturbs the order of things. He is not told about the ordinary — and uninteresting — course of events, but only of unusual disasters and crime, etc., that disturb that course. He does not read about the thousands of trains that every day arrive normally at their destination, but he learns all the details of a train accident.

In the world of politics and economies, the same holds true. The news is only about trouble, danger and problems. This gives man the notion that he lives in a terrible and frightening era. Man cannot stand this; he cannot live in an absurd and incoherent world (for this, he would have to be heroic, and even Camus, who considered this the only honest posture, was not really able to stick it to it); nor can he accept the idea that the problems, which sprout all around him, cannot be solved, or that he himself has no value as an individual and is subject to the turn of events.

The man who keeps himself informed needs a framework in which all this information can be put in order; he needs explanations and comprehensive answers to general problems; he needs coherence. And he needs an affirmation of his own worth. All this is the immediate effect of information.

And the more complicated the problems are, the more simple the explanations must be; the more fragmented the canvas, the simpler the pattern; the more difficult the question, the more all-embracing the solution; the more menacing the reduction of his worth, the greater the need for boosting his ego.

All this propaganda — and only propaganda — can give him.

… An analysis of propaganda therefore shows that it succeeds primarily because it corresponds exactly to a need of the masses. Effective propaganda needs to give man an all-embracing view of the world, a view rather than a doctrine. Such a view will first of all encompass a general panorama of history, economics and politics. That panorama allows the individual to give proper classification to all the news items he receives; to exercise a “critical” judgment, to sharply accentuate certain facts and suppress others, depending on well they fit into the framework.

News therefore loses its frightening character when it offers information for which the listener already has a ready explanation in his mind, or for which he can easily find one. Man is doubly reassured by propaganda: first, because it tells him the reasons behind the developments which unfold, and second, because it promises a solution for all the problems that arise, which would otherwise seem insoluble.

Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness. It also corresponds to deep and constant needs, more developed today, perhaps, than ever before; the need to believe and obey, to create and hear fables, to communicate in the language of myths. It also responds to man’s intellectual and desire for security–intrinsic characteristics of the real man as opposed to the theoretical man of the Existentialists.

This situation has another aspect. In our society, man is being pushed more and more into passivity. He is thrust into vast organizations which function collectively and in which each man has his own small part to play. But he cannot act on his own; he can act only as the result of somebody else’s decision. He is more and more trained to participate in group movements and to act only on signal and in the way he has been taught.

The individual becomes less and less capable of acting by himself; he needs the collective signals which integrate his actions into the complete mechanism. Modern life induces us to wait until we are told to act.

At the same time, the individual feels himself diminished. For one thing, he gets the feeling that he is under constant supervision and can never exercise his independent initiative; for another, he thinks he is always being pushed down to a lower level. To be sure, we’re talking of the average man; obviously a corporate president, high-level administrator, or professional man does not feel diminished, but that fact does not change the general situation.

The feeling of being unimportant stems from

•general working conditions, such as mechanization and regimentation
•from housing conditions, with small rooms, noise, and lack of privacy
•from family conditions, with loss of authority over children
•from submission to an ever-growing number of authorities (no one will ever be able to assess fully the disastrous effect on the human soul of all the bureaus and agencies)
– in short, from participation in mass society.

But man cannot stand being unimportant; he cannot accept the status of a cipher. He needs to assert himself, to see himself as a hero. He needs to feel he is somebody and to be considered as such. He needs to express his authority, the drive for power and domination that is in every man.

Under our present conditions, that instinct is completely frustrated. Only propaganda provides the individual with a fully satisfactory response to his profound need.

The more his needs increase in the collective society, the more propaganda must give man the feeling that he is a free individual. Propaganda alone can create this feeling, which, in turn, will integrate the individual into collective movements.

Though a mass instrument, propaganda addresses itself to each individual. It appeals to me. It appeals to my common sense, desires, and provokes my wrath and my indignation. It evokes my feelings of justice and my desire for freedom. It gives me violent feelings, and lift me out of the daily grind.

As soon as I have been politicized by propaganda, I can from my heights look down on my daily trifles. My boss, who does not share my convictions, is merely a poor fool, a prey to the illusions of an evil world. I take my revenge upon him by being enlightened; I have understood the situation and know what ought to be done. Thanks to propaganda, the diminished individual obtains the very satisfaction he needs.

In addition, to the extent that modern man is diminished, he finds himself faced with the almost constant need for repression. Most of his natural tendencies are suppressed by social constraints.

We live in an increasingly organized and ordered society which permits less and less free and spontaneous expression of man’s profound drives (which, it must be admitted, would be largely anti-social if completely unleashed). But it is impossible to keep the individual in such a situation for long.

The individual who feels himself in conflict with the group, whose personal values are different from those of his milieu, who feels tension toward his society and even toward the group in which he participates–that individual is in a tragic position in modern society.

To seal all outlets and suppress man in all areas is dangerous. Man needs to express his passions and his desires; collective social repression can have the same effect as individual repression. Either sublimation or release is necessary.

Propaganda offers release on a grand scale. For example, propaganda will permit what so far was prohibited, such as hatred, which is a dangerous and destructive feeling and fought by society. But man always has a certain need to hate, just as he hides in heart the urge to kill. Propaganda offers him an object of hatred [think of the giant pictures of Goldstein in 1984, shown during the Five Minutes of Hate], for all propaganda is aimed at an enemy. And the hatred it offers him is not shameful, evil hatred that he must hide, but a legitimate hatred, which he can justly feel.

Moreover, propaganda points out enemies that must be slain, transforming crime into a praise-worthy act [the Ritual Crime between citizen and state]. Almost every man feels a desire to kill his neighbor, but this is forbidden, and in most cases the individual will refrain from it for fear of the consequences. But propaganda opens the door and allows him to kill the Jews, the bourgeois, the Communists, and so on, and such murder even becomes an achievement.

Authoritarian regimes know that people held very firmly in hand need some decompression, some safety valves. The government offers these itself. This role is played by satirical journals attacking the authorities, yet tolerated by the dictator, or by a wild holiday set aside for ridiculing the regime, yet paid for by the dictator (Friday of Sorrows in Guatemala) Clearly, such instruments are controlled by the regime.

These instruments of criticism serve to consolidate power and make people cling even more to the regime by providing artificial release of tendencies that the state must keep in check. In such situations, propaganda has an almost therapeutic and compensatory function.

This role is even more prominent in the presence of another phenomenon: anxiety. Anxiety is perhaps the most widespread psychological trait in our society. On the one hand, the number of dangers is increasing and, because of the news media, man is more aware of them; on the other hand, religious beliefs, which allowed men to face fear, have disappeared almost entirely.

Finally, as a result of all the threats and contradictions in contemporary society, man feels accused, guilty. He cannot feel that he is right and good as long as he is exposed to contradictions, which place him in conflict with one of his group’s imperatives no matter which solution he adopts.

But one of man’s greatest inner needs is to feel that he is right. First, man needs to be right in his own eyes. He must be able to assert that he is right, that he does what he should, that he is worthy of his own respect. Then, man needs to be right in the eyes of those around him, his family, his milieu, his coworkers, his friends, his country.

Finally, he feels the need to belong to a group, which he considers right and which he can proclaim as noble, just and good. But that righteousness is not absolute righteousness, true and authentic justice.

For what matters is not to be just, or to act just, or that the group to which one belongs is just — but to seem just, to find reasons for asserting that one is just, and to have these reasons shared by one’s audience. [The rallying cries of "multiculturalism" and "diversity" come to mind here.]

This corresponds to man’s refusal to see reality — his own reality first of all — as it is, for that would be intolerable; it also corresponds to his refusal to acknowledge that he may be wrong. Before himself and others, man is constantly pleading his own case and working to find good reasons for what he does or has done. Of course, the whole process is unconscious. Relevant here is the tendency of the individual to reconstruct his past to demonstrate that his conduct was right. But this is justification rather than explanation of behavior. Man thus lives in a seemingly reasonable fiction.

On the collective level one can say that most ideologies and political or economic theories are justifications. A study by M. Rubel has shown that Marx’s rigid and seemingly uncompromising doctrine was one gigantic intellectual justification for sentimental and spontaneous positions taken by him in his youth.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to accept reality as it is and acknowledge the true reasons for our behavior, or to see clearly the motivations of a group to which we belong. If we practice a profession, we cannot limit ourselves to its financial rewards; we must also invest it with idealistic or moral justification. It becomes our “calling,” and we will not tolerate its being questioned.

Obviously, the prodigious universality of justification makes it so effective: the man who justifies himself and unconsciously plays this farce not only believes it himself but also has the need for others to believe it. And, in fact, the others do believe it, because they use the rationalizations and become accomplices of the play in which they themselves are actors.

Justification really attains its effectiveness only on the basis of this complicity, which is so all-pervasive that even those who are victims of justification go along with it.

Propaganda appeases tensions and resolves conflicts. It offers facile, ready-made justifications, which are transmitted by society and easily believed. At the same time, propaganda has the freshness and novelty which correspond to new situations and give men the impression of having invented new ideals. It provides man with a high ideal that permits him to give into his passions while seeing to accomplish a great mission.

Propaganda dissolves contradictions and restores man to unitary world in which the demands are in accord with the facts. Here, propaganda plays an idealistic role, by involving a man caught in the world of reality and making him live by anticipation in a world based on principle.

In conclusion: For all these reasons contemporary man needs propaganda; he asks for it; in fact, he almost instigates it. The development of propaganda is no accident. The politician who uses it is not a monster; he fills a social demand. The propagandee is a close accomplice of the propagandist. Only with the propagandee’s unconscious complicity can propaganda fulfill its function; and because propaganda satisfies him — even if he protests against propaganda in abstracto, or considers himself immune to it — he follows its route.

Propaganda is the inevitable result of the various components of technological society, and plays so central a role in the life of society that no economic or political development can take place without the influence of its great power.

Social work, Human Relations in social relationships, advertising (Human Engineering in the economy) propaganda in the strictest sense in the field of politics — the need for psychological influence is everywhere the decisive factor, which progress demands and which the individual seeks in order to be delivered from his own self.

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What Would Debbie Downer Say?

Source:

America:  Osama Bin Laden's dead!  President Obama's the man!

Debbie: Until Fox News twists this to make Bush the hero. According to redstate.com, it's thanks to President Bush because of his “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guntanamo Bay Prison that Osama is dead.

America:  Well, whatever the story is, it's the first time in a long time that all is right with the world!

Debbie:  Good thing that the millions of  lives lost/destroyed, the trillions of dollars spent, the implementation of "Big Brother" type surveillance/loss of our 4th amendment rights,   unmanned predator drones, piloted by gamers,  the shredding of our Constitution, unemployment, the foreclosure crisis, the bankster's plundering of the economy, is all behind us. Right?

America:  Right! It's a good thing that we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed because that's how we got the information that killed Osama.  This is pay-off! It's time to get out the kilts and bagpipes, prepared speeches, glow sticks, and head down to Ground Zero!

Debbie:  I wonder if any of  the sick and fallen 9/11 heroes will be able to make it.  Probably not. The ones who have not yet succumbed to toxic WTC dust are too busy trying to prove they're not terrorists. 

America:  Yeah, too bad for them, but, now that our bad-ass military brought down Osama, those sick and fallen heroes have not suffered in vain. For the first time in a long time, our future looks bright!

Debbie:  The  nuclear hell-storms that al-Qa'ida plans to unleash according to WikiLeaks should make it very bright. The Islamists vow bin Laden death will not mute Jihad call.  I'm sure the Department of Defense, Homeland Security and TSA are getting ready to roll out plans to escalate  the use of torture, fire up more predator drones, ratchet up the surveillance state, and...

America:  Alrighty then, well, it's May...no worries about frost interfering with our celebrations...

Debbie: Mr. Frost interviewed Benazir Bhutto in November of 2007, before she was murdered. She told him, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh – one of those convicted of kidnapping and killing U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl - murdered Osama Bin Laden.

America: You know what, Debbie? You're really taking a royal crap on our celebration of Osama's death. We, the people completely held our tongue when you showed us pictures of dead Iraqi babies, and we didn't say one word when you went on and on about the NATO strikes that took out a school for disabled children in Libya...

The US government, as Paul Craig Roberts said, has an  "unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans".

Links:


Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?

Osama bin Laden corpse photo is fake

YEARS OF DECEIT: US OPENLY ACCEPTS BIN LADEN LONG DEAD

U.S. anticipates al Qaeda 'threats of retaliation'

Preparing the Battlefield

Agenda 21

Building Moderate Muslim Networks - RAND's blueprint for the Muslim world. The protests we are seeing now are playing out exactly as prescribed: from protest organizers to the protest leaders, to the America's military leadership activity behind-the-scenes...it's all there

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Operation Innovate to Zero Gets a Little Help From the FDA.

Don't you wonder why more Americans than ever before are burdened by expanding waistlines, multiple chronic illness, and "out of the X-files" type affliction, such as the controversial Morgellon's Disease?  The disease that the CDC has yet to reveal its findings, despite constant inquiry that started over ten-years ago.





The following will be easier to follow, if, first, you understand that, according to the FDA, anything used to treat disease is considered a drug... anything! Therefore, that anything is subject to regulation by Monsanto the FDA.  And second, "Codex Alimentarius" (latin for food rules),  is not about consumer protection at all. It's chief reason for existence is to serve the economic ambitions of multi-national corporations, in particular, the pharmaceutical industry.

The same industry that Bill Gates is dedicating his philanthropical career, ( 500,000 shares in Monsanto) as he tries to lower the population of the planet, through vaccines, health care and reproductive health.



Really, Bill, what's next? Handing the control of our food over to Monsanto?  Oh, wait...

What's so scary is that since  Senate Bill 510, now H.R. 2751:FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act, is law, and President Obama's appointed Antichrist's Monsanto’s own Michael Taylor - who designed the FDA’s GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) friendly policy, allowing GMOs on the market without any investigation into its safety, without labeling, and who wrote the FDA’s guidelines on recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), banning dairies from labeling their milk “rBGH Free“ while serving as the FDA’s Deputy commissioner for policy -  as Food Safety Czar, our food may very well cease being food, if it hasn't already.  And, we may have to get prescriptions for oranges, apples, spinach...hell, maybe even the right to walk around the block, if Monsanto the FDA finds out those things actually treat disease.  Unfortunately for us, we can't even rely on claims of no genetically modified ingredients.

Proof of the FDA's knowledge - thanks to the Alliance for Bio-Integrity's lawsuit (Alliance for Bio-Integrity et al., vs. Shalala, et al.) to gain mandatory safety testing and labeling of food,  FDA internal memoranda about the hazards of genetically engineered foods - can be found here.  Not to mention, Wikileaks revealed that former President Bush was conspiring with Monsanto to force the global sale and use of hazardous-to-life-as-we-know-it GMOs. And now that H.R. 2751 passed, it gives Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

Hence, the recently approved genetically engineered alfalfa.

So, what's so bad about genetically modified food? Well, think cell invasion.  In order to move genetic material from one organism to another that do not normally interact, you've got to find an agent such as bacteria or viruses, since they're so good at penetrating and establishing themselves in the cell, to allow the transformation to take place. For example, Monsanto uses e-coli to recombine with the modifying dna that will create the genetically engineered dna inserted into the organism targeted for modification.  (See video below for all methods).



Several documented studies, compiled in the book, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods , which was distributed to Congress, breaks down the health risks, genetically engineered food presents. Amongst other things, it can alter your DNA, change your brain waves, destroy your immune system,  destroy your organs and, if that's not enough, it can render you infertile.  Moreover, it actually cuts the productivity of crops.

So, there you have it. The multinational pharmaceutical industry seizing the opportunity to line their pockets with profits of providing "safe" nutrition with their FDA approved food substitutes and the biotechnology companies playing genetic rhoulette, resulting  hazardous-to-life-as-we-know-it GMOs.

Links:

Open Letter To The GAO: Michael Taylor, Monsanto Attorney Should Be Removed From The FDA Because Of Conflict Of Interest, Aspartame Approval Reinvestigated And Banned

Monsanto buys 'Terminator' seeds company

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Leaving Whistleblowers and Taxpayers Hopelessly in a Lurch

Abuse of the public trust is at an all time high. So, its more important than ever before to see and understand, what our leadership is up to...the leadership we've been conditioned to trust. And, that's where the  Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA) came in.  It was legislation aimed at exposing corruption at the top levels of politics, our economy, and other large institutions. The Act would have protected federal workers who use legal and safe channels to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and threats to public safety. 

So, you say, what's more important than protecting against "unlawful acts, regulatory violations, abuses of authority, dangers to public health and any gross mismanagement or gross waste of funds?" Apparently, everything. Especially after a few Republicans connected the WikiLeaks controversy to the WPEA, ultimately killing it.

Yep, the act of one  senator, who shall remain nameless, secretly put a hold on the bill after it passed a voice vote, just before the chamber adjourned for the Christmas holiday...the political scoundrel's favorite time of the year.

But isn't it weird how it always comes down to that one scoundrel who messes things up for everyone?  Anyway, WikiLeaks seems to be the go-to excuse for everything from restrict-the-Internet to kill-the-whistleblower...protection.

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WikiLeaks: Intelligence Agency of the People? Or Agency of the Powerful?

Update: Did the CIA use Sweden to launder the transfer of carefully screened and redacted State Department cables to WikiLeaks...and the subsequent release of the cables to pre-selected corporate news media entities?

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Did you ever wonder why so many things that clearly happened, never happened, even while they were happening? And, other things, that appear to be happening, make little to absolutely no sense at all? Or, why does it appear that governments and mainstream media seem to believe that we the people are too stupid to notice what’s really going on...as if we swallow what we're told with the "stupidity of an animal".

Well, as far as the mainstream media goes,  we can thank  The Telecommunications Act of 1996, the most important step toward allowing media consolidation. Fifteen years later, the mass media - television networks, newspapers, cable channels, movie studios, magazines, and even many websites - is under the control of only a handful of  huge corporations, and no doubt, mainstream media was made to conform to the agenda of these mega-corporations.  Now, as far as mindlessly swallowing what we're told, let's just say it serves us well to be skeptical of everything we see, hear and read. And, fortunately, for us, information and knowledge is at our fingertips, leveling the playing field, somewhat.

However, as useful as the Internet is to we the people, it has created a monumental problem for those in power (wealthiest one-tenth of one percent). Why? It severely limits their ability to control the one thing absolutely necessary to stay in power, and control the money supply, in a top-down society: information and knowledge.

Which raises the question of whether the WikiLeaks "cat and mouse" game playing out before our very eyes... that  just so happens to center on the so-called "problem" the Internet poses to national security, is a real "wikipedia for whistle-blowers" or something else, entirely.  While it certainly appears that WikiLeaks is operating in the interest of the people,  appearances can be, and often are very deceiving.

Having said that, there are rumors that surround WikiLeaks; from accusing Israeli security of using WikiLeaks to create  a  'false flag' operation aimed at furthering the US/Israeli agenda to demonize and eventually attack Iran to WikiLeaks serving as a CIA conduit.  Or maybe WikiLeaks will provide the perfect excuse to clamp down on the biggest threat to our current power structure: the Internet.

As Tom Ashbrook (On Point) said, regarding our government's concern over WikiLeaks,  "they're talking about going back to laws from nineteen-teen in this country..." Moreover,  Jack Beatty, on the same program, said that the WikiLeaks "revelations" are essentially "making apparent what we already know".   In other words, if it turns out they use the WikiLeaks "revelations" that might be noteworthy, but certainly not earth shattering, as an excuse to curtail the flow of information and curb our access to the Internet,  WikiLeaks may not be an agency of the people at all.

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News Inc

Today, American journalism is replete with incestuous relationships between government, industry, and academia, thanks to a few of the largest Fortune 500 corporations that own and operate news organizations. What we call mainstream "news" is now a bottom-line serving propaganda machine, riddled with conflicts of interest. Moreover, mainstream "journalists" have morphed into strategic communication professionals.And authentic investigative journalism does not exist, if it ever really existed in the mainstream media when you take into account all that the Internet has unearthed from as far back as the 1930s. However, it seems, whatever the situation was, it may be far worse now.

Because of the incestuous "working relationship" government and corporate media enjoy, average Americans receive not only a censored version of reality, but also many times, a fabricated version of reality. The fourth estate, the press, rather than acting as watchdog of American democracy, is now an instrument of the growing corpocracy that is in the process of transforming America from a Constitutional Republic to an oligarchy.

Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator and author of two New York Times Bestselling books: "How Would a Patriot Act?", "A Tragic Legacy" and most recently, "Great American Hypocrites", eloquently depicts the corporatized mainstream media as he analyzes and describes his own experience in his recent article: The merger of journalists and government officials

"...Over the last month, I've done many television and radio segments about WikiLeaks and what always strikes me is how indistinguishable -- identical -- are the political figures and the journalists. There's just no difference in how they think, what their values and priorities are, how completely they've ingested and how eagerly they recite the same anti-WikiLeaks, "Assange = Saddam" script. So absolute is the WikiLeaks-is-Evil bipartisan orthodoxy among the Beltway political and media class (forever cemented by the joint Biden/McConnell decree that Assange is a "high-tech Terrorist,") that you're viewed as being from another planet if you don't spout it. It's the equivalent of questioning Saddam's WMD stockpile in early 2003.

It's not news that establishment journalists identify with, are merged into, serve as spokespeople for, the political class: that's what makes them establishment journalists. But even knowing that, it's just amazing, to me at least, how so many of these "debates" I've done involving one anti-WikiLeaks political figure and one ostensibly "neutral" journalist -- on MSNBC with The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and former GOP Congresswoman Susan Molinari, on NPR with The New York Times' John Burns and former Clinton State Department official James Rubin, and last night on CNN with Yellin and Townsend -- entail no daylight at all between the "journalists" and the political figures. They don't even bother any longer with the pretense that they're distinct or play different assigned roles. I'm not complaining here -- Yellin was perfectly fair and gave me ample time -- but merely observing how inseparable are most American journalists from the political officials they "cover."

(2) From the start of the WikiLeaks controversy, the most striking aspect for me has been that the ones who are leading the crusade against the transparency brought about by WikiLeaks -- the ones most enraged about the leaks and the subversion of government secrecy -- have been . . . America's intrepid Watchdog journalists. What illustrates how warped our political and media culture is as potently as that? It just never seems to dawn on them -- even when you explain it -- that the transparency and undermining of the secrecy regime against which they are angrily railing is supposed to be . . . what they do.

What an astounding feat to train a nation's journalist class to despise above all else those who shine a light on what the most powerful factions do in the dark and who expose their corruption and deceit, and to have journalists -- of all people -- lead the way in calling for the head of anyone who exposes the secrets of the powerful. Most ruling classes -- from all eras and all cultures -- could only fantasize about having a journalist class that thinks that way, but most political leaders would have to dismiss that fantasy as too extreme, too implausible, to pursue. After all, how could you ever get journalists -- of all people -- to loathe those who bring about transparency and disclosure of secrets? But, with a few noble exceptions, that's exactly the journalist class we have.

There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Jessica Yellin because of that time when she unwittingly (though still bravely) admitted on air that -- when she worked at MSNBC -- NBC's corporate executives constantly pressured the network's journalists to make their reporting favorable to George Bush and the Iraq War (I say "unwittingly" because she quickly walked back that confession after I and others wrote about it and a controversy ensued). But, as Yellin herself revealed in that moment of rare TV self-exposure, that's the government-subservient corporate culture in which these journalists are trained and molded...."

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Hope Knows an Injustice Visited on our Neighbor is an Injustice Visited on Us All.

In Pakistan, civilians have no choice but to cope with a drone war that has turned merciless, as  unprecedented’ drone assaults - 58 Strikes in 102 days - continues on without an official figure of how many civilians have died as a result of the unmanned missile strikes.  Strikes, which President Obama has more than doubled since the remote attacks started, despite the United Nation's urging to rein in , the "once-limited, once-covert program to off senior terrorist leaders that has morphed into a full-scale — if undeclared — war in Pakistan".

So, now, that we can do war by remote control, it's easy for us, as Americans, nestled in our mostly taken-for-granted creature comforts, to keep a positive attitude and pretend that that is enough to save our country...the world from those who want to take it over with no thought for anyone but  themselves.  It's not enough.

However, thankfully, there are brave people who realize that something must be done.  One of those people is Chris Hedges, who demonstrated the courage to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, to vindicate the rights of all who are left desolate,” and who consequently, was arrested yesterday, along with 130 other people, including Daniel Ellsberg, at the Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War event.

In the video below, Hedges gives a speech on how to keep hope alive, and it will not be kept alive, in his words, by "trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama".



Chis Hedges' speech:

"Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It will not be realized by chanting packaged campaign slogans or attempting to influence the democratic party.  It will not come through our bankrupt liberal institutions, from the press, nor from the withered stump that is the labor movement.

Hope will only come now when we physically defy the violence of the state.  All who resist. All who are here today keep hope alive.  All who succumb to fear, despair, and apathy become an enemy of hope.  They become in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration.

Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal risk. It is not about the right attitude or peace of mind. Hope is an action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is, the vaster and the more potent hope becomes. Hope never makes sense. Hope is weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in its powerlessness the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on us all. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This is the secret of hope’s power and it is why it can never finally be defeated. Hope demands for others what we demand for ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy our own face.

Hope is not for the practical and the sophisticated, the cynics and the complacent, the defeated and the fearful. Hope is what the corporate state, which saturates our airwaves with lies, seeks to obliterate. Hope is what our corporate overlords are determined to crush. Be afraid, they tell us. Surrender your liberties to us so we can make the world safe from terror. Don’t resist. Embrace the alienation of our cheerful conformity. Buy our products. Without them you are worthless. Become our brands. Do not look up from your electronic hallucinations to think. No. Above all do not think. Obey.

The powerful do not understand hope. Hope is not part of their vocabulary. They speak in the cold, dead words of national security, global markets, electoral strategy, staying on message, image and money. The powerful protect their own. They divide the world into the damned and the blessed, the patriots and the enemy, the rich and the poor. They insist that extinguishing lives in foreign wars or in our prison complexes is a form of human progress. They cannot see that the suffering of a child in Kandahar or a child in the blighted urban pocket of our nation's capitol diminishes and impoverishes us all. They are deaf, dumb and blind to hope. Those addicted to power, enthralled by self-exaltation, cannot decipher the words of hope any more than most of us can decipher hieroglyphics. Hope to Wall Street bankers and politicians, to the masters of war and commerce, is not practical. It is gibberish. It means nothing. And this is because they kneel before the idols of greed and money.

If we resist, and carry out acts, no matter how small, of open defiance, hope will not be extinguished. If all we accomplish today is to assure a grieving mother in Baghdad or Afghanistan, a young man or woman crippled physically and emotionally by the hammer blows of war that he or she is not alone, our act will be successful, but hope cannot be sustained if it cannot be seen. Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance of those who make war, of those who perpetuate corporate greed, and are responsible for state crimes, anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm. And every act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Links:

Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) - Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict works on behalf of war victims by advocating that warring parties recognize and help the civilians they harm. CIVIC supports the principle that it is never acceptable for a warring party to ignore civilian suffering.

In 2005, CIVIC’s founder Marla Ruzicka was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomb while advocating for families of victims. CIVIC honors her legacy and strives to sustain her vision.

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Banking System Rigged to Blow if We Do Not Continue Bailing Out the Wealthy.

If you took the $1.4 trillion that was initially spent to bail out the banks and distributed it amongst financially troubled Americans, each person would receive close to $400,000.  Even better, if you took the $3.3 trillion recently reported by the Federal Reserve to bail out international as well as national banks and corporations, and distributed amongst financially troubled Americans, each person would receive close to $1 million!

Keep in mind that most of this money would be spent immediately, thus returning it to the stream of purchasing power so crucial to the economic flow.  Without a doubt, new jobs would be created as aggregate demand would increase.   Obviously, it's not that simple, however it demonstrates how rigged our financial system is to favor the wealthiest Americans.

We live in a country that has enjoyed more wealth than any other country in human history, yet we live amidst rampant unemployment, with one in six people living in poverty, and millions of people living without health insurance. We, the ordinary Americans are left to fend for ourselves while the wealthy get bailed out for "being evil".  Why? Because our banking system is rigged to blow up the global economy if we do not continue to bail the rich bastards out. Wait, isn't that what terrorists do?

Consider the following excerpt from  Marketplace:

Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace: "...the news this week that the Federal Reserve released all of those documents on Wednesday...we now know who borrowed how much and at what times.  Here's the thing though, John, as much as the WikiLeaks cables at the State Department show that our diplomats say nasty things about other countries, does it matter that we know Goldman Sachs went to the Fed 84 times?"

John Carney from CNBC: "I think it matters in that it shows how severe the financial crisis really got. That even relatively healthy banks had to depend on the Fed for funding in late 2008.  I think that is a good reminder that things were really, really, really were awful, and measures that the Fed took allowed a lot of these banks to actually stay alive.  It's very clear from the numbers that Morgan Stanley was dead. They borrowed so heavily from the Fed's facilities because there was no other way for them to continue to operate. 

Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace: What about that?

Lee Gallagher of Fortune magazine: What also was really interesting about that dump that it really drove home that it was not just the banks. It was companies like Verizon and Harley Davidson and GE and we knew back then that the commercial paper market had frozen up but most people really don't know what that means. What we see now is that companies like Harley Davidson couldn't make their payroll and needed to have those facilities."

"Need to have those facilities?"  Need??  Well, what about our needs? I thought this country belonged to us.  What about when things get really, really, really awful for us  ordinary Americans? What about when we the people can no longer operate, or survive because terrorist bankers stole our money, our jobs, our quality of life? Where is our "facility" that disperses money at 0%, so that we can loan it out at three-four times that amount?  Well?

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Wikileaks Julian Assange: Hero, Egomaniac or a Little of Both?

Daniel Ellsberg, the prime player in the release of the Pentagon Papers  in 1971, who was a true hero, not only because he exposed the truth of the Vietnam war, but because he did so with the knowledge he could face the rest of his life in prison is a fan of Wikileaks.

John Nichols of Capital Times interviewed Daniel Ellsburg last month.  He said that "Ellsburg is a fan of WikiLeaks, in particular, and whistle-blowers, in general. He argues that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange “is serving our democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country.”

“I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public.” -- Daniel Ellsberg as he surrendered to authorities in 1971

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, like Ellsburg, exposed 92,000 documents that may call into question America’s policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. Assange also believes he and/or Wikileaks may be in danger, as Wikileak's servers are located in different countries, and there is no headquarters. As for Assange, he never stays in one place, depending on the goodwill of people around the world to lend him a sofa to sleep.



Is Wikileaks, as it claims,  "a multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing" whose  primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East... assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations?

Or as others claim, is Wikileaks  part of a U.S. cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations?  Or a CIA front?  A stalking horse for George Soros? Next to secrecy, authoritativeness is the most dangerous to an open society, and Wikileaks "sells" both.

In January 2007, John Young, who runs cryptome.org, a site that publishes a wealth of sensitive and classified information, left Wikileaks, claiming the operation was a CIA front. Young also published some 150 email messages sent by Wikileaks activists on cryptome. They include a disparaging comment about this editor by Wikileaks Dr. Julian Assange. Assange lists as one of his professions "hacker." His German co-founder of Wikileaks uses a pseudonym, "Daniel Schmitt."

"Those who get the truth to the American people show better judgment in putting it out than the people who keep it secret from the American people.” - Daniel Ellburg

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Free Bradley Manning

There is a call for justice for US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, who was incarcerated without charge on June 18 (finally charged on July 6, 2010) at Camp Arifjan, Kuwaitto.

He stands accused of disclosing a classified video (the video was published by WikiLeaks on April 5, 2010),  depicting American troops shooting civilians from an Apache helicopter in 2007. Eleven adults were killed, including two Reuters employees, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen.  In addition, two children were  critically injured. Bradley Manning faces up to 52-years in prison, however no charges have been filed against the soldiers in the video.

Yesterday,  Manning was transferred to the Marine Corps Base Quantico Brig in Quantico, Virginia.  He was transferred because of the potential for lengthy continued pretrial confinement given the complexity of the charges and ongoing investigation.

In the meantime, public support is growing. The Bradley Manning Support Network is a grassroots initiative in collaboration with Courage to Resist,  in order to defend and support  Manning.  The network began accepting online donations for the legal defense of Bradley Manning, July 27, 2010.

“We have heard from the family and the military lawyers assigned to Bradley that the cost of his defense will be significant. We are also concerned that Bradley may choose his legal counsel based on his available funds. If he fears his family will absorb the cost of the trial, he might choose a less experienced, less expensive attorney. We’re very concerned about the ramifications of such a decision.” -- Mike Gogulski, an online activist and founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network.

The mainstream media is not doing their job. Rather than revealing crucial information, they are concealing crucial information. Americans are not being informed of what's really going on in a war that we started. By exposing evidence of war crimes, Bradley Manning is nothing short of a hero. However, in a society where the rich and powerful are above the law, despite their atrocious unlawful behavior, those who act courageously, morally, with integrity are banished to spend eternity in torment.

"Far above and beyond the practical applications of the Rule of Law there is a principle of the utmost moment not only to democracy, but to the whole of humanity- namely, that justice is an end in itself and must be pursued unflinchingly, whatever the inconveniences to individuals or to governments. The contrary principle, which is established in all totalitarian societies, is that justice is an instrument of policy. To any true democrat this is the ultimate and unpardonable heresy, the sin against the light. Law, thus interpreted, is power; and the whole meaning of the Rule of Law is that it is a restraint on power." -- Sir Carleton Kemp Allen, Democracy and the Individual, 1943

Links:


Sign the Petition to free Bradley Manning

Donate to Bradley Manning's legal defense fund

Add a Bradley Manning link/banner to your emails.

Analysis of charges against Bradley Manning

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Judge Allows Whistle-blower site Resume Operation in the United States,

Federal Judge Jeffrey White changed his mind today, based on "the futility of attempts to censor information" after it's already been released and allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S. hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock WikiLeaks from the internet.

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US Judge Orders Whistle-blower Site Offline.

WikiLeaks.org, the transparency website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents, "uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis" has been taken offline in the US and is unavailable due to a restraining order issued by the California Northern District Court in San Francisco. The largest Swiss bank specializing in hiding the assets of the bank Julius Baer (the parent company of the accused Cayman bank) filed federal US proceedings against the transparency group WikiLeaks.

The Presiding Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered a permanent injunction against WikiLeaks - or the web host, Dynadot - as the owner of the site is outside US legal jurisdiction, at first, but then reconsidered if it refrained from posting actual documents.

The Whistle blower site vows to defy court order.

Additional info:

WikiLeaks discussion blog discusses the ethical and technical issues surrounding the WikiLeaks.org project which claims to be the "uncensorable" version of WikiPedia, for "mass document leaking" and whistleblowing."

US Judge Arranges Summary Execution of WikiLeaks.org

Julius Baer vs. WikiLeaks

The Citizen Media Law Project comments.

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