By focusing on the personalities or philosophy behind Wikileaks, in addition to the Imperial and Corporate reactions to its successes thus far, it is easy to lose focus on the actual substance of the leaks themselves. So here is an incomplete list of significant revelations emerging from Wikileaks in 2010, summarized from a list of headlines compiled by G. Greewald:
- Video of U.S forces gleefully slaughtering good Samaritans and journalists in Iraq
- Logs that reveal secret orders that let U.S. ignore (outsource?) abuse (torture).
- 15,000 previously unrevealed civilian deaths in Iraq.
- That Iraq War cheerleader Secretary of State H. Clinton ordered American diplomats to spy on U.N. officails.
- That Obama and Republicans conspired to kill Spain’s probe into the Bush Administrations torture regime (and that B. Obama is a liar).
- That the U.S. pressured Germany not to prosecute CIA officers for torture and rendition, and that Germany caved to this pressure.
- That “top American leaders lied, knowingly to the American public, to American troops, and to the world.”
- That the Obama administration and the president of Yemen conspired to hide U.S. authorship of military strikes in Yemen, just as it was also supplying arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Northern Yemen.
- That India tortured Kashmir prisoners.
- That the U.K. trained a death squad in Bangladesh.
- That the U.K. agreed to shield U.S. interests in an Iraq probe.
- That the Pope refused to cooperate in a sex abuse investigation.
- That the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa recognized the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zalaya as an illegal coup four days before the coup occurred, though the Obama administration thereafter quickly normalized relations with the coup government.
- That China was behind a hack of Google’s network.
- That U.S. Special Forces have indeed been secretly operating in Pakistan.
- And, through the Afghan War Logs, that (surprise!) the occupation of Afghanistan is a fucking catastrophe.
UPDATE: Here is another round-up of what Wikileaks revelations, compiled by CBS news.
Excellent piece Rosencrantz, addresses exactly the problem that the CONTENT of the Wikileaks Revelations is being aggressively masked. Do we name this phenomenon Weapons of Mass Distraction? It keeps happening, for three decades, since Vietnam, on the record. In 2003, I labeled it InfoProp (akin to AgitProp, but representing Information Propaganda).
but, to return to the content itself, organized as you have done here:
The contents staggers the mind, and profoundly stabs the heart. The distractions shield us from the horror of the revelations concerning the behavior of US soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. I’d propose you may want a little more space between lines, tad crowded. The visual effect is good, but for consuming the content, it’d be clearer.
The Wikileaks Revelations are the greatest single expression of the freedom of the press and of freedom of speech in history.
The First Amendment of the Constitution, one of the best reasons to be a US American, is being tested, they say. Not by puritan evangelicals or fundamentalists attached to Right Wing cowboys, but by DEMOCRATS, led by a Half-White, African-American born in Hawaii, trained in New England and borne into politics by the Chicago Daley machine, to make sure his Attorney General Holder will say Assange is a terrorist and should be extradited and tried for his behavior. This is fascist and fundamentally un-AMERICAN.
Hillary, who at one time seemed better to me because she resisted, now travels the world stamping on The Bill of Rights in front of others. Treats them like a rag she keeps in her purse – that the interpretation of the current Secretary of the State of the System determines what is and isn’t Constitutional.
Ah, the smart and powerful Hillary, Attorney, Board member, American feminism’s price and joy, tainted by her husband – is who interprets the Constitution and the Bill of Rights concerning Julian Assange and Wikileaks right to publish.
We should each take one of the list you’ve published and choose to make a larger piece focused upon it solely, charged to produce a cogent response, executable by the group. I would take one, but not the first one, it hurts my heart too much to listen to those horrible helicopter gunmen and their officers in charge talking about those innocent civilians they murder.
thanks for taking the lead again.
This blog is the avant-garde.
mtk