WIKILEAKS AND DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Posted on May 6, 2013October 10, 2022 by Ray Joseph Cormier

TRUTH IS THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR

I admire Chris Hedges. I see him as being like an Old Testament Prophet, pointing out the warning signs to a society going down the wrong path, to a people who do not listen or consider.

By his notable accomplishments, he speaks from a platform most of us will never reach in our lifetimes. This prominence among the people gives him some protection from arbitrary government actions to silence him – so far.

His latest warnings and admonitions about what the POWER is doing in our Democracy, that will last only as long as there is a vigilant, aware citizenry, should be heeded by all concerned about our common Future and well being.

His latest article is named ‘THE DEATH OF TRUTH.’ As I read it, even though it is 5 pages long, I see it as modern day version reflecting the words of the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah recorded 2600 years ago, and posted at the bottom of this article. Not much has changed in all that time gone by.

In my view, these are key perceptions from Chris Hedge’s report:

“Assange, Manning and WikiLeaks, by making public in 2010 half a million internal documents from the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the 2007 video of U.S. helicopter pilots nonchalantly gunning down Iraqi civilians, including children, and two Reuters journalists, effectively exposed the empire’s hypocrisy, indiscriminate violence and its use of torture, lies, bribery and crude tactics of intimidation. WikiLeaks shone a spotlight into the inner workings of empire—the most important role of a press—and for this it has become empire’s prey. Those around the globe with the computer skills to search out the secrets of empire are now those whom empire fears most. If we lose this battle, if these rebels are defeated, it means the dark night of corporate totalitarianism. If we win, if the corporate state is unmasked, it can be destroyed.”

With all the violent War movies and all the blood and gore in the crime shows on TV, and all the porn the underage can see on the Internet, YouTube wants to protect me from seeing the horrors of War as it actually happened! It defies Common Sense.

Everything is being recorded these days, and it is this video hidden from the American Public clearly demonstrating the horrors of War the American people pay for without question, that made Wikileaks a “Terrorist” to those Authorities who want to keep their own evil deeds under wraps and out of the Public Eye.

As bad as the Boston Marathon murders were in the loss of innocent lives, and the 24/7 patriotic pap fed to Americans by the media, what about this loss of innocent life at the hands of Americans? Does the Biblical injunction ‘what you sow, so shall you reap’ not apply to Americans and other Nations?

“At least a dozen American governmental agencies, including the Pentagon, the FBI, the Army’s Criminal Investigative Department, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Diplomatic Security Service, are assigned to the WikiLeaks case, while the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are assigned to track down WikiLeaks’ supposed breaches of security. The global assault—which saw Australia threaten to revoke Assange’s passport—is part of the terrifying metamorphosis of the “war on terror” into a wider war on civil liberties. It has become a hunt not for actual terrorists but a hunt for all those with the ability to expose the mounting crimes of the power elite.”

LEAKED US MILITARY MANUAL FOR POLICING HOMELAND INTERNMENT CAMPS FOR POLITICAL DISSIDENTS

See how terrified the Public Administrators are the People will wake up to their crimes done out of the Public Eye?

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12

“And there is a well-orchestrated campaign of character assassination against Assange, including mischaracterizations of the sexual misconduct case brought against him by Swedish police. Assange has not formally been charged with a crime. The two women involved have not accused him of rape.

Bradley Manning’s heroism extends to his steadfast refusal, despite what appears to be tremendous pressure, to implicate Assange in espionage. If Manning alleges that Assange had instructed him on how to ferret out classified documents, the U.S. might try to charge Assange with espionage.

Statement of Bradley Manning to the Courts Martial

Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy after exhausting his fight to avoid extradition from the United Kingdom to Sweden. He and his lawyers say that an extradition to Sweden would mean an extradition to the U.S. If Sweden refused to comply with U.S demands for Assange, kidnapping, or “extraordinary rendition,” would remain an option for Washington.

Kidnapping was given legal cover by a 1989 memorandum issued by the Justice Department stating that “the FBI may use its statutory authority to investigate and arrest individuals for violating United States law, even if the FBI’s actions contravene customary international law” and that an “arrest that is inconsistent with international or foreign law does not violate the Fourth Amendment.” This is a stunning example of the security and surveillance state’s Orwellian doublespeak. The persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks and the practice of extraordinary rendition embody the shredding of the Fourth Amendment, which was designed to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.”

Do you remember the US going to the United Nations Security Council with all that false and misleading information asking for “permission” to invade Iraq? The UN is the repository of Internationl Law, governing the rules of behaviour among Nations. Each Member State is Sovereign in writing and applying their own National Laws.

The UN is only as good as it’s Member States. The US claims to always hold the highest moral and legal ground among all Nations of this earth. What example did the US set for others when it defied the UN in refusing to sanction the invasion of Iraq, but did it anyway? This was contrary to the UN and International Law? Who but God can bring the US to Court?

When the most powerful Nation can violate International Law with impunity, logically thinking people will know, under the thin veneer we call Civilization, lurks the Law of the Jungle. It is assuredly breaking through with that kind of behaviour by the ruling elite! They don’t want to be exposed. Kill the messenger is the US response to Julian Assuage.

In a Democracy, the people generally get the government they deserve. CPAC does not reveal to the People what their government is doing behind the scenes. The POWER does not want their People to know how double dealing they can be in the power centres of this world they want to control. This is an example from Chris’s report on the value of Wikileaks contribution to transparency;

“In 1975 Kissinger during a conversation with the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and two Turkish and Cypriot diplomats assured his hosts that he could work around an official arms embargo then in effect. He is quoted in the documents as saying: “Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings, ‘The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.’ [laughter] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I’m afraid to say things like that.”

The documents, along with detailing collaborations with the military dictatorships in Spain and Greece, show that Washington created a torture exemption to allow the military government in Brazil to receive U.S. aid.”

When the peaceful ’79 Iranian Revolution replaced the American imposed proxy Dictatorship of the Shah, the lessor thrones the British created in the Middle East thought they might be next. Even though the American/Shah’s regime was a Dictatorship as brutal as any the Americans say they are against, he followed US Dictates so he was a good for the Americans Dictator. His throne did have some historical legitimacy, going all the way back to the Persian Empire as compared to those Royal Oil Sheikdoms the British created after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, to serve as proxies for British interests.

The problem for the Americans was how to nip that Peaceful Iranian Revolution in the bud? Peaceful Revolutions would put the International Arms dealers out of business. They could not tolerate Peaceful Revolutions. The Truth is the US is the biggest arms dealer the world has ever produced. There is a great conflict of interest in maintaining that position. Conflicts must be created overtly or covertly.

When he was useful to British/American interests, Saddam was the only one in the position to put the boots on the ground as the West’s proxy army in starting the brutal 8 year war to distract the Iranians from exporting their Peaceful Revolution. The US and the West financed Iraq in waging that war ending in a stalemate after 1,000,000 deaths on both sides.

While I have no proof, my gut tells me the West promised Saddam the return of Kuwait, the 13th Province the British carved out of Iraq and renamed Kuwait, for putting Iraqi lives in harms way for the American interest. I think Saddam was double-crossed and went into Kuwait anyway like the US invaded Iraq without UN sanction. The rest is history.

“Assange said he sees WikiLeaks’ primary role as giving a voice to the victims of U.S. wars and proxy wars by using leaked documents to tell their stories. The release of the Afghan and Iraq War Logs, he said, disclosed the extent of civilian death and suffering, and the plethora of lies told by the Pentagon and the state to conceal the human toll. The logs, Assange said, also unmasked the bankruptcy of the traditional press and its obsequious service as war propagandists.”

Please go here to read the rest of “The Death of Truth” as Chris Hedges wrote it, and give it your thoughtful consideration.

In the final analysis, as Chris says, if the mainstream media do not stand up for Julian Assuange and Bradley Manning, there will no Democratic Freedom of the Press remaining in the Fascist Dictatorship surreptitiously usurping Democracy as we have known it.

You can lead a horse to water,
but you can’t make it drink!

You can lead a person to knowledge,
but you can’t make them think!

Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perverseness.

None calls for Justice, nor any pleads for Truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eats of their eggs dies, and that which is crushed breaks out into a viper.
Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil, and they make hast to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.

The way of Peace they know not; and there is no Judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goes in there shall not know Peace.

Therefore is Judgment far from us, neither does Justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.
We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.
We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for Judgment, but there is none; for Salvation, but it is far off from us.

For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us: for our transgressions are with us; and as for our iniquities, we know them;
In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

And Judgment is turned away backward, and Justice stands afar off: for TRUTH is fallen in the street, and EQUITY cannot enter.
Yea, Truth fails; and he that departs from evil makes himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no Judgment.
Isaiah 59

The Foundation of the United Nations Building in New York

QUO VADIS?

Posted on September 10, 2012March 17, 2024 by Ray Joseph Cormier

Growth Is the Problem

Image by celesteh via Flickr

The ceaseless expansion of economic exploitation, the engine of global capitalism, has come to an end. The futile and myopic effort to resurrect this expansion—a fallacy embraced by most economists—means that we respond to illusion rather than reality. We invest our efforts into bringing back what is gone forever. This strange twilight moment, in which our experts and systems managers squander resources in attempting to re-create an expanding economic system that is moribund, will inevitably lead to systems collapse. The steady depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, along with the accelerated pace of climate change, will combine with crippling levels of personal and national debt to thrust us into a global depression that will dwarf any in the history of capitalism. And very few of us are prepared.

“Our solution is our problem,” Richard Heinberg, the author of “The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality,” told me when I reached him by phone in California. “Its name is growth. But growth has become uneconomic. We are worse off because of growth. To achieve growth now means mounting debt, more pollution, an accelerated loss of biodiversity and the continued destabilization of the climate. But we are addicted to growth. If there is no growth there are insufficient tax revenues and jobs. If there is no growth existing debt levels become unsustainable. The elites see the current economic crisis as a temporary impediment. They are desperately trying to fix it. But this crisis signals an irreversible change for civilization itself. We cannot prevent it. We can only decide whether we will adapt to it or not.”

Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, argues that we cannot grasp the real state of the global economy by the usual metrics—GDP, unemployment, housing, durable goods, national deficits, personal income and consumer spending—although even these measures point to severe and chronic problems. Rather, he says, we have to examine the structural flaws that sit like time bombs embedded within the economic edifice. U.S. household debt enabled the expansion of consumer spending during the boom years, he says, but consumer debt cannot continue to grow as house prices decline to realistic levels. Toxic assets litter the portfolios of the major banks, presaging another global financial meltdown. The Earth’s natural resources are being exhausted. And climate change, with its extreme weather conditions, is beginning to exact a heavy economic toll on countries, including the United States, through the destruction brought about by droughts, floods, wildfires and loss of crop yields.

Heinberg also highlights what he calls “the highly dysfunctional U.S. political system,” which is paralyzed and hostage to corporate power. It is unable to respond rationally to the crisis or solve “even the most trivial of problems.”

“The government at this point exacerbates nearly every crisis the nation faces,” he said. “Policy decisions do not emerge from deliberations between the public and elected leaders. They arise from unaccountable government agencies and private interest groups. The Republican Party has taken leave of reality. It exists in a hermetically sealed ideasphere where climate change is a hoax and economic problems can be solved by cutting spending and taxes. The Democrats, meanwhile, offer no realistic strategy for coping with the economic unraveling or climate change.”

The collision course is set. It is now only a matter of time and our personal response.

“It could implode in a few weeks, in a few months or maybe in a few years,” Heinberg said, “but unless radical steps are taken to restructure the economy, it will implode. And when it does the financial system will seize up far more dramatically than in 2008. You will go to the bank or the ATM and there will be no money. Food will be scarce and expensive. Unemployment will be rampant. And government services will break down. Living standards will plummet. ‘Austerity’ programs will become more draconian. Economic inequality will widen to create massive gaps between a tiny, oligarchic global elite and the masses. The collapse will also inevitably trigger the kind of instability and unrest, including riots, that we have seen in countries such as Greece. The elites, who understand and deeply fear the possibility of an unraveling, have been pillaging state resources to save their corrupt, insolvent banks, militarize their police forces and rewrite legal codes to criminalize dissent.”

If nations were able to respond rationally to the crisis they could forestall social collapse by reconfiguring their economies away from ceaseless growth and exploitation. It remains possible, at least in the industrialized world, to provide to most citizens the basics—food, water, housing, medical care, employment, education and public safety. This, however, as Heinberg points out, would require a radical reversal of the structures of power. It would necessitate a massive cancellation of debt, along with the slashing of bloated militaries, heavy regulation and restraints placed on the financial sector and high taxes imposed on oligarchic elites and corporations in order to reduce unsustainable levels of inequality. While this economic reconfiguration would not mitigate the effects of climate change and the depletion of natural resources it would create the social stability needed to cope with a new post-growth regime. But Heinberg says he doubts a rational policy is forthcoming. He fears that as deterioration accelerates there will be a greater resolve on the part of the power elite to “cannibalize the resources of society in order to prop up megabanks and military establishments.”

Survival will be determined by localities. Communities will have to create collectives to grow their own food and provide for their security, education, financial systems and self-governance, efforts that Heinberg suspects will “be discouraged and perhaps criminalized by those in authority.” This process of decentralization will, he said, become “the signal economic and social trend of the 21st century.” It will be, in effect, a repudiation of classic economic models such as free enterprise versus the planned economy or Keynesian stimulus versus austerity. The reconfiguration will arise not through ideologies, but through the necessities of survival forced on the poor and former members of the working and middle class who have joined the poor. This will inevitably create conflicts as decentralization weakens the power of the elites and the corporate state.

Joseph Tainter, an archeologist, in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” provides a useful blueprint for how such societies unravel. All of history’s major 24 civilizations have collapsed and the patterns are strikingly similar, he writes. The difference this time around is that we will unravel as a planet. Tainter notes that as societies become more complex they inevitably invest greater and greater amounts of diminishing resources in expanding systems of complexity. This proves to be fatal.

“More complex societies are costlier to maintain than simpler ones and require higher support levels per capita,” Tainter writes. The investments required to maintain an overly complex system become too costly, and these investments yield declining returns. The elites, in a desperate effort to maintain their own levels of consumption and preserve the system that empowers them, through repression and austerity measures squeeze the masses harder and harder until the edifice collapses. This collapse leaves behind decentralized, autonomous pockets of human communities.

Heinberg says this is our fate. The quality of our lives will depend on the quality of our communities. If communal structures are strong we will be able to endure. If they are weak we will succumb to the bleakness. It is important that these structures be set in place before the onset of the crisis, he says. This means starting to “know your neighbors.” It means setting up food banks and farmers’ markets. It means establishing a local currency, carpooling, creating clothing exchanges, establishing cooperative housing, growing gardens, raising chickens and buying local. It is the matrix of neighbors, family and friends, Heinberg says, that will provide “our refuge and our opportunity to build anew.”

“The inevitable decline in resources to support societal complexity will generate a centrifugal force,” Heinberg said. “It will break up existing economic and governmental power structures. It will unleash a battle for diminishing resources. This battle will see conflicts erupt between nations and within nations. Localism will soon be our fate. It will also be our strategy for survival. Learning practical skills, becoming more self-sufficient, forming bonds of trust with our neighbors will determine the quality of our lives and the lives of our children.”

Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

When people have to run faster and faster to hold on to where they were, it is time to consider some unorthodox solutions.

How about revisiting the Lord’s prayer? Forgive us our debts as we forgive those indebted to us.

There would be a huge transformation, redeeming Time and Opportunity, if the people decided they would be better off standing up and affirming their own self-interest by implementing this good, old, common sense advice as the Global Biblical Babylonian economic, military, political system has arrived at it’s end as the Bible said it would:

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow shares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

THE TOWER OF BABEL & THE BEGINNING OF NATIONS

Posted on April 13, 2012January 31, 2025 by Ray Joseph Cormier

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built.
And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us (plural) go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
So the LORD (singular) scattered them abroad from then upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from then did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11

Human life was precarious 4300 years ago when the Babel story was recorded. The people did not have any central authority or government other than the family unit. There were no police to protect them from marauding bandits. There would have been no organized religions. With no clocks other than sunrise and sunset, life was a matter of survival from day to day. I suppose many people worshiped the sun, the moon and the stars, and the Earth that produced sustenance from the dirt to support human life.

These days we treat the Earth and people like dirt, polluting the rivers, lakes and streams and even the oceans, all in the name of money, business, progress and jobs.

This Living Earth may be ready to cut off it´s life sustaining power and regurgitate us for destroying it.

And the nations were angry, and your wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that you should give reward to your servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear your name, small and great; and should destroy them which destroy the earth.

Revelation 11:18

In my view, this 4300 year old Bible story speaks to both our history and our common future. Humanity has evolved. Every Nation has its high towers as symbols of it´s economic prowess. We have reached the Heavens. Mankind has landed on the moon and sent satellites into deep space. We have come a long way.

On Earth, we are still divided by language, even within the same language, with competing interests and beggar thy neighbour attitudes, rather than having a common purpose for the Common Good of Mankind. If we continue to remain blind to all the signs of the times shouting Change!!! then as a species, we may not be worthy to continue much longer.

To this very Day the people babble on and babble on and not much is resolved!

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For ALL NATIONS have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.

And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.

Revelation 18