[LINK] Manning Assange

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmm, 

We live in an age of weasel words, public relations, advertising, social manipulation and any other methodology you care to name that has, as its primary purpose, to sway our opinions in someone else's interest. 

I have no doubt Obama's speech writer (like pretty well any politician's speech writer) is not wedded to honesty, honour, fact or truth ... he's simply selling a product (Obama). That said, there are products that I find far more worrying than Obama.

Politicians have a history of saying high minded things, and setting in motion despicable things. They profess to represent us, but are in the pockets of assorted vested interests. They represent themselves as being kind, friendly and empathetic ... 'one of us' if you like ...when in reality they are cold blooded vote calculation machines who don't give a damn who they have to step on, torture, kill or otherwise destroy to get re-elected. They are married to their respective machines, and can't disentangle themselves or they fall by the political wayside.

They have no concept of the action-reaction dynamic of what they do, they foolishly assume that those they inflict their short term strategies upon will simply take it, and that no consequences will attach to them ... and in large part they are right because the general public has the memory of a brain damaged amoeba, and is willing to be distracted by puerile simplistic distractions to take their (limited) attention from the consequences of all those political mistakes.

So ... we go in to blindly hit out at some nebulously defined (by the aforesaid politicians) threat. We go in to Vietnam, we go into Iraq, we go into Afghanistan ... and always there are consequences. But those consequences don't fall on the politicians ... they fall on the dead and dying in the places we go into, they fall on the troops we send overseas, they fall on the steady deterioration of our individual ethics and morality as we get tired of wherever we have gone into and look for 'exit strategies'. And we leave those places in the hands of our unspeakably corrupt proxy rulers ... and are always surprised when it all falls apart soon after we leave.

What really amuses me about WikiLeaks is that they tried to tell/expose the truth ... and were nailed for it (I'm separating WikiLeaks from Assange here). Better to believe the press releases, the PR campaigns, the 'official statements', the 'embedded reporters' ... all the communications channels that the powers-that-be control.

Manning ... well, he was a member of the US armed forces, and had probably taken an oath not to reveal things ... but his actions do beg the question about how in hell the US NSA and military could be so incompetent, stupid and inept as to not compartmentalise and encrypt sensitive data in the first place so that one of their lowest ranked  (and from reports psychologically troubled) members couldn't take what he wanted. If I was defending Manning that's a line I would come back to, time and again - just for the embarrassment value. Second thing about Manning ... the stuff he nabbed was embarrassing, but not a state secret on which lives depended.

On WikiLeaks ... well, what we're seeing here is State sponsored vindictiveness. Politicians, high ranking military and senior bureaucrats have been made to look stupid, two faced, dishonest and inept. So WikiLeaks has become the object lesson.

On Assange. This whole thing could be put to rest if the separate parties (Assange, the US government, the Swedish prosecutor, the English government and the Swedish government) compromised. But given that none of them will, it will probably continue like a running sore in the world's media for the next 12 months to two years ... reminding all and sundry how much easier it would have been to remove the whole thing from the public eye and avoid the continuing embarrassment

The good thing up until now has been that the communications channels have been decentralising and taken out of the control of the powers-that-be, but now they are fighting back. Now they (government, traditional media, telecommunications giants etc) want to capture everything that is said and done on the Net, impose their will, their corrupt censorship and control on what had been a burgeoning of freedom of speech ... and unless Joe Public does something completely unexpected they'll succeed.

So yeah, Janet ... I'm probably as pessimistic as you are. But I have a really good reason for it ... I'm old, grouchy, cynical and no longer have an ideal to fall back on.                :)
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On 28/09/2012, at 4:12 PM, Janet Hawtin <janet at hawtin.net.au> wrote:

> Warcrimes, torture, truth is the enemy?
> https://rt.com/news/assange-addresses-un-human-rights-069/
> 
> I don't know if this would have been on your news
> it did not get a lot of tv coverage in SA.
> The foreign minister is denying anyone speaking to him about
> Assange at all despite that I can see people tweeting to him about it.
> perhaps tweets don't count as people.
> 
>> From the Gillard talk at the UN threatening Iran it looks as though
> they are going to attack again another country.
> 
> Obama seems like a nice man. He says the right things.
> That means this is the best it can be? He still can't stop the torture
> and drones killing people in random countries?
> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/09/voting-against-barack-obamas-record?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/express_yourself
> 
> Sorry I know this is off topic really but I am terrified about how
> torture and killing civilians has become the new normal
> and our government seems to have no independent thought
> just flat out momentum for war.
> 
> back to your regular viewing.
> 
> j
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