The online release by whistleblower site Wikileaks of more than 250,000 leaked secret US cables, with a selection simultaneously published by five leading mainstream newspapers, including the British Guardian and The New York Times, sent a tremor through the imperialist ruling class, in particular in the United States.
Much of what was published was diplomatic tittle-tattle; embarrassing to the US and Britain, certainly, and amusing for the rest of us – although who, really, was surprised to discover that Prince Andrew is a vulgar boor or that Afghanistan’s President Karzai is weak and his family corrupt? Nor will the news that US diplomats consider Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi ‘vain, feckless and ineffective’ or French President Sarkozy ‘thin-skinned, arrogant and authoritarian’ have raised many eyebrows.
But, although less shocking than the video revealed by WikiLeaks in April, of US soldiers deliberately gunning down, computer-game style, Iraqi citizens who had surrendered, there are nuggets of damning and often horrific evidence to be found of imperialism’s dirty crimes. These include:
Iraq
• Evidence of the killing of 66,000 civilians in Iraq, 15,000 more than previously reported, by US and UK troops, including the shooting of an eight-year-old girl as she played in the street.
• The regular handing over of Iraqi civilians, including children, by US troops to Iraqi security forces, knowing they would be tortured, and the official decision not to investigate any reports of abuse by Iraqi forces.
United Nations
• US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directing US diplomats to spy on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and gather personal information, including credit card details, biometric information and email addresses, on representatives of the other four countries on the UN Security Council.
Bangladesh
• UK and US supporting the Rapid Action Battalion death squad in Bangladesh, responsible for hundreds of extra-judicial killings of left-wing activists and the routine use of torture.
Nigeria
• The Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell claiming it had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government, giving it access to politicians’ every move in the oil-rich Niger Delta, swapping intelligence with the US and requesting information on whether
militant opponents had acquired anti-aircraft missiles.
Uganda
• The US asked the Ugandan army to let it know if it planned to commit any war crimes based on US intelligence – but took no action to prevent such crimes.
This is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg, and has in any case been heavily redacted by the bourgeois media.
The New York Times admitted that it had run material, pre-publication, past the White House; The Guardian was less open, but is known to have held back material it considered too legally or politically sensitive. And much of it has been known, or suspected, by anti-imperialists and progressives for a long time. Nonetheless, what WikiLeaks has done is force into the mainstream evidence that the world of so-called US and UK ‘diplomacy’ and ‘peace-keeping’ is in fact one of collusion with torture and murder, one of bribes and threats, arm-twisting, blackmail and corruption. Here was all imperialism’s dirty laundry being aired in the international media – and who knew what other ‘secret’ and potentially even more damaging material might fall into WikiLeaks’ hands next? The imperialists were definitely rattled, and their retribution was swift.
The witch-hunt
At the request of the US government, Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, Amazon, Bank of America, Apple and Swiss Bank suspended any business with or payments to WikiLeaks. Republican Mick Huckabee stated: ‘Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.’ The greatest venom was reserved for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with right-wing US politicians and media figures calling for his assassination; Tea Party idol Sarah Palin demanded Julian Assange be ‘hunted down just like
Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders’.
And hunt him down they did: not the discreet assassination called for by right-wing US politicians but a full-on character assassination with the resurfacing of rape allegations dismissed earlier in the summer by Stockholm’s chief prosecutor for want of evidence. An Interpol Fugitive Notice was issued to bring Julian Assange in for questioning, despite no formal charges having been made. He was arrested on 7 December after handing himself in to police in London, held in solitary confinement at Wandsworth prison, with limited access to a phone and his lawyers and initially refused bail. He has since been bailed for £240,000, subject to electronic tagging and a night-time curfew. He will reappear in court on 7 February where Sweden will apply for a European Arrest Warrant to extradite him to Stockholm ‘for questioning’. He fears that extradition to SwedenUS, where Attorney General Eric Holder has threatened to ‘close the gaps’ in US espionage legislation to allow Assange to be prosecuted, and possibly face the death penalty if convicted. will simply be the prelude to extradition to the
The rape allegations concern two women, ‘A’ and ‘W’, who – separately – had consensual sexual relations with Assange over a period of three days in August. A and W did not report rape at the time – on the contrary, according to Assange’s Melbourne-based barrister James Catlin, the following day both women tweeted enthusiastically about their ‘celebrity conquest’ and A went so far as to host a party at her home in his honour. However, they later shared their experiences, including Assange’s alleged refusal to wear a condom when having sex with W, and decided to go to the police for ‘advice’. Many commentators, including feminist organisations, have commented on how bizarre the sequence of events is and how much it smacks of a political frame-up.
As Katrin Axelsson of campaigning organisation Women Against Rape pointed out in a letter to The Guardian (8 December 2010), such zealous prosecution for rape is surprising from Sweden, a country where 90% of rape allegations never come to court. As she says: ‘There is a long tradition of the use of rape and sexual assault for political agendas that have nothing to do with women’s safety. In the south of the US, the lynching of black men was often justified on grounds that they had raped or even looked at a white woman. Women don’t take kindly to our demand for safety being misused, while rape continues to be neglected at best or protected at worst.’
According to journalist Israel Shamir (Counterpunch 3-6 December 2010), ‘A’ has strong links with the reactionary US-supported Cuban organisation Women in White and a history of working with an anti-Castro group in Sweden that has links with the CIA.
Ironically, Assange had earlier sought residency in Sweden to benefit from the protection of its liberal media laws – an idea swiftly kyboshed when the CIA threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish secret service, if this were granted. Sweden has 500 troops in Afghanistan and benefits financially from the ‘war on terror’ as the world’s largest per capita arms exporter. In persecuting Assange, Sweden is acting directly in the interests of imperialism.
WikiLeaks is to be congratulated for publishing information that serves to undermine the secrecy and dirty-dealing of the imperialist system and helps people understand how it operates. It is our responsibility as communists to now use that information to challenge this barbaric, corrupt and rotten system.
Anthony Rupert and Cat Alison
Bradley Manning
Bradley Manning, a former US army private accused of delivering classified documents detailing the US’s brutal military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, is currently being held in solitary confinement in Quantico military prison, Virginia. He has been there for nearly eight months with no charge. He is held in solitary confinement in a six by twelve foot cell where he cannot exercise, see daylight, and is denied even a pillow and sheet. He is shackled during visits and denied the opportunity to work and is said to be on suicide watch. If convicted in the ‘Article 32’ hearing he faces, Manning could face 52 years in prison. US authorities have desperately tried to link him to Julian Assange, which they argue would allow them to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act, but have failed to find the evidence they need. The Bradley Manning Support Fund, which has received $20,000 from Wikileaks, can be found at www.bradleymanning.org
FRFI 219 February / March 2011
