Defend WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning & Julian Assange

Tony Greenstein & Terry Gallogly Appear in Wiki Leaks!

I was searching for an article on the Guardian website last night in which I had appeared, so I did a search on my name and guess what came up? Yup that’s right. It seems I have made a guest appearance on Wiki Leaks. What makes it certain that it is me and not another Greenstein is that I am combined with one Gallogly. Terry Gallogly is a good comrade and Chair of York PSC. It is also an unusual name and the chances of such a combination being found elsewhere would be in the millions.

The timing is strange too. The 5th of February. In October, in response to a Jewish Chronicle poll about whether Rabbis should associate and work with the EDL both of us recommended that they do what is natural to them and we both took some flack. But clearly the cable can'’ relate to 8 months later and my only guess is that this was shortly after the Palestine Solidarity Conference, which no doubt the US was keeping under surveillance.

The Wiki Leaks story dramatically demonstrates that in the West, democratic rights is a thin layer resting on a barbaric system no different from those in dictatorships and police states.

It is no surprise that former US Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called for the execution of Julian Assange for treason. Or Republicans like Sarah Palin and ex-IRA supporter and New York Congressman Peter King who call for Assange ‘to be hunted down’ are as thick as they come and so don’t understand that treason means disloyalty to one’s own country. As far as I’m aware Assange is Australian, not American, though one suspects that in reality the US Empire does indeed include the land of kangaroos.

Clearly they never heard of Sir John Harington’s who wrote that ‘Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason. In other words treason is something the other fellow does and if he succeeds it isn’t treasonous because loyalty is now owed to him.

The Guardian newspaper is to be congratulated for having published the Wiki Leak cables. Unlike the yellow press of the United States – the New York Times in particular – which instead of giving support to a genuine whistleblower have damned him with words of cowardice. Genuine journalism is nothing if not about challenging the status quo and those who hold power, yet these court journalists content themselves with tugging on the coat tails of power as they echo the received wisdom that Assange has ‘endangered lives’.

This is of course rich coming from Hilary Clinto, who supported a war in Iraq that cost over 1 million lives, or who currently prosecutes the war in Afghanistan. Yet our rulers are right to be worried. Because the Wiki Leaks demonstrate exactly what the purpose of US diplomacy is, and it isn’t spreading democracy in the world but defending their imperial interests against the interests of the peoples of the third world.

For example we Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi envoy to the U.K., on 12th June 2010 denied the Saudis would allow Israel to use Saudi airspace to launch an attack against Iran. Good gracious no, such a move "would be against the policy adopted and followed by the Kingdom."

According to the Asharq al-Awsat report, ‘bin Nawaf reiterated the Saudi Arabia's rejection of any violation of its territories or airspace, adding that it would be "illogical to allow the Israeli occupying force, with whom Saudi Arabia has no relations whatsoever, to use its land and airspace." ‘

Illogical or duplicitous it may be, but King Abdullah was also urging the United States, Israel’s main backer, to ‘cut the head of the snake off’ by attacking Iran!

So if this is a threat to civilisation as we know it and the international community (the warmakers) etc. then one can only presume that Clinton and Obama accept that the current political system is one based on lies and deceptions.

Of course it is humorous to read that our Foreign Secretary William Hague promising that the Tories would provide a pro-American ‘regime’ in this country once installed in power. Given the pro-US stance of New Labour under Blair and Brown this takes some doing. And one cannot avoid a wry smile at how even US diplomats cringed at this ‘corrosive’ behaviour and wondered if British politicians suffered a deep neurosis.

The revelations uncover little which wasn’t already known or suspected, but they put flesh on what are often skeletons. It is interesting to know that there are no depths that the Arab rulers, such as Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh will not sink in their cringing self-abasement and prostration before the American rulers. Saleh gave the US a green light to go into his country and attack ‘Al Quaeda’ whilst promising to claim the credit himself!

Now the truth is out the USA is doing its best to protect its own citizens from the truth. US multinationals and corporations, from Amazon to PayPal, have pulled the plug on Wiki Leaks as the Metropolitan Police promise to arrest Assange on a trumped up charge of rape by the Swedish police. Oh yes, just like in Afghanistan, where we went in to defend Afghani women, we will be arresting and jailing Assange in order to protect women!

Even though the secrets are out, not US Government computer must download the cables, as they are still confidential! Even Alice and the Mad Hatter would have had difficulty in bettering that one. [US federal workers told: your PC will be ‘sanitised’ if you view WikiLeaks].

What these and previous leaks demonstrate is the callous US indifference to the murder and slaughter of those who get in the way of its interests, how civilians were gunned down by planes in Iraq to the amusement of the pilots or that the US was waging a war inside Pakistan in collusion with its military. Yes there are many reasons for Obama, Clinton and Cameron to be afraid of the truth. And surely they are right to say that the revelations threaten their cosy little world.

When they talk of freedom of speech they mean the right to complain when your dustbins aren’t emptied in time, not the right to poke into the right of the rich and those who control power in this society to do as they want. Julian Assange and Wiki Leaks and just as importantly Bradley Manning the US intelligence analyst who was so appalled by what he saw and read that he spilled the beans and faces life in prison in revenge for letting the truth out.