Wikileaks Roundup: recovering from C-SPAN edition.

I had to stop the sound in my head of "blah blah Wikuhleaks blah". The things I do for you people.

I know this is disaster porn, but it really is a disaster.

The Guardian, despite lack of liveblog today, persists in awesomeness by calling out the US Occupation of Haiti, likening it to the systemic removal of governments the US didn't like in South America, legitimately (I think) playing the socioeconomic/race card in why no one notices, calling on South American governments to stop aiding and abetting the occupation, and saying that the US is at a 1998-level of prep for war in Iran. They open strong, and they just keep swinging:

"The polarisation of the debate around WikiLeaks is pretty simple, really. Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity. The Iraq war has claimed certainly hundreds of thousands, and, most likely, more than a million lives. It was completely unnecessary and unjustifiable, and based on lies. Now, Washington is moving toward a military confrontation with Iran."

Pow!


In the category of political fallout that DOESN'T ORIGINATE FROM WIKILEAKS, the CIA station chief undercover in Pakistan (when'd the war with Pakistan start?) flees the country because his name was released in a legal complaint against armed drone attacks against Al Qaeda targets that killed German and UK citizens. Who published the documents? Well, lawyers, of course.
 I have three points on this:
-this is the only action from the NYT anyone has seen in days. They're totally hedging their bets.
-how long until this is erroneously pointed out as an unacceptable consequence of Wikileaks? Tick tick tick.
-this gives me a lot of faith in the ability of lawyers to decide what information needs to be secret and what doesn't.
Also, I've unilaterally decided that "Waziristan" wins word of the year. It's almost as good to say as "Malawians".


Michael Moore logs not-a-total-asshat points with this open letter to the Swedish government:

"This tactic of using a rape charge to go after minorities or troublemakers, guilty or innocent -- while turning a blind eye to clear crimes of rape the rest of the time — is what I fear is happening here. I want to make sure that good people not remain silent and that you, Sweden, will not succeed if in fact you are in cahoots with corrupt governments such as ours...Unless you have the evidence (and it seems if you did you would have issued an arrest warrant by now), drop the extradition attempt and get to work doing the job you've so far refused to do: Protecting the women of Sweden."

This is a reaction to the incredible beating he and Keith Olbermann have taken from the left-wing feminists for coming out in support of Assange. A perusal of feminist blogs that I like are a little low on the innocent-until-proven-guilty-ometer, probably because rape is so goddamn serious and taken so goddamn lightly in the society I live in, and that makes people who care about it (myself included) understandably angry. They're also saying the case against Assange is more straightforward than I consider it to be, and the haze around it is due to shitty reporting. I'd just like to remind everyone of three things:

1) that there is a legal responsibility on the part of the Swedes that curiously hasn't been fulfilled yet, despite repeated requests: the presentation of evidence gathered against Assange. That's what I'm waiting on, because I don't think it's wise (or possible) to overlook the extenuating political and legal circumstances of this case.
2) that the current state of rape response by legal institutions all over the world is fucking dismal,
3) that the response by legal institutions to THIS alleged rape case is so clearly not about the alleged rape that it ruins everything.

That is all.

And I'm late to the party on this one, but only because I've been thinking about it so hard: Dan Ellsberg (aka Mr. Pentagon Papers) weighs in on the Afghan War Logs, and wikileaks in general. Some good brain-fodder on this Friday:

   Ellsberg's argument was that the oaths he had sworn as a Marine and a military analyst were to the Constitution, a document that Jefferson said in his first inaugural address is best defended by "the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason."

WikiLeaks says today that:  "We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”

“The secrecy that has enveloped the war in Afghanistan is very costly to us,” argues Ellsberg. Those who leak and publish the true facts about America's wars, he explains, can usually be said to have "showed better judgment in putting it out than the people who keep [the facts] secret from the American people."

From the Cables: US bombed Yemen, has active secret operations in over 75 other countries

On Dec 17th 2009, an alleged Al Qaeda training camp in Yemen was hit by cruise missiles. 41 people were killed, including 14 women and 21 children, and 14 people alleged to be Al Qaeda fighters.  Another strike hit a Yemeni village a week later. Amnesty International had photos showing US cluster munitions and Tomahawks (including the one shown here), but the Pentagon wouldn't comment. The Yemeni government released a statement taking credit for the strikes.

Cables now show that those strikes were actually ordered by General Petraeus, Head of Central Command at the time. The President of Yemen told him that "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," during a meeting in early January 2010. The Deputy Prime Minister bragged that he "lied" to the Yemeni parliament, telling them that Yemen's military deployed the bombs. Reports are surfacing that US teams were also on targeted killing operations inside Yemen.

Did I miss when the States went to war with Yemen? That sounds like the sort of thing I would have noticed.

How about when the States went to war with the more than 75 other countries that the Cables say the military is conducting special combat operations in? When was the public disclosure that they were conducting drone strikes in Pakistan, headed by the real-life equivalents of G.I. Joes? And what about the outright denial from US politicians and military that any of this has been happening --a tactic that they stalwartly stuck to for the greater part of the last year?

How many times are they going to put their foot in it before something happens to hold them accountable?