On Sunday, November 28th, the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks released 219 of 251,287 leaked cables they intend to make public from US Embassies around the world. The leaks uncomfortably expose candid assessments by diplomatic officials, including their often unflattering descriptions of the local office boys of American imperialism. Secrecy and duplicity are and have always been at the heart of bourgeois diplomatic dealings. They are essential for those conspiring to carve up the globe, for those who send the working masses to die on the battlefield for them so that they can carry out their plans and divide up the spoils.

Now, for the crime of exposing this secret diplomacy, SPC Bradley Manning (right) will likely spend 52 years in jail. Before being turned in to the police by a right-wing hacker, Manning told him these cables would show “how the first world exploits the third, in detail”. This is precisely why the imperialists intend to destroy his life, and that of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has now been arrested. They want to send out a clear message that anyone who dares do what Manning and Assange have done will be dealt with severely.

•

Collecting DNA and Spying on the United Nations

One cable directly from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, asks American diplomats at the UN to collect personal information like credit card numbers and passwords.

Cable 09STATE80163

Cable 09STATE37561

.

Watching the allies

When it comes to the second and third-rate powers that American imperialism has gathered around itself, diplomats keep a close watch on political developments, and lean on local politicians to defend US interests. When the Spanish Socialist Party was organizing demonstrations against the Iraq war, the ambassador called a high ranking cabinet member to tell him to rein it in.

“7. (C) The DCM will follow up with a similar message to other officials and has requested meetings with PSOE Secretary Blanco and PSOE International Relations Secretary Elena Valenciano to ask that they leave the U.S. out of their political campaign.” (Emphasis ours in this and all the following quotes) Cable 07MADRID520

In other countries, the American diplomats have had years to cultivate a relationship with the ruling party, such as the “special relationship” with the UK. One interesting excerpt comes from a meeting between Jon Day, British MOD Director General for Security Policy and an American official, where they discuss the upcoming public inquiry into the Iraq war.

Cable 09LONDON2198

This inquiry was launched by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and publicly billed as a “historic” and “impartial” inquiry. The cable shows that behind the scenes, the New Labour bureaucrats manoeuvred to ensure it would not damage American interests.

But US diplomats do not restrict their activity to contact with governments of the day. There are other tools at their disposal to guarantee the safeguarding of American interests. In Sweden, in a meeting with the chargé d’affaires of the American embassy, Urban Ahlin volunteered, saying he could be “useful” for American imperialism on several issues. Ahlin is a right-wing Social Democrat member of parliament, and describes himself as such. Ahlin asked the embassy to help ensure Social Democrat MPs would vote for an extension and expansion of Sweden’s military role in Afghanistan, despite the anti-war mood of the rank-and-file.

“[…] Ahlin noted that he is perceived as being on the right wing of his party on security issues and relations with the U.S. He is well-wired across the spectrum in Stockholm, and is willing to play a useful role regarding Afghanistan and Kosovo.” Cable 08STOCKHOLM51

The cable also refers to Lennmarker, a representative of the governing party who was in the same meeting. So here we have both the government and the main opposition party providing their services to the US embassy, and meeting to arrive at a common strategy to implement policies which suit American imperialism.

Elsewhere, embassies are busy managing the empire’s public image. In Canada, the embassy seemed to become concerned that the entertainment of their neighbours to the north was painting the CIA and Homeland Security negatively.

The embassy is also upset that Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar is referenced on one show. The CIA kidnapped him in a case of mistaken identity and sent him to Syria to be secretly tortured. The facts of this case were a scandal in the country, and Canadian courts awarded him substantial compensation because of the involvement of Canadian intelligence (CSIS) in the events.

Cable 08OTTAWA136

The CBC is a state owned television network, whose budget allowed it to develop its own programming in the past. One such programme was a mini-series mentioned in the report, which revolves around an American-sponsored coup in Canada. That budget has since been cut by the Conservative Harper government.

Leaders from the advanced capitalist countries who have appeared in these leaks are understandably upset. These leaks speak volumes about the real worth of bourgeois democracy. In case after case, we can see how the decisions are made not at the ballot box, but often behind closed doors, and sometimes with the direct intervention of the American embassy. This is at the root of the indignation being vented by all the governments that have closed ranks around the US and joined a chorus of legal and public attacks on WikiLeaks.

Iraq, Iran and the Middle East

While the Ottawa embassy may have enough time to extensively report on local spy dramas, in the Middle East the American diplomats are in crisis mode. In the conversations with allies in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, the focus is on Iran and a possible bombing campaign against its nuclear programme.

In the UAE, the ruling class is particularly concerned about the blowback from any US or Israeli strike, and the possibility they may be a target for Iranian retaliation.

Cable 09ABUDHABI192

Saudi Arabian royals have been pressing the US to bomb Iran, fearing the consequences of allowing Iran’s ruling class to continue expanding its ambitions in the region and to bolster its position with nuclear arms.

Cable 08RIYADH649

Publicly, no Arab leader could admit to encouraging the US or Israel to carry out such an attack, but this is the position of the client states of US imperialism, all of whom are watching Iranian influence and economic interests grow, particularly in Iraq and Lebanon. Where Iranian interests grow, theirs are nudged out, and a nuclear Iran cannot be easily knocked back down. Saudi Arabia particularly has a long term investment in Lebanon with the Hariri family, and is watching with concern as Iran freely operates in Iraq. Iran and Syria have conquered markets for their goods there, and Iran is increasing its influence on local militias, just as it did in Lebanon.

“[Name removed] commented that most farmers support PM Maliki for his increasingly non-sectarian political message and success in improving security. However, he complained that Iran and Syria were waging economic warfare on Iraqi farmers by flooding provincial markets with low cost/quality produce that are heavily subsidized by their respective governments.” Cable 09BAGHDAD3195

American imperialism has attempted over the past period to find a way out of Iraq, first by attempting to come to some sort of entente with the Iranian regime, or failing that, by attempting to come to a deal with the Syrian state apparatus to break it away from its relationship with Iran and away from Hamas and Hezbollah. The Syrian state is open to coming to some sort of arrangement with American and Israeli imperialism, but it is not completely optimistic about such a prospect. It therefore leans on Hamas, Hezbollah, and maintains ties with Iran as a counterweight to Israeli power, and it makes clear this will not change until after a deal has been reached:

Cable 10DAMASCUS8

This is further made clear in a discussion between an envoy of American senators and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad:

Cable 09DAMASCUS179

Cable 08CAIRO1067

Cable 09TELAVIV2500

Tension rising in Middle East: Could Israel attack Iran and why?, which has been confirmed in large part by the contents of these secret cables.

Afghanistan, Pakistan and the “Great Game”

Iran is an irritation further east as well, where America is still fighting a war in Afghanistan and even inside Pakistan. This is a strategic region, which has previously seen such a rush to divide the spoils. In earlier times, major powers, with Britain on top, were engaged in a similar scramble for control. Prince Andrew, who seems to still be living in his romantic ideal of British colonialism, made clear at a brunch in Bishkek that the great game is back.

“Addressing the Ambassador directly, Prince Andrew then turned to regional politics. He stated baldly that ‘the United Kingdom, Western Europe (and by extension you Americans too)’ were now back in the thick of playing the Great Game. More animated than ever, he stated cockily: ‘And this time we aim to win!’”

And of course, the Great Game means being able to take control at any cost, it means lubricating the gears of the local officials, even if it takes a little bit of bribery.

“The brunch had already lasted almost twice its allotted time, but the Prince looked like he was just getting started. Having exhausted the topic of Kyrgyzstan, he turned to the general issue of promoting British economic interests abroad. He railed at British anti-corruption investigators, who had had the ‘idiocy’ of almost scuttling the Al-Yamama deal with Saudi Arabia. (NOTE: The Duke was referencing an investigation, subsequently closed, into alleged kickbacks a senior Saudi royal had received in exchange for the multi-year, lucrative BAE Systems contract to provide equipment and training to Saudi security forces. END NOTE.) His mother’s subjects seated around the table roared their approval. He then went on to ‘these (expletive) journalists, especially from the National Guardian, who poke their noses everywhere’ and (presumably) make it harder for British businessmen to do business. The crowd practically clapped. He then capped this off with a zinger: castigating ‘our stupid (sic) British and American governments which plan at best for ten years whereas people in this part of the world plan for centuries.’ There were calls of ‘hear, hear’ in the private brunch hall.” Cable 08BISHKEK1095

Here we can see clearly to what extent the bourgeois state acts directly in the interests of the capitalist class, even defending their right to use corruption to gain advantages against their competitors. Then it should be no surprise that the “democracy” that western youth are being sent to die for in Afghanistan includes $52 million dollars in cash for the country’s Vice President, no questions asked. The New York Times described one cable which has yet to be released in full in the following terms:

“When Afghanistan’s vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money ‘a significant amount’ that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, ‘was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.’ (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)” Leaked Cables Offer Raw Look at U.S. Diplomacy

Neither should it be surprising that the US work closely with President Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, even though he is known to be a corrupt drug dealer:

In the same cable, we are reminded of the reality that the Afghan war strategy is being shifted towards coming to some sort of agreement with elements of the Taliban, with Ahmed Wali Karzai encouraging the Americans to remove some of their fighters from the wanted list so they could make a deal:

“Senior Taliban fighters in Pakistan may be prepared to reintegrate, he said, but are forced by the Pakistan Government to continue to fight. AWK said some Afghan Taliban commanders cannot return to Afghanistan because they are on the Joint Priority Effects List (JPEL) and are told by the Pakistanis they must continue to fight or will be turned over to the coalition. It is important to remove such fighters from the JPEL for reintegration to work, he argued” Cable 10KABUL693

This deal of course, will not mean any improvement of life for the Afghan working masses. The same religious barbarian Taliban, that were in power and maintained control through brutal methods nine years ago, will be back in power to some degree, perhaps in a coalition of some sort. So for regular Afghans, it will be like coming full circle. Thousands have died and been maimed, only to see the return of the Taliban to power, only that this time round it would be a Taliban faction that is more open to American plans for the region.

RIGHT: Bradley Manning

Over the last decade, American cluster bombs have played a big role in the destruction of the country. These are bombs that scatter across a vast area before exploding, ensuring maximum death and mutilation. There is nothing targeted about them: innocent people are often caught in the blasts and they have become the focus of much of the hatred of the occupation in Afghanistan. When a treaty banning their use was agreed, US embassy officials scrambled to find a loophole. The US is not a signatory, and regularly uses these weapons, but the Afghan government did sign. As we see, even UN treaties, public bourgeois diplomacy, are nothing but a cover for the real decisions made behind closed doors.

“According to timely Post reporting, President Karzai decided at the last moment to overrule Spanta [the then Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs] and sign the CCM [Convention on Cluster Munitions] without prior consultation with the USG or other key states engaged in operations in Afghanistan. Information from Post and the press indicates that even ardent supporters of the CCM who had been lobbying Kabul for some time were unaware of the change in policy until December 3, when Afghanistan formally signed the treaty. Moreover, at least parts of the Foreign Ministry appeared unaware of the policy change, as of December 10 (ref C). Given the political sensitivities in Afghanistan surrounding cluster munitions as well as air and artillery strikes in general, the Department believes that a relatively low-profile dialogue at the sub-ministerial level will be the best way to ensure a common understanding between the USG and GIRoA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] that the CCM does not impede U.S. and ISAF military planning and operations.” Cable 08STATE134777

Within the labour movement internationally it is very common to see the United Nations presented as some kind of impartial arbiter that can be counted on to solve conflicts. We have always explained the falseness of this view. For anyone who may have held out some hope in UN treaties, this cable shatters any illusion that such treaties and institutions are anything more than PR for imperialist interests. They are pieces of paper to be bandied about for public consumption while the imperialist get on with their serious business behind the scenes.

Revolution, Counterrevolution and the Coup in Honduras

Embassies in Latin America have also been busy. US imperialism was very concerned to control the message it sent out during the Honduran coup in 2009, eager not to be seen as being implicated. They worked to preserve deniability in case the coup backfired as was the case in Venezuela in 2002, but also diligently avoided the use of the term “coup”.

Later, they would give backing to an election organized by the coup-plotters to legitimize the coup. While the cable on the coup seems to imply that the embassy was not involved in the direct planning of the events, it bluntly refers to it as an illegal coup in a way that was not done publicly.

Had they publicly admitted that what had occurred was a coup, they would have had some problems in justifying before “public opinion” their manoeuvres, as US law would forbid them from having any further dealings with the coup plotters. The law states that military and financial aid would have to be cut off immediately if a democratically elected government were overthrown by a coup. So, one month after the cable made clear that there was no doubt that this was an illegal and unconstitutional coup, the public response was to pretend not to know what was happening:

WikiLeaks Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup

US imperialism, though it may not have directly sanctioned the actions of its local allies, carried out a public relations campaign on their behalf once the deed was done, intended to convince the world precisely of the opposite of what its own diplomats were privately saying:

But why allow a good coup to go to waste? American imperialism attempted to negotiate Zelaya’s return by bringing both sides into some sort of agreement, alluded to in the cable. Presumably, such a negotiated deal would have needed Zelaya to give up any thought of further reforms which would harm the interests of the very same oligarchy that was behind his overthrow and of the American government which was their patron.

Cable 09TEGUCIGALPA645

And when that didn’t work, they called an election to legitimize the coup.

In Venezuela, the American embassy was directly involved in deciding the next step in the battle against the revolution. The embassy felt the opposition needed to seize on the failures of the revolution by promising “additional programs to redistribute the oil wealth”. It also lays heavy emphasis on the need to contrast the failings of the revolution with the amounts being spent abroad in aid, whipping up nationalism.

16. (U) Primero Justicia (PJ) has been the only political party to criticize Chavez consistently for his handouts to other countries. Promising additional programs to redistribute oil wealth, PJ presidential candidate Julio Borges has asked the BRV [Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela] to explain why ordinary Venezuelans are not receiving the money sent to Cuba, according to press reports. With the closure of the Caracas-La Guaira bridge, other elements of the opposition are also beginning to contrast BRV gifts abroad with problems at home.” Cable 06CARACAS219

This cable seems to foreshadow the shifts in the opposition’s tactics, which have borne fruit in the most recent National Assembly elections. It shows that the imperialists understand that the real weakness in Venezuela is to be found in the fact that the revolution has not done enough to solve the problems of the masses, and that the opposition should seize on this by promising to do more. This flies in the face of the arguments of the reformists, who claim that the revolution is moving too fast. The enemy knows otherwise!

Imperialists in a frenzy

On the diplomatic cables released, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, had this to say, as reported in the British Guardian newspaper:

“‘It is an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations, that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.’

“‘There is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people, and there is nothing brave about sabotaging peaceful relations between nations on which our common security depends,’ she said.

“While she said she would not comment directly on the cables or their substance, she said that the government would take ‘aggressive steps’ to hold responsible those who ‘stole’ them.

Hillary Clinton attacks release of US embassy cables

When Barack Obama took office, he promised to make government transparent:

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN WELCOMING SENIOR STAFF AND CABINET SECRETARIES TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Those words of Obama reveal that he is the perfect diplomat. He knows how to put together pretty words, and lie eloquently. According to Obama and Hillary, those who “sought to make” these confidential documents “known” committed a crime. As with all of Obama’s promises, his role as defender in chief of American imperialism takes precedence over any nice speeches about transparency and truth.

But other preparations had already begun when Bradley Manning was arrested in May of this year, and the hacker who betrayed him revealed he had told him he had provided WikiLeaks with these cables.

And only a week before the release of the cables, having ignored all attempts by Assange to voluntarily answer any questions at the Swedish embassy in London, Sweden issued an international arrest warrant, claiming they were unable to contact Assange for interrogation. It has since emerged that the two women who brought forward the charges originally did not want to pursue them, but only to ask Assange to take a test, because a condom had broken during consensual sex.

One can be justified in asking the question: had Assange not been the founder of WikiLeaks but an unknown figure guilty of rape, would there have been an international arrest warrant sought against him, would there have been any attempt to extradite him?

However, just in case the accusations of rape should not suffice to achieve their aims, US officials have also made clear that they are looking for ways to charge Assange under American espionage laws.

Assange voluntarily gave himself up to police in Britain on Tuesday, where he was promptly arrested and denied bail, when it is standard practice to grant bail in such cases. Extradition proceedings to send him to Sweden are expected soon, and diplomatic sources have already leaked that discussions have begun to extradite him to the US from there.

RIGHT: Daniel Ellsberg

But the attack on WikiLeaks is not only a legal one. At the very beginning of the leaks, the site was the target of a mass distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which brought it down for the first few days. Now, corporations across the world have begun to take action against the site. First, amazon.com, whose EC2 storage service WikiLeaks had been using to back up the site, cut it off. Then EveryDNS, a service which allows users to access the site by typing the wikileaks.org address instead of the IP number, booted it off. As the chorus grew from politicians across the world calling on companies to follow suit, PayPal shut down the account WikiLeaks uses to collect donations. In the past few days, Switzerland’s Postfinance closed down Assange’s legal defence fund bank account because he did not meet “residency requirements”. That may well be the first ever case of a Swiss bank paying any attention to the residency requirement laws. They were followed by MasterCard and Visa both blocking transactions to the site.

In a statement, PayPal made crystal clear what was behind all of these attacks:

Wikileaks under attack: the definitive timeline

Since then, a group of thousands of anonymous youth have brought down the sites for many of these companies, even managing to distupt MasterCard transactions across the internet entirely, for brief periods. (See: Operation Payback cripples MasterCard site in revenge for WikiLeaks ban).

The site has also been copied to thousands of other servers, in an attempt to prevent it from being taken down.

The attacks continue, with Tom Flanagan (right below), a former senior advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling for Assange to be assassinated. US Republican Sarah Palin, called for him to be deemed a terrorist and “hunted down”.

Bradley Manning, Sacrificed to Protect “Secret Diplomacy”

“We know, furthermore, that our “defencists” vehemently support the Milyukovs’ refusal to publish the secret treaties. These so-called socialist have sunk so low as to defend secret diplomacy, and the secret diplomacy of the ex-tsar at that. Why do the supporters of the imperialist war guard the secret of these treaties so zealously?” (V. I. Lenin, One of the Secret Treaties)

Lenin and the Bolsheviks always stood against bourgeois secret diplomacy, which is the conspiracy of the imperialist powers against the working masses of the world. There is no difference between the secret treaties of those days, and the embassy cables of today. In both cases, the purpose of keeping them secret is to ensure the bourgeoisie’s ability to continue manipulating the working class, sending them out to die to protect profits and conquer markets and resources for the bosses.

Soldiers may honestly believe their life is worth sacrificing to protect women’s rights and bring democracy to Afghanistan, or to defend their “homeland” against the use of “weapons of mass destruction”. It is much more difficult to convince them to make this sacrifice for Ahmed Wali Karzai’s dirty money or for returning the Taliban to power while protecting America’s economic interests. Neither can they convince the working classes of the need to cut their standards of living, without hiding the fact that so many billions have been spent on wars that are nothing but the defence of criminal dealings across the world.

After the October revolution, the Bolsheviks threw open the books on these kinds of secret treaties. Trotsky issued a statement explaining why, which we feel is as relevant today as it was back in 1917.

“Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests. Imperialism, with its dark plans of conquest and its robber alliances and deals, developed the system of secret diplomacy to the highest level. The struggle against the imperialism which is exhausting and destroying the peoples of Europe is at the same time a struggle against capitalist diplomacy, which has cause enough to fear the light of day. The Russian people, and the peoples of Europe and the whole world, should learn the documentary truth about the plans forged in secret by the financiers and industrialists together with their parliamentary and diplomatic agents. The peoples of Europe have paid for the right to this truth with countless sacrifices and universal economic desolation.

The exposure of these secrets deals a real political blow to the bourgeoisie’s moral authority. Without moral authority, passive support from the working masses they exploit, the bourgeoisie could not maintain its position. In Latin America, and in many other parts of the world, they have periodically lost this authority, and have had to resort to military coups to stem the tide of the masses, i.e. they have had to impose their will through brute force.

They understand, however, that brute force alone is not enough to hold down the masses. The working people are the overwhelming majority in society. If they move en masse against the ruling class there would be no force on earth that could stop them. That is why the ruling class invests so much in all kinds of means that are designed to keep a hold of the minds of millions of ordinary people. Wars are justified as being “for democracy” or for “security”, when in reality they are to defend the profits, privileges and prestige of the ruling classes.

The reaction of the mighty and powerful to the public exposure of their secret dealings has brought out real rage. They are using everything they can to put the genie back in the bottle. They have attempted to close down the WikiLeaks site, strangle it of financial backing by getting Credit card companies to boycott it, and demanding the arrest of its founder.

They are also planning on destroying Bradley Manning’s life to protect their right to hide their true face. Manning is 23 years old, a working class kid who worked as an intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq.

After having passed off all of the documents to WikiLeaks, Manning contacted Adrian Lamo, a former hacker turned security specialist. In a chat with him, Manning revealed what he had done and what had motivated him.

Some of the more salient parts of the chat are the following:

[To see the whole chat and comments go to: Wikileaks: a somewhat less redacted version of the Lamo/Manning logs]

Unfortunately for Bradley, he was being naive to the extreme. Despite promising him that this conversation would be kept in confidence, Lamo handed the logs of the chat over to the US government, calling it an act of “conscience”. In this Lamo merely revealed his allegiance to the interests of the US ruling class.

This awkward youth, gay and the son of divorced parents, ostracized within the army, saw enough in Iraq to convince him that the world had to find out. The chat logs show how uncomfortable he was with the possibility that his face would be everywhere as a result of his actions.

“Manning had been tasked with evaluating the arrest of 15 Iraqis rounded up by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing “anti Iraq” literature. “The Iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with U.S. forces, so I was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the ‘bad guys’ were, and how significant this was for the FPs,” he wrote.

“But when Manning had the literature translated, he discovered it was a scholarly critique of Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki titled Where Did the Money Go?, he wrote. The document was nothing more than a “benign political critique … following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet.

““I immediately took that information and ran to the [U.S. Army] officer to explain what was going on. He didn’t want to hear any of it. He told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding MORE detainees.”

“He continued. “Everything started slipping after that. I saw things differently. I had always questioned the [way] things worked, and investigated to find the truth. But that was a point where I was a part of something. I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.”” Suspected Wikileaks Source Described Crisis of Conscience Leading to Leaks

Bradley Manning is an honest working class kid, who decided to do something about what he had seen. His “crime” is that he has exposed the secret dealings of American imperialism, the secret massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan. What cynical hypocrisy it is, to call this a crime. The real crimes are committed by the world’s bourgeois, as they conspire behind the backs of the masses to divide up the planet. Using working class youth like Bradley as pawns, sacrificed like lambs to impose the will of oligarchs on peoples in distant lands.

The working masses in Iraq and Afghanistan have far more in common with the Bradley Mannings of this world than with the local gangster bourgeois class he exposed in the cables. In these cables, it becomes even clearer just how much these elements are wedded to the imperialist powers, and how lucrative such an arrangement can be for them. As their people die and starve, they make off with millions.

This is what Manning has exposed. However, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone who has any understanding of how capitalist society functions. Most of what has been revealed has merely confirmed what Marxists have always maintained. However, it is one thing for the advanced layers of the working class and youth to be conscious of all this, it is a completely different matter if the wider masses are made aware of these secret dealings.

In normal times, most people accept the dominant views as expressed through the media, the education system, the local church, and so on. According to this outlook, the state is an impartial “democratic” institution. We are all supposed to be equal before the law. The truth is very different.

As Marx put it in the Communist Manifesto, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Engels put it thus: “As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.”

The secrets of diplomacy are one of these means, and normally they remain precisely that, secrets! Bradley Manning stumbled on these secrets. They confirmed to him what he was already beginning to suspect from his experiences in the army. In this sense his revelations are an accident. But it was an accident waiting to happen, especially in the epoch of the Internet!

While all this is happening we have one scandal after another that reveal the rottenness of the system. In Britain we had the MPs’ expenses scandal. In Italy we have Berlusconi using his personal wealth to wield influence well beyond his remit as prime minister. In France Sarkozy is seen as living it up while the masses suffer. In the underdeveloped world it is far worse, where we see ruling elites living in the lap of luxury while all around them people suffer in the depths of poverty.

The financial crisis that started in 2007 led to a situation where the whole banking system was facing the possibility of collapse. The state everywhere stepped in and handed over billions to the bankers, and now the working people of the world are being forced to pay.

All this is creating a very angry mood among ordinary working people. The bourgeoisie has enough on its plate trying to convince the workers and youth that austerity measures are necessary. What they didn’t need was WikiLeaks spilling the beans with the biggest exposure of their secret dealings ever seen in history.

Now WikiLeaks and its founder Assange are under attack as the high and mighty do everything to try and stem this tide. The individuals involved, people like Manning and Assange, have done a service to all people who seek truth and justice. But the truth by itself is not enough. Individuals, however heroic they may be, stand no chance alone against the power the bosses have amassed in their industries and their state. To break open the vaults where their secret dealings lie hidden, we must break their power, as the workers did in Russia in the October revolution. Then there will be nowhere for them to hide.

Hands off Bradley Manning and Assange!

Down with bourgeois secret diplomacy!

(12:52:33 PM) bradass87:

Wikileaks: a somewhat less redacted version of the Lamo/Manning logs