Stat of the Week

The United States ranks as the world’s most unequal developed nation. But parts of the United States rank as among the most unequal places in the entire world, developing nations included. Notes Fiscal Policy Institute economist James Parrott: “If New York City were a nation, its level of income concentration would rank 15th worst among 134 countries, between Chile and Honduras.”

Peddling Poison for Fun and Profit

A quarter-century ago, in 1986, the biggest Wall Street banker paycheck went to John Gutfreund, the Salomon Brothers CEO. Gutfreund pulled in $3.2 million. Two decades later, in 2006, Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal pocketed $91 million.

To understand the 2008 Wall Street meltdown that cratered the U.S. economy, suggests the new final report from the panel Congress appointed to probe the causes of that crater, you need to understand this enormous pay explosion — and the fierce incentive this explosion created for reckless and fraudulent behavior.

How reckless and fraudulent? In the years that led up to the 2008 meltdown, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report released late last month details, Wall Street’s top bankers and financiers “made, bought, and sold mortgage securities they never examined, did not care to examine, or knew to be defective.”

These same bankers borrowed, based on these securities, tens of billions of dollars “that had to be renewed each and every night” and then traded these billions in totally unregulated, semi-secret, financial “derivative” gambles.

This frenetic financial folly would eventually leave four million homes lost to foreclosure and another four and a half million American families either ensnared in the foreclosure process or seriously behind on their mortgage payments.

“Nearly $11 trillion in household wealth has vanished,” adds the Financial Crisis Commission final report, “with retirement accounts and life savings swept away.”

The top five execs at Bear Stearns, for instance, all lost their jobs when that investment house collapsed in 2008. But in the eight years before that collapse, notes the Financial Crisis panel, these five “took home over $326.5 million in cash and over $1.1 billion from stock sales.” Their windfall exceeded the annual budget of the SEC, the federal agency that’s supposed to keep Wall Street honest.

The Wall Street pay explosion also helps explain why this Financial Crisis panel final report — a clear, compelling read — appears to be going nowhere. The 545-page paper, since its January 27 release, has sunk, like a rock, from public view.

Reports from blue-ribbon panels don’t, of course, always sink. They sometimes help crystallize public outrage and serve as a useful stepping stone to fundamental reform. In the Great Depression, the Senate Banking Committee’s celebrated Pecora Commission report played just that role.

But blue-ribbon reports, to make an impact, need political patrons, elected leaders who’ll talk the report content up, in news conferences and speeches, and demand immediate action to correct the ills that report content identifies.

The Pecora Commission report had plenty of those patrons, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has had virtually none. The White House has done next to nothing to give the report legs, and neither have many Democratic lawmakers.

Republicans, for their part, have followed the lead of the four GOP appointees on the panel. All four “dissented” from the main report, and their convoluted rebuttal to the majority report has allowed conservatives — and much of the media — to dismiss the Financial Crisis panel report as a purely partisan exercise.

Why all the haste to bury this report? Politicos on both sides of the aisle have essentially become too dependent on Wall Street. The report itself supplies the basic numbers: From 1999 to 2008, the financial industry dumped over $1 billion into political campaigns — and spent another $2.7 billion on lobbying.

That money has kept the Wall Street money machine percolating nicely. Total pay in the financial sector, the Wall Street Journal reported last week, topped $135 billion last year, a new record. Overall, concludes the Council of Institutional Investors, pay practices on Wall Street “have worsened” since the 2008 crisis.

The American people, meanwhile, remain absolutely outraged. Over 70 percent of Americans, a Bloomberg poll found this past December, want big bonuses banned this year at Wall Street firms that took taxpayer money.

People power, of course, can check money power, but only if organized. In the Great Depression, people did organize. The hugely influential Senate Banking Pecora Commission operated against the backdrop of a mobilized popular uproar.

The lesson for today? Even the most compelling blue-ribbon reports can’t, on their own, drive real reform. The pressure to end the pay excess behind the horrors the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has so exhaustively chronicled is going to have to come from average Americans.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has its final report available online, for free download. Interested in organizing, in your community or congregation, for economic security and justice? Check the Common Security Club network.

New Wisdom on Wealth John Dominic Crossan, With Liberty and Justice For All: Why the Bible Promotes Equality, February 1, 2011. An eminent theologian explores the biblical “expectation of a world ruled by a fair and equitable distribution of its resources.” Hugh Noble, The Spirit Level Revisited. A statistician demolishes the attacks on the 2010 British best-seller that exposed the heavy price societies pay for tolerating ever wider income inequality.
In Review
A Business Case for Greater Equality The Nordic Way: Shared norms for the new reality. A report prepared for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 2011. President Obama has opened 2011 preaching a new gospel: competitiveness. To succeed economically, his argument goes, the United States must become more “competitive.” So where do we start? How about looking at societies that are already competing quite nicely? Maybe they have lessons to share. These societies, turns out, do feel they have lessons to share. Better yet, the four nations that rate highest on global “competitiveness” benchmarks seem to be in a sharing mood. Last month, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, corporate and government leaders from these four nations — Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland — brought a special report that lays out what they feel gives them their distinct competitive edge. A distinct competitive edge — for Scandinavia? Conservatives all around the world would find this notion ludicrous. They’ve been arguing for years, as this new report wryly notes, that the Nordic economies are going to crash any minute. In this conservative world view, the Nordic economies represent a compromise between socialism and capitalism that can’t possibly last — since “the costly and unproductive ‘socialist’ elements of the model were bound to overwhelm the productive ‘capitalist’ aspects that had been allowed to remain.” But the Nordics, contrary to these dire predictions, are doing just fine. They’ve survived the Great Recession much better than the rest of the developed world. The Nordics also boast budget surpluses and low public debt, not to mention “long-term political stability, transparent institutions, technological adaptability, flexible labor markets, open economies, and high levels of education” — all the elements that business analysts say make for competitive economic success. The secret to this success? The Nordic business and policy leaders behind the Nordic Way report, a group that includes the chairman of the largest industrial holding company in Northern Europe, brought a somewhat surprising answer to their global corporate and governmental colleagues gathered in Davos. The Nordic nations, these entrepreneurs and elected leaders maintain, value individualism, so much so that they make sure — through a tightly knit social safety net — that no individual ever has to feel beholden to another. Individualism, The Nordic Way goes on to argue, “need not lead to social fragmentation, distrust, and short-term maximization of material interests.” Quite the opposite. Individual autonomy can “lead to greater social cohesion if it is done in an egalitarian way.” And that’s what the Nordic nations have done. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland all rank among the world’s most equal nations. The resulting social cohesion nurtures a “high degree of trust” — a trust in each other, in the law, in the strong governmental institutions that guarantee the social safety net. This trust, Nordic business leaders believe, translates into the “systemic advantage” that economists have labeled “low transaction costs.” People who do business in Scandinavia spend less time hassling with lawsuits and paperwork Critics, The Nordic Way acknowledges, see “political and cultural drawbacks” to the Scandinavian “commitment to personal autonomy, a strong state, and social equality.” Such a commitment, the attack on the Nordics posits, generates “conformity, loneliness, and an intrusive bureaucracy.” The Nordic Way sees a different Scandinavian reality: societies full of “citizens who feel empowered, accept the demands of modernity, and are willing to make compromises to achieve economic efficiency and rational decision-making.” The ultimate “take-away” message that Nordic business and government leaders want their peers elsewhere to take to heart? “In the Nordic countries,” The Nordic Way sums up, “social trust, confidence in state institutions, and relative equality coincide.” In the United States, this trust, confidence, and equality have gone by the boards. To become “competitive,” we have work to do. A lot.	About Too Much
Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies | 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 | (202) 234-9382 | Editor: Sam Pizzigati. | E-mail: editor@toomuchonline.org | Unsubscribe. Inequality Links Working Group on Extreme Inequality Common Security Clubs United for a Fair Economy The Equality Trust One Society Wealth for the Common Good New Economy Working Group Class Action Tax Justice Network High Pay Commission Us Against Greed ________________ Subscribe to Too Much Forward to a Friend HOWARD ZINN: A people's war? (Part 2) A PEOPLE’S WAR?  [PART TWO]  For Part 1, click here [print_link] But there was no organized Negro opposition to the war. In fact, there was little organized opposition from any source. The Communist party was enthusiastically in support. The Socialist party was divided, unable to make a clear statement one way or the other. Only one organized socialist group opposed the war unequivocally. This was the Socialist Workers Party. The Espionage Act of 1917 , still on the books, applied to wartime statements. But in 1940, with the United States not yet at war, Congress passed the Smith Act. This took Espionage Act prohibitions against talk or writing that would lead to refusal of duty in the armed forces and applied them to peacetime. The Smith Act also made it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence, or to join any group that advocated this, or to publish anything with such ideas. In Minneapolis in 1943, eighteen members of the Socialist Workers party were convicted for belonging to a party whose ideas, expressed in its Declaration of Principles, and in the Communist Manifesto, were said to violate the Smith Act. They were sentenced to prison terms, and the Supreme Court refused to review their case. A World Destroyed). Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with perhaps 50,000 killed. The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26. Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, set up by the War Department in 1944 to study the results of aerial attacks in the war, interviewed hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, and reported just after the war: If only the Americans had not insisted on unconditional surrender- that is, if they were willing to accept one condition to the surrender, that the Emperor, a holy figure to the Japanese, remain in place-the Japanese would have agreed to stop the war. Why did the United States not take that small step to save both American and Japanese lives? Was it because too much money and effort had been invested in the atomic bomb not to drop it? General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, described Truman as a man on a toboggan, the momentum too great to stop it. Or was it, as British scientist P. M. S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan? The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki seems to have been scheduled in advance, and no one has ever been able to explain why it was dropped. Was it because this was a plutonium bomb whereas the Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb? Were the dead and irradiated of Nagasaki victims of a scientific experiment? Martin Shenvin says that among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war. He notes a message of July 31 from Headquarters, U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces, Guam, to the War Department: Reports prisoner of war sources, not verified by photos, give location of Allied prisoner of war camp one mile north of center of city of Nagasaki. Does this influence the choice of this target for initial Centerboard operation? Request immediate reply. True, the war then ended quickly. Italy had been defeated a year earlier. Germany had recently surrendered, crushed primarily by the armies of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, aided by the Allied armies on the West. Now Japan surrendered. The Fascist powers were destroyed. That is what happened. When, right after the war, the American public, war-weary, seemed to favor demobilization and disarmament, the Truman administration (Roosevelt had died in April 1945) worked to create an atmosphere of crisis and cold war. True, the rivalry with the Soviet Union was real—that country had come out of the war with its economy wrecked and 20 million people dead, but was making an astounding comeback, rebuilding its industry, regaining military strength. The Truman administration, however, presented the Soviet Union as not just a rival but an immediate threat. In a series of moves abroad and at home, it established a climate of fear—a hysteria about Communism—which would steeply escalate the military budget and stimulate the economy with war-related orders. This combination of policies would permit more aggressive actions abroad, more repressive actions at home. In fact, the biggest outside pressure was the United States. The Greek rebels were getting some aid from Yugoslavia, but no aid from the Soviet Union, which during the war had promised Churchill a free hand in Greece if he would give the Soviet Union its way in Rumania, Poland, Bulgaria. The Soviet Union, like the United States, did not seem to be willing to help revolutions it could not control. In front of us a curious figure was standing, a little crouched, legs straddled, arms held out from his sides. He had no eyes, and the whole of his body, nearly all of which was visible through tatters of burnt rags, was covered with a hard black crust speckled with yellow pus. . . . He had to stand because he was no longer covered with a skin, but with a crust-like crackling which broke easily. . . . I thought of the hundreds of villages reduced to ash which I personally had seen and realized the sort of casualty list which must be mounting up along the Korean front. The left had become very influential in the hard times of the thirties, and during the war against Fascism. The actual membership of the Communist party was not large-fewer than 100,000 probably-but it was a potent force in trade unions numbering millions of members, in the arts, and among countless Americans who may have been led by the failure of the capitalist system in the thirties to look favorably on Communism and Socialism. Thus, if the Establishment, after World War II, was to make capitalism more secure in the country, and to build a consensus of support for the American Empire, it had to weaken and isolate the left. World events right after the war made it easier to build up public support for the anti-Communist crusade at home. In 1948, the Communist party in Czechoslovakia ousted non-Communists from the government and established their own rule. The Soviet Union that year blockaded Berlin, which was a jointly occupied city isolated inside the Soviet sphere of East Germany, forcing the United States to airlift supplies into Berlin. In 1949, there was the Communist victory in China, and in that year also, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. In 1950 the Korean war began. These were all portrayed to the public as signs of a world Communist conspiracy. So it was not just Soviet expansion that was threatening to the United States government and to American business interests. In fact, China, Korea, Indochina, the Philippines, represented local Communist movements, not Russian fomentation. It was a general wave of anti- imperialist insurrection in the world, which would require gigantic American effort to defeat: national unity for militarization of the budget, for the suppression of domestic opposition to such a foreign policy. Truman and the liberals in Congress proceeded to try to create a new national unity for the postwar years-with the executive order on loyalty oaths, Justice Department prosecutions, and anti-Communist legislation. The Selected Works of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Philip Foner, and The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman. Some books were burned. Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming unless a coalition government with the Communists was formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government. So concerned were our diplomats and their advisers, the Lattimores and the Fairbanks [both scholars in the field of Chinese history, Owen Lattimore a favorite target of McCarthy, John Fairbank, a Harvard professor], with the imperfection of the democratic system in China after 20 years of war and the tales of corruption in high places that they lost sight of our tremendous stake in a non- Communist China. . . . This House must now assume the responsibility of preventing the onrushing tide of Communism from engulfing all of Asia. The Rosenbergs were charged with espionage. The major evidence was supplied by a few people who had already confessed to being spies, and were either in prison or under indictment. David Greenglass, the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, was the key witness. He had been a machinist at the Manhattan Project laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1944-1945 when the atomic bomb was being made there and testified that Julius Rosenberg had asked him to get information for the Russians. Greenglass said he had made sketches from memory for his brother-in-law of experiments with lenses to be used to detonate atomic bombs. He said Rosenberg had given him half of the cardboard top to a box of Jell-O, and told him a man would show up in New Mexico with the other half, and that, in June 1945, Harry Gold appeared with the other half of the box top, and Greenglass gave him information he had memorized. That refreshed his memory. When the Rosenbergs were found guilty, and Judge Irving Kaufman pronounced sentence, he said: I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb as already caused the Communist aggression in Korea with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 Americans and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. . . . He sentenced them both to die in the electric chair. FBI documents subpoenaed in the 1970s showed that Judge Kaufman had conferred with the prosecutors secretly about the sentences he would give in the case. Another document shows that after three years of appeal a meeting took place between Attorney General Herbert Brownell and Chief Justice Fred Vinson of the Supreme Court, and the chief justice assured the Attorney General that if any Supreme Court justice gave a stay of execution, he would immediately call a full court session and override it. There had been a worldwide campaign of protest. Albert Einstein, whose letter to Roosevelt early in the war had initiated work on the atomic bomb, appealed for the Rosenbergs, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, and the sister of Bartolomeo Vanzetti. There was an appeal to President Truman, just before he left office in the spring of 1953. It was turned down. Then, another appeal to the new President, Dwight Eisenhower, was also turned down. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, set up specifically to defend the liberties of Communists and all other political groups, began to wilt in the cold war atmosphere. It had already started in this direction back in 1940 when it expelled one of its charter members, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, because she was a member of the Communist party. In the fifties, the ACLU was hesitant to defend Corliss Lamont, its own board member, and Owen Lattimore, when both were under attack. It was reluctant to defend publicly the Communist leaders during the first Smith Act trial, and kept completely out of the Rosenberg case, saying no civil liberties issues were involved. Steel had said in November 1946-even before the Truman Doctrine that Truman’s policies gave “the firm assurance that maintaining and building our preparations for war will be big business in the United States for at least a considerable period ahead.” That prediction turned out to be accurate. At the start of 1950, the total U.S. budget was about $40 billion, and the military part of it was about $12 billion. But by 1955, the military part alone was $40 billion out of a total of $62 billion. In 1960, the military budget was $45.8 billion—9.7 percent of the budget. That year John F. Kennedy was elected President, and he immediately moved to increase military spending. In fourteen months, the Kennedy administration added $9 billion to defense funds, according to Edgar Bottome (The Balance of Terror). The Soviet Union was obviously behind—it had between fifty and a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles and fewer than two hundred long-range bombers. But the U.S. budget kept mounting, the hysteria kept growing, the profits of corporations getting defense contracts multiplied, and employment and wages moved ahead just enough to keep a substantial number of Americans dependent on war industries for their living. C. Wright Mills, in his book of the fifties, The Power Elite, counted the military as part of the top elite, along with politicians and corporations. These elements were more and more intertwined. A Senate report showed that the one hundred largest defense contractors, who held 67.4 percent of the military contracts, employed more than two thousand former high-ranking officers of the military. From 1952 on, foreign aid was more and more obviously designed to build up military power in non-Communist countries. In the next ten years, of the $50 billion in aid granted by the United States to ninety countries, only $5 billion was for nonmilitary economic development. When John F. Kennedy took office, he launched the Alliance for Progress, a program of help for Latin America, emphasizing social reform to better the lives of people. But it turned out to be mostly military aid to keep in power right-wing dictatorships and enable them to stave off revolutions. In 1958, the Eisenhower government sent thousands of marines to Lebanon to make sure the pro-American government there was not toppled by a revolution, and to keep an armed presence in that oil-rich area. In power, Castro moved to set up a nationwide system of education, of housing, of land distribution to landless peasants. The government confiscated over a million acres of land from three American companies, including United Fruit. The success of the liberal-conservative coalition in creating a national anti-Communist consensus was shown by how certain important news publications cooperated with the Kennedy administration in deceiving the American public on the Cuban invasion. The New Republic was about to print an article on the CIA training of Cuban exiles, a few weeks before the invasion. Historian Arthur Schlesinger was given copies of the article in advance. He showed them to Kennedy, who asked that the article not be printed, and The New Republic went along. Around 1960, the fifteen-year effort since the end of World War II to break up the Communist-radical upsurge of the New Deal and wartime years seemed successful. The Communist party was in disarray-its leaders in jail, its membership shrunken, its influence in the trade union movement very small. The trade union movement itself had become more controlled, more conservative. The military budget was taking half of the national budget, but the public was accepting this. On Thermonuclear War, in which he explained that it was possible to have a nuclear war without total destruction of the world, that people should not be so frightened of it. A political scientist named Henry Kissinger wrote a book published in 1957 in which he said: “With proper tactics, nuclear war need not be as destructive as it appears….” He agreed to a tax break for business investment in plant expansion and modernization. He is not spoiling for a fight with the Southern conservatives over civil rights. He has been urging the unions to keep wage demands down so that prices can be competitive in the world markets and jobs increased. And he has been trying to reassure the business community that he does not want any cold war with them on the home front. During these twelve months the President has moved over into the decisive middle ground of American politics. . . . HOWARD ZINN: A people's war? (Part One) click here Was it? These questions deserve thought. At the time of World War II, the atmosphere was too dense with war fervor to permit them to be aired. A State Department memorandum on Japanese expansion, a year before Pearl Harbor, did not talk of the independence of China or the principle of self-determination. It said: . . . our general diplomatic and strategic position would be considerably weakened-by our loss of Chinese, Indian and South Seas markets (and by our loss of much of the Japanese market for our goods, as Japan would become more and more self-sufficient) as well as by insurmountable restrictions upon our access to the rubber, tin, jute, and other vital materials of the Asian and Oceanic regions. The Pentagon Papers) itself pointed to what it called an “ambivalent” policy toward Indochina, noting that “in the Atlantic Charter and other pronouncements, the U.S. proclaimed support for national self-determination and independence” but also “early in the war repeatedly expressed or implied to the French an intention to restore to France its overseas empire after the war.” In the headlines were the battles and troop movements: the invasion of North Africa in 1942, Italy in 1943, the massive, dramatic cross-Channel invasion of German -occupied France in 1944, the bitter battles as Germany was pushed back toward and over her frontiers, the increasing bombardment by the British and American air forces. And, at the same time, the Russian victories over the Nazi armies (the Russians, by the time of the cross-Channel invasion, had driven the Germans out of Russia, and were engaging 80 percent of the German troops). In the Pacific, in 1943 and 1944, there was the island-by-island move of American forces toward Japan, finding closer and closer bases for the thunderous bombardment of Japanese cities. Quietly, behind the headlines in battles and bombings, American diplomats and businessmen worked hard to make sure that when the war ended, American economic power would be second to none in the world. United States business would penetrate areas that up to this time had been dominated by England. The Open Door Policy of equal access would be extended from Asia to Europe, meaning that the United States intended to push England aside and move in. Anthony Sampson, in his study of the international oil business (The Seven Sisters), says: By the end of the war the dominant influence in Saudi Arabia was unquestionably the United States. King Ibn Sand was regarded no longer as a wild desert warrior, but as a key piece in the power-game, to be wooed by the West. Roosevelt, on his way back from Yalta in February 1945, entertained the King on the cruiser Quincy, together with his entourage of fifty, including two sons, a prime minister, an astrologer and flocks of sheep for slaughter. Roosevelt then wrote to Ibn Sand, promising the United States would not change its Palestine policy without consulting the Arabs. In later years, the concern for oil would constantly compete with political concern for the Jewish state in the Middle East, but at this point, oil seemed more important. With British imperial power collapsing during World War II, the United States was ready to move in. Hull said early in the war: Leadership toward a new system of international relationships in trade and other economic affairs will devolve very largely upon the United States because of our great economic strength. We should assume this leadership, and the responsibility that goes with it, primarily for reasons of pure national self-interest. The creation of the United Nations during the war was presented to the world as international cooperation to prevent future wars. But the U.N. was dominated by the Western imperial countries- the United States, England, and France-and a new imperial power, with military bases and powerful influence in Eastern Europe-the Soviet Union. An important conservative Republican Senator, Arthur Vandenburg, wrote in his diary about the United Nations Charter: Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old. Franklin D. Roosevelt did not share this frenzy, but he calmly signed Executive Order 9066, in February 1942, giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese-American on the West Coast-110,000 men, women, and children-to take them from their homes, transport them to camps far into the interior, and keep them there under prison conditions. Three-fourths of these were Nisei-children born in the United States of Japanese parents and therefore American citizens. The other fourth-the Issei, born in Japan-were barred by law from becoming citizens. In 1944 the Supreme Court upheld the forced evacuation on the grounds of military necessity. The Japanese remained in those camps for over three years. Michi Weglyn was a young girl when her family experienced evacuation and detention. She tells (Years of Infamy) of bungling in the evacuation, of misery, confusion, anger, but also of Japanese-American dignity and fighting back. There were strikes, petitions, mass meetings, refusal to sign loyalty oaths, riots against the camp authorities. The Japanese resisted to the end. Many more than 43,000 refusers did not show up for the draft at all. The government lists about 350,000 cases of draft evasion, including technical violations as well as actual desertion, so it is hard to tell the true number, but it may be that the number of men who either did not show up or claimed C.O. status was in the hundreds of thousands-not a small number. And this in the face of an American community almost unanimously for the war. From Here to Eternity, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead captured this GI anger against the army “brass.” In The Naked and the Dead, the soldiers talk in battle, and one of them says: “The only thing wrong with this Army is it never lost a war.” Dear Lord, today I go to war: To fight, to die, Tell me what for? I do not fear, My fears are here. America! ABOUT THE AUTHOR The WikiLeaks revelations as seen by a Marxist analyst {VIDEO} WikiLeaks: imperialist backroom deals revealed – free Bradley Manning, abolish secret diplomacy! _________________ _______________________ THE CABLES published by WikiLeaks revealing the underhand, secret dealings of imperialist diplomacy are the largest leak of state secrets in human history. They lay bare what the bourgeois state really is, what class interests it defends. That explains the undisguised rage of the bourgeois class that is now mustering all its forces in a desperate attempt to silence WikiLeaks. [Update 10/12/10: A reader has alerted us to the fact that wikileaks.ch is somewhat unreliable due to attacks. It appears to be online at the moment though. For those with difficulties, try wikileaks.tard.is instead.] 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