It is time to choose...

The army has to choose between Egypt and Mubarak, read a banner held by protesters yesterday in Cairo.
As of yet, the army has refused to clarify its intentions.
Nevertheless, it did take one principled stand that may spell the end of Mubarak’s regime.
In a statement, the armed forces said the following:
The presence of the army in the streets is for your sake and to ensure your safety and wellbeing. The armed forces will not resort to use force against our great people
Your armed forces, who are aware of the legitimacy of your demands and are keen to assume their responsibility in protecting the nation and the citizens, affirms that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody.
That the army should be hesitant to support unequivocally the regime is not surprising.
The armed forces embody Egyptian nationalism.
A 1952 coup led by Gamal Abdul Nasser overthrew King Faruk and the monarchy.
The nation has been led by military men ever since.
An army composed of conscripts, it has close links with the Egyptian people.
As such, the lower ranks no doubt share the frustrations and demands of those demonstrating in the streets of Alexandria, Cairo and Suez.
The fact that the army has clearly stated that it would not fire on its own people may further embolden the Egyptian opposition movement.
Their leaders have called on all Egyptians to demonstrate today in unprecedented numbers in a march of millions, to commemorate the seventh day in the Egyptian people‘s campaign to rid the country of the autocratic Mubarak regime.
President Mubarak has refused to yield and appointed a new cabinet yesterday, including a new Interior Minister in charge of security, Mahmoud Wagdi, former director of Egypt’s prisons.
He did instruct his Vice President, Omar Suleiman (notorious for his role in the US extraordinary renditions program and his propensity to employ torture, when head of the country’s intelligence services) to begin talks with the opposition on constitutional reform. The president has asked me today to immediately hold meetings with the political forces to start a dialogue about all raised issues that also involve constitutional and legislative reforms in a way that will result in clear proposed amendments and a specific timetable for its implementation, he said, according to The Guardian.
The various strands of the opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Ayman Nour, the former presidential candidate, Mohamed ElBaradei’s National Association for Change, and the young activists in the April 6 Youth Movement, appointed a committee to negotiate with the Mubarak government.
Though the Muslim Brotherhood constitute the most powerful and influential current, ElBaradei was asked to lead it.
Well known abroad since his days as head of the IAEA, winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, he was considered a more appealing spokesman than a member of the Islamic organization…
A national salvation government was also appointed, to be led by Mr. ElBaradei as well, should President Mubarak resign in the near future.
Young political activists, particularly in the April 6 Movement, have been at the forefront of the opposition coalition, using the internet and social networking sites to mobilize disgruntled Egyptians against the regime (Egypt’s internet is now completely down, as the last provider Noor, was shut down as well yesterday. Satellite TV, and the coverage of Aljazeera, now fuel the movement though the network was taken off the air Sunday by the Egyptian government, which arrested six of its reporters yesterday, and confiscated their equipment).
The young people are still leading this, Ibrahim Issa, an Egyptian intellectual, told the NYT.
Mohamed ElBaradei himself has been following the advice of the young activists. At their request, he went to Tahrir Square on Sunday afternoon and addressed the demonstrators.
Their alliance with the older, traditional Egyptian opposition militants has given the opposition more coherence.
Leadership has to come out of the people who are already out there, because most of us are under 30. But now they recognize that we’re in the street, and they are taking us seriously, Amr Ezz, a lawyer and 27, member of the April 6 Youth Movement, told the NYT.
What are the opposition’s objectives?
The resignation of President Mubarak; the formation of a new government, and amending the constitution such that free and fair elections can then be held.
Yet, Mubarak is still there.
Will he still occupy the presidential palace if millions do march in Cairo’s streets today?
Yesterday, some 250,000, according to Aljazeera, demonstrated in the capital, demanding Mubarak’s resignation. They are unlikely to settle for anything less.
As one Aljazeera journalist wrote yesterday, but it is now blatantly obvious to anyone who mingled in Tahrir Square crowds growing larger by the day that they won’t go home until they have a new leader.
We  have spoken. When the citizens speak, we cannot go back.
I came here to fight the fear inside me. Now people have lost their fear, Ahmed Mustafat, a demonstrator, told The Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood.
To hasten the autocrat’s departure, opposition leaders will encourage protesters to adopt what David Kirkpatrick and Mona El-Naggar of the NYT called the hug a soldier strategy, to entice the military to support their cause.
We are dealing with the army in a peaceful manner until it proves otherwise, and we still have faith in the army. Until now, they are neutral, and at least if we can’t bring them to our side, we don‘t want to lose them, Mr. Ezz told the NYT.
Moreover, Mubarak has not yet lost US support.
The way Egypt looks and operates must change, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday, but it’s not for us to determine…undoubtedly in this case, transition means change.
That position is no longer tenable…
The Egyptian people demand the fall of the Mubarak regime, because the President has repeatedly demonstrated these last thirty years that he cannot, or simply will not, cater to the needs of his people: freedom, justice, democracy and decent living conditions.
Only a new republic founded on democratic principles can now satisfy the Egyptian people.
The American government cannot ask the Egyptian people to believe that a dictator who has been in power for 30 years will be the one to implement democracy, Mohamed ElBaradei told CBS’s Face the Nation.
It’s better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, it’s time for you to go, ElBaradei said.
French junior minister for youth affairs, Jeannette Bougrab was bold enough to say that Mubarak should leave, but was then promptly summoned by French Prime Minister François Fillon and reprimanded...
Though Western support for the Egyptian demonstrators has been subdued, it is still considered recklessly excessive by the Israelis.
The Americans and the Europeans are being pulled along by public opinion and aren’t considering their genuine interests, a senior Israeli official declared, according to The Guardian.
If only that were true….Let us hope that the millions demonstrating today will finally compel the leaders of the Western world to support wholeheartedly the brave Egyptian people.
Do MM. Cameron, Obama and Sarkozy really wish to be remembered as leaders who betrayed the very foundations of their own societies and preferred to support an ailing despot until the bitter end, instead of a proud people demanding what is rightfully theirs?
(the photograph above is by Reuters)




 

  

Mubarak must go...

Which side is the Egyptian army on?
Would it be willing to fire on demonstrators if ordered to do so by President Mubarak?
The future of his authoritarian and sclerotic regime depends on the answer to these questions.
The army, one of the few meritocratic institutions in the country which can provide decent careers to those of humble backgrounds, is widely respected in Egypt.
Yesterday, President Mubarak ordered his army to patrol the streets in order to try and restore a semblance of order in the country, a task the police seems no longer capable of fulfilling.
As such, it is the army that is now guarding the capital’s strategic sites and buildings.
It has also been instructed to enforce the curfew in Cairo, between 4PM and 8AM.
The police has, for the most part, vanished.
Yesterday in Cairo, protesters, after a day-long struggle, finally overwhelmed the police and took control of the Kasr al-Nil bridge, which leads to Tahrir Square (Liberation Square), a rallying point for Cairo’s demonstrators.
In Alexandria meanwhile, the police also retreated, unable to subdue the thousands demonstrating against the regime.
There is no government in Alexandria now. They are all hiding, Muhammd Ahmed Ibrahim, a twenty-two-year old protester, told the NYT.
For the first time in the history of the Mubarak regime, the capacity of the police was completely exhausted. The police state broke down today, Peter Bouckaert, of HRW, told the NYT.
When the long confrontation which ended in their defeat was over, police officers actually shook hands with protesters and shared bottles of water with them.
The police however, is widely despised in Egypt, and for good reason.
According to cables recently released by WikiLeaks, police brutality is routine and pervasive.
The emergency law, imposed by Mubarak after the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar el Sadat in 1981,  allowed the police to operate at will, as it saw fit, and above the law if need be.
The police use brutal methods against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders.
One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharaohs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone, according to one cable.
Even today, some apartment dwellers are loathe to report burglaries due to the predictable consequences: the torture of all the doormen is standard procedure.
Saturday, demonstrators once again took to Cairo’s streets in the tens of thousands, according to The Guardian’s Jack Shenker.
Thousands did likewise in Alexandria.
Friday night, President Mubarak spoke on national television and vowed to protect the nation’s security. He also announced that he had dismissed his cabinet and would appoint a new one to initiate a program of reforms essential to the nation’s future.
Yet, he made few, if any, concessions.
He did not tender his resignation.
He did not call for new parliamentary elections, that would be both free and fair.
He also failed to announce that September’s Presidential elections would be open and conducted according to established international standards.
Finally, he said nothing about repealing the emergency law…
Only concessions of this magnitude could perhaps assuage those rebelling against his rule in the streets.
Instead, he appointed Omar Suleiman, a close ally, and hitherto Director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service since 1993, (the Mukhabarat) as Vice President, a post that he had held vacant so as not to encourage any potential rivals.
Does this nomination signify that the Egyptians will be spared the ordeal of being ruled by Mubarak’s son, Gamal, come September?
He also appointed a former Air Force commander, and outgoing civil aviation minister, Ahmed Shafiq as his new Prime Minister.
These changes are merely cosmetic and do not fundamentally alter either the regime, or its nature, and, as such, should hardly suffice to resolve the crisis.
The problem is he is a corrupt president and had a corrupt government and if he brings a new government, it will also be corrupt since the system is all corrupt, as one demonstrator told Al Jazeera
We are seeking a change of regime. President Mubarak should step down. We should head towards a democratic state through a new government and free democratic elections. The world should realize that the Egyptians are not going home until their demands are realized. We are talking about taking down the Pharaonic dictatorship, Mohamed Elbaradei told Al Jazeera.
It is time to urge Mubarak to resign and support Elbaradei and all those striving to establish a democratic regime in Egypt.
President Obama, for his part declared when President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity. I just spoke to him after his speech and I told him he had a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.
That is simply not sufficient.
The only way that Mubarak can now serve his people is by stepping down…
The Washington Post, in an editorial called The US needs to break with Mubarak now, crossed the rubicund.
The United States should be using all of its influence-including the more than $1 billion in aid it supplies annually to the Egyptian military-to ensure the latter outcome, that is to say Mubarak’s resignation.
Saturday morning, the police did reemerge in Cairo and fired on those demonstrators attempting to storm the Interior Ministry building.
In the last twenty-four hours, over 100 demonstrators have been killed by the security forces, according to Al Jazeera.
Only the army can now save Mubarak.
We should be doing our utmost to ensure it does nothing of the kind…
(the photograph of demonstrators fraternising with soldiers in Cairo is by Hannibal Hanschke/EPA)

Let us demand Mubarak's departure now...

After another day of mass demonstrations, notably in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez, dubbed the Friday of Anger and Freedom, there are indications that, in some areas, the police have begun fraternising with the protesters.
In Cairo, according to Ben Wedeman of CNN, the situation may have quieted down somewhat (a curfew has been declared throughout the country) because the security forces have vanished. Things have calmed down because there is no government here, he said.
Is the Mubarak regime imploding?
AlJazeera has been at the forefront of the media coverage of the Egyptian uprising. It also played a major role in facilitating the Tunisian revolution because of its comprehensive, ubiquitous coverage, and its willingness to broadcast independent videos of the demonstrations shot by the protagonists themselves.
One would have thought, if not hoped, that coverage of such momentous events, the revolt of oppressed peoples demanding freedom, justice and the right to earn a decent living would have inspired Western media, the BBC, France 24, CNN or Fox.
Alas, the most agressive and dynamic coverage was provided by a young upstart network from Qatar...
Yet, those demanding change and seeking to overthrow their autocratic and corrupt rulers are but appropriating those ideals we hold so dear.
Why, then, has our support for the oppressed been so timid?
Why have we been aiding their oppressors for so long, thereby betraying our own ideals, and prolonging the agony of the oppressed?
We are fighting for universal values, Mohamed ELBaradei, who returned to Egypt on Thursday in order to join the demonstators, and who appears to be currently under house arrest, told The Guardian.
If the west is not going to speak out now, then when?
That is a most relevant question.
What are we waiting for?
Shall we have to apologize to the Egyptians, the day they wrest their freedom from Mubarak, for not having come to their assistance when they needed it the most?
The French have been doing just that, (or more to the point, attempting to account for their inaction) but to the Tunisian people, for the last week, because their reluctance to intervene in the conflict, so as not to destabilize the nation, led them to play the part of the hapless and helpless bystander.
The nation priding itself upon being the birthplace of human rights thus stood listlessly by, as a detemined people fought for its freedom and dignity.
Is that the part we aspire to play in the Egyptian uprising?
What are we waiting for, then, to demand Mubarak's departure and the fall of his morally bankrupt regime?
Fox's reluctance to cover the mass demonstrations in Egypt may provide a clue.
"You probably don't give a lot of time thinking about Egypt", a Fox News presenter suggested, before explaining that "groups linked to al-Qaida" were in danger of taking over the government in Cairo, wrote Richard Adams, of The Guardian's Wahington bureau.
Here lies our unspeakable fear: if the despots fall, the islamic extremists are bound to replace them.
In a post 9/11-world, that is unthinkable, an unconscionable proposition.
Hence, their misery and oppression is the price for our security and comfort, even though Islamic extremism is spawned by misery and oppression....
The Israelis themselves are terrified at the prospect of Mubarak's downfall.
I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process, one diplomat told TIME.
This remark, if condescending and contemptuous, is at least a candid one.
The time shall never be right as long as we, in the West, continue being obsessed with Osama Bin Laden.
The erroneous belief that only robust police states can shield the West from Islamic extremism led us to sacrifice the interests of entire populations comprising millions of people, in the name of security, but only our security (those hapless Muslims living in the Middle East will have to forego theirs and continue being victimized by the thugs who rule them) and affordable oil prices...
In this regard, it should be noted that the revolt in Egypt has just pushed oil prices near $100 a barrel...
Hillary Clinton has condemned the violence, but not the regime, as she still refuses to demand Mubarak's departure.  As a partner, we strongly believe that the Egyptian government needs to engage immediately with the Egyptian people in implementing political, social and economic reforms, she stated today.
Mubarak has lost the moral authority to initiate these changes, assuming he ever even knew how to proceed.
Only the demise of his corrupt police state will allow the Egyptians to create the future they demand and deserve...
(the photograph above of demonstrators in Cairo is by Mohammed Abed AFP/Getty Images)

This is do or die...

Initially, on Tuesday, members of the security apparatus, including the feared Mukhabarat, the secret police, dwarfed the number of protesters, who were scarcely visible.
Some 4,000 occupied Cairo’s busiest quarter, Tahir Square (Liberation Square).
Then the police converged on a small group of thirty demonstrators.
A few moments later, those thirty were now three hundred and  marching away from the Square. Hurriya!, Hurriya!, Hurriya! (Freedom!, Freedom!, Freedom!), they shouted.
As their numbers swelled, the protesters briefly overwhelmed the Mukhabarat, and headed toward the museum where other demonstrators, around 1,000, were marching.
When the crowd reached several thousand, the police resorted to water cannons to try to disperse the demonstrators.
I saw today that the Arabs are alive. And the Arabs are hungry, the journalist Ahmed Moor, who was present on the scene, wrote in aljazeera.net.
The Guardian reporter Jack Shenker was at Abdel Munim Riyad Square.
Thousands were converging there from Tahir Square.
The riot police charged.
Along with nearby protesters I fled down the street before stopping at what appeared to be as safe distance. A few ordinary dressed young men were running in my direction. Two came towards me and threw out punches, sending me to the ground. I was hauled back up by the scruff of the neck and dragged towards the advancing police lines, he wrote.
He was arrested and thrown into a police truck, along with dozens of other protesters heading for an unknown destination. The police attacked us to get us out of the square; they didn’t care who you were, they just attacked everybody. They hit our heads and hurt some people. There are some people bleeding, we don’t know where they are taking us, Ahmad Mamdouh, a co-detainee told the journalist.
They were soon al freed by other activists who stormed the truck…
The clashes lasted well into the night.
Yet, the demonstrators vowed to return the next day, even though the government had outlawed all public gatherings.
On Wednesday, thousands of police patrolled the streets of the Egyptian capital, controlling major intersections, and protecting the national television building, and the headquarters of President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party.
Though less numerous than the day before, several thousand protesters boldly marched through the streets.
The police fired tear gas, and charged. The activists retaliated by throwing rocks at the security forces.
Those demonstrating near the Ramses Hilton were dispersed by the police and plain-clothed agents armed with truncheons.
Nevertheless, the demonstrators repeatedly regrouped, refusing to submit to the authority of the regime’s security forces.
This is do or die. The most important thing is to keep confronting them, Mustafa Youssef, a twenty-two-year old student told the NYT.
Demonstrations also took place in Suez. Activists there threw Molotov cocktails at President Mubarak’s party headquarters.
In Assyut, south of Cairo, some one hundred demonstrators chanting down, down Hosni Mubarak and oh, people join us or you will be next, were beaten by the police, who then arrested nearly half of them.
Overall, some 800 were arrested throughout the country, according to the government. Human rights groups claim the figure is closer to 2000. Four are reported to have been killed in the clashes, including one policeman.
Sporadic clashed continued on Thursday.
There is a sense of calm before the storm in Cairo today, as protesters prepare for an all-out surge tomorrow following the afternoon prayers in mosques and churches around the country. A heavy security presence remains in place across the capital, whilst hundreds of those arrested since this uprising began will begin being interrogated today, activists are appealing for lawyers to come forward and help with their cases, Shenker wrote Thursday.
The anti-government activists vowed to demonstrate anew after Friday prayers.
Mohammed Elbaradei, former head of the IAEA, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace prize, returned to Egypt Thursday to participate.
The barrier of fear is broken and it will not come back, he told reporters upon his arrival.
Earlier he had written, the young people of Egypt have lost patience, and what you’ve seen in the streets in these last few days has all been organized by them. I have been out of Egypt because that is the only way I can be heard. I have been totally cut off from the local media when I am here. But I am going back to Cairo, and back into the streets because really, there is no choice. You go out there with this massive number of people, and you hope things will not turn ugly, but so far, the regime does not seem to have gotten the message.
January 25, Egypt’s Police Day had been chosen by Mubarak’s foes to organize a Day of Rage.
The demonstrators were summoned on Facebook, particularly on the Facebook page We Are All Khaled Sa’id. The latter was killed by the police in June of last year. The page has some 400,000 members…
An additional page called The Day of Revolution against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment was launched to promote the Day of Rage. It has well over 100,000 members.
The demonstrations have been designed as apolitical, and sponsored by a number of groups such as the April 6 Youth Movement, Mohamed Elbaradei’s National Association for Change, and the Muslim Brotherhood, an illegal opposition party that is nonetheless tolerated by the regime.
The April 6 Movement refers to the general strike that had been called for April 6, 2008. It is also an internet-based organization.
The organizers decide to call for a Day of Rage because Egypt is in one of its worst stages in history. Demonstrating would thus end the silence and the submissiveness regarding what is happening in our country, they wrote.
They felt that it was time to take control of their own future.
In Egypt, some 24% of the 80 million-strong population have access to the internet; 26 million own cell phones, such that activists can communicate through text messages.
As a result, the protest movement is largely apolitical and powered by the nation’s young people (two-thirds of the population is under 30), adept at utilizing modern technology.
In addition, they have many reasons to demand change.
President Mubarak has been in power for thirty years.
Now eighty-two and ailing, he seems intent on anointing his son Gamal as his successor. Gamal, tell your father that Egyptians hate you was one of the chants heard on the streets of Cairo.
Approximately 40% of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day, and one third is illiterate.
90% of the unemployed are under thirty…
Fraudulent parliamentary elections held last November ensured the opposition won but 3% of the seats.
Presidential elections are to be held in September, and the Egyptians suspect that the Mubarak family will once again conspire to retain power.
Hence, the current status quo is no longer tenable, all the more so as Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution proved that change is possible, and that it can only be initiated by the people themselves, with the nation’s youth spearheading the movement.
If you look at the Tunisian uprising, it’s a youth uprising. It is the youth that knows the media, Internet, Facebook, so there are other players now, Emad Shahin, an Egyptian scholar at the University of Notre Dame, told the NYT.
The protest was full of young people who had never been to protests before. All chanting against Mubarak and his regime. They had expressed their wishes on the internet but now they’ve decided to express them in the streets, Mostafa Hussein, an Egyptian doctor present in the streets of Cairo, wrote in The Guardian.
This is being driven by youth, and their familiarity with technology is helping them. There is a divide between them and the older men who hold power, David Nassar, CEO of Hotspot Digital told John Timpane, of philly.com.
The Egyptian government did attempt to prevent access to sites such as Twitter and Facebook, in order to undermine the protest movement, but was only partially successful.
In retaliation, the activists group known as Anonymous  organized what it called Operation Egypt, launching cyber attacks on several official government websites.
The group had similarly attacked Tunisian government sites earlier this month.
Will the Egyptians succeed in overthrowing Mubarak’s authoritarian regime?
The security services and armed forces firmly back the old autocrat.
The prospects for Tunisia-style reform in Egypt are dim. The Egyptian government is well-versed in managing and containing even large scale protests, and has been dong so for decades, Mona el-Ghobashy, assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, told John Timpane.
Yet, no one saw this coming in Tunisia, either. The main thing is, the unthinkable first step has happened, John Entelis, director of Middle Eastern studies at Fordham University, told philly.com.
Will the West, this time, be on the side of the people in revolt, or shall the preservation of the status quo be the preferred option once again?
Secretary of State Clinton declared that we believe strongly that the Egyptian government has an important opportunity at this moment  in time to implement political, economic and social reforms that respond to legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.
White House press secretary Robin Gibbs declined however, to explicitly express support for the beleaguered Egyptian president, declaring instead that Egypt is a strong ally.
In fact, it receives annually some $1.5 billion in US financial aid.
The US and the West obviously fear that the introduction of democracy in the Middle East could ultimately benefit groups and parties with agendas hostile to US and European security interests.
After all, when a free and fair election was held in the Palestinian Territories in 2006, Hamas, and not the West’s ally, President Abbas’ Fatah won!
Hence, promoting reform rather than revolution seems to be the policy currently pursued by Western nations.
Is it still possible however, to reform Mubarak’s Egypt?
We are staring at social disintegration, economic stagnation, political repression, and we do not hear anything from you Americans, or for that matter from the Europeans, Mohamed Elbaradei wrote in The Daily Beast.
Can the current regime realistically be expected to tackle these issues successfully?
It has been in power for thirty years…
In addition, are stability and democracy compatible?
Should we ignore the imperious demands for change the Egyptian people are vociferously expressing, following the lead of the Tunisians, so that are political interests can be preserved?
When confronted with such popular uprisings, the calling of the Western democracies seems obvious: support the people fighting and dying for freedom, justice and democracy (values we profess to embody), and not the thugs who oppress and rob them.
As recent events in Iran, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt have evinced, police states do not engender stability, but sow the seeds of rebellion instead…
It is time for Mr. Mubarak to flee, and follow his Tunisian colleague into exile, who is now wanted on charges of defrauding his country.
It is time that the autocrats of the region finally heed the voices of their own peoples.
The destiny of their nations surely belongs to the latter, and certainly not to us.
The Egyptians, like the Tunisians before them, and, hopefully soon,  the Algerians, Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis and the rest, deserve our active support.
We should not hinder their efforts to reclaim their lost dignity, but provide all the support that we can…
(the photograph above of Tunisian and Egyptian protesters is by Reuters)

Christmas Eve 1914

Christmas Eve 1914


by

Mike Harding


Christmas Eve, 1914, stars were burning, burning bright

And all along the Western Front the guns were lying still and quiet.

And men lay dozing in the trenches, in the cold and in the dark,

And far away behind the lines, a village dog began to bark.



Some lay thinking of their families, some sang songs and others were quiet

Rolling fags and playing Brag, to pass away that Christmas night.

But as they watched the German trenches, something moved in no-man's land

And from far away there came a soldier, carrying a white flag in his hand.



Then from both sides, the men came running, crossing into no-man's land

Through the barbed wire, mud and shell-holes; shyly stood there shaking hands

Fritz brought out cigars and brandy, Tommy brought corned beef and fags

Stood there laughing, crying, singing, as the moon shone down on no-man's land



On Christmas day we all played football, in the mud of no-man's land

Tommy brought a Christmas pudding, Fritz brought out a German band

And when they beat us at the football, web shared out all the grub and drink

And Fritz showed me a faded photo of a dark-haired girl back in Berlin



For four days after, no one fired. Not one shell disturbed the night

For old Fritz and Tommy Atkins, they'd both lost the will to fight.

So they withdrew us from the trenches, sent us far behind the lines,

Sent fresh troops to take our places- ordered guns; "Prepare to fire".



And next night, in 1914, flares were burning, burning bright.

The message came, "Prepare offensive, over the top we're going tonight!"

And men stood waiting in the trenches, in the cold and in the dark,

All along the Western Front the Christmas guns began to bark.



Merry Christmas,
and may this day be one of peace everywhere, as it was on the Western Front, December 25, 1914...
Richard

What would you do...?

Last Friday was Bradley Manning’s twenty-third birthday.
Initially imprisoned in Kuwait, he was transferred two months later to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where he has been held in particular harsh conditions.
From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs, wrote Glenn Greenwald in salon.com.
His treatment is harsh, punitive and taking its toll, his lawyer David Coombs told The Daily Beast.
Would the pressure on Manning be as intense if the successful prosecution of WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange did not hinge on the former accepting to testify against the latter?
Manning, accused of being the chief source of WikiLeaks and principle purveyor of classified documents to the website, has been charged with transferring classified data and delivering national defense information to an unauthorized source.
If convicted by the military court, PFC Manning could spend the next fifty years in jail.
The US authorities hope to establish a link between Assange and Manning in order to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder on conspiracy charges.
In order to do so, they must establish that Assange solicited the classified material and aided and abetted the informant.
Invoking the 1917 Espionage Act is considered too hazardous and uncertain. The authorities would, in theory, be compelled to prosecute not only The New York Times, exclusive publisher of the leaks in the US, but anyone else who may have read or discussed the classified cables.
Indeed, according to Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University, one of the flaws of the Espionage Act is that it draws no distinction between the leaker or the spy and the recipient of the information, no matter how far downstream the recipient is….Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all.
Hence, the conspiracy route is the preferred option, all the more so as it avoids a ruthless confrontation with defenders of the First Amendment.
Unfortunately for the Justice Department however, no evidence, yet, has emerged proving that Assange insigated the leak, although it seems that Manning did communicate with the WikiLeaks editor.
I mean, I’m a high profile source…and I’ve developed a relationship with Assange…But I don’t know much more than what he tells me, which is very little.
It took me four months to confirm that the person I was communicating with was in fact Assange, Manning allegedly told Adrian Lamo, a former hacker with whom he held a series of online chats, between May 21 and May 25, 2010.
On May 26, Lamo reported Manning to the FBI…
Nevertheless, pursuing the conspiracy approach could also threaten all investigative journalists who routinely solicit confidential, secret or classified information from their sources. If Assange is prosecuted today, it may be their turn tomorrow…
Who is Bradley Manning and why is he accused of being WikiLeaks' informant?
He grew up in Crescent, a small town in Oklahoma.
Interestingly, a previous whistleblower had made the town famous thirty-six years ago…
Karen Silkwood, a union activist and employee of the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant, was found dead in her car on Highway 74. She was driving to Oklahoma City to meet a NYT reporter, David Burnham, on November 13, 1974. The documents she was to give the latter, and which purportedly exposed egregious safety violations at the plant had disappeared.
The plant was closed one year later.
Meryl Streep played Silkwood in a 1983 Hollywood film about the case…
Manning’s father Brian spent five years in the Navy before his son’s birth, and after his parents divorced, Bradley went to live with his Welsh mother in Wales.
An intelligent though aloof youth, Manning was known as a geek in his teen years.
After high school, Manning returned to the US to live with his father, but the latter threw him out of the house when he discovered that his son was gay…
After being temporarily homeless, he moved in with an aunt.
In 2007, he joined the Army. He seemed to have faith in the US and its ability and willingness to change the world for the better.
I think he thought it (enlisting) would be incredibly interesting and exciting.
He was proud of our successes as a country. He valued our freedom, but probably our economic freedom the most.
I think he saw the US as a force for good, Jordan Davis, a friend of Manning’s wrote the journalist Denver Nicks.
His relationship with Tyler Watkins, a student at Brandeis University, brought him into contact with the local hacker community.
Friends said Private Manning found the atmosphere here to be everything the Army was not: openly accepting of his geeky side, his liberal political opinions, his relationship with Mr. Watkins and his ambition to do something that would get attention, wrote Ginger Thompson of the NYT.
He trained as an intelligence analyst and was sent to Iraq in late 2009.
Yet, Manning had difficulty adapting to the military environment.
The diminutive five-foot-two, one hundred and five pound young man became increasingly isolated and ill at ease.
I‘ve been living a double life, he said.
Last May, he was demoted for assaulting an officer…
As an intelligence analyst, Manning had access to all sorts of classified material.
As a result, the more material he was exposed to, the more he became disillusioned with US policies, and the role the US military was playing in Iraq.
The event that may have spurred him to action was the following: asked to investigate why the Iraqi Federal Police had arrested fifteen individuals, Manning quickly discovered that they had been detained only because they had published a document critical of the Iraqi Prime Minister, denouncing the corruption prevalent in the Prime Minister’s Office.
I immediately took that information and *ran* to the 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 allegedly told Lamo.
I had always questioned [how] 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, he added.
Manning felt that he could no longer countenance the US military’s deceptive and unethical behavior in Iraq.
He had lost faith in the ability or willingness of the US to fulfill its stated objectives in Iraq and elsewhere, and of betraying its ideals.
I don’t believe in good guys versus bad guys anymore…only [in] a plethora of states acting in self-interest…with varying ethics and moral standards of course, but self-interest nonetheless, he allegedly told Lamo.
He had sought out the former hacker, whom he believed would sympathize with his predicament. He could no longer bear his situation. I mean, I was never noticed…regularly ignored…except when I had something essential…then it was back to « bring me coffee, then sweep the floor »…felt like I was an abused work horse, he purportedly told Lamo.
As such, it was time to act, and attempt to influence the course of events.
If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight plus months, what would you do he allegedly asked Lamo?
Manning himself was obviously weighing what do with this information, much of which contradicted the official version of events released by the US military, and exposed unethical if not criminal behavior.
He had unearthed what he characterized as incredible, awful things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington D.C.
To ascertain the credibility of WikiLeaks, he sent them what he called a test cable in January 2010. WikiLeaks published the Reykjavik 13 cable February 18.
Then, he allegedly sent what became known as the Collateral Murder video depicting a scene in which an Apache helicopter fired on civilians in Baghdad, killing sixteen, including a Reuters photographer and his driver.
A video of the Granai raid in Afghanistan followed. WikiLeaks has yet to release it.
The US air strike killed some 140 civilians including women and children.
WikiLeaks also released the Afghan War Logs, and some 500,000 documents on the Iraq war.
According to the chats published by wire.com, downloading all this material proved remarkably simple.
I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like Lady Gaga.
He would then erase the music, all the while singing the Lady Gaga song Telephone
and download classified information.
He also removed any incriminating evidence from his computer.
What was Manning allegedly trying to do?
Provoke, hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms…if not… than we’re doomed as a species. I will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens.
I want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public, Manning said according to the published chats.
Manning wanted accurate information to be released so that we could all come to our own conclusions based on facts and not the official propaganda released by the US government.
He stated clearly that he was not a spy, and had no interest in selling or giving the information to the enemies of the US.
It’s public data. It belongs in the public domain. Information should be free .It belongs in the public domain…he allegedly insisted.
Manning and Assange obviously share the same belief in the intrinsic value of transparency. Only total access to all the facts can allow a citizen to reach a truly informed opinion.
This issue is at the heart of the WikiLeaks controversy.
If Manning broke the law, he should be prosecuted and tried.
No one who believes in justice and the rule of law can dispute this point.
This administration however, has a proven track record of prosecuting whistleblowers, even outdoing its predecessors, yet no one else.
Why?
Why this double standard?
The list of wrongdoings committed by the previous administration is a distressingly long and familiar one: warrantless wiretapping, secret prisons, ghost detainees, extraordinary renditions, torture in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and God only knows where else…
The Obama Administration has not considered it worthwhile to investigate, let alone prosecute anyone for these egregious abuses.
Why not?
Is it political pusillanimity or has Obama simply co-opted his predecessor’s national security agenda?
The Afghan war is now Obama's war and he has increased the number of US troops there.
He has significantly expanded the use of drones, a practice initiated by former President Bush, to kill terrorist suspects in Pakistan (the administration is also urging the Pakistani authorities to authorize an escalation of Special Ops raids on Pakistani soil…).
He has done the same in Yemen, and launched US air strikes there as well, some of which have killed civilians, including women and children.
He vowed to close Guantanamo, but has not done so.
He suspended military commissions only to reinstate them, allowing the disgraceful trial and conviction of Omar Khadr.
He has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege to prohibit all judicial review of past Bush and now Obama policies and practices.
In essence, by adopting the Bush national security agenda, he has made it his own, including all of its excesses, which he had pledged to reverse.…
Treating Manning as if was a convicted high profile terrorist, even though he has yet to be tried, is one of them.
The Obama administration clearly hopes that by prosecuting and mistreating Bradley Manning, other potential leakers will think twice before releasing classified information that could embarrass the US.
If Obama was truly interested in justice and the rule of law however, he would prosecute all those who broke the law in the name of national security (and, by doing so, not only undermined the constitutional rights of every citizen, but also sullied America’s reputation and good standing around the world), and not merely easy, and ultimately, harmless targets such as Manning…
(the photograph above of Manning was found here)

The first great cyber war…?

Julian Assange, the Australian editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, turned himself in last Tuesday and is currently in jail, after the British judge in charge of the case denied him bail.
The British authorities having received a European arrest warrant issued by Sweden the day before, Mr. Assange was instructed to report to a London police station Tuesday morning at 930AM.
When he did, he was arrested.
He is now detained in the segregation unit of Wandsworth prison where he will have access to a computer in order that he may prepare his defense.
The Swedish authorities however, even though they did issue an arrest warrant, have not charged Mr. Assange with any wrongdoing.
Instead, they merely want to question him concerning accusations leveled against him by two Swedish women he encountered last August.
Gemma Lindfield, for the Swedish authorities, gave details of the allegations against Mr. Assange.
One of the charges is that he had unprotected sex with a woman, identified only as Miss A, when she insisted he use a condom.
Another is that he had unprotected sex with another woman, Miss W, while she was asleep, the BBC reported.
Mr. Assange has vowed to fight extradition to Sweden, fearing that that could lead to extradition to the US.
For, in the US, the release of State Department cables has infuriated many, who now seek revenge and demand that the Australian be prosecuted.
The WikiLeaks guy should be in jail for the rest of his life…
These are bad people doing bad things and they're going to get Americans and our allies killed and we should recognize that and recognize that is in effect an act of war against the United States, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox.
Information warfare is warfare, and Julian Assange is engaged in warfare. Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant, he added.
I have no doubt someone can or will die as a result of these leaks, NY Republican Rep. Peter King told CNN. He claimed that the leaks were an invitation to murder.
He urged the Attorney General to designate WikiLeaks a foreign terrorist organization, claiming it posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.
Former Arkansas Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee stated that whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason. And I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty. They've put American lives at risk…and any lives they endanger they're personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands, he told CNN.
It should be said however, that at this stage there is no evidence that Mr. Assange is directly or indirectly responsible for the leaking of the cables.
Instead, PFC Bradley Manning has been accused of doing so and is currently in detention..
Former President Clinton also condemned the leaks.
I'll be very surprised if some people don't lose their lives over these leaks. And goodness knows how many will lose their careers, he said.
Sarah Palin accused Assange of being an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.
Incidentally, a former adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called for Assange’s assassination.
I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something, he told CBC.
Mr. Assange however, had taken all necessary precautions to ensure that the names of all those who could suffer from public exposure were removed.
In fact, the cables were not initially posted on the WikiLeaks website, but entrusted to the recipients, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian, El Pais, and Der Spiegel. They did the redacting.
To date, only about 1,300 of the cables have been released, or less than 1% of the total.
For its part, the NYT even sent the cables it intended to publish to the Obama administration for review beforehand!
After reviewing the cables, the officials — while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material — suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all, the newspaper indicated.
Assange even invited the State Department on several occasions to pinpoint those cables it considered could undermine the national security of the US, but it declined to do so.
Assange had not been so meticulous when posting the previous installments relating to the Afghan and Iraq wars earlier this year.
Yet, the accusation made then that the revelations would lead to the deaths of many troops and US contacts proved baseless.
There is no evidence to date that anyone died because of the WikiLeaks revelations, according to…the Pentagon.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell has said previously that there was no evidence that anyone had been killed because of the leaks. Sunday (November 28), another Pentagon official told McClatchy that the military still has no evidence that the leaks have led to any deaths. The official didn't want to be named because of the issue's sensitivity.
« We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents, » Morrell told the Washington Post on Aug 11. But « there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field », McClatchy reported.
The same accusations, nevertheless, are being parroted anew.
As a result, the US Justice Department is currently evaluating its legal options, seeking ways to indict Mr. Assange.
We have a very serious active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature. I authorized just last week a number of things to be done so that we can hopefully get to the bottom of this and hold people accountable, as they should be, Attorney General Eric Holder declared.
Some believe that the 1917 Espionage Act would be suitable to prosecute the Australian. Under this act, it is illegal to willfully communicate classified information that could undermine US national security.
I think there is a very good chance of a prosecution under the Espionage Act. His actions are not those of a responsible journalist that would enjoy the protection of the Constitution. He solicited people to commit a crime by sending him classified information. And then he disclosed it on a transmission belt, Jeffrey H. Smith a former general council at the CIA and now Washington lawyer, told McClatchy.
Yet, journalists have seldom been prosecuted on such grounds in the past.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, believes Assange will have a pretty good defense, if it were shown the classified cables were sent to WikiLeaks without his involvement. The Supreme Court has said the "innocent recipient of unlawful information" is usually protected in publishing it, she told McClatchy.
In addition, it may prove extremely difficult to establish that Julian Assange’s intent was undermining US security by releasing the cables.
As indicated above, he consulted the State Department prior to publication.
The problem here is for the United States to prosecute Assange, and in most other civilized countries, they have to show an intent. A crime has to be an intentional act, and if Assange did not intend in any way to harm anyone's interests -- and in fact, intended to further the interests of the [people of the] United States and the rest of the world -- that would be a difficult point to try to prove by the United States, that he had an evil motive here to further terrorism. That would be almost impossible to prove in court, Larry Klayman, a former prosecutor and founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, told RFE/RL.
Could he be charged with conspiracy?
The prosecution would need to prove that Assange solicited the documents and aided and abetted the informant. To date, no such evidence has been brought forward.
Trafficking in stolen government property may be another option.
Yet, the leaked documents are copies of those still in government possession.
Hence, they are not covered by property law, but by intellectual property law
This is less about stealing than it is about copying John G. Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor specializing in Internet issues and intellectual property, told the NYT.
Government documents however, cannot be copyrighted…
In essence, Mr. Assange may have broken no laws at all…
This could explain the virulent campaign that has been launched in order to discredit him and his organization.
Some U.S. politicians and commentators have even called for the assassination or killing of Julian Assange. This is pretty extraordinary and lawless stuff. What this shows about the U.S.'s own conduct is that it is really trying to discredit WikiLeaks by shifting the focus from wrongdoing by the United States in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, spying on the United Nations and so on -- and instead, trying to focus all the legal attention, all the attention on crime and illegality, to WikiLeaks, Ben Saul, co-director of the University of Sydney's Centre for International Law in Australia, told REF/RL.
A number of major American corporations have severed all links with WikiLeaks.
MasterCard and PayPal announced that they would no longer accept donations intended for the website.
At the behest of Senator Joseph Lieberman, head of the US Senate’s homeland security committee, Amazon.com removed WikiLeaks from it servers, no longer hosting its website. It quickly found another home, however (wikileaks.ch).
In fact, more than 1,300 mirror sites have emerged, such as the one in the French newspaper Libération, ensuring WikiLeaks could never be driven from the internet.
Assange’s Swiss bank account was frozen, depriving his defense fund of some 31,000 Euros.
Although neither WikiLeaks nor Assange have been charged with any offense, the latter is being treated as if were a high profile member of al-Qaeda.
As a result, this has led to spontaneous retaliatory actions against those WikiLeaks sympathizers accuse of persecuting the Australian.
An amorphous group of activists called Anonymous has launched cyber attacks against the web sites of MasterCard, Visa, the Swiss bank that closed Assange’s account, and the law firm representing the two women who have accused him of sexual misconduct.
While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons. We want transparency and we counter censorship. The attempts to silence WikiLeaks are long strides closer to a world where we can not say what we think and are unable to express our opinions and ideas, the group said in a statement.
These attacks were part of what these activists have called Operation Payback.
Some have likened this campaign to one of civil disobedience, targeting corporaions that preferred to preserve their financial interests and submit to the will of the powerful instead of fostering freedom of speech.
The hacktivists of Anonymous may be accused of many things – such as immaturity or being run by a herd instinct. But theirs is the cyber equivalent of non-violent action or civil disobedience. It disrupts rather than damages, wrote The Guardian in an editorial.
Many other free speech advocates, though not participating in the cyber retaliatory campaign voiced their dismay and anger at the onslaught against WikiLeaks.
I can use my credit card to send money to the Ku Klux Klan, to antiabortion fanatics, or to anti-homosexual bigots, but I can't use it to send money to WikiLeaks. The New York Times published the same documents. Should we tell Visa and MasterCard to stop payments to the Times, Jeff Jarvis director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, told the WP.
What, in the end, are Julian Assange and WikiLeaks trying to accomplish?
This organization practices civil obedience, that is, we are an organization that tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction, Assange told TIME.
We don't have targets other than organizations that use secrecy to conceal unjust behavior, he added.
Some cables that were released exposed such targets. For instance, contrary to what the US government officially claimed, American and not Yemeni warplanes did engage in bombing raids in Yemen, some of which killed countless civilians.
This escalation of Obama’s secret war in Yemen was never publicly revealed until now.
In the December 17, 2009 attack, forty-one civilians were killed including fourteen women and twenty-one children, according to Amnesty International.
One of these targets, who escaped unscathed, was Anwar al Awlaki, US-born Islamic militant cleric accused of being an AQAP operative.
Saleh (the President of Yemen) lamented the use of cruise missiles that are “not very accurate” and welcomed the use of aircraft-deployed precision-guided bombs instead. “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh said (in a conversation with General Petraeus, then Commander of US Central Command) prompting Deputy Prime Minister Alimi to joke that he had just “lied” by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG (Republic of Yemen Government) WikiLeaks cable 10SANAA4 stated.
On December 15, 2009, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied any US involvement in military operations inside Yemen…
In another interesting cable, WikiLeaks revealed that in July 2009, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton ordered diplomats to spy on UN officials, and collect information such as email addresses, phone, fax and credit card numbers, including biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives.
Other revelations that fall into this category are the following:
*the UK government assured the US that measures had been taken to ensure that the Chilcot inquiry, formed to investigate Britain’s role in the war in Iraq, would not undermine US interests, thus potentially limiting the scope and significance of the investigation;
*the Bush Administration attempted to prevent Germany from investigating allegations that one of its citizens, Khalid El-Masri, abducted by mistake, was tortured by the CIA;
*the Obama Administration exerted immense pressure on the Spanish government to indefinitely postpone the prosecution of six Bush Administration officials charged with creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture.
Julian Assange is well founded to argue that unethical and deceptive behavior on the part of governments should be exposed.
WikiLeaks’ message, according to Assange, is to report the truth.
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately? Assange wrote in The Australian.
It is not clear however, what value resides in releasing cables that reflect private, unofficial perceptions of foreign leaders.
Revealing speculations regarding the mental health of the President of Argentina Cristina Kirchner, or descriptions of the Putin/Medvedev relationship (likened to Batman and Robin) for instance, only needlessly embarrass those involved.
Such information should remain confidential for these revelations can only disrupt if not harm international relations.
So, why release them as well?
However good his intentions may be, Assange’s inability to consistently discern what should be revealed, and what should not undermines his mission, his credibility and only empowers the enemies of transparency who want to shield all government activity from public scrutiny, and seek to control all the information that is released, including on the web.
Are we on the verge of the first great cyber war?
If so, the US government has lost the initial battle.
Its inability to prevent the release of classified documents has encouraged those inside its own government structures to leak revealing and embarrassing documents, alienated by recent past abuses such as, and the list though not exhaustive, is a distressingly long one: warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary renditions, secret prisons, torture, Guantanamo, Bagram, endless detention, enemy combatants, military commissions, the Afghan and Iraq wars that have led to thousands of deaths, etc, etc…These abuses have spawned a culture of secrecy within the US government currently obsessed about preventing the release of information that could prove not only embarrassing but also potentially immoral if not illegal.
Yet, the US, (and governments in general), has lost the ability to control the information it possesses, and is now desperately trying to reassert that control, whatever the cost may be, hence the vicious campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks now taking place. Its aim is clear: deter WikiLeaks and like-minded enterprises from revealing information not previously vetted by the US government.
There is an information war, and it’s about control. The choice is to either live in a transparent world or shut down the Internet, Jeff Jarvis told the WP.
Coldblood, a 22-yesr-old software engineer and Anonymous activist, agreed.
I see this as becoming a war, but not your conventional war.
This is a war of data. We are trying to keep the Internet free and open for everyone, just the way the Internet always has been, he told the BBC.
It is vital to ensure the Internet does remain free and impervious to government intervention, and particularly, US government meddling, precisely because recent, post 9/11 history has amply demonstrated that it cannot be trusted, and that it will ignore both US and international law without hesitation if it deems it in its national interest to do so.
In the name of national security, the US government has shown that it will take all necessary measures (including resorting to torture if need be) to achieve its objectives, preventing another major attack on US soil, the end justifying the means.
In such a context, WikiLeaks can only flourish, and if we must chose between censorship imposed by deceitful and unethical governments, and unfettered free speech, embodied by exuberant and at times irresponsible sites such as WikiLeaks, I for one will select the latter without hesitation…
(The photograph above of Julian Assange can be found here)





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