WikiLeaks comment on U.S. election

Wed Nov 7 06:22:37 UTC 2012

Obama promised a more open government. But instead his administration has built a state within a state, placing nearly five million Americans under the national security clearance system, replete with secret laws, secret budgets, secret bailouts, secret killings, secret mass spying, and secret detention without charge.

Four more years in the same direction cannot be tolerated.

The Obama administration continues to conduct a “whole of government” investigation of “unprecedented scale and nature” into WikiLeaks and its people. It has fuelled the extrajudicial banking blockade against the WikiLeaks and has held an alleged WikiLeaks source, Bradley Manning, for 899 days without trial, in conditions that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, formally found amounted to torture.

Mr Assange has been formally found to be a political refugee over the Obama administration's behavior, U.S. ambassadors publicly warned countries such as Switzerland not to offer him asylum.

The Obama-Biden campaign brags of having prosecuted twice as many national security whistleblowers as “all previous administrations combined”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-campaign-brags-about-whistleblower-persecutions. This must change.

Politicians always say your decision, come election-time, will determine the future. But, as has been seen with the Obama administration, deciding on who gets into formal office is not a meaningful choice, because when you vote your party into government you also vote the government, including all its agencies and contractors, into your party.

Parties taking office are eliminated as the restraining voice of opposition. The last four years, like the next four years, will see the U.S. republican party as the 'restraining' voice of opposition.

But there is another option.

It was WikiLeaks’ revelations – not the actions of President Obama – that forced the U.S. administration out of the Iraq War. By exposing the killing of Iraqi children, WikiLeaks directly motivated the Iraqi government to strip the U.S. military of legal immunity, which in turn forced the U.S. withdrawal. http://salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/

It was WikiLeaks’ revelations and pan-Arab activists, not the Obama administration, that helped to trigger the Arab Spring. While WikiLeaks was exposing dictators from Yemen to Cairo, Vice-President Joseph Biden was calling Hosni Mubarak a democrat, Hillary Clinton was calling his government “stable” and the U.S. administration was colluding with Yemeni dictator Saleh to bomb his own people. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/13/amnesty-international-wikileaks-arab-spring http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/wikihistory-did-leaks-inspire-arab-spring

And it was WikiLeaks’ revelations, not the White House, that led to the reform of the largest children’s hospital network in the United States. http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Report_on_Shriners_raises_question_of_wrongdoing

Just over a month ago, on 28 September, the Pentagon again threatened WikiLeaks. Pentagon spokesman George Little demanded WikiLeaks destroy its publications, including the Iraq War logs which revealed the killings of more than 100,000 civilians. Little said: “continued possession by WikiLeaks of classified information belonging to the United States government represents a continuing violation of law”. The Pentagon also again “warned Mr Assange and WikiLeaks” against “soliciting” material from U.S. military whistleblowers.

Don't 'hope'. ACT.

http://wikileaks.org/donate2012
http://bradleymanning.org/
http://freehammond.org/
http://justice4assange.com/