Whilst attempting to look at the WikiLeaks website, the focus of a furious attack by the US political establishment over recent weeks, I managed to see the video titled "Collateral Damage".
The video shows a horrifying missile assault by a US army helicopter in Iraq, resulting in the death of 17 civilians, including 2 journalists- an atrocity that took place back in 2007. The above mentioned video had originally been posted to the website in April this year but, with the furore surrounding the release of the US State Department cables, my interest had been tweaked and a long overdue visit to the site was in order.
The video is the tip of the iceberg in a long list of crimes committed by US Imperialism and its allies against working people all over the world. the released cables provide extensive evidence of criminality, from the widespread use of torture in Imperialist occupied Iraq, the murder of civilians as a consequence of NATO bombings in Afghanistan, the conducting of an illegal war in Yemen, as well as a number of secret agreements and understandings with client regimes.
Predictably, the US government has launched a high profile campaign to censor the site through a series of cyber attacks, and a campaign of character assasination against its founder, Julian Assange. Using the language of "national security", the political representatives of the capitalist class in the United States are attempting to prevent free speech and public scrtiny of its actions, by turning those who expose it into crminals themselves! While the more right wing elements within the US ruling class, such as Presidential hopeful Sarah "pitbull with lipstick" Palin, have called for the execution of Assange as an "enemy combatant", even liberal voices have raised the prospect of prosecuting him (assuming they can get their hands on him!) under the reactionary Espionage Act of 1917.
It appears the only person who has been directly 'threatened' by the leaks is Assange himself! Irrespective of the merits or demerits of the charges of sexual assault against him, the attempt by the US establishment to muzzle any expose of its crminal activities and secret diplomacy is an attack on the democratic rights of all, and is a warning shot to all who would shine a light on the reality of the policies carrried out in the world by the capitalist class and its political representatives. An assault on our democratic rights will be ultimately aimed at depriving us the ability to resist the burdens of their economic crisis.
For many, the detail and reality of the so-called 'secret' operations of capitalism's political representatives will be of no surprise. Socialists and class conscious workers have long been aware of the operations of the capitalist class. Back in 1971 the liberal New York Times published The Pentagon Papers, which exposed the actions of the then Lyndon B Johnson administration in the USA, as it expanded its war against the people of Vietnam by deliberately, and illegally, bombing Cambodia and Laos, and launching coastal raids against North Vietnam. Predictably again, the US goverment attempted to silence the opposition by using the infamous Espionage Act against those who had released the documents!
But, of even more significance for Socialists, was the actions of the Soviet revolutionary government upon the coming to power of the working class and its allies back in October 1917.
Led by the Bolshevik Party, one of the first actions of the new government was publish for all to see the secret agreements, treaties and diplomatic documents of the ousted Czarist regime and it's Foreign Ministry! They sought to demonstrate to the people of the world what the Bolsheviks already knew, that the so-called First World War was, in fact, a war created by the ruling classes seeking to expand their own, narrow Imperialist interests.
This action of the government was carried out by the new People's Commissar for the foreign ministry, Leon Trotksy. In a statement, November 1917, Trotsky had this to say:
"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 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 parlaimentary and diplomatic agents....
The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy. The Soviet Government regards it as a duty to carry out such a policy in practice. That is precisely why, while openly proposing an immediate armistice to all the belligerant peoples and their governments, we are at the same time publishing these treaties and agreements, which have lost all binding force for the Russian workers, soldiers, and peasants who have taken power into their own hands."
Unfortunately for the US ruling class, Leon Trotsky is beyond their hands, but his ideas still live on, as do the historic actions of a government that acted in the interests of working people, both in Soviet Russia and around the world!
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