Bradley Manning trial ends:

                                                       Bradley Manning, major threat to "US security"

BRADLEY MANNING
CONVICTED:

Punishment for those who
reveal crimes; immunity for
those who commit crimes:

Shame of US Military "Justice":

The verdict of the military judge in the Bradley Manning trial in convicting the

former Army officer on a long list of charges of "espionage" is another brazen example of the hypocritical stance of the criminal Washington elite in trying to cover up its war crimes by persecuting anyone who reveals these crimes to the American public and the world. Held for months in solitary confinement and harassed by brutal guards, Officer Manning, a slightly built and quiet individual, withstood the tortures of a criminal Empire and gave inspiration to many around the world who struggle daily for Peace, human rights and the ending of the aggressive wars waged by the US Military against the civilian populations of the countries it has invaded.

On Wednesday, the day after the conviction of Bradley Manning was handed down by the military judge, the Washington Post published an article under the headline, “Manning’s Conviction Seen as Making Prosecution of WikiLeaks’ Assange Likely.” The Post noted that the prosecutors—that is, the Obama administration—specifically tailored their case against Manning to implicate the founder of WikiLeaks.

“Military prosecutors in the court-martial portrayed Julian Assange as an ‘information anarchist’ who encouraged Manning… And they insisted that the anti-secrecy group cannot be considered a media organization that published the leaked information in the public interest,” the Post wrote. The prosecution continually sought to present Assange as a co-conspirator.

Other articles sounded a similar theme, including one by the Associated Press stating that Manning’s conviction “gives a boost to the Obama administration’s aggressive pursuit of people it believes have leaked national security secrets to the media.” In addition to Assange, the AP noted that “the government’s case against National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden” will likely be “similar to the Manning prosecution.”

This is further evidence that the kangaroo-court trial of the young whistle-blower Manning is part of a ruthless government campaign to criminalise all exposures of government criminality. The prosecution of Manning, who faces a maximum sentence of 136 years in prison, is intended as an example and a precedent. Whistle-blowing, the government is declaring, amounts to espionage and treason.

The Obama administration has already opened up a grand jury investigation into Assange and WikiLeaks, and there are reports that a secret indictment has been filed. It has submitted charges against Snowden under the Espionage Act for his actions in exposing illegal government spying programs. If either Snowden or Assange is captured by the United States, there is no doubt that he will face a fate equal to, or worse, than Manning’s. Obama, along with top officials in the military and intelligence apparatus, is acutely aware that the actions taken over the past decade violate innumerable laws and constitutional

provisions.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, under the pretext of the “war on terror,” the American ruling class, first under Bush and then under Obama, has engaged in wanton criminality, only a small portion of which has been exposed by the revelations of Manning and Snowden. Washington is responsible for torture centers all over the world, domestic spying on an unparalleled scale, illegal rendition, the assassination of US citizens, and secret anti-democratic laws drawn up by secret courts.

On Wednesday, the  British "Guardian" reported on yet another surveillance program, XKeyscore, that allows NSA analysts—contrary to the testimony of government and intelligence officials—to comb through “vast databases containing emails, online chats and browsing histories of millions of individuals” without a court order.

All of these crimes flow from the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Manning himself was moved by the atrocities he witnessed in Iraq in a war based on outright lies. Hundreds of thousands have been killed. Entire cities have been destroyed. The wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been followed by other war crimes, with the US government now operating a fleet of drones that rain death on peoples throughout the world. Manning is to spend decades in jail, if not his entire life, for helping to expose these crimes, while those who carried them out walk free or occupy plush offices in the White House.

Of particular concern to the ruling class is that individuals like Manning and Snowden, utilizing the power of the Internet, have been able to bypass the stranglehold of the American media, which has aided and abetted every government conspiracy against the population. The New York Times in particular played an indispensable role in propagating the lies used to launch the war in Iraq and has utilised its pages to carry out a smear campaign against Assange and Snowden. In a two-faced editorial Wednesday, the Times declared, “There is no question that Private Manning broke laws.” This—a cowardly statement worthy of scoundrels—was published as Manning faces life in prison for exposing government illegality!

Manning, Assange and Snowden have put their lives at risk to expose to the American people the secret actions of a military-intelligence apparatus that operates without constraint and above the law.

In its contempt of legal norms, the attitude that prevails in the corridors of power in the United States is not fundamentally different from that of Hitler’s Germany. Laws exist solely for the purpose of advancing the interests of the ruling class that controls the state. They can be violated by the executive at will, receiving, if it is convenient, the endorsement of the courts and a servile Congress. Exposure of these violations, carried out in the public interest, is by definition illegal because it violates the secrecy demanded in the name of “national security.” The crimes of the Hitler regime—including the mass internment and execution of political dissidents—have yet to be replicated in the United States. However, the logic of dictatorship is the same—a logic that is driven by the irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of a parasitic financial aristocracy and the vast majority of the population.

There is immense popular sympathy for Manning, Snowden and Assange. The measures that they have exposed are unpopular, which is why the ruling class must conceal them. This sympathy must be translated into a conscious political movement, one that connects the defence of democracy with the overthrow of the corrupt economic and political system that prevails in the United States and around the world.

 

 

Nato's Arctic Expansion:

Swedish troops exercise in the far North

 

NATO  expands Arctic

military activities:

With the complete collaboration of the right-wing Swedish Government, the NATO aggressive military alliance has been allowed to expand its activities to military controlled areas in the North of Sweden although Sweden is officially a neutral country. Many Swedes are concerned that their country's neutrality is being deliberately undermined and Sweden being co-opted into NATO's global aggression and military interventions in various countries. Likewise in neighbouring Finland, pro-NATO propaganda is on the increase in recent months raising concerns by Russia that the NATO alliance is building up a confrontation military grouping on Russia's borders.

 Russia cannot see NATO expansion towards its borders as positive, as under certain circumstances the possibility of military confrontation remains, the Russian Prime minister has said at the Euro-Arctic Council’s forum. When a reporter asked Dmitry Medvedev how the balance of forces in Europe will change if Sweden and Finland decide to enter NATO, the Russian Prime Minister answered that his country would have to react to such developments:

“This is their own business; they are making decisions in accordance with the national sovereignty doctrine. But we have to consider the fact that for us the NATO bloc is not simply some estranged organisation, but a structure with military potential,” the head of the Russian government said, adding that under certain unfavourable scenarios this potential could be used against Russia. “All new members of the North Atlantic Alliance that appear in proximity of our state eventually do change the parity of the military force. And we have to react to this,” Medvedev noted.

Although Sweden and Finland officially state that they are not actively seeking membership, both nations cooperate extensively with NATO and have openly debated the possibility of joining. Speculation over Sweden mounted after it warned earlier this year that its defence capabilities were alarmingly limited. It was embarrassed in April when it could not respond to Russian military jets nearing its border, according to media reports.

NATO ... has a military potential which can be used against our country in certain cases," Medvedev said, as Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt looked on. "The fact that Norway is a member of NATO has not had any negative effect whatsoever on the development of cooperation in this part of the world," Sweden's Carl Bildt said in response.  These statements notwithstanding, Peace organisations in Sweden and Finland have stated that they expect an official invitation to both countries to join NATO will be issued from the next NATO Summit in 2014.

 

In June this year, International Peace activists responded to developments in Sweden with a conference at Kiruna, northern Sweden, the nearest large town to the areas under discussion and issued the following declaration:

 

THE KIRUNA STATEMENT

PROTECTING THE HIGH NORTH, DEMILITARISING OUTER SPACE AND REMOVING THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION

The International Conference on the High North and International Security was held in the city of Kiruna, Sweden, on 28-30^th June 2013. Representatives from a wide spectrum of civil societies and public movements from a number of Scandinavian, European, Asian and Latin American countries, Russia and the United States of America attended and agreed the following:

Conference members recognise:

That we are facing major threats to our survival through the continued pretence that security can be obtained through aggressive foreign policies and military action;

That the ultimate consequences of these policies is the continued development and threatened use of nuclear weapons and the exploitation and militarization of environments that should be protected for the benefit of all humankind - such as the Arctic and outer space;

That the High North is being used by an expanding NATO as a military practice ground in which to rehearse future war fighting strategies and to test and develop new killing technologies;

That the US has established a satellite ground station in the Svalbard islands in Norway which is used by the military and therefore violates the Svalbard or Spitzbergen Treaty that requires that the archipelago is not used for military purposes;

The rapidly increasing deployment of space based military systems and the global network of ground based stations (including radars, downlink and surveillance facilities) that support and supplement them;

that the uncontrolled and irresponsible use of outer space has resulted in that environment being littered with debris that could eventually render it impenetrable;

The destabilizing effects that the deployment of space based, ground based and sea based missile defense systems have on undermining international stability and that they are risking the possibility of reaching further agreements on nuclear disarmament;

That all states who have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should honour its Article VI and “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control”;

The negative consequences stemming from the stationing of US tactical nuclear weapons in a number of European nations;

That US President Obama’s focus on his “pivot to Asia”, the sending of missiles and warships to the region and the encouragement of the construction of support bases in the region (such as the one threatening the lives of the Gangjeong villagers on Jeju Island, South Korea), is aimed at containing China and is increasing international tension.

We therefore call on all governments, political parties, and members of civil societies and public movements all over the world to share these concerns and urgently request them to call upon:

The leaders of the Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to arrange an urgent meeting on the revival of stalled arms control processes and to embrace all key areas, including nuclear weapons, missile defense and conventional weapons stationed on the ground, at sea, in the air and in outer space;

The members of the United Nations to firmly work towards the adoption of a Nuclear Weapons Convention, leading to nuclear disarmament,  and we call upon the nuclear weapon states not to obstruct the discussion of the Nuclear Weapons Convention in the General Assembly of the UN;

All nations possessing or about to possess missile defense components should recognize their destabilizing nature and seek instead, through diplomatic processes, to reduce international tensions and work towards a situation where cooperation, mutual trust and understanding;

All space-faring nations should engage immediately in high level talks on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space and the adoption of outer space as a de-militarized zone;

All states to respect and renew their commitment to protect the unique and vitally important regions of the Earth, such as the Arctic and Antarctic, and reconfirm that they are not the property of any one nation, and never should be, but are to be protected as a common heritage for all humankind and never used for military purposes.

The money and material assets that will be gained from the above steps and other arms control and disarmament measures should not then be redirected to other military projects but used instead to help convert our militarized societies to peaceful ones that work for the betterment of the social and economic wellbeing of all people – for human rather than state security – and for dealing with our common problem of climate change.

As declared at the conference in Kiruna, Sweden, 29^th June 2013.

 

No to War - No to NATO