Five years after 'Collateral Murder', the secret US military video which made the Pentagon furious and WikiLeaks famous around the world, l'Espresso meets the WikiLeaks founder in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he is holed up to ask whether he has changed his mind and goals. The interview below is reproduced courtesty of L'Espresso.
Drones have become the weapon of choice for the US because no American casualties are involved. If innocents are killed, that is just “collateral damage”.
Instead of going after the torturers and mass murderers, President Barack Obama has targeted the whistleblowers. Bradley Manning has become its latest victim. He is not the first and will not be the last. Obama has exposed himself as a hypocrite-in-chief.
The US military-industrial complex’s pursuit of Edward Snowden, the National Security-contractor turned whistleblower, has exposed the hollowness of US claims to being a society governed by the rule of law. Surveillance and espionage even at home are what America is all about.
Indian occupation forces have been involved in horrible crimes against defenceless civilians in Kashmir for decades. While India refuses to allow international human rights organizations or the media to visit the state, an Indian human rights organization has painstakingly documented specific crimes and identified the names of perpetrators that the Indian government refuses to punish.
This is not the first time the US has attempted to criminalize Assange.
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is being targeted not because he is guilty of the rape allegation. His real ‘crime’ is that he exposed America’s dirty tricks.
Pvt. Bradley Manning’s case is cutting through the calcified US domestic landscape with a sword of sympathy. After his incarceration, the public is associating the Guantanamo images associated of “those Muslim terrorists” — shackled bodies, sexualized humiliation, minds breaking under psychological torture — with the cheery and too relatable photograph of the young American soldier.
Wikileaks has proved to be the kingmaker of all news, defying the short lifespan of most news cycles to reign for a solid week-and-a-half over world headlines. Reactions over the release of secret US State Department cables ranged from shock, titillation, amusement, or apoplectic fury.
When Wikileaks arrested world headlines, the mainstream media coped by focusing on the gossip dished up by embassies on US allies, “frenemies” (friendly enemies), and outright foes
American officials are scurrying to various capitals to advise “friendly” governments that the undiplomatic, indeed nasty language used by their diplomats and officials about other leaders should not be taken too seriously.
Western policy-makers, especially in the US were in absolute panic for two days when tens of thousands of pages of leaked documents describing the grim situation in Afghanistan were released by WikiLeaks, a tiny but influential internet site.
