Sabbath 29/9/33/120

Dear Friends

The controversial whistle-blowing site Wikileaks is progressively working its way through releasing a cache of 251,287 secret messages sent by US diplomatic staff.

Files have already been given in full to five media groups, including the New York Times and Guardian newspapers.

The US has reacted with some extraordinary claims and suggestions. It has been suggested by US officials that the site be declared a terrorist site and all assets confiscated and its operators arrested as terrorists. The founder Mr. Assange is being hounded and his own country, Australia, seems to be acquiescing in the US plans to take extensive action against him.

Wikileaks has been widely accused of endangering the lives of informants, activists, dissidents and the US military. But is there any evidence that this has happened?

The fact is that there is no evidence that the site has broken any laws and there is no evidence that neither the site nor the newspapers involved have failed to act in the manner of responsible journalism.

Yesterday morning US officials were interviewed on Australian Radio National Breakfast Program and gave the predicable rhetoric against the release of the information but as the subsequent British based journalist pointed out the US person interviewed was defending Madeline AlbrIght some years ago, when he was assisting her, for her comments that the then 500,000 children killed in Iraq was an acceptable loss. It seems to be her view of collateral damage we have heard so much about. The fact was and is that the US and its allies seem to have sunk to the point where they think the murder of innocent civilians and in this case children, as well as civilian men and women, is an acceptable way to behave in these wars of invasion.

What is really at the heart of this issue? Does it matter that the US is exposed in the cynical exercise of its diplomatic power and the use of force in its influence on other nations?  What do these politicians really fear?

The basis of the problem is that the politicians in all nations have been lying to their people in the cynical exercise of power for so long that there is a growing force that has had enough of the lies and deceit and they are exposing these hypocrites in ways that strike at the very heart of their web of secrecy and conspiracy.

Thomas Jefferson once said that: “Information is the currency of democracy.” To that end the US Constitution, in its First Amendment, ensures freedom of speech. What has happened to that concept was that the administration withheld information and lied to the people on a progressive basis and the people were persuaded that Freedom of Speech equated to the right to defame and abuse anyone and particularly those of another ethnic group, and the religious bigots are the worst at it. One is excused for praying in regard to these people that “God protect us from upright Christian gentlemen.”

The misleading of parliament is common now in the entire Westminster system in the Commonwealth and elsewhere, as it is in the US, and has been for some time.

The media, especially in the US, enables the administration to deceive readily and the Religious Right follows a campaign of defamation and hate speech and lies against anyone they happen to target or who attempts to hold them accountable for their vicious rhetoric.

We have heard it said that in the US it is a waste of time trying to get justice in regard to dealing with hate speech and attacks by such people. In fact there are no effective laws regarding hate speech. That is considered to be the reason why the rates of aggression and murder are so high.  Truth is cast to the ground. People join hands with malicious people to be malicious witnesses. They follow a multitude to do evil, and bear [false] witness and turn aside after a multitude to pervert justice, contrary to Exodus 23:1-2. These actions are forbidden to God’s people and the parliament or congress is predicated on the premise that the parliament will not mislead the people. The fact is that the parliament and the administration lie to the people continually and in such an environment sound government is impossible. Moreover, the problem stems from the religious system itself. More importantly the people love to have it so and will not accept that there is a serious problem and that they are heading into, and are virtually in slavery now.

It is impossible to maintain a just society under such conditions.

Moreover, the minds that think as these power brokers do have no respect for the lives of either those they lead or those of other nations they seek to dominate.

Breach of Conventions and Misleading the Parliament.

For examples of the cynical deceit of the nations involved we have only to look at the US Yemen Relationship and the US/UK tacit approval in the UK breach of the treaty on cluster bombs.

A January 2010 cable records a meeting between Yemeni President Abdullah Saleh and Gen Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East. The cable shows that the US has been operating clandestine bombing raids on suspected al-Qaeda targets in Yemen, with the approval of the Yemeni government in Sanaa.

Mr Saleh criticises the US use of cruise missiles against targets. He also said that US troops cannot operate on the ground. However, he gave Gen Petraeus permission for fixed-wing bombers to circle outside Yemeni territory and "out of sight", waiting for target information.

The president is quoted in the cable as saying: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours." Deputy Prime Minister Rashad Alimi is reported as joking that he had just "lied" to parliament, by telling them recent air raids in Arhab, Abyan, Shebwa had only been US-made but fired by Yemeni forces.

In relation to the UK and the Cluster bomb treaty the UK kept quiet about a loophole allowing the US to continue storing cluster bombs on its territory despite an international ban on the weapons. In other words they misled their own parliament.

A senior Foreign Office official is quoted in a message sent in May 2009, published by the Guardian, which shows the tacit UK accommodation of the US position.

Britain was among more than 90 countries that signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in December 2008. The treaty bans the use of cluster bombs and prohibits signatories from assisting other countries to use, stockpile or transfer them.

Human Rights

We also see the extent of the disregard for human rights and privacy. Both the US and China engage in massive hacking operations to spy on the citizens they lead. The fact also is that nations actively facilitate the transfer of weapons and missile parts and other weaponry in the pursuit of war and monetary profits.

In November 2007, the US urged Beijing to stop the shipment of ballistic missile components from North Korea to Iran, according to a cable released by the Guardian.

As was probably often the case, the goods were being moved through Beijing, and Washington demanded a "substantive response" to their request.

"We assess that the best way to prevent these shipments in the future is for Chinese authorities to take action... that will make the Beijing airport a less hospitable transfer point," the cable states.

The public has a right to know these details. This is the information on which the success of the democracy stands.

In the same way the release of information regarding China hacking into US government and business computers is vital not only to the US but also to the people of other nations subject to such attacks.

Another cable from similar times in 2007 published in the NY Times claims that a network of hackers and private security experts has been employed by China since 2002 and that it has hacked into US government and business computers, those of Western allies and the Dalai Lama.

The cable quotes a "Chinese contact" telling the US embassy in Beijing that the Chinese government had been behind the hacking of Google's computer systems in the country in January.
This information has alarming consequences for the integrity of business security and for human rights considerations. Google has become the major source of information for the Chinese against its own people in abuse of human rights. What is coming out of these files is the sheer extent of crimes against humanity being engaged in from the US and its allies as is the case with China, Russia and the other standard effective dictatorships.

The cables show the attempts by China to block any resettlement of Uigur detainees from Guantanamo Bay to elsewhere and pressure on the US as well as Germany and Finland allegedly warned by China against accepting any Uigur detainees whilst the US was using diplomatic interviews as bargaining chips to get countries to accept those detainees. Such conduct makes a joke out of justice and Human Rights.

People need to be properly informed to make intelligent decisions and provide input to their parliamentarians. In fact what is happening is that the democracies are becoming “dumbed down.”

Our people are fed on propaganda and the financial system is raping them with the assistance of the administration, virtually of all nations.

Further the US clearly involves itself in attempts to pervert the course of justice as we saw in the 2007 cable from the US embassy in Berlin. The US made efforts to persuade Germany not to issue international arrest warrants for the CIA agents accused of involvement in the abduction of a German citizen from Macedonia by CIA agents, who they then took to a secret prison. He was apparently mistaken for an al-Qaeda suspect.

In an account of a high-level meeting between US and German officials, the cables state that US diplomats "pointed out that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the US".

War Crimes outside of the Middle East.

The incidence of War Crimes is escalating in each area that is under conflict. Sri Lanka is also noted in the cables as being regarded as committing war crimes in the last stages of the war against the Tamil Tigers.  Thousands of Tamil civilians are believed to have been killed in the Jaffna peninsula by government forces.

Ms Butenis said one of the reasons why there was so little momentum towards the formation of a Sri Lankan inquiry into the deaths was that the president and the former army commander, Sarath Fonseka, were behind them.

"There are no examples we know of a regime undertaking wholesale investigations of its own troops or senior officials for war crimes while that regime or government remained in power," the cable reports. That appears to apply in the West to the opposition also when it assumes power.

"In Sri Lanka this is further complicated by the fact that responsibility for many alleged crimes rests with the country's senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapaksa and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka" the cable states.

Gen Fonseka lost to Mr Rajapaksa in January's presidential election. Fonseka was subsequently convicted of corruption by a court martial. However, true to form in such cases both men have denied that government troops committed war crimes.

The publication of these details is important and reflect on Australia’s, and other nation’s treatment of refugees and will serve to make Australians aware of the true circumstances.

The War against Iran.

The cables show that there is an extensive push outside of Israel to wage war against Iran and stop its nuclear ambitions.

In a 2006 cable, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed, told the US officers he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "going to take us to war".

In a cable from April 2008, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, recalled King Abdullah's "frequent exhortations" to the US to attack Iran.

Mr al-Jubeir said the king wanted the US "to cut the head off the snake"; the Saudi foreign minister was reportedly less extreme, calling for more severe sanctions on Tehran.

It was reported that during a meeting between King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain and US General David Petraeus, the king told the US to stop Iran's nuclear programme "by whatever means necessary".

"The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it," he is quoted as saying in the cable from ambassador Adam Ereli, dated November 2009.

Meanwhile, Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak used a May 2009 visit by a Congressional delegation to Tel Aviv to warn that time was running out to stop Iran's nuclear programme.
"Barak estimated a window between six and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable," we are told from a cable sent back to Washington by the US ambassador the following month.

"After that, he said any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."

Korea

Beijing is also reported as growing frustrated with North Korea's behaviour. A Chinese ambassador was reported as warning that Pyongyang's nuclear programme was "a threat to the whole world's security".

South Korean officials reported that many Chinese officials are starting to think that the Korean peninsula should be reunified under Seoul's control and that China was ready to "face the new reality" that North Korea had little value to Beijing as a buffer state. Korea is prepared to offer commercial incentives for the reunification.

Pakistan

Another security problem is seen as Pakistan. Also India is in fact a liability in Afghanistan. Pakistan sees India as the main problem and would rather have Taliban assistance to contain India.

The cables also revealed that US and UK diplomats feared Pakistan's nuclear material could fall into the hands of terrorists, the Guardian reports.

Cables reported in the New York Times revealed that the US has been attempting to remove highly enriched uranium from a research reactor in Pakistan since 2007.

In a May 2009 cable, US ambassador Anne W. Patterson said Pakistan had refused a visit from US experts. She quoted Pakistan officials as saying removing the fuel would be seen in Pakistan "as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons".

Another cable concerning a US intelligence briefing in 2008, reported in the Guardian, said Pakistan was "producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world".
The cables also revealed that the Russian foreign ministry official Yuri Korolev feared that Islamists might infiltrate the ranks of the 120,000-130,000 people directly involved in Pakistan's nuclear and missile programmes.

He is reported as telling US officials in February "There is no way to guarantee that all are 100% loyal and reliable," according to the Guardian reports.

The same is said of the Middle East regarding Terrorists and the inability to act against terrorists for fear of reprisals. The state of Qatar is identified as being among the worst.

Russia

The dangers presented by the above nations and their problems are made even more unpredictable by the uncertainty of the actions and ethics of Russia and its satellites Belarus and Chechnya and soon the Ukraine in their being virtual mafia states. Many of us understand that has developed but it is something that needs to be understood generally.

Russia now stands accused of being a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

One cable reports a briefing for US officials on 13 January 2010, reporting a conversation with a Spanish prosecutor who has specialised on the activities of the Russian mafia in Spain, Jose "Pepe" Grinda Gonzalez. He says he considers Belarus, Chechnya and Russia to be virtual "mafia states" and said that Ukraine is going to be one.

In another cable from February 2010, published by the Guardian, the US ambassador in Moscow John Beyrle details the "shadowy world of corrupt business practices" under former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, "with corrupt officials requiring bribes from businesses attempting to operate in the city".

He states in the cable "The Moscow city government's direct links to criminality have led some to call it 'dysfunctional', and to assert that the government operates more as a kleptocracy than a government,"

In another message published in the Guardian, the UK Foreign Office's Russia director, Michael Davenport, is quoted as calling Russia a "corrupt autocracy".

Predicably Mr Putin has denied links to organised crime but any question of knowing what they would do in any given situation is impossible to tell.

No doubt as time goes on and the papers are published more and more will surface that will throw more light on what is a murky and shabby enterprise.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the use of national resources in spying on everyone from the UN Secretary General down to the citizen with his PC or mobile phone in your own country is the stuff of novels. However, it was indeed predicted in the frightening world of George Orwell’s 1984. It is upon us and the people who implement the system are of a different breed. A cable to US diplomats issued under US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's name is revealing of the lengths they will go and tells them to collect "biographic and biometric" information - including iris scans, DNA samples and fingerprints - of key officials at the UN. The agencies and diplomats are also ordered to find credit card details, e-mail addresses and passwords and encryption keys used for computer networks and in official communications.

The officials covered include "undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders".

The cables included in the Wikileaks contain at least nine similar directives covering various countries, both under the name of Mrs Clinton and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

We do not need to deal with all the speculative and pejorative statements made against other heads of state as they do not concern us here in the pursuit of truth and ethics in dealing with the modern world’s corrupted systems. No doubt the curious person will study them separately. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg to date.

Please pray for the salvation of our people and their extractions from this dreadful, evil world system in which we are enmeshed.

Wade Cox
Coordinator General