1/19/11;  1:15pm
I must say I was overjoyed to find in my mail the January 7 edition of Workers Vanguard  that explores Wikkileaks, Assange and Bradley Manning.   I heartily agree with the analysis that presents these two remarkable men and urges that we, who favor radical revolutionary solutions to the corruption and cynicism they revealed, must adopt and champion them both if they are to be saved from the salacious “legal” retribution Obama and his henchmen have planned for them.  The same Espionage Act that sent Eugene Debs to federal prison and that resulted in the murders of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg is being dusted off for re-use, as it enables federal prosecutors to change free speech into sedition.

I’ve been thinking this last week about Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. While not able to access any research materials, in my current setting (smile) I can rely on my own memory of those heady times.  1970, Nixon as President and suddenly there is a burst of light on the horizon and all the things we had been telling the older generation about government lying and why they lied were packaged as Exhibit A —right there in the venerated NY Times.  The Gulf of Tonkin and other political ledgerdomain, the highest levels of government fooling the People, were revealed by Dan Ellsberg.  It was staggeringly important and everyone talked about it.  We, trying to be the vanguard, attempted to forge ahead with the people, but  we outran the issue and soon Nixon and Watergate and his hasty departure from DC were history.

Today, Assange and Manning have once again revealed that the Emperor has no clothes.  These State Department communiques that the government keeps trying to spin positively  reveal the fraternity (in the worst sense) boy mentality and an imperial foreign policy that would make Nero and  ????( name of the Roman emporer who was totally depraved) look like playground fun and games. Joking around about civilian targets in Yemen and how they made it look like the attacks were local.  Controlling the Mexcan drug wars and seclecting who to be eliminated.. Capturing the “wrong” Arab and torturing him for months and months Abu  Ghreib style while they tried to figure how to get rid of this embarrassment.  No it isn’t Terry and the Pirates (or if that’s too old school for you) try the Empire Striking Back.  It is the revealed bare bottom of the hypocracy and cruelty of foreigh policy — a real Animal House–

When the Pentagon Papers were revealed it was part of the tapestry of the history of those times.  Yet another confirmation that we, the forces of opposition to US government were correct and should not stop until the White House was Red. As I said earlier, the movement that had been co-opted and infiltrated, spluttered out  with in the next ten years but it would have been impossible POLITICALLY at that time for that government to put Daniel Ellsberg in a torture chamber and do to him what they are doing to Bradley Manning.  The New York Times was never questioned for its patriotism !  Yet here is Assange. baited on all sides — by various client states of the US on bogus criminal (Sweden–unprotected but consensual sex???,  Switzerland a twitter because a banker’s ethics got in the way of corporate secrecy ?) charges: and by the Corporate Internet Web which he helped promote and create who have tried to financially ice him and his revelations.

So, what to do ????   As suggested by the Vanguard, we must champion the people who show the Emperor to be naked and in that deplorable nakedness,  reveal the veniality and the hypocricy, the total loss of any idealism and the championing of the stupidity and the ignorance and greed of the “ruling class”!! Hooray for Manning and Assange — Truth tellers who gave us the proof of what we already knew but were’t supposed to know.

Honor them as we do the political heroes, now prisoners in the jails of the US and worldwide ,at this marvelous gathering.  Continue the Struggle for Truth that must lead to Liberation!!!