More on those “cables” that support the false ideas they wish to maintain in you
General Joe and company | 09.12.2010 06:53 | Analysis | Anti-militarism | Social Struggles | World
"The secret plans spell out preparations for a full-scale war with Russia that would see the immediate deployment of nine divisions of US, British, German and Polish troops in the event of any Russian incursion into the former Soviet Baltic republics.
The plans also specify German and Polish ports that would be used to receive naval assault units and US and British warships destined for battle with Russian forces.
Despite these details, there is no indication in the cables of the potentially catastrophic implications of such an armed clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers."
The plans also specify German and Polish ports that would be used to receive naval assault units and US and British warships destined for battle with Russian forces.
Despite these details, there is no indication in the cables of the potentially catastrophic implications of such an armed clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers."
More on those “cables” that support the false ideas they wish to maintain in your mind:
SEP Australia public meetings
Imperialist diplomacy exposed: Behind the witch-hunt of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
8 December 2010
The ongoing publication of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks has provided an invaluable insight into the real state of international relations, the undercover criminal activities of the United States and other governments, and the mounting tensions between the US and its “allies” and rivals alike—tensions that threaten to spark new military conflicts in flashpoints around the world.
The revelations published so far are the most significant exposure of the real character of “imperialist diplomacy” since Leon Trotsky published the diplomatic cables of the Tsarist government after the October Revolution of 1917.
Like that event, the WikiLeaks exposures have sent shock waves throughout the globe. Their significance can be gauged by the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been subject to a series of death threats from members of the US ruling elites as well as calls for his trial and execution.
In Australia, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has joined this international lynch mob declaring, without any foundation, that the activities of Assange and WikiLeaks are “illegal.”
The international witch-hunt against Assange reveals the extent to which any commitment to upholding basic democratic rights has been discarded in ruling circles. How could it be otherwise when, in country after country, governments of all political stripes are imposing draconian austerity measures to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks on the demands of the financial markets?
The SEP has called two public meetings to demand that the democratic rights of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange be defended, and to discuss the significance of the WikiLeaks’ exposures for the Australian and international working class.
We urge all WSWS readers and SEP supporters to attend the meetings and to advertise them as widely as possible.
Melbourne December 20, 7.00 p.m. Conference Room Arts House, Meat Market 5 Blackwood Street North Melbourne (Melway Reference: 2B A9) Tickets: $4/$2 concession
Sydney December 21, 7.00 p.m. Tom Mann Theatre 136 Chalmers Street Surry Hills (Close to Central Station) Tickets: $4/$2 concession
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WikiLeaks cable exposes NATO war plan against Russia
By Bill Van Auken 9 December 2010
US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks have unveiled secret NATO plans for a US-led war against Russia over the Baltic states.
The cables, first reported by the Guardian newspaper Tuesday and posted on the WikiLeaks site, underscore the growing geo-strategic tensions between the US and Russia even as the Obama administration has emphasized a “reset” in relations that was supposed to overcome the conflicts left over from the Bush administration.
The secret plans spell out preparations for a full-scale war with Russia that would see the immediate deployment of nine divisions of US, British, German and Polish troops in the event of any Russian incursion into the former Soviet Baltic republics.
The plans also specify German and Polish ports that would be used to receive naval assault units and US and British warships destined for battle with Russian forces.
Despite these details, there is no indication in the cables of the potentially catastrophic implications of such an armed clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
While some analysts in Moscow insisted that Russian intelligence was well aware of the contingency plans, their public exposure by WikiLeaks prompted statements of protest by Russian officials and demands for an explanation from NATO.
The contingency plans that would send US troops into combat against Russian forces were developed in the wake of the Russian-Georgian clash of August 2008 that followed Georgia’s unsuccessful attempt to overrun the breakaway territory of South Ossetia.
As the cables spell out, the governments of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which were brought into the NATO alliance in 2004, began to lobby US officials for the development of a NATO strategy for the defense of their territories against a Russian attack.
The US embassy in Latvia began by informing Washington about the concerns of the government in Riga even as the fighting was going on in South Ossetia. An August 15, 2008 message cited discussions with Latvian leaders who expressed the sentiment that “this could easily be them” and reported “Latvians are beginning to worry if membership in (NATO) provides them the assurances of their security that they had hoped for.’
The documents, marked secret and classified, trace the evolution of US policy from these first demands by the Baltic states in the wake of the Russian-Georgian conflict through to the actual elaboration of a contingency plan for a military confrontation with Russia that was secretly adopted in January 2010.
The cables indicate that US officials were anxious not to publicly antagonize Moscow, even as they sought to put into place the war plans demanded by the Baltic states. A report classified as secret from the US ambassador to NATO, recounting a meeting with the three Baltic state ambassadors, asserts, “We are not returning to the cold war.”
NATO and Russia had established formal relations in 1997 based on an agreement that explicitly stated, “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” The problem confronting US officials was how to draft a policy that clearly cast Russia as an enemy without upending ties with Moscow.
In a cable drafted in October 2009, US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder spelled out the problem. “Leaders in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are pressing hard for NATO Article 5 (which compels all NATO states to come to the defense of any other member state under attack) contingency planning for the Baltic states,” he began, noting that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already stated their support for such plans.
The problem, Daalder pointed out, was that such plans “would require specifying Russia as a potential threat,” something which Germany and other NATO member states opposed. He wrote: “As we saw during the debates over the Russia-Georgia war, many Allies will take great pains to avoid even the suggestion that the Alliance and Russia are on a course toward a new Cold War.”
He suggested that Washington could get around the evident contradiction by expanding an existing contingency plan for the defense of Poland to include the Baltic states or by adopting “generic plans” for a NATO response to aggression that would not name the states involved but would be applicable to the Baltic countries.
Among the concerns expressed by Daalder was that in the absence of a contingency plan, the Baltic states would not trust NATO for their defense and “will have to consider developing a force structure focused on territorial defense rather than on expeditionary capabilities.” The specific “expeditionary” role that the US ambassador had in mind was the deployment of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian troops in the US-led war in Afghanistan.
The cable indicates that it was Germany that first raised the suggestion that the contingency plan for Poland—codenamed “Eagle Guardian”—could be widened to include the Baltic states. This was the path that Washington ultimately backed. NATO approved the plan on January 22, 2010 but made no public announcement.
A January 26 cable signed by Hillary Clinton from the State Department to US diplomats in NATO countries and to the American embassy in Moscow spelled out the need to maintain strict secrecy in relation to the agreement.
“The United States believes strongly that such planning should not be discussed publicly. These military plans are classified at the NATO SECRET level,” the cable states. “Public discussion of contingency plans undermines their military value, giving insight into NATO’s planning processes. This weakens the security of all Allies.”
The document adds: “A public discussion of contingency planning would also likely lead to an unnecessary increase in NATO-Russia tensions, something we should try to avoid as we work to improve practical cooperation in areas of common NATO-Russia interest.”
The cable concludes with recommendations for dealing with any media inquiries on the contingency plans. Such non-answers as “NATO does not discuss specific plans” and “NATO is constantly reviewing and revising its plans” are suggested. The diplomats are instructed to stress that NATO planning “is not ’aimed’ at any other country,” which in this case it most definitely was—at Russia.
Russia’s ambassador to NATO said Tuesday that Moscow would demand that the Western alliance abrogate the Baltic contingency plan, saying that the plan stood in direct contradiction to assurances given at the recent NATO summit in Lisbon.
“We must get some assurances that such plans will be dropped, and that Russia is not an enemy for NATO,” said the Russian envoy, Dmitry Rogozin. “I expect my colleagues from the NATO-Russia Council to confirm that Lisbon has made all the difference.”
Rogozin dismissed NATO’s claims that the contingency plan was not aimed at any one country. “Against whom else could such a defense be intended?” he asked. “Against Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, against polar bears, or against the Russian bear?”
Meanwhile, the Guardian quoted an unnamed official at the Russian foreign ministry as saying that the documents had provoked “a lot of questions and bewilderment.”
“Russia has repeatedly raised the question about the need to ensure that there is no military planning aimed against one another,” the source said.
The revelations have surfaced under conditions of mounting tensions between Washington and Moscow over the US Senate’s failure to ratify a new START treaty on nuclear arms reduction and differences over Washington’s drive to set up an anti-missile network in Europe.
Cooperation between Moscow and Washington notwithstanding, the US war in Afghanistan and the strategic drive by US imperialism to assert its hegemony in Central Asia are an inevitable source of conflict.
Underscoring these growing tensions, the Russian navy reported Wednesday that US and Japanese forces suspended war games in the Sea of Japan after two Russian Ilyushin-38 anti-submarine aircraft flew over the area.
“The area is our zone of responsibility,” said Roman Markov, a spokesman for the Russian navy. “The airplanes carried out a planned flight in an area of the Russian Pacific Fleet’s regular activity. Our pilots did not violate any rules of international air space.”
The military exercise involves some 34,000 Japanese and more than 10,000 US military personnel along with scores of warships and hundreds of aircraft. They were suspended out of concern that the Russian aircraft could gather secret data on US and Japanese capabilities.
Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have soured in recent weeks over the dispute between the two governments over the control of a string of islands stretching south of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. Known in Russia as the Southern Kuriles and in Japan as the Northern Territories, they were seized by Soviet forces in World War II.
Last month, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev made a brief surprise trip to one of the islands, provoking angry protests from Japan. Last weekend, in an apparent response, Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara flew past of the islands on a Japanese coast guard plane. An unnamed Russian official responded to the fly-by: “No one, Japan included, is banned from admiring the beauties of Russian nature.”
Other dispatches released by WikiLeaks point to the tensions within the NATO alliance over relations with Russia. In particular, a February 2010 cable from the US embassy in Paris records a clash between US Secretary of State Robert Gates and France’s Foreign Minister Herve Morin over French plans for arms sales to Moscow.
Gates, the cable reports, “raised US concerns over sales of a Mistral-class helicopter carrier to Russia as sending a mixed signal to both Russia and our Central and Eastern European allies.” The Pentagon chief went on to recall that while French President Nicolas Sarkozy had negotiated the ceasefire agreement that ended the fighting between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Moscow had not lived up to the agreement.
Morin replied, according to the cable, by asking “rhetorically how we can tell Russia we desire a partnership but then not trust them.”
The cable also quotes Morin expressing the view that “a European Missile Defense system is both unwise and unnecessary,” adding that Gates “refuted Morin’s contention.”
An appended note indicating back-channel discussions between US and French officials states: “Following the meetings, Morin’s critical comments on Missile Defense were disavowed by senior officials at the MoD and the MFA, who said that his views were his own and that the U.S. should essentially ‘erase’ what he had just said.”
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WikiLeaks and Sri Lanka: Who are the real criminals?
9 December 2010
Among the hundreds of secret diplomatic cables so far released by WikiLeaks, one sent from the US embassy in Sri Lanka has confirmed that the Obama administration was well aware of the war crimes committed by President Mahinda Rajapakse and his associates during the final stages of the war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in early 2009. The document highlights the fact that who is deemed a criminal, or not, is determined entirely by the US and its allies according to the requirements of their economic and strategic interests.
The cable, transmitted by the US Ambassador to Colombo, Patricia A. Butenis in January this year, stated the prospect of any investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka had been “complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapakse and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka.”
The Obama administration and its allies are relentlessly hounding WikiLeaks and seeking to criminalise its founder Julian Assange, whose only “crime” has been to help expose to the world the dirty intrigues and crimes carried out by US imperialism. WikiLeaks has performed a decisive service in allowing ordinary people internationally to gain a glimpse of the secret diplomacy of Washington and its partners, including throughout the Indian sub-continent, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Sri Lanka.
As a result of US pressure, Assange is now behind bars in Britain, fighting extradition to Sweden on trumped-up charges. By contrast, President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is directly responsible for war crimes, is free to roam the world, and was last week welcomed in London by the British government. Washington has never publicly named Rajapakse, his brothers or former Army Commander Fonseka as being responsible for the atrocities in Sri Lanka, despite a mountain of evidence in the public domain.
The UN has estimated that at least 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed between January and May 2009 as the security forces repeatedly attacked civilians trapped in the government’s own “no-fire zone”. The International Crisis Group compiled evidence of the killing of an estimated 30,000 to 75,000 civilians, with hospitals deliberately targeted for bombardment. Across Sri Lanka, hundreds more people, including journalists and politicians, are known to have disappeared at the hands of pro-government death squads that operated with impunity.
The US was complicit in these crimes and helped cover up who was responsible for them. In 2006, the US and other major powers effectively backed the Rajapakse government when it restarted the war against the LTTE, even though Rajapakse brazenly violated a 2002 ceasefire. Only once it became clear that the LTTE would be defeated did Washington voice reservations about “human rights violations”, but only as a means to pressure on Rajapakse to fall into line with Washington.
In the post-war positioning for influence over the strategically-located island, the Obama administration’s prime concern was that China had used the war to build close relations with Colombo. Beijing had provided the Rajapakse regime with weapons and funds to fight the war, in return for economic and strategic concessions, including naval access to a major new southern port being constructed at Hambantota.
The State Department issued a vague call last year for an international probe into “human right violations”—as if they were committed by individual soldiers or middle-ranking military officers—while also blaming the LTTE for atrocities. It is now documented that Washington was fully aware that the major crimes were committed under Rajapakse, who is not only president, but also the defence minister and commander in chief of the armed forces.
The US dropped the “human rights” pretence when it became clear that it was not assisting in the effort to woo or coerce Rajapakse, but instead was proving counter-productive. Butenis’s cable took the same approach as last December’s US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, which highlighted the danger to US strategic interests of China’s growing influence in Colombo. The report declared that the US could not afford to “lose Sri Lanka”. A preoccupation with “human rights” would “shortchange US geostrategic interests in the region,” it stated.
Since then, the Obama administration has publicly backed a sham inquiry established by Rajapakse himself, called the Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation. Its purpose, like previous inquiries appointed by Rajapakse into military atrocities and pro-government death squads, is to cover the crimes, whitewash the role of the government and justify the war itself. In June, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in Washington that Rajapakse’s commission “holds promise”.
Because the Obama administration is mending its relations with him, Rajapakse, unlike Assange, remains free to strut the world stage. Last week he visited London with a large entourage. While Tamil protests eventually forced the Oxford Union Debating Society to cancel a planned address, Rajapakse was afforded a meeting with UK Defence Minister Liam Fox. According to media reports, the pair discussed British assistance to Sri Lanka, especially in infrastructure projects in the former LTTE-held North, and opportunities for British investment in the country.
By contrast, the British government moved to have Assange arrested as soon as possible. As the British police prepared to detain Assange, Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman declared: “We unequivocally condemn the unauthorised release of classified information. The leaks and their publication are damaging to national security in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.”
This “national security” has nothing to do with the security or safety of ordinary people, but consists of hiding from them the killings, assassinations, coups and other imperialist conspiracies perpetrated by the US and its allies in pursuit of their strategic and corporate interests. Alongside the US, Britain is the second biggest military contributor to Obama’s escalating offensive underway in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In their attempts to crush resistance to the neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan, both governments are responsible for war crimes, including drone assassinations, aerial bombings and military death squads,
The Obama administration has been stung by the WikiLeaks exposures because they place the spotlight on the real criminals. They are part of a ruling elite that is responsible for decades of illegal acts carried out behind the backs of the American working class—from wars of aggression to renditions, torture and other acts of international terror. The Sri Lankan revelations point to the necessity for the international working class to overturn the entire socio-economic order that has produced these filthy imperialist intrigues and wars.
K. Ratnayake
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Australia: WikiLeaks cables reveal secret ties between Rudd coup plotters and US embassy
By Patrick O’Connor 9 December 2010
The latest batch of the several hundred leaked US diplomatic cables concerning Australia, provided by WikiLeaks to the Fairfax company’s Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age, provide further extraordinary evidence of Washington’s direct involvement in the anti-democratic coup against former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last June.
Key coup plotters in the Labor Party and trade unions—including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes—secretly provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership. As early as June 2008, the American ambassador identified Julia Gillard as the “front-runner” to replace Rudd. In October 2009, i.e., eight months before Gillard was installed in unprecedented circumstances, Mark Arbib informed American officials of emerging leadership tensions. The Australian people, on the other hand, were kept entirely in the dark about any differences between the prime minister and his colleagues until after Rudd was ousted.
Gillard was described, some two years before the coup, by US diplomatic officials as the “rising star” within the Labor government. They made various enquiries into Gillard’s foreign policy sympathies, receiving assurances from government sources that her origins in the party’s “left” faction had no policy significance whatsoever. Arbib told the embassy that Gillard was “one of the most pragmatic politicians in the ALP”; Victorian senator David Feeney added that “there is no longer any intellectual integrity in the factions” and that “there is no major policy issue on which he, a Right factional leader, differs from Gillard”. When embassy officials checked on Gillard with Paul Howes, Australian Workers Union boss and subsequent anti-Rudd coup plotter, observing that “ALP politicians from the Left, no matter how capable, do not become party leader,” he responded immediately: “but she votes with the Right’.”
The Sydney Morning Herald and Age have published parts of the latest material in excerpted form, ahead of their full public release expected in coming weeks. They focus today on Mark Arbib’s role as a “secret US source”. One of the key apparatchiks in Labor’s powerful New South Wales right-wing faction, Arbib reportedly made several requests to US officials that his identity as a “protected” informant be guarded.
The cables refer to Arbib as early as mid-2006, when he served as NSW Labor Party state secretary. After being elected to the senate in the November 2007 federal election, the factional leader deepened his relationship with Washington. A US embassy profile, authored in July 2009, noted that Arbib “understands the importance of supporting a vibrant relationship with the US” and that officials “have found him personable, confident and articulate”. The profile also recorded that he “has met with us repeatedly throughout his political rise”. Other cables referred to the senator as a “right-wing powerbroker and political rising star” and noted his influence within both Labor’s factions and “Rudd’s inner circle”.
The cables make clear that Arbib and the other identified MPs function not simply as mere US “sources”, as characterised in the media today—but rather as agents. Within the Labor and trade unions apparatuses, these party members serve as conduits for Washington’s agenda. The embassy communications reveal the extent to which the US government determines Australian foreign policy and dictates who will hold senior government posts, including the office of prime minister.
A precise chronology of Washington’s sordid, behind-the-scenes manipulation of Australian political affairs, between the Labor Party’s election victory in November 2007 and Rudd’s axing in June 2010, is likely to emerge once WikiLeaks releases the full cache of relevant cables.
Already, however, it is now beyond dispute that Washington began cultivating Gillard at the same time as embassy officials were issuing damning assessments of Rudd, above all over his stance on Beijing. In June 2008, the same month Gillard was named as the “front-runner” to succeed Rudd, the prime minister unveiled his Asia-Pacific Community project, attempting to mediate the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China. An American embassy cable lambasted this proposal as yet another Rudd initiative launched “without advance consultation”. (See: “WikiLeaks cables cast fresh light on coup against former Australian PM Rudd”)
Beginning at this time, the Fairfax press reports: “US diplomats were anxious to establish Ms Gillard’s attitudes towards Australia’s alliance with the United States and other key foreign policy questions, especially in regard to Israel. Numerous Labor figures were drawn by US diplomats into conversation concerning Ms Gillard’s personality and political positions with ‘many key ALP insiders’ quickly telling embassy officers that her past membership of the Victorian Labor Party’s Socialist Left faction meant little and that she was ‘at heart a pragmatist’.”
Gillard was undoubtedly aware that she was being sounded out. One cable sent to the State Department in mid-2008 stated: “Although long appearing ambivalent about the Australia-US Alliance, Gillard’s actions since she became the Labor Party number two indicate an understanding of its importance. [US embassy political officers] had little contact with her when she was in opposition but since the election, Gillard has gone out of her way to assist the embassy... Although warm and engaging in her dealings with American diplomats, it’s unclear whether this change in attitude reflects a mellowing of her views or an understanding of what she needs to do to become leader of the ALP.”
These comments outline who really calls the shots in Australia’s so-called parliamentary democracy. Labor leaders must understand “what they need to do”—that is, kowtow on every major strategic and foreign policy issue to Washington. They need to recognise that Australia is an obedient servant of US imperialism, and that its political superstructure must function accordingly.
Arbib issued a terse statement today, simply outlining that he was an active member of the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue, and “like many members of the federal parliament, have regular discussions about the state of Australian and US politics with members of the US mission and consulate”. Contained here is a fairly clear warning, by Labor’s key backroom operator, to anyone in the government thinking of using the revelations against him. Arbib has helpfully reminded them that he enjoys Washington’s support, and that others are sure to be implicated as more cables are released.
The Fairfax press has already named former Labor national secretary and Rudd government cabinet member Bob McMullen and current backbencher Michael Danby as among those named in the WikiLeaks documents. Others likely to be named are starting to come out of the woodwork, in an effort to pre-empt the fallout. Health Minister Nicola Roxon today volunteered that she is likely to be identified, as she “meets with US diplomats from time to time”. Greens’ leader Bob Brown has foreshadowed similar revelations—though he was at pains to point out that he was always “very careful” in his responses, and spoke with diplomats “from all over the world, from Bangladesh to the US to New Zealand, Taiwan and Beijing”.
The cables will no doubt reveal similar relationships between Washington and senior Australian media personnel. Editors, journalists, and broadcasters are routinely nurtured through the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue, and other such forums.
The excerpted cables also expose the close working relationship between the US government and Australia’s trade unions. The Fairfax press noted that “senior union leaders have privately briefed US officials about how they use their influence over the Labor Party to shape federal government policies”, and cited an August 2009 cable, which stated that the trade unions “continue to play a significant role in the formulation of national policies that can impact the United States”. Discussions between US embassy officials and senior figures in the Australian Workers Union and the National Union of Workers were reported, with one cable declaring that the leaders of the right-wing unions were “dynamic and forward thinking”.
The same cable reportedly described the declining influence of the “left” unions within the Labor Party, a conclusion that was “drawn partly through briefings from CFMEU [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union] national secretary Dave Noonan and Victorian secretary Bill Oliver”. These two figures—often hailed as great militants by the various middle class pseudo-left outfits—were described by US embassy officials as “capable leaders”.
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German media responds to WikiLeaks revelations with nostalgia for the authoritarian state
By Peter Schwarz 9 December 2010
The publication of US State Department internal documents by WikiLeaks has prompted a vociferous response in Germany. With few exceptions, officials and media commentators have echoed Washington’s witch-hunting attacks.
The vast majority of journalists and politicians have condemned WikiLeaks and defended secret diplomacy. This is true not only for right-wing and conservative circles, but also for the so-called “liberal press,” the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.
Typical is a guest contribution published December 3 in the Frankfurter Rundschau by the leader of the social democratic faction in the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. The author employs a cheap debater’s trick, equating the protection of state secrets with the defence of individual privacy.
“We must pose the question,” he writes, “what sort of a society do we want—one in which nothing remains private and confidential?” He continues: “Trust, confidentiality and even secrets are part of our private lives. In public life, too, there have to be confidential moments.”
The same argument is found in many other commentaries. It implies that keeping secret state accords that have serious, even potentially disastrous implications for millions of people is the same as the confidentiality of personal matters that concern only those directly affected.
The documents published by WikiLeaks do not deal with the personal relationships or affairs of diplomats. As the British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in an article for Der Spiegel, they give “a clear view of priorities, characters, patterns of thought.”
The documents released to date have revealed, among other things, that the United States and its allies are planning military actions against Iran, China and other countries that could easily lead to a third world war and the destruction of mankind.
Anyone repulsed by the lies with which the US justified the 2003 war against Iraq would welcome the publication of the WikiLeaks documents. Not so Schulz. He complains that WikiLeaks acts “not in the public interest” by undermining “the institutions of diplomacy.”
Schulz's article culminates with the accusation: “WikiLeaks has not understood the distinction between the interests of the public and the public interest.” He thus expresses an understanding of the state that has more to do with the authoritarian Prussian state than with a democracy or a republic.
Under the Hohenzollern monarchy, broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie—including such icons of German liberalism as Friedrich Naumann and Max Weber—defended the rule of the emperor against the democratic parliamentary system. In their eyes, the monarchy was needed to enforce the “public interest”—which included the build-up of the German Navy, the conquest of colonies and the subordination of central Europe to German rule—against the growing influence of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was on the eve of becoming the strongest party in the Reichstag (parliament).
“The monarch, with all his constitutional prerogatives, which in principle are not compatible with a parliamentary regime, offered himself as an ideal instrument to immunise the existing order against democratic currents,” writes historian Wolfgang J. Mommsen. (War der Kaiser an Allem Schuld?—Was the Emperor to Blame for Everything? Munich: 2002, p. 74)
In posing a contradiction between the public interest and the interests of the public, Schulz rejects democracy. For if all power emanated from the people, as laid down in the German constitution, there could not be such a contradiction. Even for the ancient Romans, the res publica (commonwealth, republic) was identical to the res populi (the people), as Cicero’s famous treatise De re publica explains.
Schulz expresses the fact that the state has interests other than those of the people and therefore needs secrecy. This is the essence of his attack on WikiLeaks.
“Without confidentiality—no open conversation, less information, and perhaps more wrong decisions,” he writes, speaking for many politicians and union officials who plot their deals behind closed doors and trust that they are never exposed to the public. For where would we end up if everyone could read what the chancellor promises to bank managers, what opposition politicians agree to with the government, or trade union leaders with the employers? The existing order would begin to crumble.”
Schulz is one of many expressing their ire at WikiLeaks because it has lifted the veil on state secrecy. The Green Party chairman, Cem Özdemir, said on television that by publishing secret diplomatic documents WikiLeaks had “crossed a line that does no good for our democracy as a whole.”
Political scientist Herfried Münkler wrote in Der Spiegel: “A society without secrets has lost its order.” And: “The success of the state is tied crucially to the successful monopolization of political secrecy.”
In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Nikolas Richter warned: “The betrayal of secrecy threatens the functioning of foreign policy.” In the same newspaper, Stefan Kornelius wrote: “Without confidentiality, no information… If the US president must one day take a decision about Iran’s nuclear programme and is pushed to order an air strike, we hope he has reliable advice.”
The finance daily Handelsblatt worried: “What is shaking US policy will not leave the economy untouched. If Washington’s command centre is exposed by secret despatches with seeming ease today, the same can happen tomorrow to General Electric, Siemens, Daimler or Deutsche Bank.”
When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and exposed the American government’s lies regarding the Vietnam War, he was awarded numerous honours. The same goes for the journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who uncovered the Watergate scandal. In contrast, the equally important revelations published by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange evoke within the political and media establishment near-universal fear, hatred, slander and retaliation.
This shows two things: First, in an age of austerity programmes, bank rescue packages and international military operations, state decisions can no longer be presented openly and defended publicly. More than ever, the rich and powerful rely on secrecy to achieve their political goals.
Second, the media and political establishment have shifted so far to the right that even in liberal circles hardly anyone can be found who will defend democratic rights.
This must serve as a warning to working people. The attacks on wages, benefits and jobs, and the militarization of foreign policy, go hand in hand with attacks on democratic rights and the build-up of authoritarian structures. This can be stopped only by a counteroffensive of the working class based on an international socialist program.
Spread widely please. General Joe
SEP Australia public meetings
Imperialist diplomacy exposed: Behind the witch-hunt of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange
8 December 2010
The ongoing publication of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks has provided an invaluable insight into the real state of international relations, the undercover criminal activities of the United States and other governments, and the mounting tensions between the US and its “allies” and rivals alike—tensions that threaten to spark new military conflicts in flashpoints around the world.
The revelations published so far are the most significant exposure of the real character of “imperialist diplomacy” since Leon Trotsky published the diplomatic cables of the Tsarist government after the October Revolution of 1917.
Like that event, the WikiLeaks exposures have sent shock waves throughout the globe. Their significance can be gauged by the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been subject to a series of death threats from members of the US ruling elites as well as calls for his trial and execution.
In Australia, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has joined this international lynch mob declaring, without any foundation, that the activities of Assange and WikiLeaks are “illegal.”
The international witch-hunt against Assange reveals the extent to which any commitment to upholding basic democratic rights has been discarded in ruling circles. How could it be otherwise when, in country after country, governments of all political stripes are imposing draconian austerity measures to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banks on the demands of the financial markets?
The SEP has called two public meetings to demand that the democratic rights of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange be defended, and to discuss the significance of the WikiLeaks’ exposures for the Australian and international working class.
We urge all WSWS readers and SEP supporters to attend the meetings and to advertise them as widely as possible.
Melbourne December 20, 7.00 p.m. Conference Room Arts House, Meat Market 5 Blackwood Street North Melbourne (Melway Reference: 2B A9) Tickets: $4/$2 concession
Sydney December 21, 7.00 p.m. Tom Mann Theatre 136 Chalmers Street Surry Hills (Close to Central Station) Tickets: $4/$2 concession
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WikiLeaks cable exposes NATO war plan against Russia
By Bill Van Auken 9 December 2010
US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks have unveiled secret NATO plans for a US-led war against Russia over the Baltic states.
The cables, first reported by the Guardian newspaper Tuesday and posted on the WikiLeaks site, underscore the growing geo-strategic tensions between the US and Russia even as the Obama administration has emphasized a “reset” in relations that was supposed to overcome the conflicts left over from the Bush administration.
The secret plans spell out preparations for a full-scale war with Russia that would see the immediate deployment of nine divisions of US, British, German and Polish troops in the event of any Russian incursion into the former Soviet Baltic republics.
The plans also specify German and Polish ports that would be used to receive naval assault units and US and British warships destined for battle with Russian forces.
Despite these details, there is no indication in the cables of the potentially catastrophic implications of such an armed clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
While some analysts in Moscow insisted that Russian intelligence was well aware of the contingency plans, their public exposure by WikiLeaks prompted statements of protest by Russian officials and demands for an explanation from NATO.
The contingency plans that would send US troops into combat against Russian forces were developed in the wake of the Russian-Georgian clash of August 2008 that followed Georgia’s unsuccessful attempt to overrun the breakaway territory of South Ossetia.
As the cables spell out, the governments of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which were brought into the NATO alliance in 2004, began to lobby US officials for the development of a NATO strategy for the defense of their territories against a Russian attack.
The US embassy in Latvia began by informing Washington about the concerns of the government in Riga even as the fighting was going on in South Ossetia. An August 15, 2008 message cited discussions with Latvian leaders who expressed the sentiment that “this could easily be them” and reported “Latvians are beginning to worry if membership in (NATO) provides them the assurances of their security that they had hoped for.’
The documents, marked secret and classified, trace the evolution of US policy from these first demands by the Baltic states in the wake of the Russian-Georgian conflict through to the actual elaboration of a contingency plan for a military confrontation with Russia that was secretly adopted in January 2010.
The cables indicate that US officials were anxious not to publicly antagonize Moscow, even as they sought to put into place the war plans demanded by the Baltic states. A report classified as secret from the US ambassador to NATO, recounting a meeting with the three Baltic state ambassadors, asserts, “We are not returning to the cold war.”
NATO and Russia had established formal relations in 1997 based on an agreement that explicitly stated, “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” The problem confronting US officials was how to draft a policy that clearly cast Russia as an enemy without upending ties with Moscow.
In a cable drafted in October 2009, US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder spelled out the problem. “Leaders in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are pressing hard for NATO Article 5 (which compels all NATO states to come to the defense of any other member state under attack) contingency planning for the Baltic states,” he began, noting that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already stated their support for such plans.
The problem, Daalder pointed out, was that such plans “would require specifying Russia as a potential threat,” something which Germany and other NATO member states opposed. He wrote: “As we saw during the debates over the Russia-Georgia war, many Allies will take great pains to avoid even the suggestion that the Alliance and Russia are on a course toward a new Cold War.”
He suggested that Washington could get around the evident contradiction by expanding an existing contingency plan for the defense of Poland to include the Baltic states or by adopting “generic plans” for a NATO response to aggression that would not name the states involved but would be applicable to the Baltic countries.
Among the concerns expressed by Daalder was that in the absence of a contingency plan, the Baltic states would not trust NATO for their defense and “will have to consider developing a force structure focused on territorial defense rather than on expeditionary capabilities.” The specific “expeditionary” role that the US ambassador had in mind was the deployment of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian troops in the US-led war in Afghanistan.
The cable indicates that it was Germany that first raised the suggestion that the contingency plan for Poland—codenamed “Eagle Guardian”—could be widened to include the Baltic states. This was the path that Washington ultimately backed. NATO approved the plan on January 22, 2010 but made no public announcement.
A January 26 cable signed by Hillary Clinton from the State Department to US diplomats in NATO countries and to the American embassy in Moscow spelled out the need to maintain strict secrecy in relation to the agreement.
“The United States believes strongly that such planning should not be discussed publicly. These military plans are classified at the NATO SECRET level,” the cable states. “Public discussion of contingency plans undermines their military value, giving insight into NATO’s planning processes. This weakens the security of all Allies.”
The document adds: “A public discussion of contingency planning would also likely lead to an unnecessary increase in NATO-Russia tensions, something we should try to avoid as we work to improve practical cooperation in areas of common NATO-Russia interest.”
The cable concludes with recommendations for dealing with any media inquiries on the contingency plans. Such non-answers as “NATO does not discuss specific plans” and “NATO is constantly reviewing and revising its plans” are suggested. The diplomats are instructed to stress that NATO planning “is not ’aimed’ at any other country,” which in this case it most definitely was—at Russia.
Russia’s ambassador to NATO said Tuesday that Moscow would demand that the Western alliance abrogate the Baltic contingency plan, saying that the plan stood in direct contradiction to assurances given at the recent NATO summit in Lisbon.
“We must get some assurances that such plans will be dropped, and that Russia is not an enemy for NATO,” said the Russian envoy, Dmitry Rogozin. “I expect my colleagues from the NATO-Russia Council to confirm that Lisbon has made all the difference.”
Rogozin dismissed NATO’s claims that the contingency plan was not aimed at any one country. “Against whom else could such a defense be intended?” he asked. “Against Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, against polar bears, or against the Russian bear?”
Meanwhile, the Guardian quoted an unnamed official at the Russian foreign ministry as saying that the documents had provoked “a lot of questions and bewilderment.”
“Russia has repeatedly raised the question about the need to ensure that there is no military planning aimed against one another,” the source said.
The revelations have surfaced under conditions of mounting tensions between Washington and Moscow over the US Senate’s failure to ratify a new START treaty on nuclear arms reduction and differences over Washington’s drive to set up an anti-missile network in Europe.
Cooperation between Moscow and Washington notwithstanding, the US war in Afghanistan and the strategic drive by US imperialism to assert its hegemony in Central Asia are an inevitable source of conflict.
Underscoring these growing tensions, the Russian navy reported Wednesday that US and Japanese forces suspended war games in the Sea of Japan after two Russian Ilyushin-38 anti-submarine aircraft flew over the area.
“The area is our zone of responsibility,” said Roman Markov, a spokesman for the Russian navy. “The airplanes carried out a planned flight in an area of the Russian Pacific Fleet’s regular activity. Our pilots did not violate any rules of international air space.”
The military exercise involves some 34,000 Japanese and more than 10,000 US military personnel along with scores of warships and hundreds of aircraft. They were suspended out of concern that the Russian aircraft could gather secret data on US and Japanese capabilities.
Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have soured in recent weeks over the dispute between the two governments over the control of a string of islands stretching south of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. Known in Russia as the Southern Kuriles and in Japan as the Northern Territories, they were seized by Soviet forces in World War II.
Last month, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev made a brief surprise trip to one of the islands, provoking angry protests from Japan. Last weekend, in an apparent response, Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara flew past of the islands on a Japanese coast guard plane. An unnamed Russian official responded to the fly-by: “No one, Japan included, is banned from admiring the beauties of Russian nature.”
Other dispatches released by WikiLeaks point to the tensions within the NATO alliance over relations with Russia. In particular, a February 2010 cable from the US embassy in Paris records a clash between US Secretary of State Robert Gates and France’s Foreign Minister Herve Morin over French plans for arms sales to Moscow.
Gates, the cable reports, “raised US concerns over sales of a Mistral-class helicopter carrier to Russia as sending a mixed signal to both Russia and our Central and Eastern European allies.” The Pentagon chief went on to recall that while French President Nicolas Sarkozy had negotiated the ceasefire agreement that ended the fighting between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Moscow had not lived up to the agreement.
Morin replied, according to the cable, by asking “rhetorically how we can tell Russia we desire a partnership but then not trust them.”
The cable also quotes Morin expressing the view that “a European Missile Defense system is both unwise and unnecessary,” adding that Gates “refuted Morin’s contention.”
An appended note indicating back-channel discussions between US and French officials states: “Following the meetings, Morin’s critical comments on Missile Defense were disavowed by senior officials at the MoD and the MFA, who said that his views were his own and that the U.S. should essentially ‘erase’ what he had just said.”
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WikiLeaks and Sri Lanka: Who are the real criminals?
9 December 2010
Among the hundreds of secret diplomatic cables so far released by WikiLeaks, one sent from the US embassy in Sri Lanka has confirmed that the Obama administration was well aware of the war crimes committed by President Mahinda Rajapakse and his associates during the final stages of the war against Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in early 2009. The document highlights the fact that who is deemed a criminal, or not, is determined entirely by the US and its allies according to the requirements of their economic and strategic interests.
The cable, transmitted by the US Ambassador to Colombo, Patricia A. Butenis in January this year, stated the prospect of any investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka had been “complicated by the fact that responsibility for many of the alleged crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Rajapakse and his brothers and opposition candidate General Fonseka.”
The Obama administration and its allies are relentlessly hounding WikiLeaks and seeking to criminalise its founder Julian Assange, whose only “crime” has been to help expose to the world the dirty intrigues and crimes carried out by US imperialism. WikiLeaks has performed a decisive service in allowing ordinary people internationally to gain a glimpse of the secret diplomacy of Washington and its partners, including throughout the Indian sub-continent, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Sri Lanka.
As a result of US pressure, Assange is now behind bars in Britain, fighting extradition to Sweden on trumped-up charges. By contrast, President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is directly responsible for war crimes, is free to roam the world, and was last week welcomed in London by the British government. Washington has never publicly named Rajapakse, his brothers or former Army Commander Fonseka as being responsible for the atrocities in Sri Lanka, despite a mountain of evidence in the public domain.
The UN has estimated that at least 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed between January and May 2009 as the security forces repeatedly attacked civilians trapped in the government’s own “no-fire zone”. The International Crisis Group compiled evidence of the killing of an estimated 30,000 to 75,000 civilians, with hospitals deliberately targeted for bombardment. Across Sri Lanka, hundreds more people, including journalists and politicians, are known to have disappeared at the hands of pro-government death squads that operated with impunity.
The US was complicit in these crimes and helped cover up who was responsible for them. In 2006, the US and other major powers effectively backed the Rajapakse government when it restarted the war against the LTTE, even though Rajapakse brazenly violated a 2002 ceasefire. Only once it became clear that the LTTE would be defeated did Washington voice reservations about “human rights violations”, but only as a means to pressure on Rajapakse to fall into line with Washington.
In the post-war positioning for influence over the strategically-located island, the Obama administration’s prime concern was that China had used the war to build close relations with Colombo. Beijing had provided the Rajapakse regime with weapons and funds to fight the war, in return for economic and strategic concessions, including naval access to a major new southern port being constructed at Hambantota.
The State Department issued a vague call last year for an international probe into “human right violations”—as if they were committed by individual soldiers or middle-ranking military officers—while also blaming the LTTE for atrocities. It is now documented that Washington was fully aware that the major crimes were committed under Rajapakse, who is not only president, but also the defence minister and commander in chief of the armed forces.
The US dropped the “human rights” pretence when it became clear that it was not assisting in the effort to woo or coerce Rajapakse, but instead was proving counter-productive. Butenis’s cable took the same approach as last December’s US Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, which highlighted the danger to US strategic interests of China’s growing influence in Colombo. The report declared that the US could not afford to “lose Sri Lanka”. A preoccupation with “human rights” would “shortchange US geostrategic interests in the region,” it stated.
Since then, the Obama administration has publicly backed a sham inquiry established by Rajapakse himself, called the Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation. Its purpose, like previous inquiries appointed by Rajapakse into military atrocities and pro-government death squads, is to cover the crimes, whitewash the role of the government and justify the war itself. In June, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in Washington that Rajapakse’s commission “holds promise”.
Because the Obama administration is mending its relations with him, Rajapakse, unlike Assange, remains free to strut the world stage. Last week he visited London with a large entourage. While Tamil protests eventually forced the Oxford Union Debating Society to cancel a planned address, Rajapakse was afforded a meeting with UK Defence Minister Liam Fox. According to media reports, the pair discussed British assistance to Sri Lanka, especially in infrastructure projects in the former LTTE-held North, and opportunities for British investment in the country.
By contrast, the British government moved to have Assange arrested as soon as possible. As the British police prepared to detain Assange, Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman declared: “We unequivocally condemn the unauthorised release of classified information. The leaks and their publication are damaging to national security in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.”
This “national security” has nothing to do with the security or safety of ordinary people, but consists of hiding from them the killings, assassinations, coups and other imperialist conspiracies perpetrated by the US and its allies in pursuit of their strategic and corporate interests. Alongside the US, Britain is the second biggest military contributor to Obama’s escalating offensive underway in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In their attempts to crush resistance to the neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan, both governments are responsible for war crimes, including drone assassinations, aerial bombings and military death squads,
The Obama administration has been stung by the WikiLeaks exposures because they place the spotlight on the real criminals. They are part of a ruling elite that is responsible for decades of illegal acts carried out behind the backs of the American working class—from wars of aggression to renditions, torture and other acts of international terror. The Sri Lankan revelations point to the necessity for the international working class to overturn the entire socio-economic order that has produced these filthy imperialist intrigues and wars.
K. Ratnayake
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Australia: WikiLeaks cables reveal secret ties between Rudd coup plotters and US embassy
By Patrick O’Connor 9 December 2010
The latest batch of the several hundred leaked US diplomatic cables concerning Australia, provided by WikiLeaks to the Fairfax company’s Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age, provide further extraordinary evidence of Washington’s direct involvement in the anti-democratic coup against former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last June.
Key coup plotters in the Labor Party and trade unions—including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes—secretly provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership. As early as June 2008, the American ambassador identified Julia Gillard as the “front-runner” to replace Rudd. In October 2009, i.e., eight months before Gillard was installed in unprecedented circumstances, Mark Arbib informed American officials of emerging leadership tensions. The Australian people, on the other hand, were kept entirely in the dark about any differences between the prime minister and his colleagues until after Rudd was ousted.
Gillard was described, some two years before the coup, by US diplomatic officials as the “rising star” within the Labor government. They made various enquiries into Gillard’s foreign policy sympathies, receiving assurances from government sources that her origins in the party’s “left” faction had no policy significance whatsoever. Arbib told the embassy that Gillard was “one of the most pragmatic politicians in the ALP”; Victorian senator David Feeney added that “there is no longer any intellectual integrity in the factions” and that “there is no major policy issue on which he, a Right factional leader, differs from Gillard”. When embassy officials checked on Gillard with Paul Howes, Australian Workers Union boss and subsequent anti-Rudd coup plotter, observing that “ALP politicians from the Left, no matter how capable, do not become party leader,” he responded immediately: “but she votes with the Right’.”
The Sydney Morning Herald and Age have published parts of the latest material in excerpted form, ahead of their full public release expected in coming weeks. They focus today on Mark Arbib’s role as a “secret US source”. One of the key apparatchiks in Labor’s powerful New South Wales right-wing faction, Arbib reportedly made several requests to US officials that his identity as a “protected” informant be guarded.
The cables refer to Arbib as early as mid-2006, when he served as NSW Labor Party state secretary. After being elected to the senate in the November 2007 federal election, the factional leader deepened his relationship with Washington. A US embassy profile, authored in July 2009, noted that Arbib “understands the importance of supporting a vibrant relationship with the US” and that officials “have found him personable, confident and articulate”. The profile also recorded that he “has met with us repeatedly throughout his political rise”. Other cables referred to the senator as a “right-wing powerbroker and political rising star” and noted his influence within both Labor’s factions and “Rudd’s inner circle”.
The cables make clear that Arbib and the other identified MPs function not simply as mere US “sources”, as characterised in the media today—but rather as agents. Within the Labor and trade unions apparatuses, these party members serve as conduits for Washington’s agenda. The embassy communications reveal the extent to which the US government determines Australian foreign policy and dictates who will hold senior government posts, including the office of prime minister.
A precise chronology of Washington’s sordid, behind-the-scenes manipulation of Australian political affairs, between the Labor Party’s election victory in November 2007 and Rudd’s axing in June 2010, is likely to emerge once WikiLeaks releases the full cache of relevant cables.
Already, however, it is now beyond dispute that Washington began cultivating Gillard at the same time as embassy officials were issuing damning assessments of Rudd, above all over his stance on Beijing. In June 2008, the same month Gillard was named as the “front-runner” to succeed Rudd, the prime minister unveiled his Asia-Pacific Community project, attempting to mediate the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China. An American embassy cable lambasted this proposal as yet another Rudd initiative launched “without advance consultation”. (See: “WikiLeaks cables cast fresh light on coup against former Australian PM Rudd”)
Beginning at this time, the Fairfax press reports: “US diplomats were anxious to establish Ms Gillard’s attitudes towards Australia’s alliance with the United States and other key foreign policy questions, especially in regard to Israel. Numerous Labor figures were drawn by US diplomats into conversation concerning Ms Gillard’s personality and political positions with ‘many key ALP insiders’ quickly telling embassy officers that her past membership of the Victorian Labor Party’s Socialist Left faction meant little and that she was ‘at heart a pragmatist’.”
Gillard was undoubtedly aware that she was being sounded out. One cable sent to the State Department in mid-2008 stated: “Although long appearing ambivalent about the Australia-US Alliance, Gillard’s actions since she became the Labor Party number two indicate an understanding of its importance. [US embassy political officers] had little contact with her when she was in opposition but since the election, Gillard has gone out of her way to assist the embassy... Although warm and engaging in her dealings with American diplomats, it’s unclear whether this change in attitude reflects a mellowing of her views or an understanding of what she needs to do to become leader of the ALP.”
These comments outline who really calls the shots in Australia’s so-called parliamentary democracy. Labor leaders must understand “what they need to do”—that is, kowtow on every major strategic and foreign policy issue to Washington. They need to recognise that Australia is an obedient servant of US imperialism, and that its political superstructure must function accordingly.
Arbib issued a terse statement today, simply outlining that he was an active member of the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue, and “like many members of the federal parliament, have regular discussions about the state of Australian and US politics with members of the US mission and consulate”. Contained here is a fairly clear warning, by Labor’s key backroom operator, to anyone in the government thinking of using the revelations against him. Arbib has helpfully reminded them that he enjoys Washington’s support, and that others are sure to be implicated as more cables are released.
The Fairfax press has already named former Labor national secretary and Rudd government cabinet member Bob McMullen and current backbencher Michael Danby as among those named in the WikiLeaks documents. Others likely to be named are starting to come out of the woodwork, in an effort to pre-empt the fallout. Health Minister Nicola Roxon today volunteered that she is likely to be identified, as she “meets with US diplomats from time to time”. Greens’ leader Bob Brown has foreshadowed similar revelations—though he was at pains to point out that he was always “very careful” in his responses, and spoke with diplomats “from all over the world, from Bangladesh to the US to New Zealand, Taiwan and Beijing”.
The cables will no doubt reveal similar relationships between Washington and senior Australian media personnel. Editors, journalists, and broadcasters are routinely nurtured through the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue, and other such forums.
The excerpted cables also expose the close working relationship between the US government and Australia’s trade unions. The Fairfax press noted that “senior union leaders have privately briefed US officials about how they use their influence over the Labor Party to shape federal government policies”, and cited an August 2009 cable, which stated that the trade unions “continue to play a significant role in the formulation of national policies that can impact the United States”. Discussions between US embassy officials and senior figures in the Australian Workers Union and the National Union of Workers were reported, with one cable declaring that the leaders of the right-wing unions were “dynamic and forward thinking”.
The same cable reportedly described the declining influence of the “left” unions within the Labor Party, a conclusion that was “drawn partly through briefings from CFMEU [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union] national secretary Dave Noonan and Victorian secretary Bill Oliver”. These two figures—often hailed as great militants by the various middle class pseudo-left outfits—were described by US embassy officials as “capable leaders”.
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German media responds to WikiLeaks revelations with nostalgia for the authoritarian state
By Peter Schwarz 9 December 2010
The publication of US State Department internal documents by WikiLeaks has prompted a vociferous response in Germany. With few exceptions, officials and media commentators have echoed Washington’s witch-hunting attacks.
The vast majority of journalists and politicians have condemned WikiLeaks and defended secret diplomacy. This is true not only for right-wing and conservative circles, but also for the so-called “liberal press,” the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.
Typical is a guest contribution published December 3 in the Frankfurter Rundschau by the leader of the social democratic faction in the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. The author employs a cheap debater’s trick, equating the protection of state secrets with the defence of individual privacy.
“We must pose the question,” he writes, “what sort of a society do we want—one in which nothing remains private and confidential?” He continues: “Trust, confidentiality and even secrets are part of our private lives. In public life, too, there have to be confidential moments.”
The same argument is found in many other commentaries. It implies that keeping secret state accords that have serious, even potentially disastrous implications for millions of people is the same as the confidentiality of personal matters that concern only those directly affected.
The documents published by WikiLeaks do not deal with the personal relationships or affairs of diplomats. As the British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in an article for Der Spiegel, they give “a clear view of priorities, characters, patterns of thought.”
The documents released to date have revealed, among other things, that the United States and its allies are planning military actions against Iran, China and other countries that could easily lead to a third world war and the destruction of mankind.
Anyone repulsed by the lies with which the US justified the 2003 war against Iraq would welcome the publication of the WikiLeaks documents. Not so Schulz. He complains that WikiLeaks acts “not in the public interest” by undermining “the institutions of diplomacy.”
Schulz's article culminates with the accusation: “WikiLeaks has not understood the distinction between the interests of the public and the public interest.” He thus expresses an understanding of the state that has more to do with the authoritarian Prussian state than with a democracy or a republic.
Under the Hohenzollern monarchy, broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie—including such icons of German liberalism as Friedrich Naumann and Max Weber—defended the rule of the emperor against the democratic parliamentary system. In their eyes, the monarchy was needed to enforce the “public interest”—which included the build-up of the German Navy, the conquest of colonies and the subordination of central Europe to German rule—against the growing influence of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was on the eve of becoming the strongest party in the Reichstag (parliament).
“The monarch, with all his constitutional prerogatives, which in principle are not compatible with a parliamentary regime, offered himself as an ideal instrument to immunise the existing order against democratic currents,” writes historian Wolfgang J. Mommsen. (War der Kaiser an Allem Schuld?—Was the Emperor to Blame for Everything? Munich: 2002, p. 74)
In posing a contradiction between the public interest and the interests of the public, Schulz rejects democracy. For if all power emanated from the people, as laid down in the German constitution, there could not be such a contradiction. Even for the ancient Romans, the res publica (commonwealth, republic) was identical to the res populi (the people), as Cicero’s famous treatise De re publica explains.
Schulz expresses the fact that the state has interests other than those of the people and therefore needs secrecy. This is the essence of his attack on WikiLeaks.
“Without confidentiality—no open conversation, less information, and perhaps more wrong decisions,” he writes, speaking for many politicians and union officials who plot their deals behind closed doors and trust that they are never exposed to the public. For where would we end up if everyone could read what the chancellor promises to bank managers, what opposition politicians agree to with the government, or trade union leaders with the employers? The existing order would begin to crumble.”
Schulz is one of many expressing their ire at WikiLeaks because it has lifted the veil on state secrecy. The Green Party chairman, Cem Özdemir, said on television that by publishing secret diplomatic documents WikiLeaks had “crossed a line that does no good for our democracy as a whole.”
Political scientist Herfried Münkler wrote in Der Spiegel: “A society without secrets has lost its order.” And: “The success of the state is tied crucially to the successful monopolization of political secrecy.”
In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Nikolas Richter warned: “The betrayal of secrecy threatens the functioning of foreign policy.” In the same newspaper, Stefan Kornelius wrote: “Without confidentiality, no information… If the US president must one day take a decision about Iran’s nuclear programme and is pushed to order an air strike, we hope he has reliable advice.”
The finance daily Handelsblatt worried: “What is shaking US policy will not leave the economy untouched. If Washington’s command centre is exposed by secret despatches with seeming ease today, the same can happen tomorrow to General Electric, Siemens, Daimler or Deutsche Bank.”
When Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and exposed the American government’s lies regarding the Vietnam War, he was awarded numerous honours. The same goes for the journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who uncovered the Watergate scandal. In contrast, the equally important revelations published by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange evoke within the political and media establishment near-universal fear, hatred, slander and retaliation.
This shows two things: First, in an age of austerity programmes, bank rescue packages and international military operations, state decisions can no longer be presented openly and defended publicly. More than ever, the rich and powerful rely on secrecy to achieve their political goals.
Second, the media and political establishment have shifted so far to the right that even in liberal circles hardly anyone can be found who will defend democratic rights.
This must serve as a warning to working people. The attacks on wages, benefits and jobs, and the militarization of foreign policy, go hand in hand with attacks on democratic rights and the build-up of authoritarian structures. This can be stopped only by a counteroffensive of the working class based on an international socialist program.
Spread widely please. General Joe
General Joe and company
