Coleen Rowley & Robert Parry

Almost four decades after Defense Department insider Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers – thus exposing the lies that led the United States into the Vietnam War – another courageous “national security leaker” has stepped forward and now is facing retaliation similar to what the U.S. government tried to inflict on Ellsberg.

Army Intelligence Specialist Bradley Manning is alleged to have turned over a large volume of classified material about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to Wikileaks.org, including the recently posted U.S. military video showing American helicopters gunning down two Reuters journalists and about 10 other Iraqi men in 2007. Two children were also injured.

The 22-year-old Manning was turned in by a convicted computer hacker named Adrian Lamo, who befriended Manning over the Internet and then betrayed him, supposedly out of concern that disclosure of the classified material might put U.S. military personnel in danger. Manning is now in U.S. military custody in Kuwait awaiting charges.

Though there are historic parallels between the actions of Manning today and those of Ellsberg in 1971, a major difference is the attitude of the mainstream U.S. news media, which then fought to publish Ellsberg’s secret history but now is behaving more like what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the “fawning corporate media” or FCM.

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Stephen Lendman

The Flotilla attack was a well-planned act of premeditated murder in international waters, the Netanyahu government (on June 14) announcing an inquiry commission this writer discussed in a same-day article, accessed through the following link.

It explained the planned whitewash of a grievous crime against humanity, one Israel mustn't be allowed to get away with despite it being minor by comparison with far greater ones, Cast Lead most prominent recently.

The internal commission is illegitimate, even with international observers (chosen for supporting Israel), nonetheless endorsed by the White House, its paymaster/partner in crime, colluding in the coverup.

Called an Independent Public Commission, Netanyahu said it will demonstrate clearly "to the entire world that the state of Israel acts according to law, transparently and with full responsibility."

In his released statement, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs endorsed the announcement as an "important step forward," saying "the structure and terms of reference of Israel's proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation."

The administration was silent after the May 31 massacre, only saying it regretted the loss of life, its usual boilerplate cover for Israeli belligerence, partnered with our own globally.

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David Lindorff

Kevin Neish, a Canadian activist aboard the
Mavi Marmara, witnessed the Israeli assault
on the Flotilla bound for Gaza.

Kevin Neish of Victoria, British Columbia, didn’t know he was a celebrity until he was about to board a flight from Istanbul to Ottawa. "This Arab woman wearing a beautiful outfit suddenly ran up to me crying, 'It’s you! From Arab TV! You’re famous!’" he recalls with a laugh. "I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she told me, 'I saw you flipping through the Israeli commando’s book! It’s being aired over and over!’"

A soft-spoken teacher and former civilian engineer with the Canadian Department of Defense, Neish realized then that a video taken by an Arab TV cameraman in the midst of the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza of him flipping through a booklet had been transmitted before the Israelis blocked all electronic signals from the flotilla. The booklet had pictures and profiles of all the passengers, and he'd found it in the backpack of an Israeli Defense Force commando.

Neish, 53, was on the second deck of the flotilla’s lead ship, the Turkish Mavi Marmara, with a good view of the stern, when the IDF, in the early morning darkness of May 31, began its assault with percussion grenades, tear gas and a hail of bullets. He then moved to the fourth deck in an enclosed stairwell, from which he watched and took photographs as casualties were carried down past him to a makeshift medical station. Several IDF commandos, captured by the passengers and crew, were also brought past him.

"I saw them carrying this one IDF guy down," he recalls. "He looked terrified, like he thought he was going to be killed. But when a big Turkish guy, who had seen seriously injured passengers who had been shot by the IDF, charged over and tried to hit the commando, the Turkish aid workers pushed him off and pinned him to the wall. They protected this Israeli soldier."

That was when he found the backpack which the soldier had dropped. "I figured I’d look inside and see what he was carrying," Neish says. "And inside was this kind of flip-book. It was full of photos and names in English and Hebrew of who was on all the ships. The booklet also had a detailed diagram of the decks of the Mavi Marmara."

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Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

Welcome to Wal-Mart! Just a reminder: this is what our ease and comfort are based on -- someone doing work like this:

From the Guardian: A worker prepares a cotton gin in Mumbai.
India is the second largest exporter of the fibre after China, the
recipient of around 60% of India’s cotton exports.

A Worker Writes

Roy Mayall spotlights the ever-growing inequalities in our best of all possible worlds -- disparities that will only grow vastly greater as the world's elites stoke bogus deficit panics to "justify" their shredding of the last remaining tiny mitigations against their brute power. From the London Review of Books:

Adam Crozier, the retiring chief executive [of Royal Mail], received more than £2.4m in the year 2009-10. With bonuses and pensions that figure rises to £3.5 million. ... I earn £8.98 an hour. I work a 20-hour week. I’d like to work more but there are no full-time jobs available. My basic pay is £177.28 a week, before deductions. That’s about £9200 a year. That means that I would have to work for nearly 380 years to earn as much as Adam Crozier earned last year.

Fair enough. Adam Crozier obviously has 380 times my needs. He must have a house that is 380 times the size of mine. He is 380 times taller. Maybe he has 380 stomachs to fill. Perhaps his dick is 380 times bigger than mine and he needs 380 partners to service it. He must have 380 times the intellectual capacity as his brain is clearly 380 times more developed than mine. His value to the world is 380 times greater.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that our elites really do think like this. They really believe their value to the world is immeasurably greater than any memeber of the common rabble -- or indeed, the common rabble as a whole. (And this case only deals with an executive in the UK; the disparities in the United States are much greater.) That's why they find it so very easy to kill vast numbers of people and grind others into the dirt. The rabble is just a herd, whose individual lives have no value, except as they can be exploited by those who really matter.

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