The New York Times fingers whistleblower WikiLeaks

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Following exposure of military massacre in Iraq
The New York Times fingers whistleblower WikiLeaks
By David Walsh
8 April 2010

The release of video footage Monday showing cold-blooded murder
committed by US military forces on the streets of eastern Baghdad in
July 2007 has evoked widespread outrage and horror. The video has been
viewed more than 4 million times since its posting, offering a
worldwide audience a first-hand glimpse of the real character of the
US occupation of Iraq.

It has also provoked the liberal newspaper of record in the US, the
New York Times, to zero in on WikiLeaks, the web site that exposed the
crime, as a dangerous source of opposition that should, if things
worked out to the Times’ liking, be put out of business.

The chilling July 2007 video, made available to and posted on
WikiLeaks, records an attack by US helicopter gunships on a crowd of a
dozen or so men, including, as it would become known, two Reuters news
agency employees, Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh.
The two Iraqi journalists were among 10 to 15 Iraqis killed in the
massacre, which is no doubt typical of innumerable such incidents.
(See “Leaked video shows US military killing of two Iraqi journalists”)

The video footage posted by WikiLeaks reveals that—without making any
attempt to determine the identities of the individuals—the helicopter
gunners receive permission to kill everyone in the group and set about
their murderous work with enthusiasm. When a local man stops to aid
the wounded, his van is fired on, wounding two children. The
helicopter pilots gloat about the carnage.

One or two of the Iraqis in the group appear to be carrying weapons.
Civilians are permitted to own firearms in Iraq, and many do. Neither
the gunship nor any other US forces are in danger at any point.

According to reporters present nearby, the American forces were firing
on everything that moved that day. This is the nature of a colonial
war. The occupiers, confronted with a hostile population, come to view
everyone as the enemy. In the present conflict, the extraordinary
firepower available to US forces increases the likelihood of
fatalities. As many as one million Iraqis have died as the result of
the illegal US-led invasion launched in March 2003. The video in
question makes the immense death toll somewhat easier to comprehend.

The Pentagon attempted to prevent Reuters from obtaining the video of
the 2007 murders and covered them up. All the troops involved in the
killings were exonerated, and the army declared that the incident was
conducted according to its rules of engagement. Various experts have
demonstrated that this is false, even on the military’s own terms.

The New Yorker posted a piece April 5 by Raffi Khatchadourian which
points out that the operation contravened the army’s rules of
engagement on at least four grounds: proportionality; positive
identification of the targets as combatants; “command culture” (the
helicopter crew falsified the situation on the ground, exaggerating or
inventing threats, and their commander accepted their claims without
question); and the firing on the wounded.

All this may be very well, but the New York Times has other concerns.
Its article is headlined, rather ominously, “Iraq Video Brings Notice
to a Web Site.” It might be entitled, “New York Times Fingers a Web Site.”

The piece begins by identifying WikiLeaks as a web site “that posts
classified and sensitive documents.” It notes that “Somehow—it will
not say how—WikiLeaks found the necessary computer time to decrypt”
the video in question. All in all, the article suggests, this was
clearly a dubious or illegitimate undertaking.

The Times reporters note that “the site has become a thorn in the side
of authorities in the United States and abroad. With the Iraq attack
video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging closer
toward a form of investigative journalism and to advocacy.” As opposed
to the Times, of course, which practices nothing but objective journalism.

The Times is particularly concerned about other potential exposures of
the crimes of the US military, writing, “WikiLeaks claimed to have
another encrypted video, said to show an American airstrike in
Afghanistan that killed 97 civilians last year, and used the
opportunity to ask for donations.”

The article refers several times to the regrettable fact that
WikiLeaks is difficult to shut down. It notes, for example, “Where
judges and plaintiffs could once stop or delay publication with a
court order, WikiLeaks exists in a digital sphere in which information
becomes instantly available.” The Times adds: “By being everywhere,
yet in no exact place, WikiLeaks is, in effect, beyond the reach of
any institution or government that hopes to silence it.”

Once more: “WikiLeaks has grown increasingly controversial as it has
published more material. (The United States Army called it a threat to
its operations in a report last month.) Many have tried to silence the
site; in Britain, WikiLeaks has been used a number of times to evade
injunctions on publication by courts that ruled that the material
would violate the privacy of the people involved. The courts reversed
themselves when they discovered how ineffectual their rulings were.”

The Times mentions the Pentagon’s claim without a comment. In 2008 a
US army counterintelligence officer wrote a report alleging that
WikiLeaks represented a “potential … threat to the US Army.” The
report recommended efforts to “damage or destroy” the web site.

The WikiLeaks site alleges that its staff has been targeted for
surveillance and harassment by the US State Department and possibly
the CIA. In a blog post, the group’s co-founder, Julian Assange,
asserts that the US government activity “includes attempted covert
following, photographing, filming and the overt detention &
questioning of a WikiLeaks’ volunteer in Iceland.” There is no reason
to doubt these claims.

The Times, however, like much of the US media, identifies the main
threat, not in the murderous actions of the American military or the
repressive operations of the US intelligence apparatus, but in the
efforts by honest journalists to expose the crimes of imperialism.

The Christian Science Monitor, in that same spirit, headlines one of
its articles, “Video of Iraqi journalists’ killings: Is WikiLeaks a
security threat?” The article begins: “The US military has been warily
watching for several years the group that released on Monday a graphic
video showing a US helicopter apparently killing two Iraqi journalists
from Reuters in a Baghdad suburb in 2007.”

Significantly, neither the Times nor the Christian Science Monitor
questions the authenticity of the video, or seriously disputes that it
exposes an atrocity. Rather, they tacitly acknowledge, along with the
military, that the revelation of the truth about the Iraq war
represents a risk.

The liberal media in the US and liberal circles, more generally, have
accommodated themselves in recent years to the crimes of American
imperialism. A massive campaign of lies by the White House, an illegal
invasion of a foreign country, brutal treatment of prisoners of war,
CIA and military torture sites—all of this has been accepted with
barely a protest.

Incidents that would have drawn outraged comments from the Times and
other publications as recently as the Vietnam War era, along with
demands for Congressional investigations and the laying of criminal
charges, are met with a shrug of the shoulder, if not an approving
wink. One might say that elements in the liberal establishment have
acquired a taste for such operations. In any event, they now identify
fully with the US military and the CIA, and recognize those as among
the chief defenders of their wealth and privileges.

The Times’ targeting of WikiLeaks also expresses a persistent theme in
the establishment media about the danger represented by the Internet
and alternative news outlets.

Times executive editor Bill Keller, in an October 2006 speech in Ann
Arbor, Michigan, warned about the weakening of the “establishment
press” in the face of growing competition from new sources of news and
opinion on the Internet. (See “New York Times editor touts role of
establishment press in ‘war on terror’”)

He might have been predicting his paper’s present anxiety about the
WikiLeaks revelations, when he noted that “Legions of Internet
journalists include at least a few who would feel no compunction about
disclosing life-threatening information.” Keller noted with approval
that “we have not yet fallen into information anarchy” and praised
news outlets such as his own “that still take their responsibilities
seriously,” i.e., that control and vet the flow of information to the
public.

Along similar lines, in an interview several years before his
retirement in 2004, former NBC news anchorman Tom Brokaw asserted that
cyberspace should be managed for younger audiences, in particular.
(See “Exit NBC anchor Tom Brokaw: a nonentity in the service of wealth
and power”)

“We can’t let that generation and a whole segment of the population
just slide away out to the Internet and retrieve what information it
wants without being in on it,” Brokaw declared. “I also believe
strongly that the Internet works best when there are gatekeepers. When
there are people making determinations and judgments about what
information is relevant and factual and useful. Otherwise, it’s like
going to the rainforest and just seeing a green maze.”

The entire US establishment is currently considering the means by
which it might suppress oppositional voices on the Internet, which do
indeed represent a “threat” to the present social order.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/wiki-a08.shtml

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********