Although an unlikely emergence in my lifetime but I believe there will be a time when global citizens will recognise Democracy as a sordid and unjust system of government in the same way we regard Fascism and Communism.
Democratic governments and major corporations engage in the exploitation of numerous nations in a determination to control the lives and the resources of the people of those kingdoms. Numerous individuals and organisations work tirelessly within democracy to stop the violence of war, corruption and manipulation of public opinion to no avail.
I cannot see any point in trying to defend Democracy any more or tinker with the systems of current voting when Democracy, itself, is rotten down to the core, right through the very body of Democracy, right through its DNA, if you will.
Documents and emails made available through WikiLeaks confirm to the world what some of us have known already: the USA is a rogue state. A privileged elite has long since hijacked Democracy. It does not matter who you vote for because our elected officials show neither wisdom nor compassion but a ruthless intent to hold onto self-interest regardless.
I regard Democracy as beyond hope, beyond salvation, with its meaningless gestures for citizens to place a tick in the voting booths every few years or express a few words of dissent on foreign and domestic policy.
Through literally hundreds of thousands of US documents, the recent WikiLeaks revelations confirm that Democracy serves the interest of the few at the expense of the many around the world. Around the world, the poor slave away in factories and farms on pathetic hourly rates and in miserable working conditions to support the middle classes desire to pay the minimal for necessities to ensure disposable income for meaningless forms of self gratification..
WikiLeaks reveal repeatedly the blind and arrogant determination of the USA, and its submissive allies, to control the global political and economic agenda, by any possible means. It is the living proof of the pathology of Democracy where any changes in our government and any election of a new party make not a scrap of difference to the brutal foreign policies of our governments.
In late November, WikiLeaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain.
WikiLeaks also released an archived copy of all its 20,000 files and 391,832 reports as told by soldiers’ first hand experience in Iraq, The Iraq War Logs document the war and occupation in Iraq from 1st January 2004 to the beginning of 2010 plus making available another 77,000 US documents on the war on Afghanistan.
For the last few days, I have been trawling through the Internet, day and night, reading extracts and reports from Wikileaks and the world’s media that reveal in detail the extent of the killing fields and subversive operations of the USA. Incidentally, I found the reports on the Wikileaks documents in the New York Times, which received full access to the revelations of WikiLeaks, as timid and bland. According to the introductory paragraph of the major article NYT article on the WikiLeaks expose, American Embassies engage in “back room bargaining.” Is supporting a coup back room bargaining?
Take one example. A State Department memo makes it clear that the Obama administration knew that the Honduran military acted illegally when it removed the (mildly) left-leaning Honduran President Mel Zelaya and was not a kind of impeachment as Law Library of Congress Report stated. Mr. Zeya wanted to increase the hourly rates of workers in the sweat factories of American corporations in Honduras. That could have led to other countries in Central and South America demanding the same rights for their citizens employed in similar factories. The US government has continued its close ties with the Honduran military and its still business as usual.
The largest ever leak of US classified documents gave the world endless insights into what the US, other democracies and numerous leaders really think, say and do behind the scenes. Unresolved control issues, fear, prejudices, wanton greed, hate and blame, crude generalisations and negative stereotypes dominate the Embassy cables to and from Washington. American Embassies engage in countless scathing attacks on people and nations while hiding behind the hypocrisy of diplomacy. The same embassies feed local journalists with deliberate misinformation about people and events. American embassies worldwide engage in a dirty war against dissidents opposing US foreign policy.
Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan
The leaks include 400,000 American military documents detailing policies of routine torture, summary executions and war crimes. As Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States takes ultimate responsibility for the bombings, willful destruction and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani men, women and children. No wonder the Arab world has renamed Nobel Peace Prize winner, US President Barack Obama as Barack Obomber.
The US President ordered a surge of 30,000 US troops to support more killing operations in Afghanistan, sanctioned the a major increase of use of drones to bomb villages and homes of Al Qaeda suspects in northern Pakistan, a sovereign nation, and permits US assassination squads to operate in Iraq, Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and elsewhere. Leaked memos reveal that the USA employs the deadly unmanned Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban suspects in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan by remote control from an army base in Nevada.
Special US units in Afghanistan also hunt for Taliban members (the word Taliban means Students in Arabic) to assassinate or torture for information while countless numbers of citizens have been killed, maimed and left to die after to raids on towns and villages. The US military virtually raised Fallujah, the pilgrimage city for Muslims in Iraq, to the ground bringing terrible suffering upon its citizens and pilgrims.
Records from WikiLeaks show hundreds of “incidents” such as troops firing at a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and French troops strafed a bus in 2007 while Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.
In the leaks, the British Prime Minister, Mr Cameron told the White House, before the British general election, that the US could be tougher on Pakistan as his party was less reliant on votes from people with Pakistani connections than Labour. In other words, the British Government will ignore the suffering the US inflicts on the people of Pakistan.
British and US government collude to ensure the continuity of cluster bombs. The two governments secretly allow the US to keep cluster bombs in Britain even though the UK signed a treaty, along with 118 other nations, banning the use of such bombs. Scientists designed cluster bombs to kill as many people in a town or village, indoors or outdoors, as possible, as well as make areas uninhabitable. The Israeli army employed these bombs, provided by the US military, when it invaded southern Lebanon. Each cluster bomb contains around 2000 bomblets. More than 4 million bomblets exploded or remained unexploded and still lethal in the 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon making whole areas uninhabitable.
Abuse of Power
Despite being a failed state, USA has become a self-appointed power to engage in global war upon perceived threats to its strategic ambitions. This picture is unmistakable from the files. The US government has military bases, industrial bases, chemical plants and CIA operatives in countless countries to ensure its domination. US embassies and US multi nationals around the world seek to ensure governments of various nation states comply with US demands or else the USA will undermine or plot to sabotage governments who resist.
For example, WikiLeaks reveals that the US government used its economic power, threats and bribes against 100 – 150 countries to destroy the opportunity for agreement of the UN Climate Change Summit in December, 2009, leaving a watered down and impotent accord. Dozen of cables show that tiny nations immediately acceded to US demands or faced the collapse of their fragile economies through American control over globalisation. American domination and materialistic way of life matters more than the fate of the planet. Other democracies cower under American bullying tactics. Not even Communism, nor Fascism ever had such destructive power over the world’s seven billion people as Democracy
Readers may say this is the reality of politics and war. Well, we know that. With a blind and obsessive determination, our countries endeavour to impose on other nations, whether they want our Democracy or not, three essential demands. They are a
- two or three party state,
- privatisation of all resources
- conversion of citizens into consumers.
This is the core objective of Democracy.
WikiLeaks also revealed that Washington runs a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, demanded forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial use. These are criminal acts. This is the endorsement of spying and espionage. There is no accountability for those in power in Democracy.
There are revelations as well about the US corporate world. Just take two examples, Shell and Pfizer, in Nigeria, of many examples of the dirty war of corporations. Shell, the giant oil company, infiltrated every Nigerian ministry affecting its operations there. Pfizer, the US pharmaceutical company, used 194 poor children in 1996 for a drug trial that went wrong. Leaked cables show the company ran a dirty tricks campaign to try to scuttle the Nigerian government’s lawsuit against Pfizer. Europe has banned the use of the drug on children.
Terrified of real freedom of information, the Senate Homeland Security Committee pressured Amazon to shutdown the WikiLeaks website while simultaneously VISA and Paypal stopped WikilLeaks from making financial transactions or receiving donations, via those American companies. With the full support of other Democratic governments, the US and British government have stifled the voice of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Julian Asange.
Complying with obvious US demands, the British government has refused bail to Julian Asange over a possible court case involving contact and condoms with two Swedish women. Asange is now behind bars. This is where the US government wants him as US prosecutors prepare to charge Julian Asange with spying, even though WikilLeaks has not committed any crime but only released information. Meanwhile Democracy and capitalism continues to put the lives of the world’s citizens at risk.
There are already stories on Internet that Julian Asange, an Australian journalist, will be nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize following in the steps of Liu Xiaobo, 2010 Nobel Prize winner, who has already spent several years languishing in a Chinese jail with another 10 years to serve for “subverting state power.” Wait a minute. The US government would never permit the Norwegian Committee to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Julian Asange.
A Change at the Deepest Level
Fascism is finished. Communism is finished. Democracy is not fit for purpose. It consumes and destroys. The global community has to develop fresh ways of communication free from the tyranny of Democracy, the nation state, capitalism and corporate power. I believe we need visionaries, communities of wise elders, networks totally committed to conflict resolution and a significant shift in consciousness from obsession with power, status and materialism.
We need women and men who have explored the depths of their inner life, know the significance of ethics, mindfulness and meditation, and remain dedicated to wisdom and compassion. Such women and men offer their services to others out of love rather than the pursuit of power, a place in history and entrapment in views of ” us and them.” Our adversarial system of Democracy shapes the minds of the present incumbants in high office making the democratic system and the mind set inseparable.
Wikileaks confirms that the vast majority of present incumbents in politics have let us down, let themselves down and revealed the poverty of Democracy. Their is little point in attacking powerful politicians as they are the final products of the institution of Democracy.
Our political system has failed us. Our political masters have failed the poor and failed to act as guardians of the Earth for future generations. Those who climb the political ladder compromise step by step until all integrity has evaporated or become virtually invisible.
Hence we are left with the grubby views of powerful politicians competing with other powerful politicians who hold equally grubby views. We need change at the very deepest level of our being and at the very deepest level of our major institution.
When are we going to wake up?
PS. The current URL for WikiLeaks is: http://213.251.145.96/
and some of the mirror sites include: http://www.fuckip.de/,
http://Wikileaks.tard.is/mirrors.html, http://freeus.jsdev.org/, http://Wikileaks.huissoud.ch/ .
These websites may soon disappear if the USA and Europe Union
declare WikiLeaks illegal and a threat to national governments.