Freedom? Freedom of Press?? Julian Assange on sums up the wikileaks effect

Cannot seem to connect to the Wikileaks site for the original Julian Assange article . Connecting to the story anyway. Technology zindabad !

What Manning Clark is being tortured and prosecuted for is the exposure of U S War Crimes. Crimes that are continuing even today. And that is not surprising , American media has largely ignored the Manning case and even the opening of his trail, It is  a shock, even then, that the only Manning most Americans know is a football star.

Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for 921 days. This is the longest pre-trial detention of a U.S. military soldier since at least the Vietnam War. U.S. military law says the maximum is 120 days.

The material that Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked has highlighted astonishing examples of U.S. subversion of the democratic process around the world, systematic evasion of accountability for atrocities and killings, and many other abuses. Our archive of State Department cables have appeared in tens of thousands of articles, books and scholarly works, illustrating the nature of U.S. foreign policy and the instruments of U.S. national power. On the two-year anniversary of the start of Cablegate, I want to highlight some of the stories that have emerged.

A War of Terror

The United States' War on Terror has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, inflamed sectarian violence, and made a mockery of international law. Victims and their families struggle to have their stories acknowledged, and the U.S.' systematic avoidance of accountability for war crimes implicitly denies their right to be considered human beings. Moreover, as the U.S. increasingly relies on clandestine military operations conducted outside the scrutiny of government oversight, the execution of this expanding War on Terror becomes increasingly uncoupled from the democratic process. While President Obama had promised the American people in 2008 that he would end the Iraq War, U.S. troops were only withdrawn when information from a cable revived international scrutiny of abuse occurring in Iraq, resulting in a refusal to grant continued immunity to U.S. troops in 2012 or beyond.

Lobbying for Unaccountability -- Manipulation of Judicial Process in Other Countries

Abuse that occurs in war, as it did in Iraq, is often dismissed by its perpetrators as exceptional, and we are often assured that when abuse has occurred, the accountability mechanisms in place will bring justice. The diplomatic cables have given us numerous concrete examples of the coercion used by the U.S. to manipulate and undermine judicial processes in other countries, and they establish a clear policy for the evasion of accountability in any form.

During the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, two journalists -- including the Spanish journalist José Couso -- were killed and three others were wounded when a U.S. tank fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. An investigation into the event was subsequently launched in Spain, and an international arrest warrant was issued for three U.S. soldiers involved. Cables showed that the U.S. aggressively fought to have Spanish officials drop the case. Writing about the case in one cable, U.S. Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre emphasizes: "While we are careful to show our respect for the tragic death of Couso and for the independence of the Spanish judicial system, behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear." Shamefully, this quote was redacted in the original reporting on the subject from El Pais andLe Monde.

Secret Agreements -- Circumvention of the Democratic Process

The State Department cables revealed that the United States and its allies systematically make secret arrangements with various governments, hiding details not only from the country's public, but sometimes even from the country's representatives, ministers and oversight bodies.

In 2009, Jeremy Scahill and Seymour Hersh broke a story in The Nation on secret U.S. special operations forces combat missions and drone strikes in Pakistan. When questioned about the story, Department of Defense spokesperson Geoff Morrell dismissed the claims as "conspiratorial theories." Only one year later, cables released by WikiLeaks confirmed their story. In addition, cables quoted Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani telling U.S. officials: "I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people -- we'll protest about it in the National Assembly and then ignore it." 

Breaking the Monopoly on Influence

The examples I present above represent only a small fraction of what has been revealed by WikiLeaks material. Since 2010, Western governments have tried to portray WikiLeaks as aterrorist organization, enabling a disproportionate response from both political figures and private institutions. It is the case that WikiLeaks' publications can and have changed the world, but that change has clearly been for the better. Two years on, no claim of individual harm has been presented, and the examples above clearly show precisely who has blood on their hands.

In large Western democracies, the political discourse has been so highly controlled for so long, that it is no longer shocking when Western experts fill in to speak for third world victims, or when an American president stands up at a podium to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, and makes the case for war. It is, in fact, no longer safe to presume that a media outlet such asThe New York Times would perform the same act today as they did in 1971 when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/30-5