By Juventud Rebelde.
digital@juventudrebelde.cu
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Since its founding in 2006, the WikiLeaks organization has contributed to revealing some of the darkest activities carried out from the highest levels of political power in various countries.
Through the anonymous leaking of hundreds of thousands of documents, this international network of cyberactivists, founded by Julian Assange – arrested this Thursday in London – has revealed military, political and diplomatic secrets, generating notable scandals and denouncing unethical or unorthodox behavior within different power organizations.
Espionage, war crimes, political or diplomatic pressure, abuses of power or government malpractices have come to light thanks to the work of WikiLeaks.
We review the most important leaks carried out by this organization, some of which have completely changed the perception of several events in the recent history of the world
1 U.S. Army Manual for Guantánamo Bay Prison
In December 2007, WikiLeaks published a U.S. Army manual for soldiers guarding prisoners at the Guantánamo detention center.
The text sets out the “standard operating procedures” that apply to prisoners, including measures such as the use of dogs for intimidating purposes or restricting access to the compound to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The increase in mental health problems or the number of suicides among prisoners is also reflected in the document.
2 Air raid on civilians in Baghdad
On April 5, 2010, Assange’s organization filtered a shocking video showing a group of civilians being attacked with powerful firearms from a U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopter on July 12, 2007.
Soldiers aboard the aircraft, whose often jovial conversations are heard in the leaked recording, fired on a group of Iraqis, killing 12 of them, including two Reuters news agency collaborators: Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh.
3 The “Afghanistan war diary”
It was the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. military history to date, and is a true milestone in WikiLeaks’ reporting: On July 25, 2010, the organization headed by Assange published 90,000 pages, divided into more than 100 categories, containing various incidents and reports of the war in Afghanistan.
The documents revealed, for example, that the US concealed the brutal massacres committed by the Taliban (resulting in some 2,000 civilian casualties), or the cases of 195 unarmed people killed by coalition forces as a result of gunfire motivated by the fear that they were suicide bombers. The search for Osama Bin Laden is also extensively documented in these reports.
Wikileaks simultaneously sent this information to the New York Times, the British Guardian and Der Spiegel in Germany.
4 The records of the war in Iraq
Wikileaks surpasses its feat just three months later: on October 22, 2010, it leaked almost 400,000 documents about the war in Iraq, the content of which horrifies the world.
This massive leak includes a count of victims, prepared by the U.S. Army itself, which puts the death toll in Iraq at 109,032, and acknowledges that 60% of them are civilians. The documents also reveal several cases of US soldiers killing civilians at checkpoints.
Another scandalous aspect uncovered in this impressive consignment of documents is the finding that the US tolerated abuse, torture, rape and summary executions of civilians committed by allied Iraqi forces, which they supervised and trained.
5 The ‘cablegate’: documents of American diplomacy
On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks once again shocked the world with the leakage of more than 250,000 messages from the U.S. State Department, revealing unpublished episodes from various trouble spots around the world, as well as highly relevant data that reveal a very considerable part of U.S. foreign policy, as well as its obsessions, its mechanisms and many of its sources.
This is one of the most profoundly important revelations carried out by WikiLeaks, insofar as it contributes to citizens’ understanding of the real way in which the US develops the dark side of its international relations.
These documents contain comments and reports prepared by different U.S. diplomacy officials, sometimes written in an especially frank language and referring to personalities from all over the world. They also reveal the contents of interviews and meetings at the highest level, and even uncover unknown activities directly related to espionage.
In some cases, the very nature of the expressions used in these messages truly endangered U.S. relations with some of its allies; at other times, they made some U.S. foreign policy strategies difficult, such as rapprochement with Russia or with certain Arab countries.
The documentation was sent from the WikiLeaks server to the newspapers El País (Spain), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Guardian (United Kingdom) and The New York Times (USA).
6 The Guantanamo Bay archives.
On 25 April 2011, WikiLeaks leaked nearly 800 secret Pentagon documents revealing that the US government used the Guantánamo detention center illegally to obtain information from its inmates, many of whom had no links to terrorism.
There were 4,759 pages dated between 2002 and 2009, signed by the highest commanders of the base’s Joint Task Force and addressed to the Department of Defense Southern Command in Miami. These included classified dossiers, interviews and internal memoirs, reflecting, for example, the fragile mental state of some detainees, such as a 14-year-old boy or an 89-year-old man.
The United States even admitted in those reports that 83 of the 779 inmates posed no risk to the security of the nation, and 77 others acknowledged that it is “unlikely” that they were a threat to the country or its allies. The U.S. Army itself estimated that approximately 20 percent of the prisoners had been arbitrarily taken to prison.
7 Detention policies at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib
On October 24, 2012, WikiLeaks reveals abundant documentation – more than 100 reports – detailing the procedures used by U.S. military authorities with detainees in their custody in Abu Ghraib prisons (Iraq), and again in Guantánamo Bay (Cuba).
On the day this leak became effective, the United States was in the final stretch of the electoral campaign, with a view to the elections scheduled for November 6 of the same year, in which Barack Obama would be re-elected.
Assange, already imprisoned at the Ecuadorian embassy at the time, declared that these documents “show the anatomy of the detention monster created after September 11, the creation of a dark space in which law and rights do not exist, where people can be detained without a trace, at the will of the U.S. Department of Defense.
8 Espionage in Europe
In June 2015, Wikileaks publishes five reports from the US National Security Agency (NSA), based on intercepted communications from French ex-presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as then-President Francois Hollande.
The cyberactivists asserted that “the US has implemented a policy of economic espionage against France for a decade”, through mechanisms such as the “interception of all French corporate contracts and negotiations valued at more than 200 million dollars”.
Among the communications spied on by the US agency were discussions on the debt crisis in Greece (including the possibility of the Hellenic country leaving the European Union) or talks on the leadership of the Eurozone, as well as on the relations between Hollande’s government and that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
9 Espionage against Netanyahu, Berlusconi and Ban Ki-moon
Barely 7 months later, in February 2016, Wikileaks revealed new documents that revealed more espionage actions carried out by the NSA against world leaders. In this case, the spies were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The U.S. agency conducted secret wiretaps at a meeting between Ban Ki-moon and Angela Merkel, which also appears in these reports. The documents also include a conversation between Netanyahu and Berlusconi and a private meeting between Berlusconi, Merkel and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The NSA reports faithfully reproduce the content of these exchanges. Merkel and Ban talk about the fight against climate change; Netanyahu asks Berlusconi for help in dealing with the administration of US President Barack Obama; and Sarkozy warns the former Italian prime minister about the seriousness of the dangers facing his country’s banking system.
10 Hillary Clinton’s email
On March 16, 2016, she published a file with more than 30,000 e-mails received and sent by Hillary Clinton from her private server while serving as secretary of state. The documents cover the period from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014.
Among these leaks are 27,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee (CND), which uncovered issues as diverse and relevant as the maneuvers of various Party members or the supply of weapons for radicals in Syria, among many others.
The cyberactivists also made public some 50,000 emails from John Podesta, the head of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, which uncovered a large amount of confidential information from the top of the Democratic Party, including campaign strategies, complete transcripts of speeches and some internal party disputes.
Published in Russia Today: April 11, 2019
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Special for the newspaper POR ESTO! of Mérida, Mexico.
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann. Julian Assange was arrested in England on Thursday, April 11, and is feared to be extradited to the United States to face charges for his actions during the Obama administration.
According to an editorial in the Washington Post in 2011, such a conviction “would also cause collateral damage to the liberties of the U.S. media so Washington should not attempt to do so with Julian Assange.
The Post’s editorial of years ago is still relevant, given that Assange would be tried for a “crime” which took place almost a decade ago. What has changed since then is the public perception of Assange and, in a supreme irony, that of Donald Trump. At one point in Trump’s demagoguery, he proclaimed himself a fanatic twitter lover of WikiLeaks,. Now he has now been left as the ultimate beneficiary of public support for initiating a process that the Obama administration hesitated to push when he was President.
The current accusation is the extension of a years-long effort, begun prior to Trump, to build a legal argument against those who release secrets the government finds embarassing.
But much of the U.S. citizenry now sees the arrested founder of WikiLeaks through the lens of the 2016 elections, having been denounced as a Russian ally in favor of Trump’s election.
Barack Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, said as early as 2010 the founder of WikiLeaks was the center of an “active and ongoing criminal investigation. At the time, Assange had won, or was about to win, several journalism awards for publishing shameful classified information about many governments, including the video “Collateral Murder” delivered by Chelsea Manning showing a helicopter attack in Iraq that killed two English reporters.
The prosecution is known to say that “it is part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took steps to hide Manning as the source of the revelation,” while the defense will argue that reporters have extremely complicated relationships with sources, especially with whistleblowers like Manning, who are often under extreme stress and emotionally vulnerable.
The indictment now filed against Assange is just a technicality: an indictment for a (seemingly unsuccessful) attempt to help Chelsea Manning crack a government password. Assange’s lawyer, Barry Pollock, said the charges “boil down to encouraging a source to provide information and taking steps to protect the identity of that source.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated: “Any U.S. prosecution of Assange for WikiLeaks publishing operations would be unprecedented, unconstitutional, and open the door to criminal investigations by other news organizations.
Assange’s case, and the very serious problems it poses, will be affected by things that happened long after the alleged crimes like Assange’s role in the 2016 election.
Not only did this case have nothing to do with Russiagate, but in one of the strangest unreported details of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, he never interviewed or attempted to interview Assange. In fact, it appears that none of the 2,800 citations, 500 witness interviews and 500 search warrants in Mueller’s investigation pointed to Assange or WikiLeaks.
As for Assange’s case, coverage by a national press corps that welcomed him at the time of these crimes – and that repeated his leaks widely – will likely focus on the issue of hacking, as if it weren’t really about reducing legitimate journalism.
“The weakness of the U.S. indictment against Assange is shocking,” Edward Snowden said on Twitter. “The accusation that he tried to help crack a password during his world-famous report has been public for nearly a decade: he is the count that Obama’s Justice Department refused to accuse, saying it endangered journalism.
In fact, it would be difficult to find a more extreme example of how deep the bipartisan consensus is to expand surveillance of leaks.
Both happened, however, and we should stop being surprised by them, even as Donald Trump takes the final step of this journey begun by Barack Obama.
April 15, 2019.
By: Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Ph.D in Philosophy and Literature, writer and Cuban politician. He was Ambassador to the UN and Cuban Foreign Minister. Presided over the National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba (Parliament) for 20 years.
April 13, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
The Trap
Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. State Department has issued several announcements about the partial suspension of the application of some aspects of a chapter of the so-called Helms-Burton Act. It has done so in the deceitful, fraudulent style characteristic of the current rulers. Its clear intention is to create uncertainty and confusion, a purpose for which they have, as usual, the means that are supposed to be used for informing the public.
Above all, it must be said rigorously said that this is a secondary aspect of the Helms-Burton Law, a pseudo-juridical contraption that grossly violates International Law, whose illegality and aggressiveness does not change a bit whether or not the so-vaunted suspension is applied. It is a question of opening or not, now, the possibility of presenting lawsuits before North American courts for acts carried out outside their jurisdiction, in this case in the territory of the Republic of Cuba. Since such litigation could affect foreign companies with investments in the Island, the matter provoked rejection by other countries. It also led the European Union to present a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization in 1996. The matter was then sealed when Washington undertook to suspend the action before its courts, which Clinton, W. Bush, Obama, and even Trump, have consistently done every six months.
This was an exercise repeated for more than twenty years until, on January 16, [2019] it was announced that this time the suspension would be for only 45 days. When the deadline expired in March, they made it known that they would extend it for another 30 days, adding that, as of the 19th of that month, they would allow the filing of lawsuits before their courts against some 200 Cuban companies arbitrarily included in a list drawn up by Washington. Again, in April, they extended the deadline by two weeks, until May 1st, maintaining the exception against Cuban entities.
Already in 1996, Fidel Castro had anticipated that the suspension clause was a “hoax”. Since last January, twenty-three years later, Mr. Pompeo appears, in a doubtful pose, “shedding the daisy”, mocking everyone, especially his European allies, turning the commitment made to them into wet paper.
This game serves, above all, to divert attention from what is fundamental, to what is barely spoken of, and to what I would like to refer to, trusting in the benevolence of the readers of Por Esto!
The Helms-Burton Act has four Chapters or Titles. The first turns into Law, all the measures, which until then were executive decisions, that shape the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba, widens it, and tries to extend it all over the planet. The infamous policy, thus codified, could only be eliminated by a decision of both Houses of the U.S. Congress.
The Second describes, with a certain level of detail, what would happen with the hypothetical defeat of the Cuban Revolution as a consequence of the economic war. There would then be what they call a “transition period” during which all the institutions of Cuban society would be dismantled and the country would be under total U.S. domination. So that no one can doubt it, the process would be led by a U.S. official appointed by the President of the United States, whom the law discreetly calls Cuba Transition Coordinator. This true proconsul was actually appointed by W. Bush, although he never fulfilled his mandate on the island. He had to devote himself to promoting, outside Cuba, the Transition Plan that Bush, in compliance with the law, presented to Congress in 2004 and in an expanded version in 2006 and that no one has repealed.
Throughout Title II, there is a redundant insistence on the concept that for the elimination of the blockade and future relations with a supposed post-revolutionary Cuba, an indispensable condition will be the return of their properties to those who lost them on January 1, 1959 (to this subject I will have to return later).
So far, with Title I and Title II, Helms-Burton is a text that tramples on International Law from beginning to end. Its extra-territorial character is more than obvious since the Cuban archipelago is not part of the territory under Washington’s jurisdiction.
In addition to the above, Helms-Burton added a Title III that establishes the possibility of bringing legal actions before U.S. courts against companies or individuals who use, in any way, properties claimed by those who allegedly owned or inherited them. This Title includes an article that allows the US President to suspend the commencement of such actions for half-yearly periods, to which I devoted the initial part of this essay.
Finally, Title IV, which has already been applied on several occasions, denies visas to enter the United States to businesspeople and their families who use properties that are the subject of a lawsuit.
The Helms-Burton Act reminds us of the warning Carlos Manuel de Céspedes gave us very early on. The Father of the Cuban Homeland, in 1870, discovered that the “secret” of U.S. policy was to “seize Cuba.” Thanks to Helms and Burton, the designs of the Empire appear in the light of day. That they can make them a reality is, of course, something quite different. From Céspedes to Fidel, Cubans have shown that they will fight to the end and that they will never be anyone’s slaves again.
Special for Mexican daily Por Esto! Taken from Cubadebate.
By Thalia Fuentes Puebla, Student of Journalism of the Department of Communication of the University of Havana. On Twitter: @ThalyFuentes and Ismael Francisco
April 7, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
If we mention stories that touch the heart, we cannot forget Rinti, a dog that after his owner died, threw herself at the feet of her protector’s grave until she died, after refusing the food and water offered by the cemetery keepers.
This love was mutual, just a page from Jeannette Ryder’s work in defense of animals. Precisely under her motto: “We speak for those who cannot speak”, hundreds of people arrived this Sunday at her tomb in the Columbus Cemetery to make people aware of the importance of fighting animal abuse.
“Violence is one, it doesn’t matter against what,” quoted one of the many slogans that demanded sensitivity to protect animals. These were attached to orange ribbons, pets of different breeds and sizes along with their owners and posters and T-shirts with inscriptions such as: “Protection for our animals” and “Animal abuse is a crime.”
The animalists pledged to continue to promote pet adoptions, mass sterilizations and deworming. Waiting for a law, they must act in the order of conscience and appeal to civic, individual and social culture.
Jeannette Ryder was an American philanthropist who lived in Cuba at the beginning of the 20th century. She founded the humanitarian organization Sociedad Protectora de Niños, Animales y Plantas, also known as el Bando de Piedad.
She was buried in the Colón cemetery in Havana. Her pantheon is known as the tomb of loyalty. A commemorative sculpture depicts Rinti resting at the foot of the tomb.
By Enrique Ortega Salinas
March 31, 2019
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
In December I saw people looking for food in the garbage… but it wasn’t Venezuela, it was the United States, not Caracas, but Los Angeles.
It’s clear that Venezuela is having a hard time. The question is why do the international networks and the channels of my country only report these cases in the Caribbean country and do not say a single letter when it happens in the lands of Uncle Sam.
I know of a country that imprisons children with officials who sexually abuse them because they are immigrants; but it is not Venezuela, it is the United States.
When millions of Colombians were fleeing the internal war and the criminal regime of Álvaro Uribe, both Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador received them fraternally. In the reign of Donald Trump, in late February a complaint against his policy of separating immigrants from their children exposed the sexual abuse to which minors were subjected in captivity. Democrat Congressman Ted Deuch said 154 officials are accused of assaulting children in detention centers in the border area, where two children have already died. 4556 complaints from the Refugee Bureau supported his words.
I know of a country where the popular will is mocked and whoever gets to the presidency is not the most voted in the polls; but it is not Venezuela, it is the United States. Hillary Clinton got 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump; but the incomprehensible American electoral system prevented her from occupying the White House. As former President Jimmy Carter put it, “The best electoral system in the world is that of Venezuela; the worst is that of the United States.
I also know of a country where one of its provinces has legalized work for 10-year-old children; but it is not Venezuela, the country is Argentina and the province of Jujuy.
I know of a country where there are thousands of opposition journalists persecuted, fired and harassed; but it is not Venezuela, but Argentina. The case of Uruguayan Víctor Hugo Morales, to whom the judges dependent on the Clarín Group and the macrismo fabricate causes left and right, is emblematic, but not unique. Among the most recent cases are those of the El Destape mobilist Lucas Martínez, beaten by the City Police, and the photographer of Página 12, Bernardino Ávila, who after portraying a woman taking a vegetable from the ground (during the so-called “Cuadernazo”) was detained along with other demonstrators for 11 hours.
I also know of a country where its president despises women, blacks, indigenous people and gay people; but it is not Venezuela, but Brazil. Recently, two members of the Landless Movement were assassinated, but neither Almagro nor Trump asked the government for explanations, nor did the large international chains of disinformation give them the space they would have given if they had occurred during the presidency of Nicolas Maduro.
I know of a country that is one of the most corrupt in the world; but it is not Venezuela, but Paraguay, with its eternal Colorado Party, a minimum wage of $370 dollars and an industry minister who boasts that half of Paraguayan workers earn less than that figure. As Oscar Andrade has pointed out, he did not say it with pain, but with pride and satisfaction. It should not be forgotten that the governments of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay have been applauded by the Uruguayan opposition right-wing.
I know of a country where every four days a trade unionist is murdered, but it is not Venezuela, but Colombia. The denunciation was presented by the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia before the International Labor Organization and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, but impunity prevails. Threats are focused against union leaders in the oil sector, teachers and agriculture. Neither CNN nor Almagro have shown themselves with their souls split in two for these crimes that already imply a blatant attempt to exterminate trade unionism on the part of the right-wing and the Colombian business community.
I know of a country where anyone who dares to criticize the ruler, who, on the other hand, holds power without ever having been endorsed by the ballot box, is punished with imprisonment; but it is not Venezuela, but Spain. It is incredible that in the 21st century the monarchy persists, a real attack against the intelligence of the peoples of Spain, England and Canada, among others; but it is even more incredible that such monarchies pretend to teach democracy to their former colonies.
And I also know of a people that neither sells nor gives up, that neither breaks nor surrenders, that neither fears nor trembles, in spite of the permanent harassment and the immense power of its adversaries… but it is not that of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Spain, Colombia or the United States…
It’s the one from Venezuela.
(Taken from the magazine Revista Caras y Caretas)
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