Quite a day for Obama: how he double-crossed the American people, and nailed a good citizen to the cross
The Slog: Yesterday’s news
about the ‘upgrading’ of the fall-out from the Japanese Fukushima
reactor was rapidly followed by the receipt of a timely dossier by The
Slog. There’s nothing secret about it, you can read it in full here
and while I’m not familiar with the site, 95% of it is based on FOI
demanded information in the US, with Xeroxed extracts to prove the
points being made.
The thrust of the piece is that, from the first day onwards, the US
government has massively underplayed the the scale of the disaster – and
its effect in particular on North America itself. In the text of
stenography, there are repeated references to “play down the level of
fallout”, “our line should be there’s no cause for alarm” and so forth.
But the bottom line is that somewhere in the region of 1.3 million Americans will be dead as a direct cause of Fukushima by 2030.
There is also clear evidence – I would say, irrefutable evidence –
that the Japanese have run out of ideas as to how the meltdown process
might be stopped, and that in complete contrast to official
announcements, very little at Fukushima is “contained”. The likelihood
is further melting down is still in progress. This was partly supported
by yesterday’s “update”, in which the Tokyo Electric Power Company
(Tepco) said a leak of at least 300 tonnes of the highly radioactive
water was discovered on Monday. But the game is still on to toe the “no
cause for alarm” line: officials described the leak as a level-one
incident – the lowest level – on the International Nuclear and
Radiological Event Scale (Ines). Based on the dossier linked to above, I
would suggest that this is almost certainly bollocks. (Apart from
anything else, the first release said the level of danger had been
raised: so how can it still be at “the lowest level”? Webs, weave,
deceive etc etc).
A complete weasel: caesium is just one
element in a radioactive plume disaster. Try this extract from the
dossier, March 13th 2011:
And this, from later the same year:
Or this in the light of the BBC’s claim that “nobody has yet been reported as dead” as a result of the disaster:
This bit, however, was the part that truly
turned even my iron-clad cynical stomach as an example of the US élite’s
“prorities”: in this first extract, it’s clear that Obama knows the
truth, and is keen to cover it up….as are the bureaucrats:
And in this latter fragment, the President’s main concern seems to be his popularity in two western States:
One is, of course, left wondering what Mr Wiggins had yet to figure out…explaining away all the dead folks?
???????????????????????????????????
So what if anything has this latest example of sociopathy at high
government levels got in common with the Bradley Manning case? Just
this: both show that those allegedly in charge have not the remotest
intention of either nurturing or protecting their citizens and their
values. Manning has been given 35 years for blowing the whistle on
profoundly unethical foreign policy and military practices by the US.
What does that tell us about the American Justice system’s ability to
give Americans a fair trial and equality before the law?
The guy broke a promise, an Oath. Big deal: his Government broke at
least seven International laws on an industrial scale. And for revealing
this, a liberal democracy led by a black Democrat President has put
this fundamentally decent man behind bars for 35 years. This was his
letter to Obama pleading for a pardon:
‘The decisions that I made in 2010
were made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in.
Since the tragic events of 9/11, our country has been at war. We’ve
been at war with an enemy that chooses not to meet us on any traditional
battlefield, and due to this fact we’ve had to alter our methods of
combating the risks posed to us and our way of life.
I initially agreed with these
methods and chose to volunteer to help defend my country. It was not
until I was in Iraq and reading secret military reports on a daily basis
that I started to question the morality of what we were doing. It was
at this time I realized that (in) our efforts to meet the risk posed to
us by the enemy, we have forgotten our humanity. We consciously elected
to devalue human life both in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we engaged
those that we perceived were the enemy, we sometimes killed innocent
civilians. Whenever we killed innocent civilians, instead of accepting
responsibility for our conduct, we elected to hide behind the veil of
national security and classified information in order to avoid any
public accountability.
In our zeal to kill the enemy, we
internally debated the definition of torture. We held individuals at
Guantanamo for years without due process. We inexplicably turned a blind
eye to torture and executions by the Iraqi government. And we stomached
countless other acts in the name of our war on terror.
Patriotism is often the cry extolled
when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When
these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it
is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out
some ill-conceived mission.
Our nation has had similar dark
moments for the virtues of democracy — the Trail of Tears, the Dred
Scott decision, McCarthyism, and the Japanese-American internment camps —
to mention a few. I am confident that many of the actions since 9/11
will one day be viewed in a similar light.
As the late Howard Zinn once said, “There is not a flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
I understand that my actions
violated the law; I regret if my actions hurt anyone or harmed the
United States. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to
help people. When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so
out of a love for my country and a sense of duty to others.
If you deny my request for a pardon,
I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy
price to live in a free society. I will gladly pay that price if it
means we could have a country that is truly conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that all women and men are created equal.’
Well I don’t know about you, but I’m moved by that simple and
entirely laudable expression of intent. But it wasn’t enough to mollify
CBS – “The Army private was given a much lower prison sentence than what
was allowable based on his convictions” – or indeed the increasingly
visceral Hannanite UK media-wolf pack:
‘He was a ‘mess of a child’ who was
tormented for being gay, kicked out of home at 18 by his father and once
threatened to stab his step mother with a knife. His own mother drank
too much, he could not hold down a job and once literally crawled up a
wall because he felt his family were ignoring him.Perhaps it was no
surprise then, that Bradley Manning was angry at the world – angry
enough to hit back at any figure of authority that was within his grasp.
He has now been convicted of leaking classified information but given
the troubled life he led Manning was always a time bomb waiting to go
off.’
Much as I am the last person on Earth to be pc about anything, the Daily Mail
totally surpassed itself with this foul slur aimed at anyone who’s mum
drank, or is gay, or was bullied at school. It is an insult to all the
millions of people round the world who fit one or more of those
stereotypes. But chiefly, it is braindead tabloid morality at its worst.
My take would be that despite those awful familial influences, Bradley Manning triumphed over them to do the right thing. But that’s probably just me being a fluffy Leftie, or something. Or an incurable optimist.
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