It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, July 08, 2021
European Bank For Reconstruction And Development Ends All Upstream Oil Financing
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will no longer invest in oil and gas exploration and production, the bank’s Managing Director Harry Boyd-Carpenter told Reuters as the institution pledged to align all its activities to the Paris Agreement goals from the end of next year.
“We will no longer invest in upstream oil and gas projects,” Boyd-Carpenter told Reuters on Thursday.
On the same day, the bank announced that its Board of Governors decided at the Annual Meeting 2021 to accelerate decarbonization across the regions it operates, supporting them to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
The EBRD invests in projects in central and eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean.
The EBRD, however, will continue to invest in selected oil and gas projects in the downstream and midstream that are aligned to or contribute to the Paris Agreement goals, EBRD’s Boyd-Carpenter told Reuters.
“The low carbon transition requires the world economy to move in less than 30 years from a more than 80 per cent reliance on fossil fuels to a net-zero model. This is a challenge that is unprecedented in economic history. Similarly, the associated opportunity is enormous,” the EBRD’s First Vice-President Jürgen Rigterink said in a statement.
The EBRD is the latest bank to announce it would halt financing for one or other form of oil and gas.
Last year, Deutsche Bank ended financing for new oil and gas projects in the oil sands and the Arctic region effective immediately.
In the United States, Goldman Sachs said in December 2019 that it would decline to finance new Arctic oil exploration and production and new thermal coal mine development or strip mining. Wells Fargo and JPMorgan have also said they would stop financing new oil and gas projects in the Arctic.
Earlier this year, UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ said that banks should finance low-carbon climate-resilient projects, not big fossil fuel infrastructure that is not even cost-effective anymore.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
STEPHEN J GOULD THOU ART AVENGED
Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy
As museums reopen let’s introduce ourselves, and our children, to the original Black ancestors of all human beings
19th century image of a prehistoric man. Credit: Getty Images
After a year of lockdown, museums, libraries and bookstores across America are reopening. This cultural reawakening’s beginning coincided with both the Juneteenth holiday and the one-year anniversary of the one of the largest protests in American history against racial injustice. As bookstores reopen, many are organizing displays of children's books that celebrate Black history. What you won’t find in even the biggest collections of books is the story of the dark-skinned early people who launched human civilization.
The global scientific community overwhelmingly accepts that all living humans are of African descent. Most scientific articles about our African origins focus on genetics. The part of the story that is not widely shared is about the creation of human culture. We are all descended genetically, and also culturally, from dark-skinned ancestors. Early humans from the African continent are the ones who first invented tools; the use of fire; language; and religion. These dark skinned early people laid down the foundation for human culture. Considering the short life span of our early ancestors, these original innovators were probably also very young. No one who follows artistic trends will be surprised to learn that, from the beginning, human culture was essentially invented by teenagers. And by culture I don’t just mean the arts, I mean the whole shebang.
I want to unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies. Under the guise of “religious freedom,” the legalistic wing of creationists loudly insists that their point of view deserves equal time in the classroom. Science education in the U.S. is constantly on the defensive against antievolution activists who want biblical stories to be taught as fact. In fact, the first wave of legal fights against evolution was supported by the Klan in the 1920s. Ever since then, entrenched racism and the ban on teaching evolution in the schools have gone hand in hand. In his piece,What We Get Wrong About the Evolution Debate, Adam Shapiro argues that “the history of American controversies over evolution has long been entangled with the history of American educational racism.”
At the heart of white evangelical creationism is the mythology of an unbroken white lineage that stretches back to a light-skinned Adam and Eve. In literal interpretations of the Christian Bible, white skin was created in God's image. Dark skin has a different, more problematic origin. As the biblical story goes, the curse or mark of Cain for killing his brother was a darkening of his descendants' skin. Historically, many congregations in the U.S. pointed to this story of Cain as evidence that Black skin was created as a punishment.
The fantasy of a continuous line of white descendants segregates white heritage from Black bodies. In the real world, this mythology translates into lethal effects on people who are Black. Fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible are part of the “fake news” epidemic that feeds the racial divide in our country.
For too long, a vocal minority of creationists has hijacked children’s education, media and book publishing. Statistics on creationist beliefs in the US vary. Depending on the poll, up to 40 percent of percent of adults believe that humans have always existed in their present form (i.e., they believe in an unbroken human lineage stretching back to Adam and Eve).
We have seen some progress in the classroom. From 2007 to 2019, the percentage of teachers who present evolution without a creationist alternative grew dramatically, from only 51 percent to 67 percent. But it’s still not enough. My hope is that if we make the connection between creationism and racist ideology clearer, we will provide more ammunition to get science into the classroom—and into our culture at large.
It’s common knowledge that some school boards, especially in the South, have fought long and hard to keep evolution out of school textbooks. What you might not know is how the policing of educational content morphs into what might be called “self-censorship” within the children’s book industry as a whole. Scientific findings about human origins have been slow to trickle down into books written for young people. This major omission reflects the outsize effect that science-denying voices have on the books that find their ways not just into classrooms, but also into libraries, bookstores and children's homes. Fear of economic punishment within the publishing industry creates a self-perpetuating lack of teaching materials about evolution.
If you go on Amazon and look up “children’s books on evolution” you will find about 10–15 relevant titles. This is in contrast to the hundreds of children’s books on other scientific subjects such as chemistry, astronomy and other less controversial subjects. I found only one book on evolution for preschoolers, called Grandmother Fish. The author had to self-fund the book through Kickstarter.
On the other hand, there are hundreds of children’s books available on Amazon that focus on biblical origin stories. Science deniers are pumping money into a well-funded antievolution machine. In 2007, the creationists built their own Bible-themed museum and amusement park. What they understand is that to reach young children you need music, colorful characters and celebration.
In the Adam-and-Eve scenario, the Creator bestows both physical and cultural humanity on the first people. From the get-go Adam knows how to name the animals. No one has to invent language or figure out how to make tools. Science, of course, tells us otherwise. The process of natural selection shaped our bodies and capacities. Our humanity emerged over the millennia as creative ancient people figured out the crucial skills—from storytelling to cooking to rope making—that we now take for granted
And yet, even in the current literature about human origins that we do have, the end point of evolution is often depicted as a white man carrying a spear. This image not only eliminates our African heritage but also erases women and children from the picture. Because evolution is foundational knowledge, we need the story to be told in many different ways, by many different voices.
As we move forward to undo systemic racism in every aspect of business, society, academia and life, let’s be sure to do so in science education as well. Embracing humanity’s dark-skinned ancestors with love and respect is key to changing our relationship to the past, and to creating racial equity in the present. These ancient people made the rest of us possible. Opening our hearts to them and embracing them as heroic, fully human and worthy of our respect is part of the process of healing from our racist history.
This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Allison Hopper is a filmmaker and designer with a master's degree in educational design from New York University. Early in her career, she worked on PBS documentaries. More recently, she's been creating content for young people on the topic of evolution. She has presented on evolution at the Big History Conference in Amsterdam and Chautauqua, among other places. Learn more about Allison and her projects at http://www.spiralzoom.com/. She recently completed a short animation titled Evolution and YOU!a>
CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
There Are No Mass Migrations Without U.S. Meddling and Militarism
Despite its pledges to aid Central America, the Biden administration continues to deny the United States’ role in destabilizing the region.
Vice President Kamala Harris addresses the media in Atlanta, Ga., on June 18, 2021MEGAN VARNER / GETTY IMAGES
When Vice President Kamala Harris visited the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on June 25, she repeated the claim she made during her trip to Guatemala and Mexico earlier that month: The Biden administration is serious about addressing the root causes of Central American migration.
“This issue cannot be reduced to a political issue,” Harris said. “We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families, we’re talking about suffering, and our approach has to be thoughtful and effective.”
Toward this end, the administration has set forth a four-year, $4 billion proposal to increase assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, “conditioned on their ability to reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.” President Joe Biden also issued an executive order that identifies the principal culprits for this present state of affairs as “criminal gangs,” “trafficking networks,” “gender-based and domestic violence,” and “economic insecurity and inequality.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Biden appears to be following the footsteps of past administrations by denying the role that decades of U.S. interventionism and militarization have played in destabilizing the region. What’s worse, officials like Harris continue to order migrants to stop coming to the United States — even as the United States exacerbates the very crises that encourage migration in the first place. A history of white supremacy and interventionism
Since the early 1900s, the United States has trained and employed law enforcement officers to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, providing them with virtually unlimited discretion to keep non-white people out of the country. U.S. Border Patrol is itself rooted in white supremacy: At the time of its founding in 1924, many of its members belonged either to the Ku Klux Klan or the Texas Rangers, which was tantamount to a racist paramilitary force. In addition to beating and humiliating migrants, patrols shot, hung and disappeared people who they believed had crossed into the United States outside official ports of entry. Confident in their impunity, border patrollers often tortured migrants into confessions whether they had entered the country lawfully or not.
Even after transferring Border Patrol from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice, the U.S. government continued to pass laws that effectively criminalized migration while increasing the agency’s powers. The Hart-Celler Act of 1965 established immigration quotas from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Twenty-nine years later, under President Bill Clinton, U.S. Border Patrol implemented a “prevention through deterrence” immigration policy that funnels migrants into mortally dangerous terrain by closing off more common points of entry. The policy remains in effect today.
While brutally guarding its Southern border, the United States has spent billions of dollars training Latin American security forces in torture, extortion, blackmail and extraordinary rendition. Formerly known as the School of the Americas, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINESEC) has “educated” over 80,000 officers in more than a dozen countries, in addition to Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. WHINESEC graduates are responsible for countless acts of abuse, murders and disappearances outside of the United States.
The United States has used WHINESEC-trained security forces and other government resources to destabilize left-wing governments in Latin America. In the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, the CIA backed a coup to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz. The Eisenhower administration depicted Guatemala as a pawn of the Soviet Union; in reality, Arbenz’s proposed land reform threatened U.S. business interests, including the United Fruit Company.
The United States also played a key role in El Salvador’s civil war from 1980 to 1992, supplying the Salvadoran junta with $1 million each day to quash the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. During that time, the Reagan administration, working alongside the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, began imposing trade policies on Central American countries that benefited large, multinational corporations at the expense of local people.
In 1999, the United States adopted Plan Colombia, allocating more than $8 billion to arm and train Colombia’s military and police in a so-called war on drugs. The plan, which has targeted narco-traffickers and left-wing guerrillas alike, has forcibly displaced nearly 6 million Colombians and killed thousands more.
These policies at home and abroad have not only generated mass human suffering but waves of forced migration to the United States. The number of Honduran children crossing the border increased by more than 1,000% in 2014, for example, within five years of the Obama administration aiding a coup against Honduras’ democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya.
As another example, immigration from Mexico has doubled since the United States signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which undercut small business, crushed low-income workers and made migration a matter of survival. School of the Americas Watch, a human rights organization that has long called for the closure of WHINESEC, notes that, “by the 1980s, migration from the South was not for obtaining employment” but was fueled instead by the immediate need to flee the “conditions created by U.S. foreign policy and intervention.”
The foundation of Biden’s platform
So far, the Biden administration appears committed to business as usual when it comes to the Southern border and foreign policy in the Americas. Biden’s proposed U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 reflects two long-standing priorities of past immigration bills. First, it floods Central American countries with money to beef up local military and police forces as a means of promoting “the rule of law, security, and economic development.” Second, it effectively “outsources” U.S. border control by funding Mexico to militarize its own Southern border states, which also works to extend U.S. authority over movement in the broader region.
The United States pursued similar strategies with the Mérida Initiative (2007) and the Southern Border Program (aka Programa Frontera Sur, 2014). Modeled after Plan Colombia and initiated by President George W. Bush and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, the Mérida Initiative sought to limit drug trafficking and organized crime by providing Mexico with billions of dollars for military equipment, training and infrastructure. The Initiative also increased security along new “21st-century borders” that are not contiguous with the United States. As of 2013, the U.S. government had financed a dozen advanced military bases and a hundred miles of security partitions along the borders separating Mexico from Belize and Guatemala, respectively.
With Programa Frontera Sur, the Obama administration doubled down, funneling millions more in aid and law enforcement resources to the Mexican government. This time, U.S. assistance included such equipment as high-tech observation towers along the Mexico-Guatemala border, as well as intensive training for local Mexican police and immigration officers.
Many of the countries to which the United States has supplied security aid have embraced this kind of militarization. In the early aughts, the governments of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras each placed soldiers on the streets in an effort to crack down on drug trafficking. Yet, in the years since the Mérida Initiative and Programa Frontera Sur took effect, homicide rates and drug-related violence in these countries have only increased.
Biden again demonstrated his commitment to a failed immigration policy in January when nearly 8,000 Hondurans arrived at the Honduras-Guatemala border seeking refuge from the wreckage of two major hurricanes, the devastating effects of Covid-19 and the extreme violence that has swept Honduras since the U.S.-backed coup of 2009. Unwilling to break with precedent, the Biden administration stood by as 2,000 Guatemalan police officers and soldiers, armed and trained by the United States, fought the migrants back with tear gas and batons. Multiple administration officials would later praise the Guatemalan government for its response.
Steps towards a more just and humane immigration policy
On January 15, days before Biden assumed office, more than 70 human rights organizations published a joint letter urging the incoming administration to make substantive changes to U.S. policy in Central America. Echoing many of the demands that advocates and organizers have made for decades, the letter called on the federal government to end security assistance, training, and weapons sales to the region; increase transparency about where U.S. aid is directed and how it is used; halt all economic sanctions against Central American countries; and drastically limit U.S. involvement in their domestic politics.
Money towards further militarization will only intensity the suffering in Central America. If the Biden administration is truly committed to addressing the root cause of forced migration, it must first acknowledge the destructive force of U.S. interventionism, imperialism and white supremacy. Only then can the administration offer anything approaching a just remedy.
The authors would like to thank law students Aashna Rao and Camelia Metwally for their research support for this article.
AZADEH SHAHSHAHANI is legal and advocacy director at Project South and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She tweets @ashahshahani.
RHONDA RAMIRO is the chair of BAYAN-USA and leads the global secretariat of the Resist US-Led War Movement.
Holmes, U.S. clash again over missing Theranos patient database
Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg News
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former chief executive officer of Theranos Inc., right, exits U.S. federal court in San Jose, California, U.S., on Thursday, May 6, 2021. Holmes and her lawyers appeared in-person Thursday in the federal court where the Theranos founder and former chief executive officer is scheduled to go to trial in August on charges that the blood-test startup once valued at $9 billion was a fraud. , Bloomberg
Elizabeth Holmes doubled down on her attempt to block prosecutors from presenting Theranos Inc. customer complaints, inaccurate test results and problematic regulatory findings to jurors at her upcoming criminal fraud trial.
At a hearing Wednesday, Holmes’s lawyers revived their argument that the government dropped the ball by allowing the company’s Laboratory Information System, or LIS, to go irretrievably dark. Without the patient data it contains, they argue, the founder of the failed blood-testing startup can’t fairly defend herself.
Prosecutors suggested Holmes should be careful what she asks for, arguing that if the LIS data were somehow reproduced in full it would probably further incriminate her.
Wednesday wasn’t the first time Holmes has pointed to the crippled LIS to try to exclude potentially damaging evidence from her trial scheduled to start at the end of August.
“Ms. Holmes has lost the opportunity to refute adequately the government’s assertions with respect to customer complaints and testing results” and regulatory reports, her lawyers said in a court filing. “Evidence of the potentially millions of accurate testing results that resided on the LIS is therefore central to the case and is now missing.”
In response, prosecutors have revealed more information about what they think happened to the database, and laid the blame more squarely on Holmes herself.
Holmes hasn’t been hurt by the loss of the LIS, and to the contrary she “likely benefited from it,” prosecutors said in a court filing. “In fact, the available information strongly suggests that, were the LIS still in existence, its contents would dramatically bolster the government’s allegations.”
The government said it has learned from Adam Rosendorff, the company’s lab director at the time of its clinical launch, that Theranos analyzers failed quality control testing at a rate of up to 20 per cent. Prosecutors contend such data signaled serious problems with Theranos equipment’s accuracy and reliability, undercutting any claim that the contents of the LIS would exonerate Holmes.
ISRAEL IS NOT A DEMOCRACY
Supreme Court rules Nationality Law is constitutional
Supreme Court rejects all 15 petitions against Nationality Law by 10-1.
Arutz Sheva Staff , Jul 08 , 2021
Supreme Court Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90
An expanded panel of 11 Supreme Court justices decided today (Thursday) to reject 15 petitions against the Nationality Law.
President Hayut wrote in the judgment regarding the court's authority to hold a judicial review of the content of a Basic Law: "I would like to present the various complexities and relevant considerations, but leave the decision on the issue at hand. This is because even if I assume that such authority is given to the court, the Basic Law: Nationality does not, in my view, deny the character of the State of Israel as Jewish and democratic, and therefore it does not in any case establish grounds for judicial intervention by us."
Justice George Kara was the only dissenting voice, writing a minority opinion that there are sections of the law which harm Israel's status as a democratic state.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Gideon Sa'ar expressed satisfaction with the court's decision. "The Basic Law: Nationality is an important law that constitutes another chapter in the state constitution, which anchors the essence and character of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people."
"The court did well when it decided to reject the petition, since there was no reason to intervene in the legislation. The law also does not infringe on the individual rights of any of the citizens of Israel," Sa'ar said.
CITIZENS OF ISRAEL UNDER THE LAW ARE NOT ARABS, OR PALESTINIANS, OR CHRISTIANS, ETC. THEY ARE JEWS ONLY
A ZIONIST STATE IS NOT A DEMOCRATIC STATE
IT IS A THEOLOGICAL STATE
US Diplomats Protest Israel’s Demolition of West Bank Home By Linda Gradstein July 08, 2021 10:44 AM
JERUSALEM - The Israeli army on Thursday demolished the home of a Palestinian-American who was convicted of murdering an Israeli citizen in a terror attack in May. The U.S. Embassy denounced the move calling it a “unilateral move that exacerbates tensions.”
Israeli troops placed explosives around Muntasar Shalabi’s house in the West Bank town of Turmus Ayya during the night Tuesday and set off the explosives early Wednesday morning.
About 200 Palestinians threw rocks at the soldiers who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.
There were no reports of injuries. While Israel frequently demolishes the homes of Palestinians convicted of attacks on Israelis, this case is different for several reasons.
Like many of the residents of Turmus Aya Shalabi is an American citizen and spends most of the year living in the U.S., not the West Bank. In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem denounced the demolition, calling on all sides to “refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a two-state solution,” adding that “this certainly includes the punitive demolition of Palestinian homes.”
The statement said that the home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual.
Shalabi’s family had appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court against the demolition, saying that he spent most of the year in the U.S., and only came to the West Bank for a visit every summer. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal.
In addition, Shalabi, a father of seven, is estranged from his wife, and stays in a separate room in the house when he visits. An Israeli human rights group also appealed against the demolition saying that Shalabi suffered from mental health issues and had been prescribed anti-psychotic medications.
The state prosecutor argued that Shalabi still owned the house and had recently renovated it. He also said that it is more important to provide a deterrent against future attacks, than that innocent people would suffer.
Meanwhile, the World Bank said Tuesday that repairing the damage to the Gaza Strip from Israel’s bombing during May’s conflict between Israel and Gaza will cost $485 million over the next two years.
'Long, long odds' TC Energy's NAFTA claim will be successful: Trade lawyer
The odds of TC Energy Corp. getting its money back for its now-terminated Keystone XL pipeline project are slim, according to a veteran trade lawyer.
The Calgary-based pipeline giant launched a NAFTA dispute on Friday seeking US$15 billion in damages after U.S. President Joe Biden revoked a presidential permit for Keystone XL on his first day in the White House.
“Long, long odds,” said Mark Warner, principal at MAAW Law, in a television interview. “No case has ever succeeded against the United States under the NAFTA chapter 11 investor-state dispute settlement system.”
Warner said the onus is on TC Energy to prove they were treated unfairly or differently than an American company would have been in the same situation.
“This will go on for a long time,” said Warner. “The question is how much corporate energy TC Energy wants to devote to fighting this case.”
One of the Biden Administration’s first official acts was to revoke the permit for the highly contested project, which sought to boost the amount of crude shipped from the oil sands to refineries in southern U.S. states. TC Energy officially abandoned the expansion project last month, dealing a victory to environmental critics who opposed the project.
It’s unclear if either Alberta or the federal government will assist TC Energy with its legal challenge.
“My sense has always been that the Trudeau government is not willing to fight for Keystone,” said Warner.
He suggested Canada’s real interest on the energy front is in Enbridge Inc.'s Line 5 pipeline project, which would bring crude North under Lake Michigan and into Canada.
The fate of that project is also up in the air as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer attempted to block the project over environmental concerns. Enbridge said it plans to raise the issue to federal courts.
“It’s a good sign [the Biden Administration] hasn’t completely removed themselves from the project, but they certainly haven’t given Canada what we’ve been lobbying for which is an immediate smack down of the Michigan governor,” Warner said.
WHY DO YOU BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACIES?
BECAUSE THE RULING CLASS CABALS ENGAGE IN THEM
TO GAIN POWER AND TO HOLD ON TO IT.
THE CABALS ARE THE ' POWERS THAT BE ' ( OF THE 1% )
AND SINCE THEY HAVE CONSPIRED TO GET POWER
AND HOLD ON TO IT FOR AEONS
THEY THINK THAT EVERYONE ACTS LIKE THEM
IN POLITICS
WHICH IS WHY THEY CANNOT IMAGINE
A SELF ORGANIZED PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
AND CLAIM IT IS ORGANIZED BY UNKNOWN FORCES DARK AND SINISTER.
THE REAL SECRET SOCIETIES ARE THOSE OF REACTION
AGAINST PROLETARIAN SELF ORGANIZATION & REVOLUTION!
GREEN CAPITALI$M
CIBC and a group of international banks look to set up new carbon credit market
The Canadian Press
CIBC and a group of international banks have announced plans for a voluntary carbon marketplace pilot that they say will help make it easier for companies to buy carbon offsets
The group includes Brazil's Itau Unibanco, National Australia Bank and British banking and insurance company NatWest Group.
Companies buy carbon offsets as a way to implement their climate change strategies.
The banks say Project Carbon aims to support a marketplace for carbon offsets with clear and consistent pricing and standards.
The blockchain-based system will allow owners of credits to demonstrate possession to the market, reducing risks of double counting and simplifying reporting.
It is expected to launch next month as a pilot to demonstrate the operational, legal and technical capability of the platform.
Why Are Assange, Manning Still in the Crosshairs?Facebook
10 Years After Iraq War Logs, It’s Impunity for War Criminals, War on Whistleblowers
On October 22, 2010, WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs, a colossal compendium of nearly 400,000 classified U.S. Army field reports revealing what founder Julian Assange called “intimate details” of the war—including war crimes and other serious human rights abuses perpetrated by American and coalition troops, private contractors, and Iraqi government and paramilitary forces.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning have both paid a tremendous price for revealing U.S. and allied war crimes while the planners and perpetrators face no consequences.
It was the largest leak in U.S. military history and a stunned world demanded justice. However, in the decade since then, only the whistleblowers who revealed the crimes detailed in the logs were ever seriously punished, while the architects and the perpetrators of the atrocities continue to enjoy impunity.
The publication of the Iraq War Logs was the culmination of a year full of WikiLeaks revelations regarding U.S. and allied conduct during the so-called War on Terror. Early in the year, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning leaked the “Collateral Murder” video, which shows U.S. Apache attack helicopter crews laughing and joking while massacring a group of Iraqi civilians, including journalists, and shooting children.
WikiLeaks video: 'Collateral murder' in Iraq
In July 2010, WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs, which contained over 75,000 classified Army reports detailing war crimes committed by coalition forces in Afghanistan.
None of the Bush or Obama administration officials who planned or executed the illegal war, nor any of the field commanders or even rank-and-file troops connected with any of the crimes revealed in the logs, were ever seriously punished.
The whistleblowers, on the other hand, suffered tremendously for exposing the truth. Both Manning and Assange were charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. Manning was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison, although her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama just before he left office in January 2017.
Assange is today imprisoned in Britain’s notorious Belmarsh Prison as he awaits possible extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years behind bars, most likely in a supermax facility a former warden described as a “fate worse than death.”
Both Assange and Manning have suffered abuse that prominent human rights advocates have called torture.
The aggressive prosecution of Manning and Assange is a deliberate attempt to silence would-be whistleblowers, says Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild.
“The Obama administration charged Chelsea Manning, and the Trump administration indicted and is trying to extradite Julian Assange, in an attempt to punish the messengers to obscure the message and protect the real culprits,” Cohn told Common Dreams. “Their prosecutions are calculated to chill the willingness of would-be whistleblowers to reveal, and journalists and media outlets to publish, material critical of U.S. policy.”
“WikiLeaks’ publication of the Afghan War Logs, however, has led to the opening of a war crimes investigation of U.S. leaders in the International Criminal Court,” Cohn noted.
Asked whether Assange’s prospects for freedom would improve if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump next month, Cohn said that “Biden is more likely to follow Obama’s policy—he refrained from prosecuting Assange because [the administration] couldn’t distinguish between what WikiLeaks did and what what The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País also did—than Trump’s.”
“Assange’s lawyers think he faces a worse fate if Trump is reelected,” she added.
Cohn said the government hasn’t been successful in silencing whistleblowers as it intended. Although there haven’t been any Mannings, Assanges, or Edward Snowdens of late, “last year a whistleblower in the intelligence community revealed evidence of Trump using the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election. And in May, another whistleblower complained that some federal Covid-19 vaccine contracts were awarded based on political connections.”
“If Assange successfully resists extradition or escapes a conviction if he is extradited to the U.S. for trial, that would encourage future whistleblowers to come forward when they see evidence of criminal government activity,” said Cohn. “That’s one of the reasons it’s so critical to oppose the U.S. government’s persecution of Assange.”
Prosecution of Julian Assange (UCLA) Part 8 Marjorie Cohn
The Iraq War Logs comprised a staggering collection of documents offering an unprecedented inside look at the U.S. war and occupation, then in its eighth year. The bombshell revelations contained in the 391,832 Army field reports showed that:
Coalition officials lied about not recording the number of Iraqi civilians killed by coalition forces—Gen. Tommy Franks infamously declared that “we don’t do body counts” in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion, and Bush administration and Pentagon officials repeatedly said they did not track civilian casualties.
Some 66,000 of the 109,000 total Iraqi deaths recorded by U.S. authorities from 2004 to 2009 were civilians.
These figures were still likely an undercount of the true civilian death toll; for example, no civilian deaths are recorded from the two brutal battles for Fallujah in 2004, although the monitor group Iraq Body Count said at least 1,153 men, women, and children died.
U.S. troops often falsely claimed that civilians they killed were insurgents, as was the case with the “Collateral Murder” video.
U.S. troops killed nearly 700 civilians—including pregnant women and people with mental illness—for coming too close to checkpoints.
American and other foreign mercenaries and contractors killed many Iraqi civilians.
U.S. officials failed to investigate hundreds of reports of torture, rape, murder, and other crimes committed by Iraqi security forces with impunity.
American forces often handed over suspected insurgents and other detainees to Iraqi forces known for murder, torture, and other atrocities, including the notorious Wolf Brigade.
“The stated aims for going into that war, of improving the human rights situation, improving the rule of law, did not eventuate,” Assange said at the time. “In terms of raw numbers of people arbitrarily killed, [that] worsened the situation in Iraq.”
International media published many of the leaked documents, sparking global outrage and condemnation of the United States and the already tremendously unpopular war. The U.S. corporate media, however, downplayed and whitewashed the American lies and war crimes revealed in the logs and instead focused on revelations of Iranian involvement in Iraq and abuses committed by private contractors and Iraqi forces.
What Happened in the Iraq War? Julian Assange at WikiLeaks Press Conference (2010)
Almost immediately, the U.S. government went into attack mode. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the release, claiming—apparently without irony—that it “puts the lives of United States and its partners’ service members and civilians at risk.”
Assange rightfully countered that there was no evidence anyone was harmed by the leaks. Regardless, the Australian national was widely condemned in the U.S., with prominent Republicans and others—including a television game show host and businessman named Donald Trump—calling for his execution.
Meanwhile, U.S. military leaders kept on lying. Gen. George Casey insited that U.S. policy “all along was if American soldiers encountered prisoner abuse, to stop it and report it immediately up the U.S. chain of command and up the Iraqi chain of command.”
