Was Bradley Manning the one to finally end the Iraq War (among other things)?

some solid cause for speculation...

glenn...

[T]he high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama administration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.

In other words, whoever leaked that cable cast light on a heinous American war crime and, by doing so, likely played some significant role in thwarting an agreement between the Obama and Maliki governments to keep U.S. troops in Iraq and thus helped end this stage of the Iraq war (h/t Trevor Timm). Moreover, whoever leaked these cables — as even virulent WikiLeaks critic Bill Keller repeatedly acknowledged — likely played some significant in helping spark the Arab Spring protests by documenting just how deeply corrupt those U.S.-supported kleptocrats were. And in general, whoever leaked those cables has done more to publicize the corrupt, illegal and deceitful acts of the world’s most powerful factions — and to educate the world about how they behave — than all “watchdog” media outlets combined (indeed, the amount of news reports on a wide array of topics featuring WikiLeaks cables as the primary source is staggering). In sum, whoever leaked those cables is responsible for one of the most consequential, beneficial and noble acts of this generation.

[...]

And yet (or more accurately: therefore) the person accused of accomplishing all of this, Bradley Manning, has been imprisoned for more than a year without trial, and, if convicted, is almost certain to remain in prison for many more years (with the possibility, albeit unlikely, of death, and as the Obama administration continues to block an unmonitored visit by the U.N. official investigating what had been the inhumane conditions of his detention).

maybe bradley manning should be awarded the nobel peace prize...

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U.S. family indebtedness, U.S. national debt, country-by-country indebtedness

some highly illuminating graphics...

from a bankruptcy law firm...

America Is A Country In Debt

from u.s. debt kleptocracy...

A Visualization of U.S. Debt

from the economist...

World debt guide

although it took me a while to wake up to the fact, i've now known for some years that encouraging individuals, families, governments and nations to build up massive amounts of debt is really a strategy for enslavement - and our super-rich elites are no fools when it comes to strategies for enslavement...

all the solicitations for credit cards that poured in to our mailboxes by the bushel over the past twenty years, the endless stream of tv ads exhorting us to build up our credit ratings (turn on any channel to find the supremely odious ben stein shilling for a sleazy "free" credit score outfit), all the automobile and furniture commercials pushing no money down and no interest until some comfortably distant time in the future, are all calculated to extend and deepen our slavery...

we may think that slavery is a thing of the past but if we really stop to think about it, being in debt is very much the same as "being owned" by someone else... and the societal and legal penalties for reneging on debt are deliberately swift and harsh... after all, ya can't have the sheep straying too far from the herd... they might get to thinking they're not really sheep and god knows where THAT might lead...

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Our kleptocratic rulers know exactly what they are doing

i've said all along, there's nothing incompetent or unintentional about what's happening...

ismael hossein-zadeh in counterpunch via alternet...

[T]he kleptocratic rulers in the US, EU, and other debt-burdened countries know exactly what they are doing: to let the recession drag on, to take advantage of the crushing recession in order to extract “enough” concessions from the working people until welfare states are dismantled and labor costs in the more developed capitalist countries are made competitive with those of the less-developed countries. This explains why despite new signs of further global economic contraction, the reigning governments in these countries (whether they are nominally headed by Socialist, Social-Democratic, Labor, Democratic, Conservative or other parties) are maintaining their coordinated abstention from expansive or stimulating fiscal policies while continuing their brutal spending cuts on health, education, wages, pensions, and the like.

This is not to say that these governments do not want to have economic growth or job-creation—they do—but that they want them on their own (Neoliberal) terms, that is, through Neoliberal policies that would create jobs that would pay wages on a par with those of workers in less-developed countries. In other words, they prefer the kind of lopsided economic growth whose fruits would be reaped mostly by the wealthy—the so-called trickle-down or supply-side economic growth. As writer/reporter Patrick O’Connor points out, “In the US, Europe and other advanced capitalist economies, the aim is permanently reducing the living standards of working people.

It is not surprising then that, instead of calling for bold expansionary policies of growth promotion and job creation, US and European government heads, their economic policy makers and the collusive corporate media are frequently calling for “tolerance” and “endurance” in the face of economic hardship, exhorting the unemployed and economically distressed that they “need to be patient” because, as President Obama has occasionally put it, “the road to economic recovery does not follow a straight line,” and that “it's going to take some time to fix it." (The President made this statement on ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Mr. Stephanopoulos obligingly spared the President the obvious question: “why is it, Mr. President, that fixing the enormously expensive problem of Wall Street gamblers did not take much time, but reviving the economy and creating jobs, which would take only a fraction of the cost of the Wall Street bailout, would take a long time?”)

yes, mr. president... why IS it...?

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The REAL truth about the U.S. in Ethiopia and Somalia... Yes, it's about OIL and a "narrow, extremely violent kleptocracy"...

this is perhaps the best analysis i've read yet of what's going on in africa...

from the media alerts section of medialens...

On May 1, the BBC website reported an attack on Somalia with the words:

“Air raid kills Somali militants.”

One might think the BBC’s headline would identify the agency responsible for the bombing, but the first few sentences also shed no light:

“The leader of the military wing of an Islamist insurgent organisation in Somalia has been killed in an overnight air strike.

“Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab's military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed.

“Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.”

[...]

[T]he US is the world’s policeman; no need to mention it by name. The action of bombing an impoverished Third World country already indicates the agent. This also helps explain why no mention was made of the illegality of this act of aggression.

ok, now, let's get down to brass tacks...

The preferred media framework for making sense of US actions closely parallels cold war mythology. We are to believe the US is passionately, even blindly, battling ideological enemies in an effort to protect itself and the West.

[...]

As Andy Rowell and James Marriott have noted, the key fact is that “some 30 per cent of America's oil will come from Africa in the next ten years". (Rowell and Marriott, A Game as Old as Empire - The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption, edited by Steven Hiatt, Berrett-Koehler, 2007, p.118)

The US has plans for nearly two-thirds of Somalia's oil fields to be allocated to the US oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips. The US hopes Somalia will line up as an ally alongside Ethiopia and Djibouti, where the US has a military base. This alliance would give America powerful leverage close to the major energy-producing regions.

[...]

[W]e are [only] free to chose from parties and leaders who all represent the same interests of concentrated state-corporate power - the tiny fraction of the population that owns much of the country and runs its business.

Crucially, ’our leaders’ front a political system that has an overwhelming advantage in high-tech military power. They are all too willing to use this power to convulse countries with bloodshed when doing so supports their lucrative version of economic ’order’. Iraq is the obvious example - Somalia is another.

’Our leaders’ rule in the name of democracy, but they act in the interests of a narrow, extremely violent kleptocracy.

excellent stuff... i encourage you to read it all...

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