The secrecy-busting by Wiki-leakers may take years to play out in the corridors of power, but there are signs on the ground that citizens are finally rubbing the sleep from their eyes. It's an Aha moment: "They've been lying to us all this time". And so they have; law breaking with impunity, instigating wars, abetting torture, renditions, secret jails; destroying documents, conspiring to steal DNA from diplomats, slaughtering civilians on several continents, plus much else besides and ... weirdly ... getting away with it. For how much longer?
Citizens today resemble the chained prisoners in Plato's cave, mesmerised by the shadowy flickering on the wall, or on our TV's, which we mistake for reality. The images are illusions. In Plato's famous parable, a prisoner escapes from the cave and discovers the 'real world' in all its heartbreak and glory, which he seeks to reveal to the inmates. The revelation is unwanted and the escapee is branded a lunatic.
This tale can be viewed from today's perspective, where prisoners of the US military are shackled night and day, brutally beaten, tortured, humiliated, even "disappeared" until they lose all hope of re-entering a world they once knew. Many prisoners are innocent, and – according to numerous accounts - many of the guards are psychopaths.
In October 2001, when the US invaded Afghanistan, an ill educated Australian searching for adventure, David Hicks, tried to flee. Previously he had enlisted in the Kosovo Liberation Army, then fighting against the Serbs in the Balkans, and allied with NATO. Hicks saw no action. A confused and uneducated but idealistic young man, he later sought to fight on the side of the Kashmiri people but changed his mind. He had been briefly fascinated by Islam. Hicks was picked up by a Northern Alliance soldier and sold to US operatives for US$5000. As he states in his memoir, Guantanamo, My Journey, the brutal beatings began on day one in Afghanistan and he feared for his life. Like many others traded for cash, he is hooded, shackled, interrogated at gun point, repeatedly kicked, punched in the face, treated to mock executions and sodomised with a "large piece of white plastic" as a US soldier snarls "extra ribbed for your pleasure". The sadism is breathtaking – and this is just the beginning.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/House-of-Horrors-Smashing-by-Richard-Neville-110106-634.html------------------
As a historian and former humanitarian worker none of the cables have been shocking to me. But that is because I happen to have worked with some of this crap in the past... as in declassified versions decades after the events. I will say, for me the cables are not that revolutionary, but to people who usually never see them... I can see how this is the wake up moment.
Of course I produced my fair share of boringly long classified reports, as a humanitarian worker... that helped to find refugees a new home... no, don't ask... and they were as mundane and yes, boring, as these cables... or perhaps after hearing the same story of genocide you tend to use boiler plate when you write the report... sorry... that is the way it is... and a few of these cables were boiler plate
But I can understand why for most citizens these cables are such a huge wake up moment. To me. meh, same shit different decade... but I can see how it is not same shit different decade for most, since well... most were not awake for the other horror shows we have had. Or went back to sleep, and now are waking up. Now that people are waking up though... I wonder if we will have enough of a mass of people to finally effect change.
Of course the upcoming superpower will engage in its own version... but that is another story.
Oh and good article by the way. Why I am sharing... I guess I have been closer to the entrance to the cave for most of my life...you tend to after the first time you hear a fifteen year old share her horrors.
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