Posts Tagged ‘Wikileaks’
Notebook, 17 February 2011: Authoritarian Regimes, Egypt and the Pentagon . . .
“Farmers in Meru had prospered from the production of coffee. With the proceeds they had earned, some had invested in cattle. many had financed the education of their children, some of whom attended elementary school in the village, others secondary school in town, and some universities abroad.
Many of these who secured an education then taken jobs in the cities, maintaining ties with their families at home, they funneled a portion of their earnings back to the farms and shops at Meru. Even during a drought in 1985—the year I worked in the district—Meru, its farmers, and its towns radiated a sheen of prosperity and well-being that reflected the successful response of its peasants to the opportunities presented by the export of coffee.
Departing the farms at the foot of Mount Kenya, I then journeyed farther inland and crossed into Bugisu, a coffee-producing region lying on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Uganda. There too farmers had invested in the production of coffee, and towns had sprung up to provide them the means to ship their crop, to collect payment, and to make purchases for their farms and families. But prosperity and tranquility, I soon learned, lay in Bugisu’s past; stagnation and fear characterized its present. Unlike the streets and towns of Meru, those in Bugisu were not crowded with farmers hurriedly making purchases or leisurely enjoying the pleasure of town; rather, they were occupied by soldiers, while farmers fearfully huddled on their homesteads in the forests. Youths did not stroll about in school uniforms, as they had in Meru, in Bugisu, they instead marched, lockstep, in military garb, lashed by the voices—and the belts—of their commanders. On the farms, the coffee bearing trees remained unpruned; diseases ran unchecked from plant to plant and farm to farm; stocks accumulated, for want of the ability of merchants to finance the purchase of the crop or its transport to the coast.
By venturing from the coast inland, I was therefore forcefully introduced to the link between prosperity and violence. In the central harbor, force was not absent; rather, it was structured and organized.”1
Notebook: 26 November 2010 – Black Friday
If you need to wonder why the Patriot Act and police state tactics of the suppression of dissent is a bad idea, then consider that the BU student newspaper reports that a 2010 graduate, David House, was detained at O’Hare airport, had his laptop and other electronics gear seized because of his participation in the Bradley Manning support network:
“I am not, as far as I know, under investigation, neither is Jake Appelbaum,” House said. “I have not been told that the information acquired is being used for any purpose – it seems that the government is just kind of, I don’t know, securing the computers of people they think are dissidents in hopes of finding something. And that strikes me as being a little bit odd.”
According to the story, he was also questioned about wikileaks, which he appears to have no part of.
This is not the first instance of ordinary people’s civil rights being violated for their legitimate political activity, and as for the missing gear which the DHS/FBI seized, where are the “rights of property above all else” crowd to protect House’s property from government seizure?
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Speaking of Wikileaks, they’ve made the entire dump available for copy by torrent. I’ve saved both the .csv and the SQL versions and have made these available for propagation. As a War Logs evaluator, I’ve looked at some 1600 entries, placing me number five overall of people who have evaluated entries.
Thus far, I haven’t seen anything which I hadn’t already come across in the news, and if anything, Wikileaks has gone overboard in their redactions as far as I can tell. Having said this, what strikes me most about these entries is the sheer size of the IED problem (which our troops seem to be doing a pretty damned good job in dealing with), as well as the scale of murder and assassination taking place in Iraq. If the number of entries, considering how few entries I’ve seen, about victims being found is any indication, then Iraq was (or is) on the brink of civil war.
Better to go the refugee route than chance this low-grade, but ubiquitous, warfare.
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And then there are these anti-war activists from the heartland who are facing another Grand Jury subpeona as the government goes on another fishing expedition . . . . I wonder if they ever got their seized property back?
