The Empire Strikes Back

We all knew it was coming. Ever since July, when WikiLeaks released classified Afghanistan War documents over the objections of the U.S. government, there was simply no chance that website founder Julian Assange would be allowed to make a clean getaway. Not after challenging the same people who left a hundred thousand dead in Iraq without so much as a backward glance. And certainly not after the Australian hacker-turned-activist continued his work, releasing both documents relating to the Iraq War and, in the latest outrage, U.S. State Department cables that shed light on its back-room dealings. Such repeated acts of defiance would not – could not – go unpunished. Too much was at stake. It was only a matter of time before the inevitable response.

Now Assange sits in solitary confinement in a London prison, awaiting extradition to Sweden to face sex-crime allegations as the U.S. government builds its own case against him. And yet, for all its tragic inevitability, there remains something shocking in the swiftness and single-minded ferocity with which Assange was taken down. In just over a week, the coordinated assault by state and corporate power stripped WikiLeaks of its domain name and banished it, through a campaign of harassment and disruption, onto unrecognizable mirror sites. Far from decrying this act of censorship, the establishment press denounced Assange, calling for his prosecution if not his outright assassination. Pundits howled that the leak threatened national security even as they reassured the public that it revealed nothing new and could be safely dismissed as irrelevant.

Both claims, of course, are false, just as they were when the press made them during the last two WikiLeaks disclosures. Despite the shrill accusations of Assange having “blood on his hands,” the very same government making those charges has acknowledged that it does not know of anyone being harmed, much less killed, as a result of the leaks. The notion that the released cables are uninformative is similarly incorrect. We now know that U.S. Special Forces are operating in Pakistan, just as Jeremy Scahill reported last year to a chorus of denials from military officials, and that the U.S. turned a blind eye to hundreds of murders committed by its military allies in that country. We know that it was indeed the U.S. that has been bombing Yemen, contrary to the statements of U.S. and Yemeni officials. We know that Hillary Clinton ordered diplomats to spy on United Nations dignitaries and that the U.S. government was aware of Shell and Pfizer’s corporate malfeasance in Nigeria. But the most valuable lesson of the WikiLeaks affair lies less in the cables than it does in the world’s response to them.

Even before the documents were released, the U.S. government launched a full-fledged public relations assault on WikiLeaks. What is most striking, however, is that the fight against WikiLeaks was soon taken up by virtually every major government in the world, regardless of political system or stated commitment to freedom of speech. Iran and China moved to block online access to the cables. The United Kingdom condemned the leak as “not in the national interest.” These remarks were echoed by the Canadian foreign affairs minister, who called the release “irresponsible.” Australia, too, condemned the action, promising to “support any law enforcement action that may be taken.” Italy blasted the release as the “September 11 of world diplomacy,” while France denounced it as “a threat to democracy.” The Japanese foreign minister, not to be outdone, declared the release “a monstrosity and criminal act.” Taken together, these statements are nearly indistinguishable. The Italian minister could have just as easily read the remarks of the Australian attorney general, or the Canadian or French or Japanese dignitaries, and it would not have made the slightest difference. Separated by thousands of miles, they were all reading from the same script.

There were a few notable holdouts from the WikiLeaks roast. The president of Brazil expressed solidarity with Assange, while Russia proposed that he receive the Nobel Peace Prize in a cynical attempt to score political points. By and large, however, the world’s governments were in lockstep on the danger presented by WikiLeaks. This sheer uniformity of opinion crossed all political lines: authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies, U.S. allies and rivals joined as one in condemning the anti-secrecy website. Faced with the disclosure of diplomatic secrets, even alleged U.S. enemies put aside their dislike of American empire to face down a far more dangerous threat to their systems: the idea that their citizens might know what they were saying behind closed doors.

Corporations followed suit, rapidly closing ranks against the whistleblower site. In a matter of days, WikiLeaks was abandoned by EveryDNS.net, Amazon.com, MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and PostFinance, limiting the site’s ability to receive donations and hampering its accessibility to internet users. With world governments spearheading the legal assault on WikiLeaks and the mainstream media disparaging the site in the court of public opinion, the corporate boycott served as the third prong of the attack on WikiLeaks. Mainstream commentators often speak of the adversarial relationship between government and business. The reaction to the WikiLeaks affair shows nothing could be further from the truth. When push came to shove, far from providing checks and balances on one another, the power centers of the establishment – government, corporate, and media – united in pursuit of a common cause: the destruction of WikiLeaks and its founder.

There has been resistance. Anti-censorship hackers have launched attacks on the websites of the corporations guilty of dropping WikiLeaks, and have succeeded in temporarily disrupting them. For their troubles, they have been rewarded with the promise of a criminal investigation by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who has made no similar promise to investigate the hackers who launched damaging denial-of-service attacks against WikiLeaks. Meanwhile, in its efforts to prosecute Assange, the ironically-named Justice Department is considering dusting off the Espionage Act of 1917, which was used to persecute antiwar activists during the two world wars. Back in August, I wrote that WikiLeaks’ truth-telling constituted a revolutionary act. Now the long-awaited crackdown is here – and, if Julian Assange's legal troubles are anything to go by, it is only just beginning.

"A Sin and a Shame"

Bob Herbert proves once again why he’s arguably the only New York Times columnist worth reading, with this excellent analysis of how corporations used the recession as an excuse to lay off unnecessarily large numbers of workers and reap massive profits in the process.

Note how he tackles the same subject as Zakaria, but, unlike his reflexively pro-business counterpart, correctly diagnoses the problem – corporate greed – and calls it what it is: “a sin and a shame.” Rather than spinning the numbers into a free-market parable, Herbert addresses the ugly reality that Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, pointed out recently: “Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment.”

That piece can be read here. But just another word on Herbert, who is far and away the best writer on the Times op-ed staff. While his critiques usually don’t stray too far left of the mainstream, he writes with a profound sense of common decency that is utterly lacking among fellow NYT columnists like Thomas Friedman (of “Suck on this, Iraq” infamy) and David Brooks, who memorably opined that Haitian culture, and not the island’s history of exploitation by colonial powers, was to blame for the country’s endemic poverty. Whether Herbert is lamenting the escalation in Afghanistan or defending the working class, his work marks a refreshing change from the pro-war, pro-corporate screeds that so often populate the Times. Good for him.

Newsweek's Economic Fix: Give Business More Power

U.S. corporations are still making a killing, recession be damned. And – shockingly – they’re not spreading the wealth. In his recent article “Obama’s CEO Problem,” Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek points out that “the Federal Reserve recently reported that America’s 500 largest nonfinancial companies have accumulated an astonishing $1.8 trillion of cash on their balance sheets.” This figure, he notes, “is higher than it has been in almost half a century.” But here’s the kicker: “And yet, most corporations are not spending this money on new plants, equipment, or workers.”

Could this be another reminder – as if we needed it – that the long-discredited theory of trickle-down economics doesn’t work? That rather than re-invest their riches to create working-class prosperity, Big Business tends to pocket the money, cut workers and costs, and jack their profit margins even higher, as happened during the Reagan years? Only to Establishment darling and self-proclaimed “centrist” Zakaria would this come as a shock.

But don’t take my word for it. Zakaria, in his infinite wisdom, has already foreseen this reaction and sagely warns that “the populist left will surely scream that the last thing we need to do is pander to business.” No, the real problem here, Zakaria writes, is that the private sector views President Obama as fundamentally “anti-business.” Why the distrust? Zakaria goes on to quote a handful of unnamed “business leaders,” who recite a litany of tragic wrongs done them by the Obama Administration. Among them are these grave injustices: “Obama had no businessmen or women in his cabinet” and “he rarely consulted with CEOs.”

Not to sound like a member of the screaming populist left, but does anyone apart from Zakaria’s nameless “business leaders” – and the most dedicated of Obama’s Kool-Aid drinkers – really believe that Big Business no longer has a voice in D.C.? The notion that Obama has miraculously banished lobbyists from the Beltway is ludicrous. Corporate influence is so strong that the line dividing the private and public sectors has all but disappeared (to the extent that there’s ever been a line, that is). And given the revelations that have surfaced since the Deepwater Horizon spill – which found that, in one case, an industry employee was sleeping with a federal regulator – is even more entanglement between business and government really the solution to our continuing economic woes?

But that’s not all. Of particular concern to Zakaria’s captains of industry is the “uncertainty surrounding regulations and taxes,” especially the havoc that “the myriad new laws and regulations being cooked up in Washington” will wreak upon corporate profits. One poor CEO lamented that “his company had lawyers working day and night trying to figure out the implications of all these new regulations.” The average American is expected to sympathize.

Zakaria attempts to temper these criticisms, stating that “most of the business leaders I spoke to had voted for Barack Obama.” While Zakaria clearly mentions this to prove his corporate contacts aren’t raving Tea Party fanatics, the line says more about Obama than it does any of Zakaria’s unattributed sources. Despite his “anti-business” label, Obama was during the election and remains today a creature of the Establishment. If there are any remaining doubts on that front – and by this point in the game, there should not be – that ringing endorsement by the American business community should put them to rest.