WikiLeaks Open Thread
December 3rd, 2010I’m officially exhausted with the WikiLeaks spectacle. I’m now blocking any mention of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange from my feeds and email submissions. Enough already. Wake me up when I can locally search the whole damn thing on my own. This clown act is a bore.
Ok, so these were the stories that caught my eye before I hit the mute button on this thing:
DNS Provider Drops Wikileaks.org
Comment: Again, the TLD/DNS issue is very serious: 1, 2.
wikileaks.ch was working for a while, but it’s down for me now. It doesn’t resolve to anything. Their Swedish “bunker” gear is still operational from the IP as I write this: http://46.59.1.2. They probably have other domain names that work, but I don’t know what they are.
Keep in mind, this is all drama and showmanship. Assange could post the passphrase to the “insurance file” on Twitter at any time if he was interested in putting a stop to this nonsense. The goal, as stated on the FAQ, is to release the documents slowly, so it extends the period of time that they are discussed in the media:
Why not release everything now?
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents to ensure that there is time for them to be written about, commented on and discussed widely in public, something that is impossible if hundreds of thousands of documents are released at once. We will therefore be releasing the documents gradually over the coming weeks and months.
So, the three ring circus continues. Step right up!
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Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site
Comment: Good. Hopefully the megalomaniac index will be lower than what we’re seeing with WikiLeaks.
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Comment: It’s going from a three ring circus to cockteasing. No pun intended, given his legal troubles.
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Amazon Dropped WikiLeaks from Their Cloud Computing/Hosting Service
Comment: If Amazon’s other cloud clients weren’t threatened from the DDOS, I’d say that this is a worrying, but hardly a surprising, decision. Anyone who deals with controversial content knows that the terms and conditions are often selectively applied. It happened with me and Google. It happens with PayPal and loads of sites.
Cryptome is hosted by Network Solutions. Cryptome is hosting a mirror of the State Department documents released so far and John Young isn’t having any problem with his host. Search down cryptome.org for “Cryptome latest mirror”.
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That’s all for me, folks. For now, anyway. If you have anything to add, go for it.
A Cryptogon reader posted this link in the comments of a post made a few weeks ago:
http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/
The delayed leaking strategy would also serve the purpose of freaking out the various bureaucracies on a regular basis. It’s one thing for journalists to investigate and write articles based on research and interviews; that can be mediated and controlled.
Leaking reports written in confidence could arguably affect the bureaucracy’s ability to function. And according to the link, which dissects an essay written by Assange, that is one of the primary purposes of the leaking: to impede the effectiveness of the bureaucracy’s function.
That being said, one has to wonder who the various bureaucracies are worried about. The slack-jawed idiots watching the Super Bowl? Other bureaucracies? Various activist groups? None of the stuff leaked was that surprising to people who care enough to follow these sorts of things.
Another possibility, of course, is that the authoritarians will use Wikileaks as an excuse and opportunity to institute more draconian controls on the internet, which it looks like they are already doing. I personally think their publicity firestorm is more designed to drum up negative public opinion against Wikileaks to justify a popular ratification in favor of said controls.
Its kind of weird to be away from reading Cryptogon for a week and see nothing posted re JA (Julian Assange) on an open thread.
Myself, from newspapers, FAIR, and general info that arrived in my brain box just today, I don’t understand the lack of comments here. On an open thread?
Oh well. I have lots to say.
Was thinking that Julian Assange is wanted by Interpol (for not using condoms – that is the case against him in Sweden), but that makes him the WORLD’s MOST WANTED CRIMINAL. Wow. What happened to Osama Bin Ladin?
This Wikileaks story was/is quite a bit of fun. I have my popcorn out and am enjoying every twist and turn. I have no idea what is going on, but it is as amusing as can be watching the powerful on all sides squirm.
One thing we have learned is how heavily the internet has been infiltrated by the government and the corporations. Amazon, Paypal, Everydns, would all be ashamed if they were capable of shame. Remarkably enough most of the press has behaved themselves in this debacle. The actions of the USG in this have been deplorable. The latest was a memo out of Social Security to their employees threatening them with legal action if they read any of the leaks.
I don’t what in the world wikileaks is trying to accomplish other than reaching maximum piss off with the government by dribbling out the leaks at the rate of 100/day or so. I am guessing yesterday was maximum coverage day, as people will start to grow bored with the sordid tale fairly quickly.
“one has to wonder who the various bureaucracies are worried about”
well, imho, it is people outside the US who haven’t been paying attention (for the past 65 years) to the fact that their (sic) governments are lackeys for the US imperium. the mafia boss is in charge of his mafia minions. some people may have been under the erroneous beleif that their government acted in the interest of the country’s citizens. wrong. they have been sucking up to the mafia boss for so many decades now, no one even bats an eyelid.
hence, the leaks send the mafia into a panic and create friction between the mafia’s lackeys and local populations. this is not a short-term process, though. after three or four years, things could get interesting, i reckon.
I just can’t understand why so many are falling for this guy. Really. Wikileaks is ALL OVER the MSM like a rash being lapped up as some kind of wonderful crusader of the oppressed when it is clear that most of the so called leaks are simply rehashing all the old globalist geo-political nonsense a la al-qaeda, Russia and Iran as the designated evil blah blah blah. Any critical thinking seems to be totally suspended in relation to this ridiculous spectacle. I’ve never seen such a blatant example of Psychological operations in plain view.
Some of the best alternative news websites are publishing gushing articles in praise of Wikileaks’ crusade to the extent that I seriously call into question whether they’ve learned anything at about the nature of “information dominance”. Quite extraordinary of pied piper distraction – just enough truth to take the populace away from the deeper issues.
There are a few writers out there at least taking a more objective and cautious view based on the EVIDENCE and QUI BONO effect which is what should always be at the forefront of any serious researcher’s mind is Joe Quinn of sott.net, Wayne Madsen of the waynemadsenreport.com Gordon Duff of veteranstoday.com, Dr.Tariq Shadid from empirestrikesblack and a few more…
I’ll include the links to the sott.net articles which seem to me to be far the most concise:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/218901-Wiki-Leaks-and-Plausible-Lies-Where-Have-All-The-Critical-Thinkers-Gone-
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/218807-Wiki-Leaks-Serves-Israeli-Agenda-Of-Demonizing-Iran
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/213080-Beware-Julian-Assange-and-Wikileaks-Darlings-Of-The-Mainstream-Media
Shikar, you said it better than I could have. All those leaks since the helicopter attack video look empty of “explosive” content.
The cable leaks so far are no exception. Granted we have seen a couple of name calling here and there but overall it will all be forgotten in a year or so.
You might have noticed that some cable are censored. I will let Julian Assange himself explain to us who got the time to read all of those cables and censor them:
quote “Mr Assange,
Can you explain the censorship of identities as XXXXX’s in the revealed cables? Some critical identities are left as is, whereas some are XXXXX’d. Some cables are partially revealed. Who can make such critical decisons, but the US gov’t? As far as we know your request for such help was rejected by the State department. Also is there an order in the release of cable or are they randomly selected?
Thank you.
Julian Assange:
The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it. The redactions are then reviewed by at least one other journalist or editor, and we review samples supplied by the other organisations to make sure the process is working.”
I never thrusted the mainstream media to tell me the whole true but now I’m supposed to thrust them when it comes to wikileaks? yea right..
@tochigi
The people you describe would be the analogues to the people who watch the Super Bowl in the USA; they watch the World Cup instead. I typically find people from outside the US more politically aware of the US role in the world than people within the US, but naturally this evidence is purely anecdotal.
@Shikar
I don’t think Wikileaks can automatically be concluded to be a state actor in the sense that all its participants are knowing, paid-off employees of some agency, knowingly disseminating state propaganda with the intent to deceive. However, I would not be surprised to find out that he has state actors or establishment figures acting as guardian angels to increase the chances of keeping him alive and out of jail.
State documents would naturally be filled with state propaganda, namely the view of foreign states as suspicious, devilish enemies to be spied on and plotted against. Why do people find it so sinister that Iran attempts to arm itself? Nobody in the “establishment” US worries about Great Britain or Israel buying arms. Iran has been harmed by the West for the greater part of the 20th century, it is quite natural for it to behave the way it does. The West got rid of Mossaddegh, brought in the Shah, backed Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war, etc. etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
No state actor comes out looking good from these leaks.
However, this does not mean that the various media groups and state actors cannot spin the Wikileaks material to support their world-views.
For example, I followed one of those links to a New York Post piece whining about how there really were WMD in Iraq because small amounts of chemical weapons had been found, according to the Wikileaks material. But that is only relevant to idiots that buy into the notion that the presence of chemical weapons requires a full-scale invasion.
@ltcolonelnemo.
I’m of the mind that most of the bods at Wikileaks are quite sincere. I think the best propaganda can only work when the main protagonists themselves are unaware how they are being used – in other words when most of the whisleblowers in question are patsies chosen precisely for their large egos and lack of psychological awareness and knowledge concerning the machiavellian nature of the corporate/military complex. I think Julian Assange may fall into that category though I’m not sure.
Whatever the true sources and reasoning behind Wikileaks I think the whole think stinks to high heaven and popular alternative sites like globalresearch and informationclearinghouse need to get their acts together sharpish if they wish to retain credibility.The Psyops taking place on the internet right now obviously doesn’t seem to have been grasped by the majority of outlets.
There is a recent piece highlighting the fact that on the Wikileaks advisory board there is a…”member working for a corporation that has partnered with the CIA to buy a firm specialising in software perfectly suited to spying, infiltration and COINTELPRO.”
http://empirestrikesblack.com/2010/12/wikileaks-linked-to-the-cia/
So, my guess is that Wikileaks has been managed and “contoured” from the start by well-intentioned but somewhat niave participants.
With regard to Wikileaks as a knowing (vs. unknowing) intelligence agency dupe, Paul Craig Roberts makes the following argument:
“However, it has gained traction because some of the cables contain false information. Some have concluded, incorrectly, that the false information was put into the documents for the purpose of being leaked.
There is another explanation for the false information. Diplomats concerned with advancing their careers learn to tell their bosses what they want to hear, whether true or false. Diplomats understand that the US government has agendas that it cannot declare and that they are expected to support these agendas by sending in reports that validate the undeclared agendas. For example, the US government cannot openly say that it is endeavoring to create a climate of opinion that gives the US a green light for eliminating the independent Iranian government and re-establishing an American puppet state. US “diplomats,” a.k.a., spies, understand this and fabricate the information that supports the agenda.”
These statements resonated with me because I’ve met many people who deliberately assert false world-views as a means to survival, prosperity, and advancement. When you corner them and pin them down with facts or inconsistencies, they’ll usually admit that you’re either right or have a point, and then they’ll acknowledge that they don’t really care, but that they don’t want to rock the boat, or they want to keep their job.
Needless to say, it can be very dangerous to say the wrong thing, and even more dangerous to put it into print, especially when you don’t know who holds the hammer or when it could drop.
The link for that PCR statement was:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22269
He refers to this article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un
Wikileaks: United States Ambassador to the Holy See reveals ‘Pope is Catholic’.
This is BS of the highest order. If it’s a PSYOP, perhaps it’s telling us ‘You’re on your own. Everyone else’s brains have turned to onions’.
The only creditable report was from the UK’s Register:
Has Wikileaks run out of secrets?
actually, i think that TheRegister, like most other mainstream disinformation&propaganda ops, is the one helping TPTB. yes, most of the cables are trivial or obvious but not publicly spoken assessments. BUT, there is plenty of shit in there that really shows how the mafia world works for anyone willing to read. ok, even most of this stuff is no surprise to the people who read globalresearch, but this is the US govt and its imperial lackeys incriminating themselves for all to see. the people who make out, “nothing to see here, move along”, well they make me really suspicious of their motives.
“The people who make out, “nothing to see here, move along”, well they make me really suspicious of their motives.”
Exactly. They write this because they know that most people will not read all of the leaked documents.
If the leaks, or the act of leaking were inconsequential, why all the firestorm of controversy, why all the threats, why all the converging of various powerful entities to lower the boom on Wikileaks?
One could argue that by not releasing everything all at the same time, Wikileaks made a dangerous gambit. I read somewhere once that whistleblowers play a dangerous game if they hold secrets back because they incentivize their enemies to eliminate or incapacitate them. By releasing all the secrets, they have done all their damage, and there is no point to going after them, unless you count revenge, or making an example of them.
It seems some people are trying to spin this into an I-9/11 incident, where Assange is a terrorist who warrants the passage of new, draconian, repressive laws. This whole thing is escalating into a show-down that could have grave consequences as bluffs get called.
“Another possibility, of course, is that the authoritarians will use Wikileaks as an excuse and opportunity to institute more draconian controls on the internet, which it looks like they are already doing. I personally think their publicity firestorm is more designed to drum up negative public opinion against Wikileaks to justify a popular ratification in favor of said controls.”
ltcolonelnemo looks to be spot on, again.
It’s only taken 3 days to prove it. Websites shut down (including torrent sites), denying funds (paypal plus frozen assests), deny access (via DNS), warrants and death threats?
“Information was meant to be free.” (Stuart Brand)
Wikileaks is the 9/11 to fix that ‘information freedom’ problem.
@ltcolonelnemo:
i agree. i tink Assange has taken a calculated risk. he is smart, and hopefully not overcome by hubris…
i think the whole thing shows how the mainstream propaganda outfits have no credibility left to lose. they are simply tools of the mafia-state and are unashamed to let the world see this. but hadly anyone cares. as with most things, it mostly is a question of self-delusion, emperors, new clothes, etc.
@jfreon
Re: Websites shut down, there are several hundred mirrors now:
http://46.59.1.2/mirrors.html
@ltcolonelnemo:
“There is another explanation for the false information. Diplomats concerned with advancing their careers learn to tell their bosses what they want to hear, whether true or false. US “diplomats,” a.k.a., spies, understand this and fabricate the information that supports the agenda.”
I’ve a lot of respect for Paul Craig Roberts and I agree with the above in that is certainly part of the mix but it is not the whole story. Roberts is a political animal turned renegade but he still retains some the singularly American social programming that prevents him from deeper analysis.
“Exactly. They write this because they know that most people will not read all of the leaked documents.”
Secrets? Please tell me something in any of the leaked documents that really shakes the foundations of the State Department. I can find nothing other than a parroting of the State Department agenda. All I can see is a strenthening of the fake “war on terror” that the Osama bin Laden bogey-man is alive and kicking, the same Iran is evil, Russia is worse and continuing spin-balling of an equally decadent Pakistan…This is simply a channel by which the same tired old lies are being propagated. In other words: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout Sure, this is very probably due a wide variety of influences – some natural some not so natural however the inception and end result is very far from the idea that Wikileaks is about freedom and calling governments to account. It is not.
“Another possibility, of course, is that the authoritarians will use Wikileaks as an excuse and opportunity to institute more draconian controls on the internet, which it looks like they are already doing. I personally think their publicity firestorm is more designed to drum up negative public opinion against Wikileaks to justify a popular ratification in favor of said controls.”
How about both? You can defang activism and dissidents by channelling all their energy into an essentially vacuous and false “cry for freedom”
while at the same time using it as the perfect excuse to do initiate further controls on the internet which were already taking place long before Wikileaks. And what a grand pantomime in favour of “freedom” while more tinkering with the economy goes unnoticed…Always multiple uses to cream off the milk of awareness.
“Wikileaks is the 9/11 to fix that ‘information freedom’ problem.”
Indeed.
Well, just in case anyone is still reading this thread I’ll have to admit to a serious period of reflection going on with the Wikileaks saga. I’m not sure I’m changing my position on the raison d’etre of this circus but I read an article today that I found extraordinary and profound. And in the end I had to concur.
“Because, in the end, it is the principle that the people are entitled to the Truth that matters and that is what is at stake here.”
Indeed. I recommend all folks spotlighting the Wikileaks phenomena read this article quicksharp:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/219199-The-Baby-and-the-Bathwater-Wiki-Leaks-and-the-Principle-of-Truth
How the world turns….