Wikileaks: A Big Dangerous US Government Con Job

[3optic]

I sent this link to a friend who is a journalist and hosted an alternative public radio news broadcast in Los Angeles. His reply:

Of course I have heard this thesis -- that Wikileaks is actually a U.S. disinfo campaign -- but have yet to encounter a compelling argument making the case.

Engdahls arguments are weak:

1. That it is too good to be true.
2. That wikileaks use of establishment media show that they are not anti-establishment
3. That the leaks themselves are not secret, or uninteresting, or enable imperial justifications for targeting Iran, etc.
4. That it enables a crackdown on internet freedom.

These arguments are not compelling because:

1. Good things sometimes happen, and the narrative is not so unbelievable.
2. There is a coherent philosophy motivating the use of establishment media to disseminate the leaks, a philosophy which is articulated by Assange to the Frontline press club on the occasion of the release of the Iraq War Logs.
http://www.theworldsgotproblems.com/...he-free-world/
In a nutshell, wikileaks promises leakers that it will seek the greatest impact for the leaks, and they do this by setting competitive establishment media in many countries against each other.
Furthermore, if you don't like the framing of the material by these establishment media outlets, you can access the leaks directly.
3. That the leaks are not secret or not interesting works against 1 & 2. He cannot have it both ways. In any case it is not true that the leaks are not secret or not interesting. For example, an additional 15 K civilian deaths were revealed by the Iraq war logs, and the diplomatic cables reveal, definitively, that the U.S. is conducting airstrikes in Yemen -- airstrikes that the Yemeni government have been taking credit for in order to hide the role of the U.S. This was not generally known until the leaks, and it is not uninteresting, and it does not make the U.S. look good. And as for the justifications for targeting Iran found in the Cables -- of course Imperial functionaries are going to spin what is in the cables this way or that. The cables reveal that many Arab dictators don't like Iran, and so they try to spin this into a justification for sanctions or worse. I don't see how that is supposed to show that the release of the leaks themselves is a disinfo campaign.
4. Of course the leaks will occasion an internet crackdown!! This is also anticipated by the philosophy motivating wikileaks, see this great summary:
http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010...ment%E2%80%9D/
In an oversimplified nutshell, such a predictable crackdown inhibits the imperial machine from communicating, and thereby from articulating its goals. Also, bring on the hackers disrupting paypal, mastercard, etc....

[lisa]

Posted by Samothrace (here)
Err there is a bit more weight to the leaks than just "childish gossips". And I don't know where you are getting "most" from.

Where is the weight in calling:

• Putin and Medvedev “Batman and Robin,”
• Kim Jong-il a "flabby old chap"
• Angela Merkel "unimaginative"
• David Cameron "lacking depth"
• Prince Andrew "rude"
• Amadinejad "crazy"
• Hugo Chavez is "like Hitler"

[Butangeld]

Quite true none of these points raised against wikileaks can logically undermine the idea that it is a genuine alt-media, digging-for-truth outlet. Trouble I have with Assange's story is that he does have all of the usual elements found in a faked hero. I have no doubt this man has been created as a false adversary created to fix, and prop-up, the official stories and conspiracies of officialdom everywhere. His story even has the sordid sexual elements to boot. And it is most likely that even he does not have a full picture of his role in his own story.
He wouldn't and won't touch the stories that really matter - 9/11, Palestine and the concerted effort to collapse the United States of America. I really don't have much with which to defend America these days, but when it goes so does the philosophy upon which it was meant to have been based. Then, it will be every man for himself, and if you believe the 'leaks' then it seems the very best course of action to take is to start world war 3 by attacking Iran/China/North Korea - now who would want that?
There is a non-too surprising lack of 'leaks' concerning the actions of Israel over the last decade.
Remember, our mission is not to spread hate but to find freedom through truth.
People are evil not nations/religions and I don't believe that Assange is either. He is a goof. Let them try and control the Internet - there are plenty of other more resilient networks springing up all over the garden

[ponda]

Posted by lisa (here)
Where is the weight in calling:

• Putin and Medvedev “Batman and Robin,”
• Kim Jong-il a "flabby old chap"
• Angela Merkel "unimaginative"
• David Cameron "lacking depth"
• Prince Andrew "rude"
• Amadinejad "crazy"
• Hugo Chavez is "like Hitler"

Very true lisa but this is when it is up to us to try to filter out the unimportant details from the information

[bluestflame]

I believe JA's use of the particular media selected is to set the media up to PROVE how they manipulate the masses by ommission of important information

how they have been systematically manipulating public opinion for years

I think it was always planned to release the more complete leaks to show how much valid information was held back by the media without good cause

the information itself will verify this ~

¤=[Post Update]=¤

after the selected major media was given enough time , ...and enough rope

[dddanieljjjamesss]

And if it's all fake?

It doesn't really matter. Even if Assange is only being used to set the stage for further goals, the censors reveal themselves either way.

Freedom of information- truth- is already under attack, always has been. It doesn't matter that now the war for the mind is being staged on the internet, the goal is always the same.

Like his hair, Assange is in the gray. Good and bad things are riding on the whole thing. For one, I'm happy to know that what I have been saying about Shell and Nigeria is more evident. People are waking up even if they were only being programmed to start waking up... and some are one step ahead and congratulations to them, but for the people who are one behind, its still a step.

[The One]

Barely a day goes by when we do not hear of the term 'Wikileaks'.

If nothing else, it appears to have divided opinion.

In one corner - those that commend the whistleblowers.

In the other corner - Those (mainly right wing Americans), who want the man behind Wikileaks to be hunted down and declared a 'terrorist'.

One man offers an alternative view.

His name?

Frederick William Engdahl.

If you have never heard of him here is a little about the man on Wikipedia.

F. William Engdahl - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._William_Engdahl

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/




http://www.politic.co.uk/18423-wikil...#ixzz180R5XDxa

[3optic]

Posted by The One (here)

One man offers an alternative view.

His name?

Frederick William Engdahl.

We seem to be going in circles.

[The One]

Better to go round in circles than none at all

[Victoria Tintagel]

Hey Avalonean, I do hope you smile to yourself and place a monkey on your shoulder Here's an update I received in my mailbox, again, on Wikileaks.
Blessed be, Dutchess Tint.

Arianna Huffington Posted: December 15, 2010 09:19 PM The Media Gets It Wrong on WikiLeaks: It's About Broken Trust, Not Broken Condoms

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ariann...rm=Daily+Brief

I attend a lot of conferences on media and technology -- indeed, they might actually be the biggest growth sector of the media -- but the one I attended this past weekend was one of the most fascinating I've been to in quite a while. Entitled "A Symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet Freedom," the one-day event was sponsored by the Personal Democracy Forum and was moderated by the group's Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej. The WikiLeaks story is an ever-shifting one -- witness the latest twists of the Air Force blocking its personnel from accessing more than 25 news sites that have posted material released by WikiLeaks, and the shocking treatment of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of being the source of the leaks. One of the problems with the WikiLeaks story is that there has been way too much conflating going on, as Katrin Verclas pointed out at the symposium. So some serious unconflating (disconflating?) is in order.

I see four main aspects to the story. The first important aspect of the revelations is... the revelations. Too much of the coverage has been meta -- focusing on questions about whether the leaks were justified, while too little has dealt with the details of what has actually been revealed and what those revelations say about the wisdom of our ongoing effort in Afghanistan. There's a reason why the administration is so upset about these leaks. True, there hasn't been one smoking-gun, bombshell revelation -- but that's certainly not to say the cables haven't been revealing. What there has been instead is more of the consistent drip, drip, drip of damning details we keep getting about the war. Details that belie the upbeat talk the administration wants us to believe. The effect is cumulative -- not unlike mercury poisoning.

It's notable that the latest leaks came out the same week President Obama went to Afghanistan for his surprise visit to the troops -- and made a speech about how we are "succeeding" and "making important progress" and bound to "prevail." The WikiLeaks cables present quite a different picture. What emerges is one reality (the real one) colliding with another (the official one). We see smart, good-faith diplomats and foreign service personnel trying to make the truth on the ground match up to the one the administration has proclaimed to the public. The cables show the widening disconnect. It's like a foreign policy Ponzi scheme -- this one fueled not by the public's money, but the public's acquiescence.

The cables show that the administration has been cooking the books. And what's scandalous is not the actions of the diplomats doing their best to minimize the damage from our policies, but the policies themselves. Of course, we've known about them, but the cables provide another opportunity to see the truth behind the spin -- so it's no wonder the administration has reacted so hysterically to them. The second aspect of the story -- the one that was the focus of the symposium -- is the changing relationship to government that technology has made possible. Back in the year 2007, B.W. (Before WikiLeaks), Barack Obama waxed lyrical about government and the internet: "We have to use technology to open up our democracy. It's no coincidence that one of the most secretive administrations in our history has favored special interest and pursued policy that could not stand up to the sunlight."

At that moment he was, of course, busy building an internet framework that would play an important part in his becoming the head of the next administration. Not long after the election, in announcing his "Transparency and Open Government" policy, the president proclaimed: "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset." Cut to a few years later. Now that he's defending a reality that doesn't match up to, well, reality, he's suddenly not so keen on the people having a chance to access this "national asset."

Even more wikironic are the statements by his Secretary of State who, less than a year ago, was lecturing other nations about the value of an unfettered and free internet. Given her description of the WikiLeaks as "an attack on America's foreign policy interests" that have put in danger "innocent people," her comments take on a whole different light. Some highlights: In authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable... technologies with the potential to open up access to government and promote transparency can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human rights... As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent thinkers who use these tools. Now "making government accountable" is, as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs put it, a "reckless and dangerous action."

And the government isn't stopping at shameless demagoguery, hypocrisy, and fear-mongering -- it's putting its words into action. According to The Hill, this week the House Judiciary Committee will open hearings into whether WikiLeaks has somehow violated the Espionage Act of 1917. What's more, ABC News reports that Assange's lawyers are hearing that U.S. indictments could be forthcoming: "The American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that are, I believe, arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "We have a very serious, active, ongoing investigation that is criminal in nature. I authorized just last week a number of things to be done so that we can hopefully get to the bottom of this and hold people accountable... as they should be."

For the Obama administration, it appears that accountability is a one-way street. When he had the chance to bring the principle of accountability to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and investigate how we got into them, the president passed. As John Perry Barlow tweeted, "We have reached a point in our history where lies are protected speech and the truth is criminal."
Any process of real accountability, would, of course, also include the key role the press played in bringing us the war in Iraq. Jay Rosen, one of the participants in the symposium, wrote a brilliant essay entitled "From Judith Miller to Julian Assange." He writes: For the portion of the American press that still looks to Watergate and the Pentagon Papers for inspiration, and that considers itself a check on state power, the hour of its greatest humiliation can, I think, be located with some precision: it happened on Sunday, September 8, 2002.

That was when the New York Times published Judith Miller and Michael Gordon's breathless, spoon-fed -- and ultimately inaccurate -- account of Iraqi attempts to buy aluminum tubes to produce fuel for a nuclear bomb. Miller's after-the-facts-proved-wrong response, as quoted in a Michael Massing piece in the New York Review of Books, was: "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."
In other words, her job is to tell citizens what their government is saying, not, as Obama called for in his transparency initiative, what their government is doing. As Jay Rosen put it:
Today it is recognized at the Times and in the journalism world that Judy Miller was a bad actor who did a lot of damage and had to go. But it has never been recognized that secrecy was itself a bad actor in the events that led to the collapse, that it did a lot of damage, and parts of it might have to go. Our press has never come to terms with the ways in which it got itself on the wrong side of secrecy as the national security state swelled in size after September 11th.

And in the WikiLeaks case, much of media has again found itself on the wrong side of secrecy -- and so much of the reporting about WikiLeaks has served to obscure, to conflate, to mislead.
For instance, how many stories have you heard or read about all the cables being "dumped" in "indiscriminate" ways with no attempt to "vet" and "redact" the stories first. In truth, only just over 1,200 of the 250,000 cables have been released, and WikiLeaks is now publishing only those cables vetted and redacted by their media partners, which includes the New York Times here and the Guardian in England. The establishment media may be part of the media, but they're also part of the establishment. And they're circling the wagons. One method they're using, as Andrew Rasiej put it after the symposium, is to conflate the secrecy that governments use to operate and the secrecy that is used to hide the truth and allow governments to mislead us.

Nobody, including WikiLeaks, is promoting the idea that government should exist in total transparency, or that, for instance, all government meetings should be live-streamed and cameras placed around the White House like a DC-based spin-off of Big Brother. Assange himself would not disagree. "Secrecy is important for many things," he told Time's Richard Stengel. "We keep secret the identity of our sources, as an example, take great pains to do it." At the same time, however, secrecy "shouldn't be used to cover up abuses." But the government's legitimate need for secrecy is very different from the government's desire to get away with hiding the truth. Conflating the two is dangerously unhealthy for a democracy. And this is why it's especially important to look at what WikiLeaks is actually doing, as distinct from what its critics claim it's doing. And this is why it's also important to look at the fact that even though the cables are being published in mainstream outlets like the Times, the information first went to WikiLeaks. "You've heard of voting with your feet?" Rosen said during the symposium. "The sources are voting with their leaks. If they trusted the newspapers more, they would be going to the newspapers."

Our democracy's need for accountability transcends left and right divisions. Over at American Conservative magazine, Jack Hunter penned "The Conservative Case for WikiLeaks," writing:
Decentralizing government power, limiting it, and challenging it was the Founders' intent and these have always been core conservative principles. Conservatives should prefer an explosion of whistleblower groups like WikiLeaks to a federal government powerful enough to take them down. Government officials who now attack WikiLeaks don't fear national endangerment, they fear personal embarrassment. And while scores of conservatives have long promised to undermine or challenge the current monstrosity in Washington, D.C., it is now an organization not recognizably conservative that best undermines the political establishment and challenges its very foundations. It is not, as Simon Jenkins put it in the Guardian, the job of the media to protect the powerful from embarrassment. As I said at the symposium, its job is to play the role of the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes -- brave enough to point out what nobody else is willing to say.

When the press trades truth for access, it is WikiLeaks that acts like the little boy. "Power," wrote Jenkins, "loathes truth revealed. When the public interest is undermined by the lies and paranoia of power, it is disclosure that takes sanity by the scruff of its neck and sets it back on its feet." A final aspect of the story is Julian Assange himself. Is he a visionary? Is he an anarchist? Is he a jerk? This is fun speculation, but why does it have an impact on the value of the WikiLeaks revelations? Of course, it's not terribly surprising that those who are made uncomfortable by the discrepancy between what the leaked cables show and what our government claims would rather make this all about the psychological makeup of Assange. But doing so is a virtual admission that they have nothing tangible with which to counter the reality exposed by WikiLeaks. Maybe Assange "often acts without completely thinking through every repercussion of his actions," writes Slate's Jack Shafer. "But if you want to dismiss him just because he's a seething jerk, there are about 2,000 journalists I'd like you to meet."

Whether Assange is a world-class jerk or not, this is bigger than Assange -- and will continue whether or not he continues to be a central player in it. In fact, there is already an offshoot site soon to be launched, called Openleaks, which will be run by veterans of WikiLeaks. And I doubt this will be the only offshoot. So as interesting as the Assange saga is, and I'm sure there will be books and movies recounting Assange's personal tale, this is not about one man. Nor is it about one site, though the precedent of allowing the government to shut it down is very important.
It is about our future. For our democracy to survive, citizens have to be able to know what our government is really doing. We can't change course if we don't have accurate information about where we really are. Whether this comes from a website or a newspaper or both doesn't matter. But if our government is successful in its efforts to shut down this new avenue of accountability, it will have done our country far more damage than what it claims is being done by WikiLeaks.

[Ahkenaten]

Posted by lisa (here)
Where is the weight in calling:

• Putin and Medvedev “Batman and Robin,”
• Kim Jong-il a "flabby old chap"
• Angela Merkel "unimaginative"
• David Cameron "lacking depth"
• Prince Andrew "rude"
• Amadinejad "crazy"
• Hugo Chavez is "like Hitler"

Lisa there is quite a bit of weight in revealing that the US government used airbases in the North of England to store cluster bombs in collaboration with the British Military, attempting to keep this information from Parliament - in violation of international treaties..............so is that trivial or merely gossip?

[lisa]

Ahkenaten, sorry my post wasn't clear. I did not mean that all info that come out of Wikileaks are gossips with no weight. I was only talking about the first batch of release from the sea of info given to New York Times. What context did these political gossips come within? Can they publish the complete emails and conversations rather than just the snippets?

[Ahkenaten]

Hi Lisa - I think you raise a very important issue, that is the degree of control the press has over what is actually released to the public. The way I understand it is that Wikileaks dumps data on its four press partners (NY Times, The Guardian, and I think Figaro in France and Spiegel in Germany - could be wrong about the last two!) Anyway then they go to work on the info deciding what to redact for security reasons and what to print. The weak point in the whole scheme seems to me to be the press partners who exercise total control over what actually is released if my understanding is correct. I also read that Wikileaks had asked the US Department of State to work with them on sorting through the documents for security purposes and they refused to be involved. Anyway one can clearly see that the press could easily cherry-pick information to suit whatever political biases the paper had.................and by printing skewed info, skew the entire project.

But that gets to us and our lack of time or laziness................as a practical matter where does the regular Joe Schmo have the time to read thousands of pages of legal documents to "get to the bottom of it" - we rely on the press to predigest this kind of information for us and they have not proven themselves to be as trustworthy and objective as one would wish, especially when it comes to the volatile world of international politics and relations.

But what are the alternatives? Remember we have about 1,200 documents dumped so far out of a total of about 260K!!!!

?????????????

[ponda]

Yeah the problem with having the msm involved is that it will still come down to business decisions that are based on selling newspapers and making money and also corporate ownership interests,hence the tabloid headlines and gossip comments that lisa pointed out previously.What we need is considered and unbiased analysis.I don't think we will get that from the msm in large amounts.

[chelmostef]

Hi Arkenaten, I think you have made the point quite well. 1,200 documents out of 260k, now that is a lot of info and the media cherry picking the info to suit their own agenda, trying to not sound sarcastic but who would have thought they would do that! The Guardian should have done better with the information and without retrospect should have been a good choice to release the information from in my opinion. I personally still have a little hope for some of the main stream medias not being completely corrupt and inept although this opinion changes from day to day, I think the fact the Daily Mail keeps running with the Dr David Kelly case high lights this quite nicely.

In summary until all the memo/information has been released and deciphered independently from the news outlets its impossible to draw a conclusion, we can only speculate over if they have some real goodies for us.

Over the last few years the media has never had so many stories to write about, one industry that is surely growing, they must love Wiki or should do... Maybe its promoting lazy journalism as they dont have to go out and search for the stories just sift though Wiki leaks.

[AlkaMyst]

I have posted the following on my blog "Wikileaks Founder: Bigger Bombshells On The Way"......check it here!.

It was a recent interview done by Alex Jones with John Young where they talked about how "Julian Assange is greasing the skids for the cybersecurity agenda to regulate and censor the world wide web."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-lTBJAkNyBk

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kzHRgJLgSm4

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=d7ve_ez3LL0

[chelmostef]

Hi AlkaMyst!
"Julian Assange is greasing the skids for the cybersecurity agenda to regulate and censor the world wide web."

This is the problem isn't it! Wikileaks being the internet 9-11 you can even hear the media calling him a terrorist. It just sucks! (Not just Wiki but all the nefarious organised campaigns against us)

But how do we fight this effectively?

Maybe just buying silver! Thats Max Keisers magic bullet!

[AlkaMyst]

This is the problem isn't it! Wikileaks being the internet 9-11 you can even hear the media calling him a terrorist. It just sucks! (Not just Wiki but all the nefarious organised campaigns against us)

But how do we fight this effectively?

Maybe just buying silver! Thats Max Keisers magic bullet!

Sadly but true, but maybe you should do some research onto who really finances WikiLeaks and if you listen to the interview above you'll find out that they are getting funds from George Soros....not only that but Julian Assange is one of the original Cypherpunk's and a very skilled hacker!!!

And like Assange said before, "No one will be able to bring WikiLeaks down and to do so they will have to shutdown the internet" and I just don't see that happening....I do however see Legislation already being created here in the US to start banning and shutting down websites that support or have any kind of material like WikiLeaks, can you say "Internet Censorship".

I don't think this is something we can fight, this WikiLeaks Monster has taken a life of it's own and I think it's going to take us (the World) for a wild ride and we better hold on cause I don't see the brakes pedal on WikiLeaks release galore!!!

[chelmostef]

Hi AlkaMyst!

That is a very telling quote;

"No one will be able to bring WikiLeaks down and to do so they will have to shutdown the internet"

Although I still think the jury is still out on this one.(In the context that it puts Wiki into the dis-info/psy-ops)


If we really want to know all the government has in is secret vaults then we are going need something like wikileaks to push the envelope further.
How far can it be pushed is the question will it go our way or thiers?

Seems like its going to be one bumpy ride!

[AlkaMyst]

Although I still think the jury is still out on this one.(In the context that it puts Wiki into the dis-info/psy-ops)


If we really want to know all the government has in is secret vaults then we are going need something like wikileaks to push the envelope further.
How far can it be pushed is the question will it go our way or thiers?

Seems like its going to be one bumpy ride!

I couldn't have said it better!!!