Unlimited Wikileaks Shenanigans

[Lies]

Come on guys, I get the feeling you don't even bother to actually *read* these articles and still make wild speculations like these?

Wasn't the American government given a similar choice to review the leak but decided to give em the finger so they wouldn't be creditable

Peleus, what do you mean "similar" ? You're just guessing/speculating here, nowhere in the Indymedia article does it say this alleged deal with Israel was of the same nature of the US being offered to review the leaks

• before release.
  
  Even then, it wouldn't make sense, because no country except the US was made offer. Duh, because it was their diplomatic cables, after all. They didn't offer it to Russia, Iran, Germany or whoever either.
  
  Additionally, the US refusal to use that offer was made public, I'm guessing that, in the unlikely event that the US would had made use of the offer, this would also have been made public (not in specifics but something like "The US has assisted and advised Wikileaks in the censoring of certain names and events whose public release would have put lives in danger" or something similar).
  
  So it seems weird to me that if Israel has been offered a similar deal, we hear nothing about it from Wikileaks themselves.
  
  Also, in that case, the stakes are a lot lower for countries other than the US, because their review and censoring would not carry the same type of public endorsement, because it's not their diplomatic cables that have been leaked in the first place.
  
  [* I agree about your reasoning why the US refused btw, because doing so would make it seem they endorsed the rest of the leaks. Also, to be completely fair, that refusal is one of the few US moves re:Wikileaks that seems quite reasonable and understandable to me. Of course, Wikileaks anticipating this US reaction went ahead and made the offer for the sake of better PR what a game ... ]
  
  
  

  Israel is hardly the only country to be spared, it was only today that Austrailia got its first slam.

  
  While you're probably right, this is not really a solid reason for me to discredit that article.
  
  (better reason: only 1000 out of 260,000 documents have been released so any perceived pattern in releases is meaningless)
  
  
  However,
  
  

  What do you guys think of this?
  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470066.html

  
  I find this hard to believe. Because if it's true, and it came out (and Assange of all people should know that everything can be leaked and become public info), it would pretty much destroy Assange's [if not Wikileak's] credibility. Way worse than these rape charges, because everybody with half a brain knows they have to be a set-up [in some way or another], while this thing would also make him lose a shitload of public support for him and his goals right now, it it came out. Because it pretty much goes right against what most people perceive to be his goals.
  
  What I just said is, of course, circular reasoning: I find it hard to believe he would put his reputation at stake like this, because doing so would put his reputation at stake.
  
  That's why I say I find it hard to believe, not that it can't be true. But there's more.
  
  If he would put his reputation at stake like this, then obviously his goals aren't quite exactly what most people believe his [Assange and/or Wikileaks] goals are (which afaik, would be something like the free dissemination of information, freedom of press and exposure of government corruption and big corporate corruption).
  
  I question his possible motives. If that is not his goal, then what is?
  
  Doing it because he "had received money from semi-official Israeli sources"? That doesn't jive at all with his previous behaviour, let alone his current situation. Because right now he's fucked. He made some really, really, really big enemies, and not just the US. He might get lucky and get out of this alive or life-sentenced or whatever, small chance, but only if selling out to Israel doesn't come out in public. And again, I think he knows that everything can get out in the public. I dunno, that kind of grave risk seems to me to be something only a True Idealist would take. Not a sellout. Still leaves the possibility that he follows a twisted kind of Idealism that nobody [or none of his supporters] suspected thus far, but not "just for the money", not even if he intended to use this money for the good of Wikileaks. That would just be too stupid, to assume he can get away with the exact same kind of corrupt behaviour that he works so hard to expose.
  
  Of course, it would hardly be the first time human stupidity surprises me. But it's quite an extraordinary claim, I think Assange is a clever guy, and if he'd done this, ... that'd be really interesting -- But I'm going to need some proof first.
  
  If not for the money, the other option is that he's been an Israeli sympathisant agent some sort of whatever all along, and does it for the sake of Israel, the money being a nice bonus, and a means to get away when the story ultimately comes out. I believe this is also unlikely.
  
  [Reasoning skipped cause this post is getting too long and I want to get to the final, possible most important point]
  
  Which are the sources.
  
  The most controversial (IMO) parts of the story are the parts where Indymedia claims Assange has receives a large sums of money:
  
  

  According to an Arabic investigative journalism website [2], Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them, in a "secret, video-recorded agreement," not to publish any document that may harm Israeli security or diplomatic interests.

  
  Unfortunately, reference [2] is from syriatruth.info, a website completely written in Arabic, which I cannot read. It does feature a picture of Assange and the Wikileaks logo, so it probably says *something* about the topic.
  
  And later in the article once more:
  
  

  According to another report [8], a left-leaning Lebanese newspaper had met with Assange twice and tried to negotiate a deal with him, offering "a big amount of money", in order to get hold of documents concerning the 2006 war, particularly the minutes of a meeting held at the American embassy in Beirut on 24th July 2006, which is widely considered as a 'war council' meeting between American, Israeli and Lebanese parties that played a role in the war again Hizbullah and its allies. The documents the Al-Akhbar editors received, however, all date to 2008 onwards and do not contain "anything of value," the sources confirm. This only goes to support the Israel deal allegations.

  
  Reference [8] is also from syriatruth.info, and therefore useless to me for fact-checking. BTW this wasn't immediately clear to me, but the "left-leaning Lebanese newspaper" is the later mentioned Al-Akhbar (it literally means "The News", first I thought the phrase meant "Allah is great", which seemed kinda weird so I looked it up as my Arabian is kinda limited).
  
  In addition to sources I can't read, there are a few other problems with the article:
  
  

  According to the Al-Haqiqa sources, Assange met with Israeli officials in Geneva earlier this year and struck the secret deal. The Israel government, it seems, had somehow found out or expected that the documents to be leaked contained a large number of documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008-9 respectively. These documents, which are said to have originated mainly from the Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut, where [sic] removed and possibly destroyed by Assange, who is the only person who knows the password that can open these documents, the sources added.

  
  The whole bit about Assange being the only one with "the password" (assuming they mean to say "key" or "passphrase" here, Wikileaks doesn't use passwords) able to open these documents, is really kind of weird. Because with the high-grade type of assymetric RSA encryption* Wikileaks most probably uses, this kind of thing becomes pretty damn hard. In fact, even if they used a symmetric cipher like they did for the Insurance file, proper cryptographic procedure prescribes that encryption really is as good as useless without validation. Meaning Assange would have had a hard time altering the documents without any other Wikileaks associate finding out sooner or later.
  
  (* "assymmetric" means the public/private key stuff, which gives rise to a whole bunch of schemes besides encryption, those being validation, authentication, digital signing, tamper-proofing, and more. To contrast, the AES256 encryption used for the insurance file is a "symmetric" cipher, which means there is just one key, and it is used for both the encryption and decryption, very much like historic ciphers such as Vigenere's--advantage of symmetric ciphers is that they offer better security for less bits in the key, but are not nearly as versatile as assymmetric ciphers)
  
  

  Indeed, the published documents seem to have a 'gap' stretching over the period of July - September 2006, during which the 33-day Lebanon war took place. Is it possible that US diplomats and officials did not have any comments or information to exchange about this crucial event but spent their time 'gossiping' about every other 'trivial' Middle-Eastern matter?

  
  There are at least three much more likely possibilities. First, by now I wouldn't put it past Indymedia that if I were to check for myself, maybe there is no "gap" or perhaps just a relatively quiet period in communication. Second and more likely, Wikileaks has only received cables classified up to "secret", but not "top secret", maybe the cables during this 33 day period had a higher security clearance and therefore do not appear in the 260,000 cablegate docs. And third, which makes me seriously doubt wtf Indymedia is going on about, only about 1000 out of the 260,000 documents have been released so far, so how can they speak of a "gap" in the data? It would not surprise me that, if Wikileaks has incriminating documents about the 33-day conflict, they might release them in one chunk, and not as a part of the (seemingly random?) stuff so far.
  
  

  In an interview with the Time magazine around the same time, Assange praised Netanyahu as a hero of transparency and openness! [7]

  
  Since this reference is actually in a language and script I can read, I checked it. Do so yourself, ctrl-F "Netanyahu" if you like, but Assange says no such thing.
  
  This, of course, gives me not much reason to believe the references that I can't read.
  
  
  Oh yeah, and that's right I just remembered, the entire premise of the article is wrong, because there ARE in fact cables released already that place Israel in a bad light, also as pointed out by one of the commenters:
  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470066.html?c=on#c260675
  
  
  Hm, and the bits about internal struggles and disagreements within Wikileaks, they are probably true (I didn't check the references, but I heard about it before the whole Cablegate thing). It doesn't surprise me that ideas opinions and ideals will clash among a group of motivated idealists such as Wikileaks. Of course it says nothing about whether Assange is wrong, or the guy that disagrees with him is wrong, or perhaps, just like we do in Discordianism, they both respect eachother for doing their own thing if they disagree.
  

Thank you so much for your insightful review man, its very much appreciated.

[Triple Zero]

No problem! Reading it back, I hope you can make sense of my convoluted sentences. Not my prettiest writings

[Cain]

Peleus may have worded it poorly, but he is right in that the State Department was, yet again, given a chance to review the material and redact anything they considered critical to national security but, again, declined (the Pentagon was given similar offers with the Afghan and Iraq War diaries).

The reason the releases are being staggered is because Wikileaks are working with certain media outlets (the Guardian, De Spiegel etc) to work through the material and prevent names, sources etc to be leaked.  Originally, the New York Times was one of these media outlets, but because it refused, then went squealing to the US government like the power-worshipping little bitches they are, they've been cut out of the loop.

[Cramulus]

feedback requested: http://23ae.com/2010/12/assange-is-not-the-target/

managed to grab 300 unique hits yesterday! Big thanks to everybody that helped spread it. 

[Requia ☣]

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/12/07/report-wikileaks-cab.html

this is a blog post on how a Texan security company has been facilitating the pimping out of young boys to some afgans.

And thus the true motive for government contractors telling their employees not to read anything about the cable releases.  They're afraid of all the horrible shit they did getting revealed to the rank and file employees.   

[Adios]

feedback requested: http://23ae.com/2010/12/assange-is-not-the-target/

managed to grab 300 unique hits yesterday! Big thanks to everybody that helped spread it. 

It's a great piece.

[the last yatto]

Israel is hardly the only country to be spared, it was only today that Austrailia got its first slam.

While you're probably right, this is not really a solid reason for me to discredit that article.

(better reason: only 1000 out of 260,000 documents have been released so any perceived pattern in releases is meaningless)

this also coming what a day (or two) after Iran said the leaks were western propaganda
might have been just a move to avoid a landmine on his part, AIPAC has alot of influence

i mean if he put the holy land at stake, they wouldnt just call for his death they would just run out and buy the nails and wood

[the last yatto]

feedback requested: http://23ae.com/2010/12/assange-is-not-the-target/

managed to grab 300 unique hits yesterday! Big thanks to everybody that helped spread it. 

It's a great piece.

http://twitter.com/whereRtheFNORDS/status/12246822428868609

if anyone wants to RT

[the last yatto]

 
http://www.boingboing.net/assets_c/2010/12/Screen-shot-2010-12-08-at-8.21-36544.html

[Adios]

http://www.boingboing.net/assets_c/2010/12/Screen-shot-2010-12-08-at-8.21-36544.html

"data from interpol" 

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

http://www.boingboing.net/assets_c/2010/12/Screen-shot-2010-12-08-at-8.21-36544.html

once apon a time i used to read natal charts. That one is too small for me to even bein t get a handle on.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

also I cannot be fucked to. Maybe we can find an astrology forum to annoy. 

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

Meanwhile, in Canada:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tom-flanagan-threatened-me-over-wikileaks-comment-toronto-woman-says/article1829169/

[Juana]

feedback requested: http://23ae.com/2010/12/assange-is-not-the-target/

managed to grab 300 unique hits yesterday! Big thanks to everybody that helped spread it. 

Related, vaguely:
4channers Go After PayPal, Swiss Bank in Defense of Wikileaks

4chan-affiliated hacker group Anonymous has declared war on enemies of secret-sharing site Wikileaks. Internet war! Their first targets: PayPal, which won't facilitate donations to Wikileaks, and PostFinance, the Swiss bank that froze founder Julian Assange's accounts. Update: And Mastercard!

For all of the high-minded talk about censorship, information, and power, the publication of hundreds of classified diplomatic cables on secret-sharing site Wikileaks is also an act of very high-level trolling. So is it really any surprise that Anonymous, the vaguely-organized group of anti-Scientology troll-hacker-vigilantes known for hanging around the 4chan image boards, is striking out in his defense?

In their requisite self-serious flyer declaring "Operation Avenge Assange" ("We have a chance to fight in the first infowar ever fought," it reads), Anonymous tells itself: "PayPal is the enemy." (The flyer then lays out the rest of the hilariously earnest plan: Write letters to your congressman! Hold protests! Vote for Julian Assange in the "Time Person of the Year" poll!)

Unfortunately, PayPal might have been too much enemy for Anonymous. The main site doesn't seem to have been affected by the presumed DDoS attack (though the blog went down), and soldiers on facilitating eBay transactions and so forth.

But luckily for Anonymous, though, PayPal wasn't their only target. Another DDoS attack, this one aimed at the Swiss bank PostFinance, which froze Assange's assets, was very successful, and has kept the site down for some 24 hours as of this writing. Don't be down on yourselves, guys! One out of two ain't bad.

Of course, their attacks didn't come without counterattacks of their own: Anonymous' own site was reportedly the victim of an unsuccessful DDoS. But such are the wages of InfoWar, one supposes.

Assange, meanwhile, is still being detained by Britain, having been denied bail.

Update: Looks like they've improved to two-for-three! As of 11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Mastercard's website has been down for at least two hours, presumably thanks to an Anonymous DDoS in response to Mastercard's refusal to process payments to Wikileaks. You can still use your card but, well, hope you didn't need to check your credit card bills today!

[Juana]

Report: Wikileaks cables show Texas company "helped pimp little boys to stoned Afghan cops"

In the Houston Press, an extensive blog post untangling an alarming story from the state department cables: "another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police," and apparent proof that the company procured male children for bacha bazi ("boy-play") parties.

The story boils down to this: this company, headquartered in DC with Texas offices, helped pimp out little boys as sex slaves to stoned cops in Afghanistan:

   

For Pashtuns in the South of Afghanistan, there is no shame in having a little boy lover; on the contrary, it is a matter of pride. Those who can afford the most attractive boy are the players in their world, the OG's of places like Kandahar and Khost. On the Frontline video, ridiculously macho warrior guys brag about their young boyfriends utterly without shame.

    So perhaps in the evil world of Realpolitik, in which there is apparently no moral compass US private contractors won't smash to smithereens, it made sense for DynCorp to drug up some Pashtun police recruits and turn them loose on a bunch of little boys. But according to the leaked document, Atmar, the Afghani interior minister, was terrified this story would catch a reporter's ear.

    He urged the US State Department to shut down a reporter he heard was snooping around, and was horrified that a rumored videotape of the party might surface. He predicted that any story about the party would "endanger lives." He said that his government had arrested two Afghan police and nine Afghan civilians on charges of "purchasing a service from a child" in connection with the party, but that he was worried about the image of their "foreign mentors," by which he apparently meant DynCorp. American diplomats told him to chill. They apparently had a better handle on our media than Atmar, because when a report of the party finally did emerge, it was neutered to the point of near-falsehood.

Read the whole post.

Frontline covered the phenomenon earlier this year—I watched the documentary when it first aired in the US. It was hard to watch. The notion that an American company enabled the sexual and physical abuse of kids like this is nauseating. Video embedded below, may be geo-blocked for folks outside the USA.