Unlimited Wikileaks Shenanigans

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FgnBN6af90

Glenn Beck Part 1 - The Soros Wikileaks Connection 11/29/2010

Oh god.

[Juana]

Is there any validity to those claims?  Is it possible that it's a smear tactic?

One which seems to working...I just listened to my mother natter on about how bad of a person he is after she read an article on him.

[Da6s]

The only thing that comes to mind regarding Asange is these guys:

[Jasper]

One which seems to working...I just listened to my mother natter on about how bad of a person he is after she read an article on him.

Of course it is.  These people are experts.

[the last yatto]

In contrast to the potential hostility from U.S. allies, leftist-run Ecuador provided Assange with an invitation Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas said in audio posted online by the EcuadorInmediato news site that "we are open to giving him residence in Ecuador, without any kind of trouble and without any kind of conditions."
"We think it would be important not only to converse with him but to listen to him," Lucas added, saying Ecuador wanted to invite Assange to "freely expound" and see what it's like in "friendly countries."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013551732_apltecuadorwikileaksfounder.html

[Cramulus]

Wikileaks for 11/30

by clicking this link, you are going on a list. 

[Sister Fracture]

Wikileaks for 11/30

by clicking this link, you are going on a list. 

This knowledge is practically the same thing as "DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK EVER"

Cram you, Damnulous!

[Cramulus]

This knowledge is practically the same thing as "DO NOT CLICK ON THIS LINK EVER"

Cram you, Damnulous!

that's going in your file

[Triple Zero]

The only thing that comes to mind regarding Asange is these guys:

Are those from Hackers or from Johnny Mnemonic ?

[Disco Pickle]

Are those from Hackers or from Johnny Mnemonic ?

Hack the Planet guys from Hackers.

also relevant to this thread: http://www.spiegel.de/flash/flash-24861.html

map of origin locations of cables leaked with color coding based on level of classification.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wikileaks for 11/30

by clicking this link, you are going on a list. 

I couldn't resist 

[Requia ☣]

If internet activities can get you on a list, there's no way I'm not on half of them already.  I clicked.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/articles/2010/Iraq-Inquiry-told-to-protect-US.html

Iraq Inquiry told to "protect US interests"

[the last yatto]

Are those from Hackers or from Johnny Mnemonic ?

Hack the Planet guys from Hackers.

Razer and Blake

[Cain]

Glenn Greenwald has another righteous rant on this:

Time's Joe Klein writes this about the WikiLeaks disclosures:

I am tremendously concernced [sic] about the puerile eruptions of Julian Assange. . . . If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in "freedom" stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He's the one who should be in jail.

Do you have that principle down?  If "a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail" because of the WikiLeaks disclosure -- even a "single one" -- then the entire WikiLeaks enterprise is proven to be a "disaster" and "Assange is a criminal" who "should be in jail."  That's quite a rigorous moral standard.  So let's apply it elsewhere:

What about the most destructive "anarchic exercise in 'freedom'" the planet has known for at least a generation:  the "human disaster" known as the attack on Iraq, which Klein supported?  That didn't result in the imprisonment of "a single foreign national," but rather the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of a country of 26 million people.  Are those who supported that "anarchic exercise in 'freedom'" -- or at least those responsible for its execution -- also "criminals who should be in jail"? 

How about the multiple journalists and other human beings whom the U.S. Government imprisoned (and continues to imprison) for years without charges  -- and tortured -- including many whom the Government knew were completely innocent, while Klein assured the world that wasn't happening?  How about those responsible for the war in Afghanistan (which Klein supports) with its checkpoint shootings of an "amazing number" of innocent Afghans and civilian slaughtering air strikes, or the use of cluster bombs in Yemen, or the civilian killing drones in Pakistan?  Are those responsible for the sky-high corpses of innocent people from these actions also "criminals who should be in jail"?

I'm not singling out Klein here; his commentary is merely illustrative of what I'm finding truly stunning about the increasingly bloodthirsty two-minute hate session aimed at Julian Assange, also known as the new Osama bin Laden.  The ringleaders of this hate ritual are advocates of -- and in some cases directly responsible for -- the world's deadliest and most lawless actions of the last decade.  And they're demanding Assange's imprisonment, or his blood, in service of a Government that has perpetrated all of these abuses and, more so, to preserve a Wall of Secrecy which has enabled them.  To accomplish that, they're actually advocating -- somehow with a straight face -- the theory that if a single innocent person is harmed by these disclosures, then it proves that Assange and WikiLeaks are evil monsters who deserve the worst fates one can conjure, all while they devote themselves to protecting and defending a secrecy regime that spawns at least as much human suffering and disaster as any single other force in the world.  That is what the secrecy regime of the permanent National Security State has spawned.

Meanwhile, in the real world (as opposed to the world of speculation, fantasy, and fear-mongering) there is no evidence -- zero -- that the WikiLeaks disclosures have harmed a single person.  As McClatchy reported, they have exercised increasing levels of caution to protect innocent people.  Even Robert Gates disdained hysterical warnings about the damage caused as "significantly overwrought."  But look at what WikiLeaks has revealed to the world:

We viscerally saw the grotesque realities of our war in Iraq with the Apache attack video on innocent civilians and journalists in Baghdad -- and their small children -- as they desperately scurried for cover.  We recently learned that the U.S. government adopted a formal policy of refusing to investigate the systematic human rights abuses of our new Iraqi client state, all of which took place under our deliberately blind eye.  We learned of 15,000 additional civilian deaths caused by the war in Iraq that we didn't know of before.  We learned -- as documented by The Washington Post's former Baghdad Bureau Chief -- how clear, deliberate and extensive were the lies of top Bush officials about that war as it was unfolding:  "Thanks to WikiLeaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public," she wrote.

In this latest WikiLeaks release -- probably the least informative of them all, at least so far -- we learned a great deal as well.  Juan Cole today details the 10 most important revelations about the Middle East.  Scott Horton examines the revelation that the State Department pressured and bullied Germany out of criminally investigating the CIA's kidnapping of one of their citizens who turned out to be completely innocent.  The head of the Bank of England got caught interfering in British politics to induce harsher austerity measures in violation of his duty to remain apolitical and removed from the political process, a scandal resulting in calls for his resignation.  British officials, while pretending to conduct a sweeping investigation into the Iraq War, were privately pledging to protect Bush officials from embarrassing disclosures.  Hillary Clinton's State Department ordered U.N. diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data in order to spy on top U.N. officials and others, likely in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961 (see Articles 27 and 30; and, believe me, I know:  it's just "law," nothing any Serious person believes should constrain our great leaders).

Do WikiLeaks critics believe it'd be best if all that were kept secret, if we remained ignorant of it, if the world's most powerful factions could continue to hide things like that?  Apparently.  When Joe Klein and his media comrades calling for Assange's head start uncovering even a fraction of secret government conduct this important, then they'll have credibility to complain about WikiLeaks' "excessive commitment to disclosure."  But that will never happen.

One could respond that it's good that we know these specific things, but not other things WikiLeaks has released.  That's all well and good; as I've said several times, there are reasonable concerns about some specific disclosures here.  But in the real world, this ideal, perfectly calibrated subversion of the secrecy regime doesn't exist.  WikiLeaks is it.  We have occasional investigative probes of isolated government secrets coming from establishment media outlets (the illegal NSA program, the CIA black sites, the Pentagon propaganda program), along with transparency groups such as the ACLU, CCR, EPIC and EFF valiantly battling through protracted litigation to uncover secrets.  But nothing comes close to the blows WikiLeaks has struck in undermining that regime.

The real-world alternative to the current iteration of WikiLeaks is not The Perfect Wikileaks that makes perfect judgments about what should and should not be disclosed, but rather, the ongoing, essentially unchallenged hegemony of the permanent National Security State, for which secrecy is the first article of faith and prime weapon

He also made a funny in a previous article:

On CNN last night, Wolf Blitzer was beside himself with rage over the fact that the U.S. Government had failed to keep all these things secret from him