Deep Politics Forum

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Peter Presland Wrote:76 mirrors to date - and counting.

Plus masses of static mirrors and other clever linking stuff here

I'm working at getting a live one up on the wikispooks server. Meanwhile I've put a banner link up on Wikispooks main page and will try to ensure it always links to a live site

They are going to have to hit the nuke button to stop this now

Nothing like a little cyber-guerrilla-warfare....but I think at this point the Truth is winning! Viking

WikiLeaks Ready to Release Giant 'Insurance' File if Shut Down

Published December 05, 2010
| Sunday Times

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/05/...z17HIUkdmc

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.
One of the files identified this weekend by The Sunday Times — called the “insurance” file — has been downloaded from the WikiLeaks website by tens of thousands of supporters, from America to Australia.
Assange warns that any government that tries to curtail his activities risks triggering a new deluge of state and commercial secrets.
The military papers on Guantanamo Bay, yet to be published, have been supplied by Bradley Manning, Assange’s primary source until his arrest in May. Other documents that Assange is confirmed to possess include an aerial video of a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan that killed civilians, BP files and Bank of America documents.
One of the key files available for download — named insurance.aes256 — appears to be encrypted with a 256-digit key. Experts said last week it was virtually unbreakable.

The U.S. Department of Defense says it is aware of the WikiLeaks insurance file, but has been unable to establish its contents. It has been available for download since July.
Assange has warned he can divulge the classified documents in the insurance file and similar backups if he is detained or the WikiLeaks website is permanently removed from the internet. He has suggested the contents are unredacted, posing a possible security risk for coalition partners around the world.
Assange warned: “We have over a long period of time distributed encrypted backups of material we have yet to release. All we have to do is release the password to that material, and it is instantly available.”
The “doomsday files” are part of a contingency plan drawn up by Assange and his supporters as they face a legal threat. He is wanted in Sweden over sexual assault allegations, and the US administration is reviewing the possibility of legal action after the release of 250,000 diplomatic cables.
Ben Laurie, a London-based computer security expert who has advised WikiLeaks, said: “Julian’s a smart guy and this is an interesting tactic. He will hope it deters anyone from acting against him.”
Nigel Smart, professor of cryptology at the U.K.'s Bristol University, said even powerful military computers would be unable to crack the encryption. He said: “This isn’t something that can be broken with a modern computer. You need the key to open it.”
The file is 1.4 gigabytes in size, which would be big enough for a compressed version of all the files released this year and additional data.
Assange said last year that he had been leaked a computer hard drive from an executive at Bank of America and warned this month he was planning a major release on a large American bank. He also claims to have confidential files on BP and other energy companies. Tens of millions of personal computers were hijacked last week in an act of sabotage that crippled the WikiLeaks website. WikiLeaks revealed that a “denial of service” attack that temporarily shut down the website used a network of “zombie” computers, which were infiltrated by the hackers.
WikiLeaks is now battling for its survival. Amazon, which hosted the website, refused further access to its servers last week. A site that provided WikiLeaks with its domain name, EveryDNS.net, also cut off its service because it said it was being inundated with sabotage attacks.
Some of the contingency plans were revealed when the site re-emerged on Friday with a Swiss address, WikiLeaks.ch. The new name was provided by the Swiss Pirate party, which champions internet freedom. Assange has also set up contingency servers in Sweden.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/05/...z17HIKIqGC

From a discussion thread on which I occasionally post, some reflections:

Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 18:31:11 -0600 [06:31:11 PM CST]
From: "Carl Sack"
To: prog-action@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: prog-action@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [prog-action] WikiLeaks in perspective

I agree that there is no American "watchdog press." But I disagree that there ever really was.

One of the reasons I love the internet is it makes projects like Wikileaks possible, exposing corruption and forcing the media to act on it. What would be nice is a media that, instead of making so much huff and bluster over whether the state department thinks Assange should be hung from a light pole, actually paid attention and reported on the substance of the leaked material. We the public--at least, the overwhelming majority of us--aren't going to spend the time and energy to sift through a quarter million diplomatic cables looking for juicy gossip about China or Afghanistan. That's still the press's job. We still need them to distill out relevant information, and this is where their gargantuan failure lies.

I'd be curious to know on what grounds the authors of this commentary label Wikileaks a "shadowy organization." Exactly how would they like the organization to be more transparent--other than revealing Assange's whereabouts so the CIA can swoop in and extraordinarily rendite him to some remote torture chamber in the Caucuses?

Incidentally, I heard an interesting piece on NPR--yes, National Public Radio--this morning about Assange. They extensively quoted his lawyer saying that the Swedish charges were a complete ruse, dropped by one judge then resurrected by another in an entirely different city the day the latest leak was released, apparently at the urging of the U.S., who simply want Interpol to capture and then extradite him to the U.S. for espionage charges. When all this blows over, someone is going to get rich writing and filming Robert Ludlum-style-but-non-fictional thrillers about it.

-Carl

On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Patrick Schoenfelder wrote:

While site followers debate the wisdom of breaking Julian Assange's fingers (possibly better than Sarah Palin, who calls for his murder,) here is a comment from Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and a well known advocate of 4th amendment rights and journalistic integrity, has to say about how the world came to develop a niche for WikiLeaks and why important news sources are using WikiLeaks and other similar sites instead of mainstream news outlets. The quote is from his blog, and I think it says more about this issue than all of the other media noise combined:

In the American case, one of the reasons is that the legitimacy of the press itself is in doubt in the minds of the leakers. And there's good reason for that. Because while we have what purports to be a "watchdog press," we also have -- laid out in front of us -- the clear record of the watchdog press' failure to do what it says it can do, which is provide a check on power when it tries to conceal its deeds and its purpose.

So I think it's a mistake to try to reckon with WikiLeaks and what it's about without including in the frame the spectacular failures of the watchdog press over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years - but especially recently. Without this legitimacy crisis in mainstream American journalism, the leakers might not be so inclined to trust an upstart like Julian Assange and a shadowy organization like WikiLeaks.

The failures of the press in dealing with these huge, cataclysmic events like the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the war on terror within the normal legitimacy regime lie in the background of the WikiLeaks case, because if it wasn't for those things, WikiLeaks wouldn't have the supporters it has, the leakers wouldn't collaborate the way they do, and the moral force behind exposing what this Government is doing just wouldn't be there. . . . The watchdog press died, and what we have is WikiLeaks instead.

On the Historical Necessity of Wikileaks
Saturday, 04 December 2010 14:00

By Lawrence Davidson

[URL="http://www.newsvine.com/_wine/save?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmwcnews.net%2Ffocus%2Feditorial%2F7045-historical-necessity-of-wikileaks.html&h=On%20the%20Historical%20Necessity%20of%20Wikileaks"]
[/URL]
[Image: wikileaks-5.jpg]

Historical Precedent

Given the ahistorical nature of the public mind, few people will recall that as the United States prepared to enter World War I, American citizens were quite exercised over the issue of "open diplomacy." Indeed, at the time, President Woodrow Wilson made it the number one issue of his fourteen points–the points that constituted U.S. war aims, and so the ones for which some 320, 518 American soldiers were killed or wounded in the subsequent year. Here is how the president put it while addressing Congress on 8 January 1918. “The program of the world’s peace…is our program” and among the fourteen prerequisites to peace is “1. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at, after which there will surely be no private international action or rulings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”
Why did Wilson make this number one on his list of war aims? Because those Americans who paid attention to such issues did not trust the European style of international relations. They thought it was corrupt and tainted by narrow interest that seemed always to lead to conflict. This was one of the beliefs that encouraged American isolationism. However, Wilson was not an isolationist. He wanted the United States to engage in the world and take a leadership position. He imagined that America was a morally superior nation and its involvement in international affairs would make the world better. "Diplomacy proceeding frankly and in the public view" was his first move in the effort to assert that idealistic American leadership. So what would Woodrow Wilson, or for that matter the educated and aware American citizen supporting him in 1918, say about Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and other U.S. officials and "pundits" running about and insisting on the absolute need for secret diplomacy, while calling those who defy that standard criminals? What indeed?!

Historical Need

The truth is that there has always been a gap between the interests of the general citizenry and interests as they take shape at the level of state policy. It is within that gap that secret diplomacy thrives. One can see this most clearly in the case of dictatorships. For instance, if you travel about the Middle East, say to Jordan or Egypt, everyone takes it for granted that there is no connection between the business of the people and the business of the state. The state is run by narrow elites who make policy according to their own needs and the public plays no role and is given little consideration. Its fate is to be lied to and manipulated. So, of course, those elites are going to operate from back rooms and behind censored media. The person on the street knows this to be so and accepts it because, if he or she protests, the "security" services will come after them. They will be charged with endangering the state or framed for some other crime. And their lives will be ruined.

But what about democracies? Well, the truth is that they too are run by political and economic elites whose interests are rarely the same as the general public. That is why, when the government uses the term "national interest," one should always be suspicious. When it comes to foreign policy this can be most clearly seen in the policies long adopted toward places like Cuba and Israel. A very good argument can be made that the policies pursued for decades by the US government toward these two nations is no more than product of special interest manipulation with no reference to actual national interest or well being. Indeed, in the former case it led to an illegal invasion of Cuba by US backed forces in 1961 and no doubt encouraged the Cubans to allow Soviet missiles on their territory in 1962. The latter has contributed to numerous disastrous actions on the part of the US in the Middle East out of which came the attack on September 11, 2001. None of this is in the interest of anyone other than the elites whose semi-secret machinations lead to the policies pursued.

The difference between dictatorships and democracies are ones of style and, in a democracy, the option to shift emphasis in terms of elite interests served, each time there is an election. Democratic elites have learned that they do not need to rely on the brute force characteristic of dictatorships as long as they can sufficiently control the public information environment. You restrict meaningful free speech to the fringes of the media, to the "outliers" along the information bell curve. You rely on the sociological fact that the vast majority of citizens will either pay no attention to that which they find irrelevant to their immediate lives, or they will believe the official story line about places and happenings of which they are otherwise ignorant. Once you have identified the official story line with the official policy being pursued, loyalty to the policy comes to equate to patriotism. It is a shockingly simple formula and it usually works. Given this scenario, Woodrow Wilson and his notion of open diplomacy represents an historical anomaly. When, in 1919, he arrived at Versailles for the peace conference the representatives of Britain, France and Italy thought him a hopeless idealist. And perhaps he really was.

Incompatibility with Democracy

Whether Wilson was or was not an idealist cannot affect the fact that secret diplomacy almost never represents the public interest. It cannot affect the fact that an honest assessment of secret diplomacy, an honest look at what most of the time it has historically wrought, leads to the conclusion that it is harmful. It often leads to unnecessary conflict and it undermines the democratic process because it denies the public’s right to know what is being done in its name. And, in a democracy, it cannot be sustained without the help of massive state lying and propaganda.

So, what does that say about those American leaders railing against Wikileaks and crying for Julian Assange’s head? Does it mean, to use Noam Chomsky’s characterization, that they have a "deep hatred for democracy"? I doubt they have thought it out that far. Some of them, such as Sarah Palin, who wants Assange hunted down like Osama bin Laden (which means, I guess, hunted down ineffectively), Newt Gingrich, who likens Assange to an "enemy combatant," and Bill Kristol who wants the government to kidnap and then "whack" Assange, are personalities of the extreme right who essentially advocate the policies of dictators. It is not hard to identify these folks with a particular ideology and elite interest group. Others, like Senator Joseph Lieberman, have done their utmost to shut down Wikileaks through pressuring on-line operators such as Amazon who, until recently, have cooperated with the whistle blowing website. Lieberman has taken it upon himself to use his political clout to determine what the entire American population can and cannot know. Is Joe Lieberman doing all this for the public good? It is unlikely. He does declare, with a lot of righteous indignation, that the information Wikileaks has made public is "stolen." Yet, as Daniel Ellsberg has suggested, Julian Assange and Wikileaks are "serving our [American] democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." In other words, Lieberman is on shaky legal grounds when he throws around a word like "stolen." But, I suspect he cares little about this and his real motivation is probably special interest driven. Given Liberman’s history as an obsessive devotee of Israel, would he be so fixated on Wikileaks if the Zionist state was not embarrassingly involved in recent revelations?

Conclusion

Woodrow Wilson had it wrong about America. The United States is not a morally superior nation and its elites have always been just as corruptible and obsessed with secrecy as any in Europe. His plea for open diplomacy never had a chance on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. If Wilson’s idealism was seriously wounded at Versailles, it was killed outright by the Republican majority in the Senate which refused to ratify the peace treaty he brought home. Why? Largely because of the desire to frustrate and ruin a Democratic president. Sound familiar?

Can one imagine circumstances in which diplomatic interaction necessities secrecy? I am sure one can. However, those circumstances should be exceptional. They should not constitute the norm. And, there should be clear criteria as to what constitutes such circumstances. Arriving at those criteria should be part of a widespread public debate over a seminal right– the right to know what your government is doing in your name. At this point you might ask, what widespread public debate? Well, the one that supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks are trying desperately to begin.

Thanks for that post James.If you don't mind,I'd like to mention that it might be a good idea to x out your friends email addresses though.

Don’t Look, Don’t Read: Government Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents

By ERIC LIPTON

Published: December 4, 2010

WASHINGTON — In a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama administration and the Department of Defense have ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors not to view the secret cables and other classified documents published by Wikileaks and news organizations around the world unless the workers have the required security clearance or authorization.

Related

The Lede Blog: Don’t Mention the Cables, Future Diplomats (December 4, 2010)

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” said the notice sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management and Budget, which is part of the White House, to agency and department heads, urging them to distribute it to their staff.
The directive applies to both government computers and private devices that employees or contractors might have, as long as they are accessing the documents on nonclassified government networks. It does not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other websites on government computer systems, a White House official said Saturday. And it does not prohibit federal employees from reading news stories about the topic. But if they have “accidentially” already downloaded any of these documents, they are being told to notify their “information security offices.”
The Department of Defense, in its own directive to military personnel and contractors, says that simply viewing these documents, without proper authorization, will violate long-standing rules even though they are accessible to the public at large on Internet sites.
"Viewing or downloading still classified documents from unclassified government computers creates a security violation," a spokeswoman said in a statement on Saturday.
The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret.
“It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole,” Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. “This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world.”The Library of Congress has joined in the push, blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone else using its computer system, from accessing the WikiLeaks site, noting that “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”
The moves have not apparently discouraged staff at WikiLeaks, as the organization continues to post Twitter feeds mocking the efforts to limit access to the documents, including one note on Saturday reading: “Digital McCarthyism: U.S. Military Tries to Intimidate Soldiers Into Not Reading Wikileaks”.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 5, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/...e%20title=

Digging Deeper in Years into Wikileaks’ Treasure Chest- Part I

Friday, 3. December 2010 by Sibel Edmonds
A Fairly Short List of Goodies for Wikileaks Santa

I have been waiting. I have been searching and reading. I have been waiting impatiently while searching and reading the initial pile of recently released Wikileaks’ documents, specifically those pertaining to Turkey. I have received many e-mails asking me impatiently to comment and provide my analyses on this latest international exposé. I am being impatiently patient in doing so, and here is a brief explanation as to why:
There’s so much I don’t know. I don’t know how real this entire deal actually is. If truly ‘real,’ I don’t know how far and deep the involved documents actually go. Many of my trusted friends tell me it is indeed real. A few trusted friends and advisors are ringing cautionary bells. I am truly pro transparency, and considering the abusive nature and use of secrecy and classification, I am mostly pro leak when the information in question involves criminal deeds and intentions.
During the previous release (Afghan Files), in my gut I was a bit bothered by the direction of some of these released documents – pointing towards Iran – which was generously milked by the US mainstream media. But then again, that was only based on some gut feeling, and I didn’t want to pour out analyses and opinion solely based on ‘some gut feeling.’ So far, some of the first cache of the recently released documents is strongly pointing towards Iran, and that too is bothering the heck out of me. But again, in my gut, and that alone is not sufficient to make me sit and analyze and interpret. So this is why I’ve been impatiently patient, waiting for more. Meanwhile, while I am restraining myself and being uncharacteristically patient, I am going to go on record and tell you what I expect to see if this whole deal proves to be completely genuine, and if the obtained files go as far as they say they go.
I prepared a long list of items (documented diplomatic correspondence) I know to be included in diplomatic communications which took place between the mid 90s and early 2000s. I know I have a fairly large credit due with Santa since I’ve never made a wish list for him; ever. He owes me. He knows it and I know it. While that justifies my very long list (now you know I am old!!) I am going to exercise a little bit of fairness and present my list in manageable quantities and intervals. I hope my Wikileaks Santa has ‘word/phrase search’ technology at his disposal, because that would make his task of sorting and finding my requested items a far easier task. Okay, here it goes Wikileaks Santa, my first list for you, may your immensely large goodies bag contain these items highly beneficial for not only me but many others here and abroad:

1- 1994-1996: Communication pertaining to joint US-Turkey operations against former Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev, including at least one ‘mock’ assassination attempt in Azerbaijan.
2- 1994-1997: Communication between the US State Department, US Embassy in Ankara, and Turkish Prime Minister’s office pertaining to using the Azerbaijan president’s family members’ (including his son Ilham Aliyev) casino debts accumulated in Turkey as means to blackmail on the Pipeline project and Russia’s pending proposal.
3- 1994-1995: Communication pertaining to US-Turkey coordination on transferring several groups of Mujahideen from Pakistan-Afghanistan-Saudi Arabia to Bosnia via Turkey using Turkish special military planes into Turkey, and after granting Mujahideen Turkish passports, via NATO planes from Turkey to several Balkan countries, including Romania.
4- 1994-1997: Communication pertaining to US involvement in Turkish casino expansions in Azerbaijan and free-ownership (partnership) being granted to key Azeri political figures and their family members for future ‘leverage’.
5- 1994-1997: Communication pertaining to US ‘off the book’ money transfers to Turkish paramilitary members and the president of Kazakhstan using several accounts in Cyprus’ First Merchant Bank.
6- 1994-1997: Communication pertaining to US ‘off the book’ wire transfers through Cyprus’ First Merchant Bank to two Chechen leaders with Turkish citizenship for prearranged arm procurement deals via front dealers in Dubai.
7- 1995-1997: Communication pertaining to US negotiation with two top Turkish casino owners for casino projects to be established in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan with Cyprus’ First Merchant Bank acting as the primary banking conduit; the bank’s primary role: conduit for payments obtained for US weapons’ shipment transfer to ‘black-listed’ recipients via False End User Certificates
8- 1995: Communications pertaining to special requests by the US Embassy in Ankara for the immediate release of Yasar OZ, who was detained by DEA in New Jersey on heroin importing and distribution charges. Per US State Department order Yasar OZ was immediately released and his file became classified.
9- 1996-1997: Communication pertaining to ‘evacuating’ (pulling out) then US Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman, due to a ‘secret’ warrant by the Susurluk commission seeking his testimony on involvement with illegal Turkish paramilitary operations targeting the Caucasus and Central Asia.
10- 1997-1998: Communication pertaining to a ‘special request’ for urgently granting US residency to Turkish paramilitary director Mehmet Eymur, who directed several criminal operations, including assassination plots against foreign leaders, as part of joint US- ‘Special’ NATO operations in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010/12/...#more-2702

Assange Accuser Worked with US-Funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro Group

By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D.

December 05, 2010 "FDL" -- Yesterday Alexander Cockburn reminded us of the news Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett broke at Counterpunch in September. Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.

Anna Ardin (the official complainant) is often described by the media as a “leftist”. She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups. She published her anti-Castro diatribes (see here and here) in the Swedish-language publication Revista de Asignaturas Cubanas put out by Misceláneas de Cuba. From Oslo, Professor Michael Seltzer points out that this periodical is the product of a well-financed anti-Castro organization in Sweden. He further notes that the group is connected with Union Liberal Cubana led by Carlos Alberto Montaner whose CIA ties were exposed here.

Quelle surprise, no? Shamir and Bennett went on to write about Ardin’s history in Cuba with a US funded group openly supported by a real terrorist: Luis Posada Carriles.

In Cuba she interacted with the feminist anti-Castro group Las damas de blanco (the Ladies in White). This group receives US government funds and the convicted anti-communist terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is a friend and supporter. Wikipedia quotes Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo as saying that “the so-called Ladies in White defend the terrorism of the United States.”

Who is Luis Posada Carriles? He’s a mass murderer, and former CIA agent.

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (born February 15, 1928) (nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles)[1] is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist extremist. A former Central Intelligence Agency agent,[2] Posada has been convicted in absentia of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Americas, including: involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people;[3][4] admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots;[5][6][7] involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion; [and] involvement in the Iran-Contra affair…

Luis Posada Carilles is so evil that even the Bush administration wanted him behind bars:

In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, finding that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.[11] His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.[12] The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was “an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks”, a flight risk and a danger to the community.[7]

Who is Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden? She’s a gender equity officer at Uppsula University – who chose to associate with a US funded group openly supported by a convicted terrorist and mass murderer. She just happens to have her work published by a very well funded group connected with Union Liberal Cubana – whose leader, Carlos Alberto Montaner, in turn just happened to pop up on right wing Colombian TV a few hours after the right-wing coup in Honduras. Where he joined the leader of the failed coup in Ecuador to savage Correa, the target of the coup. Montnaner also just happened to vociferously support the violent coup in Honduras, and chose to show up to sing the praises of the Honduran junta. Jean-Guy Allard, a retired Canadian journalist who now writes for Cuba’s Gramma, captured the moment

A strange pair appeared on NTN 24, the right-wing Colombian television channel aligned to the Fox Broadcasting Company the U.S. A few hours after the coup attempt in Quito, Ecuador, CIA agent Carlos Alberto Montaner, a fugitive from Cuban justice for acts of terrorism, joined with one of the leaders of the failed Ecuadorian coup, ex-Lieutenant Colonel Lucio Gutiérrez, to attack President Rafael Correa…On the margin of his media news shows, Montaner’s is known for his fanatic support of the most extreme elements of the Cuban-American mafia.
Last year, in the wake of the coup d’état against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, June 28, he became an fervent supporter of the dictator Roberto Micheletti, along with U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and another Cuban-American terrorist and CIA collaborator, Armando Valladares.
Montaner showed up repeatedly in Tegucigalpa to “defend human rights,” and at the same time to applaud the fascist Honduran regime when it unleashed its police on demonstrations by the National Resistance Front.

Oh…and the “rape” charge that’s smeared Julian Assange’s name around the world? On Thursday James D. Catlin, the Melbourne barrister who represented Assange in London, wrote:

Apparently having consensual sex in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity.Sweden’s Public Prosecutor’s Office was embarrassed in August this year when it leaked to the media that it was seeking to arrest Assange for rape, then on the same day withdrew the arrest warrant because in its own words there was “no evidence”. The damage to Assange’s reputation is incalculable. More than three quarters of internet references to his name refer to rape. Now, three months on and three prosecutors later, the Swedes seem to be clear on their basis to proceed. Consensual sex that started out with a condom ended up without one, ergo, the sex was not consensual.

I’ve spent much of my professional life as a psychiatrist helping women (and men) who are survivors of sexual violence. Rape is a hideous crime. Yet in Assange’s case his alleged victim – the gender equity officer at Uppsula University – chose to throw a party for her alleged assailant – after they’d had the sex that even Swedish prosecutors concede was consensual. Barrister Caitlin again:

[The] phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilén boasting of their respective conquests after the “crimes”.In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange’s honour at her flat after the “crime” and tweeted to her followers that she is with the “the world’s coolest smartest people, it’s amazing!”. Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilén’s mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Neither Wilén’s nor Ardin’s texts complain of rape.

Small world, isn’t it? Julian Assange is the human face of Wikileaks – the organization that’s enabled whistle-blowers to reveal hideous war crimes and expose much of America’s foreign policy to the world.

He just happens to meet a Swedish woman who just happens to have been publishing her work in a well-funded anti-Castro group that just happens to have links with a group led by a man at least one journalist describes as an agent of the CIA: the violent secret arm of America’s foreign policy.

And she just happens to have been expelled from Cuba, which just happens to be the global symbol of successful defiance of American foreign policy.

And – despite her work in Sweden upholding the human right of gender equity – in Cuba she just happens to end up associating with a group openly supported by an admitted CIA agent who himself committed mass murder when he actively participated in the terrorist bombing of a jetliner carrying a Cuban sports team…an act that was of a piece with America’s secret foreign policy of violent attacks against Cuban state interests.

And now she just happens – after admittedly consensual sex – to have gone to Swedish authorities to report the sex ended without a condom…which just happens to be the pretext for Interpol to issue a “Red Notice” informing the world’s police forces of charges against Julian Assange.

Who just happens to be the man America’s political class – the people who run America’s foreign policy – have been trying to silence. And who happens to be the man some of them have been calling to have murdered.

With a lust for vengeance like that, one could be forgiven for concluding they’ve just happened to have taken a page from Anna’s revenge manual.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e27005.htm

More Reflections on the State Department's Leaked Cables

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Having looked through more of these things, I think there are quite a few nuggets to be found. If you're curious and inclined to search for yourself, this search engine may be of help. I reckon it'll take some weeks, or maybe much longer, to put important pieces of the puzzle together. But bear in mind: these are not the Crown Jewels. Despite their fancy classifications, these are run-of-the-mill State Department telegrams which every day of the week, by the hundreds, land on the desk of an average Assistant Secretary of State.

A bit of background. All foreign service officers have a Top Secret security clearance. Indeed, Top Secret is the highest level of classification within the U.S. government. What confuses people is that there are 'sub-categories' within Top Secret. Those include such things as Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), Special Access Programs (SAP), or other unusual distribution restrictions. Technically, those materials are not more highly classified than Top Secret, but they are limited to a much smaller set of people. Some of the clearances I had, for example, were so classified that even the name of the clearance was classified. Go figure. Anyhow, none of that sort of material was in any of the leaks and, so far at least, none of the leaked cables are even classified Top Secret.
Some of the cables are classified Secret, some Confidential, and some are unclassified. There's little rhyme or reason to any particular cable's level of classification, other than the ego of the officer who assigned the classification, so be aware that important and interesting material may well bear a lower level of classification.
If you read more than a few of these cables you'll get a pretty good sense of a diplomat's paper blizzard environment. It's rough. Indeed, a lot of these cables make really incredibly boring reading. And perhaps it's the warm glow of nostalgia, or self-selected memories, but it seems to me that cables were generally better written when I was at State twenty years ago — I wonder whether a drop in writing skills (if that's, in fact, the case) may reflect a drop in critical thinking ability?
A good rule of thumb: if a cable is difficult to read it isn't worth reading.
[Update: Note State's ostrich response, as well as DOD's, and OMB's. What idiots!]

Posted by George Kenney on December 3, 2010 3:51 PM

http://www.electricpolitics.com/2010/12/....html#more

Writer's brief bio:

"Here's the short version of my bio: I'm George Kenney. I was born in Algiers in 1956, during the battle of Algiers, to a US foreign service family, and I grew up in the states, in Africa and in Europe. I spent way too much time in graduate school at the University of Chicago (MA in Economics) from which, following family tradition, I joined the foreign service myself. I was a tenured, mid-level career officer, serving as Yugoslav desk officer at the State Department headquarters in DC, when I resigned my commission in 1991 over US policy towards the Yugoslav conflict. Subsequently for a few years I was a consultant in residence at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Those were my salad days as a pundit. I had about 60 articles published in mainstream outlets, did hundreds of radio and tv interviews and talk shows, and traveled extensively through the US on speaking tours. In the mid-1990s, however, I came down with symptoms of a hereditary illness — iron overload — which sidelined me for years. With treatment I'm now operating more or less on two cylinders, more or less permanently. C'est la vie... and I'm glad to be alive!"

Saturday, Dec 4, 2010 10:01 ET WikiLeaks and the sham of "public diplomacy"

Our diplomats spout jingoistic nonsense about American supremacy -- instead of engaging with the rest of the world

By Ben Barber

AP/Dita Alangkara

As the latest WikiLeaks revelations have shown, when diplomatic cables are made public they are often far from diplomatic. In fact, they aren't even good journalism.
It is shocking that in the hundreds of cables released in recent days, U.S. diplomats often repeat unverified rumors. If I tried to base a story on such information, my editors would routinely send it back to me with an admonition: "Get some better sources. Find someone to speak on the record. Verify some of this stuff."
So now the State Department is rushing to mollify foreign leaders in Italy, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This idle and unsubstantiated rumor-mongering by U.S. diplomats has shattered the brittle façade of official smiles we have dubbed "Public Diplomacy" -- a euphemism for public affairs that some also call "propaganda."
Propaganda is meant to persuade the public that black is white. Public affairs tells the public about the good things our government does while simply ignoring the bad things we sometimes do. Public diplomacy is a hybrid of the two -- explaining policies to foreign audiences with the hope of changing minds.
Winston Churchill wrote that informing the public during wartime about progress in fighting the Nazis and defending democratic civilization is a worthy and noble task. It builds hope and prepares the public for the slow and costly battle to achieve victory over evil forces.
When Edward R. Murrow was director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in 1963, he told Congress that "American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable ... "
However, the field of international relations that is called "public diplomacy" is a new breed of animal that emerged only in the past 15 years -- since Jesse Helms, installed as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the 1994 elections, began pushing for the USIA to be absorbed by the State Department and shut down, something that officially happened in 1999.
Before that, the USIA was an open and accessible source of information set up in every international capital. It gave out official U.S. policy statements as well as fairly straightforward reports on U.S. culture, economics and politics. Foreign students, journalists and researchers found it easy to visit the American libraries attached to the USIA buildings, which were deliberately separate from the intimidating American embassies.
As a foreign correspondent in the 1980s and 1990s, I would go to USIA public affairs officers for information and to set up interviews with political officers. The American Libraries were a breath of fresh air in countries that either lacked freedom or were so poor that most journalists could not afford to buy its varied publications, dictionaries, encyclopedias and newspapers. In many cities, the USIA would obtain by fax or cable the top daily international stories from U.S. newspapers and provide free copies to many newspaper editors each morning -- a service they could not have afforded to purchase.
These days the Internet provides free access to U.S. media and State Department statements. And anti-American terrorism in recent years has made all U.S. facilities overseas less open. Had we not shuttered our USIA offices and American Libraries, visitors would have to pass a terrifying barrier of heavily armed guards, searches and security checks as they do at embassies today.
But the abolition of the USIA has caused great harm to America’s ability to tell its story to the world. To save money and consolidate U.S. international affairs under the State Department, the 2,000-strong independent agency was abolished in 1999. Its staff was now under the control of State Department bureaucrats, forced to rein in the open, informal style of their contacts with the international and U.S. media. "Public diplomacy" was thusly born.
Some -- including the conservative Heritage Foundation -- say that the lack of a quasi-independent public affairs office that knows how to speak to the international media without resorting to deliberately confusing "State speak" has crippled efforts to reach Muslims who are subject to a global barrage of anti-American Islamist propaganda.
Our diplomats have been so enamored of their fancy toy of public diplomacy they believe if they can word a policy cleverly enough other nations will swallow it, no matter who benefits. For example, one secretary of state announced her policy would be "transformational diplomacy," which meant to the rest of the world -- if you read some of its materials -- that we would transform you. It was not widely swallowed.
Other senior public diplomacy officials circled the globe trying to persuade foreigners that they would happily accept U.S. leadership -- if only they understood what fine people we are and what great family values we had.
Another former secretary of state gave me heartburn when she stated that the United States was "the only indispensable nation." This was diplomatic? So what about my friends and colleagues in Britain,Thailand, Israel, France, India and Morocco. Are we saying they are dispensable?
Every nation has created its own unique culture, language, agriculture, architecture and religion. But too often our diplomats and other government officials are forced to wear blinders and hew to the jingoistic party line that we are the best and the only indispensable nation.
When we fought as allies in World War II, we respected the contributions of our allies. When we faced down nuclear Armageddon in the Cold War, we did so with European allies in NATO. And in fighting the Islamic terrorism of recent years, our troops mixed their blood in the soil of Iraq and Afghanistan with Afghans, Iraqis, Brits, the French, Danes, Canadians and others.
We need to restore a public voice to this country that is freed from the onerous obligation of parroting American supremacy in order to satisfy domestic political imperatives. Even if we are less indispensable than other nations -- due to our huge military, economy, standard of living and rule of law -- real public diplomacy would know not to vaunt that status.
To counter the anti-Americanism growing not just in Muslim countries but in Latin America, it is time to treat others with greater respect and to present a more humble image around the world. We must recall the fable in which the powerful lion needed a tiny mouse to remove a thorn from his paw. We may be that limping lion. And the WikiLeaks documents show us roaring aimlessly, trafficking in unverified facts while an increasingly dubious world looks on.

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_r...index.html

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