Deep Politics Forum

Magda Hassan Wrote:I'd love to know how long this particular law has been on the books in Sweden and who else has ever been charged and how their trials went. It could be that it was set up recently as a honeypot trap for Julian.

Yes. And no doubt they've been trying to get something on him for a while. If this is all they could pin on him he must be quite wholesome.

Myra Bronstein Wrote:

Magda Hassan Wrote:I'd love to know how long this particular law has been on the books in Sweden and who else has ever been charged and how their trials went. It could be that it was set up recently as a honeypot trap for Julian.

Yes. And no doubt they've been trying to get something on him for a while. If this is all they could pin on him he must be quite wholesome.

Yeah, he strikes me as a simple aesthetic man more interested in ideas than living it up with wild women (or men) and drink and drugs.

For too long time I [Israel Shamir] suffered fools besmirching Assange, fools obsessed by paranoia, who see the Mossad agents under every bed. Out with them, and I do mean Duff and Gates. This list will not repeat NOT publish them anymore and they are asked to unsubscribe and to be gone. Here is a very good text by our friend Frank Scott who explains this decision:
Weak Links

by Frank Scott


The Wikileaks story has been treated by the establishment as a dangerous expose of imperial mind management and led to suppression, damage control and vindictive retribution. Meanwhile much of what passes for an anti establishment has expressed cynical disregard for what seems like old news, or treated the entire episode as another of the products of an all controlling deity-like complex of near invisible forces. These involve theories of manipulative plots and conspiracies to plot conspiratorial manipulations, all of them unknown to any but a chosen sect who seem to understand everything but how to stop the evil conspirators. The most extreme members of this cult are dangerously close to believing sunrise, sunset and the seasons are the result of machinations by a group of Talmudic billionaire Mossad agents sitting in a room in Tel Aviv or New York. In often mentally disabling ways these sources almost make the dangers of global capitalism and Zionist dominance of the American government pale in importance or even existence beside the threat of seemingly invisible forces that conspire to arrange just about everything. But many establishment figures, among them some of the foremost jackals and hyenas of the foreign policy establishment, have joined in cynically asking “who is manipulating us here?” All but totally submerged in consciousness is the risk that has been run by the Wikileaks group and its sources, nor is there enough awareness of the panic among keepers of the public mind and their lashing out in ways as irrational as some of the critics, though far more threatening.


Along with near comical” illuminati” based theories of conspiracies, plots and counter plots, we have defamation of the character and intelligence of people taking heroic risk in making public what was once private. They are maligned as criminals, fools or enemy agents. A citizen of Australia is accused of being a traitor to America while Sweden charges him with a horrendous sex offense seemingly invented by otherwise sane Scandinavians: he refused to use a condom! It is almost bizarre enough to be funny but the potential tragedy is hardly humorous. The Wikileakers are subjected to death threats and demands for their execution by irrational voices in and out of government while small, shrill voices claim they are counter-counter-counter spies or dupes of dupes of dupes. Just what is going on here?

Instead of being grateful to people informing the public about matters normally kept secret from them, we have a variety of suspicions on the one hand, and the spinning of cables and messages by corporate media on the other. When major sources reveal only those parts of the information that fit the governing mind control operation and focus on Iran or China, it is not those media sources that are charged with misinforming but those bringing the information out of the darkness and into public light. Instead of often mindless speculation about what motivates Assange we would all do better to heed his warnings that the so-called journalistic process itself is nothing more than “ a craven sucking up to official sources”, as is clearly indicated in the editorial opions rendered and major media reportage of this story. This giant step towards democracy and anti secrecy is reduced to the vicious charges being made by some of the most scurrilous and murderous individuals and institutional forces in the society. Indeed, what is going on here? Imperial business as usual, and what else is new?

Calls for the execution of Assange have been made by elected fanatics and their crackpot rehab counterparts in media, with segments of the public whipped into a frenzy over his alleged treachery and nonsense that these leaks risk the lives of military personnel, despite not one shred of evidence to indicate anything of the sort. In fact and with rare exceptions, care has been taken by the Wiki leakers to omit what might indeed be dangerous to innocent employees of the empire. And the heroic military worker who turned the information over to Wikileaks is in a cell and facing a fifty-year prison sentence for the crime of actually serving his people and not their rulers. The murderous pretenders to democracy who send thousands to their death in foreign wars now shriek that Manning and Assange are endangering the lives of those who would be safe in their homes if not for these political employees of global capital and its Zionist affiliates who allegedly serve “public” interest with their bloody and racist militarism.


Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and their cohorts are definitely a threat to diplomacy that hides reality from the public when not totally distorting it, and to perverted government policies of war carried out in the public’s name and called dedication to peace. Establishment leaders and their stenographers in media treat this assault on logic, language and morality as patriotism. Meanwhile, efforts to bring information that should have reached us long ago if corporate media were not under control of the very forces it supposedly reports on, are seen as treason, disregarded as nothing new or treated as an adventure story. Maybe we’d be better off is all of this were just the sort of conspiracy from a supernatural realm that some suspect, but it is very real and demands the concern of all who wish for a different reality. Assange, Manning, and all their cohorts yet unknown in this drama need and demand the support of all who believe in peace, social justice and open democratic government to achieve those things. They have given the lie to the notion that there are, or should be, secrets in an open society or that there should be behind the scenes manipulation of nations, governments and media sources.


The Wikileaks group are sending a signal that we can know and should know everything that is done in our name and that in this electronic age there are no longer any secrets that can be kept from us, if we would simply demand completely open government and defend those who take great risk to bring it about. The first call ought to be to come to the aid of Assange, and especially Manning. If we allow either of them to be made scapegoats and suffer more than they already have for their acts on behalf of humanity, we may all suffer far more ourselves. And we will deserve it.
http://legalienate.blogspot.com/2010/12/weak-links.html

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A response by Eric Walberg:

it's not true that there is nothing negative about israel, either. (see below, based on raimondo's recent piece). what the tight-lipped US diplo leaks relating to Israel shows is the fear that US diplos have of saying anything negative about Israel. possibly too, Israeli control of virtually all US communications networks (and most likely having developed their own more secure ones for such sensitive exchanges) has something to do with what ended up getting leaked. the leaks lead to more questions, not answers.

Israel mafia activities are a serious concern to both the CIA and the State Department as revealed in the November 2010 Wikileaks. A May 15 2009 cable "Israel, A Promised Land for Organized Crime?" from the US embassy in Tel Aviv refers to leading mafia figures trying to get visas to attend a "security-related convention" in Las Vegas. "Zvika Ben Shabat, Yaacov Avitan, and Tzuri Roka requested visas ... many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely." Zvika Ben Shabat is president of H.A.Sh Security Group, a joint venture with India’s giant Micro-Technologies, building a "command and control centre" in Mumbai, scene of the Chabad House bombing (see Cultural Wars). They export security technologies for identification and monitoring of cell phones, vehicles, structures, computers, infrastructures and WIFI technologies to Europe and Africa. The chairman of H.A.Sh Security is retired Major General Dan Ronen, who led the overall forces and systems during the invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Many such members of "OC" (organized crime) "slip through the consular cracks". Israeli organized crime operates in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt especially in cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and credit card and computer fraud. A 1997 Los Angeles federal and state investigation soured because the Israeli drug dealers were monitoring the police communications.
A CIA investigation later concluded, "The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information." The intimate connection between senior Israel politicians and the mafia, especially in communications security technology now used around the world, makes clear the immense power now available for Israel to pursue plans outside of US control, and with the extensive array of local US soft power, to forestall any US government attempts to pressure Israel into following a US agenda.


http://ericwalberg.com

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

WikiLeaks, WikiDrama and WikiGossip



What should we make of the Wikileaks story?
Obviously, the Swedish "sex crime" charges are ridiculous, as are the death threats against Wikileaks founds Julian Assange. See this, this and this.
Some leading first amendment advocates support Wikileaks as a vital resource. For example, John Perry Barlow - founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a great organization with a long and proven track record in fighting censorship) says:
Likewise, the ACLU has been fighting for Wikileaks for years.

And Daniel Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky think Wikileaks is the real deal.

However, many savvy observers argue that that Wikileaks is not what it seems.

For example, former U.S. National Security Adviser under President Carter (and top foreign policy advisor) Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn’t think all the leaked information coming out of Wikileaks is a result of Army PFC Bradley Manning, and suspects a foreign intelligence service may be providing the more embarrassing leaks for their own political reasons.

As Brzezinski told PBS:
Other smart people point out that - while there is pointed information challenging the actions of other countries - the information coming from Wikileaks about the U.S. is more of the nature of gossip, and doesn't actually challenge U.S. foreign or domestic policy is a direct manner. For example, the information disclosed to date doesn't challenge the narrative of the "War on Terror" itself, the government's handling of the economic crisis, or any other central American policy.

So whether Wikileaks is a first amendment champion or an intelligence service psychological operation aiming to persuade and embarrass, so far it has mainly been a bunch of gossip in terms of leaks about America.

If you don't believe me, read some of the actual cables which have been released. While there have been some stunners about foreign countries, the ones regarding U.S. actions have been nothing but idle chatter about well-known people or events, providing interesting but wholly irrelevant details about what people were wearing or who they slept with. No breakthrough revelations which actually challenge core U.S. policy.

(Many people are saying that the disclosure that the U.S. has spied on the United Nations shows the value of Wikileaks. But it has been known for years that the U.S. spies on the U.N. See this, this and this.)

As the very mainstream, Murdoch-owned Herald Sun notes:
As the head of long-time whistleblower Cryptome (and former Wikileaks supporter - John Young - argues, Wikileaks has been more hype than substance:
So far - despite the media frenzy - it's more like WikiGossip than WikiLeaks.

Don't get distracted by the WikiDrama ... Unless WikiLeaks releases something which discloses criminal behavior by a large American bank, more damning information about the government's actions than the Fed's own data release, or facts which undermine the false war on terror narrative - Brzezinski himself told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative" - such as previously unknown false flags, then it's mainly a publicity-seeking melodrama more than an authentic challenge to American power.

Remember that the corporate press tends to be pro-war. The more cynical might argue that the fact that the corporate press is publishing all of the cables released by Wikileaks could imply that the material is not fundamentally of an anti-war nature.

The more cynical also point out that many credible whistleblowers - including former high-level government officials - have been ignored over the last 10 years by the corporate media when they have disclosed facts which challenged core U.S. policy. But Wikileaks is getting 24/7 coverage. I'm strongly for whistleblowers ... I'm just not convinced that WikiLeaks is as hard-hitting as other whistleblower groups out there.

All people of good faith agree that freedom of information and freedom of speech are vital in a free society. The real question is whether this particular organization is made up of WikiHeroes, WikiPublicityHounds, WikiDupes, or WikiDisinfoAgents.

Only time will tell.

7 comments

Neoliberal News of the Day – Dec. 7, 2010

Posted on December 7, 2010 by willyloman


Check out all the latest Neoliberal News of the day…



Obama the “Pragmatic” 20 Dimention Chess Player Cuts a Deal (while the nation focuses on Assange’s arrest) – “The “framework” of the deal that Obama outlined Monday evening calls for a two-year extension of the cuts in all income tax brackets. It also would extend long-term unemployment benefits through next year. The estate tax rate would be renewed, but at a lower rate than even during the Bush administration. And the Obama administration is proposing a one-year payroll tax reduction that sources say would cut the amount contributed to Social Security from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. … Under Bush, the tax on large estates dropped from 55 percent to 45 percent — then to zero this year. Under the deal announced by Obama, it would change to 35 percent next year for estates larger than $5 million“


Obama the “Pragmatic” 20 Dimention Chess Player Signs us Up for Another NAFTA – “President Obama says he’s doing this to create jobs. As Paul Krugman points out today, that’s hogwash. This deal will not do that — it’s just NAFTA extended to another country, one with a huge manufacturing base. Since NAFTA was enacted, more than 45,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities have closed nationwide, and 5.5 million manufacturing workers have lost their jobs. Currently, American workers suffer a $2000 annual net loss due to our trade policy — more than the average American’s federal tax burden.”


First Lady’s Anti-Obesity Program is Really for the Military – “And since 1990, obesity and overweight have emerged as crucial problems for military planners — so much so that a group of retired officers has branded America’s high-calorie school lunch programs as a threat to national security.”… “In 2008, some 634 military personnel were discharged for transgressing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That same year, 4,555 were discharged for failing to meet military weight standards.”


Condoleezza Rice (terrorist, war criminal) Sat Down on “The View” (Mockingbird Showcase) to Discuss Assange – Whoopie Goldberg calls Assange “a terrorist”, Rice says this shows the state department knows what is REALLY GOING ON in the Middle East, and they ALL agree that SOMETHING must be done to “crack down” on the internet so that things like this don’t happen again…


Ireland to spare no one in austerity drive – “I don’t want to think about it,” said John-Joe Feeney, a 41-year-old out of work carpenter in Dublin’s poor inner city. “I just know they (the government) are going to hurt the people who have nothing, like me, my wife and kids and leave the fat cats alone. It’s not worth thinking about.”


Government Forced to Release Docs on Spying Program – “Last week’s release of 900 pages of U.S. government documents dealing with the implementation of the nation’s primary surveillance law suggests that the government has been systematically violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens“


Karzai Abandons Plan to Ban Private Security Contractors – “By October Karzai had backed off the plan somewhat, saying it didn’t apply to the ones working for NATO (which was a large portion of them), after US condemnations of the plan, and he later announced a delay of the rest of the ban.”


Homeland Security ‘messages’ coming to Walmart, hotels, malls – “Shoppers at Walmart will soon have something other than glossy magazines and chewing gum to look at when in the checkout line: A “video message” from the Department of Homeland Security asking them to look out for “suspicious” activity and report it immediately.”
Let Big Business Write the Tax Code Laws – “”What Republicans ought to do is say to people who create jobs, how many years does the tax code need to be extended for you to make an investment decision?” former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Sunday.”


‘The United States Is Behind This Deliberate Leak’ – Mashai: These documents are not authentic… SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the diplomatic reports were published against Washington’s will… Mashai: Are you sure about that? How, then, did WikiLeaks gain access to the documents?… SPIEGEL ONLINE: Presumably through a US Army private who had access to a central government database… Mashai: Do you believe that? Then you must be very naïve indeed. No, the United States is behind this deliberate leak.


The Cheonan Incident. America’s Pretext to Wage War on North Korea – “The JIG investigation was conducted by South Korea with the participation of its allies. Aside from a minor role played by the Swedish team, there was no impartial, let alone countervailing, voice in the JIG. Too much in the JIG’s investigation hinted at a predetermined conclusion, with the evidence being made to fit. It would serve not only the cause of truth but that of peace for a new investigation to be opened; but this time with the participation of all interested parties, including North Korea. That investigation will not happen, of course. The Cheonan’s tragedy is too useful in the Lee Administration’s campaign to kill the Sunshine Policy of his two predecessors.”


Wall Street’s Pentagon Papers: Biggest Financial Scam In World History – WIKI-LEAKS IS A DISTRACTION – This data release reveals “emergency lending programs” that doled out $12.3 TRILLION in taxpayer money – $3.3 trillion in liquidity, $9 trillion in “other financial arrangements.” “The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland (U.K.), Barclays (U.K.), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players were “gifted.” All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations got their cut.”

On November 13th 2010, Burma’s most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was released from house arrest. She had been confined to her house for almost 15 years. The event provoked an outpouring of feeling across the world. People rejoiced because she had been set free, and her great spirit of endurance was celebrated. And under this all, a great sigh, at the loss of hours and days and years of a life. She had done nothing wrong. Hers was the plight of a political prisoner.
On Tuesday 7th of December, Julian Assange, after willingly meeting with the British police, was placed under arrest, and remanded in custody for a week, pending an extradition hearing.
On December 14th, then, almost exactly a month to the day from the release of Aung San Suu Kyi from Burmese house arrest, a court of the United Kingdom will decide whether it is going to play its own role in an expeditious slide by Western democracies, increasingly visible in the last two weeks, into the habits of authoritarian rule.
The allegations from Sweden provide the veneer of legality for a political imprisonment. In truth, Julian Assange is not being accused of “rape,” no more than Socrates was accused of “corrupting the youth of Athens.” The two women who are alleged victims did not allege rape - their story has been co-opted by the Swedish prosecutor to pursue Assange. At every single stage of this Swedish case there has been absurd and frightening departures from the norms of criminal procedure. A cursory examination of the history of the case reveals abundant and suspicious oversights.
Isolated, these irregularities might be attributed to incompetence. In aggregate, that explanation becomes less credible. They point resolutely towards the abuse of the Swedish criminal justice system for a political end: the suppression of Julian Assange at all costs.
As for Socrates, so for Julian Assange. His real crime, which is not a crime in any Western jurisdiction, is to have embarrassed the powerful, by revealing not only the crimes of corporations and governments, but a political culture of complicity, deception and veiled contempt for their democratic peoples. He has done this entirely within the law. Wikileaks is a non-violent organization, whose strategy is to harnass the right of free speech to expose secret misconduct. There are no legal grounds for the suppression of Wikileaks. And so the powerful must seek other means.
Sweden is not alone. The American position will not have escaped anyone in the past few weeks. And European and Commonwealth governments have fallen over themselves to capitulate to American wishes. Assange’s own sovereign government, the Australian government, has, in an unforgivable desertion of its duty to its own citizens, vocally presumed his guilt and backwardly conducted its police to find those laws by which he might be guilty.
It is apparent, also, that French, Swiss and American officials have abused their positions, exerting pressure well beyond the remit of their offices on private companies, to deny services vital to the free speech of Wikileaks. Assange has broken no law; the closure of his Swiss bank account, and the denial of service by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and Amazon have no legal justification, and are therefore assaults by private companies on the freedom of speech in our democracies.
These actions have not gone unnoticed. Over the past two weeks, Wikileaks’ global support has grown until Wikileaks’ supporters were numbered in the millions, as the citizens of Western states were alerted to the accelerated decay of our democracies. The seriousness of the past two weeks’ events has not been lost on us. Assault has been openly conducted on the founding ideals of our political cultures, by the very officials elected to defend those ideals. In their rush to suppress Wikileaks by persecuting Julian Assange, our governments have made it clear that they are now hostile to their own people, and enemies of the sacred institutions and offices they now occupy. The constitutional rights established to protect us from the abuses of state power have been brushed aside.
We, at WL Central, condemn in the most serious terms this concerted assault on our democracies, carried out in the persecution of Julian Assange. Our support for Wikileaks has always been pursuant to our greater support for the ideals of a single standard of justice, and freedom from tyranny, towards which Julian Assange has worked with tireless dedication and at great personal risk. The persecution of Julian Assange is not the persecution of one man, but the persecution of us all. It is not a single injustice, but an injustice to end all pretence of justice. It is an emergency of historical significance.
We therefore address the governments and legislatures of the United States, of the European Union Member States, and the governments and parliaments of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Nations, including, and especially, the government of Australia.
We affirm
That Wikileaks is now an integral pillar in the international fourth estate.
That Wikileaks’ work since its foundation demonstrates exigent flaws in the political cultures of our democracies, with dire consequences for domestic and global justice.
That Wikileaks is therefore of critical importance to the cause of reform in our societies, and of critical importance to the maintenance of our freedoms.
That Wikileaks is in fact unsuppressable, and that any attempts to suppress it will not attain their goal, but cause further harm to our legal orders, and to the relationship between the governments and their peoples.
That therefore any attack on Wikileaks or its staff or supporters is to be interpreted as an attack on our political cultures themselves.
We urge
That the Australian government will meet its duty of advocacy for one of its own citizens and defend Julian Assange to the limits of its means.
That governments will recognize Wikileaks as enjoying the same freedoms to communicate information as do we all, as well as those freedoms particular to the press.
That governments will react to Wikileaks, not by further compounding their mistakes, but by resolving to act so as to be beyond reproach.
Finally, we urge that no perversion of justice occurs on December 14th and that the court meet the requirements of justice free from political influence. Julian Assange must not become a hostage to political convenience or expediency. Only a month on from the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the West must not plunge its own freedoms into the disrepute it so roundly and justly condemns in other parts of the world. This is important, and it involves us all. Proceed with great care. The world is watching.

Myra Bronstein Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:3 offenses by the same women over three days (it looks like)...

Mmmm. She must've really been outraged.

Simply outraged.

Outraged, I say.

Hilarious.

It will be a very brave or stupid 'Romeo' to EVER date either of those women again.......even talking to them could land one with the XY chromosomes and the wrong political ideas in deep, deep pooh! :bike: Any any potential 'Romeo' should best use a stainless steel or titanium, if not depleted uranium condom of at least triple standard wall thickness - pressure tested. A witness should be present to record all on video and a notary present to authenticate the video. In case of breakage of the depleted uranium condom [or stainless/titanium] a doctor and nurse with flamethrower and a pharmacopoeia of caustic anti-sperm/HIV/STD chemicals of all sorts should be present, as well. How romantic and private a tryst......

NB - Apparently, one of the 'charges' is that Assange did not call one of the women the day after they had sex......my, my, that could be a capital crime in Sweden. Having lived there [Stockholm], one has to know that a Swedish policeman can, under Swedish law, arrest one for walking down the street under 'the influence'....hurting no one but you own brain cells. It seems to have escaped notice that one of the cables indicates that Sweden is secretly in NATO...and this might be bothering the Swedes now.....they may also worry that some info on the US-Swedish Assassination of Palme may surface in all this. Kill the messenger quick!

December 7, 2010

The following statement was released today, signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson; all are associated with Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in. The people listed below this release would be pleased to shed light on these exciting new developments.

How far down the U.S. has slid can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that's right, Russia's Pravda): "What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic ... After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when ... government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. ..."

So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. ... the American people should be outraged that their government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

Odd, isn't it, that it takes a Pravda commentator to drive home the point that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history. Most of our own media are demanding that WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange be hunted down -- with some of the more bloodthirsty politicians calling for his murder. The corporate-and-government dominated media are apprehensive over the challenge that WikiLeaks presents. Perhaps deep down they know, as Dickens put it, "There is nothing so strong ... as the simple truth."

As part of their attempt to blacken WikiLeaks and Assange, pundit commentary over the weekend has tried to portray Assange's exposure of classified materials as very different from -- and far less laudable than -- what Daniel Ellsberg did in releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Ellsberg strongly rejects the mantra "Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad." He continues: "That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."

Motivation? WikiLeaks' reported source, Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, having watched Iraqi police abuses, and having read of similar and worse incidents in official messages, reportedly concluded, "I was actively involved in something that I was completely against." Rather than simply go with the flow, Manning wrote: "I want people to see the truth ... because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public," adding that he hoped to provoke worldwide discussion, debates, and reform.

There is nothing to suggest that WikiLeaks/Assange's motives were any different. Granted, mothers are not the most impartial observers. Yet, given what we have seen of Assange’s behavior, there was the ring of truth in Assange’s mother’s recent remarks in an interview with an Australian newspaper. She put it this way: "Living by what you believe in and standing up for something is a good thing. … He sees what he is doing as a good thing in the world, fighting baddies, if you like."

That may sound a bit quixotic, but Assange and his associates appear the opposite of benighted. Still, with the Pentagon PR man Geoff Morrell and even Attorney General Eric Holder making thinly disguised threats of extrajudicial steps, Assange may be in personal danger.

The media: again, the media is key. No one has said it better than Monseñor Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago warned, "The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy." Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today.

The big question is not whether Americans can "handle the truth." We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions -- an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, most of which have mounted a hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.

So far, the question of whether Americans can "handle the truth" has been an academic rather than an experience-based one, because Americans have had very little access to the truth. Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, "ground truth."

How to inform American citizens? As a step in that direction, on October 23 we "Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence" (see below) presented our annual award for integrity to Julian Assange. He accepted the honor "on behalf of our sources, without which WikiLeaks' contributions are of no significance." In presenting the award, we noted that many around the world are deeply indebted to truth-tellers like WikiLeaks and its sources.

Here is a brief footnote: Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) is a group of former CIA colleagues and other admirers of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, who hold up his example as a model for those who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power.

Sam did speak truth to power on Vietnam, and in honoring his memory, SAAII confers an award each year to a truth-teller exemplifying Sam Adams' courage, persistence, and devotion to truth -- no matter the consequences. Previous recipients include:

-Coleen Rowley of the FBI
-Katharine Gun of British Intelligence
-Sibel Edmonds of the FBI
-Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan
-Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army
-Frank Grevil, Maj., Danish Army Intelligence
-Larry Wilkerson, Col., US Army (ret.)
-Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

"There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Everything you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight; what you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops."
-- Luke 12:2-3

The following former awardees and other associates have signed the above statement; some are available for interviews:

DANIEL ELLSBERG
A former government analyst, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the Vietnam War to the New York Times and other newspapers in 1971. He was an admirer of Sam Adams when they were both working on Vietnam and in March 1968 disclosed to the New York Times some of Adams' accurate analysis, helping head off reinforcement of 206,000 additional troops into South Vietnam and a widening of the war at that time to neighboring countries.

FRANK GREVIL
Grevil, a former Danish intelligence analyst, was imprisoned for giving the Danish press documents showing that Denmark's Prime Minister (now NATO Secretary General) disregarded warnings that there was no authentic evidence of WMD in Iraq; in Copenhagen, Denmark.

KATHARINE GUN
Gun is a former British government employee who faced two years imprisonment in England for leaking a U.S. intelligence memo before the invasion of Iraq. The memo indicated that the U.S. had mounted a spying "surge" against U.N. Security Council delegations in early 2003 in an effort to win approval for an Iraq war resolution. The leaked memo -- published by the British newspaper The Observer on March 2, 2003 -- was big news in parts of the world, but almost ignored in the United States. The U.S. government then failed to obtain a U.N. resolution approving war, but still proceeded with the invasion.

DAVID MacMICHAEL
MacMichael is a former CIA analyst. He resigned in the 1980s when he came to the conclusion that the CIA was slanting intelligence on Central America for political reasons. He is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

RAY McGOVERN
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President's Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

CRAIG MURRAY
Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was fired from his job when he objected to Uzbeks being tortured to gain "intelligence" on "terrorists." Upon receiving his Sam Adams award, Murray said, "I would rather die than let someone be tortured in an attempt to give me some increment of security." Observers have noted that Murray was subjected to similar character assassination techniques as Julian Assange is now encountering to discredit him.

COLEEN ROWLEY
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002. She recently co-wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed titled, "WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if? Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks."

LARRY WILKERSON
Wilkerson, Col., U.S. Army (ret.), former chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell at the State Department, who criticized what he called the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal." See recent interviews

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Goes the Dark Leader? ...



Fiction and truth merge?






"Remember right here we talked about finding a guy and turning him into a star years ago," the junior man said, adding too much sugar. "He's sure blown up since then. Makes me nostalgic."

"He's the biggest thing in the world right," the senior man said, ladling a little honey. "That was one sweet concept."

"Lucky I had a brainstorm," the junior man needled.

"Sure, you were on the verge of washing out," the senior man teased back. "I gave you the credit because you needed a boost and you came up with a real humdinger, my son." His smile ended up as a grimace. Out of practice.

The junior man took a cautious sip. "And now he's everywhere. He's all over the news just about twenty-four-seven."

"Well, we own the goddamn mainstream media," the senior man said, trying his own latte. "Are you surprised?"

"It's strange to watch," the junior man said. "I know it's all an act, but the left wing wants him deified and the right wants him shot."

"That's part of the dialectic. We need to control both sides of the argument. Our guys need to capture the most radical sentiments in order to control them. Has to do with credibility."

German minister of economics, Brüderle, has said the following words, probably in an effort to criticize Wikileaks:
"Manches, was ich bei WikiLeaks da entnehme, erinnert mich an die Sammelwut, die früher Institutionen im Osten hatten, die Stasi dabei."
(Something that I gather from Wikileaks reminds me to the collection rage that institutions in the east had, Stasi included.)
The cables were indeed collected by the US State Department, not by Wikileaks.

From http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolit...71,00.html
(in German)