Will WikiLeaks unravel the American 'secret government'?

[David Guyatt]

It was interesting for me Peter, that yesterday 10 mins before Assange was due to go live on the Guardian website with Q & A's, there were over 750 questions already queued.

Many were quite insightful questions too. Someone's paying attention.

[Peter Lemkin]

It was interesting for me Peter, that yesterday 10 mins before Assange was due to go live on the Guardian website with Q & A's, there were over 750 questions already queued.

Many were quite insightful questions too. Someone's paying attention.

One hell of a lot of persons paying attention! Over 150.000 persons have taken the possible risk and downloaded the 1.4 GB 'insurance' file [which I'm sure some computer is keeping track of any IP connecting to and downloading it]....and while the Government[s] are in a panic, I don't think the average person is/are. The true test will come if something untoward happens to Assange or Wikileaks....what will the mass of silent supporters do then?!

[Peter Lemkin]

OMG, I'e just caught up on the last 5 pages, since I last looked yesterday evening.

The world has gone completely bare-bollock MAD!

The Emperor's clothes have been torn away to reveal the revolting, stinking, suppurating mass throbbing inside. It's a terrible sight. Such fragility. Such fear. Such guilt!

I offer a thought regarding the intention to make Wikileaks an official terrorist organization. Should that happen, anyone reading Wikileaks worldwide would be guilty of assisting a terrorist organization and will - in all probability - be liable for arrest and - who knows? - rendition (silly me, I mean "extradition" of course).

And based on the massive USG over-reaction yesterday, perhaps "Cablegate" is the new 911 to initiate entirely new draconian controls.

Just a thought.

Quite a spectacle isn't it?

And the rabid demands for Assange's execution are something to behold. I really do struggle to understand the visceral hatred that underlies them. Understand or not though, it is precisely that mindset in a large proportion of the population that is the enabler of the whole US/UK/NATO criminal enterprise. So, TPTB nurture, stir and stoke it at every opportunity.

My big problem is that I also struggle to get a handle on the numbers who are waking up to their status as sheep and are prepared, having due regard for the potential consequences, to do something about it.

I fear it is far fewer than needed to thwart what is planned though. I also agree that Wikileaks (ie Collateral murder, Afghan war logs, cablegate, the pending bank stuff plus the Insurance.aes256 file) may indeed turn out to be the new 911 - and that we are currently at the apex of the free dissemination and exchange of information.

If they just 'up and kill him' [as they are wont to do and have done tens of thousands of times before], there is little to protect him. In an American Court of Law, I think they might have a more difficult time than they think! [or maybe they know this and will resort to option 1] - there is the little matter of the trial and law used successfully with the Pentagon Papers - which had higher security clearances.

As to this being the new 911, personally I think not, but do agree they will pull something soon to shut all down and have an excuse to further repress free speech, internet dissemination of information [even unclassified or declassified]. The shit is about to hit the proverbial fan.....phony fan; real shit!

[Magda Hassan]

Linda Minor noted on her blog that the Pentagon Papers had 1st amendment protection (free speech) even if it was classified information.

[Peter Lemkin]

Linda Minor noted on her blog that the Pentagon Papers had 1st amendment protection (free speech) even if it was classified information.

That noted and that being established law, since then a few things [ahem!] have happened - not the least of which is the unPatriot Act and its co-acts which actually made democracy, freedoms and liberties illegal for the Plebs. It would be a real struggle...but one I'd like to see fought....then we will have a thumbs up or thumbs down on the future of Amerika....or if it ended in 2001. Sadly, if someone is declared a terrorist or enemy combatant, there need be no trial and they never have to have a lawyer or be set free...even torture is OK....some country we have become. I can't see what the *uck we are defending - other than the privilege and power of the privileged and powerful.

[Peter Lemkin]

PayPal freezes WikiLeaks account [Credit Card Companies to follow suit]

Online payment company says funds were being used for 'illegal activity' in violation of its rules

Jonathan Haynes
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 December 2010 10.19 GMT
Article history

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/Reuters

PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks' account in the latest action against the whistleblower website, which has been posting leaked US embassy cables online.

The decision by the online payment site – which WikiLeaks had used to raise funds for web hosting and other costs – has been announced with a posting on PayPal's blog.

PayPal, owned by the auction website eBay, said the account had been frozen because it was being used for "illegal" activity.

This week Amazon withdrew its cloud hosting of WikiLeaks' cables site and the WikiLeaks.org domain was taken offline. It has since moved to other domains based outside America.

PayPal said: "PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal acceptable use policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We've notified the account holder of this action."

[David Guyatt]

I expect that Assange expected this and has made other arrangements. But it demonstrates yet again how petty and vindictive the US ruling elite have become.

I'm now considering donating to Wikileaks once a new banking platform is up. I doubt it needs the money, but I simply wish to fuck them that try to fuck with it. There's a principle involved.

[Peter Presland]

I post this purely for balance sake and as an antidote to the herd instinct to which we are all so susceptible. I remain four-square in support of the original declared Wikileaks objectives; Assange's long history on the Cyberpunks list are among the very best of his credentials and not so easily dismissed as Duff implies - but

The Rosen-AIPAC thing, and the suggestion that many WL geeks are among the people being shielded by it's handling; the Brzezinski involvement; together with the long-established modus operandi of the Mossad - they all have a certain ring to them. Whoever else has been damaged by Wikileaks to date, it has certainly not been Zionist Israel - quite the opposite in fact. The cables are billed as being concentrated around the Middle East and yet - so far anyway - I'm not aware of anything of significance - from the US Tel Aviv embassy. I'm also thoroughly pissed off at the stage management of the releases in dribs and drabs. That modus operandi is clearly in service to an agenda - and the agenda we are expected to swallow is that it is to "Maximise Impact". Frankly I do NOT buy that.

From My Catbird Seat:

There are two opinions of Wikileaks. The worlds intelligence services all, every single one, believes Wikileaks is simply an intelligence agency playing games. They say this to each other, Vladimir Putin and Zbigniew Brzezinski have announced it to the world and others are following suit.
Nobody, at least nobody typically “answerable” will say the word “Israel” but it is what they mean when they say “intelligence agency.” They mean Israel. Every Wikileak does something to help Israel in a different way at a different time. If Israel has a problem, a Wikileak is there, part of the solution. This time, Secretary Clinton was in the way and Wikileaks showed up to gut the State Department and give Israel the usual “buff and polish” job they usually do.
There is another group, not a group that actually believes Wikileaks is real, few but the “Joe Six-Pack” crowd buys that, but a group that loves Wikileaks like an addict loves a fix. The press loves Wikileaks. I even love Wikileaks. Wikileaks is pushing readership through the roof, not just America but worldwide. Wikileaks is a news marketing phenomenon like any disaster. There is a reason the media are compared to vultures and hyenas.
Killing Wikileaks as the hoax it is, and not a harmless hoax, not by a long shot, is like killing the golden goose. Wikileaks sells news, pulls up website traffic to unimaginable levels, even crashes servers from overload. There isn’t just one story, teaching the world how bad America is, there is also the daytime TV drama, the soap opera of Julian Assange.
I wonder when the public will pick up on the endless stream of carefully posed, carefully staged photos. Just imagine meeting Assange, hiding from Interpol, running for his life, the CIA hunting him down, angry “date rape’ victims lurking the streets of London and Amsterdam. He always has time for the media, never misses an interview.

“Julian, look to the side, leer a bit…look threatening. OK, another one, this time …softer…something the gay community will like. OK, that was great.”

Wikileaks would be funny if it weren’t getting people killed, something almost everyone agrees on. Those with a powerful desire to “buy in,” the disaffected, the overt and “closet” America haters and, most of all, the bored. Wikileaks is perfect for people with nothing to do, nothing to talk about and absolutely no knowledge about foreign policy or defense. There is something for everyone in Wikileaks, rape, gay sex, car chases, everything but truth.
NASTY TRUTH

Why call Wikileaks a hoax? Many have now pointed out that some things don’t make sense, that selected very nasty information seems to have been dug out, all “one sided,” and very much not simple “leaks.” Wikileaks is propaganda sold as truth. Are the things in Wikileaks lies? Here is a good analogy for Wikileaks:

There are three houses on a street for sale. One man, a neighbor down the block, puts up a website claiming a murderer and child rapist lives on the street. The website is correct, as are Wikileaks, there is a murderer and child rapist living on the street, but as we might guess, this isn’t the entire story.

Property values plummet. More homes go up for sale. Nobody will buy there and those who are there all want to leave.
The three houses go into foreclosure and more on the way. The man who puts up the website buys them for half their value, the families who owned them are now living in a public shelter for the homeless.
What the website doesn’t say is that the person who put it up is the murder and child rapist. Welcome to Wikileaks and “warfare through deception.”

THE FBI and AIPAC

We are supposed to believe that Julian Assange and Bradley Manning have outwitted the FBI, made fools of them. Ann Coulter is beating that drum, part of her crusade against gays in general. What’s not to hate? Seldom overweight, nicely dressed, financially successful, better educated than most, certainly not a demographic that would appeal to Ann Coulter, hardly the kind of Americans she caters to.
Selling the “Bradley Manning” myth, that accused serial rapist Assange’s “gay lover” looted the Pentagon of its least vital secrets, bringing America’s evil Fascist dictatorship to its knees….the myth. There is also the minor problem that Manning was in jail when the other leaks occurred. The excuse given, Assange has been sitting on the information for months, simply doesn’t hold water.
Judy Woodruff of PBS, while interviewing former national security advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Hadley, made an attempt to sell the Bradley Manning myth. Watch Brzezinski and Hadley shut her down like an alarm clock stuck on a “rap” station:

JUDY WOODRUFF: But a lot of these documents have been in the hands — haven’t they been in the hands of WikiLeaks for some time?
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: We don’t know that for a fact.
JUDY WOODRUFF: … because of — because of this private who is in jail and accused, Army private?
STEPHEN HADLEY: We don’t know it!

Publicly, the FBI is silent, choosing ignominy and survival. Highly placed sources indicate the AIPAC spy scandal, now shoved under the rug, was 10 times the extent of the infamous Pollard affair. We are told there is solid evidence of widespread espionage extending to the highest levels of, not only Defense but the Executive branch as well. Arrest warrants were being prepared for more than several Bush officials and several currently serving President Obama. With two presidents being blackmailed because their administrations had been totally penetrated by spies, the FBI was called off.
Grant Smith discusses the Rosen v. AIPAC lawsuit that threatens to bring Washington to its knees with an espionage scandal of unimagined proportions:

Steven J. Rosen’s defamation lawsuit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is now entering a critical phase. A series of cross-filings stakes out the critical court terrain. Rosen intends to show that obtaining and leveraging classified U.S. government information in the service of Israel is common practice at AIPAC. He claims it was unfair for AIPAC to fire and malign him in the press after he was indicted on espionage charges in 2005.
On March 2, 2009, Rosen filed the civil lawsuit against his former employer, directors, and an outside public relations firm for libel and slander. Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy chief, seeks $5 million in damages from AIPAC, and punitive damages of $500,000 from each former board member, for a total claim of $21 million. AIPAC made statements to the news media Rosen believes were “knowingly false and defamatory and issued in reckless disregard.” AIPAC fired Rosen and fellow employee Keith Weissman after they were criminally indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act in 2005. Both were caught up in an FBI sting operation receiving classified information from Department of Defense employee Col. Lawrence Franklin, who pled guilty and turned state’s witness.
Rosen’s legal counsel David H. Shapiro gruffly advised AIPAC’s attorney Thomas L. McCally that he would be seeking “serious discovery” on Rosen’s behalf during a status hearing on June 5, 2009. It is this sort of public intrusion guided by knowledgeable insiders, following already devastating FBI raids, that AIPAC probably wants to avoid at all costs.
Ironically, Rosen’s civil lawsuit, like the failed government prosecution, hinges on proving that circulating classified information is common practice inside AIPAC.

What FBI insiders have alluded to is that the the case should have been allowed to follow the investigation which had led, not just to a vast Israeli spy ring operating through AIPAC but to falsifying the intelligence reports used to justify the ill fated US invasion of, not only Iraq but Afghanistan. Sources indicate that Wikileaks is seen as an attempt to duplicate the espionage and treason of 2001 and 2003, but this time aimed at Iran.
WIKILEAKS AS AN ENTERTAINMENT COMMODITY

There is little doubt that the primary purpose of Wikileaks has always been to clear the way for an attack on Iran. If one ignores what Zbigniew Brzezniski calls “seeding” with “pointed intelligence,” what he says is proof Wikileaks is an intelligence operation, the Wikileaks saga can be appreciated for drama alone. Would anyone be surprised to see Assange on Skating with the Stars? After all, Bristol Palin had a very successful season on Dancing with the Stars and Assange may actually be a less controversial figure.
Can anyone imagine Assange making a public apology? That would be worth staying up late for.
Anyone in the industry recognizes a few basic things about Assange. Everything is staged, everything is managed. Anyone who doesn’t see the handiwork of a professional publicist and agent, the “personal assistant,” the body guards and all the other trappings of Britney or Lindsay, is, well, part of the act themselves. Assange is just a shill, a “carny.” Britney deserves better than the comparison.
THE 500 POUND GORILLA

Calling Wikileaks a simple hoax is a kindness. Maybe we can call 9/11 a hoax also. Will the families of the dead feel any better? History will prove Wikileaks, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, the mindless and seemingly eternal fiasco of Afghanistan are all acts in the same play, certainly a tragedy but hardly Shakespearean.
Bradley Manning isn’t the “Wikileaker,” not by a long shot. If the FBI’s assertions about AIPAC are correct and there is no reason to believe otherwise, Wikileaks could easily be the small army of “dual citizens,” the only possible suspects. There is no other group able to silence and shelve the FBI, able to pull documents out of databases at Defense, State, foreign embassies. The sad attempts to blame Manning or the Chinese, certainly victims of the recent revelations, are acts of desperation.
Wikileaks the hoax isn’t an area for rumination. You accept the fact or show your colors, red white and blue or blue and white.
That time is here, the debates are long over. Assange a hero? Assange a victim? Where you see those questions, look behind them. You will see the smiling face of treason, not for the first time.

[David Guyatt]

It’s an interesting perspective for certain Peter, and I appreciate you putting up for discussion.

Israel would do it if they could, I don’t doubt.

But there are statements seeded in the article that we are asked to accept at face value without any substantiation, and that always makes me ridiculously uncomfortable - and under such conditions I always am inclined to ask: “am I being played?”

Therefore my question has to be: is the “Israel did it” a disinfo ploy to minimize the impact/deflect attention away etc.

Don’t the US and Israel fondle each other in bed every night anyway?

The worlds intelligence services all, every single one, believes Wikileaks is simply an intelligence agency playing games.

And

Arrest warrants were being prepared for more than several Bush officials and several currently serving President Obama. With two presidents being blackmailed because their administrations had been totally penetrated by spies, the FBI was called off.

On the other hand there have been no Tel Aviv Embassy cables released, which might amount to something important in the fullness of time. But nor have there been any Vatican cables released - but we have been promised them for the New Year.

[Peter Lemkin]

For the New Year we have been promised a higher power than the Vatican - a major [if not THE major bank] in the World!.... Personally while I agree that the USA and Israel fondle each other in bed not only in the night, but by daylight....that this Israel is behind or 'bending' Wikileaks WAY off course! Now, every intel agency will be trying to turn and twist Wikileaks and Wikileaks' leaks to their advantage, but I do NOT sense nor see Israel at the nexus of this whole matter. Sorry to those of you who do. Let it play out, IMO, and don't be too quick off the 'block'...... This is now a very complex affair, and regarded by all major and many minor countries as the the matter on the top of their security agenda [whether they publicly admit it or not]. Whatever, whoever, you think Assange and his close associates are working for, I fear for their lives and liberty - and to me that says a lot!....in their favor!

Are we being 'played'...yes, surely...but by whom it is not clear and I think the answer will not be one entity! Perhaps one started the 'play', but others of equal 'weight' soon latched on, as well.

Wikileaks could in its own way be as important as 9-11 or 7-7, IMO. Take care and don't be too quick to jump to conclusions. Even those playing us are being played. This is POLITICAL POKER / CHESS at the COSMIC level. Winner take all. [the 'house' always has the advantage..but who or what the 'house' is is NOT even vaguely clear, yet!!!!!] :bandit:

I could be wrong, but my best guess is that Assange is even amazed and confused by what is going on and who is controlling whom......time will tell.