Yeah and dont forget a mention of BIOT

Wikileaks tag 09LONDON11

And Craig never even asked one of us to go too to carry his bags!

Temp. Accra Ghana 27C

Temp. London UK -1C

I could have done with some sun. HRH QEII and Phil the Greek have been in Oman instead of their usual winter jaunt to the Caribbean. So too have Hague and Ffion. Nice one you bald little twerp.

I expect you have heard that the change in Universal Jurisduction is being sneaked in via the Police Reform Act so that all the ConDem Zionist war criminals like Livni will be able to come and go freely without any fear of arrest.

a~

Foreign Secretary comments on universal jurisdiction

Posted by David Sketchley on December 1, 2010, 11:26 pm (media lens)

Foreign Secretary William Hague commented on the proposed amendment to the arrangements for obtaining arrest warrants in respect of universal jurisdiction.

This is included in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill which was presented to Parliament on 30 November 2010. Under the proposed change the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions would be required before an arrest warrant could be issued to a private prosecutor in respect of an offence of universal jurisdiction.

The Foreign Secretary said today:

“The UK is committed to upholding international justice and all of our international obligations. Our core principle remains that those guilty of war crimes must be brought to justice.

This government has been clear that the current arrangements for obtaining arrest warrants in respect of universal jurisdiction offences are an anomaly that allow the UK’s systems to be abused for political reasons. The proposed change is designed to correct these and ensure that people are not detained when there is no realistic chance of prosecution. It is now important that the amendment is considered by Parliament in line with normal constitutional practice.”

http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=268996682

As if the government didn’t have political reasons of its own, as the Wikileaks cablegate is now showing us. Hague is taking the p*ss. He’s mocking us, laughing in our faces.

No realistic chance of prosecution? Please explain what you mean by that Mr. Hague.

a~

What hypocrisy. By the time the DPP has considered the request, s l o w l y, the criminals will have been and gone.

Look, you invite scum into your house, Hague and Cameron are BIG friends of Israel. Cameron is a Zionist (his words) FFS whining on and on. Take to the streets and protest, but, the media will portray this as aggressive and against the public good. What are the chances betterment will arrive with bleating sheep. You need only look at the comments from the online media regarding Iran & North Korea to see the majority of posts are ignorant and brainwashed.

I just read one of the recently released wikileak docs, released yesterday (but largely inaccessible due to the DOSing). The title is: ‘ISRAEL, A PROMISED LAND FOR ORGANISED CRIME?’. Below are some quotes.

“Organized crime (OC) has longstanding roots in Israel, but in recent years there has been a sharp increase in the reach and impact of OC networks.”

“xxxxx told conoffs that the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use

indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock

market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale.”

“The Abutbul family began its

gambling business in Romania over a decade ago, and now owns the Europe-wide Casino Royale network. In 2002, Israeli OC turf wars spilled into Europe”

“Israeli OC now plays a significant role in the global drug trade, providing both a local consumer market and an important transit point to Europe and the United States.”

“The prostitution business has also grown beyond the

neighborhood brothel. In March 2009, the INP arrested twelve suspects in what is believed to be the largest Israeli-led human trafficking network unearthed to date. Ring leader Rami Saban and

his associates were charged with smuggling thousands of women from the former Soviet Union and forcing them to work as prostitutes in

Israel, Cyprus, Belgium, and Great Britain.”

“In December 2008, former Prime Minister Olmert himself

admitted that efforts to combat OC have long been diluted among different agencies”

“Given the recent change in government and the current economic crisis, there is public skepticism as to whether GOI promises to remedy the situation will be fulfilled. In 2003, following a failed assassination attempt on Rosenstein, then Prime Minister Ariel

Sharon made similar promises to commit manpower and resources to combating the problem.”

“It is not entirely clear to what extent OC elements have

penetrated the Israeli establishment and corrupted public officials.”

“The election of Inbal Gavrieli to the Knesset in 2003 as a member of Likud raised concerns about OC influence in the party’s Central Committee. Gavrieli is the daughter of a suspected crime boss, and she

attempted to use her parliamentary immunity to block investigations into her father’s business.”

“Just last month, Israeli politicos and OC figures came

together for the funeral of Likud party activist Shlomi Oz, who served time in prison in the 1990s for extortion on behalf of the Alperon family. Among those in attendance was Omri Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was himself convicted in

2006 on illegal fundraising charges unrelated to OC.”

“Israeli OC Operating Freely in United States”

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/05/09TELAVIV1098.html

Sorry about the massive, copy/paste job, but I feel this document is worth it. This leak doesn’t exactly fit into the narrative that WL is a Zionist enterprise.

Israeli organised crime – well, really, it’s a web of international organised crime in which Israel is a major node – is enormous. The fall of the USSR and consequent Russian influx into Israel post-1991 galvanised it globally (as did the Afghan War during the 1980s and that of now). As in Russia and Italy, major politicians are involved and the system is rotten to the core.

In organised crime, there are no friends and no enemies, there are only deals, the biggest of which is known as the world economy. Organised crime is bigger than Oil and Gas put together. Organised crime developed globalisation and the web as we know it. In Sicilia, shopkeepers have to pay the pizzo. But we all now pay the pizzo. It is everywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzo_(extortion)

“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday defended his disclosure of classified U.S. documents by singling out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example of a world leader who believes the publications will aid global diplomacy.

“We can see the Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu coming out with a very interesting statement that leaders should speak in public like they do in private whenever they can,” Assange told Time Magazine in an interview on Wednesday, days after his online whistleblower published thousands of secret diplomatic cables …

“I just noticed today Iran has agreed to nuclear talks. Maybe that’s coincidence or maybe it’s coming out of this process, but it’s certainly not being canceled by this process,” he added.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/wikileaks-founder-netanyahu-believes-expose-will-aid-mideast-peace-1.328380

or

http://tinyurl.com/36stc5x

Is this getting very sniffy?

Organised Crime (OC) – this was the point of my earlier comment about the denial of service (DDOS) attack upon WikiLeaks; DDOS is an OC technique. Likewise Stuxnet. There’s that recently released cable about Russian government convergence with organised crime. And even my other comment about telephone companies collecting premium rate call charges on behalf of internet scammers. Let’s not even mention drugs and weapons. Human trafficking and extraordinary rendition have similarities, too.

There is no clear line between business and crime; it seems more like a spectrum.

“Is this getting very sniffy?”

Like Suhayl, I haven’t made up my mnd about Wikileaks, although I’m suspicious (not very meaningful, as I’m suspicious of everything). I’m puzzled at the non sequitur of some media comment, notably on BBC news, where some pundits seem to be arguing that it was fine so long as all the anxious chatter about Iran was secret, but now that it is out in the open, Something Will Have To Be Done. Wikileaks as casus belli?

There’s more detailed commentary on specific leaks here:

http://www.juancole.com/

“There is no clear line between business and crime”

Al Capone spoke wistfully of leaving his life of crime and getting into one of the ‘legit rackets’.

I know I have appeared to be the pro-WL guy in recent days. But honestly, I haven’t made up my mind. I have however been reading the anti-WL articles posted here by various people, and I haven’t found their arguments to be very convincing. I also think it’s unfair to state that WL must be an inside job based on how the media is spinning the leaks. The media can spin anything (I guess that’s why its called spin), if someone has published facts and those facts are misused, its the fault of those misusing them, not a fault of the original publisher. There are so many examples of good people making valuable statements and arguments only to have those with a negative agenda misuse the statements to further illegitimate aims.

Even Pakistani generals noticing the smell …

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8909091183

“if someone has published facts and those facts are misused”

Often it’s possible to identify the intention of the original publisher as an antidote to any subsequent spin. I can’t identify any clear intention in Wikileaks. But usually (or in the past) the intention of a leak is quite clear. Wikileaks seems an undifferentiated flow of noise, with the obvious risk that different signals may be inferred.

“But usually (or in the past) the intention of a leak is quite clear. Wikileaks seems an undifferentiated flow of noise, with the obvious risk that different signals may be inferred.”

The intention seem to be to publish whatever people leak to them ? In which case, the website would indeed be an accumulation of intentions, different for each leaker, possibly at cross or unrelated purposes ? Life isn’t a soap-opera, the writers don’t get sacked if there isn’t a simple storyline.

Here in the US, the right-wing media, which predominates, has whipped much of the public into a frenzy, calling for Assange to be arrested, or deported, or stripped of his citizenship (all of which are hilarious, as he’s not a citizen and doesn’t live here). They also want him tried for treason, which is also funny, since he’s not a citizen.

Some lament he’s going to get away with this BECAUSE he’s not a citizen, apparently they’re forgetting our First Amendment protections, which would allow him to do what he’s doing.

Crazy people like Palin want him assassinated, because he’s “attacking our troops.”

Yet no one seems to be bothered about all the illegal activities on our government’s part displayed in the leaks.

Has the world always been this crazy?

Hague has just announced that Linda Norgrove died as a result of injuries (fragmentation injuries to the head and chest)sustained when a US grenade was used. That was denied originally of course. Yvette Cooper is making a creepy reply acknowledging the bravery! of the US special forces and condemning the Taliban for kidnapping her. Now we have Frank I Was There Gardner spouting off.

Paul:

Pakistani Generals are a reliable source? The Pakistani army is hardly famous for their support of civil society and transparency. In fact the Pakistani army is one of the worst perpetrators of oppression against the poor and downtrodden.

Vronsky:

WL claims to publish any leak that they believe is not a fake. The claimed agenda is simply greater transparency. You can find out more about the various leaks over the last 4 years at (/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikileaks#Leaks) and (wikileaks.org/about.html)

I haven’t heard a single report that WL has refused to release a legitimate leak, and with today’s tech, it wouldn’t be hard to release the info without the aid of WL.

I was also pondering the nature of WL last night, and realised the following. Even if WL were a CIA propaganda operation, it still doesn’t really make sense from a authoritarian perspective. That is because WL encourages and makes heroes of people leaking govt, business secrets. If you look at sites like reddit and slashdot (both powered by user submissions), they are overwhelmingly supportive of WL and the transparency they claim to promote. Surely the CIA or any other blackop group would realise that in the long term, creating a culture that promotes people thinking independently and breaking the law because of their conscious would be counter productive? I hope what I just wrote makes sense =P

erm I mean ‘conscience’.

thanks for the link Vronsky – indeed the case for war.

Another interesting article about WikiLeaks entitled

“Ho Hum: More Wikileaks “Chickenfeed”

at

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22202

Amazon have booted Wikileaks off their hosting and now there’s a campaign to boycott Amazon. There’s an article about it in today’s Metro.

It’ll be interesting to see how their Christmas sales figures fare over the Christmas period in Britain.

They spy on us, now we spy on them. Listen to the piggies squeal.

It makes perfect sense, CheebaCow at 1:43pm. If one looks at most of the pro-war brigade (we and they know who they are), one can see that they consistently are railing against Wikileaks for all kinds of largely overblown, spurious reasons.

That’s different from the people – like me – who have doubts, aren’t certain, want to wait and see, etc.

Now, it may be that this consonant symphony of neoconia and fellow-musicians has somehow been orchestrated, but even the CIA/SIS et al would find it quite difficult to get all these variegated personages all over the world to sing simultaneously from precisely the same, doubly disingenuous hymn-sheet simply in order to maintain the (in this construct) supposed ‘illusion’ that Wikileaks is genuinely anti-war, anti-Establishment, anti-whatever.

It doesn’t mean that manipulation is not occurring. But that would occur with all information and in all situations.

Nonetheless, as Ruth perhaps suggest at 2:06pm and as Ian Bell The Herald also indicated, I’ve yet to be told of a revelation that genuinely surprises me. Russia is run by the mafia; Saudi Arabia hates Iran; politicians in the USA/UK/Canada/everywhere lie; John Major called Michael Portillo a bastard (oh, sorry, that was last decade’s revelation); Israel hosts the Capo di Capo Re; the war on Iraq was profitable for Big Everything; CSIS tortures and harasses people, etc., etc. – but perhaps this simply means that my (and many others’) world-view vis a vis the MI Complex et al is more-or-less accurate (!)

In other words, that the people who contribute to this blog and who are critical of power have been right all along.

Not that one ought to feel smug; it means that the reality is probably even worse than our imaginings.

I can’t follow what you just wrote, Suhayl, sorry. Were you agreeing or disagreeing with CheebaCow who said

“Surely the CIA or any other blackop group would realise that in the long term, creating a culture that promotes people thinking independently and breaking the law because of their conscious would be counter productive?” ?

I read Juan Cole’s blog, thanks Vronsky. I think I’m still waiting to see if anything really damaging comes out about the USA or Israel — given that the spying at the UN has been brushed off fairly quickly. And Netanyahu seems to think (or is claiming) that the whole exercise is good PR for Israel which he claims talks straight in private as well as in public!

[I assume the Beeb will be blamed for the announcement just now that Russia will host the World Cup!?]

I think that people are perhaps expecting a bit too much from these leaks. They are fairly low level clearance and thus won’t reveal too many secrets (if any). It should also be noted that less than 600 of the 250,000 have actually been released so far. I think the real value in them is that the info is coming from the horses mouth . You can construct arguments from them without being labelled a crank for using non-mainstream sources.

Any really explosive documents would have much stricter access, so a junior analyst such as Manning (only 22 years old) surely wouldn’t have access.

Also I think a lot of information has always been known/available, it was just not reported in the press. For example in the run up to the recent Iraq war when everyone was going on about WMD, if you actually read the public UNSCOM reports, or even the statements of the US government from a few years earlier it was obvious there would be no WMD to be found. This info wasn’t top secret or speculated about only by extreme left dissidents, however it was completely ignored by the mainstream media.

Anyway I have been sitting in front of computers all day long. It’s time for me to crash.

Oh I forgot to add this:

“A journalist working closely with WikiLeaks says that secret documents about the Vatican and the volatile territories of North Korea and Israel are to be made public soon.”

Interview can be seen at the Telegraph here

http://tinyurl.com/3ykr9vo

Well the Russian mafia won. Abramovitch was grinning away like the proverbial Cheshire cat. I think I spotted Bill Clinton in the audience too. America was bidding for 2022 which Qatar won.

Their bid included the new stadia they build being demolished after the games and then re-erected in the Third World. So much fossil fuel use is involved in all this jetting around, the construction of stadia, airports, roads, hotels etc and then for transporting the fans from around the world to the matches. As someone else said earlier, Cameron’s pre-election environmental credentials (Arctic sledges and huskies) seem to have gone out of the window.

Q. Will there be any oil and other necessary resources left in 2018 and 2022 for these purposes? Similarly the Olympics in 2012 and then Rio in 2016.

http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2010/12/02/6080/

We don’t see it, but our arrogance stops us from listening

by Peter Watt

Understanding this year’s defeat is, as we all know, central to bouncing back electorally. A lot has been written about the need to listen and the need to reconnect to voters. And the launch of the policy consultations in Gillingham last weekend was an attempt to listen and learn the lessons of defeat.

But there is an arrogance at the heart of our politics that is going to make it difficult to really understand why we lost. It is an arrogance that says that we alone own morality and that we alone want the best for people. It says that our instincts and our motives alone are pure. It’s an arrogance that belittles others’ fears and concerns as “isms” whilst raising ours as righteous. We then mistakenly define ourselves as being distinctive from our opponents because we are morally superior rather than because we have different diagnoses and solutions. It is lazy, wrong and politically dangerous.

If you think that I am being harsh, just think about what we say about our opponents. We assume that they are all in it for themselves, that they are indifferent to the suffering of others. In fact, that they are quite happy to induce more suffering if it suits their malign ends. What we don’t think is that they may want the same things as us, but just have a different approach. Instead, we cast high-minded aspersions on their morality and humanity.

Take the example of welfare policy. Listen to Labour and the assumption is that IDS wants to punish the poor, somehow that he gets off on increasing vulnerable people’s suffering. What we don’t think is that he wants to improve the lives of the poor but just doesn’t think that the current incarnation of the welfare state is the best way to achieve this. And yet, much of his programme is familiar to the last (Labour) government. Presumably our motives were pure, though.

What about the heinous charge that they want to “ideologically shrink” the size of the state. We, of course, want to use the state to do good things for people. Their wanting to shrink it clearly indicates that they don’t want to do good things for people. Clearly, therefore, they are morally bankrupt. Well, perhaps not. Maybe they think that over-taxing people is wrong and that an over-reaching state is in itself bad for the same people that we want to help? I am not saying that I necessarily agree, but I am saying that it is a perfectly valid view and one that is not intrinsically immoral.

But does it matter? Well, yes, I think that it does. Because our arrogance has the effect of stopping us listening. In fact, it is worse than that: we think that we are listening when many voters know that we are not. If we are honest, all too often we do believe that our version of the world is not just better than anyone else’s, but also more moral and in fact just plain right. It makes us believe that if people don’t agree with us then they are either less moral or need educating. Possibly both. It is how we dismiss the opinion polls which show people being concerned about things that we would rather they weren’t, like immigration and welfare abuse.

We often don’t hear these concerns even when we say that we do. Our sense of moral outrage at the perceived underlying prejudice overrides all. I have heard people say that “we shouldn’t pander to people; we should be prepared to put them right”. Of course. I am sure that people will vote for us gratefully once we have put them right. That’s just what people have been waiting for. Really hearing these concerns doesn’t mean that we should accept the unacceptable. But it does mean that we have to be humble enough to accept that we do not exclusively own truth and morality. Ed said in his NPF speech in Gillingham:

“Being rooted in people’s lives is not about a slogan. It’s not about going out and just saying ‘tell us what we should think’, but it is about saying we need to be reconnected to the hopes and aspirations of the people of Britain”.

I agree. But not all of people’s hopes and aspirations may chime with our rigid moral code. And, increasingly, voters are less tribal in their political allegiances. In fact, most people are probably not even habitual voters for a single party, never mind being tribal. If we are really to connect with enough voters (such that they vote for us in winning numbers at the next general election), then we will have to find ways of understanding their moral sense of the world. We can’t just condemn or patronise everyone as not understanding just because they say or feel things with which we don’t agree.

Of course, we have values of social justice that guide us, and our values don’t change. But that doesn’t mean that other people don’t also care about social justice and that they may come to different conclusions. If we put aside our moral arrogance then we might just find that we have much in common with them and them with us. That may well be the beginning of understanding why we lost. On the other hand, we could just remain in opposition, happy with our own sense that we are right ?” morally at least.

Look forward to seeing how the Russian neo-nazi fans “embrace” the African teams and their supporters. A mark of honour to lose this one.

CheebaCow

I’ve no problem at all with the various points you make: my position is agnostic, but a sort of puzzled agnostic: what’s it all about? The leaks seem like low level, dog-bites-man gossip, not news to anyone.

What do you make of Assange’s claim that he was responsible for the Climategate leak? If true, it’s a break in the pattern, because that stuff was editorialised to carry a clear intention (debunking AGW). Was Assange used, or did he do the editorialising? Or is he fibbing about his role? I can see no interpretation that works out well for him.

http://climateaudit.org/2010/11/30/assange-on-climategate/

Concerning other matters of importance: many Scots heaving a sigh of relief at the soccer news, although tidings of a forthcoming wedding mean that the telly may still be thrown out of a window.

Here’s the YouTube video of Assange.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W17dW_aJEwU

I believe WikiLeaks did publish the Climategate e-mails, though they weren’t the first. It doesn’t look dodgy to me. And who brought “decryption of the e-mails” into it? They weren’t encrypted, were they?

A mother is supposed to be loving of her offspring and other children

and to protect them from harm.

This monster who is now with NATO and mother of two daughters and an ex-ambassador, shown here with her beatific smile does not possess that quality.

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-4165566B-16BE6079/natolive/who_is_who_62544.htm

She is quoted in the Guardian article linked below -

‘Mariot Leslie, then director general of defence and intelligence in the Foreign Office, reassured him that the British were only taking part as a “tactical manoeuvre” and cluster bombs were “essential to its arsenal”. “The UK is concerned about the impact of the Oslo process on the aftermath of a conflict, foreseeing ‘astronomical bills’ handed out to those who used cluster munitions in the past,”

The cluster bombs are in store on US ships anchored off Diego Garcia. How vile these specimens of humanity are who are referred to in the article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-cluster-bombs-britain

How many children world wide have been injured and killed by cluster bombs?

Heh Truthers – Fox News is finally backing you up!!!

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/search/label/Andrew%20Napolitano

Again, what’s it feel like to be a knee-jerk British leftist who’s being manipulated by insane American right-wingers?

Yes, I agree with Vronsky at 5:32pm. I mean, we knew at the time, did we not, that US Secretary of State, Colin Powell got up and lied to the UN Security Council.

I suspect that anyone who is profoundly surprised by the material so far leaked (from what one can gather) is likely to have belonged to that part of the population which it is possible to fool “all of the time”, as opposed to most of the people, who can be fooled only “some of the time”.

Nonetheless, even if, in context of the contemporary rightly skeptical public environment, in the main the leaks are embarrassing (‘Emperor Loses Clothes!), rather than destabilising, it is still important that proof has been demonstrated and that we now have 2.5 million photographs of the emperor’s nudity.

I’d rather have 2.5 million ‘dog-eat-dog’ bites than George W. Bush’s, Anthony Blair’s and Alastair Campbell’s triple tear-soaked memoirs of mendacity and blood.

The Moody Blues’-style maxim for today?

A little bite (of truth) is better than the biggest pie of lies.

Cue the mellotron.

Support Israel for 2022 qualification!

I think I should apologise for linking to climateaudit.org – in the context, it was ironically intended.

I’m sure we all already have shortcuts to places like http://www.realclimate.org. Other recommendations welcome.

I was once obliged to study the mellotron in a most unwelcome degree degree of detail. It wasn’t pleasant, and I’m afraid I can’t thank you for that memory poke, Suhayl.

…ten million butterfly sneezes – when America permeated our minds – totally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oyhf7CLoIw

Thanks for the cue Suhayl… “Now we’ve learned to play with fire!”

What was wrong with it, Vronsky? The mellotron, I mean. It’s always seemed to me to be a deeply mellow instrument: mellow mellotron. But I never had to engage in intimate study of it. Do tell.

Alan, I’m not sure whether you’re being ironic or ‘situationist’ at 8:37pm, but if you’re interested in things Israeli, check out Ariel Sabar’s excellent book, ‘My Father’s Paradise’:

http://www.arielsabar.com/book.html

This schmuck Campbell hasn’t worked out that Israel is an ethno-supremacist state that discriminates against its Orthodox, Sephardi and Arab citizens and commits genocidal acts of terror against the Palestinians and its neighbours.

Israel and the Family of Nations is an utterly oxymoronic concept.

Moreover just who is going to run the risk of landing within a square mile of its coast or airspace to compete in a soccer tournament?

Get real you dumb arse shill!

“What was wrong with it….I never had to engage in intimate study of it”

Nothing wrong with it. Just, any magical thing can be de-magicked (nearly) by analysing it. I just got myself into that crossfire – music technology. Techie interested in music = accident waiting to happen, I suppose. I recall some stuff about unweaving rainbows. Have you encountered the telharmonium?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telharmonium

The telharmonium: brilliant! I hadn’t heard of it. It has to be the heaviest invented musical instrument of all time: 7 tons or 200 tons! But also ahead of its time. The technological hadn’t attained the level necessary. I love the idea of strange electronic music breaking into telephone conversations! If that happened now, we’d probably think the secret services were screwing with our minds!

This chap, Zahir Ebrahim, clearly thinks that Wikileaks is more Wurlitzer than mellotron:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/12/01/zahir-ebrahim-wikileaks-and-imperial-mobilization/

If one reads the Ariel Sabar book, one will discover, among many other interesting things, that Ashkenazi-dominated Israel did indeed discriminate against, and even experiment on, the Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries). The book is not a paean to Israel; it’s a moving human story of migration from Kurdistan (where people of three or more religions had co-existed peacefully for centuries, until the 1940s and the rise of Zionism). The author describes Israel as “a European solution to a European problem”. Which puts it very well, I think. Sabar is an American from LA.

Here’s one for the crazies:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/6511363/the-ultimate-jewish-conspiracy-theory.thtml

Suhayl Most of the reviews of ‘My Father’s Paradise’ I have seen are by American Jews who praise the book and the author and include support for the creation of the Zionist state of Israel which was created when Palestine was cruelly occupied – Al Nakba. If these reviews are correct, I would not want to read a propaganda tract. What is your view of these opinions?

“Ashkenazi-dominated Israel”

I’m not awfully well informed but I have a Jewish partner and Jewish friends (some, formerly in Scotland, now in Israel). I hear recurring complaints of discrimination – not of Jew against Arab, but Jew against Jew. It’s sadly reminiscent of our Scottish Catholic/Protestant thing (but all are Christians).

Staying with music, Joaquin Rodrigo (whose concerto everyone knows) was well acquainted with these conflicting cultural strands. Perhaps in Spain cultural history is geologically twisted and forced upward, so that we can see the strata. Rodrigo has a piece (which I have never heard performed) called Ecos de Sefara, Sefara being Iberia, and clearly related to ‘Sephardic’. It’s a little musical protest. And celebration. Modal and moody.

For anyone checking up, sefara should maybe be sefarad. But where I learned my (primitive) Spanish you wouldn’t pronounce that final ‘d’ anyway. And I’m not going to rummage round the shelves tonight to see how Rodrigo spelled it. Bedtime.

Thanks, Vronsky. I know some of Rodrigo’s excellent work, but I’d not heard of that one – I must listen to it!

Somebody, sometimes it’s best not to read reviews. When I went to (or should I say, stumbled upon) the author’s reading in Washington DC two years ago, the event had already begun and so, a little awkwardly (as is the case when one is late and in a foreign country, etc.) I sat down among the crowd because it sounded interesting.

This bookshop – ‘Politics and Prose’ is in an affluent area of the city. The audience (as is often the case with readings anywhere in the world) seemed affluent, highly educated, upper-middle/professional-middle class and I sensed that they were probably nearly all Jewish.

What the author was saying was immensely interesting. Here was a guy whose grandfather (and father) migrated from Iraq (Kurdistan) to Israel in 1951 and whose father later (j the early 1950s) moved to the USA. Sabar made it very clear that until the 1940s, relations in Iraq b/w Muslims, Jews and Eastern Christians were excellent (and esp. compared to the situation in Europe, essentially had been so for centuries) and that animosity began only subsequent to the intrusions of Zionist agents into Iraq and of Zionism in general in the Levant during the 1940s and that it reached a head with the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

I sensed, from their questions, that this was not really a narrative which many in the audience had heard before. It didn’t fit the historical amnesia/ propaganda to which they may have been accustomed. But I was impressed.

When I read the book, it was clear there while Sabar is not in any sense denying his Israeli component and while there are things I’d definitely argue with in it, what one comes away with is not a propaganda tract but a human story, a sense of the family’s affection and longing for Kurdistan/ Kurds and a deeply ambivalent and, I sensed, somewhat resentful, attitude towards the role which Israel (one of the supposed ‘paradises’; the other two are the town in Kurdistan and the glitz of LA in the USA) played in his family’s journey.

No, you’re not going to get a ‘pro-Palestinian’ book here. I tend to read things which do not always accord with all my views. But what you do get is a subtle but definite alteration in the quiddity – he ‘gets away’ with it because it’s cleverly done, because of his provenance and because he doesn’t enter into a direct confrontation in the Palestine/Israel dynamic.

His father is a Prof. of Aramaic at UCLA – a native speaker, indeed. These people work with Arabs, Iranians, etc. in their studies. I think the Prof. who gave his father a job in the USA was an Iranian.

It’s worth reading because of all the above and of course because it’s very well-written – a good story – and because it adds to one’s knowledge of the human condition. The storytellers of Zakho, Kurdistan are fascinating, for example. I guess that’s why I’ve spent this amount of time on it.

Zahir Ebrahim’s book – unpublished – sounds fascinating. I haven’t read it yet, just skimmed the Foreward. But I shall! ‘Prisoners of the Cave’. He’s a Pakistani based in the USA.

http://prisonersofthecave.blogspot.com/2007/04/contents.html

Nick Glegg is near being able to announce the coalition’s plans for ending child detention.

Clegg told Citizens UK on Wednesday, via a videolink from Kazakhstan where he is representing the UK at a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

“There were 1,085 children detained last year, with more than 100 detained between April and June this year. In July Clegg described it as a “moral outrage”. The immigration minister, Damian Green, has pledged to dress up as Father Christmas if children are detained this Christmas in the Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/01/nick-clegg-announce-timetable-ending-child-detentions

I also vow, George W Bush, I will ensure you are prosecuted as a war criminal even if it takes my last twenty years.

Bush vowed…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/39985071#40004029

“I am a content man” – Mark runs to the bathroom.

Last night I was working in a shop where you couldn’t turn off the sound. Two TVs next to eachother with different tunes making it really difficult for any of us to work or think straight. One of the tracks was endlessly repeated Beatles which might have had a Guantanamo torture effect. But there was also some horrible, virtual, computer-synthetic noise.

In same way you have with Wikileaks, a parallel soundtrack: the old, familiar theme-tunes of media world politics, but also the preposterous, whispering suggestion that we are being revealed inner secrets. As if. Satan often tells the truth. It’s the fact that it pops up as a notion in your head from nowhere that means you have to treat it as the pack of lies.

Wikileaks is a major piece of deception, even if it may contain bits of truth. Sorry to put the kibosh on it. Also, Suhayl, for as many who migrated from different countries to Israel, many others have merely strengthened their roots in the same place. Kurdistan is still host to many Jewish interests, of the non-ziological brand of course.

“Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site”

(spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732212,00.html)

The more the merrier in my opinion. Hydras and all that.

It’s funny how we adopt words and adapt our lexicon to the times. This is a very useful slant on things.

Thanks, anno, a powerful analogy. Interesting, your point about Kurdistan – please do tell us more. One of the things many people don’t realise actually is that in 1940 one third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish. The Talmud was written there. Much of what now is known as Judaism actually was written in Egypt, Iraq and other Muslim countries by Arabic-speaking Jews. It is this vast and ineluctable historical fact which does not accord with current geopolitical perceived exigencies and agendas, that has been suppressed, in my view, in much mainstream cultural discourse. This needs to be addressed: he who controls the past controls the present…

Yes, anno, do tell Suhayl more about your anti-Jewish hatred. He thrives on it.

Suhayl, this Zahir Ebrahim you recommend is a dumbass who didn’t actually write a “book” – he wrote some pages on the Internet rehashing dumb leftist claims and dumb rightist claims.

He cites Michael Ruppert. Isn’t that enough to know about him? Isn’t that enough to know about you?

Suhayl, you’re a lefty failed doctor who’s spending the twilight of his years writing bad novels and being manipulated by right-wing American nuts. I would say that you’re also being manipulated by Jew-haters, but then I think you yourself are a Jew-hater.

Meanwhile, non-Wiki leaks are ignored.

tinyurl.com/34plsdl

Here is yet another view of Wikileaks, by Badruddin Gowani. All this debate goes to show just how contested the public space is today (as if we didn’t already know!).

http://globeistan.com/

Vronsky, that’s a good link you provided. It has been argued that a number of BBC correspondents posted to Palestine-Israel have been deeply compromised figures in relation to reporting from the Levant. It is part of a systemic policy. Read Greg Philo and David Miller’s book, ‘Bad News from Israel’, Pluto Press.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/jul/14/israel.middleeastthemedia

“Thanks, anno, a powerful analogy. Interesting, your point about Kurdistan – please do tell us more. One of the things many people don’t realise actually is that in 1940 one third of the population of Baghdad was Jewish. The Talmud was written there. Much of what now is known as Judaism actually was written in Egypt, Iraq and other Muslim countries by Arabic-speaking Jews. It is this vast and ineluctable historical fact which does not accord with current geopolitical perceived exigencies and agendas, that has been suppressed, in my view, in much mainstream cultural discourse. This needs to be addressed: he who controls the past controls the present…”

Finally, a Muslim acknowledges this.

When you do your comrades plan on giving the Jews their property back? Or will you keep harping on Palestinian claims (as if you really care about the Palestinians)?

Suhayl, you do realize that the Jews were expelled from Baghdad, don’t you?

If the CIA/MI6/Mossad were behind the WikiLeaks’ revelations then they would have a very good reason for it.

9/11 ‘legitimatised’ the invasion and theft of resources from lands that did not belong to the US/UK.

The internet is a very, very powerful influence. People have a far greater insight into the activities of those who govern them. So it is potentially a great danger to our rulers.

Now WikiLeaks has given the US government the ‘legitimacy’ to censor the web.

How long before Craig’s site is pulled?

Well, Ruth, as has been amply demonstrated here, Craig’s site is replete with trolls of varying types, who adopt differing postures and states of revelation. I’ve read the excellent essay on the subject to which I think you kindly linked. Someone ought really to write a thesis on internet trolling. Can we have a whistleblower, please, a ‘reformed senior troll’, who can give us all comprehensive inside information as to precisely how such mechanisms – including payment, outsourcing, etc. – might work? This is an open invitation.

suhayl -

Jonathan Cook very interesting on Press Management worldwide, Israeli example leading –

http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=293&aid=633

CheebaCow 9.58AM yesterday –

interesting WL there on Organised Crime in Israel . Seen most of it before, in Haaretz I think, but gathers together very well …

Yes, Jonathan Cook’s written very well on the subject, thanks for reminding me of that and for the link, anonymous poster at 10:24am.

Btw, here’s another link re. the spying on the UN undertaken by the USA:

http://www.legitgov.org/

“How long before Craig’s site is pulled?”

BWWWWAAAHHHHAAAAA.

You nutcases. Craig’s site will be up in perpetuity.

Give this guy a rope and you nutcases step in to hang him with it.

Is there any precedent for a site to be “pulled”? Or are you that narcissistic that you’ll be taking part in the first “pulling” of a site?

Wow Suhayl … Citizens for Legitimate Government … another 911 truth site … this time from the left.

Those clowns get everything wrong.

Another angle on the term, ‘arsenic and old lace’? A truly fascinating find. Let’s just hope they don’t use the idea as the rubric for a new type of biological weapon.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20101203/tsc-nasa-finds-new-form-of-life-on-earth-e123fef.html

Suhayl, do you ever stop to consider that you might be evil?

At least, that you have more in common with Tim McVeigh than Barack Obama?

“a thesis on internet trolling”

I think the framework is laid out in Cass Sunstein’s paper, which you’ve read (link below for anyone who hasn’t). However this doesn’t cover detailed methods. There must be some sort of selection/training – what larry does isn’t easy – could you, as a real person, be bothered? I suspect there is also a ‘troll spectrum’ ranging from larry at one end to apparently intelligent and informed commenters at the other, with somewhere in the middle the merely meaningless, like tony_opmoc. We seem to have the whole tribe here. I wonder if it’s possible to design a ‘troll test’, along the lines of the Turing Test (tinyurl.com/c4rv9) or this (tinyurl.com/39fge8z)?

Sunstein paper: tinyurl.com/3jv4wo

Hard-hitting comment by Glenn Greenwald: tinyurl.com/yl4w3po

quote:

… “conspiracy theories” are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified…

And why exactly did you stop treating patients, Suhayl? Is it because you recognise yourself as a jihadist, and you don’t want to let your patients down when you inevitably put on a bomb vest and get on the tube?

There has to be a reason for you no longer treating patients.

Glenn Greenwald yesterday:

“Following up on my post from earlier today about Joe Lieberman’s Chinese-replicating Internet censorship efforts (and please read that first for the context), I wanted this to be highlighted separately: The New York Times reports that another company has now capitulated to Lieberman’s demands: “a Seattle-based software company, Tableau, which provides a free Web platform for interactive graphics, removed charts uploaded by WikiLeaks in response to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s public statement that companies should stop helping the whistle-blowers.” Tableau issued a statement, which reads …

(And as for the first one, he starts by quoting the Guardian)

‘WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure’

“The US struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in reaction to heavy political pressure.

“The company announced it was cutting WikiLeaks off yesterday only 24 hours after being contacted by the staff of Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate’s committee on homeland security … etc etc

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/02/censorship/index.html

And they whine about China …

Thanks, Vronsky, yes, you’re right, we do have the full panoply on this site; indeed, it would be an excellent place to begin a formal study.

First, an address to trolls:

Is there anyone who would like to confess at this point to being a troll? Truth and reconciliation and all that… No? I thought not.

I see a bestseller: ‘Confessions of an Internet Troll’.

Senator Joseph Lieberman – there he is again. He and Sarah Palin would make a fine pair. He could chase eels across the ice while she fished for grizzlies! There are both tubes in a very profound sense. And they both are extremely successful – Palin will be the next Republican Presidential candidate.

It’s enough to put you right off tea. Cup of coffee, anyone?

Whatever Wikileaks’s provenance, if Senator Joseph Lieberman wants to shut it done, it can’t be all bad. It would be worth keeping open, just to irritate Lieberman and everything he represents.

It’s good, dreoilin – we are witnessing the hard state in action. This is what they are, in truth. It’s good, the gloves are off. Let’s witness the emperor in his nakedness, and let’s collectively laugh. Depleted uranium and cruise missiles – these are our rulers real tools. If they could launch a cruise missile at Wikileaks, they would. They’ve killed journalists in Iraq and elsewhere for much less, for simply being independent.

Assange must not venture near any shops selling large sports bags, blunt antique knives, Co-proxamol or bondage gear of any description.

… or tangerines.

“could you, as a real person, be bothered?”

If one was bitter and vitriolic enough. I don’t necessarily think he’s getting paid. I’ve seen so many vile remarks about Muslims (or anyone whom they think sounds like one) on American blogs. Horrendous stuff.

Saw a great tweet from Ali Abunimah on Twitter. He had posted a link to where some Rabbi was saying “Europe has been overrun by Muslims” and he asked the question “How would people repond if this was said about Jews?” So telling …

tony_opmoc isn’t a troll, surely? I’ve seen him post on Alternet.org. But I tend to rely a good deal on “female intuition”. Alfred would have a ball with that.

You’re right, Suhayl, if I was Assange I’d remain in hiding (and hope for the best). They have no compunction about bumping people off. The latest accusation in the States is that “Assange believes in transparency, but he won’t reveal his whereabouts!”. I mean, WTF? The Sarah Palin types are very short on brains. And logic.

Vronsky:

I don’t wanna sound like a tool, but can you please post the original links and not tinyurl? I usually don’t bother to follow them, who knows where you will end up. They are also a common way to fool people into visiting a malware site. I did however make an exception for you this time

Ruth:

I think that the RIAA/MIAA and the proposed ACTA treaty have done far more to limit internet freedom than any response I have seen to wikileaks. No need for a boogie man, just big corporations and cash (and an unspoken fear of losing the monopoly on publishing).

If WL is NOT a front it gives an excuse to limit net freedom. If WL is a front it gives an excuse to limit net freedom. I don’t think you can infer much from the potential to limit net freedom.

Re trolls:

I have been on the net since 94 or 95 and I can tell you from personal experience that there are many people that really have nothing better to do than stir up shit all day long. There is something about computer types mixed with anonymity that creates trolls. No matter how apolitical a forum may be, there are always trolls to push peoples buttons. I also accept that there are paid shills that push various agendas, however their behaviour is indistinguishable from that of a ‘normal’ troll. Also accusing a normal troll of being a paid agent is pretty much the highest compliment you can give them (they would probably cum in their pants). Coupled with the paranoia such speculation breeds, personally I find it’s better to not bother speculating which type of troll they are. There are only 2 ways to deal with any type of troll, banning or completely ignoring them. As Craig’s tech doesn’t allow banning, there is only 1 option.

I really wish Craig would improve his blogging platform. It shouldn’t be seen as merely a technical issue, as it would promote and encourage a better standard of discourse and make his site far more effective.

Suhayl Thanks for your reply and the comments about ‘My Father’s Paradise’.

I am glad you are not rising to the bait being thrown on to the water by a very unpleasant character.

yeah suhayl, ditto!

Suhayl You rightly said ‘Depleted uranium and cruise missiles – these are our rulers real tools. If they could launch a cruise missile at Wikileaks, they would. They’ve killed journalists in Iraq and elsewhere for much less, for simply being independent.’

Did you not hear what the evil Huckabee and Flanagan had to offer?

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/7502039-calls-for-wikileaks-julian-assange-to-be-assassinated

Oh dear, all these sour grapes over Julian.

Steven Harper’s call to use more assassinations rings a bell, maybe we should, big time.

We could have team C doing jobs for allcomers, I want more assassinations now, and public executions, just as Saudi Arabia does, properly, in a big public square.

Indeed Steven Harper should get a little bit assassinated too.

And Larry whilst we are at it, Liebermann maybe, holding hands with Netanyahu and Karimov.

How about anybody, lets say, over seventy, lets sort this pesky pension problem out once and for all, politicians for decades couldn’t be bothered to deal with all that care lark and rather than letting these old people crap themselves in hospital beds, because there is no funds left for accomodation and care in the social service budget, make a dignified assassination.

We also could invite Tzivi Lipni, all proper and official, say that she will not get arrested but, after the fist official engagements, when darkness falls and Tzivi wants to play…. that there might be a spare dum dum with here name on.

Anybody who spits should be asssassinated, off course if they spit at someone, like Cameron, for being dumb in Zuerich and even dumber, for not going to Cancun, this will count as mitigating circumstances.

Crikey Yankee,. blimey limey, what a load of anger and pissed offness, the bile seems to fly at top speed these days.

Julian Assange has been on a Guardian blog since after 1pm answering questions. They had far too much traffic and he couldn’t do it “live”. So they sent him the questions and his answers are here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks

somebody:

I read in other articles that refer to Huckabee’s comments that he was talking about Bradley Manning and not Assange. But nonetheless what a cold prick Huckabee is. Huckabee is the most dangerous type of far right leader. He cultivates a very reasonable and friendly persona to appear likeable and appeal to more moderate voters, but when you actually explore his ideas and beliefs they are really bigoted and crazy. The guy doesn’t even believe in evolution, WTF?

Also from your link, I find it the height of irony that Hillary Clinton can state that WL is an “attack on the international community” when it was she that ordered spying on the top levels of the UN.

Oh dear, all these sour grapes over Julian.

Steven Harper’s call to use more assassinations rings a bell, maybe we should, big time.

We could have team C doing jobs for allcomers, I want more assassinations now, and public executions, just as Saudi Arabia does, properly, in a big public square.

Indeed Steven Harper should get a little bit assassinated too.

And Larry whilst we are at it, Liebermann maybe, holding hands with Netanyahu and Karimov.

How about anybody, lets say, over seventy, lets sort this pesky pension problem out once and for all, politicians for decades couldn’t be bothered to deal with all that care lark and rather than letting these old people crap themselves in hospital beds, because there is no funds left for accomodation and care in the social service budget, make a dignified assassination.

We also could invite Tzivi Lipni, all proper and official, say that she will not get arrested but, after the fist official engagements, when darkness falls and Tzivi wants to play…. that there might be a spare dum dum with here name on.

Anybody who spits should be asssassinated, off course if they spit at someone, like Cameron, for being dumb in Zuerich and even dumber, for not going to Cancun, this will count as mitigating circumstances.

Crikey Yankee,. blimey limey, what a load of anger and pissed offness, the bile seems to fly at top speed these days.

somebody:

I read in other articles that refer to Huckabee’s comments that he was talking about Bradley Manning and not Assange. But nonetheless what a cold prick Huckabee is. Huckabee is the most dangerous type of far right leader. He cultivates a very reasonable and friendly persona to appear likeable and appeal to more moderate voters, but when you actually explore his ideas and beliefs they are really bigoted and crazy. The guy doesn’t even believe in evolution, what more can be said?

Also from your link, I find it the height of irony that Hillary Clinton can state that WL is an “attack on the international community” when it was she that ordered spying on the top levels of the UN.

Julian Assange has been on a Guardian blog since after 1pm answering questions. They had far too much traffic and he couldn’t do it “live”. So they sent him the questions and his answers are here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks

oops, had some connection issues, sorry for the double post.

Julian Assange has been on a Guardian blog since after 1pm answering questions. They had far too much traffic and he couldn’t do it “live”. So they sent him the questions and his answers are here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/dec/03/julian-assange-wikileaks

me too, apologies

The science of the possible: Brazil’s primary healthcare programme.Another world can happen. It doesn’t have to belong to the dogs of war and the hounds of despair. It has taken Brazil 200 years; of course, it could have happened much earlier. Always hope and keep thinking, writing and working.

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4945.full

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6936.full

somebody, technicolour, on this dreich slushy day, here in the northern latitudes, your goodwill has brightened-up my day. Thank you both.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys

Well, well, well. Vietnam, all over again.

We told you so.

dreoilin thanks for the link. Honestly my first thought while reading it was ‘wow, who did the makeover?’. I remember when the latest leaks were first released and he had cut his hair and dyed it, I thought it was a good idea to be honest. Before that he looked like one of the Children of the Corn. I didn’t care, but thought it might have been a bit off putting to those a bit more mainstream. This latest pic though… looks like he is auditioning for a Hollywood production.

From the article: “If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.”

ahahahaha.

Also from your link, I find it the height of irony that Hillary Clinton can state that WL is an “attack on the international community” when it was she that ordered spying on the top levels of the UN.

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/How/US/worked/to/get/three/soldiers/off/the/hook/for/cameraman/elpepueng/20101201elpeng_14/Ten

The cesspit grows deeper.

Child abuse, murdering journalists…

CheebaCow,

Did you refresh? He’s still there. More answers coming all the time. Up to a minute ago anyway.

Thanks for pointing that out dreoilin, I hadn’t realised. Assange seems to be a real canny guy. I liked this answer:

“Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit in order to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.”

Hey all, just stopping by to say hi to all good people here. A tip of the fedora goes to Suhayl for resolutely ignoring the troll – I’ve had to tolerate persistent hyperventilating abuse from other trolls, and it is sometimes too tempting not to respond. Well done.

It is perhaps too early to say, but anyone think that Wikileaks might be the start of a substantial government clean-up? Assange has some essays on the web about ‘reducing a conspiracy’s ability to communicate destroys that conspiracy’ – intriguing stuff.

Thanks, Jon – and the same to you, with best wishes of the day!

Yes, let’s see what happens with Wikileaks… but surely, the cat is out of the bag, the horse has bolted from the stable and nine stitches have been sewn.

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/judgment-woolas-031210.pdf

Woolas found guilty.

Pity Straw wasn’t too when he was ‘treating’ the electors in Blackburn.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/jack_straw_and.html

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking”.

H. L. Mencken

Ingo,

CheebaCow,

Other techies,

Ingo, did you get your PC fixed? Was a virus found? It just occurred to me, Ingo’s PC may have been part of the botnet that has been DDOS attacking WikiLeaks. So I hope a virus or something was actually found, if you see what I mean.

Horace Simpson said at December 1, 2010 8:38 PM

“… Last week, the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. seized the domain names of some 70 websites for copyright infringement, without warrants, court orders, or court hearings before a judge. The DHS used their authority to grab websites on the basis they are perceived threats.

If WikiLeaks is really exposing dangerous classified diplomatic cables that are a threat to the United States, why didn’t DHS seize the WikiLeaks domain? … If WikiLeaks was a real whistleblower, DHS could shut them down by grabbing their domain name just as easily as it shut down the copyright violators. They didn’t.

WikiLeaks is a fake whistleblower, an attempt to repackage old ABCNNBBCBS lies in a new form that the public will swallow.”

Such logic no doubt compelled action to shut down Wikileaks.org, although as Arsalan points out, Wikileaks is still accessible at the IP address 213.251.145.96. The site can also be accessed via Wikileaks.info. This is quite consistent with Horace Simpson’s argument, i.e., action to shutdown Wikileaks has been perfunctory, and for the sake of appearances.

However, after a heroic battle, Wikileaks will no doubt be wrestled to the ground, by which time its work will have been done. The hundreds of thousands of low-level classified documents containing little but gossip with which to spice-up the stories the pro-war media have been pushing all along have already been transferred to the safe hands of five media organizagtions: Le Monde, El Pais in Spain, The Guardian in Britain and Der Spiegel in Germany. The Guardian shared the material with The New York Times, which organizations have been:

“advising WikiLeaks on which documents to release publicly and what redactions to make to those documents.”

And remember, the NY Times seeks the advice of the White House on what to Print. LOL. If that isn’t a Cass Sunstein cognitive disinformation operation, why the heck is the guy on the US public payroll?

And I believe Clark is wrong if he thinks Assange did not deliberately and falsely claim to have broken the Climategate emails story. In this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W17dW_aJEwU

In response to the request for “comment on your role in the release of the hacked emails of the CRU…” Assange said:

“… your saying ‘maybe we shouln’t have released it’ of course our promise to our sources is ‘get it to us and if it was witheld from the public we will release it.’ Then we had no choice but to release it.”

So what Assange clearly and deliberately implies is that Wikileaks “released” the Climategate emails because they were at that time being withheld from the public. But that was a lie. The emails had already been made publicly available, first via a Russian server on November 19, 2009 and then from eastangliaemails.com.

Here’s Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit’s describing the events:

“Assange falsely claimed that the Climategate emails were broken by WikiLeaks. This is obviously untrue as CA readers know. I can date WikiLeaks’ entry by contemporary comments. The first notice of the emails at WikiLeaks was 2009/11/21 at 2.50 AM Eastern (12:50 AM blog time). The emails had been downloaded by many people (including me) from a Russian server on Nov 19 and had been downloaded by WUWT moderators on Nov 17. A contemporary comment in a CA thread says that WikiLeaks was down and refers people to megauploads. WikiLeaks has not even been a major reference for Climategate ?” that belongs to eastangliaemails.com (originally anelegantchaos.org) which was up on Nov 20 and provided a searchable database.”

Steve McIntyre, incidentally, is not as Clark seems to believe, some marginal anti-climate warming blogger. He’s a math wizz, an expert statistician and the author of a number of significant papers on climate science in the peer-reviewed literature, including a paper published this week in the Journal of Climate.

CheebaCow, I’m very wounded by your suggestion that I might use tinyurl to post a link to malware. But I’ll be polite, and desist.

Anent the taxonomy of trolls, my (tinyurl above – sorry) link to the void-komp test in Bladerunner is probably best. The author of the original story, Phillip K Dick, was obsessed by conventionally assumed differences between things that so far as he could see were not different. Read a few of his stories and there is a risk that you might begin to share his confusion. On the bottom line, he seems to be arguing for schizophrenia as a valid form of consciousness.

Is larry just sad? Is tony_opmoc just, as he claims, a rambling drunk? Or are they trolls? PK Dick says if there’s no difference, then there’s no difference. Troubling moment in the movie – Rachel says to Deckard (the killer): ‘Have you ever retired a human by mistake?’ (‘Retire’ means ‘kill’)

Non-humans are being retired wholesale in the Middle East. Too late with your warning, Mr Dick.

Letter to BBC Health Reporters, Jane Hughes, Branwen Jeffreys and Jabe Dreaper.

Dear Ms Hughes,

There is a steady stream of bad stories about the NHS. As a retired orthopaedic and trauma consultant with the deepest belief in OUR NHS, I certainly want poor practice and inadequate care to be exposed and the root causes found. Sadly, the latter are usually obfuscated. A cynic might think the BBC is promoting these stories in order to reduce public respect and love for the NHS and thus make that public more ready to accept accelerated privatisation as planned by Mr Lansley and this coalition government.

My plea to you and your fellow health correspondents is more confined however. Whenever you quote an organisation, usually a “Think Tank”, which is commenting on the NHS then you must broadcast whether there are conflicting interests. These are usually pecuniary but they are often political.

“Reform” is often quoted; its political philosophy is frankly right wing and it looks forward to the evisceration of our NHS.

You reported on examples of alleged terrible neglect of elderly people tonight. The Patients Association played a central part in the commentary. I doubt incidentally whether either of the young men had helped an elderly lady on to a bed pan or fed her. Please examine the list of corporations which contribute to the funding of the Patients Association

http://www.patients-association.com/Corporate-Members

I see see three at least which have a primary interest in private medical services. I have written before to the BBC on this subject but I did not get a reply.

The women’s fracture ward at Torbay hospital had 25 beds. It was always full (the annual increase in fractures in and about the hip was 7% latterly). Many of the ladies were bed bound for a time, some were ill with other conditions, some incontinent and some confused. We had two nurses to care for them at night. I spent many hours in that hospital and knew everything that went on. I knew that 2 nurses could not turn those patients 2 hourly who needed that help or care for those 25 as they were trained and would wish. I wrote to the management, raised it in the consultant staff meetings etc. Extra help never happened and the staff did their best. ‘It could not be afforded’ but the desks increased after the internal market of Margaret Thatcher. In fact it was not her but Prof Endhoven of the Rand Corporation and the rabid marketeers advising Thatcher. I fought that plan with every fibre.** What is happening now is the coup de grace, unless the all powerful media reports the facts.

For truth, reason and justice

David Halpin MB BS FRCS

** As forecast by myself and others, the market caused the cost of admin to jump from about 5-6% of total budget to well over 10%. In that first year the extra cost was estimated at 1.2 billion on a total budget, from memory, of about 38 billion.

Vronsky say:

“Is tony_opmoc just, as he claims, a rambling drunk? Or are they trolls? PK Dick says if there’s no difference, then there’s no difference. ”

Larry is sufficiently repetitive to be classified as a troll, and indeed, I have tested him and come to the conclusion that he is merely a semi-intelligent robot.

However, it seems common on this blog for folks to label as trolls anyone they disagree with. This seems to be entirely destructive of intelligent conversation. If a person has an argument, what the hell does it matter what their motivation is. Just as long as it is a reasonable and reasonably interesting argument couched in civil language why not address it?

I see that above I referred to a Cass Sunstein “cognitive disinformation operation.” I meant “cognitive infiltration”. Presumably, “infiltration” is Sunstein’s polite word for “disinformation.”

Jane Dreaper.

PS when I said I tested Larry, I mean by the Turing test.

And re trolls, of course if you only want to hear what you agree with, then label those with differing opinions as trolls by all means. They’ll soon bugger off, unless, of course, they really are trolls.

Here’s Cass Sunstein on the phenomenon of people using technology to shield themselves from views with which the disagree:

“…one of the most striking powers provided by emerging technologies: the growing power of consumers to “filter” what they see. As a result of the Internet and other technological developments, many people are increasingly engaged in a process of “personalization” that limits their exposure to topics and points of view of their own choosing.”

http://bostonreview.net/BR26.3/sunstein.php

Without resisting this tendency, our opinions become worthless.

“Reform” is often quoted.

Yup. We can use that. I’ll confess to my friends here (because I know it will go no further) that I am a blazing, utterly uncompromising Scottish separatist. Elsewhere though, I need to reassure people that I don’t want to end the Union, not at all, perish the thought. Just modernise it, reform it, ensure that it is fit for purpose, learns lessons and adapts to new realities. Perhaps, naturally, slim it down a little – let’s have a leaner, fitter Union. Who could quarrel with that?

Wink, wink.

Vronsky, you’re a hoot.

Democracy Now – Is WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange a Hero? Glenn Greenwald Debates Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/3/is_wikileaks_julian_assange_a_hero

["The U.S. State Department has blocked all its employees from accessing the site and is warning all government employees not to read the cables, even at home." It's probably all Government employees. And some Uni students have got the memo too, I think.]

Hi Jon, good to hear from you, have to have a read of these essays.

Clark, symptoms were ultra slow connections, thrown out of the guardian website, my local papers came up with error messages, EI did not display.

That was during am, it got much better during the afternoon.

I did two scans and had loads of media trackers and ad server cookies, the rest went into the vault. Since then touch wood.

I don’t think that any botnet wants my tired old computer running on steam.

Botnets like PC’s that are constantly switched on, mine isn’t. When I’m not using the computer its switched off. I’m scrupellous with managing my time on the ‘puter.

Thanks for the link dreolin and somebody.

I’m sure that if the State Department bans people from watching the site it will get plenty of traffic.

I’m also duffing my cap to Suhayl, for his noncholant, thickskinned paree of our resident kosher sausage, larry the lamb.

CheebaCow @ 12:18 : Re: Trolls

“I have been on the net since 94 or 95 and I can tell you from personal experience that there are many people that really have nothing better to do”

Chorus: We agree. We are the lurkers and we agree.

I’ve tried to make exactly that same point, several times over, but it just doesn’t seem to stick.

It’s odd, because anybody old enough to have their own ‘net connection must surely, in the rest of their lives, have seen people acting the arsehole, without any need to explain it with anything more elaborate than “they’re an arsehole” ? But, come here and it turns into some sort of fantasy game. All anybody has to do is to be Wrong On The Internet[TM xkcd/386] and they can have all the attention they want. Anybody can be an evil spy genius, and anybody who spots one gets to be important enough to deserve devilish clever people plotting against them, round in circles.

(Is that enough to explain why I dropped out ? I’ll turn into another chip on the shoulder, throwing tantrums about how stupid people are. It’s too frustrating)

And, quite frankly, people are so easy to wind up, it’s a temptation. Suhayl, you’re one of the good guys, but your “analysis” of the robot who said “shan’t” was a prime example. You’ve seen other people writing things over your own name, so you _know_, you can’t not know, that there’s nothing to stop different people from using the same name. When you offer to engage a robot in conversation, can you not see that somebody might think it amusing to take the name up and respond ? Really, there’s no way on earth it proves that the original robot was anything except the usual junk, or that a human who borrows the name is anything except someone with 2 minutes to spare and a sense of humour. Ahem. It wasn’t me the first time round, honest, yer honour. It was 2nd time, though. Does that make my point ? (Go penetrate your own chickens !)

Waves to all the nice people, relurks, and waits for as many as will to guess who would pay me to say such things …

Suhayl

I was the anonymous poster with the Jonathan Cook link at 10.24. Forgot.

A Wikileak of interest to the French is this one -

SUBJECT: EMBASSY PARIS – MINORITY ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

http://213.251.145.96/cable/2010/01/10PARIS58.html

WIKILEAK REF-

10PARIS58 2010-01-19 09:09 2010-12-01 12:12 CONFIDENTIAL//NOFORN Embassy Paris

QUOTE –

” (C/NF) Fourth, we will encourage moderate voices of

tolerance to express themselves with courage and conviction.

Building on our work with two prominent websites geared

toward young French-speaking Muslims — oumma.fr and

saphirnews.com — we will support, train, and engage media

and political activists *”who share our values”*. As we continue

to meet with moderate leaders of minority groups, we will

also expand our efforts to facilitate grass roots inter-faith

exchanges. We will share in France, with faith communities

and with the Ministry of the Interior, the most effective

techniques for teaching tolerance currently employed in

American mosques, synagogues, churches, and other religious

institutions. We will engage directly with the Ministry of

Interior to compare U.S. and French approaches to supporting

minority leaders who seek moderation and mutual

understanding, while also comparing our responses to those

who seek to sow hatred and discord.”

Vronsky.

‘Reform’ mentioned is this think tank

http://www.reform.co.uk/

whose spokespersons are very often given airtime on the BBC and other channels.

Aww, Richard, you’re missed.

“The U.S. State Department has blocked all its employees from accessing the site and is warning all government employees not to read the cables, even at home.”

Does MOSSAD assume we are *that* gullible; a bunch of suckers? Surely what is important is what wiki-wide eyed-Leaks does not expose. The puppet Karzai corruption and drug dealing for instance, involving the CIA and their private contractors and some unnamed Congress members.

The aim of WikiLeaks since its ‘rise to fame’ after the Iraq journalist massacre that demonized America is to keep Pakistan pressured and cornered while diverting our attention from our own SAS cross border recons and raids which are escalating big-time according to my knowledge straight from military sources.

Brigadier Asif Haroon Raja makes this quite clear in his ‘London Report’ which must be read *before* falling hook, line and sinker for slippery-leaks.

http://pakobserver.net/201006/27/detailnews.asp?id=38395

WikiLeaks? I have seen more confidential information on a weather report!!

I’d been trying to figure out what was missing here lately and I’ve just realised — there’s hardly any humour now.

Mark, I’m switching sides every five minutes on Assange. Literally. I can’t make up my mind. Awaiting further evidence.

Oh, btw, he’s not in hiding. According to Ch 4 News, both the police in Britain and the lawyers in Sweden know his exact whereabouts in London.

Off topic – but on global jurisprudential point.

To date, the International Criminal Court held investigations into these five situations:-

DRC

Central African Republic

Sudan ( Darfur)

Kenya; and

Northern Uganda

I ask a few questions of all:-

A. Is there equality of international justice when the likes of Blair and Bush, who have advanced wars of aggression, are excluded from answering for their war crimes?

B. Since heads of state from the African continent can so readily be indicted and/or put in the international dock ?” why when equal or larger crimes against humanity are committed by Western leaders aren’t they too held accountable.

C. Forget questions A and B above and accept that the makers of the rules manipulate and exclude themselves from justice ?”they laugh and thumb their noses at the very thought of any subjugation to the very courts they have created.

Would be great to hear from all on the prevailing international justice system and have views shared. I humbly offer my little parody on the topic :-

“Criminal’s Accomplice”

(A one act/one scene play with a potentially horrific end.)

Setting: A War Crimes Tribunal, somewhere in Europe.

Actors: Three Judges; an international war crimes Prosecutor; a Court Clerk; two armed court officers; Donald Rumsfeld

Act 1

Scene one. A black curtain is slowly drawn to reveal a somber setting. Three Judges ( A President of the Court; the Judge on the President’s right; The Judge on the President’s left); two armed guards; a Court Clerk who reads the charges; the Prosecutor; Donald Rumsfeld, standing as an accused before the Tribunal.

President ( looking at Rumsfeld): Mr. Rumsfeld you have been brought before this Tribunal for reason that by international consensus, a vast majority of people in the world had petitioned for your trial for complicity in crimes against humanity. Should this Tribunal find you guilty, you can be sentenced to life imprisonment. Do you understand?

Rumsfeld: Yes I do.

President: Is there anything you wish to say before the trial commences?

Rumsfeld: I am an American citizen, and this court has no jurisdiction over me. I am American, I am above international law, and in fact I am a law unto myself.

President: Precisely, and it is those misconceived notions which got you into this predicament in the first place. Commence with the charges.

Court Clerk: Reads a long list of jurisprudential formalities, and then adds…

” facilitating the procurement of chemical weapons , namely bis- ( 2-cholorethyl) ?” sulfide ( more commonly known as mustard gas) for sale to the Government of Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein.”

Rumsfeld: Is that supposed to be a charge?

President: Mr. Rumsfeld the international law applicable to your alleged heinous conduct was read out to you previously. Would you care rica?

Rumsfeld: Yes.

Prosecutor: During the period of the Iran- Iraq War ?” do you recall being an envoy to Baghdad?

Rumsfeld: Yes.

Prosecutor: And at the time you carried a hand-written letter and personally delivered it to Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein?

Rumsfeld: Yes.

Prosecutor: It is also true to say that at the time of your visit to Iraq you were the highest ranking United States official to have visited Iraq in the previous six years.

Rumsfeld: Probably.

Prosecutor: It was either so or it wasn’t. Are you able to name anyone in the preceding six years, prior to your visit to Baghdad, who held higher office than yourself who had visited Baghdad; or, more precisely had at all visited Iraq?

Rumsfeld: No.

Prosecutor: So…

Rumsfeld: Look, it’s all lawyers’ games, if this then that, so what ? O.K. yes I was the top guy who visited.

Prosecutor: Would you have a look at the three exhibits which I am about to hand up to you – listed “A” , “B” and “C’ for ease for reference.

( papers are handed to Rumsfeld)

Prosecutor: Please look at ” A”. And you accept that in March 1984 you were in Baghdad.

Rumsfeld: Yes.

Prosecutor: Now turn to “B”. From that United Press International report, you accept that it was reported internationally that, and I quote in part, ” Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers in the 43-month Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq… .” And it goes on ” Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with Foreign Minister Tarek Aziz on the Gulf War before leaving for an unspecified destination.” Do you accept that report as factually accurate?

Rumsfeld: Well I already told you that I was in Baghdad, but I wasn’t there doing the gassing.

Prosecutor: Do you have reason to doubt that at the time it was reported, you personally knew, and the day before your meeting with Tariq Aziz it had been reported that some 600 Iranian soldiers had been gassed with chemical weapons on the southern front.

Rumsfeld: I told you I wasn’t there gassing, so how am I to know?

Prosecutor: Look at exhibit “C” Mr. Rumsfeld. By reference to that document, is it no less a person than US Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who acknowledged, ” We think the use of chemical weapons is a very serious matter. We’ve made that clear in general and particular.” Now, do you deny that as a very senior US official you knew and were fully aware of the gassing with chemical weapons?

Rumsfeld: O.K., you got me on that one.

Prosecutor: And on March 29, 1984, it was reported in the New York Times, ” American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.”

Rumsfeld: Look, I am no dummy, my name is Donald, not George, you are going to go to some paper and ask this, and question the other , and therefore this, and all that lawyer bullshit. Let me just tell you plain and straight. In May, 1984, I resigned. You want to suggest that I am the facilitator who gave support when Iraq was actively using chemical weapons. You are then going on to say that during my period Iraq was actively purchasing weapons and chemical agents from American firms. Well let me tell you something Buddy, that’s just how the world is. I did it for my country, The U.S. of A. which I love. Look, I am not some kind of Milosovic, or some criminal, who you put in some monkey cage and get away with it. We will bomb the shit out of this court before that is allowed to happen. You guys just don’t get it, yes we sold ?” yes I helped procure the weapons. I did what was right for my country at the time. I came back and I have loyally served George W. Yes, Saddam gassed the Kurds in 1988.Yes we sold him 60 Hughes helicopters and more stuff too.

President: Mr. Rumsfeld, just a couple questions.

Rumsfeld: Sure.

President: Having just admitted as you did, you have been a great help to this Tribunal, and have probably shortened the trial considerably ?” however, just for the record, a couple points. Do you, personally, not feel any sense of remorse for the complicity in first facilitating the Iraqi government’s atrocities, and then never having done anything about it?

Rumsfeld: Look, under Clinton I signed a letter saying that we should get rid of Saddam.

President: But when you were in a position to inform the world about the atrocities you were totally silent.

Rumsfeld: You just don’t get it. We sold him the stuff, and we needed him then, so why should I have said anything? It would not be logical. It would not have made sense. But when Geroge W. got back in we are focused on oil and we moved aggressively after him. The guy is a tyrant, so he had to be got rid of.

Prosecutor: Mr. Rumsfeld…

Rumsfeld: I have had enough of this court crap.

Rumsfeld turns and walks towards the main doors of the court, and as he does so he is approached by the court’s two armed officers. Rumsfeld turns and says…

“If one of you so much as puts a hand on me, the Marines will be here quicker than you can say ‘Saddam Hussein’ . I am out of here guys, back to God’s own country, the U.S.of A.”

As he walks through the court’s doors a loud mocking laugh is heard.

The End.

@ Craig,

You are in Ghana – so – a great and relevant place to post from re. my just posted question.

Enjoy your African visit.

Courtenay

You see, you can torture me, You can make me experience the most aweful pain, but you can’t take it away from me, no matter what you do…

You can assassinate me

You can string me up by my balls until I slowly die

But You Can’t Take My Love Away From Me

Tony

” Cheney Charged In Nigerian Corruption Trial”

Really?

Craig, It must be great to be in the Sun of Africa, because it’s bloody freezing here in Calgary. Yet we have had our moments of excitement in relation to wikileaks.

I am sorry to say that an academic where I live, who was once very close to Canada’s Prime Minister Harper, called for the assassination of Mr. Assange though he speedily retracted and apologized. Most people I’ve talked to in Calgary believe in open democracy and welcome these wikileaks disclosures as I do. One of these disclosures even demonstrates that Canada’s Spy Agency (CSIS) operates above the law, and harasses innocent citizens at will. Here is a short article on it that was published recently from Calgary.

Former CSIS Chief Admits to Torture

http://mostlywater.org/former_csis_chief_admits_torture_0

Clark:

To be honest I don’t really like the H. L. Mencken quote. I like to think that “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us even when no one is looking”.

Vronsky:

Sorry if I expressed myself poorly. I didn’t mean that YOU might be using tinyurl to send people to malware sites, I was just trying to explain why in general I don’t follow those links and why I try to discourage people from using such services. This blog ain’t twitter, there isn’t a character limit

Richard:

It was actually all the trolling that got me to stop being a lurker. I wanted to try an get the conversation back on the rails. Probably didn’t help, but I had to try =P

dreoilin:

What brown and sticky?

A stick! *ZING*

ingo:

Botnets will take any computer they can get. Honestly I don’t have too much faith in AV software. If my computer got infected I would backup the relevant data and then do a complete re-install. A pain in the arse I know, but I don’t wanna risk my bank details, CC numbers or work details in order to save an hour or two installing a new OS.

To add to what dreoilin wrote earlier, the following was sent to students at Columbia University:

” From: “Office of Career Services”

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 ESTTo:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,

Office of Career Services”

(arabist.net/blog/2010/12/2/state-dept-warning-prospective-recruits-to-steer-clear-of-wi.html)

A comment in the blog also says the same email was sent to Georgetown students. Simply outrageous.

“U.S. soldiers in Iraq who try to read about the Wikileaks disclosures?”or read coverage of them in mainstream news sites?”on unclassified networks get a page warning them that they’re about to break the law.”

[SNIP]

“Not even Social Security Administration employees are safe from the intimidation: The Administration has reportedly sent an alert to all its employees claiming that the Wikileaks documents “remain classified and SSA employees should not access, download, or transmit them. Individuals may be subject to applicable federal criminal statutes for unlawful access to or transmission of classified information.”"

(gawker.com/5705639/us-military-in-iraq-tries-to-intimidate-soldiers-into-not-reading-wikileaks)

“Brazil says it has recognized the state of Palestine based on borders at the time of Israel’s 1967 conquest of the West Bank. ”

(washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303134.html)

One of the few positive results of the recent US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is that it provided enough political space for the leftist Latin American movements to advance their position.

Ok I will stop spamming the blog now =P

Support We Are Change against the Southern Poverty Law Center!

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/free-radical#

These addresses did not work this am,

http://213.251.145.96/

http://88.80.13.160/

Could someone update me ?

Wanted to look at first posters cable on Chagos Islands .

Thanks.

The Times this morning –

World News British diplomat ‘plotted to keep islanders in exile’

Colin Roberts urged American diplomats to support plans to prevent natives of the Chagos Islands from returning home

Dave from France, thanks for the link – that was a great article by Jonathan Cook, which I’d recommend to everyone. I’d read another, earlier piece by him on general press management but hadn’t read this more recent, and longer, one specifically on Israel. Here it is again, for anyone who missed it first time around:

http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=293&aid=633

CheebaCow, you’re right about South America’s ‘window’; in the past, the USA would simply have crushed the Left as they did for a hundred years before. They still try to manipulate (eg. they failed in Venezuela but succeeded in Mexico, which of course is part of North America and the NAFTA), but one hopes that the zeitgeist and the momentum of change (THIS is ‘change we can recognise and know, change we can vote for’, people) will overcome such subversions. Brazil, the powerhouse, will be too economically powerful to stop – and the USA needs the investment, but can no longer treat South America a a fiefdom, a neo-colony. So, it will be trade, not slavery. Good. I hope this will be a domino effect, an example, for other areas, too.

Welcome back, Richard. Really good to see you, we did miss your august presence! And thanks for the (as always) sage advice. How are the tunes going? Is that website back up yet? Let me know, I’m keen to check them out. Ta much.

There is a young singer of traditional British folk who I think is excellent named Chloe Matharu; I think she’s part-Welsh, part-Indian, sings mainly English traditional music and lives in Edinburgh:

http://www.chloematharu.com/default.aspx

Check it out.

Jonathan Cook is a brave individual who lives within ‘the belly of the beast’ in Nazareth. Because he is married to a Palestinian he has been obliged to take Israeli citizenship. He took the ‘oath’ with his fingers crossed behind his back. He worked for the MSM and latterly at the Guardian/Observer group but abandoned it to become independent. He has +always+ spoken out about Israeli crimes.

http://www.jkcook.net/index.html

There is an archive of his articles on his site.

Hello Suhayl

———————————

Wikileaks Chagos –

http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/05/09LONDON1156.html

maybe those first two addresses are good, I was half-asleep …

——————–

I came back here after a long absence, when I think opmoc and co drove me away!

I was an early bird, copying “”those”" FCO telegrams.

Raining now but still vvvv close to freezing in Normandy ..Seeya

One way and anotherm they are cutting the legs off Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Apart from the taking down of access to servers, etc. Paypal have cancelled transactions with Wikileaks.

John Pilger who is nobody’s fool is calling for support for Assange.

‘In an ABC Radio Australia interview, John Pilger asks Australians to break their silence and rally round compatriot Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. John Pilger’s new film, ‘The War You Don’t See’, due to be released in Australia in 2011, will feature an interview with Queensland born Assange.’

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2010/3083583.htm

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/12/bst_20101203_0821.mp3

That film btw is released in London on Dec 13.

@dreoilin

Q: What do you get if you cross an atheist with a Jehovah’s Witness?

A: Someone who comes to your door and tells you to fuck off.

http://www.jkcook.net/Articles3/0536.htm#Top

Here’s a good, pithy one from the Jonathan Cook site (thanks, somebody) on Wikileaks and imperial over-reach.

Israel the parasitic state almost wholly dependent on foreign tax subsidy failed to get the 2022 World Cup.

The ethnosupremacist entity lost out to Qatar!

Now with its JNF-planted pine forests engulfed in raging inferno we see a uniquely poignant metaphor for the sad impotent masonic spawn that calls itself,”Israel”.

For Gilad Atzmon Zionism has burnt itself out.

P.S. Israelis are fucking useless at football anyway.

P.P.S. Qatar and Al Jazeera 6 Israel 0!

Thanks Suhayl,

“the world’s finite resources and its laws of nature promise a much harsher lesson[than the release of confidential documents]”

Britain and America must muster the courage to regret the carnage and slaughter inflicted on Iraq. The ‘inner voice of conscience’ cannot be distracted or hidden by a curtain of diplomat induced noise created by a manipulated WikiLeaks intended to divert eyes and ears away from the preparations of war.

The crescendo of hope focused on the humiliation of the ‘shock and awe’ purveyors is our weapon against further atrocities by a failing and obsolescent capitalist war machine.

Without that hope our children and their children will be condemned to centuries of relentless fear and suppression.

Have faith…

Harr!

Love the agnostic Jehovah’s Witness. I’m sitting here in this bankrupted country with a bad head/chest dose, haven’t slept for two full nights because of coughing/breathing probs, my eyes are burning and falling out of my head, so it’s good to laugh!

Just to fill you in, since you were all so kind about my friend who was attacked and brutally beaten around the head. Miraculously, he’s home and online (after 4 months in hospital). He has double vision and amnesia, but he seems to be recovering. A Christmas present for all his friends.

‘The War You Don’t See’, in UK cinemas from Sunday 12 December 2010 and on ITV two days later at 10.35pm.

Poor you Dreoilin. Hope you’re better soon and glad about your friend.

Saw this on the BBC website. Duh!! Almost feel sorry for the lad.

Snow footprints lead to burglar in Sutton

Footprints led the way to the unfortunate culprit

A trail of footprints in the snow led police to catch a burglar shivering in a bush.

The 17-year-old was spotted by a homeowner stealing a bicycle from a garage in Sutton, south London.

Police noticed his footprints and followed them for several streets until they found him cowering under frozen foliage.

The officers then followed the trail back – to discover several other garages had been targeted.

Insp Colin Baker, of Sutton Police, said: “This burglar left great big footprints for officers to follow.

“So, despite the difficult weather conditions, officers were able to track him down, following the tracks in the snow.”

The teenager was arrested on suspicion of burglary at about 0300 GMT on Friday and was released on bail pending further inquiries.

It is not the first time snow has helped police in Sutton defeat criminals.

Two teenagers were caught stealing electronic goods from a garage in January after officers followed their footprints

Good job he wasn’t the Bigfoot!

Here’s a super documentary, just the first in a series:

http://metanoia-films.org/psywar.php

“The public is a threat that needs to be countered” -

http://player.vimeo.com/video/17085237

Superb indeed Suhayl thank-you – reasons to be wary.

The Atzmon “Burning Bush” commentary on Israel’s fires mentioned earlier has been extended with interjections by Brian Akira:

http://brianakira.wordpress.com/

The 6m trees they meant to plant eventually as commemoration to the “6m” who supposedly died in the Jewish “Holocaust” seem to have gone up in smoke literally.

Much like the Holocaust exterminationist myth peddled on this site by Murray and the PC saps here who haven’t done enough research to discover that like the 911 official conspiracy theory it bears no scrutiny whatever-the Hoax of the Twentieth Century is falling apart in the Twenty-First!

The myth can only be maintained by corporate media, their gate-keeper camp followers like Murray and legal threats from the Bn’ai Br’ith/ADL mafia.

Wait for the censor’s scissors.

They hate the truth!

In a society where culture is saturated with deceit and propaganda telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

@ somebody

the snow is a mixed blessing for the Sutton cops, on the one hand it helps them look good by solving petty crime and being reported positively by BBC, on the other they need to get off their fat a**es to give chase while they could be far better employed eating bacon butties back at the station.

Quite right anon at 5.50pm How many are on sickies whilst the rest are bashing kids up in London?

This choked me about Cadbury. First the giant US corporation Kraft made their acquisition with the help of the usual financial vultures when Brown and Mandelslime were around. They immediately broke pledges and shed some workers when a factory was closed and now decide to decamp to Switzerland to cut their tax bill. Boycott them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11919248

Ha bloody ha! So much for Brown.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/7025145/Kraft-deal-for-Cadbury-Gordon-Brown-warns-US-firm-over-jobs.html

@CheebaCow

“a lot of information has always been known/available, it was just not reported in the press. For example in the run up to the recent Iraq war when everyone was going on about WMD, if you actually read the public UNSCOM reports, or even the statements of the US government from a few years earlier it was obvious there would be no WMD to be found.”

Ha! But Trikileaks proved otherwise:

Wired Mag: October 23, 2010

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/

There’s yer rat poison, right there.

Joe Quinn explains Wikileaks

“… The broad view of Wiki-leaks and its documents, so far, paints a picture of a concerted effort to supplant the alternative, anti-war media with an illusion of truth. As the Western mainstream media continues to reach new heights of mendacity and obfuscation of the truth, an increasing number of ordinary people have been turning to alternative news sites for a more accurate perspective of what is happening on our planet. This has posed a clear threat to those whose positions of influence and power depend on a misinformed population.

The solution to this problem would be the appearance on the scene of an organization that goes one better than the anti-war, alternative media and produces ‘smoking gun’, officially documented evidence of government lies and deception. …”

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/218901-Wiki-Leaks-and-Plausible-Lies-Where-Have-All-The-Critical-Thinkers-Gone-

Dreoilin, congratulations to your friend, and thanks for the update.

CheebaCow, re: “..somebody may be looking” / “..even when no one is looking”; I think both are true, to varying extents in different people over different matters. I was thinking that this leak may sharpen the consciences of people who thought they were protected by secrecy. So maybe I meant “..somebody may find out”.

Humanity face many crises now and in the near future, and the alternative / hippy types sometimes talk of raising or expanding the Global Consciousness. Well, I think that’s what these leaks do, in a very literal sense. Intentions and judgements of an influential section of humanity (US diplomatic staff) that were formerly hidden have suddenly been revealed, like a person suddenly realising that they’ve had some unconscious motivations or prejudices.

CheebaCow, thanks for the stories of US authorities instructing students and others to not read the leaks. This is so serious and so funny at the same time. “Oh no, quick, cover your eyes! You must stick your head in the sand now, it’s the law!”.

Also amusing is the blanket agreement between governments that WikiLeaks is a Really Bad Thing, versus the masses of popular support. Eris has thrown the Apple of Discord; all the leaders want it, and none of them want any of the others to have it. It really illustrates the tension between all the people and all the rulers.

Vronsky, knock knock…

Zbigniew Brzezinski on Wikileaks

“It’s, rather, a question of whether WikiLeaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments, because some of these items that are being emphasized and have surfaced are very pointed.

And I wonder whether, in fact, there aren’t some operations internationally, intelligence services, that are feeding stuff to WikiLeaks, because it is a unique opportunity to embarrass us, to embarrass our position, but also to undermine our relations with particular governments.”

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/7483-brzezinski-on-wikileaks-doubting-seeds-seeding-doubts.html

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/11/zbigniew-brzezinski-who-is-really.html

Zbigniew Brzezinski: Who is Really Leaking to Wikileaks?

Alfred, the “rat poison” report that you link to could well be used as evidence of how +few+ WMDs were found in Iraq: 10 abandoned rounds in total disrepair, one report of gas that may have come from Iran, two reports of possible chemical weapons technicians. These reports were made by US military personnel who were probably glad to have found anything at all.

THE GLOBAL CONSPIRACY BEHIND THE BOYISH GRIN…

“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. ….”

http://www.rebelnews.org/opinion/war/541972-the-wiki-hoax

@Clark

“Alfred, the “rat poison” report that you link to could well be used as evidence of how +few+ WMDs were found in Iraq”

You think:

All this and more is attributed to Wikileaks:

“Meanwhile, the second battle of Fallujah was raging in Anbar province. In the southeastern corner of the city, American forces came across a “house with a chemical lab … substances found are similar to ones (in lesser quantities located a previous chemical lab.” The following day, there’s a call in another part of the city for explosive experts to dispose of a “chemical cache.”

“Nearly three years later, American troops were still finding WMD in the region. An armored Buffalo vehicle unearthed a cache of artillery shells “that was covered by sacks and leaves under an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint. “The 155mm rounds are filled with an unknown liquid, and several of which are leaking a black tar-like substance.” Initial tests were inconclusive. But later, “the rounds tested positive for mustard.”

Here are the WMD’s that Tony Blair warned could be deployed by drones over London within minutes!

A few rusty old leaking rounds and a “chemical cache” of two test tubes that could have been at the back of a demestic fridge for donkey’s years, in which case the chemicals were likely degraded beyond use.

“Here are the WMD’s that Tony Blair warned could be deployed by drones over London within minutes!”

You’re taking the piss, Alfred, surely.

In other news, a woman who dialled 999 to report the theft of her snowman yesterday has been blasted by police.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/12/04/999-call-over-stolen-snowman-115875-22760300/

major problems posting

Sir Philip Green

Is Not So Keen

On Paying Taxes

…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11918873

Great to see these protests growing and the public being given the facts.

That should have read “and a ‘chemical cache’ of maybe two test tubes”

but it wouldn’t let me preview and edit.

That should have read “and a ‘chemical cache’ of maybe two test tubes”

but it wouldn’t let me edit.

I like the “house with a chemical lab” – sounds like a big, military-scale operation, that one. Did they catch the little boy responsible for developing the bottle-rocket delivery system?

Thanks somebody, thanks Clark. Going to try to post these snippets and then , …

“Despite pressure from U.S. and France, Swiss host for WikiLeaks refuses to take them offline. The Guardian reports: “The site’s new Swiss host, Switch, today said there was “no reason” why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names.”

**

“NYT gets Columbia Univ to confirm it did send that email to some students warning them not to go to Wiki sites or they will jeopardize their careers.”

**

“Wash Times published column calling for Assange assassination yesterday … after paper asked HIM for WIki files earlier in week.”

**

“now there is a Boycott Pay Pal For Dumping WIkiLeaks page at Facebook”

All from The Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/156845/blogging-wikileaks-weekend-edition

@Dreoilin

“”Here are the WMD’s that Tony Blair warned could be deployed by drones over London within minutes!”

‘You’re taking the piss, Alfred, surely.’

If anyone is taking the piss, its the mainstream media. The following is a direct quote from Wired Magazine:

“But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.”

Read that a couple of times. Then think about whose side Wikileaks is on.

Most Americans believe that WMDs were found in Iraq. Here, according to the MSM is the proof, provided by Wikileaks.

So what effect will this have on public opinion do you think?

Obviously it reinforces the lies that were deployed to justify the Iraq invasion.

No wonder the MSM love Wikileaks. It is a classic operation in cognitive infiltration, that bolsters the disintegrating MSM business model.

Of course it is difficult for folks here to believe that because Craig Murray is so heavily invested in Assange’s cred. And if Assange is a stooge or a dupe then ….

Here’s Eric Margolis on Wikileaks”

“But there’s also something about WikiLeaks that smells nasty to me. I sense the leaks have been heavily censored, or cherry-picked before the public saw them. Much seems to be missing.

For example, the New York Times, one of the recipients of the entire leak package of thousands of cables, appeared to use them selectively to push its pro-war position in Afghanistan and press for war against Iran. The ‘revelations’ brought cheers from the Israel lobby which has been beating the war drums against Iran.

The massed neoconservative-dominated US media and Congress have jumped on the bandwagon… gleefully using parts of the leaks to promote war against Iran. …”

The uproar over the leaks comes as the combined 16 US intelligence agencies are reportedly preparing to release a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) unanimously concluding Iran is not building nuclear weapons. Interesting coincidence, to say the least. …

Also interesting was how the bits about Russia being a Mafia state emerged just before the FIFA vote

Also interesting was how the bits about Russia being a Mafia state emerged just before the FIFA vote

Alfred,

People here don’t all have the same views. It’d be quite boring if they did. Some believe WikiLeaks is genuine, some are not sure, some including myself believe it’s run by intelligence services.

You See – Its a Matter of EDUCATION

But so many people don’t understand, and so I try and explain it and I can see some of it gets through…

I try and put it down to engagement

I had never met her before – and all I could get out of her – some tnuc was having a go at her…

because she was smoking a cigarette

All She Said Was

“I DON’t GIVE A SHIT”

and so I could only agree with her – I said well if you do give a shit – and realise all the shit that is going on – then you are likely to get really depressed…

And Then She Said

“I DON’t GIVE A FUCK”

And I knew I had got Her Attention

She Later Said – This Is The BEST

(bass player’s wife)

Message To Our American Friends

I haven’t a clue who Dr. Laura is but My Wife Was Fucking Fantastic Tonight

The Bass Player In The Band Asked Her To Do It….

So She went Round The Pub With The Jug

Asking People If They Had Any Change For The Band…

So Cos She is Such an Angel and We Really Like This Venue

We are Going To See HAWKWIND For Our Christmas Party

In LONDON

A few years ago we went to The Forum In Kentish Town – Its an Old Cinema – and Has Got an Upstairs

The Band Was Called THE MUSIC – They Come From Leeds

And The Girlfriends of The Band

From Above Threw Halos – You Know Silver Glittery Things That You Decorate Your Christmas Tree With…

Down Into The Audience

And We Wore Our Halos All The Way Home – From One Side of London to The Other and Beyond

People in England are Really Nice

Even Our Cops are Nice Most of The Time

And We Look at You Poor Souls in America Under NAZI Rule and All Your Heads are All Fucked Up With Hatred.

Why do You Hate Humans So Much?

We are Actually REALLY NICE

Can’t You Change Your Government Or Something?

How come You Have Got The Most EVIL CRETINS In The World In Control Of You?

Get Yourself a Bit Of Hawkwind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q59FntObgek

Tony

dreoilin – hi, and, thanks. I felt the same when you went off for a bit. But, I don’t think I can do this regularly, it’s just too frustrating. I say things, and then courtesy and stuff kicks in, I need to look for replies & follow up, and wade through all the soapboxes, wrongnesses, distractions (oi ! Alfred – it’s spelled “Bagehot”. With an ‘e’), and it’s just too depressing, I’ll turn into another Larrysobacampbell. So I don’t think I can look in more than intermittently; or disguise myself as the occasional irresponsible (not wanting to answer) textile product once in a while.

And CheebaCow, likewise. Yes. I’ve felt that, too, and hoped to. But there’s an infinite number of monkeys out there, and nothing to stop them having scripts they want to discuss. In the absence of a killfile, moderation would do. Something to kick it into focus. As a wannabe-anarchist, it pains me, but. Only my feeling at the moment, don’t let me put you off. It might work, it all helps, as much as we can.

And, thanks for the Chloe Matharu recommendation, Suhayl. Frustrating website, the way it fades out after a couple of lines, but, yes, good clear voice. English ? I dunno. I used to hear “Come by the Hills” round Sutherland. (hey, weather or what ? -27C at Altnaharra the other night, according to the bbc. That’ll shiver your Krakens. It must be beautiful, if only you’ve got enough warm clothes). The website’s still as it is, but I’m hoping to have the new! improved! one at least on a proper server for testing by the end of the year.

“Monster Energy Hats” is good. I’d want to know which monster before I paid for one, though.

“It’s Bagehot …”

Bagehot, Bagehot, yeah write, I’ll rite that out a million times.

“Some believe WikiLeaks is genuine…”

I wouldn’t mind that if they had even a half-baked reason for believing it!

“some are not sure,”

Well I can tolerate ignorance

“some including myself believe it’s run by intelligence services.”

Now about that, I’m not sure?

All seems a bit unintelligent to me, like lying about having broken the Climategate emails story and then trying to prove that there was nothing to bother about in the emails.

what

well, hey, all you real people out there. Richard, do you own the Faber Book of Parodies, by any chance?

dreoilin, great about your friend. thank you.

here nice evening with old friend punctuated by TERROR and DESPAIR and WAR and stuff. Seriously, one of the reasons i stood against the whole thing in the first place was that it was fucking BORING.

Alfred, good points: fwiw my own view of the wikileaks saga is, like yours and Suhayl’s, that the questions it raises are more interesting than the answers it seems to give.

Hey Tech,

Yeah, it could be complicated. Concerning the role of intelligence services, do they control Assange, or are they just feeding him selected or spiked info?

That the NY Times, a prime US war enabler works hand in glove with both Assange and the White House on releasing the leaked docs, suggests the operation has highest level approval.

Rod,

Re: Steve Harper

He strongly condemned the suggestion that Assange be assassinated — even if the suggestion was made in jest, which is not the reaction you might expect if Canada feared some hugely embarrassing leak via Assange.

And beside the question of whether Assange is the stooge or the dupe of an intelligence service, there is the question of which intelligence service. Zbibniev Bzrezinski (bet I spelled that wrong too) strongly hints at a role of a foreign intelligence agency:

JUDY WOODRUFF: And what is it — what are you worried about with regard to the knowledge that…

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It’s not a question of worry. It’s, rather, a question of whether WikiLeaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments, because some of these items that are being emphasized and have surfaced are very pointed.

And I wonder whether, in fact, there aren’t some operations internationally, intelligence services, that are feeding stuff to WikiLeaks, because it is a unique opportunity to embarrass us, to embarrass our position, but also to undermine our relations with particular governments.

For example, leaving aside the personal gossip about Sarkozy or Berlusconi or Putin, the business about the Turks is clearly calculated in terms of its potential impact on disrupting the American-Turkish relationship. …

JUDY WOODRUFF: How easy would it be to seed this to make sure that it was slanted a certain way?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Seeding — seeding it is very easy.

I have no doubt that WikiLeaks is getting a lot of the stuff from sort of relatively unimportant sources, like the one that perhaps is identified on the air. But it may be getting stuff at the same time from interested intelligence parties who want to manipulate the process and achieve certain very specific objectives. …

And much more:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/july-dec10/weakileaks2_11-29.html

Brzezinski, for those who weren’t around at the time of the Carter Presidency, was national security advisor and was considered to have been the architecht of the Afghan war — the one that the Soviets lost.

OMG! You 911 conspiracy losers with your right-wing nutter American friends are about to blow apart the official 911 narrative!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqVQMyYJtMQ

In case anyone missed it the first time around, and apologies for being repetitive – but in this case I think it’s worth it – here is an excellent documentary from the US about py-ops, PR, propaganda, etc. I think this should be broadcast widely.

http://metanoia-films.org/watchonline.php

“..somebody may be looking”

Isn’t the official – that is, biological – explanation just that conscience has survival value? Social animals evolve to be good at weighing the cost/benefit of selfish/altruistic acts, and select action accordingly. The behaviour is observed in chmipanzees. Except it’s hard to make a pithy observation out of that. Pretty boring, actually.

Suhayl: thanks for link to Metanoia.

Clark: Who’s there? Oh, my reaction to widespread official disapproval of WL? I think I’m staying on the fence for a bit yet. There was widespread official disapproval of the release of al Megrahi, by the same widespread official disapprovers who arranged it.

Thought this would interest you especially Dreoilin. I haven’t made the link into a tiny url as they are distrusted here so sorry it’s so long! Good for Jim Corr abd Ian Crane.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=ykxpkqcab&v=0018lFCxjd71KNs-iK1O_5Z5-fCvjhYgUv_0S4A6TXCSvYAb8sWm_MPInJboEWj8Z5DYCGVkm1EpYgkdrrcC2GhfIB9o79d1ccYwdeAGb26PcDa5UrrnM1TvA%3D%3D

Eire is a template for the banksters/gangsters, and the UK is a trial ground for dismantling all the ‘public goods’.

One of the very powerful banksters/manipulators/propagandists is here

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutherland

where there is an amazingly long list of high powered connections.

You no doubt know all about him. Trilateral, BP, head of WTO, Bilderberg etc etc He was interviewed on the Today programme yesterday by Naughtie, the latter a member of the British-American Foundation. No irony then.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British-American_Project

Note the KCMG (HON)!!

“tiny url as they are distrusted here”

Compromise is possible. You can use the preview facility in tinyurl, which displays the url that will be linked. For example, here is your link in that form:

preview.tinyurl.com/372v5le

In fact given any tinyurl all you have to do is prefix it with ‘preview.’ and you will see the full text of the link without being taken to it.

From the Metanoia site, this video is relevant to a recent discussion on ‘anarchist’ violence at the student demos. Three masked ‘anarchists’ armed with rocks to throw, unmasked as police officers.

preview.tinyurl.com/2vuh8m5

Vronsky: I’ve just seen your comment on the J7 blog (I assume it was you) about identifying documents. Very good point.

“I assume it was you”

Guilty.

My emails and tweet to Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens with simple courteous requests and polite suggestions have not been acknowledged.

mark.stephens@fsilaw.com

Hey Bornfree

Don’t bother quoting Orwell to these airheads! And the Holocaust is off-gatekeeper limits!

It’s a fact that dawned on me visiting this site some time ago their grasp of the “truth” concept remains still very much in its infancy.

I agree that the Israeli forest fires are a poignant reminder of the charred edifice of lies and propaganda used at the end of WW2 to create the Jewish state.

The current figure for Israeli dead in the forest fires is 40.

How long before it’s inflated to 4m?

The gnarled stumps of the trees should also remind Zionists-who so often played God in the past-of their crimes against the indigenous population.

The Jewish settler-fascists are notorious for their crimes of arson against Palestinian olive groves and crops.

We shall weep no tears for the Chosenites over this inferno in which the Hand of God may well have played a role.

The Metanoia site these intellectually- challenged dingbats are wetting their pants about would appear to specialize in Gestalt therapy and Transactional analysis! (LOL)

Just what these guys need-counselling!

On the exerminationist myth they don’t want to talk about check out Metapedia:

http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Holocaust

World almanac figures cited there show the Jewish population INCREASED relative to Christians who were decimated during WW2.

Um………..wait for the scissors…..

Vronsky: “Fuck Off!”

(Now. Can you work out why?)

It’s a fact that dawned on me visiting this site some time ago their grasp of the “truth” concept remains still very much in its infancy.

Clark: touche.

Juan Cole echoes a point about WikiLeaks that I was trying to make earlier. He of course puts it better:

“I think leaking can be an ethically heroic act if one is leaking a covered-up crime. The leaking of documents from the tobacco industry showing they covered up their own knowledge that cigarettes cause lung cancer was such a noble deed. But relatively few covered-up crimes are coming to light in these Wikileaks documents unless one is an anarchist and considers government in general to be a crime. In many instances, the documents are little more than gossip, producing hurt feelings, without having obvious policy implications. Scattershot massive infodump is not the same thing as leaking for purposes of securing justice in some particular instance.”

preview.tinyurl.com/37cfv96

good to hear that you friend is better dreolin, you get better soon.

Thanks for that excellent metanoia link Suhayl, its relevance has a bearing on all of us, it is a global concern.

The reaction world wide to Wkileaks revellations, showing us the real diplomatic enpasse and what happening behind their smiling faces, is akin to the Fatwa against Rushdie.

They have been found out and I have to gurdgingly agree with Brezinski, after the first leak, new information given to Wiki could have been slanted.

Since when did they know about Mannings activities? the key question to the originality, imho.

What if Manning was found out copying the transfers much earlier and was allowed to carry on? the possibilities exist.

That not much deals with Israel and its policies, that not one leak refers to the secretive talks held between the US,Britain and Israel, some month before the Iraq war.

It is a mixed bag we are sorting though, but I still would support the release of information of such kind and more.

Bradley Manning could have gad access to NATO comms, cosmic top secret stuff maybe.

Can I take this opportunity to thank all of you, even the most obvious guttersnipes, on here in their capacity as thermometers of ‘their’ discontent, for the excellent research links your beavering activities have come up with.

We must persuade Craig to save all his archive and move it lock stock and barrel to a safer more suitable and modern site.

I’m a luddite in IT, but some of us here could easilty help him achieve it, somehow I think its worth while and a good move for the future of this site.

I think that good blogs who speak up should follow Wiki’s example and have preacautionary talks with a multiple of servers, as assurance in case of sites being attacked, Ideally this should be private enteties, companies that operate/sell/manufacture for a profit are always vulnerable to pressure from the establishment.

Can one not link computers up in networks? Can these computers talk to each other? and be processing what comes in as to where/when it comes in, storing it in multiples on other servers as it happens?

the principles I know of, but how to get there is far too technical for me.

Whatever information comes alight, and whistleblowers are threatened again under this ConDem Government, can then be published in the knowledge of having ‘reserve sites’ sleeping, ready to ping into life when required.

The only disadvantage in having to be paranoid is, that this will be at the cost to the environment. Still in balance to the perceived evil on one side, I think that the future of our kids, on the other side, is still the pre dominant priority, I can and have to live with it.

The fires in Israel might have the unusual effect of bringing the two sides closer together.

Helping each other when all life is threatened, whether its extreme cold, fire or floods, is the stuff societal glue is made off, something that will be remembered, although i expect peace will be based on facts on the ground, requirements for two states to exist, not just emotional basics.

“…the documents are little more than gossip, producing hurt feelings, without having obvious policy implications”.

Well yes, so far. There are over 250,000 documents in total and so far only a few hundred have been released. It is possible that the tittle-tattle is being released first with more substantial stuff saved for later.

Totally agree Vronsky – a poignant and penetrating view from Cole – well spotted.

Sibel Edmonds looks at WL from another angle: what if you already know some of what ought to be there, and wonder when/if it will appear?

preview.tinyurl.com/3222zcc

John Pilger is interviewed about his new film – The War You Don’t See

http://www.newint.org/features/2010/12/01/john-pilger-interview/

On the murder and attempted murder of nuclear scientists in Tehran.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/assassins-cyber-worms-and-iran-s-nuclear-ambitions-1.1072544

btw Marr was interviewing Yvette Cooper this morning. She is Shadow Foreign Secretary. When they had finished discussing the Middle East (Palestine, the lack of Gaza exports, Bliar, etc) Marr said,

If there is one place in the world that is particularly dangerous right at the moment,++ it’s Iran ++ clearly. We’ve had story after story of Iranian nuclear scientists being killed and there must be suspicion that this is the Israelis behind it. And of course Wikileaks has revealed just how urgently the Saudis and others have been pressing the Americans to actually attack Iran. What’s your reading of the situation?

a~

Note his pathetic little bit of demonization of Iran.

Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, was also on the progamme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/andrew_marr_show/default.stm

somebody:

In Scottish newspapers, we have an unlovely coupling: the Herald and the Scotsman. they are rapidly attaining the status of the Russian joke about Pravda and Isvestia (‘The Truth’ and ‘The News’).

What’s in Isvestia isn’t Pravda, and what’s in Pravda isn’t Isvestia.

Prostrate

Is it just me or do the intellectual underclass that try to comment here bore you shitless as well?

More Atzmon re-Israel’s Burning Bushes:

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=15566

By the way 40% Israeli Arabs deny the Holocaust:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/survey-finds-nearly-half-of-israeli-arabs-deny-holocaust-1.276206

Now these Arabs are worthy of respect because they live with the consequences of the exterminationist myth every day.

The PC brigade here kow-tow to the host’s proscriptions against “denial” but don’t have the intellectual confidence to either defend the official myth or speak out against it.

Pathetic I call it……….

“It is possible that the tittle-tattle is being released first with more substantial stuff saved for later.”

How could that be. Assange has stated:

“… our promise to our sources is ‘get it to us and if it was witheld from the public we will release it.’ Then we had no choice but to release it.” (For the source, see above.)

He didn’t say, we had no choice but to release it if and when we think fit.

So If your assumption that the serious stuff is being held for later release, you are saying Assange is a trickster and a liar.

That Assange’s promise to leakers is a lie seems confirmed by the distribution of “an encrypted ‘poison pill’ cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay,” i.e., documents that someone has got to Wikileaks but over the release of which Wikileaks has exercised a choice, which is not to release them unless and until it suites Wikileaks to do so.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/12/05/wikileaks-ready-release-massive-insurance-file-shut/

Alfred at December 5, 2010 5:44 AM- It is being treated as a much larger issue here than you are suggesting, and I have commented on it in Canada’s mainstream press, and also in Open Democracy. Enough said.

Suhayl – Got the URL for the PsyOps film. Thanks. One of an intelligence service’s disinformation techniques is to *** “Create Confusion over facts”.*** I.e. – Is wikileaks genuine or is it an intelligence operation, is it our intelligence operation or somebody else’s, etc. etc.

I found wikileaks disclosure on CSIS, that can be viewed by clicking on my name, to be very interesting – and I think it poses several questions for Canadian Parliamentarians and Steve Harper.

I suppose that even if some of these US cables were released which show that 911 and 77 were indeed inside jobs, would Larry the Loon still insist they were not or would he pack up his bags and move on ?

Assange asserts that the difference between democratic and non-democratic freedom of speech is ‘fiscal’. Our freedom of speech makes no difference to governments because the West a fiscal defence shield. Countries like China use government capital to bypass the rape of the exchequer by the banks, but can therefore be held directly accountable for policy.

Democracy, which I approve of in theory, because it has recently removed extremely nasty, war-mongering, New Labour, evades accountability by blaming the system and whitewashing the facts.

What planet is Desmond Tutu living on, that he can tick off China for human rights abuses, when the USEUUKIS alliance has squandered ballistics against the civilian populations of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan?

The difference between democratic and non-democratic systems is fuck-all to do with fiscal. It’s to do with the very thin veneer of utterly hypocritical Christianity that the West has left.

“Democracy, which I approve of in theory, because it has recently removed extremely nasty, war-mongering, New Labour”

anno, a little respect please – it’s us you’re talking too. You don’t really imagine that nasty, warmongering New Labour has now been replaced by sweetly pacifistic Tories?

The democracy of which you approve in theory has just replaced one extremely nasty warmongering party with another extremely nasty warmongering party. If the day ever dawns when the populace becomes tired of both, there is a third nasty warmongering party which they can vote for. So I guess the system works.

“So If your assumption that the serious stuff is being held for later release, you are saying Assange is a trickster and a liar”.

No, just that we shouldn’t reach conclusions based on 0.001% of the evidence. A quarter of a million documents is too much to digest all at once; a staggered release seems reasonable at this stage.

“a staggered release seems reasonable at this stage.”

Why? It doesn’t seem so to me. If Assange has anything of value, surely he’d want to unload quickly, before he’s stopped?

It’s reminiscent of the Muslim terrorist calmly piloting his hijacked airliner to the Pentagon, executing that long, languid, circling descent. Either he was an idiot, or he knew the F16s weren’t coming.

Anonymous wrote: “I suppose that even if some of these US cables were released which show that 911 and 77 were indeed inside jobs, would Larry the Loon still insist they were not or would he pack up his bags and move on ?”

Absolutely. If the cables provided good evidence that, say, nanothermite were spray-painted into the Towers prior to Sept. 11, I would have to accept the proposition.

It’s just like proof of paranormal activity. If presented with solid evidence, a true skeptic would have to accept that there is such a thing.

Note that, among the nutters, the converse is not true. The complete lack of evidence among the leaks (and with respect to any leak) does not challenge your conspiracism. You just expand the conspiracy – for instance, by claiming that Assange is part of the conspiracy.

“If Assange has anything of value, surely he’d want to unload quickly, before he’s stopped?”

Well, there is the insurance file. I don’t know; my understanding is that he has released all the documents to the MSM, which is publishing them as it sees fit. I may be wrong about this.

“If Assange has anything of value, surely he’d want to unload quickly, before he’s stopped?”

Well, there is the insurance file. I don’t know; my understanding is that he has released all the documents to the MSM, which is publishing them as it sees fit. I may be wrong about this.

To paraphrase from the Psyops documentary, bringing the actual players to the surface and into full visibility (cutting through the PR operations), demonstrating their mechanics of operation, forcing them to expose their roles in perpetuation the system is absolutely crucial in what is a full-blown war of the mind.

I agree. This blog is part of that war.

As I’ve said on many occasions, the workings of contemporary imperialism are actually very clear; it is only the cornucopic self-delusion of those who consider themselves to be highly educated and cultured – what used to be termed, ‘false consciousness’ – that prevents them seeing the machine for what it is.

anno, to give Tutu credit, he has criticised Western imperialism/ militarism (including specifically that is Israel) on many occasions – as well as, pointedly, the ANC government of his own country on, among other matters, wealth distribution, etc.

Bornfree

You’re right re-the boredometer rocketing when these guys pretend to communicate.

Even the one with exotic name above sounds so effete and English it makes you cringe!

Now they might be good at whispering sweet nothings to eachother while simultaneously boring everyone else to death but I think we can let Ubersturmfuhrer Murray know on his return that not one of them felt brave enough to defend the “Holocaust” myth!

Saddoes!

On the Machine check this out:

http://patrickgrimm.typepad.com/zionist-watch/2009/07/the-machine.html

They’ll get into a lot of trouble for reading this!

(LMAO)

Craig’s post July 6th: Apostate et al are banned from this board for persistent anti-semitism and Holocaust denial.

I think the next WikiLeaks’revelations will cause damage, maybe severe damage, and as such there will be a universal cry for such sites to be curtailed. Then step by step sites such as Craig’s which oppose government, corruption etc will come under scrutiny.

This to me is the reason for WikiLeaks’ recent activities.

I don’t think all the documents have been released to the MSM – as far as I know, there no evidence that this has happened. However they are likely to be contained within the insurance file, so a mass release can be effected easily if someone decides to attack Wikileaks volunteers physically. I’m inclined also to guess that the passphrase has been passed by Wikileaks to the US political establishment, so as to demonstrate the insurance as genuine.

On controlling critical websites, I think we need not worry too much about that. The people of the US have a decent history of believing in free speech, and if there is step-change in what people are allowed to publish on the internet coming from the US, I am sure there will be a backlash. In fact I am inclined towards positivity – I think there will be an almighty vendetta against WikiLeaks, and the US government will lose the fight. The information is too dispersed, and there is too much significant mainstream support for its release, to put the cat back in the bag.

Anno, your political analysis is bordering on the ridiculous, as it has been for some time. That upsets me, as I think – and as your being here might go to show – that you’re a good person. I don’t sense that you’re a troublemaker, as some people are here. Or perhaps I am just regularly misreading your religiously-inspired posts?

Condemning ‘democracy’ because we have a murderous system is ludicrous – consider the possibility that in the UK we don’t have a working representative democracy? You didn’t mention it this time around, but I’d hate to think you’d use our broken democracy as a reason to support its replacement with Sharia instead?

I am not a Christian, nor a supporter of Christianity, but your position on ‘utterly hypocritical Christianity’ does not take into account the distinct possibility that leaders who claim to be Christian may not have a genuine connection to the faith they profess. I’d say that was particularly the case in America amongst the political elite, where a faith must be worn on the sleeve, and sometimes must be proclaimed loudly.

Meanwhile, I am not sure I’ve read any criticism from you on other religions. It would be healthy for you to think in that direction once in a while – all religions at one time or another have demonstrated hypocrisy. Religion, I think, is another kind of system whose hierarchy wants to exercise social control over people. It is worth therefore, as I am sure I’ve mentioned in the past, regarding religion (or its dogmatic over-application) as the problem, not the solution.

Notwithstanding my slight frustration, best wishes to you.

Patrick Grimm describes exactly my experience of the anti-conscience machine when I had a breakdown in 1987. But conscience and virtue, being the stock in trade of God, are one zillion times more powerful than the mind-castration machine.

The too-scared-to-protest institutions of society, the church, your family, the medics, police and your friends, stand back in desperation when you refuse to comply with society’s submission to the satanic system. Indeed endless wars are constantly being waged against the Muslims who uphold values that are different from the Western norm.

The Qur’an states that Allah calls us to freedom and mercy, while Satan calls us to darkness, perversion and fear of worldly ruin.

It’s perfectly clear to me that David Cameron has been colluding with the Zio-bankers to engineer the redaction of the welfare state which we are now seeing. He has Menorah parties in No 10, with his cronies. But this public schoolboy, Zio-satanism plays on the fears of isolation of normal human beings.

I joined the far vaster world of clean-hearted victims of anti-Muslim war-crime, who know that they are only being targeted because they refuse to submit to the scary money-grasping machine. We can see that the Rothschild machine is worn out and desperate, and that Islam is going to power soon. I am far more worried by the fact that us Muslims still think that they have to play the Western game, lying and getting ensnared in un-Islamic vices, than the vast expanse of living dead who have been processed by the machine.

The powers that be keep throwing furniture in the path of their pursuers, but the inexorable mercy of God is swifter and vaster than the money-grinders who try to destroy human-beings.

The Jewish holocaust happened and it was a long time coming. The black slave-trade happened and it was a long time coming. Constantine in the 3rd century A.D. was waging constant wars in his time against the people of Africa who refused to change from belief in God to belief in Trinity.

The machine processes people into good citizens and then leaves them alone. WE ARE BEING PROCESSED AT THE MOMENT by the George Bush statement that because the US had superior fire-power to Saddam, that it would win. But the silly zios can’t see that winning by force has lost them their moral standing in the eyes of the crushed human race.

What used to be obvious only to Muslims is now written across the horizons: Satan’s power to destroy is empty compared to Allah’s power to create and sustain.

Any of the techies on this board considering helping Wikileaks to stay online? The site can be mirrored quite easily, if you have a shared/dedicated *nix server:

http://wikileaks.terrax.info/mass-mirror.html

Zio-Satanism? Crumbs, Anno – you are letting your anger make you sound quite irrational.

The powers that be are, for the umpteenth time, are NOT anti-Muslim. Iraq and Afghanistan were not invaded for religious reasons: you’ve talked about the damaging power of capital before, and I don’t see why you would reject that as sufficient reasoning?

If you’re genuinely open to seeing violence and full-scale war and all the suffering that goes with that as being part of the neo-capitalist system, then I’ll gladly share some extra thoughts on that topic. But I’d need to see that I wouldn’t be wasting my time first.

Incidentally, what do you mean by “The Jewish Holocaust [and] the black slave trade… [were] a long time coming?”

Jon, and best wishes to you as well.

The system of democracy, the power of the majority is completely wrong. We should be ruled by sharia, not human beings. But democracy as it now stands is mitigated by the decency of Protestant Reform, which threw out the excesses of theocratic megalomania by church, pope or their criminal adherents. Our system has become viciously corrupted in recent centuries by the rise of a replacement religious tyranny of Zionism.

Sharia as it now stands is unreformed. The law of God MUST be obeyed, but Mullahs do not have the authority to do anything more than persuade, UNTIL the citizens themselves submit to being regulated by Sharia. Islam has to learn the humility of their prophet, peace be upon him, before Allah entrusts the management of the world to the Mullahs’ arrogant hands.

I predict humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, through bitter civil war, the same as Iraq, UNLESS AND UNTIL the scholars of Islam cease to try to duplicate the mistakes of the previous generations of Caliphates. They have to abandon Macchiavelian deceit and political lying and they have to make themselves humble again, before Allah rewards them with worldy power.

Jon

I was referring to the link posted by apostate, which compared holocaust guilt with slave-trade guilt. In my view, these events took place and were provoked by Zio-satanists who were opposed to the civilised Christian values that persisted at the time.

It appears that these type of events, in which I include Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan, result from a combination of zio-Satanism and wealthy vested- interest colonials. You can trace the thread of anti-Semitism in Germany and of anti-Africanism in Europe long before the events took place. but the catalyst is always sato-zionism, however much you state or Obama states that persecution of the Muslims is not their motivation.

As to the Holocaust, the sato-zionistic purpose achieved their target result: the transformation of thousands of years of Jewish worship into apartheid occupation of Palestine.

“In my view, these events took place and were provoked by Zio-satanists who were opposed to the civilised Christian values that persisted at the time.”

The civilized Christian values of Nazi Germany? Riiiiiight!

British drones built on Israeli design

Britain got its ‘Watchkeeper’ drone into the air for the first time earlier this year.

Britain is introducing two new models of UAV; the Watchkeeper 180 and the Watchkeeper 450. Both UAVs are based on Israeli designs (the Hermes 180 and 450).

The Watchkeeper 450 is a 450 kg (992 pound) aircraft with a payload of 150 kg. It is also being equipped to carry Hellfire missiles for support of troops in Afghanistan. This UAV is already designed to carry two extra fuel tanks under its wings. Each of these fuel tanks weighs more than the 50 kg (110 pound) Hellfire missile. The Watchkeeper 450 is 6.5 meters (20 feet long) and has a 11.3 meter (35 foot) wingspan. It can stay in the air for up to 20 hours per sortie, and fly as high as 6,500 meters (20,000 feet). The Hermes 450 is the primary UAV for the Israeli armed forces.

The smaller (4.5 meters/14 feet long, 6.5 meter/20 foot wingspan) Watchkeeper 180 weighs 196 kg (430 pounds), has a maximum payload of 35 kg (77 pounds) and can stay in the air for ten hours at a time.

Both UAVs have day/night cameras and can supply ground troops with live video.

British troops have already been using other UAVs, and are convinced of the benefits of live video in support of combat operations. It is expected that Britain will begin using these craft to fly-over Iran and give advance information to special forces reconnaissance missions laying laser designators near nuclear sites.

By the way, some commentator here had theorized that Assange et al. must be “controlled assets” and I’ve seen people seriously asserting that WikiLeaks MUST be CIA-Mossad-Zio-Satanic-Banking-Usurious-Trilateral Commission-Bildergerby [edit according to prejudice] because after all why would the mainstream media take Assange so seriously when it continues to “blacklist” Craig Murray and Scott Ritter?

Maybe because almost any newspaper in the world is going to publish the contents of archives that are opened thirty years after the fact. It is standard to read about “damning revelations” from generations ago which usually amounts to some top politician calling another top politician a nob. Just because each and every opening of the archives does not reveal secret plans to overturn the entire known course of history in favour of some exotic worldview doesn’t mean it isn’t newsworthy.

Just to give you an example, poor ol’ Robert Fisk has chosen now, of all times, to go through the diplomatic cables of Ireland’s wartime diplomatic service. The Independent still publishes it yet it would be silly to assert that his hapless pieces are some charade to cover up the involvement of Roosevelt in the Pearl Harbor attack or the evil Zio-Satanists in 9/11 or the sinking of the Lusitania or whatever other fervent faith-based beliefs are popular among the conspiracy crowd.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-survival-of-the-neutral–irelands-second-world-war-2150836.html

By the way, has anyone seen this lunatic editorial that appeared in the lunatic Washington Times, itself a paper run by a religious nutbag:

“Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. vows that he is looking into possible criminal charges against Mr. Assange. It is too late for tough talk. At this point, we are beyond indictments and courts. The damage has been done; people have died – and will die because of the actions of this puerile, self-absorbed narcissist. News reports say the WikiLeaks founder is hiding out in England. If that’s true, we should treat Mr. Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets: Kill him.”

Jon

The humiliation of a whole society is the unintended consequence of greed, according to you.

Today I heard an absolute-total dumbo economist on Peter Day’s World of Business programme on the World service, state that in future our economy could progress without any increase in energy consumption, but purely through human ingenuity.

What! We humiliated a whole society and we didn’t even need our cut of the oil to keep our bankrupt economy going?

He should take a peep at the motorway system one day. Apparently two days of snow nearly brought our petrol stations and supermarkets to crisis shortages.

Brits are accused by yanks of not being willing to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, because our officers are scared of duplicating US genocide? Jon, our prime minister Blair, seeing the desperate need for oil security, hitched us up to severely satanic, US-Zionist anti-Muslim genocide. You can be a Iraqi-holocaust denier if you like but I still have some pride that this country is better than Blair’s criminal, Israel-dwelling mind.

Ruth: ” some including myself believe it’s run by intelligence services.”

Ruth, I’m sure you’re a nice lady and everything, but you believe EVERYTHING is run by the intelligence services. Presaging everything you say, with “I believe…” and “I think…” followed by assertions of “…is controlled by the intelligence services” is not an argument.

Neither is this:

“Also interesting was how the bits about Russia being a Mafia state emerged just before the FIFA vote”

If by “just before” you mean “from about twenty years ago and continuously, since then” then I would agree that it has emerged that Russia is a Mafia state just before the FIFA vote.

Actually, I can’t begin to understand what you mean by this. Do you mean that those gallant English gents Becks, Wills and Cammers jetted off to bid for a white elephant that they knew they wouldn’t get and so Assange skillfully leaked some suggestions that Russia might be a bit corrupt just beforehand to control the official narrative or something like that?

Maybe a better explanation would be that the English contingent’s attempts to rig the vote were less adept than Russia’s attempt to do so and if they look a bit like prize twats now they only have themselves to blame. We don’t need conspiracy to explain that. Just run of the mill greasy palming.

angryfanny

I don’t see the thrush of what you are trying to imply! You think that the German people are Nazis? I agree with you that at this time the blood of Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine is on the English hands. But I think that the English people and the German people are peaceloving, but somehow reluctant to hang their criminal leaders.Blair could easily return to power same as Hitler a second time!

I read (or maybe saw a video of an Assange interview) that WikiLeaks had given the entire set of Cablegate documents to the five papers. The papers go through the cables, assigning cables to the reporters most familiar with the subjects, who work out what should be redacted. Redactions are reported back to WikiLeaks. Also, releases are reported back to WikiLeaks, who then release the same material. So it is plausible that gossip and trivia would come out first – it’s easy to vet, and hey, these are journalists, right? So “keep watching” seems sensible.

A question to all the “WikiLeaks is fake” supporters – who knew, and who didn’t? Who is faking being shocked and outraged, and who is genuinely surprised? I’m suspending my (mild) disbelief and pretending that WikiLeaks is proven to be genuine, ‘cos it feels good and lots of fun!

Vronsky, thanks for the Sibel Edmonds link. That’s the first decent test for Cablegate that I’ve seen.

itchylips

It’s perfectly obvious why Qatar got the World Cup, because the buggers are still baling out the world economy with real, un-funny petro-money. As to Russia, it’s bigger than the UK. I remember roller-skating up and down an empty drive all the world cup when I was child. Of course they knew they were going to lose the bid. Don’t patronise.

“angryfanny”

Hoo hoo! Naughty word!

“I don’t see the thrush of what you are trying to imply!”

There is no “thrush”! You have made a flurry of rather bizarre posts in which you repeatedly refer to “zio-Satanism” or “sato-zionism” and suggested that the Holocaust was perpetrated by what you call “Zio-Satanists” in opposition to “civilized Christian values” prevalent at the time.

No, again, you don’t need to invent some weird conspiratorial explanation for how the Holocaust happened. Hitler was a rabid anti-semite who hated Jews (and gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally-ill and disabled, Slavs, Muslims too by the way, Jehovah’s witnesses etc…etc…) and he was fortunate to be surrounded by somewhat like-minded “civilized Christians”.

Yeah, weird stuff just happens from time to time. Nuffin to do wi’ me, guv. i wasn’t born at the time.

But I have just lived through 13 years of murderous violence instigated partly by our government. The word on the street is:

If people’s got the weapons, why’s people get surprised?

I warn you, aqngrysoba, if we do not hang Blair for war-crimes, he’ll be back doing the same like Hitler, hand in hand with the Milibands.

Anyhow, all the cables are available for download here: http://www.wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html

MJ, are you sure it isn’t just the ones released so far?

“Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. vows that he is looking into possible criminal charges against Mr. Assange.”

Looking into? Making stolen classified documents public is or is not a criminal act. I’d assume that it is. If so, what’s he waiting for? For the operation to achieve its intended objectives before winding it up?

Clark is correct in stating that all of the 250,000 stolen cables are in the hands of the media, or so it is implied by this Guardian story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy-cables-leaked

Look at the list of dates down the left side of the page MJ linked. The years Sibel Edmonds is interested in are absent. Is that list getting filled in?

Angry: you quoted the moonie-run Washington Times as saying, “News reports say the WikiLeaks founder is hiding out in England. If that’s true, we should treat Mr. Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets: Kill him.”

Yes indeed. Just like any other such target – if you identify the evil-doer as being in a certain area, why, we should kill everyone in that zone! Drop a hellfire missile on the crowd he might be in. Destroy the block of houses in which we suspect he currently resides. Heck, if he’s suspected of being in some particular restaurant, blow up that restaurant at once! That was all considered fair play in Iraq, even before “shock and awe”.

Do you suppose these people think for a moment before running their tough-talk editorials, or rethugs with their talking points? I believe the “treat him like any other high profile terrorist” originated with a tweet from the teabagger central control, the Palin compound itself. Although who precisely is being ‘terrorised’ (apart from powerful politicians being terrorised with their own words) is not clear.

“Ruth, I’m sure you’re a nice lady and everything, but you believe EVERYTHING is run by the intelligence services.”

Angry, why don’t you just come out with it, the standard taunt of all those who buy into the MSM narrative and call Ruth a CONSPIRACY THEORIST.

Not that it negates the force of anything that she has said, but it makes it clearer, exactly where you stand.

Not that I’m calling you a shill, or anything.

What I would like to know though is what you and other supporters of Wikileaks think that Wikileaks has told us that it is so important for citizens of a democratic society to know.

That there were WMD in Iraq?

That Osama bin Laden is alive and well and directing the war against the US from Pakistan?

That Putin is an alpha dog?

“…are you sure it isn’t just the ones released so far?”

Not at all sure since you mention it. In fact, having had a closer look, I see that at the top of the page it says “Currently released so far… 931 / 251,287″

Alfred: Well… we do know now that the Germans are kind of dull and lumbering, the French are rather excitable, the Italians are childish and sexist, the Russians pretty much run a mafia state, the Afghans are corrupt to a man, and that the British are obsequious to the US to the point of embarrassment. Want more? Well, the US likes to spy on everyone, the British royals are oiks, the Chinese are taking over the world, and our Middle-East stooges all say what they know Amerika wants them to say (particularly in regard to Iran, and they say nothing about Israel).

Isn’t that enough for you to be going on with?

Collateral Murder.

The UK government biased an inquiry in the favour of the US. Prince Andrew supports BAE Systems corruption in Saudi Arabia. The incoming UK government promised to be pro-US.

Only 249,000 still to come, can’t be much left…

Glenn: “Do you suppose these people think for a moment before running their tough-talk editorials, or rethugs with their talking points?”

No, probably not. I think the editorial is borderline criminal in its irresponsibility. It’s effectively a fatwa.

Alfred,

“Looking into? Making stolen classified documents public is or is not a criminal act. I’d assume that it is. If so, what’s he waiting for? For the operation to achieve its intended objectives before winding it up?”

Alfred, I didn’t put that editorial up there so that we can chew over the relative merits of the events described in the piece. It is an obviously lunatic piece which is littered with factual errors and incoherent ranting. I am simply putting it up there to show you that some of the right-wing crazies are very serious about Wikileaks. Palin and Huckabee too.

But as you asked, it is clear that the leaking by an enlisted man of these documents is illegal and unsurprisingly Bradley Manning will be court-martialled. There is surely no case for saying it is not a court-martiallable offence. Yet, whether Assange’s actions are illegal is probably a more tricky legal question. If Assange is guilty then why not the NYT, the Guardian and Der Spiegel?

I have no idea where US law stands on that. According to Assange, the Pentagon has been trying to build a case for saying Assange is guilty of espionage but they have been unable to do so yet.

It seems pretty crazy to accuse Assange of espionage (as some American did on R4′s World At One today). Assange has performed the same function as the telephone, newspapers or the Internet itself – a conduit for such information. It’s amazing that people go on the record accusing Assange of stealing secrets, when it’s perfectly obvious he hasn’t stolen anything. First Amendment rights that cover freedom of the press will keep the courts tied up indefinitely should any prosecution actually be brought to bear, as the US administration knows full well, which is why they haven’t even tried going down that route.

The question of the NYT, Guardian et al being guilty of the same were brought up in the same interview, but dismissed because they weren’t the primary source. Naturally, our BBC stooge newshound didn’t embarrass her correspondent by pointing out Assange wasn’t the primary source either.

“Angry, why don’t you just come out with it, the standard taunt of all those who buy into the MSM narrative and call Ruth a CONSPIRACY THEORIST.”

I don’t know what other term applies when someone is repeatedly making unsubstantiated claims of conspiracy. You do it yourself with your theories about how the BNP is an intelligence services front, and Wikileaks etc…etc…

“Not that I’m calling you a shill, or anything.”

Which is the standard taunt of the conspiracy theorist against anyone who doesn’t believe your theories without evidence. The difference is that the word “shill” is both connotively and denotively derogatory. Not that it bothers me at all.

“What I would like to know though is what you and other supporters of Wikileaks think that Wikileaks has told us that it is so important for citizens of a democratic society to know.”

I think this is just a meaningless question. The document dump is simply a vast amount of chatter between diplomats. The fact that you feel it MUST contain really Earth-shattering secrets is your problem when they don’t appear.

Other people have already made that point here much better than I (I think CheebaCow, for example and maybe Vronsky). But like I said before the opening of any archives is usually a newsworthy event in itself. The fact that these are being opened so soon after their creation makes it even more so.

As for being a “supporter” of Wikileaks, my support is tepid at best. I think that this guy cannot be as smart as he thinks he is to know that what he is doing isn’t dangerous or that he can can predict that the fallout from these leaks will be less than the fallout of keeping diplomatic cables confidential. Now, clearly, when you are anti-war you need to have another avenue of conflict resolution and surely the best of those is diplomacy. These leaks effectively cripple the avenue of diplomacy at least towards those who might want to speak frankly in confidence to US diplomats. I think it is fatuous to assume that there is some principle of human affairs which make it much better for everything to be out in the open.

“The question of the NYT, Guardian et al being guilty of the same were brought up in the same interview, but dismissed because they weren’t the primary source. Naturally, our BBC stooge newshound didn’t embarrass her correspondent by pointing out Assange wasn’t the primary source either.”

Well, exactly. That’s what I mean and that was part of my response to Alfred who thinks if something is illegal it should be immediately apparent. I’m saying this is not so. I am saying that some US authorities might be ATTEMPTING to pin charges on Assange but haven’t been able to find a legal basis.

And yes, the espionage thing is again something that they can’t pin on him but would like to. We can, of course, think up some kind of hypothetical scenario. If Assange were being bankrolled by, say, the Taliban to try to expose all confidential information then there would be a case. It’s almost certain that he would be under surveillance right now to see if he is working for someone else.

Angrysoba, this isn’t going to “cripple diplomacy”. It’s a one-off leak, better security procedures will be established; two and a half million people had (have?) access to this stuff. What it will do is make lots of people more cautious, which may be a good thing.

It’s also shown up who is pro censorship, pro assassination, contemptuous of the rule of law, etc.

And it’s not just any country, it’s the US. With its wars, rendition, dodgy deals and alliances, any break in US secrecy that disrupts US spin is bound to be popular.

Glenn,

Thanks for the run down on what Wikileaks has taught us!

Angry

Re: ” If Assange is guilty then why not the NYT, the Guardian and Der Spiegel?

…According to Assange, the Pentagon has been trying to build a case for saying Assange is guilty of espionage but they have been unable to do so yet.”

Well here’s something one of the lawyers, Larry or Courtenay Barnett might help us with.

However, beside things like Britain’s Official Secrets Act, which would surely cover those passing secrets on to the public as well as those purloinging them, there are general laws against sedition, etc. which must be applicable if national harm has been done, as many allege. Therefore, part of the argument for Wikileaks being some kind of exercise in cognitive infiltration (i.e., an intelligence operation) is the fact that no legal action to stop publication of the stolen classified docs has been taken.

That the MSM is playing the central role in selecting material for publication from the stolen cache (material which, surprise surprise, confirms everything the warmonger press has been telling us for years) — the NY Times acting in consultation with the Government — is a further reason to consider Ruth’s hypothesis that the release of information via Wikileaks is a government operation.

That Hillary Clinton seems to approve of Wikileaks notwithstanding that the leak of diplomatic cables has been deemed a black eye for the State Department supports the same case.

Contrary to Angry’s assertion, I do not think and did not state that “if something is illegal it should be immediately apparent,” which is why I said it would be useful if one of the lawyers who sometimes write here would comment on the legal implications.

However, it is reasonable to suppose that a deliberate breach of official secrecy can cause harm to the state, and in that case the overt act(s) giving rise to the breach of secrecy may amount to sedition or treason.

That governments appear to be conniving at the Wikileaks leaks suggests that they are intended to serve the interests of the state, not to damage them.

“Therefore, part of the argument for Wikileaks being some kind of exercise in cognitive infiltration (i.e., an intelligence operation) is the fact that no legal action to stop publication of the stolen classified docs has been taken.”

Alfred, “cognitive infiltration” is not, as you think, the wilful spreading of disinformation. The idea is that in certain closed-off areas of the blogosphere where everyone furiously agrees with each other that the government controls everything and did 9/11 and the Jews killed JFK, there is the fear that people will start to do dangerous things based on their loony fantasies such as gunning people down at Holocaust memorial museums, flying planes into IRS buildings, starting a suicide cult etc… Cognitive infiltration is the idea of going into these circles and saying, “well, are you quite sure that’s exactly right?” to disrupt the confirmation bias they are used to.

I have said before that such things are unlikely to work and in fact they may be illegal. Besides, if “cognitive infiltration” were ever unmasked it would be utterly counter-productive as all the tinfoilers could start saying, “See? See? See? Everything IS run by the security services!”

Anno,

“Today I heard an absolute-total dumbo economist on Peter Day’s World of Business programme on the World service, state that in future our economy could progress without any increase in energy consumption, but purely through human ingenuity.”

There’s nothing dumbo about that. Energy use efficiency has been increasing in the industrial economies since the construction of the first steam engine. Yet even now many processes are absurdly inefficient. Why for example does your average north American office worker need a 200+ horsepower mobile living room with leather armchairs to haul their arse across town to the office every day? Obviously they don’t. Most other major energy uses are equally and pathetically inefficient: home heating, which mainly consists in heating the outdoors, through drafts and poorly insulated structures, lightbulbs, snap peas flown daily from Kenya to London, etc., etc.

“What! We humiliated a whole society and we didn’t even need our cut of the oil to keep our bankrupt economy going?”

We didn’t need the oil, India and China do, as they come up to our living standard. We could have let Saddam develop Iraq’s oil, but that would have given him the means to build the second most expensive military establishment in the world, which was intolerable to the empire.

Now that Iraq is under puppet administration, oil output is rising to 12 million barrels a day, or about $300 billion worth a year, most of it going to the Government of Iraq for uses which one hopes will benefit the people of Iraq.

“Angrysoba, this isn’t going to “cripple diplomacy”. It’s a one-off leak, better security procedures will be established; two and a half million people had (have?) access to this stuff. What it will do is make lots of people more cautious, which may be a good thing.”

What do you mean, it’s a one-off? How do you know that there aren’t going to be massive dumps forthcoming? Assange may be the editor of WikiLeaks but he doesn’t make the decision for any other Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to follow suit.

“And it’s not just any country, it’s the US. With its wars, rendition, dodgy deals and alliances, any break in US secrecy that disrupts US spin is bound to be popular.”

Oh, I know why they are popular. They appeal to anti-US sentiment. But I mean that it affects any country that talks to the US. That goes for China too who are making angry noises about dealing with these leaks properly, whatever that means. I know that China is often favourably compared with the US hereabouts and criticism of China is often decried, even by anno, who must know of China’s occupation of East Turkestan, but I wonder how China would deal with their own version of Assange.

Alfred, “Contrary to Angry’s assertion, I do not think and did not state that “if something is illegal it should be immediately apparent,” which is why I said it would be useful if one of the lawyers who sometimes write here would comment on the legal implications.”

No, Alfred, what you said was this:

“Looking into? Making stolen classified documents public is or is not a criminal act. I’d assume that it is. If so, what’s he waiting for?”

Which is clearly pouring scorn on the idea that there could be anything complex about the question of legality of the leaks.

” is not, as you think…”

Angry, why don’t you just say what you think instead of indulging the offensive habit of falsly attributing beliefs to others?

Re: “Besides, if “cognitive infiltration” were ever unmasked it would be utterly counter-productive as all the tinfoilers could start saying, “See? See? See? Everything IS run by the security services!”

But that’s what those you call the tinfoilers are saying now, istn’t it? So in that case your argument is pointless.

There is no Official Secrets Act in the U.S. That was highlighted by the Valerie Plame affair. My (limited) understanding of the UK Official Secrets Act is that a few of the actors in the Plame affair would have been indictable. However, under U.S. law, the prosecution couldn’t come up with anything, other than convicting one of the individuals with lying to the prosecution.

Handing over documents that you obtain as an insider, especially in the military, is another matter of course.

I think angrysoba’s point about Assange being indistinguishable from a traditional news source is extremely relevant, and probably what the matter comes down to. If you recall The Big Lebowski, when Walter said that “the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint,” he was referring to the New York Times Co. v. United States, which was in the process of publishing the Pentagon Papers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States). That case is fairly on-point.

Plus there’s the matter that Assange is not an American, so he largely escapes espionage laws.

Outcome: there’s really no law with which to indict and convict Assange, so the fact that he’s not been arrested does not indicate that he’s a deep-cover super-secret agent man; rather, the U.S. is correctly applying its own laws.

Angry,

“”Looking into? Making stolen classified documents public is or is not a criminal act. I’d assume that it is. If so, what’s he waiting for?”

Which is clearly pouring scorn on the idea that there could be anything complex about the question of legality of the leaks.”

Bollocks. I said “I assume” clearly indicating uncertainty. If I knew for a fact, I would have simply stated the fact. And I said, “if so,” again clearly indicating uncertainty.

And I further stated that it would be useful to have a legal opinion on the question.

But you seem to be approaching a state of mania so I’ll sign off here for a bit.

“I said “I assume” clearly indicating uncertainty.”

No, it clearly indicates a belief. One without evidential support but that is not something that has bothered you in the past. You were trying to be ironic as if the very notion of having to “look into” the legality of a case were ridiculous.

Only later did you suggest it might be more nuanced than that. However, I will drop the subject now because it isn’t interesting for anyone else.

Angrysoba, (1) I mean, the leak has happened. It is previous conversations with US diplomatic staff that are compromised, not current or future ones. (2) Opposition to the US should not be dismissed as “sentiment”.

Angrysoba, I’d advise you against word tennis with Alfred.

Larry, thanks for your 3:30 AM post.

This domain seems to recieve a good ammount of visitors. How do you promote it? It gives a nice individual twist on things. I guess having something authentic or substantial to talk about is the most important thing.

“If you recall The Big Lebowski, when Walter said that “the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint,” he was referring to the New York Times Co. v. United States, which was in the process of publishing the Pentagon Papers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_States). That case is fairly on-point.”

Yes, this is a good point. The Pentagon Papers is a precedent that the New York Times will have been very familiar with, of course, meaning that they would know full well whether what they were doing is legal or not.

Now how about desisting with the ugly ad hom jibes that you direct towards Suhayl Saadi. They are often just as obnoxious as the anti-Semitic witterings of some of the other commenters here.

As it happens, I spoke to someone who was once in US Army Intelligence who said it is not that surprising that an army private could get access to the field reports and the diplomatic cables as Manning is supposed to have done. She said that even when she was in the army a number of years ago there was intelligence sharing between the State Department and DoD. Since 9/11 it has become even easier. According to some of the article on this, it is because after 9/11 greater intelligence sharing was seen as necessary to prevent further attacks. The problem as we can now see is that it means more people can release that data.

Suhayl:

In regards to South America, it appears that the left have learned some lessons, especially from all the dirty CIA tricks last century. There seems to be a concerted effort to cooperate regionally and protect one another, which was not the case before. This policy is seen in new organisations such as the BancoSur, the Union of South American Nations and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. Although the 2009 Honduran coup is very troubling.

RE Wired & Wikileaks:

I would remain somewhat sceptical of any reporting that Wired does on WL. The guy (Lamo) that betrayed Bradley Manning and turned him into the FBI has a very long and cosy relationship with one of editors at Wired (Poulsen). Wired got the scoop on Manning’s arrest and it was Poulsen who reported it. Glenn Greenwald has a long and detailed write up about all the events here: (salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks)

“That’s the first decent test for Cablegate that I’ve seen.”

Another suggests itself: Craig ought to have a pretty accurate idea of some of the stuff that should emerge about Uzbekistan.

Juan Cole has some observations on the legality or otherwise of WL.

preview.tinyurl.com/37cfv96

“Another suggests itself: Craig ought to have a pretty accurate idea of some of the stuff that should emerge about Uzbekistan.”

Yes, that is a good point. Assuming that Mr Murray sent cables to the US State Department while ambassador to Uzbekistan he would surely expect them to turn up in the dump.

A ahocking statistic for consideration by the ConDems.

‘The number of children of working parents who are living in poverty in the UK has risen to an unprecedented 2.1 million, a report has found.

A report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that while the number of impoverished children dropped overall to 3.7 million, the majority are now from homes where a parent or carer is working, accounting for 58% of the total.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/dec/06/children-poverty-working-parents

I found a good new blogger called Tim Wilkinson. He has recorded a Radio 4 conversation with Jane Garvey and Annie Machon ex MI5 and Christopher Andrew, the MI5 historian. The blogger’s own running commentary on the videos are hilarious.

http://surelysomemistake.blogspot.com/2010/12/annie-machon-v-christopher-andrew-on.html

There are other interesting topics on the site as you can see.

s/b ….tunning commentary on the videos is hilarious.

Something else funny on Radio 4 Today when Naughtie made a Spoonerism on Jeremy Hunt’s name.

http://bit.ly/eza4rv

He is a rich *unt, has personal wealth of over £4m, and had to repay some of his parliamentary expenses.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/labour-mps-expenses/6780793/MPs-expenses-Jeremy-Hunt-to-repay-9500.html

Tim Wilkinson! He’s been blogging for a few years at least. I even got a mention once:

http://surelysomemistake.blogspot.com/2010/08/spurious-retraction-syndrome-or-do-you.html

Vronsky,

Angrysoba,

I thought of Craig’s inside knowledge, too, but he was UK, not US. I thought all the cables were from US diplomatic staff (correct me if I’m wrong), in which case we might find comments about Craig, but nothing he actually wrote himself.

Thanks, angrysoba at 5:58am, I really appreciate it. Your consistent attempts to remain rational and talk about the issues rather than (all of our disparate and largely unknowable) personalities and your drawing a firm line on racism, etc. in these discussions on these boards is important and I’m sure others here would concur. It means a lot to me, thanks.

Suhayl, are you still trying to call me a racist?

Suhayl – I 2nd your comment. it is just because these discussions are important that there are so many nasty smears from trolls whose masters will pay to stifle free speech.

Re glenn’s comment at December 6, 2010 2:10 AM. Like Glenn I too have learnt a lot from wiki-leaks, one item of which can be seen by clicking on my signature. I’ve been impressed by what has come out of wiki-leaks, though I have been amazed about the opposition to the disclosures from certain sections of the media. It could be argued that we should have already known about much of the leaked information from the media, but the fact is we didn’t. Why?? May I suggest that all too often the media gets its scoops spoon fed to it by PR professionals who know how to manipulate them; So that the road ahead for an ambitious journalist today is not to be a good investigative journalist, but rather to toe the line with the right PR people. Indeed such journalists will invariably see wiki-leaks as a threat and seek to minimize its value.

Further to my post at December 5, 2010 9:35 AM

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-al-megrahi-move-saved-uk.html

“If accurate, the cable is evidence that the British government was clearly supportive of the decision by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to release Megrahi, the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 and the murder of 270 people. At the time, then prime minister Gordon Brown refused to comment on the decision and insisted the UK government had played “no role” in the release.”

Brown and the Labour Party have consistently attacked the decision to release.

somebody: thanks for the link to surelysomemistake – excellent.

Suhayl Saadi, thanks for the link to metanoia-films.org, and the excellent Psyops video.

Craig – another call from me to increase moderation here. First the spam needs to be dealt with, then there are two or three firmly banned individuals who insist on posting.

That all said: I am pleasantly surprised by Larry’s December 6, 2010 3:30 AM post. Worthwhile, discursive and diatribe-free. But his racist attacks on Suhayl, his bating of Roderick, and his aggressive sniping generally make most of his input frustrating and unproductive.

Could you please inform me of my racist attack on Suhayl? Really? What are you talking about?

Larry,

Interesting comment on the legal status of an Australian leaking US Classified docs.

It would be interesting to know the status of an American newspaper, e.g., the NYTimes that publishes classified documents. Presumably, the NYTimes believes that it is not in legal jeopardy by doing so, but is there no legal issue at all?

It would also be interesting to know the legal implications where the distribution of information, classified or otherwise, harms American security? In this connection, the Canadian lawyer, Ezra Levant, wrote in the Toronto Sun:

“Assange published the names of Afghan human rights activists and others who have co-operated with the U.S. ?” giving out names of villages and GPS coordinates.

“That’s not journalism. That’s not whistleblowing. That’s setting up “deadly revenge attacks,” says Reporters Without Borders.

“Zabihullah Mujahid is grateful. He’s a Taliban spokesman who says “we know how to punish them.”

“Assange published details about technology used to stop improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from being detonated. WikiLeaks calls roadside bombs a “rebel investment,” proudly pointing out for every dollar spent by the terrorists, the U.S. and Canada have to spend a thousand to defend against them. So Assange published those anti-IED details online.”

Today, apparently, Wikileaks has published a list of worldwide infrastructure ‘critical’ to security of U.S.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40526224/ns/us_news-security/

It is reports of this kind that seem to justify calls for Assange’s assassination — assassination being now a standard US policy tool apparently.

Thus, for example, Ezra Levant writes:

“Assange and his colleagues act like spies, not journalists. WikiLeaks could have its assets seized, just like the Taliban has. And U.S. President Barack Obama could do what he’s doing to the Taliban throughout the world.

“He doesn’t sue them or catch them. He kills them. Because it’s war.

“Obama has even ordered the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.

“How does Obama see Assange any differently?”

I don’t advocate assassinating Assange, but I find it difficult to challenge the logic of those who do.

“U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is calling the founder of the online site WikiLeaks a “high-tech terrorist” for releasing classified material from the U.S. government.

“McConnell said that the online release of secret diplomat exchanges has done “enormous damage” to the country and to its relationship with its allies.

“McConnell told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he hopes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be prosecuted for the disclosures.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/05/ap/congress/main7119787.shtml

It seems to me that information distributed by Wikileaks has either done significant harm to United States interests, in which case Assange is likely to suffer the consequences, or as many have supposed, Wikileaks is some kind of U.S. propaganda operation, the information released containing sufficient titillating gossip to conceal the taste of rat poison.

“I don’t advocate assassinating Assange, but I find it difficult to challenge the logic of those who do. ”

Alfred, either someone is posting in your name, or you have just gone off the deep end. I understand why elites and members of the elite might be opposed to the release of the cables – they are worried about the levers of power slipping from their hands. I can understand why ordinary people and a few well-motivated diplomats might also be opposed – they believe that diplomacy is delicate and needs to be conducted in secrecy. But do you find it genuinely difficult to challenge calling for an assassination?

Assange and his team have, as far as we know, not broken any laws. In particular, he is not treasonous – since he is not an American citizen. I am not convinced that he is ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’ since many governments are exposed by the cables as duplicitous, not just the United States. Indeed, at times, the US image has been helped by the cables; they appear to have been a moderating influence on the Saudi dictatorship’s militarism.

The US establishment has not yet shown that the release of the cables has harmed anyone, but the serial lying and deception that is routinely practised by neoliberal governments has murdered millions. For the first time in some years, I have a glimmer of optimism that international politics is about to get a great deal more honest, and I applaud that.

Meanwhile your statement sounds like you’re not thoroughly opposed to the United States killing a journalist they don’t like. Even though you’ve taken a view on a number of topics that I’ve found regressive, this is extremely disappointing.

“I have a glimmer of optimism that international politics is about to get a great deal more honest”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that sentence before. Are you feeling OK?

@anno, I thought I’d remembered correctly that you were a Sharia supporter, but didn’t want to rely on that too much in my last post lest I be viewed as making an negative ethnic assumption.

But: you must be stark raving mad to support such a system, but then you’ve probably heard that before, and shielded your religious fervence from the cognitive dissonance you should experience from coming here. I’ve talked to Islamic extremists preaching in Birmingham, and like you they appear to have thrown the democracy baby out with the neoliberal bathwater. They can be animated and excited about Sharia, but don’t see how unfair it is to put decisions in the hands of religious nutters who most of us don’t recognise as ‘authorities’ anyway. Why swap one form of murderous anti-democracy with another?

I think you could make the conversion from Sharia apologist to democratic idealist if you wanted to: democracy is broken, but then perhaps we’ve not yet achieved it? You should read more, and not just the Qu’ran: what do you think of Marx? Anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation? Social democratic ideals? Socialism? Participatory Economics from Michael Albert? The Letts currency system? Are you so frustrated with human output that you think we can’t solve the worldwide economic and environmental crises, and that the levers of power cannot be wrenched from the hands of the elite?

@MJ – feeling pretty good today (though not getting much work done!).

Do you think I am being premature in my statement, or are you personally convinced that the cables as misinformation deliberately leaked by the US? I find the latter an interesting suggestion, but I’ve not seen anything to support it, and whilst I am no fan of the Iranian leadership, I think they’ve blinded themselves to Saudi mendacity.

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Jon: I’m agnostic on the true status of the leaks but yes, the proposition that the Wikileaks is being used, either wittingly or not, to disseminate planted disinformation is a compelling one. For the time being however I’m happy to give the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever the truth of the matter however I feel no optimism. On the contrary, I am a little fearful that one upshot of all this might be that our internet freedoms will be curtailed – and all for sake of some rather dull diplomatic cables.

OK, yeah, I see where you’re coming from.

I don’t think the cables are dull, but they are not the primary issue here. The issue, which the global elite see all too well, is that the nature of secret exchange may be forced to be more open and accountable simply by virtue of the demonstrated power of leaks to force governments to act more honestly. Given that (in my view) the hidden hand of the market forces the elite towards secrecy and mendacity, an enforced move towards honesty is the same as capital losing a portion of its selfish control to the democratic majority.

I am also impressed by Assange’s years-old essays on the nature of reducing the power of a conspiracy by preventing its ability to hide its crimes. If that theoretical and intellectual idea proves correct in the real world – where of course unforeseen variables may change its predicted course – then the power of capital may be substantially weaker than we’d all previously assumed.

I am happy to hear that I am being naive, but the glimmer remains.

Alfred

I am working tonight 100 miles away from home. The machines we are installing use lots of copper and last 10 years. Economies are possible, but it would be nice if that gave the African continent which produced the copper ore a cut.

Jon

The Creator wrote the manual, so why should I try and discard it for a hotch-potch of human ideas?

Anno, the problem is, God doesn’t enforce Sharia; that always falls to people. I’ve no problem with you living, voluntarily, in accordance with Sharia law, but I certainly don’t want some self appointed “representative of God” telling everyone how to live. Where would we find the perfect humans that we could trust?

Jon; I, too, feel cautiously optimistic about these leaks. I agree that they’re likely to increase honesty. It is also highly illustrative to see assorted governments towing the US line, and amusing to find the US in agreement with China etc.

anno – and you’d force that system on (a) people who believe in a different creator/manual to you, (b) people who don’t believe in a creator at all, or (c) people who believe in a creator of any kind, but are quite attached to the idea of democracy as well? Perhaps you regard your views as more important than theirs, backed up as you are by The Word Of God!

I’d like to see you comment on the anti-democratic nature of Sharia, as well as perhaps illustrating that you have genuinely read about some of the things I’ve mentioned with an open mind.

The Creator wrote the manual.

Did he use a pencil, a pen or a keyboard?

Am downloading the Wikileaks insurance file, btw (https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5723136/WikiLeaks_insurance). Anyone familiar with Torrent is recommended to download it, especially if they have the swift capacity to decrypt and publish if such an action proves necessary. Personally, I hope it doesn’t.

Yes, Somebody. Apparently, the Creator’s manual was written in evolved human language, complete with all its ambiguities and inaccuracies. I don’t know of any passage that says something like “WARNING! The thoughts of the Creator cannot be accurately expressed in human language, nor even fully comprehended by the human brain. Please check your interpretation of these scriptures against your God-given, built-in sense of empathy before telling anyone else what God’s laws. Remember that your interpretation is just as likely to be flawed as theirs.”

Jon,

When I said

“I don’t advocate assassinating Assange,” I meant just that.

and when I said, “but I find it difficult to challenge the logic of those who do.”

I meant that, for the reasons I had given, the logic of those who advocated assassination was difficult to challenge.

Specifically, those who advocate assassination believe:

(a) that information provided by Assange, .e.g, on IED defenses and the location of human rights advocates, has likely caused death to American soldiers or American citizens in Afghanistan or soldiers of American allies, including the son of my doctor, killed recently by an IED.

(b) Assange’s actions aid the enemy, therefore he should be treated as an enemy.

That’s the logic. I didn’t say I accept the premises. However, if I did, I would probably accept the logic also. In fact, I still think it most probably that Assange is a stooge or a dupe of some disinformation operation.

But then it might be all about that $5 million he’s trying to raise — not bad for a few months work and no need for an audited account.

Although it is always tiresome to listen to Alex Jones, a recent interview with Webster Tarpley provides background to the thesis that Wikileaks is a US operation intended to damage enemies, both American and foreign.

http://tarpley.net/2010/12/05/assange-targets-cia-enemies/

This reference may generate particular derision from those one might suspect of being engaged in cognitive infiltration.

“This reference may generate particular derision from those one might suspect of being engaged in cognitive infiltration.”

You what?

Loved your 6.27 post, Clark, interesting stuff all round in fact.

Going back to anno’s copper cabling:

Copper is very much in demand these days. Junkies steal boilers from uninhabited flats in order to sell the copper on the black market. I once worked in a place which got flooded one midsummer morning because of that; in an inner-city irony somehow typical of Glasgow, other junkies helped us clear it up (as otherwise they wouldn’t have got their methadone script). Right now, the sweeping white space-age concrete and metal of the 2014 Commonwealth Stadium and Village is being constructed near there – interesting juxtaposition. I hope the people in the area benefit.

And so, in an almost absurdist semantic, we have lots of coppers chasing lots of copper.

Congo, Democratic Republic of. Dalmarnock, Glasgow. Mines. Necolonialism. Organised crime. War. It’s all there, in front of our eyes, every day on every street-corner.

Alfred,

On the links you’ve previously provided regarding “finding WMDs”, I echo other voices here to say I’m unimpressed. I would welcome speculation why, if they thought it was significant, this was not run as a major story by the MSM. Given that it supports corporate capital very well, I am inclined to think they didn’t think it was significant enough to wake that particular giant.

On the IED and human rights advocates issue, I’m not aware of that, and I will look into it. Thanks. If what you say is true, would you support WL if it had not done these things? I should appreciate any links on this topic, from anyone, and I will think on it.

I am totally in favour of WL redacting things where there are safety issues at stake. But I am still frustrated at the imbalance of this argument: the power of global capital has killed hundreds of thousands (or millions) of Iraqis, and thousands of Western troops, and the counterbalancing action (release of secret documents) is criticised for putting a much smaller group of people at risk. I am not diminishing the importance of protecting human rights workers – just unhappy that some people are furiously protecting a rotten system, and wondering why those people – perhaps, respectfully, you included – are not furious at the system in the first place.

And: become an enemy of the United States and all its aggressive security assets for an unknown portion of 5m USD? No thanks from me! Do people here regard this as a tempting offer?

Jon,

“On the links you’ve previously provided regarding “finding WMDs”, I echo other voices here to say I’m unimpressed. ”

I wasn’t impressed either. My point was that significant US media outlets including, not only Wired Mag, but also the NY Post, took the Wikileaks documents as proof of existence of the long-sought Iraqi WMD’s.

The second sentence of the Wired story states:

“But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.”

What more do you want in justification of the war?

True the rest of the story essentially rebuts the initial claim. But the point is many more people will have read the first couple of sentences than the whole story.

The NY Post begins its story “US did find Iraq WMD’s” with the blunt statement “There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after all,” and provides none of the details that would lead one to realise that the story was BS.

Re: the IED jammers, Assange even admits he probably has blood on his hands.

http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N58/wikileaks_p.html

Sounds a weirdo:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?_r=2&hp

Those readers who still give WikiLeaks any credence at all I suspect are those whose critical faculties have already been irreparably damaged by their reliance on corporate and gate-keeper sources.

To those who read widely and are more selective re-which sources are reliable the phoniness of WikiLeaks has been abundantly apparent from its inception.

Since when do websites revealing very embarrassing things re-the doings of the US govt. receive tons of publicity in the tightly controlled propaganda organ known as the mainstream media?

Give me a break!

If the same info was coming out of vetstoday there would never be a peep about it in the kept press.

Wake up you dimwits!

“Sounds a weirdo”

Paranoid megalomaniac.

Steelback

You sound like me! These guys are so slow it’s incredible. They just babble on at length about precisely nothing.

Pavlovian dogs trained to say nothing re-anything that matters and attack anyone who tells the truth about Israel and its international subversions as an “anti-semite”.

Look what happened to 90 year old veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvmDZ05nMCM

She wouldn’t last long as a corporate media correspondent in this country at all either.

Funny thing is the video has been filed by a Zionist website claiming she is recorded saying something “anti-semitic”.

Forgive me-I’m not as quick as the PC Pavlovian dogs here but I missed the anti-semitism completely. I heard her talking re-the Zionist cabal controlling US Presidents and forcing them into wars against people who are really friends not enemies-but anti-semitism no way!

Given Thomas has Lebanese Arab ancestry the idea that Ashkenazi Jews have some God-given right to denounce her as an “anti-semite” is positively obscene.

It’s Pavlovian as well!

Hi Albert,

OK, interesting. On WMD, you were unimpressed and so therefore you think Assange/WL is a security asset? I’m not so sure, since I don’t see any great win for the United States yet (perhaps a split in the Arab world aside, but isn’t it split already? Would the Palestinians regard the Saudi dictatorship better if it wasn’t for the cables?). Personally I was unimpressed because, if the story was genuinely newsworthy in favour of the establishment – which sounds like it could have been – it would have reached British shores and we would have heard it LONG and LOUD. We just didn’t get it here as far as I know – at a volume to be noticeable, at least.

In any case, it is worth us both considering nefarious US groups within the power elite (CIA?) inserting significant battlefield finds for Washington to discover, and to subsequently offer to the media as “proof” they were right all along. This could happen without the knowledge of most of the establishment, and certainly without the foreknowledge that the cables would be leaked (or, indeed, “leaked”).

I should be interested to know more about what you see as Assange’s cavalier attitude to putting people at risk deliberately. I’m afraid the article you proffer, however, is rotten to the core – it could have easily been written by McCain or Lieberman, and it looks like the author is gunning for a well-paid post on Capitol Hill. I don’t think reactionary student demagoguery should be offered as evidence here, even if it is labelled ‘opinion’. There was not even a hint of balance or discursiveness in that piece.

To the author’s (very minor) credit, he at least attempts to tackle the awkward issue regarding Assange’s nationality – that he is not a US citizen ought to pose some problems for a law-abiding American establishment. But your nutter reverts to Palin type quickly: apparently this doesn’t matter, nor is violating the sovereignty of another country a problem. It is not the “first obligation” of the government to defend some “vague conception of international law”, and worrying about this is “obsessing”. Assange should either be extradited or “snatch[ed]” since “we do not need the permission of foreigners to defend our country”.

I see the point you’ve extracted from this article, and I am interested in reading about this further. My enthusiasm for the +purpose+ of Wikileaks is undimmed, even though I am not in favour of putting civilians at risk. I’d want to see several good reports on this topic, however, if I were to take Wikileaks to task on it.

But I think there is a larger point to be taken from the article, and you seem to have missed it entirely. The essence of Wikileaks and the massive global support they have received comes about +precisely+ because people like the author have got themselves in government, with their violence, their arrogance, their disregard for international law, and their appalling city-on-a-hill exceptionalism. Without a hint of irony, your author calls Assange a fanatic!

This brings me back to the last paragraph in my last post, which you’ve not commented on. +If+ Wikileaks has endangered, say, hundreds of people, should we not consider the million dead from US foreign policy – just in Iraq – as well? How about the deaths – signficantly more than could be posited as at risk from Wikileaks releases – that are happening +right now+ in Afghanistan? Drone strikes on Pakistan or Somalia? The supply of military aid to Israel?

In fact, my penultimate paragraph is also important, I think: if it were not for issues where some data should have been redacted for safety’s sake, would you be in favour of Wikileaks generally, to reign in the power of the US establishment? If not, why not? Do you see the US political elite, in sum, as generally well-meaning?

Here here Alfred, amongst the fog of diplomatic chatter we note the Iraq WMD issue taken up by the NY Post and spoon-fed to the American public. We note that Assange lawyer ‘is being watched’ by ‘dark actors’ in cars, hiding behind newspapers outside his house??

Wikileaks is being approved and publicised by every TV network and press group and governments around the world are giving Assange and his site official recognition.

There have been countless numbers of independent journalists, bloggers and other websites that have exposed similar information revealed on Wikileaks… Where’s their media coverage?

Now there’s the demonisation of Assange, the incessant bleatings of compromised national security and the inevitable branding of ‘terrorist’. A new kind of terrorist, an Internet Terrorist which by extention, a Global Terrorist.

Now the Globalists can call for international cooperation to put an end to the threat of this form of Global Terrorism and at the same time the last bastion of free information will be breached.

This whole charade is part of a staged attack on the free internet and a precursor to a top secret strike on Iran’s underground nuclear plants already supported by a British and America task force in the Straits of Hormuz.

US Attorney General Eric Holder played his part today by announcing, “The American people themselves have been put at risk by these actions that I *believe* are arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful in any way.”

It is noticeable that he does not say illegal, expressing only a judgmental “belief”. Meanwhile Bradley Manning is being kept in complete isolation (the psych squad are doing their brain-washing).

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

A Collage…

First of all a Cure For Depression…

Merry Christmas

http://vimeo.com/17406812

This may not work in America. It apparently doesn’t work in France and has already been deleted from Youtube.

I suppose we could always host it on wikileaks then you would be sure to see it.

With regards to Mr. Assange turning up at the cop shop to answer the charges that have already been dismissed at least once in Sweden…

He should tell the truth. So far as I am aware, the UK Police don’t normally torture Australians, and in general we tend to really appreciate Aussie’s sense of humour – though I’m not sure Julian falls into the category of your typical “Bruce”

But from what I gather – after he shagged them – and FFS who wears a condom these days? The Pope’s legalised them????

After he had shagged them, they went out to get some bacon and eggs and cooked him breakfast and did it again?

Now how the fuck can that be rape???

I mean – I reckon they must have really enjoyed it – otherwise why did they cook him bacon and egg and say – do it again Julian…

So I reckon the charges are ridiculous and so will the UK Police.

“A Wildfire Is Burning All Illusions in Israel”

I presume this means no more Jaffa Oranges

Incidentally, I hate Oranges

I am not supposed to say what I think

Particularly when it comes to Israeli’s

But I Think We Should Piss On Them and Take Their Fire Away

Tony

Have a Nice Day

A little snippet (and I’ll be back later):

“It’s war! Earlier today we noted how the Swiss bank Switzerland Post Finance (a bank associated with the Swiss post office) had frozen Julian Assange’s bank account for his defense fund.

“Well, payback. As NYT reports, their site has now been taken offline, and a group calling itself Operation Payback on Twitter claims credit for the DDOS.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-bank-that-froze-julian-assanges-bank-account-has-now-been-taken-down-by-hackers-2010-12#ixzz17NpydWOR

Whatever about Assange being legit or not, or a dupe or not, that item made me grin.

Twitter has rapidly spread the word about mirror sites and earlier today there were (at least) 208 hosting the full Wikileaks site/contents. It’s not going anywhere. And as Clark pointed out earlier, assassinating Assange or imprisoning him won’t make a blind bit of difference.

Jon,

In case your remarks directed at a non-existent Albert were intended for me.

I draw no definite conclusion about Assange. Is he a dupe, a stooge, a money-making scoundrel — is he short the shares of the bank on which he threatens to deal the dirt, a megalomaniac?

I don’t know, although I think Mark Golding’s interpretion is quite probable, i.e., that Wikileaks is some kind of cognitive infiltration operation, which is to say, an operation to persuade those of the alternative media community that everything they thought about the war is wrong, and in particular, that Osama really did do the Twin Towers (even Noam Chomsky denies that), Saddam really did have WMD’s and Iran really is poised to wipe Israel off the map. If that is so, it would be reasonable to regard Assange as a particularly toxic appendage of the Imperial power structure.

Re: If Wikileaks has endangered, say, hundreds of people, should we not consider the million dead from US foreign policy …?

But what if Wikileaks is just more prowar propaganda? If you deny that it is propaganda, give me some examples of Wikileaks documents that can reasonably be expected to reduce public support for the war (Providing information that results in the killing human rights activists in Afghanistan, or providing the Taliban with information that helps them kill NATO soldiers only strengthens public support for the war.).

In any case, you won’t stop the war by giving aid to your country’s enemies. The US empire and its European vassal states all have elected governments. If you want to change policy, the only legal and sane way is through electoral means–admitedly a near impossibility now the dogs of war have been loosed.

If you are a saint or a lunatic you can stand in front of the war machine, but you will be crushed as Rachel Corrie was crushed.

Rachel Corrie was truly a Ghandian martyr of the non-violence movement, and I honor her courage and her sacrifice, which had the useful effect of making clear to the world the brutality of Israel’s racist colonial policy. But I will not emulate her action, nor therefore, can I advise anyone else to do so.

However, I don’t see how one can condone the sacrifice another person’s life in order to make a political statement. Therefore, I regard with contempt and revulsion Assange’s casual acceptance of responsibility for the death of innocents in Afghanistan, whether soldiers or civilians.

Tony,

Re: “So I reckon the charges are ridiculous and so will the UK Police.”

I tried pointing this out on another thread. The only possible significance of the charges seems to be that they make it appear that Assange is the victim of state harassment, which might be taken by some as evidence of his anti-war cred, or by those more cynical, of his anti-war incred, since the charges are vacuous.

I have absolutely no idea where these guys come from, but the guy who looked like he was a Palestinian – he just blew me away…

You see The Quality varies from complete starter to well – you know…

So he could be really famous…

I didn’t pursue him, because the 14 year old from Kent blew even him away…

But any way, I bumped into him outside the pub – and said to him you were awesome – its the way you play – you seem to do it so effortlessly like you are riding a motorcycle at a leisurely 70 mph but you are so relaxed and so cool and we are just amazed how you can get so much power out at 70mph, knowing that at any time when the Rhythm is ready, you can both slow down to 20mph or accelerate to 250mph and you will still be note perfect

Its only a guitar

Tony

Hello Alfred: If one wanted to make a profit (by shorting banks, etc. etc.) there certainly would be easier ways of doing it! You wanted examples of wikileaks documents that might reduce support for the wars. If the truth that’s already available in abundance doesn’t do it, probably not much else will. I might cite the bloodthirsty cowards firing at the Reuters journalists from a helicopter miles from danger, or the many thousands of individual reports, logging the grinding, deadly pointlessness of an occupation. But that’s not going to convince anyone, no more than pointing out the filthy war profiteers or the lies that began these adventures.

You seem to require evidence convincing to a larger audience would prove wikileaks is not a propaganda front, but that seems an unreasonably high standard to demand. Since nothing will convince a population immersed in mind-numbing popular entertainment, and steeped in establishment propaganda, against the government position, so why do you bother even asking for the virtually impossible?

It also seems that you have acquired a touching faith in democratic principles holding in the west. We cannot vote in a party that opposes war, because none is standing for election, even though the majority of the country would like that. Not one of the three parties campaigned on an anti-war platform in the UK, despite that being undoubtedly the most favoured position. Not one of them represents it now. Democracy might be all very well, but it doesn’t work – our corrupt leaders have managed to circumvent it, both here and the US.

Jon, earlier, asked why even a tiny fraction of the manufactured outrage about the possible danger Assange was placing on people revealed in wikileaks is not poured 100 times onto those warmongers who started wars of aggreesion. Or words more or less to that effect. I don’t believe he’s had a serious answer.

In any case – name anyone who has been killed as a result of Wikileaks telling the truth? I’ll do you a deal – name one, and I’ll name ten who have died as a result of our government telling lies to drum up war. And I can keep that going for a long, long time. And then maybe we can talk about why there is not much more outrage from governments about pro-war lies, than outrage concerning wikileaks.

Alfred,

I never actually took much notice of wikileaks – sure I saw the Helicopter Baghdad shoot em up

But thought – well I’ve already seen a similat thing before…

And then when the latest stuff came out, I was seriously unimpressed…

Sure big deal…tell us something we don’t already know…

And immediately afterwards all this pro-Israeli and right wing neo-con propaganda came out – and even Zbig didn’t seem to be too sure what was going on…

So I kind of went with the view that he had received funds from the CIA and probably Mossad too…

And was maybe working for Mossad…

And then I did a bit more analysis of what the information really said – and it was a MASSIVE Attack on Hillary Clinton – like he had let off loads of rockets and one of them went straight up Hillary’s arse.

I thought this really bizarre…

So I reassessed my opinion of him, and when they tried to ban him, I was completely really fucking annouyed and I think my mates suddenly fucking mirrored his sites 219 times which is quite a lot

He maybe a cunt – but he hasn’t broken any laws and has entertained us for the last week or so ….

I am just Shouting

MORE

I reckon I know what his Insurance Policy is but was never really into encryption

I have seen the emails – and posted them

It will all come out in the wash

Tony

TONY: Sit down and shut up, you distracting, disruptive, stupid old drunk fuck.

This is a secret, but I did notice…

Rather a lot of Julian Assange’s CV is like mine – like in parts identical -

Except for most of the time, I was working on the inside trying to keep buggers like him out…

And I retired 6 years ago.

I have toasmit he is rather good looking, but my hir is much longer – and I have got a Professional Qualification – Well Sort of…

A bit Like His…

But I could fucking Do It and Did

I was Fucking Good

But Now I am Retired – Because I Kept The Company I Was Working For Alive

And So Should He

Its a UNIX thing

You see – you can see everything – and so you have to adopt some really basic really fundamental principles with regards to responsibility

You have suddenly found yourself in this position of trust

You can’t betray that trust that people have given you – even if you didn’t realise you were going to land here.

96% of People are Nice and Exceedingly Honest.

Believe it – It is True.

Tony

TONY: Shut the hell up, you rambling, stupid drunk.

I have to say this again, because actually it is quite a wonderful thing

All The Top UNIX Systems Administrators I have Worked With From All Over (At Least My World – I Don’t Know About Yours)

Have Exhibited The Highest Level of Integrity

And Most Of Them Are Really Nice Guys Too…

Not Like Computer Games Programmers At All………

Well You’ve Got To Haven’t You??? What other Choice Do You Have?

In all the companies that I worked for the management projected the highest levels of integrity…

They Just Said – Do It – Make It Work

So we did

We Didn’t Fiddle Our Expenses or Anything

They Paid Us Well For The Work We Did. We were Respected Both By Our Bosses And By The People We Provided Services To…

And I Personally Claim For The Company I Worked For and Who Pays My Pension The World Record For The Most Reliable Major Computer System in The World Starting in 1995

Cos we were Benchmarked and We said No We Can’t Come First in The World – Mark Us Down to 6th For Fuck Sake

We are ENGLISH

Strange but True

Tony

As well as having the utmost integrity we also achieved the near impossible at the time

It was like threading a haystack through a needle

We were the FIRST

We had The FIRST MAJOR DEPLOYMENT OF ITS TYPE IN THE WORLD

We were Fucking BRILLIANT

We Did It

Then They Told Us To Do More

And we all Fucked Off and Went Our Seperate Ways and Did Something Different…

Then They Demolished The Place Where We Did It – and We Had All Left

I am not quite sure how this happenned, but I have worked with some of the most talented people in the world…

We Learned Together – and Just Did it Even if it Meant Working 15 hour days for weeks with only a few short breaks for sleep

Sure we broke all the Rules – but we had to make it work

Otherwise it would have all gone to fuck

But you can only do that for a few years otherwise you blow up

You have No FUCKING IDEA

How Good We Were

Tony

I have an announcement to make. I have formally decided to stop using my Larry from St. Louis alter ego tag. I know I was rumbled a long while back, but I had already started digging a big hole for myself and felt compelled to perpetuate the big lie. I want to formally apologise to Craig, and everyone else, and reassure you all that it won’t keep happening. I feel very ashamed and foolish. I don’t care if you all think i’m a complete tithead. I am going to make all future posts from the one tag. I fully realise that spewing the same stuff from two tags makes me no more credible. Let’s call it my New Year resolution.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Bah HUMBUG!

I probably shouldn’t say such things in America

Look as you probably realise as I keep telling you, that I am not working for anyone and I think I may have written a few rather strong things before I went to the pub – and probably afterwards…##

But personally I think the only person he Really Fucked and I am Not Suggesting it was Up The Vagina

Was Hillary Clinton

i Mean For Fucks Sake

The Fucking Aussies Have Got Some BALLS

Straight Up

They Don’t Fuck Around

Tony

Look its like this

V2.0010911 was a complete abortion

And then there was

V2.0050707

And It Was Fucking Horrible

These Nasty People Were Letting Off Bombs Everywhere Trying To Make Us Afraid Of Them

But We Are Not Afraid Of You

And We Are Doing Away With The Version System But We Will Train You In Jail

Some of You Might Be nice and wrongly accused

That is why we Have LAWS and TRIALS and JURIES

If You Break Them, then you could be in TROUBLE

BECAUSE WE FOUGHT FOR OUR LAWS

And we are not going to let Arseholes Like Tony Blair, George Bush and Dick Cheney Take Our LAWS Away From Us

Tony

Hey Glenn,

“If one wanted to make a profit (by shorting banks, etc. etc.) there certainly would be easier ways of doing it!”

I dunno, you seen the chart for Bank of America, it’s been gently downhill for the last six months. Now, if Assange has something really good, it could send the stock to just about nothing — emails, for instance, confirming criminal intent in the creation or sale of dud mortgages.

“You wanted examples of wikileaks documents that might reduce support for the wars. If the truth that’s already available in abundance doesn’t do it, probably not much else will.”

What we’ve had from Assange is more of what we already knew, or what we already knew was a lie. We knew, for instance, that the US kills unembedded journalists without compunction. They gave warning of this before the Iraq war had even begun. And we knew bin Laden was dead long before Assange told us otherwise.

What I’d call significant, would be proof of high level political authorization of atrocities such as the bombing of the golden Mosque, which got the Sunnis and the Shias killing each other, or the Mumbai killings. About such events, we have no proof of state crimes, although that is probably what they were.

I actually, agree with Tony. Hillary Clinton seems to be a prime target of the leaks. She has responded by promising not to run for the Presidency. Not that that will stop her if she thinks she has a chance, but it takes the heat off for now.

“It also seems that you have acquired a touching faith in democratic principles holding in the west.”

Not at all. I agree its totally fucking hopeless. But what’s the alternative? Putting one’s faith in a known liar and seeming fantasist? I don’t think so. I agree with Cyril Connolly, once the war is on, it’s too late for effective anti-war protest. Churchill said the same thing. During wartime, the government is very strong. Why else do Americans put up with sexual humiliation at airports for not sane reason? Because a wartime government is essentially an unlimited government.

If Assange is genuine, he will be crushed. If he is a stooge, he will likely be crushed anyway — once he has served his purpose. That’s what usually happens to stooges of the US government.

So, if you consider yourself more cynical than I am, you might be wrong!

Cheers

“Bah HUMBUG!”

The post at “angrysoba at December 7, 2010 3:46 AM” was not me as I’m sure most people will have guessed.

PS, Glenn,

Re: “We cannot vote in a party that opposes war, because none is standing for election”

There was the BNP.

And, yes, Angry,

Your style is quite distinct from Larry’s.

Alfred: “What we’ve had from Assange is more of what we already knew, or what we already knew was a lie. We knew, for instance, that the US kills unembedded journalists without compunction. They gave warning of this before the Iraq war had even begun. And we knew bin Laden was dead long before Assange told us otherwise.

What I’d call significant, would be proof of high level political authorization of atrocities such as the bombing of the golden Mosque, which got the Sunnis and the Shias killing each other, or the Mumbai killings.”

So, let’s get this straight. Unless Assange’s leaks conform to your conspiratorial view of the world then WikiLeaks must be part of the conspiracy.

You believe that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the destruction of the Golden Mosque of Samarra was a “false flag”, that the Mumbai killings were “false flag” operations and you believe these things on NO EVIDENCE but an eager desire to BELIEVE and WikiLeaks will only be genuine if evidence for your unsubstantiated beliefs are revealed.

At no point are your beliefs to be subject to the same tests. For you X is a suspected “false flag” until proven a “false flag”. They are apparently the only categories of knowledge you apply to terrorist attacks in the world.

PPS, Glen,

There are rumors of Soros shorting Bank of America. And we know Soros funds all kinds of dissidents. Why not Assange? Could be a productive working relationship.

And Angry

If creating straw men is the best you can do, why not just go fuck yourself.

Glenn, Jon, great posts.

Alfred, on one hand, you seem to be suggesting that Assange/ Wikileaks are either state assets or are being manipulated by the empire (let us use this term for a moment, both for convenience and in cognisance of Gore Vidal et al) and on the other that (as the spokesperson of empire argue) Assange/Wikileaks are responsible for deaths and so ought to be subject to censure.

Now, while I suspect that official imperial opprobrium as manifested through the second point-of-view is largely persiflage and an attempt at news management and damage limitation in this war of the mind, it has seemed to me throughout this debate on Wikileaks that your thrust has been to say that (shall we say) you do not like Wikileaks, one way or another. I also think more generally that you hold deeply paradoxical and inconsistent views on the current military-imperial complex.

Alfred, at 6:46am, what is this with you and the BNP? If Wikileaks has not revealed smoking guns in relation to various operations (but, to use a CSI-obsessed term, maybe “traces of gunpowder residue”) and if you feel that you can see through the ‘disingenuousness’ of Assange, how is is that you seem incapable of doing the same with the much more shambolic operation that is known as the BNP? On the one hand, you’ve suggested on these boards that the BNP may be a state asset/construct set up to discredit the anti-war stance, yet on the other you clearly have suggested on a number of occasions that people ought to support it because it is ‘anti-war’. It doesn’t matter that it is a fascist, racist party; thankfully, the attempt to veneer this blood and soil ethos has failed at every turn. You have espoused what might be described as ‘right-wing libertarian’ views economically and politically, yet most right-wing libertarians would laugh if you suggested that they support the BNP, a deeply authoritarian (and fascist, racist) outfit.

Most anti-war people are not fascist or racist and would not in a million years dream of supporting a party like the BNP. They also are likely to despise all three mainstream political parties.

In short, Alfred, your views are an enigma – as, I think, are Alan Campbell’s, though through a differing set of paradigmatic mirrors.

Alfred, just what the hell do you think i’m doing during those long nights when i’m away from Craig’s blogs for a few minutes? It can get damn lonely at times.

Suhayl:

Great post at 7:23 AM. I wanted to make the same points but was too lazy. Alfred is just throwing around extreme and completely inconsistent accusations. The only consistency is Alfred’s obvious dislike of Assange. According to Alfred, WL/Assange is 1 of 3 things:

1 – “Wikileaks has either done significant harm to United States interests”, and Assange “has blood on his hands” or

2 – “Wikileaks is some kind of U.S. propaganda operation, the information released containing sufficient titillating gossip to conceal the taste of rat poison.” or

3 – Assange is a “money-making scoundrel — is he short the shares of the bank on which he threatens to deal the dirt”.

The fact that all Alfred’s possible interpretations of Assange are so completely inconsistent and negative says far more about what Alfred wants to see, and not what is actually there to see. Is thinking that pissing off all the most powerful states across the globe is a good money making venture really a reasonable interpretation?

“Although it is always tiresome to listen to Alex Jones, a recent interview with Webster Tarpley provides background to the thesis that Wikileaks is a US operation intended to damage enemies, both American and foreign.”

Alfred you say you don’t like Alex Jones yet that is the second Alex Jones piece you have linked to while discussing WL. No one with a serious point to make links to Alex Jones. You also have linked to a shrill anti-global warming piece and a young Republicans op-ed in a student newspaper. Your links aren’t helping your case at all.

“that Osama really did do the Twin Towers (even Noam Chomsky denies that)”

I would really like a source for that claim. I have 2 Chomsky talks on my iPod right now and the very premise of the talks is that Osama committed 911.

Perhaps we’re making a false dichotomy: WL is/is not genuine. There are other possibilities – e.g. WL is genuine, just not in possession of anything novel.

As shoddyhandbags says above “The intention seem to be to publish whatever people leak to them”. As a used car salesman once told me (truly) “I don’t dishonestly sell dud cars, but I can only sell what I’m given”.

Perhaps meaningful editorial from the (ultra-establishment) Glasgow Herald?

“WikiLeaks has damaged itself by this publication. It makes it harder to defend the principle of the public’s right to know, when a campaigner fails to recognise where to draw the line.”

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-view/wikileaks-made-the-wrong-decision-1.1072822

Angrysoba – ‘”Bah HUMBUG!”

The post at “angrysoba at December 7, 2010 3:46 AM” was not me as I’m sure most people will have guessed.’

Well, well, well. It would have been Lamby right? You do seem to be getting very mixed up and slowly unravelling. It seems we have a regular Norman Bates in our midst. As for New Year resolutions, i’ve heard of some that didn’t endure long I must admit, but that takes the biscuit. Just give it a rest eh pal…

Vronsky – ‘Perhaps meaningful editorial from the (ultra-establishment) Glasgow Herald?

“WikiLeaks has damaged itself by this publication. It makes it harder to defend the principle of the public’s right to know, when a campaigner fails to recognise where to draw the line.”

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-view/wikileaks-made-the-wrong-decision-1.1072822‘

Like you hint at, using Wikileaks as an excuse for internet censorship doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t genuine. Internet censorship is probably very high on the elitist agenda. I hope that no one reading this blog doubts that for a millisecond. They will try to use anything to their advantage. I suppose it’s possible that this could have all been orchestrated with internet censorship primarily in mind, like Ruth says, but would tend to doubt that myself. We have to challenge whatever is in front of us, so does it really matter even?

There is talk above about Julian Assange being responsible for deaths (I assume in Afghanistan?) so here’s a quote from Glenn Greenwald:

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

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/wikileaks

And then there’s this:

“WASHINGTON, D.C. ?” An ongoing Pentagon review of the massive flood of secret documents made public by the WikiLeaks website has so far found no evidence that the disclosure harmed U.S. national security or endangered American troops in the field, a Pentagon official told NBC News on Monday.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38417666/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

Someone in the US admin (according to what I read about a week ago) admitted that not one Afghan has had to be moved or warned about his/her safety on account of Wikileaks. So what are these allegations of Assange having blood on his hands based on? I’d really like to know.

Meanwhile in Haaretz, Lamis Andoni finishes up a piece about Wikileaks by saying

“The WikiLeaks revelations will further erode the image of Arab leaders in Arab public opinion and make it more difficult for them to publicly advocate a war against Iran. Even if some of the fears expressed by Arab leaders are shared by segments of the Arab people, any official Arab attempt, beyond the closed doors of meetings with US officials, to make Iran, rather than Israel, the enemy will backfire.”

english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/11/20101129223858642223.html

which would seem to be a positive outcome to me.

On the subject of BoA,

“It is a won

BBC News breaking news

The strapline reads -

BREAKING NEWS:Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange detained in London after Sweden issues a European arrest warrant

‘May I suggest a headline for The Onion? “Swiss banks to Assange: You are not Nazi enough”‘

Evgeny Morozov, author of the forthcoming book, “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom”

PS: That WMD stuff is nonsense. No quantities specified (what’s a cache?) and no information regarding the age of the items or whether they had a snowball’s chance in hell of being used. “The rounds tested positive for mustard” (mustard gas? isn’t that ancient?) could mean there was just a hint of degraded material discovered.

If there was a major story in any of it, Sky News would have had it as their lead story for a week or more. PLUS, I seem to remember many of these bits and bobs reported in the American press during the last seven years or so, but not one of them was big enough to make huge international headlines. Because the stuff found was nothing but ancient leftovers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Wired said otherwise.

Back under the duvet!

Alfred – yes, I called you Albert. Sorry about that, I think I was a bit tired. Trust the rest of it made sense!

I think the idea that Assange needs to kill bank shares via Wikileaks to make some money is very far fetched, at least at this stage. Let’s wait and see what bank it is, and what the documents are first, eh?

Anyway, I continue to await answers to my questions. I don’t sense that Wikileaks represents pro-war propaganda in the way you seem to, and glenn makes some excellent (and, to me, quite obvious) points about why WL cannot be taken broadly to support attacking Iraq, or war generally.

I wanted you to comment, perhaps after reflection on my dismissal of it, on the piece you put forward from the MIT newspaper. Like other people here, I can’t help but feel you are putting an inconsistent set of views across, and that the reactionary militarism writ across that article would not normally garner your support at all. Why different for Assange/WL?

Why proffer the BNP as a serious anti-war party? Were you being flippant, or did you want someone here to take it seriously? You may not be of the view that they are a racist and crypto-fascist party, but that is the predominant view here, and there is plenty of evidence available to support that.

“If you want to change policy, the only legal and sane way is through electoral means–admitedly a near impossibility now the dogs of war have been loosed”.

Isn’t the sense of helplessness implied by your own statement – that we have no electoral means to stop the war and neo-capitalist machines – part of the reason that Wikileaks has garnered such significant support amongst ordinary people?

Thanks, dreoilin, for putting up a countering view regarding whether Wikileaks has caused harm to people. I sense that, regardless of people’s views on Greenwald’s politics, he is a great deal more balanced that the mini-McCain that Alfred put forward.

Will they kill the internet?

The final para of an article in the Guardian entitled.

Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It’s your choice.

Western political elites obfuscate, lie and bluster ?” and when the veil of secrecy is lifted, they try to kill the messenger

John Naughton

7 December 2010

‘But politicians now face an agonising dilemma. The old, mole-whacking approach won’t work. WikiLeaks does not depend only on web technology. Thousands of copies of those secret cables ?” and probably of much else besides ?” are out there, distributed by peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent. Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet. Over to them.’

guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks

Sky News are carrying repetitive propaganda for Clarke’s cost-cutting policy to empty the prisons.

They have engineered a video of life inside Bullingdon Prison featuring the import of drugs and illegal phones. The aimlessness of prison life is emphasized and also the fact that re-offending rates are not altered.

No alternative to the prison regime is given or suggestions made as to how the regime could be made more constructive and beneficial to the offender and to society.

http://www.newsonnews.net/skynews/5979-exclusive-sky-news-investigation-reveals-serious-security-breach-at-bullingdon-prison.html

There are live links within to the Sky reports.

Bit ironic that it’s Bullingdon Prison and not the Bullingdon Club!

http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2010/04/exclusive-david-cameron-and-the-bullingdon-night-of-the-broken-window/

Now, I wonder who could have posted this:

“Alfred, just what the hell do you think i’m doing during those long nights when i’m away from Craig’s blogs for a few minutes? It can get damn lonely at times.

Posted by: angrysoba at December 7, 2010 7:25 AM”

I have no suspects, but wait…

Jaded: “Well, well, well. It would have been Lamby right?”

Well, I have no suspects. But if it was Larry then I see he is cunningly disguising his writing style by adopting yours.

For example, the claim that Larry and I are one and the same:

“I have an announcement to make. I have formally decided to stop using my Larry from St. Louis alter ego tag. I know I was rumbled a long while back, but I had already started digging a big hole for myself and felt compelled to perpetuate the big lie.” (pseudo-soba)

“You do seem to be getting very mixed up and slowly unravelling. It seems we have a regular Norman Bates in our midst. As for New Year resolutions, i’ve heard of some that didn’t endure long I must admit, but that takes the biscuit. Just give it a rest eh pal…”(Jaded)

Plus the smiley “:-(” which “Lamby” cleverly inserted. As well as the use of the word, “tithead”, a Jadedism, and the claim that I spend too much time here, something you’ve been very concerned with in the past.

But, as I say, I have no suspects.

So, the UK police have arrested Assange. This is so clearly an abuse of the law, everyone can see it for what it is. Assange is a political prisoner. Anyone who believes in freedom of expression should condemn the UK authorities (and the Swedish authorities) for their abjectly craven attitude. There ought to be demos outside whichever police station or jail he is being held in.

He’ll meet the bail, but this is trumpeted harassment and is intended to tie-up him and his organisation in costly and probably Dickensian legal processes both to hamper their work and to send a warning to any others who might be thinking of releasing details that cause potential embarrassment to the empire and its multiple facades. The empire is dependent on the back line of these facades holding, as their first line of domestic control is based on mass delusion and sleight of hand. Self-censorship by omission is the norm. Wikileaks has rendered unto the people in the USA/UK a glimpse of the emperor’s skin, something which peoples in the rest of the world have known for many years. Beneath the facade, of course, beneath the toughened imperial hide, is pig-iron and blood.

“Wikileaks has rendered unto the people in the USA/UK a glimpse of the emperor’s skin”

While maintaining my agnosticism, I seriously doubt it. Those who know, knew; those who didn’t know still don’t.

angrysoba:

Chill – we know you when we hear you.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307137/Supporters-dismissed-rape-accusations-WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange–women-involved-tell-different-story.html

This article is quite good on the detail and shows that the allegations don’t amount to rape in any normal sense of the term and nor indeed

does it support the laughable claim by the writer that “Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain ?” Assange’s attempts to portray himself as an online saint, exposing the secrets of the superpowers, has been dealt a damaging blow.”

What’s most telling is that the comments with massive red marks against them were those critical of Assange whilst the majority with green marks were supportive.

Poor old Daily Mail….

I see that Assange has been remanded in custody which is curious for allegations which even in loopy old feminist Sweden don’t carry a custodial sentence.

I suppose it’ll allow the spooks to get his dna, harass him and use the dna to plant him at the scene of other “crimes”.

Of course it’s ludicrous to think that an amateur, with a magic stick, could so easily download files that the intelligence services of America’s enemies and rivals had not been long aware of. Mr. Assange’s real offense has been to bring this information to the general public’s attention. His disclosures have done nothing except make information available to the general public that was already available to the USA’s enemies around the world. His crime is a belief in open democracy.

Yes, this argument of the Daily Mail’s that someone who might be ‘not a saint’ cannot be a genuine whistleblower is peculiarly twee and weak and doesn’t fool many, I suspect.

Basically, many people know now – esp. since the Iraq imbroglio – that they’ve systematically been lied to about much, indeed about most of the matters that are important – like war and sending young men off to die – as they have almost always been lied to in such matters. It is obvious that the web has played an important part in that process of awakening people to begin to question. And once you begin to question, once you pose the basic question: “Am I being lied to?”, it is indeed a slippery slope – or rather, an awakening into a truly adult political consciousness.

There are over 2,200 seeders of the Wikileaks insurance file, and I’ve downloaded a good half of it already. I’ll have it in full tomorrow, I think. Trust others are doing the same.

Between the limited voices of opposition on this blog, the reactionary calls for Assange’s assassination, and the craven attitudes of Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and the UK and Swedish governments, I am more persuaded of the need for Wikileaks generally, not less.

Give it a couple of days, and perhaps I’ll have set up a mirror too. 100GB per month costs less than five quid these days – well worth the money. Fun and games for imperialists and their apologists everywhere!

Go for it Jon, the despicable behaviour of swedish/swiss officials is outrageous.

Why is this man being harrassed and haunted when these files were accessable by 2 million people, not secrets by any courts description.

Further the obcessive hysteria that is including Julian in every news bulletin, bad news galore has the opposite effect. Fra from alienating him form the public, we are more and more intigued.

The public also seems to think that he is some kind of leader, little do they know that he is merely speaking for Wiki and that there are now thousands of people who will carry on With Wikileaks work, not just the online journalists.

I hope he countersues the swedish state for refusing to engage with him, they took him for a ride and should stand up for it.

I also hope the swedish taxpayer will think about replacing their public prosecutor at ther next election, her cap duffing zeal/personal masochism for more US pressure is astonishing, she has provided the worlds media and Governments with a convenient label.

And they are now using it over and over again, re-amplification ad nauseum is their prefered psychological torture of the public mind.

What jouranilsts are speaking up for him, can they not see what they have become?

Who is next to be declared ‘vogelfrei’?

What will this global Mc Carthyism achieve?

What was Orwell on when he wrote his book, he was more of a ‘seer’ than Nostradamus, imho.

Thanks dreoling for the last link, very telling. Keep filling that hotwater bottle of yours, eat your fruit salad and stay under the duvet!

“he was more of a ‘seer’ than Nostradamus”

’1984′ was a stylised description of matters as Orwell saw them in 1948 – I am very irked when people don’t realise this. Read his essays ‘Looking back on the Spanish Civil War’ and ‘Politics and Language’ and you will find 1984 unencoded. The novel was reportage, not prophecy.

It’s the Frankenstein story – the creation comes to life. It disobeys its maker, and becomes seen as a monster.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) designed ARPANET to be robust through redundancy, and from there grew the Internet. “The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”. Well, it worked, didn’t it?

Clark: yep

“The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”.

Clark, that’s what my son said to me. He said it could never be taken down or shut off. I keep my hope in that, no matter what “kill switch” the US talks about.

I wrote at 10.25am,

“Meanwhile, we know Assange is not being charged with rape”

It’s ludicrous. Rape was given as one of the (possible) charges for which he was wanted for questioning. But it’s not rape as we know it. However, all over Twitter ‘rape’ is being repeated with no explanation, by those who are not clued up on Sweden.

Dreoilin, you probably already know, but since I proclaimed the Internet uncensorable, I’d best expound.

Information on the Internet can’t be locally censored. All servers holding the banned information would have to be entirely ring-fenced, no phone line, no satellite or mobile signal, no USB stick traffic – impractical. However, the WorldWide Web is a layer built on top of the Internet, and the Web’s “phone book”, the DNS system, is a critical attack point for censors. If the wikileaks.org entries that point to IP address 213.251.145.96 were deleted, http://www.wikileaks.org would not work in a browser’s address bar or as a link, but the site could still be accessed at 213.251.145.96.

Clark, I’m not capable of discussing DNS hardly at all, although my son drew me diagrams and doodles at one stage. I’ve forgotten most if it. But there are folks out there involved in setting up alternative DNS to get around ICANN. Does that make sense?

‘Now, I wonder who could have posted this:

“Alfred, just what the hell do you think i’m doing during those long nights when i’m away from Craig’s blogs for a few minutes? It can get damn lonely at times.

Posted by: angrysoba at December 7, 2010 7:25 AM”

I have no suspects, but wait…

Jaded: “Well, well, well. It would have been Lamby right?”

Well, I have no suspects. But if it was Larry then I see he is cunningly disguising his writing style by adopting yours.

For example, the claim that Larry and I are one and the same:

“I have an announcement to make. I have formally decided to stop using my Larry from St. Louis alter ego tag. I know I was rumbled a long while back, but I had already started digging a big hole for myself and felt compelled to perpetuate the big lie.” (pseudo-soba)

“You do seem to be getting very mixed up and slowly unravelling. It seems we have a regular Norman Bates in our midst. As for New Year resolutions, i’ve heard of some that didn’t endure long I must admit, but that takes the biscuit. Just give it a rest eh pal…”(Jaded)

Plus the smiley “:-(” which “Lamby” cleverly inserted. As well as the use of the word, “tithead”, a Jadedism, and the claim that I spend too much time here, something you’ve been very concerned with in the past.

But, as I say, I have no suspects.’

Hmm, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. You are beginning to sound very paranoid and conspiratorial too. So now you think the lizards did it or something? I think your big head is well overdue for a large tinfoil hat to be frank. You have heard of the Mental Health Act I take it? You really need to keep your personalities in check. Like Vronsky said, just chill out chum.

You lot seem to think that God is just a higher manifestation of a global colonial new world order. Religion was created to increase uncertainty by putting forward absurdly difficult standards, beyond the capability of human beings. The Bible and Qur’an were leaked as a false flag operation to close down rational civilised peaceful existence on earth.

From where do you derive the cleanness of heart to detect the corruption of world politics? Do you not think it might be better to utilise the touchstone of God’s revealed morality, than trust in your own relativism? Ignorance of religion and ascribing to God a malign intent against human beings is , in my book, worse lunacy than Nazism or Blair’s trust-me-wait-and-see destruction of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. You treat God as if He is the principal role-model for all the other influences you dislike in the world. What a bunch of weirdos you all are!

Anno: prove it.

I am sad to see, furthermore, that the good wishes I passed to you recently are not reflected back to me in your offensive message.

“What a bunch of weirdos you all are!”

Anno, the same could be said for religious extremists, desperately holding on to the pretense their actions were guided by god and led by the nose of a mafia of charity chugging preachers out to serve themeselves and their social positions within their resapective religion.

Please do not take this personal.

You are welcome to speak on the behalf of your nutters and weirdoes, just as anybody else is.

If catholics would spout out about divine retribution and saving souls by bearing all, they would get the same resaponse here.

This is not a religious channel, but religion is discussed now and then, so lets stay within these liberal parameters, cause if every thread is seeded with sharia or condome for randy preachers issues, then this will not be condisive to the main guist here, would you not asgree?

calling people weirdoes for not holding the same believes is weird.

“Ignorance of religion and ascribing to God a malign intent against human beings is, in my book, worse lunacy than Nazism…” anno

The debate about the existence of evil in the world in the presence of a supposedly-benevolent and/or omniscient/omnipotent deity is one common in theology across many relaigiosn, including in Islam. Does that mean that all those who engage in such debates are worse than Nazis? How so? And ignorance of religion, well, that’s pretty common, even if one might wish for poeople to be more knowledgeable in general. Worse than Nazism, though, anno? Rhetorical hyperbole, perhaps? But ‘Nazism’ (and its mass murder, war, etc.) is a somewhat hackneyed and so less effective rhetorical device nowadays, esp. where the ‘offences’ concerned are on an entirely different scale and in a different realm.

Suhayl, I didn’t use Nazism to illustrate evil, I used it to illustrate the susceptibility of ordinary people to sign up to politicians’ crazy ideas. The British public have reconciled themselves to Blair’s wars. In my opinion the best way to counter this sleepwalking into terror, which this country has done many times before, is to revert to religious absolutes. Like the appeal to absolute equality of all humans that ended the slave trade.

Relativism cannot succeed against relativism. There is no proof at all that my utopian world is better than Blair’s. He resorts to the respectability of religion and this lot deny the respectability of religion. They want democracy to bring about a cure! The cornerstone of Blair’s criminality is the argument that you voted me in, so I can do just about anything I please.

They want freedom of speech, so the powers that be produce freedom of speech in the form of wikileaks, so that they can make it unacceptable or disloyal in the public’s eyes to question or probe.

Look how hurt they are when you criticise their relativistic ideas. Don’t take away their teddy bears, please. The only touchstone for human behaviour is the revealed word of God, so whether they want to quibble about the method of revelation, through the angel Gabriel, peace be upon him, or the content, until they recognise that this is the only way our problems are going to be solved, we are just talking for the sake of talking. Politicians are not afraid of hot air, but they are scared enough of Islam to muster all their weapons of mass destruction and their media power.

Assange has been charged with phoney charges, because he is a tool of the establishment. By the way Feminism is nothing to do with female. I have never lost my respect for the female sex in spite of previous betrayals. That is because if people follow Satan, whether they are male or female, they will get you into trouble.

Assange being accused of rape is just a political lie, same as Blair’s lie about 45 minute WMD. In both cases it is a collective, conspiratorial, scripted, political lie, devised by the establishment to serve their cynical objectives and delivered by an actor.

The lie is more effective because it comes from someone you respect, such as a female, or a prime minister. Assange is an informed part of the apparatus of deceiving the public and the principle designers, constructers and inspectors of these type of lies are Sato-Zionists, as stated so many times.

Assange has been charged with phoney charges, because he is a tool of the establishment. By the way Feminism is nothing to do with female. I have never lost my respect for the female sex in spite of previous betrayals. That is because if people follow Satan, whether they are male or female, they will get you into trouble.

Assange being accused of rape is just a political lie, same as Blair’s lie about 45 minute WMD. In both cases it is a collective, conspiratorial, scripted, political lie, devised by the establishment to serve their cynical objectives and delivered by an actor.

The lie is more effective because it comes from someone you respect, such as a female, or a prime minister. Assange is an informed part of the apparatus of deceiving the public and the principle designers, constructers and inspectors of these type of lies are Sato-Zionists, as stated so many times.

No answer to my question, I see, anno. Nor an acknowledgement that your frustration with people who won’t follow your extreme religious ideology has culminated in your being rude to us all.

You want British law to be based on God because he’s perfect? Prove he exists, and prove he’s perfect. Otherwise desist. You genuinely regard people as ‘following Satan’? Prove he exists, otherwise desist.

Anno, I think you are quite misguided, and that makes me unhappy. I don’t sense that you’re nefarious, like the politicians, or the corporate executives, or like the trolls. But you’ve gotten caught up in a religion that promises utopia, but won’t deliver it, and you’ve perhaps gotten caught up in a human psychology that is fragile and flawed. We’re all susceptible to our own madnesses, all of us, and I am sad that if I suggest that this might be your problem, you will reject it out of hand.

Be religious, by all means. I believe in freedom, and that means freedom of religion. But I think you need to try harder when it comes to inflicting your beliefs on other people. Your god may, as it turns out, not exist, even though it is valuable for you and others to have such a belief.

“The British public have reconciled themselves to Blair’s wars.” –anno

Rubbish, you are talking out of your hat. Look at the opinion polls. They were opposed to the war in Iraq, and are now opposed to the war in Afghanistan; there was not a great deal they could do then, and there’s not much they can do now. Publics under governments are generally a cowed lot, given the state’s monopoly on violence and removal of liberty, and given the power of the media, deliberately or otherwise, to misinform.