Sympathy for the Devil?

"An organization with a sterling reputation for providing the public with accurate information about secret government and corporate activities was used to launder conspiracy theories that helped elect a racist, sexual predator president of the United States."

To some, Julian Assange is a martyr in the cause of free speech. To others, those who have watched his antics over the past two years, he's the grand corrupter of his own creation, WikiLeaks.

For years I backed WikiLeaks and Assange but, in the last presidential election, it became apparent, in fact brutally obvious, that Assange was bent and WikiLeaks with him. I did easily eight or ten posts about my growing doubts about Assange, his credibility and what he was really up to. Most of those elicited angry criticism from people on the Left who rallied to his defence, accusing me of being pro-Hillary. Just search the blog for "Assange" if you're interested.

Since then emails have emerged leaving no doubt that Assange colluded, collaborated with the Trump campaign to influence the outcome of the election. It proved, as I had argued, that Assange was bent through and through and no "honest broker" of journalism. I can only wonder what my critics think now that the truth is out.

The Intercept's Robert Mackey has written an interesting expose, "Julian Assange's Hatred of Hillary Clinton Was No Secret. His Advice to Donald Trump Was." It's not an exhaustive account of Assange's interactions with Team Trump but it lays out the gist of Assange's deceit and his betrayal of his own creation, WikiLeaks. Here are some excerpts.

Before his private messages to Trump Jr. were leaked, Assange himself had categorically denied that he or WikiLeaks had been attacking Hillary Clinton to help elect Donald Trump. “This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election,” he wrote in a statement released on November 8 as Americans went to the polls.

Even though Assange had by then transformed the WikiLeaks Twitter feed into a vehicle for smearing Clinton, he insisted that his work was journalistic in nature. “The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks — an organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself,” Assange wrote. “Millions of Americans have pored over the leaks and passed on their citations to each other and to us,” he added. “It is an open model of journalism that gatekeepers are uncomfortable with, but which is perfectly harmonious with the First Amendment.”

...

WHILE WIKILEAKS HAS undoubtedly facilitated the release of information that is both true and important, it is Assange’s Trump-like willingness to traffic in such unsubstantiated rumors, conspiracy theories, and innuendo not supported by evidence that undermines his claim to be a disinterested publisher, not a political operative.

This willingness to traffic in false or misleading information was very much in evidence during his work on behalf of Trump, and it is a consistent feature of Assange’s advocacy for other people and causes.

...
In the final months of the 2016 presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter feed promoted not just its new publications, but also frequently referred to tabloid rumors — like old chestnuts about Hillary Clinton’s supposed “role in the death of White House counsel Vince Foster” — and wild conspiracy theories about her campaign chair taking part in bloody satanic rituals.

...
Despite the constant claims from Assange and the Trumps that the emails stolen from Democrats implicated Clinton in scandal and corruption, it is important to keep in mind that the WikiLeaks method of encouraging Trump supporters and Reddit trolls to scour the documents for evidence of malfeasance did not, in fact, uncover any such evidence.

Instead, the hacked emails were used to reverse-engineer preposterous conspiracy theories, like the imaginary pedophilia scandal called Pizzagate, which WikiLeaks was still treating as real two months after the election.

...This is the real tragedy and menace of the public and private collaboration of WikiLeaks with Trump. An organization with a sterling reputation for providing the public with accurate information about secret government and corporate activities was used to launder conspiracy theories that helped elect a racist, sexual predator president of the United States.

That might be a terrific result for people like Julian Assange, who see a dysfunctional, discredited White House as a way to undermine what they see as the real evil empire. For Americans condemned to live under Trump, particularly the most marginalized who, as Noam Chomsky has observed, will suffer the most from his cruelty, it is a far more troubling outcome.

That Didn't Take Long. Is This Assange's Reward?

Is Julian Assange getting an early Christmas present? A week after Donald Trump's election victory and six years after Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a Swedish prosecutor went to the British capital to visit Assange in the embassy.

Assange's team said he agreed to the interview "in part to ensure the Swedish authorities have no further excuse not to discontinue their investigation".

Swedish assistant prosecutor Ingrid Isgren was present at the interview, which was conducted by an Ecuadorian prosecutor.

The fact that Swedish prosecutors were present but not the Swedish defence counsel was "incredibly problematic", [Assange lawyer Jennifer Robinson] said – but they had decided to proceed anyway.

"We have been offering his testimony since 2010 and the Swedish prosecutor has refused to hear his side of the story until now."

It's amazing how the wheels of justice can suddenly free up and I'm sure the election result and a grateful president-elect had absolutely no bearing on it.

International Criminal Court Launches Probe. Israel Seethes and Squirms.

A prosecutor from the International Criminal Court has opened a probe into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories.  Israel wasted no time lashing out, threatening to dismantle the ICC.

Potential cases [prosecutor Fatou] Bensouda could take on include allegations of war crimes by Israel during last summer's Gaza war where the Palestinians suffered heavy civilian casualties. Israel's settlement construction on occupied Palestinian lands could also be examined.

The cases could also include alleged war crimes by Hamas, which controls Gaza, including the firing of thousands of rockets at Israeli residential areas from crowded neighborhoods.

[Israeli prime minister, Benjamin] Netanyahu also said that, "unfortunately, the move turns the court into part of the problem, rather than part of the solution," Netanyahu concluded. "It's a scandalous that only days after terrorists slaughtered Jews in Paris ... the ICC opens an inquiry against the Jewish state, and only because it defends its citizens against Hamas, a terrorist organization that is partnered with the Palestinian Authority."

Describing the court's statement as hypocritical and supportive of terror, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman the decision was "scandalous," stemmed political and anti-Israel motives and was an attempt to "harm Israel's right to defend itself against terror." He added that Israel would take international action to have the ICC dismantled.

Lieberman said that it was impossible to compare the Israel Defense Forces, which "does everything possible to avoid harming innocents," with "terror organizations which fire from areas populated by civilians against areas populated by other civilians." 

Lieberman, true to form, is talking out of his ass.  The assault on Gaza last summer was a textbook case of the Israeli tactic, Dahiyeh, the deliberate and massive targeting of civilians and the essential infrastructure upon which civilians depend.  It begins with airstrikes to take out sewer and water plants, indispensible to urban living.  Next up are hospitals and schools.  Finally residential areas are targeted and attacked.  Dahiyeh  takes its name from the Lebanese suburb of Beirut where Israel introduced the atrocity.  That this is a deliberate. calculated policy authorized by the highest Israeli authority was revealed by documents released by Wikileaks.

Is There a Wiki "Tipping Point"?

Is WikiLeaks a tempest in a teapot or could it just be something much more, a real force for change?

All of us, to some extent, absorbed the revelations from the first disclosure of American diplomatic dispatches.   There weren't that many surprises in the stuff.  The documents mainly served to corroborate what we already believed or at least suspected.  A couple of diplomatic postings had to be shuffled, a few power types had to eat humble pie, but there didn't seem to be any seismic impacts from the leaks other than, perhaps, in Tunisia.

But is all of that about to change?  Maybe so.  WikiLeaks is still in business despite the almost rabid legal pursuit of its founder, Julian Assange.   And it's not just governments who are after him.   Today he disclosed that he's had more legal threats from banks than from any other organization.

Banks, Assange, WikiLeaks, what gives?   Possibly a great deal, enough to make the diplomatic leaks seem like schoolyard tales.  This could just be WikiLeaks' tipping point, the moment when it fights back hard.

It's been known for a while that WikiLeaks is planning to release a tsunami of documents aimed at Bank of America and its executives.   BofA has responded with apparent panic.   Last month the bank even began buying hundreds of internet domain names that could be used to attack its executives, registering names such as "BrianMoynihanSucks.com" to protect its CEO.   Too bad they didn't get onto that earlier as BankofAmericaSucks.com is already up and running for disgruntled bank customers.

But wait, there's more.   At a press conference today, Assange took delivery of two CDs from renegade former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer.  The CDs are rumoured to contain a load of Swiss banking data that could threaten some very wealthy tax dodgers, particularly from Europe and the United States, and expose how Swiss bankers colluded with them.   In an era when the mega-rich appear to focus most of their energies on keeping their wealth out of sight and out of the reach of their government authorities, this information could have ramifications far greater than the diplomatic leaks.

I suspect Julian Assange is in a high-stakes race to get the Swiss bank and Bank of America documents into the hands of major media outlets before the Americans can get their hands on him.   Right now, my money is on Assange.  We'll have to wait and see how Western governments move to suppress the disclosure of this information.

Most Americans have yet to realize it but Ronald Reagan, probably unwittingly, launched a class war in which working Americans have been on the losing side for the past 30-years.   As a result of the seamless union of government, corporate and media power, a great many Americans have been  conditioned to act to their own detriment and to embrace the best interests of those who have manipulated them.    Economic and political power have quietly passed from the hands of the many into the hands of the few.

I have often wondered what will happen when these Americans wake up and realize what has been done to them?  What happens when the rich and powerful lose control of the narrative?  It is possible that WikiLeaks could be the first crack in the dam, the one that assures its eventual collapse?   I think there are some Western governments who might share that view and find it alarming.

When Everybody Looks Like a Scumbag

Like most of us, I got mildly immersed in the WikiLeaks/New York Times - Guardian - Der Spiegel disclosure of American diplomatic missives.  At first it was like peeking into the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy but, before long, I found it just saddening.

I guess that's how America's powers-that-be see the rest of the world - duplicitous, venal, craven, utterly unfaithful.  The WikiLeaks diplo-dump was mildly interesting - at first - but as it droned on and on, the sheer weight of it became a bit oppressive, even suffocating.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the very best, the American diplomatic communiques seem to depict a world in which other nations rank anywhere from a mid-five to a one-minus.   The American vision, to the extent these memos reflect that accurately, is profoundly bleak and well beyond simply cautious or even negative.

I'm left wondering whether the Americans aren't seeing the rest of the world very much as that world has come to see them.   Ever since the Bush/Cheney cancer set in and metastasized, America's standing in the world has taken a hit from which it has shown little interest in recovering.   Sure we greeted Obama and prayed his election would even America's keel but the American right, political and media, heeled over even harder, further.

The tone I discerned that was relatively constant through these documents was of a country that feels itself besieged, betrayed and unappreciated.

Maybe, just maybe, America has more to learn, stands to gain more than anyone else from the WikiLeaks scandal.  Maybe America badly needs to take a brutally honest look at what's wrong with the way it sees the world.  It could just be that America could be the big winner.

WikiLeaks? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

The Guardian's executive investigations editor, David Leigh, says there are many powerful disclosures yet to be revealed from the WikiLeaks dump of U.S. diplomatic cables.



Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky says the leaked diplomatic messages reveal a "profound hatred of democracy on the part of [America's] political leadership."

Is the U.S. In League with Terrorists?

Wikileaks is planning a truly massive dump of U.S. government documents this weekend that could show Washington in league with terrorists.   The documents are said to show the U.S. has been supporting Turkey's Kurdish separatists, the PKK.   This is the same PKK that Washington officially lists as a terrorist group.

A report in The Jerusalem Post said the US military documents referred to the PKK as ''warriors for freedom and Turkish citizens'' and said the US had set free arrested PKK members in Iraq.

The documents also say US forces in Iraq have given weapons to the PKK.

But, then again, if America is supporting them they're not terrorists, they're freedom fighters.  Washington's perfidy will likely drive once secular Turkey even more firmly into the Islamist camp which will also probably eliminate what had been Israel's best friend in the Muslim world.

Wikileaks Poses No Threat to U.S. or Afghan Security

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has put to rest the notion that the release by WikiLeaks of some 70,000 documents concerning Afghanistan has endangered national security.  The Americans have scrutinized the materials.   The only concern is that the release of names of Afhgans working for or assisting allied forces could place those individuals and their families in jeopardy of retaliation from the Talibs.

At least the security canard has finally been put to rest.

Wikileaks Has "Several Million" US Government Files

Those 92,000 documents Wikileaks released to American, British and German news organizations?   Just the teeniest tip of a enormous iceberg.   According to The Guardian, the Afghanistan war logs released to the media are just the start.

[Founder Julian] Assange volunteered that Wikileaks was in possession of several million files, which amounted to an untold history of American government activity around the world, disclosing numerous important and controversial activities. They were putting the finishing touches to an accessible version of the data which they were preparing to post immediately on the internet in order to pre-empt any attempt to censor it.

American authorities are fighting back:

Since the release of the Apache helicopter video, there has been some evidence of low-level attempts to smear Wikileaks. Online stories accuse Assange of spending Wikileaks money on expensive hotels (at a follow-up meeting in Stockholm, he slept on an office floor); of selling data to mainstream media (the subject of money was never mentioned); or charging for media interviews (also never mentioned).



Earlier this year, Wikileaks published a US military document which disclosed a plan to "destroy the centre of gravity" of Wikileaks by attacking its trustworthiness.

According to The Guardian, a key player in the leaks was a US Army intelligence analyst serving in Baghdad who went by the online name Bradass87.   It all began when Bradass87 contacted computer hacker Adrian Lamo.

For five days, Bradass87 opened his heart to Lamo. He described how his job gave him access to two secret networks: the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, SIPRNET, which carries US diplomatic and military intelligence classified "secret"; and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System which uses a different security system to carry similar material classified up to "top secret". He said this had allowed him to see "incredible things, awful things … that belong in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC … almost criminal political backdealings … the non-PR version of world events and crises."



Bradass87 suggested that "someone I know intimately" had been downloading and compressing and encrypting all this data and uploading it to someone he identified as Julian Assange.

So it would seem that the Afghanistan logs could be just the beginning of a fascinating look into America's role in the world.   We may just get to see the American government for what it truly is, not what it pretends to be.

Bring it on.