A former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper is backing down from calls he made for the assassination of WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange.
“I regret that I made a glib comment about a serious subject,” Mr. Flanagan, an author and political science professor at the University of Calgary, told The Globe and Mail Wednesday. “If Mr. Assange is arrested on the recently announced Interpol warrant, I hope he receives a fair trial and due process of law.”
Mr. Flanagan made his comments on CBC’s Power and Politics show Tuesday evening. In a discussion about the significance of the leaks, Mr. Flanagan said: “I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract or maybe use a drone or something.”
Host Evan Solomon noted that his guest’s remarks were “pretty harsh.”
Noting that some of the diplomatic cables released is “not stuff that should be out,” Mr. Flanagan replied: “Well, I’m feeling very manly today. ... I wouldn’t feel unhappy if Assange disappeared.”
His comments are now attracting international headlines. British newspaper The Telegraph picked up the statement in a story it published about how Mr. Assange should be treated for his actions. “A former adviser to Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, suggested a different solution to the international diplomatic crisis – assassinating Mr. Assange,” the paper reported.
The professor has long been associated with Mr. Harper, having written a revealing book looking at his time on the Conservative Leader’s staff. He was also the architect of Tory election campaigns and advised on Mr. Harper’s winning effort in 2006.
Mr. Flanagan’s comments, however, prompted swift dismissals from the Prime Minister’s Office. “Everybody knows Tom Flanagan is no advisor to the Prime Minister,” director of communications Dimitri Soudas said on Twitter.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Mr. Flanagan’s comments were “utterly unacceptable” and “crosses the line.”
“I am not a defender of Mr. Flanagan but I think it is absolutely irresponsible, reprehensible to use language of this sort. Mr. Flanagan constantly speaks on behalf and for the Conservative Party, he is constantly on television. He is a man of experience, he is a man, I thought, of judgment. He showed astonishingly poor judgment.”
But Scott Reid, a former communications director to prime minister Paul Martin, was on the panel with Mr. Flanagan. The Liberal strategist knows what it’s like to attract headlines for pointed comments.
“To my ear, Tom was being his usual colourful and provocative self but he was obviously talking tongue in cheek,” Mr. Reid said Wednesday. “Not for a second did I think he was suggesting seriously that someone's life be put at risk. He's a great guy with strong opinions, not a mean guy with lunatic opinions.”
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #17 on: 2010-12-01 21:00:31 »
There you go our 'Justice System' at work .... or is that our 'Criminal System'. Setup, match and game point.
I guess the axiom is 'Don't piss off powerful rich people with the truth'.
"Wut und Macht, mehr wissen sie nicht"
Sigh
Fritz
WikiLeaks Founder Wanted by Interpol
Source: Tom's Guide Author: Kevin Parrish Date: 2010.12.01
A previous sexual assault case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been conveniently reopened during the disclosure of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables.
WikiLeaks has certainly been a hot topic of discussion during recent months with the release of the Afghan War Diaries and the more recent slow unveiling of a cache containing 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables. The latter release has splashed across newspaper headlines and fired up a political outrage, with the White House condemning the "unauthorized disclosure" of the cables and warning that revealing certain documents could disrupt American operations abroad and put American diplomats at risk.
That said, it should come as no surprise that a previous case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange has been conveniently reopened and recently upheld by an appeals court. The case against Assange supposedly has nothing to do with the recent WikiLeak activities, however the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) now has him on the wanted list not for espionage, but for previously-dropped sexual allegations.
The notice for Assange's arrest, found here, lists him as a 39-year-old man from Townsville, Australia wanted for sex crimes. The actual warrant was issued by the International Public Prosecution Office in Gothenberg, Sweden and stems from accusations of rape and sexual molestation made by two Swedish women he met during a WikiLeaks-related trip back in August.
But the Swedish authorities eventually withdrew the warrant. Chief prosecutor Eva Finne told the press that there "wasn't a reason to suspect that he committed rape." and the rape charges dropped, Although he admitted to having unprotected sex with both women, Assange began throwing out accusations of a possible "smear campaign," possibly ignited by an enemy of WikiLeaks.
Unsurprisingly, the sexual accusations and resulting warrant arrived just after WikiLeaks released more that 70,000 secret military documents regarding NATO's Afghan War.
Now after the release of the U.S. Diplomatic cables, the previous sexual assault case against Assange has been reopened and an EAW (European Arrest Warrant) has been issued to detain him for questioning. The reasons behind the case re-activation is unknown at this point. Mark Stephens, Assange's London-based lawyer, said a EAW must be based on a formal charge, and thus the current warrant is essentially invalid.
"Julian Assange has never been charged by Swedish prosecutors," Stephens told the Guardian. "He is formally wanted as a witness. All we have is an English translation of what's being reported in the media. The Swedish authorities have not met their obligations under domestic and European law to communicate the nature of the allegations against him in a language that he understands, and the evidence against him."
Currently the United States is in "an active, ongoing criminal investigation" to determine if the cable leaks violated Washington's Espionage Act. Other countries are already taking legal action while others are still considering the option.
So where is Assange now? The WikiLeaks founder is reportedly at a secret location somewhere outside London, England. He is supposedly joined by his fellow hackers and other WikiLeaks enthusiasts. He may eventually migrate to Ecuador, as its government on Monday offered the WikiLeaks founder asylum.
"We are ready to give him residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions," Ecuador's foreign minister, Kintto Lucas, said.
It was a humble text-only mailing list called cypherpunks, hosted by Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore, that laid the philosophical foundation for WikiLeaks. Longtime cypherpunk John Young, a New York architect, was the first to register the WikiLeaks.org domain name but has since become a critic. (Full disclosure: I subscribed to the mailing list during that time.)
From 1995 through at least 2002, Assange and some of WikiLeaks' other founders spent thousands of hours debating strong encryption, offshore data havens, and how to use technology to obtain documents and then publish them anonymously. The discussions there seemed to be a decade ahead of their time: list co-founder and Cyphernomicon author Tim May joked back in 1987 that strong encryption and anonymity would lead to someone offering: "Stealth bomber blueprints for sale. Post highest offer and include public key."
Today, that seems more plausible than not.
One common topic among the mostly libertarian-leaning cypherpunks is honing technological approaches to liberating information that a government or other influential organization would prefer to keep secret.
In a 1996 message, for instance, Assange announced a demonstration at the Scientology building in Melbourne in response to the church's aggressive legal attempts to remove its secret scriptures from the Internet. He wrote:
The fight against the Church is far more than the Net vs a bunch of wackos with too much money. It is about corporate suppression of the Internet and free speech. It is about intellectual property and the big and rich versus the small and smart. The precedents the Church sets today the weapons of corporate tirany [sic] tomorrow.
A year later, Assange announced that he had finished programming a beta version of a pioneering cryptographic file system, which he described as a "rubber hose proof" file system. The idea was to encrypt and hide data on a hard drive so thoroughly that it would be invisible to a government agency.
Government agents might suspect that some data existed, but they wouldn't be able to prove it. So even if the laptop's owner were tortured by being beaten with a rubber hose, he or she could claim that there was no more encrypted data left on the hard drive. As Assange put it at the time, "I can never prove that I have revealed the last of my keys. "
A 2001 cypherpunks post by Assange appears to preview his vision for what WikiLeaks would become: "Post-war U.S. liberties were usually restored after appalling abuses by the mendacious followed by intensive lobbing by civil rights activists. It'd be nice to cut the former phase short."
This article was first published as a blog post CNET News.
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #20 on: 2010-12-02 20:03:31 »
It is becoming clear to me that this Wikileak drama is really calling out how poor the current news media are at investigative reporting and how much they are in the back pocket of regimes everywhere; Goebbels is continuing his smug grin in his grave.
Cheers
Fritz
WikiLeaks shines light on media sources
Source: MSN Canada Author: Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press Date: 2010.12.02
OTTAWA - The raging WikiLeaks saga is shining a light on more than just the inside skinny of American diplomatic cables. It's sparking a debate about the very nature of journalism and leaks of government information.
What's remarkable about the WikiLeaks scandal isn't so much that internal government information found its way into the public domain, but that it did so without some degree of governmental approval and intent.
"It's amazing to me that the U.S. government security system is so lax that someone could allegedly do this kind of damage just by simply pretending to be listening to a Lady Gaga CD and at the same time downloading all these kinds of documents," CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer fulminated on air this week.
Blitzer's comments elicited a deluge of outrage in the journalism blogosphere.
"Journalists who oppose WikiLeaks are opposed to journalism," Roy Greenslade thundered in the Guardian newspaper.
The truth, well known to every political reporter, is that governments strategically leak information on an almost daily basis. Genuine whistleblowers are exceedingly rare.
Canadian newspaper headlines Thursday offered a real-world journalism-school clinic on the murky business of media leaks.
Both the National Post and the Globe and Mail had banner, front-page stories related to as-yet undisclosed WikiLeaks revelations concerning Canadian relations with the Afghan government.
Both newspapers led with the same leaked diplomatic note in which Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan, William Crosbie, warns of his blunt assessments of President Hamid Karzai, and offers to resign over the damage that's likely to ensue.
Neither paper provides the source of Crosbie's leaked diplomatic note, but it was not WikiLeaks. Rather, the note appears leaked in reaction to potential WikiLeaks fall-out. Given that it's a confidential communication between a Canadian ambassador and his Canadian overseers, the source was likely Canadian as well.
When asked Thursday about the leak, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a stout defence of Crosbie and his duty to present candid, confidential assessments in Canada's national interest.
Both tactics present Canada's Afghan ambassador as an honest diplomat ready to fall on his sword for the greater good of the country, if necessary. Not bad pre-emptive damage control — notwithstanding an RCMP announcement Thursday that it was looking into the source of the Crosbie leak.
Past history suggests the Mounties won't get very far.
When Justice Dennis O'Connor conducted his judicial inquiry into the treatment of Maher Arar, he dedicated considerable time to a series of prejudicial leaks that had painted the wrongly accused as a national security threat.
"Unquestionably, the leaks came from government sources with access to classified information ...," O'Connor concluded.
"The practice of leaking confidential information is wrong and inexcusable. Unfortunately, leakers never seem to get caught."
And even when the source of the leak is well known, there's a wide range of retribution.
Harper's former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, was outed for revealing an embarrassing anecdote to reporters about presidential candidate Barack Obama during the 2008 U.S. primaries.
Obama, Brodie confided during a budget lockup in Ottawa, wasn't serious about reopening the North America Free Trade Agreement. According to Brodie, an Obama aide had confided it was just a ploy to win over voters in northern U.S. states.
The incident caused a minor media sensation in the U.S., and gave Obama considerable discomfort.
Brodie survived but, paradoxically, a journalist who actually reported on Brodie's remarkable indiscretion was let go by CTV.
In between such high-profile and controversial leaks is the more mundane fare of daily news coverage in Ottawa.
When the Conservative government announced measures to combat human smuggling this summer, at least twice it defended its legislative decisions by referencing reports in the Sun Media newspaper chain — reports that had been based on leaks of internal government information.
But it's not just governments who love leaks. The "leak" is also intoxicatingly attractive to journalists as a wellspring of information.
How else to explain widespread, WikiLeaks-sourced news reports this week that France had pressed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the release of Canadian child soldier Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay?
As Maclean's magazine dryly noted Thursday, France actually issued a press release on its Khadr advocacy after the Clinton meeting in February 2009. It barely made a ripple at the time.
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #21 on: 2010-12-03 03:44:56 »
[Blunderov] I mentioned the Plame Affair previously. This splendid piece explores it further.
(Tangentially, heads up people! This is the Information Age and, as might be expected in human affairs, there is (IMO) an epic Information World War brewing. The oligarchs, badly stung by the Wikileaks revelations, are going to try to break the internet. We will have to fight for it. I think we can WIN but we need to be ready. Us or them I'm afraid.)
In my recent article “Ward Churchill: The Lie Lives On” (Pravda.Ru, 11/29/2010), I discussed the following realities about America’s legal “system”: it is duplicitous and corrupt; it will go to any extremes to insulate from prosecution, and in many cases civil liability, persons whose crimes facilitate this duplicity and corruption; it has abdicated its responsibility to serve as a “check-and-balance” against the other two branches of government, and has instead been transformed into a weapon exploited by the wealthy, the corporations, and the politically connected to defend their criminality, conceal their corruption and promote their economic interests; and, finally, that the oft-quoted adage “Nobody is above the law” is a lie.
Some critics were quick to dismiss my article as politically motivated hyperbole. But with the recent revelations disclosed by Wikileaks, it appears that this article did not even scratch the surface, because it is now evident that Barack Obama, who entered the White House with optimistic messages of change and hope, is just as complicit in, and manipulative of, the legal “system’s” duplicity and corruption as was his predecessor George W. Bush.
For example, as I stated in the aforementioned article, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute former Attorney General John Ashcroft for abusing the “material witness” statute; refused to prosecute Ashcroft’s successor (and suspected perjurer) Alberto Gonzales for his role in the politically motivated firing of nine federal prosecutors; refused to prosecute Justice Department authors of the now infamous “torture memos,” like John Yoo and Jay Bybee; and, more recently, refused to prosecute former CIA official Jose Rodriquez Jr. for destroying tapes that purportedly showed CIA agents torturing detainees.
Predictably, the official mantra supporting these refusals is that “exhaustive” investigations had been conducted. But now, thanks to Wikileaks, the world has been enlightened to the fact that the Obama administration not only refused to prosecute these individuals itself, it also exerted pressure on the governments of Germany and Spain not to prosecute, or even indict, any of the torturers or war criminals from the Bush dictatorship.
This revelation invariably leads to three inescapable conclusions: these so-called “exhaustive investigations” were a sham; the Obama administration never intended to prosecute such crimes and, in fact, went to inordinate lengths to cover them up; and the American government has the proven capacity to influence the legal systems of other countries.
And now, given the fact that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing criminal charges in Sweden, it is also evident that America even has the Swedish government and Interpol in its hip pocket.
Of course, I do not know if Assange committed the crime he is accused of. I do know that to the American legal “system” the truth is irrelevant. The minute Assange revealed the extent of America’s criminality and cover-ups to the world, he became a marked man. And America is going to do anything it can to silence him.
Already we see the treacherous Joe Lieberman, the man who almost single-handedly killed the “public option” in the health care reform bill so insurance companies can continue to enjoy record profits, intimidate an American server into discontinuing its transmission of Wikileaks.
And we see many right-wing commentators demanding that Assange be hunted down, with some even calling for his murder, on the grounds that he may have endangered lives by releasing confidential government documents.
Yet, for the right-wing, this apparently was not a concern when the late columnist Robert Novak “outed” CIA agent Valerie Plame after her husband Joseph Wilson authored an OP-ED piece in The New York Times criticizing the motivations for waging war against Iraq. Even though there was evidence of involvement within the highest echelons of the Bush dictatorship, only one person, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted and convicted of “outing” Plame to Novak. And, despite the fact that this “outing” potentially endangered the lives of Plame’s overseas contacts, Bush commuted Libby’s thirty-month prison sentence, calling it “excessive.”
Why the disparity? The answer is simple: The Plame “outing” served the interests of the military-industrial complex and helped to conceal the Bush dictatorship’s lies, tortures and war crimes, while Wikileaks not only exposed such evils, but also revealed how Obama’s administration, and Obama himself, are little more than “snake oil” merchants pontificating about government accountability while undermining it at every turn.
Now there is talk of charging Assange under America’s so-called “espionage” statutes. But American history has shown how these statutes have been incessantly used to conceal government criminality.
When the United States Constitution was being created, a conflict emerged between delegates who wanted a strong federal government (the Federalists) and those who wanted a weak federal government (the anti-Federalists).
Although the Federalists won the day, one of the most distinguished anti-Federalists, George Mason, refused to sign the new Constitution, sacrificing in the process, some historians say, a revered place amongst America’s founding fathers.
Two of Mason’s concerns were that the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, and that the presidential pardon powers would allow corrupt presidents to pardon people who had committed crimes on presidential orders.
Mason’s concerns about the abuse of the pardon powers were eventually proven right when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, when Ronald Reagan pardoned FBI agents convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins, and when George H.W. Bush pardoned six individuals involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
Mason was also proven right after the Federalists realized that the States would not ratify the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added. But this was done begrudgingly, as demonstrated by America’s second president, Federalist John Adams, who essentially destroyed the right to freedom of speech via the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to say, write or publish anything critical of the United States government.
Years later, Adams’ precedent would resurface during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, this time via the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Although these laws were designed to prohibit criticism of America’s involvement in World War One, mainstream religious leaders who criticized the war were rarely prosecuted, but persons and political organizations considered to be “radical,” like Socialist leader Eugene Debs and members of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union (IWW), were imprisoned and their organizations decimated.
The McCarthy era of the 1950s brought forth the full power of the Smith Act, which was allegedly created to punish communists who advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government, but was ultimately used to blacklist and, in many cases, economically destroy members of the political left.
During the 1960s and 70s, after the courts diluted much of the power of the Sedition laws, government tactics used to “neutralize” persons and political organizations became more covert. Some, like actress Jean Seberg, had false rumors circulated about them in an attempt to destroy their careers. (Seberg ultimately committed suicide as a result of one of these rumors). Others, like Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, were framed and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. And still others, like Chicago Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were murdered outright.
The ironic thing about these so-called “espionage” acts is that they actually invert the concepts of crime and punishment. Most criminals break laws that others have created, and people who assist in exposing or apprehending them are usually lauded as heroes. But with the “espionage” acts, the criminals themselves have actually created laws to conceal their crimes, and exploit these laws to penalize people who expose them.[Bl. My underlining.]*
The problem with America’s system of government is that it has become too easy, and too convenient, to simply stamp “classified” on documents that reveal acts of government corruption, cover-up, mendacity and malfeasance, or to withhold them “in the interest of national security.” Given this web of secrecy, is it any wonder why so many Americans are still skeptical about the “official” versions of the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, or the events surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001?
In the past, whenever I wrote about the evils of the Bush dictatorship, I often quoted a question folk singer Phil Ochs rhetorically asked during a 1968 concert in Vancouver, Canada: “What can you do when you’re a helpless soul, a helpless piece of flesh, amid all this cruel, cruel machinery and terrible, heartless men?”
Ochs subsequently committed suicide in 1976, and while I am uncertain that this was the correct path to take, I can certainly understand his frustration. Although the election of Barack Obama gave rise to the “outrage” expressed by the so-called “tea party” movement, if there is any political group in America that has a right to be outraged, it is the Progressives. They bought into Obama’s message of change and hope, believed that the criminals of the Bush dictatorship would have to answer for their crimes, and naively dreamed that America’s respect for peace, justice and human rights would be restored.
But, as Wikileaks and the antics of Obama’s “Justice” Department have shown, the Progressives were deceived. Yet, as in the past, they are forced to be supportive of Obama’s duplicity because the alternative is worse.
I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.
What Wikileaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic and content to lose themselves in one or more of the addictions American culture offers, be it drugs, alcohol, the Internet, video games, celebrity gossip, text-messaging—in essence anything that serves to divert attention from the harshness of reality.
After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts from being aware of these evils can be paralyzing, especially when accentuated by the knowledge that government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. The prevalence of such evils can shatter faith in goodness and sometimes even in God. They can transform virtues like honesty, compassion, and hope into vices and make those who cling to them suffer in poverty, depression and sorrow.
So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. And shame on Germany and Spain, and all those other guilty countries, for allowing their sense of justice to be distorted by a nation that doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word.
And damn the right-wing outrage over the Wikileaks revelations. It is the American people who should be outraged that its government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.
So savor the Wikileaks documents while you can, because soon they’ll be gone. And for the government criminals of the world, and for those who protect them, it will again be business as usual.
David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru
By : David R. Hoffman, Pravda.Ru Legal Editor December Friday 3 2010
* [Bl.] The counter-argument goes that 'the people' have appointed leaders to act as it were in loco parentis and that there has to be trust in those leaders. However, it could not be more crystal clear that these leaders (and perhaps all people) cannot be trusted to operate in any interests but their own if they are permitted to do so in secrecy. This why democracies are supposed to have a free press as a check or balance. Like conscience, the free press is that little voice in your head that tells you somebody might be watching. Of course the 'free press' has for the most part been bought and paid for and that inconvenient little voice is now quite silent. This leaves our internet, our Ring of Power, as the last bastion of accountability and Morder will do anything it can to take it away from us now because "They hate us for our freedoms". Srsly. They really, really do.
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #22 on: 2010-12-05 17:24:44 »
As we smugly look over the rim of our cafe lattes, leafing through the Christmas sale flyers, wondering which after school event we have to shuttle our off spring to this evening; a morally bankrupt regime is doing exactly what we condemned in horror not so long ago.
Salman Rushdie and Raheel Raza, were sentenced to death by their clan of alleged cultural equals and we were outraged. Now we are requesting the demise of Julian Assange a member of our clan. In both cases the respective zealots (aka Self Lubricating Uncaring Tyrants) to maintain their power by managing and controlling information, have released a fatwa requesting it, and the media is selling it.
I am less optimistic then Blunderov. If Wikileaks goes down; the internet as a tool for democracy and social conscience is finished.
The Internet is the greatest tool the human species has ever had to further just and equitable societies. From all accounts of recorded history, controlling information is power. As the west now mounts is 'Wiki Inquisition' and Julian Assange is tried and burnt at the stake as a witch for rubbing, our noses in the excrement we have covered our democracies in, to ensure our next 'krispy kream' and frothy cappuccino, we are heading into an 'information dark ages' that will make the last 'dark ages' seem down right enlightened.
It would seem to me time to rework Kafka's "Amerika" or "The Man Who Disappeared" into "The West", "The Culture that Disappeared".
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #24 on: 2010-12-07 11:14:04 »
[letheomaniac] Everything I want to say about the Wikileaks affair has already been said by... Hillary fucking Clinton?!
"Information has never been so free. Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable." - Hillary Clinton in a speech given in Washing DC on the 21st of January 2010
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #26 on: 2010-12-07 15:02:39 »
[Blunderov] 9th dan International Trollmaster Julian Assange has demonstrated the very pinnacle of the troll's art by causing the US and Israel to get butthurt with each other thus scoring moar than 9000.
Some will say it should have been obvious that the Joos were behind it right from the start because of the profit; others will say to the victor go the lulz. Yet others speak of a time of raidz and drama to come, with many going into the party van and perhaps even perma b&.
December Monday 6 2010 (17h35) : Wikileaks: US Hits Back At Israel
Wikileaks: US Hits Back At Israel Posted on 03. Dec, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba
U.S. intelligence retaliates against Israel’s role in Wikileaks’s disclosures By Wayne Madsen
With Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, continuing their gloating over the disclosure by Wikileaks of classified U.S. State Department cables, the U.S. intelligence community is taking off its gloves and is releasing some embarrassing information about Netanyahu and a Mossad attempt to use a divorce involving the President of Yemen’s family to penetrate the president’s family’s inner circle in a possible blackmail attempt.
Wikileaks’s founder, Julian Assange, singled out Netanyahu for praise as a world leader who believes the embarrassing leaks will aid "global diplomacy." In an interview with Time magazine, Assange said "Netanyahu believes that the result of this publication, which makes the sentiments of many privately held beliefs public, are promising a pretty good . . . . [and] will lead to some kind of increase in the peace process in the Middle East and particularly in relation to Iran." Assange, who is believed to be in the United Kingdom, is the subject of an INTERPOL arrest warrant for alleged "sex crimes" in Sweden. Huseyin Celik, the deputy chief of Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), said that Israel appeared to have had advance knowledge of the contents of the latest release of State Department cables. Celik said of the leaks: "One should look at which country is content. Israel is extremely content."
Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay stated from Ankara that "It seems to us that the country which is not mentioned much, especially in the Middle East, or which this development seems to favor, is Israel. This is how we see it in a way when we look in the context of who is benefiting and who is being harmed."
WMR previously reported that Wikileaks, or "WikIsrael", was part of a Mossad operation having links within the neocon and Israel Lobby apparatus of the United States government. Turkey has reasons to be suspicious of the leaks. Various leaked State Department cables suggested that Iran was helping Hamas and secretly helping Iran with its nuclear program.
The notorious pro-Israeli publisher of The New Republic, Martin Peretz, chimed in with a column in his magazine stating that the leaks from the U.S. embassy in Ankara proved that Obama’s outreach to the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a "failure."
In fact, many of the leaked cables favoring Israel, hostile to Russia and China, or proving very embarrassing to President Obama appear to have been written in total or in part or contain quotes by political appointee or career Jewish diplomats with close ties to Israel and its lobby in the United States: U.S. ambassadors to Turkey Eric Edelman and James Jeffrey; Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg; U.S. ambassador to Brazil Clifford Sobel; U.S. charge d’affaires in Saudi Arabia Michael Gfoeller; Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip H. Gordon; ambassador-at-large Daniel Fried; U.S. ambassador to Canada David Jacobson; among others.
A source within the U.S. Secret Service, on deep background and on the condition of anonymity, informed WMR that while on a "business trip" to New York on November 8, Netanyahu visited a performing arts theater in West Greenwich Village. U.S. Secret Service personnel were required to accompany Netanyahu to the theater. The performance involved extreme sado-masochistic, as well as homosexual themes, according to our source, who added, "I almost threw up." Netanyahu was passing through New York on his way to New Orleans where he addressed the general assembly of the Jewish Federation of North America.
Another U.S. intelligence source has revealed to WMR that a well-known operative for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Capitol Hill is attempting to blackmail the daughter of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in a "honey trap" operation. Saleh’s daughter, who is recently divorced, has reportedly been writing checks to the AIPAC operative, which, subsequently, are not cashed. The un-cashed checks appear to be part of a Mossad operation designed to establish a paper trail that can later be used to blackmail Saleh through his daughter.
These are likely the first of many retaliatory moves by intelligence agencies around the world against Israel. As one informed source put it, "Israel overplayed its hand with these Wikileaks releases, now it will suffer the ’blow-back."
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He has written for several renowned papers and blogs. Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has been a frequent political and national security commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and MS-NBC. Madsen has taken on Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on their television shows. He has been invited to testifty as a witness before the US House of Representatives, the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and an terrorism investigation panel of the French government.
As a U.S. Naval Officer, he managed one of the first computer security programs for the U.S. Navy. He subsequently worked for the National Security Agency, the Naval Data Automation Command, Department of State, RCA Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation.
Madsen is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO), and the National Press Club. He is a regular contributor to Opinion Maker
We may never know the whole story behind the recent publication of sensitive U.S. government documents by the Wikileaks organization, but we certainly can draw some important conclusions from the reaction of so many in government and media.
At its core, the Wikileaks controversy serves as a diversion from the real issue of what our foreign policy should be. But the mainstream media, along with neoconservatives from both political parties, insist on asking the wrong question. When presented with embarrassing disclosures about U.S. spying and meddling, the policy that requires so much spying and meddling is not questioned. Instead, the media focus on how so much sensitive information could have been leaked, or how authorities might prosecute the publishers of such information.
No one questions the status quo or suggests a wholesale rethinking of our foreign policy. No one suggests that the White House or the State Department should be embarrassed that the U.S. engages in spying and meddling. The only embarrassment is that it was made public. This allows ordinary people to actually know and talk about what the government does. But state secrecy is anathema to a free society. Why exactly should Americans be prevented from knowing what their government is doing in their name?
In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, however, we are in big trouble. The truth is that our foreign spying, meddling, and outright military intervention in the post-World War II era has made us less secure, not more. And we have lost countless lives and spent trillions of dollars for our trouble. Too often “official” government lies have provided justification for endless, illegal wars and hundreds of thousands of resulting deaths and casualties.
Take the recent hostilities in Korea as only one example. More than fifty years after the end of the Korean War, American taxpayers continue to spend billions for the U.S. military to defend a modern and wealthy South Korea. The continued presence of the U.S. military places American lives between the two factions. The U.S. presence only serves to prolong the conflict, further drain our empty treasury, and place our military at risk.
The neoconservative ethos, steeped in the teaching of Leo Strauss, cannot abide an America where individuals simply pursue their own happy, peaceful, prosperous lives. It cannot abide an America where society centers around family, religion, or civic and social institutions rather than an all powerful central state. There is always an enemy to slay, whether communist or terrorist. In the neoconservative vision, a constant state of alarm must be fostered among the people to keep them focused on something greater than themselves — namely their great protector, the state. This is why the neoconservative reaction to the Wikileaks revelations is so predictable: “See, we told you the world was a dangerous place,” goes the story. They claim we must prosecute — or even assassinate — those responsible for publishing the leaks. And we must redouble our efforts to police the world by spying and meddling better, with no more leaks.
We should view the Wikileaks controversy in the larger context of American foreign policy. Rather than worry about the disclosure of embarrassing secrets, we should focus on our delusional foreign policy. We are kidding ourselves when we believe spying, intrigue, and outright military intervention can maintain our international status as a superpower while our domestic economy crumbles in an orgy of debt and monetary debasement.
He is a new kind of whistle-blower: one made for the digital age. Those before him (like Daniel Ellsberg) were limited in the ways they could go public with their information. But in founding WikiLeaks.org, Julian Assange gave himself the freedom to publish virtually anything he wants, whether it's the true nature of Iraqi prisoner abuse, the double role Pakistan plays in Afghanistan or the personal e-mails of Sarah Palin.
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #28 on: 2010-12-08 10:47:57 »
Quote:
Posted by: letheomaniac Posted on: 2010-12-07 11:35:10 [letheomaniac] I thought this article was well reasoned and informative, if a little long to post: Wikileaks and the Worldwide Information War by Andrew Gavin Marshall. It's well worth a read if you have a bit of time to spare.
[Fritz]Great Read Thx !
It is interesting how [Letheomaniacs] story and [Bl] seem to contradict each other ?
“This document is a classifed (SECRET/NOFORN) 32 page U.S. counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks. “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out”. It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses “trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whisteblowers”, the report recommends “The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistlblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site”. [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective]. As an odd justificaton for the plan, the report claims that “Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Kora, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website”. The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks—U.S. equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable U.S. violations of the Cemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanmo Bay…”
Re:Wikileaks
« Reply #29 on: 2010-12-14 09:39:58 »
[Blunderov] For me, this settles any lingering doubts I may have had about the Wikileaks. (Not that I was seriously troubled on this score.) The issue is now (IMO), given that access to these and similar materials are perfectly justifiable and indeed perhaps even morally obligatory (enforced tours of Abu Ghraib for the entire population of the USA anyone?), what degree of resistance to those who would prevent it is therefore justified? The argument that it is within the power of the people to change their government and then change the rules for the better in a legal manner is clearly absurd - if Obama's presidency proves anything it proves that much. (I strongly suspect that this will be the whole of the legacy his sad little single term of office. It would be nice if he hands back the Nobel when he leaves the White House. One lives in hope that there remains some shred of integrity in the man if not the President.)
(The underlinings in the following piece were added by me.)
The website "Wikileaks" has been getting a lot of media attention recently after it's leaking of thousands of secret and classified US diplomatic cables. It was also in the headlines in April after it's release of classified footage showing US forces killing Iraqi civilians and journalists. Some governments have been critical of Wikileaks, Hilary Clinton referring to the recent leaks as an "attack on the international community and Sarah Palin describing head-man Julian Assange as having "blood on his hands", and calling for the US government to hunt him down with the same urgency as that with which they hunt down suspected terrorists. Is any of this backlash justified? I have a feeling that such harsh criticism is typical of a person who has been caught in the act of wrong-doing and points the finger at the person who reveals their crimes, in an attempt to draw attention away from their own misdeeds. Is Wikileaks responsible for the death of US soldiers in Iraq? Is there a point at which freedom of information becomes ethically unjustifiable?
Response from: Peter S. Fosl
I'm inclined to think your psychological account of the response is correct, though perhaps incomplete. I also think the intensity of the fury against the leaks indicates the extent to which the government and many citizens have internalized institutional authority as normal and overriding, that both the government and many citizens have lost touch with other, competing, and sometimes more important sources of authority and obligation. The authorities have reacted hysterically because they find intolerable the idea that people might act upon other grounds and find themselves compelled by duties that the authorities don't define. They are not only upset with these leaks, but they fear that these leaks may inspire others. The policies of the state, however, are not always congruent (and are often not congruent) with the interests of the nation, or with what is morally right. So far, Wikileaks has no demonstrable blood on its hands. If it had, the specifics would be broadcast on FOX 24/7. Defense Secretary Gates has announced that whatever damage may have been done seems "moderate." The military has indicated it has not even found it necessary to warn anyone whom might be in danger. Wikileaks worked carefully with press organizations and through them with the State Department to redact information from the documents that might harm people. (So, organizations that have published the leaks along with Wikileaks such as the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian have blood on their hands, too, if Wikileaks does.) This, of course, may change, and it may turn out that the leaks have caused and will cause suffering and death. And that possibility is a morally troubling dimension of leaks of this sort. It does warrant the judgment that leaking is not the most desirable way of dealing with government misconduct. On the other hand, the leaks have clearly shown that the US government, unlike Wikileaks, actually does have blood on its hands. The Iraq leaks revealed 15,000 deaths that had gone unreported, a number of which may have been criminal in nature. They revealed US complicity in many, many, many cases of torture and abuse of prisoners--details that the public had not known until that point. They have revealed US military actions in Pakistan that had been unknown. And they have confirmed that the US bombed Yemen in November of 2009 killing scores of civilians, many of them children, in an action that had been denied. The leaks have demonstrated that the US government has interfered with investigations of murder and torture in Spain and Germany and that Arab governments have lied about important matters to their people and have been calling for the bombing of Iran. All this involves real blood, not the hypothetical sort to which charges against Wikileaks appeal. Moreover, the leaks reveal real, violent conduct, the sort of conduct about which citizens of free societies ought to know (and ought to want to know) in order to assess the policies of their governments. Wikileaks has also exposed corruption in Iceland, Nigeria, Australia, and Peru. It is a measure of the extent to which the US is not a free society that so much more attention has been focused upon the messenger than upon the deeply troubling content of the message. Having said that, not all leaks are proper or defensible. In my view, violating secrecy classifications is justifiable only when two conditions are met: (1) the violation serves to expose serious government corruption, criminality, or misconduct--in short, when the leak serves the public interest in a substantial way--and (2) when lawful alternatives to exposing the corruption, etc., are not reasonably available. In the case of Wikileaks, I'd say that the jury is still out. Only if we find (1) that the information disclosed on balance serves the public interest in a substantial way and (2) that the information could not have been acquired through lawful channels, will the leaks have been justifiable. It's seem clear to me that the second condition has been met: The failure of the US government and its citizens to pursue proper investigations into the process that led to the Iraq War, the financial corruption involved in prosecuting the wars, into torture, rendition, surveillance, and unlawful killing warrants the conclusion that the information the leaks have revealed about wrongdoing would not have been released through normal, legal channels. The vast numbers of trivial and meaningless documents in the leaks that were classified as secret suggests a pervasive abuse of secrecy classifications. That abuse, too, suggests that the second condition has been met. Still, I think's still too early to tell whether the first condition has been met: that is, on balance, whether the leaks have been for the good. We may soon discover terrible effects of the leaks that will outweigh the benefits so far achieved. To date, however, things look pretty good for the leakers.
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