G9 -- Snowden Appears In Russia Amid the Hoohah Over Microsoft Revelations (Ride The Tiger)

Yes. Well. The Prodigal Returns -- or at least he reappears. It will be interesting to see how his saga plays out from this point given yesterday's bombshell Guardian story regarding Microsoft's willing participation in the National Spy Games.

Julian got into his fine pickle, recall, almost immediately after he mentioned that WikiLeaks was going to release internal communications from some bank's (thought to be BofA) executive suites. Until that moment he'd been something of a gadfly and clown as far as the Powers That Be  were concerned, and his big releases were media chum and money makers. Afterwards, he was a wanted fugitive denounced and deplored by practically every living government or private sector personality suckling at the corporate teat. So he sits, fuming, in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, run to ground. WikiLeaks has been largely neutered.

The situation is somewhat different with regard to Snowden, Greenwald (et al) and the Guardian. The leaked material is being vetted with US government representatives prior to publication by the Guardian. You'll notice that almost nothing that's being published is bylined Greenwald alone -- and that I would say is a safety factor in all the hoohah. Snowden essentially disappeared after he made the video interview in Hong Kong, and reports of his travels and whereabouts and struggles had to be taken with a grain of salt because there were no witnesses and no proof that any of it was accurate or true. Now he has appeared, apparently in Moscow at the airport where he has apparently been staying since he arrived from Hong Kong, but video of this appearance has been forbidden, and practically all news of it is coming from tweets from inside the meeting room and interviews outside it  -- interviews not with Snowden.

His safety at the airport -- if not his comfort and convenience -- is supposedly assured as he or his handlers work out the details of asylum somewhere, eventually.

The Microsoft story yesterday was really the first time that the releases had touched upon how willingly cooperative the NSA's corporate partners have been on behalf of the National Surveillance State, and that struck me as the "BofA" moment for this saga.  Once that door is opened, it can never be shut again. Because it directly affects the international power and profits of behemoth corporate entities, it is seen as the same kind of existential threat to those behemoths that Julian's BofA threat-comment did, thus, you would think that the full force and power of the corporate-state would be unleashed against... what?

Julian threatened to release sensitive and confidential information about banks; Snowden provided information to the Guardian and the Guardian has released sensitive and confidential information about Microsoft's cooperative relationship with the NSA, and Snowden has now "appeared" in Moscow (at least for a moment) and, apart from some boilerplate denials and fudges, Microsoft and the government with which it functions in symbiosis have been remarkably silent, remarkably restrained -- despite claims of a Global Manhunt and all the rest of the spectacle that's been made of the saga, including the downing of the Bolivian president's plane in Vienna.

Of course both the government and Microsoft had foreknowledge of what was to be published and so it seems to be throughout this story, such foreknowledge has calmed some of the expected hysteria, something that was not necessarily the case with Julian and WikiLeaks -- though until the third rail of banking docs was touched, there was little effort to silence Julian or stanch the flow of leaks through WikiLeaks.

So far as I can tell from the very limited amount of information acquired by the Guardian at the Snowden Appearance in Moscow, the only "news" was that he is applying for asylum and will stay at the airport until it is granted and he is able to safely make his way elsewhere. Or maybe he'll stay in Russia.

OK. The tiger is mounted; let's see if it can be ridden.

holio ‏@holiode 

#Snowden pic.twitter.com/rhiz2eqpg8

Does the United States Even Have a Government Anymore?

I noticed that the current crop of Obomba Scandals!!!!! opened up almost immediately after the Correspondents' Dinner in April, almost on cue, and that the leading Obomba Scandals!!!! (Benghazi, IRS, Spying on the AP) had been in the hopper for quite some time. They were not "news," they were rehashed previous stories, pumped up to Frenzy Level 12. All of them had been reported on previously -- some, like Benghazi, becoming memes.

Suddenly, we saw the spectacle of Washington, particularly the White House, scrambling and babbling and doing its level best to both inflate and deflate these Scandals!!!! -- depending on which political team was being played for at any given moment. Polling the rabble was constant. Interestingly, none of these Scandals!!!! were resonating much with the public, so another one was introduced, Spying on a FOX reporter!!!! That got a momentary rise, but then even it seemed to settle into the background noise.

These Scandals!!!!! were not catching fire with the unwashed masses, and the White House seemed to be handling each one deftly. Rope-a-Doping Issa was easy. Calling for heads to roll was easy. Some sacrificial heads were offered up, "reforms" were launched, the Frenzy died down.

Then there came the Snowden Thing from the Guardian, and All Holy Hell broke loose -- at least for a time -- as the Nation's Sekrits!!!! were Exposed!!!! EVERYONE WAS BEING SPIED ON ALL THE TIME, AIYEEEE!!!! Run for your lives, Children, we're all going to DIEEEEEE!!!!

Yes, well. When the AP Surveillance story was being pumped up, I, among others, pointed out that everyone was subject to intrusive surveillance, had been for a long time, and now it seemed the AP was demanding an exemption. Why should they be exempt when the People are not? At what point do we turn this around and demand that the universal and blanket surveillance that everyone is under be curtailed?

I thought it was interesting at the time that quite literally no one was paying any attention to the fact that universal surveillance had been institutionalized thanks to the abrogation of responsibility by Congress, and it had been going on for years. Supposedly anti-terrorist, the surveillance was obviously in place to protect and defend the Overclass from interference by the Rabble. The obvious proof was in the OWS surveillance revelations that never got a lot of media but which are really quite shocking, especially for the granular level of surveillance of OWS and the coordination of surveillance and suppression by government and corporate interests throughout the land. This indicated that when it comes to perceived threats to the Ruling Class, the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the Constitution are essentially inoperative. And there is a vast ground level surveillance apparat in place, coordinated out of Washington, to ensure that it is so.

And nobody pumping the Scandals!!!! seemed to care. The only thing that mattered to them was that the media was being spied on: OUTRAGEOUS!!!! Except the Public didn't care about that. The Big Media had so little credibility with the public that whether or not reporters were being tailed by gumshoes was utterly irrelevant to most people. The public indifference toward the media's whining about being spied on seemed to come as a shock to the insular Big Media Club. How dare the rabble not care!!!?

Yes, well. That's how it goes when you betray the public's trust over and over and over again, which was how the Big Media had been operating for the entirety of the last decade and more -- at least since the Judicial Coup of 2000, and many would say since well before that, given all the phony Scandals!!!!! the Big Media < cough NYT cough > manufactured and marketed during the Clinton Apocalypse. The Post-Modern Media was as thoroughgoing an embarrassment to the concept of a Free Press as had ever seen the light of day, and that was saying something, considering how appallingly bad media had been in previous eras.

But just as that Scandal!!!!! was dying down thanks to public indifference, the Snowden Thing popped up at the Guardian and it was like manna from heaven to the parched and starving Big Media. Finally! Something to catch and hold the interest of the masses! Hurrah!

And of course what it was about was exactly what the previous failed Scandals!!!!! were not: the universal surveillance of everyone all the time, something that most people can actually relate to, though they may not be particularly opposed to it  -- depending on whether or not people they know are caught up in the Programs.

Yet the Snowden Thing is faltering, partly because of the somewhat bizarre nature of the skip tracing that's (apparently) taking place to apprehend the culprit. Much the same thing happened with Julian Assange, as I was reminded last night when Frontline re-ran their "WikiSecrets" program from 2010. The similarities between the Assange/Manning Thing and the Snowden Thing were remarkable. I was reminded of a lot things, including own my minor involvement in the story. Oh dear, what had I done?

At any rate, in looking back, not only on that but on the HBGary Thing that would come up not long afterwards, I felt the kind of disorientation I sometimes feel when things seem to be entering the Twilight Zone. Or is it Chinatown?

In this case, I'm asking, "Does the United States have a government anymore, or are Our Rulers just winging it?" And if they are, just who are they?

Obama and his Team? Uh, well, that's been debatable from the outset, as we saw when he set out to do certain things, like shut down the Guantanamo Gulag, and immediately he was beset by harpies, led by the contemptible daughter of One Dick Cheney, Ruler Imperial Forever or Something.  Every time she -- or he, now that he has someone else's heart -- opens their piehole, all of Washington, and particularly the White House, trembles. It is obvious as sin that they are, literally, in charge. But on whose behalf?

They -- House Cheney --  are able to publicly order Obama around like a string puppet. It's shocking. Congress is supine in the face of their bluster. WTF? As for the courts, ha. It's not simple corruption with the courts, it's something orders of magnitude worse, for We, the People have neither standing nor influence over issues like law and justice and so forth. At least in a corrupt judicial system, the People have some say, some of them even have some control, and if you know who they are, which you probably do, you at least have a chance.... in the current system, though, the People are kept completely in the dark, it's all a Big Secret.

Is there a government in the sense the public understands the concept of "government" any more? Or has what once was the Government become entirely a matter of certain private interests contending with one another to operate the levers of power on their own -- private -- behalf, either ignoring or exploiting the People in the process?

Is there really any question about it any more?

When I see the devolution of these issues into hatred for one or another of the political actors in the drama -- whether it be Obama or any other -- I shake my head in disgust. Obama and Bush were strolling around Africa together the other day, as if they were old buddies, much as Clinton and Bush stroll around together these days, and what's necessary to see here is that it -- the Presidency at the least and the governing class the Presidency serves is a continuum, not a discreet series of individuals to be hailed or excoriated in turn. Banging on about how wonderful or awful whoever sits on the Throne of Office may be simply gets nowhere. It's a form of venting to be sure, but beyond that, what good is it?

If, as seems to be, government is out of the People's hands altogether, and our public-private-partnership surveillance state fully intends to keep it that way forever and ever, amen, what, then, must we do?

That is the question for which we have no universal answer as yet, though many, many answers are being sought and experimented with. Sometimes the answer is right there in front of us, sometimes it has to be the product of struggle great or small, sometimes there is no answer -- or as is often the case, the answer is "no."

Submission and compliance and required economic extractions are all Our Rulers really want from us in any case.

As long as they believe they have that, we are, of course, free.

Frontline Gets Around to the Manning/WikiLeaks Story

Actually, it was quite a good program to introduce the topic to those who probably haven't been following it closely. Which I would assume includes pretty much all Americans.

I was more interested in the reaction to it in the comments to the program and to some of the additional material online.

Many people were appreciative that the story was being told at all, but a significant contingent put on their High Dudgeon Drag and stormed around denouncing PBS and Frontline for their "hatchet job" and "hit piece," going on and on and on about how disreputable this kind of coverage is, etc., etc.

We've. Seen. It. All. Before.

It is routine whenever the topic of WikiLeaks arises for partisans, "team-members," and mindless loyalists to throw hissy-fits and temper tantrums if the story isn't sufficiently laudatory toward Julian Assange. Julian himself has done it many times.

In this psycho-drama, Bradley Manning is little more than a prop. It's always all about Julian and how earthshakingly selfless and heroic he is in the face of concerted State Power. Any hint that Julian may be human and not a superhero, may even have feet of clay, is met with relentless denunciations.

As for Manning, he is a support-player in Julian's psycho-drama at best. Julian refuses (no doubt on the advice of an attorney) to acknowledge any connection between himself/WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, though there is some evidence he's wanted the story changed to suit his particular interests and needs. The Game is Julian playing cat-and-mouse with The Government (whichever Government); in that Game, people like Manning are collateral damage. Oh well, too bad, so sad.

One of the people who appeared in the documentary goes by the name of Emmanuel Goldstein. How cute. This person is actually one Eric Gordon Corley, hacker extraordinaire, but strangely, Frontline did not identify him as such. Emmanuel Goldstein, as we know, is the turncoat subject of the Two Minute Hate in 1984. In fact, for a time, at least until he was run to very plush ground in Britain, Julian Assange was the chosen Emmanuel Goldstein for our time. Once he was bagged, though...

...it was time for Bin Laden to get liquidated. And now they are going after Gaddafi, having already terminated one of his sons. I'm sure that Other Devils will arise as one-by-one, the old ones are eliminated.

This Frontline episode is being ritually denounced by what I assume are the usual crew of WikiLeaks supporters simply for not being laudatory enough of Julian on the one hand and for "smearing" Manning on the other by delving somewhat gingerly into his private life -- including his somewhat turbulent personality and his gayness.

An example of the commentary:

Greg K. 1 month ago
Kill the messenger much?

Very disheartening to see Frontline do such an irrelevant piece on such a hugely important story. Manning's personality and motives -- as well as his status as a hero or villain-- don't matter in the slightest. What does matter is the shifting of power dynamics brought about by communications technology, the leveling of the playing field between governments and individuals. Passive-aggressive hit pieces like this one only serve to obscure the issue.

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/wikileaks/bradley-manning/#disqus_thread#ixzz1NO04YR7p

There it is in a nutshell.

I'm pondering why it is so important for the mindless loyalists of Julian/WikiLeaks to repeat these charges again and again, no matter who publishes insufficiently laudatory pieces about Julian/WikiLeaks (and/or collateral damage like Manning) and no matter what those pieces say, and further, I'm wondering why it is so important for them (and Julian) to try to control the narrative so completely.

To me, this is just one of several signs that things are not -- at all -- what they seem to be with Julian and WikiLeaks, and that one should treat anything that comes out of their workshop with extreme skepticism.

Just as one should be skeptical of anything in the Major Mass Media.

Scott Creighton on 'Product Assange' and the Stupidity of the Liberal Class

As some of my handful of readers know, I've never been convinced of the -- shall we say -- motives and independence of Julian Assange and his business enterprise, WikiLeaks. I have my own reasons for skepticism and disbelief which I have extensively detailed here and elsewhere. Scott Creighton, at his "American Everyman" blog has detailed his rationale for not accepting the "Product Assange" that's being sold to the public, in a number of posts over the last few months.

His latest on the topic takes the matter a few steps further and essentially indicts the "Liberal Class" (h/t Chris Hedges) for its uncritical acceptance of Julian and his business enterprise at face value.

It's well worth the time to read and consider, especially given the signs of outright madness Assange has been showing more and more of lately.

It's all about him, in other words, and it has always been all about him.

Those who fall for this crap strike me as seriously foolish, people who have really lost their way and can be manipulated to believe almost anything as long as it appears to be opposed to the prevalent power structure. With the emphasis on appears to be.

I recognized early on that Julian really isn't opposed to the prevalent power structure, not at all. He is quite comfortably aligned with it. The fact that the main outlets for his leaks have been Establishment media, and the sole American outlet has been the New York Times (even after his little spat with them over John Burns thing) which everyone knows -- or should know -- is a deeply involved Government propaganda organ, is an obvious tip off of what's really going on here.

Apparently the Left, what's left of it (!), and its Libertarian hangers-on is so desperate for a Hero to Lead Them Out of the Wilderness, that they will readily attach themselves to a mountebank like Assange and celebrate his "triumphs!" and ritualistically denounce anything that suggests things may not be what they seem with him and with WikiLeaks.

The desperation on the Left for a Hero is what's been so striking to me. Instead of doing the hard and necessary work to achieve the important values of social and economic Dignity and Justice, what passes for the Left in this country has come to rely more and more on a handful of Heroic Figures in politics and the media to do it for them. In other words, they seem to believe that Faith is sufficient.

This is sad. Faith matters, no doubt about it. But it is never sufficient unto itself, especially if that Faith is focused on individuals.

Much as I admire Chris Hedges, for example, and as much as he puts his own comfort and safety on the line to make his point, I don't elevate him to Heroic stature mostly because I see him as a scout, a pathfinder. He's looking for a way through the Wilderness, he has not declared he has found it or that he necessarily will find it. He is on a path of discovery. And along the way, he indicts the Liberal Class as thoroughly as anyone has, bless his heart. He knows what's gone wrong and he's trying to find a way to rectification.

Julian? Not so much. Because everything on the whole planet is about him, and he was the cause of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East (and no doubt the Middle West as well), his efforts have never been about any sort of rectification of conditions, never about justice, never about dignity, they are only about his personal prominence, and particularly about fostering the triumph of the essentially Rightist political faction that knows how to do Imperialism correctly. He is opposed to the failures of the New Imperialism, not to Imperialism itself.

I could go on and I have gone on and I won't go on at length about this any more.

But I do recommend Creighton's piece on the matter of "Product Assange" for a corrective viewpoint.

[Oh, Happy St Patrick's Day! Faith and Begorrah!]

Leaking WikiLeaks

Everyone knows that the highly touted "Bank Revelations" that Julian Assange promised would be released by WikiLeaks soon after the New Year have essentially disappeared from the radar screens of WikiLeaks and the WikiLeaks partisan community. These days, the tout is that WikiLeaks is behind all the Revolutions in the Mid East.

Most people who followed the Assange drama last December were aware that the sudden official (private and government) hyper-interest in "getting" Assange and shutting down WikiLeaks coincided with Julian's claims in December about the upcoming release of the "Bank Revelations." Up to that point, the cat and mouse, spy vs spy gamesmanship between Julian and his pursuers was almost casual. WikiLeaks was never actually shut down, and the cyberwar against WikiLeaks seemed to peter out when Julian turned himself in and agreed to be held to answer for alleged sex crimes in Sweden. At the same time, WikiLeaks changed its MO, no longer accepting leaks online, and changing its operations to emphasize its journalistic assertions.

Meanwhile, a plethora of other leak sites has arisen, including one at Al Jazeera which published a trove of documents from the Israel/Palestine negotiations that demonstrated there were no real negotiations at all during nearly the last ten years, that in fact, Israel wasn't interested in peace with the Palestinians, and the whole "peace-process-road-map" was an ongoing fraud in which the United States was neither an honest broker nor a power player. Israel simply stomped all over everyone and then ignored the wreckage.

These incendiary documents are likely to have a stronger long term effect than anything WikiLeaks has put in the public domain to date though the overall effect of the Palestine Papers remains to be seen.

Comes now the release of "Inside WikiLeaks" a book by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, former WikiLeaks spokesperson and close ally of Julian Assange. It is reviewed by Laurel Maury at Truthout and Truthdig..

I have no personal desire to read this book, but I was interested in the review, not just for what Domscheit-Berg had to say about Julian and WikiLeaks, but for what reviewer Laurel Maury had to say about the book. She does not engage in the smear tactics that are routine for WikiLeaks/Assange partisans. For that failure, I'm sure that she and Truthout/Truthdig will be subject to intense propaganda campaigns and smearing by WikiLeaks/Assange partisans, some of which is already apparent in the comments to the review. The level of partisan animosity toward anyone and anything that doesn't follow the correct propaganda line about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is sometimes thoroughly bewildering Stalinist. It is as if WikiLeaks/Assange partisans are completely brainwashed to believe whatever Julian says, and to believe that everything that WikiLeaks leaks or publishes or Julian says is Absolute Truth -- as long as it confirms pre-existing opinions and prejudices, of course. There can be no deviation from the Correct Line whatever, and nothing but praise for Assange can be allowed. Even if partisans acknowledge there might be something "off" about Julian, the correct line is that it doesn't matter. It is pure personality cult and propaganda, but because so many WikiLeaks/Assange partisans are incapable of critical thinking under the circumstances, they don't even recognize they are parroting propaganda and worshiping the image and personality of an individual.

It really is bizarre sick-making.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg aims to tear down some of the personality cult and propaganda that surrounds Assange/WikiLeaks through what seems to be a fairly straighforward telling of what he saw, participated in and experienced as an insider. It's not a pretty picture, but neither is it surprising to anyone who has been paying attention and has maintained any critical thinking ability at all

One of the most interesting aspects of Daniel Domscheit-Berg's story is that when he left WikiLeaks last September, he and another unnamed employee deliberately crippled the organization.

The author claims that he and this man, whom he calls “the architect,” before their departure shut down the platform WikiLeaks uses to accept submissions, essentially locking the door to new material and walking off with the keys. He says the system still isn’t fixed and implies a fix isn’t likely.

This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that WikiLeaks no longer accepts online submissions.

Perhaps more germane to the overall picture is Domscheit-Berg's assertions that the WikiLeaks operation and especially Julian Assange is immersed in lies.

It must be remembered that “Inside WikiLeaks” is written by a man who admits to lying a great deal and who claims that the principal character of his book, Assange, is an arch-liar.

Again, anyone who has been paying attention and has maintained any sort of critical thinking skills at all during the repeated media frenzies that have arisen due to WikiLeaks and the antics of Julian Assange is well aware not just that there have been lies upon lies disseminated by Assange and WikiLeaks, but that propaganda -- a somewhat more subtle thing than straight out lies -- is Assange's and WikiLeaks' stock in trade.

Back in December, Michel Chossudovsky published an examination of WikiLeaks and its origins titled Who is Behind Wikileaks? at GlobalResearch.ca that covers in much greater detail some of the speculation I and others engaged in last year regarding the origins and motives of WikiLeaks' operations. Even with Domscheit-Berg's revelations, the picture is no where near complete, and what is really going on -- or meant to go on -- with the media phenoms of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is still mysterious.

The release of the State Department cables -- very slowly, almost all through media partners (in this country, exclusively through the New York Times, on the schedule and with whatever spin and emphasis the Times chooses) seemed to indicate that Julian and WikiLeaks had been tamed, brought into the fold of the mainstream as it were.

But at least since the episode last December when Julian threatened the Banks and all holy hell broke loose to chase him down and shutter WikiLeaks -- holy hell that abated promptly when Julian was run to ground we ought to note -- WikiLeaks essentially became sidelined while Julian's drama became the sole matter of public interest.

Other leak sites have arisen in the interim, some publishing explosive revelations, and the revolutionary spirit sweeping the Arab autocracies and the Middle East has simply eclipsed the plodding pace of whatever might come from the State Department trove WikiLeaks and its media partners were featuring.

The issue is supposedly government and corporate secrets. Domscheit-Berg is offering some secrets about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange for balance you might say. He is being actively smeared by WikiLeaks/Julian partisans because that's what they do. Whether he's telling the truth or not, few of us have any way of knowing. Nor do we have any way of knowing whether WikiLeaks is what it purports to be.

This uncertainty is part of our new reality, as is the tendency to believe rather than rationally -- and critically -- consider. We've passed into another universe, perhaps without even noticing.

Concepts

I used to joke that mine was the last generation to actually be "educated" in public school. In California, radical changes in the nature and purpose of public education began in 1967 with the Governorship of Ronald Reagan, the point being to make it impossible for students to rise up ever again.

It seemed fairly clear early on that the objective was to eliminate the teaching of -- and thus knowledge of -- critical thinking. Given the nature of the student uprisings of the '60's, based as they were on the realization that much of what were were being told was lies, a realization driven by the widespread ability to think critically, eliminating that ability understandably became a prime objective.

Today, it seems the very idea of critical thinking is unknown to almost anyone under 60.

Not only that, but there is a nearly universal misperception of the difference between speculation and fact.

There seems to be little or no knowledge of how to evaluate information; it is all a jumble that one sorts through based entirely on principles of Authority: who says the thing determines its factual truth.

During December, for example, an immense amount of "news" -- and hysteria -- was generated over the curious case of Julian Assange and what he might or might not have done to get himself in trouble with the Law. It was widely purported that the accusations against him in Sweden for those "sex crimes" were a set up by the CIA to entrap him so as to make his extradition to the USA for trial on any number of Espionage and other charges possible.

Charlie Savage's December 15 report in the New York Times laid the groundwork for much of the hysteria over what the Department of Justice was doing to build a case against Assange. His reporting was taken as gospel, fact, indisputable, partly because Charlie Savage is a widely trusted Authority, and partly because it was in the New York Times, which -- of course -- is Assange's Media Partner in the United States (except for their spat over the John Burns profile, of course.)

But if you read the article critically, there are no named sources, there is no support for the assertions made by Savage regarding what the Justice Department is or is not doing except for very vague statements and "authorizations" by AG Eric Holder, there is no factual evidence of any grand jury proceeding, and there is extensive speculation about what the DoJ "could be doing."

In other words, the entire piece, which has been taken uncritically as "fact," has very few facts in it, whereas it is filled with speculation, unsupported assertion, quotes from named and unnamed interested parties, and suspected future potentials.

Perhaps it's not an entirely useless story, but it doesn't tell you what is really going on -- because it can't.

All it does is keep a pot stirred -- and likely is a conduit for propaganda. It is the New York Times after all.

But people who don't understand critical thinking cannot look at a story like this that way. They look at who wrote it, they look at where it was published, they look at what is being said. As long as those things fit with their perceptions of "truth", the story is "true" and "factual."

Yes, it's factually speculative. Beyond that? Nothing.

Except that it made the Assange defense go into hyperdrive -- for fear, apparently, that Assange was going to be rounded up and put on trial in the US for Evility -- or something.

That fear and chaos and panic is useful for someone. But who?

The Year of Julian Goldstein

It really has been remarkable how Julian Assange (aka "Goldstein") has been able to dominate so much of the "news" this year, given especially the rather tepid interest in most of the Secrets Revealed that has been his stock in trade.

The key understanding here is "stock in trade." Julian Assange/Emmanuel Goldstein is no dilettante anarchist by any means. He is a very savvy businessman who acquired -- shall we say -- purloined commodities (ie: "secrets") from the US Government, apparently through the agency of a low-level military intelligence drone, one PFC Bradley Manning, who is now being held in solitary at Quantico on various charges of violating the UCMJ.

The way this is supposed to have worked is that Manning surreptitiously downloaded a huge trove of military and diplomatic reports that had been made available to an extraordinary number of individuals with security clearances (some 3 million) through the essentially unsecured SIPRnet System used by the DoD and State Department to "share" timely and pertinent information on what's going on in the world.

Once downloaded, Manning then cast about for what to do with the information, and finally he gave it over to Julian's business enterprise, WikiLeaks. Then, supposedly, he bragged about it to one Adrian Lamo, an FBI informant, online, and by and bye Manning was arrested and charged with violations of UCMJ Article 92 and 134. He languishes in pretrial confinement awaiting an Article 32 hearing preliminary to court-martial.

According to his lawyer, David Coombs, the defense (ie: Coombs) made a number of unspecified pretrial motions which caused the prosecution to request a delay in the Article 32 hearing until the classification level of the case can be determined. Granted. Article 32 is likely to be sometime after the New Year, Court-martial to follow likely in the spring.

Manning's conditions of confinement have been loudly protested by members of the Libertarian online commentariat -- not so much because of what they are (loudly claimed to be "torture"), but because of who are being applied to, ie: Manning, who, as a Hero, should neither be held at all nor prosecuted.

Meanwhile Julian's antics have been widely covered all over the world, especially the Sex Crimes he is accused of in Sweden, in many ways largely obscuring the content of the purloined materials he received (apparently from Manning) and distributed through his Media Partners (in the United States, exclusively through the New York Times... well, except for the State Department cables, which he withheld from the Times in "retaliation"* for an insufficiently flattering profile of himself by the redoubtable John Burns... well, except, the State Department cables are being released in the United States "exclusively" though the New York Times, as the Guardian UK provided the trove to the NYT, no charge, when Julian refused to.)

Chasing Goldstein/Assange became a huge story for a while, until that is, he was run to ground in England. Well, as the story is told, he contacted Scotland Yard (or was it his attorney) and said he would present himself at the local station after breakfast, on the basis of the INTERPOL warrant, issued by Sweden regarding those Sex Crimes, if that was all right with everyone, pip-pip, cheerio. It was, he did, the law in its majesty took its course, and he his now free on bail, confined, however, to a British supporter's country mansion, forced to wear an ankle bracelet so that his location may be monitored more easily from afar.

While there has been plenty of huffing and puffing from the Inner Party that Goldstein/Assange is some kind of rogue anarchist/nihilist intent on blowing everything up just to see it burn, the evidence is strikingly otherwise.

What we learn from his interviews and statements is that Assange/Goldstein is essentially a standard-issue (if somewhat naive) Anglo neo-colonialist/neo-imperialist who believes, apparently sincerely, that the current course of regenerating the British Empire as a New Anglo-American Empire is being done wrong -- and for the wrong reasons -- largely because of American incompetence, greed, brutality and folly. In other words, the New Empire is not the problem, the Americans are the problem.

In order to hamstring further American troublemaking in the world, Assange/Goldstein and his sponsors apparently believe that their form of "transparency" -- by releasing purloined American documents through selected Media Partners -- will minimize the threat they feel America represents to "getting on with it." Ie: remaking the world the way it should be.

The British, especially, have long complained of American corruption, greed, brutality and incompetence in the Imperial Project that has been under way since 2001. Australians have had their own complaints. What it boils down to is that Americans are "doing it wrong" and if they would just desist, those who know how to do these things would be able to bring peace, light, harmony and democracy to all the benighted peoples of the world, as it is their mission from On High.

The focus on Julian, of course, makes all this high-mindedness of Empire vanish. And we see that though Julian himself is an expert at raising his own profile, he is eagerly collaborated with by nearly the entire global mainstream media. They love this character, and at this point, they will do almost anything to continue to boost his profile.

Meanwhile, whether his efforts are effective in any way -- except for boosting his own profile -- remains to be seen. The Imperial Project continues, under American control and authority, as brutal as ever if not actually more so. The Powers That Be still rule us with a rod and a staff, and if these PTBs are replaced with others, there is no indication whatsoever that the burden on the masses would be in any way ameliorated.

The "knowledge" that supposedly comes from the purloined documents is being used and massaged by the Media Partners to advance particular agendas -- in the case of the NYT, an even more bloodthirsty future than the past. And in the United States, the NYT's spin on the docs, all of them, is the standard narrative for almost all mainstream media.

From the beginning, I've suspected that WikiLeaks being used as a factional player -- if it isn't actually a factional player -- by a segment of our government to force a certain (and not very pretty) future on all of us. So far, nothing has suggested to me anything else. It still has all the trappings of a factional fight within the government for power and control.

Meanwhile, Michael Chossudovsky has an interesting take:

Who is Behind WikiLeaks?

Especially interesting is his notion of "Manufacturing Dissent." I'd go farther. It's not just the manufacturing of dissent, it is the careful manipulation and managing of dissent.

In addition, some people are beginning to realize that not everything in the cables and the other documents dumped by WikiLeaks is factually true. In fact, a substantial proportion is false. Now what is one supposed to do with that bit of knowledge?

Nevertheless, this has been the Year of Julian Goldstein. Will we get a New Goldstein next year? Or has the Permanent Enemy of the State now been settled on?

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*This is how Greenwald put it:

They're [WikiLeaks] trying to train these newspapers with their favors - that's why the NYT was frozen out this time: in retaliation for that Burns article, and it's why the WashPost will never get anything, but they still feel like they need those papers to make a big impact.

To say the least, I laughed out loud. This is exactly what the Government does with its super abundance of "secrets" that are traded as commodities with favored reporters and outlets. In this case, stolen "secrets" are now being traded as commodities by Julian Goldstein and are being used as "training devices" to punish those whose reports on Julian are insufficiently laudatory. Exactly the way the Busheviks treated the press.

Fascinating.