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.

Black Ops

Strange encounter during one of my testy exchanges with Glenn today. It had to do with WikiLeaks, a topic I wrote about on Monday.

I had responded to muddy thinking's question about a video WikiLeaks has of a massacre in Afghanistan. I pointed out essentially that this was a video that Julian Assange claimed in April would be released "soon," but it has never been released. And I proposed a number of questions I thought journalists should ask Julian about WikiLeaks and the various materials they say they have.

Strangely enough, Glenn responded to my post to muddy thinking, and he did so in the spirit of the testiness we had had with one another since yesterday, but with what I thought was an odd twist. Comme ça:

Che Pasa

[Quoting me to muddy thinking:]
He kept claiming WikiLeaks was going to release the video of the Afghan murders "soon." They never did.

Julian needs to be asked what's the hold up.

[Glenn's response:]

They haven't yet, but will - there are issues with encryption and verification that take time.

It is interesting that so much of our propaganda media has been so eager to put out just about any story Julian wants to tell.

What's "interesting" about it? Are you one of those people who think WikiLeaks is some sort of government-run operation - like they were eager to have that Apache attack seen by the world?

Besides, wasn't Julian in hiding somewhere in Australia because the Pentagon and the drones were after him? His passport seized?

His passport has been returned. And it's not Julian who claimed the Pentagon was after him - that was reported by a former NYT reporter who now writes for The Daily Beast, and it was Daniel Ellsberg who speculated that he feared for Julian's safety - but they all probably are controlled by the Pentagon, too.

Curious to say the least.

The slothful, dishonest way of spreading innuendo: ominously pronounce things "interesting" and "curious" without ever actually saying anything.

Now wait, I thought. "Are you one of those people who think WikiLeaks is some sort of government-run operation...?"

Hold on. Glenn does not read my blog posts here; so far as I can tell, he has not been here any time in the past year. And apart from some casual references, I have not mentioned WikiLeaks at Glenn's Place. He would not have seen my post on the topic yesterday.

Nor was there anything in my questions about WikiLeaks today that indicated I wondered if it was a black op -- something I have in fact wondered since the first time they made a media splash, but I have only mentioned it here. And it's something any skeptic should wonder.

I've never seen any evidence that it is, and I certainly have no knowledge that it is. There are just too many "curious" things going on -- from the wall to wall coverage in the propaganda media and the endless loop showing the extermination of the Iraqis in the April "Collateral Murder" tape to the increasingly ludicrous cat and mouse routine Julian revels in to the curious cases of the leaker and the hacker that turned him in. And all those hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables.

Anyone should be skeptical of this continuing drama, but I don't know what's really going on. Nor, at the time I wrote did I have any idea that there was a whole "WikiLeaks is Black Ops" conspiracy theory subculture. I had no idea that was the case when Glenn responded the way he did.

I didn't even look into it until after I'd let the question settle: "Are you one of those...?"

And behold.

Oh, there's a lot of skepticism and elaborations on theories of conspiracy about WikiLeaks out there that I had no idea existed.

I'm just now starting to sort through it. And the first source cited is Wayne Madsen Report, a site I do not link and I do not read. I have probably only seen it a couple of times, and the only thing I can recall about it was that it seemed to be a black op itself! Hm. Spy v Spy indeed!

So they are claiming WikiLeaks is CIA? That's rich.

I will have to investigate further and report back. This is fascinating.

===============================================

Haven't really found much that is useful, but a good deal of speculation is out there, and it seems to center around the notion that Julian, an "ex-hacker", is using WikiLeaks as a way to, let's face it, make money. He would collect "secret" information from anonymous individuals in the field and then sell it to eagerly awaiting news organizations.

Only they weren't so eager, apparently. So, runs the speculation, he was "flipped." Rather than make him into an Enemy of the State, the spooks turned him into a useful ally. The figure of $2 million came up in one speculative missive. Problem is, he's still trying to raise money. But that's all part of Spookery 101, so we'll let that go.

Australia, according to one account, is full to bursting with CIA, and it is widely believed there and elsewhere that Julian -- who is WikiLeaks, there is no one else in point of fact -- is a spook.

Manning seems to be regarded as an impressionable and not very stable young man who was befriended (on the internet?) by Julian; supposedly, there is an extensive email archive between them, but much of it has been scrubbed. Lamo, another ex hacker who turned Manning in to the FBI, is also rather unstable, was arrested for computer hacking, and according to the McClatchy report, he was flipped and is now essentialy a useful tool in Cyberwars. How he related to Julian is not entirely clear, although Lamo and Manning have an extensive online archive with one another, like Manning and Julian are said to have.

However all of these speculative threads sort out, the theory I kind of like is that WikiLeaks is -- or was -- a "honeypot." I say "was" because there are hints out there that for all intents and purposes, with the arrest of Manning, WikiLeaks started evaporating. Thus Julian's apparent indisposition and disappearance.

It's all speculation and yarn-spinning, though. Nothing may be as it seems, and the stories being spun are mostly almost certainly figments. There are wheels within wheels in the spook business, so I wouldn't put anything past anyone in this whole affair.

I highly suspect that the truth, whatever it is, will never be known by the public.

Ever.

I haven't linked to any of the information I found. Just Google "WikiLeaks Black Op" and see what pops up. I'm sure there is plenty more.

The Utter Confusion of Snowden's Asylum Search

Edith Piaf - Non,  je ne regrette rien by bebepanda

There's been some news from Moscow.

Edward J. Snowden has received many offers of political asylum and he announced that he has accepted all of them, but for reasons that aren't entirely clear, he claims he is unable to "enjoy" these offers because he cannot travel within Russia nor can he legally leave the transit zone of the airport where he has apparently been housed at the capsule hotel since he arrived from Hong Kong. So, as far as I can puzzle out from the rather elaborate legalese of his statements, he is once again requesting asylum in Russia (which request he previously withdrew due to unacceptable conditions placed on his asylum by Vladimir Putin) so that he may travel in country until such time as external travel arrangements can be made and safe conduct assured for his eventual departure to Latin America.

Where in Latin America is not exactly clear as a number of Latin American countries have granted him asylum including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador -- or maybe not. Exactly what has been offered and by whom is quite as murky as Snowden's whereabouts and activities during his weeks-long disappearance before his brief semi-public presence at the meeting with human rights organization and legal representatives in Moscow today.

Snowden took the opportunity to denounce the United States and unnamed European governments for acting lawlessly to prevent him from "enjoying" asylum, and for their despicable acts in forcing down the airplane of a sovereign nation's head of state in order to search the plane for his presence.

It's not exactly clear what he is demanding. If I were trying to help him, I'd have no idea what he wanted me to do.

His main complaint seems to be that he is not allowed to travel legally from the transit zone because his passport was canceled by the US State Department, an arrest warrant has been issued for his apprehension, and he's afraid that the United States Government will not treat him well if he is apprehended.

Yet others have already pointed out that he can travel within Russia -- say from the airport to an embassy -- in a diplomatic car without a problem, and any nation that grants him asylum (as several have done) can also provide him with valid travel documents for his journey, wherever he wishes to go.

Nevertheless, he says he is trapped in the airport until... what?

What I gather from the statements he's made and the statements made on his behalf by WikiLeaks and the Guardian is that he seeks a status equivalent to diplomatic immunity from some country, whether Russia or some other, and a complete cessation of efforts by the government of the United States to extradite and apprehend him -- so that he may freely travel to some third country to enjoy their grant of asylum.

This is not as strange as it may sound -- of course, to his partisans, nothing he says or is said on his behalf sounds strange, but that's another topic for another day. Clearly he's been handled by WikiLeaks at least since his departure from Hong Kong, and WikiLeaks' posture has been that of a nation-state contending with other nation-states. WikiLeaks personnel have come close to demanding diplomatic immunity for themselves from other nation-states. Of course it is not granted, but they keep demanding.

Though Snowden is not a WikiLeaks factotum -- at least not so far as we know -- it appears that he is under the care and feeding of his WikiLeaks handler in Moscow, and much of what he is purported to have said or written himself since arriving in Moscow is widely believed to have been the product of WikiLeaks, or even of Julian himself. There have been reports that WikiLeaks is paying at least some of his expenses while he is on the run (or stationary in Moscow as the case may be).

His argument is so legally muddled, however, and is so compromised by propaganda and ritualized denunciations of the United States and its European handmaidens that interpretations of what he is saying and what he means and wants are required. They aren't much clearer than his own statements and those made on his behalf.

I've long believed that WikiLeaks was likely being run as a honeypot to attract would-be whistle blowers and extract whatever information they might have before turning them over to the appropriate authorities ("sorry about that!"). In that context, I saw Julian as an agency asset who went rogue when he got above himself and said he was going to release the bank docs that had come his way. All holy hell broke lose at that moment, and he became  a real fugitive and WikiLeaks was effectively neutered. Those promised bank docs were never released. Its revelations since that time have been minimal at best. But during its hey-day, WikiLeaks and Julian were media giants. Now, they're closer to pariahs as far as most of the media is concerned.

The advent of Young Snowden injected new life into Julian and WikiLeaks, though it didn't gain them much respect from People Who Mattered, respect that was largely pissed away some time ago. While Julian might be an asset that went rogue, the question has been, if he is an asset, for whom? We might be able to sort that out given the way the Snowden Thing has devolved.

It's obvious (to me) that Snowden is an asset, and it's not certain that he has actually gone rogue, but he may well be a limited hangout or even a mole. If so, there has been some speculation that he is an asset for the CIA out doing a number on the rival NSA -- and its partners. If so, that may be why, even now, the government has been somewhat reticent about rounding him up. The government is as factionalized as any other aspect of American life, and when powerful agencies and their corporate partners contend with one another for primacy, the fireworks show can be entertaining -- but very confusing. In these circumstances, we're not meant to know what's going on, and we usually don't.

I don't know what's going on here, but I doubt that little of what we're being told about it is true.

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.

On This Wikileaks Thing -- Spy vs Spy?

This WikiLeaks Thing is turning in to quite the chase-movie, isn't it?

It's got everything. Enigmatic Albino Anti-Hero on the lam, now in hiding somewhere in -- presumably -- Australia, his passport seized and drones thought to be seeking him out for liquidation from Above. Governments panicking, acting stupid. An odd-duck leaker cooling his heels in Kuwait awaiting military trial for something, just what isn't clear. Even odder-odd duck who turned in the odd-duck leaker to the FBI, a notorious hacker in his own right.

It's got it all.

Myself, I've always wondered whether WikiLeaks is a black op specifically designed to encourage traitors to the Empire to leak bits and pieces of Imperial misfeasance so as to be that much easier to track down and neutralize.

The cloak and dagger routine engaged in by Julian Assange was the tip off. The sort of over the top drama surrounding the release in April of this year of the video of American gunners exterminating "suspected militants" (oh and some journalists, too) in Baghdad (that happened in 2007) seemed extreme and deliberately hyped up by WikiLeaks and our propaganda machine, the major mass media, over something that is really very common in the "battlespace" -- and has been since "warfighting" began over there, with numerous incidents not much different than the one WikiLeaks documented being splashed all over the YouTubes for years, most of them released by the military propaganda shop itself.

In other words, the casual extermination of Ragheads is routine, has been since the beginning of conflict Over There and is very well known (and frequently celebrated) in the United States.

WikiLeaks claimed to have video of a similar incident in Afghanistan that they would release "shortly." They never released it, but Julian got on the teevee constantly claiming it would be released any time now, but it never was. And furthermore, the fact that these incidents go on in Afghanistan, too, has been abundantly documented in numerous YouTube videos currently on show. Julian was not "revealing" a damn thing that wasn't already known, in other words.

Death From Above is a constant in the ever-expanding Anglo-American Imperial Expeditions. This sort of killing goes on in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and for all we know, many other places as well, constantly. It is not a mystery.

So the sensational "revelations" by WikiLeaks that it was going on, with the gunning down of the hapless Baghdad Ragheads endlessly looped on the teevee screens of America and the World seemed severely "off" to me.

This is no revelation, I thought. We know this sort of thing has been going on relentlessly throughout the Anglo-American drive to re-establish Empire. There's no mystery here. This is how operations from Above are conducted. It is brutal and murderous and disgusting. So why was it being played for all it's worth this way?

And now that details about the drama and those involved are coming -- somewhat -- to light, the failure of the smell test is very strong.

260,000 State Department memos? All righty then. Show us.

A major marketing campaign is under way.

That's all I can say about it right now....

And Another Thing.

Is that Frontline may have revived a story that had sunk from view, even for many of the WikiLeaks/Julian/Manning partisans.

When Manning was transferred to Ft. Leavenworth and his attorney said that his treatment would be far better than it had been at Quantico, almost all the steam went out of the "Free Bradley Manning" movement, much as running Julian to ground in Britain and putting him up at his supporter's country estate for the duration slowed the pace of and changed the focus of WikiLeaks leaks, and it had the effect of quieting the WikiLeaks/Julian partisans.

As many have noted, Julian's threats to leak the contents of a bank executive's hard drive, threats that seemed to have precipitated the all-out hunt for him and his subsequent surrender in London, never materialized.

Were deals made? Who knows?

The Frontline piece and its supporting materials online serves as an introduction to the story for those who haven't been following it closely, but it is far from complete -- something I think its producers will readily acknowledge -- and the followup, if there is any, could be quite extended. But the question is, why, when the story was on the verge of disappearing altogether, would Frontline choose to bring it up again and get the partisans all riled up over their "hatchet job?"

Are we witnessing those wheels within wheels again? Another false flag episode?

Designed to do what?

Can we put this into some kind of overall context?

Manning's father made an interesting comment in the post-show chat (in which both David House and Julian Assange claimed to participate.)

1:15


FRONTLINE:
Here's a question from Reddit user Clansky:
Do you think there is any hope Bradley will be released? Or do you think he'll be there forever? And to Brian, do you agree with what your son did?
1:16


Marcela Gaviria/Martin Smith:
Anything’s possible, but the prosecution’s case appears quite strong. Investigators say that that they have matched Manning’s computer to Lamo’s, verifying the authenticity of the chats. To be acquitted Manning’s lawyer would somehow have to prove that Manning had been framed and his computer had been tampered with.
1:17


Brian Manning:
I hope so as I do not think he was the leak.
1:17


Brian Manning:
I would not agree with anyone doing such acts.

"I do not think he was the leak."

Huh. The assumption is that Bradley Manning must be the leaker; he confessed in an online chat (via AOL!) with Adrian Lamo that he did the deed and was proud of it, and almost all his partisans (including the iconic Daniel Ellsberg) hail him a Hero for doing so. War crimes were revealed! Wars were brought to a screeching halt. HILLARY was embarrassed!!!!

Oh?

Actually no.

Not at all. If anything, there are more wars and more plans for more Imperial wars of aggression than before the releases from WikiLeaks. There have been no war crimes trials -- for Americans and their allies and mercenaries in the field -- and the extermination of the innocent continues apace, with or without bin Laden to justify it.

As for Hillary, so?

As I said at the time of its release, the "Collateral Murder" video that got the ball rolling on high-profiling the WikiLeaks/Manning matter was put into constant rotation on all the teevee news, to the point of saturation (much as the Mavi Marara video from the Israelis would be later), and the actions of the Death From Above helicopter squad that were shown over and over again were praised, not condemned, by the American people who saw the tapes -- actually they couldn't avoid them. Which I assumed was the point of showing the video in the first place: first, that they couldn't avoid it, and second that they would be filled with pride at the actions of their brave soldiers.

When I pointed out that the Pentagon had long been proudly releasing videos showing other similar exterminations so their "outrage" at the release of this one rang very hollow indeed, I was greeted with confusion to say the least. The Narrative was set by that time: WikiLeaks and Julian and whoever leaked the video were heroes documenting war crimes. Americans never would have known this was happening if it hadn't been for such heroes!

Well, except for the dozens of similar gun camera videos that the Pentagon had already released showing similar -- and in some cases even more gruesome -- slaughters of people on the ground -- I guess that's right. Except for that, the American People couldn't possibly have known this was going on.

For cripes sake, they knew -- and they loved it.

The "Collateral Murder" video had the same effect. But arguing that's the case when the Narrative says just the opposite -- that it revealed War Crimes most foul and the American People didn't know this was going on, and when they found out, they Turned Against the War(s)™ -- even though the empirical evidence says otherwise-- was generally met with either blank stares or active hostility and denunciation.

Because the implication was that the Pentagon was playing a game with the public here, and WikiLeaks wasn't what it purported to be. It might even be a false-flag/black op itself.

As more and more of the supposed Manning material was released -- the War Logs and then the State Department Cables -- it seemed more and more clear to me and some other observers that this whole thing was a highly engineered operation, by and for whom being the question.

In the aggregate, the War Logs didn't reveal much at all. They were too cryptic to be comprehended by civilians. They had to be selected and interpreted by The Media (which is a whole other issue) in order to be understood, and most of what they documented was routine, while many of the sensational events in the Logs had already been extensively reported, mostly in the same manner (though not in the same cryptic style) as they were reported to superiors in the Logs. The Logs made the Ragheads out to be far worse than had been previously reported. But are the Logs truthful? The problem with this kind of raw intelligence -- for that's what it is -- is that you don't know what's true and what's not, and it takes a very knowledgeable hand to sort through all the crap. There were and are very few such hands around.

The State Department Cables caused an international flap, to be sure, but it seems to have blown over nicely and Hillary is out there doing her job as if little or nothing had happened.

And they touched off the Arab Spring, and they got bin Laden, so what's the problem?

Actually, there isn't one -- at least not for our rulers. Is there?

This whole thing is very much Emmanuel Goldstein-esque -- which is why skeptics of many stripes refuse to take it at face value.

What is really going on is not something we can easily suss out.

The question, nevertheless, is what motivated Frontline to reopen the matter now? And who, ultimately, was behind it?

"I have QUESTIONS to ask!!!" Jiang Qing in "Madame Mao" by Thérèse Radic, 1986

What WikiLeaks' American Media Partner Has Done With the Documents

During the past week, I've been in some fairly contentious argument over at Glenn's Place regarding the nature of Julian Assange's relationship with the New York Times, his American business partner in the publication and interpretation of the leaked American military field reports concerning both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've been uneasy about WikiLeaks, Julian, and the intense amount of hype surrounding the leaks that have been published by the Times (and a number of other outlets in other countries.)

My unease has to do, in part, with the fact that Julian has partnered with the New York Times, the leading American media cheerleader for war and empire. The Times, indeed, has been running interference for Julian and WikiLeaks. A very odd situation to say the least.

The excuse for this business partnership that I hear all the time is that the Times' circulation guarantees the widest distribution of the field reports in this country, and it was a perfectly acceptable decision by Julian to partner with them. It's self evident.

Except it isn't. The Times' circulation guarantees that their interpretation of the documents will be widely disseminated and will become (has already become) the Standard Narrative in this country regarding what's in the documents. That, to me, is the most obvious upshot of this strange partnership. Yet it is apparently a completely new thought to many who encounter it, and it is very difficult for them to accept.

The public for the most part won't read the documents themselves. I've given it a shot with what WikiLeaks has posted, and it's a hard slog. For their part, the Times hasn't actually published the documents themselves; they've selected some of them to highlight and interpret, but you have to go to WikiLeaks or one of the overseas sites to get the full doc dump. And enormous volume of these reports, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, guarantees that no one (sane) is going to read them all. Not gonna happen.

What has happened, though, is that the New York Times, being the sole US media partner for WikiLeaks, has determined what is and is not important to know from these reports and has focused its coverage there. And their coverage has formed the basis of the coverage by all other American media. For most of them, the New York Times interpretation of the documents is the Standard Narrative.

These are the headlines of the stories the Times has printed on the Iraq War Logs:

WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Chased by Turmoil

Growing Use of Contractors Added to War's Chaos

Mix of Trust and Despair Helped Turn the Tide in Iraq

Tensions Remain High Along Kurdish-Arab Line

Deadly Day in Iraq

Archive Offers Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths

Detainees Suffered Most in Iraqi Custody, U.S. Logs Say

Iran's Role in Aiding Iraqi Militias Is Detailed in Reports

Of course the story on Julian himself has garnered the most attention -- at least from the Blogosphere -- and it has caused a firestorm led by Glenn Greenwald, whose polemical attacks on the Times and writer John Burns for "smearing" Julian (by reporting some of the well-known accusations against him) border on the hysterical and ludicrous.

The stories about what's in the documents have so far been largely ignored by the US Blogosphere. Other US media has been mostly concerned with Julian, his antics, or following the Pentagon line that there's "nothing new" in the documents, and condemning WikiLeaks for releasing them.

The Times' selection of stories to published based on the leaked reports (as opposed to their profile of Julian) is interesting, and I argue that they are essentially making two points: Iran must be destroyed, and Our Glorious Empire must endure forever because the gibbering Natives are incapable of governing themselves according to civilized norms.

And in this context, the Times story of Contractor Chaos in Iraq perfectly complements the broader notion that "Natives" -- that is, apparently, anyone who is not a member of the elites, in this case, mercenaries employed by Our Glorious Empire because there aren't enough Glorious Troops to Do The Job -- are incapable of governing themselves and behaving according to civilized norms. They are, at best, all of them, children. Give us some of that old White Man's Burden, eh?

The story of the Tide Turning is a story of gibbering Natives, perfidious Persians, and Glorious Americans, particularly His Imperial Divinity Gen. David Petraeus, who single handedly rescued the pitiful survivors of "sectarian strife" from their own worst impulses.

In the story of High Tension between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq, we find even more gibbering Natives and the Glorious Imperial Troops finding themselves between many rocks and hard places trying to keep the peace. Mediation, yay!

"A Deadly Day in Iraq" is an interactive map that shows us all the killings and violence in Baghdad during the height of what's called the "cleansing" -- when bodies were turning up everywhere, bombs were going off, and neighborhoods were systematically patrolled by roving death squads and expulsion teams. At no point is it even hinted that Americans shared any responsibility for what was going on. They were merely observers documenting the atrocities. No, according to the Times, the killing and cleansing stopped when the Glorious Surge Arrived, yay!

More gibbering Natives incapable of governing themselves are described in the Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths article. For the most part, of course, the Deaths resulted from Native-on-Native action in the passion of the moment, but some were due to unfortunate accidents like when Glorious American Troops accidentally fired (repeatedly) on approaching civilian vehicles at checkpoints. As they so often did. Accidentally.

Of course the story of detainee torture in Native hands is well-known by now. Clearly, the Iraqis were and no doubt are far worse with their torture than Americans could ever hope to be. This is proved by the documents.

The story of the Perfidious Persians has probably gotten the widest play of any of the Times' stories derived from the leaked reports. Time after time, Glorious Americans find themselves threatened or accosted by Persians or gibbering Iraqi Natives who have been trained and equipped by the Persians. The Greeks at Marathon did not face a more brutal and organized Persian threat than Americans faced in Iraq. Persia delenda est!!!!

So this is what is being disseminated by Julian Assange's American Media Partner, this is the story that is being told in America. There is no consciousness, at all, that The United States (and needless to say, the New York Times) precipitated the tragedy that is Iraq, and that this Imperial Project is in any way misbegotten.

I have said, and I will say again, Julian had to know this would happen when he partnered with the Times. My question is, If he didn't want this to happen, why did he partner with them?

There are other, more trustworthy choices in this country. Well, at least for the time being.

Something just isn't right...

As for the Tunisia Thing

I haven't been following it much, for there is always the undercurrent in these things that tells us what we see -- or are allowed to see -- is only a superficial gloss on something much more deep-seated. I would not take anyone's word for anything about the "Revolution" in Tunisia.

What I find interesting, though, is the attempt to inject WikiLeaks into the action, on the basis of some cables that came from somewhere, which purport to show that the US State Department knew that Tunisia was ruled by a kleptocracy and that things would have to change.

Nobody knows exactly where the cables came from, whether they are authentic, or anything about them, but there they were being touted by all sorts of mainstream media (Business Week, Foreign Policy, and... of course... Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic) and you've just got to wonder.

I've never thought that things are what they seem to be with WikiLeaks, but at the same time, it's all so slippery and slimy, I don't know how anyone can untangle it. It is certainly convenient to think that Revolutions can be triggered by the revelations in the WikiLeaks docs, but the problem with that notion is that at this time, WikiLeaks isn't releasing the State Department docs until after they have been vetted and scrubbed by its Media Partners and the State Department. In other words, the State Department doc dump is being performed strictly by the Rules of the Game, and nothing that makes it into the public domain is anything except what the Powers That Be want.

Furthermore, back in December, Julian gave an interview to ABC News -- which he overly dramatically flounced out of after being questioned about the Sex Crimes allegations in Sweden, at the very end of a long interview (ed note: obviously a set up) -- in which he stated that by golly, WikiLeaks was working with a number of smaller news organizations to get the State Department docs out more quickly. Then, in January, he repeated this claim. There's been no evidence of it, however. What there has been, at least according to some reports, is the acquisition of WikiLeaks leaks, in whole or in part, by (apparently) unauthorized media outlets. What they do with them remains to be seen.

Meanwhile back in Tunisia, it seems obvious, to the extent anything is "obvious" about what's going on there, that the People have known full well of the corruption and self-dealing at the top, and the issue for them has always been about the obscene levels of exploitation and oppression they have been under. There is no sign yet that that's going to change. This appears to be yet another Neo-Liberal coup, not a Revolution at all, which will have the effect of tightening the screws.

How convenient.

And have you heard? Baby Doc has returned to Haiti from his luxury-exile in Paris. I wonder if Bill or Hillary gave him a call...

Another WikiLeaks Doc Dump (Finally) -- and Asleep At The Wheel (Finally)

This might be an unworkable juxtaposition, but we'll give it a try and see what can be squoze out of it.

Julian has now dumped close to 400,000 mostly field reports about the Iraq Occupation on the eagerly awaiting public. Well. Except that from the yawning news reports it looks like the Gatekeepers don't much care anymore what WikiLeaks does or doesn't do. They haven't ignored the dump altogether, although in fact, it has been a non-story pretty much throughout the "Progressive" Blogosphere. The Major Mass Media has pretty much confined themselves to noting in passing that "there is this."

Once again, Julian "partnered" with Der Spiegel, Guardian UK, and the New York Times, apparently along with al Jazeera and BBC this time, and they've had the docs for months, analyzing the heck out of them to "find the lies" that have been told all these years.

This is always a puzzling perspective to me. The "lies." Well, if you want to deal with The Lies, then go back to the propaganda from the leading governments involved in the attack on and occupation of Iraq, and then go through the coverage of their propaganda, and then look at just about any initial report of "action" in the Iraq Theater. It's almost all lies, and it has been lies from the get go.

If you don't recognize that, then you really, honestly have not been paying attention at all. If you don't start with the premise that whatever they say about what is happening and what happened is a lie -- and neither the MSM nor the blogosphere starts there -- then you've got events all balled up in your mind, and you're probably never going to be able to come to grips with the enormity of the Lies Upon Lies that have been at the foundation of Our Middle East Imperial Adventure and especially of the Conquest of Iraq.

I remember years ago that I mentioned in a comment, probably at Glenn's Place, that if the Pentagon was saying it, or if field commanders and Public Information Offices in Iraq were saying it, it was probably -- in fact almost certainly -- a Lie. A fabrication. A falsehood. A deception. A fraud. One of the commenters -- Retired Military Patriot, who had been a PIO during his time in service -- took offense. He could not believe that the military people involved today would actually fabricate "information," and deliberately disseminate lies. It just wasn't done that way in his day, ie: Post Vietnam. But over and over again, as incidents in Iraq were reported, it was clear they did lie, first and foremost, and often to the bitter end.

So. Here's WikiLeaks dumping docs through their media Partners, and whaddaya know. Lies were routine. Gee. Anyone who was paying attention could see that back in the day, without WikiLeaks "revealing" it. It was obvious.

Well. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to a lot of other observers. The Pentagon and its people are incapable of telling the truth about pretty much anything. They lie to the Public and apparently to one another as a matter of course. They must be trained to lie. They must live in lies so profound and so deep seated they no longer have any conception of "Lying".

And this is an infection that has spread through much of the government and the media/corporate complex ("Our Rulers" as it were) it serves. We ought to blame Bernays and the success of the Public Relations game back in the 20th Century. The methods were adopted and perfected, and now apparently, the Powers That Be have no inkling of the simple fact that they are lying to the public -- and to one another -- all. the. time.

The latest WikiLeaks doc dump is being met pretty much with yawns all over the media-plex. First, it's too large to handle rationally and methodically. Second, what it apparently shows is... lies. The field reports themselves are -- apparently -- often lies. In other words, there is little truth anywhere. You can't find it from the docs. What you can find is that media reporting from the field was often inadequate or wrong. That's about it.

But we knew that. Didn't we?

At one point during the flap over the Afghanistan Doc Dump, Julian said something like "the problem isn't WikiLeaks, the problem is the secrecy."

That's good as far as it goes. There is no earthy reason to classify all these documents; there is no point in the Government as a whole classifying so much information so often. Except that by doing so, the Government can -- and sometimes does -- selectively release "secret information" when and how it chooses. Given the fact that WikiLeaks routinely partners with major media outlets, outlets that are routinely denounced as propaganda outlets, one is justified in suspecting that WikiLeaks partially serves that selective release function.

As much of a problem as all that secrecy is, there is a deeper problem that Julian, the major mass media and much of the blogosphere don't deal with, though: the perpetual Lies. It just isn't discussed.

Maybe everybody is so caught up in it they can't figure it out. I don't know. But clearly Bernays still rules.

---------------

As for Asleep At the Wheel, well...

They're a retro-Western-Swing band out of Austin, been around -- they say -- for 40 years now, and for more than thirty of those years, I've been wanting to see them. Missing them by "just this much." Truly. They were once based in Northern California and would perform from time to time in the Bay Area and Central Valley -- this back in the early '70's -- and that's how I got to know them. They were played on local radio in Northern California long before they were elsewhere. And their gigs were often close by. But back then, actually getting to one of their shows was difficult for me, sometimes impossible. Then they moved to Austin, and while they were producing lots of music, one didn't see them around here much at all.

Time passes, the years go by. In the '80's I was producing/directing occasional musical shows, and some of the people this got me involved with were associated with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in one way or another. In the 1950's Bob Wills had a resort off of what was then known as Highway 40 out of Sacramento called Wills Point. When I was a kid, I used to go swimming out there in their huge blue-bottomed pool. Well before I was born, my mother used to go out dancing at the Aragon Ballroom, which became the Wills Point ballroom after Bob Wills bought the place. Wills Point was run by Billy Jack Wills, Bob's brother. He had his own band that played there and regionally, while Bob Wills continued touring nationally, and they (Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) sometimes would wind up playing at Wills Point. Then, thousands would show up to his shows. I think Bob Wills also had a ranch in Fresno. So there were deep connections between the Wills family and their operations and the Central Valley of California, much as there are still between Bakersfield and the Central Valley and Merle Haggard and Buck Owens (and Dwight Yoakam and so on and so forth, but I digress.)

Asleep At the Wheel is sometimes thought of as a "Bob Wills Tribute Band," in part because they have always done a lot of Bob Wills music, and a few years ago, they put together a play called "A Ride With Bob" that included plenty of Bob Wills music along with a fictionalized story line based partly on what might have happened if Bob Wills and Ray Benson (AATW's head man) had met. (An aside, they did meet, but it was a sad meeting as Bob Wills was incapacitated by stroke).

Back in the day, I started but never completed work on a play I called "Red" that was based in part on the legacy of Bob Wills -- in the Valley especially -- told through the eyes (and song stylings) of the daughter of one of his band members. I'm thinking I may have to go back to it.

At any rate, when I've been in New Mexico over the last few years, I've missed Asleep At the Wheel repeatedly because my own schedule required me to arrive just after they left, or required me to leave just as they were arriving. This happened over and over, at least five or six times. It became something of a running joke.

So a few months ago, I saw that they would be performing a "tribute to Bob Wills" show at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco on Wednesday of this week, so I boldly got tickets since so far as I knew my schedule would keep me in California this week. Sure enough. Though San Francisco is "my city" in that I once lived there, and it's been my closest destination city for fifty years or more, and I've been to many many SF venues over the years, I'd never been to the Herbst. So that would be a bonus treat. It was the site of the signing of the UN Charter back in the day, after all.

Spent the day in San Francisco Wednesday -- and I realized I hadn't been there for... years. I have to say, it was really nice being back. And the show was well worth the wait, though I crabbed it was falsely advertised by the SF Jazz Festival, as it was not really all that much of a tribute to Bob Wills. But that didn't matter in the end. I got to see Asleep At the Wheel for the first time, and it was grand.

Thursday I was idly noodling around on the InterWebs and saw that AATW was scheduled to perform in Sacramento at a club I hadn't been to for many years. Oh. Dear. Somehow I had missed this gig listing previously. Not that I check their tour dates all that often. So I ordered up some tickets, and went to see them again on Thursday, and had a great time in a very intimate setting. They did a somewhat different show to boot, which made it all that much more entertaining.

During the show, Ray Benson mentioned the band's early career in Northern California and mentioned being played on KRAK radio in Sacramento, one of the first stations to play AAtW anywhere, and gigs at what was then called Crabshaw Corner, and I (along with many other old coots in the audience) had to laugh. Just the mention of Crabshaw Corner.... ha! This was the first time they'd been back to Sacramento since then, almost 40 years, and those who remember Crabshaw Corner (later the Oasis Ballroom, now a beauty salon) are ... well, dying out.

He also mentioned that Bob Wills' niece (Billy Jack's daughter) was in the audience, and that Tiny Moore, Bob Wills' mandolin player, had been based in Sacramento (he and Billy Jack married the McKinney Sisters; they had come out from Oklahoma Alabama, I believe, to sing with the band in the late '40's.) Plenty of connections, and I could list a whole string of others, as could, I suspect, nearly everyone else in the audience.

There is a history.

The show was even better than San Francisco, although the clarinet/saxophone player (Jonathan Doyle) was missing at the club show. I'm sure there's a story there... but we'll have to let it pass for now.

----------------------------------
WikiLeaks and the secrets and lies they are involved with doesn't really relate to Asleep At the Wheel in any logical way, but I think at this point, many of us are beyond logic when it comes to the operations of systems we don't really understand and can't control.

Decades passed before I was able to see Asleep At the Wheel, and then I saw them twice in one week. Desire long delayed, in other words, but nevertheless realized with surprise, joy and satisfaction. There was no real "control" on my part involved. It was a form of Kismet.

WikiLeaks gives the world secrets and lies, through its partners in the major mass media. For those who were paying attention, the secrets weren't really secrets and the lies were obvious at the time. But apparently "paying attention" is a rarity. Or maybe a near impossibility for many people, who apparently no longer know what to pay attention to. And our ability to "control" the actions of a distant and unresponsive rulership gets less every day.

Is there a form of Kismet that can correct it?

I don't know... but it's interesting to speculate.

Still More Shiny Objects -- And It's Coming to a Head

It's hard to tell -- and it's not so hard to tell -- what's going on these days.

The WikiLeaks Leaks initially seemed benign enough, certainly nothing (much) in the Leaks that would raise more than momentary domestic ire, regardless of what was happening in the embassies, presidential palaces, and sultans' seraglios overseas. Not exactly a tempest in a teapot, but really, not-that-bad either, unless you were intent, like some Libertarians who wear the Masque of "Progressives" -- Greenwald being one -- to cripple and if possible bring down this Government and substitute it with something else; if Jane were in her Kali-phase, I have no doubt she'd be slashing away with her scimitar at all the "lies" and "phoniness" and "corruption." But she's seemed to be almost somnolent through this latest set-to. Another dog that doesn't bark? I dunno.

When it is realized what the information is, how it was obtained, how lax -- actually absent -- security for the system was, and how mostly benign the cables are, one sees or should see that while it's never wise to have all diplomacy conducted in the open, what's been going on (at least from the perspective of the levels of confidentiality these cables deal with) is pretty much to be expected given widely understood assessments of the World As It Is.

So the relative languidness of The Powers That Be toward the Revelations seemed fitting. What was curious was that apparently nothing (much) was done to secure the Information Retreival system these documents were from until just recently. Clearly there was no intent to do so, until...

All of a sudden, something happened. The usual bluster and threats had been coming out of the Government bunkers, but then all of a sudden, CyberWar got under way in earnest. Strenuous efforts are being made for the first time, so far as I can tell, to shut down not only WikiLeaks ability to disseminate classified information (no matter how benign) but to prevent government workers and the general public from accessing the documents, world-wide if possible. There is apparently "hot pursuit" of Julian under way as well, the lack of which had always puzzled me before, as his peripatetic wanderings on public airlines and his widely advertised public appearances made his whereabouts extraordinarily easy to track.

Now it looks like full-on panic mode from the Government. And like the lack of response to the massive security breach that the doc dumps represented, the New Panic Response isn't normal.

It all seemed to come to a head when Julian announced the upcoming dump of internal memos and documents from a large financial institution widely assumed to be Bank of America. That's when all hell broke loose. And Holy Joe got up in his pulpit and demanded retribution.

OK then.

So does my early impression that WikiLeaks might be an aspect of a factional war within Government still stand? Truly, that is still mysterious to me. It could be. During the Clinton interregnum between the Bushes, there was a battle royal going on between Gingrichites and Clintonites, in other words, factions of the Governing Class, which Clinton ostensibly "won" -- by beating the Impeachment rap -- but which ultimately led directly to the installation of Bush II on the Throne, and all the wild and crazy shit that followed. The Bushevik reign went down in flames when their Imperial Project crashed on the rocks and it was torpedoed by the collapse of the economy. It was a pretty serious situation.

The Busheviks were replaced by cold blooded technocrats whose job it was to consolidate the gains of the Bushevik era, correct the errots, right some of the furniture, keep the masses tame, and leave things in good order for the next round of lootage and bloodshed.

It was going well until the TeaBaggers popped out from under their rocks, funded by KochPelf and whipped to a frenzy by FOX"News". Oh my. The furiosity of the antagonism toward the cold-blooded technocrats in office took them by surprise, to say the least. The effectiveness of the Furies, driven as they were by mindless contempt and rage, and constantly threatening domestic insurrection, was striking.

The Lesson Learned for the leaders of the TeaBag Uprising was that if you want to have your way, you better go balls to the wall. And so... they did. And the technocrats recoiled in horror.

There's been one insurrection after another, and now the technocrats are bunkered down, seemingly as much as the Busheviks were toward the end.

This will not end well.

The Panic from the Bunkers is not good. Arsonists intent on Burning Down the House may think it is Wonderful, but that is merely a sign of narcissism (heh) and nihilism. For them, it's destruction for its own sake, not "creative destruction" at all. (This is what the Kalis among us never seem to comprehend. There can be moments of creative destruction, but mostly it's just... destruction. And then what? Nihilists have no answer, and Kali doesn't care.)

The Panic is a sign that something seriously dangerous has been uncovered or unleashed. It may actually have nothing to do with WikiLeaks per se; it may be something else altogether. The fact that directives would go out to the federal workforce not to access WikiLeaks -- even if they had access to the documents leaked -- was absurd. Some of the efforts to prevent access by the public are bizarre. the directives coming from Holy Joe ordering (suggesting) that private companies stop hosting WikiLeaks OR ELSE are seriously whack. What's worse is their compliance. The repeatedly bungled "manhunt" for Julian looks like an exercise in futility and powerlessness. Panic is a sign of weakness, not solely of the Leader, but of the Government as an Institution, and when we get to that point, we should all be very... uh... nervous.

A panicked US Government is unpredictably dangerous. Not just to itself. But to everyone. Not just at home, but everywhere. This is quite a step up of the Shock Doctrine.

And that's what's got me puttin' on the tinfoil today.

Hoo-boy, batten down.

The Bradley Manning Thing and Starship Troopers

Klendathu -- It's an Ugly System, a Bug System

"Starship Troopers" has been on heavy rotation one of the broadcast movie channels here, and I watched it the other day and had a good hoot over it. When the United States went to WAR!!! some years ago -- good heavens, more than a decade now -- I and others made many comparisons between the propaganda that suffuses Paul Verhoeven's film and what Americans were being subjected to in order to whip them to a frenzy of Muslim-Bug-Hate, and we commented about how much the images of the WAR!!! ON TERRA! and the WARR!!!! ON KLENDATHU! resembled one another. It was as if we were being made to live out this mockery of Heinlein's adolescent fantasy as re-configured by Verhoeven. Truth was stranger than fiction.

The book was published in 1959; the movie -- the original, not the sequels -- was released in 1997 not long after the Bosnia campaign; the WAR!!!! against Klendathu, er, Afghanistan was initiated in 2001 and quickly spread to Iraq and has now embroiled much of the Middle East and parts of Africa with no end in sight... here we are, so many years down the line, and so many young people can't really remember a time when we weren't fighting Klendathu/Bugs for some reason.

We have always been fighting Klendathu/Bugs in a way.

A young soldier named Bradley Manning is to be court-martialed for turning over massive amounts of military and State Department documents and communications, some of it classified, to WikiLeaks some years ago (we've lost track of the exact timelines now), a trial that has been delayed for an extraordinarily long time as the sides prepare and maneuver. The most recent phase involved a hearing on the conditions of Manning's confinement at the Quantico brig, conditions which were ridiculous when they weren't appalling, but conditions which are faced by tens of thousands of domestic prisoners, including children, every day. The hoopla over Manning's confinement conditions seemed to me to be over the top, in part because so many prisoners in America face similar conditions, and many of those prisoners have not been convicted any more than Manning has been convicted. There simply is no outcry, there's hardly any recognition that atrocious, indeed torturous, confinement conditions are standard operating procedure in America's vast and expanding prison/industrial complex.

Confinement conditions in Marine brigs have been notorious for brutality and psychological terror for decades. What was done to Manning, while atrocious, was actually mild compared to the treatment of some prisoners held in the brig for various offenses both pre and post conviction. I've reported previously that a relative faced far worse conditions, and for far longer, than Manning when he was held in the brig for four years on what I believe was either a completely bogus or completely political (ie: Marine Corps politics) criminal charge. This is how a formidable and corrupt system works and has worked for many long years. Where is the outcry?

Quite simply, there is no outcry beyond the highly select cohort of individuals who truly care about these things. Manning should not have been treated the way he was at Quantico, nor should anyone else face such treatment and worse in any part of the American Gulag, but the conditions faced by those not named Manning wasn't part of the general conversation and still isn't. Americans by and large are in complete denial about the prison/industrial system that holds millions of its citizens and foreigners under often appalling conditions, day in and day out, year in and year out. It is an out of control punishment system that gets more out of control and brutal as time goes by.

The hearing over Manning's confinement conditions has concluded; it was covered by Kevin Gozstola over at FDL and a few other reporters, notably not including the New York Times until a public outcry (and a rather harsh column by the paper's public editor) embarrassed the Gray Lady's Powers That Be enough to send someone to witness part of one day's testimony -- and then write inaccurately about it. There might be a ruling on the manner of Manning's Quantico stay sometime in January, but I won't hold my breath because this case has been delayed so many times for such a long time over all sorts of things, while Manning himself cools his heels at the Ft. Leavenworth facility awaiting a disposition that may never come.

Manning is accused of releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, some of which were classified "Secret" and above, but many of which were unclassified. The intranet system from which this material was obtained was not secure; there was little effort to make it secure for months after the alleged leak allegedly via Manning and his all-purpose thumb drive. Consequently, part of the defense argument has been that Manning's actions really couldn't constitute such a big security breech -- because there was so little security to begin with.

The argument of many of Manning's defenders has been that Manning is a Hero and therefore should not be subjected to... well, what, actually? Accusation? Trial? Law itself?

The central document that was released through WikiLeaks as a consequence of the actions Manning is accused of is the "Collateral Murder" helicopter gun-camera video of the slaughter of some dozen or so Iraqis gathered on a street that took place in New Baghdad in 2009 (October, if I recall correctly). It is classic "Death From Above" war-porn and could have been straight out of a movie like "Starship Troopers." It was hideous and disgusting to anyone with a shred of conscience. And it was run in heavy rotation on all the propaganda news outlets for weeks in April of 2010, in a sort of orgy of bloodletting visuals that led to fist-pumping celebrations of American Might.

As I pointed out at the time, this video, while horrible to witness, is one of any number of similar extermination-porn videos, American "Death From Above" videos, many of which were proudly released by the military itself. They're available on YouTube for anyone with an internet connection to view anytime they want. They are all very similar, very hideous, and very disgusting. Yet they caused little sensation and no general outcry when they were released. Like the "Collateral Murder" video, they inspired pride not revulsion in many if not most of those who saw them.

It was only when Manning allegedly provided WikiLeaks with the "Collateral Murder" video that a small but vocal segment of the public spoke out, claiming War Crimes and perfidy in the conduct of the Iraq Occupation, and by extension in the conduct of the various imperial wars of aggression in general. The vocal segment that spoke out against the slaughter depicted in the "Collateral Murder" video is now mostly focused on the outrage of the Drone Campaigns that have been expanded under Obama. While the outrage is not misplaced, the focus may well be far too narrow.

There are almost too many individual incidents of "Death From Above" during the constant WAR!!!! against "Klendathu" to count. The incidents are grotesque, but at some point the underlying issue needs addressing.

These incidents are happening because Our Government is intent on pursuing an Imperial Expansion objective, one that has been determined by those few individuals and interests that own and control the Government. The People never agreed to this Imperial Project; they are largely ignorant that it is going on. The People have no say in these matters in any case.

"Klendathu" has always been Our Enemy, and so it is today. If we want the incidents to stop, we have to stop the objectification of our Bug-Enemies, and furthermore we must stop the Imperial Expansion Project that allows and requires this endless horror to go on.

I don't know whether Manning had or has any of that in mind. He's a complex character whose motivations have never been entirely clear. At one time, it was claimed that his "torture" at Quantico was undertaken to extract information from him regarding WikiLeaks. That tack seems to have been dropped as it became clear that his treatment at Quantico was done because it could be done and not for any other reason at all. The brig commanders are brutal and not very bright thugs. Hello? This is news somehow?

WikiLeaks has largely faded (which is a whole other story). The Manning Thing was ostentatiously ignored by the New York Times, which was the exclusive US publisher of the WikiLeaks trove (allegedly from Manning) at one time. Coverage of the Manning Thing is still spotty. Imperial wars of aggression continue with occasional adjustments.

We are still at war with Klendathu. The Bugs are Still Out There...

"Death From Above"

[Sorry about the absence of links, have to see if I can add some later...]

Episode 105: Tilo Jung Interviews Alexa O'Brien Re: "Pierre"

It was largely through Alexa's Twitter exchanges with "Pierre" (we don't know who is actually Twitting for Omidyar, but it is likely not himself) that the world and WikiLeaks learned, much to its amazement, that PayPal was not "blockading" WikiLeaks at all, pfft, what an idea, the very thought of it made "Pierre" shudder. Figuratively. Alexa and WikiLeaks probed and probed, but got no satisfactory response regarding this remarkable revision of history. All "Pierre" would say is that WikiLeaks should try setting up a PayPal account again, because there would be no "blockade." WikiLeaks apparently demurred. So it's on them, if they don't use PayPal, not "Pierre," for he is manfully not -- at all -- athwart the barricades.

In this episode of Jung und Naiv, the intrepid but disinterested Tilo interviews Alexa O'Brien about this and other matters of potential interest. I thought the close was priceless: she has enormous respect for Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras. Unmentioned is Greenwald. Skewer thrust, perhaps?



There is also a longer interview with Ms O'Brien mostly regarding the Manning revelations and trial.

Does Anybody Even Know What A Cable Is Anymore?

I'm not sure I recall the last time I got a telegram, but I think it was when my father died. More than 40 years ago. A telegram is not quite the same as a cable, in that the telegram is sent by telegraph and the cablegram is sent by cable, duh, but they used to be very similar, in fact indistinguishable by the recipient. The method of travel, whether over telegraph wires or undersea cable, was the main difference.

Shortly, we are breathlessly informed, WikiLeaks will release up to 3 million diplomatic cables (which I assume are really emails), at least some of which will likely contain messages uncomplimentary of allied governments and personnel. Oh. Dear.

My memory of history may be faulty, but I seem to recall something like this happening a long time ago and the release of uncomplimentary information was a prelude to war. That's all we need.

Apparently, though who can say, the Government has been busy notifying embassies and presidential palaces to be warned of the coming dump and be prepared for some unkind things reported. It sounds like the State Department knows pretty much which cables will be the most troublesome and has made every effort to let the other governments know in advance what was said and by whom.

But still, there is a palpable collective breath-holding while awaiting the release.

"This could be bad." Indeed.

If it is, it will be the first time for a WikiLeaks Leak. And so I won't be surprised if it is, and I won't be surprised if it isn't.

In fact, nothing that WikiLeaks has leaked so far has been of particular world-shaking importance, and despite what Daniel Ellsberg says, the importance of WikiLeaks' Leakage has always been somewhat less than advertised.

Of course that could change.

I was discussing the situation with a close friend, and I mentioned that it seemed very strange to me that such a low level military intelligence grunt would have free access to so much supposedly "secret" information, particularly something as potentially froughtful as diplomatic cables, which shouldn't be in military intelligence files at all. I still wonder how that happened. The ability to protect diplomatic communications has always been a fundamental aspect of government -- for hundreds if not thousands of years. When that communications security is breached, very bad things can happen. And they often do.

Military field reports, for the most part, don't need to be classified, at least not for more than a short time, and with only a few strategic redactions on release. The field reports that WikiLeaks Leaked were standard communications and reports from the field. They were not sensational nor did they reveal "secrets" that weren't already mostly known of at least in outline if not detail. But then, that's the nature of these reports.

Diplomatic cables are something else altogether, and the fact that Bradley Manning, if he's the leaker, had access to any of them at all, let alone to millions of them, is nothing short of a monumental governmental malpractice. This could be very dangerous for all kinds of people.

On the other hand, maybe not. We'll see.

How It Could All Shake Out...

The last couple of days have displayed one of the most remarkable news cycles in quite a long time. I'd say there's been nothing quite like it since the opening of the Pentagon Papers fracas all those many years ago. Certainly the Bradley Manning Thing has never reached this level of hoarse-throated media screaming frenzy. Nor did even the recent AP Thing reach this level of extremity.

Glenn breaks a story in the Guardian (in a piece that was clearly and rather heavily massaged by someone else; I'm pretty sure that was Spencer Ackerman, though it may have been simply the Guardian's editorial department) touching on the breadth and depth of domestic spying in this country, using -- for the first time that I know of -- an actual FISA court order as the primary documentation. There is a good deal of to-do over this breaking story, not so much because the information it presents is all that "new" (it isn't, not to those who have been following the metastasizing Security State) but because it is now firmly documented in black and white for the first time. It's no long a matter of what "sources familiar with the program(s)" are saying about them, it is now directly a matter of what a top secret court has ordered.

It was interesting that the WaPo and NYT jumped into the fray with their own stories, apparently independently sourced, almost immediately, presenting the same information in pretty much the same way, essentially confirming the Guardian story in detail and actually expanding on the story in some ways.

These didn't look to be stories written in haste to play catch up, either. It was almost as if these stories were mostly pre-written.

Then almost immediately thereafter, we had the stories about the internet being hoovered by the Agencies, now being slightly walked back ("foreign internet only, don'tchaknow.")

Both the WaPo and the NYT are notorious for their close associations with the American spy shops, government agencies and factional players within the government. They are often doing the bidding of one or another of the agencies or factions, and frequently they act as little more than propaganda organs for the government sequentially or simultaneously. This is well-known, but it doesn't seem to be so well understood, as many people still rely on them as primary news sources and believe that what they read in the Times or the Post is credible and correct. There are plenty of people who continue to believe that if something isn't in the NYT or the WaPo, it isn't really "news" at all.

The Guardian has always been outside this nexus, or so it would seem, being British and all. But I started to wonder about it when the Guardian, along with the NYT,  became primary publisher of Wikileaks material.

This became very much a Spy vs Spy issue in my mind as all kinds of mainstream -- and compromised -- outlets were added to the primary publisher category for Wikileaks. My suspicions were heightened that Wikileaks was not just a matter of a honey-pot, but of a serious effort to tightly control the what and how of information release. Julian's eventual fallings-out with the media he himself had chosen as publishers of the trove he had received from Manning were signs to me that Julian wasn't terribly bright -- or that he was as compromised as the outlets he had chosen. The extraordinary level of drama surrounding his various run-ins with The Law and his eventual running to ground over Swedish/Interpol warrants really took away from anything Wikileaks presented to the World, and has by this point made Wikileaks into a very marginal player in the numberless rounds of charge and counter charge in the whole "sekrits" game.

Ever since the Correspondents' Dinner, Team Obama has been under an apparently withering assault from the Right and parts of the media over this or that "scandal" -- to wit, the IRS Thing, the AP Spying Thing, the FOX Reporter Thing, etc. Each one has been ginned up to a frenzy and then left dangling. Now there's this.

When the media Things got all that attention, I -- among a few others -- said, "Wait just a damned minute. This surveillance shit has been perpetrated against the People of the United States for years and years, and you want some kind of special exemption for the highly compromised media? The answer is NO! The issue is the general surveillance of the American People, and until and unless the media makes that a Big Deal, I'm not going to have much sympathy for the AP or FOX."

And would ya lookit now.

Some observers have questioned both the timing and the content of the current leaks regarding domestic surveillance. Given the widespread rightist ideological framework of the previous leaks -- and the OUTRAGE!!!® produced by the current ones -- and the highly personal tenor of the anti-Obama frenzy that's being manufactured over all of them ("I voted for this man TWICE!!! He betrayed me!!!!") I wouldn't be at all surprised if every bit of it isn't part and parcel of a carefully engineered Get Obama! Campaign being waged by the rightist of rightist factions within the government/media-plex for the purpose of ending Obama's already highly constrained ability to govern.

The personal character of the OUTRAGE!!!!® is a tell that there is no intent to curtail the Surveillance State. The intent is merely to hamstring the President.

Who would be interested in that, one wonders. Well, of course, it's the Cheneys and those they serve. This has been obvious as sin since day one of the Obama Administration -- since even before it began. That harpie-spawn of the Devil Dick was carrying on like a total madwoman -- and she was on all the shows, too -- over Obama's announced plans to review and revise and reconsider all the elements of the Great And Glorious Cheney Wars, and her relentless carping had an obvious effect.

In fact, her efforts and those of her father's seemed to terrify the White House into compliance with the wishes of House Cheney in almost every particular. Ever since, any time a Cheney arises from the crypt to lambaste the White House and Obama for this or that failing or overreach, the White House complies with their demands.

Cheney, in effect, is still President. Who the Cheneys serve is another question, though, isn't it.

At any rate, the Surveillance State is a Cheney innovation, and the likely shakeout of all this hoo-hah is that surveillance will be redoubled, not curtailed. There is no doubt in my mind that the Constitution will not be restored to viability, and there is no intention whatsoever that it be revived. In fact, the intent seems to me to be to ensure its perpetual irrelevance from now on. I can see no real intent to get rid of Obama, but there is plenty of intent to control him, and the Cheneys have shown they can do that with barely a curl of their lip. The media has already declared Obama's Second Term Agenda (whatever it might have been, and I surely don't know) to be Dead, Dead, Dead; his only choice is to follow the dictates of the Rightists who've been in charge all along anyway.

OUTRAGE!!!!® is a product, these days it's a packaged product traded for attention and favors. The internet cannot exist without it in abundant measure. The fact that Americans are being surveilled in their multitudes has long been discussed, but not necessarily documented the way it is now. There is no sign -- at all -- that the White House or the Congress (and certainly not the courts) will back off even an inch from the level of universal surveillance currently in place, nor is there much evidence (at least so far) that the People will be up in arms about it. As is so often the case, leftish internet OUTRAGE!!!!® will have no perceptible effect on policy. On the other hand, the existence of leftish OUTRAGE!!!!® at Team Obama will have the effect of further constraining any effort at adopting or expanding positive policies on behalf of the People.

The Surveillance State, after all, exists to preserve, protect and defend the (rightist) government and its sponsors from the People. So far, so good.

We'll see. There may be many more shoes left to drop. I would bet money though that the upshot will be even more surveillance and repression, more inverted totalitarianism.

We are not getting out of this handbasket anytime soon.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Creighton continues to cast his jaundiced but gimlet eye on the Whole Thing. Check it out. You and I may not agree with his perspective, but then again...