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So the [URL="http://wikileaks.org"]Wikileaks[/URL]' release of over 90,000 classified documents happened yesterday. They released this material to the [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2010/jul/26/n.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs"]Guardian[/URL], the [URL="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html"]New York Times[/URL] and the German news magazine [URL="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html"]Der Spiegel[/URL] a few weeks ago and all three have published the logs and commentary on them. It is interesting that the reporting slant of the three organizations differs so much. NYT focusses on the role of Pakistan, The Guardian on the extra-judicial killings, the murder of civilians and the general lawlessness with which the war continues to be conducted by Obama as with Bush before and Der Spiegel on how badly the war is going and the difference between reality and US propaganda which the MSM is swallowing whole. But one thing is clear from all the reporting: The whole thing is a disaster.

From the Guardian (note they disagree with me on where the emphasis of their reporting is):
[quote]Each of the news organisations has a slightly different take on the files.
For the Guardian the files [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-guardian-editorial"]reveal the futility of the conflict and the current strategy[/URL].[INDENT] However you cut it, this is not an Afghanistan that either the US or Britain is about to hand over gift-wrapped with pink ribbons to a sovereign national government in Kabul. Quite the contrary. After nine years of warfare, the chaos threatens to overwhelm. A war fought ostensibly for the hearts and minds of Afghans cannot be won like this.
[/INDENT][URL="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html"]Der Spiegel [/URL]says: "Never before has it been possible to compare the reality on the battlefield in such a detailed manner with what the US Army propaganda machinery is propagating."
It adds that they show "The German army was clueless and naïve when it stumbled into the conflict."
The New York Times focuses on what the documents reveal about the role of Pakistan's security service in directing the Afghan insurgency.
"The documents suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders," its top stoy on the leaks says.
[/quote]PS: The Obama administration is out with its usual rubbish of how the release of documents is illegal and terrible and anyway we have changed our strategy. Like it is going to make any difference!

Great commentary from Jay Rosen at NYU school of journalism.
[url]http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/07/26/wikileaks_afghan.html[/url]

[QUOTE]The [URL="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40204.html"]initial response[/URL] from the White House was extremely unimpressive: [LIST][*]This leak will harm national security. (As if those words still had some kind of magical power, after all the abuse they have been party to.)[/LIST] [LIST][*]There’s nothing new here. (Then how could the release harm national security?)[/LIST] [LIST][*]Wikileaks is irresponsible; they didn’t even try to contact us! (Hold on: [URL="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-massive-leak/"]you’re hunting the guy down[/URL] and you’re outraged that he didn’t contact you?)[/LIST] [LIST][*]Wikileaks is against the war in Afghanistan; they’re not an objective news source. (So does that mean the documents they published are fake?)[/LIST] [LIST][*]“The period of time covered in these documents… is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.” (Okay, so now we too know the basis for the President’s decision: and that’s a bad thing?)[/LIST][/QUOTE]

I'll tell you the one thing most truly harmful to national security, and it ain't leaked wartime writings, memos and videos: It's fighting a neverending series of [1] poorly defined, [2] trumped-up or [3] flat-out unwinnable wars all over the globe.

Afghanistan is likely [1] and possibly also [2], but I have become convinced that it is unwinnable, for the combination of the following reasons:

1. You are fighting a diffuse religious/political/military movement which specializes in guerrilla tactics, destabilization and intimidation rather than a standing army;

2. Said movement has substantial support among much of the country`s populace;

3. Said movement consists of loose-knit bands of local militias and foreign fighters who have joined the cause - most of these folks can easily blend into the local populace at a moment's notice;

4. Said movement is not limited by any rules of engagement - the only practical restraint is to not do anything so unbelievably atrocious to the local populations that would engender mass odium against your cause [and even when you do such, most of the time you can deflect criticism by blaming the Americans].

5. Said movement is also keenly aware of the limitations of the coalition forces in this regard, and knows that the coalition is unwilling to bring to bear the kind of overwhelming military force (and to suffer the kinds of casualties that would accompany such escalation) which would be needed to give a chance - only a chance, mind you - of winning. ["Winning" here defined as "finishing said movement as a political and fighting force for the foreseeable future"];

6. Said movement has a more-or-less permanent safe haven across the border in Pakistan;

7. We are fighting far from our home base, in a cultural milieu which is radically different from ours, on the enemy's home turf, home turf which is ideal for fighting guerrilla wars of attrition against invaders;

8. Our "allies" in the region are so feckless and corrupt that militarily they are at best useless, and our continuing support for them makes it impossible to win the crucial "hearts and minds" aspect of the conflict;

9. Being unable to win hearts and minds, the coalition has resorted to trying to "buy rifles", and much of the resulting flood of money is finding its way to the very folks it is intended to help defeat;

10. Our enemies know - in no small part because we have told them - that our effort is highly time-limited, whereas they have all the time in the world. They just need to hold out a few years longer and victory will be theirs.

In the long history of organized warfare, no military power has *ever* succeeded against such odds.

Time to cut our losses, folks - yes of course we need to do it in such a way that does not simply abandon the country to its fate (as we did after the Soviets pulled out - the ensuing debacle is one of the big reasons no one there trusts the U.S.) - but we need to find some reasonable way to semi-plausibly declare "mission accomplished" and get out. If that means some unsavory alliances with local tribal leaders (say by assuring them that their poppy harvest is safe) which will induce them to keep the Taliban in check and allow foreign aid organizations to operate in relative safety (thus preserving some non-atrocious level of human rights,especially for Afghan girls and women), so be it. Better to support the local crooks and profiteers (who at least have some power over what goes on in their respective back yards) than a mega-corrupt and completely useless central government.

IMO, letting Karzai steal the last election was the beginning of the end.

[quote=ewmayer;222908]In the long history of organized warfare, no military power has *ever* succeeded against such odds.[/quote]Not true, IMAO.

Counterexample: Rome.

The countries of the over-developed world simply do not have the ruthlessness the Romans showed to the like of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes.

Carthago delenda erat...

Paul

[QUOTE=xilman;222922]Not true, IMAO.

Counterexample: Rome.

The countries of the over-developed world simply do not have the ruthlessness the Romans showed to the like of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes[/QUOTE]

Re-read my point [5] ... I meant that once "absolute ruthlessness" is ruled out as an option, the odds against winning a conflict against a foe who is not similarly constrained go up substantially.

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

Not sure if Garo has posted it elsewhere, but back in June [i]The New Yorker[/i] ran a nice piece on the people behind WikiLeaks:

[url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian]No Secrets[/url]: [i]Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency.[/i]

[QUOTE=garo;222895]Great commentary from Jay Rosen at NYU school of journalism.
[url]http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/07/26/wikileaks_afghan.html[/url][/QUOTE]

How many here remember Tricky Dick's grossly illegal bombing of Cambodia
while lying about it to the American public???

The worst threat to America is a bureaucratic secrecy. When governments
keep secrets from its own populace, especially embarassing secrets, the
result is criminal behavior and tyranny from our leaders.

The leaking of these documents is surely an excellent thing for true
democracy. Maybe the American public will demand accountability for
the running of the wars. Maybe we will demand that we get the hell
out of there. And I don't care a rat's ass for what happens to the
citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's their country! Let them solve
their own problems. My concern is for the lives of our soldiers who
are fighting a hopeless cause and for the resources and money we are wasting.

[QUOTE=xilman;222922]Not true, IMAO.

Counterexample: Rome.

The countries of the over-developed world simply do not have the ruthlessness the Romans showed to the like of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavic tribes.

Carthago delenda erat...

Paul[/QUOTE]

Sure, we could win a war against Iraq and Afghanistan. But only by
behaving like total barbarians. Such a war would cost the lives of
millions of civilians. Think 'Dresden'. 'Hamburg', etc.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;222950] Maybe we will demand that we get the hell
out of there. And I don't care a rat's ass for what happens to the
citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's their country! Let them solve
their own problems. [/QUOTE]

Seems like they attempted before. Which caused similar embitterment as with Germany after WWI.

[QUOTE=ewmayer]Time to cut our losses, folks - yes of course we need to do it in such a way that does not simply abandon the country to its fate (as we did after the Soviets pulled out - the ensuing debacle is one of the big reasons no one there trusts the U.S.) [/QUOTE]

Also R.D. Silverman when does intervention need to take place when a country tries to solve their own problems? E.g. Dafur, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, and sadly the list goes on.

I agree that the war is unwinnable. But it needn't have been that. The returns for the blood and treasure put in have been really really bad. The reasons in no particular order are:

1. The standard US cold-war model of uprooting one ruler and replacing him with a compliant puppet could not have worked in Afghanistan. The country was utterly fragmented after 15 years of civil war. There was way too much weaponry floating about.

2. Utter disregard for civilian casualties. If your objective is to win hearts and minds you don't go about casually lobbing bombs and rockets at groups of 100+ civilians. Poorly trained and undisciplined soldiers (yeah I know I know, don't give me the bull about world class training and best trained soldiers. If anything the logs clearly show that soldiers are as fallible as the rest of us) who committed many atrocities out of revenge, fear or just plain sadism.

3. Use of airpower and drones as a short cut. Yes it reduces casualties on your side but it alienates the local population like nothing else. There are literally thousands of families in Afghanistan today who had an innocent relative murdered by the ISAF. They are not going to like you and not going to help you. Many of them will actively try their best to defeat you by helping kill your soldiers.

4. Pakistan.

5. The creeping privatization and contracting out of combat and espionage work. Private mercenaries are out there to make money. They are not out there to help win the war quickly. Because once the war is won, their job is finished.

BTW, note that I am not singling out US troops here. All ISAF troops have behaved badly, be they Polish soldiers who mortared a weddng party in revenge or French troops who strafed a bus carrying school girls for no apparent reason or British troops who allegedly targeted a governer's son. Certain section in the US and UK are claiming that our troops are the best trained and don't indulge in this kind of stuff but the sad truth is that troops from all countries have done horrible stuff to innocent Afghans.

[QUOTE=garo;222980]but the sad truth is that troops from all countries have done horrible stuff to innocent Afghans.[/QUOTE]

Would these be the same "innocents" who cheered when 9/11 happened?

[QUOTE=Mathew Steine;222979]Seems like they attempted before. Which caused similar embitterment as with Germany after WWI.



Also R.D. Silverman when does intervention need to take place when a country tries to solve their own problems? E.g. Dafur, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, and sadly the list goes on.[/QUOTE]

The U.S. can not be the world's policeman and it is about time that we
stopped trying.

Intervention, when it needs to happen, needs to be done under the
fully unified backing of the U.N. And I mean including participation
by all.


I have yet to even hear a cogent objective for the Afghanistan war.
Expecting that a fully humane internal government can be set up is
fantasy.

In war, regardless of the outcome, nobody wins.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;222984]The U.S. can not be the world's policeman and it is about time that we
stopped trying.[/QUOTE]

you all tried to ? I didn't notice just joking must be another flaw in the system caused on behalf of the pigeonhole principle.

[quote=retina;222985]In war, regardless of the outcome, nobody wins.[/quote][URL]http://www.google.com/search?q=money%20afghanistan%20siphon&hl=en[/URL]

[quote=R.D. Silverman;222983]Would these be the same "innocents" who cheered when 9/11 happened?[/quote]

That is an [B]asinine [/B]statement. There may have been some who cheered but how can paint all Afghans with such a broad stroke? It is like referring to Americans as "Would these be the same people who burnt little black girls in churches?"

Or if you prefer "Would these be the same 'America's finest' who raped and burnt a 14 year old girl and killed all her family?" or "Would these be the same soldiers who tortured in Abu Ghraib?"

That is just a stupid way of thinking! I'm disappointed with your intellectual laziness Bob.
</flamebait>

PS: Cheering after 9/11 still does not make anyone any less innocent. Or have you forgotten the first amendment to your constitution?

Back to the WikiLeaks documents: At least as interesting to me as the documentation of the real "dirty war" going on in Afghanistan is the apparently deep and longstanding role of the Pakistani intelligence service in [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html]actively aiding and abetting the Taliban[/url] - yet another example of the U.S.' naive attempt to solve all problems by throwing guns and money at them backfiring. With "allies"like that, who needs enemies?

Now our only interest in propping up a sequence of dubious or flat-out corrupt regimes in Pakistan is in an effort to try to make sure their nukes stay safeguarded ... I doubt that effort will be any more successful in influencing the outcomes on that front than the war-on-terror one is.

NYT article today makes clear why the document leak (especially in its timing) is so crucial:

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/asia/28wikileaks.html?_r=1&ref=world]Document Leak May Hurt Efforts to Build War Support[/url]: [i]The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.[/i]
[quote]The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.

In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.

Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
[b]
“We don’t know how to react,” one frustrated administration official said on Monday. “This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood.”[/b][/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] That`s right ... can`t have that nasty old thing called "the truth" - whether about economy, the real cost of health care reform, the real nature of the recently-passed financial-reform megabill or the war in Afghanistan - putting the proles in a bad mood, now.
[quote]Mr. Obama is facing a tough choice: he must either figure out a way to convince Congress and the American people that his war strategy remains on track and is seeing fruit — a harder sell given that the war is lagging — or move more quickly to a far more limited American presence.

As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup. Richard C. Holbrooke, Mr. Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Afghan war effort came down to a matter of American national security, in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, struck a similar note on Monday in responding to the documents, which WikiLeaks made accessible to The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel.

“We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Mr. Gibbs said. [b]“Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there[/b], and that’s why we’re going to continue to make progress on this relationship.” [/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] Given that you have not yet caught Al Qaida #1 and #2 despite nearly a decade`s effort and huge amounts of money thrown at the task, pardon me if I question the ongoing state of perma-emergency here. Also, the fact that the real safe havens are not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan and it`s clear the government there is actively helping keep that so, this whole thing looks like a lost cause run by blinkered blunderers who are still living in Fall 2001.

Oh, the irony: Due to a revolt in his own party, Obama's latest war-funding bill only passed because of Republican support:

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/28prexy.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=world]Democrats Split as House Backs War Funds[/url]: [i]The House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to provide $37 billion to continue financing America’s two wars, but the vote showed deepening divisions and anxiety among Democrats over the course of the nearly nine-year-old conflict in Afghanistan[/i]

A separate story I saw about the vote was that the democratic house leadership drastically limited debate on the measure (to a total of 40 minutes) by invoking a rules clause normally only used for bills considered too trivial to justify floor debate. Nice.

[QUOTE=garo;223041]PS: Cheering after 9/11 still does not make anyone any less innocent. Or have you forgotten the first amendment to your constitution?[/QUOTE]

I agree. Cheering the deaths of thousands may be a despicable thing to do, but it does not make those who cheered criminals.

So more releases to come.

And "someone" (gee I wonder who?) is currently DoSing the site.

So let's throw back the same old excuses they give the public when talking about phone snooping and encryption key escrow:

[size=4][b]"USA: if you are doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide".[/b][/size]

I don't think it is a coincidence that homeland security has just shut down 70+ sites: [url]http://mashable.com/2010/11/27/homeland-security-website-seized/[/url]

These are torrent sites, etc.
DHS would like to make these new leaks harder to get.

[CENTER]War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength[/CENTER]

[QUOTE=retina;239059]So more releases to come.

And "someone" (gee I wonder who?) is currently DoSing the site.

So let's throw back the same old excuses they give the public when talking about phone snooping and encryption key escrow:

[size=4][b]"USA: if you are doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide".[/b][/size][/QUOTE]

There is nothing wrong with taking a dump or having sex, but I am sure
that you would not want pictures released to the world of your doing
either.

[QUOTE=retina;239059]So more releases to come.

And "someone" (gee I wonder who?) is currently DoSing the site.

So let's throw back the same old excuses they give the public when talking about phone snooping and encryption key escrow:

[SIZE=4][B]"USA: if you are doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide".[/B][/SIZE][/QUOTE]At least some leaks have been released, according to the Beeb: [url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858895[/url]

Is it a genuine DoS or is it just an instance of the SlashDot effect?

The mirrors will pop up soon enough.


Paul

[QUOTE=xilman;239068]At least some leaks have been released, according to the Beeb: [URL]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858895[/URL]

Is it a genuine DoS or is it just an instance of the SlashDot effect?

The mirrors will pop up soon enough.


Paul[/QUOTE]More links: [URL]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11858990[/URL]

[URL]http://www.guardian.co.uk/[/URL]
[URL]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks[/URL]

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/[/url]


Paul

One thing about secrets as classified by the US Government is that they are still considered to be classified secret even when published somewhere unless they are declassified. Even though persons in the US Government outed Valerie Plame, it technically would still be a violation to talk about it by anyone who had [I]ever [/I]signed the paperwork involved in getting a security clearance -- regardless of how many other people were talking about it. Compartmentalization terms themselves are also classified. It looks like a major headache is on the way.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;239067]There is nothing wrong with taking a dump or having sex, but I am sure
that you would not want pictures released to the world of your doing
either.[/QUOTE]Yes, I fully agree with you. And that shows why the "nothing wrong --> nothing to hide" argument the gov's use against the public is nonsense.

The cables related to Iran's nuclear program offer some fascinating insights into how the Arab world views that situation, and how the Obama administration has been working on mutliple fronts behind the scenes in that regard:

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=world]Around the World, Distress Over Iran[/url]
[quote]The cables also contain a fresh American intelligence assessment of Iran’s missile program. They reveal for the first time that the United States believes that Iran has obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could let it strike at Western European capitals and Moscow and help it develop more formidable long-range ballistic missiles.

In day-by-day detail, the cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations, tell the disparate diplomatic back stories of two administrations pressed from all sides to confront Tehran. They show how President George W. Bush, hamstrung by the complexities of Iraq and suspicions that he might attack Iran, struggled to put together even modest sanctions.

They also offer new insights into how President Obama, determined to merge his promise of “engagement” with his vow to raise the pressure on the Iranians, assembled a coalition that agreed to impose an array of sanctions considerably harsher than any before attempted.
...
At the same time, the cables reveal how Iran’s ascent has unified Israel and many longtime Arab adversaries — notably the Saudis — in a common cause. Publicly, these Arab states held their tongues, for fear of a domestic uproar and the retributions of a powerful neighbor. Privately, they clamored for strong action — by someone else.

If they seemed obsessed with Iran, though, they also seemed deeply conflicted about how to deal with it — with diplomacy, covert action or force. In one typical cable, a senior Omani military officer is described as unable to decide what is worse: “a strike against Iran’s nuclear capability and the resulting turmoil it would cause in the Gulf, or inaction and having to live with a nuclear-capable Iran.”

Still, running beneath the cables is a belief among many leaders that unless the current government in Tehran falls, Iran will have a bomb sooner or later. And the Obama administration appears doubtful that a military strike would change that. [/quote]
The NYT also explains their decision to publish the redacted diplomatic cables [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29editornote.html?src=me&ref=world]here[/url]:
[quote]The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.
...
The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security. The Times’s redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit the documents they planned to post online.

After its own redactions, The Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest. After reviewing the cables, the officials — while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material — suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all. The Times is forwarding the administration’s concerns to other news organizations and, at the suggestion of the State Department, to WikiLeaks itself. In all, The Times plans to post on its Web site the text of about 100 cables — some edited, some in full — that illuminate aspects of American foreign policy.

The question of dealing with classified information is rarely easy, and never to be taken lightly. Editors try to balance the value of the material to public understanding against potential dangers to the national interest. As a general rule we withhold secret information that would expose confidential sources to reprisals or that would reveal operational intelligence that might be useful to adversaries in war. We excise material that might lead terrorists to unsecured weapons material, compromise intelligence-gathering programs aimed at hostile countries, or disclose information about the capabilities of American weapons that could be helpful to an enemy.
...
Of course, most of these documents will be made public regardless of what The Times decides ... But the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money. They shed light on the motivations — and, in some cases, duplicity — of allies on the receiving end of American courtship and foreign aid. They illuminate the diplomacy surrounding two current wars and several countries, like Pakistan and Yemen, where American military involvement is growing. As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name. [/quote]

[url=http://www.zerohedge.com/article/interpol-issues-international-arrest-warrant-julian-assange-sex-crimes]Interpol Issues International Arrest Warrant For Julian Assange For "Sex Crimes"[/url]

[Confirmatory article in The Guardian [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/30/interpol-wanted-notice-julian-assange]here[/url].]

Oh yeah, this sounds very legit ... let me guess, "An unnamed female informant indicated to the authorities that she had sighted Mr. Assange on several occasions being too sexy for his shirt."

I guess the PTBs attempts to sneak kiddie porn onto his laptop computer failed, so they've gone with the heavy-handed "International man of perversity" smear-campaign approach.

The timing on all of this is just a wee bit ... suspicious. Especially interesting in light of Assange's comment to [i]Forbes[/i] magazine yesterday that he has major dirt on on the biggest US banks. Add to that the curious coincidence that the current Interpol secretary general, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Noble]Ronald Noble[/url], was formerly Undersecretary for Enforcement of the U.S. Treasury. Noble's more recent accomplishments actually fit well with the "kiddie porn on his laptop computer" theme in my above comment:
[quote]Under Secretary General Noble's leadership, Interpol developed the world's first global database of stolen or lost travel documents (i.e., passports) from more than 120 countries and the first global police communications system, called I-24/7 as part of its international screening process for terrorists and dangerous criminals.

He created the world's first international automated DNA database and another automated database aimed at fighting the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. During his 2000-2007 tenure, nearly 22,000 wanted international criminals were arrested, he directed the opening of a new Interpol office at the United Nations in 2004 and another office at the European Union in Brussels, increased the nationalities of their staff from 52 to 80; created a bioterrorism prevention unit at the General Secretariat in Lyon and planned the formation of the first International Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna, Austria.[/quote]
...And he suddenly decided to go after "suspected international sex criminal Julian Assange" today. I'm sure that was mere fortuitous coincidence.

Who was it, not long ago, that did something else spectacular (non-sex-related) to upset various authorities, then suddenly faced some sex crime charge?

[QUOTE=cheesehead;239433]Who was it, not long ago, that did something else spectacular (non-sex-related) to upset various authorities, then suddenly faced some sex crime charge?[/QUOTE]Might you actually be thinking about this case? The allegations spring from August. I faintly recall hearing about the allegations while his name was still in the air from the last round of Wikileaks and remember thinking that his remarks about it being a set-up would not be a long stretch considering the tricky stuff that sometimes happens (I don't have a strong opinion on this either way). Looking back in this thread, one can see that August was just after the last batch of Wikileaks

[QUOTE=only_human;239436]Might you actually be thinking about this case? The allegations spring from August. I faintly recall hearing about the allegations while his name was still in the air from the last round of Wikileaks and remember thinking that his remarks about it being a set-up would not be a long stretch considering the tricky stuff that sometimes happens (I don't have a strong opinion on this either way). Looking back in this thread, one can see that August was just after the last batch of Wikileaks[/QUOTE]No, not this case. In the instance I'm recalling, it wasn't just allegations -- it was a sudden serious formal charge. Assange wasn't charged last August.

As e.g. the Guardian piece describes, the latest warrants stem from the same allegations which the Swedish authorities declines to prosecute at the time ... apparently they suddenly felt a resurgence of keen interest in questioning Assange.

Anyway, speaking strictly hypothetically, let's say there were some actual evidence of non-consensual sex in the Swedish case. Any underaged women or household pets involved? No ... so since when does a mere allegation of nonconsensual adult sex get one on Interpol's most-wanted-for-sex-crimes list? Gimme a break ... don't you have any number of international child-traffickers much more deserving of such an honor?

And now I see Tom Flanagan, the former chief of staff to Canadian PM Stephen Harper, has actually called for [url=http://news.lalate.com/2010/12/01/tom-flanagan-calls-for-assassination-of-julian-assange/]Assange's assassination[/url]. (Note to the trigger-happy Professor F.: Since Assange is a private citizen, the more-apt word for it is "murder").

Makes you wonder who the real terrorists and international criminals are here...

[QUOTE=ewmayer;239487]Makes you wonder who the real terrorists and international criminals are here...[/QUOTE]Too much of the rule of law has been set aside lately. The real terrorism is how quickly multi-generationally hard earned rights and freedoms have been eroded. Now jackanapes everywhere are casting off the veneer of civilization and they like the taste of blood in their mouths.

So today was apparently another furious day of whack-a-mole by the "land of the free" powers that be ... Senator Joe Lieberman (perhaps because he owns a lot of stock in the bank whose dirty laundry Wikileaks is preparing to air out?) gets Amazon.com to pull the plug on Wikileaks from their cloud-hosting service. (Readers may want to keep this in mind next time they do any online shopping).

A couple hours later the site [url=http://www.zerohedge.com/article/wikileaks-reopens-sweden]is back up[/url], hosted by servers in Sweden (yes, the irony of that is not lost on me) and France. Bloody socialists - how dare they enjoy more free speech rights than we in the self-anointed greatest @!%!&%$@$ nation on God's green earth do.

As one ZH readers pithily put it (by paraphrasing one of the NRA gun nuts` favorite bumper-sticker logos):

"When free speech is outlawed, only outlaws will have free speech."

A NY Times reader points out the irony of U.S. government officials attacking Wikileaks:

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/opinion/l01wiki.html?_r=1&ref=opinion]Letters | Secrecy and Diplomacy in the Age of WikiLeaks[/url]
[quote]To the Editor:

As I watch President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others in the government denounce WikiLeaks’ release of classified material, including, in Ms. Clinton’s words, “private discussions” between diplomats, I can’t help but see some irony.

A government that has supported all manner of intrusions into private citizens’ private discussions and doings, including wiretapping our phone conversations, monitoring our e-mails and what Web sites we visit, and peeking at our naked bodies in airports, is suddenly crying foul when its own secrets are pried into.

When we complain about Big Brother’s intrusions, we’re told that if we have nothing to hide, then we have nothing to fear. Isn’t WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, arguing the same thing?

I certainly don’t support putting our diplomats at risk, but I do wonder if maybe this will give our leaders some perspective on how it feels to have your private business intruded upon by folks who claim to be serving the greater good.

David Nurenberg
Somerville, Mass., Nov. 29, 2010 [/quote]

Mish Shedlock (blogger I frequently cite in the Soapbox MET2010 thread) has several commentaries on "WikiLeaks and the Lies Our Government Tells About the Issue of Secrecy":

[url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-drops-wikileaks-on-request-of.html]Amazon Drops WikiLeaks on Request of Sen. Lieberman; Lie of the Day from Hillary Clinton; How NOT to Stop Leaks; Why we have Leaks[/url]

[url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/state-secrets-or-blazing-stupidity-us.html] State Secrets or Blazing Stupidity? US a Pawn for Oil Producers? Next Stop "Secret Police"[/url]
[quote][b]The Moral Standards of WikiLeaks Critics[/b]

[url=http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/01/wikileaks/]New York Times writer Joe Klein writes[/url] "If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in 'freedom' stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He's the one who should be in jail."

[Salon.com writer] Glenn Greewald smashes the blazing hypocrisy of Joe Klein right out of the ballpark with his rebuttal [url=http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/wikileaks/index.html]The Moral Standards of WikiLeaks Critics.[/url]
[i]
Do you have that principle down? If "a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail" because of the WikiLeaks disclosure -- even a "single one" -- then the entire WikiLeaks enterprise is proven to be a "disaster" and "Assange is a criminal" who "should be in jail." That's quite a rigorous moral standard. So let's apply it elsewhere:

What about the most destructive "anarchic exercise in 'freedom'" the planet has known for at least a generation: the "human disaster" known as the attack on Iraq, [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/joe-klein-seeks-to-master_b_40479.html]which Klein supported[/url]? That didn't result in the imprisonment of "a single foreign national," but rather the deaths of more than 100,000 innocent human beings, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of a country of 26 million people. Are those who supported that "anarchic exercise in 'freedom'" -- or at least those responsible for its execution -- also "criminals who should be in jail"?[/i][/quote]

[b]Update:[/b] Mish just added another post which includes the story about the aide to Canadian PM Harper unabashedly calling for Assange`s murder, and a link to the latest noise out of Sarah Palin`s mouth:

[url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/former-canadian-prime-minister-adviser.html]Sarah Palin Compares Assange to Bin Laden[/url]
[quote]Tom Flanagan joins media darling Sarah Palin who thinks [url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334341/WikiLeaks-Sarah-Palin-demands-Julian-Assange-hunted-like-Al-Qaeda-terrorist.html]Assange is like an Al Qaeda terrorist[/url]:

Sarah Palin has demanded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is hunted down like Osama bin Laden. In an extraordinary outburst on Facebook, the former Alaska governor attacked the White House for 'incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.'
[/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] I actually wish Assange *were* "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", in the sense that bin Laden remains a free man and is able to spread his message quite effectively.

[QUOTE="AP"]STOCKHOLM – WikiLeaks' [I]domain name system[/I] provider says it has withdrawn service to the [url]http://wikileaks.org[/url] name.
[I]EveryDNS[/I] says it dropped the website late Thursday after it became the "target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks."
The American provider says in a statement that the attacks have threatened the stability of its infrastructure[/QUOTE]
And this card was now played, too. [URL="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212340/wikileaksorg_downed_by_domain_hosting_service.html"]A bit lame[/URL]?
Anybody remembers the numeric IP, perchance?

[QUOTE=Batalov;239811]And this card was now played, too. [URL="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212340/wikileaksorg_downed_by_domain_hosting_service.html"]A bit lame[/URL]?
Anybody remembers the numeric IP, perchance?[/QUOTE]The URL and the last working DNS' resolving numeric IP are currently in the sidebar on the right side of Wikipedia's entry here: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks[/url]

Why were these cables leaked? I mostly ignore the news, so maybe I missed the key point.

IIRC, previous newsworthy leaks were because the leaker felt there was some terrible wrong being covered up that needed to be exposed. There doesn't seem to be any wrongdoing issue here, just an opportunity to embarrass by revealing the blunt and frank private evaluations behind the public face. It feels like yet another step down the news as entertainment decline.

[QUOTE=Batalov;239811]And this card was now played, too. [URL="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/212340/wikileaksorg_downed_by_domain_hosting_service.html"]A bit lame[/URL]?
Anybody remembers the numeric IP, perchance?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://88.80.13.160[/url] according to the BBC

Paul

[QUOTE=wblipp;239826]Why were these cables leaked? I mostly ignore the news, so maybe I missed the key point.[/QUOTE]

Most of them were just routine daily diplo-chatter and most of the MSM (and not just the American ones) are obsessing about the embarrassing who-said-what-about-whom dirt, but there was some pretty meaty stuff in at least a half-dozen areas I can recall offhand - the ongoing NY Times culling and [url=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/statessecrets.html]special section on their site[/url] has much more:

1. The real views of many middle eastern leaders vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear program, and the [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=world]behind-the-scenes efforts of the Obama administration[/url] on this issue (my opinion of the admin. in this regard actually rose once I saw how seriously and carefully they were trying to walk the diplomatic tightrope here and - unlike the Bushies - actually getting in place some real serious sanctions before leaping into hostilities);

2. U.S. grave concerns about "unreliable ally" Pakistan and the threat of nuclear material there [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/asia/01wikileaks-pakistan.html?_r=1]falling into the hands of terrorists[/url] - the fact that the U.S. was actively trying to get Pak. to allow it to secretly remove a legacy cache of enriched and dirty-bomb-grade nuclear material was not publicly known. And I think it is certainly good to know stuff like this before the next multi-billions of U.S. taxpayer monies are handed over to the Pakistani government and military:
[quote]Over all, though, the cables portray deep skepticism that Pakistan will ever cooperate fully in fighting the full panoply of extremist groups. This is partly because Pakistan sees some of the strongest militant groups as insurance for the inevitable day that the United States military withdraws from Afghanistan — and Pakistan wants to exert maximum influence inside Afghanistan and against Indian intervention.

Indeed, the consul general in Peshawar wrote in 2008 that she believed that some members of the Haqqani network — one of the most lethal groups attacking American and Afghan soldiers — had left North Waziristan to escape drone strikes. Some family members, she wrote, relocated south of Peshawar; others lived in Rawalpindi, where senior Pakistani military officials also live. [/quote]

3. Many previously unknown details about the weapons flow from [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29missiles.html]North Korea to Iran[/url]. If I were a citizen of Europe or Western Russia and environs, I might certainly be interested in knowing that the world looking the other way w.r.to N. Korea has now resulted in Iran having advanced ICBMs which can reach thousands of kilometers farther than their older ones can;

4. The fact that the U.S. implicated the Chinese government in the hacking attacks on numerous multinational companies (Google was the one that went public with this), and did nothing of substance in this regard (the official cover was "rogue hackers at a Chinese technical school") is ... interesting. also note that the attacks are ongoing - just a few weeks ago there was [url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/17/bgp_hijacking_report/]another in a series[/url] of "incidents" (which were at first blandly described as "glitches") in which a significant fraction of world internet traffic was "mysteriously" diverted through a Chinese ISP;

5. The backroom dealing w.r.to the Guantanamo prisoners;

6. Rampant corruption amongst our Afghan "allies".

But you say you "ignore the news", so why would you expect to be up on anything but the most-sensational soap-operatic aspects of this? (And why am I wasting my time trying to spoon-feed it to you? Because I'm an idiot, probably.)

But so what? Is any of this really a surprise? Your points all strike me as confirmation of what any thoughtful observer would have suspected. What's the motivation of the leaker?

There's a big difference between "suspected" and "known".

Teh intar-tubes are fighting back
 

There seems to be a growing effort to make sure that WikiLeaks isn't silenced by Joe 'McCarthy' Lieberman and his corporate stooges.

Paul Carvill has added an A record to the WikiLeaks IP on a subdomain within his domain. [url]http://www.paulcarvill.com/2010/12/opposing-government-and-corporate-censorship-of-the-web/[/url]

A number of mass-mirrors of the WikiLeaks cabledump have sprung up. [url]http://www.twitlonger.com/show/79s9r1[/url]

And of course, there are the now obligatory Facebook pages calling for a boycott of Amazon, Paypal and EveryDNS.

[QUOTE=garo;240184]And of course, there are the now obligatory Facebook pages calling for a boycott of Amazon, Paypal and EveryDNS.[/QUOTE]
I was preparing for my annual bout of holiday online shopping late last week, and after reading about Amazon.com`s action vis-a-vis Wikileaks, I diverted my planned purchases away from there, instead buying DVDs used as a second-hand site and buying some things (or similar items) on Ebay. Of course the next thing I heard was that Paypal - owned of course by eBay and which I used to pay for my eBay purchase - suspended the donation link for Wikileaks. Bugger.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;240320]I was preparing for my annual bout of holiday online shopping late last week, and after reading about Amazon.com`s action vis-a-vis Wikileaks, I diverted my planned purchases away from there, instead buying DVDs used as a second-hand site and buying some things (or similar items) on Ebay. Of course the next thing I heard was that Paypal - owned of course by eBay and which I used to pay for my eBay purchase - suspended the donation link for Wikileaks. Bugger.[/QUOTE]A case of epic bad timing is today Amazon announced their own DNS services. Slashdot is all over it and everyone is linking it to the Amazon's politically requested pulling of Wikileaks support. No one wants a DNS so vulnerable to manipulation. Just a couple of days ago a bittorrent top level domain project was lanched.

What we need is to organize DDOS (distributed denial-of-shopping) attacks against Amazon and the like.

[QUOTE]I was preparing for my annual bout of holiday online shopping late last week, and after reading about Amazon.com`s action vis-a-vis Wikileaks, I diverted my planned purchases away from there…[/QUOTE]Amazon lost a modest [URL="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/675829-USA/Nikon_2184_AF_S_Nikkor_24mm_f_1_4G.html"]purchase[/URL] from us today. It is only a drop in the bucket, but enough drops might make a difference.

Besides, B&H rocks. And they matched Amazon's price.

My older sister put a wishlist on Amazon, so I just took the list over to secondspin.com and got these DVDs, all used, for less than $30 total:

Seinfeld: Seasons 1 and 2 [4 Discs]
Good Shepherd [Widescreen]
Great Escape [Widescreen]
Hurt Locker

If you think you might want to buy some used DVDs from the above site, note that almost always have some special promotion going which they e-mail to registered customers (but anyone can use the promo code) – current one is $10 off any purchase of $40 or more, promo code is DECTEN. (Last day for that is Dec 9th). Since they always offer free shipping for orders of $30 or more, any order qualifying for the promo gets free shipping, too. My order above was just over $40 before the promo.

We are trying to not use Visa or MasterCard right now…

:max:

And speaking of MasterCard...

[url=http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hackers-strike-at-MasterCard-apf-635471139.html?x=0&.v=17]Hackers launch online attacks upon MasterCard, other perceived enemies of WikiLeaks' Assange[/url]
[quote]LONDON (AP) -- Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange.

Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing severe technological problems at the website for MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks a day ago.

MasterCard acknowledged "a service disruption" involving its Secure Code system for verifying online payments, but spokesman James Issokson said consumers could still use their credit cards for secure transactions.

The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site's Facebook page hit 1 million fans.

Late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems, as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack.
...
The pro-WikiLeaks vengeance campaign on Wednesday appeared to be taking the form of denial-of-service attacks in which computers are harnessed -- sometimes surreptitiously -- to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.

Per Hellqvist, a security specialist with the firm Symantec, said a network of web activists called Anonymous -- to which Operation Payback is affiliated -- appeared to be behind many of the attacks. The group, which has previously focused on the Church of Scientology and the music industry, is knocking offline websites seen as hostile to WikiLeaks.

"While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons," the group said in a statement. "We want transparency and we counter censorship ... we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy."

The website for Swedish lawyer Claes Borgstrom, who represents the two women at the center of Assange's sex crimes case, was unreachable Wednesday.

The Swiss postal system's financial arm, Postfinance, which shut down Assange's bank account on Monday, was also having trouble. Spokesman Alex Josty said the website buckled under a barrage of traffic Tuesday.

"Yesterday it was very, very difficult, then things improved overnight," he told the AP. "But it's still not entirely back to normal."[/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] Apparently they also managed to [url=http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Operation-Payback-Took-Down-siliconalley-600450584.html?x=0&.v=3]bring down Visa`s website[/url] ... note it doesn`t look like any actual transaction-processing services are affected, at least so far.


The Electronic Freedom Foundation (which sponsors the prime prizes which have greatky helped GIMPS in its PR efforts, among other things) released a statement on the controversy yesterday:

[url=http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/join-eff-in-standing-up-against-internet-censorship]Join EFF in Standing up Against Internet Censorship[/url]
[quote]Over the past few weeks, we here at EFF have watched as whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has fueled an emotionally charged debate about the secrecy of government information and the people's right to know. We have welcomed this debate, and the fact that there have been myriad views is the embodiment of the freedom of expression upon which this country was founded.

However, we've been greatly troubled by a recent shift in focus. The debate about the wisdom of releasing secret government documents has turned into a massive attack on the right of intermediaries to publish truthful information. Suddenly, WikiLeaks has become the Internet's scapegoat, with a Who's Who of American and foreign companies choosing to shun the site.

Let's be clear — in the United States, at least, WikiLeaks has a fundamental right to publish truthful political information. And equally important, Internet users have a fundamental right to read that information and voice their opinions about it. We live in a society that values freedom of expression and shuns censorship. Unfortunately, those values are only as strong as the will to support them — a will that seems to be dwindling now in an alarming way.

On Friday, we wrote about Amazon's disappointing decision to yank hosting services from WikiLeaks after a phone call from a senator's office. Since then, a cascade of companies and organizations has backed away from WikiLeaks. A public figure called for the assassination of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa axed WikiLeaks’ accounts. EveryDNS.net pulled Wikileaks’ DNS services. Unknown sources continue to cripple WikiLeaks with repeated denial of service attacks. Even the Library of Congress, normally a bastion of public access to information, is blocking WikiLeaks.

There has been a tremendous backlash against WikiLeaks from governments around the world. In the United States, lawmakers have rashly proposed a law that threatens legitimate news reporting well beyond WikiLeaks. We expect to see similar efforts in other countries. Like it or not, WikiLeaks has become the emblem for one of the most important battles for our rights that is likely to come along in our lifetimes. We cannot sit this one out.[/quote]

[QUOTE]…"hacktivists"…[/QUOTE]:ouch:

:smile:

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;240705]We are trying to not use Visa or MasterCard right now…

:max:[/QUOTE]Just use Paypal for everything.

Pirates’ Catch Exposed Route of Sudan Arms
 

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/world/africa/09wikileaks-tank.html?ref=world]Pirates’ Catch Exposed Route of Arms in Sudan Conflict[/url]: [i]It was September 2008 and a band of Somali pirates made a startling discovery.[/i]
[quote]The Ukrainian freighter they had just commandeered in the Gulf of Aden was packed with weapons, including 32 Soviet-era battle tanks, and the entire arsenal was headed for the regional government in southern Sudan. The Ukrainian and Kenyan governments vigorously denied that, insisting that the tanks were intended for the Kenyan military.

“This is a big loss for us,” said Alfred Mutua, a spokesman for the Kenyan government, at the time.

But it turns out the pirates were telling the truth — and the Kenyans and Ukrainians were not. According to several secret State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks, the tanks not only were headed to southern Sudan, but they were the latest installment of several underground arms shipments. By the time the freighter was seized, 67 T-72 tanks had already been delivered to bolster southern Sudan’s armed forces against the government in Khartoum, an international pariah for its human rights abuses in Darfur.

[b]Bush administration officials knew of the earlier weapons transactions and chose not to shut them down[/b], an official from southern Sudan asserted in an interview, and the cables acknowledge the Kenyan officials’ assertions that they had kept American officials informed about the deal. But once the pirates exposed the arms pipeline through Kenya, the Obama administration protested to the Ukrainian and Kenyan governments, even threatening sanctions, the cables show.

Vann H. Van Diepen, a senior State Department official, presented the Ukrainians with a sales contract that showed southern Sudan as the recipient, according to a November 2009 cable from the American Embassy in Kiev. [b]When they dismissed it as a forgery, Mr. Van Diepen “showed the Ukrainians cleared satellite imagery of T-72 tanks unloaded in Kenya, transferred to railyards for onward shipment, and finally in South Sudan,” the cable said, referring to the early deliveries of the weapons. “This led to a commotion on the Ukrainian side.”[/b][/quote]

[QUOTE]Just use Paypal for everything.[/QUOTE][URL]http://thenextweb.com/media/2010/12/09/caving-to-pressure-from-supporters-paypal-releases-wikileaks-funds/[/URL]

The account is still "restricted".

:poop:

Wow, and you'd expect major companies like PayPal and Visa some decent DDoS protection...

[QUOTE=wblipp;239846]But so what? Is any of this really a surprise? Your points all strike me as confirmation of what any thoughtful observer would have suspected. What's the motivation of the leaker?[/QUOTE]

My powder's still dry William:smile:

Sundance

All these attacks on Wikileaks remind me of what I saw about eight years ago, after the Bush administration started its "the French won't join us because they're cowards" campaign (apparently relying on its followers' completely forgetting, or never having learned, that without the aid of the French fleet, the colonial American army would almost certainly never have defeated the British forces -- not to mention that little Statue of Liberty centennial gift).

In a local grocery store, the signs for French cheeses in the gourmet section were defaced with derogatory graffiti. That they were allowed to remain indicates that the store management at least agreed with -- or perhaps, committed -- the graffiti.

(But if the store management wanted to discourage purchases of French products, why didn't they just stop importing them to sell? Perhaps store management and their chain's management disagreed.)

I bought a wedge of imported Brie every week for two years in response. (Perhaps the store's reverse psychology worked?)

- - - -

[QUOTE=only_human;239436]Might you actually be thinking about this case?[/QUOTE]Probably either you're right or else I've conflated this with a somewhat-similar local episode.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;240894]Probably either you're right or else I've conflated this with a somewhat-similar local episode.[/QUOTE]

Now you're talking my language Richard.

I do believe this excellent post was missed. Mish says it like it is. I find myself disagreeing very often with his cures for the economy - though not what ails it - but I usually find myself agreeing with his take on politics and civil liberties.

[URL]http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazon-drops-wikileaks-on-request-of.html[/URL]

[QUOTE]The response from the administration is not to crack down on abuses but rather to provide new ways of ignoring abuses.

Just ask yourself, has anyone outside of Bernie Madoff ever been prosecuted, fired, or even reprimanded over fraud, torture, kickbacks, or anything else? Here's the bonus-point followup question: How many times did the SEC fail to act on information that proved Bernie Madoff was a crook?
[/QUOTE][QUOTE] If people have every right to ask questions, how the hell can questions be asked if the US government classifies everything it does not want anyone to know?

The US has no interest in discussing waterboarding, torture, the killing of innocent civilians with our allies or anyone else. The US wants to and is going to do everything it can to suppress that information.

If WikiLeaks has damaging information about Bank of America, we should all want to see it. We should all stand up for the rights to make that data public, not sweep it under the rug.

We do not have a Department of Homeland Security, we have a Department of Homeland Insecurity putting on a pathetic parade of pomp with full body scanners and pat downs that will not do a damn thing.

[B]Why We Have Leaks[/B]

No one has bothered to tackle the question why we have security problems and leaks.

I will tell you why: The US has troops in 140 countries around the world, we arrogantly go where we have no vested interest going, we support corrupt regimes when it suits our purposes, we follow the asinine creed "the enemy of our enemy is our friend", and we believe we - and we alone - act as the moral authority to be the world's policeman.

When you do that you make enemies. When you make enemies you create security problems.

Instead of addressing WHY we make enemies, we setup sham terrorist organizations like the Department of Homeland Security whose efforts make us less secure.

[B]Running List of Needed Criminal Investigations[/B]

Instead of addressing fundamental problems we want to stop leaks.

I will tell you how to stop leaks: Don't do stupid things! Stop trying to be the world's policeman. Prosecute fraud.[/QUOTE]

US Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks
 

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/16wiki.html?ref=world]U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks[/url]: [i]Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.[/i]
[quote]Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.

Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

Adrian Lamo, an ex-hacker in whom Private Manning confided and who eventually turned him in, said Private Manning detailed those interactions in instant-message conversations with him.

He said the special server’s purpose was to allow Private Manning’s submissions to “be bumped to the top of the queue for review.” By Mr. Lamo’s account, Private Manning bragged about this “as evidence of his status as the high-profile source for WikiLeaks.”

Wired magazine has published excerpts from logs of online chats between Mr. Lamo and Private Manning. But the sections in which Private Manning is said to detail contacts with Mr. Assange are not among them. Mr. Lamo described them from memory in an interview with The Times, but he said he could not provide the full chat transcript because the F.B.I. had taken his hard drive, on which it was saved.
[b]
Since WikiLeaks began making public large caches of classified United States government documents this year, Justice Department officials have been struggling to come up with a way to charge Mr. Assange with a crime. Among other things, they have studied several statutes that criminalize the dissemination of restricted information under certain circumstances, including the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

But while prosecutors have used such laws to go after leakers and hackers, they have never successfully prosecuted recipients of leaked information for passing it on to others — an activity that can fall under the First Amendment’s strong protections of speech and press freedoms.
[/b]
Last week, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said he had just authorized investigators to take “significant” steps, declining to specify them. This week, one of Mr. Assange’s lawyers in Britain said they had “heard from Swedish authorities there has been a secretly impaneled grand jury” in northern Virginia. [/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] Note that this is the same Justice Department which has not seen fit to build a single serious case in the little matter of "the largest financial fraud in human history". These f*ckers on Wall Street, at the ratings agencies and who ran the mortgage-issuance-to-anyone-who-can-fog-a-mirror mills are nothing less than financial terrorists, who have done far more harm to the U.S. than al Qaeda ever did. (And I don`t just mean financial and economic harm - how many lives were shortened among the tens of millions of people who lost their jobs, saw a loved one do so, and/or are beset by absolutely crushing levels of mortgage and other debt.) Not only are those crooks not being prosecuted and jailed, they are enjoying record bonuses at taxpayer expense. The staggering magnitude of the hypocrisy here makes me sick.

111

From the Australian newspaper [i]The Age[/i] we find via leaked cable just how concerned the U.S. is about its various allies around the world when it comes to "doing their share" and continually ramping up their military spending:

[url=http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/THE-DAILY-CHART-Americas-misdirected-missile-pd20101214-C4V7F?OpenDocument]THE DAILY CHART: America's misdirected missile[/url]
[quote]The latest WikiLeaks scoop for [i]The Age[/i] is a cable from the United States embassy in Canberra expressing concern to Washington about Australia's ability to meet its purchases of military equipment. Australia's defence budget currently sits at around $22 billion a year and, apparently, US diplomats were left unimpressed by the efforts of Australia's Defence Materiel Organisation chief Stephen Gumley to explain how Australia would meet its aims to increase military spending, as laid out in the White Paper. While the article didn't reveal whether or not the cable's author appreciated the irony of a US official lecturing anyone about measured military spending, this graph should really be passed on to them – just in case.

While this graph puts the US defence budget at $US711 billion in 2009, that doesn't include a number of "off-budget" items that, on some estimates, push US defence spending above $US1.3 trillion. And yet, America continues to drown in debt with only modest efforts to reign in how much it puts towards guns, tanks and missiles. Now, being the world's superpower invariably comes with a large military budget and sure some cash can go missing. But in 2002, then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that on some estimates the Pentagon had lost track of $US2.3 trillion in transactions and there was no way of ascertaining how the money was spent. How long will it be before the US really does something about its own military spending problems?[/quote]

Right now, I'm listening to a radio interview with Jim Puckett, founder and director of the Basel Action Network ([URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Action_Network[/URL]). He's talking about what goes on when e-waste (e.g., computer equipment) goes to Ghana (for instance) to have its components recycled.

He reports that many of the hard drives included are not erased or wiped.

Investigators found data files from dozens of U.S. and other government agencies. (E.g., there was a complete list of clients of Wisconsin Child Protective Services.)

- - -

Relevance to this thread:

Where is the politicians' cry for jailing or assassinating those who allow U.S. government agencies' computer hard drives to leave their jurisdiction without being properly erased, wiped or shredded ... or those who ship them overseas without taking any of those actions either?

(Note that since this data isn't being made public, as with Wikileaks, we really don't know how much winds up in possession of folks who (a) know where to get these intact hard drives from U.S. government agencies, and (b) are not U.S.- friendly.)

NYT: The Abuse of Private Manning
 

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/opinion/15tue3.html?ref=opinion]NYT Editorial: The Abuse of Private Manning[/url]
[quote]Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nine months on charges of handing government files to WikiLeaks, has not even been tried let alone convicted. Yet the military has been treating him abusively, in a way that conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects. Inexplicably, it appears to have President Obama’s support to do so.

Private Manning is in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va. For one hour a day, he is allowed to walk around a room in shackles. He is forced to remove all his clothes every night. And every morning he is required to stand outside his cell, naked, until he passes inspection and is given his clothes back.

Military officials say, without explanation, that these precautions are necessary to prevent Private Manning from injuring himself. They have put him on “prevention of injury” watch, yet his lawyers say there is no indication that he is suicidal and the military has not placed him on a suicide watch. (He apparently made a sarcastic comment about suicide.)

Forced nudity is a classic humiliation technique. During the early years of the Bush administration’s war on terror, C.I.A. interrogators regularly stripped prisoners to break down barriers of resistance, increase compliance and extract information. One C.I.A. report from 2004 said that nudity, along with sleep deprivation and dietary manipulation, was used to create a mind-set in which the prisoner “learns to perceive and value his personal welfare, comfort and immediate needs more than the information he is protecting.”

Private Manning is not an enemy combatant, and there is no indication that the military is trying to extract information from him. Many military and government officials remain furious at the huge dump of classified materials to WikiLeaks. But if this treatment is someone’s way of expressing that emotion, it would be useful to revisit the presumption of innocence and the Constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Philip Crowley, a State Department spokesman, committed the classic mistake of a Washington mouthpiece by telling the truth about Private Manning to a small group (including a blogger): that the military’s treatment of Private Manning was “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” He resigned on Sunday.

Far more troubling is why President Obama, who has forcefully denounced prisoner abuse, is condoning this treatment. Last week, at a news conference, he said the Pentagon had assured him that the terms of the private’s confinement “are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards.” He said he could not go into details, but details are precisely what is needed to explain and correct an abuse that should never have begun. [/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] Someone remind me, because I swear at one point I thought I knew the answer to this one: How is Obama not simply a smoother-talking, ethnic-melting-pottish version of Dubya Bush?

Oh wait: Health care "reform", right? Oh, wait - since that was only passed after cutting backroom deals to preserve Big Pharma`s profits and - after the ditching of the much-ballyhooed-during-the-2008-campaign "public option" - centers around a likely-unconstitutional mandate for every living American to engage in commerce with a private insurance carrier which is accompanied by no special privilege (contrast with the somewhat-less-dubious "car insurance" --> "right to use public roads"), that is actually quite Bushian in 2 senses.

He is the same as Bush. Read my latest posts in the Guantanamo thread. I did not have any high hopes of him when he was elected but he has still managed to disappoint. He is Bush-lite or rather Bush III.

A longer article in the Guardian:[URL]http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/16/hear-bradley-manning-because-chains[/URL]

[QUOTE]Ever since, the harsh conditions of Manning's imprisonment – untried and unconvicted – have been causing growing concern, culminating in Hillary Clinton's spokesman Philip Crowley telling a Boston seminar audience at the weekend: "What is being done to Bradley Manning is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid on the part of the department of defence." He was promptly forced to resign.

House too feels the displeasure of the US military when he pulls up at the Quantico guardhouse: "Recently it's become really hard. The brig seems to have done playing nice. I have to pull over. They ask for ID, and radio ahead. They pop the trunk, these guys with shotguns. Then I have to wait sometimes 20 minutes for an escort. Two black SUVs arrive and they take you into the base, for two or three miles, very slowly with police lights going. It nowadays takes about 30 minutes."

Manning is allowed visits only on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the week he is kept in his cell 23 hours a day, fed a daily diet of antidepressant pills, forbidden to exercise in his cell, and forcibly woken if he attempts to sleep in the daytime. He is continually subject to what is called "maximum custody", and also to a so-called "prevention of injury" order, which among other things, deprives him of his clothes at night and also of normal sheets and bedding in favour of a blanket he describes as being like the lead apron used when operating x-ray machines. He is allowed no personal possessions.

Problems increased after a small demonstration at the Quantico gates. He was then abruptly placed on a further "suicide watch". He wrote in a letter of protest, submitted by his lawyer, a reserve lieutenant colonel in the military: "I was stripped of all clothing with the exception of my underwear. My prescription eyeglasses were taken away from me and I was forced to sit in essential blindness." He writes: "I became upset. Out of frustration, I clenched my hair with my fingers and yelled: 'Why are you doing this to me? Why am I being punished? I have done nothing wrong.'"

The suicide watch was lifted after protests, but following the refusal of an appeal to downgrade his status to that of a normal prisoner, more indignities appear to have been invented. Manning says he made the mistake of saying sarcastically that he could no doubt harm himself with the elastic of his boxer shorts at night. The shorts were then taken away and he was made to parade naked.
[/QUOTE]I bet it is the Congress that is forcing Obama to torture Manning.</snark>

And I hope the Nobel Peace prize committee is ashamed of themselves now.

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18india.html?ref=world]In India, Leaked Cable About Bribes Sets off a Furor[/url]
[quote]NEW DELHI — India’s Parliament erupted in outrage on Thursday over a report of an American diplomatic cable that described insiders in the governing Congress Party showing off chests of money and boasting of paying bribes to wavering lawmakers to secure passage of a critical 2008 vote on a landmark civilian nuclear deal between India and the United States.

The revelations, contained in a July 18, 2008, cable obtained by WikiLeaks, portray a large, all-out effort by the Congress Party to win a confidence vote in Parliament that could have toppled the wobbly coalition government and doomed the nuclear deal. According to the cable, written five days before the critical vote, a political assistant to an influential Congress Party lawmaker told a United States Embassy diplomat that one small regional political party had already been paid millions of dollars in bribes for support.

The aide also “showed the Embassy employee two chests containing cash and said that around Rupees 50-60 crore (about $25 million) was lying around the house for use as pay-offs,” according to the cable. Another Congress Party member told an American diplomat that Kamal Nath, a government minister, “is also helping to spread the largesse” and was offering jet airplanes as enticements.

“Formerly, he could only offer small planes as bribes,” the unnamed Congress Party member told the American diplomat, according to the cable, which was reported in Thursday’s edition of The Hindu, an English-language Indian newspaper.

The uproar comes as the Congress Party has been besieged for months over allegations of corruption. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, known for his integrity, has been hammered by opposition leaders for failing to prevent a telecom scandal that may have cost India’s treasury as much as $40 billion. A parliamentary committee is now investigating the telecom scandal, and Mr. Singh has defended himself in remarks made to Parliament.

Now the nuclear vote controversy has again inflamed criticism of the government. “It is clear now that this government survived on the strength of a political sin,” Arun Jaitley, a senior leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., said Thursday on the floor of the upper house of Parliament.

The 2008 nuclear deal is regarded as a crowning achievement of Mr. Singh’s tenure and is credited with improving the growing partnership between the United States and India, even as technical hurdles remain. Mr. Singh has described nuclear power as a critical component of expanding India’s power supply, though he has called for safety inspections in the wake of the catastrophe in Japan.

But at the time of confidence vote, the nuclear deal was an angrily contested political issue that almost fractured the government. Both the Congress Party and the rival B.J.P. maneuvered frantically over the vote, wooing tiny political parties, most of them regional organizations with no national agenda.[/quote]
[i]My Comment:[/i] And there is at least one "LOL" moment in the affair:
[quote]According to the leaked American cable, the leader of the small party at the center of the bribery allegations, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, demanded that Congress rename an airport in Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state, after his father in exchange for his support. The government apparently agreed, sending a notification that the airport would be renamed. [b]Despite this and the alleged cash payments described in the cable, the party ultimately voted against the Congress Party in the confidence vote.[/b][/quote]