The Wikileaks Question

[vanlose kid]

surreal...

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P 131145Z DEC 06
FM AMEMBASSY MONTEVIDEO
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INFO RUCNMER/MERCOSUR COLLECTIVE
RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS 0469
RUEHLP/AMEMBASSY LA PAZ DEC LIMA 4870
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RUEHSG/AMEMBASSY SANTIAGO 2951
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C O N F I D E N T I A L MONTEVIDEO 001179

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR WHA/BSC AND DRL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/11/2016
TAGS: PROP PHUM PREL PINR KPAO UY
SUBJECT: LEFT USING HUMAN RIGHTS TO DISCREDIT US

REF: MONTEVIDEO 1103 (NOTAL)

¶1. (SBU) Summary: Uruguay's leftist groups increasingly
resort to human rights as an anti-U.S. rallying cry.
Uruguayan press coverage of Augusto Pinochet's death on Human
Rights day serves to reinforce the local assertion that
leftists are the only "true" defenders of human rights.
Recently declassified U.S. documents from the period around
the Uruguayan dictatorship have fueled the fire, and they
will be prominently featured in the prosecution of two senior
Uruguayan officials accused of conspiring to murder four
people in 1976. Venezuela's Telesur continues to broadcast
accusations that the U.S. sponsored "Plan Condor," while it
flashes snippets of declassified documents on its cable
broadcasts as "proof." The anti-U.S. propaganda machine is
rumbling more loudly, and the time for some sort of response
may be approaching. End Summary.

PRESS REACTION TO PINOCHET'S DEATH
----------------------------------
¶2. (SBU) Uruguayan press coverage of Augusto Pinochet's death
on December 10 reinforces the local assertion that leftists
are the only "true" defenders of human rights. Papers exude
a great deal of nostalgia for the presidency of Salvador
Allende and a vilification of those who mourn Pinochet's
passing. Socialist and Communist legislators demonize him as
the inspiration for other dictatorships in the region,
including in Uruguay, and papers convey a sense of joy in his
death. Most reports imply a vindication of leftist ideology
at the death of the man many consider to be the movement's
greatest enemy. Chile's economic success or the very real
threat posed by international Communism during the Cold War
are seldom, if ever, mentioned.

HIGH PROFILE TRIAL BEGINS
-------------------------
¶3. (SBU) U.S. declassified documents from the period around
the Uruguay dictatorship have fueled leftist allegations that
the U.S. is an enemy of human rights. Prosecutors are using
declassified U.S. documents to bolster their case against
Former Uruguayan President Juan Bordaberry and Former ForMin
Juan Blanco. The two men served during the early
dictatorship and are charged with conspiracy to murder two
opposition congressmen and two Tupamaros in Argentina
(reftel). While the U.S. documents we have seen do not
explicitly link the U.S. to any regional conspiracy against
opposition leftists, the case brings new attention to the
aging issue. Commentators sloppily and regularly presume
U.S. complicity in Plan Condor's campaign of crushing
guerrilla movements in the 1970s and endorsement of brutal
methods.

¶4. (SBU) In the current trial, one an important witness for
the prosecution is Martin Almeda, a Paraguayan lawyer who
reportedly discovered "the Terror Archives" of strongman
Alfredo Stroessner's 1954-89 dictatorship. The other is
Carlos Osorio, an Information Systems Manager at "The
National Security Archive," an independent non-governmental
research institute and library at George Washington
University. The media refers to Osorio as "one of the most
important declassifiers of the State Department's private
documents."

TELESUR HERE
------------
¶5. (SBU) Meanwhile, Venezuela's Telesur has been running a
steady stream of high-quality, anti-American propaganda
pieces. The "Injerencia" series about CIA "meddling" in
Latin America is a particularly slick product that
incorporates documentary segments, present day interviews
with witnesses and liberal use of selected declassified FOIA
documents. We note that Uruguay has a ten percent stake in
Telesur (which it pays by donating content) and that the
local government-owned channel has increased its broadcasting
of conspiratorial, anti-U.S. propaganda in recent weeks.

COMMENT:
--------
¶6. (C) The legacy of human rights abuses committed during the
1973-84 dictatorship is not a new theme in Uruguay. In the
immediate post-dictatorship period, many writers and editors
accused the U.S. of sponsoring Plan Condor and of complicity
in the dictatorship's abuses. What is new is that the Frente
Amplio is now in power and has the political and media
resources to make the old charges more uncomfortable for the
U.S. The dredging up of the past appears to be morphing into
something more than mere "closure" or a politically
convenient public distraction. The barrage of sophisticated
propaganda links the U.S. to the past abuses and paints it as
the intellectual author of Plan Condor. We do not believe
that President Vazquez sanctions this development; we also
doubt that he will do anything to dissuade it.

¶7. (C) Comment continued: Meanwhile, the U.S. appears to
have abandoned the field on this discussion and has said that
the declassified documents speak for themselves. Scandals at
U.S. anti-terror detention facilities have not helped to
promote engagement either. Nevertheless, there may come a
time when we might need to defend ourselves against this
assault on U.S. credibility and intentions. We are not at
that point yet, but the trials of Bordaberry and Blanco may
make it necessary to respond. After all, our core interests
in the region (fostering economic growth, stability and
democracy and fighting narcotics) greatly depend on our
reputation. End Comment.
Baxter

http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2006/12/06MONTEVIDEO1179.html

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[vanlose kid]

WikiLeaks to publish 'sensitive' Israel cables
(AFP) – 11 hours ago
DUBAI — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said his whistleblowing website plans to publish hundreds of "sensitive" US diplomatic cables on Israel, Al-Jazeera television reported on Thursday.

"Sensitive and classified documents" on Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon and January's assassination in Dubai of Hamas militant Mahmud al-Mabhuh would be released, Assange told Al-Jazeera in an interview.

Assange said WikiLeaks had 3,700 US documents on Israel, including 2,700 originating from the Jewish state, but denied the website had any agreement in place to spare the country of leaks.

"We do not have any secret deals with any country," he said according to an Arabic translation of remarks he made in English which were posted on Al-Jazeera's website.

"We do not have any direct or indirect contacts with the Israelis," Assange is quoted as saying, adding no more than two percent of available documents on Israel have been released so far.

Some of Israel's neighbours, most notably Turkey, have expressed unease at the lack of leaks the whistleblowing website has released on the Jewish state.

Israel fought a devastating one-month war with Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, mainly soldiers.

Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan has linked Israel's spy agency Mossad to the January 20 Cold War-style assassination in a Dubai hotel of Mabhuh.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... df0cd1.6e1

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[vanlose kid]

Julian Assange: my fate will rest in Cameron's hands if US charges me
WikiLeaks founder says it would be 'politically impossible' for Britain to extradite him to the US

Luke Harding
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 December 2010 20.20 GMT

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside Beccles police station in Suffolk, which he has to visit every day as one of the terms of his bail. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters
Julian Assange said today that it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to extradite him to the United States, and that the final word on his fate if he were charged with espionage would rest with David Cameron.

In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country mansion where he is living under virtual house arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks said it would be difficult for the prime minister to hand him over to the Americans if there was strong support for him from the British people.

"It's all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor," he said.

Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden. He strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct with two Swedish women. But he believes the biggest threat to his freedom and to WikiLeaks, his whistleblowing website, emanates from a wrathful United States.

There is no evidence of any imminent US move to indict him. But according to Assange, the Obama administration is "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence officer and alleged source of more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables embarrassingly leaked last month. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is also examining "computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism", Assange claims.

Sitting in front of a log fire, his Apple MacBook Pro perched on his lap, Assange said his recent nine-day spell in Wandsworth jail had prepared him for the possibility that he might spend a long period in prison if indicted by the US. He said the prospect of solitary confinement was no longer an "intellectual abstraction" but a reality. The high court bailed him to Norfolk last Thursday, with his extradition hearing scheduled for 6-7 February.

He said: "Solitary confinement is very difficult. But I know that provided there is some opportunity for correspondence I can withstand it. I'm mentally robust. Of course it would mean the end of my life in the conventional sense."

If the US succeeded in removing him from the UK or Sweden, Assange said there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in the US prison system.

Since moving to Ellingham Hall, a Georgian country house and organic farm owned by his friend and supporter Vaughan Smith, Assange has given numerous media interviews. But he said he was fed up with the press and described an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme – in which John Humphrys grilled him on how many people he had slept with – as "awful".

Assange also took issue with a lengthy report in Saturday's Guardian setting out the prosecution allegations against him in Sweden. Assange acknowledged that the Guardian had a right to publish the material, dealing with his alleged encounters with the women. But he said it had been "sub-selected" and not placed properly in context. Swedish prosecutors have demanded that he return to Sweden to face further questions about the August allegations. Assange also said WikiLeaks did not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though "a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us". He said legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching £500,000. The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks – apparently following US pressure – had robbed the website of a "war chest" of around €500,000, he complained. This would have been enough to fund WikiLeaks' publishing operations for six months. At its peak the organisation was receiving €100,000 a day, he said.

According to publishing sources, however, Assange can take cheer from the fact that he has secured a seven-figure advance for a book about WikiLeaks and his life story. The sources suggest he is likely to receive £250,000 himself, allowing him to pay off some of his debts and to settle his personal defence fund, currently "paralysed". The book is to be published in the spring by Knopf in the US and Canongate in the UK, the sources suggest.

Assange – who has to wear his electronic tag in the bath, and report every day to Beccles police station – confessed he has no idea where he will be in a year's time. He described the next chapter in his life as "not yet predictable.

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception."

He argued that Cameron and Nick Clegg were in a stronger position than the previous Labour government to resist his extradition by Washington. "There is a new government, which wants to show it hasn't yet been co-opted by the US," he said, claiming that the security services – British and Australian – had a history of spying on and unduly influencing Labour politicians.

Many WikiLeaks supporters have now gone home for Christmas, leaving Assange with a scaled-down team over the holiday period, on an estate where the number of pheasant and grouse greatly outnumber the humans.

His immediate plan, he said, was to rest after a gruelling couple of months and then to continue with the staged global release of redacted US state department cables in the new year. Physically, he appeared somewhat wrung out, although very much composed and in good spirits.

Assange defended one of WikiLeaks' collaborators, Israel Shamir, following claims Shamir passed sensitive cables to Belarus's dictator, Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko has arrested 600 opposition supporters and journalists since Sunday's presidential election. The whereabouts and fate of several of the president's high-profile opponents are unknown. Of Shamir, Assange said: "He is one of many journalists who have had some brief interaction with us."


Over the past month the Guardian has published over 200 articles based on the trove of US diplomatic dispatches obtained by WikiLeaks, and 739 of the cables themselves. All cables published by the Guardian and the four other international news organisations who had exclusive early access to the material have been carefully redacted to protect sources who could be placed in danger, and the redacted versions have been passed to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks now plans to begin sharing the cables with a wider group of regional news organisations. Julian Assange says all future cables released by WikiLeaks will either be redacted by other partner news organisations, or by WikiLeaks itself. The Guardian and its partners in the project, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais and Le Monde, will continue to share redactions with WikiLeaks for any cables they publish in future.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/de ... id-cameron

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[justdrew]

they would be fools to make a martyr of him. but then, we know they ARE fools (of one sort or another) so it may yet be tried. I wouldn't trust Cameron with my car keys, much less this, but he may find co-operation with a speculative US prosecution just a step too far he won't be able to take.

One goal of the PTB at this point may be to keep the focus on wikileaks and the personalities around it, rather than on the inevitable fact of proliferating leak sites, and especially rather than on the CONTENT of the leaks.

at some point there's going to be an issue around the authenticity of a major leak. The volume of cables and the technical content of them lends a lot of credibility, and I suppose the USgov has more or less admitted they're real. What happens when the leak is say, just a few memos in the form of PDFs of an Outlook printout, and the USgov denies they're real?

[vanlose kid]

they would be fools to make a martyr of him. but then, we know they ARE fools (of one sort or another) so it may yet be tried. I wouldn't trust Cameron with my car keys, much less this, but he may find co-operation with a speculative US prosecution just a step too far he won't be able to take.

One goal of the PTB at this point may be to keep the focus on wikileaks and the personalities around it, rather than on the inevitable fact of proliferating leak sites, and especially rather than on the CONTENT of the leaks.

at some point there's going to be an issue around the authenticity of a major leak. The volume of cables and the technical content of them lends a lot of credibility, and I suppose the USgov has more or less admitted they're real. What happens when the leak is say, just a few memos in the form of PDFs of an Outlook printout, and the USgov denies they're real?

expose the source?

*

[AlicetheKurious]

WikiLeaks to publish 'sensitive' Israel cables

I guess too many people noticed, eh?

I wonder how "sensitive" the information will be. Given the fact that Israel kills thousands of innocent civilians for every political or military target, and engages in all kinds of illegal activities like developing and using experimental weapons against helpless people including children, the litmus test will be whether the "sensitive" information includes anything about that.

Any specific reference to Israel's massive spying operations on the US or in Europe or in Arab countries or Turkey, or of Israeli funding to certain politicians or journalists in those countries would also serve to counteract the well-founded (in my opinion) suspicions that Wikileaks is an Israeli psyop. Given the degree to which Israeli leaders have infuriated even their closest American "friends" (including Joseph "I am a Zionist" catamite Biden), it will be interesting to see if the so-called "secret" cables reveal even as much as the corporate media has, about American criticism of Israeli leaders like Netanyahu.

If the only "sensitive" cables about Israel refer to the assassination of Mabhouh or other Mossad operations that the Israelis are secretly proud of, and use to promote their assassins' mystique, then this would be a very limited hangout and serve only to confirm the widespread suspicions about what Wikileaks is, and what it is not.

[The Hacktivist]

longish piece by Bruce Sterling... comments and links at source...

The Blast Shack
...

Then there is Julian Assange, who is a pure-dye underground computer hacker. Julian doesn’t break into systems at the moment, but he’s not an “ex-hacker,” he’s the silver-plated real deal, the true avant-garde. Julian is a child of the underground hacker milieu, the digital-native as twenty-first century cypherpunk. As far as I can figure, Julian has never found any other line of work that bore any interest for him.

...

Ever the detail-freak, Assange in fact hasn’t shipped all the cables he received from Manning. Instead, he cunningly encrypted the cables and distributed them worldwide to thousands of fellow-travellers. This stunt sounds technically impressive, although it isn’t. It’s pretty easy to do, and nobody but a cypherpunk would think that it made any big difference to anybody. It’s part and parcel of Assange’s other characteristic activities, such as his inability to pack books inside a box while leaving any empty space.

While others stare in awe at Assange’s many otherworldly aspects — his hairstyle, his neatness, too-precise speech, his post-national life out of a laptop bag — I can recognize him as pure triple-A outsider geek. Man, I know a thousand modern weirdos like that, and every single one of them seems to be on my Twitter stream screaming support for Assange because they can recognize him as a brother and a class ally. They are in holy awe of him because, for the first time, their mostly-imaginary and lastingly resentful underclass has landed a serious blow in a public arena. Julian Assange has hacked a superpower.

He didn’t just insult the captain of the global football team; he put spycams in the locker room. He has showed the striped-pants set without their pants. This a massively embarrassing act of technical voyeurism. It’s like Monica and her stains and kneepads, only even more so.

Now, I wish I could say that I feel some human pity for Julian Assange, in the way I do for the hapless, one-shot Bradley Manning, but I can’t possibly say that. Pity is not the right response, because Assange has carefully built this role for himself. He did it with all the minute concentration of some geek assembling a Rubik’s Cube.

In that regard, one’s hat should be off to him. He’s had forty years to learn what he was doing. He’s not some miserabilist semi-captive like the uniformed Bradley Manning. He’s a darkside player out to stick it to the Man. The guy has surrounded himself with the cream of the computer underground, wily old rascals like Rop Gonggrijp and the fearsome Teutonic minions of the Chaos Computer Club.

Assange has had many long, and no doubt insanely detailed, policy discussions with all his closest allies, about every aspect of his means, motives and opportunities. And he did what he did with fierce resolve.

Furthermore, and not as any accident, Assange has managed to alienate everyone who knew him best. All his friends think he’s nuts. I’m not too thrilled to see that happen. That’s not a great sign in a consciousness-raising, power-to-the-people, radical political-leader type. Most successful dissidents have serious people skills and are way into revolutionary camaraderie and a charismatic sense of righteousness. They’re into kissing babies, waving bloody shirts, and keeping hope alive. Not this chilly, eldritch guy. He’s a bright, good-looking man who — let’s face it — can’t get next to women without provoking clumsy havoc and a bitter and lasting resentment. That’s half the human race that’s beyond his comprehension there, and I rather surmise that, from his stern point of view, it was sure to be all their fault.

Assange was in prison for a while lately, and his best friend in the prison was his Mom. That seems rather typical of him. Obviously Julian knew he was going to prison; a child would know it. He’s been putting on his Solzhenitsyn clothes and combing his forelock for that role for ages now. I’m a little surprised that he didn’t have a more organized prison-support committee, because he’s a convicted computer criminal who’s been through this wringer before. Maybe he figures he’ll reap more glory if he’s martyred all alone.

I rather doubt the authorities are any happier to have him in prison. They pretty much gotta feed him into their legal wringer somehow, but a botched Assange show-trial could do colossal damage. There’s every likelihood that the guy could get off. He could walk into an American court and come out smelling of roses. It’s the kind of show-trial judo every repressive government fears.

It’s not just about him and the burning urge to punish him; it’s about the public risks to the reputation of the USA. They superpower hypocrisy here is gonna be hard to bear. The USA loves to read other people’s diplomatic cables. They dote on doing it. If Assange had happened to out the cable-library of some outlaw pariah state, say, Paraguay or North Korea, the US State Department would be heaping lilies at his feet. They’d be a little upset about his violation of the strict proprieties, but they’d also take keen satisfaction in the hilarious comeuppance of minor powers that shouldn’t be messing with computers, unlike the grandiose, high-tech USA.

...


Assange is no more a “journalist” than he is a crypto mathematician. He’s a darkside hacker who is a self-appointed, self-anointed, self-educated global dissident. He’s a one-man Polish Solidarity, waiting for the population to accrete around his stirring propaganda of the deed. And they are accreting; not all of ‘em, but, well, it doesn’t take all of them.

Julian Assange doesn’t want to be in power; he has no people skills at all, and nobody’s ever gonna make him President Vaclav Havel. He’s certainly not in for the money, because he wouldn’t know what to do with the cash; he lives out of a backpack, and his daily routine is probably sixteen hours online. He’s not gonna get better Google searches by spending more on his banned MasterCard. I don’t even think Assange is all that big on ego; I know authors and architects, so I’ve seen much worse than Julian in that regard. He’s just what he is; he’s something we donâ’t yet have words for.

He’s a different, modern type of serious troublemaker. He’s certainly not a “terrorist,” because nobody is scared and no one got injured. He’s not a “spy,” because nobody spies by revealing the doings of a government to its own civil population. He is orthogonal. He’s asymmetrical. He panics people in power and he makes them look stupid. And I feel sorry for them. But sorrier for the rest of us.

Julian Assange’s extremely weird version of dissident “living in truth” doesn’t bear much relationship to the way that public life has ever been arranged. It does, however, align very closely to what we’ve done to ourselves by inventing and spreading the Internet. If the Internet was walking around in public, it would look and act a lot like Julian Assange. The Internet is about his age, and it doesn’t have any more care for the delicacies of profit, propriety and hierarchy than he does.

So Julian is heading for a modern legal netherworld, the slammer, the electronic parole cuff, whatever; you can bet there will be surveillance of some kind wherever he goes, to go along with the FREE ASSANGE stencils and xeroxed flyers that are gonna spring up in every coffee-bar, favela and university on the planet. A guy as personally hampered and sociopathic as Julian may in fact thrive in an inhuman situation like this. Unlike a lot of keyboard-hammering geeks, he’s a serious reader and a pretty good writer, with a jailhouse-lawyer facility for pointing out weaknesses in the logic of his opponents, and boy are they ever. Weak, that is. They are pathetically weak.

...

Well… every once in a while, a situation that’s one-in-a-thousand is met by a guy who is one in a million. It may be that Assange is, somehow, up to this situation. Maybe he’s gonna grow in stature by the massive trouble he has caused. Saints, martyrs, dissidents and freaks are always wild-cards, but sometimes they’re the only ones who can clear the general air. Sometimes they become the catalyst for historical events that somehow had to happen. They don’t have to be nice guys; that’s not the point. Julian Assange did this; he direly wanted it to happen. He planned it in nitpicky, obsessive detail. Here it is; a planetary hack.

I don’t have a lot of cheery hope to offer about his all-too-compelling gesture, but I dare to hope he’s everything he thinks he is, and much, much, more.

Bruce Sterling

first, justdrew, thanks for this. i've been hitting Bill Gibson's site on and off for quite some time and he's said nary a word of this and the forum there is "television tuned to a dead channel".

there's some stuff i don't agree with there and some of it that just reads like a good author getting carried away by his powers of rhetoric, but what he does get right is Assange, he's an entirely new animal.

and i think this is why so many who (here at RI too) find him suspicious or are convinced he can't be for real – because to them he isn't. what motivates him is nothing they can recognize, so they try their best to fit him into some category that makes sense, to them.

he doesn't even make sense to the US and other authorities who are after him. – they, like the "sceptics", just don't get where he's coming from, so they focus on catch phrases like freak, geek, albino (and if they had paid attention they'd have known by now that his hair color went white due to some pretty harrowing personal experiences), and what not. there's been a lot of that bandied about. and they still don't get him.

asymmetrical. that's it. and alone. clear eyed and clear headed.

he knows what he's doing and has thought it all through. he's no martyr, no.

just doing what he does best. hack.

it's the why of it that has some folks befuddled.

*

edit, for typos and bad syntax and grammar and...

*

He is so real. I wish people would understand that. And those of us who are vouching for him and fighting for his freedom are exactly the people who have made an art and a science out of finding out who is real and who isnt real. We have the tools for that job, you want a house built hire a carpenter, you want information, you come to the cyber underground. I mean, it is what *we* do.


And to us, in this little underground subculture we belong to, the man is a hero, he has done what most of us have been trying to do or dream of doing, since the early 90s at least.


He is real, he is legit, take it from those who have spent their lives and all their free time inventing and finding ways to determine who and what is real and who and what isnt.

Again, it is what *we* do. This.

[AlicetheKurious]

We will publish Israel cables in six months, Assange says

The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel

* By Habib Toumi, Bahrain Bureau Chief
* Published: 11:08 December 23, 2010


* There may be some files related to the role of Mossad in killing a Lebanese military leader in Damascus by sniper bullets, says Julian Assange.
* Image Credit: Reuters

Manama: Western papers have been reluctant to publish diplomatic cables containing information about Israel, WikiLeaks site founder has said.

“There are 3,700 files related to Israel and the source of 2,700 files is Israel,” Julian Assange told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV.

“The Guardian, El-Pais and Le Monde have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel. Even New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US,” Assange said in the interview telecast live from the UK on Wednesday evening.

However, Assange said that WikiLeaks will release top secret American files related to Israel.

"In the next six months we intend to publish more files depending on our sources," he said.

Assange said that Israel had not tried to contact him though mediators.

“No, no contacts with Israel, but I am sure Mossad is following our activities closely like Australia, Sweden and the CIA," he told the host of "Without Borders" programme, Qatari daily The Peninsula reported.

Excerpts from the interview (selected by The Peninsula):

An Arabic newspaper conducted an interview with one of your former colleagues who said you have a deal with Israel not to publish these secret files.

This is not true. We have been accused as agents of Iran and CIA by this former colleague who was working for Germany in the past and was dismissed from his job after we published American military documents related to Germany.

We were the biggest institution receiving official funding from the US but after we released a video tape about killing people in cold blood in Iraq in 2007, the funding stopped and we had to depend on individuals for finance.

When will you publish the files related to Israel on your website?

We will publish 3700 files and the source is the American embassy in Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Netanyahu was traveling to Paris to talk to the US ambassador there. You will see more information about that in six months.

Do these Israeli files speak about the July 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon?

Yes there is some information about that and these files were classified as top secret.

Is there any relation with these files and the assassination of Hamas military leader Al Mabhouh in Dubai?

Yes there are some indications to this and may be some special reports published by newspapers. Mossad agents used Australian, British and European passports to travel to Dubai and there are diplomatic files about that.

Are there any security service companies providing information to international airports and monitoring passengers even in the Arab countries?

There are some files about American and Israeli security companies that tried to intervene in certain areas. For example, in Brazil, the American embassy put some Israeli security companies during the Olympic Games.

Are there any files about agencies providing intelligence information about famous personalities in the Arab world?

I am not sure about that but there are files about Hezbollah in Lebanon. In one of these files Lebanon government complained against cables passing near the French embassy. Americans are always very much worried about the telecommunications network.

Are there any files about Israeli agents in the Arab world, including some Arab royal palaces?

Most of the files related to Mossad are classified as top secret but there may be some files related to the role of Mossad in killing a Lebanese military leader in Damascus by sniper bullets.

There 2,500 files related to Mossad and I have read only 1,000. So I don’t know about everything, I need more journalists including Arabs to read and analyse and put everything in the context for the benefit of the readers.

We have 17,000 files where the word Qatar has been mentioned, the source of 3,000 of these files is the American embassy in Doha.

What is the most interesting file about Qatar that was not published?

There is a lot to be read. The name of Waddah Khanfar has been mentioned in 504 files. Some of these files have been published by The Guardian.

How do the Americans view Al Jazeera in these files?

There were some meetings between people from Al Jazeera and the US embassy where the latter suggested coverage of certain things in a certain way.

There are files about a TV channel in Dubai which the Americans said can be used against Al Jazeera and when this channel tried to move in the American direction, people stopped watching it.

The Americans despite having a base here were angry about the presence of an Iranian bank in Qatar, but Qatar said it would not close it but would not open new banks.

Despite that this bank established many more branches in Doha. Qatar is trying to create a balance between the Arab world and America.

The Americans appreciate having their largest base in Doha, but Qatar does not agree with all American requirements and Al Jazeera is a good example for that. Link



Gordon Duff says it better than I do:

Thursday, December 23, 2010
GORDON DUFF: ASSANGE ADMITS WIKILEAKS A FRAUD RUN BY PRESS FOR ISRAEL


ADMITS ALLOWING PRESS TO EDIT WIKILEAKS FOR ISRAEL

“it is one thing for the New York Times to edit their own stories but you let them censor everything for all of us”

Today, Julian Assange admitted that Wikileak material had been chosen by the press, not an independent organization after all. Wikileaks, in effect, admitted that it has always been a front for what Helen Thomas refers to as the Zionist controlled media. Assange, in a childish attempt at “spin” blamed the press for having too many “sensitivities ” [about] Israel and making Wikileaks look bad.

HELLO!

The only reason we needed Wikileaks in the first place is that the press failed so utterly. Is it any secret that Assange turned total control of Wikileaks over to the press, the people who gave him “rock star” status? How utterly sick.

CHICKENFEED ONCE MORE

Now Assange is telling us he has 3700 cables from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, documents covering the an Israeli assassination and the tail kicking they got when they last invaded Lebanon. Anyone who think they can expect to hear the embassy communications outlining American outrage at Israeli actions will die waiting. Expect the same “media sensitivities” we have seen all along.

By “media sensitivities” we are simply saying that Israel controls Wikileaks and uses it to bash their enemies, the United States and their neighbors, some we now learn have been their friends all along.

SHAMEFUL ADMISSION DISGUISED AS SPIN

Wikileaks had promised the press thousands of documents about a “UFO War over the Southern Ocean.” I couldn’t wait for this one. Instead, seemingly clever Julian Assange in his most apologetic manner is now telling us that he has sinned. Where did the mysterious UFO story go? Who told you to withhold it? Are we sitting on that story because President Obama is now drumbeating for war with Iran full time?

WIKILEAKS ADMITS TO BEING A FRAUD

He let the press control Wikileaks.

Julian, if we wanted to read the New York Times, we would go out and get one. Now you are telling us that the Times, a worthless rag of a newspaper, has been running Wikileaks all along? Do you know what “fraud” means?

If we wanted to hear what Israel wanted us to hear, we simply would have turned on our televisions. We have had nothing else for decades. Now you admit you have been a part of it. Are we supposed to be surprised?

You weren’t that hard to figure out. Every day, a new photograph in hundreds of newspapers, always posed, always thoughtful. You spend 9 days waiting for bail and we find out that you have been working for the press, working for Israel, working for the most powerful and devious forces known to mankind all along? You needed 240,000 pounds for bail? This wouldn’t be a one month retainer for your lawyer or publicists. The people you work for use money like that for lighting cigars.

We know it was all an act, just like this is part of that act, more drama brought on because some of us caught you early on and have “outed” you. What I find amazing is your chutzpah. You admit to using us all, defrauding us, being a disinformation agent.

Now you are taking a second shot at deceiving us all. What we expect is the same press that you are now accusing, now supposedly “distancing” yourself from will be the lead on this new story. What we are going to get is the New York Times, the Guardian, der Spiegel, the same triumvirate of baloney, your partners in crime, spreading the same old Wikileaks chickenfeed mixed in with Israeli disinformation and leaks designed to hurt the US government and discredit your Islamic neighbors.

Yes, Julian. They are your Islamic neighbors. If you don’t have Israeli citizenship yet, you soon will. They need another comedian and that seems to be your only real talent. I do so love your choice of words.

“SENSITIVITIES”

What you call “sensitivities,” a word that undoubtedly came from a committee of advisors juggling emails between New York and Tel Aviv is simply lying and cheating to the rest of us. You lied to us all, not once but continually and now you think we are going to take more of your lies simply because they are delivered with a half hearted apology?
Chutzpah. Link

[The Hacktivist]

WikiLeaks to publish 'sensitive' Israel cables

I guess too many people noticed, eh?

I wonder how "sensitive" the information will be. Given the fact that Israel kills thousands of innocent civilians for every political or military target, and engages in all kinds of illegal activities like developing and using experimental weapons against helpless people including children, the litmus test will be whether the "sensitive" information includes anything about that.

Any specific reference to Israel's massive spying operations on the US or in Europe or in Arab countries or Turkey, or of Israeli funding to certain politicians or journalists in those countries would also serve to counteract the well-founded (in my opinion) suspicions that Wikileaks is an Israeli psyop. Given the degree to which Israeli leaders have infuriated even their closest American "friends" (including Joseph "I am a Zionist" catamite Biden), it will be interesting to see if the so-called "secret" cables reveal even as much as the corporate media has, about American criticism of Israeli leaders like Netanyahu.

If the only "sensitive" cables about Israel refer to the assassination of Mabhouh or other Mossad operations that the Israelis are secretly proud of, and use to promote their assassins' mystique, then this would be a very limited hangout and serve only to confirm the widespread suspicions about what Wikileaks is, and what it is not.

This idea that Wikileaks is Israel is not what I would refer to as "widespread," in fact it is being parroted bythe usual internet suspects who blame everything else on Israel too. The general notion that Wikileaks and Assange isnt what it claims to be, isnt itself ncessarily widespread either. Most understand that it is real and a few of us who know the truth, know that it is. But again, I dont think you could say there is wifespread belief that it isnt real, that is generally confined to a very small, yet vocal group of righting internet media types.


Regardless, no matter what Wikileaks does, it will not be enough for them, nothing ever is.

[The Hacktivist]

GORDON DUFF: ASSANGE ADMITS WIKILEAKS A FRAUD RUN BY PRESS FOR ISRAEL



Look at this BS headline as a fine example of how fucked up these people are and how they are LIARS.

Assange didnt admit this nor is it his fault. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA are the ones who made this decision to edit out those Israseli cables and he IS GOING TO FIX THAT BY RELEASING THOSE CABLES unedited, himself on his own website.

Duff is an idiot.

[AlicetheKurious]

GORDON DUFF: ASSANGE ADMITS WIKILEAKS A FRAUD RUN BY PRESS FOR ISRAEL



Look at this BS headline as a fine example of how fucked up these people are and how they are LIARS.

Yeah, I didn't like the headline either. Assange didn't admit that Wikileaks was a fraud run by the press for Israel; he muttered some mealy-mouthed weaselly pap about how the press that he selected to arbitrate what gets released, censored 98% of the cables about Israel out of deference to Jewish "sensitivities". Assange did not utter one word of objection. It's all about "sensitivities", you see. Because Assange is so sensitive to the sensitivities of those who commit and advocate and cover up war crimes.

Assange didnt admit this nor is it his fault. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA are the ones who made this decision to edit out those Israseli cables

Once again, it was Assange's choice to give THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA the exclusive right to redact and select what to publish.

and he IS GOING TO FIX THAT BY RELEASING THOSE CABLES unedited, himself on his own website.

Sure, six months from now, according to him. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. It's like: "dude, the check's in the mail," so shut up already. If that's not a sign of good faith, I don't know what is.

[JackRiddler]

.

As of 24 December 2010, http://wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html the running tally of all leaked cables so far published reads:

"Currently released so far... 1897 / 251,287" = 0.7 percent

That's all files. Not only Israel. (Puzzler for mathematicians: Which is greater? 2 percent or 0.7 percent?)

All files are being published at the same slow rate. Almost all files so far have gone through other media before publication. When Assange says, "In the next six months we intend to publish more files depending on our sources," this also describes the process for the entire release, and not only the parts about Israel. In the next six months normally means during the next six months, which is not the same as what the headline applied by Gulf News says (i.e., to "publish Israel cables in six months.")

Furthermore, when Assange says that newspapers "have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel" and "New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US," anyone who is not in the game solely to defame Assange would understand that as a criticism of the papers, and a reminder that Wikileaks intends ultimately to publish all cables.

You might have a criticism of the slow process Wikileaks is employing with the cables. I have been critical several times above. But it is not their special policy with Israel, but for all countries.

So far readings of the cables show that what has been released redacts only source names, not details. Will that remain so? Who knows? (Do you have reason to disbelieve even Assange when he says he's read only 1000 out of 2500 relating to Israel, and presumably a similar proportion of the 251,000 total?)

Thus the Duff headline, purporting to be based on Assange's interview with Al-Jazeera interview, that Assange "admits" Israeli control and Mossad censorship (!), is insupportable, a complete and outrageous fabrication.

That at this stage you would still be returning to Duff, is what I call the start-at-zero tactic.

After 54 pages on this thread and a similar number of pages on the other Wikileaks threads, the case for Israeli influence over Wikileaks, as mostly borrowed from Duff, has been multiply dissected as an agenda-driven, simplistic pack of lies. In this latest Duff, as in every other one so far, all of his claims are tendentious misinterpretations of the cited source texts. All anyone has to do to see that is to read his sources alongside what he makes of them.

But all Alice needs to do is to copy-paste Duff's latest, and it's like none of that ever happened. You treat the record as non-existent and look to win by flooding the original talking points. No matter what has happened in the meantime, you expect us always to deal with the same shit, the same prior conclusions repackaged as hot news. Forever. You may expect to "win" by repetition, you may think that gradually, everyone will see no point in answering the latest Duff repeat and gradually will cede the ground to Alice's echo chamber.

You and Duff are dishonest and cheap.

Over on one of the other threads, nathan28 complained that revelations through the cables about Israel and the Middle East are, in fact, being ignored:

The last one is killing me. I thought you all gave a damn about this, but simply put you do not treat it seriously, which really helps to qualify the whining and doomsaying. Cables on Israeli organized crime go unnoticed. A cable on a Saudi drug trafficking jet goes unnoticed. The implicit admission to human rights violations in South America goes unnoticed. Cables showing corruption and infiltration by energy companies go unnoticed. Simply put, the people who keep decrying the contents of the cables have next to no actual familiarity with them.

To which c2w? responded with a post suggesting she had found something interesting too:

As of this afternoon -- when I stumbled across Mossad and the U.S. in the library with a candlestick (actually, in the recent past, engaging in the kind of crime that stays with world leaders to the grave and beyond because it's just too big to leave out of the obituary and history books) -- I can top that.

But you know what? If people want to know more than that, they're going to have to find it themselves. Because I'm not about to go throwing the sweat of my brow out there just so that I can watch the same people who insist that's the only possible thing that ever goes on beyond closed doors try to debunk hard evidence of it, just because it came from me.

And if there's one thing I know for sure in this world, it's this:

Just entering the search terms "Wikileaks" and "Mossad" is never going to reward a single person on earth who doesn't have the patience of Job already. And you wanna know why? Because when you do that, what you get is about one billion links that either lead to:

(a) Gordon Duff peddling his 100-percent information-free, utterly familiar and well-worn line rhetoric, lightly adapted for application to Wikileaks; or

(b) Someone else of no particular authority peddling a quasi-plagiarized version of Gordon Duff's 100-percent information-free, utterly familiar and well-worn line rhetoric, lightly adapted for application to Wikileaks.

And ordinarily, stuff like that other (real) thing that I mentioned wouldn't be that hard to find, it's not like it's all abstruse and wrapped in jargon, or anything like that. Anyone who's willing to idly but methodically read the cables and then search the unique, hard-data-point terms in their spare moments will hit it sooner or later.

But casual readers, or the world at large? Forget about it. So:

Way to go, everybody! You helped make the Google-ranking difference! And you sure can spot a psy-op!

OMG! We're ALL KEYWORD HIJACKING HEROES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
__________________

I've never been prouder.

.

PS, Both of these statements are also false readings:

Once again, it was Assange's choice to give THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA the exclusive right to redact and select what to publish.

They do not have an exclusive right and the claim is everything will be published. That process has begun (Wikileaks.ch includes cables that haven't been in the media) and the cables are clearly spreading to newspapers outside the original group (Al-Arabiya, presumably Afterposten).

Sure, six months from now, according to him. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week.

Assange's "In the next six months" != "six months from now," as it falsely interpreted.

.

[The Hacktivist]

GORDON DUFF: ASSANGE ADMITS WIKILEAKS A FRAUD RUN BY PRESS FOR ISRAEL



Look at this BS headline as a fine example of how fucked up these people are and how they are LIARS.

Yeah, I didn't like the headline either. Assange didn't admit that Wikileaks was a fraud run by the press for Israel; he muttered some mealy-mouthed weaselly pap about how the press that he selected to arbitrate what gets released, censored 98% of the cables about Israel out of deference to Jewish "sensitivities". Assange did not utter one word of objection. It's all about "sensitivities", you see. Because Assange is so sensitive to the sensitivities of those who commit and advocate and cover up war crimes.

Assange didnt admit this nor is it his fault. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA are the ones who made this decision to edit out those Israseli cables

Once again, it was Assange's choice to give THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA the exclusive right to redact and select what to publish.

and he IS GOING TO FIX THAT BY RELEASING THOSE CABLES unedited, himself on his own website.

Sure, six months from now, according to him. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week. It's like: "dude, the check's in the mail," so shut up already. If that's not a sign of good faith, I don't know what is.

deference to Jewish "sensitivities"...



Assange did not utter one word of objection. It's all about "sensitivities", you see. Because Assange is so sensitive to the sensitivities of those who commit and advocate and cover up war crimes.

So youre saying all Jews commit and advocate war crimes? And that he shouldnt have sensitivities towards Jews, because of this?


Wow.


It may take a few weeks or months before he releases them but I am sure he has a lot more on his plate than making the likes of you and Gordon Duff happy. The fact remains he didnt edit out those Israeli cables, he didnt like that they were edited out but he understood why, due to Jewish sensitivity with news organizations like the NYT. But he will fix that by publishing them himself on his own website, unedited.

Like I said above, this wont be enough for some of you, nothing is ever enough.

[The Hacktivist]

.

As of 24 December 2010, http://wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html the running tally of all leaked cables so far published reads:

"Currently released so far... 1897 / 251,287" = 0.7 percent

That's all files. Not only Israel. (Puzzler for mathematicians: Which is greater? 2 percent or 0.7 percent?)

All files are being published at the same slow rate. Almost all files so far have gone through other media before publication. When Assange says, "In the next six months we intend to publish more files depending on our sources," this also describes the process for the entire release, and not only the parts about Israel. The statement furthermore states an intent to get files out during the next six months time, which is not the same as what the headline applied by Gulf News says (i.e., to "publish Israel cables in six months.")

Furthermore, when Assange says that newspapers "have published only two percent of the files related to Israel due to the sensitive relations between Germany, France and Israel" and "New York Times could not publish more due to the sensitivities related to the Jewish community in the US," anyone who is not in the game solely to defame Assange would understand that as a criticism of the papers, and a reminder that Wikileaks intends ultimately to publish all cables.

You might have a criticism of the slow process Wikileaks is employing with the cables. I have been critical several times above. But it is not their special policy with Israel, but for all countries.

So far readings of the cables show that what has been released redacts only source names, not details. Will that remain so? Who knows? (Do you have reason to disbelieve even Assange when he says he's read only 1000 out of 2500 relating to Israel, and presumably a similar proportion of the 251,000 total?)

Thus the Duff headline, purporting to be based on Assange's interview with Al-Jazeera interview, that Assange "admits" Mossad censorship (!), is insupportable, a complete and outrageous fabrication.

That at this stage you would still be returning to Duff, is what I call the start-at-zero tactic.

After 54 pages on this thread and a similar number of pages on the others, the case you mostly borrow from Duff has been multiply dissected as an agenda-driven, simplistic pack of lies. In this latest, Duff as in every other one so far, every one of his claims is a tendentious misinterpretation of the cited source texts. All anyone has to do is to read his sources.

But all you need to do is copy-paste Duff's latest, and it's like none of that ever happened. You treat the record as non-existent and look to win by flooding. No matter what has happened in the meantime, you expect us to always deal with the same shit, the same prior conclusion repackaged as hot news. Forever. You may expect to "win" by repetition, you may think that gradually, everyone will see no point in answering the latest Duff repeat and gradually will cede the ground to Alice's echo chamber.

You and Duff are dishonest and cheap.

Over on one of the other threads, nathan28 complained about how revelations about Israel through the cables are in fact being ignored:

The last one is killing me. I thought you all gave a damn about this, but simply put you do not treat it seriously, which really helps to qualify the whining and doomsaying. Cables on Israeli organized crime go unnoticed. A cable on a Saudi drug trafficking jet goes unnoticed. The implicit admission to human rights violations in South America goes unnoticed. Cables showing corruption and infiltration by energy companies go unnoticed. Simply put, the people who keep decrying the contents of the cables have next to no actual familiarity with them.

To which c2w? responded:

As of this afternoon -- when I stumbled across Mossad and the U.S. in the library with a candlestick (actually, in the recent past, engaging in the kind of crime that stays with world leaders to the grave and beyond because it's just too big to leave out of the obituary and history books) -- I can top that.

But you know what? If people want to know more than that, they're going to have to find it themselves. Because I'm not about to go throwing the sweat of my brow out there just so that I can watch the same people who insist that's the only possible thing that ever goes on beyond closed doors try to debunk hard evidence of it, just because it came from me.

And if there's one thing I know for sure in this world, it's this:

Just entering the search terms "Wikileaks" and "Mossad" is never going to reward a single person on earth who doesn't have the patience of Job already. And you wanna know why? Because when you do that, what you get is about one billion links that either lead to:

(a) Gordon Duff peddling his 100-percent information-free, utterly familiar and well-worn line rhetoric, lightly adapted for application to Wikileaks; or

(b) Someone else of no particular authority peddling a quasi-plagiarized version of Gordon Duff's 100-percent information-free, utterly familiar and well-worn line rhetoric, lightly adapted for application to Wikileaks.

And ordinarily, stuff like that other (real) thing that I mentioned wouldn't be that hard to find, it's not like it's all abstruse and wrapped in jargon, or anything like that. Anyone who's willing to idly but methodically read the cables and then search the unique, hard-data-point terms in their spare moments will hit it sooner or later.

But casual readers, or the world at large? Forget about it. So:

Way to go, everybody! You helped make the Google-ranking difference! And you sure can spot a psy-op!

OMG! We're ALL KEYWORD HIJACKING HEROES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
__________________

I've never been prouder.

.

PS, Both of these statements are also false readings:

Once again, it was Assange's choice to give THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA the exclusive right to redact and select what to publish.

They do not have an exclusive right and the claim is everything will be published. Furthermore, that process has begun.

Sure, six months from now, according to him. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week.

In the next six months != "six months from now."

Thanks for that, Jack.

Indeed the claim Assange is making is that in time everything will be published INCLUDING The Israeli stuff, but of course that still wont make Duff and his crowd happy, if he said he would do it tomorrow they would wonder why he didnt do it today.

In the next 6 months OVER A PERIOD of the next 6 months you will begin to see them. In otherwords the process is UNDERWAY and in the next 6 months we should have everything INCLUDING the Israeli cables.

This stuff takes time and a lot of man hours and Wikileaks has NO MONEY thanks to paypal and visa et al.

[JackRiddler]

.

The only possible conclusion from Duff's consistently tendentious arguments over time is that he is a witting purveyor of disinformation (or does "line rhetoric," as c2w? put it). Everyone interested in this affair, including the moderators of this site, have a choice of whether to focus on and copy-paste his lies (as peddled here by his local SEO volunteer, AlicetheKurious) or to actually use the opportunity offered by the release of the cables. Or to engage in the 17 trillion other better possibilities offered by life.

.

Here is a slightly expanded version of plutonia's list from above:

.

Where to research the cables (best as I know)

Of the newspaper sites, in English go with The Guardian. They are a full partner and have been doing constant, massive coverage. (The Times site is a joke and shamelessly spun to minimize releases and maximize pro-war propaganda.)

1. Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-us-embassy-cables

2. Wikileaks new home: http://wikileaks.ch / (go to "cablegate" section)

3. Search-able database of cables that is synched with Wikileaks releases: http://www.dazzlepod.com/cable /

4. Wikileaks the forum: http://www.wikileaksforum.net /

5. Crowdjournalizing the raw cables... very slowly: http://operationleakspin.org /

---

#5 is a wiki site for the cables and actually looks like it will develop into the most interesting.

Among other examples, some cables and important stories have received first treatment in the Arab press (Murr), by the Bolivian government (which is hosting cables about Bolivia), in Counterpunch (where they took apart the NY Times attack-Iran spin), and in the article by Andrew Gavin Marshall on Global Research (on the UK royal family).

Currently trying a compilation of cable stories here - ran into flame war...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... g_id=57930

.

hacktivist, I appreciate being quoted, and thanks for the kind words. But when you quote me (or anyone), and if you're not going to comment on it piece by piece, do you mind just using a bit to show the reference, rather than repeating the whole thing? To keep the pages shorter, if you don't mind... (Also, I have a bad editing jones.)

.