The Wikileaks Question

[vanlose kid]

wikirebel documentary, full version.



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[vanlose kid]

NKorea congratulates UK for the capture of Assange.





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[Joe Hillshoist]

The real wikileaks question is why so much time (and more importantly energy) gets spent talking about wikileaks or individuals instead of whats in the leaks.

That doesn't seem to happen in other places, (eg Iceland,) but we'll see what happens about these supposed bank documents.

Wikileaks is a place where people dump sensitive documents in the hope of achieving some vague notion of justice.

Everything else about them is created outside that, by everyone else. Which is us.

I dunno how many of you remember, but when there was a secret blacklist of supposedly banned websites in Australia that we Australians weren't allowed to see, wikileaks published it.

When people look back it'll be one of the major reasons the proposed internet filter, a great wall of oz, got any real scrutiny. If it never happens, and thats looking more likely as time goes by, (especially after the last years publicity,) then wikileaks publishing that list had a big role in stopping it. Maybe someone else would have, the point is they did. We as a internet using population accessed, mirrored and more importantly, talked about what was on the list and used it to back up the arguments against it.

The govt adding the entire wikileaks site to the list only added to the farce.

That was before the recent publicity tho. Not many people noticed.

I dunno how that fits with the psy op narrative. Anyone mentioned Laurie Oakes yet?

That'd probably be a nail in JAs coffin cept for the obvious.

Oakes made his support for JA clear as he accepted an award - the most prestigious in Australian journalism, which isn't saying alot - but he was getting that award cos he had publicised leaks during an election that nearly brought down a govt.

The Australian media has disapppeared so far up its own arse it almost looks like its come out the other side, but even it could see the obvious - that wikileaks had already shown its usefulness for Australians. Had done what the MM should have done - reported the filter blacklist. Oakes support isn't part of some psy op cept in the crude sense that he represents the MM and trad media trying to bask in reflected credibility - like a tiring animal in the middle of an ocean, desperate to stay alive as long as it can, but knowing its only a matter of time.

And ultimately, even if wikileaks is a scam, or fails or is shut down, its also a meme and a model. Someone else will do it properly (well better) if they don't. Someone probably is right now anyway. Well trying, or thinking about it.

JA is kind of possessed by an archetype, that began with revenge of the nerds, and had bill gates for a while and now its got him - striding out of a gerling video wielding his backpack like Gandalf and humming along:

Do you know where has your courage gone?
Do you remember where you did once belong?
Are you going away?
Are you going away from me?
Do you know?

We're all fighting against The Man
The big brotherhood and the master plan
We're all fighting against that same evil man



As far as the charges (?) against him go. Given the climate its not hard to see this as a set up of some sort. But ... if he does have a case to answer then he should answer it.

I dunno if adding my opinion of the matter is gonna contribute to the fairness of his his trial, for him, or for his alleged victims. Until the allegations are tested or dropped, and that could only happen if they were groundless in this situation (couldn't it?), then my opinion probably doesn't matter for shit. (Well there's no probably about it, and honestly at the moment it seems to be working. He is being prosecuted for an alleged crime, one of the worse. (If its possible to scale that stuff.)

For anyone who is interested, comparing his attitude, I mean the attitude to him (edit) to the (name removed for legal reasons) vs St Kilda Football Club debacle thats happening at the moment in melbourne, (Its been called dikileaks by some people who might not know it also refers to someone's broken franga. So if you want to look it up google dikileaks and st kilda) its pretty easy to see a big difference.

I haven't typed anything for a while so sorry this went on so long. Its like virtual cabin fever.

[AlicetheKurious]

Of course the meaning of words is important! Assange said in the next six months. Anyone who turns that into "in six months" is wrong. That is not a "quibble." It is a misinterpretation, and in Duff's case used maliciously.

Actually, it is a quibble, because until 6 months are up, the claim can be made that strictly speaking, he hasn't broken his promise yet. In any case, it hasn't started yet and time will tell whether all the files are published WITHIN the next six months or IN the next six months or never, and whether those files will contain anything that can't be classified as boastful tales of Mossad derring-do and/or actually counters the warmongering Israeli hasbara lies that Wikileaks has (wittingly or not) helped to propagate so effectively.

Which leaves us with the question that you managed yet again to ignore: why didn't Assange publish the cables in their entirety at the same time he gave them to the New York Times et al? If, as he claims, he intends to make them all publicly available, and if as you insist, Assange opposes the newspapers' decision to censor 98% (or the remaining 99%, according to Assange himself -- see below) of the cables about Israel, then why wait? I recall someone saying in Wikileaks' defense that its purpose is to expose media bias by publishing all the raw cables parallel to their release to the media, so that readers can independently compare the raw data to the media spin. If that's the case, then why has this not been done with the Israeli cables?

Alice, in the last month or so, citing such greats as Duff and willyloman and Tarpley, [insert rant here]

First, that's rich, coming from someone who actually quoted Xymphora, whom you despise, not because he contributed some new information or a persuasive argument, but in the form of a testimonial that Xymphora believes that Wikileaks is trustworthy (and therefore we should too).

In contrast, I cited Duff, willyloman and Tarpley, not for the purpose of ad populum, still less as an appeal to authority, as you did; I don't really know much about any of them and care still less. I quoted them only because in my opinion the questions and arguments they raised were valid on their own merit and I didn't want to plagiarize them, or steal credit for them. They could have been raised by my son or the mailman, or come to me in a vision in the shower, for all the relevance that would have. The question is whether they are indeed valid or not, and why.

Of course, this is in a much larger pattern of years, of dozens of related claims from you that find an Israeli origin in anything you wish. Israel is not just the illegal occupier of Palestinian territory and a violator of human rights and international law. That will not do. Rather, you have told us that Israel scripts anything bad in American foreign policy, always working against "American interests"; that Israel killed Kennedy and caused the US to invade Vietnam; that Israel alone did 9/11 and is the sole reason for the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions; that these are all things that the reasonable non-Zionists among the managers of US empire would have never done, that only Zionists were responsible.

Poor me! I could have spared myself the hours and days of grinding labor I have spent over the years meticulously documenting every fact I've cited and painstakingly demonstrating how it relates to other facts to form a coherent and factually sound hypothesis that explains, in my opinion, far more than your narrative of random, unrelated events and the actions of consistently incompetent independent actors leading to unpredictable consequences that somehow always manage to further the stated objectives of Israel at the expense of everybody else. According to you, if certain individuals just happen to be deeply involved in orchestrating these events, and if those individuals are identifiable as zionist zealots, this is utterly irrelevant. In fact, your entire "debunking" consists of insisting that this or that fact is irrelevant, that these consequences were unpredictable and unintended, and that you don't like my conclusions therefore they must be wrong.

As I always do, I welcome you and anybody else to check for themselves and would be grateful if anybody can point to any specific error of fact or logic that he or she finds. In fact, I am genuinely delighted when someone goes to the trouble of correcting me, not through silly insults and ad hominem and other irrational attacks, but by properly documenting where I got my individual facts wrong, or how my analysis violates the principles of logic.

This record of what you've written, of disregard for evidence and logic, and of an unchanging master narrative that informs nearly all of your political writings, can be read on this site! You've never gone back on any of it, you've often reiterated. But at other times you try to "start at zero," as though none of this came before. Thus we are expected to spend the days producing point-by-point rebuttals for every new Duff text, even if it's just repeats of the same nonsense that was rebutted before, and even if he's been exposed beyond any reasonable measure as a dishonest actor.

Part of the problem is that you manage to convince yourself that you've made a devastating "rebuttal" or "debunking" when you've done nothing of the kind. Instead, you try to impose an alternative narrative that you find less objectionable ideologically, even though it does not account for a lot of inconvenient facts that you choose to ignore or that you have decreed are irrelevant. And then you become livid and go into these periodic snit fits because how dare I continue to insist on the validity of my thesis, even though you've failed to demonstrate where it is based on either false information or unsound logic.

Let me note that when the disinformation from the Syrian guy completely fabricating quotes from Domscheit-Berg was published, you had the foresight to avoid hyping that one, as something that would be quickly and inevitably exposed as a lie.

Actually, since you're obsessed with my "patterns", a consistent pattern of mine is to do everything possible to make sure I don't post false or questionable information from any unaccountable source, and avoid sources that are known to publish uncorroborated claims as fact. On the rare occasions that I've been careless or inaccurate, I've admitted it readily. There's no shame in sometimes being wrong, only in being dishonest.

However, you are less circumspect about Assange quoted (on ICH, in translation from an Arabic article!) as saying, "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." (http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e27119.htm). Besides that nothing in that back-translated sentence makes sense, there he is, freely "admitting" that the USG finances him, as any such recipient of USG cash would do, on an Arab TV station: and, apparently, Wikileaks is bigger than the CIA itself!*

I happened to watch the al-Jazeera interview live, and even went to the trouble of reviewing the interview on Youtube. What I found was that the translation you quoted above was indeed inaccurate, not to mention incomplete. The following is my own translation, to the best of my abilities, of Julian Assange's words:

Al-Jazeera: Do you deny any secret agreement between you and the Israelis, to prevent the publication of their documents on their website?

Assange: Yes, certainly. We have no secret agreement with any country or any foundation or corporation and we don't receive any funding from any foundation in the world. We applied once for a grant application to a foundation in the US, the (Night?) Foundation, a non-governmental foundation and then, we were the highest-ranked out of 3000 organizations. We were the number one to receive a grant. Then we released "Collateral Murder," a video showing murders in Baghdad in July 2007, and then, the result was our grant money was cut off, so we have had to rely on people, journalists, on people who support us as individuals.

So it's definitely misleading to simply say that Assange admitted to receiving money from the US without specifying that this money came from an ngo, something called the Night Foundation (it could have been "Light", I'm not sure). Regardless of what the Night/Light Foundation turns out to be, I don't happen to believe that this, in itself, constitutes any evidence that Assange was "working for" the US, unless other facts emerge that support this possibility. In other words, that particular item should be checked, acknowledged and just filed for now.

In this latest post, you've turned to a critique about the speed of the releases that several of us were advancing many pages ago.

Please see my question at the top of this post, which you have in fact not answered, though it's been posed many times before.

You exposed yourself long ago.

Speaking of which:

PPS - Is Assange "that stupid" as to announce what he intends to leak in advance? What if he were, and who cares? So far he's announced every move in advance, and then made it as announced. (Future results not necessarily guaranteed.) Supposedly everything he's announcing is in "History Insurance," anyway.

Now that fits YOUR pattern, of repeatedly ascribing actions that happen to perfectly serve the objectives of Israel, to incompetence. In your scenario, Assange is a complete idiot who announces his intention to publish secret and damaging information about Israel months in advance, thus not only making him a prime target of the Mossad and every pro-Israel zealot on earth, but giving them ample time to neutralize him.

I suspect that his promise that he WILL release the documents about Israel may very well be a tactic to buy time and to counter the widespread questions about the fact that he HASN'T although he should and could have, but has yet to offer a credible explanation why not. He has admitted that the mainstream outlets he chose censored the documents and that this reflects their "bias".

Bottom line: so far, as right-wing Israelis themselves gleefully acknowledge, Wikileaks has been very useful for recycling Israeli propaganda and targeting Israel's enemies, but we're supposed to trust Wikileaks because Assange promises this will all be fixed within a window of six months. A lot can happen in six months; we'll have to wait and see, won't we?

More of my translation from the al-Jazeera interview (heavy reliance on lip-reading to supplement and/or confirm the translator's loud and annoying dubbing):

Al-Jazeera: The Guardian has said that the number of documents specific to Israel number 2217 documents originating in Jerusalem and 3194 documents originating in Tel Aviv. Only 22 documents have been published so far. When will you publish the rest?

Assange: Well, that's 23 documents, that represent 1%. So we have released 2% of all documents, so that's half as much on average as other countries'. You have to remember that El Pais from Spain is one of our main partners and Le Monde from France so these reports have been coming out of France, out of Germany and out of Spain, which make up that 2%. And I think that figuratively Israel is not too bad, around 1% of the total being 2%. It probably reflects a little bit of the bias by the New York Times, which perhaps does not want to publish some of the material about Israel because the New York Times, of course is in New York and they have to be sensitive to the feelings and perceptions of their Jewish clients.

Al-Jazeera: When will you post the complete documents concerning Israel on Wikileaks and make them available to everybody?

Assange: There will be even more than this figure you've mentioned, of around 3,700. Those are just the documents coming from the US embassy in Israel. There are many more that are tagged "Israel" but that are coming from other embassies. So Benjamin Netanyahu goes to Paris, he speaks to the US ambassador in Paris and that material will come out of the embassy in Paris. So you'll see a lot more material about other Arab countries and Israel and this will be released gradually over the next six months.

[vanlose kid]

I happened to watch the al-Jazeera interview live, and even went to the trouble of reviewing the interview on Youtube. What I found was that the translation you quoted above was indeed inaccurate, not to mention incomplete. The following is my own translation, to the best of my abilities, of Julian Assange's words:

Al-Jazeera: Do you deny any secret agreement between you and the Israelis, to prevent the publication of their documents on their website?

Assange: Yes, certainly. We have no secret agreement with any country or any foundation or corporation and we don't receive any funding from any foundation in the world. We applied once for a grant application to a foundation in the US, the (Night?) Foundation, a non-governmental foundation and then, we were the highest-ranked out of 3000 organizations. We were the number one to receive a grant. Then we released "Collateral Murder," a video showing murders in Baghdad in July 2007, and then, the result was our grant money was cut off, so we have had to rely on people, journalists, on people who support us as individuals.

So it's definitely misleading to simply say that Assange admitted to receiving money from the US without specifying that this money came from an ngo, something called the Night Foundation (it could have been "Light", I'm not sure). Regardless of what the Night/Light Foundation turns out to be, I don't happen to believe that this, in itself, constitutes any evidence that Assange was "working for" the US, unless other facts emerge that support this possibility. In other words, that particular item should be checked, acknowledged and just filed for now.

that would be the Knight Foundation, which you could have found out if you'd have bothered to find out about wikileaks instead of relying on your J-wysense. – but, to quote c2w?, i'm sure you can dig up some smut by

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

WL did not "receive money from the US", they received money from a foundation in the US. quite a difference there. not that i think you're one to watch your protocol rhetoric. as we know you only judiciously cite

Duff, willyloman and Tarpley, not for the purpose of ad populum, still less as an appeal to authority, as you did; I don't really know much about any of them and care still less. I quoted them only because in my opinion the questions and arguments they raised were valid on their own merit and I didn't want to plagiarize them, or steal credit for them.

or anyone else of the same background "convictions" regarding the all-powerful j-w.

can't wait til you begin quoting the Protocols, cause, like, who cares who wrote them or why, it's the ideas and "arguments" – they are valid on their own merit.

by the way, thanks for the "translation", eh? had no idea Assange was fluent in arabic.


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re Gordon Duff "who's like totally objective and just speculatin' is all". it's a beaut.

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[AlicetheKurious]

can't wait til you begin quoting the Protocols, cause, like, who cares who wrote them or why, it's the ideas and "arguments" – they are valid on their own merit.

Are they?

by the way, thanks for the "translation", eh? had no idea Assange was fluent in arabic.

The interview was conducted by an Arabic interviewer on an Arabic station, with an Arabic voice-over, hence the need for translation of the questions and translation supported by lip-reading for Assange's responses.

re Gordon Duff "who's like totally objective and just speculatin' is all". it's a beaut.

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Yes, indeed it is a beaut; I really recommend that people check out this link, to see for themselves what an utter moron you are, in case there are still one or two who still harbor any doubts.

[Plutonia]

Looks like Wikileaks was considered a shoe-in for the Knight Foundation grant but lost it after the Collateral Murder/War Diary releases:

Knight Foundation Hands Out Grants to 12 Groups, but Not WikiLeaks
By NOAM COHEN

The Knight Foundation announced on Wednesday 12 winners of its News Challenge grants, projects costing a total of $2.74 million that will use new technology to spread information in local areas. The winners included a platform for collaborating to report local news and a plan to spread virtual town halls across Vermont.

Among the 2,400 proposals passed over was one from the whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks, which was asking for more than a half-million dollars to be spent over two years to bring its anonymous method of leaking documents to local newspapers.

WikiLeaks was largely a fringe Web site when it made its submission last year to the Knight Foundation – focusing, as the foundation insists, on improving local reporting. Or, as Daniel Schmitt, part of the core team that runs WikiLeaks, said at the time, “We are trying to bring WikiLeaks more directly to communities.”

Since then, the site has been in the headlines, first for releasing a video in April that showed an attack by a United States Apache helicopter in Baghdad that left seven people dead, including two Reuters journalists. And then when the United States military arrested a soldier, Bradley Manning, in connection to the leaks.

While the foundation’s spokesman, Marc Fest, wouldn’t discuss why proposals were passed over, when asked specifically about WikiLeaks, he directed a reporter to the three criteria for the News Challenge grants – that “the ideas involve technology, involve informing people and target people in a specific area.”

Twitter lately has been WikiLeak’s main way of communicating and they sent out a couple of them early Thursday about the grants.

First: “Knight grants $2.74Mio to ‘12 Grantees who will impact future of news’ — but not WikiLeaks. Knight really looking for impact?”

And then: “WikiLeaks was highest rated project in the Knight challenge, strongly recommended to the board but gets no funding. Go figure.”

The Knight News Challenge has completed its fourth year of grant-making, from a planned five-year, $25 million program. He said the director of the foundation had indicated that some form of the News Challenge grants should continue past then.

Among this year’s winners were LocalWiki, which received $350,000 to “create enhanced tools for local wikis, a new form of media that makes it easy for people to learn — and share — their own unique community knowledge”; and Front Porch Forum, based in Burlington, Vt., which received $220,000 to work on, among other things, expanding a “virtual town hall space” that “helps residents share and discuss local news, build community and increase engagement.” The site serves 25 Vermont towns and intends to grow to 250.

Mr. Fest said the News Challenge program, which so far had received 10,000 applications, had been a success both in the projects it has supported – he pointed out that the News Challenge helped Knight identify and later support independently news sites like MinnPost and Voice of San Diego – and also for demystifying the grant-seeking process.

By making the grants part of a contest, the foundation could cast a wider net, Mr. Fest said, without requiring detailed grant proposals. “The most important thing is the idea,” he said. “We don’t want bureaucratic barriers to stand in the way.”

[JackRiddler]

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(I see that while writing the below there have been other responses to Alice. My main addition WAS to point out that Wikileaks never got money from Knight, but then plutonia also took care of that before me...)

But meanwhile...

Joe Hillshoist, a voice of experience and wisdom. Great to see you posting!

The real wikileaks question is why so much time (and more importantly energy) gets spent talking about wikileaks or individuals instead of whats in the leaks.

That doesn't seem to happen in other places, (eg Iceland,) but we'll see what happens about these supposed bank documents.

Wikileaks is a place where people dump sensitive documents in the hope of achieving some vague notion of justice.

Everything else about them is created outside that, by everyone else. Which is us.

Yes and no. Starting with the cables release we've seen the top-down propaganda effort to talk only about Wikileaks and Assange, and to avoid the stories that the cables release generates. (Even at the point where only .1 percent had been released we were told they were all "old news," "harmless gossip," and "proof of American goodness," except that their release has "destroyed diplomacy" and "endangered the world.")

To the main spectacle, that of the latest Coalition being assembled to assault the new Axis of Evil of (1) Wikileaks, (2) Irresponsbile Investigative Journalism and (3) Too Much Internet Freedom, there has been a parallel attack on Wikileaks as a supposed psyop front (based on "Spidey Sense" but near-zero evidence). You can go back to the beginning of this thread to see I started it at a time when such threads predominated on RI, and that I did so in the hope of retiring a list of obvious fallacies. Here we are, 57 pages later, still debating the same nonsense in the "Wikileaks=Israel" vein, but with a damned good collection of material in the meantime, covering every development and aspect of the affair.

Thank you for the Australian perspective:

I dunno how many of you remember, but when there was a secret blacklist of supposedly banned websites in Australia that we Australians weren't allowed to see, wikileaks published it.

When people look back it'll be one of the major reasons the proposed internet filter, a great wall of oz, got any real scrutiny. If it never happens, and thats looking more likely as time goes by, (especially after the last years publicity,) then wikileaks publishing that list had a big role in stopping it. Maybe someone else would have, the point is they did. We as a internet using population accessed, mirrored and more importantly, talked about what was on the list and used it to back up the arguments against it.

The govt adding the entire wikileaks site to the list only added to the farce.

That was before the recent publicity tho. Not many people noticed.

I dunno how that fits with the psy op narrative. Anyone mentioned Laurie Oakes yet?

Not that I saw. Tell us more why you write the following. I mean, what is about this Oakes that constitutes a probable...

nail in JAs coffin cept for the obvious.

Oakes made his support for JA clear as he accepted an award - the most prestigious in Australian journalism, which isn't saying alot - but he was getting that award cos he had publicised leaks during an election that nearly brought down a govt.

The Australian media has disapppeared so far up its own arse it almost looks like its come out the other side, but even it could see the obvious - that wikileaks had already shown its usefulness for Australians. Had done what the MM should have done - reported the filter blacklist. Oakes support isn't part of some psy op cept in the crude sense that he represents the MM and trad media trying to bask in reflected credibility - like a tiring animal in the middle of an ocean, desperate to stay alive as long as it can, but knowing its only a matter of time.

What you say after that demands emphasis.

And ultimately, even if wikileaks is a scam, or fails or is shut down, its also a meme and a model. Someone else will do it properly (well better) if they don't. Someone probably is right now anyway. Well trying, or thinking about it.

JA is kind of possessed by an archetype, that began with revenge of the nerds, and had bill gates for a while and now its got him - striding out of a gerling video wielding his backpack like Gandalf and humming along:

Do you know where has your courage gone?
Do you remember where you did once belong?
Are you going away?
Are you going away from me?
Do you know?

We're all fighting against The Man
The big brotherhood and the master plan
We're all fighting against that same evil man


As far as the charges (?) against him go. Given the climate its not hard to see this as a set up of some sort. But ... if he does have a case to answer then he should answer it.

... (snip something about rugby I might check out later) ...

I haven't typed anything for a while so sorry this went on so long. Its like virtual cabin fever.

Oh, don't say that. I mean do what's right, but your words are most welcome here regardless of length, certainly by me. And you're much shorter than others, including me. ANd pithier.

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First, Alice, genuine thanks for your work in rendering what Assange actually said in the Al Jazeera interview and thus clearing up the grave and slanderous misrepresentation in the ICH "transcript," which makes it sound like Assange said Wikileaks got USG money! The foundation he mentions is the Knight Foundation, as in: the heirs to the Knight part of the Knight-Ridder newspaper fortune. They give grants to digital journalism projects (see http://www.knightfoundation.org). However, you may have misunderstood: Wikileaks never got any money from Knight. Assange means Wikileaks was the No. 1 contender in a round of applications for grants, but the application was rejected altogether after the release of "Collateral Murder." (You can check that elsewhere, pretty sure it's been covered on RI. Or this:

June 17, 2010, 9:52 am

Knight Foundation Hands Out Grants to 12 Groups, but Not WikiLeaks

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... wikileaks/

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Now, on to stuff that's already been covered before. Those who have higher priorities can skip the next part.

Of course the meaning of words is important! Assange said in the next six months. Anyone who turns that into "in six months" is wrong. That is not a "quibble." It is a misinterpretation, and in Duff's case used maliciously.

Actually, it is a quibble, because until 6 months are up, the claim can be made that strictly speaking, he hasn't broken his promise yet.

Regardless of what happens with the promise, the words "next six months" have a clear meaning and to change them into "in six months" is to misrepresent -- wittingly and dishonestly, in Duff's case.

The six-month target at any rate seems to be what's intended with all 251,687 cables, not only those tagged "Israel." Of course "a lot can happen in six months," both bad and good, and the strategy is debatable.

Which leaves us with the question that you managed yet again to ignore: why didn't Assange publish the cables in their entirety at the same time he gave them to the New York Times et al?

First error, in this case a very consistently repeated "error": Wikileaks didn't give the cables to the NYT. The NYT is not a direct Wikileaks partner on the Cablegate release. The Guardian gave the cables to the NYT.

Second error: The issue of publication timing has been discussed throughout this thread, including by me. Go back to the first days of the releases, where we were all wondering and complaining about why a different method had been adopted, compared to the Iraq and Afghan war logs.

There are many reasons why they might have decided on the drip-drip strategy. It has clearly produced spectacular effects in terms of drawing attention to the stories so far, and in keeping stories from going lost in a flood. At several points in this thread, I criticized it (we all did, in fact). I wondered about the content of Wikileaks' deals with the "devils of the establishment media." At one point I said I would have released the encryption key by now. Now I'm not so sure that would have been a good idea. I also discussed the problems with instant release, including the impossibility of redacting sources, which you may think is a minor concern. But if you can avoid getting anyone killed as a direct result of what you publish without withholding truth, then you should do so, for pragmatic as well as moral reasons. (No need to have such accusations. Note also that the only legislation so far aimed at shutting down Wikileaks would target the release of source names, not content.)

Anyway, your problem as usual is that as soon as you ask the question, you immediately ignore all possible answers but one as you hone in on

Israel

as your explanation for anything Assange (or practically anyone else) does.

Alice, in the last month or so, citing such greats as Duff and willyloman and Tarpley,

[Alice inserts "insert rant here"]

First, that's rich, coming from someone who actually quoted Xymphora

The purpose of which was clear: to demonstrate that the automatic fixation on Israel that you share with Xymphora need not lead to your own conclusions. It is largely arbitary where you go with it, and the conclusion of your fellow super-anti-Zionist Xymphora was a lot more logically grounded than your own. Also, I noted that he'd been usefully compiling cable stories and stated where I agreed and disagreed with him, and why. (People, if you care, use the search function, read for yourself. Here in fact is one of my supposed Xymphora violations: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30508)

You say you do not cite the three mentioned intellectual frauds (frauds by their repeated and consistent actions, not their credentials) as an argument from authority, but -- as you say -- because they speak for you. That's valid. I'm happy to do that with Greenwald, in most cases, as I do with Hudson on the "Wall Street" thread. People can read it all if they like. Compare and contrast!

valid on their own merit

Meaning Duff et al. That's debatable & the reader decides.

The rest again speaks to your fixation on Israel. You seem to expect that anything Assange does or says should be interpreted as reflecting a similar fixation on his part; as you never mention any other possible motive for him. You seem to think that answering the kinds of accusations you've brought should be very high on his mind; or that being killed by Super-Mossad must be very high on his list of concerns, compared to being killed by all the others who have now stated or implied a desire to kill him (or imprison, disappear or otherwise silence him and Wikileaks). That's your primary focus, not mine, and presumably not his, and I think should be of little concern to anyone looking at the larger picture. You're like a mirror image of the cliche about American Jews, who react to all developments by asking, "Is this good for the Jews?" Your version is, "Is this bad for Israel?" But these are not the only standards.

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As for the debate over our differences in general, it's all over this board and as I've taken to saying after tiring of the same old dance, people can search and read for themselves and decide whether I've been unfair to you or vice-versa. I was going to add this off-topic bit but moved it here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30652

.

[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?

expose the source?

The sources are supposed to be unknown, so that shouldn't be too possible, and wouldn't be desirable if it were. Nor would it really necessarily help with authentication. Even on these cables, if the fedgov came out and said, "we've found alterations in parts of some of the cables" - they would then be free to release their own "unedited" "correct" version of a cable. Sure, it would stink, but the mainstream media would be happy to lap it up.

Here's one of the current Standard Responses:

US government officials declined to discuss what they said was information that should never have been made public, the report said.

so you see, the emperor has clothes, and anything saying otherwise is going to have a hard time communicating it's "unique" vision.

The whole idea that the government is going to care what people know is a suspect proposition. This whole long running drama, especially America, has with the "news media" ginning up some outrage and forcing the government to change policy is a fairy tale, it's never worked like that, at least in the last three or four decades, about anything serious. Leaks have generally been used as a tool of infighting within the bureaucracy, or to push some already decided upon plan (such as the removal of Nixon). Some new method of holding the government accountable for wrongdoing and bad policy is going to be needed. A virtual revolution in the status-quo is required.

but since people will be (indeed, already are) divided among many different information streams and spins I don't really see how democracy can work on any big picture issues, because no majority will ever agree on much of anything substantial, specifically a majority in agreement on ending murder as foreign policy... Too many american scum-bags like it like that, and it get's their dicks hard to think about killing foreigners who's deaths in any way might benefit their "side". This is not especially limited to america either for that matter. Even if we had a Tribune system, it would be impossible to elect a Tribune with sufficient mandate to do anything, and the moment something unpopular needs to be done, it's over, a recall will end that. Some reform could be achieved by electing a new ruling party, which would then need to fire almost everyone currently in the US government and replace them with persons committed to more honorable goals and methods, but it's not clear that we have any such group of hundreds of thousands of informed educated alternative leaders waiting in the wings to take over. Surely an organized opposition should be grooming such persons constantly. A radical restructuring of Conventional Wisdom is in order here.

The strategy of depriving "them" of secrecy is a good one, but it's not clear that access to such secrets is going to be a sustainable thing.

[AlicetheKurious]

Joe Hillshoist, a voice of experience and wisdom. Great to see you posting!

Thank you for the Australian perspective:

I think you only get this kind of welcome from JackRiddler if you happen to pop in with a perspective that agrees with his. I don't care if you agree with me about Wikileaks, I'm happy to see you post again too, Joe, as long as you don't attack me personally. You wouldn't, I know.

And ultimately, even if wikileaks is a scam, or fails or is shut down, its also a meme and a model. Someone else will do it properly (well better) if they don't. Someone probably is right now anyway. Well trying, or thinking about it.

That is my hope as well, and the best-case scenario that I can imagine.

First, Alice, genuine thanks for your work in rendering what Assange actually said in the Al Jazeera interview and thus clearing up the grave and slanderous misrepresentation in the ICH "transcript," which makes it sound like Assange said Wikileaks got USG money!

You're welcome. To be fair, simply saying "the US" instead of specifying the American NGO's name could have been an honest mistake, but probably not; at the very least it was very sloppy.

The six-month target at any rate seems to be what's intended with all 251,687 cables, not only those tagged "Israel."

No, Assange was clearly referring to the Israeli cables that he'd already handed over to the newspapers, of which they published only 0.4% according to my calculator. He was answering a specific question about when he would make the other 99.6% that had been held back, directly available to the public.

There are many reasons why they might have decided on the drip-drip strategy.

I wasn't talking about the 251,000 files, just the 99.6% of the 5411 Israeli documents that have already been given to the newspapers, which they've chosen not to publish.

Question: what percentage of the other cables that have been handed over to the newspapers have been published on the Wikileaks site, and how many of the cables already handed over have been held back by both the newspapers and Wikileaks?

You say you do not cite the three mentioned intellectual frauds (frauds by their repeated and consistent actions, not their credentials) as an argument from authority, but -- as you say -- because they speak for you.

Now, now, that's not very honest. I've never said that they speak for me. In fact, as you should know, I have a thing about speaking for myself. I said that they raised questions and arguments that I found to be valid and wanted to include in this discussion on RI. I didn't cite them as authorities, but to avoid plagiarizing.

valid on their own merit

Meaning Duff et al. That's debatable & the reader decides.

By George, I think he's got it!!

You seem to think that answering the kinds of accusations you've brought should be very high on his mind; or that being killed by Super-Mossad must be very high on his list of concerns, compared to being killed by all the others who have now stated or implied a desire to kill him (or imprison, disappear or otherwise silence him and Wikileaks). That's your primary focus, not mine, and presumably not his, and I think should be of little concern to anyone looking at the larger picture. You're like a mirror image of the cliche about American Jews, who react to all developments by asking, "Is this good for the Jews?" Your version is, "Is this bad for Israel?" But these are not the only standards.

Kindly cut out the "you think this" and "you are..." and the rest of your two-cent psychoanalysis. It's very patronizing and rude, and does nothing at all to address the issues or bolster your argument.

Believe me, if anybody publicly announces that they plan to do something that Israel perceives as threatening in any way, he or she better start finding a bunker to hide in, but quick, regardless of who he or she is (including American presidents). If, as you imply, the possibility of Assange being assassinated "should be of little concern to anyone", including Assange himself, then the only way that would make sense is if you believe that he is, indeed, working for them. Since you don't, then it makes no sense at all.

In other words, you're babbling nonsense to divert attention from the question I raised: why did Assange give advance warning months before doing something that will be perceived as a threat by a state that actually boasts having elite assassination units who are known to target civilians all over the world? One rational answer is that 1) he did not fear being assassinated by them; another is 2) he was trying to dispel suspicions that he is working for Israel (suspicions that are quite widespread, even among experienced intelligence people), with the understanding that he would be stopped before he came through. If you have a third RATIONAL explanation, you're welcome to share it.

[crikkett]

that would be the Knight Foundation, which you could have found out if you'd have bothered to find out about wikileaks instead of relying on your J-wysense. – but, to quote c2w?, i'm sure you can dig up some smut by
...
or anyone else of the same background "convictions" regarding the all-powerful j-w.

What the hell? You really put "LOSE" in your name, kid.
Barracuda? Jeff? Anything to say about this language?

[JackRiddler]

I think you only get this kind of welcome from JackRiddler if you happen to pop in with a perspective that agrees with his.

Actually, it was ordered by my Mossad masters.

Why don't you just butt out of the hellos and salutations exchanged among others?
(censored later by me to remove hurtful profanity.)

Question: what percentage of the other cables that have been handed over to the newspapers have been published on the Wikileaks site, and how many of the cables already handed over have been held back by both the newspapers and Wikileaks?

Question: How many times are we going to go through this?

(Note: "Start at zero" tactic.)

If, as you imply, the possibility of Assange being assassinated "should be of little concern to anyone" including Assange himself, then the only way that would make sense is if you believe that he is, indeed, working for them.

Why should I answer anyone who presents the above as an even remotely accurate rendering of what I wrote?
(censored later by me to remove hurtful profanity.)

What I wrote:

You seem to think that answering the kinds of accusations you've brought should be very high on his mind; or that being killed by Super-Mossad must be very high on his list of concerns, compared to being killed by all the others who have now stated or implied a desire to kill him (or imprison, disappear or otherwise silence him and Wikileaks

Was it the small print?

.

In other words, you're babbling nonsense to divert attention from the question I raised:

As opposed to permanent Zionists-Control-Everything bullshit.
(censored by me to remove hurtful profanity)

Oh, right, the "question you raised":

why did Assange give advance warning months before doing something that will be perceived as a threat by a state that actually boasts having elite assassination units who are known to target civilians all over the world?

A question that never interested you during the many months when he was doing that before now. A question that has also already been addressed severally here. (More "Start at zero" technique from you.)

So far, every time that we know of, Wikileaks announced what they were going to do before they did it, regardless of which murdering state (or bank) was going to be affected. It may be crazy, but this very evident policy of theirs is restricted to Israel only in your Israel-obsessed mind. (Just as, apparently, Israel is the only country engaging in assassinations or targeting civilians, the only one that anyone should ever fear or take seriously, the only superpower.)

.

[AlicetheKurious]

Goodbye. It's been real.

[slow_dazzle]

Something worth thinking about REALLY hard folks.

Ok, we now know a lot about what the inner machinations of government, albeit some of the releases have possibly been redacted etc. But here is my, possibly cynical, question.

How have we been empowered to effect change? Tell me that please. Map me out your strategy for translating (sorry) the WL cable releases into change. What are you going to do? Lobby your elected representatives? Vote accordingly? (I know, I know)

But seriously, what has changed, apart from knowing a few more details, many of which were already available through various sources? Now that the cables have been released, what are you going to do next?

To be brutally frank we have not, in any way, been empowered. We KNOW a lot more (subject to applying the caveat of redacted bias) but we have no more POWER. If I'm wrong, please tell me how you will use the WL cables to empower the disenfranchised demographic, of which, most of us here probably regard ourselves.

[Jeff]

Barracuda? Jeff? Anything to say about this language?

What I'll say is that I don't object to fractious exchanges, but the barbs are getting too personal from both sides. So please dial it down.