The Wikileaks Question

[cptmarginal]

I've finished reading the Wikileaks Files book, and it was worthwhile overall. Some chapters are easier to race through than others. Nowhere near enough focus on African countries, though! There should be a second volume, another collection of various essays.

[JackRiddler]

Since everyone here theoretically gets their own private thread on each matter (or fifteen at a time), cross-posting to something I might find again in the future...

C.I.A. Scrambles to Contain Damage From WikiLeaks Documents

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, SCOTT SHANE and ADAM GOLDMAN

MARCH 8, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/w ... s-cia.html

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. scrambled on Wednesday to assess and contain the damage from the release by WikiLeaks of thousands of documents that cataloged the agency’s cyberspying capabilities, temporarily halting work on some projects while the F.B.I. turned to finding who was responsible for the leak.

Investigators say that the leak was the work not of a hostile foreign power like Russia but of a disaffected insider, as WikiLeaks suggested when it released the documents Tuesday. The F.B.I. was preparing to interview anyone who had access to the information, a group likely to include at least a few hundred people, and possibly more than a thousand.

Uncontrolled proliferation of weapons among the unreliable and self-directed, if not outright autistic. What could go wrong? Besides that it's so dangerous and stupid, the leak is a predictable outcome. Did they miss that part? Are they still confused old fish in the new waters of cyber-reality? More likely, it was done in the spirit of damn the torpedoes and innovate away. Langley and Bethesda and Fort McHenry and Herndon, and their contractors spread around the country and the world, are not lesser as a wild incubator than Silicon Valley itself, and unrestrained by merely commercial constraints. It's for a higher purpose!

But perhaps I'm forgetting and unforgiving. The Manhattan Project was possible once without a leak, almost self-evidently. Are they still bound to the faith that everyone who is asked to serve by refining these abominable poisons will keep the silence? Or that they're going to embed spy programs all over the place without someone outside their circle finding these? (Ordo ab chao arguments not considered here -- it's bullshit.)

An intelligence official said the information, much of which appeared to be technical documents, may have come from a server outside the C.I.A. managed by a contractor. But neither he nor a former senior intelligence official ruled out the possibility that the leaker was a C.I.A. employee.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation into classified information. The C.I.A. has refused to explicitly confirm the authenticity of the documents, but it all but said they were genuine Wednesday when it took the unusual step of putting out a statement to defend its work and chastise WikiLeaks.

The disclosures “equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm,” said Ryan Trapani, a spokesman for the C.I.A.

Oh please. You equip every sociopathic wanker in your employ and in the employ of your contractors and in the employ of their subcontractors with the tools to harm anyone they please, and you figure out the formula for Ice Nine as though this were a humanitarian project or something forced on you by the Wily Chin and Russ, and then you complain because after a few years I also hear about it?

He added that the C.I.A. is legally prohibited from spying on individuals in the United States and “does not do so.”[/b]

Snarf! Let me just switch hats here from agent to asset for an hour and overcome that obstacle for you. Let me just send a wink-and-a-nod request to one of the agencies or front groups that isn't quite so prohibited, and like you not at all inhibited. You really still pushing this today?

The leak was perhaps most awkward for the White House, which found itself criticizing WikiLeaks less than six months after the group published embarrassing emails from John D. Podesta, the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton, prompting President Trump to declare at the time, “I love WikiLeaks.”

(It's only been six months? This has been an intensified reality, no?) I half-believe it's true. Now that the Hitler Simulation is taking charge and looking forward, CIA GOOD, LEAKS BAD.

Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, said the release of documents “should be something that everybody is outraged about in this country.”

Sir, yes Sir, ha ha ha ha ha.

There was, he added, a “massive, massive difference” between the leak of classified C.I.A. cyberspying tools and personal emails of political figures.

Sure, the latter is fraught with ethical conundrums but might be justified, while the former is tantamount to patriotic duty.

The documents, taken at face value,

thank you Times for keeping your disclaimers at a minimum

suggest that American spies had designed hacking tools that could breach almost anything connected to the internet — smartphones, computers, televisions — and had even found a way to compromise Apple and Android devices. But whether the C.I.A. had successfully built and employed them to conduct espionage remained unclear on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the beta testers have been having a ball.

A number of cybersecurity experts and hackers expressed skepticism at the level of technical wizardry that WikiLeaks claimed to uncover, and pointed out that much of what was described in the documents was aimed at older devices that have known security flaws.

Sour grapes? "If this was true, why didn't I come up with it?" Nice sourcing there, by the way, Times. A whole number of them said this.

One document, for instance, discussed ways to quickly copy 3.5-inch floppy disks, a storage device so out of date that few people younger than 35 have probably used one.

This is a funny way to defuse the story, Times, if you think about it. One whole document out of however many thousand? If it's recent, this shows how thorough and wide-ranging the efforts were, since, obsolete or not, this could still be useful. If the document is older, it shows the historical depth of the haul.

One indication that the documents did not contain information on the most highly sensitive C.I.A. cyberespionage programs was that none of them appeared to be classified above the level of “secret/noforn,” which is a relatively low-level of classification.

Possibly meaning thousands have access, as with SIPRNET. Which, again, compounds the proliferation crime. Anyway, so what are you guys complaining about. Wait, it's time for another "some people say" nugget...

Some technical experts pointed out that while the documents suggest that the C.I.A. might be able to compromise individual smartphones, there was no evidence that the agency could break the encryption that many phone and messaging apps use.

Indeed. That's been pointed out elsewhere. And totally irrelevant, if they can commandeer the device itself and see thus see the decrypted output.

If the C.I.A. or the National Security Agency could routinely break the encryption used on such apps as Signal, Confide, Telegram and WhatsApp, then the government might be able to intercept such communications on a large scale and search for names or keywords of interest. But nothing in the leaked C.I.A. documents suggests that is possible.

Again, the work-around is in access to the device output. If I can see what is on your screen, I don't care what encrypted route it came through. If I can do that with many screens, I can also build a search platform...

Instead, the documents indicate that because of encryption, the agency must target an individual phone and then can intercept only the calls and messages that pass through that phone. Instead of casting a net for a big catch, in other words, C.I.A. spies essentially cast a single fishing line at a specific target, and do not try to troll an entire population.

Or they can cast single fishing lines at every specific target that uses the particular device, which can be millions. Thanks for the use of troll, though I'm not sure it's canonical.

“The difference between wholesale surveillance and targeted surveillance is huge,” said Dan Guido, a director at Hack/Secure, a cybersecurity investment firm. “Instead of sifting through a sea of information, they’re forced to look at devices one at a time.”

Mr. Guido also said the C.I.A. documents did not suggest that the agency was far ahead of academic or commercial security experts. “They’re using standard tools, reading the same tech sites and blogs that I read,” he said.

Thus highlighting a general problem, I agree. Do you come to the same conclusion as I do, however, that everything should therefore be open source?

Some of the vulnerabilities described by the C.I.A. have already been remedied, he said: “The holes have been plugged.”

But Joel Brenner, formerly the country’s top counterintelligence official, said he believed the leak was “a big deal” because it would assist other countries that were trying to catch up to the United States, Russia, China and Israel in electronic spying.

Pick any four other countries at random and tell me you fear them as a group more than this set. More to the point, remember that the leaked information -- and more importantly, the unleaked tools -- have been circulating among thousands of public and private employees for years.

He added that the intelligence agencies would have to again assess the advisability of sharing secrets widely inside their walls. “If something is shared with hundreds or thousands of people, there’s a sense in which it’s already no longer a secret,” he said.

ding!

The WikiLeaks release included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments. Many were partly redacted by the group, which said it wanted to to avoid disclosing the code for the tools.

But without the code, it was hard to assess just what WikiLeaks had obtained — and what it was sitting on. The documents indicated that the C.I.A. sought to break into Apple, Android and Windows devices — that is, the vast majority of the world’s smartphones, tablets and computers.

While the scale and nature of the C.I.A. documents appeared to catch government officials by surprise, there had been some signs a document dump was imminent. On Twitter, the organization had flagged for weeks that something big, under the WikiLeaks label “Vault 7,” was coming soon.

What is #Vault7? pic.twitter.com/PrjBU0LSAF

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) Feb. 4, 2017

On Feb. 16, WikiLeaks released what appeared to be a C.I.A. document laying out intelligence questions about the coming French elections that agency analysts wanted answers to, either from human spies or eavesdropping. When WikiLeaks released the cyberspying documents on Tuesday, it described the earlier document as “an introductory disclosure.”

[JackRiddler]

Now that I bumped this, I look at the first page and see that "post-reality" was a thing seven years ago.

Also, I wonder what happened to wintler2.

[dada]

Instead, the documents indicate that because of encryption, the agency must target an individual phone and then can intercept only the calls and messages that pass through that phone. Instead of casting a net for a big catch, in other words, C.I.A. spies essentially cast a single fishing line at a specific target, and do not try to troll an entire population.

Or they can cast single fishing lines at every specific target that uses the particular device, which can be millions. Thanks for the use of troll, though I'm not sure it's canonical.

Wouldn't it be "trawl?" Casting a net. They "do not try to trawl an entire population." One "trawls the internet."

Or maybe they meant something else. The CIA isn't trolling the entire population, no. Just specific targets. I think The NYTimes' Freud is showing.

Now that I bumped this, I look at the first page and see that "post-reality" was a thing seven years ago.

Nah, that can't be. In Post-reality, there is no seven years ago.

[JackRiddler]

This whole thing is very weird, because I just can't imagine a situation where Wikileaks would do something that so clearly helps Donald Trump. #spiritcooking

On the other hand, I can imagine and have heard far more intelligent statements from you than this. No matter when Wikileaks had timed the release, this nonsensical statement would have arrived just as reflexively from the predictable quarters, but it is beneath you. What pray tell does not "help Trump"? When is he not talking some trash out his ass that might accidentally be in the vicinity of truth, thus making it dangerous to speak it? He also talks bullshit about economic injustice, so really everyone should shut up about that until he's gone, right, or otherwise it might "help" him or cause some denying supporter (Nordic, basically) to think he's right about something. Assange should have just put the Vault7 stuff in a time capsule to open in 2100, I suppose.

How many times are we going through this same routine? The CIA developed these criminal tools and distributed them among hundreds or thousands of its own miscreants and associates. One or more of them then leaked the matter to Wikileaks, but surely the point is many actors already had the weapons, they were already going around the under/overworld, and every time they are used they are also copied and thus distributed to other potential users, including the targets. Exposing this at least allows some of the holes to be plugged. Until now, such exposures of exploits and weaknesses have been hailed as necessities in allowing fixes, no? That's the first story, no? How Wired would have headlined it, in the old days? And the routine and systemic criminality of military, security-state and corporate bureaucracies and networks ensconced within them and their sub-contractors (all of which is sometimes called "the Deep State") is the larger story, no? (Without which we might not have a Trump, of course.)

But to keep it real simple: Would you prefer that Samsung or its customers didn't learn about this stuff?

.

[Iamwhomiam]

I read it as the fish being flippant, though perhaps he wasn't really.

Joe's been missing lately, too. I hope both are ok.

But the news about Samsung's back door has been known for more than a few years now:
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=561734#p561734

[JackRiddler]

Regarding the headline, I hope he's better than that!

Opinions

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks has the same mission as The Post and the Times

By Julian Assange April 11, 2017
Julian Assange is the editor of WikiLeaks.

On his last night in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a powerful farewell speech to the nation — words so important that he’d spent a year and a half preparing them. “Ike” famously warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Much of Eisenhower’s speech could form part of the mission statement of WikiLeaks today. We publish truths regarding overreaches and abuses conducted in secret by the powerful.

Our most recent disclosures describe the CIA’s multibillion-dollar cyberwarfare program, in which the agency created dangerous cyberweapons, targeted private companies’ consumer products and then lost control of its cyber-arsenal. Our source(s) said they hoped to initiate a principled public debate about the “security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

The truths we publish are inconvenient for those who seek to avoid one of the magnificent hallmarks of American life — public debate. Governments assert that WikiLeaks’ reporting harms security. Some claim that publishing facts about military and national security malfeasance is a greater problem than the malfeasance itself. Yet, as Eisenhower emphasized, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Quite simply, our motive is identical to that claimed by the New York Times and The Post — to publish newsworthy content. Consistent with the U.S. Constitution, we publish material that we can confirm to be true irrespective of whether sources came by that truth legally or have the right to release it to the media. And we strive to mitigate legitimate concerns, for example by using redaction to protect the identities of at-risk intelligence agents.

Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, defended publication of our “stolen” material last year: “I get the argument that the standards should be different if the stuff is stolen and that should influence the decision. But in the end, I think that we have an obligation to report what we can about important people and important events.” David Lauter, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, made a similar argument: “My default position is democracy works best when voters have as much information as possible . . . And that information often comes from rival campaigns, from old enemies, from all sorts of people who have motives that you might look at and say, ‘that’s unsavory.’ ”

The media has a long history of speaking truth to power with purloined or leaked material — Jack Anderson’s reporting on the CIA’s enlistment of the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro; the Providence Journal-Bulletin’s release of President Richard Nixon’s stolen tax returns; the New York Times’ publication of the stolen “Pentagon Papers”; and The Post’s tenacious reporting of Watergate leaks, to name a few. I hope historians place WikiLeaks’ publications in this pantheon. Yet there are widespread calls to prosecute me.

President Thomas Jefferson had a modest proposal to improve the press: “Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, ‘Truths.’ 2nd, ‘Probabilities.’ 3rd, ‘Possibilities.’ 4th, ‘Lies.’ The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information.” Jefferson’s concept of publishing “truths” using “authentic papers” presaged WikiLeaks.

People who don’t like the tune often blame the piano player. Large public segments are agitated by the result of the U.S. presidential election, by public dissemination of the CIA’s dangerous incompetence or by evidence of dirty tricks undertaken by senior officials in a political party. But as Jefferson foresaw, “the agitation [a free press] produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”

Vested interests deflect from the facts that WikiLeaks publishes by demonizing its brave staff and me. We are mischaracterized as America-hating servants to hostile foreign powers. But in fact I harbor an overwhelming admiration for both America and the idea of America. WikiLeaks’ sole interest is expressing constitutionally protected truths, which I remain convinced is the cornerstone of the United States’ remarkable liberty, success and greatness.

I have given up years of my own liberty for the risks we have taken at WikiLeaks to bring truth to the public. I take some solace in this: Joseph Pulitzer, namesake of journalism’s award for excellence, was indicted in 1909 for publishing allegedly libelous information about President Theodore Roosevelt and the financier J.P. Morgan in the Panama Canal corruption scandal. It was the truth that set him free.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

[dada]

I don't need lofty rhetoric and constant appeals to authority to convince me that releasing classified info to the public is a good idea. But I'm not the type of person the above article is directed at. Maybe Julian knows his target audience.

I always find Julian's tone off-putting. Still, this is the internet. If I were having dinner with the guy, I might feel differently.

Although, my dinner-imaginings are not to be trusted. I think having dinner with Donald might be interesting. I've had fun at dinners with charismatic clowns before.

Not that it would ever happen in a million years. I can't imagine any scenario that would result in me sitting at the same table with Donald. Maybe if he got it in his head to hire a 'cultural marxist ambassador' or something. I'd submit an application, why the hell not?

[seemslikeadream]

interesting talking to a racist?

I wouldn't sit down with David Duke

I find no pleasure in throwing up

trump is far from a charismatic clown

donald trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

[Jerky]

SLAD, I love you my friend, but there are plenty of "interesting racists" out there who would make great dinner companions.

HP Lovecraft, for instance. Or Celine. Or TS Eliot, or Shakespeare, or Thomas Jefferson, or...

Well, you get the idea.

J.

[seemslikeadream]

yea but can they tell you how Stormy Daniels was in bed and was it worth $130 thousand dollars?

it's just not the racist thing

what do you learn from a serial liar? How terrific they are?

I do not sleep or eat with pigs...human ones.... real pigs are adorable and so are cats



HP Lovecraft ...Celine..... TS Eliot.... Shakespeare.....Thomas Jefferson...you can not compare them to the Fraud in Chief....what is he going to advise me on laundering Russian mob money...how much does it cost to silence a porn star.....how to hate all Muslims...how to start a university to rip off millions of dollars from the little people...how to rip up the Constitution...how to lie every time I open my mouth...how to live the life of a grifter?

[dada]

At my imaginary dinner, we all put our differences aside, and engage in light, lively conversation.

It isn't like I'm there to learn anything. Remember, I'm the cultural marxist ambassador in this scenario. You have to factor that in.

[JackRiddler]

Endorsement!

Just a quick reminder that this is the REAL Assange thread. The other thread represents the nadir of random copy-paste corporate media droppings with a hang for style over substance.

If you have something substantive to say about the issues raised by the long-running Wikileaks Affair, say it here and feel free to delve into the awesome 81-page archive of stuff dating back to 2010.

[JackRiddler]

.

Putin labels embassy cables 'slanderous'

Russian prime minister condemns US cable describing him and President Dmitry Medvedev as Batman and Robin

Leaks culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee
UK police seek Julian Assange over rape claims

Those are the current Guardian headlines. If Assange is genuine I'd be advising him that the time has come to dump the whole thing online, anywhere, everywhere. Somewhere between 600,000 and 3 million people had access to the cable database, which means all of the major powers and intel agencies downloaded it quietly long ago, which means any individual agent who can be compromised already was, and the only ones without access are the people. These aren't intel cables, they're the business memos of supposed public servants.

My dishwashing today featured more of Brian Lehrer, this time with Gideon Rose (identified as the "liberal" editor of Foreign Affairs, the CFR organ) in a controlled froth about the child anarchist Assange and his attack on diplomacy and America. To summarize his spin: Spying is fine because everybody does it. (1) The apparent exception, however, is Manning. He's a traitor!!! and they will and should throw away the key. The cables show nothing, just a lot of irrelevant personal gossip that no one needs to know (2). But the cables also show how American diplomats are conscientious grown-ups trying to manage the world responsibly, and those who think otherwise have seen too many conspiracy movies. (He did a little review of "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and said Assange thinks he's the girl.) If you've got a problem with that, how would YOU like to tell us the best way to run the Middle East?! Come on, what's your alternative for ruling the world? Let the adults take care of business! At one point he veered into complaining about how so many other countries also don't get how hard it is to be in charge of the whole planet and each and every region. (3)

(1) This was said plainly, as though that makes it all right to bug Ban Ki Moon's office and steal his credit card number. I'm sure Moon's doing it to Clinton, or goddamn it he would be if the roles were reversed, because that's the only way the world works.

(2) except for the hundreds of thousands who had access?

(3) Of course no mention was made that still so far less than 300 cables have been released to the public (Cable Viewer is currently DOWN) and that the spin and cherrypicking has been conducted entirely by NYT and Co.

Yesterday Baer showed the empire's mode of thinking from a more operative level -- damn it, how can we bomb people if we can't keep secrets?! -- and now Rose shows the perspective from the top: elite hatred of democracy.

This illustrates Chomsky's take:

Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"
By Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on November 30, 2010, Printed on December 1, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149032/

AMY GOODMAN: For reaction to the WikiLeaks documents, we’re joined by world renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of over a hundred books including his latest Hopes and Prospects. Forty years ago, Noam and Howard Zinn helped government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg edit and release the Pentagon Papers that top-secret internal U.S. history of the Vietnam War.

Noam Chomsky joins us from Boston... Before we talk about WikiLeaks, what was your involvement in the Pentagon Papers? I don’t think most people know about this.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Dan and I were friends. Tony Russo, who also who prepared them and helped leak them. I got advanced copies from Dan and Tony and there were several people who were releasing them to the press. I was one of them. Then I- along with Howard Zinn as you mentioned- edited a volume of essays and indexed the papers.

AMY GOODMAN: So explain how, though, how it worked. I always think this is important- to tell this story- especially for young people. Dan Ellsberg- Pentagon official, top-secret clearance- gets this U.S. involvement in Vietnam history out of his safe, he Xerox’s it and then how did you get your hands on it? He just directly gave it to you?

NOAM CHOMSKY: From Dan Ellsberg and Tony Russo, who had done the Xeroxing and the preparation of the material.

AMY GOODMAN: How much did you edit?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, we did not modify anything. The papers were not edited. They were in their original form. What Howard Zinn and I did was -- they came out in four volumes -- we prepared a fifth volume, which was critical essays by many scholars on the papers, what they mean, the significance and so on. And an index, which is almost indispensable for using them seriously. That’s the fifth volume in the Beacon Press series.

AMY GOODMAN: So you were then one of the first people to see the Pentagon Papers?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Outside of Dan Ellsberg and Tony Russo, yes. I mean, there were some journalists who may have seen them, I am not sure.

AMY GOODMAN: What are your thoughts today? For example, we just played this clip of New York republican congress member Peter King who says WikiLeaks should be declared a foreign terrorist organization.

NOAM CHOMSKY: I think that is outlandish. We should understand -- and the Pentagon Papers is another case in point -- that one of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population. In the Pentagon Papers, for example, there was one volume -- the negotiations volume -- which might have had a bearing on ongoing activities and Daniel Ellsberg withheld that. That came out a little bit later. If you look at the papers themselves, there are things Americans should have known that others did not want them to know. And as far as I can tell, from what I’ve seen here, pretty much the same is true. In fact, the current leaks are -- what I’ve seen, at least -- primarily interesting because of what they tell us about how the diplomatic service works.

AMY GOODMAN: The documents’ revelations about Iran come just as the Iranian government has agreed to a new round of nuclear talks beginning next month. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cables vindicate the Israeli position that Iran poses a nuclear threat. Netanyahu said, "Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of sixty years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the threat. If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, with can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace," Netanyahu said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also discussed Iran at her news conference in Washington. This is what she said:

HILARY CLINTON: I think that it should not be a surprise to anyone that Iran is a source of great concern, not only in the United States. What comes through in every meeting that I have- anywhere in the world- is a concern about Iranian actions and intentions. So, if anything, any of the comments that are being reported on allegedly from the cables confirm the fact that Iran poses a very serious threat in the eyes of many of her neighbors and a serious concern far beyond her region. That is why the international community came together to pass the strongest possible sanctions against Iran. It did not happen because the United States said, "Please, do this for us!" It happened because countries- once they evaluated the evidence concerning Iran’s actions and intentions- reached the same conclusion that the United States reached: that we must do whatever we can to muster the international community to take action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. So if anyone reading the stories about these, uh, alleged cables thinks carefully what they will conclude is that the concern about Iran is well founded, widely shared, and will continue to be at the source of the policy that we pursue with like-minded nations to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Secretary to Hillary Clinton yesterday at a news conference. I wanted to get your comment on Clinton, Netanyahu’s comment, and the fact that Abdullah of Saudi Arabia- the King who is now getting back surgery in the New York- called for the U.S. to attack Iran. Noam Chomsky?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That essentially reinforces what I said before, that the main significance of the cables that are being released so far is what they tell us about Western leadership. So Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. The results are rather striking. They show the Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel -- that’s 80. The second major threat is the United States -- that’s 77. Iran is listed as a threat by 10%.

With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority -- in fact, 57 – say that the region would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. 80, 77, say the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. 10 say Iran is the major threat. This may not be reported in the newspapers here -- it is in England -- but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments, and to the ambassadors. But there is not a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. This seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. The cables to not have any indication of that.

When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here -- Clinton and the media -- have drawn. There’s also a minor problem; that’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So there is a filtering process. We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there is no question that what is a radical distortion is -- or, not even a distortion, a reflection -- of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population does not matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy.

There are similar things elsewhere, such as keeping to this region. One of the most interesting cables was a cable from the U.S. ambassador in Israel to Hillary Clinton, which described the attack on Gaza -- which we should call the U.S./Israeli attack on Gaza -- December 2008. It states correctly there had been a truce. It does not add that during the truce -- which was really not observed by Israel -- but during the truce, Hamas scrupulously observed it according to the Israeli government, not a single rocket was fired. That’s an omission. But then comes a straight lie: it says that in December 2008, Hamas renewed rocket firing and therefore Israel had to attack in self-defense. Now, the ambassador surely is aware that there must be somebody in the American Embassy who reads the Israeli press -- the mainstream Israeli press -- in which case the embassy is surely aware that it is exactly the opposite: Hamas was calling for a renewal of the cease-fire. Israel considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to bomb rather than have security. Also omitted is that while Israel never observed the cease-fire -- it maintained the siege in violation of the truce agreement -- on November 4, the U.S. election 2008, the Israeli army invaded Gaza, killed half a dozen Hamas militants, which did lead to an exchange of fire in which all the casualties, as usual, were Palestinian. Then in December, Hamas -- when the truce officially ended -- Hamas called for renewing it. Israel refused, and the U.S. and Israel chose to launch the war. What the embassy reported is a gross falsification and a very significant one since- since it has to do the justification for the murderous attack- which means either the embassy hasn’t a clue to what is going on or else they’re lying outright.

AMY GOODMAN: And the latest report that just came out -- from Oxfam, from Amnesty International, and other groups -- about the effects of the siege on Gaza? What’s happening right now?

NOAM CHOMSKY: A siege is an act of war. If anyone insists on that, it is Israel. Israel launched two wars -- '56 and ’67 -- in part on grounds its access to the outside world was very partially restricted. That very partial siege they considered an act of war and justification for -- well, one of several justifications -- for what they called "preventive" -- or if you like, preemptive -- war. So they understand that perfectly well and the point is correct. The siege is a criminal act, in the first place. The Security Council has called on Israel to lift it, and others have. It's designed to -- as Israeli officials have have stated -- to keep the people of Gaza to minimal level of existence. They do not want to kill them all off because that would not look good in international opinion. As they put it, "to keep them on a diet." This justification, this began very shortly after the official Israeli withdrawal. There was an election in January 2006 after the only free election in the Arab world -- carefully monitored, recognized to be free -- but it had a flaw. The wrong people won. Namely Hamas, which the U.S. did not want it and Israel did not want. Instantly, within days, the U.S. and Israel instituted harsh measures to punish the people of Gaza for voting the wrong way in a free election.

The next step was that they -- the U.S. and Israel -- sought to, along with the Palestinian Authority, try to carry out a military coup in Gaza to overthrow the elected government. This failed -- Hamas beat back the coup attempt. That was July 2007. At that point, the siege got much harsher. In between come in many acts of violence, shellings, invasions and so on and so forth. But basically, Israel claims that when the truce was established in the summer 2008, Israel’s reason for not observing it and withdrawing the siege was that there was an Israeli soldier -- Gilad Shalit -- who was captured at the border. International commentary regards this as a terrible crime. Well, whatever you think about it, capturing a soldier of an attacking army -- and the army was attacking Gaza -- capturing a soldier of an attacking army isn’t anywhere near the level of the crime of kidnapping civilians. Just one day before the capture of Gilad Shalit at the border, Israeli troops had entered Gaza, kidnapped two civilians -- the Muammar Brothers -- and spirited them across the border. They’ve disappeared somewhere in Israel’s prison system, which is where hundreds, maybe a thousand or so people are sometimes there for years without charges. There are also secret prisons. We don’t know what happens there.

This alone is a far worse crime than the kidnapping of Shalit. In fact, you could argue there was a reason why was barely covered: Israel has been doing this for years, in fact, decades. Kidnapping, capturing people, hijacking ships, killing people, bringing them to Israel sometimes as hostages for many years. So this is regular practice; Israel can do what it likes. But the reaction here and the rest of the world of regarding the Shalit kidnapping- well, not kidnapping, you don’t kidnap soldiers- the capture of a soldier as an unspeakable crime, justification for maintaining and murders siege... that’s disgraceful.

AMY GOODMAN: So you have Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children, and eighteen other aide groups calling on Israel to unconditionally lift the blockade of Gaza. And you have in the WikiLeaks release a U.S. diplomatic cable -- provided to The Guardian by WikiLeaks -- laying out, "National human intelligence collection directive: Asking U.S. personnel to obtain details of travel plans such as routes and vehicles used by Palestinian Authority leaders and Hamas members." The cable demands, "Biographical, financial, by metric information on key PA and Hamas leaders and representatives to include the Young Guard inside Gaza, the West Bank, and outside," it says.

NOAM CHOMSKY: That should not come as much of a surprise. Contrary to the image that is portrayed here, the United States is not an honest broker. It is a participant, a direct and crucial participant, in Israeli crimes, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. The attack in Gaza was a clear case in point: they used American weapons, the U.S. blocked cease-fire efforts, they gave diplomatic support. The same is true of the daily ongoing crimes in the West Bank, and we should not forget that. Actually, in Area C- the area of the West Bank that Israel controls -- conditions for Palestinians have been reported by Save The Children to be worse than in Gaza. Again, this all takes place on the basis of crucial, decisive, U.S., military, diplomatic, economic support; and also ideological support -- meaning, distorting the situation, as is done again dramatically in the cables.

The siege itself is simply criminal. It is not only blocking desperately needed aid from coming in, it also drives Palestinians away from the border. Gaza is a small place, heavily and densely overcrowded. And Israeli fire and attacks drive Palestinians away from the Arab land on the border, and also drive fisherman in from Gaza into territorial waters. They compelled by Israeli gunboats -- all illegal, of course -- to fish right near the shore where fishing is almost impossible because Israel has destroyed the power systems and sewage systems and the contamination is terrible. This is just a stranglehold to punish people for being there and for insisting on voting the wrong way. Israel decided, "We don’t want this anymore. Let’s just get rid of them."

We should also remember, the U.S./Israeli policy -- since Oslo, since the early 1990’s -- has been to separate Gaza from the West Bank. That is in straight violation of the Oslo agreements, but it has been carried out systematically, and it has a big effect. It means almost half the Palestinian population would be cut off from any possible political arrangement that would be made. It also means Palestine loses its access to the outside world -- Gaza should have and can have airports and seaports. Right now, Israel has taken over about 40% of the West Bank. Obama’s latest offers have granted even more, and they’re certainly planning to take more. What is left is just canonized. It’s what the planner, Ariel Sharon called Bantustans. And they’re in prison, too, as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley and drives Palestinians out. So these are all crimes of a piece.

The Gaza siege is particularly grotesque because of the conditions under which people are forced to live. I mean, if a young person in Gaza -- student in Gaza, let’s say -- wants to study in a West Bank university, they can’t do it. If it a person in Gaza needs advanced medical training or treatment from an East Jerusalem hospital where the training is available, they can’t go! Medicines are held back. It is a scandalous crime, all around.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think the United States should do in this case?

NOAM CHOMSKY: What the United States should do is very simple: it should join the world. I mean, there are negotiations going on, supposedly. As they are presented here, the standard picture is that the U.S. is an honest broker trying to bring together two recalcitrant opponents -- Israel and Palestinian Authority. That’s just a charade.

If there were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party and the U.S. and Israel would be on one side and the world would be on the other side. And that is not an exaggeration. It should not be a secret that there has long been an overwhelming international consensus on a diplomatic, political solution. Everyone knows the basic outlines; some of the details you can argue about. It includes everyone except the United States and Israel. The U.S. has been blocking it for 35 years with occasional departures -- brief ones. It includes the Arab League. It includes the Organization of Islamic States. which happens to include Iran. It includes every relevant actor except the United States and Israel, the two rejectionist states. So if there were to be negotiations that were serious, that’s the way they would be organized. The actual negotiations barely reach the level of comedy. The issue that’s being debated is a footnote, a minor footnote: expansion of settlements. Of course it’s illegal. In fact, everything Israel is doing in the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. That hasn’t even been controversial since 1967. ...

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read for you now what Sarah Palin tweeted – the former Alaskan governor, of course, and Republication vice presidential nominee. This is what she tweeted about WikiLeaks. Rather, she put it on Facebook. She said, “First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop WikiLeaks’ director Julian Assange from distributing this highly-sensitive classified material, especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a journalist any more than the editor of the Al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine “Inspire,” is a journalist. He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” Noam Chomsky, your response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s pretty much what I would expect Sarah Palin to say. I don’t know how much she understands, but I think we should pay attention to what we learn from the leaks. ... Perhaps the most dramatic revelation, or mention, is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government – Hillary Clinton, others – and also by the diplomatic service.

To tell the world – well, they’re talking to each other -- to pretend to each other that the Arab world regards Iran as the major threat and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran, is extremely revealing, when they know that approximately 80% of Arab opinion regards the U.S. and Israel as the major threat, 10% regard Iran as the major threat, and a majority, 57%, think the region would be better off with Iranian nuclear weapons as a kind of deterrent. That is does not even enter. All that enters is what they claim has been said by Arab dictators – brutal Arab dictators. That is what counts.

How representative this is of what they say, we don’t know, because we do not know what the filtering is. But that’s a minor point. But the major point is that the population is irrelevant. All that matters is the opinions of the dictators that we support. If they were to back us, that is the Arab world. That is a very revealing picture of the mentality of U.S. political leadership and, presumably, the lead opinion, judging by the commentary that’s appeared here, that’s the way it has been presented in the press as well. It does not matter what the Arabs believe.

REST OF INTERVIEW AND VIDEO AT LINK.

[JackRiddler]

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Message to Posterity: Wikileaks Threads on RI

In November and December 2010, the Rigorous Intuition board saw the near-simultaneous creation of many threads approaching the Wikileaks phenomenon from different angles. Long discussions developed organically in several of these, and sometimes seemed to be held in radically alternate realities. As an aid to your historical research, this notice is being posted in six of those threads on Dec. 10 to remind you of the others.

Here are the current top-of-the-board discussions, with start author and date, in order of the number of posts as of Dec. 10:

The Wikileaks Question
by JackRiddler » Sun Nov 28, 2010 4:10 pm (27 pages)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30362

Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 27, 2010 3:29 pm (9 pages)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29320

Questioning WikiLeaks Thread
by Montag » Mon Oct 25, 2010 1:50 pm (7 pages)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29933

Cryptome founder/Wikileaks co-founder:"Wikileaks is a fraud"
by lupercal » Wed Dec 08, 2010 5:19 am (5 pages)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30479

The rush to smear Assange's rape accuser.
by barracuda » Wed Dec 08, 2010 3:17 pm (3 pages)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30485

Cables Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels WIKI!
by seemslikeadream » Sun Nov 28, 2010 1:29 pm (2 pages)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30359

PS, There are other shorter current ones as well as some older ones, so be sure to prompt Skynet to do a date-delineated search for you. Hope you are enjoying your flying cars and conveyer belts, cool jumpsuits, jauntes to Jovian moon colonies, casual sex changes and group marriages, and governing your Galactic Federation of Sentient Species by means of the Universal Metamind Congress. How's immortality treating ya? Do you still "get" irony? Do you trust Starfleet?