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Is Assange an American Agent?
Editorial of The New York Sun | November 28, 2010
Part way through our afternoon’s reading in the latest document dump from Wikileaks the thought occurred to us that maybe Julian Assange is an American agent. We don’t have anything to suggest such a thing, other than the thought that when one digs through all the chaff here there’s not much that makes American look bad. There are, however, number of things that seem destined, when they start percolating into the diplomatic dialogue, to work to our advantage.
For starters, feature the disclosure that the Arabs want an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Heretofore this point has been getting only vague focus. Via Wikileaks, however, this is put into sharp relief, with the disclosure of what the Jerusalem Post called a secret diplomatic cable from the American embassy at Riyadh about a meeting in 2008 between the Saudi king, Abdullah, and the American ambassador, Ryan Crocker, and General Petraeus.
According to the Post, the cable quotes a former Saudi envoy in the U.S., Abdel al-Jubeir, as recalling “the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program.” Quoth the king, according to Wikileaks document dump: “Cut off the head of the snake.” Ordinarily it would be awkward for American to get this kind of diplomatic cable traffic out in public. Now we have Mr. Assange to the rescue.
Or take the disclosures about the United Nations. The U.N., after all, is a body that has taken American money for years — and in incredible abundance — but has become a runaway institution. How could Americans get it through to the cynics in Turtle Bay just how low is the disrepute in which they are held by even a left-of-center American administration? Why not have old Julian Assange leak a trove of documents?
...
No doubt it is ridiculous to imagine that Mr. Assange is an American agent. But if one were trying to put into the field someone to pose as an enemy of America, who would more clearly fit the part than the earnest Australian? The key question is that old poser of forensics, “Who benefits?” The tip-off is that everyone from President Obama to Secretary of State Clinton to Defense Secretary Gates has denounced what Mr. Assange has been doing. But neither Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, nor Mr. Gates has done anything about it.
WikiLeaks releases 250,000 classified documents...WITHOUT actually releasing them.
The future has its burdens but it also its delights, even if they are a bit rindish and sour.
Case in point: Today, the WikiLeaks organization released 250,000 diplomatic cables which will shake the pillars of international relations for decades to come.
Or did they? Well, it turns out they didn't. It turns out, what they actually released were 220 (two-hundred and twenty) documents, some only partially. You can see this for yourself on the official CableGate web page.
The Guardian, which had drawn readers in with the lure of being able to download the classified cables had a little surprise in store for the thousands of people who...well...who actually tried to download them:
You couldn't.
In fact, what the Guardian is allowing people to download is (wait for it), 250,000 dates, times & tags. No content, whatsoever. No content, at all.
The actual cables- where are they? Turns out they're no-where to be found. In every story you read today, even if you read them all, they would all say that WikiLeaks has released, dumped, leaked 250,000 sensitive diplomatic cables into the public domain when they haven't done any such thing. In fact the only actual cables can be found at the WikiLeaks site. Does anyone have the 250,000 secret cables?
Well, yes. Yes, it appears that The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, etc. all have copies of the data sets which, at least in the New York Times' case, delivered anonymously to them by WikiLeaks so they could begin their investigations. But they don't appear to be sharing, which I find interesting. I mean, release them or don't but don't say they've been released if they haven't. That sounds sensible, doesn't it? None of this tomfoolery was involved with the previous WikiLeaks releases and I don't think anyone expected this release would be much different.
Ok, why haven't they dumped the documents if this is their plan all along. It differs depending on whose page you read. From WikiLeaks' page:
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.
Hrm, let's say worst-case is 6 months for all of these to spool out. And let's say they release in weekly chunks. Four releases a month. That's around 10,000 documents dropped into the public's hands, per week.
Well, that doesn't seem to make any sense either. The only way they're going to get some kind of analysis on 10,000 cables a week is by crowdsourcing with the rest of the planet who are still unable to actually access these documents.
Bottom Line: The embargo hasn't been lifted, the 250,000 documents haven't been released. All there is, so far anyway, is the trumpet which heralds a mad dash by a small number of newspapers to pick and choose the stories they want to pursue, and little else.
But I don't typically trust the mainstream media for that very reason. If the current rash of stories is any indicator of their stewardship, it would appear we're in for months (at least) of stories about how much political figure X likes political figure Y. Or a salacious quote from political figure Z...the cross-referencing and further research of which will remain entirely in the hands of a select few.
PB
I'm open to all sorts of ideas of what may be going on, as long as people aren't transparently jumping to their own a priori conclusions in the absence of evidence or argument.
JackRiddler wrote:Jeff wrote:Just State Department cables, right? It's like reading a diary aloud. Embarrassing, but it hardly gives the game away. The Deep State rolls along.
Jeff, you're doing #1 from the OP. ("They aren't releasing what a given critic would consider important.")And you couldn't buy this spin. Well, we couldn't:
WikiLeaks documents reveal Arab states' anxiety over Iran
That one's covered too: the spin belongs to others.
Spin is amazing, no? Show me the same cables, and I see corrupt US-propped dictators and kings baying for another American war on another Muslim country. How do you think their subjects are likely to react to that?.
nathan28 wrote:
...I would like to know if it's possible to browse any of the old stuff uploaded to wikileaks. Like police reports, college fraternity documents, internal white papers by autocratic regimes, etc. You know, the "everyday" stuff, like memoranda not released to the public on symbols commonly used by pedophile organizations, or white power groups, etc. Right now the only things I can navigate to from the front page are the war logs and war diaries. With google I can get to the "cables" that just broke, and that's it.
Where'd everything go? Have I just over-done my browser security settings? Is the site not compatible with chromium? Is my Google-fu that weak? Is this the new, "streamlined" Wikileaks? If it's not just me being stupid and lazy, forget paranoid ONOZ WIKILEKES IS TEH THEM I HURD IT ON WEBSTR TARPLAY OMG nonsense, this could be obnoxious corporate-style "branding" gone into PR 'scandal' overdrive.
Simulist wrote:When Julian Assange dismissed 9/11 as a "false conspiracy," he tipped his hand a bit too much, as far as I am concerned.
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