Cryptome founder:"Wikileaks is a fraud"

[Sounder]

C2W?, its great to hear from you and be reminded of your wonderful facility with words.

Sounder wrote:
This psy-ops shit is so simple, just play to the targets pretenses and presto-chango, folk that are consciously anti-globalist get turned into globalist shills. Of course the potential dissonance and threat to the validity of ones personal identity will ensure that ideas like this ignored or failing that are shouted down by the righteous warriors for 'truth'.

Well its always worked before, so why not now?

C2W? wrote...
The kind of psy-ops shit that we're speculating that Assange could be engaged in is actually really, really hard. And equally so whether he's an agent provocateur or a freedom-fighter, really. To succeed in either role, you can't talk to practically anybody, you can't make mistakes about anything, and at least occasionally, it's possible, probable or certain that your opponents are trying to kill you.

It's very stressful. And difficult. People who are good at it just make it look simple. They kind of have to. Because they can't afford to give too many signs about what they're thinking and feeling to the general public, they have no way of knowing who's watching.

There's a lot of room for custom variation in performance style, though. Kind of like the different ways that umpires working for Major League Baseball call strikes.

I was having regrets and a re-think about what I wrote during the day and before reading the new posts. Thinking that I should worry about my own pretenses instead of those of others, given that I take nearly everything from the dominant culture as being psy-ops. So I’m going to retreat back to ‘possibility factors’ and save any opinions till some future time when I feel better informed.

[vanlose kid]

.
I was going to post something really relevant that would have kept us all talking, but I've forgot what it was. It wasn't really relevant. Just to do with the fact that the "Embassy Revelation!!!" article was written by Andrew Gilligan, and that Ms Jonsdottir must've given the story to him specifically, rather than a local Icelandic journalist, knowing full welll about his significant role in the David Kelly affair.

I used to think Gilligan was one of the good guys in that bad business, and that he was very badly treated - a journalist who actually did his job, and protected his source (to the best of his ability), and paid the price. Having followed his career and his statements since, I'm not so sure anymore.

But that's just throwing more tainted meat into the shark pool, really.

Jesus... I never even checked for any Kelly cables. It's bound to have been mentioned. It was a major diplomatic incident on both sides of the Atlantic.

And welcome back, C2W?

hey ahab,

you might want to try this:

WikiLeaks cables: You ask, we search
We asked last week what we should look for among the leaked US embassy cables. Following last night's story on the Madeleine McCann investigation, here is a further instalment of user-suggested research – on the 2012 Olympics, Roman Polanski and the Dutch far right

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/20 ... -we-search

*

[vanlose kid]

Re: the embassy thing. The fact remains that Assange was at the US embassy, and presumably met with someone from US intelligence. The cover story, that they had no idea who he was, is not credible.

The US embassy could not have failed to know who he was, nor how inadvisable it would be to for them to appear to be blocking him from attending an event. And it's virtually certain that they would have wanted to get a look at him, or buttonhole him if they could for some conversation regarding recent events. That's what they do at embassies, as we've been discovering of late: gossip about what's in the newspapers. And spy.

Maybe. Or maybe this cock-and-bull story was rapidly hatched to neutralize any possible witness recollection that Assange was in fact seen with US intelligence officials.

Maybe. But if so, I'd say that it was probably rapidly hatched between these tweets on March 22, 2010...



...and this post by Assange to the front page of Wikileaks on March 25, 2010:

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF ICELAND

Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile
acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range
from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in
Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still
unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our
servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In
the West this has ranged from a police raid in Germany over an Australian
censorship list, to an ambush by a "James Bond" character in a Luxembourg
car park, an event that ended with a mere "we think it would be in your
interest to...".

Developing world violence aside, we've become used to the level of
security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore
that interest.

But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a
time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive.
Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre
we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.

The spying includes attempted covert following, photographng, filming and
the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks' volunteer in Iceland
on Monday night.

I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on
the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed
to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying
and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.

The possible triggers:

(1) our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties
occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
(2) our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to
fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our
reputation for integrity, hack us).
(3) our release of a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in
Reykjavik reporting on contact between the U.S. and
the U.K. over billions of euros in claimed loan guarantees.
(4) pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic
banks and Icelandic "oligarchs".

We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in
Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions
where these individuals were approached, they ran away. One had marked
police equipment and the license plates for another suspicious
vehicle track back to the Icelandic private VIP bodyguard firm Terr (
http://terr.is/ ). What does that mean? We don't know. But as you will
see, other events are clear.

U.S. sources told Icelandic state media's deputy head of news, that the
State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the
U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. I was seen at a private U.S Embassy party at
the Ambassador's residence, late last year and it is known I had
contact with Embassay staff, after.

On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik
to Copenhagen—on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism
conference in Norway. After receiving a tip, we obtained airline records
for the flght concerned. Two individuals, recorded as brandishing
diplomatic credentials checked in for my flight at 12:03 and 12:06 under
the name of "US State Department". The two are not recorded as having
any luggage.

Iceland doesn't have a separate security service. It folds its
intelligence function into its police forces, leading to an uneasy
overlap of policing and intelligence functions and values.

On Monday 22, March, at approximately 8.30pm, a WikiLeaks volunteer
was detained by Icelandic police for over 20 hours on an insignificant
matter. The police then apparently took the opportunity to detain the
volunteer over night, without charge—an unusual act in Iceland. The
next day, during the course of interrogation, the volunteer was shown
covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant "Icelandic Fish &
Chips", where a WikiLeaks production meeting took place on Wednesday
March 17, 2010—the day before individuals operating under the name of
the U.S. State Department boarded my flight to Copenhagen.

The spied on production meeting used a discreet, closed, backroom.
The subject: a concealed, scandalous, U.S. military video showing civilian
kills by U.S. pilots. During the interrogation, a specific reference was
made by police to the video—-which could not have been understood from
that day's exterior surveillance alone. Another specific reference was
made to "important", but unnamed Icelandic figures. References were also
made to the names of two senior journalists at the production meeting.

Who are the Icelandic security services loyal to in their values? The
new government of April 2009, the old pro-Iraq war government of the
Independence party, or perhaps to their personal relationships with
peers from another country who have them on a permanment intelligence
information drip?

Only a few years ago, Icelandic airspace was used for CIA rendition
flights. Why did the CIA think that this was acceptable? In a classified
U.S. profile on the former Icelandic Ambassador to the United States,
obtained by WikiLeaks, the Ambassador is praised for helping to quell
publicity of the CIA's activities.

Often when a bold new government arises, bureaucratic institutions remain
loyal to the old regime and it can take time to change the guard. Former
regime loyalists must be discovered, dissuaded and removed. But for the
security services, that first vital step, discovery, is awry. Congenitally
scared of the light, such services hide their activities; if it is not
known what security services are doing, then it is surely impossible to
know who they are doing it for.

For the obvious reason, on the end-date.

By itself, it's not conclusive, but it's not by itself

No, it's not. And no, it's not. But the facts presented below aren't all the facts, or nothing but facts. or, in at least one instance, an accurate assumption based on the facts as they're known to you.

And please let me be clear: That's not a criticism, it's just an example of one of the universal features of subjective individual human understanding in action that makes open-minded two-way communication between comrades so important during war-time. And much more important than conclusive factual knowledge in the present instance, too, seeing as how conclusive factual knowledge of remote events would be just as unattainable if the whole RI board united in an orgy of serial open-minded two-way communications (fifth sign of impending apocalypse, btw) as it would be if bickering continued as usual.

So I'm more than happy to settle for the enhanced understanding that sometimes proceeds from exposure to the perspectives of other people. But facts are good, too. More facts lead to more perspective. And in that spirit, more in a moment.

re this, the embassy party, and the discussion its generated, i posted the New Yorker profile on Assange here (The Wikileaks Question thread started by JR).

a great deal of it fleshes out what was going on in march and april of 2010. at the time WL folks were working on two projects:

Project B, collateral murder (video/Manning files):

from the article: "Their focus was Project B—Assange’s code name for a thirty-eight-minute video taken from the cockpit of an Apache military helicopter in Iraq in 2007. The video depicted American soldiers killing at least eighteen people, including two Reuters journalists; it later became the subject of widespread controversy, but at this early stage it was still a closely guarded military secret."

this was underway when "On March 26th, he had written a blast e-mail, titled “Something Is Rotten in the State of Iceland,” in which he described a teen-age Icelandic WikiLeaks volunteer’s story of being detained by local police for more than twenty hours. The volunteer was arrested for trying to break into the factory where his father worked—“the reasons he was trying to get in are not totally justified,” Assange told me—and said that while in custody he was interrogated about Project B. Assange claimed that the volunteer was “shown covert photos of me outside the Reykjavik restaurant Icelandic Fish & Chips,” where a WikiLeaks production meeting had taken place in a private back room."

and Project G:

Then Assange leaned forward and, in a whisper, began to talk about a leak, code-named Project G, that he is developing in another secret location. He promised that it would be news, and I saw in him the same mixture of seriousness and amusement, devilishness and intensity that he had displayed in the Bunker. “If it feels a little bit like we’re amateurs, it is because we are,” he said. “Everyone is an amateur in this business.” And then, his coffee finished, he made his way out of the park and into Times Square, disappearing among the masses of people moving this way and that.

there's no mention of the embassy invite etc., but that just means that the New Yorker journalist wasn't told about it.

and, c2w, there's also mention of Gongrijp who accompanied Assange to the DC press conference for "Collateral Murder". don't know if he was the one you were referring to, whose computer was confiscated?

anyway, the profile gives a pretty good idea of what was happening in that timeframe.

*

[lupercal]

I imagine you're here to defend JA from the heartless philistines

Thanks. And nope, I see no Philistines. Or pharisees, as the case may be.

Just to clear up one urgent point, I said philistines, and that is what I meant.



p.s. now here's something worth noting, though I'm not going to bump this thread to point it out: I just scanned DU's LBN and GD front pages, and except for a few wiseacre threads in GD, Julian and his circus, omnipresent in DU's LBN for at least a week, have vanished. He didn't even get Time's spook of the year award (went to the Facebook guy instead)!



And I hate to brag ( ) but as I predicted in this OP, the Wiki geyser has quietly been shut off, just as I figured it would after it served whatever purpose/s it was rolled out to serve. And I hate to say this too, but we WILL get fooled again, whenever the puppeteers decide it's time for another show.

[norton ash]

Just to clear up one urgent point, I said philistines, and that is what I meant.

Y'know, a thread about art in RI led me to the decision to drop the term 'philistine' from my vocabulary altogether.

And it's not really apropos to the Assange conversation anyway. I don't think Assange is being attacked by mercantile tits with no appreciation of spirituality or aesthetics. That may be an element of their character, but I don't think that's why they're attacking.

I think the motives of the attackers can be identified, and they vary quite broadly, QED by size of the Wiki tapestry we're accumulating right here.

And I guess you're joking, Lupe, but why so assertive about using the word philistine?

[lupercal]

^ The only reason I mentioned it is that Philistines (precursor to Palestinians) and Pharisees have religious associations that I didn't mean to conjure up. Maybe philistine does too, I thought it had pretty much shed them, but you're probably right, and as a general rule I think I will follow your suggestion and drop the term, which I rarely use anyway.

[norton ash]

Cheers for that.

These days it just buzzes in my ear with echoes of that good ol' wedge issue that never stops giving, taking its place in every political argument, including this here Wiki one.

[barracuda]

...as I predicted in this OP, the Wiki geyser has quietly been shut off, just as I figured it would after it served whatever purpose/s it was rolled out to serve.

I presume you are referring to this prediction, as it is the only prediction you made in the OP:

But I expect he's not that dumb and we'll soon see a quiet release or disappearance or maybe "suicide" or "murder by deranged illegal alien" or Ken Lay attack and our brave little albino will disappear into an Afghan cave to await his next cue.

If so, I wouldn't be too hasty to begin crowing, as yet again today more cables have been released, and contrary to your claims of clarivoyance, Assange is, as of yet, still in a London prison cell. However, I will concede that, owing to the fact that you called so many races in that one brief statement, (let's see: quiet release - no, disappearance - no, suicide - no, murder - no, Ken Lay attack - no, and reiterative disappearance - no) the odds are fair-to-good that you may at some future point have the opportunity to again attempt to put forth the assertion of having called the whole thing long ago, just as the "Wiki geyser" was beginning to gush its first fine mistings of overheated steam into the public realm.

And I hate to brag...

A quick glance around this thread reveals that your trepidation on that account is probably well founded. So you got that one right.

[lupercal]

contrary to your claims of clarivoyance

Yes ahem, it appears you've got company:

It’s Official for Limbaugh, Wikileaks Exposes Climate Change as ‘full-fledged, 100% fraud’
by Timothy B. Hurst on December 14, 2010

Never mind the myriad times right-wing radio pundit Rush Limbaugh has previously officially declared anthropogenic climate change a hoax, or nothing but an opportunity for a global communist uprising, the conservative talker said on his radio show last week that the diplomatic cables pertaining to climate leaked as part of the most recent Wikileaks dump were evidence enough for him that the whole thing has been exposed as a fraud.

Citing a post and some conjecture about the cables by climate skeptic Anthony Watts, Limbaugh said:

"I know for a fact that global warming, climate change, whatever term they attach to it, is nothing more than an attempt to create socialist nations as far around the world as they can and to separate us from our money. That's all it is and now the whole thing's been exposed as a full-fledged, 100% fraud."

http://ecopolitology.org/2010/12/14/its ... 100-fraud/

Ain't it good to know you've got a friend...

[barracuda]

That's all ya got, huh?

You're confusing my advocacy of the free flow of information with the ideological uses of that information, which is hardly surprising, as you've demonstrated your confusion about so many things on this thread, from the organisational mandates of your own government to the chronologies of important events in your history. But I know there's a bit of a learning curve here, as aspects of this discussion require some background to speak to effectively.

It strikes me, and not for the first time, that it is your own eagerness to disregard the content of the cables and WikiLeaks' previous contributions to our knowledge base, and to take every opportunity available to paint Assange and his organisation in terms of his personal appearance and mannerisms which pairs your outlook rather than my own with the current spate of right wing propaganda, the very idea which I'm sure, as a Democrat, you'd greet with enough horror and shock to effectively blind you to that understanding.

In other words, touché, well done, you really scored there. Ouch, and etc.

[lupercal]

In other words, touché, well done, you really scored there.

So it seems, and it wasn't difficult. How much more obvious does this thing have to get before you figure it out, anyway? Seriously, I'm perplexed at how anyone but a zombie couldn't see a year ago that wiki-boy is a hero to no one but the defense and oil industries. It's only going to become more obvious as time passes so you might as well start wrapping your head around it.

[barracuda]

I'm perplexed

We're in agreement here.

oil industries.

Oh yeah. Those guys. I forgot about them. Darn.

Update:

But Paterson says that he recently received a brief message from the Wau Holland Foundation in Germany, the main fundraising platform for WikiLeaks, stating that the foundation faces a possible audit by German authorities and that it cannot promise any funds at this time.

As of last week, the defense fund had raised $95,000 from 1,350 people — Paterson said it is difficult to tell if any of those donations come from active members of the U.S. military.

Although the Manning site shows a total of $98,358 raised as of the 13th. So it appears the Bradley Manning Support Network may not require the money from WikiLeaks after all.

[nathan28]

So far, this is my understanding of the anti-WikiLeaks crowd.

Some of the people who are "questioning WikiLeaks" have every reason to engage in that questioning. What I see happening, however, is quite confusing.

One assertion is that WikiLeaks can't possibly have legit documents, or the documents it has are a limited hangout. This is a curious assertion, considering that so far less than 1/100 have seen print. The more immediate question would be: under what conditions would you know that WikiLeaks was releasing legit docs? Sadly, short of some glaring botch, like documents naming the wrong US State dep't staff, this seems unlikely to be forthcoming. The only indication close to this I have seen has been Alice's find that one cable conflates two meetings. The same cable also quotes someone quoting someone as though it were the original party saying as much, suggesting the author was sloppy.

The next assertion seems to be that Assange can't be legit, that he must be an agent. He already "gave up" Manning--which is not true. Lamo busted Manning six months ago if I'm not mistaken, before any of us plebs knew that WikiLeaks had cables to release. Lamo himself was apparently only a few days out of some variety of detention. Another suggestion is that Assange attending an embassy party indicates complicity, never mind that he was on the guest list on account of being the date to a far left (as in, anarchist, not "Barack Obama's Kenyan Socialism"). The claim was made that Assange was travelling freely when he was not. The claim was made that he was "in the open" when he was staying somewhere in secret. The point was, essentially, that because he wasn't dead, he was one of "Them". Assange was then hit with some very questionably charges--not using a condom--and then the charges were elevated to rape, the second he faced potential charges for the same acts--one prosecutor IIRC having dismissed the first effort as bogus. The claim was made that this was nothing more than theater. I have no way of knowing whether it is, but you have no way of knowing whether it is not. Then Assange was arrested. Again, I am not particularly sure what the contention is here, save to say, it seems to be that the idea is that he was arrested, not assassinated by a drone with one of those fancy laser-guided 25mm RPGs in broad daylight, therefore, he must be one of them, or it is theater. Then Assange was put in solitary confinement with an elevated level of isolation. Again, the suggestion seems to be that it is all for show. Now Assange has had bail set, so that must prove it was all a show--never mind that he's still in the hole, that his bail has been challenged and that bail still entails a set of conditions designed to track all of his movements.

In other words, at every step along the way, the claim has been that the latest in the efforts to prosecute Assange simply do not matter.

Then there is the suggestion that WikiLeaks will be used to destroy internet freedom.

To start, in the United States, the biggest concern about "internet freedom" isn't free speech. I can still go to Cryptogon and to Prison Planet and listen to Pacifica streaming. Where I can't go is to the torrent sites DHS used forfeiture against. IOW: the US DOJ cares far, far more about interdicting and prosecuting copyright infringement rather than political speech hostile to "TPTB". I know personally of an instance where it took longer for police to bust a kiddie porn server than for someone I know to get busted for egregious copyright violations. Think about that for a while.

But that's beside the point. The idea seems to be that either WikiLeaks is and intentionally and witting partner part of a program to end internet freedom or that WikiLeaks's actions will result in the end of internet freedom as an unintended consequence. If the former, see the Assange-as-Agent theory; if the latter, then "everyone knows" that would be the result. I can't address the Assange-as-Agent theory because it is, barring much more evidence, impenetrable, based on a bunch of specious justifications that have had to clear higher and higher hurdles. I imagine that Assange could be drawn and quartered and someone would say that he was just an MC'd stooge acting on orders. I swear to god if it plays out that way and I'm around when someone says that I'm going to make that Buzz Aldrin Bart Sibel encounter look like love at first sight.



But what I can point to is how absurd the theory that WikiLeaks is for the worst is. Of course efforts have been and will be made to control speech on the internet. Real interests are at stake. If those interests feel threatened they will react as though they have been. Because *every* individual who has offered up that speculation has, in other venues, suggested that there is information being kept from us, that we just need to learn, that etc., etc., IOW: they are decrying ignorance and the lack of evidence.

Suddenly, handed evidence, they claim that nothing good can result from it.

That sort of sentiment borders on pathology. I consider the "everyone knows" theory exactly the same type of theory: it says that because "everyone knows" that, e.g., Shell Oil had penetrated every level of Nigeria's gov't, we don't need to get documentary evidence of that, so because WikiLeaks has created a furor and firestorm, it's worse to "know" without proof, than to know with proof, because now real interests are at stake.

There is arrogance in that attitude. It means that when you 'knew' something was the case, it was important; now that you and the rest of the world have proof, it's no longer special and no longer privileging to 'know' it. The moment it slipped the surly bonds of your imagination and entered into reality it lost its fun. Either that, or it was a stance of total pessimism, which like the agent theory is beyond being disputed. If you argued that things were bad and getting worse before, and you argue that things will be worse now after, it makes no sense to treat Assange as some demon on account of there suddenly being a really-existing material objective cause for whatever made things "worse", which previously you were content to attribute to some fantasy, some imaginary, 'spiritual' and illusory process at work in your mind.

That last suggestion, which is implicit in these arguments, is nothing more than an abrogation of responsibility. You claim to care about some issue, and you claim the issue is important, and you even claim that it threatens established authorities. But the moment those authorities themselves see that the issue is a threat, you shirk, you run. You are literally hoping to take something away from authority and entrenched interests and liars in high places.

IF WHAT YOU CARE ABOUT IS REAL AND YOU ADVANCE YOUR CAUSE YOU MUST EXPECT AND ANTICIPATE REAL REPERCUSSIONS.

Currently, as you read this, Bradley Manning is in solitary confinement. Julian Assange is in solitary confinement. No doubt SIRPNet admins have lost their jobs. You claim to care about freedom, you claim to 'know' that "They" seek to curtail it, but the moment something shifts there agenda, the moment something new burst forth and there is an opportunity to fight--you decry the circumstances, you blame those who did act and who did face repercussions.

[nathan28]

Then there's the naive positions. These are:

The Cables Don't Mention 9/11
Cables from the US State Dep't are written by people who believe US propaganda
Julian Assange is better dressed than me so he's a queer and definitely an agent
I Don't Have To Read the Cables



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

[Ben D]

Just thinking out loud,.. given that all intelligence Agencies are very compartmentalized, if Wikileaks is an inter-Agency planned psyops (CIA,MI6, etc.), then imagine the potential for confusion and mistrust that would arise over the Wikileaks issue as it is unravelling, both between Agencies and among the departments not in the know and those that are within the respective Agencies? This in turn would create a full spectrum of opinions on the part of politicians/governments, journalists/media, etc.. depending on their respective sources. IOW, everyone thinks they are working in the best interests of their respective nations based on limited knowledge available to them, but the complexity of the inherent deceptive nature of whole structure has reached a point that no intrinsic truth can be found anywhere.

I know that I didn't convey that as well as I would have liked, but I hope you get the general picture.