Cryptome founder:"Wikileaks is a fraud"

[lupercal]

Go do something about it. They did in Kenya. They did in Iceland. They might in Lebanon.

Exactly, because the problem here is that espionage and regime change by any other name, even a catchy name like wikileaks, are still espionage and regime change, which makes wikileaks look like an old game with a new name.

[MacCruiskeen]

But you decided not to mention it in order to make your point?

No, I just didn't mention it. And I mentioned it now. In fact I answered your point in some detail, although you choose to pretend that I didn't.

Also, you may or may not have noticed, but there have been other things going on the world while the Zorro plot thickens. For instance, mass demosntrations in Britain throughout this month, on a scale and of a militancy not seen for at least twenty years. So I cannot and will not focus on the Pimpernel's rakish adventures full-time, especially as filtered, in homeopathic doses, through the NYT, the Guardian and the Spiegel, though you may wish to. Good luck with that. Let us know when he catches the US Ambassador to Australia dissing Kylie.

Thanks for adding to the discussion.

I added to the discussion. You chose to ignore all of it except for the first three words. You will know why, presumably. You will perhaps also object to my sarcasm, because it's common knowledge that you never indulge in it yourself.

No thanks for detracting from the discussion, barracuda. But thanks for clarifying your attitude to discussions per se.

[barracuda]

You are indeed most welcome.

...the problem here is that espionage and regime change by any other name, even a catchy name like wikileaks, are still espionage and regime change, which makes wikileaks look like an old game with a new name.

Aww, poor thing. Here, have a hanky.

[82_28]

That statement is nothing more than a lie.
(Disclaimer - This statement is NOT for rhetorical puroposes.)

OK, I don't understand what that means. Are you insinuating that I have the capability to lie about an idle speculation or even a speculation running at full speed? How does anybody know anything about anything about this other than what we're being fed or being leaked, as it were? However, the "minds" I tend to trust or at least find most fascinating when it comes to unraveling shit of this magnitude and oddness all have their own founded reservations. My own damn mom told me, and she is about as technologically unsavvy as one can be, that she does not trust the **meaning** behind the cables. And since I guess I sprang from her genes, perhaps I think a lot like her and that could be the reason for my relative density in accepting this whole strange circus whole cloth. We're all idiots except for the people who say "sweet! Now this Internet is finally getting somewhere and sticking it to the man!" Do you really think that those skeptical are being skeptical because they are fools or that they are running scenarios in their heads about how this could possibly be a "trojan horse" as far as the free flow, on demand nature of the Internet itself?

Some shit clearly can be kept secret. You aren't going to solve the secrecy problem by suddenly flooding the world with freely available former secrets without sullying the negative attitude further of the populace as to how global affairs seem to be going.

Here, if you want a lie, I'll give you one: There is beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Assange and wikileaks conundrum is an overall good thing for the future of humanity. That would be a lie, Barracuda.

[barracuda]

Do you really think that those skeptical are being skeptical because they are fools or that they are running scenarios in their heads about how this could possibly be a "trojan horse" as far as the free flow, on demand nature of the Internet itself?

This statement is neither speculation nor skepticism:

most everybody is beginning to come around to the conclusion that this shit stinks to high heaven no matter which way you slice it.

It's a demonstrable falsehood even within the limited confines of this forum. I cannot honestly understand why anyone would say it in good faith. It's an attempt to promote the appearance of a false consensus. Period.

Here, if you want a lie, I'll give you one: There is beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Assange and wikileaks conundrum is an overall good thing for the future of humanity. That would be a lie, Barracuda.

There are few certainties in life, my man. And for that I am most sorrowful, most of the time. It's a damn shame, I say. But life does offer the option of making choices. You've apparently made yours. I have not, but I'm willing to see what happens before consigning what appears to me to be an attempt to actually perform a political action which I consider essential - undermining government and corporate secrecy - to the gutters of presumption. And to argue against mere insinuation in favor of information.

[justdrew]

she does not trust the **meaning** behind the cables.

not being 100% sure what she meant by that, I'd guess she means she doesn't trust something as true just because some state department person wrote some crap up in a cable. The cables are true, but that doesn't mean they contain truth.

I really don't see what the threat is here or how this could POSSIBLE be a Trojan horse. If billions of dollars of "intellectual property theft" as they would have it, over the last ten years, hasn't been enough to enable them to break the internet, this won't either. Screener DVDs leaking before the retail DVD is even released has probably freaked the PTB as much as these state department leaks.

The right-wing infantile hysterics in the media are just doing their thing. They're dogs. They bark.

[norton ash]

Hexagram 34 The Power of the Great

Nine in the third place means:
The inferior man works through power.
The superior man does not act thus.
To continue is dangerous.
A goat butts against a hedge
And gets its horns entangled.

I iz outside jus lookin at ur hedge
Coz I am tha goatboy
I want tha info nation ta be free
coz I am broke broke
emancipate me sez tha info nation
i run away, you nail me to a tree

And that's all we have to say about wikileaks at this time.

[compared2what?]

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.

[vanlose kid]

hey c2w, been missing you these past few days.

welcome back.

*

[vanlose kid]

posted this in two other WL threads but this bit is relevant to what c2w is addressing above:

(At this point one might be forgiven for assuming this was some type of social mix-up, which various governments quickly took advantage of -- excepting, the first and older accuser, Anna Ardin, was the volunteer who made the various arrangements for Assange's visit to Sweden, which he left for after coming under surveillance in Iceland where, given the low-lying urban architecture, it is very difficult to carry out even a moderately successful surveillance and her prior connections to rightwing anti-Castro groups as well as having worked for one of the Bonnier family's publications -- the Bonnier family being owner of record of the first rightwing tabloid to break the "leaked" story. [Some Swedes claim that this tabloid, Expressen, isn't rightwing; simply anti-leftwing.]

Typically in these situations, where someone from a shoestring-budgeted volunteer operation relies upon another foreign volunteer -- that is the typical SOP or modus operandi of the intel subversion operation (check with any environmental or activist group and you'll find they've experienced this situation in one form or another).)

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest- ... ent-805674

*

[compared2what?]

There's the fact that Assange chose newspapers with a track record of lying to promote imperialist wars

And the (sad) fact that neither western culture nor western media presently offers any other choice to someone who wants to use the broad distribution of information to make a major impact on the conduct of western institutional powers and feels urgently compelled by the exigencies of war to do so without delay.

That's not conclusive, but as far as it goes, it is a fact.

and gave them a free hand to redact and filter what he handed to them.

But that's not.

And, while I don't pretend to know what is, since the facts as represented by Assange aren't contested by anyone in a position to know, I don't really see any ground on which to challenge them, either. Apart from healthy skepticism.

However, to err on the side most friendly to your assumption, the iteration of the basic process that he described in every interview that he gave to Rick Stengel at Time is probably the one that leaves the most room for that particular reading:

RS: And as you were saying, do you review every document before you release it?

JA: All the Cablegate documents, every document is the backing document to a story appearing on a news website or in a newspaper or on a TV program or that we ourselves have released as an analysis. So yes, they're all reviewed and they're all redacted, either by us or by the newspapers concerned.

IIRC, what he said elsewhere (to Amy Goodman, maybe?) was that they were all redacted by WL or the newspapers and that all redactions were then vetted by WL in order to keep things honest.

But whatever. It's not conclusive regardless. It just can't fairly be said that he gave imperial-war-promoting newspapers "a free hand" to redact and filter what he handed to them.

The fact that these newspapers revealed the cables to officials of the US State Dept. and solicited their advice on what they should or should not publish, before they revealed them to the public,

That's not a fact. It's an inadvertent error.

The New York Times did reveal the cables to someone in the federal government -- the White House and/or the state department -- by its own sniveling admission.

But Wikileaks expressly and rather pointedly did not give The New York Times an advance review of the material on this go-round. The Times got their copies from The Guardian. You can read about that here or, if you prefer, you can plow through all the gray text surrounding the same information at its sniveling source here.

and that Assange has no problem with that.

Unknown and probably unknowable. But fwiw, my guess is that he rapidly knew that was going to be inevitable roughly between March 22 and March 25, 2010.

The fact that what the newspapers did, in fact, publish, are sensational headlines that promote a right-wing, warmongering agenda

Undisputed, but (sadly) predictable.

About as predictable as the worldwide recognition and rejection of the right-wing warmongering agenda being promoted would be to practically everybody on earth who wasn't a right-wing warmonger was, I'd say. But since you yourself noted much the same thing in somewhat less general terms here, I don't think our individual subjective views on the facts that we do know at this point really diverge by all that much.

It really all depends on what Assange thought the predictable outcome would be, at the end of the day. It's possible that he never saw the blowback that hit his skinny right-wing-warmonger-promoting ass coming and just as possible that it was exactly what he was aiming for. And I doubt that his conduct will ever be so purely indicative of his motivations that you and I could address them conclusively. If they were sinister, he'd conceal them as a routine matter of vicious self-interest. And if they were righteous, he'd conceal them as a non-routine but admirably judicious legal precaution. Because the man's obviously not an idiot.

BRB.

[compared2what?]

but that some of the more 'explosive' cables themselves have not yet been seen or verified, including the ones in which Arab monarchs allegedly urge the US to attack Iran. There is the fact that Assange chose the serial liar and war criminal Netanyahu and the serial liar and warmonger Rupert Murdoch as positive examples to illustrate his commitment to "truth". And plenty more.

Word to that.

And taken together, the ones we've just covered still aren't conclusive. Hell, I'll even see your "inconclusive" and raise you the difference between it and "almost ostentatiously ambiguous." And throw in an entirely new unsettled question, too.

Why would the opaque, discreet and source-protecting Assange go out of his way to say

"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"

only a few sentences after he'd gone out of his way to identify the past "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" as a possible trigger for the (alleged) then-ongoing surveillance and harassment he describes?

Because that's just not the kind of freely volunteered, unnecessarily voluminous and potentially identifying detail that aspiring anonymous whistleblowers find attractive, no matter how you cut it, if you ask me. And besides that, it was very uncharacteristically chatty of him, especially since it was part of a prepared written statement.

That's one of the reasons I'm guessing -- GUESSING, I SAID, LIKE ALL OF US -- that he knew then that someone would inevitably reveal the contents of the classified cables from U.S. Embassies he's publishing now to the state department/White House, in fact. He already had them, if he had the video, because both came from Manning.

But the U.S. didn't already have Bradley Manning at that point. And might not have known exactly what he was holding until the Times snivelingly informed them, shortly after which Assange got thrown in prison and held there incommunicado.

Seriously. It's possible that he's a very skilled spook who was laying down a very intricate and infinitely misleading trail. But it's also possible that he was taking evasive measures as a delaying tactic until he'd put together as much of a preemptive defense and gotten as much of a head start as he could. By placing the cables with outlets too journalistically legitimate to prosecute for espionage and then publishing them with the same redactions, for instance.

Needless to say, I'd view that whole hypothesis as much, much more credible if there was independent confirmation of the surveillance.

But as is so often the case, I really don't know how independent it could be while still being confirmation. The volunteer who was held in Iceland did speak to the press, IIRC. And the WL representative who subbed for Assange at a speaking engagement in the States not too long afterward had his laptop confiscated by customs or something like that, IIRC. And I guess that interested parties can google for links on those points, if they feel like it. Because I haven't bothered. And you never know what someone with a different perspective might turn up.

Of course, it's alsopossible that he's not even in prison, He could be on the beach somewhere. Though probably covered head to toe in sweaters and under a big umbrella, as lupercal might well hasten to remind us. Melanin issues.

It's just stuff to keep in mind as the story unfolds and it becomes clearer where this is heading. And I could not mean that more. What I really "know" is very, very little, wrt this or any other thing. I know I don't know anything, though. Which as I understand it, makes me the wisest person in ancient Athens, although it's been quite a while since I reviewed the details on that one.

Love to all,

c2w

[compared2what?]

hey c2w, been missing you these past few days.

welcome back.

*

Thanks! I'm just here on the fly. But I have been following the wikileaks story with great interest. So I thought I'd take a moment to share. Maybe change my avatar. That kind of thing. What I really miss is the lounge. I'm a lounge-dweller.

(shortest sentences written by me for an RI post EVAH.)

[compared2what?]

Yep, nothing but "good" regime change brought to you by wikileaks and you don't see any problems with this? Where's that "I want to believe" pic you're always posting in HMW's threads, anyway?

why would there be a problem? Daniel arap Moi had some folks or a single person with access to his info (cleaning staff perhaps) who didn't really like him, seems very plausible. Giving it to wikileaks seems like no-brainer. Very plausible.

but here, let me ask you this...
What conceivable scenario is there where wikileaks somehow becomes an enemy of civil society and/or peace and justice?

It's nothing personal, and maybe there's a drop of truth in this particular bucket of hogwash, but I doubt it. The Guantanemo handbook "leak" for example turns out to be a load of crap, just another conveniently timed limited hangout detailing the barbering and menu choices available to inmates to soften the blow before Abu Ghraib hit. Whatever this outfit is it's not what it's being sold as.

Since it's being sold as many things by many people, most of whom it doesn't belong to, I'm with you on that last part. I'm sorry to say that's where our agreement begins and ends, however.

It's nothing personal, it's just that Wikileaks didn't exist until three years after Abu Ghraib hit. So it didn't post the Camp Delta SOP Manuals -- they leaked two, a few weeks apart -- until three years after Abu Ghraib hit.

Also, irrespective of timing, the stuff about haircuts and food is pretty plainly about how best to dispense or withhold those things to enhance and reinforce the GTMO SOP behavioral control protocols. IOW, it's an operating manual for the soft end of their detainee-torture program.

And even if you don't read it that way, a lot of the procedures described are flat-out violations of the Geneva Conventions, on their own horrifying terms. And some of it is just horrifying in its mundanity. For example, Part 8-10 (k)(3) in the 2003 version:



But the most reader-friendly part of that leak series was probably the comparison between the '03 and'04 manuals. So if you feel like giving it another try, I'd recommend starting here.

Anyway. I wouldn't call it a load of crap, personally.

[nathan28]

Thanks for coming back, c2w.

Hell, I'll even see your "inconclusive" and raise you the difference between it and "almost ostentatiously ambiguous." And throw in an entirely new unsettled question, too.

In any event:

Why would the opaque, discreet and source-protecting Assange go out of his way to say

"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"

only a few sentences after he'd gone out of his way to identify the past "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" as a possible trigger for the (alleged) then-ongoing surveillance and harassment he describes?

For sake of clarity this is the passage you are mentioning:

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.

Try as I might, I cannot really understand what you are suggesting here.

What I read Assange state here is that 1. The US is investigating a leak out of the Reykjavik embassy 2. Assange was seen at an embassy party and has had contact with people at the embassy since attending the party. The implication being that he was at the party to chat up potential sources and he may now have them.

That would seem to be a tell, but the greater context (i.e., the surrounding paragraphs) state that 3. Assange is being followed and harassed by people who seem very likely to be spooks.

The greater implication being, Assange is being followed because he has a source in the Reykjavik embassy, that the US spook complex is aware that he does and hopes to learn more/who/what is being leaked to Assange. What I don't understand is why or how Assange's claim to that extent is problematic if it is at all truthful. If the spooks are looking closely at the Reykjavik staff and Assange, it follows that he isn't exactly exposing or admitting anything they aren't already aware of. That, and while I think it's not a far cry to assume that "contact with" is the same as "have a source inside", prima facie, it's not, which is enough to shift the burden of proof--a burden that it seems spooks are eagerly attempting to establish.

There are possibilities i'm not considering here. E.g., that account about harassment may be BS and the piece is intended to signal that he has sources at the embassy. I can think of one further speculation that builds upon that but it's speculating from speculative assumptions and am not going to cough it up lest any pattern-seeking minds mistake artifice for nature.