Update: Hmmm. I am going to backpedal a bit on wikileaks. There is a lot of buzz out there that needs checking. Like this from Sott.Net Wiki-Leaks Serves Israeli Agenda of Demonizing Iran.
But the Wiki-leaks documents tell much more than arbitrary killing in wars of conquest, they also provide support for the continuation and expansion of those wars, most notably to Iran and Pakistan.I don't like this story at all. That sounds too much like "Saddam has WMD". Who are we supposed to trust on that? I am now suspicious. I am going to watch and wait.
Wikileaks is in the news.
This is in today's Johnson City Press.From Democracy Now!
Read about Wikileaks.
Follow Wikileaks on Twitter.
Wikileaks on Facebook.
Keep leaking my friends.
And keep suspicious of those who leak.
Nothing like witnessing sausage making.
ReplyDeleteHI John: Are you sure you want to thank Wikileaks? I get nervous that the US or Israel or other will panic and start a war when this kind of leak happens.
ReplyDeleteIf the media were doing its job we wouldn't need wikileaks. The best word that describes the modern corporate media is "embedded."
ReplyDelete"In bed" with empire's military and corporate interests.
As far as starting was are concerned, wars are started for the same reasons as they always have been--control of resources--while being blamed on anything but control of resources.
I think that wikileaks may undermine trust in our empire and that will be a good thing. When we see (as Jodie said) how sausage is made, more of us may decide we no longer want sausage.
The truth while painful may set us free.
I agree 100% with John. And good for the private who apparently downloaded all that stuff onto a thumb drive.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best ways to fight the Empire is with a flashlight.
Yes! And the media is focusing on the leakage, rather than on the toxic material that has leaked.
ReplyDeleteBack in the late 60s, when we were carpet bombing Vietnam, someone (can't remember who) was quoted as saying something like "we can't expect to tell the world how to act when we are carrying out this God-damned carpet bombing". He was excoriated for using the term "God-damned" while the carpet bombing was given a pass.
The administration is right: this is dangerous stuff that is floating around out there, now, and it may cause some damage. So be it. The arrogance of politics and policy-making doesn't involve taking responsibility for the outcome of the policies, and assumes that the secrets will be kept forever.
If it is in the best interest of an entity to keeps its actions secret, it is probably in the best interest of everyone else to not perform those actions in the first place. I think most 6-year olds understand that.
And then, there is this.
ReplyDeleteMichael SC may be right. I have some suspicions. I think I am going to wait and watch on wikileaks.
I don't get the connection. Julian Assange doesn't buy that 9/11 was an inside job, therefore Wikileaks is a government facade? What am I missing, John?
ReplyDeleteI read this in an article on Wikileaks: "How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles." This was supposed to be a leak.
ReplyDeleteThat the Taliban acquired SAMs is old news. The US gave them (called freedom fighters at the time) shoulder launched SAMs back in the 1980s to be used against the Russians. I don't know the shelf life of a shoulder launched SAM. I do suspect that the Taliban probably had more than a few left over after the Russians left town.
So what did we learn that we didn't already know?
A number of things don't add up for me.
ReplyDelete--None of this information (while surprising to normal, good people) is new.
--It feeds the frenzy toward war with Iran. See my update.
--If it is so scandalous to the U.S., why doesn't the gov't find a way to shut him down?
--It seems to be a media distraction from the real news that is the financial collapse underway in Europe.
--Empire could use this or events that develop from these leaks to restrict internet for security reasons.
--And yes, 911. More on 911 in a future post. I smell a false flag.
None of these things singly or collectively are enough to say anything conclusively.
I am just now suspicious and circumspect.
You have to think about *why* they leak this stuff.
ReplyDelete(I'm not defending it, nor am I saying that if you understand *why* they do it you'll be persuaded that it's right. I'm simply saying that their reasons for leaking information are not as simple as the media would have you believe.)
The founder of wikileaks has given any number of interviews in which he states his reasons. Basically, he thinks that governments work like conspiracies (or computer networks) in which information is more freely traded between units than it is disclosed to others. If one disrupts the network by leaking information, one necessarily disrupts how governments operate.
His response to the damage that might be caused by these leaks might be something like, "Well, if governments didn't get involved in unnecessary wars, they wouldn't have to worry about the consequences of those wars." That is, if someone is injured in Iraq, it isn't because of the leaks, it is because they're in Iraq in the first place fighting a war over oil.
A more thorough examination can be found here:
http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-“to-destroy-this-invisible-government”/#
I agree that the content of the leaked documents is "nothing new" to those who bother to care. Many of us have known for years about the US' support of despotic governments in Honduras and much of Central America. We know that the Taliban and Al Qaeda both grew (in different directions, but from the same seed) from the Mujahadin that our government supported (and in many ways continues to support) when it was Russia occupying Afghanistan. And many of us knew much of what was released in the previous Wikileaks docs.
ReplyDeleteI don't deny for a second that the administration is using this as a way to distract from real issues, and I don't deny that they will take advantage of whatever they can from it - otherwise, they likely would have "silenced" Assange earlier, and they certainly would not have even brought to light the existence of the low-level soldier who copied all these docs in the first place. I don't even deny that they made it easy - way too easy - for a soldier of his clearance to access this info.
It's possible the admin (this one and the W admin) both knew what would happen and allowed it to, so they could use it in the way they want. By allowing "secret" information to be released about Iran, the Obama admin can say "look - we're not making stuff up like the previous administration did", and people will buy it more readily, although they swallowed the last bucket of chum pretty easily.
I don't know. And I agree that in the end, we need to be looking at the impending economic collapse, and we need to change the way we live. Wikileaks is a distraction, regardless of its legitimacy.