Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-23): More Re- Manning, Lamo, Moore, & More

A couple of good tweets from the last 24 hrs.:

@GregMitch: I'm live-blogging WikiLeaks news & views again, on day 25 of "Greg Mitchell Held Hostage."

and

@ggreenwald: Simultaneously advocating government transparency and individual privacy isn't hypocritical or inconsistent; it's a key for basic liberty.

For those who prefer their news re- what WL has brought us in cartoon form, The 12 Days of Wikileaks provides a partial list and is accompanied by a transcript with links to the stories mentioned.

The EFF has posted a frightening reminder that the drive to throttle WL continues and of the ease with which the powerful can silence dissidents: "Wikileaks Mirror Taken Down: Host Buckles Under Demands from Upstream Provider." SiteGround required removal of the WL files on the user's site as a condition to reinstatement of his account because, it said, "a future DDOS attack might violate its terms of use" (emphasis supplied). Of course, any such attack would most likely be mounted by the US government or others embarrassed by WL's publications. EFF notes, "your speech online is only as free as [your] weakest intermediary"; and "[i]f intermediaries are willing to use the potential for future DDOS attacks as a reason to cut off users, they can cut off anyone for anything."

Excellent investigation of the conditions under which the Army private suspected of leaking the cables to WL is being held, at Firedoglake. The United Nations' top anti-torture envoy is now looking into a complaint that Manning is being mistreated; more at AP. FDL also has a great Manning-Wikileaks timeline. UPDATE: As of 2010-12-28, inconsistencies in Adrian Lamo's story about his contacts with Manning, unearthed through some great analysis at FDL, have continued to multiply; meanwhile, Wired's Kevin Poulsen continues to refuse to release the full texts of Lamo's internet chats with Manning. FDL has now also added a compilation of key Manning-related articles, here.

From The Guardian re- revelations of State Dept. preoccupation with screenings of Michael Moore's films in other countries:

After a leaked cable from US diplomats in Havana falsely claimed Cuba had banned Moore's documentary Sicko – when in fact it was shown on state television – another cable reveals US officials flying into a panic after hearing a rumour that a New Zealand cabinet minister was hosting a screening of Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11. . . . the classified cable from the US embassy in Wellington in 2003 . . . breathlessly report[s] a series of calls to the New Zealand prime minister's office . . . .

More at the foregoing link and at MichaelMoore.com.

"According to Domain Name Wire, the [Bank of America] has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of directors' and senior executives' names followed by 'sucks' and 'blows.' For example, the company registered a number of domains for CEO Brian Moynihan: BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com." Emphasis supplied; more here. Sounds like bank regulators should take a closer look, regardless of what WL may or may not be preparing to release.

WaPo reports that the CIA has launched a task force "to examine whether the latest release of [US Embassy Cables by WL] might affect the agency's foreign relationships or operations":

Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.

* * * * *
To some agency veterans, WikiLeaks has vindicated the CIA's long-standing aversion to sharing secrets with other government agencies, a posture that came under sharp criticism after it was identified as a factor that contributed to the nation's failure to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Emphasis supplied; more at the link. Evidently, those intelligence agency veterans haven't actually bothered to read Assange's own writings.

Wikileaks plans to release a cache of documents concerning Israel within the next six months. More here.

Statement from the U.N. on WL here. It reiterates principles re- freedom of expression and access to info possessed by public officials vs. secrecy where there's a risk of substantial harm and journalistic responsibility, without making any factual findings or reaching any conclusions re- particular cases.

Excellent editorial at El Pais regarding its decision to publish info from the cables. Here are a few quotes; but the whole thing's well worthwhile:

We must not lose sight of the fact that the important thing about the WikiLeaks revelations are the revelations themselves . . . .

* * * * *
I believe that the global interest sparked by the WikiLeaks papers is mainly due to the simple but very powerful fact that they conclusively reveal the extent to which politicians in the advanced Western democracies have been lying to their citizens.

* * * * *
Tens of thousands of soldiers are fighting a war in Afghanistan that their respective leaders know is not winnable. Tens of thousands of soldiers are shoring up a government known around the world to be corrupt, but which is tolerated by those who sent the soldiers there in the first place. The WikiLeaks cables show that none of the Western powers believes that Afghanistan can become a credible nation in the medium term, and much less become a viable democracy . . . .

* * * * *
Even the least attentive observer cannot fail to be shocked by the maneuvers to shut down three investigations by the High Court that affected the United States . . . . It was equally aggressive in trying to derail Spanish judicial inquiries into torture at Guantánamo, the CIA's kidnapping of suspected Islamic militants, and the killing by US troops in Iraq of a Spanish cameraman in 2003. . . . We have also seen how US diplomats in Berlin warned the German government of the serious consequences of bringing charges against CIA agents accused of kidnapping Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was abducted and taken to Afghanistan where he was tortured. El-Masri was then dumped in Albania when it was realized they had the wrong man. Kidnapping and torture are serious crimes. For US diplomats to pressure an ally to prevent suspects from being investigated is unacceptable, and trashes the idea that those diplomats are just doing their job.

* * * * *
I am aware that publishing this information contrary to the wishes of my government has involved certain risks. But I am also aware that by publishing this detailed account of what our governments get up to in our name has made a contribution to the empowering of voters, and will hopefully strengthen their will to improve our democracy.

* * * * *
Our obligations definitely do not . . . include protecting governments and the powerful in general from embarrassing revelations.

Emphasis supplied; more at the link.

"Free" at the New Museum

Wish I could see it (through 2010-01-22):

“Free” explores how the internet has fundamentally changed our landscape of information and our notion of public space. Our shared space has expanded beyond streets and schools to more distributed forms of collectivity. What constitutes this expanded public is not only greater social connectedness but a highly visual, hybrid commons of information. As the artist Seth Price wrote in his essay “Dispersion,” which serves as a touchstone for this exhibition and is featured here within a large-scale sculptural Essay with Knots: “Collective experience is now based on simultaneous private experiences, distributed across the field of media culture, knit together by ongoing debate, publicity, promotion, and discussion. Publicness today has as much to do with sites of production and reproduction as it does with any supposed physical commons, so a popular album could be regarded as a more successful instance of public art than a monument tucked away in an urban plaza.”

“Free” takes its name from free culture, a social movement that acknowledges the revolution the internet has caused in industries like music and print publishing, and argues that it be dealt with as an opportunity for greater sharing and distribution of knowledge, rather than a threat. “Free” is based in this commitment to openness — but not directly about the movement itself. Rather, it explores how artists are engaging with the complex freedoms of a newly expanded public space; how they are examining the possibilities and dilemmas enabled by broader availability and circulation of digital material, rooting out information that is missing or hidden in an ostensibly more transparent society, and locating new contexts for art to take place.

Instead of exploring the internet’s formal properties — code and connectivity among them — “Free” explores its broader influence as a territory populated and fought over by individuals, government, and corporations, as a tool and as a cultural catalyst. The artists included here span various disciplines: photography, sculpture, video, and installation, among others. They emerge from different modes of artistic practice, and are connected through an expansive conversation around the show’s themes. The exhibition catalogue will take the form of an active website — newmuseum.org/free — including descriptions of each artwork in the exhibition, biographical details on the artists, as well as essays and a blog.

“Free” is curated by Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome and Adjunct Curator of the New Museum.

Wikileaks UPDATES (2010-12-20): Roving Hands, Etc.

Not that kind . . . Karl Rove has been employed by the Swedish Prime Minister for the last two years and is believed to have influenced the country's handling of the allegations against Assange. More at HuffPo.

Apple has reportedly pulled a Wikileaks app from the iTunes store. The app gave users access to the cables and other docs on the WikiLeaks site and also provided a live feed from the wikileaks Twitter account. The app is still available for the Android.

Cablegate: the Game makes a game of searching the cables, awarding points for reading, tagging and summarizing finds.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon discusses The NYT's decision to publish an article today re- high-level planning for imminent, covert military action by the US in Pakistan – a kind of info that's usually top-secret and that Wikileaks has never published. (The info for the article was not obtained from Wikileaks but through the reporters' own investigation.) Greenwald argues The NYT was right to publish the info, since (among other reasons) "There are few things more damaging to basic democratic values than having the government conduct or escalate a secret war beyond public debate or even awareness. By exposing these classified plans, [the reporters] did exactly what good journalists ought to do: inform the public about important actions taken or being considered by their government which the government is attempting to conceal." He of course proceeds to call out for their hypocrisy those who call Wikileaks culpable while attempting to distinguish The NYT – including Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, the Times' web hosting company and the various banks who have cut off Wikileaks.

The BBC's published the transcript of a lengthy interview with Assange. At least 80% of the interview is spent hounding Assange for his alleged personal shortcomings; but if that's what you're interested in, it's the best Q & A I've seen.

Here's another interesting documentary on YouTube: Julian Assange – a Wanted Man, aired shortly before Wikileaks' publication of the Afghan War docments leak in July , 2010.

Alan Greenspan Confirms: Crisis Caused by Fraud by Counterparties

Note, he's not talking about fraud by the little guys; he's talking about fraud by "counterparties" – the people packaging and selling securitized mortgages and derivatives. This is from Nov. 9 of this year; too bad Greenspan didn't get clarity on this problem (or others) sooner.

Thanks to Karl Denninger's Market Ticker, one of few rational observers of economic news these days.

Speaking of the Media . . .

Pilger on Propaganda in the Media

John Pilger is a journalist and documentary maker who's twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award and whose docs have received academy awards in Britain and the US. This is the first of 7 segments, all currently available on YouTube.



Pilger was relatively early in identifying Obama as a "corporate marketing creation."

Fun; and Circuitous Mental Profit re- Wikileaks

When I was 14, my parents couldn't stand that my chores (making my bed, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, dusting, and vacuuming, taking out the trash, mowing and trimming our thick, 2/3-acre lawn using a heavy, non-self-propelled mower and hand shears, re-painting all the shutters on the house plus a picnic table, bench, etc.) did not completely take up all my free time; and I was too young to be legally, gainfully employed. So they enrolled me in a typing course, and for the duration, I rode my bike to class each week day.

The ride was 4 miles each way and included an extremely large hill. The area had been under a glacier, which might have scraped the land flat on its way in but left gigantic mounds when it melted. I never made it up this one without having to walk my bike up the last 10 - 20 yards.

I managed not to resist learning to type entirely; but engraved more deeply on my mind was an idea: that "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."

We were told that typing those particular letters in that particular order involved the most difficult typing movements, so we practiced it, to improve our agility and speed. The sentiment was probably also thought helpful as an inspiration to young citizens.

Now, of course, we're just urged to shop.

Back then, my country certainly needed help, but I was too young and oblivious to feel personally called. But on some level, I understood that the time might come.

Re- the video below, there's a beyond-urgent need for Julian's stylist; but it's worth the visual torture for the info/ideas – it's jam-packed (pardon the pun) – and for the spoof on Alex Jones, plus lines such as "Obama must get firm grip on Wikitits."



If you appreciated the sentiment near the end, you may also like:

Let’s do something, while we have the chance! It’s not every day that we are needed. . . . Let us make the most of it before it is too late!
– Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1949; emphasis supplied)

Or as Hamlet said, "the readiness is all."

This evening when I went out with friends, I brought 100 copies of this flyer with me. I returned home with about 25% of them. About 80% of the people I'd offered them to seemed glad to have them.

Here's another idea. Let's slip the word, "Wikileaks" into our everyday conversation, for no reason, without explanation, and on a regular basis.

More fun: Assange on The Colbert Report last spring.

"After Hours with George Quartz"

At CentralTrak last night; loved it. Impossible to do it justice in few words, but call it the Twilight Zone of talk shows. I think they really were taping it, and hope to see the results. You should definitely try to catch it if/when it returns.

More visuals here.

UPDATE: Edited "tv" taped excerpts from this performance can now be viewed on "Quartz"'s vimeo channel.