Davider

Wikileaks smells like another Farewell Dossier

This entire episode simply doesn’t pass the smell test. We are to believe that the F.B.I. has been aware of the theft of the cables for months, yet they could do nothing to stop it. Strange how I.C.E. and the Dept. of Justice were able to so easily shut down 82 websites yesterday that they considered illegal.

Then look at the cables themselves. They haven’t been vetted for authenticity yet. Already there is speculation on the possibility that some of them are fakes. None of them were classified higher than Secret. They were all available on a government intranet that had literally hundreds of thousands of users with access. Much of what has been reviewed already is simply confirmation of information already known. It seems that no vital state secrets have been revealed here.

The Farewell Dossier was a covert CIA operation from 1982. The Russians were building a natural gas pipeline across Siberia. They lacked the technical expertise for the software required to operate it. They knew the U.S. had it and put the KGB up to stealing it from us. We were on to them and the CIA let them steal it along with some tainted software code. In mid 1982 with the gas pipeline pumping at full capacity, a massive explosion rocked Siberia. So much so that NORAD thought it to be a nuclear test. The CIA told them not to worry. It took 14 years before the entire story came out that the CIA was behind it.

Today, we have Wikileaks seemingly able to do the impossible. They have obtained massive amounts of cables and released them publicly. Some of them are potentially very damaging and embarrassing to our foreign relations. The fallout could be extensive. In fact, it’s considered a matter of national security.

Now, what could be the response to this event? How about some new government authority to regulate the internet? In the interest of national security of course. To help keep us safe. Who could deny the government this authority? Not the American public, who will willingly go along with it.

WikiLeaks' Marketing Strategy: A Stroke of Genius

To understand what WikiLeaks has done, we must understand economic cause and effect. Let us begin with a comparable market: the market for gambling.

Governments have laws against gambling. Why? The justification is moral principles. This reason is less persuasive, once the government sets up state lotteries and also licenses taxable gambling, such as horse racing. The real reason is the governments want to monopolize the vice. They expect greater tax revenues.

Governments arrest bookies. But bookies are merely providers of the service. The source of demand is the individual gambler: the guy who is placing the bets. The infrastructure that delivers the service is surely basic to the process, but it is the individual citizen who is the prime mover. Why? He is paying for it.

Want to understand the process? Follow the money. It ends with the customer.

The government prosecutes the bookie because it is cheaper than following the money to the sources. It's a matter of the economies of scale. But it is hypocritical to blame the bookie. It is cheaper to arrest and try him than to arrest and try all of his customers, but he is not the source of the practice. Customers are.

Back to WikiLeaks. Who is the source of the problem? Readers of articles about the scandals. This is gossip for educated people. This is Jerry Springer for college graduates. This is "You know what she said about him?"

Readers are going to websites: plural. They are not going to WikiLeaks' site. They are going to the "bookies'" sites: The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times. These are the national "newspapers of record." These are the Establishment's main news sources in the West.

Do you see what Julian Assange has done? He has pitted one against another. He gives them first shot at the leaked documents for a few days. Then he releases them to everyone. "Want a scoop? I'll provide it. Want to be an also-ran? Just sit on the story." He has them salivating for the next release. The papers have staffers ready to read, write, and post.

This strategy is working. The Establishment press is all over these stories.

The public, Pavlovian to the core, can't wait to get the next bit of gossip. "And then she said this!"

This is National Enquirer for the literati.

Obama's spokesmen are playing it cool. This is wise on his part. Meanwhile, what we might call the Lieberman/Huckabee/Palin axis is going ballistic. "We must stop WikiLeaks!"

Really? Why bother with WikiLeaks? Just arrest the editors and publishers of the outlets -- the major Establishment media. If all those government-funded official leakers (spies) are at risk, then the source of this risk is the Establishment media.

But the critics cannot arrest the editors and publishers. The ACLU would go into action. So would the other Establishment media. "This is a freedom of the press issue! This is a first amendment issue." This is a hits-on-our-site issue.

When The Guardian did a live interview with Assange on December 3, it got so much Web traffic that the site went down.

The incensed critics are not about to stick their fingers into this media hornets' nest. So, they call for Assange's head. Why? Economies of scale. It is cheaper to shut down WikiLeaks' site.

Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values

Western Civilization no longer upholds the values it proclaims, so what is the basis for its claim to virtue?

For example, the US print and TV media and the US government have made it completely clear that they have no regard for the First Amendment. Consider CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s reaction to the leaked diplomatic cables that reveal how the US government uses deceptions, bribes, and threats to control other governments and to deceive the American and other publics. Blitzer is outraged that information revealing the US government’s improprieties reached the people, or some of them. As Alexander Cockburn wrote, Blitzer demanded that the US government take the necessary steps to make certain that journalists and the American people never again find out what their government is up to.

The disregard for the First Amendment is well established in the US media, which functions as a propaganda ministry for the government. Remember the NSA leak given to the New York Times that the George W. Bush regime was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spying on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court? The New York Times spiked the story for one year and did not release it until after Bush’s reelection. By then, the Bush regime had fabricated a legal doctrine that "authorized" Bush to violate US law.

Glenn Greenwald writing at Salon has exposed the absence of moral standards among WikiLeaks’ critics. WikiLeaks’ critics could not make it clearer that they do not believe in accountable government. And to make certain that the government is not held accountable, WikiLeaks’ critics are calling for every possible police state measure, including extra-judicial murder, to stamp out anyone who makes information available that enables the citizenry to hold government accountable.

The US government definitely does not believe in accountable government. Among the first things the Obama regime did was to make certain that there would be no investigation into the Bush regime’s use of lies, fabricated "intelligence," and deception of the American public and the United Nations in order to further its agenda of conquering the independent Muslim states in the Middle East and turning them into US puppets. The Obama regime also made certain that no member of the Bush regime would be held accountable for violating US and international laws, for torturing detainees, for war crimes, for privacy violations or for any of the other criminal acts of the Bush regime.

As the cables leaked by a patriotic American to WikiLeaks reveal, the US government was even able to prevent accountable government in the UK by having British prime minister Brown "fix" the official Chilcot Inquiry into the deceptions used by former prime minister Tony Blair to lead the British into serving as mercenaries in America’s wars. The US was able to do this, because the British prime minister does not believe in accountable government either.

The leaked documents show that the last thing the US government wants anywhere is a government that is accountable to its own citizens instead of to the US government.

The US government’s frontal assault on freedom of information goes well beyond WikiLeaks and shutting down its host servers. In a December 2 editorial, "Wave goodbye to Internet freedom," the Washington Times reports that Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski has "outlined a plan to expand the federal government’s power over the Internet."

The obvious, but unasked, question is: Why does the US government fear the American people and believe that only news that is managed and spun by the government is fit to print? Is there an agenda afoot to turn citizens into subjects?

Escalation of Confrontation

I cannot escape the feeling that Butler Shaffer’s long-held prediction is coming true: “The threat to the established order would be devastating, a challenge that would elicit the most violent and desperate efforts to defend the status quo. Wars, increased police powers, the enhanced regulation of and restrictions on alternative social systems would become the norm.” Joseph Lieberman’s proposed “Internet Kill Switch” is an example. Every increased resistance to the empire or any concocted event is going to be played as a threat to the mythical national security and used to enhance control over people so as to dampen any resistance. The new Old Order is not going to give up without a struggle. Trash it in your minds. Think of it as trash, as rubbish, which it is. It trashes everything it touches. And think of the people unalterably in it and who unwaveringly support it and have every intent to extend it further as trash for being the liars, manipulators, hypocrites, thieves, murderers, usurpers, and traitors that they are.