Wikileaks - The Death of Spin

The greatest truth about Wikileaks is that there is no way of blocking it. Not while governments rely on the internet. So all the quibbling is totally irrelevant.
As for the idiots who believe the lie that the files are all about how the Pope wears a hat, it isn't interesting enough to hear exactly how Washington sabotaged the Copenhagen talks. And hear that China is prepared to pull the plug on North Korea, and hear that Burma is building an atom bomb.  Or what the Americans really think of Pakistan and the Yemen.
 'If our troops’ presence in Pakistan was going to be visible, Pakistan might not let them into the country. And the Yemeni government might veto transparently American drone strikes.

This would mean killing fewer terrorists in the short run, but it would probably mean creating way fewer of them in the long run. '

Ali Abdulah Saleh, the Yemeni dictator, brags to a US diplomat: “We’ll continue to say the bombs are ours, not yours.” 

Meanwhile, critics who would have happily hanged Daniel Ellsberg for the Pentagon Papers are blustering that Assange is not even a pale imitation. But the man himself is quite certain.

 “EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”

We have discovered an America that was under our noses, in both the literal and metaphorical senses. After Hilarious's tender Epistle to the Brits yesterday, the Special Relationship seems to have got Specialer, if anything. But the only real question is "What do documents released by the Wikileaks website tell us.." And the answer is that everything is now very, very different. Turned inside out like the Lloyds of London building.

The other accusation of Wikileaks is that it doesn't understand the entire scope of how world affairs work behind closed doors and thus is unable to use proper discretion in what it releases, which assumes that the ruling classes do understand, which is patent nonsense.
They haven't shown much evidence of understanding yet, or we wouldn't be in a state of perpetual, industrially essential war.
The fact that the entire Wiki-Witchhunt cannot cite a single case where operatives or contacts have been placed at risk, and now have had to resort to a Fatwha on Assange and stealing the assets of Wikileaks, is testimony to the level of scrutiny exercised by Wikileaks and its partners in the conventional media.
If Joe Lieberman wants Assange's head on a pole today, how long before he wants to haul the editor of the New York Times onto the scaffold, and even poor old Alan Rusbridger? Wiki-Terror? The neologisms fly to all the 9/11 jargon like pins to a magnet. The state terrorists are being outed by their own actions. It's like watching monkeys with a mirror.
 The reason reactionaries and other corporate poodles are trying to sneer Wikileaks onto the back pages is because they know that the next tranche of files are just as likely to reveal the murky dealings of their beloved banks and oil corporations. They get that much, at least.
The cardboard house is collapsing in a rain of Kings and Queens and Jakes of Spades and Diamonds and Clubs. There isn't any precedent for this, I don't think. Though I'd like to hear some nominations.
If it's done nothing else, Wikileaks has flushed all the crazies out of the woods.  Screams like:
'YOU ARE CRAZY IF YOU ATTACK OUR GOVERNMENT!' are now common from the reactionary right, especially the American right, who have spent the last two years trying to destroy their own government themselves..
What they mean of course is:
'THE PARTY IS ALWAYS RIGHT!'
Did Orwell ever get a Nobel Prize? Of course not. Now that is crazy. 
As a side effect, the so-called 'Liberationists' will have to decide how much Liberty they really want, since they seem to be the ones demanding Assange's head on a spike. They will have to choose between Mother state and the truth. Between the Ku Klux Klan as supported by the banks, and Wikileaks, robbed of its assets and deprived of its donors by the banks. 
Progressives should welcome Wikileaks.  By scrutinising bureaucracy and the managerial world it makes a progressive society possible.  When it's done that, and there is a progressive country to blow the whistle on, the leaks can still be judged in the same way that they are now. But with Wikileaks and its clones in place, constantly monitoring the state from the inside, there may not be much to blow the whistle on.
 Meanwhile, don't worry about being able to donate to the toxic Ku Klux Klan, their website, bank accounts and PayPal streams are safe. Isn't that reassuring for you? Doesn't that ease your paranoia a bit?
For turning this into a moral issue, with Wikileaks on one side and the Klan on the other, America has been incredibly stupid. Again. Just as they were after 9/11, and after the fall of the Warsaw Pact, to name but a few. If they'd stuck to the mind-numbing trivialities of authenticity and ownership, the story would have shrunk down to the level of a Congestion Charge quibble. A battle of the bureacrats. But instead, by tomorrow, some smart Alec somewhere will have redrafted the I Have A Dream speech, and they won't be far wrong. Not only have Paypal Amazon and major banks been implicated in the Fatwha, now Twitter and possibly the rest of the 1st generation social network giants are under suspicion.  It could be All Change soon if they don't follow their users, rather than government and corporate convenience. 'Facebook - The Decline and Fall'? If Mastercard is not safe from attack, who is? Who's the Daddy now? The true power-structure of the internet is becoming clear, and it isn't good news for those who thought they controlled it. What we now have is a territorial war between billions of modern free-minded individuals and the dinosaur states and corporations who keep them afloat. And the dinosaurs have more to lose by a Scorched-Earth policy than we do. So turning off the internet is not on the cards.
But the likelihood is that for the dinosaurs, the meteor has already struck, and the shockwave is just over the horizon. Only the mammals will survive.

Along with the Guardian and the New York Times, the BBC has been one of the few organisations willing to co-operate with Wikileaks. And will be one of the few major organisations left relatively un-scarred by the new internet power-structure. In fact, they have everything to gain, whereas the commercial jackals have everything to lose, if they haven't already lost it.

But this isn't simply a matter of right and left. There will be some very strange bedfellows brokered by Wikileaks. Even The American Civil Liberties Union have joined in the debate on the side of Assange.

 "We’re deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks would be constitutional, or a good idea. The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Prosecuting WikiLeaks would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents. "

If the corporate world wants to get even more paranoid in its bunker, fine. But it won't do it any good. It will make its job more difficult and we will all see it happening live in cinemascope. There isn't anywhere for it to run anymore. The Sword of Damocles is always going to be over its head. Governments have a clear choice: come clean or become Chinese.

"I'm Julian, and this is My Friend Assange."

By tomorrow, Wikileaks Arch-Mastermind Julian Assange could be behind bars. A new European warrant has been issued for his arrest on very dubious Swedish charges. The Americans are also after his blood, shaved ape Joe Lieberman declaring that Wikileaks is the "most terrible act of espionage in US history" and is busy reinventing the treason laws to put a stop to it and try to turn back time and un-invent the internet. While the hapless Bradley Manning faces calls for his execution, in public, presumably. Lieberman is also busy bullying as many servers and associated sites into taking hostile action against Wikileaks. Amazon, in particular.
In effect, there is now a Fatwha on Julian Assange, even the Canadians are joining in:
"I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone of something."
Like the other village idiots sitting on the bridge sucking their thumbs, Lieberman doesn't understand what is happening to him. He doesn't understand that Wikileaks is not a website with lots of TopSecret information on it, but merely a piece of technology which anyone can use to do the same thing. It is the invention of the sickle. Lieberman's Law will not prosecute or deter a single 'spy', but will be as futile as trying to make all cameras 'illegal'. His law is unworkable since it would mean unplugging the internet, which his state machine depends on just as much as Iran's or even North Korea's.
Lieberman doesn't understand that we now have our own surveillance cameras inside government and corporations. Wikileaks amounts to another form of the 'Counter-veillance' used during the G20 demonstrations in London. Regardless of the destructive power of any of the individual leaks, the mere existence of Wikileaks represents a new map of the political universe, one as radical as Copernicus' heliocentric solar system. The state no longer being the sole arbiter of truth. The confidentiality provided by the Wikileaks system implies the eventual erosion of secrecy. And those states who will not voluntarily open their operation, and decide to retreat into a bunker of hyper-secrecy will ultimately become unworkable due to their own isolation. 
At this moment, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that there are disaffected lieutenants and captains and passed-over majors in the Burmese dictatorship who have their own axes to grind with their bosses, and who are now aware that revenge is only a few clicks away. Wikileaks might well prove to be be the mechanism behind the biggest wave of regime-change since 1989, if blockheads like Lieberman would get out of the way.
Yesterday, www.wikileaks.org was shut down (whether from direct attack or mere overload is largely immaterial) and had to relocate via Switzerland and Sweden (ironically enough) emerging as http://wikileaks.ch/. Producing the sequel was as easy as that. The Web Strikes Back. If all else fails the fastest way to access the site is to type its Internet Protocol address into your browser, which is http://213.251.145.96/.
 The next tranche of leaks are rumoured to uncover the machinations of the banking implosion of 2008. Whether Assange is in prison or not, the levels of betrayal and sheer sabotage of the bankers will make any accusations against Assange shrivel up like salted snails. 
Without Julian Assange, the US cable leaks would have been released un-cut. The White House needs him far more than he needs them. Together with his media partners, he is the only thing protecting the US from its own leakages. Which makes the ridiculous Fatwha against him all the more stupid and vindictive.
Some of those attacking him now should be very, very careful. When the revelations emerge which attack their political Bogeymen (the EEC, Walmart, Wall Street) they will have to perform a hand-brake turn of Essex delinquent proportions, and be revealed as stupid and vindictive too.. the rest were always a bunch of bastards, and have long sacrificed any right to mercy.
It's interesting also that no outlet has yet gone to the trouble of finding someone charged with the same offences as Assange, and asked them how they were treated, and how many superpowers tried to extradite them, and how many US Congressmen and presidential hopefuls called for their assassination.
No doubt this will be because the case is sub-judice?

Guardian Interview

Oligarchs 2 - Football 0

In a chilling impression of a schizoid robot zombie narrating his own storyboard, Sep Blatter eventually announced that FIFA had chosen Russia to host 2018 World Cup - Two self-serving oligarchies scratch each other's backs - Panorama is justified.
If FIFA rejected England's bid because of Panorama, they do not deserve the stranglehold they have on world football, and the sooner a rival accountable, transparent organisation emerges to put football on a reputable level, the better.
Competing governing bodies are a sad prospect, and with little hope for the sport, as in boxing, but they are inevitable when the monopoly controlling power loses this much credibility.
The idea that we shouldn't have Rocked The Boat is despicable. A craven submission to coercion and censorship. FIFA had a glorious opportunity to prove its detractors wrong, and instead it proved them, and the BBC, right. The Murdoch papers will try to whip up a hate-storm against the BBC. The Panorama revelations being the fatal dagger in a fiendish plot to rob Britain of £Billions with which to build orphanages and kitten sanctuaries.
A Russian World Cup certainly robs Rupert Murdoch of £Billions, but like FIFA, he would have had to pay very little tax to Britain in April 2019. In fact, almost all those trying to suppress the truth about FIFA stood to gain from an English tournament, but would have paid less to Britain in return than the average consumer.
It also seems that Blatter instructed the jury, mentioning the 'toxic' British media, who he was not happy with - who have not been very co-operative with The Organisation. What, he asks, has FIFA done to reserve such disrespect? 
A responsible FIFA would be less worried about investigative journalism which uncovers corruption, and more worried about a muckraking British press willing to destroy the reputations and morale of the English world cup squad in the run-up to the tournament, as it did this year, effectively scuppering any chance of success.
But if only it were journalistic integrity which was at stake. The fact is that FIFA's Terms & Conditions include exorbitant tax breaks and suspension of trifling rights such as the Minimum Wage. We're well out of it. If the price of getting on the World Cup gravy train is censorship and exploitation, we can leave it to the professionals. 
The Dutch estimated that, done properly, hosting the World Cup would have cost them money, not made a profit. But then, their estimates included silly little luxuries like the tournament's carbon footprint. No chance of Russia worrying about trifles like that. Another chance wasted. 
If major sporting extravaganzas are to continue, they will have to learn to live within environmental limits. FIFA will be the last governing body to pioneer such an agenda. And we do not know exactly how today's decision was taken. 
But we do now have more confirmation than ever that Russia is a gangster state, thanks to Wikileaks, and the BBC. Presumably there are just as many principled people left to blow the whistle on FIFA as there are on Russia, or the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, or the behaviour of American troops when they invade other people's countries. So maybe we will eventually find out just how much back-scratching went on between the various players. But it will be no thanks to the Murdoch media and its fellow-travellers, whose appetite for censorship and suppression grows steadily with each advance in the technology of free-expression.
South Africa and Russia did not win the tournament rights because they had the best stadiums or the best level of football or the best crowds, infrastructure or security levels. They won because of the legacy of consumers left behind after the corporate Blitzkreig of advertising had done its job. As with all wars, it was a battle of market expansion. Maybe we will one day see a World Cup and an Olympic Games which aren't merely vast advertising campaigns for Coca Cola, Nike and McDonalds, but not until FIFA and the IOC are about sport, not profit.
Now that history hasn't repeated itself this far, and we haven't won the rights to stage the World Cup 2 years after the Olympics, we can only hope it goes all the way. The last time, our celebrations were very brief.

Wikileaks and the Pope's Hat

STOP PRESS! POPE WEARS HAT!

Just about sums up the popular response to the latest Wikileaks revelations. Diplomats and politicians are liars? Tell us something we didn't know - which is missing the point by a mile, whether from deliberate stupidity or just the usual kind.

 The main point of Wikileaks is that it ensures anonymity for the source. It reduces the risk to any whistleblower and therefore breaches an entire level of state and corporate secrecy. All of a sudden they have no trousers. The revelations of past actions and attitudes by those who run our lives are significant enough, but the it's the way they behave from now on which will show the real significance of being able to monitor their machine from the inside. It's an extension of the phenomenon of 'counter-veillance' which shed light on the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests.
In effect, Wikileaks has lifted the burkha of mystery from the comely maiden of diplomacy to reveal the gurning Anne Wiiddicombe beneath. Of course the parents and the potential in-laws are going to be annoyed. The question now is how much states will feed misinformation into the archive, and how much more paranoid and secretive and insular and removed from reality they become. But in that case, Wikileaks is calling their bluff. It offers them the choice of genuine openness and democracy, or of abandoning all pretence and retreating behind Russian (or even Chinese) curtains of secrecy and paranoia. But they have to remember that the bride in the Burkha is still more marriagable than one in a suit of armour.
Wikileaks also reveals the hypocrisy of all the media corporations which refuse to publish it, and which try to smear this new freedom as old fashioned Treason. These are largely the same corporations which killed to publish the MP's Expenses information, and will eventually publish the choice titbits of Wikileaks. And which, incidentally, are also in favour of turning a blind eye to FIFA corruption as long as England's bid wins, and they get to make vast amounts of money.
The other ridiculous accusation is that Wikileaks are not a 'democratic' organisation. Wikileaks is just as 'democratic' as nay other form of journalism. In fact, since it does not rely on advertising revenue, it is approximately 27.63 times more democratic than NewsCorp, which would suppress this information and Wikileaks and the entire internet if it could. Just as it has suppressed every piece of politically inconvenient information it has ever known. By its opposition to Wikileaks, it is in fact admitting that it would have suppressed the revelations which led to the MP's Expenses Scandal.
The BBC is doing its job by giving these revelations the space they deserve, as it is in publishing the truth about FIFA. If journalism has a future, it is through working with the consequences of the internet, not by trying to deny or vilify them.

Wikileaks And The Trouserless United Nations

A single typical file from the Wikileaks hoard would at one point have easily cost one life, directly or indirectly, given the number of operatives and contacts and the Byzantine convolution of deception and human bungling required to deposit each file under its park bench on Hampstead Heath.
Now it is possible for anyone to anonymously submit any classified or Dark Information to Wikileaks, and via them to the world. The great fear is that this will eventually uncover the genuine political and economic policies of states, and reveal how little democratic control the people actually enjoy. That the knowledge of the existence of another universe of policies and strategems and treachery will expose the modern nation state for the massive Lie Machine it is. However, a trouserless United Nations would in fact be a Very Good Thing indeed. If the mighty US has lost its trousers, how many other countries can guarantee their modesty? If any dissident can now publish to the world in relative confidence, what price state secrecy? Governments might even have to live by their manifesto commitments. And where would we be then?
A previous generation of political thought would have called this a revolution. The fact that there are no barricades or Molotov cocktails does not prevent it from being one.