It was only a few months ago when I first mentioned Julian Assange to someone and unsurprisingly they didn't know who I was talking about. I explained what type of organization wikileaks was and went over some of the various notable leaks, the most recent at that time being collateral murder. Since that time wikileaks has become a household name and while people most likely have not read any of the actual leaks, they all have an opinion on the site and Assange.
I can't even recall exactly how I found wikileaks. It's been years, around the time of Project Chanology where Anonymous was using information from wikileaks to build their case against the Church Of $cientology. So wikileaks has been one of my bookmarks for years, I would check it regularly and often come across some interesting memos and various "secrets" that were interesting enough. But for me they really became earth shattering with the CRU emails.
As we know all to well, "global warming" was a dominant theme of this decade. Everyone was hammering it into our heads, on the local news, musicians, textbooks, in movies, in schools, in commercials, it was absolutely everywhere. It was a way for the elites to keep the would be challengers in check, to keep the freer markets held back while the non White world caught up, for White society to pay taxes (reparations) to the rest of the world for being successful.
Then one day you hear about climate gate, and then bam the lid is off. It's done. Over. EVERYTHING that they had told you about global warming (conveniently renamed climate change) was shattered, the models used for projections massive amounts of data was quite simply created out of thin air to match an agenda. And wikileaks was the one who laid this bare, all the emails for the world to read.
Recently there has been a lot of talk about wikileaks and if they are controlled by the CIA or Mossad (whose motto is "by deception thou shalt do war"). Now I find this to be a plausible scenario but I don't think the evidence is sound enough to justify passing judgement just yet.
So I would like to share my thoughts about wikileaks being controlled and address some of the arguments that are routinely brought up.
1. "wikileaks must be mossad because the Afghan War Diary and Iraq War Logs perpetuate the myth of Bin Laden, and Iran being a threat"
To me this has a plausible explanation that doesn't necessarily make wikileaks a mossad op, at least a knowing mossad op.
Wikileaks, is just a way for people to anonymously leak information. They aren't investigative journalist or spies who steal information so the information that they receive depends on someone to leak it. So being that these are hundreds of thousands of reports from the ground, the people making those reports primarily US military aren't going to say "osama is dead and has been for years" they are just following protocols when filling out reports and they are brainwashed at least 2x the amount the American people are as to why we are over there fighting. So it is not as if everyone in the military understands yet just covers up the charade, they have been sold the same load of BS everyone has and their reports reflect their brainwashing.
The other scenario is that at least some of the documents are false and the leaker is a mossad operative and is doing so to frame Iran and perpetuate the big scary muslim threat the jews love to parade around TV so that we will continue to fight their wars. Wikileaks would have no way to know this.
2."wikileaks must be controlled because the terror state of Israel (kikestan) comes out smelling like a rose"
This is indeed troubling. First, wikileaks is set to release several thousands israeli cables so they may well have some dirt to kick up. Also, if it was some kind of psy ops and a mossad agent released these original cables for the AWD and IWL then of course it is going to paint Israel in a nice light. Once again if people don't leak it, wikileaks can't run it. Now if there was evidence that wikileaks sat on information than that would change the story completely.
But there is more in my case for the (at least for now) defense of wikileaks.
Where were the detractors when they blew up climategate, or collateral murder? If they were a controlled group I just cannot see them leaking material of such tremendous caliber. Even though they would have to build up respect, these leaks, especially climategate are just too high for them to want to reveal.
You also have to look at these leaks from the point of view of the US government. Here you have a rogue group who is mildly popular worldwide but with outright persecution would only gain in popularity. What can you do? Well first you denounce them through your mainstream channels and get the sheep calling for Assanges head on a platter for aiding terrorists.
Secondly, through the non mainstream channels you spread the word that wikileaks might be controlled.
Now think about it, who is going to leak information that they might be either killed, fired, imprisoned, or fined if they are caught to a group that may be run by the CIA or Mossad? Who would donate money to this group?
Answer, nobody would and that is the point.
You now have covered 99% of your population, the 95% sheep who just mimic whatever the controlled media says or the 4 percent who might actually leak or donate to wikileaks and who get their information from non mainstream sources.
Case closed, it's as simple as that.
So in short, to me the jury is still out on wikileaks. I could see it going either way, I sincerely hope that they are legit and that those in power are actually starting to worry that their deceit may be layed bare and that it isn't just an act.
Time will tell, there certainly are some red flags and I proceed with caution personally. But I see no reason to pass judgement yet on wikileaks.
Showing posts with label Wikileaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wikileaks. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Wikileaks Set To Publish Thousands Of 'Sensitive' Israeli Cables
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said his whistleblowing website plans to publish hundreds of "sensitive" U.S. diplomatic cables on Israel, Al-Jazeera television reported on Thursday.
"Sensitive and classified documents" on Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon and January's assassination in Dubai of Hamas militant Mahmud al-Mabhuh would be released, Assange told Al-Jazeera in an interview.
Assange said WikiLeaks had 3,700 U.S. documents on Israel, including 2,700 originating from Israel, but denied the website had any agreement in place to spare the country of leaks. "We do not have any secret deals with any country," he said according to an Arabic translation of remarks he made in English which were posted on Al-Jazeera's website. "We do not have any direct or indirect contacts with the Israelis," Assange is quoted as saying, adding no more than two percent of available documents on Israel have been released so far.
Some of Israel's neighbors, most notably Turkey, have expressed unease at the lack of leaks the whistleblowing website has released on Israel. Following initial reaction to the first leaked U.S. Embassy cables many of which revealed diplomatic secrets about Turkey and its other neighbors, Turkish officials have started to suspect that “the main cause of these leaks was to weaken the Turkish government.”
Hüseyin Çelik, deputy leader of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the party’s spokesperson, earlier this month said “Israel could have engineered the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on WikiLeaks as a plot to corner Turkey on both domestic and foreign policy.” Turkey and Israel have had bitter relations since the flotilla crisis, in which Israeli commandos killed eight Turkish and one American-Turkish citizen.
“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these. Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents,” Çelik said.
Israel fought a devastating one-month war with Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, mainly soldiers. Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan has linked Israel's spy agency Mossad to the Jan. 20 Cold War-style assassination in a Dubai hotel of Mabhuh.
"Sensitive and classified documents" on Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon and January's assassination in Dubai of Hamas militant Mahmud al-Mabhuh would be released, Assange told Al-Jazeera in an interview.
Assange said WikiLeaks had 3,700 U.S. documents on Israel, including 2,700 originating from Israel, but denied the website had any agreement in place to spare the country of leaks. "We do not have any secret deals with any country," he said according to an Arabic translation of remarks he made in English which were posted on Al-Jazeera's website. "We do not have any direct or indirect contacts with the Israelis," Assange is quoted as saying, adding no more than two percent of available documents on Israel have been released so far.
Some of Israel's neighbors, most notably Turkey, have expressed unease at the lack of leaks the whistleblowing website has released on Israel. Following initial reaction to the first leaked U.S. Embassy cables many of which revealed diplomatic secrets about Turkey and its other neighbors, Turkish officials have started to suspect that “the main cause of these leaks was to weaken the Turkish government.”
Hüseyin Çelik, deputy leader of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the party’s spokesperson, earlier this month said “Israel could have engineered the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on WikiLeaks as a plot to corner Turkey on both domestic and foreign policy.” Turkey and Israel have had bitter relations since the flotilla crisis, in which Israeli commandos killed eight Turkish and one American-Turkish citizen.
“One has to look at which countries are pleased with these. Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents,” Çelik said.
Israel fought a devastating one-month war with Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 160 Israelis, mainly soldiers. Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan has linked Israel's spy agency Mossad to the Jan. 20 Cold War-style assassination in a Dubai hotel of Mabhuh.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Julian Assange Was Accused of Rape by Anna Ardin, a Radical Feminist Who Was Out for Revenge
SOURCE
You can’t make this stuff up. Legion alerted me to a post at the False Rape Society on the identity of one of Julian Assange’s accusers – a radical feminist with a revenge fetish:
Anna Ardin, a notorious radical known in Sweden for her feminism views on how men achieve social dominance through sex, has been known to be bent on revenge. On January Ardin posted a blog entry on ‘7 Steps to Legal Revenge by Anna Ardin’, which included a statement, I’ve been thinking about some revenge over the last few days… An article on the blog can be read here - http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2010/08/strangest-blog-thread-yet-on-swedish.html .
It is also noted that this is not the first time Ardin has accused someone for molestation of a sexual nature in Sweden.
Ardin invited Assange to Stockholm, and was briefly appointed his press secretary during his visit.
The story begins the weekend of August 15. Assange wanted to attend a Swedish crayfish party, Ardin made the arrangements.
According to the Swedish newspaper Expressen, Assange sexually harassed a woman (Ardin) in Stockholm then two or three days later traveled 20km to Enköping where he supposedly raped another woman (Ardin’s friend). The Expressen concludes by an astonishing coincidence, the two women were friends. They decided a week later to go to a police station together saying that “Assange raped and harassed us”.
I’m guessing Anna Ardin is the “Woman A” mentioned here.
Do you understand this? Assange’s “victim” is a twisted, man-hating bitch who was bent on getting revenge for being played. She fabricated a rape charge because she was mad at him for porking her younger hotter tighter girlfriend within two days of putting it in her. Ardin is a sick puppy whose petty act of vengeance will damn an innocent man.
If ever there was a time for us to spring into action, this is it. We must sound the bell – Julian Assange’s rape accusers are nothing more than lying feminist slags. The name “Anna Ardin” must go down with Crystal Gail Mangum and Katelyn Faber in the Hall of Girls Who Cried Rape. We must make the definitive case as to how feminists have destroyed modern society by making it easy for mentally disturbed groupies to make false rape accusations because their feeeeeeelings were hurt. We must hang this albatross around the feminists’ necks and give them a blow that they will never recover from.
If there is a men’s rights movement, this is your call to action. This is where you must prove you are more than talk. The ball is in your court.
You can’t make this stuff up. Legion alerted me to a post at the False Rape Society on the identity of one of Julian Assange’s accusers – a radical feminist with a revenge fetish:
Anna Ardin, a notorious radical known in Sweden for her feminism views on how men achieve social dominance through sex, has been known to be bent on revenge. On January Ardin posted a blog entry on ‘7 Steps to Legal Revenge by Anna Ardin’, which included a statement, I’ve been thinking about some revenge over the last few days… An article on the blog can be read here - http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2010/08/strangest-blog-thread-yet-on-swedish.html .
It is also noted that this is not the first time Ardin has accused someone for molestation of a sexual nature in Sweden.
Ardin invited Assange to Stockholm, and was briefly appointed his press secretary during his visit.
The story begins the weekend of August 15. Assange wanted to attend a Swedish crayfish party, Ardin made the arrangements.
According to the Swedish newspaper Expressen, Assange sexually harassed a woman (Ardin) in Stockholm then two or three days later traveled 20km to Enköping where he supposedly raped another woman (Ardin’s friend). The Expressen concludes by an astonishing coincidence, the two women were friends. They decided a week later to go to a police station together saying that “Assange raped and harassed us”.
I’m guessing Anna Ardin is the “Woman A” mentioned here.
Do you understand this? Assange’s “victim” is a twisted, man-hating bitch who was bent on getting revenge for being played. She fabricated a rape charge because she was mad at him for porking her younger hotter tighter girlfriend within two days of putting it in her. Ardin is a sick puppy whose petty act of vengeance will damn an innocent man.
If ever there was a time for us to spring into action, this is it. We must sound the bell – Julian Assange’s rape accusers are nothing more than lying feminist slags. The name “Anna Ardin” must go down with Crystal Gail Mangum and Katelyn Faber in the Hall of Girls Who Cried Rape. We must make the definitive case as to how feminists have destroyed modern society by making it easy for mentally disturbed groupies to make false rape accusations because their feeeeeeelings were hurt. We must hang this albatross around the feminists’ necks and give them a blow that they will never recover from.
If there is a men’s rights movement, this is your call to action. This is where you must prove you are more than talk. The ball is in your court.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Ron Paul Defends Wikileaks
WikiLeaks release of classified information has generated a lot of attention in the past few weeks. The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news. Despite what is claimed, the information that has been so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing our grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neoconservatives in charge.
There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principal supporter and financier of al Qaeda, and that this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government. This emphasizes even more the fact that no al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did. It has been charged by experts that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime, deserving prosecution for treason and execution, or even assassination.
But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government should prosecute an Australian citizen for treason for publishing U.S. secret information that he did not steal? And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn't the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others also published these documents be prosecuted? Actually, some in Congress are threatening this as well.
The New York Times, as a results of a Supreme Court ruling, was not found guilty in 1971 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg never served a day in prison for his role in obtaining these secret documents. The Pentagon Papers were also inserted into the Congressional record by Senator Mike Gravel, with no charges of any kind being made of breaking any national security laws. Yet the release of this classified information was considered illegal by many, and those who lied us into the Vietnam war, and argued for its prolongation were outraged. But the truth gained from the Pentagon Papers revealed that lies were told about the Gulf of Tonkin attack. which perpetuated a sad and tragic episode in our history.
Just as with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was based on lies. We were never threatened by weapons of mass destruction or al Qaeda in Iraq, though the attack on Iraq was based on this false information. Any information which challenges the official propaganda for the war in the Middle East is unwelcome by the administration and the supporters of these unnecessary wars. Few are interested in understanding the relationship of our foreign policy and our presence in the Middle East to the threat of terrorism. Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.
Questions to consider:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised 'Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.' I yield back the balance of my time.
Wikileaks Struck A Deal With The Israelis and a Rebuttal
I came across these articles the other day and since they are directly related I thought it best to post them together.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
WikiLeaks 'struck a deal with Israel' over diplomatic cables leaks
by LikiWeaks
Tuesday Dec 7th, 2010 6:39 PM
We should obviously all support WikiLeaks and its founder and spokesperson, Julian Assange, who has just been arrested in Britain, in this dirty war by states around the globe against transparency and openness. But in the world of politics, sadly, things are never as innocent as they appear. According to new revelations, Assange had allegedly struck a deal with Israel before the recent 'cable gate', which may explain why the leaks “were good for Israel,” as the Israeli prime minister put it.
A number of commentators, particularly in Turkey and Russia, have been wondering why the hundreds of thousands of American classified documents leaked by the website last month did not contain anything that may embarrass the Israeli government, like just about every other state referred to in the documents. The answer appears to be a secret deal struck between the WikiLeaks “heart and soul”, as Assange humbly described himself once [1], with Israeli officials, which ensured that all such documents were 'removed' before the rest were made public.
According to an Arabic investigative journalism website [2], Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them, in a “secret, video-recorded agreement,” not to publish any document that may harm Israeli security or diplomatic interests.
The sources of the Al-Haqiqa report are said to be former WikiLeaks volunteers who have left the organisation in the last few months over Assange's “autocratic leadership” and “lack of transparency.”
In a recent interview with the German daily Die Tageszeitung, former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg said he and other WikiLeaks dissidents are planning to launch their own whistleblowers' platform to fulfil WikiLeaks's original aim of “limitless file sharing.” [3]
Mr Domscheit-Berg, who is about to publish a book about his days 'Inside WikiLeaks', accuses Assange of acting as a “king” against the will of others in the organisation by “making deals” with media organisations that are meant to create an explosive effect, which others in WikiLeaks either know little or nothing about. [4]
Furthermore, Assange's eagerness for headline-grabbing scoops meant that WikiLeaks had not been able to 'restructure' itself to cope with this surge of interest, insiders add. This has meant that smaller leaks, which might be of interest to people at a local level, are now being overlooked for the sake of big stories. [5]
According to the Al-Haqiqa sources, Assange met with Israeli officials in Geneva earlier this year and struck the secret deal. The Israel government, it seems, had somehow found out or expected that the documents to be leaked contained a large number of documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008-9 respectively. These documents, which are said to have originated mainly from the Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut, where removed and possibly destroyed by Assange, who is the only person who knows the password that can open these documents, the sources added.
Indeed, the published documents seem to have a 'gap' stretching over the period of July - September 2006, during which the 33-day Lebanon war took place. Is it possible that US diplomats and officials did not have any comments or information to exchange about this crucial event but spent their time 'gossiping' about every other 'trivial' Middle-Eastern matter?
Following the leak (and even before), Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference that Israel had “worked in advance” to limit any damage from leaks, adding that “no classified Israeli material was exposed by WikiLeaks.” [6] In an interview with the Time magazine around the same time, Assange praised Netanyahu as a hero of transparency and openness! [7]
According to another report [8], a left-leaning Lebanese newspaper had met with Assange twice and tried to negotiate a deal with him, offering “a big amount of money”, in order to get hold of documents concerning the 2006 war, particularly the minutes of a meeting held at the American embassy in Beirut on 24th July 2006, which is widely considered as a 'war council' meeting between American, Israeli and Lebanese parties that played a role in the war again Hizbullah and its allies. The documents the Al-Akhbar editors received, however, all date to 2008 onwards and do not contain “anything of value,” the sources confirm. This only goes to support the Israel deal allegations.
Finally, it might be worth pointing out that Assange might have done what he is alleged to have done in order protect himself and ensure that the leaked documents are published so as to expose the American hypocrisy, which he is said to be obsessed with “at the expense of more fundamental aims.”
Notes:
[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/wikileaks-revolt/
[2] http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/977/36/
[3] http://www.taz.de/1/netz/netzpolitik/artikel/1/vom-hacker-zum-popstar/
[4] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732212,00.html
[5] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,719619,00.html
[6] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-wikileaks-revelations-were-good-for-israel-1.327773
[7] http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040-2,00.html
[8] http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/986/36/
Now The Rebuttal
Rebuttal to Article Alleging that Wikileaks CEO "Made a Deal with Israel" Over Cables
by anonymous
Thursday Dec 9th, 2010 12:37 AM
This article is a rebuttal to a anonymous piece that recently appeared in Indybay that specifically analyzes how this article is not only defamatory, but fails to meet even the most minimal journalistic standards. People are advised to use caution when reading articles that are self-published because although they MAY appear to be sourced, unless you check the footnotes, that may not in fact be the case - as was the case with this scurrilous piece of character assassination.
FACT FINDING RESULTS ON THE INDYBAY ARTICLE - Note: no author for this article is listed –the article appears under a section entitled “Palestine”
Link to Indybay article:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/07/18665978.php
Allegations [1] – [8] and Sources numbered as footnotes [1] - [8] at the bottom of the page, and links thereto:
The first and most damaging allegation in the Indybay piece (Indybay is an all-volunteer organization affiliated with Indymedia with links to Indymedia on its web page banner, but is not synonymous with that organization) is that Wikileaks' CEO Julian Assange struck a secret deal with Israeli authorities to insure that any documents that could damage Israel’s interests would be ‘removed’ before the rest of the documents became public. The source for that allegation, included as footnote [1] is a Wired Article, see link below. This article provides nothing to corroborate and verify this damaging allegation, rather the article focuses on disgruntled former Wikileaks employee Daniel Dorsheit-Berg, why he left Wikileaks and internal politics within the Wikileaks organization.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/wikileaks-revolt/
The second very damaging allegation is that Assange accepted money from ‘semi-official Israeli officials’ and that moreover he specifically agreed in exchange in a secretly taped interview not to publish any documents that would hurt Israeli interests. This allegation links to an article in Syriatruth and it is printed in Arabic, and cited as footnote [2] in the article, with no reliable verbatim translation from Arabic to English provided.
http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/977/36/
Because the entire Syriatruth article is completely in very exquisite Arabic script it is impossible for non-Arabic readers or speakers to confirm whether the article in fact makes these allegations, let alone go any further with fact-checking on this issue, due to formidable language barriers that the authors of the Indybay article do nothing to assist readers concerned about the truth to surmount.
The third, fourth and fifth allegations footnoted [3], [4] and [5] link to articles in the German Press, as follows, NOTE the first link to taz is in German and thus non-German readers cannot check for veracity, let alone follow-up for further fact-checking.
http://www.taz.de/1/netz/netzpolitik/artikel/1/vom-hacker-zum-popstar/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732212,00.html
and
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,719619,00.html
The last two Der Spiegel articles in English linked directly above again relate to the saga of disgruntled former Wikileaks’ employee Daniel Dorsheit-Berg, why he left Wikileaks, internal squabbles in the organization, and Dorsheit-Berg’s opinions about Julian Assange’s leadership skills. The one article that includes quotes from an interview with Dorsheit-Berg cited as [1] includes a section that relates to internal decisions about Wikileaks decision-making concerning information is the Wired Article, previously referenced, however nothing specific is said in that article about internal issues or decisions to corroborate the damaging allegations in the Indybay article, i.e. that Assange made an agreement with Israel and accepted money from them in exchange for an agreement not to publish anything damaging to Israel’s interests. In fact the Wired piece quotes from Dorsheit-Berg only serve to underscore Dorscheit-Berg's sour grapes and his being at odds with Assange over decisions concerning organizational priorities that prevented what he felt was a much-needed reorganization - even though he was not the CEO of Wikileaks. Nothing in any of these three articles in the German Press, therefore, as presented, substantiate the general damaging claims made in the Indybay article.
The sixth allegation in the article, accusing Assange of engaging in a secret meeting in Geneva with Israeli officials and agreeing to expung any leaked documents related to the Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, in 2006, and 2008-9, references as [6] a piece in Haaretz in which, not surprisingly, Israeli leaders said that Wikileaks helped them because the leaks underscored that Arabs themselves were calling on the US and Israel to take care of the problem with Iran. Alhough this information is sourced ostensibly to ‘Al-Haqiqa sources’ – no footnote whatsoever is provided.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-wikileaks-revelations-were-good-for-israel-1.327773
No one can control what any government leaders say about anything and naturally they will put whatever spin serves their purpose on any news and will extract from an information dump whatever serves their interests and emphasize it. This Haaretz article does not even state, and does not prove that Assange arrived at a prior agreement with Israel concerning leaks of documents, or that he took money from Israeli officials in exchange for that agreement or that he in fact expunged such documents.
Allegation seven concerns Assange “praising Netanyahu as a hero of transparency and openness.” [7] linking to an article in Time Magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040-2,00.html
Nowhere does this article quote Assange as saying that Mr. Netanyahu is a “hero of transparency and openness” as alleged so this article does not verify accusation #7. There ARE some areas of ambiguous language in the piece, however, that COULD be conflated to infer something. But what, is unknown from the actual language in the piece. In fact the interviewer,(I am not able to provide you his name because the link [7] is only to page 2 of 4 pages in the Time article.) was the one who suggested that the information in the leaks underscored Israel’s position with respect to Iran by revealing that certain Arab leaders wished to decapitate the Iranian government.
The last allegation in the article is that Assange met twice with a left-leaning Lebanese newspaper who offered him money to obtain documents related to a secret war meeting ostensibly held between the US, Israeli and Lebanese parties at the "US embassy in Beirut" (does the US in fact even HAVE an embassy in Beirut?) in July 24, 2006. According to source [8] the documents received by Al-Akhbar Editors left a gap and only covered information from 2008-forward, according to the Indybay article, thereby “supporting the Israeli deal allegations” - leap of the imagination by any calculation.
Unfortunately again, footnote [8] links to an article in a Syrian paper that is entirely written in Arabic so it is completely impossible for a non-Arabic speaker or reader to verify whether in fact this article actually corroborates the allegations in the Indybay article, let alone enable one in search of the truth to take their fact-checking any further.
This is the second link to Syria Truth here:
http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/986/36/
Conclusion:
The Indybay article does not meet even the most elementary journalistic standards. Aside from being riddled with conditional adverbs like “appears” – it is basically a hack-job cobbled together by someone with vindictive and malicious motives. The sources cited DO NOT corroborate the primary damaging allegations being made, i.e. that Julian Assange of Wikileaks arrived at an agreement with Israel to redact any damaging documents prior to release, let alone that he accepted secret payments from them or from the newspaper Al-Akhbar for special dispensation. The ONLY allegations that are sourced and corroorated relate to the statements of a dismissed and disgruntled Wikileaks employee who wished Wikileaks luck, and did not corroborate the damaging allegations in the Indybay article. Moreover, knowing full well that the readers who will read the Indybay article are prmarily English readers and speakers, the article links to non-English publications as sources, two in Arabic and one in German, attempting to provide legitimacy and the 'cover of ethical journalism' for its “news” reporting, DELIBERATELY further obscuring the truth.
The Anonymous Authors of this article should be very ashamed for what they have done. Whatever their motives, the ends do not justify the means.
The principle of TRUTH is an important core human value. The battle between TRUTH and the LIE has been joined.
May TRUTH and freedom prevail.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
WikiLeaks 'struck a deal with Israel' over diplomatic cables leaks
by LikiWeaks
Tuesday Dec 7th, 2010 6:39 PM
We should obviously all support WikiLeaks and its founder and spokesperson, Julian Assange, who has just been arrested in Britain, in this dirty war by states around the globe against transparency and openness. But in the world of politics, sadly, things are never as innocent as they appear. According to new revelations, Assange had allegedly struck a deal with Israel before the recent 'cable gate', which may explain why the leaks “were good for Israel,” as the Israeli prime minister put it.
A number of commentators, particularly in Turkey and Russia, have been wondering why the hundreds of thousands of American classified documents leaked by the website last month did not contain anything that may embarrass the Israeli government, like just about every other state referred to in the documents. The answer appears to be a secret deal struck between the WikiLeaks “heart and soul”, as Assange humbly described himself once [1], with Israeli officials, which ensured that all such documents were 'removed' before the rest were made public.
According to an Arabic investigative journalism website [2], Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them, in a “secret, video-recorded agreement,” not to publish any document that may harm Israeli security or diplomatic interests.
The sources of the Al-Haqiqa report are said to be former WikiLeaks volunteers who have left the organisation in the last few months over Assange's “autocratic leadership” and “lack of transparency.”
In a recent interview with the German daily Die Tageszeitung, former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg said he and other WikiLeaks dissidents are planning to launch their own whistleblowers' platform to fulfil WikiLeaks's original aim of “limitless file sharing.” [3]
Mr Domscheit-Berg, who is about to publish a book about his days 'Inside WikiLeaks', accuses Assange of acting as a “king” against the will of others in the organisation by “making deals” with media organisations that are meant to create an explosive effect, which others in WikiLeaks either know little or nothing about. [4]
Furthermore, Assange's eagerness for headline-grabbing scoops meant that WikiLeaks had not been able to 'restructure' itself to cope with this surge of interest, insiders add. This has meant that smaller leaks, which might be of interest to people at a local level, are now being overlooked for the sake of big stories. [5]
According to the Al-Haqiqa sources, Assange met with Israeli officials in Geneva earlier this year and struck the secret deal. The Israel government, it seems, had somehow found out or expected that the documents to be leaked contained a large number of documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza in 2006 and 2008-9 respectively. These documents, which are said to have originated mainly from the Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut, where removed and possibly destroyed by Assange, who is the only person who knows the password that can open these documents, the sources added.
Indeed, the published documents seem to have a 'gap' stretching over the period of July - September 2006, during which the 33-day Lebanon war took place. Is it possible that US diplomats and officials did not have any comments or information to exchange about this crucial event but spent their time 'gossiping' about every other 'trivial' Middle-Eastern matter?
Following the leak (and even before), Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference that Israel had “worked in advance” to limit any damage from leaks, adding that “no classified Israeli material was exposed by WikiLeaks.” [6] In an interview with the Time magazine around the same time, Assange praised Netanyahu as a hero of transparency and openness! [7]
According to another report [8], a left-leaning Lebanese newspaper had met with Assange twice and tried to negotiate a deal with him, offering “a big amount of money”, in order to get hold of documents concerning the 2006 war, particularly the minutes of a meeting held at the American embassy in Beirut on 24th July 2006, which is widely considered as a 'war council' meeting between American, Israeli and Lebanese parties that played a role in the war again Hizbullah and its allies. The documents the Al-Akhbar editors received, however, all date to 2008 onwards and do not contain “anything of value,” the sources confirm. This only goes to support the Israel deal allegations.
Finally, it might be worth pointing out that Assange might have done what he is alleged to have done in order protect himself and ensure that the leaked documents are published so as to expose the American hypocrisy, which he is said to be obsessed with “at the expense of more fundamental aims.”
Notes:
[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/wikileaks-revolt/
[2] http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/977/36/
[3] http://www.taz.de/1/netz/netzpolitik/artikel/1/vom-hacker-zum-popstar/
[4] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732212,00.html
[5] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,719619,00.html
[6] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-wikileaks-revelations-were-good-for-israel-1.327773
[7] http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040-2,00.html
[8] http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/986/36/
Now The Rebuttal
Rebuttal to Article Alleging that Wikileaks CEO "Made a Deal with Israel" Over Cables
by anonymous
Thursday Dec 9th, 2010 12:37 AM
This article is a rebuttal to a anonymous piece that recently appeared in Indybay that specifically analyzes how this article is not only defamatory, but fails to meet even the most minimal journalistic standards. People are advised to use caution when reading articles that are self-published because although they MAY appear to be sourced, unless you check the footnotes, that may not in fact be the case - as was the case with this scurrilous piece of character assassination.
FACT FINDING RESULTS ON THE INDYBAY ARTICLE - Note: no author for this article is listed –the article appears under a section entitled “Palestine”
Link to Indybay article:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/12/07/18665978.php
Allegations [1] – [8] and Sources numbered as footnotes [1] - [8] at the bottom of the page, and links thereto:
The first and most damaging allegation in the Indybay piece (Indybay is an all-volunteer organization affiliated with Indymedia with links to Indymedia on its web page banner, but is not synonymous with that organization) is that Wikileaks' CEO Julian Assange struck a secret deal with Israeli authorities to insure that any documents that could damage Israel’s interests would be ‘removed’ before the rest of the documents became public. The source for that allegation, included as footnote [1] is a Wired Article, see link below. This article provides nothing to corroborate and verify this damaging allegation, rather the article focuses on disgruntled former Wikileaks employee Daniel Dorsheit-Berg, why he left Wikileaks and internal politics within the Wikileaks organization.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/wikileaks-revolt/
The second very damaging allegation is that Assange accepted money from ‘semi-official Israeli officials’ and that moreover he specifically agreed in exchange in a secretly taped interview not to publish any documents that would hurt Israeli interests. This allegation links to an article in Syriatruth and it is printed in Arabic, and cited as footnote [2] in the article, with no reliable verbatim translation from Arabic to English provided.
http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/977/36/
Because the entire Syriatruth article is completely in very exquisite Arabic script it is impossible for non-Arabic readers or speakers to confirm whether the article in fact makes these allegations, let alone go any further with fact-checking on this issue, due to formidable language barriers that the authors of the Indybay article do nothing to assist readers concerned about the truth to surmount.
The third, fourth and fifth allegations footnoted [3], [4] and [5] link to articles in the German Press, as follows, NOTE the first link to taz is in German and thus non-German readers cannot check for veracity, let alone follow-up for further fact-checking.
http://www.taz.de/1/netz/netzpolitik/artikel/1/vom-hacker-zum-popstar/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,732212,00.html
and
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,719619,00.html
The last two Der Spiegel articles in English linked directly above again relate to the saga of disgruntled former Wikileaks’ employee Daniel Dorsheit-Berg, why he left Wikileaks, internal squabbles in the organization, and Dorsheit-Berg’s opinions about Julian Assange’s leadership skills. The one article that includes quotes from an interview with Dorsheit-Berg cited as [1] includes a section that relates to internal decisions about Wikileaks decision-making concerning information is the Wired Article, previously referenced, however nothing specific is said in that article about internal issues or decisions to corroborate the damaging allegations in the Indybay article, i.e. that Assange made an agreement with Israel and accepted money from them in exchange for an agreement not to publish anything damaging to Israel’s interests. In fact the Wired piece quotes from Dorsheit-Berg only serve to underscore Dorscheit-Berg's sour grapes and his being at odds with Assange over decisions concerning organizational priorities that prevented what he felt was a much-needed reorganization - even though he was not the CEO of Wikileaks. Nothing in any of these three articles in the German Press, therefore, as presented, substantiate the general damaging claims made in the Indybay article.
The sixth allegation in the article, accusing Assange of engaging in a secret meeting in Geneva with Israeli officials and agreeing to expung any leaked documents related to the Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, in 2006, and 2008-9, references as [6] a piece in Haaretz in which, not surprisingly, Israeli leaders said that Wikileaks helped them because the leaks underscored that Arabs themselves were calling on the US and Israel to take care of the problem with Iran. Alhough this information is sourced ostensibly to ‘Al-Haqiqa sources’ – no footnote whatsoever is provided.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-wikileaks-revelations-were-good-for-israel-1.327773
No one can control what any government leaders say about anything and naturally they will put whatever spin serves their purpose on any news and will extract from an information dump whatever serves their interests and emphasize it. This Haaretz article does not even state, and does not prove that Assange arrived at a prior agreement with Israel concerning leaks of documents, or that he took money from Israeli officials in exchange for that agreement or that he in fact expunged such documents.
Allegation seven concerns Assange “praising Netanyahu as a hero of transparency and openness.” [7] linking to an article in Time Magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040-2,00.html
Nowhere does this article quote Assange as saying that Mr. Netanyahu is a “hero of transparency and openness” as alleged so this article does not verify accusation #7. There ARE some areas of ambiguous language in the piece, however, that COULD be conflated to infer something. But what, is unknown from the actual language in the piece. In fact the interviewer,(I am not able to provide you his name because the link [7] is only to page 2 of 4 pages in the Time article.) was the one who suggested that the information in the leaks underscored Israel’s position with respect to Iran by revealing that certain Arab leaders wished to decapitate the Iranian government.
The last allegation in the article is that Assange met twice with a left-leaning Lebanese newspaper who offered him money to obtain documents related to a secret war meeting ostensibly held between the US, Israeli and Lebanese parties at the "US embassy in Beirut" (does the US in fact even HAVE an embassy in Beirut?) in July 24, 2006. According to source [8] the documents received by Al-Akhbar Editors left a gap and only covered information from 2008-forward, according to the Indybay article, thereby “supporting the Israeli deal allegations” - leap of the imagination by any calculation.
Unfortunately again, footnote [8] links to an article in a Syrian paper that is entirely written in Arabic so it is completely impossible for a non-Arabic speaker or reader to verify whether in fact this article actually corroborates the allegations in the Indybay article, let alone enable one in search of the truth to take their fact-checking any further.
This is the second link to Syria Truth here:
http://www.syriatruth.info/content/view/986/36/
Conclusion:
The Indybay article does not meet even the most elementary journalistic standards. Aside from being riddled with conditional adverbs like “appears” – it is basically a hack-job cobbled together by someone with vindictive and malicious motives. The sources cited DO NOT corroborate the primary damaging allegations being made, i.e. that Julian Assange of Wikileaks arrived at an agreement with Israel to redact any damaging documents prior to release, let alone that he accepted secret payments from them or from the newspaper Al-Akhbar for special dispensation. The ONLY allegations that are sourced and corroorated relate to the statements of a dismissed and disgruntled Wikileaks employee who wished Wikileaks luck, and did not corroborate the damaging allegations in the Indybay article. Moreover, knowing full well that the readers who will read the Indybay article are prmarily English readers and speakers, the article links to non-English publications as sources, two in Arabic and one in German, attempting to provide legitimacy and the 'cover of ethical journalism' for its “news” reporting, DELIBERATELY further obscuring the truth.
The Anonymous Authors of this article should be very ashamed for what they have done. Whatever their motives, the ends do not justify the means.
The principle of TRUTH is an important core human value. The battle between TRUTH and the LIE has been joined.
May TRUTH and freedom prevail.
Julian Assange Case Evidence Destroyed
One of the women who filed charges against Julian Assange is Anna Ardin. She stood in the elections to the community council for the social democrats and she is a public person who should be examined. So I'll publish her name.
Anna Ardin is christian, feminist, social democrat, animal rights activist, and opponent of abortion on the left political scene. She's previously been in charge of equality issues for the student union of Uppsala University - a job she won an award for. Today she works for the Brotherhood Movement and 'burns for peace and justice... for a just, open society of solidarity'. On her own blog she describes herself:
'A political scientist, communicator, entrepreneur, and freelance writer with special knowledge within faith and politics, gender equality issues, feminism, and Latin America.'
On Saturday 14 August at 14:00 she wrote the following on her Twitter account.
'Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow? #fb'
Early on the morning of Sunday 15 August (02:00) she writes again at Twitter.
'Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world's coolest smartest people, it's amazing! #fb'
When Anna Ardin files a police complaint against Julian Assange on 20 August these tweets are removed. Why? As far as I can tell, it's not common for victims of crime to delete blogs, clean up their cellphones, and try to get witnesses to attest to things that aren't true. Why is it so important to remove these particular tweets?
If you know that the 'reported molestation' takes place on the night towards 14 August, then it all becomes easier to understand. The tweets actually indicate that Anna really liked Julian and that there had been no molestation 24 hours earlier. You can't divine in the tweets that Anna Ardin thinks Julian has a 'warped view of womanhood and can't take no for an answer'. The tweets are more an attempt by Ardin to shine in the brilliance of Julian Assange. Why else would she publish them on the Internet? The tweets don't match Anna's story given to the police on 20 August. So she simply deletes them.
Proof That Anna Ardin Is Hiding the Truth
In the beginning of September, I note that Anna Ardin has two identical 'miniblogs' - one at Twitter and the other at Bloggy.se. It looks as if Anna Ardin's tweets are posted to both blogs at the same time. The tweets that are deleted from Twitter are still visible at annaardin.bloggy.se. Anna missed the fact that she has to delete on each and every blog. Bad luck.
To see if Anna Ardin is really trying to hide her Twitter tweets, I post a comment to Sara Gunnerud's article WikiLeaks Heroes Can Also Do Stupid Things. The article is published at the Rebella blog, a social democratic feminist blog where Anna Ardin contributes and runs the website. In my comment I mention the deleted Twitter tweets. After five days, on 13 September, my comment is reviewed and removed directly. I then post a new comment where I mention that one can read the deleted Tweets at annaardin.bloggy.se. My comment is removed directly. A few hours later the entire Bloggy.se site is taken offline. When Bloggy.se reopens at 04:00 in the morning of 14 September, the tweets deleted from Twitter are also deleted from annaardin.bloggy.se.
But it's not as easy to remove things from the Internet as Anna Ardin thinks. Google takes snapshots of how web pages look - so called caches. If you search for the cached page for annaardin.bloggy.se you can see what it looked like on 19 August. (If the cache disappears, click here.) Then you can compare the page with how annaardin.bloggy.se and twitter.com/annaardin look.
As we can see, Anna Ardin is doing all she can to hide her tweets. Tweets that indicate Julian Assange is actually innocent of at least the charge of 'molestation' that he's been accused of. It looks like Anna Ardin is doing all she can to get Julian Assange convicted. By deleting and denying acquitting circumstances, she's perhaps making herself guilty of false accusation.
Penal Code Chapter 15, 7 § A person who, otherwise than in 6 §, with prosecutors, police or other authority falsely testifies of a criminal act, provides compromising circumstances, or denies acquitting or mitigating circumstances, shall be found guilty, if authority review such a case, of false accusation to imprisonment not exceeding two years or, if the crime is petty, to a fine or imprisonment not exceeding six months.
The Assange case gets really creepy if we take everything that's happened into account. Anyone wanting to read more can see this article and this article. Julian lives in Anna Ardin's flat from 11 August until 19-20 August. During this time Julian and Anna have sex. Around 18-19 August Anna gets a call from a woman wanting to speak to Julian. When Anna realises that Julian's also had consensual sex with this woman, something happens. The two women who are both christians and are connected to the Brotherhood Movement and were at the seminar at the Brotherhood Movement realise immediately that Julian doesn't have any long term serious intentions with them. They decide after discussing the matter to file complaints against Julian Assange for sexual molestation.
It might seem strange that a christian social democrat feminist would avail herself of legislation to get revenge on a man who is 'unfaithful'. When you read about Anna Ardin's post about revenge, it's no longer strange. It's completely natural. Anna Ardin has for a long time wondered how she can exact revenge on a man who dumps her, is unfaithful. When the other woman turns up, she has the opportunity to do something about her ideas. Anna Ardin plans it all well. She gets another woman to make the actual rape accusation. A case of 'revenge by proxy'. And then she gets help from Claes Borgström who's done all he can to try to get Julian Assange put on trial, frenetically cheered on by the feminist blogs.
But the truth wins out in the end. Anna's perfect 7-Step Programme for Legal Revenge failed. One deletion too few. And the Google cache. Too bad, Anna. The ways of the Lord are truly mysterious.
I'm very surprised that christian feminist 'equality' women can so idolise a WikiLeaks hero that they do all in their power to get him into bed as soon as they have the chance. And then, when they realise he's not as interested in them as they are in him, go to the police and accuse him of rape. This demonstrates an extreme contempt for the women who are real victims of violence and sexual crimes. Their behaviour is unconscionable.
If you're a groupie at heart, why not just try to keep quiet about it? It's nothing you should spread on the net or go to the police to talk about. As things look now, Anna Ardin's carefully planned character assassination and revenge on Julian Assange amounts to nothing more than a suicide bomb on her foot. A bit unlucky for Anna that Google cache keeps track of things like an Internet god. If you're going to delete, then delete good and proper.
All that remains is to see what the preliminary investigation leads to. According to the prosecutors:
'The investigation is well advanced and only a small number of investigative procedures remain to be taken before a decision.'
If the prosecutors conclude that this is a case of false accusation, then hundreds of thousands of men who claim most rape complaints are false will win their argument. This will unfortunately also lead to making it much more difficult to get justice for real victims. That would be a catastrophe.
But something good will come out of this story. We are going to learn that just because you're christian, feminist, social democrat, animal rights activist, and opponent of abortion, it doesn't mean you believe in equal rights for women and men.
Göran Rudling, born in 1951, is the editor of Samtycke Nu/Consensus Now, a site promoting sexual self-determination that uses the motto 'it is a human right to decide for oneself when and with whom we are going to have sex'. Rudling is a frequent contributor to Newsmill where he writes about the need to introduce democratic laws that are based on sexual activities needing to be consensual to not be considered criminal.
Anna Ardin is christian, feminist, social democrat, animal rights activist, and opponent of abortion on the left political scene. She's previously been in charge of equality issues for the student union of Uppsala University - a job she won an award for. Today she works for the Brotherhood Movement and 'burns for peace and justice... for a just, open society of solidarity'. On her own blog she describes herself:
'A political scientist, communicator, entrepreneur, and freelance writer with special knowledge within faith and politics, gender equality issues, feminism, and Latin America.'
On Saturday 14 August at 14:00 she wrote the following on her Twitter account.
'Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone have a couple of available seats tonight or tomorrow? #fb'
Early on the morning of Sunday 15 August (02:00) she writes again at Twitter.
'Sitting outdoors at 02:00 and hardly freezing with the world's coolest smartest people, it's amazing! #fb'
When Anna Ardin files a police complaint against Julian Assange on 20 August these tweets are removed. Why? As far as I can tell, it's not common for victims of crime to delete blogs, clean up their cellphones, and try to get witnesses to attest to things that aren't true. Why is it so important to remove these particular tweets?
If you know that the 'reported molestation' takes place on the night towards 14 August, then it all becomes easier to understand. The tweets actually indicate that Anna really liked Julian and that there had been no molestation 24 hours earlier. You can't divine in the tweets that Anna Ardin thinks Julian has a 'warped view of womanhood and can't take no for an answer'. The tweets are more an attempt by Ardin to shine in the brilliance of Julian Assange. Why else would she publish them on the Internet? The tweets don't match Anna's story given to the police on 20 August. So she simply deletes them.
Proof That Anna Ardin Is Hiding the Truth
In the beginning of September, I note that Anna Ardin has two identical 'miniblogs' - one at Twitter and the other at Bloggy.se. It looks as if Anna Ardin's tweets are posted to both blogs at the same time. The tweets that are deleted from Twitter are still visible at annaardin.bloggy.se. Anna missed the fact that she has to delete on each and every blog. Bad luck.
To see if Anna Ardin is really trying to hide her Twitter tweets, I post a comment to Sara Gunnerud's article WikiLeaks Heroes Can Also Do Stupid Things. The article is published at the Rebella blog, a social democratic feminist blog where Anna Ardin contributes and runs the website. In my comment I mention the deleted Twitter tweets. After five days, on 13 September, my comment is reviewed and removed directly. I then post a new comment where I mention that one can read the deleted Tweets at annaardin.bloggy.se. My comment is removed directly. A few hours later the entire Bloggy.se site is taken offline. When Bloggy.se reopens at 04:00 in the morning of 14 September, the tweets deleted from Twitter are also deleted from annaardin.bloggy.se.
But it's not as easy to remove things from the Internet as Anna Ardin thinks. Google takes snapshots of how web pages look - so called caches. If you search for the cached page for annaardin.bloggy.se you can see what it looked like on 19 August. (If the cache disappears, click here.) Then you can compare the page with how annaardin.bloggy.se and twitter.com/annaardin look.
As we can see, Anna Ardin is doing all she can to hide her tweets. Tweets that indicate Julian Assange is actually innocent of at least the charge of 'molestation' that he's been accused of. It looks like Anna Ardin is doing all she can to get Julian Assange convicted. By deleting and denying acquitting circumstances, she's perhaps making herself guilty of false accusation.
Penal Code Chapter 15, 7 § A person who, otherwise than in 6 §, with prosecutors, police or other authority falsely testifies of a criminal act, provides compromising circumstances, or denies acquitting or mitigating circumstances, shall be found guilty, if authority review such a case, of false accusation to imprisonment not exceeding two years or, if the crime is petty, to a fine or imprisonment not exceeding six months.
The Assange case gets really creepy if we take everything that's happened into account. Anyone wanting to read more can see this article and this article. Julian lives in Anna Ardin's flat from 11 August until 19-20 August. During this time Julian and Anna have sex. Around 18-19 August Anna gets a call from a woman wanting to speak to Julian. When Anna realises that Julian's also had consensual sex with this woman, something happens. The two women who are both christians and are connected to the Brotherhood Movement and were at the seminar at the Brotherhood Movement realise immediately that Julian doesn't have any long term serious intentions with them. They decide after discussing the matter to file complaints against Julian Assange for sexual molestation.
It might seem strange that a christian social democrat feminist would avail herself of legislation to get revenge on a man who is 'unfaithful'. When you read about Anna Ardin's post about revenge, it's no longer strange. It's completely natural. Anna Ardin has for a long time wondered how she can exact revenge on a man who dumps her, is unfaithful. When the other woman turns up, she has the opportunity to do something about her ideas. Anna Ardin plans it all well. She gets another woman to make the actual rape accusation. A case of 'revenge by proxy'. And then she gets help from Claes Borgström who's done all he can to try to get Julian Assange put on trial, frenetically cheered on by the feminist blogs.
But the truth wins out in the end. Anna's perfect 7-Step Programme for Legal Revenge failed. One deletion too few. And the Google cache. Too bad, Anna. The ways of the Lord are truly mysterious.
I'm very surprised that christian feminist 'equality' women can so idolise a WikiLeaks hero that they do all in their power to get him into bed as soon as they have the chance. And then, when they realise he's not as interested in them as they are in him, go to the police and accuse him of rape. This demonstrates an extreme contempt for the women who are real victims of violence and sexual crimes. Their behaviour is unconscionable.
If you're a groupie at heart, why not just try to keep quiet about it? It's nothing you should spread on the net or go to the police to talk about. As things look now, Anna Ardin's carefully planned character assassination and revenge on Julian Assange amounts to nothing more than a suicide bomb on her foot. A bit unlucky for Anna that Google cache keeps track of things like an Internet god. If you're going to delete, then delete good and proper.
All that remains is to see what the preliminary investigation leads to. According to the prosecutors:
'The investigation is well advanced and only a small number of investigative procedures remain to be taken before a decision.'
If the prosecutors conclude that this is a case of false accusation, then hundreds of thousands of men who claim most rape complaints are false will win their argument. This will unfortunately also lead to making it much more difficult to get justice for real victims. That would be a catastrophe.
But something good will come out of this story. We are going to learn that just because you're christian, feminist, social democrat, animal rights activist, and opponent of abortion, it doesn't mean you believe in equal rights for women and men.
Göran Rudling, born in 1951, is the editor of Samtycke Nu/Consensus Now, a site promoting sexual self-determination that uses the motto 'it is a human right to decide for oneself when and with whom we are going to have sex'. Rudling is a frequent contributor to Newsmill where he writes about the need to introduce democratic laws that are based on sexual activities needing to be consensual to not be considered criminal.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
JEFF GATES: WIKILEAKS – MORE ISRAELI GAME THEORY WARFARE?
When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.
“The United States is the real victim of WikiLeaks. It’s an action aimed at discrediting them.” Franco Frattini, Foreign Minister of Italy
The impact of the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables fits the behavior profile of those well versed in game theory warfare.
When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science for his work on game theory, he conceded, “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”
The candor of this Israeli-American offered a rare insight into an enclave long known for waging war from the shadows. Israel’s most notable success to date was “fixing” the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq in pursuit of a geopolitical agenda long sought by Tel Aviv
When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.
Why now? Tel Aviv was feeling pressure to end its six-decade occupation of Palestine. With this release, its foot-dragging on the peace process was displaced with talk of an attack on Iran.
While the U.S. bore the brunt of the damage, the target was global public opinion. To maintain the plausibility of The Clash of Civilizations, a focus must be maintained on Iran as a credible Evil Doer.
With fast-emerging transparency, Israel and pro-Israelis have been identified as the source of the intelligence that took coalition forces to war in Iraq. Thus the need to shift attention off Tel Aviv.
WikiLeaks may yet succeed in that mission.
Foreseeable Futures
Game theory war planning aims to create outcomes that are predictable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. That’s why Israeli war planners focus on gaining traction for a plausible narrative and then advancing that storyline step by gradual step.
For the Zionist state to succeed with its expansionist agenda, Iran must remain at center stage as an essential villain in a geopolitical morality play pitting the West against Islamo Fascists.
To displace facts with false beliefs—as with belief in the intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq—momentum must be maintained for the storyline. Lose the plot (The Clash) and peace might break out. And those deceived may identify the deceiver.
Thus the timing of this latest WikiLeaks release. Its goal: to have us believe that it is not Tel Aviv but Washington that is the forefront of geopolitical duplicity and a source of Evil Doing.
Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of those targeted. With game theory algorithms, reactions become foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities.
Control enough of the variables and outcomes become a mathematical inevitability.
The WikiLeaks Motive
Was the reaction to this latest WikiLeaks foreseeable? With exquisite timing, the U.S. was discredited with an array of revelations that called into question U.S. motives and put in jeopardy U.S. relations worldwide.
As the Italian Foreign Minister summarized: “The news released by WikiLeaks will change diplomatic relations between countries.”
The hard-earned trust of the Pakistanis disappeared overnight. Attempts to engage Iran were set back. The overall effect advanced The Clash storyline. If Washington could so badly misread North Korean intentions, then why is the U.S. to be trusted when it comes to a nuclear Iran?
This Wiki-catalyzed storyline pushed Israel off the front page in favor of Iran.
Even U.S. detainees at Guantanamo are again at issue, reigniting that shameful spectacle as a provocation for extremism and terror. U.S. diplomats will now be suspected of spying and lying. What nation can now trust Americans to maintain confidences?
In short, the risks increased for everyone.
Except Israel.
Should Israel launch an attack on Iran, Tel Aviv can cite WikiLeaks as its rationale. Though an attack would be calamitous from a human, economic and financial perspective, even that foreseeable outcome would be dwarfed by the enduring hatred that would ensue.
That too is foreseeable—from a game theory perspective of those marketing The Clash.
The effect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was predictable. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia foresaw it, noting simply that the U.S. invasion would “give Iraq to Iran as a gift on a golden platter.”
With the elimination of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, the numerically dominant Shiites of Iraq were drawn into the political orbit of the Shiite-dominant Iran.
Game theorists focus their manipulation of affairs on their control of key variables. Then events take on a life all their own. The impact of this discrediting release was wide-ranging and fully foreseeable.
A Mossad case officer explained Israel’s success at waging war by way of deception: “Once the orchestra starts to play, we just hum along.”
These, after all, are the leading authorities in the field.
“The United States is the real victim of WikiLeaks. It’s an action aimed at discrediting them.” Franco Frattini, Foreign Minister of Italy
The impact of the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables fits the behavior profile of those well versed in game theory warfare.
When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science for his work on game theory, he conceded, “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”
The candor of this Israeli-American offered a rare insight into an enclave long known for waging war from the shadows. Israel’s most notable success to date was “fixing” the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq in pursuit of a geopolitical agenda long sought by Tel Aviv
When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.
Why now? Tel Aviv was feeling pressure to end its six-decade occupation of Palestine. With this release, its foot-dragging on the peace process was displaced with talk of an attack on Iran.
While the U.S. bore the brunt of the damage, the target was global public opinion. To maintain the plausibility of The Clash of Civilizations, a focus must be maintained on Iran as a credible Evil Doer.
With fast-emerging transparency, Israel and pro-Israelis have been identified as the source of the intelligence that took coalition forces to war in Iraq. Thus the need to shift attention off Tel Aviv.
WikiLeaks may yet succeed in that mission.
Foreseeable Futures
Game theory war planning aims to create outcomes that are predictable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. That’s why Israeli war planners focus on gaining traction for a plausible narrative and then advancing that storyline step by gradual step.
For the Zionist state to succeed with its expansionist agenda, Iran must remain at center stage as an essential villain in a geopolitical morality play pitting the West against Islamo Fascists.
To displace facts with false beliefs—as with belief in the intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq—momentum must be maintained for the storyline. Lose the plot (The Clash) and peace might break out. And those deceived may identify the deceiver.
Thus the timing of this latest WikiLeaks release. Its goal: to have us believe that it is not Tel Aviv but Washington that is the forefront of geopolitical duplicity and a source of Evil Doing.
Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of those targeted. With game theory algorithms, reactions become foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities.
Control enough of the variables and outcomes become a mathematical inevitability.
The WikiLeaks Motive
Was the reaction to this latest WikiLeaks foreseeable? With exquisite timing, the U.S. was discredited with an array of revelations that called into question U.S. motives and put in jeopardy U.S. relations worldwide.
As the Italian Foreign Minister summarized: “The news released by WikiLeaks will change diplomatic relations between countries.”
The hard-earned trust of the Pakistanis disappeared overnight. Attempts to engage Iran were set back. The overall effect advanced The Clash storyline. If Washington could so badly misread North Korean intentions, then why is the U.S. to be trusted when it comes to a nuclear Iran?
This Wiki-catalyzed storyline pushed Israel off the front page in favor of Iran.
Even U.S. detainees at Guantanamo are again at issue, reigniting that shameful spectacle as a provocation for extremism and terror. U.S. diplomats will now be suspected of spying and lying. What nation can now trust Americans to maintain confidences?
In short, the risks increased for everyone.
Except Israel.
Should Israel launch an attack on Iran, Tel Aviv can cite WikiLeaks as its rationale. Though an attack would be calamitous from a human, economic and financial perspective, even that foreseeable outcome would be dwarfed by the enduring hatred that would ensue.
That too is foreseeable—from a game theory perspective of those marketing The Clash.
The effect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was predictable. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia foresaw it, noting simply that the U.S. invasion would “give Iraq to Iran as a gift on a golden platter.”
With the elimination of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, the numerically dominant Shiites of Iraq were drawn into the political orbit of the Shiite-dominant Iran.
Game theorists focus their manipulation of affairs on their control of key variables. Then events take on a life all their own. The impact of this discrediting release was wide-ranging and fully foreseeable.
A Mossad case officer explained Israel’s success at waging war by way of deception: “Once the orchestra starts to play, we just hum along.”
These, after all, are the leading authorities in the field.
A New Wikileaks Emerges
If I know anything about the internet I know that movements can't be shut down. They shut down napster but did that stop file sharing? Hardly, up popped grokster, kazaa, winmx and many others to fill the void of napster. Filesharing today is as easy if not easier even though countless sites like suprnova have been taken down.
The point is that once the people decide they want to do something they do it and no amount of man made laws or bureaucracy will stop them. The same is true for wikileaks. The case can be made either way for wikileaks either they are a CIA/Mossad op or a legit organization of heroes. I sincerely pray that it's the latter but regardless now that We The People have realized this untapped avenue of information pandoras box is open. Forever.
You can take down wikileaks, but 3 more sites will pop up in it's wake. You can take those down and then you will have 9 sites pop up. I've seen it time and time again.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The pressure on WikiLeaks is increasing. DN.se reveals that several key figures behind the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational or religious documents have resigned in protest against the controversial leader Julian Assange only to launch a new service for the so-called whistleblowers. The goal: to leak sensitive information to the public.
The new project, “Openleaks,” has been under way for some time and will be launched Monday. DN.se has spoken to individuals behind the new site and the message is clear.
“Our long term goal is to build a strong, transparent platform to support whistleblowers--both in terms of technology and politics--while at the same time encouraging others to start similar projects,” says a colleague wishing to remain anonymous.
”As a short-term goal, this is about completing the technical infrastructure and ensuring that the organization continues to be democratically governed by all its members, rather than limited to one group or individual.”
The news comes in turbulent times for WikiLeaks. Thousands of documents infuriating global leaders and policy-makers have been unveiled to the public via Cablegate. Meanwhile, Julian Assange has been arrested in Great Britain on suspected rape charges based in Sweden. News about WikiLeaks has been over-shadowed by Assange's personal problems.
Earlier this year, WikiLeaks experienced accessibility issues. According to information revealed to DN.se, the problem was not linked to outsiders trying to sabotage, but came from the inside as a signal to Julian Assange to step down. The colleagues were dissatisfied with the operation's association with Assange's personal problems and how he used the organization in his explanation of the criminal charges.
It is the top-down management style which is under critique.
On the other hand, the DN.se source emphasizes the fact that the new website is supportive of WikiLeaks purpose and goal.
“The two organizations are similar in that aspect that both are focusing on providing means for whistleblowers to anonymously provide the public with information,” one insider says.
Unlike WikiLeaks, Openleaks will not receive and publish information directly for the public eye. Instead, other organizations will access the Openleaks system and in turn, present their audience with the material. Documents will be processed and published by various collaborating organizations.
“We intend to split the work in a way where we handle only the anonymity and receiving end of the information,” says another colleague.
According to the internal documents shared with DN.se, Openleaks intends to establish itself as a neutral intermediary ”without a political agenda except from the dissemination of information to the media, the public, non-profit organizations, trade- and union organizations and other participating groups.”
“All editorial control and responsibility rests with the publishing organization. We will, as far as possible, take the role of the messenger between the whistleblower and the organization the whistleblower is trying to cooperate with,” says one anonymous informant.
Another intended consequence is to avoid the pressure from world leaders that WikiLeaks has experienced.
“As a result of our intention not to publish any document directly and in our own name, we do not expect to experience the kind of political pressure which WikiLeaks is under at this time. In that aspect, it is quite interesting to see how little of politicians' anger seems directed at the newspapers using WikiLeaks sources.”
Translation: Majsan Boström.
The point is that once the people decide they want to do something they do it and no amount of man made laws or bureaucracy will stop them. The same is true for wikileaks. The case can be made either way for wikileaks either they are a CIA/Mossad op or a legit organization of heroes. I sincerely pray that it's the latter but regardless now that We The People have realized this untapped avenue of information pandoras box is open. Forever.
You can take down wikileaks, but 3 more sites will pop up in it's wake. You can take those down and then you will have 9 sites pop up. I've seen it time and time again.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The pressure on WikiLeaks is increasing. DN.se reveals that several key figures behind the website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational or religious documents have resigned in protest against the controversial leader Julian Assange only to launch a new service for the so-called whistleblowers. The goal: to leak sensitive information to the public.
The new project, “Openleaks,” has been under way for some time and will be launched Monday. DN.se has spoken to individuals behind the new site and the message is clear.
“Our long term goal is to build a strong, transparent platform to support whistleblowers--both in terms of technology and politics--while at the same time encouraging others to start similar projects,” says a colleague wishing to remain anonymous.
”As a short-term goal, this is about completing the technical infrastructure and ensuring that the organization continues to be democratically governed by all its members, rather than limited to one group or individual.”
The news comes in turbulent times for WikiLeaks. Thousands of documents infuriating global leaders and policy-makers have been unveiled to the public via Cablegate. Meanwhile, Julian Assange has been arrested in Great Britain on suspected rape charges based in Sweden. News about WikiLeaks has been over-shadowed by Assange's personal problems.
Earlier this year, WikiLeaks experienced accessibility issues. According to information revealed to DN.se, the problem was not linked to outsiders trying to sabotage, but came from the inside as a signal to Julian Assange to step down. The colleagues were dissatisfied with the operation's association with Assange's personal problems and how he used the organization in his explanation of the criminal charges.
It is the top-down management style which is under critique.
On the other hand, the DN.se source emphasizes the fact that the new website is supportive of WikiLeaks purpose and goal.
“The two organizations are similar in that aspect that both are focusing on providing means for whistleblowers to anonymously provide the public with information,” one insider says.
Unlike WikiLeaks, Openleaks will not receive and publish information directly for the public eye. Instead, other organizations will access the Openleaks system and in turn, present their audience with the material. Documents will be processed and published by various collaborating organizations.
“We intend to split the work in a way where we handle only the anonymity and receiving end of the information,” says another colleague.
According to the internal documents shared with DN.se, Openleaks intends to establish itself as a neutral intermediary ”without a political agenda except from the dissemination of information to the media, the public, non-profit organizations, trade- and union organizations and other participating groups.”
“All editorial control and responsibility rests with the publishing organization. We will, as far as possible, take the role of the messenger between the whistleblower and the organization the whistleblower is trying to cooperate with,” says one anonymous informant.
Another intended consequence is to avoid the pressure from world leaders that WikiLeaks has experienced.
“As a result of our intention not to publish any document directly and in our own name, we do not expect to experience the kind of political pressure which WikiLeaks is under at this time. In that aspect, it is quite interesting to see how little of politicians' anger seems directed at the newspapers using WikiLeaks sources.”
Translation: Majsan Boström.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Why Is Jew Neo Con Jonah Goldberg Still Alive?
FULL ARTICLE WITH LINKS
I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Jonah Goldberg dead?
I'm not threatening Jonah Goldberg. Rather I am paraphrasing Goldberg’s own published threat to Julian Assange, in a column Goldberg wrote last week entitled "Why is Assange Still Alive?" My intention, in the following paragraphs, is to suggest to poor Jonah how it might feel to have someone publicly wish him harm, and muse about method.
The next two paragraphs reflect what Jonah wrote, with my humble alterations.
In case you didn't know, Goldberg is a neoconservative commentator behind the propaganda who helped justify the invasion of Iraq, a massive – and massively unsuccessful – effort to find WMD and create a US friendly and reliable democracy where none stood before, as a US-controlled military buffer between Israel and her nemesis Iran. In a series of essays, speeches and books, he published thousands upon thousands of falsehoods and misleading talking points regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military and other government officials insist that neoconservative pundits who have no military experience and exhibit markedly dual national loyalties are doing serious damage to American national security and have frankly, gotten people killed, including brave Americans who've risked their lives and destroyed their futures based on the lies these neoconservatives told over and over again.
Even Goldberg agrees. He said in 2006 that Iraq was a mistake. After he enthusiastically cheered and relentlessly promoted (but refused to physically serve in) the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, that unwarranted war indeed has been shown to be a terrible mistake, and an openly criminal act committed by the U.S. government. A mistake we now know for sure, thanks to Wikileaks and the dedicated efforts of Julian Assange and his team. The documents that now have Jonah Goldberg in such a tizzy prove we killed (and recorded the deaths of) nearly 100,000 civilians, even as we swore we didn’t keep tabs on how many or which Iraqis were killed.
Jonah Goldberg accuses Assange of recognizing that "innocent people might die as a result of the "collateral damage" of his work [at Wikileaks]." I accuse Jonah Goldberg of not only knowingly encouraging the death of Iraqi innocents and American soldiers, but of publicly backing away from his advocacy years later when it became popular to do so.
The differences between Jonah Goldberg and Julian Assange are legion. Assange is a courageous iconoclast, brilliant, angry, driven and effective. Goldberg is an idiotic, chicken-hearted coward with limited talent in his chosen field. When he calls for the assassination by those employed by or ostensibly on the side of the US government, as he did publicly a few days ago, it tells us more about Goldberg’s own concerns and lack of character than Assange’s alleged "crimes" against the corporate state.
As Glenn Greenwald has noted, Jonah’s irresponsible plea to the dark world of government assassins, obsessive misfits and politically inspired sociopaths, is rhetorically withdrawn after the initial excitement of the headline. Jonah considers, in the end, his murder-fantasy of Julian Assange wouldn’t make much difference anyway in the age of the Internet. Now, I wonder why that is?
Is it possible that the same medium that makes Jonah’s inanity readily available for the neoconservative-leaning mouth-breathers also provides information that could be useful and valued to others who live in the United States and around the world? Already, the Chinese government has referenced Wikileaks in pointing out US hypocrisy in demanding human rights for some Chinese while instructing its own soldiers in a country those soldiers are occupying specifically for human rights and democracy, no less, to look the other way as Iraqis are beaten, locked up, raped and tortured because of their ethnicity, religion, political views or sheer bad luck.
I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Jonah Goldberg dead?
I'm not threatening Jonah Goldberg. Rather I am paraphrasing Goldberg’s own published threat to Julian Assange, in a column Goldberg wrote last week entitled "Why is Assange Still Alive?" My intention, in the following paragraphs, is to suggest to poor Jonah how it might feel to have someone publicly wish him harm, and muse about method.
The next two paragraphs reflect what Jonah wrote, with my humble alterations.
In case you didn't know, Goldberg is a neoconservative commentator behind the propaganda who helped justify the invasion of Iraq, a massive – and massively unsuccessful – effort to find WMD and create a US friendly and reliable democracy where none stood before, as a US-controlled military buffer between Israel and her nemesis Iran. In a series of essays, speeches and books, he published thousands upon thousands of falsehoods and misleading talking points regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military and other government officials insist that neoconservative pundits who have no military experience and exhibit markedly dual national loyalties are doing serious damage to American national security and have frankly, gotten people killed, including brave Americans who've risked their lives and destroyed their futures based on the lies these neoconservatives told over and over again.
Even Goldberg agrees. He said in 2006 that Iraq was a mistake. After he enthusiastically cheered and relentlessly promoted (but refused to physically serve in) the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, that unwarranted war indeed has been shown to be a terrible mistake, and an openly criminal act committed by the U.S. government. A mistake we now know for sure, thanks to Wikileaks and the dedicated efforts of Julian Assange and his team. The documents that now have Jonah Goldberg in such a tizzy prove we killed (and recorded the deaths of) nearly 100,000 civilians, even as we swore we didn’t keep tabs on how many or which Iraqis were killed.
Jonah Goldberg accuses Assange of recognizing that "innocent people might die as a result of the "collateral damage" of his work [at Wikileaks]." I accuse Jonah Goldberg of not only knowingly encouraging the death of Iraqi innocents and American soldiers, but of publicly backing away from his advocacy years later when it became popular to do so.
The differences between Jonah Goldberg and Julian Assange are legion. Assange is a courageous iconoclast, brilliant, angry, driven and effective. Goldberg is an idiotic, chicken-hearted coward with limited talent in his chosen field. When he calls for the assassination by those employed by or ostensibly on the side of the US government, as he did publicly a few days ago, it tells us more about Goldberg’s own concerns and lack of character than Assange’s alleged "crimes" against the corporate state.
As Glenn Greenwald has noted, Jonah’s irresponsible plea to the dark world of government assassins, obsessive misfits and politically inspired sociopaths, is rhetorically withdrawn after the initial excitement of the headline. Jonah considers, in the end, his murder-fantasy of Julian Assange wouldn’t make much difference anyway in the age of the Internet. Now, I wonder why that is?
Is it possible that the same medium that makes Jonah’s inanity readily available for the neoconservative-leaning mouth-breathers also provides information that could be useful and valued to others who live in the United States and around the world? Already, the Chinese government has referenced Wikileaks in pointing out US hypocrisy in demanding human rights for some Chinese while instructing its own soldiers in a country those soldiers are occupying specifically for human rights and democracy, no less, to look the other way as Iraqis are beaten, locked up, raped and tortured because of their ethnicity, religion, political views or sheer bad luck.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Has WikiLeaks Landed in Cyberattack Crosshairs?
Forget China or Al Qaeda. In a twist that would have been inconceivable even a few months ago, the WikiLeaks.org Web site is being proposed as the first public target for a U.S. government cyberattack.
After the shadowy, document-leaking organization distributed nearly 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq war on Friday, Washington officialdom responded with a torrent of denunciations alleging violations of national security and endangering U.S. military operations.
WikiLeaks
In a rare point of congruence, The Washington Post and The Washington Times both criticized the release, with the smaller paper arguing that WikiLeaks' offshore Web site should be attacked and rendered "inoperable" by the U.S. government. Some hawkish conservatives followed suit, including Christian Whiton, a State Department adviser under President George W. Bush, who wrote a column calling on the U.S. military to "electronically assault WikiLeaks and any telecommunications company offering its services to this organization."
Full Story Here
After the shadowy, document-leaking organization distributed nearly 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq war on Friday, Washington officialdom responded with a torrent of denunciations alleging violations of national security and endangering U.S. military operations.
WikiLeaks
In a rare point of congruence, The Washington Post and The Washington Times both criticized the release, with the smaller paper arguing that WikiLeaks' offshore Web site should be attacked and rendered "inoperable" by the U.S. government. Some hawkish conservatives followed suit, including Christian Whiton, a State Department adviser under President George W. Bush, who wrote a column calling on the U.S. military to "electronically assault WikiLeaks and any telecommunications company offering its services to this organization."
Full Story Here
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Wikileaks Funding Is Blocked By US Government
The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.
Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.
The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army's biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.
WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.
Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: "Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities."
When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: "When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.
"Below I have copied the answer I received from them: 'Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'"
Assange said: "This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically."
Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: "We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer." Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: "We stick with our original statement."
Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.
The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army's biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.
WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.
Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: "Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities."
When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: "When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.
"Below I have copied the answer I received from them: 'Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'"
Assange said: "This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically."
Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: "We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer." Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: "We stick with our original statement."
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Is Wikileaks Tied To The CIA Or Mossad?
Up until recently I have been an outspoken supporter of wikileaks, their founder Julian Assange and their stated mission online. As things sometimes do some information has begun to circulate that wikileaks is funded by George Soros and has ties to the Mossad and or the CIA. Now I can't confirm any of these allegations but I do consider them noteworthy.
One of the biggest red flags for me is Assange's statement that he is "annoyed" by 911 Truth stating that there are "actual conspiracies" out there. Now anyone who has honestly taken the time to investigate 911 knows at least 1 thing for certain, we aren't getting all the facts on 911, so for someone like Assange to try and divert attention from it is very suspicious.
Many people have made up their minds about Assange and wikileaks but I am not one of them, not yet. I most certainly will proceed with caution from this point but I'm not going to condemn them now, I see no reason to rush to judgement.
The following links provide a balance to the very favorable coverage I have given them in the past. Take these for what they're worth.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth
Is the latest Wikileaks release serving the military industrial complex?
GORDON DUFF: WIKI-LEAKS IS ISRAEL, LIKE WE ALL DIDN’T KNOW
WIKILEAKS WORKS FOR THE CIA AND MOSSAD?
One of the biggest red flags for me is Assange's statement that he is "annoyed" by 911 Truth stating that there are "actual conspiracies" out there. Now anyone who has honestly taken the time to investigate 911 knows at least 1 thing for certain, we aren't getting all the facts on 911, so for someone like Assange to try and divert attention from it is very suspicious.
Many people have made up their minds about Assange and wikileaks but I am not one of them, not yet. I most certainly will proceed with caution from this point but I'm not going to condemn them now, I see no reason to rush to judgement.
The following links provide a balance to the very favorable coverage I have given them in the past. Take these for what they're worth.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth
Is the latest Wikileaks release serving the military industrial complex?
GORDON DUFF: WIKI-LEAKS IS ISRAEL, LIKE WE ALL DIDN’T KNOW
WIKILEAKS WORKS FOR THE CIA AND MOSSAD?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
White House Reeling After Release of The Afghan War Diary
Knowledge is power, and the can't blindly lead people who know the Truth. They claim that it could put the troops at risk, but how? So are they worried about their mercenaries, or are they worried about the public gaining understanding of exactly what goes on, on the ground over there in the mideast.
It is documents like this that they are afraid of.
It is documents like this that they are afraid of.
Afghan War Logs Reveal CIA Role In Civilian Deaths
Source
Shum Khan, a man both deaf and dumb, lived in the remote border hamlet of Malekshay, 7,000ft up in the mountains. When a heavily armed squad from the CIA barrelled into his village in March 2007, the war logs record that he "ran at the sight of the approaching coalition forces … out of fear and confusion".
The secret CIA paramilitaries, (the euphemism here is OGA, for "other government agency") shouted at him to stop. Khan could not hear them. He carried on running. So they shot him, saying they were entitled to do so under the carefully graded "escalation of force" provisions of the US rules of engagement.
Khan was wounded but survived. The Americans' error was explained to them by village elders, so they fetched out what they term "solatia", or compensation. The classified intelligence report ends briskly: "Solatia was made in the form of supplies and the Element mission progressed".
Behind the military jargon, the war logs are littered with accounts of civilian tragedies. The 144 entries in the logs recording some of these so-called "blue on white" events, cover a wide spectrum of day-by-day assaults on Afghans, with hundreds of casualties.
They range from the shootings of individual innocents to the often massive loss of life from air strikes, which eventually led President Hamid Karzai to protest publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as "cheap". When civilian family members are actually killed in Afghanistan, their relatives do, in fairness, get greater solatia payments than cans of beans and Hershey bars. The logs refer to sums paid of 100,000 Afghani per corpse, equivalent to about £1,500.
US and allied commanders frequently deny allegations of mass civilian casualties, claiming they are Taliban propaganda or ploys to get compensation, which are contradicted by facts known to the military.
But the logs demonstrate how much of the contemporaneous US internal reporting of air strikes is simply false.
Last September there was a major scandal at Kunduz in the north of Afghanistan when a German commander ordered the bombing of a crowd looting two hijacked fuel tankers. The contemporaneous archive circulated to Nato allies records him authorising the airstrike by a US F-15 jet "after ensuring that no civilians were in the vicinity". The "battle damage assessment" confirmed, it claims, that 56 purely "enemy insurgents" had died.
Media reports followed by official inquiries, however, established something closer to the real death toll. It included 30 to 70 civilians.
In another case the logs show that on the night of 30 August 2008, a US special forces squad called Scorpion 26 blasted Helmand positions with multiple rockets, and called in an airstrike to drop a 500lb bomb. All that was officially logged was that 24 Taliban had been killed.
But writer Patrick Bishop was embedded in the valley nearby with British paratroops at their Sangin bases. He recorded independently: "Overnight, the question of civilian casualties took on an extra urgency. An American team had been inserted on to Black Mountain … From there, they launched a series of offensive operations. On 30 August, wounded civilians, some of them badly injured, turned up at Sangin and FOB Inkerman saying they had been attacked by foreign troops. Such incidents gave a hollow ring to ISAF claims that their presence would bring security to the local population."
Some of the more notorious civilian calamities did become public at the time. The logs confirm that an entirely truthful official announcement was made regretting the guidance system failure of one "smart bomb". On 9 September 2008 it unintentionally landed on a village causing 26 civilian casualties.
The US also realised very quickly that a Polish squad had committed what appeared to have been a possible war crime. On 16 August 2007 the Poles mortared a wedding party in the village of Nangar Khel in an apparent revenge attack shortly after experiencing an IED explosion.
It is recorded under the heading: "Any incident that may cause negative media". The report disclosed that three women victims had "numerous shrapnel wounds … One was pregnant and an emergency C-section was performed but the baby died". In all, six were killed. The Polish troops were shipped home and some eventually put on trial for the atrocity. After protests in their support from a Polish general, the trial has apparently so far failed to reach a conclusion.
But most of the assaults on civilians recorded here, do not appear to have been investigated. French troops "opened fire on a bus that came too close to convoy" near the village of Tangi Kalay outside Kabul on 2 October 2008, according to the logs. They wounded eight children who were in the bus.
Two months later, US troops gunned down a group of bus passengers even more peremptorily, as the logs record.
Patrolling on foot, a Kentucky-based squad from 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, known as "Red Currahee", decided to flag down the approaching bus, so their patrol could cross the road. Before sunrise, a soldier stepped out on to Afghanistan's main highway and raised both hands in the air.
When the bus failed to slow – travellers are often wary of being flagged down in Afghanistan's bandit lands – a trooper raked it with machine-gun fire. They killed four passengers and wounded 11 others.
Some of the civilian deaths in the list stem from violent actions by US special forces attempting to hunt down Taliban leaders or al-Qaida incomers. In a typical case, last November, the army files record a demonstration by 80 angry villagers who broke an armoured car window in the village of Lewani. A woman from the village had been killed in an assault by the shadowy Task Force 373.
The influence of the then new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, can be seen, however. Brought in last year with a mission to try to cut the number of civilian casualties, he clearly demanded more detailed reporting of such incidents.
The Lewani file is marked with a new "information requirement" to record each "credible allegation of Isaf [the occupying forces] … causing non-combatant injury/death".
McChrystal was replaced last month, however, by General David Petraeus, amid reports that restraints aimed at cutting civilian deaths would be loosened once again.
The bulk of the "blue-white" file consists of a relentless catalogue of civilian shootings on nearly 100 occasions by jumpy troops at checkpoints, near bases or on convoys. Unco-operative drivers and motorcyclists are frequent targets.
Each incident almost without exception is described as a meticulous "escalation of force" conducted strictly by the book, against a threatening vehicle.
US and UK rules require shouts, waves, flares, warning shots and shots into the engine block, before using lethal force. Each time it is claimed that this procedure is followed. Yet "warning shots" often seem to cause death or injury, generally ascribed to ricochets.
Sometimes, it seems as though civilian drivers merely failed to get off the road fast enough. On 9 July 2006 mechanic Mohamad Baluch was test-driving a car in Ghazni, when the Americans rolled into town on an anti-IED "route clearance patrol".
The log records: "LN [local national] vehicle did not yield to US convoy … Gunner on lead truck shot into the vehicle and convoy kept going out of the area." The townspeople threw rocks at the eight departing armoured Humvees. Baluch ended up in hospital with machine-gun bullets in his shoulder.
Shum Khan, a man both deaf and dumb, lived in the remote border hamlet of Malekshay, 7,000ft up in the mountains. When a heavily armed squad from the CIA barrelled into his village in March 2007, the war logs record that he "ran at the sight of the approaching coalition forces … out of fear and confusion".
The secret CIA paramilitaries, (the euphemism here is OGA, for "other government agency") shouted at him to stop. Khan could not hear them. He carried on running. So they shot him, saying they were entitled to do so under the carefully graded "escalation of force" provisions of the US rules of engagement.
Khan was wounded but survived. The Americans' error was explained to them by village elders, so they fetched out what they term "solatia", or compensation. The classified intelligence report ends briskly: "Solatia was made in the form of supplies and the Element mission progressed".
Behind the military jargon, the war logs are littered with accounts of civilian tragedies. The 144 entries in the logs recording some of these so-called "blue on white" events, cover a wide spectrum of day-by-day assaults on Afghans, with hundreds of casualties.
They range from the shootings of individual innocents to the often massive loss of life from air strikes, which eventually led President Hamid Karzai to protest publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as "cheap". When civilian family members are actually killed in Afghanistan, their relatives do, in fairness, get greater solatia payments than cans of beans and Hershey bars. The logs refer to sums paid of 100,000 Afghani per corpse, equivalent to about £1,500.
US and allied commanders frequently deny allegations of mass civilian casualties, claiming they are Taliban propaganda or ploys to get compensation, which are contradicted by facts known to the military.
But the logs demonstrate how much of the contemporaneous US internal reporting of air strikes is simply false.
Last September there was a major scandal at Kunduz in the north of Afghanistan when a German commander ordered the bombing of a crowd looting two hijacked fuel tankers. The contemporaneous archive circulated to Nato allies records him authorising the airstrike by a US F-15 jet "after ensuring that no civilians were in the vicinity". The "battle damage assessment" confirmed, it claims, that 56 purely "enemy insurgents" had died.
Media reports followed by official inquiries, however, established something closer to the real death toll. It included 30 to 70 civilians.
In another case the logs show that on the night of 30 August 2008, a US special forces squad called Scorpion 26 blasted Helmand positions with multiple rockets, and called in an airstrike to drop a 500lb bomb. All that was officially logged was that 24 Taliban had been killed.
But writer Patrick Bishop was embedded in the valley nearby with British paratroops at their Sangin bases. He recorded independently: "Overnight, the question of civilian casualties took on an extra urgency. An American team had been inserted on to Black Mountain … From there, they launched a series of offensive operations. On 30 August, wounded civilians, some of them badly injured, turned up at Sangin and FOB Inkerman saying they had been attacked by foreign troops. Such incidents gave a hollow ring to ISAF claims that their presence would bring security to the local population."
Some of the more notorious civilian calamities did become public at the time. The logs confirm that an entirely truthful official announcement was made regretting the guidance system failure of one "smart bomb". On 9 September 2008 it unintentionally landed on a village causing 26 civilian casualties.
The US also realised very quickly that a Polish squad had committed what appeared to have been a possible war crime. On 16 August 2007 the Poles mortared a wedding party in the village of Nangar Khel in an apparent revenge attack shortly after experiencing an IED explosion.
It is recorded under the heading: "Any incident that may cause negative media". The report disclosed that three women victims had "numerous shrapnel wounds … One was pregnant and an emergency C-section was performed but the baby died". In all, six were killed. The Polish troops were shipped home and some eventually put on trial for the atrocity. After protests in their support from a Polish general, the trial has apparently so far failed to reach a conclusion.
But most of the assaults on civilians recorded here, do not appear to have been investigated. French troops "opened fire on a bus that came too close to convoy" near the village of Tangi Kalay outside Kabul on 2 October 2008, according to the logs. They wounded eight children who were in the bus.
Two months later, US troops gunned down a group of bus passengers even more peremptorily, as the logs record.
Patrolling on foot, a Kentucky-based squad from 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, known as "Red Currahee", decided to flag down the approaching bus, so their patrol could cross the road. Before sunrise, a soldier stepped out on to Afghanistan's main highway and raised both hands in the air.
When the bus failed to slow – travellers are often wary of being flagged down in Afghanistan's bandit lands – a trooper raked it with machine-gun fire. They killed four passengers and wounded 11 others.
Some of the civilian deaths in the list stem from violent actions by US special forces attempting to hunt down Taliban leaders or al-Qaida incomers. In a typical case, last November, the army files record a demonstration by 80 angry villagers who broke an armoured car window in the village of Lewani. A woman from the village had been killed in an assault by the shadowy Task Force 373.
The influence of the then new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, can be seen, however. Brought in last year with a mission to try to cut the number of civilian casualties, he clearly demanded more detailed reporting of such incidents.
The Lewani file is marked with a new "information requirement" to record each "credible allegation of Isaf [the occupying forces] … causing non-combatant injury/death".
McChrystal was replaced last month, however, by General David Petraeus, amid reports that restraints aimed at cutting civilian deaths would be loosened once again.
The bulk of the "blue-white" file consists of a relentless catalogue of civilian shootings on nearly 100 occasions by jumpy troops at checkpoints, near bases or on convoys. Unco-operative drivers and motorcyclists are frequent targets.
Each incident almost without exception is described as a meticulous "escalation of force" conducted strictly by the book, against a threatening vehicle.
US and UK rules require shouts, waves, flares, warning shots and shots into the engine block, before using lethal force. Each time it is claimed that this procedure is followed. Yet "warning shots" often seem to cause death or injury, generally ascribed to ricochets.
Sometimes, it seems as though civilian drivers merely failed to get off the road fast enough. On 9 July 2006 mechanic Mohamad Baluch was test-driving a car in Ghazni, when the Americans rolled into town on an anti-IED "route clearance patrol".
The log records: "LN [local national] vehicle did not yield to US convoy … Gunner on lead truck shot into the vehicle and convoy kept going out of the area." The townspeople threw rocks at the eight departing armoured Humvees. Baluch ended up in hospital with machine-gun bullets in his shoulder.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Wikileaks Afghan War Diary
The following is just the first part of the page dedicated to the newest wikileaks release. It is set up on it's own page and you probably won't be able to access it without using the following link, since wikileaks main page is overloaded/DDOS.
I haven't read it so I have no comments right now.
Afghan War Diary
Sunday, July 26 5pm EST.
WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.
Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.
The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: "escalation of force", "friendly-fire", "development meeting", etc. The reports can also be viewed by our "severity" measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.
The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary -- including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.
This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
Additional information from our media partners:
* Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
* The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs
* The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html
I haven't read it so I have no comments right now.
Afghan War Diary
Sunday, July 26 5pm EST.
WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.
Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.
The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: "escalation of force", "friendly-fire", "development meeting", etc. The reports can also be viewed by our "severity" measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.
The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary -- including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.
This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
Additional information from our media partners:
* Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
* The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs
* The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)