We so far are non-plussed by the latest round of WikiLeaks materials. If this is their crown jewels we see no real justification to support the release. So far we get mostly embarrassing relationship gossip. Standard cable traffic fare (secret down to unclassified). In fact, it’s almost like a bad Bob Woodward book’s early draft, but from a Bizzaro universe. There, on a Spirit Walk with Joe Wilson above Santa Fe on peyote, Woodward envisions eating Tom Friedman’s brain and just dictates stream of consciousness the Wonder of it All into his digital recorder. ‘Putin looked at Medvedev and declared, to the Bat Cave, Dmitri!’.
There’s no larger revelation of large scale U.S. duplicity like Vietnam or 2002-2003 Iraq. So the U.S. (and everyone else) spies on the U.N. Hello, McFly?
No power can be long effective if run-of-the-mill, mid-level classified material is routinely disclosed. First, anyone meeting an American from now on will wonder how soon the American’s characterization of the meeting (in which the Americans naturally always look good) is leaked. Second, American reporting from the field and information fusion will likely suffer drastically in the name of security. Candid assessments will be self-edited. More importantly, the SIPDIS multi-agency intra-net mechanism and siblings should be supported, not abandoned in favor of security over-reactions, information silos and fracturing.
Earlier disclosures from Wikileaks we felt had marginal rationale despite real downsides. It’s true enemies gained insights into American operational practices. Most of our enemies already knew it from fighting or indirectly buying that information. In a way, that battlespace disclosure had a silver lining. We have to assume our enemies went to school on us via Wikileaks and the field. Circumstances force us to innovate and re-think anew. That’s not Pollyanna typing. An external galvanizing event like the info dump may have been the impetus needed to get turgid institutions to wake up.
We also grant a risk to those cooperating with the U.S. potentially could be increased. Those WikiLeaks initial releases at least did what drop by journalists failed to do – illuminated the slow unravelling of the U.S. military ethos down to the tactical level. For future historians the confirmation of what and how the U.S. military perceived its environment will be significant.
By contrast, we fail to see what benefit will come from this latest gesture. Disclosure for the sake of it. We are shown merely what diplomacy is, day in and day out. Nothing there — aside from the gossip — is notable for structural insights or opens new systemic understanding. It’s like a Facebook hack. WikiLeaks is tediously clinging to attention like SNL. They claim more ‘good stuff’ is to come. Just like the next new host will be really funny, for sure. If this release is any sample, Assange, you’ve had your 15 minutes and get a show on Bravo.
Back in the 1990s, we argued in public writings against NSA and FBI efforts to impost export controls on encryption at absurdly ineffective levels (they didn’t even want DES). Our point was that once information became digitized, control becomes largely notional if not wholly illusory, and technology wouldn’t wait for the Federal Register. We get no satisfaction seeing the scenario play itself out in reverse here.
We can anticipate a counterproductive clampdown in response. What we got in exchange for that? Meh.
Comment says
Freeman compares JA to early 20th cent anarchists – That thought came to our mind too when we immediately thought of Cafe Terminus (Uncle Pat’s best allusion for Euro decline) a few days ago when seeing JA image – Emile Henri. We bet he knows who Emile Henri and would not be surprised if he knows all about him-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05freeman.html
Comment says
The Iranian’s doc dump of US cables never got the any traction despite being large
anxiousmodernman says
@Hunter
I’m currently delighting in the coincidence that ‘infodump’ also refers to a literary device in SF. It’s all about the little things, you know.
Hunter says
@Tbilisi
Pretty much, yes. Especially your fourth paragraph. However, I have the feeling that ‘the market’ is changing in ways that are not (merely) explicable in terms of socio-political developments, but are also tied to fundamental shifts in our technical culture. If this is so, then we need to recognize and understand this shift, and then articulate an explicitly political vision of how we should reform our political economy and financial systems to better comport with this new reality. The New Deal was a relatively appropriate response to the demands of industrial capitalism, but as industrialism passes away (as industry becomes infrastructure in the same way that agriculture became infrastructure with the passing of agrarianism and the rise of industrialism) we need a new set of responses to the demands of our new economy. I’m still working on it, but day by day I feel more and more that what is lacking is any coherent political response to the new world. To oversimplify: the Dems want the New Deal back (ain’t gonna happen), and the Reps are utterly incoherent (for their own tactical reasons). The people, such as they are, recognize that all their ‘leaders’ are utterly failing them, but no one has any compelling alternate vision.
@anxiousmodernman
I read a bunch of Ken MacLeod’s SF recently, and there was a particularly excellent flight of fancy (in The Cassini Division, if memory serves) in which Amnesty International took to contracting hits on torturers, who were outed by inevitability in an age when cameras the size of pins could be attached to a remote control cockroach for $2. Good? Bad? In MacLeod’s world the level of State violence was rather low, but the overall level of violence in the 21st century outstripped that of the 20th, on a century by century basis… Whatever the new world will be, it will be banal and unimaginable.
anxiousmodernman says
Points of agreement:
1) The contents of the leaked cables are nothing new. We can even say this about the horrifying gunship video. The deaths and the dealings are known to anyone who cares to look.
2) It is in the interest of the majority of humanity that the American empire fade gently rather than spasm violently as power dynamics shift to the East. And Wikileaks’ strategy of the infodump is not prima facie helpful in this regard.
3) Narcissists, all: the leakers and the subjects of the leaks.
And yet the overworked masses obviously need meme-formatted, tweetable, FB wall-postable “events” for any infobit to pass the smell test these days. No one is going to willingly dig through the Federal Register, or mount a FOIA request, or do anything else, for these documents otherwise. The existence of the information itself must become known through “events”.
I agree with the last point of this article that the concept of a Wikileaks has a future. There is demand and the barriers of entry are going to be low. And given the widespread cultural cynicism, the next Bradley Manning is contemplating her options right now. The whole thing smacks of inevitability.
The tremendously small effort to retweet, to gaze, to stroke tiny screens, to poke and be poked. Information spews forth inexorably. The trend is for both volume and amplitude to increase is places other than traditional media centers.
That said, even if Wikileaks-like infodumping is a world-historical inevitability, it says nothing about what value judgments we ought to make. And I can hardly find much objectionable in what you all have said here.
Comment says
… blossom’s bloomin’ .. heads all empty and I don’t care .. saw my baby down by the river … knew she to come up soon for air:
http://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/10627544017534976
Comment says
@Dr Leo Strauss
Spitzer is probably driving her crazy because the subtext of the show is that she is the nice civilized counterpart to Spitzer. That being said – we have only watched the show 3 times – most of what we see are the transcripts of some clips on HuffPo. It seems CNN is mostly unwatchable – but Spitzer really does have the potential to be a real high concept O’Reilly if they let him demolish big shots on tv. Kathleen Parker – we read – is the most read woman columnist in the US. Hard to believe – always thought she was just a southern dowd. She’s very pretty -esp for her age – She should have a daytime show. Spitzer has to tempt more guests into lashing out at him personally like the thin skinned Rand Paul did. That was good tv.
Btw – RIP to Elaine Kauffman – We had some fun there around the turn of the century.
anxiousmodernman says
Don’t be too hard on Adbusters, Doc. When Bakunin was writing there were plausible alternative institutional forms to the corporation (be it for profit or non).
Shorter: Everybody’s gotta pay the rent.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Tbilisi Nicely said. And much to ponder. Together with Hunter, you both added to this conversation a rigorously substantive dynamic.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Wikilieaks’ origins. Didn’t realize when making John Perry Barlow/EFF reference earlier that it really did begin around what later became EFF circles.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20020996-281.html?tag=mncol;txt
Tbilisi says
I appreciate your breakdown of the organization of American power. I think along similar lines, but I like this particular articulation, especially re the factionalization of the 3m and 30k.
Two key questions for me are (1) how corporate (in the sociological sense) these factions are today and (2) how corporate will they become in the future.
My sense is that currently the factions within the 30k are relatively corporate, as is evident for example in elected politicians and their various ‘friends-of-…’ networks; the capability for socio-ideological-institutional movement networks like the core neocons to succeed over medium and long terms; and naturally the influence over policy of executives of actual for-profit corporations. This is unsurprising and really no different than at any other time in American history and in fact probably could never be different in a functioning society.
But I also sense that, as the 3m exploited their greater education, status, and spending power to become more powerful viz the 300m, the factions within it (e.g. the academy, journalists, the professional bureaucracy, other beneficiaries of liberal meritocracy) have actually become less corporate (i.e. organized, coherent, and capable of action). This has led to, among other things, the abandonment of the New Deal, an inability to understand, critique, and thus regulate the market, and acquiescence to – if not active embrace of – socio-ideological movements that are obviously anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and inherently against the interests of the 300m and ultimately the 3m as well.
In the future, the worst case scenario is that the factions within the 3m eventually solidify but in a way that simply mirrors the factions in the 30k. Such a circumstance would of course in essence be a system of fascistic corporatism a la Mussolini. The best case scenario is that the the 3m evolve coherent corporate factions that are not only independent of (and at times antagonistic to) the factions of the 30k, but also sensitive to the needs of the 300m. I’m not holding my breath for the latter outcome, as the most compelling rallying cry of the 3m today is not Justice/Freedom/Jobs/the Constitution/Equality/Dignity, but instead Viacom-sponsored ‘Sanity.’
Naturally, the other possible outcome is that the 300m simply revolt, which is both highly unlikely and inherently dangerous given that what passes for mass radicalism today is either essentially just brand marketing or actual nihilism, group-hate, and worse. Unfortunately, given current circumstances, the most likely scenario seems that both the 3m and the 300m will simply continue to participate in their own enslavement.
Bringing it back to Wikileaks, I believe that if fair Julian was truly either, as his Roman namesake, the Apostate or the Philosopher, he would have positioned himself to be primarily a source for any and all journalists. This could have modestly strengthened a key faction within the 3m, and potentially could have helped save them from their own stupidity in cutting investigative journalism in favor of gossip-by-access. But, like so many things, not to be.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Comment
Does anyone know what the spread is (Vegas or London) on when Parker explodes on air and quits?
Dr Leo Strauss says
Glad you did clarify and with precision. “On his own terms” we meant that to support his rationale of a hidden, covert U.S. criminal conspiracy, one must demonstrate a disconnect/ulterior pursuit of private conspiracy interest versus public facade. And it’s not there.
As for his larger goal of inducing Permanent National Security State over-reaction, the impulse will be strong from some. Assange, however, probably did us a favor.
If one 20 year old kid from Potomac can burn CDs humming Lady Gaga, as we wrote below, one has to assume what a trained agent/turned American-in-place could do. So some re-calibration is in order. It happened after Ames and Hanssen.
Assange ultimately may be more Quixote (to mix up the stoner references). Those states most vulnerable to his tried and true methods least likely to supply the means.
The most famous case of a covert conspiracy state is the Soviets. All of us here have talked at some length about Soviet history. In 1917 the regime began as essentially a Counter Intelligence State (we often credit retired DIA analyst John Dziak for the term). Stalin perverted the mechanisms but it began with Lenin, and explicitly with murder, terror and secrecy.
Compounding that origin, we’ve all here talked now and then about the Eastern Front and the Soviet victory over the Wehrmacht. To win, the Soviets had to create the Planned Economy 1941-45 (the earlier 5 Year Plans were crude mobilizations without much planning). Their elite conspiracy, counter-intelligence DNA, and Planned Economy created the state Assange imagines the U.S. to be.
As we know, they lost the long term war. Gorbachev’s recognition of a Counter-Intelligence State’s cost in an information age is well known, as is its 1991 fate. Putin’s Russia, for all the criticisms, is not retrograde Soviet but something new. As is Beijing.
The U.S. is actually the converse of that model. We drown in a surfeit of information and expose. It’s something that used to drive the Soviets crazy – if we publish so much how were they to find the secrets? (They used to air ship weekly every copy of Aviation Week (AvLeak) to Moscow).
Assange may be trying to nail jello to a wall. With all our data we’re numb to exposes. Most of the kleptocracy in the U.S. is very public, in the U.S. Code, the Federal Register or in congressional reports. Opaque? Sure. But it’s there. No one cares. Bremer simply lost $9 billion in cash and no one cared. What can Assange do to top that?
Ah, the banks? We already ‘know’ who started it, who benefitted. Books, articles, blogs, blather. The Fed tells us it spent $3 trillion bailing out almost the entire Western World. But in a weird way we don’t KNOW anything at all. All we get are Olbermann’s Special Comments. Nothing happens.
Would Assange’s attack model aside from the USG have any real impact there? Really? What would it have to be? Or would the current social miasma simply absorb the disclosures in a 2 day news cycle, letting it all sink into our murky pea soup-like existence? Maybe some hearings. Ed Schultz screaming on TV demanding viewers to TXT their opinions.
Having pulled off the greatest swindle in the history of finance without a scratch, what would Assange have to do to cause Goldman suddenly sabotage itself with over reaction? When profits were at stake? When the Financial Services Roundtable and the Chamber are on tap?
For Assange to believe he will have an impact he has to trust someone cares enough to be an unwitting dupe. In that case, he’s a romantic stoner to boot.
Comment says
Lindsey Graham says he will tell the Paks that they should be worried more about the Taliban than India. Yeah, that will work – then he laughs concedingly at Spitzer when Spitzer (no dummy) suggests it would be impossible to know if 9-11 would have happened if we had bases in Afgan way back when – Very annoying debate.
Comment says
Lindsey Graham on tv now saying stay in Afgan forever while looking annoyed when Spitzer questions him. Graham justifies this by saying we already have bases everywhere. This fella is addicted to war – just like his boss McCain.
Dr Leo Strauss says
An email that arrived today promoting a magazine on sale at B. Dalton’s, Borders and most magazine racks. Bakhunin, it’s come down to that, an email subscription promotion.
We do encourage folks to re-read Hunter’s excellent precis of Assange’s writing. Worth bearing in mind while reading the endless Twit stream blindly supporting Assange and WikiLeaks (We’re looking at you, Glenn Greenwald, Xeni, etc.).
Hunter says
@Dr Leo Strauss
No indeed, I misread you. I thought you were complaining that he wasn’t providing enough benefit to the project of Liberal Democracy to justify the counterproductive clampdown that will likely result from his actions, and that this was a problem to which HE should be attentive (to be fair to me, though, lines like ‘On his own terms, he doesn’t cut it’ muddy the waters more than a bit). On HIS terms, the counterproductive clampdown is the point, on yours (mine, ours), the utility of him and his organization is judged elsewise. It seemed to me useful to make that distinction crystal.
Comment says
Ruth Marcus on the Newshour – just so lame. Had to vent after hearing her explain why Afgan causes discomfort.
Dr Leo Strauss says
@Hunter
Hunter, you summarize Assange well. We’re comfortable with our take.
Our response was and is on two levels. First, OUR view of whether he’s useful. To us it’s whether a disclosure helps American liberal democracy to function. Failing that, he’s at best worthless, if not mendacious.
His notion of provoking a government to overreact to its detriment is ancient. Hence the reference to someone stoned staring at their fingernails gasping at their unique insight and then calling all their friends on FaceTime.
Finally, Hunter, Assange legitimizes his actions against the U.S. precisely because it is in his world view a criminal conspiracy. And thus the ends justify the means.
We don’t think we’ve misread him at all.
Hunter says
So, to the rest of your comment: yes, he’s being irresponsible. But let’s be clear about just how incredibly irresponsible he’s being, and self-consciously so.
Hunter says
It seems to me that there’s rather a lot of point-missing going on here. Assange is not concerned with the State Department’s conduct of Foreign Policy, he is concerned with the institutions of power generally. It matters not a whit that all of the info in this dump is known; his purpose is not to reveal shocking new secrets in order to provoke reform, and everyone who analyzes his actions in those terms will continue to be confused by him.
He views the US Government itself as the institutional arm of a mostly illegitimate, decentralized conspiracy of power-brokers. The way I think of power in the US is something like this: there are 300m citizens, of whom 3m have potential access to power (I’m here), of whom 30k exercise power on a daily basis (elected reps, board members of the Fortune 500, state Governors, media elite, pick your favorites). The 30k ostensibly work on behalf of the 300m, but actually on behalf of the 3m. Furthermore, the 3m and the 30k are a factionalized and mostly incompetent oligarchy. Assange seems to think that the 30k are a competent conspiracy.
But then again, not really. He has an odd definition of conspiracy that embraces any system that depends upon secrecy in part to function. He further (and obviously problematically) conflates secrecy with injustice. Be that as it may, this very site has extensively documented the absurdities of the PNSS, the counter-intelligence state, etc., e.g. in a comment of the Doktor in a post a while back that related an amusing anecdote about the FBI trying to coerce Agency-connected US Academics into helping them. Why is one part of our Government reduced to coercing aid from their internal allies? This becomes intelligible in the framework that Assange operates under. The understanding gained thereby may or may not actually be useful or have any relation to the truth, but the appeal of the framework should be apparent.
He is correct, however, that a system which depends on a certain particular level of secrecy (perhaps privacy would be a better term) for its essential functions is vulnerable to just the attack he is making. A failure to respond lowers the level of secrecy to the point that the essential functions of the organization are compromised, and over-reaction increases the rigidity of the organization to the point that its collapse is imminent. Again, his purpose is not to reveal shocking new secrets in order to provoke reform. His purpose is to provoke the systems he hates into dangerous (to themselves) over-reaction in terms of increasing secrecy to an untenable point.
This is, obviously, an untested theory. It may well be that the US Government can function just fine with a much higher level of default internal information security, but that remains to be seen. In any case, the logic of Assange’s actions can be understood on the grounds of his statements there. They are not aimed at provoking ‘reform’.
Comment says
@DrLeoStrauss
Great stuff -also re JA/Wl Interesting that you peg him as a frosh stoner – He actually reminded us of a grad student who lived in the basement of a group house of women we knew when we were sophs. Off campus. In the grand scheme of things we know that is small beers worth of difference – But we recall this cat complaining still about a bad undergrad teacher ruining his shot at getting into his preferred grad psych program. He had a pretty good pc set up at the time and used DOS metaphors in conversation when he wasn’t spitting contempt for it. He has this fidgety aspect – he was a turtlenecked leptosome quoting Kafka, Reich, Freud, Marcuse, etc to the young women. Making up for lost time. JA did something similar at a Christian college in Canberra – or at least he tried – We recall that dude w. Pink Flloyd. Told us our enjoyment of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire was infantile compared to Hunter Thompson because Wolfe reported but Thompson DID and reporting vs. being is what it is all about. First time we heard the name Derrida outside of classroom, if we recall – \JA did say he is more worried about Russia and China but his mom is worried about his safety. Btw – how is everyone so sure B of A is the next leak? But anyway – there is seperate issue of WL and the msm reaction to it vs. the actual person doing the actual leaking. If we had to guess we think he’ll have to deal with his Swedish charge – he called it trivial on Larry King, but King corrected him on that. So much for being Chesterton’s Hardy – we laughed at that because he just dropped Chesterton’s name on his blog precisely because he knew his audience would not catch the reference – That grad student we recall used to do stuff like that.
DrLeoStrauss says
@Hunter
Assange’s alleged ‘intellectually substantive’ analysis is piffle, afraid to say. On his own terms he doesn’t cut it.
Using his own hackneyed melange of so-called conspiracy (his concoction fails from both political science and legal frameworks) WikiLeaks’ disclosures prove him wrong. Probably 99% of the leaks in no way contradict or undermine an already existing public understanding. They add color. Gossip. But nothing even approaching his alleged conspiracy. They in fact prove the opposite. U.S. diplomacy is actually pretty transparent for the most part.
Sunni regimes want the U.S. to get tough on Iran for them? Known. Karzai’s out of touch and his brother corrupt? Check. U.S. embassy has few contacts in Russian society still and rely on second hand news to speculate on Putin and Medvedev? Check. Pakistan’s not cooperating with us on nukes? Same. The U.S. Embassy in Georgia was captured by Georgians? Check – and actually a plus, many expected a more explicit green light from Neocon Washington. And so on.
WikiLeaks actually prove that U.S. public knowledge of the broad parameters of U.S. policy is pretty good. So what to make of his ‘conspiracy’ claptrap?
To veer into the ad hominem for a second, Assange so far is best understood as nothing more than the proverbial college freshman sitting in a dorm hallway, stoned for the first time, looking at his hand and marveling there could be a whole universe in his fingernail. Eureka! And because of technology, he can now FaceTime this novel insight to all his friends!
It’s not just Assange. This kind of callow, superficial, pendantry fuels Maddow and her ilk, those who embrace the — to them novel — factoid or truism with hilariously inappropriate solemnity and self importance. (Maddow is only slightly less repellant in her naive exuberance than certain bloggers who compulsively insert “I”, “me” or “mine” into every sentence and paragraph of their blogs. When those appear with Maddow on camera, one almost expects a black hole of narcissism to form spontaneously and devour the world (forget the super collider)).
Second, aside from the freshman stoner prism, even IF Assange could have produced the goods — which aren’t here in an EPIC FAIL — a question must be asked: what next? What is the purpose besides tearing down?
It’s not enough to fantasize about being the hero pulling down the alleged American authoritarian conspiracy. Intelligence services of dozens of countries try to do that every day. Crippling the United States is more than a freshman stoner’s ramblings. If U.S. Power (whether of Bushian truculence or Obama’s indecision) is imploded at this moment in time, what will replace it? At what cost? To people wholly innocent of any grand power conspiracy or Great Games? Billions of peoples’ lives and well being depend on that answer. Assange has no responsible answer. The freshman stoner equivalent is another bong hit.
Many oppose American militarization and bumbling imperialism. Their task — conducted in public — is how to adjust American power and purposes to a global order conducive to American values after our Moment expires. It’s no hero who wants to ignore the consequences or this important work. A juvenile temper tantrum that America must be undermined because it’s criminal works for 30 seconds speaking to his Twitter hipster fanclub.
Twitting hipsters don’t know. They, like Assange, don’t think in world historical terms. But Assange’s not just lighting his loozer roommate’s Maroon 5 poster on fire to their giggling encouragement as they wait for pizza with the munchies. Undermining U.S. power has real world consequences.
The international system has not been this potentially unstable and disordered in modern times. Cavalier attacks on American power will only exacerbate the chaos and ironically strengthen the hands of regimes far more repugnant than even Dick Cheney’s America. Problems from Africa to Asia are potentially undercut with real lives at stake.
Personally, does Assange the philosophe think that Litvenenko died because he went to a London Burger King and bought a plutonium sandwich? One of his own leaked cables ironically shows U.S. concerns about that murder. Is that the international order Assange wants to supplant the admittedly poorly managed U.S. fin de siecle? Does Assange realize the complications of rushing a Beijing-centric global order in a vacuum before they or the world are ready?
If Assange has real information that can inform a serious failing of democracy then all power to him. Like the NY Times breaking the NSA/Cheney extra-constitutional domestic surveillance, etc. If he could have proven who forged the Italian documents about Nigerian yellow cake, we’d buy him a drink.
His bulimic dump not only undermines the freshman stoner shoe-gazing-esque rationales, his self-centered obliviousness to consequence defines him. We care not a whit about the reputation or embarrassment of U.S. functionaries. This isn’t about those petty issues. American power for good or for ill has real meaning, real impact on the daily lives of billions of people. The orderly re-calibration of American power in the world is in the interests those billions, including 300 million plus Americans. Its exercise requires confidentiality and a balance between ideals and self-interest which Assange flagrantly disregards.
We’ve written at length (in Ivy League publications — how’s that for shallow self promotion and resort to authority as logical dodge?) about the inherent American dilemma reconciling secrecy and Old Europe’s raison d’etat with our republican ideals. Many others have, too, going back to the 1950s. A trip to Amazon on the Google will turn up many titles. One has to excuse a freshman stoner for not realizing his ‘trailblazing’ insights about this tension are in fact old academic news. He should try a library. There’s a huge back catalog.
We welcome specific investigative reporting/disclosure that would highlight a major duplicity or outright fabrication that would have a material impact on our ability to function as a liberal democracy. We recognize there are legitimate reasons to at least listen to presentations back about how publication might damage national interest. Like, for example, to cite a cause celebre of the Assange-Tweeting-Masses, redacting Valerie Plame’s name. (If only to spare the world years of her spouse’s bloated media whoring).
But nothing Assange has said here convinces he’s anything more than that prism of a self-absorbed freshman stoner, thinking what’s new to his limited experience and life is new to God’s creation. He isn’t even a vandal or anarchist. That’s an insult to Bakhunin. Perhaps Assange wants to pretend ex post facto he’s Wilson at Versailles. Open agreements openly arrived at. That worked well. For Wilson, for the failed League of Nations, for American isolationism, for vindictive French and British terms and the 50 million people who died later. Would Assange assail Roosevelt’s blatantly illegal covert aid to Great Britain before December, 1941, including helping to sink the Bismark?
At best he reminds us of the stoner naivete of John Perry Barlow, who’s ridden his career as lyricist for the Dead for quite some time. In 1994 or so, he, Esther Dyson and others got together and cobbled together a ‘Magna Carta for the Digital Age’. Barlow prattled on how cyberspace was now a distinct presence and ‘immune’ from the dead hand of the non-digerati in governments. All very Sugar Magnolia. (Barlow would have loved spending thousands for virtual islands in Second Life no doubt; maybe he did. He’s still popping up via EFF).
American media pundit Rightists calling for his physical harm are their usual selves, safely posturing for ratings. He’s Australian and received the leaks. So that kind of posturing is just more Fox programming.
But Assange shouldn’t forget Litvenenko. He may in time welcome protection by the Swedish (or other) authorities. And in the future, should he break real news that truly help America to function better as a liberal democracy, more power to him. But this ain’t it. We’d welcome a surprise but suspect the stoner prism above really is the best explanation for him past and present.
Hunter says
OK, I just reread this post, and skimmed the commentary, and that link I just dropped in my last comment is not ‘perhaps useful’ but utterly essential reading. Like, now.
Hunter says
Some perhaps useful background theory:
zz on Assange on the purpose of Wikileaks
Comment says
@Dr Leo Strauss Speaking of Asian mercantilism – Interesting comments re passing of C. Johnson:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/21/the_impact_today_and_tomorrow_of_chalmers_johnson/?ref=c3
Comment says
If Brian Lamb were doing the interview instead od Stengle he would have asked why 1978. But Stengle is afraid to ask simple questions if they may make him un cool or naive.
Wonder how he feels about Palin calling for his scalp.
Comment says
We also thought it was funny that JA dated the peak of US openness at 1978 — He is a classic autodidact with his half baked theories darting in and out of his mind. He might be right about 1978. Susan Molinari didn’t seem to bright calling him an anti capitalist leftist hypocrite on tweety live. He is anarchic-libertarian – arguably to the right of molinari. Yeah whatever = these pundits just babble.
Comment says
JA seems to think the French Rev happened before ours. Odd he has not been heckled for this – They just let that hang:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034040-2,00.html
re: the cables – we were just looking quickly at the huge numbers from Amman and just extrapolating creatively.
Dr Leo Strauss says
People should be mindful and avoid reading too much into WikiLeaks items. Particularly this kind of so-called traffic analysis. Why? First, it’s a skewed sample from a much larger unknown universe. Just what WikiLeaks sources give them and what WikiLeaks releases.
Second, one needs to understand the Foreign Service and its internal dynamics for career advancement. FSOs are deployed in ‘cones’ serving abroad. Political affairs is the one considered fast track, counselor affairs, management, etc. less desirable. Cable traffic volume from an embassy often can be explained by internal career dynamics as much as objective strategic attention. Just as workings of the Executive Secretariat at Foggy Bottom can explain much that is attributed to considered and purposeful action by senior appointees.
Third, the sample is skewed because it’s mid-level or less. Secret down to non-classified to boot.
Fourth, to make a valid geo-strategic appraisal, one needs to see the entire volumetric output per category (country, topic, etc.) of the entire embassy, including Dept of Commerce Commercial Services and other attaches/representatives. The instruction/action items coming back also must be factored into an analysis.
Finally, it’s as – if not more – important to know what WASN’t sent, i.e. spiked.
U.S. ambassadors, for example, can go ‘native’ and become advocates for their seat/position/nation. (And not just them). The classic example is Mike Mansfield (1977-1989), who spiked an enormous volume of reports from Tokyo attempting to warn Washington what Japanese intentions were regarding targeted merchantilist assault on the open U.S. domestic market. Mansfield is perhaps the most egregious, but Ambassadors and FSOs across the Middle East and in its heyday Japan are/were notorious for cultivating host countries govs and companies’ interest for their post State Dept. career meal ticket cash out.
When Armacost replaced Mansfield in Tokyo he was astounded what was spiked by Mansfield as being ‘alarmist’ or otherwise possibly objectionable to the Japanese. Those years –1977-1989 — perhaps coincidentally were crucial in cementing the Japanese zero-sum export economic model’s success against the U.S. target, copied by the 4 Tigers and now trumped by the Chinese.
Comment says
What we meant to say re cables – If you go down the list of countries – many of the ones we have extensive cable traffic with are ones that do not add to the bottom line. You can see a snapshot of our being mired in things unprofitable and intractable –
Comment says
We read about WL’s failsafe provisions a while back – They have planned pretty well for the eventuality of Assange being caught. We read Eli Lake mocking Assange as a pseudo intellectual and that pretty much sums of the media concern about how WL crimps on their status.
Leo – the other day you noted how little those 30 hack matter – True, but they actually did matter a bit just a few years ago and they mattered quite a bit 5-10 yrs ago. They are all being marginalized just as the gov is.
So yes, this is the 4gw, as that Leave It Beaver-con keeps sayin’
Dr Leo Strauss says
If they truly are only starting to examine the security problems highlighted by WikiLeaks, that is more alarming than anything actually leaked to date.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0115477120101202
Comment says
We can already hear Strickland 6 months down the road saying “well that’s not really what I meant by intellectual elitism, what I meant was, now stick with me here, was that when Republicans unfairly said Democrat party and refused to meet us half ….”
Obama has been incredible since the election – Just seems to be trying to outdo himself in caves. He actually could pass tons of stuff during this lame duck session if he was really tough. Start by doing nothing and let those tax cuts expire. Does Obama really think that would cause harm? No, we think not.
Comment says
It’s the dummies vs. the pussies:
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/12/01/flanagan-wikileaks-assange.html
Dr Leo Strauss says
re Strickland, pathetic really — typical Democratic battered spouse syndrome. Democrats radiate weakness like a melting nuclear reactor. Who gets excited about flinching weaklings? Who negotiate with themselves into defeat? That stand for ‘you need us because we suck less.’
When the Boy King unilaterally froze federal pay without any linkage to promoting any of his alleged priorities we just laughed. Really, can’t make it up.
Comment says
Irony here – Strickland offers some good sensible advice, but then buries it under a GOP favored phrase. While he meant something different with his elitism than they do, he doesn’t realize who put words in his mouth
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/01/exclusive-ted-strickland-_n_790489.html
Comment says
This guy is a small minded hot head – We have seen him lose his cool before over nothing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/01/steve-buyer-flips-out-house_n_789705.html
Comment says
A lot of this brutal and violent talk is just BS – It makes people feel tough if they talk tough. They are very much influenced by movies. The fact that Assange has a certain kind of Bond villain aspect to him serves to provoke the laptop rumblers. When Assange assumes his ‘more in sadness than in anger’ tone, people just go crazy.
Comment says
Jonah Goldberg has regularly suggested murdering unfavored personalities – Krauthammer suggested the only reason Bush’s Iraq war went south was because he did not murder that Shia cleric.
Guess Jonah would say it’s not a red or black hit job – but a south park execution – No bigger deal than a whoopee cushion filled with anthrax or poison gas.
btw- Being an ethics professor at a journalistic institute sound pretty emasculating. Bond would never be one – unless he was castrated with a carpet beater.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Eliminationism is the historical progression in the pathology after de-legitimitzation and physical abuse/torture – under brownshirts or the red banner.
Comment says
Not sure why, but we always laugh and think it is sort of ridiculous when we read articles that quote people from bogus seeming (to us) journalistic ethics experts – Usually Poynter or Columbia. As if they have some sort of wisdom that eludes us mortals. J-school probably has it’s place, but maybe it is just a notch more legit than the precious MFA writer schools or Masters in Teaching.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051905333_2.html
Comment says
Bill O’Reilly took some time off from defending Jesus during the Christmas season to suggest Julian Assage be executed.
Jonah Goldberg and others have been pretty quick with murder suggestions lately. Seems like a trend – You know: everyone is for torture, but real men are for executions.
Comment says
Keller gets beyotched here by someone who has to comply with an official secrets act. Turns out the unofficial secret bootlickers act is more powerful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMn4q4FNHg&feature=player_embedded
DrLeoStrauss says
re Manning, from a CI point of view he is a symptom, a data point in a much more alarming reality. If one young, self-motivated amateur could Lady GaGa his way to even a part of this mid-level cache, a trained or coached agent (or disaffected/turned American in place) could do exponentially greater damage. One HAS TO consider this worst case scenario. The potential universe of compromised material is staggering.
Add to this the badge flipping and contractor proliferation 2001-2006 and it is in fact a nightmare. Rolodexes and other government property routinely walked out the door in the great diaspora and cash-in either physically or retained (yes Cofer, you, Richter and the legions of others).
In the end, despite the fact the Chicoms and others technically are already overtly attacking our network achilles heel, the human element always poses the greatest security risk. Not just the lazy password on a post-it. Given the Warlord’s radicalization 2001-08 and the rot of cynicism it engendered, from our perspective Manning is merely one random data point made public on a much more troubling mosaic.
Plus, big as it is, the Permanent National Security State would have been substantially larger. The demand for increasing cadres of TS, TS/SCI as well as more common Secret, Confidential personnel is insatiable. It is at its current bloated but reduced size because of years of slow bureaucratic bottlenecks getting background checks expedited. Pressure from contractors and even from the hollowed out governmental entities during the balloon years to rush the process was intense. We know. We carried water for the defense industry trying to push through expedited background checks to allow more outsourcing, profit, etc. — oops, we meant to say performing their patriotic duty.
These internal issues play out against an unprecedented environment. Most of the world, including our alleged NATO allies, thought Bush’s America was a rogue, unpredictable nation. So one kid from Potomac burned some CDs. Think about the above and then realize the CI challenge would drive a grown man to chew Tylenols like candy.
Comment says
@Comment Totally agree Red
RedPhillip says
@Comment
I think the major media are opposed to Wikileaks is because there is no domestic faction that benefits from the release of these documents. If there were factional interests at play then it would be more likely to find media spokesmodels expressing soe degree of support for Wikileaks. Since the diplomatic documents reflect badly on projects that all major ruling class factions basically support, and because all major media represent the interests of their owners, it is not a surprise that only outlier media defend the leaks.
Comment says
Jamie Ruben is unimpressive against wikileaks because he cannot just admit why he hates it – He is an insider and they are outsiders. Instead he has to make up some speech. Rubin is now suggesting watergate was so different than anything WL exposes. Maybe not. We shall see – but it is odd to see media be against leaks.
Comment says
Bet these wikileaks are not only from Manning’s doc dump.
Comment says
HRC is very diligent:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/daskrapital/2010/11/29/is-cristina-on-any-medications-how-do-her-emotions-affect-her-decision-making/