Following up on my previous ‘random thoughts‘ about Wikileaks and Assange, I want to share with you some tentative conclusions to which I have come about the Wikileaks & Assange topic.
First, and most importantly, I have come to the conclusion that these are real leaks, not some kind of disinformation, strategic psyop, or propaganda operation. As of this moment, 1095 documents have been released and, to paraphrase Hegel, this quantitative change has resulted in a real qualitative change. Looking at the scope and nature of some of these documents, I have to conclude that they are absolutely genuine and that they do significantly and negatively affect the US Empire’s interests. Some will no doubt fault me for being slow to come to that conclusion, while other will fault me for coming to the wrong conclusion. To the first ones I will just say that rather than immediately jump to conclusion, I rather wait to get the minimal amount of data to form an opinion. To the second ones I will say that in a choice between opinion and facts, the latter should prevail.
Second, it appears that Assange and the rest of the Wikileaks folks have severely underestimated the arrogant, brazen and wholly illegal way in which the Empire would hunt them down. The minor problem is that Assange should have stayed in Iceland where he seems to enjoy some degree of protection, instead he chose to say in the UK in the mistaken hope that he would be granted bail. A far worse miscalculation was to believe that major corporations like Visa, Amazon or PayPal would not immediately obey any instruction coming from Uncle Sam. The only fact mitigating this disaster is that Wikileaks does not need lots of money to continue operating. I am confident that it will be very easy to find money to cover Wikileaks’ and Assange’s legal costs. Ditto for hosting costs.
Third, the next logical step would be to arrest the people currently doing the release of the documents. Frankly, the idea that these folks are working from some ‘hidden location’ is absolutely preposterous. If an agency like the NSA (and the rest of the Echelon nations) set its mind to find out where these so-called ‘secret locations’ are, it will easily do so, even if this is a decentralized effort. In other worse, Wikileakers should now fully be prepared to be arrested at minute and be ready to have their servers seized.
Fourth, the idea of the ‘insurance file’ is not nearly as brilliant as some think. The problem with this “thermonuclear option”, to use the same expression as Assange’s lawyer, is the problem inherent to any thermonuclear device: its a very bad negotiations tool. Think about it, if the passphrase is released, then that’s it, Assange and Wikileaks have nothing else to negotiate with. And if they do no release it and keep it only as a threat, the credibility of this threat will erode with time. Or think about it this one: one side gradually escalates step by step, while the other side only has one big “boom” option. How credible is that? There is a reason why strategists speak of ‘flexible response’ or ‘full-spectrum dominance”: you cannot effectively deter with a mega-weapon.
Fifth, even though I do now believe that the leaks are real, I still believe that there is something much, much bigger at stake: the future of the entire Internet. What this Wikileaks confrontation has triggered is nothing less than a battle for the future of the Internet who is now facing a stark choice: to become Joe Lieberman’s latest propaganda tool, or to remain a mostly free medium of expression. It is far too early to call this one, as the resolution of this conflict will involve many countries, technologies, courts, police and intelligence forces, political actors and millions of people. I would only add that savvy observers did see this one coming for years and I personally think that it’s a good thing that this confrontation is finally coming out in the open.
Sixth, yes, the US Empire is clearly and irrevocably in decline. But it would be a grievous mistake to assume that being in decline means becoming weaker. On the contrary, we should expect a significant escalation in the Empire’s use of force, pressure, arrogant demands and outright violence, even of a ‘kinetic’ type. Guys, the folks running this empire are not going to gently retire and accept the loss of their current status, power and privileges. No, they will fight with everything they have, baring their fangs much more openly than in the past, and showing their Empire’s true face. This is true for the actions of the Empire’s actions both inside its ‘homeland’ (got to love that expression!) and outside. The folks at Wikileaks should expect the worst, no matter how obscene, illegal or stupid. The fact that the Empire is in decline makes it far more dangerous than in the past.
On a personal note, I will be very busy for the next couple of days, so please excuse me if I do not answer emails or comments. Things should return to normal on Monday.
The Saker
great to see this post.
the leaks are very important.
yes, some of them contain diplomatic gossip. yes, some of them regurgitate diplomatic propaganda. but many of them reveal important secrets, which are highly harmful to US foreign policy.
a few examples: special ops in pakistan, covert bombings in yemen, arab state plans against HA, US spying on the US, NATO war plans against Russia, US lobbying on behalf of MC and Visa, US spying inside the German state, US-Auzzie conspiring for a possibly war against China, etc.
furthermore, the US now fears negative reactions from its partners in crime around the world.
it is also terrified about the internet becoming what it could truly be — a global open source communications medium, which can undermine the power of states and corporations to rule over us.
hence, the global cyber war now taking place.
i might disagree with you on one point. it is clearly part of Assange’s strategy to force the beast to devour itself. he has written a few short essays on this method of warfare. i think he is willing to sacrifice himself here to see the process of self-destruction accelerate. he hopes the US will do what he said it would do: resort to even greater “conspiracies” which only discredit it in the eyes of the world.
however, i agree: he should have stayed somewhere else, and probably shouldn’t have made himself such a figurehead — too cultish.
I agree that an Empire in decline can be a very dangerous thing tempted to use force to recover its position. A paranoid leviathan is liable to lash out.
Depressing thing is the potential new Empire, China. is not an attractive prospect. If the transfer of power was from the US to Europe I’d feel much happier but I can’t see Europe uniting politically and many European elites are utterly subservient to Uncle Sam especially my country, the UK.
Military control of the Middle East oilfields is paramount. If the only reason to hold dollars was to buy goods and services held in the US the dollar would fall. Oil remains priced in it and as long as that remains true chances are the dollar will remain the world reserve currency.
I suspect the alliance between China and Iran will grow as China’s Achilles heel is that it needs to import oil. At present the US Navy could block China’s oil supplies or allow Israel to attack Iran and block the Strait of Hormuz.
I have to conclude that they are absolutely genuine and that they do significantly and negatively affect the US Empire’s interests.”
How exactly does it do that?
On the contrary it fully supports the Empires interests.
No one argues that some or almost all the leaks are not genuine but those released so far do support the current geo-political agenda while conveniently omit central Jewish/Israeli figures Ossetian war and Chechnya cables being the prime example.
So it is genuine info mixed in with false propaganda.
The cable on Chechnya was the usual propaganda which claims from the ambassador the US has only an observer status which we know to be a lie because the NGO operating in the North Caucasus are NED affiliated and financed even listed on their website for 2008 at least which run through the US embassy. In 99 in Azerbajin US officials organised training and assistance for Chechen jihadists in the Caucasus.
As noted from Boudansky’s Defense & Foreign Affairs publication.
“Consequently, the US determined to deprive Russia of an alternate pipeline route by supporting a spiraling violence and terrorism in Chechnya….The Clinton White House sought to actively involve the US in yet another anti-Russian jihad as if reliving the “good ol’ days” of Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces in yet another strategic region.
In mid-December 1999, US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central and South Asia, and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly the intelligence services of Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type that did Washington’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in spring 2000. Citing security concerns vis-à-vis Armenia and Russia, Azerbaijan adamantly refused to permit training camps on its soil.
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2323
So does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing?
Perhaps I need to read it again but no reference to Berezovsky whose connection to Chechnya is legendary and Guisinky. Are you shiting me!
The ‘insurance file’ decrypt algorithm was developed by the NSA who have a built in back door.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3zIA46ishc
I have posted more damming info than Wikileaks on the Underground Serbian Café maybe that will get targeted soon.
@Anonymous
There not any real revelations at all.
I could list major things I would have expected there to be diplomatic cables.
Saker,
I’ve come to the same conclusions you have regarding the nature of wikileaks. But i do give Assange and co more credit than you.
1. Unless Assange is willing never to set foot in the western world again, this legal showdown is going to happen. It might as well happen in England as anywhere else. Actually England is probably one of the most preferable countries to have it in.
2. Just because wikileaks have established a thermonuclear option, doesn’t rule them out from practicing lower level options. Any member of the wikileaks team can send out a mass email of one or more classified documents at any time of his choosing.
3. I give these guys more credit for being able to avoid capture than you do. These guys are good, and tools like TOR are already at military level encryption. I know, I know, it’s the NSA, with billions of dollars at it’s disposal, and if anyone has the ability to do the super badass traffic analysis to track these guys down, the NSA does. It won’t however be a trivial thing, and some members will likely slip through any coordinated ‘kinetic action’ or arrest raid, and wamo-up to 1.4 gigs of unredacted retaliation.
The it’s been done so far is pretty good, it allows the USG to gently adjust itself to the idea of having these things leaked without *too* big a shock, and allows them a back channel way to censor especially harmful bits, as long as they behave themselves. Assange can also hang on to the unredacted versions as time goes by and the whole thing is leaked, just in case he or wikileaks run into legal problems afterward.
Masoud
“To the second ones I will say that in a choice between opinion and facts, the latter should prevail.”
When you get a chance, can you give us some examples of these facts, and explain how they damage the empire?
It isn’t news to anyone that embassies promote US businesses overseas. Promoting the interests of the host country is what embassies are for.
It’s not a newsflash that the US spies on other countries, and that they spy on us.
It isn’t news that US troops commit war crimes. There have been a number of very public trials of low level US war criminals. What is missing from Wikileaks is evidence of high level war crimes.
It isn’t news that the US and other countries routinely draw up plans to defend or attack this or that territory. Any military force that doesn’t envision various scenarios and plan for them would be worthless.
What is news, and what is both surprising and highly suspect, is the idea US officials parrot the same neocon propaganda in their private communciation as they do in their public communications. Apparently, the people who make Soylent Green have no idea it’s made of people.
If this is true, then Wikileaks is essentially useless, as the entire point of Wikileaks is that government officials lie to the public, but give a different version of events in private. If you can reveal these private conversations, you will be revealing the “truth” as the government sees it, or at least, you will prove that they are lying.
I accept that if the government is lying to us, then you should expect a wide variation between what government officials say to the public and what they discuss in private. But with Wikileaks, we see the opposite. US government officials appear to be more on message with neocon propaganda in private than they are in public.
For example, the CIA itself has contradicted the lie that WMDs were found in Iraq that Wikileaks resurrects. The NIE reported that Iran does not have a WMD program, despite the impression Wikileaks gives to the contrary. I doubt that there is ANYONE in the State Dept, CIA, NSA etc who believes this nonsense.
Far from proving that the government is lying to us, Wikileaks gives the impression government officials sincerely believe all the nonsense that gets fed to us, and are therefore not lying to us. They might be misled, but they are not lying. I find that impossible to believe.
If Wikileaks is legit, then why did it release so much neocon propaganda? Even if the neocon-favoring leaks are real, which I doubt, that Assange cherry-picked these leaks out of 400,000 others to release speaks volumes about his agenda.