David Seaton's picture

    Wikileaks: Getting serious for a moment

    By David Seaton on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 3:17am |

    For the time being the USA is the major pillar of stability of some sort that the world has. Like it or not, that is a fact. Anything that affects that stability causes extremely unpredictable outcomes, blowback and damage everywhere. I am certainly not "pro status quo", but on the other hand neither am I a nihilist or an anarchist or a juvenile delinquent. At some point frivolity becomes a mortal sin... America is fast reaching or may have already overshot that point by some distance.

    There is something very few people here at Dagblog seem to taking into account in talking about Wikileaks. Right now we are living a moment of tremendous economic instability and turbulence... not to mention two wars running and two more (Iran and Korea) waiting in the wings, world food prices are rising... it goes on and on. Bad times, the worst times since the 1930s, and you may remember how they ended.

    Obviously this is a moment where those who have been chosen (democratically or otherwise) to take decisions which affect the lives, income and welfare of millions of people should be able to communicate frankly and calmly with each other and reach agreements quickly.

    To put it mildly, people like Julian Assange or Glenn Beck are not helpful right now. To tolerate them is frivolous.

    What irritates me especially in the middle of all this is the monumental incoherence and myopia of those who applaud and enable the tactics of Wikileaks.

    If the powerful of the world are as evil, brutal, venal and unscrupulous as the Wikileaks data-dump makes them out to be... and they could be all of that, and much, much worse, do you think that they are just going to sit back quietly and watch while the "truth" sets us "free"?

    Only a fool could believe that.

    This is like going up to a Mafia hit-man and squirting him with a water pistol.

    What we are going to get from this, minimally, is an "Official Secrets Act" like the British have and if that don't get it, there will be legislation passed that, if necessary, will rival "China's Great Firewall"... don't doubt if for a minute. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Newspapers that are publishing the material come to regret having done so.

    Remember that Wilson passed the Sedition Act of 1918, and that Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.

    But we are not really at war, you say.

    No problem, a Gulf of Tonkin provocation is engineered and we actually declare war on Iran.

    But that would have terrible consequences you say, it would damage the economy and many people would die.

    Don't think for a minute that the people who started such a war would lose money on the deal or send their sons to fight in it.

    I would like a revolution as much as the next man, but Wikileaks isn't going to bring a revolution, it is going to bring a counterrevolution... And that may be what is behind it all in the first place.

    Cross posted from: http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com

    Comments

    So let me get this straight,

    A few weeks ago you, David, were channelling your 'inner Lenin', wishing that McCain had won the election so that presumably he could start wars in Iran, N. Korea, and (say) Georgia, because only through massive worldwide human suffering could humanity be put back on the path to material and spiritual progress. Or something...

    And now you are desperately worried that these Wikileak revelations will lead, say, Arab dictators to maybe stop egging the US to start a war in Iran, and that may in some tortured way lead to ... war in Iran.

    Or is it the Chinese remarks that you're worried about? That the N. Koreans are going to start a nuclear war in a hissy fit NOW, because yesterday they were so stable and controlled? Or that the Chinese are going to let talks fall apart because of some fourth-hand gossip reported by Kathleen Stephens.

    Good God, David, you need to rethink what you consider 'serious'. You really mistake the self-importance of the international cocktail circuit for real importance.


    by Obey on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 6:24am

    No, you've got me wrong. What I see happening is what I say in my last paragraph:

    I would like a revolution as much as the next man, but Wikileaks isn't going to bring a revolution, it is going to bring a counterrevolution... And that may be what is behind it all in the first place.

    We are being led off a cliff by a bunch of armchiair anarchists. Enjoy your freedom on the Internet, while it lasts.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 6:34am

    David, it seems axiomatic to your worldview that:

    1. progress is impossible, for 'THEY' (i.e. 'some Jews') are all-powerful

    2. anything that looks like progress is not what it seems. See (1)

    therefore

    3. embrace the abyss (and/or McCain).

    As applied to Wikileaks, the thinking seems to be

    Wikileaks revelations, qua transparency, would be progress, but progress is impossible, and so Wikileaks must be the marionnette of the above-mentionned THEY. Hence, conclusion: despair.

     

    As a result you don't actually bother trying to evaluate whether the revelations might do more good than bad. Or connecting the dots from the leaks to ... Armaggedon. Because that would be superfluous, given your axioms.

    But that just means your general approach is vacuous. Because there is no empirical foundation to your outlook. It has no grip on reality. Or rather reality has no grip on it. Which is what I find unserious. I'm sorry if this sounds dickish, but I can't remember the last time you actually tried to present an argument. And I miss them ...


    by Obey on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 7:13am

    So... we shouldn't support what Wikileaks is doing because if they keep it up, some one will pass a law banning what they're doing.  Which you think they should stop doing anyway.  Okay, I'm subtle enough that I can see that having them voluntarily stop is better than seeing draconian laws passed to stop them, I get that.  What I don't get is why you're willing to entrust this all so important "stability" to people who you seem to believe are venal criminals.  Your position would make a lot more sense to me if you thought they were honest citizens doing the best they can.  Otherwise what you're saying comes down to "Shhhhh... there are bad dangerous people at work here, don't piss them off."  That only serves to enable them, doesn't it?


    by Michael Maiello on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 8:29am

    Hmmm.  Wolfrum linked to this at Raw Story; it shows how the White House pressured the Spanish government to stop the prosecutions for torture of key Bush officials.  It brings a whole new meaning to the 'looking forward, not backward' theme.  But you might see how their interference (coupled with Republican lawmakers) is choking off legitimate prosecutions as per Spanish law and tradition. 

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/obama-spain-bush-torture-prosecution/

    I'm glad to know about this, and the lengths the administration would go toward this end.  Don't know what the carrots and sticks were, but it's clear that it worked, and would likely work to prevent Spain from prosecuting the Obama administration in the future, too.

    As far as draconian laws being passed, the protocols are in place already for the 'internet kill switch', even though the purported idea was to protect hackers from zapping out our power grids (Read: and national emergencies), another is in the works, though I forget the particulars; there are plenty of laws against sedition; and hell: the Patriot Act covers just about anything The President or presidents want it to cover, yes? 


    by we are stardust on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 8:50am

    A few observations  

    1. Progress is possible, but not inevitable.
    2. Progress can be reversable.
    3. So are freedom of speech and assembly.
    4. Powerful people are often not very nice (that's how they usually get to be powerful)
    5. If you want to cross them, you had better be ready for a fight. Not virtual, but real.
    6. Better not start fights you are not able to finish.
    7. Anarchists and Trotskysts, never make revolutions, they only bring on repression and fascism.
    8. If you think this Wikileaks business is genuine activism, I have a bridge to sell you.

    by David Seaton on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 9:00am

    You suggest that Wikileaks is itself a Gulf of Tonkin episode, designed to legitimize more extensive control of information. Was this cunning plan designed by the same international "managers" who you say will be unable to maintain stability if they cannot remain secure behind their firewalls?


    by moat on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 9:06am

    You've become a talking vegetable.

    The Church, Franco - every thug that's ever ruled - wouid adore your new columns, and you're too much of an ass to see it. Crank up the fear, hint at any one of dozens of shadowy figures "behind" the problem, then suggest we all run for the bunkers.

     


    by quinn esq on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 10:47am

    To avoid the Francos and the thugs prudence is necessary. Assange is a dream for them, he plays directly into their hands. Just as the attacks on 9-11 froze the Seattle movement, Wikileaks is going to make real activism much more difficult and is going to justify a lot of repression... and if you haven't ever experienced a dictatorship, even as privileged foreigner, it is hard to know what they are really about.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 11:27am

    Julian Assange says WikiLeaks wants to expose China and Russia as much as US,

    guardian.co.uk, Thursday December 2 2010

    In interview, Assange denies US focus and says WikiLeaks can be force for opening up closed countries like China and Russia

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/julian-assange-wikileaks-chi...

    Edit to add: I fully expect you to pick this apart for clues to his supposed puppet masters, since of course, as with all conspiracy theorists, the person cannot possibly mean what he says. There's got to be Mossad code in there somewheres, or at the very least, he could be a secret follower of Pat Robertson, trying to urge in the Judgment Day....come to think of it, I haven't spent too much time looking at the German media on this, perhaps they know what is going on, is it really the Scientology's master plan finally being put into action?


    by artappraiser on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 12:51pm

    Art, I don't think it has to be as esoteric as you suggest, but as we see where things go, it may be clearer what is all behind this.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 2:03pm

    This whole WikiLeaky thingy is dingy. As if diplomatic correspondence has never, ever been published in a public forum. Gimme a break!

    Look at it from another point of view.

    The USoA decided there was way too much channeling, shuffling, pigeon holing, duplicated, copied, muli-tab filed, indexed filed, widely disseminated, but viewer sensitive, for certain people's eyes only information sharing amongst the many, multiple agencies within agencies of Departments of the government, the military, Congress and the White House.

    So to make vital info available to all they created a government filing smorgasbord of info with loose criteria for access much less any mechanisms to defeat anyone from copying, transferring, duplicating to thumbdrives, e-mail or personal folders on personal accounts within the system and so forth with no accounting who accessed what and when, if copies were made, where such copies resided and so on. In short, they left the system wide open.

    The real crime isn't Wiki leaked. It's the government made it all too easy for someone on the inside to act as a conduit flushing out the crap like your toilet in your home.


    by Beetlejuice on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 3:22pm

    What you say is very true that is why in a previous post I spoke of "America's Senior Moment", I think this episode indicates that America is suffering from national Alzheimer's. You give a very good techical analysis of the symptoms.

    However, it will be very interesting to discover who has decided, in this particular case, to take advantage of America's dementia in order to gut the credibility of the US State Department and to freeze up diplomatic communication at this particular juncture.


    by David Seaton on Thu, 12/02/2010 - 3:44pm

    I don't recognize Beetlejuice's point in your reply. He wasn't talking about "America" in the nebulous general sense you employ in your previous post, he was saying the U.S. government bears some responsibility for what happened to it.

    In the matter of future consequences, this responsibility will again be present. As the saying goes: Pull my pants down once, shame on you. Pull my pants down twice, shame on me.


    by moat on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 2:25pm

    I continue to be surprised at your defense of the powers that be David.

    You think that if the power structure is exposed as the duplicitous and untrustworthy thing that it is that we stand more to lose than if they are allowed to run amok.  You seem to be arguing that the only way to avoid getting an official secrets act (which would require a constituttional amendment that isn't going to happen) is to excercise the censorship the state would like to impose on our own thus never shedding the light of day on what our career State and DOD employees are doing in our name.  I think that's a wild over reaction given the impact of the revelations thus far.  What Wikileaks has done is to shed light on how our government operates, how it lies to the public about what it is doing and so on.  What Wikileaks has done is not even remotely advancing anarchism.  It is the lawlessness of our own government that has destabilized the Iraq/Iran region and our ongoing wars that serve no purpose, are bankrupting the nation and cannot be won.  I don't think any significant harm has been caused and when the dust settles I think we will find that these particular leaks will have been a great help by exposing the lies and hypocrisy of the government.


    by oleeb on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 1:46am

    The diplomatic corp of any sovereign country is not "the powers that be", it is an instrument of the state.  It does what the head of state and his/her government decide that it do.

    As I said in a post awhile back:

    Let us assume for a moment that the United States of America is a democracy and it's officials represent the American people and that its institutions genuinely represent, define and defend the interests of the American people.

    It is that assumption that we, as American citizens must question, no other. Is the government of the USA legitimately empowered to govern its citizens and to define and defend their interests. I repeat the diplomatic corp is merely an intrument for that.

    Assange has damaged that instrument. Not only America's but the instrument of all who wish or must deal with the USA. Thus Julian Assange has damaged something that belongs to the US government, which in turn belongs to the citizens of the USA. Something must be done to deter him from doing this anymore and to punish him severely enough to deter others from imitating him.

    To avoid that Mr. Assange affirms that he possesses a secret so secret that if revealed would cause unimaginable harm to the United States, and that this secret is in an encrypted file at the following address: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5741985/INSURANCE.AES256_WIKILEAKS.SECRET.DOCUMENT.2010.08.06 and that if any harm should befall him, his followers will publish the key to this file on the Internet, thus causing untold harm to the interests of the American people (always supposing that the government of the USA represents the citizens of the USA.

    Cutting to the chase, Julian Assange is blackmailing the United States of America. (!!!)

    This is beginning to sound like the plot a Bruce Willis "Die Hard" film, twitchy terrorist included.

    Really this is coming down to the question: are the people of the United States of America and its institutions Julian Assange's bitch?


    by David Seaton on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 8:18am

    Having our leaders lie us into a war of aggression, subvert our Constitution, use torture which it tries to make acceptable policy, all after stealing an election and therefore giving themselves the power to do these things, are actions which should shake our country to its core. You have written some fiction so you are not averse to using your imagination. Imagine for me what kind of revelation Assange might be holding back that would do the damage you envision. I do not mean this question as a snark remark.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 8:46am

    Your question is perfectly legitimate. But somehow, I still think that, despite all the horrors, the USA needs an effective ministry of foreign affairs.

    I don't think anybody has savaged George W. Bush any more than I have. This is not about Bush, this is about a foreign national with no standing who is sabotaging the US State Department. My question is, who is Assange and what gives him the right to do that?

    Here is a sample of Assange's arrogance, from a live, blog interview in The Guardian:

    JAnthony

    Julian.

    I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and the protection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.

    In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.

    My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.

    Julian Assange:

    If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.

    The guy's on a roll, next thing your know he'll be trashing hotel rooms.


    by David Seaton on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 10:51am

    The former British diplomat is acting like an arrogant jerk here.  His question is nothing more than the assertion that the diplomats know best and thus should be left alone.  How is Assange supposed to actually answer that?  I mean, in a way he has answered.  His answer is "no."


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 11:04am

    I was talking this morning to a guy who does mergers and acquisitions for one of the big Spanish banks, they've done deals in the USA, in S. America, in China, in the Middle East... in a sense they are like the bank's diplomats... They are in constant conversation with people who are not exactly adversaries, but of a different organization. The Bank people know what they are willing to pay, but it is important that the people across the table not have that information. All their internal conversations are held in the utmost confidentiality as are those with the people they are negotiating with... it is essential. What my friend couldn't understand is how the Americans let a hamburger like Private Manning  have access to such important information. He is totally mystified. That is the real story here, the basic lines of American policy, warts and all, we already knew.

    What I am driving at, and what I think that the British diplomat was asserting, is that doing deals is a process, where confidentiality is vital and without confidentiality the deals cannot be done, and Assange is making that more difficult, perhaps impossible


    by David Seaton on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 1:23pm

    I hear ya, David.  I'm going to spare you repeating myself, we just see this differently. Have a great weekend.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 2:54pm

    I just cannot agree that Assange and Wikileaks have damaged anything David.  I have seen no evidence nor heard of any report that would even approach proving in any way that the US has suffered any significant harm as a result of what Wikileaks has done  The harm you are supposing is purely a matter of opinion and not of fact.

    I believe that the Department of State, being an instrument of the government is, in fact, a part of the powers that be.  I think those powers have delegitimized themselves via ongoing military violence, lying to the public about what they are doing and what the position of the government is.


    by oleeb on Sat, 12/04/2010 - 3:12am

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