Just arrived in Ghana after a journey complicated by the snow in the UK. A few meetings this morning, then some thoughts on Wikileaks, Chilcot and the so called complicity in torture inquiry to come.
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Alfred – yes, I called you Albert. Sorry about that, I think I was a bit tired. Trust the rest of it made sense!
I think the idea that Assange needs to kill bank shares via Wikileaks to make some money is very far fetched, at least at this stage. Let’s wait and see what bank it is, and what the documents are first, eh?
Anyway, I continue to await answers to my questions. I don’t sense that Wikileaks represents pro-war propaganda in the way you seem to, and glenn makes some excellent (and, to me, quite obvious) points about why WL cannot be taken broadly to support attacking Iraq, or war generally.
I wanted you to comment, perhaps after reflection on my dismissal of it, on the piece you put forward from the MIT newspaper. Like other people here, I can’t help but feel you are putting an inconsistent set of views across, and that the reactionary militarism writ across that article would not normally garner your support at all. Why different for Assange/WL?
Why proffer the BNP as a serious anti-war party? Were you being flippant, or did you want someone here to take it seriously? You may not be of the view that they are a racist and crypto-fascist party, but that is the predominant view here, and there is plenty of evidence available to support that.
“If you want to change policy, the only legal and sane way is through electoral means–admitedly a near impossibility now the dogs of war have been loosed”.
Isn’t the sense of helplessness implied by your own statement – that we have no electoral means to stop the war and neo-capitalist machines – part of the reason that Wikileaks has garnered such significant support amongst ordinary people?
Thanks, dreoilin, for putting up a countering view regarding whether Wikileaks has caused harm to people. I sense that, regardless of people’s views on Greenwald’s politics, he is a great deal more balanced that the mini-McCain that Alfred put forward.
Will they kill the internet?
The final para of an article in the Guardian entitled.
Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It’s your choice.
Western political elites obfuscate, lie and bluster ?” and when the veil of secrecy is lifted, they try to kill the messenger
John Naughton
7 December 2010
‘But politicians now face an agonising dilemma. The old, mole-whacking approach won’t work. WikiLeaks does not depend only on web technology. Thousands of copies of those secret cables ?” and probably of much else besides ?” are out there, distributed by peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent. Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet. Over to them.’
guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks
Sky News are carrying repetitive propaganda for Clarke’s cost-cutting policy to empty the prisons.
They have engineered a video of life inside Bullingdon Prison featuring the import of drugs and illegal phones. The aimlessness of prison life is emphasized and also the fact that re-offending rates are not altered.
No alternative to the prison regime is given or suggestions made as to how the regime could be made more constructive and beneficial to the offender and to society.
http://www.newsonnews.net/skynews/5979-exclusive-sky-news-investigation-reveals-serious-security-breach-at-bullingdon-prison.html
There are live links within to the Sky reports.
Bit ironic that it’s Bullingdon Prison and not the Bullingdon Club!
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2010/04/exclusive-david-cameron-and-the-bullingdon-night-of-the-broken-window/
Now, I wonder who could have posted this:
“Alfred, just what the hell do you think i’m doing during those long nights when i’m away from Craig’s blogs for a few minutes? It can get damn lonely at times. 🙁
Posted by: angrysoba at December 7, 2010 7:25 AM”
I have no suspects, but wait…
Jaded: “Well, well, well. It would have been Lamby right?”
Well, I have no suspects. But if it was Larry then I see he is cunningly disguising his writing style by adopting yours.
For example, the claim that Larry and I are one and the same:
“I have an announcement to make. I have formally decided to stop using my Larry from St. Louis alter ego tag. I know I was rumbled a long while back, but I had already started digging a big hole for myself and felt compelled to perpetuate the big lie.” (pseudo-soba)
“You do seem to be getting very mixed up and slowly unravelling. It seems we have a regular Norman Bates in our midst. As for New Year resolutions, i’ve heard of some that didn’t endure long I must admit, but that takes the biscuit. Just give it a rest eh pal…”(Jaded)
Plus the smiley “:-(” which “Lamby” cleverly inserted. As well as the use of the word, “tithead”, a Jadedism, and the claim that I spend too much time here, something you’ve been very concerned with in the past.
But, as I say, I have no suspects.
So, the UK police have arrested Assange. This is so clearly an abuse of the law, everyone can see it for what it is. Assange is a political prisoner. Anyone who believes in freedom of expression should condemn the UK authorities (and the Swedish authorities) for their abjectly craven attitude. There ought to be demos outside whichever police station or jail he is being held in.
He’ll meet the bail, but this is trumpeted harassment and is intended to tie-up him and his organisation in costly and probably Dickensian legal processes both to hamper their work and to send a warning to any others who might be thinking of releasing details that cause potential embarrassment to the empire and its multiple facades. The empire is dependent on the back line of these facades holding, as their first line of domestic control is based on mass delusion and sleight of hand. Self-censorship by omission is the norm. Wikileaks has rendered unto the people in the USA/UK a glimpse of the emperor’s skin, something which peoples in the rest of the world have known for many years. Beneath the facade, of course, beneath the toughened imperial hide, is pig-iron and blood.
“Wikileaks has rendered unto the people in the USA/UK a glimpse of the emperor’s skin”
While maintaining my agnosticism, I seriously doubt it. Those who know, knew; those who didn’t know still don’t.
angrysoba:
Chill – we know you when we hear you.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307137/Supporters-dismissed-rape-accusations-WikiLeaks-founder-Julian-Assange–women-involved-tell-different-story.html
This article is quite good on the detail and shows that the allegations don’t amount to rape in any normal sense of the term and nor indeed
does it support the laughable claim by the writer that “Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain ?” Assange’s attempts to portray himself as an online saint, exposing the secrets of the superpowers, has been dealt a damaging blow.”
What’s most telling is that the comments with massive red marks against them were those critical of Assange whilst the majority with green marks were supportive.
Poor old Daily Mail….
I see that Assange has been remanded in custody which is curious for allegations which even in loopy old feminist Sweden don’t carry a custodial sentence.
I suppose it’ll allow the spooks to get his dna, harass him and use the dna to plant him at the scene of other “crimes”.
Of course it’s ludicrous to think that an amateur, with a magic stick, could so easily download files that the intelligence services of America’s enemies and rivals had not been long aware of. Mr. Assange’s real offense has been to bring this information to the general public’s attention. His disclosures have done nothing except make information available to the general public that was already available to the USA’s enemies around the world. His crime is a belief in open democracy.
Yes, this argument of the Daily Mail’s that someone who might be ‘not a saint’ cannot be a genuine whistleblower is peculiarly twee and weak and doesn’t fool many, I suspect.
Basically, many people know now – esp. since the Iraq imbroglio – that they’ve systematically been lied to about much, indeed about most of the matters that are important – like war and sending young men off to die – as they have almost always been lied to in such matters. It is obvious that the web has played an important part in that process of awakening people to begin to question. And once you begin to question, once you pose the basic question: “Am I being lied to?”, it is indeed a slippery slope – or rather, an awakening into a truly adult political consciousness.
There are over 2,200 seeders of the Wikileaks insurance file, and I’ve downloaded a good half of it already. I’ll have it in full tomorrow, I think. Trust others are doing the same.
Between the limited voices of opposition on this blog, the reactionary calls for Assange’s assassination, and the craven attitudes of Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, and the UK and Swedish governments, I am more persuaded of the need for Wikileaks generally, not less.
Give it a couple of days, and perhaps I’ll have set up a mirror too. 100GB per month costs less than five quid these days – well worth the money. Fun and games for imperialists and their apologists everywhere!
Go for it Jon, the despicable behaviour of swedish/swiss officials is outrageous.
Why is this man being harrassed and haunted when these files were accessable by 2 million people, not secrets by any courts description.
Further the obcessive hysteria that is including Julian in every news bulletin, bad news galore has the opposite effect. Fra from alienating him form the public, we are more and more intigued.
The public also seems to think that he is some kind of leader, little do they know that he is merely speaking for Wiki and that there are now thousands of people who will carry on With Wikileaks work, not just the online journalists.
I hope he countersues the swedish state for refusing to engage with him, they took him for a ride and should stand up for it.
I also hope the swedish taxpayer will think about replacing their public prosecutor at ther next election, her cap duffing zeal/personal masochism for more US pressure is astonishing, she has provided the worlds media and Governments with a convenient label.
And they are now using it over and over again, re-amplification ad nauseum is their prefered psychological torture of the public mind.
What jouranilsts are speaking up for him, can they not see what they have become?
Who is next to be declared ‘vogelfrei’?
What will this global Mc Carthyism achieve?
What was Orwell on when he wrote his book, he was more of a ‘seer’ than Nostradamus, imho.
Thanks dreoling for the last link, very telling. Keep filling that hotwater bottle of yours, eat your fruit salad and stay under the duvet!
“he was more of a ‘seer’ than Nostradamus”
‘1984’ was a stylised description of matters as Orwell saw them in 1948 – I am very irked when people don’t realise this. Read his essays ‘Looking back on the Spanish Civil War’ and ‘Politics and Language’ and you will find 1984 unencoded. The novel was reportage, not prophecy.
It’s the Frankenstein story – the creation comes to life. It disobeys its maker, and becomes seen as a monster.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) designed ARPANET to be robust through redundancy, and from there grew the Internet. “The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”. Well, it worked, didn’t it?
Clark: yep 🙂
“The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it”.
Clark, that’s what my son said to me. He said it could never be taken down or shut off. I keep my hope in that, no matter what “kill switch” the US talks about.
I wrote at 10.25am,
“Meanwhile, we know Assange is not being charged with rape”
It’s ludicrous. Rape was given as one of the (possible) charges for which he was wanted for questioning. But it’s not rape as we know it. However, all over Twitter ‘rape’ is being repeated with no explanation, by those who are not clued up on Sweden.
Dreoilin, you probably already know, but since I proclaimed the Internet uncensorable, I’d best expound.
Information on the Internet can’t be locally censored. All servers holding the banned information would have to be entirely ring-fenced, no phone line, no satellite or mobile signal, no USB stick traffic – impractical. However, the WorldWide Web is a layer built on top of the Internet, and the Web’s “phone book”, the DNS system, is a critical attack point for censors. If the wikileaks.org entries that point to IP address 213.251.145.96 were deleted, http://www.wikileaks.org would not work in a browser’s address bar or as a link, but the site could still be accessed at 213.251.145.96.
Clark, I’m not capable of discussing DNS hardly at all, although my son drew me diagrams and doodles at one stage. I’ve forgotten most if it. But there are folks out there involved in setting up alternative DNS to get around ICANN. Does that make sense?
‘Now, I wonder who could have posted this:
“Alfred, just what the hell do you think i’m doing during those long nights when i’m away from Craig’s blogs for a few minutes? It can get damn lonely at times. 🙁
Posted by: angrysoba at December 7, 2010 7:25 AM”
I have no suspects, but wait…
Jaded: “Well, well, well. It would have been Lamby right?”
Well, I have no suspects. But if it was Larry then I see he is cunningly disguising his writing style by adopting yours.
For example, the claim that Larry and I are one and the same:
“I have an announcement to make. I have formally decided to stop using my Larry from St. Louis alter ego tag. I know I was rumbled a long while back, but I had already started digging a big hole for myself and felt compelled to perpetuate the big lie.” (pseudo-soba)
“You do seem to be getting very mixed up and slowly unravelling. It seems we have a regular Norman Bates in our midst. As for New Year resolutions, i’ve heard of some that didn’t endure long I must admit, but that takes the biscuit. Just give it a rest eh pal…”(Jaded)
Plus the smiley “:-(” which “Lamby” cleverly inserted. As well as the use of the word, “tithead”, a Jadedism, and the claim that I spend too much time here, something you’ve been very concerned with in the past.
But, as I say, I have no suspects.’
Hmm, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much. You are beginning to sound very paranoid and conspiratorial too. So now you think the lizards did it or something? I think your big head is well overdue for a large tinfoil hat to be frank. You have heard of the Mental Health Act I take it? You really need to keep your personalities in check. Like Vronsky said, just chill out chum.
You lot seem to think that God is just a higher manifestation of a global colonial new world order. Religion was created to increase uncertainty by putting forward absurdly difficult standards, beyond the capability of human beings. The Bible and Qur’an were leaked as a false flag operation to close down rational civilised peaceful existence on earth.
From where do you derive the cleanness of heart to detect the corruption of world politics? Do you not think it might be better to utilise the touchstone of God’s revealed morality, than trust in your own relativism? Ignorance of religion and ascribing to God a malign intent against human beings is , in my book, worse lunacy than Nazism or Blair’s trust-me-wait-and-see destruction of Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. You treat God as if He is the principal role-model for all the other influences you dislike in the world. What a bunch of weirdos you all are!
Anno: prove it.
I am sad to see, furthermore, that the good wishes I passed to you recently are not reflected back to me in your offensive message.
“What a bunch of weirdos you all are!”
Anno, the same could be said for religious extremists, desperately holding on to the pretense their actions were guided by god and led by the nose of a mafia of charity chugging preachers out to serve themeselves and their social positions within their resapective religion.
Please do not take this personal.
You are welcome to speak on the behalf of your nutters and weirdoes, just as anybody else is.
If catholics would spout out about divine retribution and saving souls by bearing all, they would get the same resaponse here.
This is not a religious channel, but religion is discussed now and then, so lets stay within these liberal parameters, cause if every thread is seeded with sharia or condome for randy preachers issues, then this will not be condisive to the main guist here, would you not asgree?
calling people weirdoes for not holding the same believes is weird.
“Ignorance of religion and ascribing to God a malign intent against human beings is, in my book, worse lunacy than Nazism…” anno
The debate about the existence of evil in the world in the presence of a supposedly-benevolent and/or omniscient/omnipotent deity is one common in theology across many relaigiosn, including in Islam. Does that mean that all those who engage in such debates are worse than Nazis? How so? And ignorance of religion, well, that’s pretty common, even if one might wish for poeople to be more knowledgeable in general. Worse than Nazism, though, anno? Rhetorical hyperbole, perhaps? But ‘Nazism’ (and its mass murder, war, etc.) is a somewhat hackneyed and so less effective rhetorical device nowadays, esp. where the ‘offences’ concerned are on an entirely different scale and in a different realm.
Suhayl, I didn’t use Nazism to illustrate evil, I used it to illustrate the susceptibility of ordinary people to sign up to politicians’ crazy ideas. The British public have reconciled themselves to Blair’s wars. In my opinion the best way to counter this sleepwalking into terror, which this country has done many times before, is to revert to religious absolutes. Like the appeal to absolute equality of all humans that ended the slave trade.
Relativism cannot succeed against relativism. There is no proof at all that my utopian world is better than Blair’s. He resorts to the respectability of religion and this lot deny the respectability of religion. They want democracy to bring about a cure! The cornerstone of Blair’s criminality is the argument that you voted me in, so I can do just about anything I please.
They want freedom of speech, so the powers that be produce freedom of speech in the form of wikileaks, so that they can make it unacceptable or disloyal in the public’s eyes to question or probe.
Look how hurt they are when you criticise their relativistic ideas. Don’t take away their teddy bears, please. The only touchstone for human behaviour is the revealed word of God, so whether they want to quibble about the method of revelation, through the angel Gabriel, peace be upon him, or the content, until they recognise that this is the only way our problems are going to be solved, we are just talking for the sake of talking. Politicians are not afraid of hot air, but they are scared enough of Islam to muster all their weapons of mass destruction and their media power.
Assange has been charged with phoney charges, because he is a tool of the establishment. By the way Feminism is nothing to do with female. I have never lost my respect for the female sex in spite of previous betrayals. That is because if people follow Satan, whether they are male or female, they will get you into trouble.
Assange being accused of rape is just a political lie, same as Blair’s lie about 45 minute WMD. In both cases it is a collective, conspiratorial, scripted, political lie, devised by the establishment to serve their cynical objectives and delivered by an actor.
The lie is more effective because it comes from someone you respect, such as a female, or a prime minister. Assange is an informed part of the apparatus of deceiving the public and the principle designers, constructers and inspectors of these type of lies are Sato-Zionists, as stated so many times.
Assange has been charged with phoney charges, because he is a tool of the establishment. By the way Feminism is nothing to do with female. I have never lost my respect for the female sex in spite of previous betrayals. That is because if people follow Satan, whether they are male or female, they will get you into trouble.
Assange being accused of rape is just a political lie, same as Blair’s lie about 45 minute WMD. In both cases it is a collective, conspiratorial, scripted, political lie, devised by the establishment to serve their cynical objectives and delivered by an actor.
The lie is more effective because it comes from someone you respect, such as a female, or a prime minister. Assange is an informed part of the apparatus of deceiving the public and the principle designers, constructers and inspectors of these type of lies are Sato-Zionists, as stated so many times.
No answer to my question, I see, anno. Nor an acknowledgement that your frustration with people who won’t follow your extreme religious ideology has culminated in your being rude to us all.
You want British law to be based on God because he’s perfect? Prove he exists, and prove he’s perfect. Otherwise desist. You genuinely regard people as ‘following Satan’? Prove he exists, otherwise desist.
Anno, I think you are quite misguided, and that makes me unhappy. I don’t sense that you’re nefarious, like the politicians, or the corporate executives, or like the trolls. But you’ve gotten caught up in a religion that promises utopia, but won’t deliver it, and you’ve perhaps gotten caught up in a human psychology that is fragile and flawed. We’re all susceptible to our own madnesses, all of us, and I am sad that if I suggest that this might be your problem, you will reject it out of hand.
Be religious, by all means. I believe in freedom, and that means freedom of religion. But I think you need to try harder when it comes to inflicting your beliefs on other people. Your god may, as it turns out, not exist, even though it is valuable for you and others to have such a belief.
“The British public have reconciled themselves to Blair’s wars.” –anno
Rubbish, you are talking out of your hat. Look at the opinion polls. They were opposed to the war in Iraq, and are now opposed to the war in Afghanistan; there was not a great deal they could do then, and there’s not much they can do now. Publics under governments are generally a cowed lot, given the state’s monopoly on violence and removal of liberty, and given the power of the media, deliberately or otherwise, to misinform.