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Raise A Glass to Wikileaks

Craig Murray | 29.11.2010 14:14 | Analysis | History | Terror War | Sheffield | World

The Guardian CIF has radically shortened and buried in a panel a piece I wrote for them - at their request - on Wikileaks.
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/29/us-embassy-cables-middle-east

Following is the original...

The well paid securitocracy have been out in force in the media, attacking wikileaks and repeating their well worn mantras.

These leaks will claim innocent lives, and will damage national security. They will encourage Islamic terrorism. Government secrecy is essential to keep us all safe. In fact, this action by Wikileaks is so cataclysmic, I shall be astonished if we are not all killed in our beds tonight.

Except that we heard exactly the same things months ago when Wikileaks released the Iraq war documents and then the Afghan war documents, and nobody has been able to point to a concrete example of any of these bloodurdling consequences.

As these are diplomatic telegrams, we have also had a number of pro-secrecy arguments being trotted out. These are arguments with which I was wearily familiar in over twenty years as a British diplomat, six of them in the Senior Management Structure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

It is seriously argued that Ambassadors will not in future give candid advice, if that advice might become public. In the last twelve hours I have heard this remarkable proposition put forward on five different television networks, without anybody challenging it.

Put it another way. The best advice is advice you would not be prepared to defend in public. Really? Why? In today's globalised world, the Embassy is not a unique source of expertise. Often expatriate, academic and commercial organisations are a lot better informed. The best policy advice is not advice which is shielded from peer review.

What of course the establishment mean is that Ambassadors should be free to recommend things which the general public would view with deep opprobrium, without any danger of being found out. But should they really be allowed to do that, in a democracy?

I have never understood why it is felt that behaviours which would be considered reprehensible in private or even commercial life – like lying, or saying one thing to one person and the opposite to another person – should be considered acceptable, or even praiseworthy, in diplomacy.

When Ambassador to Uzbekistan, I was rebuked by the then head of the Diplomatic Service for reporting to London by unclassified email the details of dreadful human rights abuses by the Uzbek government. The FCO were concerned that the Uzbeks, who were intercepting our communications, would discover that I disapproved of their human rights violations. This might endanger the Uzbek alliance with British forces in neighbouring Afghanistan. For the FCO, diplomacy is synonymous with duplicity.

Among British diplomats. this belief that their profession exempts them from the normal constraints of decent behaviour amounts to a cult of Machiavellianism, a pride in their own amorality. It is reinforced by their narrow social origins – still in 2010, 80% of British ambassadors went to private schools. As a group, they view themselves as ultra-intelligent Nietzschean supermen, above normal morality. In Tony Blair (Fettes and Oxford), they had both leader and soulmate.

Those who argue that wikileaks are wrong, believe that we should entrust the government with sole control of what the people can and cannot know of what is done in their name. That attitude led to the “Dodgy dossier” of lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Those who posit the potential loss of life from wikileaks' activities need to set against any such risk the hundreds of thousands of actual dead from the foreign policies of the US and its co-conspirators in the past decade.

Web commenters have noted that the diplomatic cables now released reflect the USA's political agenda, and there is even a substantial wedge of the blogosphere which suggests that Wikileaks are therefore a CIA front. This is nonsense. Of course the documents reflect the US view – they are official US government communications. What they show is something I witnessed personally, that diplomats as a class very seldom tell unpalatable truths to politicians, but rather report and reinforce what their masters want to hear, in the hope of receiving preferment.

There is therefore a huge amount about Iran's putative nuclear arsenal and an exaggeration of Iran's warhead delivery capability. But there is nothing about Israel's massive nuclear arsenal. That is not because wikileaks have censored criticism of Israel. It is because any US diplomat who made an honest and open assessment of Israeli crimes would very quickly be an unemployed ex-diplomat. I don't want to bang on about my own case, but I wouldn't wish the things they do to whistleblowers on anybody. .

It is is no surprise that US diplomats are complicit in spying on senior UN staff. The British do it too, and a very brave woman, Katherine Gunn, was sacked for trying to stop it. While the cables released so far contain nothing that will shock informed observers, one real impact will be the information available to the arab peoples on how far they are betrayed by their US puppet leaders.

The government of Yemen has been actively colluding with the US in lying - including to its own parliament – that US drone attacks that have killed many civilians, were the work of the Yemeni air force. The King of Saudi Arabia shows no concern over the behaviour of Israel or the fate of the Palestinians, but strongly urges the bombing of Iran. It is not only, or primarily, in the Western world that we need to know more about what is done in our name. Wikileaks have struck a great blow against the USA's informal empire.

The people discomfited by these leaks are people who deserve to be discomfited. Truth helps the people against rapacious elites – everywhere.

Craig Murray
- Homepage: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/11/raise_a_glass_t.html

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

The corporate media's filtering of the leaks

29.11.2010 14:24

Rather than dumping all the material in the public domain and letting anyone sift through and blog / tweet / whatever the results of what can be found, Wikileaks has allowed a select number of corporate media outlets filter and "redact" and totally manage the release the material:

"It's the media outlets who are analysing and reporting on the documents. In that they might play up certain revelations, while playing down others."

"So for example, at the moment the story that seems to have been given most prominence is that of Iran being seen as a threat by some middle-eastern states. That does basically fit into a power friendly narrative of Iran as dangerous menace."

"While the revelation that the U.S. and Yemen deliberately lied to cover up civilian killing U.S. cruise missile strikes in Yemen doesn't seem to have gotten anywhere near as much prominence. I've yet to see it on any news website front page, for example. Perhaps because it's embarrassing to the U.S.."

"And because a lot of people won't have the time and/or inclination to go and read/search the cables for themselves, which story will they come away remembering the most if relying in British/U.S. media outlets for their info? Iran as a menace, or the U.S. as a dishonest civilian killer? My guess is it'll be the former. "

 http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1291036747.html

This, combined with Craig Murray's observation above:

"Web commenters have noted that the diplomatic cables now released reflect the USA's political agenda, and there is even a substantial wedge of the blogosphere which suggests that Wikileaks are therefore a CIA front. This is nonsense. Of course the documents reflect the US view – they are official US government communications. What they show is something I witnessed personally, that diplomats as a class very seldom tell unpalatable truths to politicians, but rather report and reinforce what their masters want to hear, in the hope of receiving preferment."

Appears to explain why these leaks don't, so far, appear to threaten in a serious way, the current US Imperial Agenda.



Chris


Hear Hear to this!

29.11.2010 14:34

Hear Hear!

In an age where corporate media is owned by a handful of CEOs who tightly control what is published, we need sites like Wikileaks even more to ensure that democratic discourse continues to take place, and to ensure that those in power are still being held accountable for their decisions, and don't get away with brushing everything under the proverbial rug of offical secrets laws, which more and more seem to be a way of governments (especially) keeping everything to themselves, regardless of whether it truly is of 'strategic' importance.

In other words, governments (and in some cases corporations) across the world are attempting to use the law to make themselves unaccountable and hide the truth of their intentions and actions from us.

Democratic discourse is all about getting under peoples' skins, of being a nuisance, of asking awkward questions.

If this doesn't happen, we don't have democracy any more, we have autocracy.

The day that all the media (including internet content) is loved by the powers that be is the day that democracy truly dies, because it means that we will no longer have the freedom to ask all those awkward questions that should be asked.

Democratic Supporter.


CIA, Mossad and Soros behind Wikileaks... ?

29.11.2010 21:33

from Pakistan Daily ..
[WMR has learned from Asian intelligence sources that there is a strong belief in some Asian countries, particularly China and Thailand, that the website Wikileaks, which purports to publish classified and sensitive documents while guaranteeing anonymity to the providers, is linked to U.S. cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations, as well as to Mossad’s own cyber-warfare activities. Wikileaks claims to have decrypted video footage of a U.S. Predator air strike on civilians in Afghanistan and that covert U.S. State Department agents followed Wikileaks’s editor from Iceland to Norway in a surveillance operation conducted jointly by the United States and Iceland. Iceland’s financially-strapped government recently announced a policy of becoming a haven for websites that fear political oppression and censorship in their home countries. However, in the case of Wikileaks, countries like China and Thailand are suspicious of the websites’ actual “ownership.”Wikileaks says it intends to show its video at an April 5 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC but that its presenters may be detained or arrested before that time. WMR’s sources believe the Wikileaks “militancy” in the face of supposed surveillance appears fake. Our Asian intelligence sources report the following: “Wikileaks is running a disinformation campaign, crying persecution by U.S. intelligence- when it is U.S. intelligence itself. Its [Wikileaks'] activities in Iceland are totally suspect.” Wikileaks claims it is the victim of a new COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program] operation directed by the Pentagon and various U.S. intelligence agencies. WMR’s sources believe that it is Wikileaks that is part and parcel of a cyber-COINTELPRO campaign, such as that proposed by President Obama’s “information czar,” Dr. Cass Sunstein.
In January 2007, John Young, who runs Cryptome, a site that publishes a wealth of sensitive and classified information, left Wikileaks, claiming the operation was a CIA front. Young also published some 150 email messages sent by Wikileaks activists on cryptome. They include a disparaging comment about this editor by Wikileaks co-founder Dr. Julian Assange of Australia. Assange lists as one of his professions “hacker.” His German co-founder of Wikileaks uses a pseudonym, “Daniel Schmitt.”
Wikileaks claims it is “a multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing” [whose] primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.”
In China, Wikileaks is suspected of having Mossad connections. It is pointed out that its first “leak” was from an Al Shabbab “insider” in Somalia. Al Shabbab is the Muslim insurgent group that the neocons have linked to “Al Qaeda.”
Asian intelligence sources also point out that Assange’s “PhD” is from Moffett University, an on-line diploma mill and that while he is said to hail from Nairobi, Kenya, he actually in from Australia where his exploits have included computer hacking and software piracy.
WMR has confirmed Young’s contention that Wikileaks is a CIA front operation. Wikileaks is intimately involved in a $20 million CIA operation that U.S.-based Chinese dissidents that hack into computers in China. Some of the Chinese hackers route special hacking program through Chinese computers that then target U.S. government and military computer systems. After this hacking is accomplished, the U.S. government announces through friendly media outlets that U.S. computers have been subjected to a Chinese cyber-attack. The “threat” increases an already-bloated cyber-defense and offense budget and plays into the fears of the American public and businesses that heavily rely on information technology.
It is also pointed out that on Wikileaks advisory board is Ben Laurie, a one-time programmer and Internet security expert for Google, which recently signed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and has been charged by China with being part of a U.S. cyber-espionage campaign against China. Other Wikileaks advisory members are leading Chinese dissidents, including Wan Dan, who won the 1998 National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Democracy Award; Wang Youcai, founder of the Chinese Democracy Party; Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley, member of the advisory board of the International Campaign for Tibet, and commentator on the George Soros-affiliated Radio Free Asia; and Tibetan exile and activist Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang.
Our sources in Asia believe that Wikileaks ran afoul of their CIA paymasters after it was discovered that some of Wikileaks’s “take” was being diverted to Mossad instead of to their benefactors at Langley. After a CIA cur-off in funding, “Daniel Schmitt” took over and moved the Wikileaks operation to Belgium and Sweden with hopes of making a more secure base in Iceland.
There are strong suspicions that Wikileaks is yet another Soros-funded “false flag” operation on the left side of the political spectrum. WMR has learned that after former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) decided to oppose Soros’s choice of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s deputy Mark Malloch Brown as President of the World Bank, succeeding the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, Soros put the Wikileaks operation into high gear. “Daniel Schmitt” hacked into Coleman’s supporters list, stealing credit card info, addresses, and publishing the “take” on Wikileaks. Democrat Al Franken, who was strongly backed by Soros, defeated Coleman in a legally-contested and very close election. It is also believed by informed sources that Soros is behind the operation to move Wikileaks to Iceland. By becoming a power in Iceland, Soros can prevent Icelanders from paying back the British and Dutch investors in Icelandic online Ponzi scheme banking and continue his all-out war against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has, in turn, targeted Soros for betting against pound sterling.
Iceland is classic prey for Soros. The Icelandic krona has been decimated as a currency and has no where to go but up in value, especially if the British pound and the euro depreciate. Soros is currently talking down the euro, planning its fall and shorting it, just like he did versus the pound in London in the 1980s. After the UK’s and Europe’s currencies are devalued, Soros will buy every Euro note in sight, thus making trillions.
Soros and his Wikileaks friends have in Iceland a practically unregulated banking system desperate for an influx of capital — money that will come from the exiled Russian tycoons in Israel, London and the United States. Israeli investors like Bank Leumi, and awash in siphoned-off Bernard Madoff cash, will do their bit for this smash-and-grab operation by Soros’s Quantum-linked hedge funds. With Wikileaks firmly ensconced in Iceland, the “brave” and much-heralded information leakers will run an international blackmail operation against Soros’s foes and launch computer break-ins against Soros’s business rivals and non-Quantum banks. Wikileaks will be used as the info-hitmen against President Obama’s and Rahm Emanuel’s enemies in the 2012 re-election campaign.
From Iceland, Soros will be well-positioned to gain control over the massive mineral resources under the melting ice sheet of Greenland. Under the ice are the only major rare-earth deposits outside of China and with such minerals at his disposal, Soros can control the world’s electronics industries. This past week’s volcanic activity in Iceland could, however, disrupt or destroy Soros’s plans to establish and control a North American-European gateway in Iceland.]

gar
- Homepage: http://garizo.blogspot.com/2010/11/cia-mossad-and-soros-behind-wikileaks.html


Welcome, but..

30.11.2010 00:09

I certainly welcome Wikileaks revelations, but I wish I knew where they really get their funding from. Julian Assange appears to have a jet set life style, very different from the activists I know and of course there are many others involved and some considerable resources being used. Who's footing the bill and what strings are attached?

What is also rather disconcerting is the huge amount of bluster being aimed at Wikileaks. If they really wanted to silence the website, surely they would adopt a more serious approach.

Actually, not a lot has come out of the revelations. As far as I can see people are not tearing each other to bits over them. Just lots of posturing.

So are the revelations deliberately anodyne compared with some which could be released?

Are they being steered by some malignant agency?

Perhaps, just my suspicious mind.

Curious


cablegate

30.11.2010 14:48

I like the idea that the whole thing is a CIA conspiracy. It shows the low level of thought of conspiracy theorists.

KuKluxKlan


Jetset lifestyle?wikileaks gets donations from millions of people like me

30.11.2010 17:40

Most of its info is no doubt leaked genuinely by whistle blowers, some not,

Alex Jones & Co are great except when they get too paranoid & start making Bob Fossil off mighty boosh look sane

Bingo Ringo


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