Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"and long amy he live to drive them insane"

I myself LOVE Amy (though she spells it 'Ame' -- and has a boyfriend). And I agree with you totally about Assange.

Amen, MJS.

And we also know, don't we, that precedent is always of central importance to the Executive Committee. Left alone, Sandinista Nicaragua wasn't going to become Japan or China. But it sure as hell was going to soften the misery of its people.

Likewise, the democratic and moral argument is that institutional secrecy has no place in this world or in this alleged republic. And these leaks show that, and also confirm that spookery is not vital to anything but rule-from-above.

"Mahmoud, my brother"

Good God, or Allah, as if any more evidence were required for how reactionary you are. What possible justification could your warped imagination offer for including Mahmoud, a blatant and unequivocal religious reactionary, misogynist, homophobe (and homo-killer), and all around regressive tyrant, in your pantheon?

Fidel, Hugo, Noam, Alex, Ralph, Julian...fine, fine fine, whatever. One can varying degrees of respect for the last four names on that list. But Mahmoud? Are you out of your fucking mind?

Your minions will no doubt now come to the defense of your warped "reasoning." They will be lying through their keystrokes, or humoring you. You have revealed yourself, with those three simple words quoted above, to be a reactionary pig with an affinity for regressive tyranny.

I don't think it's fair to assume ipso facto that when someone remarks on how amazing it is that so many are ignorant of what's staring us in the face (re: US imperial atrocities)* that he or she is saying wikileaks is useless. By virtue of the fact wikileaks has apparently brought a revelation to so many a great thing has obviously happened--even if its only concrete effect is to embarrass and enrage those in power (as well as the obsequious media).

It is worth noting, that it is dispiriting so many demand some kind of official document "proving..." before they'll believe well documented (if not tolerated in the mainstream) facts. Though perhaps those making this demand have no intention of ever believing the facts, or at least admitting they do.

*As one Latin America-based facebook comrade did, commenting "Same old, same old" in reply to a linked article on the US support for the Honduran coup regime.

Amen to MOST of this. I think you may underrate how disruptive this is going to be. I agree that the overlords are pissed about being disobeyed but I think there is more to it. I think some fairly explosive stuff will still come to light and for a lot of people even the old news will be news. I mean, he disobeyed them before but the ante seems to be way up this time. I mean, no one has gone through all the cables yet. And then you've got a bank about to get hit with an Enron-size whopper in January.

The drama that's playing out as these things get released is very explosive in its own right. I mean the lengths that the government is going to right now - the Interpol arrest alert, Ecuador offering and then pulling asylum, Lieberman strong-arming Amazon to take the files off their cloud, bullying Sweden into reissuing the arrest warrant so as to extradite him - really are sort of laying the whole business even more bare. Overall, I think people are going to be rooting for Wikileaks. As you say, these cables won't tell most reasonably informed leftists anything new but painted in such detail alongside this drama of man against global dictatorship, I have to say it's pretty fucking shocking stuff taken as a whole even for my jaded eyes.

I worry for Assange's life. I think the powers that be are probably trying to calculate the benefit of taking him out to make an example vs. the way that act will strengthen the movement he's spearheading. I have been seeing hints here and there about how the Russians aren't happy about him either and if I were a betting man, I'd say that if the powers decide to kill him, they'll pin it on the Russian mob.

Assange doesn't have to be a bad guy to be a rube.

"Mahmoud, my brother"

Good God, or Allah, as if any more evidence were required for how reactionary you are.

"I don't think so. I think they're really pissed. And it's not because the material in itself is so explosive. No. It's just because they've been disobeyed"

You will obey my authoritah!

I think you have it nailed MJS.

- Greg

Assange doesn't have to be a bad guy to be a rube.

And one doesn't have to be named McCarthy or be in the Tea Party to be splatter about the spew that is the paranoid style of US politics.

i like the notion this type of leaking
might become fashionable among lower limb insiders
now it gets press here
i'm actually surprised this outfit hasn't already induced copy cats
and triggered a pandemic of leaks
everywhere

nothing super K hated more then leaks

Among the quarter million diplomatic dispatches released by Wikileaks this weekend is a posting from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran’s capital, dated August 13, 1979, just three months before the embassy was seized by Iranian students. The cable, by Bruce Laingen, the highest ranking U.S. diplomat in Iran at the time, is less than 1,000 words long, but speaks volumes to the essential racism of the American imperial worldview, and to white America’s fundamental unfitness for the role of superpower.

The Iranian revolution had earlier in 1979 overthrown the dictatorial Shah, whom the Americans had forcibly installed in power in 1953. Needless to say, Iranians blamed the Americans for the unspeakable crimes committed by the Shah’s regime. But Bruce Laingen maintained, in his cable to the State Department in Washington, that the main problem was not U.S. policy in Iran, but an inherent psychological “defect” in the Iranian people – or “Persians,” as he called them. These “underlying cultural and psychological qualities,” wrote Laingen, “account for the nature of these difficulties” in dealing with Persians. He writes: ”Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism” whose “practical effect…is an almost total Persian preoccupation with self [that] leaves little room for understanding points of view other than one’s own.” In other words, the Iranians are too sick in the head to comprehend United States policy in their part of the world. It’s a “cultural and psychological” defect – unrelated, of course, to the fact that the U.S. stole their democracy from them and put their own puppet on the Peacock Throne.

From a recent piece by another well known patsy of the ruling class:
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/american-racism-display-wikileaks-iran-cable

Fadduh Smiff sez:
... but in fact there are a good many people I like more than not: Fidel, Hugo, Noam, Alex, Ralph, Mahmoud.... Of late, Julian occupies a place of honor in this mini-pantheon...

Y'know, I know this sounds a bit odd, but I find myself digging Mahmoud in spite of myself. Not that I don't think the guy's an authoritarian crank or anything, but I still totally get a kick out of any public remarks of his which are reported in the US media, because I know the US media and US state will provide me with endless hours of entertainment with their off-the-hook hypocritical fuming and pants-crapping about gay rights and womens' rights and religious tolerance and nuclear threats everytime Mahmoud says something.

Fadduh Smiff continuez:
I've been very surprised and puzzled by a pandemic tendency on the Left to look the Wikileaks gift horse in the mouth. Reactions have ranged from the ho-hum ("Nothing new here") to the Chicken Little ("The leaks give the US a better pretext to attack Iran") to the downright conspiratorial ("Assange is a CIA asset").

I find this Grinchery hard to understand.

D'ahh, c'mon, man. What's so surprising and puzzling? What's so hard to understand? The US Left gets all standoffish about these leaks because to express any joy over them would make them appear to be "soft on terrorism" or "not supporting the troops" or some shit. The Left soft-pedals the Wikileaks Leak O'The Month because they're scared shitless that the GOP is going to freak out and "kick the dog", as it were.

It's perfectly easy to understand; the Left reacts to this the way it does because they're -- not to be too blunt about it -- a bunch of goddamn' pussies.

Oh, and look! Here's Little Milton, moanin' the blues again:

Good God, or Allah, as if any more evidence were required for how reactionary you are. What possible justification could your warped imagination offer for including Mahmoud, a blatant and unequivocal religious reactionary, misogynist, homophobe (and homo-killer), and all around regressive tyrant, in your pantheon?

...Your minions will no doubt now come to the defense of your warped "reasoning." They will be lying through their keystrokes, or humoring you. You have revealed yourself, with those three simple words quoted above, to be a reactionary pig with an affinity for regressive tyranny.

Here, Milt, let me explain it to you in terms of an old joke long popular here in DC: My two favorite teams are the Redskins, and whoever's playing the Cowboys this week.

See also my remarks above, re: how anybody who can make the US State and media crap their drawers is totally OK with me. Along with the rest of Smiff's Pantheon whose politics I largely agree with, I also dig Mahmoud for the same reasons -- that they're willing to go public, on the record, and talk to the US "leadership" the way it needs to be talked to.

I think the US Left -- along with our cadre of dickless Liberal politicians who purport to work for us -- is simply jealous of Hugo, Fidel, Mahmoud, et. al. for having the cajones to bitch-slap the US State in the public press, in front of the whole world and God and everybody.

(Wow, I'm a "minion". Movin' up in the world, huh?)

diamonddog -- You never know what's gonna do it for people until it does it. If the Wikileaks revelations are really the last straw for a lot of people, then that's even more reason to be grateful than we already have. The argument I was trying to make was that even if the leaks have no immediate effect at all, they're still a good thing. Demonstrations of disobedience always have a very salutary bad-apple character.

Great post, MJS. Really enjoyed your analysis on this.

OP: nothing super K hated more then leaks

OP, you clearly haven't been paying attention. Super K may have called Daniel Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America," but this was just part of one of those fiendishly elaborate, hyper-refined, wheels-within-wheels schemes.

er,

Assange doesn't have to be a bad guy to be a rube.

And one doesn't have to be named McCarthy or be in the Tea Party to splatter about the spew that is the paranoid style of US politics.

You smacked it with this one, MJS.

I have a hard time seeing Wikileaks as anything other than an unalloyed good, even if it is just a minor one.

Personally, I can't wait for the bank leak. Who is it?? GS? JPM? CITI? BOA? UBS (again)? Please let there be some white collar perp walks. We haven't had nearly enough of those lately.

Perhaps it can appear as an "unalloyed good" because it's easy to persuade oneself that a representation is identical with what it obscures.

eh what now

What does Wikileaks obscure?

I agree with most of this? Yes, I do! It is true! Feudalism! Wolverines!

...Except the Ahmadinejad-puffing -- which I'm sure was included just to annoy people. That the douchenozzle is mostly harmless I'll grant you, but he is genuinely disgusting. And not just because he, you know, offends my delicate Benthamesque Broderite etc. sensibilities with his vile rhetoric, but because he would probably gleefully have me (and you) (and everybody else in this great, great nation!) killed for violating the deeply hilarious code of conduct to which he has pledged the offices of his semi-comical lunacy. Which is just gross.

...Except the Ahmadinejad-puffing -- which I'm sure was included just to annoy people.

Ahmadinejad is a representative of a faction of the bazaari bourgeoisie which came to power by massacring the Iranian left after the overthrow of the Shah, and which would be happy to reach a modus vivendi with uncle sam if only uncle sam would so oblige -- as he did once before over the Nicaraguan arms deals in the 1980s.

emma

i love your comments
but i submit some of us just might accept
with a calm "of course"
the fact a ringo amen-jihad would
"have me ...killed "
and other neat katz 'round here too

rule by homocide
goes back to the origins of human intra group authority

the killing of brothers sisters sons daughters grand pops maiden aunts cousins ...
fathers and mothers ??
built right in to the fabric of social coherence ..a catabolic adhesive never far from the motives and actions
of the .....constituency

when i think of
the state american style
i think of the waco roast
that bomb drop in black philly
and those benighted dears
in the incinerated SLA hide out

yes unlike aurelian barry
muckmood has a certain
thugish rascals menace written
all over his face
but
as the ole silver fox once sung
"behind closed doors "
" states all look alike "

u just gotta pick one
where your team is in the saddle
and if your team turns on ya when darkness comes at noon

so be it

let Clio's will be done
in prole party hell
as its done
in harvard heaven

when the state comes up

any class state
i recall a certain moment in time
i think it was 1977
in brooklyn
minority community x had just suffered
another police killing
elements of minority community x
spontaneously over whelmed a less then fully prepared police precinct outfit

okay fair enough

few days later a funeral procession was organized to carry the departed community member thru the streets and of course past
this same precinct op

well...
the cops came at the procession from all four sides
beat the holy crap out of anyone they could get near enough to for a good irish cristening

i recall father smiff among other friends and comrades
found himself in the midst of this
"lesson" in state power
there was much mayhem blood and breakage

btw
as usual my nose for
flawed box canyon gesturing
had kept me clear

Looking at the way Julian Assange and Scott Ritter have both been accused of sex crimes, I can imagine only two explanations.

1.) They were both set up by the US government.

2.) Pervs really do tend to tell the truth more than non-pervs do. In that case, more pervs should be encouraged to go into sensitive government positions.

I find it especially interesting that Scott Ritter served in the Marine corps for over a decade and as UN weapons inspector for most of the 1990s without any pervy tendencies coming out.

He managed to pass all of the security clearance hurdles until he became a dissident (I HATE the word whistleblower and prefer the word dissident).

Perhaps being a dissident brings out the latent perviness in us all.

Or, just perhaps, the government is setting them both up. I know the US government never lies.....................

What does it obscure? The Spectacle itself. Wikileaks commodifies state secrets, for public consumption. I'm not suggesting that the information should be secret, or that these revelations are inherently wrong or wrongheaded - but the making public itself relies on the corporate media to commodify these images, and the concepts associated with them. It feeds the spectacle by validating the producers of it, and by giving them raw material with which to work.

Anything which feeds the spectacle serves the needs of the spectacle's ultimate beneficiaries, our old nemesis, the capitalist ruling class.

Assange has, willfully or not (I don't subscribe to C-theories myself), given them control of the narrative. The discussion right now, except in lefty and righty marginal realms, is about how to manage Clinton's survival, how to use the data dump to help Obama's administration, how to "fix" relations between the US and Europe, how to contain Iran. This is the product being sold or given to television watchers.

In short, Wikileaks data dump has become a giant commodity manufacture, giving the capitalist press organs the images and story products necessary for their task. Anything which does not end the Spectacle serves the Spectacle - and we ain't gonna end the spectacle by using it, are we?

The Spectacular society is also the society of the double bind. There are no good moves. Everything that can be co-opted will be, including the option not to participate. What's left is stumbling along, doing the best you can, hoping that doesn't become exploitable and trying to do some halfway concealed good.

Get rid of the stuff about that sick fuck Mahmoud, and I agree with MJS, and Al, on this. The leaks are good, and only a paranoid looney-tune with an exaggerated, infantile view of the competence and foresight of the US government would think that this was done by their hand, or that Julian is a CIA stooge, or anything along those lines. Al's business about the teaspoons/tablespoons is correct, and MJS seems to have a pretty clear-eyed view of this, setting aside the Mahmoud nonsense.

Mike: The Redskins suck, hippie. J E T S. There's a working-class team for you.

In short, Wikileaks data dump has become a giant commodity manufacture, giving the capitalist press organs the images and story products necessary for their task.

The British labour party under Atlee, having being forced to abandon India by the independence movement, manufactured the myth that India was granted its independence by the gift of the British government. Indian independence thus gave this wretched imperialist and warmongering organisation (the British Labour Party) the opportunity to burnish its progressive reputation, with the support of hack writers in the capitalist press and university history departments.

Even the black freedom struggle in the US has been sanitised and co opted by the ruling class for their own purposes -- most egregiously by the stooge who, with the connivance of the media, has claimed continuity of his 2008 campaign with the black freedom struggle.

But was the effect of the black and Indian freedom struggles limited to giving the western press organs the images and story products necessary for the task of selling filthy war criminals to the world?

I'm having a difficult time figuring out what you are getting at here Jack.

Is your only problem with Wikileaks that they leaked to the MSM?

If they leaked it elsewhere, it still would have ended up in the MSM anyway, so I don't really see how that is so important. It's news, the MSM commodifies all news, so what's the big deal? It's not like Wikileaks gives the NYT any sort of credibility by leaking to it.

What about blogging? Does that feed into "The Spectacle" as well?

Heck, doesn't everything feed Teh Spectacle? Including comments on Blog Post threads? I advocate building a cabinet in the wilderness and forwarding manifestos written on toilet papper rolls to other wilderness cabin dwellers. THAT will show them! Until the Mainstream Media gets ahold of one of the rolls, then even the hermit's missives will contribue to The Spectacle. There is no escape. There is no solution. :)

op:

Although I wasn’t thinking of the contents of your comments when I was posting my own, I think I can incorporate those events into my, uh, 'argument’ without looking too awfully stupid; MJS accords the domestic murderers the contempt they so richly deserve, but he "likes" Ahmadinejad? Who behaves in exactly the same way as, say, epic Commie-hater Barack Obama, except that Ahmadinejad holds his citizens to standards which are even more stupidly unfair and hypocritical? And dispenses consequences which are even more likely to be fatal? I know Ahmadinejad isn’t the person in charge of creating Iranian policy, but: Derp? Herp? Really? I am pretty sure MJS is not a moron, so I have to conclude that he is actively attempting to irritate his readers. Success!

As far as Wikileaks goes, I only wish it leaked more often, and that the water was dirtier. I also wish the world’s heads-of-state were a little more creative. We know they’re evil and awful, but I was a little surprised by how boring they are. And what do you want to bet there’s at least one pretend-secret investigative body in on the attempt to arrest Assange who are informally referred to as 'The Plumbers'?

fb

crow has a paradigm
and it relieves him of every consideration pre emptively

with labels like

spectacle
commodity
narrative
control
corporate
co optation

its like a pin ball machine
bing bing bing ....tilt
"There are no good moves."
indeed if so
this suggests bad moves have no ground

i take refreshment in this
any move's status good or bad
given time and context
turn into their opposite
this is not mere antinomy when viewed
as a self evolving internally contradictory concatenation
the spectacle is massively defective
full of snares hitches gaps etc self refutations

yes ours is a guerilla conflict
like captured arms
we live off the dropped elements
of the hegemon's narrative

winston smith's memory hole/re write op
is utterly inadequate to its task

toxic memes like spectacle theory
aren't enough to stop organized struggle
in the end the reigning totalization
crumbles into dust

FB,

I'm of a very similar mind with Al, as usual. I just not willing to pretend that everything Assange does is an "unalloyed good." I'm all for punching a motherfucker, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend that punching him isn't sometimes exactly what he wants me to do, cuz he's got back up and I don't. Or he has friends with multibillion dollar media concerns, and I beg a multibillion dollar media corporation for some negligible free server space.

Anytime anyone takes a shot at power, I remind myself of the Neetch's best aphorism - that one about shooting princes.

Anyway - what I'm attempting to communicate is fairly simple, but first a caveat or two: I don't think the Spectacle is an amorphous mystical phlebotinum. It's just a word which communicates the added effect of the capitalist commodification of images, in pretty much the same way that "the State" communicates the durable form of power. Neither term says exactly everything about this particular State, or this contemporary set of capitalists - but that's not really their purpose.

They communicate cause and effect, in a recognizable form, because people continuously duplicate these forms in human society.

DeBord was probably even more right than he himself knew - the colonization of memory, by corporate capitalist image interests, is the primary means of control, because it doesn't ever have to look exactly like control. It's just "culture" or "entertainment" or in more perfidious terms, "education."

Again - no plot or conspiracy are necessary, here. It's just rich white guys using the material environment and tools at hand, tools which they often have a hand in creating.

Anything which is done in that environment they control - the mediation of concepts and the commodification of images - serves their needs in pretty much the same way that a host of late colonial national revolutions ended up serving the interests of the former colonial masters, and more significantly, the corporations they hosted. The liberation of the Congo didn't hurt capital. It made the extraction of resources simpler, by removing the immediate symbol of oppression, transforming revolt against capitalist and imperial colonizers into civil wars for control of resources which would shortly after be conceded to capitalists on even more favorable terms.

The liberation of these documents doesn't hurt capital or its war machine either. It only gives the giant media concerns a dominant position in determining how their client-consumers understand data sets they already have. It gives them control over how the images and ideas are themselves commodified, and remembered.

Is anyone surprised that the Sauds want the Persians wrapped up in some martial nastiness? That Hillary Clinton is an earnestly authoritarian harridan? That a North African strong man digs naked women?

Will anyone be able to express honest surprise when Assange ends up Rittered? Or dead of apparent suicide? Or just disappeared into the CIA's dungeon system? Or show trialed and walkerlindhed?

Is anyone actually surprised that a national security state fetishizes secrets?

So what does Wikileaks actually accomplish, given the actual, material mediated environment in which we exist?

My argument follows from this question, only. And I'm just suggesting - given the Spectacle - that it accomplishes the opposite of its boosters belief. It normalizes. It does not threaten.

Because it gives control of the discussion of the material over to the capitalist conglomerates which actually dominate the mediated space in which we form a considerable portion of our various "independent" worldviews. We are discussing Wikileaks, in the first place, because of that capitalist media distribution system. That's the environment in which we must work - and by using it we strengthen it. We aren't pulling off an inside job, or a transformation of institutions. We're just following the lead of a handful of ridiculously large corporations, discussing shit we already know, but now to their tune.

And for what it's worth, I'm also not suggesting that Assange does this deliberately. I'm saying it's the expected consequence of the media environment.

Respect,

Jack

Op has a
mystical fuck himself in the face
with silly beliefs about his epistemes
of heuristics
which allow
him
to read
what's now
on the
page, or -
screen,
and believe
only what
suits his
tired mysticism
of the
world historical
future
that
can't happen
because OP
is a bourgeois mystic
who fucks himself
in
the
face
with
the manipulation of
symbols
which are always only
self referential
but which he calls
History

Ok, what I know about the Society of the Spectacle comes from a few pages I have just read online about it and Debord and the Situationists. In other words, I am an expert.

It is my conclusion after this serious study, that Wikileaks has all the features of a disruption of the Spectacle in that it is a dramatic act of sabotage and vandalism that will force more than a few people to see things and themselves in a new light. There is no question that it is also part of the Spectacle but it seems to me that any Spectacle disruption would have to become part of the Spectacle to interrupt it.

Debord himself recommended détournement, "which involves using spectacular images and language to disrupt the flow of the spectacle" which seems to me pretty close to what is happening now. That certainly seems to be how the capitalist ruling class sees it, unless the literally murderous rage they are directing at Assange is all part of the show. I don't think it is. I think they would much rather be concerned with something else right now. To me the truth value of any part of the Spectacle matters more than the Spectacle itself.

I do think Jack raises a worthy concern about how it's still largely the mainstream media interpreting Wikileaks for everyone else, but the fact is, the files are out there for everyone and they will be read and interpreted by all sorts. I think it's a mistake to see the State or media as monolithic. I think it's interesting to see certain minor players in large media enterprises who seem to be quietly promoting him. It's also a serious mistake to hopelessly credit the State or the media with unlimited power, resourcefulnous and durability. I think for any genuine movement forward, a large number of people will need to see the Empire and the media as vulnerable and feel that there are actually resources out there to make them bleed. Contemplating the extent to which Hillary Clinton is truly suffering right now by way of stress alone is very nourishing, not just personally but politically. A tablespoon of water, all by itself.

dd,

I don't have a dispute with anything you've written. I tend to agree almost entirely. I just started out arguing against the idea that this is an "unalloyed" good.

It's not. One thing does not follow automatically from another. Future history isn't as predetermined as some here seem to argue. Awareness of vulnerability is necessary, but it's not enough.

On second and third consideration, I think my argument is actually with the passivity of certain assumptions about Wikileaks efficacy, as if the leaks themselves have magical import.

Respect,

Jack

And I think there's some identity confusion going on, too. What a bunch of glibertarians, reds and anarchists think about these leaks - on the intertubewebz - doesn't actually reveal anything about how most Americans (or Canadians, or Brits, etc) do or will react.

We are discussing people who are generally apathetic about prisons, torture, foreign occupations, aggressive wars, their oil consumption, their consumptive lifestyles, strip mining, mountaintop removal, black men in prison and drone wars, no?

I think a good read of the actual bellwhether is the comments section of Balloon Juice, where institutional liberals gather by the hundreds to defend the indefensible.

Heh. Bellwether.

"... I just started out arguing against the idea that this is an "unalloyed" good."
but then poor tyke his inner apparatus kicks in and rolls him out on a limb
the crow
a bright enough fellow
notices he's gone out on a limb
admits it ...and allah be praised
backs off some

"On second and third consideration, I think my argument is actually with the passivity of certain assumptions about Wikileaks efficacy, as if the leaks themselves have magical import"

well well well...a rather banal caveat
but hardly "wrong"
that should be commended... eh ??

but then...too near nakedness perhaps
he pushes the neutron bomb button

"We are discussing people who are generally apathetic about prisons, torture, foreign occupations, aggressive wars, their oil consumption, their consumptive lifestyles, strip mining, mountaintop removal, black men in prison and drone wars"

nukes to the white yankee people !!!

ya...
the duped bribed
paleface bastards ... .nuke em

as if "the mind of the people "
is a frozen tableau

If we're going to fawn over somebody, what about Saint Bradley Manning? He didn't even get world tour equipped with groupies before going to the gulag.

From what I've read, 3 million people had access to the same materials that Manning had, and only one of them decided to share. It's a shame he cracked and talked to a narc.

Jack, I think you are doing what you often accuse OP of: you have an Idea of what the world is like (Spectacle) and you are making predictions (on balance Wikileaks will only serve power). You accuse OP of doing this from a Hegelian historical materialism POV, your's is French postmodernist or whatever, but you are making a prediction, that will either be borne out by history or not.

Solar hero,

Op is an admitted dialectician, with a credo and a belief system. I'm not a postmodernist, or a deconstructionist, or a student of any particular school fo thought - I just find DeBord's model useful, in this context. The SotS seems to describe modern conditions, with some accuracy. Not the future. Now.

That's the giant difference. I'm not saying that History must turn out such and such a way because History has an unseen teleology. OP is saying that. It's his faith position. Owen: "historical" determinist. Jack: not.

And I am not making a prediction about the future. I'm stating that assumptions about the efficacy of Wikileaks data dumps, **right now**, are not properly modeled because those making the assumptions assume a world which doesn't exist, and a subject population which doesn't identify the way they do.

Owen and I couldn't be arguing for or from more distinct positions, or modes of thought.

~ Jack

And Hegelianism is not materialism. Ever. It's very openly a post-medieval Hermeticism. Hegel was a believer in Hermetic magic.

Apropos the spectacle -- Jack has given us a good account of its dialectic in what you might call its clockwise mode of operation: it assimilates every threat to itself into itself. But there's a counterclockwise dialectic, too, isn't there? The one where every institution secretes the acids of its own dissolution?

Apropos my man Mahmoud -- I'll save a fuller treatment for the next time Iran is in the news big-time, but in the meantime let me tell you a parable.

Owen recently mentioned -- was it another thread? -- an occasion in which I got caught up in a police riot here in true-blue Gotham. While the cops roved through the streets like bulls in Pamplona, I ended up huddled in a shallow doorway, with a comrade I particularly detested -- a loudmouthed, male-chauvinist, unthinking, slogan-mongering New York Irish sectarian of the worst kind. he couldn't stand me either, I might add.

We both had grabbed sticks -- he had a little length of 2x4 that he'd found God knows where, and I had a fallen tree branch, leaves and all.

So there we stood in our doorway, prepared to take at least one swing in return before they clubbed us to the ground.

As it happened, they overlooked us, and swept on down the street after more visible prey. We waited till they were out of sight, then dropped our sticks, nodded mutely at each other, and went our separate ways.

He wasn't my kind of guy, or I his. But for a moment there, we were in the same boat. I was glad to have him at my side, and I bet he felt the same way.

Solar hero,

My dispute wasn't even with OP, even if he was eventually to chime in with more Hegelian Haiku, and his poor imitation of a Nietzschean ad-hom. I was only disputing Fred's "unalloyed good." I don't see the Wikileaks dump as necessarily leading to more power for the State. I'm suggesting that the idea that it's an "unalloyed good" is wrong. It can get worse.

MJS "The one where every institution secretes the acids of its own dissolution?"

I have admittedly not focused on that - but you are absolutely correct. Could this be one of those sets of instances, where enough spillage (courtesy of Assange and his accomplices) actually damage the public trust in the fiction of consent?

No doubt.

I'm just not comfortable assuming it is **necessarily** so.

as if "the mind of the people "
is a frozen tableau

Exactly. If it were, the powers wouldn't go to such lengths to keep them confused and ignorant. They wouldn't care about Julian Assange. They wouldn't be working so hard to secure themselves against more leaks. Certainly all this liberty-shredding that's been going on anticipates an awakening.

Also, can't something be seriously disruptive, revolutionary even, without the participation of 'most' of the people, even if one allowed the premise (which I don't) that most are irretrievably backward and complacent?

dd,

Owen is tilting at windmills. I don't assume that there is (a) the people, (b) that it has a mind which can therefore (c) be frozen in a tableau.

I'm just looking at right now - and I don't see a whole lot of people in the States particularly troubled by those items in my list.

Not that they will always be thus. But that, right now, there isn't a movement to abolish - by party or insurrection - the national security state, the prison complex, the Joint Chiefs, class oppression, Walmart or Comcast.

Wikileaks is not dumping into a revolutionary environment, or even a proto-revolutionary one. It's dumping into a Spectacular one, one which does in fact absorb its discontents as functions of its own spectacle. Guy robs a bank is not reported on the nightly news as the class act that it is - it's reported and absorbed as an isolated act of criminality, and this with the purpose of altering memory and entertaining.

The spectacular environment continuously mitigates the potential for revolutionary unrest by transforming the images of insurrection into consumable entertainment and by almost universally dominating how insurrection itself is understood.

I find it unfathomable that there are still people on the Left who can be taken in by a mass media dog and pony show like the Wikileaks fandango. Real classified and incriminating documents get leaked to the media all the time yet are not reported on.

If there was anything substantial or damaging to the powers-that-be in the Wikileaks "revelations" they would be similarly ignored, not trumpeted about with great fanfare. Are we to believe based on the massive amount of attention being paid to these "leaks" that the media has suddenly gone over to the side of the angels and become a freedom fighter for truth and justice?

Judging by the nature of these alleged "revelations," I don't think it "Grinchery" or "Chicken Little" hysterics to think not. For over 40 years we have been swamped with anti-Muslim propaganda in the mass media. During that same time, there must have easily been over a hundred thousand articles, TV-spots and blog posts manufacturing fatuous nonsense about Iran and the alleged threat it poses and trying to sell us on a war with the "Mad Mullahs." The monumental effort behind this propaganda campaign has been astounding in its scope, and no honest person not living off the grid somewhere can claim not to have noticed it. The type of "secret" information released by Wikileaks definitely seems to be more grist for that particular mill, and has the reek of bullshit about it.

We learn from the Wikileaks "revelations" of "classified info" the astounding fact that:

1. Iran really has a nuclear weapons program.
2. Iran and Hezbollah have been smuggling guns and explosives into Iraq and training the Iraqi resistance. Pakistani intelligence and Iran are allegedly supporting the Taliban.
3. Iraq really did have WMDs and they have been found by the US military.
4. Iran has been assassinating and kidnapping civilians in Iraq and Hezbollah is also involved in this.
5. Iran has custom designed a new suicide vest for use by anti-American insurgents.
6. There have been torture and abuses by US puppet al-Maliki, but the US government has intervened to stop it. Now if they can just stop the torture in US prisons.
7. That only 109,000 Iraqis have been killed in the war, an estimate which Assange assures us is "the most accurate description of a war that has ever been released into the historic record. There is nothing comparable."

http://solidarityislam2.blogspot.com/2010/10/julian-assange-to-rt-wikileaks-gives.html

Anybody who can say something like this with a straight face based on self-serving documents allegedly "leaked" by God only knows who in the government is either an idiot or a charlatan.

All of this horseshit is really just a repetition of standard warmonger tropes given a facade of credibility by its allegedly being leaked from actual government sources and therefore, presumably more accurate than what is willingly revealed to us in the media—even though it is identical to the lies we are routinely exposed to in the media and the media is hardly making a secret of these "stunning revelations."

The Wikileaks seem to serve power more than embarrass it, and give credence to the massive, decades-long propaganda effort to sell us on a war with Iran.

I am amazed there are still people who contemptuously dismiss the idea that the intelligence services or government of the US or other countries might want to game the system a little bit by planting leaks that bolster their own case together with enough background filler of real but inconsequential info to make it credible.

Such a plan is remarkably simple in both its conception and its execution, particularly when you have a largely compliant media. Every child has mastered the art of feigned outrage by the age of 7. Despite what appears to be dissonant shrieking from our political choir, they are in fact singing in tune.

Sean,

I don't know if someone at Foggy Bottom made a command decision or not, but as for the mediated sell, I think you're on the money, and not alone in that thinking:

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/30/what-wikileaks-docs-reveal-about-the-iran-threat.html

http://agonist.org/sean_paul_kelley/20101128/wikileaks_disclosure_makes_war_with_iran_more_likely

And since SMBIVA has the three link bug...

Sean,

I have a post in limbo because of multiple links, I think - but in support of your argument:

http://warincontext.org/2010/07/28/war-against-iran-more-likely-thanks-to-wikileaks/

"The Wikileaks seem to serve power more than embarrass it "
its not implausible the leaks contain well packaged disinformation
in fact its impossibly silly
to suggest the giant bundle is not contaminated with much planted crap
that however is not the twist the spectacle
works over here
its almost all gotcha
all about embarassment
it's hardly likely most pwogie folks will use this to squash there self doubts
about the basic validity
of our uncle produced official narrative

frankly i haven't looked at any of it
can't imagine it contains broadly useful material
the beauty of it to me
is the disloyalty the leaks at least appear to suggest lurks inside the beast

for a parallel
i recall the carnation rev
or whatever
u want to call it
the leftist coup etc
that hit mid 70's portugal
toppling the crusted over
authoritarian regime

as i recall
there was a quaint fear
among the "reactionary forces"
trying to stablize the PREC
this side of a people's republic

the fear ??

red submarines
inside the establihment apparatus
the civil service
and of course
the military srvice too

delightful eh ??

prolly just enough belief in it
among elite circles
to be useful
disruptive
divisive
alas t'was not enough
by far not enough

I'd wager sean might be the double agent, given his peddling and parroting of ridiculous falsehoods about the wikileaks. This, for instance, is the "leak" about WMDs being found in Iraq and not announced by the USA:

"The documents showed that US troops continued to find chemical weapons and labs for years after the invasion, including remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons arsenal -- most of which had been destroyed following the Gulf War."

Either sean isn't savvy enough to make sense of that, or he is somebody's agent.

JC, meanwhile, exceeds himself in verbal diarrhea output. First he says Wikileaks is a plant job. Then he ends up agreeing with MJS. In between, he tosses around words he has clearly passed eyes over, yet cannot handle in any degree.

To commodify something is to turn it into an item sold directly, in itself, as such for cash.

"Spectacle," meanwhile, is perhaps the most imprecise attempt at sociology in all of sociology's history, which include the collected works of Talcott Parsons. What modern, post-neolithic society is not a society of the spectacle? What does "spectacle" denote as a concept? "An event that carries symbolic meaning."

For all his prolixity and French "theoretical" hautiness, Debord simply had the binoculars backwards. He's not worth the paper his droolings are printed on.

" Iraq really did have WMDs and they have been found by the US military."
only point i find curious

expatiate please and link in to it

the link you give largely suggests the leaks make for rag tag peacenik clawless agons
the rest of your items are only the expected
yankee cardboard

I never stated WL was a plant job, Dawson. You lie. Plainly, you lie.

i was working on my comment and missed md's

thanx ranger !!!

jc
cool off no one needs to lie about your "products"

Dawson's MO is boring - anyone who disagrees with him is either too stupid to understand the words they're using or works for the FBI.

He never varies it. And don't care use the word "consumer."

Oh, I see, JC. You called Assange a "rube" who rubes himself "willfully or not." And you now would have it that you said these things because you said all along that he's a brave whistle-blower. Yes, of course. ROFLMAO.

Lesson? Don't take what JC posts seriously. To do so is to "lie."

That's the fourth or fifth time you instructed me to "cool off, now. I'm not hot. I'm just naming a lie for what it is. Dawson lied. If it's un"cool" to point out Dawson's lie, you can ban me or live with it.

What I wrote, Dawson, and what you reported, not the same. I wrote:

"Assange doesn't have to be a bad guy to be a rube."

1. That's a propositional statement.

2. It's not stating that Assange is a rube. It's stating that he doesn't have to be a bad guy to be a rube.

3. Being a rube does not mean he's a plant. It doesn't mean that what he operates, at Wikileaks, is a "plant job."

4. Because I never argued that it was a plant job.

5. I only argued that one doesn't have to assume he's not on the level to accept that he might be dupable.

So - you either have so little grasp of logic, formal or informal, that your attacks on others word choices are almost double ironically hipster ironic - or you lie.

I think you lie. Because you always misrepresent. So, I'm biased.

JC, you're now endorsing the word "consumer"? Beautiful. We see the depth of your radicalism. It's JC's way or no way. Just as you've been insisting all along, I suppose...

As to calling people spies, there are spies, and there certainly may be FBI agents all over the place these days, as there have always been.

Nonetheless, my point was intended as a tweak to sean's ridiculous take on Wikileaks. The core of that silly and stupid reading is the claim that Julian Assange is a spook. No fucking way. The system doesn't do this to itself.

You couldn't have illustrated my claims about your MO or your instinct to misrepresent any better, Dawson. Thank you.

I'll return the shuttle, JC. What else would would a "willful rube" be, if not a plant?

Looking forward to your answer!

OK, well given the exacting standards being applied here, let me rephrase my original point:

Wikileaks is a (minor) unalloyed good to the exact extent that any public behaviour can possibly be an unalloyed good in the current state of the world.

And dude, it's Emerson.

Read this. Just savor it. It's priceless:

"As to calling people spies, there are spies, and there certainly may be FBI agents all over the place these days, as there have always been."

Spies, spies everywhere. Guys who disagree with me are spies. It's part of the system.

"Nonetheless, my point was intended as a tweak to sean's ridiculous take on Wikileaks. The core of that silly and stupid reading is the claim that Julian Assange is a spook. No fucking way. The system doesn't do this to itself."

It's stupid to assume that the guy who I agree with is a spy. The system doesn't allow for it.

Belly laughs abound, worm.

Again, and not for the first time, JC, you wanna take a poll on who's being accurate here?

Meanwhile, Lajany, have you looked at Stephen Kinzer's book on Operation Ajax? Kinzer wimps out a bit on the conclusions (he did onec report for the NYT, after all), but he includes a lot of detail about the paint-peeling racist assumptions going all the way back to when the Brits started cultivating the Pahlavis. The main story in the Time mag carrying Mossadegh as MOY for 1951 (possibly penned by Scotty Reston, if I recall) was replete with the American version.

Dawson: "What else would would a "willful rube" be, if not a plant?"

I didn't call Assange a "willful rube," you lying worm.

I wrote, much much later and not even in the same post:

"Assange has, willfully or not (I don't subscribe to C-theories myself), given them control of the narrative."

That's it. Right there where I state that I don't subscribe to conspiracism. I don't know Assange's motives, so I don't attribute to him what I don't know.

Unlike you, liar.

A poll will definitely be able to tell us who's more accurate!

JC, my moronic friend, I did not start the spy thing, and do not consider it a major topic, as whatever spies exist in places like this nook of the web are mainly sinecure occupants collecting notes on what opposition there is.

This whole rant by you, in which you're attempting to change the topic from getting snared once again in your own verbiage to my own supposed spy-fetish, is quite comical, given that you are the one who posts here saying Julian Assange is rube doing false-flag spywork.

Your attempt to explain your theory of that, with its belches about commodification and spectacle, is pure you.

I don't think people who disagree with me are spies. I don't even think you are a spy.

Molotov pimple-pop is more like it.

Dawson:

"I'd wager sean might be the double agent, given his peddling and parroting of ridiculous falsehoods about the wikileaks."

You even deflect poorly, worm.

My argument was simple: Wikileaks is not an unalloyed good. Here's why: [...] It was not: Julian Assange is running a plant operation.

Whether or not you agree with my reading of Spectacular society, you lied about my argument.

Makes you a liar.

And let's not forget your pet theory that Oxtrot is a Fed. That was funny, too, clown.

Dawson you were called on it
Be a man dude

have you looked at Stephen Kinzer's book on Operation Ajax?

No, haven't yet. Will get it from the library. We also ought to recommend it to the interloper who's been expressing so much concern about the state of democracy in one oil rich Latin American country here lately.

I thought we were going to wait for the results of the poll!

"The documents showed that US troops continued to find chemical weapons and labs for years after the invasion, including remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons arsenal -- most of which had been destroyed following the Gulf War.""

Why don't you post the link to the article you got that from, Dawson?

US did find Iraq WMD

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_did_find_iraq_wmd_AYiLgNbw7pDf7AZ3RO9qnM

The analysis here is obvious. Everyone knows that Saddam destroyed at least some of his chemical weapons stocks. But he was required under UN Resolution 1441 to destroy them all, and also the facilities for manufacturing them. Remember Colin Powell at the UN and the allegations of mobile WMD labs? The findings here would seem more substantial than that charade if true, which begs the question why the Pentagon would wish to hide them.

If Saddam still had biochem labs and stocks left over at the start of the war, then it appears he was in fact in violation of 1441 as alleged. That's the point being made here.

That only 109,000 Iraqis have been killed in the war, an estimate which Assange assures us is "the most accurate description of a war that has ever been released into the historic record. There is nothing comparable.

I like your 'prolix' contributions Sean, and I go back and forth myself on the legitimacy of Wikileaks. However, this particular quote does not serve you very well as it's clearly twisted to make it appear as if Assange's statement is specifically about the 109,000 figure, rather than his assessment of the war logs as a whole. The 109k figure is simply the figure from one of the logs and I haven't seen him specifically endorse it. You're kind of spinning things.

The Cablegate drop, to the extent I comprehend it so far, doesn't by itself make any particular case for bombing Iran or the extent of its nuclear weapons program. It simply contains cables from various State Department officials who are indoctrinated to various degrees, and who are also being fed a lot of bullshit themselves depending on their place in the chain, and unsurprisingly have opinions that are not in Iran's interest.

I think your case speaks more strongly to what I took to be Jack's original view, which is that the capitalist class will appropriate and twist everything in Wikileaks to its own ends and that, in the end, it may actually be strengthened by the whole exercise.

FAIR did a good piece recently on how the New York Times spun one of the cables about North Korea and Iran and at the request of the White House did not include the cable itself in their coverage.

Op has kind of thrown me for a loop with this:

Its impossibly silly
to suggest the giant bundle is not contaminated with much planted crap

This sounds like he buys the Wheels Within Wheels proposition but that he thinks it will have unintended negative consequences for whomever is doing the planting. I'm now officially confused.

dd: "I think your case speaks more strongly to what I took to be Jack's original view, which is that the capitalist class will appropriate and twist everything in Wikileaks to its own ends and that, in the end, it may actually be strengthened by the whole exercise."

It's still almost my view. I don't know about "strengthened."

"Preserved from the expression of contradictions, and consequences, that arise from the running a oil-dependent mediated empire."

I don't know if that strengthens the position of the state vis a vis its subject population, because the subject population itself is hardly stable, and does not exist in a crystalline and fixed relationship with the various institutions and superstructures of capitalist accumulation and control.

I think it can help the capitalist class, and its current iteration of the state, to reinforce a confirmation bias its been inculcating for the better part of thirty years - on the necessity of permanent warfare and ubiquitous (well, the illusion of...) security and law enforcement.

Respect,

Jack

* - ULE, owes to Vinge...

Sean, between a conspiracy-mongering, paranoid style American punk, and Angry Arab, I go with Angry Arab any day:

I and volunteers have launched a project to translate and publish all the Wikileaks relating to the Arab world. We are on Facebook now and will soon be on the web. Stay tuned.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-in-arabic.html

and

Assad Abukhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, said: “I think the extent to which the Saudi government—and all Arab governments in the Gulf—are embarrassed by these leaks is evidenced by the clampdown that is being exhibited throughout the Saudi-controlled Arab media. And even the so-called 'independent' Al Jazeera— which, contrary to its reputation here in the West, is the most serious news organization—is also trying to cover up the embarrassing revelations about the way Arab governments operate vis-à-vis the United States.”

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/arab-media-and-wikileaks.html

I have to admit my jaw dropped when I saw only recently that the October logs did seem to bolster the Iraq WMD claims. In fact, I don't understand why it didn't receive more coverage at the time.

Sean, is your position that Wikileaks is getting played by Mossad (I am assuming that's your most likely suspect) or has been established by Mossad? I am curious, Sean, where does the impending whammy about Bank of America (or whomever) fit into all this.

""Its impossibly silly
to suggest the giant bundle is not contaminated with much planted crap"

Really? It seems to me that there's not really a whole lot of middle ground in this case. It's conspiracy or no conspiracy. Either the authorities knew that the leak was going to happen and planted the info, or employed the leakers at some level, or this is just what it appears to be.

What have we got: a bunch of fairly low level wires that 3,000,000 people have access to. Do you think that the State Department or whoever habitually peppers their everyday communications with false messages based on the premonition that they may one day be leaked? I don't know, but I find that hard to believe.

"its not implausible the leaks contain well packaged disinformation
in fact its impossibly silly
to suggest the giant bundle is not contaminated with much planted crap
that however is not the twist the spectacle
works over here"

That's certainly possible. But bear in mid that the entire bundle of 400,000 pages has not been released yet, and we have only seen two dumps of about 300 and 200 pages respectively, presumably hand-picked by Assange himself.

Isn't it a little strange that where they concern the Mideast, most of these released cables seem to focus largely on demonizing Iran and embarrassing the Arabs? These leaks are conspicuous in what they don't contain: no mention of Israel's attacks on Gaza or Lebanon, assassination in Dubai, or the spread of the "War on Terror" to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Surely, there must have been a diplomatic rustling or two over these events?

I find it difficult to believe that the focus of the American diplomatic corps could be so narrow, even if some diplomats might display this level of ignorance in their correspondence.

We haven't seen everything in the Wikileaks collection yet and I would be happy to eat my words if there is something substantial there, but at this point what appears to be the careful selection of the more poisonous documents can only push me in one direction.

FB,

Wikileaks existed before the November dumps, no? It was founded four years ago. Time enough to compromise some of its (WL) sources? Are you arguing that the federales don't have practice with counter-intelligence and disinformation, under the operating umbrellas of the ATF, FBI, DEA and CIA?

Again, and only as in intellectual exercise - I'm not (yes, you Dawson...) suggesting that this is a conspiracy, and it pains me to agree with Owen, but it's hardly impossible for the feds to earmark a few dollars in order to feed Assange three years of good data, in order to secure his faith in a source.

It's not like the Drug War isn't run like this every single day of the week, already.

So whether or not you agree with Owen's "planted crap" assessment, the feds certainly at least have the capability. It isn't necessarily an either or.

Sean, between a conspiracy-mongering, paranoid style American punk, and Angry Arab, I go with Angry Arab any day

I wish people would just logically refute each other's claims, including Sean's, whose scenario I like the least.

That the Angry Arab believes in the leaks doesn't do that. He's a smart guy. He's not omniscient.

I think it's as irrational to never acknowledge the possibility of conspiracy as it is to see it everywhere. I agree with Sean that using Wikileaks to manage public opinion is not outside the realm of technical possibility. Generally the problem with conspiracy theories is that they presuppose huge numbers of people all working with perfect efficiency toward a common goal that doesn't correspond to real life. Cherry-picking a bunch of documents and then uploading them doesn't seem so hard. There's no question that if this internet leaking stuff takes off people will be planting all sorts of crap.

"Sean, is your position that Wikileaks is getting played by Mossad (I am assuming that's your most likely suspect) or has been established by Mossad? I am curious, Sean, where does the impending whammy about Bank of America (or whomever) fit into all this."

Let's see what the "impending whammy" actually reveals and then I can respond. If it's anything like the existing whammy, it won't be anything we don't already know.

As for whether Wikileaks is being played by the Mossad or not, who knows, but it is interesting to note that Netanyahu has been bragging loudly that the leaks vindicate Israel, even though only a fraction of the papers have been released. Assange, for his part, had this to say about Netanyahu:

"We can see the Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu coming out with a very interesting statement that leaders should speak in public like they do in private whenever they can," Assange told Time Magazine in an interview on Wednesday, days after his online whistleblower published thousands of secret diplomatic cables.

"I just noticed today Iran has agreed to nuclear talks. Maybe that's coincidence or maybe it's coming out of this process, but it's certainly not being canceled by this process," he added.

http://jnoubiyeh.com/2010/12/assange-praises-netanyahu-turkey-blasts.html

no mention of Israel's attacks on Gaza or Lebanon, assassination in Dubai, or the spread of the "War on Terror" to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Surely, there must have been a diplomatic rustling or two over these events?

That's a good point, though I believe that there was a cable released about Yemen taking official credit for American drone attacks. That, of course, does not disprove your general point. Just clarifying.

Jakc,

Fair enough. I'm sure that they do routinely muddy the waters to throw off other intelligence agencies, but it just seems unlikely to me that in this case they would bother with such an elaborate plot, falsifying thousands of messages with WikiLeaks in mind. Then again, I really have no idea.

We can see the Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu coming out with a very interesting statement that leaders should speak in public like they do in private whenever they can," Assange told Time Magazine in an interview on Wednesday, days after his online whistleblower published thousands of secret diplomatic cables.

Oh yuck. That's officially creepy. Ahhh man.

Well, at least Hillary Clinton's pissed. Maybe only a tablespoonful after all.

"However, this particular quote does not serve you very well as it's clearly twisted to make it appear as if Assange's statement is specifically about the 109,000 figure, rather than his assessment of the war logs as a whole. The 109k figure is simply the figure from one of the logs and I haven't seen him specifically endorse it. You're kind of spinning things."

Assange has been appearing frequently with the folks over at Iraq Body Count, who are the source of this suspect estimate of Iraq War casualties:

http://www.google.com/search?q=iraq+body+count&hl=en&num=100&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=off

http://wn.com/Wikileaks_Assange_and_Iraq_Body_Count_talk_on_Iraq_Files

http://jnoubiyeh.com/2010/11/wiki-leaks-serves-israeli-agenda-of.html

It simply contains cables from various State Department officials who are indoctrinated to various degrees, and who are also being fed a lot of bullshit themselves depending on their place in the chain, and unsurprisingly have opinions that are not in Iran's interest.

I considered this myself, but as I mentioned in my response to op, it is rather odd that out of the 500 cables that have been released so far, most seem to have this negative focus on Iran, Iraq and the Arabs whenever the Mideast is the topic. This level of ignorance I might believe, but such a narrow focus, randomly cherry-picked from 400,000 documents? That I find it very hard to believe.

Fred,

The Manhattan Project was elaborate. I think feeding bad data to Julian Assange would probably be fairly simple.

Again - I don't embrace the conspiracism, although I'm not inclined to reject it out of hand.

My point about it not being an "unalloyed good" has nothing to do with whether or not the Feds slip in a bunch of disinformation. My point was, given the current media environment, that these dumps seem to be providing the people who dominate the "national discourse" with a host of nifty pretexts for reinforcing a strong confirmation bias in they've long encouraged in the general population.

I would honestly love to believe that leaked documents encourage rebelliousness, but I also know that there wasn't much of a hiccup as the Seventies faded away in bad music and corporate drugs, to be replaced by a most naked jingoism. Ellsworth was brave, but he didn't prevent the Reagan revolution or the rise of the neo-liberal warmongers. In fact, in retrospect, the Pentagon Papers exposed a serious problem in information control that has subsequently been rather neatly rectified by the likes of (seriously well compensated corporate tools) Hannity and Limbaugh, no?

Did the American people take to the barricades, or even discover a US suitable Fabianism, upon the numerous "revelations" that Bush and Cheney told a whole bunch of lies to a willing-to-hear-them Congress?

Did Clinton's signing of NAFTA galvanize a successful movement to end Democratic corralling of the left?

Again - it's not that I think that Marx (or revolutionary leftism) was wrong, or that the principles of leftist historical materialism are invalid, such that people cannot seize the means of production. I think people cannot even properly identify them anymore, so mystifying are immersion medias and corporate financed narratives.

I think the conditions themselves have changed, so that revelations about widespread abuse can be used to bolster the argument that more abuse is necessary, because the next people to employ coercion it will be better managers and will do a better job of protecting the innocents. Something like 1/5 to 1/2 Americans affirmatively support torture, despite what appears to be a lot of cluck-clucking from the corporate press about it - because the narrative has never been "torture is wrong." The narrative - and it's really almost admirably bold and bald - has always been "torture we learn about is wrong." And we end up with a debate not about ending all torture, but about what is and isn't torture, and when it is and is not acceptable.

And right now the entire commentariat is devoted to discussing whether leaking is or is not wrong, whether Hillary should or should not be shit-canned, and whether Julian Assange is or is not a rapist. As all that data itself is mildly confirmed, normalized and forgotten.

Except by those of us who exist on the mental and moral margins and fail to understand (sometimes willfully, since Karl wrote much that is good) that Marx's usefulness tends to end at the point where the use of television, demographics and marketing outpaces his (understandably dated) comprehension of the material conditioning of memory, and of knowledge.

Respect,

Jack

sorry about the extra words - I went thru on review and changed a few vague terms and forgot to delete a few pronouns and prepositions...

I wish people would just logically refute each other's claims, including Sean's

Why bother? Arguing with these paranoid style American cretins gives them a credence that they don't deserve.

For example, Sean accuses wikileaks of slandering Iran and Pakistan thusly:

Iran and Hezbollah have been smuggling guns and explosives into Iraq and training the Iraqi resistance. Pakistani intelligence and Iran are allegedly supporting the Taliban.

Are the the Pakistani ISI and the Iranians are such naive babes in the woods that they cannot or would not support armed groups in neighbouring countries occupied by the US?

One might wonder what sort of assumptions allow for US intelligence agencies that can plan and execute intricate wheels within wheels plots through Wikileaks, plots which successfully play the whole world for patsies, while simultaneously holding that their Iranian and Pakistani counterparts are too stupid, dumb, incompetent, or naive to supply arms to groups across their own borders.

"I'd wager sean might be the double agent"

no one here is a double anything md

oh ya... i have a double chin
all of a sudden
woke up one morning
and there it was
in the mirror
i could be a piggy bank

63
ah...the splendor of fleshly decline

One might wonder what sort of assumptions allow for US intelligence agencies that can plan and execute intricate wheels within wheels plots through Wikileaks

It's NOT intricate. Do you think spies and secret governments do nothing all day? The official unofficial back story is that an Army private got access to all these documents and then handed them off to Wikileaks. If it's that easy to review huge databases of documents and copy them onto DVDs, why is it so preposterous to believe that it was someone else who did it, someone with different motives?

Sean's most compelling point is the overwhelming emphasis on Iran of the first data dump, not the allegations themselves. Certainly Assange's cheerleading for Bibi in Time Magazine looks highly suspect.

"Are the the Pakistani ISI and the Iranians are such naive babes in the woods that they cannot or would not support armed groups in neighbouring countries occupied by the US?"

That's entirely possible. The Grenadier Guards could have pulled off the 7/7 bombings as well.

My question is: where's the evidence?

Oh, that's right. Wikileaks. How convenient.

'nuff said.

Umm MJS aren't you praising the wrong person?

Assange did a very useful thing in publishing the cables, but Manning is the one who raided the cookie jar. I doubt Assange faces any real danger, but poor Manning is actually a subject of the Empire and undoubtedly has a grim fate awaiting him. I think he's one troop that we should all support. In fact, his status as soldier has probably been what has kept the media from talking much about him or vilifying him. That might be changing now though. America's cuddliest fundamentalist Mike "The Original Subway Jared" Huckabee was calling for his execution today...

http://www.newsok.com/in-bra-panties-and-wheelchair-woman-goes-through-oklahoma-city-airport-screening-this-morning/article/3519691

"Are the the Pakistani ISI and the Iranians are such naive babes in the woods that they cannot or would not support armed groups in neighbouring countries occupied by the US?"

That's entirely possible.

Right. Pakistanis and Iranis are too naive, stupid, dumb, or incompetent to support groups in Afghanistan fighting the US today but not too naive, stupid, dumb, or incompetent to partly arm and finance the Afghani Moujahedin that fought the USSR when it occupied the same country between 1979--1989?

What ignorance and conceit. Are you on this planet at all? In fact think I have just about had my fill with....

Certainly Assange's cheerleading for Bibi in Time Magazine looks highly suspect.

Surely Ockham's Razor applies here. Rather than wheels within wheels, all that is needed to explain this observation is that Assange is a liberal, and a white liberal from Australia -- that is a state and society that has a similar white supremacist colonial history and ideology to Israel. Absent other evidence, the only conclusion we can confidently draw from his statement re Israel is that he's a liberal, and not part of the radical or anti-imperialist left. Thousands of liberals after all, make similar statements every day.

As the man Newton said, "we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."

"All that is needed to explain"?

Surely you don't think that you're actually applying the Razor, Lajany?

Your argument doesn't apply the Razor.

It assumes too many other (often complex) variables - ones which you don't even take a passing shot at demonstrating, such as Assange's political views, his necessary assumption of the racist attitudes of Australians who proceeded him in history or his actual attitudes towards colonialism, Australian or otherwise.

You've not chosen the most parsimonious explanation, Lajany. And it's certainly not the "only conclusion we can confidently draw." It's the one which might best serve your perspective and biases, but that doesn't make it the least assumptive.

Sean assumes two conditions - that Assange is a portal for government propaganda, and that his opinion about Bibi is significant in this light.

You assume four conditions - that Assange is a white liberal, that he necessarily shares the opinions common to white supremacists (and doesn't, in fact, reject them), that these opinions are necessarily common to all white liberals in Australia, and that they necessarily translate to an exact sympathy for a Jewish colonialism. Two of these assumptions also actually rest on corollary propositions - first, that Assange has not explicitly rejected the predominant Australian culture (and as a renegade, lawbreaking hacker - you seem to fail on the surface of this one, almost immediately), and that the culture you assert is predominant is in fact so.

You make a case for none of these propositions, or assertions.

So, Sean's argument may fail an actual application of the Razor, if another argument rests on only a single assumption (say, Assange hates all authority) - but compared to your four to six base assumptions, the razor most definitely cuts in his favor.

Thus Sean:

We learn from the Wikileaks "revelations" of "classified info" the astounding fact that: [followed by 7 bullet points]

Sic Jacobus Corvus:

I'm stating that assumptions about the efficacy of Wikileaks data dumps, **right now**, are not properly modeled

One can find the Wikileaks story cheering and encouraging. One can see it as evidence that a spirit of resistance crops up in the most unlikely places, and takes some unexpected forms. One can be deeply pleased that such resistance, however symbolic and ineffectual in immediate, concrete terms it may be, nevertheless makes our rulers go purple-faced with fury.

What's not to like about all this?

No, it's not going to pull down the pillars of the temple in the next week. But then, who said it would?

Jack Crow,
Right, even if it may have been in the past, white supremacism does not remain a fundamental ideology and structural feature of Australia, US, and the other white imperialist nations in Western Europe. Never mind the fact that they still have their economic and military boots firmly placed on the collective neck of much of the non-white population of the world. And even if white supremacism was not omnipresent in these societies, liberals would have both the means and the interest to come up with a radical critique of the institutions that the white imperialist states have built and reinforced since 1492.

Putting aside the many limitations of liberalism, Assange, though apparently not from the anti-imperialist or radical left, is a smart and seemingly decent guy who deserves respect of the left for putting himself in considerable danger and bringing to light the mendacious and criminal character of the empire.

You on the other hand give every indication of being ignorant or dishonest, and full of yourself for good measure.

MJS,

I was replying to Solar Hero's erroneous assertion that I was engaging in predictions. The straw man was not my own. The fuller quote provides that context:

"And I am not making a prediction about the future. I'm stating that assumptions about the efficacy of Wikileaks data dumps, **right now**, are not properly modeled because those making the assumptions assume a world which doesn't exist, and a subject population which doesn't identify the way they do."

I'm not saying anything about whether it's good or bad, all on it's own, or whether you or anyone else should be overjoyed or underwhelmed by Assange's efforts. I don't personally think that Wikileaks is a stand alone (or unalloyed) good, but we've covered why already. Conversely, I don't think that Wikileaks can only do bad and only serve the interests of capital.

With respect,

Jack.

*

Lajany,

When I make an argument stating there's no white supremacism, your reply will actually apply to me. I was pointing out that you don't appear to understand what Occam's Razor does. It doesn't establish validity, or truthfulness. It's used to establish only that the most parsimonious theory is to be preferred, when comparing competing theories which are otherwise on equal footing.

Sean's theory is more parsimonious, because it relies on fewer assumptions than your own. Applying the Razor doesn't establish that Sean's is correct, that your theory is wrong, or that your premises are invalid. Using the Razor simply establishes that your theory requires more assumptions than Sean's does.

If pointing out that you don't appear to understand Occam's Razor makes me "ignorant" or "dishonest" perhaps you need to bone up on the meanings of those terms as well.

Kindly,

Jack

Assange in his own words:

Because, if we don't have Western countries as a beacon on the hill for Enlightenment values, what countries are left to hold that value?

If pointing out that you don't appear to understand Occam's Razor makes me "ignorant" or "dishonest" perhaps you need to bone up on the meanings of those terms as well.

No you either haven't bothered to read Assange's fairly thorough and quintessentially liberal justifications for his and Wikileak's actions, or have read them and are lying about it.

Based on what Assange himself has said, my observation above that his world view is that of a liberal needs no further justification.

Jack Crow:

... Assange is a portal for government propaganda, and that his opinion about Bibi is significant in this light.

Repeating and giving credence this sort of calumny, at time when the US state and its satrapy in Australia are doing everything they can to criminalise Wikileaks and Assange, is nothing short of foul.

As I wrote earlier, arguing with practitioners of the paranoid style of US politics merely gives it respectability it doesn't deserve. I regret not heeding my own warning.

Christ, Lajany - learn to read.

There's so much dick swinging going on here it's impossible to duck inside without getting a 5 incher fwapped across your cheek.

But what's the basic set up of Wikileaks?

It's a website that lets anybody uploaded documents in an encrypted form via a secure pipeline, no questions asked.

Then a team of people at Wikileaks look at the documents, without knowing who uploaded them, and decide what to release.

It would be naive to think that the Mossad or the CIA isn't uploading disinformation to Wikileaks, and a lot of it.

But the key chokepoint would come at the editorial stage. Who decides what gets released.

Even if Julian Assange is totally on the level, and there's no reason to believe he's not, or even if he's a government plant, and there's no reason to believe he's not, the problem is that he's one guy who's not an expert on foreign policy.

Daniel Ellsberg was an expert on Southeast Asia leaking documents he was familiar with in his subject area.

Assanage is just some computer guy. He couldn't POSSIBLY read through every diplomatic cable, let alone know which ones are authentic and which ones not.

So he's the bottleneck, whatever his intentions.

"Assange hates all authority"

identification crow ??
surely that is a fond wish ...eh ?
mjs calls it ass burgering

----

btw
accusing each other of "lies "
and secret the man agency ,,,,here
why isn't that really foolish and self serious .....isn't it ??

at least in the old testament sense of false witness this back ally informal unsworn insignifigant swap fest
as a proceeding
hardly suggests such strident accusations
are in order
again
cool off

we're all just riff raff
mooing growling and barking at each other
and the passing commuters

i must say i thought the dumps were from un known heterogenious sources and over a considerable period of time
as t of t suggests

some of these comments suggest
to me an implict assumption
a unitary figure a deep throat
is behind all this
as if it came out in a few gigantic beltches

if so then the throater would have to be
a cut out or better and more likely
a funnel fool
steered and fed
by ex[perts at disinfo
much more useful to the disinfo clique
if they simply contaminated the multi source flow itself which might if multiple sopurced
indeed be mostly innocent leakings
of raw cable shit
with some choice bogeys as i suggested above
if not at first certainly by now

again this whole tumble weed falls outside my range of interest and i have only the very most obviously rerun chunks of the original it
as reproduced by the spectacle machines

and beyond crying lies in the night
what good is suggesting some one straw man-ed
and or scare crow-ed your position
or argument
in as much as our piffle amounts to a position what brand needs protection

just keep throwing in your next two cents
and busting up a the last wo cents counter point
personalizing this when everyone can resort to a mask marvel moniker ...

come on

this is flag football we're playing here
and a pick up game at that
play by flag football rules
not "its total war "
this ain't the super bowl

op,

It was all one leak. The deepthroat figure is low level army intelligence officer, Bradley Manning, who smuggled them out on a writable CD. He's been caught already, got ratted out by another hacker.

I don't think that Wikileaks can only do bad and only serve the interests of capital

nice to see you back off jc

wish you might admit you over stated your case at the outset

its okay to do that
i do it all the time to stur up the park pigeons
just fess to it
you're among comrades and like feathered birds here
you're among comrades here
as brutus suggested to ceasar

fb

"It was all one leak. The deepthroat figure is low level army intelligence officer, Bradley Manning, who smuggled them out on a writable CD. He's been caught already, got ratted out by another hacker"

if so fb ...if that's the case
its only exciting to me
if in train
this leaker has many copy cats

that he hasn't if he hasn't
in all this time sense leak one was made public
back there aways
reduces my vigor this morning

if so also
the notion the packet was pre-loaded with disinfo gunk falls away pretty considerably
of course

but mjs makes or repeats a key point
this is intra outfit traffic
raw gibber about raw gibber
reflextive self serving inside baseball
gamery prone
as such
useful primarily for any added confirmation
and needless to say
suspect as a source of refutation

btw

if this chap suggests he finds a zionic criminal
on the right beam

transparency supreme

then he's a god damn quixotic fool
the devil bless him for that
fools are deserving of protection by one end of the tug rope or other eh ??

but handle him like radioactive junk

"its only exciting to me
if in train
this leaker has many copy cats"

Supposedly he does. The next leak scheduled for release in January is apparently a huge dump of the internal documents of one of the major US banks. I'm salivating...

oWeN,

I didn't overstate a case in the first. My whole point was: Well, Fred, maybe it's not an unalloyed good. That's still my point, despite some lengthy day trips down the Dawson express on the way from there to here.

while i'm playing self appointed miss manners in a convict shirt

whats with this shallow sarcasm

respectfully and kindly
why be such a school yard prat

come on

this is an inclusive sight

smug
' hah hah so there ' shit
only adds
a layer of personal hostility
everyone sees only these words
leave them as the target
and we're all better off
and authors of words oughta readily back off em

here i was assuming this wikeleak was a seriously collective project when it was a one off

everything i wrote b4 that moment of enlightenment was completely off base
to the extent it relied on wrong assumptions

when sean indicated the leaks had vindicated the wmd gig
i began to explore contamination elements
not knowing its all from one big bundle
like burroughs word horde

so all the above censorial barking
applies obviously
to me most of all
as
resident bloody mary 'round here
the vic hatfield of smbiva

perhaps even more then just
most of all
i should never indulge my very active spleen
against fellow commenters

--ah but its such fun ...---
i'll try harder next time
as tantalus is wont to say

"if so also
the notion the packet was pre-loaded with disinfo gunk falls away pretty considerably
of course"

As do a lot of the theories. That was the point that I made in Al's earlier post. I've been following wikileaks and the backstory to this current leak for while now. A lot of the people spouting these conspiracy theories only seem to have started paying attention this week, and don't seem to have any clue about the backstory. Of course, Manning himself may be a plant but I don't see many conspiracists making that argument. From what I can tell, a good portion of them never even bothered to check the wikipedia article before employing their imaginations.

The same leaker also leaked the "Collateral Murder" cockpit video of a US apache helicopter pilot who was chomping at the bit to murder some Iraqis accidentally killing a Reuters reporter because his video camera supposedly looked like a rocket launcher. He then killed a bunch more iraqis who tried to come help the man as he was lying wounded.

Do the conspiracists have a theory on what kind of quadruple false flag operation that was? It came from the same leak.

"Not exactly. What we learn is that people in the State Department were saying these things to each other, or reporting other self-interested parties saying them. Admittedly, this should come as no surprise. But it's hard to see how a report of GS-XX groupthink should ever sway anybody else's opinion."

You are making an assumption here based on no real evidence. We don't know the true provenance of these cables, and whether they or the opinions they contain are real or not. Assange himself may not know the truth.

What we do know is that these opinions, real or faked, are being presented as "facts" in the media, as anyone could have predicted. I don't see where Assange has clarified that these are merely the opinions of diplomats, and not hard statements of fact. Quite the contrary, his comment that, "this is the most accurate description of a war that has ever been released into the historic record. There is nothing comparable," doesn't sound like a man expressing an opinion based on the opinions of others, but a man making a statement with rock solid certainty.

The highly selective and one-sided sampling of 500 of over 400,000 documents could not be the result of random chance. This lack of balance is a blatant red flag, and should not be dismissed out of hand.

Your concern trolling my signature now, Owen? Too funny.

jc
i was using u as an example to others
a beware this end

i hold no concerns about u
after all
you're an institution

like sea gull shit on monumental sculptures

You of the American left!! Hear, Hear. Rather.. Every discussion devolves into an erection measuring contest... Keep it up!! (appropriate at last)

Yrs flacidly, Clap.

The powers that be got the Wikipedia site's host to pull its DNS support because of "massive" and coordinated cyber attacks.

But I guess that's just another layer of the conspiracy onion, where the CIA is relying on people's inherent tendency to be curious about any information that is suppressed. Or they're trying to convince us of Assange's bona fides because they're just that concerned about what a handful of conspiracy-minded leftists are saying about him on blogs.

And yet more reason why I loathe Dianne Feinstein with a white-hot passion:

Several US senators have also called for him to be charged with espionage.

Senator Dianne Feinstein says the leak is a serious breach of national security and action must be taken.

"We have reviewed the espionage statutes and we believe it qualifies," she said.

She's all about suppressing dissident speech under the pretext of the law. Just look at the way she celebrated the conviction of Sherman Austin, webmaster of RaiseTheFist.org.

The clapper has a good point.

The only remaining point of interest in this amazing thread is how good old sean imagines the Bush Adminstration might have made the decision to waste what sean claims is evidence of a 1441 violation.

"Hahaha, fellows! here we have it! A chance to to let these WMDs sit here unmentioned, so that we can one day unveil Operation Assange! Glory! That will lead to us getting everything we want and more! On that day, we shall achieve the long-awaited Perfect Fake-Out! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

Either that, or they found only dregs of the WMD programs the US sponsored when Saddam was our boy.

Hmmm, which one of these seems rather more plausible?

clap
i don't think u are being completely fair
lots of folks here have
both open minds and ass holes

op sez on 12.02.10 @12:06:
yes ours is a guerilla conflict
like captured arms
we live off the dropped elements
of the hegemon's narrative

Wow, damn, man. I never even thought of that. Excellent.