Wednesday 8th of May 2024
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shrieking, tone-deaf .....

shrieking, tone deaf .....

When one declares that his robes are the most beautiful, made of the finest silk, so glorious that they compete with the sun - sometimes a little blond-haired boy with a most serious look about him declares that it seems to him that the Emperor has no clothes! And we see, slowly at first, then an unstoppable surge of laughter and finger-pointing by the common people who, for all their ignorance and all their flaws, know enough to put on clothes before going out in public.

The US government shrieks, tone-deaf, of global democracy - but disparages the populist language of Italian officials and declares the elected and popular prime minister there to be unqualified. Yet, this same democracy-loving government enjoys very much its dealings with the evilest of dictators. This hypocrisy has long been a staple of both libertarian and Marxist critiques of US foreign policy, for well over a century. Now it's out in the open - and it's kind of funny.

Hillary Clinton approves a State Department-wide command to surreptitiously collect DNA and credit card numbers on UN representatives and other diplomats. This particular case is breathtakingly Nuremburgian. The order Hilary was transmitting was already government policy - the great Diplomat Herself was just following orders. And certainly, any of us common folk who watch enough CSI to be dangerous know that collection of DNA samples with chain of custody procedures that will stand up in court is not something we would automatically trust to a bunch of pinstripers at State. Beyond that, the rest of us who watch COPS know that taking people's credit card numbers without their knowledge and permission is a crime.

Now that we know what they are trying to do, the proper reaction is to giggle and glance at each other while we check our pockets, handbags, backpacks and satchels for our wallets and watches whenever we find ourselves near a government representative.

Of course, air travellers in this country have been doing just that for some time. But the sweet lesson here is that a government goon is a government goon, just following orders, no matter where they buy their suits. Our ability to quickly recognize that government goon is increasingly unifying average Americans, and strengthening us. As our government goonar continues to develop, the game becomes more fun, and funnier. Cablegate improves everyone's goonar!

There is talk that the data released this week actually helps Israel's case for a good old-fashioned pre-emptive attack on Iran. Why? Because Saudi Arabia supports it! Well, skyrocketing oil prices certainly would come in handy to the still dollar dependent House of Saud about now, but I digress. Now, if I were the little old US of A thinking about starting one more war with a country I didn't like, especially given I was dead broke and already a military laughingstock based on past and present performance in Iraq and Afghanistan, listening to what the corrupt, US-dependent ruling class of Saudi Arabia had to say about it would be right up there on my go-to-war-decision-meter.

Given the obvious and otherworldly stupidity of our politicians, generals, and diplomats, perhaps the Saudis do tell us what to do, and maybe Wikileaks hearts neocons. A better sense of where the US diplomatic head is at can be gained by reading reports of meetings in Tel Aviv, where the great US stumbles over itself to be inoffensive, seeking simultaneously to be both submissive and warlike when speaking to Israelis. Pathetic little weasels, the lot of them. But their pathetic weaselness cannot be blamed on Julian Assange, no matter how many neocons and other cons declare the problem to be facts in the open, rather than simply the facts.

On a more serious note, beyond the debate on whether to assassinate Assange, blow up the Internet, conduct an unwarranted attack on an NPT signatory that is following the rules, or to continue to ally ourselves with the crazies in Pakistan and Israel, it is important to recognize that fascism of one kind or another is currently embraced by a majority in Congress, and by a large minority across the country. An alert and informed citizenry, valued by presidents from Washington to Eisenhower, is now deemed by D.C. to be a nascent domestic terrorism threat.

As the American wholesale subsidy of banks, bullets and butter metastasizes, devouring freedom and wrecking the system, the desperation of the ruling class and those in its employ is palpable. Americans ought to gratefully smile as we review these latest Wikileaks, and we should savour the hilarity. Seeing our government as theatrical stooge, as incompetent popinjay, as naked and embarrassed Emperor, sets the stage well for what comes next.

The Proper Response to Wikileaks

playing icarus .....

The editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has called on the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to resign over suggestions she encouraged US diplomats to spy on their foreign counterparts.

His call comes as the whistleblower organisation continues to slowly release dozens of damaging cables sent from US embassies all over the world.

Speaking to Time magazine, Mr Assange said WikiLeaks would release about 80 cables a day and planned to ramp up that rate as media partners began publishing them.

Asked if Mrs Clinton was responsible for revelations that diplomats were being pushed to collect information such as the DNA and credit card numbers of their foreign counterparts, Mr Assange said: ''She should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering US diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the US has signed up.''

He also said WikiLeaks was not breaking laws by publishing the cables, contrary to the claims of the Obama administration.

''It's very important to remember the law is not what, not simply what, powerful people would want others to believe it is. The law is not what a general says it is. The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is.''

Assange calls on Clinton to quit

shooting the messenger .....

from Crikey .....

Rundle: WikiLeaks ... diplomacy out the door and instead, talk of execution

From London, Guy Rundle writes:

JULIAN ASSANGE, MERVYN KING, SARAH PALIN, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WIKILEAKS

Sir Richard Dalton, one of the UK's leading diplomats of the past 30 years, has slammed the United States government for demanding that its diplomatic representatives to the UN spy on UN diplomats and staff, and engage in criminal acts such as stealing their credit card numbers.

Dalton's comments come on another extraordinary day in which WikiLeaks revelations put the position of Bank of England governor Mervyn King at risk, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange condemned the issue of an Interpol alert for him as "worthy of [Stalin police chief] Lavrenty Beria".

Speaking at a panel discussion at London's Frontline Club, Dalton was unequivocal on the UN spying fiasco. "I think the diplomats who received those instructions should have returned them and refused them", the former ambassador said. He added that while he believed that diplomatic secrecy should be preserved, WikiLeaks and news outlets had no choice but to publish the material once it was passed to them.

Dalton, who served as the UK's first ambassador to Libya after the resumption of diplomatic relations, and as ambassador to Iran until last year, also rejected the charge that the cables show nothing new, arguing that there's a difference between suspecting and knowing, and that the cables were of clear import.

Dalton was rebutting claims by former US under-secretary of state for public diplomacy Colleen Graffy, who argued that the cables should never be presented raw to the general public, who would not have the ability to understand their meaning, and should rely instead on journalists and others to contextualise them. Graffy, who was in the state department during the period that the practice of spying on the UN was first mooted, refused to deny that the US had broken international treaties and law by the practice, arguing only that "all nations spy".

The statements came as the WikiLeaks Cablegate stories continued to set the news agenda across Europe and the US. Tonight's release setting out in detail the belief of US and other diplomatic representatives that Russia is not merely a state with a lot of Mafias, but that the state and organised crime have simply merged, with Robert Gates, US defence secretary, quoted as saying that "Russian democracy has simply disappeared; it is an oligarchy run by the secret services".

Again the establishment shills within journalism rushed to deride the release as "nothing we didn't already know", Vladimir Putin thought it worth so little attention that he held a global press conference, and did an interview with Larry King, in which he suggested that WikiLeaks was being fed misinformation as part of a bait-and-switch conspiracy.

That would suggest a complex operation, but that's probably what your mind turns to if, as the cables suggest US diplomats believe, you regularly poison your opponents with radioactive material in London restaurants.

London was the scene of another WL-inspired showdown, when cables revealed that Bank of England governor Mervyn King strongly lobbied the incoming conservative government to impose a harsh deficit reduction program, while at the same time telling those who would listen that he thought that Cameron and Chancellor Osborne were lightweights. The intervention broke convention and King's explicit rules for his subordinates against becoming involved in policy - rules he imposed on centre-left staff most insistently.

The continued tide of revelations, and the fact that there is no end in sight - WikiLeaks has released just 600 of the 250,000 cables spoken of, and it is unclear whether or not these are part of a much larger drop of up to three million cables - has prompted US figures to new heights of seething violence.

Bill O'Reilly, an alleged journalist/commentator on Fox, has called for the "execution" for treason of whoever leaked the files to WikiLeaks, while Sarah Palin suggested that Julian Assange should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden - which he sort of is, ie: not - and also charged with treason, a tough thing for a US court to hang on an Australian citizen. Mike Huckabee has lined up with executors, while Assange has been slated for execution by the Canadian deputy prime minister. No, I don't know either.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, a lot of that hostility appears to be coming from the professional journalist fraternity, judging by the other questions at the Frontline Club last night. One expected the standard line from Graffy - that this had a "chilling" effect on diplomatic discourse, etc, but the weird thing was that the bulk of the questions came from journos who seemed to have some beef with WikiLeaks.

"Is this irresponsible?" said one. "Why isn't WikiLeaks encouraging competition?' said another. "Is WikiLeaks displacing field journalism?' "Is redaction an admission of earlier guilt?' "How will people understand these cables without context?' "Has WikiLeaks betrayed Bradley Manning?' and on and on.

It's not that some of these questions weren't fair or pertinent -- it's that the whole evening was taken up with a palpable anxiety by journalists, and a hostility from those who rely on political connections and inside knowledge, that the rules of the game were changing, and that there were new players.

That takes a bit of getting used to. Halfway through the evening, someone announced that WikiLeaks had been denied access to Amazon servers, a service it was using for excess demand. Graffy crowed that the site was down. Checking it afterwards, it was clearly not (though parts were bouncing back), as was the case with the last half-dozen reports of WL being decisively hacked.

Whether they can stay up for ever remains to be seen. That question is becoming more pertinent for Assange as well, currently - according to WikiLeaks rep Kristinn Hrafnsson in an undisclosed location outside London somewhere, so probably not in the UK at all.

Interpol has a issued a "red" notice of locate and trace, in relation to the Swedish warrant compelling Assange to present himself for questioning on the r-pe accusations that go back to August, and result from complaints to police by two former s-xual partners that Assange would not consent to an STI test.

Through his lawyer, Assange reiterated that he had been given leave to exit Sweden during the investigation, had been in contact with the prosecutor's office, and that they had refused several possible interview dates.

The red notice leaves a danger that Assange could be detained in the UK for extradition, and possibly served with charges by the US government - which can be enacted near-automatically, under the one-way UK-US extradition treaty negotiated by Tony Blair.

Should the US find a way to charge him, Assange could face decades in prison - although the murderous tone of mainstream right-wing American discourse at moment suggests they have other measures on their mind, a thuggishness that has been implicit in much of their discourse for a long while now. The times are anything but diplomatic.

meanwhile ......

When it comes to Assange rape case, the Swedes are making it up as they go along

Melbourne barrister James D. Catlin, who acted for Julian Assange in London in October, writes:

JULIAN ASSANGE, SWEDEN, WIKILEAKS

Apparently having consensual s-x in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity.

Sweden's Public Prosecutor's Office was embarrassed in August this year when it leaked to the media that it was seeking to arrest Assange for rape, then on the same day withdrew the arrest warrant because in its own words there was "no evidence". The damage to Assange's reputation is incalculable. More than three quarters of internet references to his name refer to rape. Now, three months on and three prosecutors later, the Swedes seem to be clear on their basis to proceed. Consensual sex that started out with a condom ended up without one, ergo, the sex was not consensual.

For three months Assange had been waiting in vain to hear whether media statements by and for the two female "victims" that there was no fear or violence were going to be embellished so the charges might be carried forward due to greater seriousness. Such statements would stop a rape charge in any Western country dead in its tracks. Rape is a crime of violence, duress or deception. You can rape someone by deluding them into thinking you are someone else or by drugging them or by reason of their young age but essentially it's a crime of violence.

The women here are near to and over 30 and have international experience, some of it working in Swedish government embassies. There is no suggestion of drugs nor identity concealment. Far from it. Both women boasted of their celebrity connection to Assange after the events that they would now see him destroyed for.

That further evidence hasn't been confected to make the charges less absurd does Sweden no credit because it has no choice in the matter. The phenomena of social networking through the internet and mobile phones constrains Swedish authorities from augmenting the evidence against Assange because it would look even less credible in the face of tweets by Anna Ardin and SMS texts by Sofia Wilen boasting of their respective conquests after the "crimes".

In the case of Ardin it is clear that she has thrown a party in Assange's honour at her flat after the "crime" and tweeted to her followers that she is with the "the world's coolest smartest people, it's amazing!". Go on the internet and see for yourself. That Ardin has sought unsuccessfully to delete these exculpatory tweets from the public record should be a matter of grave concern. That she has published on the internet a guide on how to get revenge on cheating boyfriends ever graver. The exact content of Wilen's mobile phone texts is not yet known but their bragging and exculpatory character has been confirmed by Swedish prosecutors. Niether Wilen's nor Ardin's texts complain of rape.

But then neither Arden nor Wilen complained to the police but rather "sought advice", a technique in Sweden enabling citizens to avoid just punishment for making false complaints. They sought advice together, having collaborated and irrevocably tainted each other's evidence beforehand. Their SMS texts to each other show a plan to contact the Swedish newspaper Expressen beforehand in order to maximise the damage to Assange. They belong to the same political group and attended a public lecture given by Assange and organised by them. You can see Wilen on the YouTube video of the event even now.

Of course, their celebrity lawyer Claes Borgstrom was questioned as to how the women themselves could be essentially contradicting the legal characterisation of Swedish prosecutors; a crime of non-consent by consent. Borgstrom's answer is emblematic of how divorced from reality this matter is. "They (the women) are not jurists". You need a law degree to know whether you have been raped or not in Sweden. In the context of such double think, the question of how the Swedish authorities propose to deal with victims who neither saw themselves as such nor acted as such is easily answered: You're not a Swedish lawyer so you wouldn't understand anyway. The consent of both women to sex with Assange has been confirmed by prosecutors.

Proposed reforms of Swedish rape laws would introduce a test of whether the unequal power relations between the parties might void the sincerely expressed consent of one party. In this case, presumably, the politically active Ardin, with experience fielding gender equity complaints as a gender equity officer at Uppsala University, had her will suborned by Assange's celebrity. The prosecutor coming as she does from a prosecution "Development Unit" could achieve this broadening of the law during Assange's trial so he can be convicted of a crime that didn't exist at the time he allegedly committed it. She would need to. There is no precedent for it. The Swedes are making it up as they go along.

A great deal more damning evidence is yet to be revealed about what passes for legal process in Sweden, such as Assange's lawyers having not received a single official document until November 18, 2010 (and then in Swedish language contrary to European Law) and having to learn about the status of investigations through prosecution media announcements but make no mistake: it is not Julian Assange that is on trial here but Sweden and its reputation as a modern and model country with rules of law.

* James D. Catlin is a Melbourne barrister who acted for Julian Assange in London during October.

dumb & getting dumber .....

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the leaking of classified documents via the WikiLeaks website is "illegal".

Well Julia, US Secretay of State, Hillary Clinton, also acted illegally in instructing members of the State Department to spy on UN Officials.

The day we see Hillary charged for her crimes is the day I'd be happy to see Assange charged, notwithstanding the fact that your own Attorney-General has already had to publicly admit that he hasn't broken any Australian law & it may well be that he hasn't broken any laws at all.

Of course your government Julia, just like your predecessor's & those of the US & Great Britain, has shown complete contempt for the 'rule of law', when it suits you to do so.

By making these kinds of dishonest public statements, you do no injury to Assange, but merely succeed in making yourself look stupid & even more of a lickspittle to the US than ever.

Look at the polls Julia (Labour is supposed to be very good at doing that) & you will see that public support for Assange's actions is more than 80% .... Want to put that up against your own?

Wikileaks Acting Illegally, says Gillard