Wikileaks: Prelude to a New
Wave of 'Legal' Repression?
This wikileaks thing is frustrating the life out of me! The release
has, in theory at least, exposed the Machiavellian activities of the
foreign arm of the US state in all its sordid and mundane expressions,
not-to-mention the complete rubbish these 'experts' regurgitate, to the
entire world. It really is a case of 'doing your dirty laundry in
public'. But right now the last thing we are learning about is the
contents. Instead it's been turned into a media circus all focused on
the 'rapist', 'traitor' and 'terrorist' Assange.
Of course the corporate/state media has gone apeshit over Assange,
there's even a new word in the English language, to be 'Wikied', all
assisted by his dramatic arrest and detention and all the rumours about
how the Obama administration wants to get its blood-splattered hands on
him.[1] (As I write, Assange has been released on a $310,000 or around
£200,000, though apparently, he's still in the slammer for another 48
hours while he raises the dosh).
The clearly trumped-up sexual assault charges, also regurgitated after several months, served to detract from the self-evident importance
of the contents of the diplomatic cables and bring the focus of
attention onto Assange instead (I bet as he sat in his cell in the awful
Wandsworth Prison, he must have been kicking himself for that one-night
stand).
The media has played its allotted role firstly by 'celebritizing'
him, then castigating him and finally demonizing him. It works in a
feedback loop with the state's propaganda, one feeding off the other,
back and forwards, until Assange and Wikileaks has nothing to do with
blowing open the inner workings of Empire and it's all to do with the
'threat to lives' linked of course to Assange not being able to keep his
dick in his pants.
All the other stuff, death threats and other ravings of lunatic
right-wing nuts is bullshit, serving only to reinforce the focus on
Assange.
The cables and their contents are now clearly a sideshow.
And on the other hand, it does all fit together like one of those Chinese puzzles. Why did Wikileaks go to the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Speigel?
Did Assange think the information would not reach public without such
massive exposure or that the information wasn't genuine and it needed
the 'official media' stamp of approval? This is a troubling question to
me. Assange says he chose the three because they were
“the best newspapers in the world for investigative research.”[2]
But why not take them to the National Security Archive
as well, surely the best place to make real sense of a quarter million
cables and they would give us the BIG picture. This is what they do! So
if what Assange says is true, then it speaks reams about his lack of
political acumen.
We know that all three of these newspapers represent corporate
interests first and foremost, so with these three representatives of
international capital controlling the flow, we know that we only get
what they want us to read. In any case, it comes down what they choose
to run with, whether it be 'Batman and Robin' or the Saudis urging the
US to attack Iran (and untrue, the cables said no such thing).
So is it a CIA/State department plot/setup/patsy/black-ops/hidden agenda kinda thing?
Well maybe it is as both Engdahl and now Chossudovsky
assert, but it seems an awfully convulated way to attempt take control
of the Internet, if this was its intention, which I doubt.
And I say attempt because to my knowledge, short of pulling the plug
on every server connected to the Internet, there is no way of
controlling the Internet, not for long anyway: as long as it takes to
figure out a way around it, which in computer time is not long at all.
Why do you think the NSA, CIA et al, hire whizzkid 'hackers' in a vain
attempt to stay one jump ahead of all those kids out there who eat and
sleep programming 24/7?
Back in the early days of computing, the late 70s-early 80s, I knew a
few of the early 'hackers' and quite a few professional programmers and
believe me they liked nothing better than a challenge and they've only
gotten better in the intervening decades.
Even a country like China, where the WWW connection to the outside
world is controlled by the state, it's still porous. Anybody determined
to get access to sites deemed dangerous to the Chinese state and blocked
can, just as with the Wikileaks mirrors, access the content via a
mirror. Technically speaking as each ip address appears it could be
blocked but it would just pop up somewhere else. That's the entire point of the exercise. Duh-
A far better way of taking control would be to engineer some really
big attack on some critical (but not too critical) infrastructure, a
kind of digital 9/11, but quite how that would work I don't know, but it
would require that the existing infrastructure be shut down and a new,
alternative state-controlled network taking control of the existing
infrastructure. What happens to the global circuit capital in the
meantime is anybody's guess. Hey, it might not be such a bad idea after
all!
What is dangerous about the turn of events, and here I concur with
both Chossudovsky and Engdahl, is that it if there is an ulterior motive
it might be a new wave of repressive laws, in all likelihood under the
infinitely expanding umbrella of the 'war on terror'. Already, it's
illegal in many countries to 'assist terrorists' by putting up content
that might be construed as giving 'moral support' to terrorism. So for
example, if I put a link here for you donate to 'al-Qu-eda' (not sure
how that would work as I don't think they have a real Website), in theory I could be prosecuted as 'aiding and assisting...blah-blah.
As to Assange's motives? Who gives a shit? They're not really
relevant but judging by his writings, he strikes me as a very idealistic
and naive person, easily duped by women and seduced by the allure of
big media. This was why 'celebritizing' Assange was extremely important
as it set him apart from us mere mortals. It's a VIP, Access all Areas
kinda thing.
Thus it's vital that we continue to support Wikileaks and Assange and make sure that they don't turn us all into outlaws by trying to write the truth.
Notes
1. See: US grand jury to consider charges against Assange
2. For more on this, see 'WikiLeaks uses old, new media to publish documents', -- Yahoo News, 26 July, 2010
