Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Wikileaks Talks Back To Power - The Politics of Information IV

Well, the Wikileaks story is growing, taking on the dimensions of the Daniel Ellsberg/Washington Post/Pentagon Papers; very exciting this is happening in my time!

As I write, the Wikileaks site is under a major DDOS attack, the first beginning 28 Sunday 11 in an attempt to keep Wikileaks from publishing the quarter of a million diplomatic cables released that day and sent to the NY Times, the Guardian and others. That attack was rerouted and Wikileaks got up again (never gonna keep 'em down - thx The Register) but is today 30 Nov @2:51GMT/UT experiencing a 10GB per second DDOSsing.


I was wondering what Wikileaks would do in response to the attacks on Julian Assange and the attempt by the Pentagon to blackmail, intimidate or threaten Wikileaks and obscure the real issue: the Afghan War Diaries and the information they reveal.

The attacks on Wikileaks continue; Forbes Magazine has the incendiary article titled "Julian Assange Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets" today. This is ridiculous, as Wikileaks has no incentive nor interest in some company's methods of accounting, share splits or other business-related operations; only in criminal acts and outright lies to stockholders and the public. But you see how this slanting and spinning of news is done as a disinformation and propaganda campaign.

The Obama Administration has revealed its own hollow rhetoric and bombast in caving in to Pentagon and other pressures in instigating US Justice and Defense Department investigations into trying Julian and Wikileaks for charges under the Espionage Act, echoing the charges brought against Ellsberg, The NY Times and The Washington Post by John Mitchell, Henry Kissinger, William Rehnquist and Richard Nixon and finally leading to Watergate and the downfall of the Nixon Administration.

Ultimately in that case justice and the First Amendment prevailed, revealing not "state secrets" designed to keep this nation safe and secure but the considered manipulation by men of power to expand and continue an unjustified war resulting in the death and crippling of hundreds of thousands of young men, the feeding of the military-industrial complex for profit warned against by President Eisenhower and the absolutely morally-bankrupt conduct of men of power to profit off war and human misery.


Hooray for Wikileaks, hooray for the First Amendment; hooray for brave men and women of honor, integrity and journalism and hooray for the net, the Last Free Press.


... and yes, this blog post is about art, as was Picasso's Guernica.


ps - thx to soror Nishi for pointing me to an interview with one of my favorite people, Noam Chomsky on this and other issues:

Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"

3 comments:

Apmel said...

Great post again Miso. Here some more from the swedish front:
WikiLeaks Founder Appeals Swedish Court Order


About art. I stole this from the mission statment of the Art Action-Union: "..continually create awareness about social justice and topics that are always under scrutiny or are concerning to the artists."

sororNishi said...

Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"...article at http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_wikileaks_cables_reveal_profound

...well, it is about time their lies and criminal behaviour was exposed.

I am, however, continually amazed at how stupid the general public is. In a recent radio programme the support was for the Government and their right to hold things hidden from us. Duh!!

Miso Susanowa said...

@apmel: ty :) i don't deliberately set out to be "political" or confrontive; sometimes I make pretty flowers too :D but sometimes I hafta talk about life and what makes me feel.


@ soror for the CHOMPsky link *laughing* i have loved him for many years now...

you know... I thought that for a long time... but with all the programming, psyops, propaganda and disinformation... and watching "them" crash the markets not once but twice (dot-com boom, housing)leading to the nose-to-the-grindstone mentality and fear and lack of leisure time (which is always where a civilization advances and prospers)... I wonder how much of it is a willful blindness born from real fear.

I think either it will go towards totalitarianism, or people will have to... be as brave and reckless and motivated and desperate as the men who founded this country. And that is a hard choice to make, and I wonder how much of the inertia and sheepishness of most people is this gut-wrenching fear.

That I could forgive... I spend a great deal of time in my life looking, seeing, thinking, researching and investigating these things. I have paid for that; other people have houses, lives... I can understand why this fear that sometimes has me literally gibbering in the dark at 3am is such a fundamental terror in the human condition. It makes my hatred of men who would use and manipulate that just that much more intense and hot.

I hope you watched the Eisenhower speech; the first time I saw that it made my jaw drop, and still does.