US diplomatic cables to be dropped by wikileaks; US doing pre-emptive damage control

[Kuya]

Noam Chomsky on the Iran topic:

AMY GOODMAN: The documents’ revelations about Iran come just as the Iranian government has agreed to a new round of nuclear talks beginning next month. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cables vindicate the Israeli position that Iran poses a nuclear threat. Netanyahu said, "Our region has been hostage to a narrative that is the result of sixty years of propaganda, which paints Israel as the greatest threat. In reality, leaders understand that that view is bankrupt. For the first time in history, there is agreement that Iran is the threat. If leaders start saying openly what they have long been saying behind closed doors, with can make a real breakthrough on the road to peace," Netanyahu said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also discussed Iran at her news conference in Washington. This is what she said:

HILARY CLINTON: I think that it should not be a surprise to anyone that Iran is a source of great concern, not only in the United States. What comes through in every meeting that I have- anywhere in the world- is a concern about Iranian actions and intentions. So, if anything, any of the comments that are being reported on allegedly from the cables confirm the fact that Iran poses a very serious threat in the eyes of many of her neighbors and a serious concern far beyond her region. That is why the international community came together to pass the strongest possible sanctions against Iran. It did not happen because the United States said, "Please, do this for us!" It happened because countries- once they evaluated the evidence concerning Iran’s actions and intentions- reached the same conclusion that the United States reached: that we must do whatever we can to muster the international community to take action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state. So if anyone reading the stories about these, uh, alleged cables thinks carefully what they will conclude is that the concern about Iran is well founded, widely shared, and will continue to be at the source of the policy that we pursue with like-minded nations to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Secretary to Hillary Clinton yesterday at a news conference. I wanted to get your comment on Clinton, Netanyahu’s comment, and the fact that Abdullah of Saudi Arabia- the King who is now getting back surgery in the New York- called for the U.S. to attack Iran. Noam Chomsky?


NOAM CHOMSKY: That essentially reinforces what I said before, that the main significance of the cables that are being released so far is what they tell us about Western leadership. So Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu surely know of the careful polls of Arab public opinion. The Brookings Institute just a few months ago released extensive polls of what Arabs think about Iran. The results are rather striking. They show the Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel- that’s 80. The second major threat is the United States- that’s 77. Iran is listed as a threat by 10%.
With regard to nuclear weapons, rather remarkably, a majority- in fact, 57–say that the region would have a positive effect in the region if Iran had nuclear weapons. Now, these are not small numbers. 80, 77, say the U.S. and Israel are the major threat. 10 say Iran is the major threat. This may not be reported in the newspapers here- it is in England- but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments, and to the ambassadors. But there is not a word about it anywhere. What that reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership and the Israeli political leadership. These things aren’t even to be mentioned. This seeps its way all through the diplomatic service. The cables to not have any indication of that.
When they talk about Arabs, they mean the Arab dictators, not the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to the conclusions that the analysts here- Clinton and the media- have drawn. There’s also a minor problem; that’s the major problem. The minor problem is that we don’t know from the cables what the Arab leaders think and say. We know what was selected from the range of what they say. So there is a filtering process. We don’t know how much it distorts the information. But there is no question that what is a radical distortion is- or, not even a distortion, a reflection–of the concern that the dictators are what matter. The population does not matter, even if it’s overwhelmingly opposed to U.S. policy.

NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s pretty much what I would expect Sarah Palin to say. I don’t know how much she understands, but I think we should pay attention to what we learn from the leaks. What we learned, for example, is kinds of things I’ve said. Perhaps the most dramatic revelation, or mention, is the bitter hatred of democracy that is revealed both by the U.S. Government – Hillary Clinton, others – and also by the diplomatic service.


To tell the world– well, they’re talking to each other- to pretend to each other that the Arab world regards Iran as the major threat and wants the U.S. to bomb Iran, is extremely revealing, when they know that approximately 80% of Arab opinion regards the U.S. and Israel as the major threat, 10% regard Iran as the major threat, and a majority, 57%, think the region would be better off with Iranian nuclear weapons as a kind of deterrent. That is does not even enter. All that enters is what they claim has been said by Arab dictators – brutal Arab dictators. That is what counts.


How representative this is of what they say, we don’t know, because we do not know what the filtering is. But that’s a minor point. But the major point is that the population is irrelevant. All that matters is the opinions of the dictators that we support. If they were to back us, that is the Arab world. That is a very revealing picture of the mentality of U.S. political leadership and, presumably, the lead opinion, judging by the commentary that’s appeared here, that’s the way it has been presented in the press as well. It does not matter with the Arabs believe.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/...eveal_profound

[aurik]

Read that yesterday, found the interview interesting, but he is so virulently obsessed with the israeli-palestine conflict that he can barely talk about anything else.

[isladar]

How is the country with nuclear weapons held hostage by the country that has yet to attain them?

[aurik]

If I have to hate democracy to get involved in politics, I may need to shift career focus.

You don't have to hate-it-hate-it. You just have to realize that you are a much better judge of things than The Great Unwashed.

[Cadsuane]

I cant say I know enough Canadians to make an accurate assessment of Those Canadian cables(in the off chance he's right) but the person who wrote em sounds like a douche that thinks everyone in Canada thinks they're the hat and that they live near the border in order to be closer to America. It's interesting because it apparently never occurred to the guy that people grouped down near the bottom in Canada because as you go more and more north shit gets fucking COLD.


Is there some way to just outright download everything wikileaks has released ever? It seems like something to read while bored.

I thought it was a pretty accurate assessment of federal politics during the Stephane Dion era of the liberal party. Incidentally, not much has changed since then.

[Maguspk]

Wikileaks related:

Dissatisfaction with Assange
Former WikiLeaks Activists to Launch New Whistleblowing Site
http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-1...9free-ifmg.jpg
This April 2009 photo shows Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who went by the name Daniel Schmitt at the time, back when he was WikiLeaks' Germany spokesman.

A group of former members of WikiLeaks is planning to launch its own whistleblowing platform in mid-December, according to a German newspaper. The activists criticize WikiLeaks for concentrating too much on the US and want to take a broader approach.

Julian Assange is the public face of the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks, and Sunday's publication of the leaked US diplomatic cables will have raised his profile even higher. In fact, the former hacker is now a leading candidate for Time magazine's "2010 Person of the Year."

But former members of the organization have criticized his supposedly autocratic leadership style. "I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off," Assange famously wrote to one internal critic.

Now a group of former WikiLeaks activists are planning to launch a whistleblowing platform of their own in mid-December, according to a report in the Wednesday edition of the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung. The group stresses that the as-yet-unnamed platform should not be seen as a competitor to WikiLeaks but as a different approach, the newspaper wrote.

"As many people as possible should have access to as many documents as possible," the former Germany spokesman for WikiLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, told the newspaper.

Domscheit-Berg criticized WikiLeaks for concentrating on publishing material about the US while other information was neglected. "There was a lack of transparency about how decisions had been reached," he told the newspaper. "That's why I trust this organization as little as I would trust another organization with similar problems."

Domscheit-Berg has written a tell-all book about his experiences with WikiLeaks, titled "Inside WikiLeaks," which will be published in German by the Berlin-based publisher Econ Verlag in January 2011. A spokeswoman for the publisher told SPIEGEL ONLINE that there were no immediate plans to publish an English version, but that it was "entirely possible" that the book might be translated.

'We Wish Them Luck'

Back in September, Domscheit-Berg, at the time the second-best known member of WikiLeaks, announced in a SPIEGEL interview that he was leaving the organization out of dissatisfaction with how Assange was running the project. "Unfortunately we've reached a dead end," he said. "Julian Assange reacted to any criticism with the allegation that I was disobedient to him and disloyal to the project."

For its part, WikiLeaks has said it would welcome rivals. "There is some indication that Daniel and some others are setting up a similar venue, and we wish them luck," said Kristinn Hrafnsson, a WikiLeaks spokesman, in an interview quoted by the Wall Street Journal in early November. "It would be good to have more organizations like WikiLeaks."

Meanwhile pressure is increasing on Julian Assange in relation to an alleged sex offence. Interpol announced early on Wednesday that it had issued a "Red Notice" asking people to contact the authorities if they had information on his location, which is currently unknown. Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden over the alleged crime, which he denies. Interpol stressed that the "Red Notice" is not an international arrest warrant.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...732212,00.html

[Kuya]

If this is serious, then another wikileaks might be to our benefit.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

It is and it will be. If these guys are going to go after China and Russia and Assange focuses on the US then it's win/win

[Maguspk]

Yeah, wikileaks is simply a pioneer. Hopefully we are witnessing the start of an unprecedented amount of samizdat.

[Correction]

The world really needs a hundred wikileaks, having too many targets weakens the abilities of faggots like Lieberman from knocking a peg out from underneath them at his whim.

[Kuya]

The world really needs a hundred wikileaks, having too many targets weakens the abilities of faggots like Lieberman from knocking a peg out from underneath them at his whim.

Going to go ahead and let people know what you're talking about:

From TPM:

Early this week, after hacker attacks on its site, Wikileaks moved its operation, including all those diplomatic cables, to the greener pastures of Amazon.com's cloud servers. But today, it was down again and mid-afternoon we found out the reason: Amazon had axed Wikileaks from its servers.

The announcement came from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Lieberman said in a statement that Amazon's "decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material."

Committee staff had seen news reports yesterday that Wikileaks was being hosted on Amazon's servers, a committee spokeswoman told TPM. The service, we should note, is self-serve; as with services like YouTube, the company does not screen or pre-approve the content posted on its servers.

Staffers then, according to the spokeswoman, Leslie Phillips, called Amazon to ask about it, and left questions with a press secretary including, "Are there plans to take the site down?"

Wikileaks is reportedly back on servers based in Sweden. Lieberman, in his statement today, called on "any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them."

Phillips said Lieberman has no plans to reach out to other web-hosting services that may host Wikileaks, and has not contacted the Swedish government to discuss servers in its country.

"Sen. Lieberman hopes that the Amazon case will send the message to other companies that might host Wikileaks that it would be irresponsible to host the site," she said.

From NY Times:

The Lede has learned that a Seattle-based software company, Tableau, which provides a free Web platform for interactive graphics, removed charts linked to by WikiLeaks in response to Sen. Joe Lieberman's public statement that companies should stop helping the whistle-blowers.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem..._wikileaks.php

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/201...-more-problems

[Demosthenes11]

I wish I had capable servers.

[aurik]

no you don't

[Khajit]

Read that yesterday, found the interview interesting, but he is so virulently obsessed with the israeli-palestine conflict that he can barely talk about anything else.

True but considering the sheer collateral damage the conflict has done to the world i'd say it's still pretty damned important. Even in the past decade 9/11 and various other terror attacks have happened as a result, getting to board an airplane is one step from requiring a semen sample, xenophobia is rampant in America, and half the planet got sucked into a war so expensive that the money spent on it probably could have stopped a global recession. It's also important to him since he's Jewish and as such the issue gets thrown in his face every other second for not being supportive on the conflict.
Now if you mind i have to readup on whatever sith lord said something this time.(People at the top of the Us government tend to remind me of Palpatine whenever I see them.)

[Athas]

Still don't understand the enthusiasm here.

Middle Eastern countries have fascist dictators whose rule almost always runs contrary to the will of its people?

I'm shocked! SHOCKED!!

Well, not that shocked. Or at all.

[Kuya]

Still don't understand the enthusiasm here.

Middle Eastern countries have fascist dictators whose rule almost always runs contrary to the will of its people?

I'm shocked! SHOCKED!!

Well, not that shocked. Or at all.

What are you talking about?

[notorious bum]

Still don't understand the enthusiasm here.

Middle Eastern countries have fascist dictators whose rule almost always runs contrary to the will of its people?

I'm shocked! SHOCKED!!

Well, not that shocked. Or at all.

http://coldeels.files.wordpress.com/...c9a590dec5.jpg

[Antithesis]

Wikileaks' Domain Name Killed, But Site is Still Accessible

You can still read up on Wikileaks' released cables, but no longer by typing in wikileaks.org. Its domain name registrar, EveryDNS.net, shut down the name after repeated DDOS attacks, which have risked the 500,000 other sites EveryDNS.net has registered. You can now get to Wikileaks by going to http://46.59.1.2, or the brilliantly-named redirect of http://www.wikileeks.org.uk.

In case you missed it yesterday, Amazon threw Wikileaks off its servers, and the site is now hosted in France by OVH.

http://gizmodo.com/5705072/wikileaks.../full+(Gizmodo)

[BerenTebogo]

• The US military has been charging its allies a 15% handling fee on hundreds of millions of dollars being raised internationally to build up the Afghan army. Germany has threatened to cancel contributions, raising concerns that money is going to the US treasury.

Reading on the lolguardian, is this true? If so it's hilarious.

[Zansho]

I find it hilarious that all this crying about the breach of privacy by this govt, is the same one that's breaching its own citizens privacy at the airports doing all those gropes/xray scans.

Gotta protect those diplomats, but not your own citizens, eh?