One problem WikiLeaks has run afoul of in dealing with dribbling cables out through the media is distortion.
Some of its partners have things other then pure enlightenment in mind when they write stories on newly released cables. Like fame and fortune.
And because WikiLeaks is difficult to search directly onsite, readers are left with either taking what’s printed in the media for granted. Or spending a lot of time sifting through originals, with little guidance available, at WikiLeaks.
DD assumes, perhaps wrongly, that this was never Julian Assange’s intent.
The point of WikiLeaks is, obviously, to shed light. Not to provide more of the same old horse shit.
The publication of a carefully distorted piece, based on WikiLeaks cables, to cast the same type of impression one has been handed by the US government during the war on terror.
A few samples from it and the fallout as other newspapers and blogs rushed to play catch-up:
After sourcing nuclear materials and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty??? bombs, Al Qaeda is on the brink of producing radioactive weapons, as disclosed by leaked diplomatic documents.
The Vancouver Sun reports that, “a leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a ‘nuclear 9/11.’ Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing ‘workable and efficient’ biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.???
The Daily Telegraph of London obtained thousands of classified American cables originating from Wikileaks that detailed the global struggle to halt the spread of weapons-grade nuclear, chemical and biological material around the world.
According to the Vancouver Sun, “at a Nato meeting in January 2009, security chiefs briefed member states that al-Qaeda was plotting a program of ‘dirty radioactive IEDS,’ makeshift nuclear roadside bombs that could be used against British troops in Afghanistan.??? — Dallas blog
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In November 2007, the US embassy in London received a telephone call from a British deep-sea salvage merchant based in Sheffield, who claimed that his business associates in the Philippines had found six uranium “bricks??? at the site of an underwater wreck. The uranium had formerly belonged the US. The merchant provided nine photographs of the bricks, which he said his associates wanted to sell for a profit. It is not clear whether diplomats agreed to the purchase. — The Telegraph
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Airport security staff are being urged to examine “children’s articles??? after US intelligence concluded that terrorists were plotting to fill them with explosive chemicals.
The threat was disclosed at a meeting in Spain between Janet Napolitano, the US Secretary of Homeland Security, and European ministers in January 2010.
Ministers said that planes remained the “priority target??? for al-Qaeda.
According to the cable, Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister, described “recent threat information that noted the possibility of terrorists using children’s articles to introduce bombs into airplanes??? — The Telegraph, in “WikiLeaks: terrorists plan to use teddy bear bombs to blow up planes”
The obvious purpose of The Telegraph’s release of WikiLeaks material is sensationalism — the creation of the feeling that menace lurks everywhere and that al Qaeda is hatching new plots.
However, the newspaper’s website is a thicket of misleading information and come-ons to cables, promises and links that lead virtually nowhere except to the newspaper’s own material.
For example, after serially reading through WikiLeaks itself, consulting a searchable database tied to keywords for WikiLeaks here, and using the Telegraph’s own portal purported to search its cables, I could find nothing on teddy bear bomb plots.
This does not mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe I couldn’t find what was obvious. And al Qaeda seems to have such a high problem with unreliability, quality of human capital and achievement these days, any feverish dream could be possible, I guess.
However, the result does smell really bad when taken within the context of everything else DD could find.
If one has a sensational story to be pushed around the world there is a responsibility to make it as transparent as possible. Not just the opposite.
And it was my understanding that this was one of the things WikiLeaks was ostensibly about: The presentation of material in such a way that it could not be twisted and distorted by the usual players.
Which is what has transpired with the Telegraph’s use of WikiLeaks.
The Telegraph’s coverage aggressively creates the impression of terror capabilities when there is no actual proof they exist.
It scavenges what is often old news, or just wrong information, in an effort devoted to weaving trivia, random appearances of radioactive scrap — waste of an industrialized world, unexplained events and outright hoaxes on nuclear smuggling into a tapestry that indicates growing danger.
After using Cablesearch and WikiLeaks itself, DD could find very little really interesting postings on nuclear smuggling.
Most of it is rumors and crap, revealing only that the US government is bent on chasing around everything that might have to do with nuclear smuggling worldwide, even rumors and crap.
There is a report from Kabul on alleged materials, “2 bottles of uranium,” seized from a native. Later, it turns out to be gun-cleaning fluid, if I’m reading the thicket of cables correctly.
There is an unreliable hoaxer in Bujumbura in 2007, peddling red mercury and other materials, a scam that’s been around as long as people have been worried about nuclear proliferation.
ALLEGED NUCLEAR SMUGGLING INCIDENT IN BUJUMBURA,
DATE 2007-06-27 16:04:00
CLASSIFICATION SECRET
ORIGIN Embassy Bujumbura
TEXT S E C R E T BUJUMBURA 000479
The XXXXXXXXXXXX men indicated that there were 14 items found in the concrete bunker. All items have marking and labels indicating that they were produced in Belgium. The subjects were unable to spell the names of some of the items properly and did not know what the other items were, thus some of the spelling of the items are phonetic.
-Uranium, 30kg, powder form. The men did not know if the uranium was weapon-usable fissile material, highly enriched uranium, what the percentage of uranium-235 isotope or other isotopes were, or how its content was determined. -1 booklet describing the Uranium -Brommerck, 2,500g -Red Brommerk, 12kg -Red mercury, 6kg -Cocaine, liquid form
¶4. (C/NF) When asked what they intended to do with the items the subjects stated that they brought a vial of the Brommerck, to Bujumbura from the Congo. They planned on selling it to get enough money to transport the Uranium to Bujumbura upon securing a buyer. They also stated that they had not approached anyone else with this information. Their motive for approaching the American Embassy was that they did not want these items to fall into the wrong hands, specifically mentioning that they did not want Muslims to possess the items. When asked why they did not notify the Congolese authorities the subjects stated that they were afraid that the corrupt Congolese police would steal the items and sell it themselves. When asked why they approached the American Embassy in Bujumbura instead of the embassy or Consulate in the Congo they stated that the embassy in Bujumbura is much closer.
¶5. (C/NF) The ARSO asked the men to provide detailed photos of the items and their labels, especially the Uranium. The subjects agreed to provide photographs and additional information on all items at a later date. They indicated that they could produce a sample of the brommerck, upon request. The ARSO declined, but noticed that the subjects were pushing for a sale of the sample of brommerck,. The ARSO has the contact information of XXXXXXXXXXXX and is currently waiting to receive further photographic information from the subjects.
¶6. (C/NF) ARSO assessment: This case fits the profile of typical scams involving nuclear smuggling originating from the eastern DRC. ARSO considers this case to be a non-credible case of nuclear smuggling.
“Terrorist acquisition of WMD was the next topic of major concern. Although there was a limited assessed capability for al-Qaeda and other groups to acquire WMD, the intent was clearly present, and there were ongoing credible reports of attempts to recruit the needed expertise. A ‘dirty’ RADIOLOGICAL IED program was assessed to be under active consideration by al-Qaeda,” reads a cable here.
It’s one paragraph of very old rumint, trash, from a 2009 cable.
The Telegraph has used it to help resurrect an al Qaeda dirty bomb plot, one that probably doesn’t exist except on the terrorist organization’s wish lists.
These and others, taken together without a newspaper purposely futzing them up for purposes of titillation, don’t describe anything but a random world. One where the US is obsessed with any information about potentials for nuclear terrorism.
In one sense, this is reassuring.
In another, it reveals a criminal underground of unreliable people out to make a quick buck who also know it.
WikiLeaks had to partner with newspapers like the New York Times and the Guardian for maximum impact. As these relationships fell apart, one was made with The Telegraph.
Subsequently, all three newspapers, as well as Der Spiegel, have monetized WikiLeaks.
In the process, particularly with the Telegraph’s recent news stories, the result has been to make things less clear than they were previously, to create smoke where there is no fire.
Key findings: the number of people out of the labor force who are no longer trying to find a job is steadily increasing, as the normal mechanisms for reentry have collapsed. It’s now more likely for the unemployed to drop out than to find a job — the first time this has happened as far back as data can be found. Jayadev and Konczal find that underemployment has risen due to a lack of aggregate demand, not a mismatch between workers’ skills and available jobs.
The graph, taken from here and reposted all over the blogosphere, illustrates unemployment decreasing, in part, because the many of the unemployed are leaving the labor market — illustrated by the rising red line. It would seem a symptom of entrenched failure in the US economy, with no obvious sign of “winning the future.” It also looks like it could actually be the primary driver of “decreasing” unemployment statistics.
(Go to the original post for a larger version.)
Writes Mike Konczal:
The percentage of unemployed who will drop out of the labor force is increasing, gaining over those who will find a job. This is unique in the post-World War II economy — and only getting worse.
Palantir Technologies, a private sector spying firm for corporate America, got pantsed, along with others (HBGary Federal, Berico Technologies), today for targeting Anonymous, WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald.
The firm doesn’t realize the unsympathetic bad press about to fall on it for putting Salon’s Greenwald in their confidential slide presentations here.
If anything, the story emphasizes the utterly creepy and rotted nature of such companies and the people they work for, in this case apparently Bank of America. Which is already a much hated American corporate institution.
“Traditional responses will fail; we must employ the best investigative team, currently employed by the most sensitive of national security agencies,” reads one exposed company e-mail, presumably referencing the planning of a private sector-led attack on WikiLeaks.
If anything, it makes one want to cheer Julian Assange’s promise to expose a big US bank. If this still holds true, he should do so with even greater speed and vigor.
“Palantir was built by technologists serious about protecting privacy and civil liberties,” reads the company website.
So planning to spread disinformation and bad rumors about Glenn Greenwald, who writes almost exclusively about civil liberties being trampled, has something to do with protecting civil liberty?
Wall Street bosses have been warned that al Qaeda has targeted America’s banks and financial institutions for another 9/11.
Counter-terrorism agents fear some top banking executives may have been singled out for assassination attempts.
They have urged improved security amid fears that al Qaeda in Yemen may again try to send package bombs or potentially deadly biological or chemical materials through the post to bank chiefs.
What? They’re going to send bad things to Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon?
And why are we supposed to be scared of this?
Further:
Among the banks getting the security briefings were said to be Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and Barclays, according to NBC.
Intelligence officials insist the threats are general and not aimed at any individual or bank.
It’s good to know Homeland Security is giving pep talks to the bankers, reassuring them that whatever happens we’ll bail them out and avenge whatever needs avenging.
The Daily Mail piece originated in the New York Daily News here.
One commenter succinctly explains al Qaeda’s (and, by extension, the US government counter-terror service’s) dilemma in the shaping of perceptions.
Essentially, the war on terror has lasted too long and had too many whoopie cushion alerts. For most people it’s a phony war. No one even expects this administration, or any other, to get Osama bin Laden.
On the other hand, many Americans saw their jobs and immediate futures go up in smoke in 2008 due to Wall Street.
So Wall Street being in the cross-hairs of anyone doesn’t roil the sympathetic fear juices like it should.
The comment:
Ooooh, no, don’t blow up Goldman Sachs! They care about all of us little people so much!
One of the larger issues, which the national security poobahs in this country have yet to visibly grapple with or discuss, are the potential consequences of economic inequality becoming so great that American business becomes even more suspect of operating only under rules of bad faith. In other words, that it will be thought deserving of anything it gets whatever the circumstances.
Arnold in better times. No more good news, lads! Alles kaput!
After more than half a decade of misery and failure at the state level, via Digby,here:
In 2003 Californians recalled Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now they say oops. 42% of voters in the state say that Davis was the superior Governor to only 32% who remain in Schwarzenegger’s camp. Democrats, at 56%, are a lot more sold on Davis having better than Republicans, at 48%, are on Schwarzenegger. Beyond that independents go for Davis by a 40/33 margin as well. It would be hard to claim that Davis is a popular figure at this point- but he’s certainly not as disliked as Schwarzenegger and his 25/65 favorability rating is.
In 2003, I had the right idea. Make a song, “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” with purloined Arnold vocal bits taken from prank phone-call sites.
A couple of MP3 online musical parodies by “Arnold and the Gropinators,” a “Venice Beach garage metal” band, have surfaced … the A-side title, “I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich,” is taken from a description in The Times of an alleged movie set incident in which Schwarzenegger and his stand-in trapped stand-in Carla Baron next to a food service table. Schwarzenegger supposedly said, “I think we should make a Carla sandwich,” and the men squeezed her between them. After they released her, Baron said, Schwarzenegger stuck his tongue in her mouth.
It was popular enough to make its way across the country to the Pine Grove, PA, video rental store.
“I Think We Should Make a Carla Sandwich” — is here.
“I vould like to vork you out/Your ass feels to me, very stout!”
It’s almost too easy to bag on the fancy and fine editors and contributors to the New York Times magazine when they blow up in public like this:
There is an element of uncertainty in every complicated engineering endeavor. “In July 2003, in the Pacific, a Japanese fishing boat was sunk by a flying cow,??? Robert Bea told me. Bea is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading scholar of risk; he also spent many years working in research and management at Shell. The cow, it turned out, was part of an illegal cattle shipment bound from Anchorage to Russia; as the plane approached its destination the smugglers became nervous about their cargo and began shoving it out of the plane. “No risk analysis can ever be complete. No one can predict a flying cow.???
Written by Benjamin Wallace-Wells for an article entitled “The Will to Drill,” the Times retracted what was a too-choice-to-be-true and fairly obvious hoax with a brief note on the 5th:
An article on Jan. 16 about drilling for oil off the coast of Angola erroneously reported a story about cows falling from planes, as an example of risks in any engineering endeavor. No cows, smuggled or otherwise, ever fell from a plane into a Japanese fishing rig. The story is an urban legend, and versions of it have been reported in Scotland, Germany, Russia and other locations.
The original — whimsically dubbed “No one can predict a flying cow” — in e-mail, is here although the pages of Wallace-Wells’ article have been cleansed of his goof.
Wallace-Wells’ tagline is even more cringe worthy in its misplaced vanity:
Benjamin Wallace-Wells is a contributing writer for the magazine and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. His last article for the magazine was about the legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
Hey, you think they might invest in research into making something that could be put in the water so that people, like Republicans, would be more open to science?
This quote from the New York Times piece channeling a recent article in the journal, Science, is all you need to know:
“With 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teaching creationism,??? he continued, “this is the biggest failure in science education. There’s no other field where teachers reject the foundations of their science like they do in biology.???
When I was in high school in the Seventies in very conservative Pine Grove, PA, this was not an issue.
One might say it has evolved, driven by extreme religious right GOP efforts to use science as a wedge issue, not only because its findings conflict with its ideology but because people can be rallied by insinuating their faith is under attack by the other side which believes the hated “elites.”
PGAHS had a fine biology lab and equally good instruction. It prepared my entire class, most of which was headed toward a college education.
One of the academics interviewed by the Times did not think more education was an answer. And that’s because the right rejects evolution outright.
“At least 25 percent of high school teachers in Minnesota explicitly teach creationism,??? says one professor to the Times.
This would have presented me with a dilemma in 1972.
Walk and try to find a school where there wasn’t a creationist (PGAHS had only one high school biology instructor) or have my time wasted.
And when the president went on television to say we need more interest in science I just laughed. If people who were in a position to do something about that in this country now we would be able to reverse this atrocious statistic and run the creationists out of town.
The paradox is that American science hasn’t been up to this job. For many years the denial of science was taken as just a laugh-it-off kind of thing in University-land.
So we don’t live in a country where just more rational discourse has any effect. We live in a country that is in decline, that has lost a self-correcting capability, and this is one symptom of it.
When half the political establishment detests science and actively works to undermine it, it’s a driver of decline.
Over at Armchair Generalist, Jason Sigger has embedded a bit from Bill Maher. Here five trivial people, Maher included, argue global warming and evolution.
At this point there are only two solutions to the behavior.
The nice one is that you don’t give the Republicans an opening. You don’t invite them if you plan to discuss it. It’s not entertainment. It’s just more of the problem.
If Republicans — or any random heevahavas — get to open their mouths they present myths and falsehoods, now packed with the maddening implication that it’s they who have the scientific outlook because it is they who have evaluated all the data and are now being criticized for it.
They cling to the idea that the rightness of something is determined by the number of people who adopt it. And since their tribe is the one to adopt non-belief in science, that is what’s right.
The not-nice solution is to wind up and knock the grinning Georgia politician’s teeth out when he starts up on cable television.
“It’s a mystery how these people get dressed in the morning,” concludes Armchair Generalist.
