Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
December 8, 2010
You can judge a tree by its fruit. In the case of Wikileaks, its low-hanging fruit.
There is only one thing more dangerous than a fundamentalist Neo-conservative, and that’s a naive liberal. In the wake of the demolition of the modern, somewhat mythological illusory icon Barrack Obama, people who identify themselves as liberal watchdogs have been left wanting for a new hero.
Enter the Messiah 2.0, the silver haired saviour, one Julian Assange. The ascent and timing of the Wikileaks phenomenon could not be more scripted and perfect. This magnificent digital cloud has literally captured the minds of eternally frustrated people the world over- frustrated by war, corruption and the endless cloak and dagger exploits of our leaders. The uploading of 250,000 “secret cables” threatened to bring down the corrupt Washington Establishment. In reality however, it has done nothing of the sort, bizarrely bolstering the status quo.
What exactly is Wikileaks? The pieces are now coming together.
The soil was readied for the arrival of Wikileaks by a decade of anonymous postings on highly questionable Islamic websites featuring pixelated avatars of Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and similar theatrical villains in the West’s staged production of the Global War on Terror. What the anonymous Islamic dot.com boom achieved was to validate all manner of mysterious postings and virtual events online as something purporting to be modern historical record. Washington, London and Tel Aviv validated these internet episodes with official State Dept reactions and high level addresses. Hence, foreign policies, domestic security state measures and war-time decisions could now be based on this new virtual theatre of events. Enter stage left, the anamorphic character, crusader for free speech, Mr Julian Assange, alleged founder of the free liberal world’s latest beacon of light, Wikileaks.
In the complexed world of intelligence leaks, counter leaks, false leaks and misinformation it is often difficult for the casual observer to separate the wheat from the chaff. Leaks are used by the Establishment to out rogue agents, settle political scores or create timely diversions needed by intelligence services to maintain an air of chaos on the front pages of the major daily rags. But the real clues to the political functions of these leaks are often hidden in plain sight. Case inpoint: this past summer’s Wikileaks cache which featured former Pakistani ISI Chief, Hamid Gul, portaying him as an active puppet master working in cahoots with Al Qaeda and the Taliban to attack US and NATO forces in the region, was one of the clearest giveaways as to the real function and dark pedigree of the so-called intelligence pouring out of this seemingly trustworthy Icelandic online oracle. In the years running up to this US ’leak’, General Hamid Gul was one of the most consistent and relentless critics of the US foreign policy and the military occupations in the region, as well as its often duplicitous relationship with its client state Pakistan. Gul even went so far as to accuse elements within the US intelligence structure as being either responsible or involved in the planning and execution of the infamous September 11th attacks of 2001. This of course, was a bombshell at the time and placed Hamid Gul in the crosshairs of Washington’s military and intelligence establishments. It was, afterall, Gul- the old inside man in the pay of the CIA, who worked for Washington in the 1980′s to train and arm the mujahedeen in Soviet occupied Afghanistan. The July 2010 Wikileaks file on General Gul repositioned him from whistleblower into a new member of the revised ’Al Qaeda camp’, an ememy of the state, thus priming the engines of the CIA Gulfstream Jet that could now pick up the retired Pakistani General as an enemy combatant in the War on Terror, black sack and all. From annoying inside to demonised outsider. Job done.
Watch Hamid Gul’s reaction to the Wikileak release
More importantly, however, what this supposed Wiki-revelation did was to fuel the new idea that there is now ”mistrust” between these two close allies in the war on terror, and “without each other’s support they cannot win the war on terror”. Bare in mind that during this time, US drone attacks and Blackwater encroachments into Pakistani territory had reached a new high. This is only one example, but certainly a telling one, and virtually identical in execution to Osama bin Laden’s fabled timely election messages and Christmas addresses to the world, further demonstrating the uncanny timing and disinformation coming out of many of these Wikileaks doc dumps.
Many, if not all of those warm timely Bin Laden festive messages have been debunked, and exposed as contrived fakes put out by the CIA’s shadowy media arm Intel Center, but again viewers need to bare in mind the importance of these messages in the formation of public opinion and feeling on issues surrounding both domestic and foreign policy. These controlled items are invalueable and serve a real PR purpose. Wikileaks can be analysed in a similar fashion by noting the timing of the content, the material released, the subsequent predictable media reaction to them, and also noting what is ommitted from these supposed ‘tell all’ mega files.
The Business of Leaking
In the case of Washington, when real world events become difficult to manage in PR terms, a diversion is essential. The old formula of staging fake terror plots, or even real terror bombs has reached its end with the public, so what is better than combing through the Pentagon’s back catalogue of PDF files and adding a few new files for good measure, then uploading them to an off-shore server? It’s cheap, fast and best all, it’s easy to controlled. A junior officer could do the job. Amazingly, nowhere in any of these sinister cables appears any implications of criminal wrong doing by Herrs Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Obama or Blair. Nowhere is there any trace of implications or criticism of the US’s number one ally and moral/material partner in the illegal Middle East occupations- Israel. One secret cable even numbered Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion at a mere 66,000- in effect rewriting previous UN and independent estimates of 1.5 million deaths. Can we take this seriously? So we get 250,000 ‘secret’ files dumped and the prevailing Establishment remains firmly in tact with no real change in the status quo? Interesting.
Webster Tarpley breaks down the problem with Julian Assange and Wikileaks
Time will tell what policy and law changes will be rushed into place as a Neo-conservative reaction against Wikileaks’ staged embarrassment of the US State Dept. Perhaps Washington and London will enact new security measures and authorities to take down hundreds of ‘rogue’ websites that threaten the interests of National Security. That would of course be an own-goal for liberal watchdogs and fans pining for Assange and Wikileaks, but this is precisely the kind of reaction we can expect in the media circus surrounding the flimsy internet Wikileak phenomenon.
If it all goes south for Wikileaks and free speech online, you can expect Assange to be hard on the lecture circuit promoting his new book, which you can buy in hardback on Amazon for $24.99.
Whether the new liberal cult hero Julian Assange is in fact a “useful idiot” helping to propagate fake leaks for the Establishment, or is a bona fide covert intelligence operative, remains to be seen. His recent detention in the UK for alleged sexual abuse in Sweden is providing endless media columns which will focus on the international legal circus of these charges, and further propel the cult of personality forward. One thing is fairly certain though, that Wikileaks is a corrupt oracle putting out a mix of light-to-middleweight intelligence and outright misinformation, in order to direct public opinion on a variety of issues. One needs only to look at the initial George Soros-type funding vessels and early support for Wikileaks, and tie these association together to trace its genealogy. This is complexed and not for amateurs, but utterly fascinating for those willing to look deeper into this virtual off-shore Conintelpro organ of the 21st century.
Our advice to readers: be vigilant when analysing your Wikileaks. Watch for the low-hanging fruit… look but don’t bite!
