http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_wikileaks_cables_reveal_profound
Anarchy In Your Head » Archive » The Slave Test Are you a slave? Recently I wrote about how governments manufacture and evoke powerful symbols to essentially brainwash us and keep us obedient. I used an analogy of similar tactics in the past to efficiently maintain the obedience of household slaves. I have a friend who claims my language is far too strong. He says I overuse words like “violence” and “slave” to artificially infuse my arguments with emotion when I’m talking about governments. I can’t really recall his exact argument but I think it amounted to “Nuh uh!”.
Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein Respond to Obama's First State of the Union This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, from the headquarters of the Sundance Film Festival, the largest festival of independent cinema in the country. In his State of the Union address, President Obama renewed his criticism of the Supreme Court ruling, saying he hopes Congress passes legislation, quote, “that helps to right this wrong."
WikiLeakiLeaks: Open Attack or Honest Attempt At Media Transparency? Gawker has had enough of the tight-lipped Wikileaks and its elusive founder, Julian Assange, it would seem. According to a blog post this morning, the media outlet decries the website to be "about as open as North Korea". In response, it has launched the hilariously-named Wikileakileaks, "your source for Wikileaks-related secrets, documents and rumors". Gawker writes that, "it's time to give Wikileaks the Wikileaks treatment - expose it to the same sort of radical transparency it advocates and see what turns up". The Wikileakileaks (no, it's not a rare Hawaiin fruit) page offers a laundry list of what Gawker's looking for, including documents relating to Assange's recent sexual molestation charges in Sweden, information on finance and funding or information on upcoming leaks. According to Wikileakileaks, the editorial process for posting any tips or leaks will be using "the highly-scientific criteria of 'does it look legit?'"
“Democracy Uprising” in the U.S.A.?: Noam Chomsky on Wisconsin’s Resistance to Assault on Public Sector, the Obama-Sanctioned Crackdown on Activists, and the Distorted Legacy of Ronald Reagan This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This month is the 15th anniversary of Democracy Now! on the air, and it’s a real privilege to have MIT professor, analyst, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, Noam Chomsky with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez, and we’ve been together for this whole 15 years, Juan. It’s really been quite an amazing journey.
Wikileaks now hosted from an underground nuclear bunker One of the world’s most controversial websites now has one of the world’s coolest datacenters. Andy Greenberg at Forbes has picked up on a Norwegian report that Wikileaks‘ servers are now hosted in Sweden’s Pionen datacentre, housed inside a Cold War-era underground nuclear bunker. 30 metres below Stockholm, it reportedly has a single entrance with half-metre thick metal doors. The move has been initiated by the Swedish Pirate Party, who began looking after Wikileaks’ hosting this month. “We have long admired Wikileaks”, the Pirate Party’s Rick Falkvinge told Norway’s VG, claiming that as his party is hosting Wikileaks, an attack on Wikileaks is also regarded as an attack on a political party. Moving to a nuclear bunker is probably little more than a symbolic move.
Three digital myths The release of the Afghan War Diaries on Wikileaks, with stories published in The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel by agreement with Wikileaks, has made news around the world. Le Monde Diplomatique, in conjunction with Owni and Slate.fr, have also made the documents available online via a dedicated website. The security implications of the leaked material will be discussed for years to come. Meanwhile the release of over 90,000 documents has generated debate on the rising power of digital journalism and social media.
How WikiLeaks Is Changing the World WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being all shifty-eyed in London today. After dumping 90,000 documents from the war in Afghanistan, and with a treasure trove of millions of files on other topics from around the world waiting to be released, everywhere-and-nowhere Internet leak hub WikiLeaks is once again the center of a discussion about the changing landscape of investigative journalism and the relationship between the media and the state secrets it reports. Nobody questions the importance of WikiLeaks, but not everyone is pleased. [T]he truth is that we don't really know what Wikileaks is, or what the organization's ethics are, or why they've become such a stunningly good conduit of classified information. In the new asymmetrical journalism, it's not clear who is on what side or what the rules of engagement actually are.
Azeem Ibrahim: Don't Let Anyone Fool You That the WikiLeaks Affair Is Not Important Of all the responses to the recent WikiLeaks affair, one of the most interesting was the argument that the leaks actually are not a big deal. The idea seems to be that the political damage from the leaks to the governments who have supported the war can be minimized by arguing that what has been leaked is simply not all that important. Probably the best proponent of this view was an op ed from a fellow at the Center for a New American Security in the New York Times. The argument is based on the proposition that the leaks do not tell us anything new of any importance, but rather paint a more detailed picture of what was already known to analysts. For example, it is claimed that the leaks which show the Pakistan's spy agency -- the ISI -- is believed to be conspiring with the Taliban and other insurgents, are not a big deal because American intelligence officers already knew this, and have said so in anonymous leaks to the press. This nicely misses the point.
Al WP Broadcasting board decides Voice of America can peruse WikiLeak documents Some new members of the Broadcasting Board of Governors were most upset by a column item last Wednesday noting that the IT and security folks at the International Broadcasting Bureau had instructed Voice of America employees to not read or e-mail any of the WikiLeaks material on their government computers (bit of a blow to original reporting). The matter was added to the agenda at Friday's gathering of the new board, which passed a unanimous resolution in closed session that "authorized the Director of the Voice of America to proceed with reporting on the disclosure of classified documents available on the WikiLeaks website in a manner that is consistent with the VOA Charter and the BBG's statutory mission, and to balance this effort with due consideration for the laws and executive orders" on using classified information. We got a copy of the resolution Monday, but apparently it didn't filter down to the VOA newsroom. So we tried again. The judicial waiting game Perhaps.
After Afghan War Leaks, Revisions in a Shield Bill Senators and , Democrats of New York and California, are drafting an amendment to make clear that the bill’s protections extend only to traditional news-gathering activities and not to Web sites that serve as a conduit for the mass dissemination of secret documents. The so-called “media shield” bill is awaiting a vote on the Senate floor. “WikiLeaks should not be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “Our bill already includes safeguards when a leak impacts national security, and it would never grant protection to a Web site like this one, but we will take this extra step to remove even a scintilla of doubt.”
The Weakest Link: What Wikileaks Has Taught Us About the Open Internet "The first serious infowar is now engaged," EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow tweeted on Friday. "The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops." Cablegate and Tech Companies US source protection bill amended to exclude WikiLeaks The furore surrounding WikiLeaks continues this week, as US Senators reportedly working on a “media-shields” legislation to protect journalists from revealing sources are making amendments to ensure no such protection can be afforded to the whistleblowing site. According to a report by the NYTimes.com, senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein are drafting the amendment to outline that the bill’s protections would “extend only to traditional news-gathering activities and not to websites that serve as a conduit for the mass dissemination of secret documents”. Quoting Schumer in a statement he claims the amendments will ensure there is no chance of the law ever being used to protect websites like WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks should not be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law. According to the NYTimes.com report, the new bill would require a person to “exhaust all other means” of getting the names they desire before they could take a journalist to court.