Wikileaks and Material Support
To anyone paying attention for the past five years, the Wikileak files don’t contain broad information that was widely known or suspected. It filled in lots of blanks, but anyone paying attention knew that Pakistan’s ISI is backing significant elements of the Taliban with cash, guns, intel and protection, the Karzai government is corrupt as hell, IEDs hit civilians more often than they hit ISAF military targets, portable anti-aircraft missiles are occasionally used and special forces teams are doing frequent raids that sometimes have good results and sometimes are cluster-fucks.
None of this is new to anyone paying attention. However, most people are not paying attention to the details, although they are paying attention to the general atmospherics and vaguely know that the war in Afghanistan is not achieving its stated objectives nor is it producing any security gain comparable to the costs.
The Wikileaks story is burning up Memeorandum and the 24 hour news cycle right now, so people who did not know the details are hearing details for the first time, and the political pressure to do something different in Afghanistan will continue to build.
Andrew Bacevich has a very interesting take on Wikileaks as an agenda and discussion driver:
Rather than being defined as actions undertaken by a government to influence the perception of reality, information warfare now includes actions taken by disaffected functionaries within government to discredit the officially approved view of reality. This action is the handiwork of subversives, perhaps soldiers, perhaps civilians. Within our own national security apparatus, a second insurgent campaign may well have begun. Its purpose: bring America’s longest war to an end.
The following is pure speculation….
If an administration that already has a history of expanding executive power and a pliable court that will back foreign policy power grabs, there is a chance that Wikileaks or at least its identifiable individuals attached to it could be branded a “foreign terrorist organization” engaged in “propaganda” that is aimed at combating American national goals. And since a foreign terrorist organization is purely an administrative decision made by the State Department, it is not subject to judicial review or judicial contest of the facts. And once Wikileaks is categorized as such, any journalist who happens to go over a juicy leak from Wikileaks happens to run into the ‘material support‘ which means disseminating any good info is a felony that can be prosecuted with all the fun tools in the Patriot Act as that is ‘terrorism’ or at least ‘terrorist assisting journalism….’
I would not lay a whole lot of money down on a bet that Wikileaks is categorized as an FTO, but if I could get 90:1 odds, I would lay 10 dollars on that proposition that it would happen by Jan. 1, 2013.
The question is whether our rulers will be willing to abandon the illusion of running a democracy with a free press by then. Right now they allow the press to occasionally print things that contradict the Party line because it gives the little people the illusion that they are not living in a tyrannical police state and thus an excuse to not act against the constant infringements of basic human rights that happen every day (since those infringements must be against mere criminals, not against fine upstanding Americans). But if the U.S. starts putting journalists in jail for the crime of committing journalism (to an extent far greater than the situation today), that pretty much takes the velvet glove off the iron fist.
So the question you are asking is, shall that Rubicon be crossed? You are betting yes. I am betting no. Given the realities of the 24 hour news cycle, which is guaranteed to have the attention span of a hyperactive ferret on crack, the illusion of freedom is, I submit, more important to our rulers than the occasional leakage of a few documents that will swiftly disappear under a pile of other news in the short-attention-span American public’s minds.
- Badtux the Conspiracy Penguin
Well, I wouldn’t cover that bet, even at those odds. As I said in a post last December:
“Our Supreme Court feels that the Constitution can bear being warped to permit un-Constitutional treatment of human beings - even American human beings, as long as said human beings are arbitrarily labeled a ’suspected enemy combatant’ beforehand…”
(end excerpt)
Or a “foreign terrorist organization” - and I’m not so sure “foreign” will have any particular meaning in this globalized, interconnected world. As also mentioned in that post, I see a [Terry Gilliam's] Brazil scenario, with elites feeding horror stories to the bourgeoisie about the “terrorist” activists who are simply pushing back, including the inevitable show trials, and executions.
But then, I tend to be the cheery sort…
(Wish you had a “Preview” feature - a bit nervous about my HTML. Well, here goes…)
The good news about all this is that it’s on the front pages of the mainstream media. Obama et al can’t dismiss it with it’s just “those ‘effing retard’ progressives” or crazy “Code Pink.” The more public opinions turns against it (and the msm reflects that ) the better it is for peace activists.
i presume some of this is for public consumption, but i would bet the info allowed out is for crowd control, at best.
those who control the flow of info aren’t about to let anything important out. i too expect Wikileaks and Mr. Assange to labeled a terrorist org. this is just a matter of time. unless Wikileaks if already a part of the structure.
the real threat is that of net neutrality, as Al Franken said at the netroots. he who controls the net controls a whole lot, including the Great Satan and all those cheetos eating pajama clad libtard, effing libtards.
whether we get out of Afghan is a curious question, though i doubt, war is profit all the way. if we do exit Afghan, i bet we go to war with Iran, as Israel has their neocons pushing the envelope here in America.
shame, though, America did at least look like a “free country.”
My second thought on hearing of the WikiLeaks’ 90,000 document leak was that Assange may well be on some US kill list.
Best stay away from any places the US flies those predator drones….
Or, maybe the CIA will do it the old fashioned way….