WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange turns on everyone

• By staff writers
• From: NewsCore
• December 21, 201011:19AM

Wikileaks latest coverage

Julian Assange speaks to journalists outside Diss train station in Norfolk on Saturday / AFP  Source: AFP

• Assange attacks former friends and US
• Says rape accusers motivated by revenge
• Claims to have material to destroy bank boss
• Police feared he would be assassinated

JULIAN Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, today launched a wide ranging series of attacks on both his enemies and allies as he defended his public and private conduct.

In his first UK newspaper interview since releasing hundreds of secret diplomatic cables last month, Mr Assange told The Times he predicts the US will face reprisals if it attempts to extradite him on conspiracy charges.

He accused his media partners at The Guardian newspaper, which worked with him to make the embarrassing leaks public, of unfairly tarnishing him by revealing damaging details of the sex assault allegations he faces in Sweden.

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He insisted that the women behind the claims were motivated by revenge.

Mr Assange said he had enough material ready to destroy the bosses of one of the world’s biggest banks.

Speaking from the English mansion where he is confined on bail, the 39-year-old Australian said that the decision to publish incriminating police files about him was “disgusting”. The Guardian had previously used him as its source for hundreds of leaked US embassy cables.

Mr Assange is understood to be particularly angry with a senior reporter at the paper and former friend for “selectively publishing” incriminating sections of the police report, although The Guardian made clear that the WikiLeaks founder was given several days to respond.

Mr Assange claimed the newspaper received leaked documents from Swedish authorities or “other intelligence agencies” intent on jeopardising his defence.

“The leak was clearly designed to undermine my bail application,” he said. “Someone in authority clearly intended to keep Julian in prison.”

He denied allegations of sexual assault and said that the allegations by two Swedish women he met in August “came from nowhere”.

Mr Assange was arrested and held in Wandsworth prison after Swedish authorities issued an extradition request. He was released on bail last week on a surety of £275,000 ($US427,872).

He said that he still had not seen the full extent of the allegations against him, although he accepted that his Swedish lawyer had been handed many of the details.

When asked if he was promiscuous, he replied: “I’m not promiscuous. I just really like women.”

Mr Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about a bank which it intends to release early next year.

Shares in Bank of America recently fell after speculation spread that it was the target.

“We don’t want the bank to suffer unless it’s called for,” Mr Assange said. “But if its management is operating in a responsive way there will be resignations.”

US officials are reportedly searching for ways to extradite him on espionage charges. Vice President Joe Biden recently called the WikiLeaks founder a “high-tech terrorist”.

Mr Assange said that he believed that the US situation would “turn around absolutely” as a groundswell of favourable opinion grew in America.

“The people in power are organised and were able to respond quickly,” he said. “But numerically they are not that strong and our support in the general population is tremendous.”

Mr Assange’s interview follows revelations that police feared he would be assassinated on the front steps of London’s High Court.

He revealed earlier he was told to keep a statement celebrating his freedom brief due a perceived threat on his life.

The police concerns emerged as Mr Assange revealed further details about his prison stay - including that he was housed alongside paedophiles and found support among prison guards.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/features/wikileaks/wikileaks-boss-julian-assange-turns-on-friends-and-foes/story-fn79cf6x-1225974366476#ixzz18m2RBJnk

WikiLeaks’ Jew-Hating Staff

WikiLeaks’ Jew-Hating Staff

Posted By Ryan Mauro On December 17, 2010 @ 12:45 am In FrontPage | 13 Comments

If you needed any more proof of WikiLeaks’ extremist agenda, look no further than Israel Shamir ^[1], the Holocaust denier who is in charge of distributing the organization’s documents to the Russian media. The involvement of Shamir, who also supports Ahmadinejad and refers to Palestinian terrorists as “martyrs,” should put to rest any doubt that WikiLeaks’ rhetoric about transparency is just a cloak for its anti-American and anti-Western agenda.

As Michael C. Moynihan exposed, ^[2] Shamir has a long track record of anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial. Shamir described Auschwitz as “an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross (as opposed to the US internment centre in Guantanamo.” He told another journalist and fellow Holocaust denier that “it’s every Muslim and Christian’s duty to deny the Holocaust.”

In reading Shamir’s work, it is easy to find other anti-Semitic statements and even endorsements of terrorism. His criticism of Israel is not based in politics but in bigotry. He writes, ^[3] “Israel’s behaviour is partly connected to the Jewish superiority complex, and its consequence, the apartheid structure.” He forecasts ^[3] the destruction of the Jewish state in language that any Islamic terrorist would admire, saying the “Demise of Israel is inevitable; the only question is whether it will be forcibly removed and the land destroyed, or it will be peacefully absorbed in the region.”

Shamir openly supports Palestinian terrorists carrying out attacks in Israel and outrageously, even calls a potential nuclear suicide bomber a “martyr.”

“Israeli cruelty, vengefulness and inability to respect others called hundreds of Palestinians to the horrible martyrdom. If, or rather when, a potential martyr will be equipped with a miniaturized nuclear device instead of home-made dynamite, the sad story of the Jewish state will be over,” he writes. ^[3]

Based on these comments, it is not surprising that Shamir would openly advocate for Iranian President Ahmadinejad, another Holocaust denier that supports terrorism and seeks nuclear weapons that could destroy Israel. “[The] people of Iran have made their choice. Democracy won….Iranians reelected their president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by landslide majority,” Shamir wrote. ^[4] He complimented Ahmadinejad as having “highly deserved” his so-called election victory.

It has also been discovered ^[2] that Shamir’s son, Johannes Wahlström, acts in a similar capacity as his father for WikiLeaks in Sweden. He has been accused of making up quotes and expressing anti-Semitism. One expert on neo-Nazism said ^[2] that one of his son’s stories that had to be redacted “[had all of the] elements that one would find in a classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.”

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It is fitting that such extremists would serve as high-level officials in WikiLeaks, given the organization’s anti-American agenda. The organization’s recent actions are clearly designed to damage the United States, politically and operationally. The group recently released a document labeled “secret” from February 2009 that lists over 200 sites including 35 companies around the world that qualify as “critical U.S. foreign dependencies.” The document specifically says that “if [the listed sites are] destroyed, disrupted or exploited, [it] would likely have an immediate and deterious effect on the United States.”

This was a confidential list of potential top-tier targets and it is now publicly available. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies condemned the release, saying ^[5] it is like a “global map—a menu, if not a recipe book—to every extremist group in the world.”

This is a case where the release of a specific document undermines the national security of the U.S., but the overall disclosures have instantly negative effects. By releasing confidential diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks deters foreign officials from talking honestly to their American counterparts and makes them wary of discussing any secret arrangements. Foreign governments will not make sensitive deals with the U.S. or even share intelligence if they are significantly worried about exposures that embarrass them or reveal methods and sources.

WikiLeaks’ disclosures also serve as anti-American propaganda. ^[6] The leader, Julian Assange, has indicated he has material related to what he calls “the Garani massacre” that supposedly killed over 100 Afghan civilians, mostly children. As I previously discussed, ^[7] the facts surrounding the incident provide some explanation for the civilian casualties but that is of no concern for Assange. Prior to that, WikiLeaks released a heavily edited videotape titled “Collateral Damage” that was so biased against U.S. soldiers in Iraq that left-wing comedian Stephen Colbert confronted ^[8] Assange in an interview, one of the very rare moments when Colbert breaks character.

It is telling that WikiLeaks’ resources are spent against the U.S. and its allies and not against truly oppressive governments like those in Iran and China. Julian Assange has said ^[9] “We have been attacked by the United   States, so we are forced into a position where we must defend ourselves.” He says, ^[10] “I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.”

To Assange, Holocaust deniers and supporters of anti-Israeli terrorism are not “bastards” that should be “crushed”—but the U.S. government and its allies are.

Assange on the Defensive

Assange on the Defensive

Posted By Rich Trzupek On December 8, 2010 @ 12:45 am In FrontPage | 13 Comments

Alleged sex offender and world-class narcissist Julian Assange coined a phrase to describe the practice of accepting and publishing stolen documents that puts lives in danger and threatens national security: “scientific journalism.” Having made enemies from Washington to Moscow and beyond, Assange is now in full martyr mode, portraying himself and his pals at WikiLeaks as crusaders courageously trying to make the world a better place by delivering facts into the hands of ordinary people like you and me. Here’s how Assange described his brand of “journalism” in an op-ed piece published in The Australian ^[1] yesterday entitled “Don’t Shoot the Messenger for Revealing Uncomfortable Truths”:

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Even if we were to ignore the propriety of publishing illegally-obtained documents and the morality of putting lives at risk in the name of a twisted form of journalistic purity, Assange’s arguments still don’t hold up. Any time a journalist or a media outlet obtains information, it has to make editorial decisions about how to use that information. What stories do you highlight, and which get less attention? What context do you provide and who provides it? Where do you try to focus your audience’s attention? Like every other media outlet, WikiLeaks has to make such decisions; decisions which inevitably involve the prejudices, judgment and knowledge-base of the editors who make them. The proposition that WikiLeaks is simply a resource for those interested in the truth does not hold up to any kind of scrutiny.

WikiLeaks says that it obtained more than 250,000 State Department cables, for example. Did it simply release all of those documents and allow its readers to figure out who was reporting the news accurately? Of course not. Had it done so, the deluge of information would have been too great for anyone to comprehend. Instead, WikiLeaks did what journalists do: Assange and his cronies made editorial decisions based on which cables, in their judgment, would have the most impact and create the biggest buzz. They provided trusted partners like The New York Times and The Guardian with selected cables that would create blazing headlines. They decided which cables to release at their own site and they offered commentary intended to steer their readers in a particular direction when those readers digested the contents. Assange doesn’t want his followers to judge for themselves, he rather wants them to agree with Julian Assange’s judgment and offer him a deafening round of applause.

In what was perhaps the most egregious example of Assange’s editorial bias, WikiLeaks’ prejudices and duplicity were on full display in the video “Collateral Murder.” Having obtained raw video of an engagement between a US Army Apache helicopter and Iraqi insurgents, Assange didn’t simply air the raw video as received and let the viewer “judge for themselves.” Instead, as a story in The New Yorker detailed ^[2], Assange and his cronies spent hour upon hour going over the grainy black and white footage, deciding which portions to publish, which to discard and how to best explain what the edited footage they would release meant, in order to deliver the message they preferred. At no point did they consult with anyone ^[3] who has been in combat, in order to understand the context of the engagement or how it would have looked to the crew of the Apache ^[4]. Indeed, the title for the video they chose presupposes a conclusion. Huddled in their hideout in Iceland, the last thing Assange and his pals wanted was for viewers to evaluate the veracity of WikiLeaks’ claims. They rather put in long hours of work in order to ensure that they produced a product that would be fully consistent with their worldview.
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Thus, it’s clear that WikiLeaks is not what Assange says it is. But, what if there were such a clearinghouse of information that made secrets available without editorial prejudice or leading commentary? Would such an unbiased source of “the truth” truly be a good thing for the world? Though Assange clearly will never come to grips with the difference, there are secrets that are tucked away in the name of good and there are secrets that are cloaked to protect that which is evil. Assange neatly sidesteps the distinction by falling back upon the crutch of moral relativism. Good and evil are murky concepts to the Australian, so he’ll reveal all he can and let the world sort it out.

If we follow Assange’s logic to its tortuous conclusion, it would have been perfectly fine for the press to reveal that we had broken Japanese and German codes during World War II. It is universally acknowledged today that MAGIC, the crack of certain high-level Japanese codes, and ULTRA, which got the Allies access to Germany’s secret ENIGMA messages, were of vital importance during the war. Without MAGIC and ENIGMA, World War II would have stretched on far longer and many more lives would have been lost. Yet, according to Julian Assange, it would have been the media’s obligation to reveal the existence of MAGIC and ENIGMA if the World War II equivalent of Pfc. Bradley Manning had revealed the programs.

Assange may not realize it, but the world is once again at war; a war between the principles of freedom and self-determination and that of religious tyranny. In this war, the support of allies who teeter on the edge of the conflict is of vital importance to the future of the free world. Thus, when nations like Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia agree to quietly help the West battle the fanatics – even if they don’t have the courage to do so publicly – it is a very good thing. When WikiLeaks undermines their positions by releasing sensitive information, then Assange’s organization lends aid and comfort to our enemies, simply by attacking the fragile foundations of our shaky alliances with tenuous Arab partners. Are nations like Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia real allies? Not really. But they have been invaluable resources, at least until Assange and his fellow glory-seekers stepped in to make them retreat even further into the shadows.

Julian Assange’s professed ideal – a bright world empowered by the light of truth – is nothing but a shabby ruse. In the pursuit of personal aggrandizement, Assange has lent invaluable aid and comfort to the enemies of the free democratic institutions that he purports to protect. Assange faces trial over alleged sex offences. The truth of these allegations have yet to be proven. But, whatever the outcome, Assange is surely guilty of violating a far more serious statute that is only enforceable in the context of an ancient Greek tragedy: the sin of hubris. For that transgression, Julian Assange surely deserves life without parole.

WikiLeaks Crocodile Tears

By Vasko
Kohlmayer

 

In recent days we have heard much complaining from the
administration and assorted politicians about how the WikiLeaks disclosures pose
a threat to our troops on the ground. By this they primarily mean our soldiers
in Afghanistan, which is presently this country’s main theater of military
operations.

This apparent concern on the part of the political class is for the most
part only a ploy designed to save their own skins. Here is why.

On July 25, 2010, WikiLeaks posted on its website a vast tranche of
documents concerning our military activity in Afghanistan. Containing more than
75,000 military logs, it was the largest military leak up to that time.
WikiLeaks published these documents under the name of Afghan War Diaries.

Please notice the release date. The documents which now supposedly present
such a dire threat to our soldiers were released this past summer. To put it
another way, they were made public four and a half months ago.

Now ask yourself: Did we hear anything from the administration — or,
indeed, from our political establishment — immediately after the release of
these documents? Did we hear anything from them on this subject in August or
September? Did we hear any complaining in the run up to the elections in
October? Did you we anything about it after the elections?

The answer is no. They only began crying foul about ten days ago. Why only
ten days ago? Here is a clue: On October 28, WikiLeaks began releasing the
infamous State Department cables.

As it happens those cables contained no information that would have direct
bearing on the conduct of day-to-day military operations in Afghanistan or in
Iraq. But they did contain something else: They revealed information that deeply
humiliated and compromised this administration. And it was precisely at that
time when they suddenly started to be concerned about the safety our troops.
Don’t you find this coincidence a little suspicious?

It is, indeed, very suspicious for several reasons. To begin with, their
sudden concern for our troops is out of character for the types who run the
present administration. After all, many of them have long records of criticism
and dislike of the military. This is not surprising, since the military is not
particularly partial to their politically correct agendas such as having openly
gay men serving in its ranks.

Why — let us ask again — are these people showing their concern so late
in the game, months after the documents were made public?

The answer is obvious. Their concern for the troops is simply a gambit to
divert attention from the information that threatens their own careers. Knowing
how much most people in this country care for our armed forces, they want us to
get us angry at WikiLeaks under false pretenses. They want us to support their
efforts to silence the source that imperils their positions.

If they were sincere in their concern for the troops, they would have
protested the moment the Afghan tranche was made public. But they were silent
then. They were silent until their own skins were exposed. Only then they began
lamenting about the troops. They are using the troops — the very people about
whom they could care less under normal circumstances — as a cover to save
themselves.

The last four and a half months present a classic study in political
hypocrisy. The release of the Afghan diaries by WikiLeaks should have been a
major blow to this administration. Had it happened under Bush, he would have
likely had to leave office. The left and the media would have gone into a frenzy
and ask how we can conduct a war if internal information about it appears on the
internet. The left wanted Bush to resign over Abu Ghraib. It turns that under
Obama some rogue servicemen were using Afghans for target practice. Can you
imagine the pandemonium that would have ensued had such information come to
light under Bush?

Because it posed such a potential threat to the administration, up until
recently we heard very little about the Afghan War Diaries. The politicians’
concern for the troops was nowhere to be seen or heard. In fact, they tried to
keep the whole affair under the radar. They only became “concerned” about the
troops when they found themselves in hot water with the release of the State
Department cables.

A few words also need to be said about the Republicans. Even though they
are now seething and indignant about the supposed dangers to our military, they
were for the most part silent during all that time after the release of the
Afghan cache. They only began calling for Assange’s execution when Mrs.
Clinton’s backside came on the line. Is this not completely absurd?

But let us now ask whether the Afghan dump did indeed pose a direct danger
to our troops. The documents it contained covered the period from January 2004
and December 2009. Please keep in mind that their release occurred in July of
2010. At that time even the most recent of the documents would have been more
than six months old. The vast majority of the papers were several years old.
Because of their being so dated, their value as a source of actionable
battlefield intelligence was for all practical purposes zero. For an enemy to be
able to take tactical advantage of other side’s information, it has to be fresh.
Anything which is more than few weeks old is usually not very helpful.

Despite the craze stirred up by the politicians, it would appear that the
leaks have caused no direct damage to our troops or those who work with us. In
August, for example, a Pentagon spokesman stated that “we have yet to see any
harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the
WikiLeaks documents.” In October Pentagon concluded that the release “did not
disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods” and that “there has not
been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the
leak.”

This is not to say no damage has been inflicted or that no damage will be
inflicted in the future. But it should be obvious that the claims of damage have
been greatly exaggerated by the very politicians who are now frantically trying
to save their jobs.

What about the damage to this country’s reputation? In the grip of the
hysteria, most people have failed to notice that the Afghan dump also contained
information that is favorable and vindicating. For one thing, it shows the
cruelty and ruthlessness of the enemy. It also documents America’s efforts to
improve the lot of the Afghanis.

The damage from WikiLeaks’ Afghan logs is far less than that caused by the
Abu Ghraib scandal whose flames the left kept fanning for months in their effort
to bring down the Bush administration. Do you believe for a minute that the same
people who were so willing and eager to drag out military through the mud then
are now suddenly concerned about its well being? Their concern for the troops is
suspiciously new and glaringly out of line with their past actions and
statements. It only dates from the day their own activities came under
fire.

It has been remarked by many that the liberal elitists who are currently in
charge — the Obamas, the Clintons and their friends — seem to harbor scorn for
common people like us. It is hard to say whether this is true or not, but there
is one thing that can be said with certainty: they know how to pluck on our
patriotic string when things get too hot for them. Many have fallen for the
trick. What should have been the day of reckoning for an arrogant and
dysfunctional political class has been turned into the lynching of an Australian
programmer who helped to expose its incompetence.

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at December 08, 2010 – 11:16:38 AM CST

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Krauthammer on the government’s wishy-washy response to the Wikileaks scandal

Rick Moran

 

Charles
Krauthammer on the damage done to US interests because of the Wikileaks
scandal:

The WikiLeaks document dump is sabotage, however quaint that term
may seem. We are at war – a hot war in Afghanistan where six Americans were
killed just this past Monday, and a shadowy world war where enemies from Yemen
to Portland, Ore., are planning holy terror. Franklin Roosevelt had German
saboteurs tried by military tribunal and shot. Assange has done more damage to
the United States than all six of those Germans combined. Putting U.S. secrets
on the Internet, a medium of universal dissemination new in human history,
requires a reconceptualization of sabotage and espionage – and the laws to
punish and prevent them. Where is the Justice Department?
And where are the intelligence agencies on which we lavish $80 billion a
year? Assange has gone missing. Well, he’s no cave-dwelling jihadi ascetic. Find
him. Start with every five-star hotel in England and work your way down.
Want to prevent this from happening again? Let the world see a man who can’t
sleep in the same bed on consecutive nights, who fears the long arm of American
justice. I’m not advocating that we bring out of retirement the KGB proxy who,
on a London street, killed a Bulgarian dissident with a poisoned umbrella tip.
But it would be nice if people like Assange were made to worry every time they
go out in the rain.

Why such a passive response from the Obama administration? It appears that
they are torn between their hyper-ideological world view and the real
politick consequences of what Assange has done to our foreign policy and
national security. The left has celebrated “whistleblowers” for so long – people
who have outed CIA agents, leaked vital security programs and operations, and
plastered our most carefully guarded secrets all over the front page of the New
York Times – that when one of these miscreants comes along and damages a liberal
administration, they don’t quite know what to do. They are torn between cheering
for the saboteur and whining about how unfair it all is.
So they basically do nothing. And, as Krauthammer points out, unbelievable
damage has been done to some vital efforts in our war against terror.
Considering these facts, the administration’s actions prior to the release of
the documents borders on criminal negligence.
If we get hit by a terror attack because a country had stopped cooperating
with us fearing exposure, we shouldn’t blame Julian Assange. We should blame
those who did nothing to prevent him from damaging our security.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

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WikiLeaks Exposes White House’s Conscious Support of Islamists

 

December 02, 2010

December 02, 2010

By Seth
Mandel

 

The fact that the latest installment of WikiLeaks coincided with the
Egyptian parliamentary elections is unfortunate timing for the U.S. It provides
an unflattering portrait of a White House that sides with Islamists both in and
out of power around the world.

Though it was to be expected — in the spirit of “free and fair” elections
– that the White House would say it was “disappointed” that Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak shut
out the Muslim Brotherhood from the electoral process, how will President
Obama and Secretary of State Clinton explain their purposeful strengthening of
ties with other Islamists who fund terrorism and undermine U.S. policy in the
Middle East and Southeast Asia?

Take, for example, the Obama administration’s infusion of goodwill into our
relationship with Turkey. Here is how EurasiaNet reported
Secretary Clinton’s visit to Turkey early on in the administration:

Combining statecraft with stagecraft, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
appears to have turned around US-Turkish relations. For most of the Bush
administration’s tenure, Washington had a strained relationship with Ankara, but
Clinton’s first visit to Turkey as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state
has Turkish officials feeling more optimistic about the future of bilateral
relations.

Obama followed up a month later in an address to the Turkish parliament
that local media called
“historic.” In that speech, Obama called for Turkey’s accession to the
EU.

Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become
a member of the European Union,” the president said, adding that “Turkish
membership would broaden and strengthen Europe’s foundation once
more.

And more recently, Turkey was publicly assured
that the White House would oppose any resolution recognizing the Armenian
genocide. The administration continued to reaffirm the friendship between the
two countries even in the face of Turkey’s involvement
in the terror flotilla and the country’s blocking
of increased sanctions on Iran.

All along, the administration could attribute these actions to the pitfalls
of multilateral diplomacy and not a deliberate ideological pursuit on the part
of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to usher in a new age of Islamist
regional power. Until now.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we now know that American diplomats were well aware of
the direction Erdoğan intended to take his country. GlobalPost quotes
one leaked cable offering a pretty clear assessment: “Does all this mean that
the country is becoming more focused on the Islamist world and its Muslim
tradition in its foreign policy? Absolutely.”

“Shrugging off diplomatic-speak, American diplomats describe Turkish Prime
Minister Teyyip Erdogan as an outspoken Islamist and ‘perfectionist workaholic’
who may be seeking the creation of an Islamic state,” GlobalPost’s Iason
Athanasiadis reports.

And what of Turkey’s claims that part of its value to the West lies in its
ability to act as a productive intermediary between the U.S. and Iran? Nonsense,
as American diplomats found out. Athanasiadis once more:

Reports allege that, contrary to their claims, Turkish politicians cannot
[e]ffect changes in Iranian attitudes and that their country is being used as a
transit zone to smuggle dual-use materials into Iran for its controversial
nuclear program.

It would be one thing if our support for the Turkish Islamists were only
verbal. But that’s not the case. We are prepared to sell the Turks
the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. According to Michael
Rubin, this decision was made “without even reviewing the potential for
technology transfer.” He added that Obama was also considering putting an
early-warning missile radar — intended mainly as protection from Iranian
missiles — in Turkey.

And Erdoğan is not an isolated case. His network of Islamists includes
Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and current leader of the
opposition. Ibrahim is currently on trial for what his supporters say are
trumped-up charges of sodomy, and his powerful friends in the U.S., such as Al
Gore and Paul Wolfowitz, have stridently
defended him as a persecuted moderate Muslim who should serve as an example
of the kind of Islam the U.S. has been — and should be — promoting. Hillary
Clinton, in her role as secretary of state, requested a face-to-face meeting
with Anwar last month, and when it didn’t happen, she pressed the Malaysian
leadership privately and publicly on
Anwar’s behalf.

But Anwar is also an anti-Semite, complaining of Zionist
infiltration of state agencies and Israeli proxy control of police units. And
Anwar is a co-founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a
Muslim Brotherhood think-tank in Virginia that has called for violence against
Israel and has been under investigation by the FBI for the better part of a
decade for its ties to terrorist organizations.

Anwar also helped finance oil projects for Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan
al-Turabi, who is the leader of the National Islamic Front, a partner
organization to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turabi calls Anwar
a “fellow-student of his.” Anwar also serves on
the board of the Al Baraka Banking Group (ABG). ABG’s chairman is Shaikh
Saleh Abdullah Kamel, who, in the wake of 9/11, was sued for having “lent
material support to Al Qaeda and OBL (Osama bin Laden), aided and abetted others
who lent material support to Al Qaeda and OBL, and otherwise engaged in
racketeering activity in violation of the law,” according to the
complaint.

So perhaps we can give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he is not really
“disappointed” that the Muslim Brotherhood lost influence in Egypt. But we
should also note that such benefit of the doubt is getting to be increasingly
generous, for the president’s record of supporting Islamists is consistent and
troublesome, to say the least.

Seth Mandel is a freelance foreign affairs writer based in
Washington, D.C. Twitter:
@SethAMandel

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at December 02, 2010 – 12:58:53 PM CST

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BySeth
Mandel

 

The fact that the latest installment of WikiLeaks coincided with the
Egyptian parliamentary elections is unfortunate timing for the U.S. It provides
an unflattering portrait of a White House that sides with Islamists both in and
out of power around the world.

Though it was to be expected — in the spirit of “free and fair” elections
– that the White House would say it was “disappointed” that Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak shut
out the Muslim Brotherhood from the electoral process, how will President
Obama and Secretary of State Clinton explain their purposeful strengthening of
ties with other Islamists who fund terrorism and undermine U.S. policy in the
Middle East and Southeast Asia?

Take, for example, the Obama administration’s infusion of goodwill into our
relationship with Turkey. Here is how EurasiaNet reported
Secretary Clinton’s visit to Turkey early on in the administration:

Combining statecraft with stagecraft, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
appears to have turned around US-Turkish relations. For most of the Bush
administration’s tenure, Washington had a strained relationship with Ankara, but
Clinton’s first visit to Turkey as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state
has Turkish officials feeling more optimistic about the future of bilateral
relations.

Obama followed up a month later in an address to the Turkish parliament
that local media called
“historic.” In that speech, Obama called for Turkey’s accession to the
EU.

Let me be clear: the United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become
a member of the European Union,” the president said, adding that “Turkish
membership would broaden and strengthen Europe’s foundation once
more.

And more recently, Turkey was publicly assured
that the White House would oppose any resolution recognizing the Armenian
genocide. The administration continued to reaffirm the friendship between the
two countries even in the face of Turkey’s involvement
in the terror flotilla and the country’s blocking
of increased sanctions on Iran.

All along, the administration could attribute these actions to the pitfalls
of multilateral diplomacy and not a deliberate ideological pursuit on the part
of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to usher in a new age of Islamist
regional power. Until now.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, we now know that American diplomats were well aware of
the direction Erdoğan intended to take his country. GlobalPost quotes
one leaked cable offering a pretty clear assessment: “Does all this mean that
the country is becoming more focused on the Islamist world and its Muslim
tradition in its foreign policy? Absolutely.”

“Shrugging off diplomatic-speak, American diplomats describe Turkish Prime
Minister Teyyip Erdogan as an outspoken Islamist and ‘perfectionist workaholic’
who may be seeking the creation of an Islamic state,” GlobalPost’s Iason
Athanasiadis reports.

And what of Turkey’s claims that part of its value to the West lies in its
ability to act as a productive intermediary between the U.S. and Iran? Nonsense,
as American diplomats found out. Athanasiadis once more:

Reports allege that, contrary to their claims, Turkish politicians cannot
[e]ffect changes in Iranian attitudes and that their country is being used as a
transit zone to smuggle dual-use materials into Iran for its controversial
nuclear program.

It would be one thing if our support for the Turkish Islamists were only
verbal. But that’s not the case. We are prepared to sell the Turks
the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. According to Michael
Rubin, this decision was made “without even reviewing the potential for
technology transfer.” He added that Obama was also considering putting an
early-warning missile radar — intended mainly as protection from Iranian
missiles — in Turkey.

And Erdoğan is not an isolated case. His network of Islamists includes
Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and current leader of the
opposition. Ibrahim is currently on trial for what his supporters say are
trumped-up charges of sodomy, and his powerful friends in the U.S., such as Al
Gore and Paul Wolfowitz, have stridently
defended him as a persecuted moderate Muslim who should serve as an example
of the kind of Islam the U.S. has been — and should be — promoting. Hillary
Clinton, in her role as secretary of state, requested a face-to-face meeting
with Anwar last month, and when it didn’t happen, she pressed the Malaysian
leadership privately and publicly on
Anwar’s behalf.

But Anwar is also an anti-Semite, complaining of Zionist
infiltration of state agencies and Israeli proxy control of police units. And
Anwar is a co-founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a
Muslim Brotherhood think-tank in Virginia that has called for violence against
Israel and has been under investigation by the FBI for the better part of a
decade for its ties to terrorist organizations.

Anwar also helped finance oil projects for Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan
al-Turabi, who is the leader of the National Islamic Front, a partner
organization to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turabi calls Anwar
a “fellow-student of his.” Anwar also serves on
the board of the Al Baraka Banking Group (ABG). ABG’s chairman is Shaikh
Saleh Abdullah Kamel, who, in the wake of 9/11, was sued for having “lent
material support to Al Qaeda and OBL (Osama bin Laden), aided and abetted others
who lent material support to Al Qaeda and OBL, and otherwise engaged in
racketeering activity in violation of the law,” according to the
complaint.

So perhaps we can give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he is not really
“disappointed” that the Muslim Brotherhood lost influence in Egypt. But we
should also note that such benefit of the doubt is getting to be increasingly
generous, for the president’s record of supporting Islamists is consistent and
troublesome, to say the least.

Seth Mandel is a freelance foreign affairs writer based in
Washington, D.C. Twitter:
@SethAMandel

Page Printed from:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/12/wikileaks_exposes_white_houses.html

at December 02, 2010 – 12:58:53 PM CST

//  

Hang the WikiLeakers for Treason

December 1st, 2010

Michael Reagan, FloydReports.com

If we had a  president in the White House who understood  that we are  at war with a  crazed faction of Islam, and was willing to  act on that  belief, there  would be no question about how we should deal  with  people who give aid  and comfort to the enemy — they’d be tried  for  treason and when found  guilty stood up before a firing squad.

Julian Assange and his  fellow conspirator Pvt. Bradley Manning   allegedly betrayed the United  States, gave aid and comfort to the   terrorists who seek to destroy the  United States, and if found guilty   they  deserve nothing less than death  sentences for their unspeakable   crimes.

Their pitifully lame  excuse that they were merely trying to provide   information to the  American people that was being improperly withheld   from them by the  government is on a par with Benedict Arnold’s claim   that he was merely  trying to inform the British on information the   American people believed  they deserved to have.

On the contrary, the public does not have  the right to know   everything — some information needs to be kept  secret if the public’s   safety is to be assured.  Consumers do not need  to know the gory   details of how sausage is made, nor do the people need  to be made aware   of all of the details of what is being done to protect  them.

Nobody ever demanded that those scientists engaged in  building the   atomic bomb that ended the war with Japan should do their  work openly   and share their secrets with the public, and nobody has the  right to   decide which secrets the public has a need to know.

The  release of these so-called WikiLeaks documents has put the   American  people at risk, as Secretary of State Clinton has said, and   the two  culprits deserve to be made to pay the price for their   treasonous  actions.

Pvt. Bradley Manning, the soldier who is alleged to have  illegally   obtained the documents, is already behind bars where, if  justice is to   be served, he will remain for the rest of his life.

Assange’s  punishment is yet to be determined, but it should be   equally as harsh,  if indeed he escapes the hangman’s noose, although he   should not.

Read more.

Criminal Leaks

 

Criminal Leaks

 

Posted By Rich
Trzupek On November 30, 2010 @ 12:47 am

When WikiLeaks
released hundreds of thousands of classified documents involving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in October, the Obama
administration condemned Julian Assange’s rogue organization for putting the
lives of the military personnel and important informants at risk. While the
alleged source of the leak, Pfc. Bradley Manning, was taken into custody, there
was no push for punitive action against WikiLeaks itself. Now Assange has
stepped over the line: he’s embarrassed the diplomatic corps and the
politicians behind it. Sunday’s release of over 250,000 State Department
documents sent the administration and politicians on both sides of the aisle into
a frenzy ^[1].

“This
disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy
interests. It is an attack on the international community — the alliances and
partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security
and advance economic prosperity,” Secretary of State Clinton said. White House
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the release “a crime,” and Attorney General
Eric Holder said the Justice Department had launched “an active, ongoing,
criminal investigation” into WikiLeaks activities.

Assange’s
willingness to disclose state secrets is reprehensible in any form. But, should
a peek into the misty backrooms of international diplomacy cause more outrage
than putting the lives of Americans serving in uniform, and the brave Iraqis
and Afghans who help them, at risk? Such is the world we live in and perhaps we
should be grateful, if the administration is finally serious about going after
WikiLeaks in some meaningful way. Representative Peter King suggested that
WikiLeaks should be designated a terror organization and, under the old rules,
it would be hard to argue against King’s point. The Bush Doctrine said that
anyone who knowingly harbors or aids terrorists would be treated as an enemy.
“You’re either with us or against us,” Bush said, and viewed through that
simple lens, there’s no doubt which side WikiLeaks comes out on. Unfortunately,
the Obama administration, parroting the progressive point of view, cannot abide
such a clear line of demarcation. The president has effectively added a third
category: you’re with us, you’re against us, or you’re a misguided soul engaged
in criminal mischief that might seem a little like terrorism but really
shouldn’t be handled that way.

Yet, labeling
this latest document dump a crime is at least a step in the right direction for
this administration, although hoping to drag Assange and his cronies into court
falls far short of the kind of aggressive action needed to end the national
security threat that WikiLeaks represents. It is perhaps more interesting to
consider what about this particular round of disclosures caused the administration
to up the ante. Could it be that many
of the documents ^[2] reveal that the Obama administration is
inept and disingenuous when it comes to managing foreign affairs?

We now know, for example, that the Obama administration put pressure on
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop arms shipments to Hezbollah. Assad
promised action, but delivered none, and Hezbollah continues to grow in power
as a result. We also know that Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, who is very worried
about what would happen in the region if Iran
gets the bomb, urged the president to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. On the
other hand, the documents confirm what has long been an open-secret: that
wealthy Saudis remain the chief financiers of Sunni jihadists, including
al-Qaeda.

America’s tenuous, troubling
relationship with China is also revealed in
the documents. In late December 2009, Internet powerhouse Google
was the target ^[3] of a massive and sophisticated cyber-attack.
Google said that the purpose of the attack was to gather information about
Chinese dissidents and their supporters. Neither Google nor the United States government was
inclined to identify the source of the attack. The identity of the perpetrator
seemed rather obvious, for who else but the Chinese government would be
motivated to take the time to develop malware that went after such a narrow,
particular target? Independent web security firms like VeriSign’s iDefense
definitively concluded that China was to blame, but the
administration dithered and the press largely ignored the story. We now know
that the Obama administration was fully aware that China went after Google and
that the administration deliberately chose to ignore the attack, presumably out
of fear of offending our huge trading partner.

It also
appears, according
to some Internet experts ^[4], that the United States narrowly averted
disaster this summer when a targeted, Stuxnet-like virus originating in China was caught and
disabled before it could do damage to our nation’s
industrial infrastructure. This was yet another story that quietly
disappeared within the haze of diplomacy, even though the consequences of the
virus’s success would have been truly catastrophic.

WikiLeaks thus remains a most dangerous enemy. Julian Assange’s
determination to publish every bit of classified information he can lay his
hands on endangers both the West’s ability to combat terror and America’s
efforts to use the subtleties of diplomacy to coax erstwhile enemies into
action. Which agenda is more important is a matter of opinion. But, there can
be little doubt that WikiLeaks, if left unchecked, will continue to upset the
global order in a world dominated by a single superpower. How America
deals with WikiLeaks, or doesn’t deal with it, may well define the Obama
administration’s legacy when it comes to the continuing war on terror.

---

Article
printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to
article: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/11/30/criminal-leaks/

URLs in this
post:

[1] into a
frenzy: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/29/administration-vows-crack-leaks-document-dump/

[2] many of
the documents: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

[3] Google
was the target: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/29/wikileaks-dump-reveals-ch_n_789042.html

[4]
according to some Internet experts: http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/01/researchers-identify-command-servers-behind-google-attack.ars

 

Serious Questions about the Obama Administration’s Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco

by Sarah Palin on Monday, November 29, 2010 at 12:17pm

We all applaud the successful thwarting of the Christmas-Tree Bomber and hope our government continues to do all it can to keep us safe. However, the latest round of publications of leaked classified U.S. documents through the shady organization called Wikileaks raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.

 

First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a “journalist,” any more than the “editor” of al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a “journalist.” He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

 

What if any diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on NATO, EU, and other allies to disrupt Wikileaks’ technical infrastructure? Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle Wikileaks? Were individuals working for Wikileaks on these document leaks investigated? Shouldn’t they at least have had their financial assets frozen just as we do to individuals who provide material support for terrorist organizations?

 

Most importantly, serious questions must also be asked of the U.S. intelligence system. How was it possible that a 22-year-old Private First Class could get unrestricted access to so much highly sensitive information? And how was it possible that he could copy and distribute these files without anyone noticing that security was compromised?

 

The White House has now issued orders to federal departments and agencies asking them to take immediate steps to ensure that no more leaks like this happen again. It’s of course important that we do all we can to prevent similar massive document leaks in the future. But why did the White House not publish these orders after the first leak back in July? What explains this strange lack of urgency on their part?

 

We are at war. American soldiers are in Afghanistan fighting to protect our freedoms. They are serious about keeping America safe. It would be great if they could count on their government being equally serious about that vital task.

 

- Sarah Palin

Wikileaks and the sabotage of U.S. diplomacy

By Michelle Malkin  •  November 29, 2010 08:29 AM

No American should take joy, pleasure, or satisfaction from the untold, devastating ways in which the coordinated Wikileaks document dump of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables — nearly half of which are “secret” or “classified”– has undermined U.S. diplomacy.

Here’s the left-wing Guardian of London crowing that its publication of the cables has “sparked a global diplomatic crisis.”

For those of you catching up after the holidays, Allahpundit at Hot Air has the most thorough coverage and analysis of the developing story here. Key passage on the anti-American agenda driving the leaks, the transnationalist left’s use of the “hypocrisy” card, and the cowardly, selective publication of our diplomatic communications versus other nations:

The aim, transparently, is to embarrass the target, but since that’s too petty a reason to justify so vicious a tactic, the exposure is unfailingly dressed up as some sort of high-minded attempt to make the target “live by his principles.” If you take this argument seriously, any confidential communication between government officials should be fair game for leaking so long as it somehow contradicts or questions, however glancingly, state policy. (Hypocrisy!) But of course, they’re not limiting publication to only those documents that undermine official State Department positions; as noted above in the context of Turkey’s foreign minister, a lot of this stuff will simply be bits of intelligence about various international actors and speculation about their motives. Nothing “hypocritical” about it — but mighty embarrassing. In fact, there’s nothing “hypocritical” about arguably the biggest revelation thus far, the report of North Korea shipping missiles to Iran. That sort of cooperation goes straight back to Bush’s “axis of evil” speech; theories about collaboration between the two are a staple of proliferation analyses. There’s no U.S. government “lie” that needs to be exposed there, in other words. It’s simply a case of Wikileaks trying to weaken America’s hand by revealing some of the cards that it’s holding. (emphasis added)

Two other points. One: Note that they don’t say they wouldn’t have published the documents if the crucial hypocrisy component was missing. On the contrary, in their sonorous meditation about George Washington, [the Guardian editors] suggest that they would have done so anyway even though the damage to U.S. interests would have been greatly diminished. That’s further evidence that it’s confidentiality itself that they object to, not hypocrisy, and it follows Simon Jenkins’s lead in ignoring the usual balancing act when weighing the merits of a leak between the sensitivity of the information and the public’s interest in knowing about it. Wikileaks would have you believe that confidential government communications are so inherently anti-democratic that exposing them is virtually always in the public interest, no matter what collateral damage might result. No country in the world has ever followed that standard and no country ever will. (emphasis added) Two: To the extent that they do take the hypocrisy standard seriously, does that mean that less democratic nations aren’t fair game for leaks because, hey, at least they’re living by their principles? Wikileaks’s lack of interest to date in revealing state secrets of, say, China is mighty conspicuous given that cracking Beijing’s culture of secrecy would be a far greater intel coup than publishing U.S. diplomatic cables and might even have major political repercussions for the Chinese regime. But then, China isn’t “hypocritical,” you see. And of course China also isn’t likely to tolerate damaging leaks like this the way liberal western nations are…

Many Foggy Bottom officials have proven feckless under both GOP and Democrat administrations. Hillary Clinton’s “smart power” deserved mockery, for sure. But whatever microscopic kernel of constructive criticism may have motivated the Wikileakers and their abettors is galactically outweighed by the destructive sabotage of secure diplomatic communications.

The America-haters would have us unilaterally disarm diplomatically under the guise of the “public’s right to know.” This is suicide.

Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini described the consequences for the world:

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, on a trip to Qatar, said he did not know the content of the files to be released but warned they would “blow up the relationship of trust between states”, according to Italian news agencies.

“It will be the September 11th of world diplomacy,” he said.

Pay attention to which of our enemies, foreign and domestic, are dancing in the streets.

***

State defends itself:

At their Foggy Bottom headquarters, State has set up an internal working group that is working in shifts around the clock, “monitoring the situation and supporting our senior staff and embassies around the world,” the official said. “We follow the same process whenever a major event occurs.”

Specifically, the cables show that U.S. diplomats in New York were asked to collect Biographic and biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats. Separate cables disclosed on Sunday show that U.S. diplomats overseas were asked for specific reporting on officials from the Palestinian territories, Paraguay, Bulgaria, and Africa’s Great Lakes region.

The State Department officials emphasized to The Cable the distinction between diplomats who collect information as part of a wide range of duties and intelligence personnel, who have a singular and specific mission. The official also argued that other countries do the same thing and that the intelligence gathered by U.S. diplomats also benefits Washington’s allies.

“Information collection is something that diplomats of every country do every day. These areas of particular interest, they’re not just ours,” the official said. “This is information that’s of use to us, and to our allies and friends with whom we’re trying to solve regional and global challenges.”

“We’re not asking our diplomats to do anything substantially different from what they’ve been doing for eons,” the official continued. “Every diplomat and mission around the world is doing the same thing.”

***
J.E. Dyer on media glee:

A free press has often meant an adversarial press, and that in itself is not inherently bad. But an adversarial posture is justified by the constructiveness of its goals. There is a noticeably sophomoric element in the mainstream media’s cooperation with WikiLeaks: an indiscriminate enthusiasm for anything that’s being kept secret by the authorities, regardless of its objective value as information.

…The worth of the latest WikiLeaks dump is greater than zero — and greater even than its value in notifying us about Qaddafi’s voluptuous Ukrainian nurse. Its true value lies in confirming what hawks and conservatives have been saying about global security issues. China’s role in missile transfers from North Korea to Iran; Syria’s determined arming of Hezbollah; Iran’s use of Red Crescent vehicles to deliver weapons to terrorists; Obama’s strong-arming of foreign governments to accept prisoners from Guantanamo — these are things many news organizations are reporting prominently only because they have been made known through a WikiLeaks dump. In the end, WikiLeaks’s most enduring consequences may be the unintended ones