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Wikileaks - The Last Word
Ghaith Abdul Ahad breathes a breath of minty fresh air into the fetid Wikileaks debate. It was kind of obviously really; everyone was arguing about Pakistan's links to the Taliban, the Pakistanis denied it, the Pakistani media complained, the British PM slapped Pakistan around publicly in India, the Americans said it was OK, the Pakistanis were behaving much better now. The only people who didn't get a say in it all were the Taliban. Until Ghaith went and asked them.
"Pakistan's ongoing support of the Afghan Taliban is anything but news to insurgents who have spoken to NEWSWEEK. Requesting anonymity for security reasons, many of them readily admit their utter dependence on the country's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) not only for sanctuary and safe passage but also, some say, for much of their financial support. The logistics officer, speaking at his mud-brick compound near the border, offers an unverifiable estimate that Pakistan provides roughly 80 percent of the insurgents' funding, based on his conversations with other senior Taliban. He says the insurgents could barely cover their expenses in Kandahar province alone if not for the ISI. Not that he views them as friends. "They feed us with one hand and arrest and kill us with the other," he says."
To me, this is even better than delicious irony (a phrase I've been bandying about on twitter quite a lot recently). This is practically sublime. Wikileaks is the media world readjusting itself to the decline of investigative news media. But the only way to add context and any semblance of authentication to the raw, undigested field reports turns out to be good, old fashioned, contact-working, field reporting.
Read the whole thing. It's a rare bit of what reporting is supposed to be about.
PS: Has Ghaith left the Guardian?
[Abu Muqawama here. I think Ghaith merely took the picture for this report. The article was written, it appears by some guy named Ron Moreau. Readers may not be aware that Ghaith got his start as a photojournalist and still has a talented eye.]
Londonstani: Ah, right you are. Good on Ron Moreau. Good on Ghaith for the photo too. The minty breath praise goes to Ron. Not come across his stuff before, but I'm a big fan of this artilcle.
Wikileaks is the media world
Wikileaks is the media world readjusting itself to the decline of investigative news media.
this is true.
but Wikileaks et al have an agenda which is counter to yours.....they want to stop the war, which they perceive as unjust, unwinnable and immoral.
And they are True Believers, which means they can't be bought off with delicious favored access like oldschool media.
And they won't follow your rules.
This is hardly the "Last Word" on Wikileaks.
This is only the beginning.
"That illustrates a central
"That illustrates a central point, Taliban say: the only thing Pakistan can be relied on for is a single-minded pursuit of its own national interest."
I wish the ISI was in charge of DC.
Engage directly with the people: to what end? BTW Washington is averse to engaging directly with their own people.
Ever see our Town Hall meetings? They're just not that into us.....
Wikileaks is the
Wikileaks is the International Left meets the Internet. Their only true belief is causing mischief, throwing temper tantrums, shaking their fists at reality. Eternal Bratty children animated by the soul of Nero.
But if they won't be bought off, fine. There's the currency that existed before money.
Force. I think most of them were never spanked as children. Lets see how No-Jaw Assange can take a punch.
Wikileaks is a joke - as
Wikileaks is a joke - as John Young of Cryptome pointed out when first approached, their methodology matches that of snake oil salesmen, pols and spies. Their only value to the real analyst is in tracking current state-corporate propaganda efforts - as in, "Look what the talking monkey said today. Who fed it that bullshit?" I think it was British MI6, since the product dovetailed so nicely with Cameron's comments on Pakistan to an Indian audience - and they've been leaking CIA documents, too, but nothing from MI6. It's nothing but a front operation, in any case.
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/06/wikileaks_review.html
I read the article, and it's very good but it doesn't really reveal much about Taliban financing. The money may come from drug sales that elements of the ISI are involved in (quite similar to the CIA's role in Central America in the 1980s, funding the Contras with cocaine deals), or there may be a significant flow of cash from Gulf Arab petrodollars (ultimately supplied by American and European consumers).
This is why the U.S. government wouldn't back Massoud, isn't it? Too independent, too committed to the Afghanistan people, not a puppet or a tool they could command. Don't they understand that Pakistan has the same attitude today towards the Taliban that they had towards the Contras in the 1980s? National self-determination is not the goal of neocolonialist British-America foreign policy, in any case. The goal there is to ensure that BP gets its hands on Iraqi oil, isn't it? On to Rumaila! Yes, that neo-colonialism - not post-colonialism, AbuM. Neo-colonialism. Like neo-con. Or neo-Nazi.
Regardless, one of the few solid conclusions to be obtained from all this is that any efforts to resolve the India-Pakistan issues will go a long way towards settling things down in Afghanistan - but look at Cameron, it's like he's trying to drive a wedge between India and Pakistan, and inflame the situation to greater levels, isn't it?
Old colonial habits die hard, it seems - or maybe Cameron is working with the neocons in an effort to destabilize the region even more?
"Lets see how No-Jaw Assange
"Lets see how No-Jaw Assange can take a punch."
heh
the next punch is coming from Assange.
i think it will be the Garani massacre video myself.
admit it wiki-elf, you are on the ropes.
watch COIN fundage dry up like a mirage oasis in the sahra.
I don't care if COIN funding
I don't care if COIN funding dries up. It's not my income. At all. It is my taxe$. I'm part of the half that pays.
I'm curious. Any particular reason you can't seem to form a correct sentence? If it's not the spelling, it's the punctuation or grammar. Or made up words like "fundage". Is this part of sticking it to the man? The man who no doubt is paying for your edumuhkation vacation?
what do you guyz want? sit
what do you guyz want?
sit around here and tell each other campfire tales about how great the war is going?
pretend real hard and maybe COIN will magically start working?
play your fucked up version of RL table top in Af-Pak and wargame your fake solutions?
Wikileaks and the New Media are simply not going to let you do that.
lawl @ Elf, its l33tspk,
lawl @ Elf, its l33tspk, from txting & gaming.
and i don't have to speel.....im a math/physics major.
:)
Rabia - or is it Robbie? -
Rabia - or is it Robbie? - you're as much of a clown-fraud as Assange is... my guess is you're part of a neocon effort to run up "Sharia Law is Coming to the U.S." themes - isn't that what Newt Gingrich was harping on lately? An effort to stir up the dipshit base, isn't it? Neocons - all the same. Here's an appopritate quote for you, from a past American Vice President (look up his name yourself):
“The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money and more power. "
You know how that works, right, Robbie?
"They claim to be superpatriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjugation”
That's the real agenda of these human shrimp, isn't it? As for why wikileaks is a bogus front operation that fits this profile, there are numerous examples - here, read this from FAS:
A telling comparison can be made between WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq Apache helicopter attack video last April and The New Yorker’s publication of the Abu Ghraib abuse photographs in an article by Seymour Hersh in May 2004. Both disclosures involved extremely graphic and disturbing images. Both involved unreleased or classified government records. And both generated a public sensation. But there the similarity ends. The Abu Ghraib photos prompted lawsuits, congressional hearings, courts martial, prison sentences, declassification initiatives, and at least indirectly a revision of U.S. policy on torture and interrogation. By contrast, the WikiLeaks video tendentiously packaged under the title “Collateral Murder” produced none of that...
The real future of American democracy - whether it turns to fascism - will depend on the outcome of efforts to chop the private contracting budget for military services like intelligence. If these reform efforts all fail, then corporate fascism is clearly the order of the day, with all the nastiness that entails. That's the real neocon agenda, don't forget - the overthrow of democracy and the institution of rule-by-decree.
Unfortunately, it looks like the corporate press is going along with the fascists - ignoring the WaPo expose in favor of the Wikileaks bull certainly fits that bill.
Ummm.....OK. Then please
Ummm.....OK. Then please leave war to the war majors. Have a nice day.
"OK. Then please leave war
"OK. Then please leave war to the war majors."
i will if you war pimps stop lying and fucking up.
i don't think Assange and the True Believers are going to stop though.
And im a liberal.
The biological basis of political affiliation.
OT question Is there any
OT question
Is there any comparable blog here at CNAS, debating China policy?
I'm a little freaked by AEP's recent article.
I have found some related CNAS stuff, but no blog.
Rabi'a al-Adiwyya.... What's
Rabi'a al-Adiwyya.... What's Gxmx M/R = mx Vesc2 / 2 ???
Google it or use a search engine you're a intellectual pussy. Math and Physics major... Blah! I smell bullshit.
I bet you're good a computer language BS Rabi'a ...UNIX, LINUX etc.... I smell something like a University of Maryland Graduate...you're part-time hacker and you're probably already red flagged.... I bet you're into the 420, you're a LPR - Legal Permanent Resident and ICE / FBI is just waiting for you to F-ck Up so they can deport your ass, after you get ass-raped in a federal lock-up for a year.
Daddy is probably a wealthy NEA Government Official or Businessman. You're definitely not a duel citizen. I hope your cell-mate fists you with his wristwatch on and when you get deported, they air drop you without a parachute. :-)
Can we please have specific,
Can we please have specific, dedicated threads where Rabia, Elf and Mencius (and the anonymous, logorrheic, gay-obsessed contributor) can show off their mad rhetorical skillz to each other, while the rest of us can modestly keep focused on actual issues on other threads?
I know, I can just ignore them, but almost every thread in the last few days has been turned into a troll-counter-troll-fest. More valuable commenters may well have been put off commenting by the constant screeching. It's just ruining the "experience", as the kids say.
To Visiteur du Matin,
To Visiteur du Matin, Chagrin: It's called "don't feed the trolls."
Rabia especially is your garden-variety attention-seeking troll. If ignored, these types will always get bored and move on. In a month or two, trolling some other site.
But as long as people give them the attention they crave, you're just going to have to live with them.
You could always skip their posts. Though, it's true that the comments on this blog have become an open sewer ever since Rabia started posting here and, in a strange internet version of Say's Law, most of the intelligent, knowledgable posters (of whatever opinion, pro/con/"other") have long since left.
Truesay. Rabia even had the
Truesay.
Rabia even had the dramatic faux departure "I'm leaving forever, bye" post. Usually for trolls that means leaving a site for a week. In her case it was a few days.
No, trolls are like syphilus - once you have it, it's hard to treat it.
EX, WHY did it take the
EX,
WHY did it take the Pentagon / DoD 8 + Days, to get on TV and publicly ask Wiki-leaks to return our stolen property?
Actually, why they wait till now? Why not ask back when DCIS arrested Army Pfc. Bradley Manning? Why the delay?
Doesn't make sense that DoD would wait till now to contact Wiki-leaks. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt and ask nicely?
On a side note, if we did receive the documents back, there is a larger problem. Wiki-Leaks computers and servers had this information loaded up onto them.
http://www.dss.mil/ is tasked with the job of data sensitization. DoD 5220.22-M is sometimes cited as a standard for sensitization to counter data remanence. The Defense Security Service provides a Clearing and Sensitization Matrix (C&SM) which does specify methods, so if Wiki-Leaks did cooperated and said they would return the documents, DoD would still have or ask Wiki-Leaks to destroy all their computers.
As of the June 2007 edition of the DSS C&SM, overwriting is no longer acceptable for sensitization of magnetic media; only degaussing or physical destruction is acceptable.
Break out your sledgehammers Wiki-Leaks or we can assume some act of sabotage will take place.
(((
((( http://youtu.be/results?search_query=wikileaks ))) Yearn for all countries is that the President could survive the bad and cruel hope that one day America to save the president of all America all head to a hundred years ago were now bad presidemt …. this music for people chile tobe but Chile is now in all countries Anthem is to save people’s freedom even in Iran before the Iranian leader and the anthem was translated into Persian. God help people to save America from the President that the ruthless oppression of all countries ((( http://youtu.be/watch?v=_uCC-venMtU ))) قبل از ورود امام خمینی به ایران به فارسی ترجمه وسروده شد بانام ((بر پا خیز از جا کن بنای کاخ دشمن ))…………. امید است روزی در کشور امریکا خوانده شود تا تمام کشورهای جهان از شر رئسای جمهر منفور امریکا نجات یابند. …..با تشکر از مردم کشور شیلی ……… سروش رسانه " حسن قاسمی اریان ".
(((
((( http://youtu.be/results?search_query=wikileaks ))) Yearn for all countries is that the President could survive the bad and cruel hope that one day America to save the president of all America all head to a hundred years ago were now bad presidemt …. this music for people chile tobe but Chile is now in all countries Anthem is to save people’s freedom even in Iran before the Iranian leader and the anthem was translated into Persian. God help people to save America from the President that the ruthless oppression of all countries ((( http://youtu.be/watch?v=_uCC-venMtU ))) قبل از ورود امام خمینی به ایران به فارسی ترجمه وسروده شد بانام ((بر پا خیز از جا کن بنای کاخ دشمن ))…………. امید است روزی در کشور امریکا خوانده شود تا تمام کشورهای جهان از شر رئسای جمهر منفور امریکا نجات یابند. …..با تشکر از مردم کشور شیلی ……… سروش رسانه " حسن قاسمی اریان ".
What a bunch of sick puppies!
What a bunch of sick puppies! Get a life!
The Afghan war will only end when the US gets the hell out. It's been a waste of lives and billions of dollars...We learn nothing from history, and the USA keeps saying that somehow it will get better, etc. Enough already!
Wikileaks last word.. Tiptop
Wikileaks last word.. Tiptop :)
I recently came across your
I recently came across your site and have been reading many posts of yours. I just thought I'd add a fast comment and let you know that you have got a seriously nice blog. I'll watch out for updates from you!
I must say i like many of
I must say i like many of your articles, could i use part of your posts to my blog site? regards.
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