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Everything is interconnected. In some disciplines and particularly in hard sciences that is rather an obvious and therefore useless statement than a secret. But in the area I have been trained—literature, but I could use general terms like art or simply culture—the same obvious statement is often forgotten or decisively denied. The academic studies of culture and even sometimes the very products of high culture—poetry, philosophy, art—ignore, both purposely and accidentally, the connection between their abstractions and the riddle of power. Due to a good reason, though: the abstract thinking that rules high culture and the specificity of the academic studies of culture demand focusing. There is no room here for an extended explanation of this point, so I will be satisfied with the words copied from a letter of Maurice Blanchot, a radical writer of the kind that embraces its own isolation by creating a sort of exclusive language: “One [of the two impulses of a writer] is the passion, the realization, and the speech of the whole in dialectical accomplishment”, he says: the prosecution, the chase—that is what it is—of the whole.

The US president orders the assassination of a US citizen without a trial. The Canadian prime minister signs Canada up for another three plus years of war, after explicit promises not to, and says he does not have to ask parliament. The Swedish justice system, in full view of the eyes of the world, railroads a private foreign citizen through a kangaroo court with no due process. What on earth is going on, you may ask, if you haven’t been paying attention.

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On November 10th 2010 the Yale Daily Newspaper published an article by Alex Hawke, Berkeley College sophomore - a prior US Department of Defence supervisor "...for all interrogation and intelligence operations on Camp Cropper's High Value Detention Facility in Baghdad, Iraq."

Alex's article,'Protect our warriors - keep their secrets' was published as a reply to Jonathan Edwards College sophomore Rory Marsh's article entitled 'Thank you, Wikileaks.'

It comes as no surprise that when a previous US Department of Defense supervisor "...for all interrogation and intelligence operations on Camp Cropper's High Value Detention Facility in Baghdad, Iraq" - such as Alex Hawke - writes in to a student newspaper - the kids may be a little bit nervous about writing back.

But frankly I appreciate my democratic rights far too much to let Alex's claims stand unchallenged.

Anyway, here's my personal letter of response:

Oh. Hi Alex.

What a surprise to find a previous US Department of Defense supervisor "...for all interrogation and intelligence operations on Camp Cropper's High Value Detention Facility in Baghdad, Iraq..." writing for a student newspaper!

What a score for the Yale Daily Newspaper to get a first-hand account of your version of events...and what a dubious honour for your professors and fellow students to have you in their classrooms.

You see, Alex, not everyone agrees with your rose-tinted version of the US war in Iraq...and your opinions on Wikileaks.

To start, let's examine your claim that: "...professionals can use information published by Wikileaks "... to gain the advantage to kill our soldiers and undermine our [US] strategy."

A Seminar on  Document Forensics and Empirical Journalism
Julian Assange

Anyone who does not believe the global community is governed by symbol and metaphor is a complete dork. Case in point: Wiki-leaks, Julian Assange and Western Narrative. The western narrative makers have been in a flurry of late, painting Julian Assange and by extension, Wiki-leaks as the evil overlords of all that is abhorrent. From the metaphorical “blood on his hands” to allegations of rape and molestation, our hesiodic tale weavers have created a web 2.0 version of a Goldstein, a Red, a Dirty Devil.

Watch how Ny won't answer the key question. This is going into an article of ours shortly.
(Note: the link has a better transcript; this copy wasn't properly proofread and will be fixed later.)
http://rixstep.com/1/20101119,02.shtml

The ongoing saga of Sweden's persecution of Julian Assange. Updated (1).

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Image courtesy of melodysk

Regarding the US Senate panel passes bill against piracy websites article

Today the US Senate Senate Judiciary Committee has passed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act bill on a 19-0 vote. The bill is designed to give Washington more power over foreign websites, essentially allowing the Obama administration to compile a blacklist of sites they do not want the American public to access.

Although the bill is intended for use against online pirates and illegal file-sharing services like Limewire and ThePirateBay, there are little provisions protecting any website from the ire of the government's magical eraser. Sadly, the cynicism in me projects that this bill will be abused of its substantial power, allowing the American government to ban sites that leaves a bitter taste in its mouth. With America holding big influential powers to other countries, a domino effect could soon occur whereby other governments would create their own censorship law.

It is not too far-fetched to assume that Wikileaks would promptly be added to this said blacklist. You want Big Brother? They don't even need a court order to shut a domain down.

The Internet is hailed as a cornerstone for free speech, allowing anyone's voice, not matter how small, to have a global presence and impact. This may no longer be the case for America, an ironic twist for the land of the free.

On Thursday 18 November 2010 @wikileaks said:

Why our editor-in-chief is busy and needs to be defended

Thursday November 18, 2010

STAFF EDITORIAL

In October 2010 Julian Assange won the Sam Adams Award for Integrity. He has also been awarded the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award and the Economist Index on Censorship Award in 2008. It is important to remember that accolades such as these do come without tremendous hard work.

The expose of the Afghan War Diaries was a moment of media history, orchestrated by Julian Assange. He brought together The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, three of the world’s most reputable newspapers to collaborate with WikiLeaks on exposing more than 90 000 secret significant action reports by the United States relating to the war in Afghanistan. This involved a huge amount of administration in order to co-ordinate all four media partners’ publishing schedules and a lot of time to carefully construct the levels of trust needed to bring together three major newspapers who were also competitors.

Since 2007 Julian, WikiLeaks and the Sunshine Press have been behind international front page stories that have changed the world. However, every story exposing abuses by powerful organizations, whether they be from New York or Nairobi results in a counter attack. Such the importance and veracity of revelations must be defended. Immediately after the Afghan War Diaries he conducted seventy-six interviews in three days maximizing the impact of the disclosures. It is very important for WikiLeaks to create a global platform with which to reach all corners of the earth. This demonstrates to those who wish to expose wrongdoing and misconduct that there is a way to do so without putting themselves at risk. He remains a messenger who big governments and their agencies can, and constantly do, attack while all the time keeping the source of the information published safe.

via: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71l2t1

On Thursday 18th November 2010, @wikileaks said:

Statement by Julian Assange's counsel Mark Stephens

Finers Stephens Innocent http://www.fsilaw.com

LONDON, 1pm Thursday November 18, 2010

On the morning of 21 August 2010, my client, Julian Assange, read in the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen that there was a warrant out for his arrest relating to allegations of “rape” involving two Swedish women.

However, even the substance of the allegations, as revealed to the press through unauthorized disclosures do not constitute what any advanced legal system considers to be rape; as various media outlets have reported “the basis for the rape charge” purely seems to constitute a post-facto dispute over consensual, but unprotected sex days after the event. Both women have declared that they had consensual sexual relations with our client and that they continued to instigate friendly contact well after the alleged incidents. Only after the women became aware of each other’s relationships with Mr. Assange did they make their allegations against him.

The warrant for his arrest was rightly withdrawn within 24 hours by Chief prosecutor Eva Finne, who found that there was no “reason to suspect that he has committed rape." Yet his name had already been deliberately and unlawfully disclosed to the press by Swedish authorities. The “rape” story was carried around the world and has caused Mr. Assange and his organization irreparable harm.

Eva Finne’s decision to drop the “rape" investigation was reversed after the intervention of a political figure, Claes Borgstrom, who is now acting for the women. The case was given to a specific prosecutor, Marianne Ny.

This may be over the top: but, well, that is what I am good at. Feel free to use this in anyway you deem fit. It was directly inspired by the "Persecution" statement.

The Rule of Law is falling away (and the Rule of Custom is emerging).

At least, as We have understood the Rule of Law, in the context of the formal administrative systems of Nation States.

It seems to be happening at different rates in different parts of the World, depending on media, especially social media, saturation.

There is a Singularity at Hand. It is a confluence of events. Global economic collapse. Exposure of the United States as the New Nazi madmen. The US regime's petulant, and delusional response.

When War Crimes happen, My United States is in the Front Row to Prosecute, not to Perpetrate them.

I am in a unique position. I was a dissident military journalist and my stridence followed me for years, during which I patiently took notes.

I published my findings in December 2005 http://bit.ly/PAearth .

So I don't really feel constrained or chilled in any way by the Obama administration's policies, myopic though they may be, as a normal 9-5, or especially an embedded journalist might.

Who am I?

I publish the dcmDaily and a group of other newspapers http://bit.ly/dcmDailyGroup .

My backstory is at http://bit.ly/PAearth .

I've done reporting, analysis, and curation of source materials at http://bit.ly/dcmNSA .

I was trained in Journalism at the Department of Defense Information School in 1975.

I wrote an opinion column for OsOpinion from 2000-2002.

I was recently ignored by the White House when I asked a simple question http://bit.ly/WLdr3d .

I just released a documentary film Collateral War Crimes http://bit.ly/CWCShort and I publish the dcmDaily Group of newspapers http://bit.ly/dcmDailyGroup

The news cycle is a battlefield of screams and murmurs. High-stakes PR wars are being fought before our very eyes and we are none the wiser. Careful calibration of lies is big business. The uninitiated can get a taste here: http://www.crikey.com.au/spinning-the-media/

Since August 2010, an oft-repeated chant echoing from the White House, and more recently from the Australian government, is that Wikileaks has already caused the deaths of troops and civilians alike simply by publishing the classified material they had received.

Wanting once to escape from a world where curiosity was no virtue, I made a circuitous approach to philosophy and higher learning. It was only gradually clear to me what universities were for. It seems I come late to most things in life. As late as my early 20s I felt as if my choices were informed by a body of knowledge constrained at its edges not only by my own ignorance, but by ignorance of the true extent of that ignorance. Understanding, for me, requires a grasp of the global to inform the local. The global was inadequately catered for in my education, as they prepared me for being useful to my economy. I wonder now what sort of awareness it was that I had then.

Intuitively then I knew that newspapers and television were no source of knowledge, and that neither was the conventional wisdom that informed all our guesses as to the nature of things the other side of the planet. I could speak on nothing with confidence, because it felt as if all that I knew was derived from hearsay and speculation, though it came from Organs of Truth that sufficed for most. Comfortable truths were never very comfortable for me, and sometimes I hated the casualness with which others repeated them, the cause for their ubiquity. It seemed like a conspiracy of wretchedness in which we all got to play a part.

Utne Reader has named Julian Assange as one of 25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.

The rise of WikiLeaks comes at a crucial time, when daily and alternative newspapers-the traditional vehicles for exposing wrongdoing in government and business-are gutting newsrooms, disassembling costly investigative teams, and refocusing on profit. "When I look at the next ten years, investigative reporting is going to die in corporate settings," Nick Penniman of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund recently told Columbia Journalism Review.

For decades we in North America have watched anything intelligent viewed with deep suspicion. From high school clichés, to ‘charisma’ politicians, the mainstream has marginalized the intelligentsia.

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"The basis of democracy is freedom of speech"
- Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung Sun Suu Ki upon release from 15 years of house arrest

A few weeks ago I shrugged off Saturday night plans to meet up with a couple other local media geeks and techheads.

Earlier that day WikiLeaks had published 391,832 leaked U.S. military documents, detailing the deaths of 109,032 people during the Iraq War.

More evidence proving that WikiLeaks has been attempting to secure the Pentagon's cooperation in redacting names - exactly as Assange has been explaining - while the Pentagon has been issuing multiple false denials of these facts. By Glenn Greenwald.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/wikileaks/

'I realize that it shouldn't, but it nonetheless does still amazes me when I listen to professional political commentators make factual assertions without having the slightest idea or concern for whether they're actually true.' By Glenn Greenwald.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/24/wikileaks/

This is how the US government and media jointly disseminate propaganda: in the immediate wake of some newsworthy War on Terror event, US government officials (usually anonymous) make wild and reckless - though unverifiable - claims. The US media mindlessly trumpet them around the world without question or challenge. The claims become consecrated as widely accepted fact. And then weeks, months, or years later, they get quietly exposed as being utter falsehoods, by which point it does not matter because the goal is already well-achieved: the falsehoods are ingrained as accepted truth.