WIKILEAKS - is only playing catchup to CRYPTOME and the NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE

Julian Assange is less a "renegade" and more of a Hero than the editorialists will ever admit. Unlike most of those who cultivate celebrity or notoriety, Assange reads books, and literature informs his private thoughts as well as the essential work he does as the Editor-in-Chief of WIKILEAKS. He read Kafka and was ready for arrest and isolation in a London dungeon. He's read Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTYFOUR and because he also reads history he fears for human destiny. His self-described mission is save us from the daily avalanche of deception which is burying us all. Assange and his cohorts cry out to any who still have ears, guiding us as we struggle and claw our way to blue sky and the promise of pure air.

Julian Assange as Guy Fawkes - this demo was in Madrid. His Spanish supporters did understand the Gunpowder Plot metaphor and the significance of the British Crown throwing an Australian into solitary confinement, while U.S. government prosecutors scramble to concoct excuses for a legal lynching.

Not long before Assange began the controlled release of U.S. State Departments documents in November, he teased an interviewer playfully with the old rhyme "Remember , remember the 5th of November" which refers to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. [Read the well written and illustrated account of it HERE. ] Assange knows very well that Fawkes failed 400 years ago. The plotters were crushed by the Crown, and then mocked by generations of pressmen more loyal to Parliament than to their paying readers.

The Crown constantly sought to deny information to the public by controlling media, and that tradition never died out. (CRTC for you and me!) Modern censorship has deep roots. For example, in 1663 Sir Roger L'Estrange became the King's Surveyor of the Press and he relished the work. What he wrote about the riff raff of his own time still applies to you and I. Sir Roger on newspaper publishing: "I think it makes the Multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatic and censorious, and gives them not only an itch but a kind of colorable right and license to be meddling with the government." As newspapers disappear, and are replaced by news and information websites, we must decide the level of control and manipulation we will tolerate in our lives. If Julian Assange was a Canadian passport holder the chorus of Opposition MPs and TV network Allstars would rival the din of a pack of lovesick coyotes.

.

All of this invites the obvious question - Where are Canada's Info-Anarchists? Do they even exist? We have legions of Winston Smith's in Ottawa "weeding" and "redacting" federal records, but probably not a one who has the gumption to do what U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning did. Not one.

Long before the conception of WIKILEAKS there were plenty of courageous Americans and Europeans willing to web-publish secret government files, some of them won through ATIP research and others delivered by anonymous email. The campus based National Security Archive is a prime example. I've been following NSA since 1994, the year I first surfed the Net on dialup. One of the books NSA published in the 1990s was WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL (1995). It contained the emails of two American Presidents, which are in fact a PUBLIC RECORD. Sadly, we may never read its Canadian equivalent PARLIAMENTARY E-MAIL. (The office emails of a Prime Minister, a Premier and a Mayor, are PUBLIC PROPERTY but who in this country has read any?) John Young's CRYPTOME site in New York also performs heroic service and I am a devoted fan of his excellent work. Young was asked to participate in setting up Wikileaks but his own projects occupy most of his day.

.

Of course there are NO CANADIAN WEBSITES offering purloined federal or provincial files. The National Archives of Canada is mandated to decide what is retained for the permanent collection, but the bitter truth is that Ottawa bureaucracy destroys much before the juiciest file groups are perused by archivists. That is one reason Canadian Parliamentarians can make self-serving claims about being vigilant in safeguarding of our democratic system. Their confidence derives from our utter inability to monitor what they get up to. Canada is the only "democracy" which tampers with its citizens private mail, running mail opening operations 24/7. Our "democracy" tolerates the strong arming of Internet Service Providers, requiring them to assist the police by providing surveillance of citizens without a search warrant, and in real time. Our "democracy" requires bank employees, accountants and real estate sales persons to act as a clandestine informant, and rat out any client who offers "suspicious" cash. Muslim terrorism certainly angers Canadians but we don't really fear it. We suppress our anger because government tells us who to like, and punishes the expression of "hate". Actually our greatest fear should be that the American Democracy, its commitment to openness, might degenerate to the level of our own. If that should happen, the so called "Free World" would be doomed.

WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL, a 254 page book compiled by the NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE in 1995, revealed the secrets of two Republican administrations. If a President's personal email is public property, and has been for fifteen years, why should Hilary Clinton's State Department get special treatment?

.

The only Canadian secret pertaining to this book is why I had to pay BOLLUM'S BOOKS $21.95 for it in Vancouver, when the cover price in 1995 was $14.95. I'm being facetious of course. We all know why the Canadian dollar was kept artificially low. But hey, making pesky U.S. books unaffordable did keep Pierre Berton and his crack platoon of researchers employed.

.

JULIAN ASSANGE - sex charges unique to Sweden, ANNA ARDIN -a character assassin unique to our era, and NAOMI WOLF puts the boots to blonde policemen

Wow, it's so very appropriate that the decade is ending with this whole WIKILEAKS fiasco. For nine years, ever since the 9/11 Attack on New York and Washington, we have witnessed the construction of Fortress America, which has turned every U.S. city into a para-military bastion, and every airport into a neo-Checkpoint Charlie. How appropriate that a stereotypical "90 pound weakling," who's job title is "Editor-in-Chief", should put the Fear of God into the super-secret puppet masters of the world capitals. Well Assange is an Australian, so for all the salacious details of the sex smear, how about letting the Sydney Morning News explain? Guy Rundle's article "DID HE OR DIDN'T HE " is here. If you are as sick as I am of the TV networks hashing the story, you will give Rundle a few minutes of your time.

And what of Mr. Assange's brief bed partner and principle accuser, the political activist and tragi-feminist ANNA ARDIN ? She turns out to be an incredibly complex 21st century mutant, and very likely the prototype character assassin of our era. If there is a Wiki page for her (and I haven't bothered to look) she probably wrote it herself.

Sweden.... the rape capital of the world, has the gall to accuse Julian Assange of ... what? "Sex by surprise"!? Naomi Wolf, in a scathing essay kicks the Swedish legal system in the balls. It's only a five minute read. Treat yourself to some potent prose. It's posted here.

"...I knew this position taken by the male dominated U.S. British and Swedish media was, basically, horseshit. But none of the media outlets hyperventilate now about how this global-manhunt/Bourne-identity-chase-scene-level treatment of a sex crime allegation originating in Sweden must be 'normative' has bothered to do any actual reporting of how rape -- let alone the far more ambiguous charges of Assange's accusers, which are not charges of rape but of a category called 'sex by surprise,' which has no analog elsewhere -- is actually prosecuted in Sweden."

CBC News traffics in illicit U.S. documents, and not a peep from the U.S. Embassy

Well, well.... Tom Flanagan has apologized for his outburst on a CBC News panel discussion. He admits he's still pissed off at Julian Assange, but he doesn't really want him dead. It sounds like the mea culpa hastily offered by the Muslim clerics who put out a hit on film director Theo van Gogh in 2004, when he ended up literally butchered in downtown Amsterdam. Of course all Flanagan really wants is Assange muzzled for good. That way we get to listen to Flanagan shovel shit on CBC till the cows come home, but are denied knowledge of how the elites of this world con and manipulate the taxpayers who fund their vapid careers and plush retirements. WIKILEAKS style anarchy doesn't threaten our economic stability or U.S. national security. It destabilizes confident careerists.


Julian Assange as he appears on the banner of WIKILEAKS. Not one of the unflattering photos his detractors enjoy distributing. The site and its mirrors are under constant attack. As of today it can be accessed here: (Read Wikileaks)

Of course the majority of Canadians have never heard of WIKILEAKS and have no interest in Hilary Clinton's confidential email. What frightens the puppet masters this week is easy to see. If Mr. Assange is not turned into road kill fast, really fast, there is every likelihood that other disaffected drones with access to data-links, will dump juicier files onto the Internet.

I am not the only Canadian who has noticed that Mothercorp is having it both ways on this WIKILEAKS. Prior to last Sundays bulk release by WIKILEAKS , CBC News decided to traffic in illicit U.S. government documents. CBC set up a handy search widget so dummies like me (and Professor Tom Flanagan) could search and download U.S. State Department cables. I did and he did, but I am grateful for the free lunch from WIKILEAKS and Tommy is not.


This search widget has been featured on the main CBC News website for over a week. Many Canadians, including Tom Flanagan used it to access and download WIKILEAKS files. Why is that CBC traffics in illicit data provided by WIKILEAKS, but doesn't go to Julian Assanges defence? Why should he be in the crosshairs of public opinion while all of the pundits get to play it safe?


Wow... the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation even has the brass to claim copyright on "stolen" WIKILEAKS content. Has the American Embassy nothing to say on this matter? So what type of con is the U.S. government and the media establishment really trying to pull here?


Here are questions from a CBC viewer named DAMON which I read on the CBC News WIKILEAKS search page. He comments on what is bloody obvious - Mothercorp traffics in WIKILEAKS content, and yet one of its less inhibited panelists calls for Assange's assassination. He asks "How crazy is that?"


The point I made in an earlier Blog article is that Assange is an anarchist, but he is doing us a valuable service. For example he is helping us understand what the Chinese government is up to, and he champions the potential for China's citizens to reach out to us in spite of the firewall erected by the Communist Party. TIME magazine conducted an interview with Assange on that very subject. It's (here).

Flanagan uses CBC News as a podium; top TORY advisor to P.M. urges the assassination of Julian Assange

Pity poor cyber warrior Julian Assange. Now even Canadian academics want a piece of him! The truly exciting thing about sowing anarchy is that what you tend to reap is a lot more anarchy. A case in point was the spectacle of an upper echelon Tory advisor, live on the CBC News channel counselling the Americans to murder WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange with a cruise missile. One major newspaper, the JERUSALEM POST made his ugly outburst their top story this morning, although they got Tom Flanagan's name wrong.

Tom Flanagan, a top advisor to TORY Prime Minister Stephen Harper, thinks Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WIKILEAKS should be assassinated. This is a screen capture made this morning of the story posted on the JERUSALEM POST website.

The clip of Flanagan venting on CBC News World is available on You Tube and it seems like Canadians all want to see what he had to say. (Here) It's had 117,000 plays today. Incredible! What I found really amusing is that in almost the same breath of air used to denounce Assange, the Calgary based professor admitted he had read the files and found them titillating. As I mentioned in my previous article, an enormous number of Canadians were waiting to pounce on the U.S. State Department files when they appeared on Sunday, but as soon as they didn't find anything to suit their taste, they all turned on the messenger and started bitching. Flanagan happens to be just one of the those ungrateful bastards. Take a pill will ya! The world is not going to stop spinning just because of the leak of these State Department cables. Anyone who pays attention knows that the Chinese are a bigger threat to U.S. commercial, diplomatic, and military communications than WIKILEAKS could ever dream of becoming. When Mr. Flanagan opened his GLOBE & MAIL on November 18th and read that China had tapped the secure flow of Internet traffic for over a quarter of an hour, and downloaded the lot, he didn't council the Yanks to launch a strike at a Chinese data centre. Of course not.

The Chinese have been harvesting higher grade traffic... U.S. military traffic. In fact the Chinese in 2008 pulled a WIKILEAK type stunt of their own - teasing the Americans with a electronic shot across the bow of the U.S. Navy. Seymour Hersh told the incredible story in an article published in the NEW YORKER on November 1. The Chinese, he wrote, had broken secret U.S. naval codes and for several years had been "reading" everything. "A few weeks after Barack Obama's election, the Chinese began flooding a group of communications links known to be monitored by the N.S.A. with a barrage of intercepts... . The intercepts included details of planned American naval movements. The Chinese were apparently showing the U.S. their hand." What if the Chinese choose to share their NAVAL harvest with WIKILEAKS? What if they already have? The horror! The horror!

Seymour Hersh revealed how the Chinese military pulled a WIKILEAKS type stunt of their own. They fed the American N.S.A. a big dose of decrypted U.S. naval communcations. Would Prof. Flanagan recommend the White authorize a strike against Chinese military hackers? Read the entire NEW YORKER article here. Flanagan clearly hasn't.

The problem with Mr. Flanagan is simple. Because he's a buddy of the P.M. and has a security clearence, he believes he's well informed. However, having a head full of TORY gossip is far from a healthy view of the world. Julian Assange and the WIKILEAKS furor is a convenient scapegoat for a corrupted political elite which never did and never will, allow its secrets to be exposed.