A propagandist-in-chief's war on intellectual imperialism and pursuit of a resistance episteme

Posts Tagged: wikileaks

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9 months ago    |   Tags: wikileaks Julian Assange Israel United States Arab spring   |   Notes: 1

Book: Julian Assange Held Back Wikileaks About U.S., Israel

From Infowars here

“People on both sides of the argument have been quick to rush to judgement on the motivations of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. Moral crusader or compromised egotist? In a new book about Assange written by the Guardian journalists with whom he worked closely, Assange is quoted as saying that negative cables concerning the United States & Israel were deliberately omitted from initial Wikileaks releases last year to prevent the organization being stereotyped as anti-American.

” ‘We shouldn’t go exposing, for example Israel, during the initial phase….the exposure of these other bad countries (Russia, Arab countries) will set the tone of American public opinion,’ Assange is quoted as saying in the book.”

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9 months ago    |   Tags: revolution mainstream media Third-Wayism leftist intellectuals alternative media hacktivism Wikileaks   |   Notes: 1

"When revolution, alternative media, leftist intellectuals and hacktivism are mainstreamed, and dissent itself is reduced to just another site for domination, revolutionary struggle becomes one of resisting “revolution”, hacking the hacktivists, countering the so-called counter-hegemonists and above all, blaspheming against the new “protest” orthodoxy."

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Anonymous Syria hardly a credible source of email leaks

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10 months ago    |   Tags: Syria Assad wikileaks Anonymous imperialism Syrian opposition   |   Notes: 1

So much for the authenticity of Wikileaks’ Syria Files e-mails. They were provided to Wikileaks by none other than the clearly pro-opposition Anonymous Syria and I have written about their inherent bias on my blog here. Also, here is a tweet of theirs delighting in the Twitter account that impersonates me. That isn’t to dismiss all the emails outright, especially since many were provided by other hacktivists, but merely to emphasize the need to subject them to much more critical scrutiny. I wonder how much credibility such mails would have if my anti-imperialist (I keep forgetting that term is so passé) comrades and I were to offer such e-mails to Wikileaks…

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Pro-opposition Anonymous are source of Syria Files’ leaks

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10 months ago    |   Tags: syria assad wikileaks Syrian opposition   |   Notes: 2

So now material provided by a group which has openly aligned itself with one party to the Syrian conflict, and which initially offered the material to the main sponsor of that party (al-Jazeera) supposedly constitutes ”evidence”. I am sure if al-Manar tv for example, hacked mails belonging to the Syrian opposition and this would be viewed as the unadulterated truth and counted as credible evidence. Right. 

 Days after WikiLeaks began releasing a trove of more than 2 million e-mails stolen from Syrian officials, ministries and companies, members of an Anonymous group have claimed responsibility for the hacks and document dump to Wikileaks.

In a press release published Saturday, a group calling itself Anonymous Op Syria disclosed that its members hacked into multiple domains and dozens of servers inside Syria on Feb. 5 to obtain the e-mails, which it then gave to WikiLeaks.

The Anonymous team, composed of members of three groups known as Anonymous Syria, AntiSec, and the Peoples Liberation Front, says it had been assisting activists in Syria since protests began against the Syrian regime more than a year ago, and that the team worked round-the-clock shifts to hack the servers.

“So large was the data available to be taken, and so great was the danger of detection (especially for the members of Anonymous Syria, many of whom are ‘in country’) that the downloading of this data took several additional weeks,” says the group in its statement.

Last March, the group hinted at the treasure it possessed when it leaked about 3,000 e-mails from the personal e-mail account of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma to the Guardian newspaper in London.

Leaking the entire trove of e-mails, however, proved to be more difficult.

“We gave Syrian mails to Wikileaks after trying unsuccessfully to make a deal with Al Jazeera English,” a member of the group told Wired in an instant message exchange. “We like the Wikileaks concept, and they do a good job of releasing these kinds of things. We successfully released Stratfor together previously, and both learned from our mistakes there.”

Full story here

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Rethinking the Wikileaks’ Syria File

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10 months ago    |   Tags: wikileaks Syria Assad imperialism mainstream media   |   Notes: 5

Disclaimer: I stand corrected; My comrades were right, the Wikileaks Syria File is very suspicious. This is what happens when you are pressed for time and you end up reading excerpts of a statement in the media rather than reading it in the original source…

First of all, I wasn’t aware mainstream media also had publishing rights to the files,I thought Akhbar had exclusive rights as was often the case in the past. So even if Al-Akhbar’s reports balance out the coverage, they will be drowned out by the information warlords who will play up the mails which “embarrass” the regime and downplay the others . Second, I didn’t see this: “WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison told journalists that the emails reveal interactions between the Syrian government and Western companies”. This better not be the only Western hypocrisy they are referring to. In fact this charge of “hypocrisy” derives from Empire’s hegemonic view that nobody should do business with the demonic Syrian regime.
Surely there are hundreds of thousands of documents out there which, if obtained and released, would expose the mega-conspiracy against Syria. If Wikileaks is pursuing genuine balance or neutrality in coverage, they should have focused their efforts on obtaining such documents and used them as a counterbalance to mails which expose the Syrian regime. This would constitute true balance between two parties to a conflict, not the publication of material which amounts to little more than an indictment of the West for not being more consistent in its isolation and sanctions policies. 

And most importantly, how on earth did Wikileaks manage to amass over 2.4 million POLITICALLY RELEVANT mails from 680 different domain names and 678,000 individual email addresses over 6 years? How is that even possible? The State Department cables covered the entire world and only amounted to a quarter of a million….This isn’t looking good at all, though I am still hopeful some of the documents will incriminate US/NATO/GCC’s involvement in Syria. 

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Israelis not too pleased al-Akhbar will be publishing Syria File Wikileaks

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10 months ago    |   Tags: al-akhbar wikileaks syria assad mainstream media Israel information warfare  

The LA Times blog reports on the controversy surrounding Al-Akhbar’s publication of Syria Files here

“As WikiLeaks unveiled plans to release millions of Syrian government emails that could prove embarrassing to both Syrian officials and their foes, it named several partner news outlets that would soon be doing articles based on the vast trove of messages.

One of its partners quickly drew attention: Al Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper that has been accused of bias toward Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The paper is widely regarded as favoring Lebanese militant group and political party Hezbollah, which has been supportive of Assad as the conflict rages. Critics argue that its coverage of the crisis has been skewed toward the Syrian government. Journalist Max Blumenthal stopped writing for Al Akhbar last month, complaining that “the apologia for Assad and his crimes has reached unbearable levels.”

Haaretz writer Anshel Pfeffer called the choice of Al Akhbar “worrying,” saying the paper openly  identifies with the Syrian government. “If they have access to the emails, prior to their publication, it can be assumed that the security services in Damascus will also have advance knowledge,” Pfeffer wrote  in the Israeli daily.

Others countered that picking Al Akhbar would balance news coverage with that of Western outlets that would tend to play up Syrian crimes.

“Al Akhbar will be less likely than any other paper to practice selective or omissive publishing of the leaks to Empire’s benefit,” wrote leftist Lebanese blogger Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, who also writes for Al Akhbar and has argued for supporting Assad against Israel.

Announcing its WikiLeaks plans, editor Ibrahim al Amin said Al Akhbar was committed to determining what was happening in Syria, “to sort out what is real and what is fabricated.”

“One thing is obvious, though, the hypocrisy of global politics has reached a new high when dealing with Syria,” Al Amin said in an Al Akhbar article about the WikiLeaks partnership.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday. In addition to the Lebanese paper, the controversial secret-spilling website has announced that articles stemming from the emails would appear in the Associated Press and outlets in Egypt, Germany, Italy and France, as well as others that would announce themselves closer to their publication dates.

The group said on Twitter that it “covers the political spectrum on #SyriaFiles from AP to Al-Akhbar” and has stressed that the emails will prove a double-edged sword in the Syria debate. Some of the first documents to be released appear to show that an Italian company sold radio equipment to the Syrian police amid European condemnation of the regime, an explosive story run by the Italian newspaper  L’Espesso.

“The Syria Files shine a light on the inner workings of the Syrian government and economy, but they also reveal how the West and Western companies say one thing and do another,” WikiLeaks said in its announcement Thursday.

The WikiLeaks emails are the latest leaks to shed light on the Syrian government as it tries to fend off an uprising that has lasted more than a year. In March, the Guardian unveiled a cache of emails that appear to have been exchanged by Assad and his inner circle in which Assad makes light of his reforms and his wife drops thousands of dollars on French chandeliers and heels.”

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Some thoughts on Wikileaks/Al-Akhbar publication of Syria e-mails

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10 months ago    |   Tags: wikileaks al-akhbar Syria Assad imperialism   |   Notes: 7

 I know some of my comrades in the anti-imperialist/resistance camp are very unhappy about they see as  Wikileaks’ ill-timed release of over 2 million emails on Syria, and Julian Assange’s seeming equation between the two sides when he says: “The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents.”

But on the other hand, Ibrahim al-Amine, editor-in-chief of al-Akhbar, which will be publishing the leaks, has said the leaks prove that “the hypocrisy of global politics has reached a new high when dealing with Syria.” Let us not forget that Zionist/imperialist-enabler, Max Blumenthal, resigned from al-Akhbar in part because of Ibrahim’s writings on Syria, and that Al-Akhbar will be less likely than any other paper to practice selective or omissive publishing of the leaks to Empire’s benefit. It’s also important to recall that this is a newspaper which is branded “pro-Hizbullah” by the West, and whose mission as described by Al-Amine is to provoke the U.S.: “We wanted the U.S. ambassador to wake up in the morning, read it and get upset.”

As for the contents of the leaks, I know I may not be speaking for everyone in our camp but at least for a large part of it when I say that we never had any  illusions about the nature of this regime. We already knew the regime was corrupt and repressive (I am not referring to charges of massacres and such but to its overall intolerance of dissent) and contained many undesirable elements. Those of us who support Assad’s struggle against imperialism do so not because we harbour delusions about the regime’s socialist or democratic credentials but on account of its anti-imperialist, resistance credentials. Many of us already dealt with our cognitive dissonance by reluctantly accepting the regime’s defects and mistakes for the time being in the interests of a higher cause.

Even though mainstream media and the oppositionists will milk these revelations for all they are worth, the evidence incriminating those waging war on Syria (both external and domestic) will more than counterbalance whatever is leaked about the regime, especially given the gross imbalances of power.  At the end of the day, we have already made our priorities known: our struggle against imperialism takes precedence over our rejection of authoritarianism. Unless we discover that Assad has secretly been striking a deal with US-Israel or masterminding massacres, the priorities dictating our position will remain in place. The more primary evidence we have at our disposal to confirm our suspicions and reinforce our existing knowledge, the more we can expose the conspirators and collaborators with hard and irrefutable facts. The regime’s corruption and repression is common knowledge, but the nature and scope of the conspiracy against Syria isn’t. These leaks may well serve to shift Arab and international public opinion away from the side of the opposition to a more neutral or nuanced position. If the leaks are perceived as shielding the regime, they will not be able to earn the required credibility to make such a public opinion shift possible.

Full story here

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