This image makes more sense
when you see the whole thing.

I find it interesting that the media forces behind the political movement in America that fancies itself to be somehow modeled after the protests of the Boston Tea Party are amongst the loudest voices proclaiming that the teachers, fireman, police officers and others who are protesting to protect the livelihood of the working class in Wisconsin are “rabid mobs of criminals and thugs”. I also find it interesting that in spite of plans for a “day of rage”, the Saudi Arabian monarchy managed to prove once again that the best way to oppress people is to tell them that God wants it that way. And in efforts to squelch information elsewhere, it’s likely that the appeal by the lawyers of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange will fail, and he will be extradited to Sweden, and later be snagged by the US government, in keeping with the Swedish government’s previous complicity in US-organized rendition and torture. One minor problem the US government may face is where to torture people like Assange now; the Egyptian protesters seem to have breached their favorite destination for torture. Not to worry though, they can just stick him naked in a cell with Bradley Manning if they have to, right? But these are interesting times, and I don’t think that these conventional methods are going to stop the slowly growing sense of injustice that’s spreading around the world. It’s becoming difficult to even keep track of where exactly the unrest is; this CNN summary covers much of the Mideast, but almost no media sources are talking about what’s happening in Portugal for instance. And aside from the public protests, there’s another interesting movement afoot. One that will be very difficult to target as an “enemy”, because it has no body, no face, no singular agenda, and no headquarters. I’m not only talking about hacktivists like Wikileaks and Anonymous. I’m talking about people like me, and maybe you. People who have enough common sense to realize that in almost every country in the world, the concern for collective well-being is no longer about which political party is in office, but which corporations own them. Hacktivists will obviously play a role for a while, but in an environment of protests, whistleblowing, and crackdowns against them, it will be hard to keep the facts straight. One recent example of this was when, in an hilarious variation on the ancient adage “if you meet the buddha on the road, kill him“, the American media was hoodwinked in a huge way about the nature of the amorphous internet group Anonymous. MSNBC recently interviewed a fellow who claims to be a “senior strategist and propagandist” for Anonymous, and even tech blogs like this one took the bait and ran with it. People seem to just eat this stuff up; one of the few sources you’ll find that questions the likely fallacy of this fellow’s claims is TheOtherMcCain.com. It doesn’t take a genius to piece together that a group of extremely intelligent anarchistic programmers probably doesn’t send their chain-smoking general to lay out their agenda on MSNBC. Another example is a recent Gawker piece that asks What Does Anonymous Have on Bank of America?, and then goes on to basically say “nothing”. But that you should watch for that nothing this coming Monday. Careful Gawker, remember what happened last time you got Anonymous pissed off. But I personally expect to see more unrest, and to see it fueled by the kind of leaks that can only happen via the internet. Regardless of whether you approve of the specific actions of groups like Anonymous or Wikileaks, or individuals like Bradley Manning, they’re going to affect you. It may be impossible to intentionally engineer a bankrun, but the seed gets planted in the mind, and when the dirt comes out on a politician like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, we’ll see more events like the bankrun by Wisconsin fireman against M&I. Anonymous may be more on the mark than we think with the slogan “none of us is as cruel as all of us”.

I am a comment-trolling, link-baiting attention whore. Just thought I’d get that out of the way, lest you get the impression that the pot doesn’t know that it’s black. That being said, could someone please step into the kitchen and pop up some popcorn? I’m afraid that if I step away from the computer for a moment, I’ll miss something, and won’t be able to figure out who the villains and heroes are in the continually unfolding drama that began with WikiLeaks’ bold venture into international whistleblowing. By now we all know the smug, squinty-eyed face of the fellow named Julian Assange. He calls himself a journalist and author. Some people have other labels for him, like traitor, international security threat, or rapist. Or cat abuser. But regardless of whether you admire him, think he should die, or something in between, it’s hard to ignore the fact that he’s something of an egotistical attention whore. My personal opinion is that I can put up with that, provided it doesn’t destroy the positive aspect of his pursuits, which is the revelation of truths that the powerful think should remain secret. Because knowledge is indeed power, and when people who lust mostly for power try to sequester knowledge, you get things like a Nazi Party. Or a Kremlin. Or perhaps the Washington DC of the near future, if we’re not vigilant. Originally the only real star of the WikiLeaks Show, we questioned back in December whether Assange could handle the celebrity. This has become less of an issue, because if you’ve stayed tuned in, you know the show has come to rely on more of an ensemble cast. While big names like Lieberman, MasterCard, Amazon, and B-listers like Glenn Greenwald and Michael Moore had some interesting walk-ons, it was the relatively unknown Anonymous, from….well hell, we don’t know WHERE Anonymous is from, do we? In any case, in a surprise Oscar-worthy performance, it was Anonymous that became the hot new name in LeakyWood. First by taking down has-beens and also-rans like MasterCard/Visa, Joe Lieberman, the Swedish Prosecution Authority, PayPal and Amazon in defense of WikiLeaks, and more recently by taking down Aaron Barr and HBGary Federal (here’s a screen grab of HBGary’s site after Anonymous had hacked it), mostly because, well, Aaron Barr was a self-impressed dimwit who thought he could make a bunch of money with your tax dollars by partnering with banks and the US government in a secret plan to kill Wikileaks with FUD, and gain a lot of fame for bringing Anonymous to its knees. He really should have pondered whether Anonymous even has knees, I mean, the fact that they don’t have a head should be a bit of a warning sign. If you’ve been too busy following tweets about the block parties in the Middle East, or fretting over whether Lindsay Lohan’s dress was appropriate attire for pleading not-guilty on felony charges, you may have missed the latest episode of the WikiLeaks Show, which really was less about WikiLeaks, and more about the ignorant bravado of the CEO of a “security firm” (now there’s a double misnomer for you) who claimed that he was going to make Anonymous less anonymous. Well, that didn’t turn out very well, now did it, Mr Barr? Count me as one of the more enthusiastic new members of the Anonymous Fan Club. And I’m not just saying that because I know they could take down my site and the hosting company that hosts it with a few keystrokes and perhaps a little social engineering, but because they’re the only actors in this epic drama that can use the term “bitchslap” and still manage to keep it classy. After turning Aaron Barr out on the street like the bum that he seems to be, they called off the dogs when he started crying like a baby, and as his former employers tried to wave the white flag by patronizing them in chat rooms (“Penny” starts in around line 520), the only demand they made was “hey, why don’t you donate a month’s salary to Bradley Manning’s defense fund?” Nice touch, Anonymous. Oh. Did we forget to mention? Michael Moore may be connected with an Assange movie, and *yawns* where were we? Oh yeah. That former WikiLeaks guy whose name we can’t remem z-z-z-z-z-z….wha? OH! Sorry. Dozed off for a second. That other WikiLeaks guy whose name we can never remember is releasing a tell-all book called Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, due for release February 15. He’s already spilling all the beans about what a loser and a liar Assange is on Wired. Who knows if he’ll get any screen time; there’s not a lot of room left in this show for another sub-plot. Book plug below, followed by the trailer for the movie Revolution Truth. Which Michael Moore and Julian Assange aren’t involved in the production of, even though their names are dropped in all the press about.

This game satirizes Obama’s promises of transparency:

And in this one you get to help Assange battle the spies:

WikiRebels: The Documentary

Besides, it all makes for some good SNL skits:

Earlier today I joked with a friend that if Julian Assange wants to live, he should get in touch with Osama Bin Laden’s people; they seem to do a pretty good job of keeping the US government off their tails. So it was with a certain glee that I read that Sarah Palin went all fuzzy in the head again, demanding we hunt Assange down like Bin Laden. I guess meaning “in a fashion that never leads to his capture”. Assange is often referred to as being in an “undisclosed location”, a place made famous by another narcissistic freak, Dick Cheney. Although in Dick’s case, he had the benefit of a global superpower’s intelligence agencies to undisclose him. Assange’s undisclosed location is England, which I personally wouldn’t refer to as particularly undisclosed. The fact that Interpol is gunning for him doesn’t bode well for his future either. Although some would argue that Assange and the Swedish legal system deserve each other, the fact that the case was brought forth once, dropped, and then brought forth again to coincide with the release of more documents smacks of the kind of spy-novel intrigue one would expect in a situation like this. In an era when White House staff members out our own spies for domestic political revenge, it would be naive to assume for certain that the rape allegations are legit. Unfortunately, in spite of the many possible virtues of what Assange is doing, many – including a co-founder that has run a “purer” version of what WikiLeaks is doing at Cryptome.org – agree that he’s going about it all wrong, letting money and his own celebrity damage the integrity of the information. Even his key tech people left en masse just a couple of months ago. I personally believe that the essence of what Assange is doing is crucial at this point in history; the age of nation states with their legacy of smiling mutual deceit and spy vs. spy charades is approaching its obsolescence. A new world order probably is in the works, and I don’t think we want it defined by the likes of any of the people being exposed in the recent diplomatic cables. I honestly just wonder how long Assange will remain free, or even alive. I hope long enough to take down a few banks. I also think it’s about time someone got to work on the movie; given Julian Assange’s foppish dislikeableness, it could easily be a career-reviving role for Julian Sands.

The old expression “what you don’t know won’t hurt you” takes on a different meaning when “what you don’t know” is that there’s a trigger-happy American Apache helicopter crew waiting for permission to shoot at you with 30mm cannons and Hellfire missiles because they’ve somehow mistaken your camera for an AK-47 and an RPG. We joked last week that maybe the US military had set up the whistleblower site WikiLeaks as a brilliantly recursive disinformation exercise, but it would be hard to find the disinformation value in releasing a video that clearly shows that you lied publicly and boldly about your role in killing innocent civilians in an urban combat area. If you’re an American, and if you still think we have any kind of credible news media or that our government exercises anything remotely like transparency, I urge you to read Glenn Greenwald’s The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters. In it, he points out that “at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated“. Which is a fact that, in my opinion, effectively counterbalances any criticism of what the site does, because so far, the site’s developers have only shown alignment with one principle that could be considered political: exposing secret and deceitful programs perpetrated by governments and large organizations. WikiLeaks is getting a lot of support from the Icelandic government to create a “journalism haven”, and God knows journalists need one. Over 800 journalists have been killed on the job since 1992. So why is Iceland behind the idea? The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative explains – among other things – that it was failure of the free press in Iceland that allowed the massive government and banking corruption that brought the country to complete economic collapse. Sound like a familiar setup? I’m sometimes accused of looking rather comfortable in a tinfoil hat, but this isn’t “internet crank” material, this may be the first ripple in a new wave of journalistic integrity. Watch the videos below, if you have the stomach for it. Be warned though, you will see innocent civilians like yourself getting killed.

The “short” version is just over 17 minutes:

The full version is nearly 40 minutes:

And for background, if you’ve never heard of sites like WikiLeaks or Cryptome http://cryptome.org , watch this BBC-produced segment: