The Rude Guy Podcast #74 December 10, 2010
[Save Julian Assange]
This is Rich Zubaty the Rude Guy
Let’s talk about the most spectacular populist uprising since the Cuban revolution. Governments all over the world are terrified of it. Corporations all over the world are terrified of it. And why? Because its purpose is to let the people know what’s really going on. The truth is insidious. The truth is Wikileaks.
And isn’t it special that a day after Wikileaks announced it was going to release whistleblower documents on one of America’s largest banks, Sweden put out an Interpol arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, for not using a condom during consensual sex – thank you Swedish feminists for an asinine rape law. Then amazon.com removed Wikileaks from its server. And Paypal refused to accept donations to Wikileaks. And Visa and Master card refused to accept Wikileaks donations, though they still accept them from the Ku Klux Klan. For real.
When did we become a country that shamelessly spies on its citizens, intercepts our phone conversations, reads our emails, videos us in public, strip searches us at airports, wants to know everything about us. But then when someone reveals what is really happening inside our own government the right wing media goons call for his execution, the institutional left goes silent, Joe Lieberman tries to shut him up, and the CIA gets third-countries to issue bogus arrest warrants. Our government wants to know everything about us, and doesn’t want us to know anything about it.
Sez Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow, in a tweet reposted by WikiLeaks to its 300,000-odd followers. Quote “The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.”
That’s right. WE are the troops. Wikileaks is a revolutionary method for exposing government/corporate lying that requires only two things. An anonymous whistle blower with digital documents to share. And a web address. That’s it. Dangerous as hell to the arrogant assholes in governments and corporations who want to keep manipulating us by way of controlling our information.
Just as technology has made it easier for governments and corporations to snoop ever more invasively into the private lives of individuals, it has also made it easier for individuals, working alone or together, to root through, and make off with, the secret files of governments and corporations.
Consider what young Bradley Manning is alleged to have accomplished with a Lady Gaga CD and a USB key on a military network. It was impossible 30 years ago to just waltz out of an office building with hundreds of thousands of sensitive files. The mountain of boxes would have weighed tons. Today, there are millions upon millions of government and corporate employees capable of downloading massive amounts of data onto tiny devices.
It was childishly easy, according to the published chatlog, of a conversation Manning had with a fellow-hacker. Quote “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing … [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s Telephone, while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.” He said that he “had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for over 8 months”…
Manning told his correspondent Adrian Lamo, who subsequently denounced him to the authorities: “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public … Everywhere there’s a US post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in text file format … It’s beautiful, and horrifying.”
He added: “Information should be free. It belongs in the public domain.” Manning, according to the chatlogs, says he uploaded the copies to WikiLeaks, the “freedom of information activists” as he called them, led by Australian former hacker Julian Assange.
Private First Class Manning had been tasked with collecting information on individuals, who were then sent to be tortured. He was OK with collecting the information, but when he complained to his sergeant that he really thought the torture part was illegal, and he was being asked to participate in illegal activity, against his soldiers’ oath to uphold the constitution, his sergeant told him to shut up and get back to work. So he did. Behaving the law. Collecting documents to expose the illegality of what was going on.
The longer these wars go on the more dead fish float to the top of the water. If Obama had got out like he implied he would, Wikileaks would’ve had no reason to leak those first war videos and files. There is an international information war being waged against the USA and we are losing. Some Arab sheik or Hugo Chavez sends $10,000 dollars to Wikileaks and they get a huge bang for their buck, leveling the last remaining super power. Why? Because we’re vulnerable. Because we’re lying to the world. We’re done for. It’s all over but the shouting. Obama will be remembered as the president who let America the superpower slide into the dustbin of history. All because he broke his campaign promises to create openness in government. We are at the exact moment that future historians will identify as the moment the U.S. Empire ended.
Julian Assange is a hacktivist. A computer hacker activist. His philosophy blends in seamlessly with the hacktivist tradition: it can’t be characterized in terms of left versus right, so much as individual versus institution. In particular, Assange holds that truth and creativity are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, or what he calls “patronage networks,” and that much of illegitimate power is perpetuated by the hoarding of information.
Let me read that last line again: Assange holds that truth and creativity are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, or what he calls “patronage networks,” and that much of illegitimate power is perpetuated by the hoarding of information.
Right on. If we don’t know what’s going on, how can we possibly make wise choices as voters?
According to New York Times reporter John F Burns, quote, “maybe what we’re looking at is a long-term attempt to provoke a response that reveals the dysfunction within our most powerful institutions, and possibly derails that dysfunction by provoking an over-reaction.” Yeah, like putting Assange in jail for sex without a rubber.
The truth shall set you free!
I just went into a Borders bookstore and looked at their Sociology section and of 25 political books, 20 were from right wing hacks like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, and five were about Obama. No left wing books at all…and there are PLENTY of them out there, but no rich guys PURCHASE their way into the stores. Publishers pay money to bribe their way into bookstores, and only the corporate-funded Conservatives, have that kind of money to burn. They’ll get it back in bigger tax cuts. Whereas the left could only ever get it back in more foodstamps. And Borders won’t take foodstamps.
Someone said, media cannot control what we think, but it can control what we think about.
Burns, who interviewed Assange in October, said, Assange changes mobile phones “the way other men change shirts”. He uses cash instead of credit cards and stays either with friends, or in hotels under false names.
This is fantastic. I can’t wait until they make the Julian Assange movie. He’s the Che Guevara they haven’t shot yet.
Think I’m kidding? Listen to this: The Financial Times says that the US backlash against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange may have unintended consequences: quote “WikiLeaks could be transformed from a handful of volunteers to a global movement of politicised geeks clamouring for revenge. (ha ha ha ha) Today’s WikiLeaks talks the language of transparency, but it could quickly develop a new code of explicit anti-Americanism, anti-imperialism and anti-globalisation.[...] An aggressive attempt to go after WikiLeaks – by blocking its web access, for instance, or by harassing its members – could install Mr Assange (or whoever succeeds him) at the helm of a powerful new global movement able to paralyze the work of governments and corporations around the world.”
No shit…Sherlock! Bring it on!
Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report can’t wait for the movie either. He titled a recent column:
Interpol: (quote) We Will Find Julian Assange…and Then We Will Hire Him
LYON, France (The Borowitz Report) — The head of Interpol was resolute today about his organization’s pursuit of missing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, telling reporters, “We will find Julian Assange, and then we will hire him.”
Interpol’s decision to offer employment to the scourge of international diplomacy raised more than a few eyebrows at the Interpol press conference, but according to Interpol chief Jean-Louis Perdu, it makes perfect sense.
“As we were racking our brains trying to find Julian Assange, we realized: You know who we could use around here? Someone like Julian Assange, who understands, how you say, the computer devices,” Perdu said.
The Interpol chief said that Mr. Assange’s inclusion on Interpol’s “Most Wanted” list was an understatement: “We don’t just want him — we need him. Badly. Merde!”
Perdu said that if Interpol does locate Mr. Assange, it intends to offer him a generous employment package, with benefits.
“I would very much like to tell Mr. Assange about our dental plan — that is, if he hasn’t already downloaded it,” he said.
Ha ha ha
And to continue with the comedy, Julian Assange himself said: “Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit, in order to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.” What he’s talking about is the lack of free speech in America. What he’s talking about is how a traitorous shithead like Joe Lieberman, head of the Homeland Security Committee, can simply call up Amazon and Paypal and intimidate them to censor Wikileaks, for “National Security Reasons”. Whose national security are we talking about here? Noam Chomsky calls this quote “contempt for democracy by our government.”
The whole problem with our national security is that we have warmonger, corporate-financed, Zionist freaks like Joe Lieberman in charge of it. I really hope Wikileaks leaks some of Joe Lieberman’s cables to Israel. Maybe THAT’S what Joe’s worried about.
Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer, says Assange has a deep, deep reverence for the “Voltaires, Galileos, and Principias of Truth…for the Gutenbergs, Marconis and Internets of truth,” who are the quote “serial killers of delusion…those brutal, driven and obsessed miners of reality…smashing, smashing, smashing every rotten edifice until all is ruins, making room for the seeds of the new to sprout.” unquote
Hacktivist Assange is like me, an anarchist, who, like me, understands that the government and corporations control us by restricting what we know and what we know about.
Says Tom Hayden, in The Nation:
In…WikiLeaks vs. The Empire
“Why is this drama important? Not because of “life-threatening” leaks, as claimed by the establishment, but because the closed doors of power need to be open to public review. We live increasingly in an Age of Secrecy…Secrecy has become the American Way of War, and increasingly draws the curtains over American democracy itself. The wars in Pakistan and Yemen are secret wars. The war in Afghanistan is dominated by secret US Special Operations raids and killings. The CIA has its own secret army in Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s entire record in Iraq was classified. Because he ran torture prisons and assassination squads. We are fighting secret wars in the Philippines and South America. And so on, ad nauseam.
And what is the purpose of all the secrecy? As Howard Zinn always emphasized, the official fear was that the American people might revolt if we knew the secrets being kept from us. Unquote.
Says Alexander Cockburn:
It’s certainly not conspiracism to suspect that the CIA has been at work in fomenting these Swedish accusations. The moment Julian sought the protection of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service.
And WikiLeaks’ Swedish server host, Bahnhof, confirmed that the website had been hit by a cyber attack, just before it leaked thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables. And let’s not forget that Sweden was one of those lickspittle states that used its resources and its facilities for secret CIA rendition flights. And now the CIA is paying anonymous hackers to attack Wikileaks. And you better believe that the U.S. military’s computer geeks are spending their days hacking away, using our money to subvert our freedom.
It’s a war for the minds of the people of the planet. Will our governments and corporations keep us in the dark? Relegate us to serfs on their feudal plantations? Or will we be able to find out what they’re up to? No legitimate media organization that is not sold out to corporate masters, could possibly oppose Wikileaks. There should be hundreds, thousands, of Wikileaks clones, so they cannot be shut down. And there will be…There will be.
Wikileaks has released an encrypted 1.4 gigabyte file called “insurance.aes256.” If something happens to Assange, the password to the encrypted file will be released (presumably via a single Twitter tweet). What’s in the file? We don’t know, but at 1.4 gigabytes, it is nineteen times the size of the Afghan war log, that was recently distributed to major newspapers. Legendary hacker Kevin Poulsen speculates that the file quote “is doubtless in the hands of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of netizens already.”
In other words, if they kill Julian or keep him in jail, the shit is gonna fly world wide. Who knows what the fuck there is in that enormous file?
I sell books every month on amazon.com. It’s a vital part of my piddling income. But I am advising you to boycott amazon. The way they caved in to Joe Lieberman was pathetic. Amazon founded its business upon being a champion of freedom of the press. There is no difference between books and computer files in that regard. Joe Lieberman is not “the law” da da dum dum. He is the head of a senate committee. So what? He has no more authority than you or me to call up Jeff Bezos at amazon, and tell him to violate the constitution by suspending free speech. If corporate money is free speech then freespeech certainly is free speech. We are protecting corporations’ rights to drown our elections in money, but not people’s rights to know what the government is up to? Bastards. Boycott Amazon. And the same with Paypal. If they’re gonna sell us out just when free speech is pushed to the edge of the cliff, then kick ‘em in the ass.
………..
I’m gonna show you how truly dangerous over-control of information is. George Bush said that Al Qaeda attacked us because they “Hate Freedom”! they…Hate Freedom. That’s Bushshit. Al Qaeda doesn’t wanna take over America. That’s not its business model. It wants America to get the fuck out of Muslim countries and stop stealing their oil.
Here’s what an al Qaeda spokesman said in 2002:
Suleiman Abu Graith:
Quote: Why were millions of people astounded by what happened to America on September 11? Did the world think anything else would happen? What happened to America is something natural, an expected event for a country that uses terror, arrogant policy, and suppression, against the nations and peoples…and imposes a single method, thought, and way of life, as if the people of the entire world are clerks in its government offices and employees in its commercial companies and institutions.
For fifty years in Palestine, the Jews – with the blessing and support of the Americans – carried out abominations of murder, suppression, abuse and exile. The Jews exiled nearly 5 million Palestinians and killed nearly 260,000. They wounded nearly 180,000, and crippled nearly 160,000. Due to the American bombings and siege of (and sanctions against) Iraq, more than 1 million 200,000 Muslims were killed in the past decade.
The number of those killed in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are but a tiny part of the equal exchange for those killed in Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have not reached parity. We have the RIGHT to kill four million Americans – two million of them children – and to exile twice as many, and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands, until we are finally even. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them using chemical and biological weapons like they used against us. America knows only the language of force. America is kept at bay by blood.
Terrifying. And all because our government lies to us about what we’re really doing out there in the rest of the world. Were any of you really aware that we’ve killed millions of Muslims and exiled millions more. Huh? Why not?
And here’s Osama bin Laden, quote:
Targeting America, in Iraq, in terms of their economy and losses of life, is a golden and unique opportunity….Do not waste it and regret it later. One of the most important reasons that led our enemies to control our land, is the theft of our oil. Do everything you can to stop the biggest plundering operation in history. Be active and prevent them from reaching the oil, and mount your operations accordingly, particularly in Iraq and the Gulf. Unquote
Our government and our media have kept from us the fact that we have murdered millions of people, so our corporations can get cheap oil, and so we can drive two hours back and forth from work every day. Millions of dead people…to sustain our wasteful American way of life.
And we don’t know it. The American people don’t know it. We think we are god’s s gift to the planet. We don’t know why all those foreigners hate us, because we have been kept in the dark about the massacres committed in our name.
Wikileaks can prevent the next 9/11. The next terrorist mega disaster. Prevent it! It can do it by telling us the truth. And the truth shall change our foreign policy. And the truth shall set us free!
At the time of this writing Wikileaks had to move its site to Switzerland. Wikileaks.ch Wikileaks dot ch. Go there. Donate 10 bucks to keep Julian Assange out of jail. I did. And god knows I can scarcely afford gas money these days. But don’t do it through Paypal or Visa. Thieves. Here’s a new way to Donate; Text WL to 56624 to make a $10 donation! Text WL to 56624 to make a $10 donation!
And if you want to see a new way to help me keep going: Go to kickstarter.com and type in: Children of War. kickstarter.com and type in: Children of War. And go to my websites at therudeguy.com and happyfool.org, and send me an email, so I know I’m not just talking to the CIA and NSA and Interpol. Ha ha ha A listener from Ohio sent me fifty bucks last month and that really made a huge difference in my abilty to go on with this. Happyfool.Org
Adios. I entrust you “to god”…for another month. Adios.
