Now we learn that a MIT student is being questioned about possible involvement in the Wikileaks saga – there’s something almost comical about watching this, as if a host of other leakers within the establishment won’t follow in their footsteps, such is the dismay with US foreign policy – this piece of information is curious:…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Endangering “informants” in Afghanistan is a murky affair
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange talks to Fox News (!) about the Afghan war logs and provides some context to the release of classified documents and the ways in which “informants” often work: A bigger problem, according to Assange, was a project the government called the “kill or capture list”– a list of suspected terrorists that…
The real conflict in Afghanistan
A new film, Act of Dishonour, is premiering in Australia this week and tells the story of Afghanistan, away from the headlines:
Al-Jazeera on Wikileaks Afghan story
The Wikileaks Afghan logs release has caused outrage, consternation and celebration across the world. Al-Jazeera’s media show, The Listening Post, this week discussed the significance of the story and the future of online journalism. They asked me to briefly comment on the tale (starts at 8.40):
Many truths within Wikileaks, if you care to look
The faux outrage over the Wikileaks revelations related to Pakistan’s closeness to the Taliban should be dismissed as propaganda (a point reinforced by Tariq Ali in the Guardian yesterday). Wikileaks has announced that more “secrets” will be forthcoming, despite the group’s testy relationship with corporate media. Here’s founder Julian Assange’s modus operandi: We have clearly…
Knowing that Afghanistan is a failure
Simon Jenkins writes in the Guardian that the Wikileaks war logs are significant. But will the media war cheer-leaders be listening? Is it the death of war? In Vietnam the horror of fighting was brought to TV screens in real time. Such was the reaction that American citizens withdrew their consent. In the 1980s computers…
Navigating the Wikileaks leak, from the man himself
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on ABC TV Lateline last night: TONY JONES: You said in your press conference that you and the conventional journalists you’d worked with had only managed to read between one and 2,000 of the reports properly. Is that correct? JULIAN ASSANGE: Yeah, that is true. To read and to read them…
Australia is increasingly owned by somebody else
My following article appears in Crikey today: The Crikey/ACIJ series on Australian companies profiting from the foreign aid budget is a welcome discussion of the rapid privatisation of services in Australia and overseas, an area largely ignored by the mainstream media. The market, lightly regulated or not, is simply accepted by most commentators as the…
How the Wikileaks story came together
The Wikileaks controversy is still swirling. Official Washington is fuming. The Guardian’s investigation’s editor explains the importance of the Afghan war logs and why his paper featured them so prominently. A partnership between old and new media gave this story its global significance (and amen to that). Perhaps the most fascinating insight into this yarn…
Wikileaks? Nothing to see here, move on please
CNN’s Anderson Cooper publishes on his website this almost hilarious spray against Wikileaks by Clint Van Winkle, the author of Soft Spots: A Marine’s Memoir of Combat and Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder: We sent troops to Afghanistan to avenge the 9/11 attacks and few people objected. Now, the Nation is having second thoughts. People want…