Wikileaks, Anonymous and the Jonny English of Spy Networks

A panel of five wikileaks associates, including Julian Assange held a press conference today (27 Feb 2012) in which they began to explain the complex relationship between Stratfor, corporations, and governments. Godman Sachs are implicated in a scandal to manipulate investments using illicit information bought in from the private syping company. Yet another blow for the 'Tower of Babel' that is the chaotic networks of globalisation.

Assange compared Stratfor to a 'helpless' and fairly useless "James Bond". If we are to believe Stratfor are more like Jonny English then perhaps the cache of emails won't be all that revealing. However, the little that has been published already today is intriguing enough. 

I have already blogged on revelations regarding Iran  and the reasons to escalate warmongering being political rather than defensive and on the controversial Mosque at Ground Zero, New York and the web of right-wing backers to the project. 

Assange talks about three types of funding received by Stratfor: bespoke funding to find out particular information; general private meetings to disseminate information; and syndicated newsfeeds. Over 300,000 subscribers to Stratfor, many of whom are influential political figures and organisations makes Stratfor an important organisation to get behind the scenes of. 

One of the biggest revelations of the press conferences was the links between Goldmans Sachs and Stratfor with allegations from Assange that a Director of Goldmans Sachs has used information gained through illicit means to make decisions on huge investments. If this is true then it may be that the director in question may have to face criminal charges. 

Assange has previously described consipiratorial dictatorships using the metaphor of a web of connections leading to a central point. Some of the connections are 'thick' because they are often used others are 'thin' because they are rarely used. 

By exposing those connections to the vulnerability of leaked information those connections become less reliable and so the authoritarian system begins to shut down on itself: unable to trust its own means of communication. If the authoritarian or domination system cannot communicate efficiently, internally, for fear of being overheard it's operations become impossible. 

In the book of Genesis, an inspiration for Jews, Christians, and Muslims around the world, the story of the Tower of Babel illustrates the same. The blood and sweat of slaves are used to build a tower that 'can reach up to God'. God is unimpressed and causes them to become unintelligible to one another, thus rendering the oppressive project impossible and scattering the people. 

Whether the emails leaked today and over the coming days generate news is less important than the future unreliability of Stratfor as a private spying organisation with billions of dollars invested in the current economic domination system. 

Iran Invasion an EU Diversion?

In files leaked today (27 February 2012) Stratfor analysts speculate that Israel has already destroyed all Iranian Nuclear weapons capability and the attempts to build up a debate over whether to invade Iran are just a way for EU powers to distract us from our financial crisis.

In files dated November 2011, just released, senior analysts quote an insight from one of their sources, "Even if the Israelis have the capabilities and are ready to attack by air, sea and land, there is no need to attack the nuclear program at this point after the commandos destroyed a significant part of it." 


While they do not all agree with one another about the truth of the source their is some consensus that Iran does not have anything close to nuclear weapons capability and that an invasion of Iran would not be motivated by a desire to stop an arms race but rather to serve other interests of the powerful. 


Stratfor is a private intelligence company whose emails are currently being released by Wikileaks. Hopefully this will be as big, if not bigger, than 'Cablegate'. 


To donate to the work done by Wikileaks, one of the only truly free press associations in the world, click here. 

Tony Blair: "The West is too apologetic and not egocentric enough"

In his response to the Chilcot enquiry Tony Blair - consummate politician - threw in the usual vagaries and emotive rhetoric to disguise his complete inability to grasp, or at least confess, what's going on. Over the years I've come to think that Blair really does believe the stuff he says.

Today he claims 'the west' should stop apologising and being wretched about the situation in Iran; it's not Britain's fault. We didn't create an unstable middle-east. We didn't?! Did they close down Tony's public library first? Does he know nothing of the history of Iraq and Iran. Britain has always been directly involved in shaping the territories and politics of Iraq/Iran/Kuwait/Palestine. Since British Petroleum was in short trousers we've been in their up to our arses in Arab blood and oil and doing very well out of it, thank you very much.

But no! Not for Tony Blair who seems to be the only one who knows what's really going on and has to patiently explain it to the rest of us thick-heads. Poor dear. Tony Blair claims that Iranian foreign policy is based on their unexplainable, irrational, and aimless dislike of 'our way of life'. This rhetoric was all the rage when W. Bush was US President - it was stupid then and it's stupid now.

In Tony-Blair-Land Britain is an innocent victim of a psychotic bullying Islamic Orient that - no matter how lovely he is - doesn't like him. He's terribly hurt. Blair is like the school yard bully who hits other children then complains to the dinner lady that no one will play with him. .... Except Blair could do it with tanks and rockets and whole 'kin countries.

That man needs a strong sedative and a quiet, soft-walled room.