When it comes to being rogered, however, opinions vary.

When being rogered a good Trojan like Hector is recommended!

Anyhoo the slow insidious descent, of those who happen to be in positions of authority toward regarding themselves as some form of modern day royalty, and are somehow separate from the rest of humanity and can…

We don't have to join the adoring masses, but we certainly shouldn't be lending our weight to those who want to keep dark corners dark.

You can drop the royal "we" when expressing personal opinion, you know.

looking naive if they express admiration for someone who is challenging the powers that be.

Wot about that Jesus then eh! Scapegoat for humanity wot a guy…….
um............ if the literature is anything to go by

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5ZboZq661E

I don't take back Swindells being insane though. I don't understand how anyone could have managed to survive talking to him without screaming.

Moore claims not to know where NZ is.

Talk about trying to identify with us common folks, he sez he wouldnt be able to last the distance to NZ in "coach' .
Hmmmmmmm

The arrogance shown in some of these Wellington cables appals (but doesn't surprise).

Moore claims not to know where NZ is.

It is surely just a coincidence that the law firm – Finers Stephens Innocent – which represents Julian Assange and set up the Julian Assange Defense Fund is also legal adviser to the Rothschild Waddesdon Trust; that the partially Rothschild-owned Economist gave Assange its…

Israel could win the same way.

Yep. I think you'd be a brave person to say that there are not powerful but frustrated elements in DC who would…

...there is no way for the United States to win a non-nuclear war with Iran.

The US could “win” by dropping hundreds of nuclear…

Yes, but the problem that they faced was that Iran had already dispersed all their sites, and they only knew where half of them were. Hence they considered it and rejected it as impractical, along with all the other issues.…

Dropping bombs on Iran, surgical or not, isn't an attack? The Iranians may wish to differ. I suggest their reaction would not be quite so defined or relaxed.

'Oh, it's not an attack – they merely took…

1. (S) Summary: ... The Saudi King and senior Princes reviewed Saudi policy toward Iraq in detail,…

No! Really?

But yes. I think there’s enough evidence now to establish that the making of the case for Iraq does amount to an actual conspiracy.

Ah whoops. Where I said Iraq there, it should be Iran. I'll re-post it to make more sense:

I’m partway through a book which…

I thought there might be some takers here on a discusion on knowledge, truth,

Well you seem to think you have some knowledge but drip feed it out. Sooo boring.
Truth, well, lets hear some.

* We Await Silent Tristero's Empire

I thought there might be some takers here on a discussion on knowledge, truth, Thomas Pynchon and the laws of theromdymics.

I have a penchant
when there’s a pinch on
to pension puns parsimoniously
initially a little ration
goes a long way….

and anagrammatically
Thermodynamics losslessly converts…

Bush wanted Bolton out of the White House and dumped him on the UN

more likely Bush and his neo-cronies just wanted to thumb their noses at the UN and all it stood for... Bolton seems happy to get in amongst it all…

You know Neil I’m absolutely twatcocked if I can see what your point is in any of this?

Participial adjective! Nice.

Reading through Clinton’s embassy briefing for her visit I thought it was accurate, measured and detailed. But sort of long and probably just one of the many briefings she has to read each day.

I feel curiously unmoved to sympathy.

Imagine what her boss Obama has to wade through. How…

Imagine what her boss Obama has to wade through. How on earth does one come to…

That's a fair assesment of what was going on at the time between Hillary and Obama. I…

That's usually something you suggest when you think…

I don't think it's much of a counter argument to claim that that evdience is irrelevant on the basis of other evidence not produced that may ot may not exist and may or may not support any…

Neil has access to a wide range of high level internal Bush memos and papers on Iran which he won't share. I'm putting pressure him to come clean.

Bush, apparently, was a…

"at best".

I really don't think it's all the controversial that Bush wanted Bolton out of the White House and dumped him on the UN.

Still, going back to…

But I really don't understand why you think Bolton has much credibility or how…

Indeed.

Neil, in that last post I think you've just dismantled both your arguments.

I'm getting a very strong sense of déjà vu here...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article659968.ece

you have a greater faith in Bush's decisions regarding the UN than me. I'm not sure that Bush shifting someone from the White House to the UN was considered a promotion, certainly [[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article659968.ece|not at…

I think anyone spending more than a brief moment considering it would think it's very unlikely.

so you're quite certain that we cannot know if Saudi Arabia wanted the US to bomb Iran but on the other hand quite certain that Saudi Arabia wanted Israel to…

well, quite.

it's also been pointed out to me that 'invaluable' doesn't necessarily mean "giving away secrets". she could just have been explaining the way things work, or connecting people.

OTOH.

You'd expect somebody who has been tagged as a possible mole to have been researched first a little bit? It wouldn't have been hard for anybody to conclude that she didn't actually hold a PhD, for instance…

they likely didn't know about the fraud and corruption charges at that stage.

this allegation could just be part of a wider pattern in the life of MA Thompson.

you think that's unlikely?

But I've lost track of why Bolton having any sort of credibility is important for your argument.

I think there has been…

I think there has been informed speculation that Saudi Arabia has offered to clear the airspace required for such a crack.

The other factor which is often…

I'll give you credit, Neil, you seem to have an amazing insight into the workings of…

If memory serves, yes, that would be the one.

The written submission [pdf] of the Director of the National Security Archive, Tom Blanton, is definitely worth a read, given the extent of his experience.

I must say, I deeply admire The Guardian’s approach to these matters

Agreed. That said, I really am not sure I am comfortable with journalists being the arbiters of what the public get to see, any more than the government.

There is some very useful information coming to surface, and…

snap, Ian

You're misreading who was actually in charge, but more importantly the little professional military advice that I've read about from credible analysts…

References.

The US Embassy in Wellington appears to be, to put it politely, a bit of a backwater.

No indication that she was entrusted with any information, is there? Seems likely to have been a one-way street. Besides, if you're looking for someone to spill the beans to a foreign power, " un trustworthy" is pretty much a prerequisite,…

...Clinton suggested extending a nuclear umbrella over the Gulf States guaranteeing them security if Iran went nuclear to deter the Gulf states from developing their own nuclear weapons.

While not on the Gulf per se, Israel's large nuclear arsenal, and sense of entitlement, already provides a destabilising influence on the…

Far out.

What, he goes on holiday around Christmas? Fucking outrageous. Helen Clark used to be rather hard to find this time of year, given her taste for adventure tourism.

I'm guessing that the broker for all the Wellington cables is Nicky Hager. He certainly was for the first round with the SST, and I understand he has all 250k of the documents. I think it puts us in a fortunate position for journalists to be…

Well, quite. A lot of the rest of that story is more of the basic bullshitting we've seen in other Wellington cables, but that absolutely warrants further investigations.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4475134/Clark-bowed-to-sending-Iraq-troops

It is hardly being petty to take an interest in relations between Assange and the newspaper that has done more than any other to bring the Wikileaks revelations to the world. Nick Davies walking away from the story…

Bolton was and is a lying self-promoter who never misses an opportunity to inflate his role in things. Bush sent him off to the UN for a short stint to get rid of him.

I think the intial point…

And Larry Flynt – publisher/editor of such edifying masturbation aids as Barely Legal and Asian Babes.

And you missed the real money quote from Assange's new landlord:

"I'm not going to criticise Nick Davies. I'm not accusing The Guardian of…

David Leigh, a journalist for The Guardian who has been working on the WikiLeaks material, said: "It's a great shame that more medals aren't being pinned up to the chest of the young soldier Bradley Manning,…

Except as pointed out by Sacha the debunking has been debunked.

so corrections have gone to double debunking...

Yes. At a quick glance at the figures, it seems like they do that by virtue of the kind of public health strategising that’s hard to do in a fully private system.…

Nobody said they were worthless but it's glaringly obvious that the stuff that matters…

I'm not inclined to trust his words on anything.

So, we have the cables that show the US did not attack Iran despite the pleas of some Arab countries but that evidence is worthless because there might be other secret…

Maybe John Bolton is a lefty plant.

I much prefer the description noxious weed.

Good grief, Neil. Think about it.

These cables are mid and low level communications from State Dept…

Presumably because the US didn't immediately leap into a third war in the region, far tougher than the other two that haven't gone too well. That's a pretty low bar.

If the suggestion is that the US has absolutely…

I'm a bit confused about why this is seen as some sort of big surprise. The only think I found remotely interesting was that Saudi bureaucrats were apparently vocal about being less keen on the…

so when the cables show the US in a good light, as James pointed out with Iran, then that can't possibly be true because there's the really secret stuff we don't know about.…

Yes. At a quick glance at the figures, it seems like they do that by…

Thanks Neil, but I think you rather miss the point on that. High level ME communications (or any high level communication) is not to be found in these cables.

The truth if any particular cable is proportional to…

I agree with that. They've become the online newspaper of record of recent, even before the leaks. And they, and The Independent, are not only even handed but often eager to bend far further than their critics give…

No! Really?

But yes. I think there's enough evidence now to establish that the making of the case for Iraq does amount to an actual…

A predisposition is not evidence though. It’s very possible there was a strategy to try and rebut…

A confusion of conflation on your part, Craig. You seem to be on endless loop in this thread.

Perhaps I am too, but you seem to offer some company.

But to be fair, I hadn't read the line Russell was quoting. CIA – no.…

Oh, for fuck's sake Simon. Post hoc ergo propter hoc much?

I don't think that's the case but there is enough evidence, indisputable stuff, of CIA involvement in the odd international incident that such should not be dismissed either. There is a body count.

Except as pointed out by Sacha the debunking has been debunked. It looks like US diplomats (you know James, the ones who have come out of all this so well) telling lies to ingratiate themselves with their masters. I think the same is obvious in…

Which goes to show, again, that these communications shouldn't necessarily be regarded as factual.

I'd be careful about…

www.newser.com/story/107864/sicko-was-not-banned-in-cuba.html

www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/us-diplomats-damned-ottawa-for-being-soft-on-cuban-abuses/article1842985/

www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/viva-wikileaks-sicko-was_b_798586.html

but at the risk of stating the obvious, most of those voices inside or outside the US inherently most suspicious and critical of the USA are of the left.

All those fundamentalist muslims will be very upset with you for dismissing them…

Not anyone who bothered paying attention to the security classifications of released material. Most of the really sensitive stuff (and Israel would surely qualify) is still firmly hidden.

See below –

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/18/wikileaks-us-diplomats-story-cuba-banned-sicko-film?INTCMP=SRCH

www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/viva-wikileaks

For the European and Latin American left, just as for the Chinese or Russian nationalist right, it has long been all but assumed that whatever the Americans say publicly about their foreign policy is simply a…

Nowadays (fixed telecoms) satellites are only used where there isn't a cable alternative. Fiji is on Southern Cross so it's likely that most of their traffic would go that way.

Communication with other Pacific nations may…

Although that, or one like it, is a fairly frequent visitor to Auckland. I see it moored up on the downtown docks every so often.

too funny

I can't remember the technical details, but my memory is that the purpose of waihopai is to pick up phone, fax, email traffic that goes via satelite from south pacific nations and NZ. I don't know how…

China's shut up shop then? Because around this 'hood they were looking fairly dominant of recent.

+1. Because I've heard this rumour that the next round of wikileaks is going to show that the US military has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (I can hardly believe it either). As…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/30/wikileaks-us-spain-guantanamo-rendition

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/200177

I'd also be very keen to know, in precise terms please, what negative stereotypes have been debunked.

I'm genuinely curious to know what you mean by both since it now seems you've quietly moved on from your earlier proclamations of claims by…

Actually I am James. Firstly polling has shown that general distrust of the USA's foreign policies outside the US, has many political starting points, varying from country to country. Some of the harshest critics of the Iraq war came from the right…

Until wikileaks releases Cheney’s man sized safe and it turns out it
holds only a years supply of paper clips…

I didn't write that every voice on the left harbours grand conspiracy theories about the USA, but at the risk of stating the obvious, most of those voices inside…

It's a non point / fairly hefty straw man – the idea that most voices on the centre or left, at least anyone I know, has grand conspiracy theories as a starting point is as you say nuttier…

The only method I can think of involves acting as the ground segment for a US controlled satellite. Aside from that, NZ could read the signals from overt or covert land receivers (e.g in the embassy), an…

I thought big mama grizzly had shot all the ilk?

Goes to show that hi-tech spying just isn't really up to much. We might live in a 'surveillance society' but it's still very easy to communicate secretly – you just use…

I doubt if it means anything but it's kerosene when least needed.

Say "Obambi", James, you know you want…

For the European and Latin American left, just as for the Chinese or Russian nationalist right, it has long been all but assumed that whatever the Americans say publicly about their foreign policy is simply a cover…

Aroha mai, tōmuri au, kātahi nā ka. Whakakatakata tikinare!…

boss: "retype then print this"

subby: "but... but... it's written in poo... and lipstick"

I thought he and his ilk were the barbarians at the gate #confused

I don't get it.

And all us deserving really clever on-to-it people can do is potter on with our trivial little lives being arrogant about all those people like him who have the guts to put their lives on the line for a cause.

Glad to see you include yourself (as in the royal…

The casual use of the name Martin Bishop was pretty clever I thought.

This is genius.

Is that a coffee and tomato juice? FFS I drink that most mornings, now I feel disgustingly Euro. Need to watch some provincial rugby to get over it.

banality-induced nausea

It was called ennui, or sometimes spleen before the existentialists got their hands on it. Absinthe is usually prescribed. It's either that or bloody Sartre.

But seriously, well, umm… not so seriously, I liked this bit of satire from Daily Mash (not directly related to the topic at hand):

Julian Cook, professor of freedom at Delingpole University, rejected claims that the Teapot movement is intellectual monkey shit led by manipulative scum and…

because they probably are

THE point of Wikileaks became clear last night after viral attacks on credit card websites stopped someone from buying Chris de Burgh's The Storyman.

Pro-Wikileaks activists brought down the Visa and Mastercard sites just…

"It's just flash gossip."

Paul Holmes is an award-winning Herald on Sunday columnist, just so you know.

Sure, but it seems pretty basic to disclose to readers when you're mentioned in the source document your story is about. Potential *perception* of conflict of interest is enough in other circles, so why not here?

Original story still says nothing about that even…

Indeed. Henry Porter in The Guardian today:

Nothing is new. In 1771, that great lover of liberty, John Wilkes, and a number of printers challenged the law that prohibited the reporting of Parliamentary debates and speeches, kept secret because those in…

Woah. That was the catch-up story on a Sunday afternoon. They’ve now reproduced verbatim the relevant part of the cable.

We don’t know what any of the journalists did, who they spoke…

Yes, as Mike Hosking put it in a question to former CIA agent Ray McGovern in this interview, what has WikiLeaks given us apart from "diplomatic tittle tattle"? Quite a lot, actually. (Though…

Funny how "infowar" isn't quite so cool when it stops being asymmetrical, isn't it?

In Sweden, among the country's community of hackers and left-leaning political activists, the timing is viewed as coincidental rather than…

Figured this one deserved its own thread:

http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/the-wellington-cables/

08WELLINGTON356 explicitly names the “Deputy Director of New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS)” which is illegal as explained by the Ministry of Justice site:

Of course – and that's disgraceful enough. I'm just wondering whether it's been officially denied.

That’s the nub of it, really. I/S just tweeted “Kathryn Ryan, Guyon Espiner, Audrey Young all grads of US IV journo conversion program,” which is a bit lurid.

Most countries offer study or…

New Zealand's collaboration with United States intelligence agencies was "fully restored" in August 2009 but both governments decided to keep the decision secret.

Question: Can anyone recall the (NZ) Govt. having explicitly denied, in the last 16 months, that this is the case?

Oddly, I couldn't find the link on Stuff. I noticed it at the bottom of one of the stories in the paper and had to type it in.

I knew he was in London on a job and figured it was to do with Wikileaks.

And finally the Star Times gets a decent story ...

Ahem. I was speaking to a seminar of educations about the future of broadcasting.

Didn't crack…

I didn't. I said I believe one of Assange's supporters have made public the last names of the complainants; that's my read of the story and…

Sacha – go Google and you'll find plenty of on-the-record mutterings about "honeytraps" and "dark plans" from Assange's lawyers. It is beyond credible that this stuff is being said without their client's knowledge and assent.

anyone know whether "Matariki" is out on dvd? That is the way I see most films, aue-

Sadly no, although not for lack of desire. And I'm unlikely to in the near future – NZ cinema and TV doesn't make it this far usually.

The Europeans and the Australians are very proactive culturally in this part of the world. NZ is MIA.

But have you or Simon seen the film Matariki? RB is probably nursing some whisky-induced hang overs so didn't do the…

they're all well know for that sort of extremism

Hell, Neil, even way up here in Bangkok I had to duck to avoid the wild swings...