{"id":271395,"date":"2024-08-12T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=271395"},"modified":"2024-08-12T08:38:10","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T07:38:10","slug":"spying-for-the-usa-and-for-peace-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/spying-for-the-usa-and-for-peace-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Spying for the USA–And for Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Washington Post<\/em> published on 19 Jul 2010 an article by Dana Priest and William Arkin on the huge US \u201cnational security enterprise\u201d.\u00a0 And on 26 Jul came the long awaited \u201cbiggest leak in US military history\u201d\u2013in the Guardian<\/em> as \u201cAfghanistan-The War Logs\u201d, in the International Herald Tribune<\/em> as \u201cThe Afghan war, unvarnished\u201d, and in Der Spiegel<\/em> as \u201cProtokoll eines Krieges<\/em>\u201c-\u201cThe Whistleblowers: Is WikiLeaks a Blessing or Curse for Democracy?\u201d\u2013from the website wikileaks.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

854,000 Americans have top secret clearance, a dubious compliment in a killer state.\u00a0 2,000 private + 1,270 agencies in 10,000 places collect information; they hardly know the numbers themselves, and any coincidence with truth would be just that, coincidental, for this cancerous social pathology.<\/p>\n

Arkin and Priest doubt their processing capacity given the zillions of bits of information impinging on that machine.\u00a0 I would put my finger on theory, not only on the lack thereof, but on exceptionally bad theory, as shown by major events they failed to predict (Sputnik, Berlin wall, the oil crisis, the fall of the Berlin wall, the end of the cold war, the Wall Street debacle, and so on).<\/p>\n

And that reminds me of what I heard in Tehran in 1976 from somebody high up in that system, in counter-intelligence.<\/p>\n

The American spies went for military hardware, could be trusted to record position, speed and capacity of anything mobile; but were very weak on \u201chumint\u201d (human intelligence).<\/p>\n

The Soviets went for \u201csocint\u201d, recording strikes and conflicts in general to better predict the inevitable collapse of capitalism.<\/p>\n

And the Chinese?\u00a0 Cutting newspapers to follow the contradictions in a society in the name of zoroasterism and western capitalism, and they were numerous.\u00a0 So the Chinese got it right, at very low cost.<\/p>\n

It cannot be easy for any secret agent to come anywhere close to the motivation of true \u201ctaliban\u201d willing to give their lives for Islam against secularism, against Kabul-Karzai, and against any foreign invasion, by anybody.\u00a0 They fight with the means at their disposal, but they believe in their struggle, as opposed to many Americans soldiers.\u00a0 For whatever reason they commit suicide, desert, and leak secrets; maybe rather than dying in a war over bases, pipelines and minerals for a dying empire, clinging to Halford Mackinder\u2019s nonsense of running the world from Central Asia.\u00a0 A tragic compliment to them?<\/p>\n

How can any truth find a way through stupidities like \u201c9\/11 being due to envy of US freedom and democracy\u201d?\u00a0 Maybe the war has given them a taste of that \u201cfreedom\u201d, to kill, and \u201cdemocracy\u201d, to conceal? So much that they prefer Afghanistan not to be cloned by the USA?<\/p>\n

Julian Assange, the Daniel Ellsberg of the Afghanistan war, and his co-workers find a way to some truth.\u00a0 There are differences between the wars, but they are minor as Dan pointed out on CNN in Larry King Live on 27 July.\u00a0 Of course, leaking 92,000 documents\u2013only the base camp relative to the mountain of leaks, according to Julian\u2019s German colleague Daniel Schmitt\u2013dwarfs Ellsberg\u2019s photocopier.\u00a0 The problem is how to sort the wheat from the chaff, like fakes planted by CIA-Pentagon as traps. But Julian seems to have that under control according to the interview in Der Spiegel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The response so far from Pentagon and Obama is \u201cnothing new\u201d, and \u201cthis may put allied forces at risk\u201d.\u00a0 The second point indicates that there is <\/em>something new; in the details, even if concrete names are scrupulously avoided.\u00a0 The problem is not who<\/em> dunit, but what<\/em>.\u00a0 And the impression is of a war with massive one-way bloodshed, and a trickle the other way as the allies fight like well-protected cowards, for nine years so far, and farther away from any \u201cvictory\u201d than ever, not even knowing what a victory might look like.<\/p>\n

What is the state of that bloated US security machinery when a leak of that magnitude is possible? \u00a0Is the country capable of fighting that war, or any war at all?\u00a0 Does it make any sense to be an ally with that incompetence on top of the command, execution, and secrecy chain?\u00a0 How naive or uninformed must a country be to sign up for an exercise of that kind?\u00a0 Would you have signed up had it been for business, run by a CEO and a board of that dubious quality?<\/p>\n

These will be the questions whispered in the war ministries of the coalition of the willing.\u00a0 At the same time as they search the documents for something they have hidden from their own people, while nervously waiting for the next release.<\/p>\n

The major impact will be on the public opinion in the belligerent countries.\u00a0 To hear and read about \u201ccollateral murder\u201d makes the whole ISAF, or NATO for that matter, look like Murder, Inc<\/em>.\u00a0 This will not end the war immediately, even if Obama could have entered the hall of fame for eternity had he canceled that wanton slaughter right now instead of continuing its escalation.\u00a0 But he is a war president, giving Special Operations permission to operate in 75 countries as opposed to 60 early last year.\u00a0 \u201cThey \/the White House\/ are willing to get aggressive much more quickly \/than the former administration\/\u201d says a military official approvingly.\u00a0 Quite some Nobel Peace Prize winner.\u00a0 The powerful secretary of the Nobel committee should resign.<\/p>\n

To study a demoralizing empire, study a general making it crystal clear in a music magazine, and the hundreds, or thousands, behind the leaks.\u00a0 But we are not at the end yet, and ugly things may happen even if the speed of allies leaving the sinking ship will accelerate.In the meantime take note of a major new institution: Leaks, Inc.,<\/em> as a public service, available free of charge to the consumer, maybe at some risks to the producer.\u00a0 More numerous, less risky.<\/p>\n

TRANSCEND Media Service<\/em> will continue its positive, solutions-oriented approach.<\/p>\n

But to expose war crimes parading as \u201csecrets\u201d is a service for peace.\u00a0 Ellsberg got the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. So will Assange.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Originally published on 2 Aug 2010<\/a> – #123<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Johan Galtung (24 Oct 1930 \u2013 17 Feb 2024), a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, was the founder of <\/em>TRANSCEND International<\/a>, <\/em>TRANSCEND <\/a>Media Service<\/a>, and rector of <\/em>TRANSCEND Peace University<\/a>. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize numerous times and was awarded among others the 1987 Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative NPP.<\/em> Galtung\u00a0has mediated in\u00a0over 150 conflicts in more than 150 countries, and written more than 170 books on peace and related issues<\/em>, 96 as the sole author. More than 40 have been translated to other languages, including <\/em>50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives<\/a> published by <\/em>TRANSCEND University Press<\/a>. His book, <\/em>Transcend and Transform<\/a>, was translated to 25 languages<\/em>. He has published more than 1700 articles\u00a0and book\u00a0chapters and over 500 Editorials for <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>. More<\/em> information about Prof. Galtung<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>all of his publications<\/em><\/a> can be found at <\/em>transcend.org\/galtung<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To expose war crimes parading as \u201csecrets\u201d is a service for peace.\u00a0 Ellsberg got the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. So will Assange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[918,1854,2299,1126,1050,1109,70,965,921,113],"class_list":["post-271395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-assange","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-daniel-ellsberg","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-spying","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-whistleblowing","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271397,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271395\/revisions\/271397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}