| t byfield on Fri, 24 Dec 2010 09:10:07 +0100 (CET) |
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| <nettime> goofy leftists sniping at WiReD 2.0: WL and timelines |
Newer nettimers can see this thread on the Well for the arcane context of
the subject line: <http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/es/at/well.html>.
I'm forwarding the excerpt below from the Firedog Lake blog not to endorse it
but, rather, to provide a practical example of an alternative to bogus debates
about whether or not WL achieves the success criterion of being Authentically
Deleuzian[TM] or whatever flavor one happens to like. It seems like those kinds
of pseudo-debates are symptomatic of a scene (in the tawdriest Freudian sense)
that's plainly obvious -- namely, WL as some sort of emotional litmus test.
Only yesterday or so, Bank of America registered 435 exec-naming *sucks and
*blows domains under .com, .net, and .org (but not .info or .co). We knew they
did, but I take this mass-registration as a quantitative sign that *they either
know or don't know* what WL might 'know.' That uncertainty is much more pointed
than banging on about whether JA is "Deleuzian": the professionalization of
precarity.
First, came the chorus chanting "we knew all this already, there's nothing to
see here, move along": they bear a certain family resemblance to, say, the sort
of premature microfascists who leap out into intersections and start directing
traffic at the first sign of a blackout. Then came the reaction of zombie
institutions stirred to pseudo-life -- the USG, Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, and
not least B of A -- hell-bent on crushing anything that smelled like it might
be leaking. Then came the leakalikes busily setting up localized copycat sites
(Brussels, Balkans, Indo, etc.): they could be legit, for all anyone knows, but
they seem a tad too eager to usher in a near-future metaghetto of
disinformation and honeypots. Then came the above-mentioned "IS!!!" vs "IS
NOT!!!" crowd. (Disclosure: I side with the former, if only because they tend
to gesture in the direction of potential, whereas the latter naysayers seem
like a bunch of toxico-scholastic trolls.) And last but not least come the
writers... In one corner, we have bruces, who's graced us with almost 6,000
words showing-not-telling that he's totally ambivalent but, in the absence of
any actual thesis, is nevertheless willing to crib his zero-knowledge of the
Cypherpunks list from an early WiReD article; but, in the other corner there's
no one, because who'd be so rash to disagree with bruces himself? (It's not
like you could condemn anyone at all for having better things to do -- say,
alphabetizing their spices -- than wade through the mayhem of the Cypherpunks
archives, if there even is an archive at this point.) The point -- which Felix
put so well -- is that we don't know where this is going.
As flawed as the Firedog Lake chronology below may or may not be -- and I
honestly don't know -- it at least aims to go ever so slightly beyond a first
draft of punditry. And, further, to begin to speculate on something much more
concrete than where it's going: instead, where it's been. This is important,
because the International Man of Mystery cult that the media has built up
around JA is rubbish. He can't break wind without a dozen intelligence agencies
knowing about it -- and that's been true for a while. One needn't attribute a
monolithic agenda to the "governments" displeased with WL to trust that
somewhere, someone was watching him. And that was before he made the template
into an international headline. Now that he's done so, *leaks will be a very,
very messy business. But it isn't quite right to say this is nothing new;
instead, it's more accurate to say that this is something very, very old. For a
while now, it's felt like we were drifting vaguely in the direction of a new
'Middle Ages'; now that feels much more palpable. On a certain level, it's not
that complicated: it's a world where we know that we don't know.
The non-chronology above omits a few ~actors for various reasons. First, the
singular, seminal figure of John Young, because he's spent as much time as
anyone plumbing these abysmal depths: hassling him about his take would feel a
bit like pointing out that there's a smudge on his face right there, no, there
-- in a wilderness of mirrors. And, second, Anonymous, because, like them or
not, you gotta respect them for being the FIRST!!! chthonic net.deity. It was
an identity waiting to happen in a Vingean sort of way -- just like WL.
Cheers,
T
-
<http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/12/23/bradley-manning-and-the-convenient-memories-of-adrian-lamo/>
[29]Bradley Manning and the Convenient Memories of Adrian Lamo
By: [30]Jane Hamsher Thursday December 23, 2010 9:48 am
So far every known piece of evidence against Bradley Manning comes from
one source, Adrian Lamo, a hacker who was institutionalized by the
police three weeks before he alleges Manning contacted him and
confessed to turning over materials to Wikileaks. There are many
inconsistencies in Lamo's many stories, as Marcy Wheeler has
documented, yet the normally excellent Charlie Savage lets Lamo serve
as sole source for a highly dubious story in the pages of [35]the New
York Times:
Wired magazine has published [36]excerpts from logs of online chats
between Mr. Lamo and Private Manning. But the sections in which Private
Manning is said to detail contacts with Mr. Assange are not among them.
Mr. Lamo described them from memory in an interview with The Times, but
he said he could not provide the full chat transcript because the
[37]F.B.I. had taken his hard drive, on which it was saved.
FDL has constructed a [38]timeline of the events surrounding Bradley
Manning, Julian Assange and Adrian Lamo. To say that Lamo's story does
not hold water would be an understatement:
[39]From the FDL Bradley Manning/Wikileaks Timeline:
April 28
* Adrian Lamo [40]involuntarily committed to mental facility by the
police
May 7
* Adrian Lamo discharged from mental hospital
May 20
* Wired Magazine reports on [41]Adrian Lamo's involuntary psychiatric
hold
May 26
* Bradley Manning is taken into custody, per Wired Magazine
May 27
* Adrian Lamo turns over his entire chat log with Manning to Wired
May 29
* Bradley Manning actually taken into custody, per his [42]official
charge document
June 6
* Wired Magazine [43]reports the arrest of Manning
June 9
* [44]John Cook of Yahoo News asks Lamo to provide a portion of their
chats; Lamo says he will have to check with his lawyer
June 10
* Wired [45]posts the heavily redacted version of the chats
* Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima reports Lamo also turned over
entire chat log to them, and [46]also publishes excerpts
June 11
* Wired [47]reports that Wikileaks is hiring a lawyer for Manning,
and that Julian Assange has asked Lamo for a copy of the chats to
assist in his defense. Lamo responds that "Private Manning's
attorney can get them by discovery like everyone else."
June 13
* Comment appears in [48]Xeni Jardin Boing Boing article, alleging
that Wired Magazine reporter and Lamo "worked their target, Bradley
Manning, for days -- in co-operation with the FBI and US Army
CID," classic "COINTELPRO tactics."
* Wired tells CJR they did not even find out Manning's name until May
27, [49]after he had already been arrested on May 26, therefore
there could have been no collusion.
June 18
* Wired[50] tells Glenn Greenwald that they published all of the
chats that Lamo turned over to them, with the exception of "Manning
discussing personal matters that aren't clearly related to his
arrest, or apparently sensitive government information."
* Greenwald [51]compares Wired's published chats with the Washington
Post's, and finds there are things that are neither "personal
matters" nor "sensitive government information," which Wired
nonetheless withheld.
June 19
* [52]Boing-Boing receives an allegedly more complete version of the
alleged Lamo/Manning chats, which were allegedly given from Lamo to
Assange when he had a change of heart.
July 6
* Wired [53]reports that Lamo says he turned Manning in because he
was concerned over the 260,000 cables. But as Marcy Wheeler points
out, the passage they quote-and its context-doesn't appear in the
[54]IM logs Wired originally reproduced.
* The quote conveniently appears in [55]the subsequent Boing Boing
chat log
* Bradley Manning charged. Documents say he was taken into custody
on May 29 and not May 26 as Wired reported
December 15
* Lamo [56]tells Charlie Savage of references to Julian Assange in
his chats with Manning, which don't appear in the Wired excerpts,
either. Lamo says he no longer has access to chats because the FBI
seized his hard drive.
* Instead of asking Lamo to go back to Wired or the Washington Post
and get copies, Savage prints the allegations without question.
For more on the inconsistencies on Lamo's stories, see Marcy Wheeler's
posts [57]here and [58]here.
Suffice to say that it is very convenient that at a time when the
government is trying desperately to make a case against Julian Assange
and prove he induced Bradley Manning to turn over the documents to
Wikileaks, Adrian Lamo suddenly "remembers" that his chats with Manning
contain details of a physical hand-off of a disk.
And instead of asking Lamo to go back to Wired, or the Washington Post,
and get copies of the chat transcripts he gave them, the New York Times
says "no problem, we'll just publish this convenient new information
based on the recollections of someone who was in a mental institution
two weeks before all this happened."
Charlie Savage's article says that Manning is being detained in very
difficult conditions which are designed to get him to implicate Julian
Assange. Meanwhile, all the known evidence against Manning comes from
Lamo's chat logs, which both Wired AND the Washington Post refuse to
publish.
Heaven knows when Lamo will need to "remember" something else, I
suppose.
<...>
29. http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/12/23/bradley-manning-and-the-convenient-memories-of-adrian-lamo/
30. http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/author/Jane-2/
<...>
35. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/16wiki.html?_r=1&ref=charliesavage
36. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/
37. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org
38. http://firedoglake.com/bradley-manning-wikileaks-timeline/
39. http://firedoglake.com/bradley-manning-wikileaks-timeline/
40. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/lamo/
41. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/lamo/
42. http://www.bradleymanning.org/3163/charge-sheet-html/
43. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/
44. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100609/ts_ynews/ynews_ts2492
45. http://firedoglake.com/bradley-manning-wikileaks-timeline/Includes%20heavily%20redacted%20version%20of%20alleged%20Manning/Lamo%20chats
46. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/09/AR2010060906170.html
47. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-to-lamo/
48. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/13/video-wikileaks-foun.html#comment-809677
49. http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/wikileaks_alleges_collusion.php?page=1
50. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks
51. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks
52. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/19/wikileaks-a-somewhat.html
53. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/manning-charges/
54. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-chat/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired27b+%28Blog+-+27B+Stroke+6+%28Threat+Level%29%29
55. http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/19/wikileaks-a-somewhat.html
56. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/16wiki.html?_r=1&ref=charliesavage
57. http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/07/07/did-adrian-lamo-have-two-days-worth-of-ims-with-bradley-manning-on-may-25/
58. http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/07/06/wikileaks-leaker-bradley-manning-finally-charged/
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