Returning to the continuity from my post of Friday, 17 December 2010 at 7:23:51 AM

The post from which I continue, albeit tangentially, established that one or more of the leaked cables revealed claims that moves were afoot within the ALP as early as June 2009 to replace Kevin Rudd as PM, and that it looked as though Julia Gillard was the front runner.

Bruce Haigh, who was the first poster to this comments thread, posted the following in a first post to a concurrent OLO article ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11376#192748 ) 'WikiLeaks challenges journalism-politics partnership':

"One of the other issues surrounding Arbib
is that he was a 'protected source'. Why?
Arbib needs to be asked the nature of his
relationship with the US embassy and government.
Was he being paid for information? Was he the
recipient of special favours, and here I move
into the relm of speculation, such as the reciept
of useful phone taps through Pine Gap that he
might have been able to use as tools of influence?"

It must be remembered that the term 'protected source' in this context means a source of information PROTECTED BY, AND FOR, THE US! Why would Arbib have needed protection if he was conveying information FROM an Australian political PARTY (note: not from the Australian GOVERNMENT) TO the US embassy? Such might have been a form of betrayal in the party loyalty sense, but hardly a crime.

What if, however, Arbib was conveying co-ordinative information or instructions in the OPPOSITE direction, from the US embassy to influential persons within the ALP, to persons who had had long experience as to the unfailing accuracy of such information with respect to, for example, the prediction of Australian electoral outcomes?

The very existence of such a track record with respect to such predictions would be cause for suspicion as to the existence of a mechanism for actually producing, or influencing, such results to order. If such proved so, we would have moved into the realm of subversion of democracy in independent nations.

TBC

PaulL, you say, << It should be obvious that there are significant political ramifications for the US and its allies from these leaks.>>

Disagree. In fact the only ones to look good against the Wikileaks revelations are the US diplomatic core. Rather than “significant political ramifications” it seems like mild embarrassment, the food upon which diplomats thrive.

You seem to be oblivious to the fact that diplomatic cables will cover every conceivable topic; at the moment all we are seeing are those cables that cover predominantly US foreign policy. What will you have to say when the cables start to cover the GFC, EU finance, UN policy and those of its agencies, and possibly climate change just to nominate a few possibilities that may yet shatter your beliefs?

Don’t know where you are going with the comment that I suggested the ABC is “working to a single right wing narrative”? No such conclusions were drawn. There was a “question” as to what “narrative the ABC is working to produce”. This was raised in the article by Jenifer Wilson; we on OLO are trying to answer this question.

It is just possible, that if the Wikileaks does cover the full range of “topics” as anticipated, the MSM and public broadcasters might be the ones feeling the most pain, not the politicians. (See the Weekend Australian for more media analysis on this topic)

Your posts seem to be going off to “planet PaulL” with many of your comments. You seem to be in as much confusion as much of the MSM, thrashing.

There is no doubt you have lots and lots of “information” but you are not converting this into rational thought that we can follow. I’m sure you have something going on between the ears but it really is getting hard to follow

Continued

Now the thing that IMO makes the WikiLeak as to the US having knowledge in June 2009 of a move to replace Rudd with, perhaps, Gillard, in hindsight remarkable, is a little event that happened right here on OLO in October 2009. Then-Deputy-PM Julia Gillard published what, as it turned out, was the vanguard OLO featured topic for October 2009, 'Personal Epiphanies' article, 'Driven by indignation at injustice' (See: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9513 ) on 5 October 2009.

I was the first poster to the comments thread of that article, but you will not find that first post to the archived thread if you look today. That post was taken down within an hour of its being posted as the result of a moderation decision made in response to a complaint as to its being off-topic. (I accepted that moderation decision then and now, so for the benefit of those who pay little attention as they read, don't imagine this reference to that event is about arguing a past moderation decision.) This link is to a later post in that thread which explains what transpired more fully: http://bit.ly/gRHgyy

This is a very condensed summary from that linked post as to what the deleted post had been about:

"The deleted post was a non-politically partisan
challenge to the Deputy PM to use her influence
to secure due process at law on behalf of two
believably innocent UK citizens facing the prospect
of extradition without trial or hearing in the UK,
to the US."

From Julia Gillard's point of view as an aspirant to the prime-ministership, the most that post constituted was a challenge to the sincerity with which she claimed to be 'driven by indignation at injustice', one she could have sidestepped if unavoidably confronted with it by saying "sorry, I'm only the Deputy-PM, you'll have to speak to Kevin Rudd about such matters".

To US interests, however, that challenge was all but identical to that posed by the Assange issue today!

TBC

" PaulL is here seen putting words in the mouth of Jennifer Wilson that she did not use."

It all becomes clear does it Forrest? Please do be my guest and split that hair for us. Which words are they?

And I’m attempting to control the discussion. What planet are you on.

You and everybody else have the right to ignore everything I say. I can’t control the discussion any more than I can control when it rains.

In general, we as a society accept that there are times when an organisations legal right to privacy can be set aside in the interests of protecting individuals who are exposing lies within that organisation. We consider that person a whistleblower and we extend them extra protection.

A whistle-blower is someone who exposes an organisation from within. In that respect, Manning could be considered a whistleblower, Assange cannot.

Secondly, If a person acts to expose information in order to damage an organisation in furtherance of their agenda, they are also no longer whistleblowers. A disgruntled former employee, who uses company secrets in order to secure a huge payday, is not a whistleblower.

Finally, if you were never part of an organistation AND wish to do it harm you are clearly not a whistleblower. A liberal party staffer who publishes information that exposes secrets in the labor party is not a whisteblower.

The legality of being an anarchist or not is irrelavnt to the question of whether Assange should be given extra protection, above and beyond what is required by law

Spindoc,

I seem to have conflated Pelican’s claims of bias by the British MSM towards their right/centre coalition, GregB’s claims of a bias towards the local Labor government; with your claims of bias. I apologize. It’s not quite right wing bias, although I’m not sure Assange would agree with you.

You have the temerity to claim that I go off to my own world. Yet you indulge yourself with inane poems expressing your wishful thinking. You have clearly conflated your own desire to see specific outcomes/specific lies uncovered at the expense of a real look at what has been uncovered. Your claims, that MSM is quivering in their boots with the possibility that some monumental lie regarding climate change will be exposed, is a clear example of this.

We should not be surprised. There are plenty of posters on OLO who ascribe to a political philosophy which relies upon wishful thinking and make-believe to sustain their world view.

How about we discuss wikileaks as they are, not as you hope they might be.

I think many in MSM have legitimate concerns about his motivation and about how “vital to the public interest” these cables have been. No-one here has been able to effectively refute these concerns. In fact, after claiming the “vital importance” of these leaks , Jennifer pointed out it was not her job to actually uncover this "vital importance". I wonder how anyone can claim the ‘vital importance’ of the leaks without pointing to leaks of ‘vital importance’? Unless you claim that the mere act of uncovering secret information is, by itself, vitally important.

I see you agree with my assessment that the leaks thus far are at worst politically embarrassing. This merely reinforces my key point, which is that the relevance of this material has determined the response to it.

Yet you disagree that this will politically damage the US and its allies.?? I think it will damage Julia Gillard, it has damaged Rudd and Mark Arbib. I haven’t been following the US impact closely but to suggest it won’t damage Obama and the Democrats is unrealistic.

Continued

So is it a more reasonable speculation that a request for the removal of a challenging first post in response to an article written by someone who, perhaps at the time unknowingly, was being groomed as a replacement PM, might be made by those doing the grooming rather than by or on behalf of the aspirant herself, and especially so if any response that might be made by the groomee might go against an already established policy of the groomer?

Now if the routine large-scale endigitisation of sensitive diplomatic records (amongst many other administrative and organisational things) is just too good a tool for a superpower government to forego the use of, while at the same time a feature of that tool is the carrying within itself of the seeds, the potential, for massive across-the-board insecurity, what alternative is there for such government other than to adopt a 'shoot the messenger, any messenger' policy when security is inevitably, as it has been, breached? Unshot, any messenger's remaining 'out there' with the leaks still on display can only result in that government's becoming held, if it is not already, in international derision.




The only workable alternative would be the adoption by such a government of an information regime of complete transparency, while at all times conducting a foreign policy that is morally and ethically defensible in its entirety.




A footnote to the matter of routine large-scale endigitization (There! See! I have spelled the word the US English way, with a zed! Everybody happy?) of governmental administrative records in an Australian context may exist in an informed consideration as to the extent to which the use of that administrative tool has been applied to the Australian electoral process, what electoral outcomes it might, over the years, have been capable of facilitating, and as to in which government's interests it may have been used. http://bit.ly/fXkyHx

Then again, perhaps they have been all, between them, only playing 'leapfrog'. You know, 'when one staff officer jumps right over another staff officer's back!'.

Oh what a lovely war!