Come on guys, I get the feeling you don't even bother to actually *read* these a

rticles and still make wild speculations like these?<br><br><div class="quotehea

der"><a href="http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=27473.msg9
77817#msg977817">Quote from: Peleus on <b>Today</b> at 17:01:32</a></div><div cl
ass="quote">Wasn't the American government given a similar choice to review the
leak but decided to give em the finger so they wouldn't be creditable</div><br>P
eleus, what do you mean "similar" ? You're just guessing/speculating here, nowhe
re in the Indymedia article does it say this alleged deal with Israel was of the
same nature of the US being offered to review the leaks<ul style="margin-top: 0
pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"><li> before release.</li></ul><br>Even then, it wouldn'
t make sense, because no country except the US was made offer. Duh, because it w
as <i>their</i> diplomatic cables, after all. They didn't offer it to Russia, Ir
an, Germany or whoever either.<br><br>Additionally, the US refusal to use that o
ffer was made public, I'm guessing that, in the unlikely event that the US would
had made use of the offer, this would also have been made public (not in specif
ics but something like "The US has assisted and advised Wikileaks in the censori
ng of certain names and events whose public release would have put lives in dang
er" or something similar).<br><br>So it seems weird to me that if Israel has bee
n offered a similar deal, we hear nothing about it from Wikileaks themselves.<br
><br>Also, in that case, the stakes are a lot lower for countries other than the
US, because their review and censoring would not carry the same type of public
endorsement, <i>because it's not their diplomatic cables that have been leaked i
n the first place.</i><br><br>[* I agree about your reasoning why the US refused
btw, because doing so would make it seem they endorsed the rest of the leaks. A
lso, to be completely fair, that refusal is one of the few US moves re:Wikileaks
that seems quite reasonable and understandable to me. Of course, Wikileaks anti
cipating this US reaction went ahead and made the offer for the sake of better P
R <img src="http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/Smileys/default/icon_lol.gif
" alt="lol" border="0"> what a game ... ]<br><br><br><div class="quoteheader"><a
href="http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=27473.msg977744#m
sg977744">Quote from: Requia ? on <b>Today</b> at 14:38:39</a></div><div class="
quote">Israel is hardly the only country to be spared, it was only today that Au
strailia got its first slam.</div><br>While you're probably right, this is not r
eally a solid reason for me to discredit that article.<br><br>(better reason: on
ly 1000 out of 260,000 documents have been released so any perceived pattern in
releases is meaningless)<br><br><br>However,<br><br><div class="quoteheader"><a
href="http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=27473.msg977741#ms
g977741">Quote from: Lysergic on <b>Today</b> at 14:35:12</a></div><div class="q
uote">What do you guys think of this?<br><a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en
/2010/12/470066.html" target="_blank">http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470
066.html</a></div><br>I find this hard to believe. Because if it's true, and it
came out (and Assange of all people should know that <i>everything</i> can be le
aked and become public info), it would pretty much destroy Assange's [if not Wik
ileak's] credibility. Way worse than these rape charges, because everybody with
half a brain knows they have to be a set-up [in some way or another], while this
thing would also make him lose a shitload of public support for him and his goa
ls right now, it it came out. Because it pretty much goes right against what mos
t people perceive to be his goals.<br><br>What I just said is, of course, circul
ar reasoning: I find it hard to believe he would put his reputation at stake lik
e this, because doing so would put his reputation at stake. <img src="http://www
.principiadiscordia.com/forum/Smileys/default/icon_lol.gif" alt="lol" border="0"
><br><br>That's why I say I find it hard to believe, not that it can't be true.
But there's more.<br><br>If he would put his reputation at stake like this, then
obviously his goals aren't quite exactly what most people believe his [Assange
and/or Wikileaks] goals are (which afaik, would be something like the free disse
mination of information, freedom of press and exposure of government corruption
and big corporate corruption).<br><br>I question his possible motives. If that i
s not his goal, then what is? <br><br>Doing it because he "had received money fr
om semi-official Israeli sources"? That doesn't jive <i>at all</i> with his prev
ious behaviour, let alone his current situation. Because right now he's fucked.
He made some really, really, <i>really</i> big enemies, and not just the US. He
might get lucky and get out of this alive or life-sentenced or whatever, small c
hance, but only if selling out to Israel doesn't come out in public. And again,
I think he knows that <i>everything</i> can get out in the public. I dunno, that
kind of grave risk seems to me to be something only a True Idealist would take.
Not a sellout. Still leaves the possibility that he follows a twisted kind of I
dealism that nobody [or none of his supporters] suspected thus far, but not "jus
t for the money", not even if he intended to use this money for the good of Wiki
leaks. That would just be too stupid, to assume he can get away with the exact s
ame kind of corrupt behaviour that he works so hard to expose.<br><br>Of course,
it would hardly be the first time human stupidity surprises me. But it's quite
an extraordinary claim, I think Assange is a clever guy, and if he'd done this,
... that'd be really <i>interesting</i> -- But I'm going to need some proof firs
t.<br><br>If not for the money, the other option is that he's been an Israeli sy
mpathisant agent some sort of whatever all along, and does it for the sake of Is
rael, the money being a nice bonus, and a means to get away when the story ultim
ately comes out. I believe this is also unlikely. <br><br>[Reasoning skipped cau
se this post is getting too long and I want to get to the final, possible most i
mportant point]<br><br>Which are the sources.<br><br>The most controversial (IMO
) parts of the story are the parts where Indymedia claims Assange has receives a
large sums of money:<br><br><div class="quoteheader">Quote from: Indymedia</div
><div class="quote">According to an Arabic investigative journalism website [2],
Assange had received money from semi-official Israeli sources and promised them
, in a secret, video-recorded agreement, not to publish any document that may harm
Israeli security or diplomatic interests.</div><br>Unfortunately, reference [2]
is from syriatruth.info, a website completely written in Arabic, which I cannot
read. It does feature a picture of Assange and the Wikileaks logo, so it probab
ly says *something* about the topic.<br><br>And later in the article once more:<
br><br><div class="quoteheader">Quote from: Indymedia</div><div class="quote">Ac
cording to another report [8], a left-leaning Lebanese newspaper had met with As
sange twice and tried to negotiate a deal with him, offering a big amount of mone
y , in order to get hold of documents concerning the 2006 war, particularly the mi
nutes of a meeting held at the American embassy in Beirut on 24th July 2006, whi
ch is widely considered as a 'war council' meeting between American, Israeli and
Lebanese parties that played a role in the war again Hizbullah and its allies.
The documents the Al-Akhbar editors received, however, all date to 2008 onwards
and do not contain anything of value, the sources confirm. This only goes to suppo
rt the Israel deal allegations.</div><br>Reference [8] is also from syriatruth.i
nfo, and therefore useless to me for fact-checking. BTW this wasn't immediately
clear to me, but the "left-leaning Lebanese newspaper" is the later mentioned <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Akhbar_%28Lebanon%29" target="_blank">Al-
Akhbar</a> (it literally means "The News", first I thought the phrase meant "All
ah is great", which seemed kinda weird so I looked it up as my Arabian is kinda
limited).<br><br>In addition to sources I can't read, there are a few other prob
lems with the article:<br><br><div class="quoteheader">Quote from: Indymedia</di
v><div class="quote">According to the Al-Haqiqa sources, Assange met with Israel
i officials in Geneva earlier this year and struck the secret deal. The Israel g
overnment, it seems, had somehow found out or expected that the documents to be
leaked contained a large number of documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebano
n and Gaza in 2006 and 2008-9 respectively. <b>These documents, which are said t
o have originated mainly from the Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut, wher
e <i>[sic]</i> removed and possibly destroyed by Assange, who is the only person
who knows the password that can open these documents, the sources added.</b></d
iv><br>The whole bit about Assange being the only one with "the password" (assum
ing they mean to say "key" or "passphrase" here, Wikileaks doesn't use passwords
) able to open these documents, is really kind of weird. Because with the high-g
rade type of assymetric RSA encryption* Wikileaks most probably uses, this kind
of thing becomes pretty damn hard. In fact, even if they used a symmetric cipher
like they did for the Insurance file, proper cryptographic procedure prescribes
that encryption really is as good as useless without validation. Meaning Assang
e would have had a hard time altering the documents without any other Wikileaks
associate finding out sooner or later.<br><br>(* "assymmetric" means the public/
private key stuff, which gives rise to a whole bunch of schemes besides encrypti
on, those being validation, authentication, digital signing, tamper-proofing, an
d more. To contrast, the AES256 encryption used for the insurance file is a "sym
metric" cipher, which means there is just one key, and it is used for both the e
ncryption and decryption, very much like historic ciphers such as Vigenere's--ad
vantage of symmetric ciphers is that they offer better security for less bits in
the key, but are not nearly as versatile as assymmetric ciphers)<br><br><div cl
ass="quoteheader">Quote from: Indymedia</div><div class="quote">Indeed, the publ
ished documents seem to have a 'gap' stretching over the period of July - Septem
ber 2006, during which the 33-day Lebanon war took place. Is it possible that US
diplomats and officials did not have any comments or information to exchange ab
out this crucial event but spent their time 'gossiping' about every other 'trivi
al' Middle-Eastern matter?</div><br>There are at least three much more likely po
ssibilities. First, by now I wouldn't put it past Indymedia that if I were to ch
eck for myself, maybe there is no "gap" or perhaps just a relatively quiet perio
d in communication. Second and more likely, Wikileaks has only received cables c
lassified up to "secret", but not "top secret", maybe the cables during this 33
day period had a higher security clearance and therefore do not appear in the 26
0,000 cablegate docs. And third, which makes me seriously doubt wtf Indymedia is
going on about, only about 1000 out of the 260,000 documents have been released
so far, so how can they speak of a "gap" in the data? It would not surprise me
that, if Wikileaks has incriminating documents about the 33-day conflict, they m
ight release them in one chunk, and not as a part of the (seemingly random?) stu
ff so far.<br><br><div class="quoteheader">Quote from: Indymedia</div><div class
="quote">In an interview with the Time magazine around the same time, Assange pr
aised Netanyahu as a hero of transparency and openness! [7]</div><br>Since this
reference is actually in a language and script I can read, I checked it. Do so y
ourself, ctrl-F "Netanyahu" if you like, but Assange says no such thing.<br><br>
This, of course, gives me not much reason to believe the references that I can't
read.<br><br><br>Oh yeah, and that's right I just remembered, the entire premis
e of the article is wrong, because there ARE in fact cables released already tha
t place Israel in a bad light, also as pointed out by one of the commenters:<br>
<a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470066.html?c=on#c260675" target
="_blank">http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470066.html?c=on#c260675</a><br
><br><br>Hm, and the bits about internal struggles and disagreements within Wiki
leaks, they are probably true (I didn't check the references, but I heard about
it before the whole Cablegate thing). It doesn't surprise me that ideas opinions
and ideals will clash among a group of motivated idealists such as Wikileaks. O
f course it says nothing about whether Assange is wrong, or the guy that disagre
es with him is wrong, or perhaps, just like we do in Discordianism, they both re
spect eachother for doing their own thing if they disagree.