David Seaton's News Links
After my waltzing around ever so long with trying to figure out who's behind Wikileaks, the penny finally dropped. It is so glaringly obvious to me now, that I'm surprised it never occurred to me before. The good news is that it isn't Israel.
(Hillary) Clinton likened online censorship by countries such as China, Vietnam and Iran to the rise of communist Europe, warning that a new "information curtain" threatened to descend on the world unless action to protect internet freedoms was taken. Her comments, which mark the Obama administration's first major foray into foreign policy online, come at a delicate time for relations between the US and China. Guardian, 01/21/2010
The May 18, 2009, cable, titled “Google China Paying Price for Resisting Censorship,” quoted a well-placed source as saying that Li Changchun, a member of China’s top ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the country’s senior propaganda official, was taken aback to discover that he could conduct Chinese-language searches on Google’s main international Web site. When Mr. Li typed his name into the search engine at google.com, he found “results critical of him.” That cable from American diplomats was one of many made public by WikiLeaks that portray China’s leadership as nearly obsessed with the threat posed by the Internet to their grip on power — and, the reverse, by the opportunities it offered them, through hacking, to obtain secrets stored in computers of its rivals, especially the United States. New York Times 12/04/2010
Kill with a borrowed knife (借刀殺人／借刀杀人, Jiè dāo shā rén) Attack using the strength of another (in a situation where using one's own strength is not favourable). Trick an ally into attacking him, bribe an official to turn traitor, or use the enemy's own strength against him.
Sacrifice the plum tree to preserve the peach tree (李代桃僵, Lǐ dài táo jiāng) There are circumstances in which you must sacrifice short-term objectives in order to gain the long-term goal. This is the scapegoat stratagem whereby someone else suffers the consequences so that the rest do not. 36 Strategems
Cutting to the chase: my theory is that Chinese intelligence is behind all of this... just to see how we like some of our own medicine... a "(fill in the color) Revolution" for the USA.
The US government and thinktankery in general have been treating Internet as if it was America's "secret" or not so secret weapon to weaken the Chinese leadership's power. Wikileaks proves that America's "regime" is as, or more, vulnerable than China's to the dissolvent of uncontrolled information.
Julian Assange is China's answer to the Dalai Lama and this year's Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Do I think that Julian Assange knows that he is being used by the Chinese?
Of course not. it would be essential for them to keep him totally in the dark. At some point or another American authorities are going to interrogate Assange and whoever is behind him wants the buck to stop right there. Assange has been put into to play to carry the can. I'm sure that whoever is China's man in the operation has impeccable cover and morphology to avoid suspicion.
Assange talks and acts like the leader of a religious sect similar to the one led by his mother's old guru, Anne Hamilton-Byrne. Manipulating someone like that into thinking that every idea in their head originated in their head is surprisingly easy. Certainly the Chinese are devious and patient enough (read Sun Tzu) to groom Wikileaks and Assange for years waiting to spring him. The fact that some of the cables are unflattering to China's leadership increase their appearance of innocence.
Up till now the Chinese have been playing defense, putting up their "Great Fire Wall" and stealing Google's source code, with Wikileaks they are now on the offense.
Certainly, if the Chinese are not behind all of this they can only be grateful for it. They are said to be compulsive gamblers, obsessed by luck. If they are innocent of Wikileaks they should at the very least burn a few joss sticks to Cai Shen, the Taoist god of fortune. DS
2 comments:
Where are the cables critical of the Israelis? Why so much talk of Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq, The Saudis, etc...
This theory is absurd: you cannot fight the opening of a society by further opening a society.
Google is not pilfering secrets, at least not as far as we know, but merely archiving web pages.
I'll bet you 100:1 that 99 out of 100 Chinese reading these cables know full well that their government is many times as devious, being even less accountable than the US govt.
Post a Comment