Pakistani papers were duped by a faked Wikileaks report, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Relying on reports said to be contained in Wikileaks, “Pakistani newspapers carried a series of scoops” until they realized they had been duped. The reporters reported that the US was colluding with India to inflict “genocide” in Kashmir; America was plotting with New Delhi to unleash a campaign of terror on Pakistan and that shadowy operatives had rubbed out a cop who threatened to expose the plot. Then they found themselves embarassed and blamed a conspiracy against them for the disinformation.
It’s got to be somebody’s fault. In the immortal words of Ed Wood’s detective in Plan 9 from Outer Space: “One thing’s sure: Inspector Clay is dead — murdered — and somebody’s responsible!” And in some parts of the world, the rule of culpability is anybody but me. Wikileaks has been imposing an intense intellectual strain on Pakistani editors of late. Radio Free Europe earlier reported on the difficulties of cherry picking even the authentic unverified reports, let alone the fake unverified reports.
The country’s virulently anti-Western Urdu-language press sees conspiracy theories behind the leaked diplomatic correspondence.
“We should think [about] whether turning WikiLeaks into headlines on our front pages and TV screens is right? Apparently it is propaganda against the Muslim countries and by projecting it, aren’t we becoming part of it? It will be best not to hype these revelations based on flawed information,” daily “Express” opined on August 4.
Declan Walsh, Islamabad correspondent for “The Guardian” — one of five media outlets with advance access to the cables — notes that most Pakistani media coverage of the WikiLeaks revelations target what has been said about the country’s civilian politicians and the deep divisions between civilian and military leaders. But Pakistani media has been silent on other critical issues highlighted in the secret diplomatic correspondence, he says.
“What we have not seen in Pakistan is a lot of debate about the other revelations of the WikiLeaks, which are, according to American diplomats and intelligence, the continuing links between Pakistan’s military and selected Islamist militant groups in the region, such as the Haqqani group and the Afghan Taliban,” Walsh says. “And according to American officials who are cited in the cables, they say that Pakistan is supporting these groups as part of a strategic hedge against India in the region.”
The Pakistani problem is simple. The Assange files cannot be true in their all-in-all. They show the Americans to be perfidious but they show the Pakistanis and their extremist friends to be even more perfidious. And now come these fake files. What’s an editor to do?
The potential for using sources without provenance for disinformation was been the subject of earlier posts. Because Assange is “leaking” reports about classified events, there is very little we can do to verify the leaks against collateral information. There is no open source collateral. For so long as the “leaks” seems plausible, they will gain credence. Once they gain credence, they become a vehicle into which can insert disinformation into the message in small but crucial quantities. Kevin Mitnick was a master of this kind of “social engineering” or hacking. “All social engineering techniques are based on specific attributes of human decision-making known as cognitive biases. These biases, sometimes called “bugs in the human hardware, ‘are exploited in various combinations to create attack techniques’”. It is our old friend disinformation, about which I wote in What Would Assange Be Willing To Say?
Julian Assange achieved the remarkable goal of establishing the truth of a set of assertions without reference to a known provenance. The fact that they were about classified information meant that the prospects of collateral confirmation or denial were small. As long as the leaks were plausible they could be passed off as true. In all likelihood the WikiLeaks stories are probably mostly true because disinformation consists of a lie embedded in a matrix of fact filler. Assange would have understood the power of a background process running amidst a mass of routine code; the importance of a wrapper around the core function. But what was the core function doing? You could never be sure if you couldn’t look very closely. And you could never look too closely as long as the leaks talked about classified comms. If Assange leaked about an entirely accessible event — if, for example, he leaked the location of every fire hydrant in the world — we could verify it. But if he leaked a claim about what we could only partially descry then his leak would only have to conform to the public visible truth to become accepted as entirely true.
He would have been well aware of the concept of deniable encryption. “Deniable encryption allows its users to decrypt the ciphertext to produce a different (innocuous but plausible) plaintext and insist that it is what they encrypted. The holder of the ciphertext will not have the means to differentiate between the true plaintext, and the bogus-claim plaintext.” How can the public know that WikiLeaks hasn’t given us the false plaintext of the real secret events if there is no other way of finding other plaintexts? It can’t. And we may never know for sure if Julian Assange’s leaks are true or whether a ringer is lurking in there somewhere.
The most important preparation for disinformation is to set up the scenario, what is called “pretexting”. It consists of creating a background we are ready to believe so that when the lie is fed to us, it is swallowed hook, line and sinker. And for decades — going way back before the Second World War — the Left has been “pretexting” by promoting self-hatred in the West. We are the bad guys. We don’t deserve to live. And so when Julian Assange says he wants to “crush bastards” he is really referring to his own civilization. What is more, there are nods of assent all around.
It is perhaps appropriate that the Russians have just unveiled the Kim Philby monument in Moscow at almost exactly the same time the “British Youth” were urinating on the Churchill Monument and swinging like apes from the Cenotaph — ostensibly because they would be charged tuition to go to college. But they were really there to stick it to the Man. Never mind that the Man was Dad. The person photographed swinging from the Union Jack on the War Memorial was Charlie Gilmour, son the Pink Floyd guitarist worth 80 million pounds. For Gilmour, there was no descration. It was another “so what” in a culture full of “so whats”. Charlie Gilmour claimed that he was carried away by the spirit of the moment and ‘I did not realise that it was the Cenotaph”. Gilmour is enrolled at Cambridge in history. Philby was from Cambridge, too. That coincidence should remind us that lies and Western self-loathing are the most potent time bombs ticking in it. “Don’t you just want to smash it up?” the fictional Philby asks Maclean in the glamorous British television recreation, upon casting his eye on students disporting themselves. Perhaps what he really wanted to do was smash himself and his circle up, and being unable to bring himself to do it, settled for the rest of us.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” print edition
Link to Wretchard’s novel “No Way In” Kindle Edition”
Sometimes it is not so apparent as to who is the spider and who is the fly. I am reminded of the Reagan Years when the USSR stole certain software for regulating natural gas pipelines. It was a trap. That which they stole was not what they thought it was. Using it blew up pipelines in Siberia that were plainly visible to astronauts in orbit from the intensity of the flames. The Soviets took the poisoned bait and thought it was delicious until the pain and convulsions started happening.
This is especially important in regard to the present WikiLeaks. Who are the spiders? And who are the flies? It isn’t always obvious. There have been flies who have been convinced that they are really spiders and only find out the truth when they are caught in the web of a true spider. But those are the easiest types of flies to catch after all.
But they were really there to stick it to the Man. Never mind that the Man was Dad.
paging doctor freud
… regarding our Pokistoni freinds, I darseay the good doctor would tell them, sometimes a leak is just a leak.
serves them right for reading something that isn’t the Koran.
First principles. This ties in to so many posts and running themes. What do young people need to be taught to give them the equipment, intellectual and moral, to use judgment in evaluating rumors and entreaties for the next 60 years? My guess is that three subjects are needed to begin. Arithmetic followed by geometry so that they can learn what a proof is. Language sufficient to tell when a sentence refers back to a subject. History in enough depth that they know what the people who created the government they grant authority to believed. If they know what Washington, Madison and Jefferson had been taught then they can evaluate criticisms of their work. Englishmen of the 1920s-30s should have had the same, after all my 3 were fighting for their rights as Englishmen, plus Bagehot.
The Urdu Editors have the use of the English language like a tool with a manual written in a language they cannot read. They produce reams of copy without any consideration of what it means. Philby and his Comrades were well educated by the standards of our civilization. They judged their present by their desires and frustrations and then read that back to judge those who had created the wealth that they consumed. There is something very immature and very human about that.
Some conservatives pulled the old Pen and Teller “petition to ban di-hydrogen monoxide” joke at the Cancun Climate summit (it kills you when it’s inhaled!). A lot of those folks with “science on their side” took the bait. Also, these citizens of the world would like to knee cap the US economy if we don’t fall in line.
You would think they’d be more understanding with President Obama in office.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/08/cop16-attendees-fall-for-the-old-dihydrogen-monoxide-petition-as-well-as-signing-up-to-cripple-the-u-s-economy/
As Richard wrote:
The most important preparation for disinformation is to set up the scenario, what is called “pretexting”. It consists of creating a background we are ready to believe so that when the lie is fed to us, it is swallowed hook, line and sinker.
Interestingly, the pretexting here was the “Climate Change Lie” and the petitions themselves were truthfully presented (although their end use was not revealed).
Wretchard says: Perhaps what he really wanted to do was smash himself and his circle up, and being unable to bring himself to do it, settled for the rest of us.
That comment could stand as a summary of the current presidency, particularly after today’s bizarre presser. Video here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/12/10/obama_ditches_tax_cut_presser_after_bill_clinton_takes_control.html
“Former President Bill Clinton gave a statement after his meeting with President Obama about his tax compromise with the Republicans.
However, after his statement, Clinton began to call on and take questions from the press with Obama at his side. Obama leaves promptly after a few moments and said he had to see Michelle, as he was keeping her ‘waiting.’
‘I don’t want to make her mad, please go,’ Clinton told Obama.”
A joke played on the Paki?
How very, very tacky
For Pokkeeston’s so young, but just a stripling
Would you play a joke on Kim?
If you do, then sing a hymn
To that master of the Khyber, Rudyard Kipling
Or as Sherlock used to say
Rushing Watson to the shay
The game’s afoot, old fellow, let’s be off!
Well that was then and this is now
And I say, if you’ll allow
They were better off when ruled by some Brit toff
They claim God himself did task it
Bid them build the biggest casket
Large enough to take all infidel to hell
If it works, don’t say it’s whacky
We will all be then in Paki
And be spilling into ‘Ganistan as well
I know Pakistan is nuclear
And while nothing could be spooklier
I can’t see them setting off some critical mass
I’m inclined to take for granted
They know Wikileaks was planted
And so I give the Paks a Khyber pass
Typo: descration -> desecration
It’s a tough call but it looks like the British moonbats are worse than the American variety. My condolences to the British but I’m glad their moonbats are far away.
Talk of disinformation techniques is a great opportunity to plug Sefton Delmar’s book Black Boomerang on British efforts during WW2… if you can find it.
The latest word is that Wikileaks has a “competitor” – someone who used to work there is starting his own leaksite.
And maybe this is for the best. For every disgruntled file clerk and scheming Sandy Burgler willing to leak something true, there are at least two dozen others willing to leak something false. I can’t tell you how many e-mails I have received with a shocking supposed statement by someone famous that have turned out to be relabled comedy routines or else complete fabrications.
Add to them the various Conspiracy Theorists and There’s a Giant Face on Mars types and the net result is a babble that no one can trust. Pretty soon, if someone says “Good Morning” you call the Naval Observatory and the Weather Bureau before replying.
I have seen the future and it is a bunch of Nigerian bankers trying to give you $24.3M in money they found in an account belonging to a now-deceased Mr. Laurel Hardy. Stealth is no more. We are now back to active noise jamming.
HDgreene,
Another “pretext” might have been Election 2000, combined with 30 years of repeated, revised history about the civil rights movement.
Remember how “blacks got disenfranchised?” Little Jewish ladies signed affidavits testifying that they voted for Pat Buchanan by accident, and those legal statements stood as “facts,” that the Florida State Supreme Court then used to justify recounts in select, Democrat party stronghold districts.
Funnily, not a single one of those affidavits met the SCOTUS’s gaze in its hearings of Bush v Gore. But for the testimony of a foreign statistics student pressing the Dem’s fuzzy math, there would have been silence from David Boyle’s witness stand. But, the myth stands…
Also, don’t forget (not that you would), but, Gore’s campaign team, and the flotilla of lawyers that descended on Broward and W. Palm Beach counties to assist Gore, all came from Daley’s Chicago.
It’s not controversial to say, Obama’s voodoo has a long, traceable pedigree. It was clear to this voter that the rust-belt mob was making its move with Obama.
And like so many others at Wretchard’s site, this American read the tea leaves on his own. No matter what the Left’s celebrities think, we don’t need a Chris Matthews or a Maureen Dowd or a Paul Krugman to read the “news” to us!
I’m sure they fabricate outright. Western media exploits translation as well, giving silly and inappropriate meaning to Asian words. I assume the purpose is finding humor in stereotypes? Or they just like to antagonize. They were awful during the Olympics.
Only slightly O/T I guess, What do the esteemed commentors, that is all of you,make of the Revalve of the Iraqi Dinar that is supposed to take place before Years end? I know of someone betting thousands he will be worth Millions soon. I suppect Pie in the Sky myself. Thoughts?
Conveniently easy to catch. Many democrats believe the Rathergate documents on Bush were a setup – i.e. a republican wrote them knowing that MS Word would be instantly recognized.
I keep wondering about a birth certificate… if it were to appear via WL, would the Left finally see Julian as anything but a hero beyond reproach?
It consists of creating a background we are ready to believe so that when the lie is fed to us, it is swallowed hook, line and sinker.
OK, so that’s not exactly new if you believe all the deconstructionists and pomo litcrit types, it’s all narrative and context, we humans buy the sizzle and not the steak.
More to the point, I just watched an episode of PBS’ Washington Weak In The Head, and the discussion about (death) taxes included *no* mention that the “compromise” numbers of whatever the are, 35% about $5m, are just about where everybody with any sense has known they should be, as long as there were any Democrats in the circuit, for ten or fifteen years, … after factoring in inflation, which this has now done. Not a *mention* of it, just some heartsick Democrats and one somewhat self-satisfied semi-conservative, if my half-an-ear-to-the-show heard it right. “Why did we have to GIVE IT ALL AWAY?” they KEPT asking. Give it all away? They *mentioned* that this year there is NO inheritance tax – and then forgot it a moment later so they could moan about giving it “all” away. THIS is a narrative, if you can’t even hold the plain meaning of YOUR OWN SENTENCE in mind for half a paragraph.
So go easy on the poor Pakistanis, I’m sure they lead complex and difficult lives and we would all be better off if they never heard of us and we never heard of them. I recommend they go on jihad against computers – no, make that anything electrical, not to mention anything in the English language. At least they should immediately purge their country of both. Then pull the borders in over their heads and live happily ever after.
And I might recommend the talking heads on PBS do just about the same, maybe retire to the countryside, unplug their Interwebs, and organize some nice book clubs where they discuss fiction and nothing at all ride on their comprehension.
The people who brought us “visualize world peace” have a paranoiac vision of humanity. If people are not full of perfidy on their own accord, then it is their very earthly emanations that are destroying mother earth. Here in the west it is the government that breeds such monsters. It must be because nature would not suffer that kind of self denying vanity. Once people were proud to be amongst great nations, now greatness can only be achieved by ratting out your neighbor. These street goons will be the perfect shock troops of a future tyranny. These men, these fine young cannibals, will be the reason that our civil liberties will be taken and too, the means to protect ourselves. Our universities are the madrassas of the leftist mind and they breed violence innocently like Dr. Frankenstein brought life for good intentions. The government will protect its children in ways that only parents can a felonious child. Not unlike Pakistan’s own brood of wild children born to terrorize their enemies. But alas, the problem has found its own solution; the money that creates such monsters has run out. So when the music stops the sons and daughters of rock stars will go home to their parent’s house, the hang-abouts will get a job, and the truly villainous will go into politics, probably as community organizers.
No fiat currency ever scripted ever increased in value in a meaningful way…
With the most unusual exception of the Lincoln Greenback.
It started out life as war script and ended up being backed by gold.
IF Iraq booms the taste will be in real estate, equities and import licenses.
Forget the currency.
exsqueeze me, but the Iraqi currency is backed by oil, almost as good as gold. but hey, just where *has* all that revenue been going for the last eight years?
into dollars I daresay but in whose name? harumph.
Glen Beck Quotes Van Jones
We’ve been trained not to have power. We’ve been trained to protest. We’ve been trained to critique and to be mad at NASA (ph). We have not been trained to grab the whip and put it down and run the plantation. That’s not what we’ve been trained to do.
So I would argue that it’s the inside-out transformation that will ignite the bottom-up transformation that will make the top-down transformation work.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BECK: OK. Top-down, remember, put the radicals in; and the bottom- up, get the revolutionaries to rise up. Grab the whip and run the plantation.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/glenn-beck/transcript/revolution-now#ixzz17m8vn1DQ
In this next clip, Beck says that he thinks that Julian Assange
is the inside out for the bottom’s up confused that the top down radicals can take advantage of.
Oh Walt,
Are you a reincarnation of W.S. Gilbert? Truly sir, you are the poet laureate of the Belmont Club.
Ned
I watched the tape several times, and being an old anti-Clinton hand watching the guy’s every move, I think Bill Clinton couldn’t believe it when Obama walked off on him cause wifey was stamping her feet.
I mean, Bill, bless his soul, just could not believe that was actually happening, and was amazed.
Walt,
But then I detect something Nashlier in spooklier.
Ned
While on the topic of being duped;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/10/gore-effect-on-steroids-six-straight-days-of-record-low-temperatures-during-cop16-in-cancun-mexico/
6 straight days of record low temperatures for the UN Cancun conference on global warming. Priceless.
They want to set the 2011 conference in hell, just to be sure but the Devil wouldn’t let them.
Precedent:
@ewerickson Erick Erickson
http://movieclips.com/cEzx/ hey this is kind of like Clinton taking over for Obama. H/t @brianfaughnan
When the rich and privileged want to wreck their society, it is truly over. The outlines of the new society are clear enough. Enjoy the future.
9. RWE
You say “I can’t tell you how many e-mails I have received with a shocking supposed statement by someone famous that have turned out to be relabled comedy routines or else complete fabrications.”
Another equally possible (maybe even probable) possibility is that the sender of the email actually believes the fabrication. How many people today actually believe that Sarah Palin said “I can see Russia from my house”.
They opened the box of Pandora
when deciding to split up the Raj
and now not a soul can ignore a
atom-splitting bacteriophage
Burma Slave?
Thanks for the notice of poor little rich kid Charlie Gilmour, typical little jerkoff.
We could use more of this history on the self-hatred that the liberals find so natural, many of my friends share it. Most famous of course, is our own Little Prince Bam Bam and his denunciation of American exceptionalism.
Where did this self-loathing come from? I remember years ago here at Belmont a poster linked us to histories of Soviet agents who seemed believable, who detailed their extremely successful efforts to introduce this oikophobia through academia.
Anyone have any links to documentation on this phenomenon? I know now, it’s like asking fish about the water they live in – what water? – but still, interesting.
Here’s a good overview, from the irreplaceable James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today column in WSJ Online 27 Aug 2010: Oikophobia
Why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.
The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: “the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours.’ ” What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.
Scruton was writing in 2004, and his focus was on Britain and Europe, not America. But his warning about the danger of oikophobes–whom he amusingly dubs “oiks”–is very pertinent on this side of the Atlantic today, and it illuminates how what are sometimes dismissed as mere matters of “culture” tie in with economic and social policy:
The oik repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed on us from on high by the EU or the UN, though without troubling to consider Terence’s question, and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community.
The oik is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of the oik that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe. For we are seeing a massive expansion of the legislative burden on the people of Europe, and a relentless assault on the only loyalties that would enable them voluntarily to bear it. The explosive effect of this has already been felt in Holland and France. It will be felt soon everywhere, and the result may not be what the oiks expect.
There is one important difference between the American oik and his European counterpart. American patriotism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism but an allegiance to a country based in an idea of enlightened universalism. Thus our oiks masquerade as–and may even believe themselves to be–superpatriots, more loyal to American principles than the vast majority of Americans, whom they denounce as “un-American” for feeling an attachment to their actual country as opposed to a collection of abstractions.
Yet the oiks’ vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .”
This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.
The Soviets took the poisoned bait and thought it was delicious until the pain and convulsions started happening.
Which sounds great, but the Soviets didn’t have hostages. The Pakistanis do (aka Hindus and Christians), and have no compunction about making infidels pay for Islamic incompetence. In many ways, humiliating a Muslim is far worse (for them) than shooting them, and provokes greater retaliatory rage. I don’t know what to do about that, and perhaps in the end said hostages will be an unfortunate and necessary sacrifice in the war against Islam, but I’d prefer to save those the Muslims will inevitably target for murder.
It is perhaps appropriate that the Russians have just unveiled the Kim Philby monument in Moscow…
Indeed. One wonders what took them so long….
Oh, and how’s that reset going?