Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Swedish psychological warfare against Wikileaks and Assange


"Operation Stalling" and new untruthful reporting by the Swedish National Television
Analysis
By Marcello Ferrada-Noli


Medialinks: 01, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Introduction

Wikileaks' main endeavour has been to obtain transparency in government and inspire decimation of oppressive dictatorships or authoritarian rule worldwide.  It is an entirely moral enterprise; an ethical inspired international movement driven solely with the civil courage of its organizers, engineers and contributors. It would be redundancy to name what the enemies of Wikileaks are, who are those ultimately behind the liquidation of Wikileaks.

Wikileaks-concept and their organization has produced the greatest impact in the international political development in the last decades since the Berlin-wall collapse. The "dangerousness" of the Wiklileaks impact, as seen for the targeted interests hit by the numerous disclosures, film documents, cables, etc., resides for the most part in its potential. A dialectical analysis done by its detractors may have considered both the “damage” Wikileaks has already done, but as well – and this is the most decisive part – it would have estimated the prospective influence of Wikileaks (or such designs) for the future and in the context of, or symbiosis with, the social-media which have also explosively grown under the same era. This social-media, or the segments of it which still has not completely fallen under intelligence-political control, will also be, and soon, a target in this “contra offensive” initiated by those politically and economically offended by Wilileaks actions.



Above, Wikileaks-video "Collateral Damage". Only this upload (there are several others) seen already by over 12 million  among English-speaking Youtube viewers. It produced a markedly change - or statistical significant -  in the public attitude towards the occupation wars in the Midle East and Afghanistan. See the full version (and also a brief version) in the site COLLATERAL MURDER

 

Nevertheless, there has been in fact no “damage” produced by Wikileaks other than its contribution to the liquidation of dictatorships around the world, or the increased awareness that several others will follow. The problem is, viewed in traditional geopolitics, that this process has not being done in a military timing designed or coinciding with the interests of those in power, those controlling the international political and economic agenda. It is the libertarian appeal of Wikileaks whose message reach direct the masses of the world, the reproduction of a non-parliamentary contesting of power, and the direct-action spiral that ensues, the elements considered highly “damaging” about Wikileaks. In other terms, It is Wikileaks world-revolutionary character.

A sad and revealing aspect of such analyses is that they miss to consider - or omit to state - that Wikileaks aims in principle at nothing more, nothing less, than to make prevail internationally the libertarian ideals of the noble American Revolution as conceived by the idealist fighters and founders of the democratic rule of USA. I remember well this was said very clear by Julian Assange in a notable interview by Steve Croft for CBS “60 Minutes”. Wikileaks is definitely not against the interest of the American people, or of any decent people in the world.

The multiple-front contra offensive against Wikileaks

With scarce resources in the decrease, Wikileaks is force to withstand these days a formidable and belligerent contra offensive in a multiple front. This is based in one and only strategy, and under one unique command. On the one front, at the direct orders of the multinational corporate world and political interests hit by the Wikileaks disclosures, international banks continue strangle the funding from supporters around the world.

In another front, the attrition war posed by the long-lasting “legal process” by proxy (taken by Sweden) against its founder and front-figure Julian Assange reveals clearer and clearer in its artificial delay the tactical aim of contribute to the blockade above. One thing is to acknowledge that appealing procedures takes their due time. But another is to explain why so different, consecutive dates and delays, have been announced for such verdicts. This, instead of having declared from the beginning a realistic time-frame for the releasing of the verdict. And this situation could hardly be understood as aimed "stressing  out" or "worn out"  the Swedish part. It is - as demonstrated with the recent news on the organization hard economic strain - that it was Wikileaks the part forced to endure the costs of these protracted decisions. The legals process "started" by Sweden did find the way - if not already designed in its very original operative schedule - to strangle Wikileaks also economically and organization wise.

Operation stalling

In my interpretation, the external-caused asphyxiation process seen all along, in acute form lately, regarding Wikileaks (economically, politically, and in the organization structure) corresponds to a psychological-warfare design. I will call it “Operation stalling", as it aims appears to be the procrastination of the "legal" process and corresponding verdicts of extradition and the like.

Today has been 333 days since the process-unjustified arrest of Julian Assange initiated by the process-unjustified solitary confinement in a London prison, the South London Jail. Until to day not a single charge has been presented against him. It is today more than pristine clear that the Swedish prosecutor Ms Marianne Ny had ample possibilities of arrange the interrogation of Julian Assange already in Sweden, or even later while Assange was under police custody or arrest in London. Now, when pieces of the international puzzle begin to take a clearer form, the public can see that this artificial delay in managing the process was a sine-qua-non element in the strategy of asphyxiate Wikileaks economically.

In the main, the political damage to Wiklileaks was in this procrastination-design a) partly to immobilize, delay or obstruct the analyses of materials and editing, of for instance the so called cables-production, b) partly to discourage the collaborative material would to be send from the part of the public to Wikileaks, based in the notion that these individuals would wait until Wikileaks founder would be  “clear” of any wrongdoing.

Certainly, a masterpiece in this strategy was to confound the public – mainly through reports from the Guardian and the Swedish mainstream media – on the character of the Swedish accusations against Assange, which were presented- and still are, as we shall see in the analysis below – as proper criminal charges or suspected charges.

And eventually to asphyxiate Wikileaks also politically, as its political base and collaborative cadres, all of them engaged only altruistically and ad-honorem, neither could endure such long period, almost a year now. This situation also affects Wiklileaks organizational functioning, as the longer the time the undefined process persists, the more expensive the costs, and ultimately the totally draining of such funds. Actually, this was pointed out by Julian Assange long time ago, when in one of his appearance’s outside the court in the previous hearings compared the enormous resources put up in this legal process by Sweden, Britain or elsewhere, in contrast with the hyper limited resources at his disposal.
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New campaigns against the Wikileaks founder in the National Television
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In a further front, the consequent attacks by the Swedish psychological-warfare apparatus. The put in motion of psychological-war classical instruments, which implementation-task is given in the first place to the National Television, the mainstream media and echoed by the radical-feminist movement from the state institutions and media platforms they control. I have already published a variety of analyses to these regards (see for instance Sweden’s credibility in trouble - Why blame Wikileaks or Julian Assange, the Swedish rigged documentary on Assange, Swedish trial by the media, etc.). 

In a new such campaign, judging from two different and consecutive programs in the Swedish National Television during the last week, we find the same pattern in the smearing of the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. One occasion was the Rapport news-program deceptively titled “Here Julian Assange hides himself” [Här gömmer sig Julian Assange], referring to Assange’s house-arrest place. The other was the weekly Agenda news-analysis of Sunday 23 October “Why Assange is abandoned by his old friends” in which accusations against Assange - presented as a threatening and dangerous psychopath - are broadcasted uncontested.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I have posted in the Professors blogg an updated, more in-deep analysis of the Agenda program on Julian Assange. See article "Further devious reports on Julian Assange in the Swedish National Television. Update"


The Swedish psychological warfare against Wikileaks and Julian Assange

I have previously analysed in which term Sweden participates in the international discredit campaign against Wikileaks, having undoubtedly own reasons détat (The Swedish political crusade against Assange and Wikileaks, in Newsmill), and I have also developed on Sweden’s central role in the smear campaign against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the above mentioned analysis on the Swedish media duck pond and the trial by the media of Julian Assange, which summary (in English) was published also in Newsmill. A comprehensive view of these theses can be found in the article A London journalist does interview on negative Swedish-media reporting of Assange case, and also in Julian Assange as "symbolic issue" for the radical-feminists in Sweden. One of the main forces signalled has been the Swedish mainstream media.

The central participation of the Swedish media apparatus in designs related to psychological warfare (meaning, national or international campaigns to sustain interest viewed as strategic by the Swedish authorities or Swedish corporatist interests) is not new. One clear illustration was presented during the discussion (and promulgation) of the surveillance legislation in 2008. It was known with the years – thanks to the Wikileaks disclosures on Sweden - that such initiative has been petitioned by the USA, or implemented in view of USA and NATO interests. Nevertheless, the mainstream media indulged a central participation in the ferocious psychological-warfare campaign. The instrument-motive used was the military participation of Sweden in the occupation of Afghanistan. Lies were declaimed all the way at the right and left of the truth-spectra.

In 2010 the machinery was anew put in motion, this time regarding the “Swedish” case against Assange. I found of particular interest the duck pond phenomenon in the Swedish media, which is a plausible explanation for the success of this campaigns, namely, the complete absence of criticism or own investigations from the part of journalists as to whether those campaigns –which obviously do not tell the all truth, or are simply deceiving – do correspond to the ultimate interests of the nation. Naturally, the Swedish National Television has had a central role in such campaigns [3], [4].



Note: A list of prominent politicians maintaining it is OK to kill Julian Assange is found here 
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References and Notes
aa  aa   [1] Svenska dagbladet, a main Swedish newspaper, illustrated its 17 Feb 2011  article “Idyllic picture of Sweden is darkened” with a montage showing the notorious criminal Göran Lindberg -- a world-reviled, convicted serial rapist (including the rape of a 14-year old child) – portrayed together with Julian Assange and his lawyer Mark Stephens. A conspicuous columnist of the newspaper Aftonbladet refers 13 Feb 2011 to Julian Assange as a paranoid idiot who refuses come to Sweden to confront trial”.  The competitor newspaper, Expressen, describes 13 Feb 2011 in its cultural page “the sexual pleasure of Mr Assange is just an inescapable element for his severe compulsive needs that are beyond. . .” [2] “Welcome to Agenda. . .Gadhaffi förnedrad och dödad. Spela någon roll hur en diktator störtas? Är Wikileaks redan historia? Reportage om Julian Assange inför beskedet om utlämning till Sverige”
Other articles in the Professors blogg on the Swedish case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange: 
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feminism 
 

1 comment:

Dag Lindgren said...

Jag tycker Sverige skall ta tillbaks eftersom det tog för lång tid och var för besvärligt att få honom utlämnad och det är inte proportionerligt med ett års husarrest bara för att få en oavslutad utredning gjord och det är för sannolikt nu att "irrelevanta" överväganden kommer att ges för stor vikt och alla inblandade inklusive "offren" har redan lidit för mycket.

Sedan tycker jag Sverige skall anmäla GB till EU kommissionen, eftersom de har förhalat ett enkelt utlämningsärende.