Shamir, Stupidity And Julian Assange.
The debate on Wikileaks has shifted somewhat, and I think that is not useful, as from my cursory reading there is plenty of excellent material.
Michael C. Moynihan has a story on Israel Shamir, the well-known Far Rightist and hardcore antisemite, and his association with Wikileaks in Russia.
I can well imagine that the photo with Julian Assange is staged, but that does not excuse his association with this well-known racist.
I would assume that Shamir wanted to engineer himself into a position of power, disseminating Wikileaks material as he chose and probably pulled the wool over a slightly naive Assange. However, that is no excuse.
Wikileaks should release a statement disassociating themselves from Israel Shamir and his associates.
Update 1: Snoopy has done a far superior post on this topic:
“Whatever you can say about Assange, he certainly captured the attention of the world lately, dividing the audience into haters and admirers. No one remained indifferent, for a wide variety of reasons. It could be said – and I tend to accept the view expressed by Francis Sedgemore – that Assange and his team started something that is far beyond the related scandals and dirt and is of extreme importance to the journalism and politics of this century.
Assange methods and Assange personal habits, though, may undermine the possible good that could come out of the whole endeavor. Enough is said and written about the way Assange published hundreds of documents that endangered people. A lot is written about his persona, so there is no need to repeat all this stuff. WikiLeaks could certainly do with a more sensible leader.”
Update 2: The JC has more on Israel Shamir/Jöran Jermas/Adam Ermash.
ModernityBlog 
Do you have any idea what the Russian next to the photo means?
Rebecca
16/12/2010 at 03:26
Moynihan is spot on here,
“So let’s treat the WikiLeaks organization like the journalists they insist they are, and ask the question put forward by Novaya Gazeta reporter Yulia Latynina: Out of all the competent journalists who are sympathetic to the WikiLeaks mission, why have Wahlström and Shamir—one a disgraced journalist, the other an extreme racist—been trusted with the largest intelligence leak in history?”
Andrew Murphy
16/12/2010 at 06:12
Rebecca,
No, sadly I don’t but a good question now you point it out.
modernityblog
16/12/2010 at 14:05
MB, thanks for the link. About 10 blogs published something on the subject. I could have been much earlier with this post, but sloth…
Now for Rebecca: the picture and the (truncated) text are from here:
http://rusrep.ru/article/2010/11/29/wikileaks
My translation of this piece of text:
The archive includes 251.288 documents.
The oldest is dated Dec 28, 1966, the freshest – Feb 28, 2010
Cables are sourced to 274 embassies and consulates of US all over the world.
The documents are cables sent by highest rank US diplomats to State Dept and also from secretary of State Dept office to the embassies, including NATO and UN. The documents contain informations on what instructions are sent by Washington, which intelligence is gathered, what the diplomats learned about the countries where they work, their reports on meetings with ministers and politics and opinions.
SnoopyTheGoon
16/12/2010 at 21:17
I’ve bundled together lots of the key links on Shamir and his connections to Assange here: http://bit.ly/bundles/bobfrombrockley/2
BobFromBrockley
20/12/2010 at 22:47
good selection Bob, why not do a small post on it?
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