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All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
We're on chaosradioaustin.org and lrn.fm, antiwar.com/radio.
Our next guest is Greg Mitchell.
He's the author of the brand new book, The Age of WikiLeaks, and a bunch of other important ones, including So Wrong, For So Long, which obviously is about mainstream media in the United States.
He keeps a blog now at thenation.com, the media fix blog.
Welcome back to the show, Greg.
How are you doing?
Always happy to be here.
All right, now it's day 88 of covering WikiLeaks since the State Department cables were released or began being released.
So why don't you tell us about the latest and greatest and most important WikiLeaks revelations?
Well, of course, we finally have gotten to Mariah Carey.
Who?
Mariah Carey.
Is that a politician?
No, I think she's a singer.
Oh, I'm just picking on her.
I've heard of her before.
I just don't know any of her songs.
I think she's going to have to be called Cash and Carey now because the latest revelation was that Gaddafi's son paid her $1 million to sing four songs at a little mini concert for him.
So that's pretty good dough.
Yeah, well, and maybe that'll even make the news on TV.
It has a pop star involved in it, huh?
Yeah, well, I mean, what's happening?
We've seen this pattern now in the last, well, going back to the Tunisia revolt.
I think last time I was on, we talked about the role that WikiLeaks played in the Tunisia revolt and then in the Egyptian revolt.
And now we have Libya and WikiLeaks has been rather savvy, or maybe they've just been lucky in the way they've played it.
But as each of these revolts has appeared, Bahrain last week, they have rolled out cables in that massive, I guess there's still 247,000 left that haven't been published.
But they sort of cherry pick the cables that are related to the latest revolt and roll them out.
And they get a lot of coverage even from these many media outlets that otherwise mock or attack WikiLeaks.
And then they, of course, put these cables on the front page.
But they keep finding things that are very relevant in these cables relating to the U.S. and the regimes that are under fire, or it's just about the regimes themselves, not particularly U.S. involvement.
So we saw it with Bahrain and the tricky U.S. relationship there.
Certainly, we saw it with Egypt and Yemen.
And now with Libya, we're getting cables about the relationship with Gaddafi.
And the latest ones are really about how wacky his family are, and his eight children, and Gaddafi himself.
Again, I think some of the stuff about his kids is new.
Of course, anyone could believe anything about Gaddafi himself.
But still, you get these details, which give you a little more insight on him and where the money is and where the money is going.
Another interesting aspect, which I pointed out yesterday, was that another WikiLeaks effect is that you may have wondered why we never seem to be hearing about the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli.
And the reason is because he was recalled last month after statements he made about Gaddafi.
And the WikiLeaks cables came out and he was returned to the U.S. So we have no U.S. ambassador on the ground there.
So that's yet another WikiLeaks fallout.
All right.
Well, now there's a bunch to go over there.
Let's start with Bahrain.
What do we learn in the WikiLeaks about America's relationship with the kingdom in Bahrain?
Well, I think most observers agree that on a relative scale, Bahrain is not as bad as some of the other regimes there.
A little more progressive towards women and various other democratic things and so forth.
So the cables kind of captured that, how the U.S. was perhaps bending over backward too far, maybe a little too friendly, revealing about how we have been so supportive of that regime because of our fifth fleet being there.
It is different.
Each of these countries, I mean, the media does occasionally point out how different each of these cases are.
Most Americans may see this wide area, lump everything together, or just now finding out where these countries are located.
It's like, oh, Bahrain, isn't that in Central America?
But Libya, we have no real, obviously we don't have any bases there and so forth, but we get tons of oil from there.
But we don't have bases there that sort of complicates things.
We don't have a military deal with Gaddafi.
Bahrain is different.
We have a fleet there.
It's strategic areas, very important.
And that's what makes it interesting because all these cases, Yemen is different from Bahrain.
And Tunisia, we saw what happened there then was picked up on and helped spark a revolt in Egypt.
And we got tables that came out about Egypt.
I think we talked about last time about Suleiman and corruption and torture and so forth.
So each table taken on its own may not be that shocking or may not be that valuable, but I find absurd the people in the media who will continue to say that Wikileaks hasn't done much or there's nothing much new there or not causing much.
You might say some of the fallout's been negative or some of the fallout's been confusing, but it is kind of hysterical to see these cables quoted on the front page and then otherwise the editorial page and the columnists are making fun of Wikileaks and Assange and so forth.
Well, and here's the thing, too, is the people on the right wing who try to scaremonger all about Bradley Manning and demonize him and Assange and Wikileaks and the whole enterprise of some kind of great treason to America, we can see that maybe there's even truth to that.
If America means the Pentagon and the State Department, they don't want to lose their empire.
And yet just all you got to do is turn it even to CNN and you can tell that the people who are overthrowing American interests are doing their best to overthrow American interests in the Middle East.
They're the good guys.
They're the people of these countries.
Our government is on the side of the dictator.
So if we lose our interest in backing the dictatorship in Tunisia, to hell with us then.
Well, it's also what has happened with the Wikileaks cables is, while it's true, we can't overstate or we shouldn't overstate the effect that they have on the people.
I mean, certainly it was true in Tunisia, but since then, you know, we can't say that the people leading these revolts are sitting home reading their Wikileaks cables or reading my blog at The Nation or, you know, picking up, reading these cables and so forth.
However, and that's true in some cases, but the bigger effect that the cables have had lately is on the media itself in the Middle East, because they are reporting the cables widely and people are reading them.
Al Jazeera, you know, is now treated by, even by many of its former critics in the U.S., is now, you know, supported because they have been full-throatedly on the side of these revolts in each of these countries.
So you've got, you know, a lot of people in America are saying, gee, I thought Al Jazeera was all, you know, pro-terrorist and anti-American and so forth.
So Al Jazeera has been, the Al Jazeera English version has gotten a tremendous, you know, uptick here in the USA.
And as we've seen, they report widely and have been very influenced by the cables.
So what we may say is maybe old ad or everyone knows, in fact, there's been a tremendous amount of new stuff and details and proof in these cables so that places like Al Jazeera and other outlets in the Middle East are now reporting these things as fact, which is not true before.
So, you know, it's just a tremendous impact all around.
Right.
Well, and as I understand it, the Tunisian press had been talking about WikiLeaks and what they revealed, what the State Department cables revealed about the corruption in the Tunisian government, which they knew good and well, but here it was all in writing.
And that had been going on in the press there for a couple of weeks before the guy set himself on fire.
That was the context with which the within which those protests were started there in Tunisia that got this whole ball rolling.
So I sure hope Bradley Manning, you know, in his 10 minutes a day, they let him watch TV is patting himself on the back for that.
All right.
Hold on one minute.
It's Greg Mitchell from TheNation.com, the Media Fix blog.
We'll be right back.
All right.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
Talking with Greg Mitchell from TheNation.com, the Media Fix blog there.
He's been keeping track of the WikiLeaks on a daily basis for you there.
It's day 88 now.
You can check out the book, the brand new book, The Age of WikiLeaks, just updated to early February in print or as an e-book, just to help you get a feel for the book.
Just go to well, just search The Nation and Greg Mitchell.
You'll find his blog and a link right there.
Perhaps, Greg, you can tell us an easier way to find your new book.
Let me let me announce for your your listeners that the just about an hour ago, the e-book at Amazon just went on sale for one day only for ninety nine cents.
So, you know, get ready now.
Is that thing available anywhere but Amazon?
Because we're boycotting Amazon because it's in print at blurb dot com.
Blurb dot com.
Yeah.
Blurb dot com.
And it's available in all the e-book combinations at Amazon.
I haven't been able to get it up on e-book any other way.
So but at least it's ninety nine cents.
So, you know, you know, none of us are going to be making anything off it.
So.
Well, that's copy.
Oh, we don't we don't begrudge you making a living, Greg.
It's just that Amazon must have known that this is the United States of America and that nothing that WikiLeaks is doing was illegal.
Even The New York Times said the Justice Department is working hard on coming up with a conspiracy theory where they can try to say Assange was in on getting Bradley Manning to do the leaking in the first place, because otherwise it's perfectly legal to publish, publish classified information in America because of the First Amendment, the one that Amazon dot com uses for their business to protect them and selling the books that they sell to people.
And then they go and stab not just WikiLeaks and truth, but even the First Amendment, their own Amazon's First Amendment in the back at the drop of a hat because the government asked them to not because any lawyers said that they had to at all.
So I say let all people who own stock in Amazon watch its value fall through the floor.
Let's let's watch Amazon go out of business.
That's how free markets are supposed to work.
When a corporation is evil, we're supposed to destroy it by not giving it our money.
Well, everyone's free to do that.
And, you know, I'm sorry for Rand and Raven all over your interview, but that really made me mad.
PayPal and and everybody else to say, well, the State Department called us and said that WikiLeaks was breaking the law.
Yeah.
And these corporations don't have lawyers of their own that they could call and ask.
Is that right?
What?
Yeah, well, it's you know, we've been MasterCard.
There's a lot of this in the book.
The book, it's MasterCard and PayPal and Amazon and all the rest on this.
So it's it's you know, fortunately, it's kind of died down.
And WikiLeaks is also getting around it.
They're using MasterCard and Visa for certain things and PayPal.
Not quite sure how they've done it, but they have online stores now where they're selling merchandise, fundraising for Assange's defense, fundraising for other WikiLeaks activities.
And if you go to these pages now, they have ways to use PayPal and MasterCard and so forth.
So I guess they're getting around it somehow.
They're certainly not boycotting.
WikiLeaks is not boycotting PayPal and MasterCard.
They can't afford to.
How do you get around MasterCard and Visa?
And I'll guarantee you this, Assange is not boycotting Amazon with a book that the publishers have just paid a million dollars for that's going to be sold mainly on Amazon.
So I know that Mr. Assange is not boycotting Amazon.
That may be true.
Antiwar.com is and at our own expense to a great degree, because, of course, we've always made a great cut recommending books to that website.
But those days are over for us.
So there's so many different things I want to ask you about.
I guess real quickly, can you tell us what's in the WikiLeaks about Chavez, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Muammar Gaddafi?
I'm sure pretty much everybody saw that Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez both had very nice things to say about Gaddafi in the last couple of days.
But what did the WikiLeaks say?
Well, you know, I have to admit I haven't caught up fully with that.
You know, I sort of read the read the little blast yesterday that probably most people read going back in their relationship.
And, you know, Chavez saying nice things about him and so forth.
I even posted a photo at the blog.
I was surprised to find so many photos when I went looking of the two of them together going back many years.
So obviously, they you know, they both consider themselves revolutionaries.
They're running revolutionary societies.
They both flung their noses at the U.S. So, you know, then people can talk about human rights in both countries if it's really the same thing there.
But in any case, they have, you know, they have certain things in common, including problems with the U.S. So it's not really surprising.
But, you know, everything is going to be looked at, you know, with a different eye.
You know, now that you know, Gaddafi was kind of quiet for a while, you know, he wasn't maybe hadn't changed the stripes.
But, you know, he had, as even Donald Rumsfeld had to say yesterday, he was sort of put on the hot seat and said, well, you know, you've said some nice things about Gaddafi.
Are you U.S. under Bush, you know, warm to Gaddafi and so on and so forth.
So there's all kinds of people.
You remember Joe Lieberman and John McCain going over there and visiting with him and saying some nice things about him afterwards.
And so everyone is going to be having to answer for these kind of things with the new perspective of the past, you know, the past week here.
But so, you know, certainly Chavez is not not not alone in that.
Well, now, part of the bigger thing other than the daily deluge of leaks is sort of the new world that we live in post WikiLeaks now that it's a big deal.
I mean, the site's been there for a long time.
I urge people to dig through all parts of it, not just the war logs and the state cables.
There's tons of all kinds of stuff about many countries all over the world there.
But, you know, I was just talking with Kevin Zeese about their Defend Bradley Manning Project, the Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund, where they're going to try to round up Dan Ellsberg and others to be the expert guest to take his side of the story on TV and that kind of thing.
And he was talking about this new thing.
I think he said Columbia Journalism School is launching a thing called Local Leaks, which will basically be, you know, a new version of WikiLeaks.
And they're at at Columbia Journalism School there.
You know, State Department's not going to be able to do too much about that.
The days of The New York Times, they're just over, aren't they, Greg?
Well, I've been you know, as you say, I've been following it from the first day and it's been amazing how, you know, the first few weeks of this, it was basically the five the five original newspapers.
And it was everything was WikiLeaks and everything was these five original newspapers that were publishing things.
And then, of course, then we started getting the announcement of all these other various niche leaks, I guess you could call them places.
The one you just mentioned, but many, many others from from open leaks to, you know, in viral leaks to, you know, El Salvador leaks.
I mean, all over the globe.
You know, Al Jazeera set up its own channel that then produced the so-called Palestine papers.
But with the WikiLeaks cables themselves, we've now seen starting starting at the end of December, Assange has been giving them or giving portions of them to newspapers around the globe, you know, Finland and Norway and, you know, it's even much smaller countries than that.
And so we have seen almost every day, you know, another nation heard from which has had some cables that are extremely relevant to them.
They may know we may not care much in the US, but kind of blockbuster stuff for their own their own country or their own region.
So, you know, certainly Assange has signaled that he's not going to be happy to work with The Guardian and The New York Times again.
And they may have the most prestige for a lot of people, but that there's plenty of other outlets to get this stuff out.
And in fact, that's what we've seen in the recent months.
We mentioned earlier how some of these news outlets, Washington Post, The New York Times, so forth, printing these excerpts from cables every day, but they're not getting them themselves.
They're picking them up from other news outlets that are publishing them.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
You know, the prestige of The New York Times is based on what?
I mean, there are some journalists there who do really good work.
I don't want to exclude them all, but there are enough who are just, you know, the worst.
And then the editorial policy, they keep getting busted.
They don't even know they're supposed to be ashamed over there.
They gladly admit that they all the time, I guess, get on the train and go over to the White House and say, may we please publish this, sir, to the White House?
And, you know, so who's going to turn to The New York Times if they're no longer the place where you go to find out which secrets have been broken?
If you go everywhere else for that.
Yeah, well, it's absolutely true.
You know, it's makes me wonder about why Reisen and Lickblau and and some of the others who I have such respect for still work there.
Why not just leave The New York Times to Michael Sanger or Michael Gordon and David Sanger, you know?
Yeah, well, it's you know, it's true.
It's just, you know, The Times has a very odd relationship with this whole story now, given it's falling off with Sanger.
So, you know, I think we just have to take it with a take a lot of their stuff with with a grain of salt and see what happens.
Yeah, well, I'm going to keep my eyes on thenation.com/blogs/media fix.
That's Greg Mitchell, the media fix blog, keeping track of the WikiLeaks for us.
The new book is The Age of WikiLeaks, find it at blurb dot com and also So Wrong for So Long and a great many others at Barnes and Noble dot com.
Thanks, Greg.
Thanks.
