Americans are too Stupid to Function in a Democracy

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PERSONAL HEALTH

News Junkie Post / By Stephen Dufrechou

Are We Too Dumb for Democracy? The Logic Behind Self-Delusion

When faced with facts that do not fit seamlessly into our individual belief systems, our minds automatically reject (or backfire) the presented facts.

December 19, 2010 |

A recent cognitive study, as reported by the Boston Globe, concluded that:

Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

In light of these findings, researchers concluded that a defense mechanism, which they labeled “backfire”, was preventing individuals from producing pure rational thought. The result is a self-delusion that appears so regularly in normal thinking that we fail to detect it in ourselves, and often in others: When faced with facts that do not fit seamlessly into our individual belief systems, our minds automatically reject (or backfire) the presented facts. The result of backfire is that we become even more entrenched in our beliefs, even if those beliefs are totally or partially false.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” said Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher of the Michigan study. The occurrence of backfire, he noted, is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

The conclusion made here is this: facts often do not determine our beliefs, but rather our beliefs (usually non-rational beliefs) determine the facts that we accept. As the Boston Globe article notes:

In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.

Despite this finding, Nyhan claims that the underlying cause of backfire is unclear. “It’s very much up in the air,” he says. And on how our society is going to counter this phenomena, Nyhan is even less certain.

These latter unanswered questions are expected in any field of research, since every field has its own limitations. Yet here the field of psychoanalysis can offer a completion of the picture.

Disavowal and Backfire: One and the Same

In an article by psychoanalyst Rex Butler, Butler independently comes to the same conclusion as the Michigan Study researchers. In regards to facts and their relationship to belief systems (or ideologies), Butler says that:

there is no necessary relationship between reality and its symbolization … Our descriptions do not naturally and immutably refer to things, but … things in retrospect begin to resemble their description. Thus, in the analysis of ideology, it is not simply a matter of seeing which account of reality best matches the ‘facts’, with the one that is closest being the least biased and therefore the best. As soon as the facts are determined, we have already – whether we know it or not – made our choice; we are already within one ideological system or another. The real dispute has already taken place over what is to count as the facts, which facts are relevant, and so on.

This places the field of psychoanalysis on the same footing as that of cognitive science, in regards to this matter. But where cognitive studies end, with Nyhan’s question about the cause of backfire, psychoanalysis picks up and provides a possible answer. In fact, psychoanalysts have been publishing work on backfire for decades; only psychoanalysis refers to backfire by another name: “disavowal”. Indeed, these two terms refer to one and the same phenomena.

The basic explanation for the underlying cause of disavowal/backfire goes as follows.

“Liberals” and “conservatives” espouse antithetical belief systems, both of which are based on different non-rational “moral values.” This is a fact that cognitive linguist George Lakoff has often discussed, which incidentally brings in yet another field of study that supports the existence of the disavowal/backfire mechanism.

In accordance with these different non-rational belief systems, any individual’s ideology tends to function also as a ‘filtering system’, accepting facts that seamlessly fit into the framework of that ideology, while dismissing facts that do not fit.

When an individual—whether a “liberal”, “conservative”, or any other potential ideology—is challenged with facts that conflict with his/her ideology, the tendency is for that individual to experience feelings of anxiety, dread, and frustration. This is because our ideologies function, like a lynch pin, to hold our psychologies together, in order to avoid, as Nyhan puts it, “cognitive dissonance”. In other words, when our lynch pins are disturbed, our psychologies are shaken.

Psychoanalysts explain that, when this cognitive dissonance does occur, the result is to ‘externalize’ the sudden negative feelings outward, in the form of anger or resentment, and then to ‘project’ this anger onto the person that initially presented the set of backfired facts to begin with. (Although, sometimes this anger is ‘introjected’ inward, in the form of self-punishment or self-loathing.)

This non-rational eruption of anger or resentment is what psychoanalysts call “de-sublimation”. And it is at the point of de-sublimation, when the disavowal/backfire mechanism is triggered as a defense against the cognitive dissonance.

Hence, here is what mentally occurs next, in a matter of seconds:

In order to regain psychological equilibrium, the mind disavows the toxic facts that initially clashed with the individuals own ideology, non-rationally deeming the facts to be false—without assessing the validity of the facts.

The final step occurs when the person, who offered the toxic facts, is then non-rationally demonized. The person, here, becomes tainted as a ‘phobic object’ in the mind of the de-sublimated individual. Hence, the other person also becomes perceived to be as toxic as the disavowed facts, themselves.

At this point, ad hominem attacks are often fired at the source of the toxic facts. For example: ‘stupid liberal’ or ‘stupid conservative’, if in a political context. Or, ‘blasphemer’ or ‘heretic’, if in a religious context. At this point, according to psychoanalysis, psychological equilibrium is regained. The status quo of the individual’s ideology is reinforced to guard against future experiences of de-sublimation.

Why Do Different Ideologies Exist?

This all begs the obvious question about the existence of differing ideologies between people. Why do they exist? And how are they constituted differently? George Lakoff has demonstrated in his studies (which are supported strongly by psychoanalysis), that human beings are not born already believing an ideology. Rather people are socialized into an ideology during their childhood formative years. The main agents which prescribe the ideology are the parental authority figures surrounding the child, who rear him, from infantile dependency on the parent-figures, into an independent adult. The parental values of how the child should be an independent and responsible adult, in regards to his relations between his self and others, later informs that child’s ideology as an adult.

Lakoff shows that two dominant parenting types exist, which can determine the child’s adult ideology. Individuals reared under the “Strict Parent” model tend to grow-up as political conservatives, while those raised under a “Nurturing Parent” model tend to become political liberals. His most influential book on these matters, “Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think”, was published in 1996.

Of course, peoples’ minds can fundamentally change, along with their ideological values. But short of a concerted effort by an individual to change, through one form of therapy or another, that change is mostly fostered by traumatic or long-endured life experiences.

Yet many minds remain rock solid for life, beliefs included. As psychiatrist Scott Peck sees it, “Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.”

Thus to answer Nyahan’s question—how can society counter the negative effects of backfire?—it seems only one answer is viable. Society will need to adopt the truths uncovered by cognitive science and psychoanalysis. And society will have to use those truths to inform their overall cultural practices and values. Short of that, Peck’s “fortunate few” will remain the only individuals among us who resist self-delusion.

Stephen Dufrechou is Editor of Opinion and Analysis for News Junkie Post.

Being the Change You Seek for the World

Become the change you seek in the world.



become the change you seek



As early pioneers in the knowing, that when you lose your reason, you attain highest perfect knowing

- -Jack Kerouac, Book Of Blues, 55th Chourus, Desolation Blues

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

- Albert Camus

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

- Albert Camus

Few are those who can see with their own eyes and hear with their own hearts.

- Albert Einstein

Aye, but isn't the man who chooses the bad in some way better than the man who has the good forced upon him?

- Alex (A Clockwork Orange)

Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.

- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" ( $ ) ( ? )

To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

- Amos Bronson Alcolt

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts--for support rather than for illumination.

- Andre Lang

Another way in is the other way out; Never doubt where to exit; it is another entrance out.

- Andrew S. Pudliner

it must be funnier to be stoned than to watch people who are stoned

- Anonymous

For example, justice is considered to mean equality, It does mean equality- but equality for those who are equal, and not for all.

- Aristotle

Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever .... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.

- Aristotle

We are what we repeatedly do.

- Aristotle

Wit is educated insolence.

- Aristotle

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

- Aristotle

Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.

- Barry Lopez

It is the path of least resistance that makes rivers and men crooked.

- Bj Palmer

its like a finger, pointing at the moon. if you stare at the finger, you miss all the heavenly glory

- Bruce Lee Enter The Dragon

Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water into a teapot, and it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash! Be water, my friend.

- Bruce Lee, TAO of Jeet Kune Do

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

- Bucy's Law

you have two ears and only one mouth for a reason

- Buddhist Belief

I'm an idealist: I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

- Carl Sandburg

The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

- Castlevania - Symphony Of The Night

How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: The Renaissance pencilled in for right after the Dark Ages. The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Post-Modern Era, then The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.

- Chuck Palahniuk

Evilwill always triumph over good, because it is dumb.

- Dark Helmet

Buckskin flaps his lips feverishly at the sight of white cubes, unaware that in time, sugar and horses will both become glue.

- David Kerman

To be is to do.

- Descartes

Learning how to stand up is easy. Learning how to stand up after you've fallen down, that is tough.

- Dican

You can never lose what you never had.

- Dican

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them---the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

- Dostoyevsky

We must either outlive our friends, you know, or our friends must outlive us; and I see no man that would hesitate about the choice.

- Dr. Samuel Johnson

I don't suffer from insanity but enjoy every minute of it

- Edgar Allan Poe

Everything is but a dream within a dream."

- Edgar Allen Poe

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

- Edward Abbey

There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one. That is spirituality

- Ellen Bass

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "The Friends of Voltaire" ( $ ) ( ? )

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you want to have clean ideas, change them as often as you change your shirts.

- Francis Picabia

Every civilizaiton must contend with an unconscious force which can block, betray, or countermand almost any conscience intention of the collectivity. (Tleilaxu Theorem)

- Frank Herbert

Do be do be do.

- Frank Sinatra

That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Finally consider that even the seeker after knowledge forces his spirit to recognige things against the inclination of the spirit , and often enough also against the wishes of his heart--by way of saying no where he would like to say yes,love, and adore--- and thus acts as an artist and transfigurer of cruelty.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

I no longer want to walk on worn soles

- Friedrich Nietzsche

A man who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how.

- From Victor E Frankl , "Man's Search for Meaning" ( $ ) ( ? )

Of all the days that was the one—an age of reason could have begun.

- Galileo, (1564 –1642)

Live simply that other may simply live.

- Gandhi

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

- Gandhi

Become the change you seek in the world.

- Gandhi

We must be the change we wish to see.

- Gandhi

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

- Ghandi

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

- Goethe

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

- Henry David Thoreau

If I have got false teeth, I trust that I have not got a false conscience. It is safer to employ the dentist than the priest to repair the deficiencies of nature.

- Henry David Thoreau

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way: government, society, and even the sun, moon and stars.

- Henry David Thoreau

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden" ( $ ) ( ? )

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden" ( $ ) ( ? )

Obstacles are those frightful things we see when we take our eyes off our goal.

- Henry Ford

My friends, on the other hand, entrenched themselves more solidly in the little ditch of understanding which they had dug for themselves. They died comfortably in their little bed of understanding, to become useful citizens of the world.

- Henry Miller

I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything. You know, instead of being a man who would say, ‘Well, it’s a rotten system we live under,’ and griping about politics, economics and the social condition, I said, ‘Despite all that, I could have acted differently, I could have come out,’ do you see? And I saw that as being the fault of my own nature, character and temperament. I accepted it, and once I did that, a great weight fell off me. I was liberated. I was able to really enjoy myself.

- Henry Miller

Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.

- Henry Rollins

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.

- Henry Rollins

The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools.

- Herbert Spencer

Time: that which man is always tring to kill, ends in killing him

- Herbert Spencer

Before the beginning of great brilliance and beauty there first must be a period of complete chaos.

- I-Ching

All your nonsenses and truths, your finery and squalid options, combine and coalesce into one noise including laugh and whimper, scream and sigh, forever and forever repeating, in any tongue we care to choose, whatever lessened, separated message we want to hear. The Universe says simply, but with every possible complication, 'Existence' and it neither pressures us nor draws us out, except as we allow. It all boils down to nothing, and where we have the means and will to fix our reference within that flux, then there we are. Let me be part of that outrageous chaos... and I am.

- Ian Banks, "The Crow Road" ( $ ) ( ? )

Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.

- Isaac Asimov

For every problem, there exists a simple and elegant solution which is absolutely wrong.

- J. Wagoner, U.C.B. Mathematics

All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh.

- Jack Kerouac

to sit back and do nothing is to cooperate with the oppresser

- Jane Elliot

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

- John Cage

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.

- John Cage

Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.

- John Fowles, "The Magus" ( $ ) ( ? )

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet

- Kafka

Man will often act and live as though he were apart from his body, as if improving it from the outside.

- Karl Marx

Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

- Lao Tzu

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you

- Lao-Tzu

If it was so, it might be; and it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

- Lewis Carrol

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

- Lewis Carroll

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does, what problems this really solves.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

- Lyall Watson

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

- Mahatma Ghandi

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker is sorry.

- Mark Twain

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we are all going to perish together as fools.

- Martin Luther King Junior

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and Earth will have to pause and say,"Here lived a great sweeper, who swept his job well

- Martin Luther King, Jr., Facing The Challenge Of A New Age

Nothing short of our own errors should offend us. He who can willfully attempt to injure another is an object of pity rather than resentment; while it is a question in my mind if there is enough of a flatterer, a fool, or a liar to offend a whole-souled woman.

- Mary Baker Eddy

Technically, noting exists, and everything does not.

- Max Levin

...Every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being."

- Max Planck

Life is a disease, sexually transmitted and fatal.

- Neil Gaiman

"According to the Buddha, these are all signs of a false identity: fear, attachment, shame, compulsion and rigidity. Hmmm. I feel like if I didn't have these things, I'd never clean my house. What's up with that?"

- Nerissa Nields

The greatest spiritual truths, with the greatest ability to transform our lives, are often the ones that look superficially like the twisted and sick rantings of a permanently-adolescent mental inadequate.¡±

- Pastor N. Pizzor

As time transcends, you sit alone in your room. You ask yourself... “Exactly why was I put here on earth?” You snicker a little bit, pondering the thought. The more you think about, the less comprehensible it becomes. It is imperative that you understand, there are infinite numbers of people that were put on the Earth for the same reason. To live. People ask, “What’s the meaning of life?” I personally, believe there is NO meaning of life. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if everything was just in imaginary illusion, processed deeply in our barren minds. If there is a meaning of life, was it intended to be left unknown. Left in the shadow, traceless. Or is it there to drive Philosophers and human beings insane, yearning for that grateful answer.

- Quinton Terintino

To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.

- R. Leakey

The truth is the light and light is the truth.

- Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man" ( $ ) ( ? )

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A foolish consistecny is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. he may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow say what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you say today. "Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood." Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Jesus and Socrates and Luther and Copericus and Galileo and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not go where the path may lead instead go where there is no path and leave a trail.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate; to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumber with your old nonsense.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What lies between us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To cross the river of boredom, one must first, hop onto the stone of imagination

- Rensouken

The strength of the genie comes from being in a bottle

- Richard Wilbur In Time, In An Essay On Male Silence

In life men seek to things, exceptance and meaning, while finding only exceptance one can never find meaning, but when one seeks meaning he will be excepted

- Robbie Mcdonald

A man's reach should exceed his grasp; else what's a heaven for?

- Robert Browning

When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free!

- Robert G. Ingersoll

How does a newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings?

- Salman Rushdie, "The Satanic Verses" ( $ ) ( ? )

when living life becomes a chore, you should think about those who are grounded to their graves.

- Santiago

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

- Sartre

Leaves of inquisitevness floating on winds of doubt fall on an ignorant ground.

- Scott Steen

A day without sunshine is, you know, night.

- Shannon

My advice to you is to get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy: if not, you'll become a philosopher

- Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living.

- Socrates

He who is not contented with what he has, will not be contented with what he doesn't have.

- Socrates

"I didn't expect you to understand me," he answered. "With your cold American intelligence you can ony adopt the critical attitude. Emerson and all that sort of thing. But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up. You are a pedant, my dear fellow. The important thing is to construct: I am constructive; I am a poet."

- Somerset Maugham, "Of Human Bondage" ( $ ) ( ? )

In my end is my beginning.

- T.S. Eliot

See, I think we have to ask ourselves--and this is corny in a way--what are we doing here. And I've become convinced, after a lifetime of asking that question,that we are here to enlarge our souls, light up our brains, and liberate our spirits.

- Tom Robbins

I don't want to die without scars

- Tyler Durden

True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.

- Voltaire

To do is to be.

- Voltaire

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

- Voltaire

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

- Walt Whitman

"There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't"

- Warren Buffet

If the doors of perception were to be cleansed man would see everything as it truly is... Infinite.

- William Blake

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

- William James

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything.

- Yamamoto Tsunetomo

There are three kinds of people - those who can count and those who can't.

- Yogi Berra

You can have anything you want in this life, as long as you help enough other people get what they want.

- Zig Ziggler

no one, not even the rain has such small hands

- ee cummings

December 16, 2010 at 21:34:09

135 Arrested For Civil Disobedience at White House; 40 Sec. Video and Ray McGovern Interview

By Rob Kall (about the author)

opednews.com

This is the first installment of a collection of images, videos and impressions of the action at the White House today by OpEdNews.com Editor in Chief Rob Kall and Managing Editor Cheryl Biren.

Today, 131 rebels were arrested for civil disobedience at the snow covered gates of the White House, including Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers, Coleen Rowley, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans and scores of veterans and supporters from WWII, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan... The message chanted in the freezing, 22 degree F snowy day was "Obama, Troops Out. End the War."

Photo Of Richie Marini by Cheryl Biren

Photo Slide Show By Cheryl Biren HERE

People who have engaged in civil disobedience routinely describe how it can literally produce a "high" like a religious experience. Here, you can see the people, knowing they are going to be arrested, virtually all of them having been arrested before-- thoroughly enjoying themselves. From Left to right: Top Row: Ray McGovern, Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, Margaret Flowers. Bottom Row: Debra Sweet, Jodie Evans, Medea Benjamin (Photo by Rob Kall)

At the White House gate, one protester used a bicycle lock to lock himself to the gate. Another used a chain with links at least half an inch in diameter chained himself to a post. Apparently, the handcuffs many had intended to use to chain themselves to the fence were confiscated.

Protesters coordinated the protest with the DC police, discussing details and logistics.

The first to be arrested appeared the most elder and frail-- a kindness by the police, considering that a lot of snow was coming down and it was a soggy 22 degrees F-- after over three hours exposed the elements. Several protesters refused to walk, so they were dragged by the police to be photographed, put on a bus and later released.

I spoke to Ray McGovern, a bit before ten tonight, to find out what happened to the protesters. His report and comments on the protest are below:

We were put on a bus, then taken to the Park police depot, searched, groped more in depth than ever before.

Gave personal data, and had to choose whether to pay $100 and plead guilty or plead not guilty and go to court (later.) I chose the latter.

Commenting on the turnout and the number of people participating in civil disobedience, McGovern commented, "It's more than anyone really expected. I was glad we did it.

I asked Ray about what he hoped to see come of the exercise in civil disobedience. He replied, "There's a saying that hope is the twin. Augustin said that hope has two daughters-- anger and courage.

What we have seen in our policy is a lot of anger, But anger is not enough, you've got to have courage.

The basic flaw in the body politic is that it is malnourished on genuine information, so the attitude that expresses itself by people saying Americans can't handle the truth. Well that isn't very clear because Americans haven't been given the truth. So the jury is out on whether or not Americans can handle the truth. But the issue is now joined because there is a fifth estate, namely Wikileaks and sites like it that are making information available to US citizens.

Once the citizenry becomes informed, in an unbiased way, about what is really going on, perhaps they'll do something.

Once the citizenry realized our military are being brutalized themselves.

There are more deaths from suicide than they are for war.

We want people to ask themselves what we're doing out there.

Hoping to be faithful and bring attention to this and leave it in the hands of the higher power that people's hearts will be touched, they will realize the one thing we've turned a blind eye to the thousands of other prisoners who have been tortured by other Iraqis. That we've killed at the very least 100,000 civilians... by the most stringent estimates.

Others who participated in the civil disobedience action expressed hope that the example set here would encourage others, across the country to take action at a time when elected officials are no longer accountable.

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), President of Futurehealth, Inc, more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

December 17, 2010 at 10:27:40

Wikileaks: Potential Key to the Big Three

By Joan Marques (about the author)

I keep being amazed at the aversion and suspicion toward the Wikileaks affair. How can anyone even wonder about or be against a long overdue need for transparency among humans? If it were not such a serious issue, it would be laughable that we, a reasonably intelligent cohort, allowed our circumstances to degenerate to a depth, where all information, funds, influence, and knowledge resides in hands of a small elite, while large groups remain deprived from even the basic needs.

Whatever Julian Assange's initial goals may have been with this medium, the attention that the Wikileaks earned in the past few months will force him to at least meet the expectations of the billions who are now watching his moves with bated breath. Wikileaks shook up the sleepwalking masses and may have started an awakening process that will change the world forever.

Unfortunately, there are still many who prefer to sleep, simply because it's easier to dwell in blissful ignorance than to fully face the cruelty we are capable of applying onto each other. It is hard to come to terms with the fact that, in hindsight, our species is not as well-organized and united as we might have liked to think. With all the disclosures Wikileaks still seem to have in store for us, we may be facing a mental tsunami for which there is no other preparation than simply waiting.

The upcoming exposé is the big "B", Business, according to Assange's source. Not that there would really be much new under the sun to those of us who have been analyzing the trends and qualities that have been cultivated in 20th century business practices. It is not really a mystery that these trends and qualities, which are still largely demanded by corporations and consequently promoted in many business schools, have been the greatest instigators for the blatant disparity in the world: the growing discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots. The big "B"-exposure might put names and faces behind the actions, but it will not change the facts. Those facts can only be changed by our collective response.

The 20th century is history, and its behavioral patterns are crumbling. Holding on to them would be foolish and would say more about us than about their unfairness. As I see it, Wikileaks is a natural fraction of the sensation that is the 21st century: a new era in which all previously forbidden fruits can be eaten without indigestion, for there was never indigestion: just a fear that was instilled in us to keep us from trying. In this era we have already become accustomed to promoting ourselves at little or no cost, communicating worldwide instantaneously, conducting major research with minimal financial or physical effort, and learning as much as we want as fast as we want to.

While Wikileaks have been around for a few years now, we have only recently learned about this source on a major scale. I suspect that once the idea has nestled itself in our psyche, and Wikileaks are as commonly accepted as Wikipedia, we may finally start witnessing and practicing the big three:

1. More forthrightness from sources that are supposed to be trustworthy, such as governments and big business. While it's unfortunate that this candor will only be instigated in a reactive manner, it's better than not at all. Now that there's danger of the dirty laundry getting displayed, there may just be more effort invested in keeping it clean.
2. Greater access to information that has thus far been amassed by a precious few, in order to maintain influence in their elite clan. This might finally give way to the rectification of a grave distortion, which we have come to accept as the standard.
3. Greater balance among human beings: an immediate consequence of the previous points. Openness and transparency could just be the crucial keys we need to finally attain thus far unrealistic targets such as the Millennium Development Goals, which focused on laudable attainments such as literacy for all, no poverty, better healthcare, curing of unnecessary deceases, eradication of unnecessary deaths, global access to clean water and other important resources, greater gender equality, and not to forget: a global compact.

The Big Three for humanity by Dr. joan marques

This may seem far-fetched, but then again, if the past 30 years have taught us anything it is that nothing is far-fetched anymore, and that everything that was once ridiculed or considered utopic, is common practice today. We're looking forward to the second decade of the 21st century!

Joan Marques is the author of "Joy at Work, Work at Joy: Living and Working Mindfully Every Day" (Personhood Press, 2010), and co-editor of "The Workplace and Spirituality: New Perspectives in Research and Practice" (Skylight Paths, 2009), an anthology with contributions from 25 authors from all over the globe. She has also authored 6 other books among which, "The Awakened Leader: One Simple Leadership Style that Works Every time Everywhere", and "Spirituality in the Workplace: What it Means; Why it Matters; How to Make it Work for You." Dr. Marques is co-founder of the Business Renaissance Institute and the Academy of Spirituality and Professional Excellence, through which she regularly co-organizes conferences and dialogue sessions for workforce members and business scholars. She is also co-founder and Chief-Editor of four scholarly journals, and facilitates MBA courses in Leadership and Organizational Behavior at Woodbury University in Burbank, California. In addition, she presents a weekly radio column in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; a weekly newspaper column in Suriname, South-America; and has published more than 300 scholarly and popular works through media worldwide. Her publications have appeared in Leadership Excellence, Personal Excellence, WomenEntrepreneur.com; Fox Business News, and others. Dr. Marques holds a Bachelors degree in Business Economics; a Master's degree in Business Administration; and a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership. Website: http://www.joanmarques.com

Joan Marques is the author of "Joy at Work, Work at Joy: Living and Working Mindfully Every Day" (Personhood Press, 2010), and co-editor of "The Workplace and Spirituality: New Perspectives in Research and Practice" (Skylight Paths, 2009), an (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
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Pilger: Wikileaks is Necessary 'Revolution in Journalism'

Published on Tuesday, December 14, 2010 by Reuters

WikiLeaks, Web to Revolutionize Reporting: Pilger

by Mike Collett-White

LONDON - Revelations on the WikiLeaks website which have enraged governments around the world should force the traditional media to rely less on official sources, award-winning journalist John Pilger said.

In an interview to discuss his film "The War You Don't See," the veteran Australian reporter, John Pilger, told Reuters the internet, and more specifically WikiLeaks, would bring about a "revolution" in journalism which too often failed to do its job properly.

In an interview to discuss his film "The War You Don't See," the veteran Australian reporter told Reuters the internet, and more specifically WikiLeaks, would bring about a "revolution" in journalism which too often failed to do its job properly.

One reason the media did not challenge the U.S. and British governments' justification for going to war in Iraq in 2003, later shown to be misplaced, was their eagerness to believe the official version of events, Pilger argued.

He said the same was true of television coverage of the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, when British broadcasters appeared willing only to use Israeli video rather than trawling the internet for alternative footage.

"That mindset that only authority can really determine the 'truth' on the news, that's a form of embedding that really now has to change," said Pilger, who has covered conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia, written books and made several acclaimed documentaries.

"There's no question about the pressure on it to change coming from the internet and coming from WikiLeaks -- it will change," he added in the interview ahead of Tuesday evening's broadcast of his new film.

"That is the canker in all of this, it's the compulsion to quote, not necessarily believing the authority source. But then once you quote it and you put it out on the wires or you broadcast it, it takes on a sort of mantle of fact and that's where the whole teaching of journalism is wrong.

"Authority has its place, but the skepticism about authority must be ingrained in people."

In The War You Don't See, Pilger interviews leading broadcast journalists including Dan Rather and Rageh Omaar, who agree that journalists failed in their basic duties during the build-up to the Iraq conflict.

It seeks to highlight how British television reporters based in London were quick to accept what they were being told by officials in Westminster, which did not necessarily reflect what was happening on the ground in Iraq.

OTHER SIDE OF STORY

The film shows how independent journalists occasionally provided evidence that countered the official version, while WikiLeaks was a relatively new source of sometimes disturbing information with the potential to embarrass the authorities.

The documentary opens with extended clips from classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. WikiLeaks released the footage in April.

Pilger also interviews WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, remanded in custody in Britain last week after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant.

Assange jokes that since it is officially wrong to retain information and to destroy it, his only choice was to publish.

Pilger, one of several prominent figures who offered a surety to secure bail for Assange, praised the recent publication of secret U.S. embassy documents which have attracted global media coverage.

"I think the WikiLeaks disclosures have been like watching a great parade of wonderful scoops," Pilger said in the interview.

"(It is) basic rich journalism that is telling people how the world works. It's not just telling them what a prime minister said. It's not framing it in how governments or other vested interests want us to think about something.

"It's giving us the story in their words. I think it's a revolution in journalism."

The War You Don't see is aired on ITV on Tuesday evening and is being screened at select theatres across Britain.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

© 2010 Reuters

Cheers Greet Bail Announcement for WikiLeaks' Assange

Published on Tuesday, December 14, 2010 by Raw Story

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Granted Bail

by David Edwards and Stephen Webster

Just one day after winning the Time Magazine online poll for "Person of the Year," Julian Assange, founder of the secrets outlet WikiLeaks, has been granted bail.

Just one day after winning the Time Magazine online poll for "Person of the Year," Julian Assange, founder of the secrets outlet WikiLeaks, has been granted bail.

He had been sitting in a British prison pending extradition to Sweden on allegations of sexual assault not connected to WikiLeaks' release of secret US State Department cables. His lawyers suggested the arrest was part of a larger plot to have Assange extradited to the US, where he may yet face espionage charges.

Though granted bail, Assange may not actually be freed on Tuesday, as it was already late afternoon when the ruling came down and prosecutors had time to appeal the decision. One of his supporters, Sarah Saunders, offered the court £150,000 -- or "pretty much all I'm worth," according to a reporter on the scene -- to ensure Assange did not flee.

He also received help from US filmmaker Michael Moore, who offered $20,000 for Assange's bail. He called the WikiLeaks founder "a pioneer of free speech" and said he'd host their site on his own web servers if needed.

Bail was set at $315,000, or 200,000 pounds UK.

Once the decision was announced, the courtroom erupted with cheers, according to The Guardian.

The court required that Assange surrender his passport, submit to a curfew and wear a tracking device.

In an MSNBC live broadcast, a reporter suggested that "the whole of the world's media" and a massive throng of supporters had gathered outside the courtroom, and that the scene was one of celebration.

But not everyone was happy. Republican strategist Boris Epshteyn, speaking to MSNBC, claimed that Assange was "out there murdering individuals."

"He's costing people's lives and putting our people, our men and women in uniform, in harm's way and I really despise him for that," the former McCain adviser said.

"US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure," Assange wrote last week, in an editorial published the day he went to jail. "The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published."

Award-winning journalist and documentarian John Pilger also told MSNBC, "there is no case against Julian Assange," adding that it's a "disgrace" for the British to keep him in solitary confinement for so long.

© 2010 Raw Story

December 12, 2010 at 10:15:14

Operation Payback and the WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun

By GLloyd Rowsey (about the author)

opednews.com

He is one of the newest recruits to Operation Payback. In a London bedroom, the 24-year-old computer hacker is preparing his weaponry for this week's battles in an evolving cyberwar.

Before WikiLeaks, Operation Payback's initial target was America's recording industry, chosen for its prosecutions of music file downloaders. From those humble origins, Payback's anti-censorship, anti-copyright, freedom of speech manifesto would go viral, last week pitting an amorphous army of online hackers against the US government and some of the biggest corporations in the world.

The battle now centres on Washington's fierce attempts to close down WikiLeaks and shut off the supply of confidential US government cables. By Thursday, the hacktivists were routinely attacking those who had targeted WikiLeaks, among them icons of the corporate world, credit card firms and some of the largest online companies. It seemed to be thefirst sustained clash between the established order and the organic, grass roots culture of the net.

At the heart of the conflict is the WikiLeaks founder, the enigmatic figure of Julian Assange,
lionised by many as the Ned Kelly of the digital age for hiscontinued defiance of a superpower, condemned by his US detractors as a threat to national security.


Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, by Lennart Preiss-Associated Press


Today, Assange sits in solitary confinement in a British jail, and he does not have access to the Internet. But progressive forces worldwide and an army of free-speech computer hackers are now one in their support for Julian Assange, our Ned Kelly of the digital age.

May Julian Assange live free and die young after attaining at least his three score and ten.

To view the London Observer's article, click here.

"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad." - Dostoevsky *** I'm sixty-nine and live in Northern California. I graduated from Stanford Law School in 1966 but have never practiced (more...)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
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WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers

As Julian Assange is held in solitary confinement at Wandsworth prison, the anonymous community of hacktivists takes to the cyber battlefields

• Mark Townsend, Paul Harris in New York, Alex Duval Smith in Johannesburg, Dan Sabbagh, Josh Halliday
• guardian.co.uk,
  
• Saturday 11 December 2010 21.30 GMT
• Article history

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photograph: Lennart Preiss/AP

He is one of the newest recruits to Operation Payback. In a London bedroom, the 24-year-old computer hacker is preparing his weaponry for this week's battles in an evolving cyberwar. He is a self-styled defender of free speech, his weapon a laptop and his enemy the US corporations responsible for attacking the website WikiLeaks.

He had seen the flyers that began springing up on the web in mid-September. In chatrooms, on discussion boards and inboxes from Manchester to New York to Sydney the grinning face of a Guy Fawkes mask had appeared with a call to arms. Across the world a battalion of hackers was being summoned.

"Greetings, fellow anons," it said beneath the headline Operation Payback. Alongside were a series of software programs dubbed "our weapons of choice" and a stark message: people needed to show their "hatred".

Like most international conflicts, last week's internet war began over a relatively modest squabble, escalating in days into a global fight.

Before WikiLeaks, Operation Payback's initial target was America's recording industry, chosen for its prosecutions of music file downloaders. From those humble origins, Payback's anti-censorship, anti-copyright, freedom of speech manifesto would go viral, last week pitting an amorphous army of online hackers against the US government and some of the biggest corporations in the world.

Charles Dodd, a consultant to US government agencies on internet security, said: "[The hackers] attack from the shadows and they have no fear of retaliation. There are no rules of engagement in this kind of emerging warfare."

The battle now centres on Washington's fierce attempts to close down WikiLeaks and shut off the supply of confidential US government cables. By Thursday, the hacktivists were routinely attacking those who had targeted WikiLeaks, among them icons of the corporate world, credit card firms and some of the largest online companies. It seemed to be the first sustained clash between the established order and the organic, grassroots culture of the net.

But the clash has cast the spotlight wider, on the net's power to act as a thorn not only in the side of authoritarian regimes but western democracies, on our right to information and the responsibility of holding secrets. It has also asked profound questions over the role of the net itself. One blogger dubbed it the "first world information war".

At the heart of the conflict is the WikiLeaks founder, the enigmatic figure of Julian Assange – lionised by some as the Ned Kelly of the digital age for his continued defiance of a superpower, condemned by his US detractors as a threat to national security.

Calls for Assange to be extradited to the US to face charges of espionage will return this week. The counteroffensive by Operation Payback is likely to escalate.

The targets include the world's biggest online retailer, Amazon – already assaulted once for its decision to stop hosting WikiLeaks-related material – Washington, Scotland Yard and the websites of senior US politicians. There is talk of infecting Facebook, which last week removed a page used by pro-WikiLeaks hackers, with a virus that spreads from profile to profile causing it to crash. No one seems certain where the febrile cyber conflict will lead, only that it has just begun.

London

At 9.15am last Tuesday a thin, white-haired figure left the Frontline Club, the west London establishment dedicated to preserving freedom of speech, and voluntarily surrendered to police. After two weeks of newspaper revelations concerning countries from Korea to Nigeria, and figures such as Silvio Berlusconi and Prince Andrew, a warrant for Assange's arrest had just been received by British police. It was from Swedish prosecutors eager to question him on unrelated allegations of rape.

The response to WikiLeaks' cable release had been savage, particularly in the US. Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said those who passed the secrets to Assange should be executed. Sarah Palin demanded Assange be hunted in the same way an al-Qaida operative would be pursued. The US attorney general Eric Holder ordered his officials to begin a criminal investigation into Assange with the intention of putting him on trial in the US. News of his arrest, even on unrelated charges, pleased the US authorities. "That sounds like good news to me," said Robert Gates, US secretary of defence.

Yet even as Assange prepared to appear in a London court last week, an unlikely alliance of defenders had begun plotting to turn on the forces circling WikiLeaks. They were beginning to attack Amazon, which had been persuaded to sever links with WikiLeaks by Joe Lieberman, who heads the US Senate's homeland security committee; they also hit every domain name system (DNS) that broke WikiLeaks.org's domain name: Mastercard, Visa and Paypal, which stopped facilitating donations to the site, and the Swiss post office which froze WikiLeaks' bank account.

Operation Payback was hitting back alongside a fledgling offshoot, Operation Avenge Assange, both operating under the Anonymous umbrella. These are a loose alliance of hackers united by a near-obsessive desire for information libertarianism who congregate on the website 4Chan.org.

The cyberwar did not only involve obvious symbols of authority, though. For days, from their darkened chatrooms, the Anonymous ones had been watching a hacker called the Jester who seemed to be co-ordinating a series of attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks. They had noticed the Jester's pro-censorship credentials, deducing he must be receiving help. Speculation mounted that the Jester was a shadowy conduit working at the behest of the US authorities. "We wondered who was really behind his anti-WikiLeaks agenda," said a source.

Attempts to railroad WikiLeaks off the net quickly failed. Removing its hosting servers has increased WikiLeaks' ability to stay online. More than 1,300 volunteer "mirror" sites, including the French newspaper Libération, have already surfaced to store the classified cables. Within days the WikiLeaks web content had spread across so many enclaves of the internet it was immune to attack by any single legal authority.

In some respects, WikiLeaks has never been safer or as aggressively defended. As Assange was remanded in custody and taken to Wandsworth jail, Anonymous vowed to "punish" the institutions that had axed links with the website under pressure from the US authorities. The websites of Visa, Mastercard and PayPal were brought down; so too the Swedish government's.

One Anonymous hacker said: "I've rambled on and on about the 'oncoming internet war' for years. I'm not saying I know how to win. But I am saying the war is on."

Stockholm

Unsurprisingly, the timing of Assange's arrest and aspects of Sweden's initial handling of the sexual allegations prompted his lawyer Mark Stephens to denounce the moves as politically motivated. A computer hacker himself, Assange, 39, achieved both instant notoriety and adulation when WikiLeaks published batches of damaging US files relating to the Afghan war in July. This fame led him to Stockholm a month later to deliver a lecture entitled: "Truth is the first casualty of war." It was a sellout. One leftwing commentator likened it to "having Mick Jagger in town".

That night – 14 August – Assange stayed with the conference organiser at her flat in Södermalm, a former working class area of the city centre that has become Stockholm's equivalent of London's Islington. Three days later, in keeping with his habit of regularly changing addresses, Assange stayed in Enköping, a town 100 miles from Stockholm, with another woman who had also attended his lecture on the importance of truth in a war zone.

Assange left Sweden on 18 August and the women went together to the police the next day. According to Claes Borgström, their lawyer, the women did not know each other before going to the police. Initially, he said, the women wanted some advice, but the police officer concluded a crime had been committed and contacted the duty public prosecutor.

In court last week Assange was alleged to have had sex with unlawful coercion with a woman who was asleep and to have sexually molested the other by having sex without a condom.

In Sweden, among the country's community of hackers and left-leaning political activists, the timing is viewed as coincidental rather than conspiratorial.

"The Americans are very lucky indeed that Assange screwed around in Sweden, a society which takes rape allegations very seriously,'' said Åsa Linderborg, culture editor of the leftwing Aftonbladet tabloid. Film-maker Bosse Lindquist, whose WikiLeaks investigation will be broadcast on Swedish TV tonight, and who has spent many hours with Assange over the past few months, said Assange's attitude to women did not seem in any way striking.

"If you look at the two prosecutors involved in investigating the rape allegations, they are not types you would imagine bowing to any kind of pressure from, say, the Swedish government or the United States.''

A senior civil servant, who requested anonymity, also dismissed allegations of political plotting against Assange, arguing that Swedish culture is often misunderstood. "Swedes do not have an iconoclastic tradition in which you build people up then demolish their reputations. Even when people are celebrities, we accept that they may have questionable private lives. Swedes are capable of seeing the advantages of WikiLeaks while conceding that Assange may have unsavoury morals between the sheets.''

Linderborg, though, says there is a widespread sense in Sweden that Assange's rise to fame fuelled his libido and ego.

"Plenty of women are attracted by his underdog status and the supposed danger of spending time with him. He has several women on the go at once. One person told me he screws more often than he eats,'' Linderborg said.

Of course, given the nature of the web, the allegations have triggered a series of attacks on both women's characters with lurid claims of "women who cry rape" and "bitches trying to send an innocent man to prison".

Operation Payback

Those monitoring the chatrooms used by Operation Payback say its hackers have set aside the sexual allegations, instead concentrating their efforts on amassing greater potency for the next phase of the WikLeaks fightback. The weapons deployed last week were "denial of service" attacks in which online computers are harnessed to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission.

The initial attacks against the Swiss PostFinance required about 200 computers, according to one Anonymous source. Yet within a day hackers were able to recruit thousands more pro-WikiLeaks footsoldiers. By the time the Visa and Mastercard websites were disrupted last Wednesday, close to 3,000 computers were involved.

Anonymous leaders began distributing software tools to allow anyone with a computer to join Payback. So far more than 9,000 users in the US have downloaded the software; in second place is the UK with 3,000. Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Spain, Poland, Russia and Australia follow with more than 1,000. The 11th country embroiled in the attacks is Sweden, where WikiLeaks's massive underground servers are housed, with 75 downloads.

Sean-Paul Correll, a cyber threat analyst at Panda Security, who has monitored Operation Payback since its conception, said it was impossible to "profile" those involved. "They are anonymous and they are everywhere," he said. "They have day jobs. They are adults and kids. It is just a bunch of people." Middle-class professional members working alongside self-styled anarchists.

Ostensibly, Anonymous is a 24-hour democracy run by whoever happens to be logged on; leaders emerge and disappear depending on the target that is being attacked and the whims of members. Correll said: "This group does not exist with some sort of hierarchy. It exists with a few organisers but these can change at any time. That gives the group great power in that it is impossible to trace and define. At the same time it is also a source of weakness as its actions can be unfocused."

Ideas are floated on internet bulletin boards, whose location moves daily to evade detection. Ultimately a proposal hits a democratic "tipping point" and action is taken.

A major test of Payback's mounting firepower will be Amazon, given the size of its servers. The attempt to attack the site last Thursday was half-hearted, but nevertheless audacious. Now sources estimate they would need between 30,000 and 40,000 computers to hurt Amazon and there is a growing feeling among hacktivists that it could happen. If it does, the retailer could lose millions of dollars during the Christmas season.

So far, though, most of the attacks have been principally designed to register protest rather than destabilise companies financially, opting for their public websites rather than their underlying infrastructure.

Two of the internet's most important social networking sites – Twitter and Facebook – are also becoming targets of elements within Anonymous.

Twitter upset hackers last week by removing the Anonymous account – which had 22,000 followers – amid speculation that it was preventing the term #wikileaks appearing on its trending topics. The Anonymous page on Facebook was removed for violating its conditions, a move that has similarly annoyed a cohort of hackers. Both Facebook and Twitter have won praise in recent years as outlets for free speech, yet both also harbour corporate aspirations that hinge on their ability to serve as advertising platforms for other companies.

Their use by Anonymous to direct people planning attacks has, according to many analysts, placed both in a difficult position. Facebook, which still has sites eulogising murderer Raoul Moat and Holocaust deniers, said it drew the line on groups that attack others, a bold move considering the site's WikiLeaks page boasts more than 1.3 million supporters. Any evidence that both sites yielded to US pressure and the gloves would be off. So too for any organisation that yields to American demands over WikiLeaks.

Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion, a book which argues the internet has failed to democraticise the world successfully, believes the attacks are already viewed by Washington "as striking at the very heart of the global economy".

Another emerging target in the weeks ahead is the US government itself. For a brief time last Tuesday, senate.gov – the website of every US senator – went down. Cyberguerillas claim it is a possible sign of things to come.

The future

The trajectory of the WikiLeaks controversy is almost impossible to predict. On Tuesday Assange will attend his next bail hearing. Although supporters have stumped up £180,000, it is expected bail will be refused, pending a full hearing of Sweden's extradition request. However his lawyer may also reveal fresh claims of US interference in the saga.

Regardless of the fate of its founder, WikiLeaks will continue releasing declassified cables. At the moment only several hundred of 250,000 cables have been publicised.

Analysts now describe the organisation's structure as a "networked enterprise", a phrase that has been used in the past in relation to al-Qaida.

For all the US attempts, it is clear the attacks on WikiLeaks have made minimal impact and are unlikely to affect the availability of the information that WikiLeaks has already leaked.

Meanwhile, Senator Lieberman has indicated that the New York Times and other news organisations using the WikiLeaks cables may be investigated for breaking US espionage laws. At present, who will win the "world's first information war" remains unclear.

Morozov said: "There will be many more people from the CIA and NSA [National Security Agency] hanging out around them."

But the conflict increasingly seems likely to target the real profits of US corporations. Today a 24-year-old from London will ready his weapons for the battle ahead.