Assange compared Stratfor to a 'helpless' and fairly useless "James Bond". If we are to believe Stratfor are more like Jonny English then perhaps the cache of emails won't be all that revealing. However, the little that has been published already today is intriguing enough.
I have already blogged on revelations regarding Iran and the reasons to escalate warmongering being political rather than defensive and on the controversial Mosque at Ground Zero, New York and the web of right-wing backers to the project.
Assange talks about three types of funding received by Stratfor: bespoke funding to find out particular information; general private meetings to disseminate information; and syndicated newsfeeds. Over 300,000 subscribers to Stratfor, many of whom are influential political figures and organisations makes Stratfor an important organisation to get behind the scenes of.
One of the biggest revelations of the press conferences was the links between Goldmans Sachs and Stratfor with allegations from Assange that a Director of Goldmans Sachs has used information gained through illicit means to make decisions on huge investments. If this is true then it may be that the director in question may have to face criminal charges.
Assange has previously described consipiratorial dictatorships using the metaphor of a web of connections leading to a central point. Some of the connections are 'thick' because they are often used others are 'thin' because they are rarely used.
By exposing those connections to the vulnerability of leaked information those connections become less reliable and so the authoritarian system begins to shut down on itself: unable to trust its own means of communication. If the authoritarian or domination system cannot communicate efficiently, internally, for fear of being overheard it's operations become impossible.
In the book of Genesis, an inspiration for Jews, Christians, and Muslims around the world, the story of the Tower of Babel illustrates the same. The blood and sweat of slaves are used to build a tower that 'can reach up to God'. God is unimpressed and causes them to become unintelligible to one another, thus rendering the oppressive project impossible and scattering the people.
Whether the emails leaked today and over the coming days generate news is less important than the future unreliability of Stratfor as a private spying organisation with billions of dollars invested in the current economic domination system.
