The New York Times Continues To Use The Dubious "Zabiullah Mujahid" As Convenient Source For Anti-Wikileaks Propaganda

Not only is a recent article in the New York Times on Julian Assange a carefully prepared piece of propaganda which tries to play down his great recent successes against the military industrial complex of America and instead present him as a strange failure, but it might also be using a purposely fictional Taliban source in an attempt to incriminate Assange and Wikileaks.

From The New York Times.

A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan using the pseudonym Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone interview that the Taliban had formed a nine-member “commission” after the Afghan documents were posted “to find about people who are spying.” He said the Taliban had a “wanted” list of 1,800 Afghans and was comparing that with names WikiLeaks provided.

“After the process is completed, our Taliban court will decide about such people,” he said.

So who is this useful contact of the New York Times behind Taliban lines, Zabiullah Mujahid?

Writers on Wikipedia have this to say about him:

Shortly after the CNN interview was broadcast, with highlights shared on the CNN web page on May 5, 2009, some jihadi web sites carried denials, some attributed to Mujahid himself, saying the person Robertson interviewed was not Mujahid. [3] [4]
Zabihullah Mujahid is described to be about 30 years old, with a beard, and is little over 6 feet (1.8 m) tall.[2] Although his association with Taliban leader Mullah Omar is not confirmed, it is suggested that Mujahid may be representing the Haqqani network or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Hezb-e-Islami political party of Afghanistan.[5] The dialect of Pashto language spoken by the man CNN claims was Mujahid during the interview with Robertson is similar to that of Hezb-e Islami, which belongs to the area covering Kunar, Laghman, Nangarhar, and Paktia.
Zabihullah Mujahid may possibly be a number of individuals who assume the persona of the "Taliban Spokesman" when contacting western and middle eastern reporters. His claims of Taliban victories and US and coalition failings are often cited uncritically by several reporters who have developed a close working relationship with "Zabihullah". For example, after an attack on Bagram Air Base in May 2010, CNN reporter Atia Abawi revealed on the air that she received phone calls directly from Zabihullah claiming credit for this and earlier attacks, and repeated his casualty claims, later shown to be gross exaggerations, as being "spot on." [6]

Sounds like a patsy/puppet/agent used by the military-industrial complex for the purpose of disinfo to me.

UPDATE: I found this old CNN interview allegedly with Mujahid. Comments point out that the room has several decorative calendars with photos of enemies of the Taliban. Wouldn't that be an odd place for a Taliban leader to go for an interview?

AFP Runs With Wikipedia Founder's 'Crazy Information' About WikiLeaks

Still the stupid parroting of the Pentagon talking point of all the people in danger from Wikileaks. As Eli Stephens says in the comment section of this article:

Unlike the New York Times, whose irresponsible publishing of leaked information via the conduit of Judith Miller and others resulted in the deaths of an estimated one million Iraqis. Are those the "responsible journalists" Jimmy Wales is referring to?

From FAIR.

09/28/2010 by Jim Naureckas

Agence France Presse (9/28/10) has an interview with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales about WikiLeaks--apparently because of their proximity in alphabetical order. Wales says that he wishes WikiLeaks didn't have "wiki" in its name--fair enough; he's free to wish that. But he goes on to say:

In the most recent round of leaks, the New York Times...actually redacted certain information that could put people in harm's way whereas WikiLeaks is planning to publish absolutely everything.... I think it is really important, when we have sensitive information, that we do rely on responsible journalists to sort through it for us.... It's much better than dumping all kinds of crazy information online and get people killed.... I don't think [WikiLeaks editor] Julian Assange wants those people killed, however if he irresponsibly follows the policy of releasing absolutely everything, it's incredibly dangerous for those people.

There's no indication in the piece that AFP tried to get a response from the group that its story is accusing of recklessly putting people's lives in danger. Granted, WikiLeaks might be hard to get hold of these days. But two minutes of googling would turn up plenty of quotes like this one from Assange (Huffington Post, 8/14/10):
He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and that "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" would be redacted from the material.

Clearly, WikiLeaks does not have a "policy of releasing absolutely everything"--as a "responsible journalist" would have noted, rather than "dumping all kinds of crazy information online."

Bedell's Phony 'Madman' Material Surfaces

Finally a link led me to the original, and now often cited, Wikipedia page of what is alleged to be John Patrick Bedell's writings. I had previously watched videos and read some statements of his which didn't seem so utterly mad at all. But the writings on his Wikipedia page, purported to exhibit the work of a 'madman' who believes crazy things like Austrian economics and 'conspiracy theories', are so obviously phony and pasted together that I now am more convinced then ever that this whole thing is some kind of manipulation being practiced on what someone obviously thinks is a very gullible public and media. I had trouble believing Joe Stack's IRS rant, but this is really a joke. Read for yourself, it's just drivel that someone made up to try to make the intelligent people who want a proper investigation of 9/11 seem like utter raving lunatics. The trick they use is to combine intelligent government-critical observations with utter nonsense in the hopes that ordinary people will just think all individuals critical of the government are raving lunatics. My guess is that part of the text was real from somewhere, maybe the individual himself, but it was spliced together haphazardly with the absurd mumbo jumbo parts added in for effect. From the psyop's mouth:

My hope is to use the creativity of markets and advanced technology to transcend the destructive regimes that have fastened themselves upon the world. I have dreamed for an number of years of creating v:production econosystems, which I hope to apply to the creation of v:security service econosystems using new and economic mechanisms and information technology.
I have a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied biochemistry at San Jose State University. I've studied electrical engineering with the goal of creating microsystems for molecular analysis.[1][2][3][4] You can see a proposal to use aluminum anodization as an adsorption method for DNA molecules on CMOS chips at v:DNA_integrated_circuit/proposal_import_2007 (which originates from an unsuccessful DARPA proposal to create a "microMIRV" interoperable with standard firearms ammunition), and a proposal to use xenon difluoride to create a picoliter-scale computer-controlled device for sorting biomolecules (available at v:Capillary_electrode_array/proposal_import_2007), including DNA and protein molecules. My goals include the discovery of a protein sequence for the diamondase enzyme, enabling the creation of macroscale diamond structures, and the creation of self-assembled macrosystems with CMOS DNA-integrated circuits. The scale of these and other projects have led me to develop financial instruments representing information as a tool to manage large projects that are very knowledge-intensive.
I am determined to see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow, as a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions and institutions such as the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption, and murder, among other crimes. My work to develop information currency is an effort to create a framework for information management that uses financial markets to create the economic signals (prices) that will effect complex human actions in the real world based on specified information. My desire for justice led me to violate what I think is one of the most unjust laws, cannabis prohibition, by growing 16 cannabis plants on my balcony in Irvine, CA from March 2006 to June 2006. I've posted the Orange County, CA District Attorney's complaint for this offense at http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/JPatrickBedell_2006-06-06_cannabis_felony_complaint .
One desired result of my effort is (will be) billions and billions of carefully cultivated, highly valuable cannabis plants growing throughout the United States with complete security of property. I have posted the image to the right in order to illustrate the use of cannabis as a monetary system using digital financial instruments. There are two information currency units in each of the PDF417 codes pictured. One of the information currency units is drawn from a series with "one gram cannabis" with the underlying asset, and the second ICU in each code has as its underlying asset the URL http://www.mises.org/humanaction/pdf/humanaction.pdf and the SHA-1 digest value of the file at that location (fd8205cb8b4793d43b57ba6f6c7367aa700c307a). This is a way of associating the work of Ludwig von Mises with financial value, which may be a tool to implement his ideas in reality. I hope someday to see full-reserve banking and observance of Article One, Section 10 of the US Constitution.
I apologize for the graphic content of some of my contributions, but detailed evidence is sometimes necessary to address important matters. I am very disturbed by the fact that Col. Sabow's civilian superiors and their successors have been able to continue their narco-mercantilism. For historical comparison, I might resemble the odd German still complaining about the murders of the Night of the Long Knives in 1938(?). Of course, Wikipedia didn't exist in 1938!
I am looking for collaborators for ongoing commercial and intellectual efforts. Email to jpbedell at mises.com is welcome!