Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg Interview
Good material here that you won’t read about in the “press”, or see on TV.
Tag: Wikileaks
Dec 27 2010
Ex-CIA Spook Calls For “Covert Action” vs. Assange
Two writers with close ties to U.S. intelligence agencies published a shocking article Dec. 22nd in The Miami Herald asserting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “a narcissistic nut” with “blood on his hands” and President Obama should do “whatever it takes to shut down WikiLeaks.” Without giving a single example of how Assange’s disclosures caused blood to flow, co-authors Thomas Spencer and F. W. Rustmann warn, “No nation can operate without secrets. Unless we adopt an aggressive plan, adopt new tough laws and take immediate action—overt and covert—we face disaster.” The authors go on to state the president should be joined in this suppression of the press by “Congress and our entire intelligence, military and law-enforcement communities” because “(our) lives are depending” on it.
While the above is vaguely worded it does appear that Spencer and Rustmann are calling for “immediate” and “covert” action—to put a stop to Assange’s activities. In short, they appear to be saying Obama & Co. has the right to terminate Assange covertly, that is to say, secretly, and, as the word has come to mean in CIA parlance, “violently” as well. It is no surprise that two writers closely tied to U.S. spy agencies appear to be advocating covert action against Assange, but it is a bit of a shock that the Miami Herald would publish this seeming call for blood.
Pardon me for suspecting this hysterical screech for Assange’s scalp was published with the blessing of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Rustmann spent 24 years as a CIA payroller and was an instructor in its covert training center, so he would know, if anybody, how to stick Assange’s feet into a block of cement and dump him in the Everglades. (Hollywood might even make a movie about it, with Rustmann’s intoning, “He sleeps with the alligators.”) As for Herald co-author Spencer, he is a lawyer who represents intelligence officers and is a Life Member in the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
Read the rest here:
http://www.antemedius.com/content/ex-cia-spook-calls-covert-action-vs-assange
Dec 22 2010
David Frost interviews Julian Assange
AlJazeeraEnglish | 22 December 2010 | 24 minutes
WikiLeaks founder talks about secrets, leaks and why he will not go back to Sweden.
Dec 22 2010
A Leaker Inside WikiLeaks?
The United States diplomatic cables leak (also known as Cablegate) began on 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks – an international new media non-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret and classified media from anonymous news sources and news leaks – started to publish classified documents of detailed correspondence between the U.S. State Department and its diplomatic missions around the world, releasing further documents every day.
Five major newspapers around the world have been publishing articles based on the leaks, by agreement with Wikileaks. The publication of the U.S. embassy cables is the third in a series of U.S. classified document “mega-leaks” distributed by WikiLeaks in 2010, following the Afghan War documents leak in July, and the Iraq War documents leak in October. The contents of the cables describe international affairs from 300 embassies dated from 1966-2010, containing diplomatic analysis of world leaders, an assessment of host countries, and a discussion about international and domestic issues.
The first 220 of the 251,287 documents were published on 28 November, with simultaneous press coverage from El País (Spain), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and The New York Times (United States). Over 130,000 of the documents are unclassified, some 100,000 are labeled “confidential”, about 15,000 documents have the higher classification “secret”, and none are classified as “top secret” on the classification scale. As of 16 December 2010, 1,532 individual cables had been released. WikiLeaks plans to release all the cables in phases over several months at a pace of about 80 cables per day. (wikipedia – For the contents of released cables, see Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak.)
Now, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten appears in a short article December 21 to be saying that it has obtained access, absent any agreement with WikiLeaks, to all of the 251,287 “CableGate” documents, and will begin publishing all of them over the coming weeks and months.
Aftenposten publishes only in Norwegian, however a Google English translation of the article reads as follows:
Website Wikileaks has published thousands of secret stamped documents. The latest leak is comprised of documents from the U.S. Foreign Service. Aftenposten has no clauses have access to all the 250,000 documents from the last leak.
[…]
The next days, weeks and months we will go through the massive material, and continuously publish news stories both online and paper.
To make our review more efficient, we would like tips from our readers.
Is there anything you wonder where you think the answer may lie in the messages that have been leaked to Wikileaks?
Tip us on [email protected]
Hat Tip to LodinLepp at DailyKos.
I can almost hear the sounds of desk drawers being hurriedly emptied and running footsteps in the halls of the U.S. State Department, from here…
Australia’s Herald Sun confirms the story today, stating:
Dec 20 2010
Karl Rove Behind Push To Prosecute Assange?
Roger Shuler is a former journalist who, according to his bio at OpEdNews lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and works in ‘higher education’.
Shuler goes on in his bio there to say that “I became interested in justice-related issues after experiencing gross judicial corruption in Alabama state courts. This corruption has a strong political component. The corrupt judges are all Republicans, and the attorney who filed a fraudulent lawsuit against me has strong family ties to the Alabama Republican Party, with indirect connections to national figures such as Karl Rove. In fact, a number of Republican operatives who have played a central role in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (a Democrat) also have connections to my case”. Shuler is also author of his blog Legal Schnauzer, where he asked on December 14 Is Karl Rove Driving the Effort to Prosecute Julian Assange?
Today over at RawStory, David Edwards writes that “Former Bush political strategist Karl Rove may be connected to a Swedish effort to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, sources for several legal experts suggest” and that “Rove is a longtime adviser to Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who recently tapped the Republican operative to aid his 2010 reelection campaign”:
Speaking to Legal Schnauzer’s [Roger] Shuler, an unnamed source suggested that Rove is likely “playing a leading role in the effort to prosecute” Assange. The founder of the secrets website was arrested Dec. 7 in London after Sweden issued a warrant for alleged sex crimes
After Assange’s release on bail, Guardian obtained and published leaked details of the allegations against him. A WikiLeaks source told The Australian that the leaked police reports were “a selective smear through the disclosure of material.”
And there’s no coincidence that the charges against Assange originate in Sweden, Shuler’s source said.
For at least 10 years, Rove has been connected to Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik. More recently, Fredrik, who is known as “the Ronald Reagan of Europe,” has contracted Rove to help with his 2010 re-election campaign.
Dec 20 2010
We can help Bradley Manning!
Each of us can help in trying to alleviate or end the plight that PFC Bradley Manning finds himself in — that of total isolation for seven months running now, no sheets nor pillows for his bed, unpermitted to exercise and is under constant surveillance. The U.S. government is holding Manning under these deplorable conditions, supposedly, for his role in having sent various various TRUTHS to Wikileaks, concerning areas in our wars and otherwise, without any charges having been had or placed against him. (Some of which information was known to some of us before such revelations through our own truth-seeking, but not to Americans, in general!)
Thanks to David Swanson, published with his thanks to Ed Fisher, there is very complete information as to how WE may help this 23-year old Bradley Manning.
How to Report the Torture of Bradley Manning to the United Nations
Sample information to include:
a. Full name of the victim:
Bradley E. Manning (born 17 December 1987), Private First Class (PFC), United States Army
b. Date on which the incident(s) of torture occurred (at least as to the month and year):
Ongoing from May, 2010.
The following is a summary of the conditions under which PFC Manning is being held, which in the opinion of experts and even International Law, constitute torture:
“Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months — and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait — under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning’s detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries” Salon
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has investigated and published an extensive report on this issue. Please refer to this article in full for more details: Salon
c. Place where the person was seized (city, province, etc.) And location at which the torture was carried out (if known):
* Camp Arifjan, a military jail in Kuwait
* U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia
“Manning was arrested by agents of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command in May 2010 and held in pre-trial confinement in a military jail at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.”
d. Indication of the forces carrying out the torture:
The President of the United States, The Congress of The United States, The United States State Department, The United States Justice Department, The United States Department of Defense, The United States Army, The United States Navy, The United States Marine Corps. All of the above are responsible for this illegal activity.
Furthermore, the torture of PFC Manning is not an isolated incident, rather, it is part of a policy shift that has been documented in The United States over the course of at least two Administrations, those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
For example, The United States has been found by the United Nations Committee against Torture to be responsible for:
* the US opinion that the Geneva Convention does not apply to, and would undermine, its War on Terror
* the US attempt to sidestep provisions of the Convention by applying it only to US territory, rather than areas under US control
* the fact that detainees are not always registered, depriving them of safeguards against acts of torture
* allegations of secret detention facilities which are not accessible to the International Red Cross
* the US refusal to comment over the existence of such facilities, and the allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment which have emanated from them
* the US involvement in enforced disappearances and its refusal to accept that this is a form of torture
* the rendition of subjects, without judicial procedure, to states where they face a real risk of torture
* the use of secret ‘diplomatic assurances’ to justify deporting detainees to country’s with poor human rights records
* the indefinite detention of prisoners without charge at Guantanamo Bay without legal safeguards or judicial assessment of justification
* the inadequate training provided to police and military personnel on the UN’s prohibition of torture
* the 2002 authorization of the use of interrogation techniques, such as water-boarding, shackling, sexual humiliation, and dogs, which have resulted in the deaths of some detainees
* the apparent impunity of police and military personnel accused of torture and not prosecuted
* the lenient sentences given to many people convicted of torture
* the proposal to withdraw the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees
* the difficulties that victims of abuse have faced in obtaining redress and compensation
* the apparent failure to ban evidence obtained under torture from being used at military commissions, and the limitations placed on the right of detainees to complain
* substantiated information which indicates that US sanctioned executions can be accompanied by severe pain and suffering
* numerous, reliable reports of sexual assault of detainees and sexual violence perpetrated by detainees on each other, to which ‘persons of differing sexual orientation’ are particularly vulnerable
* the humiliation of female prisoners and the shackling of female detainees during childbirth
* the large number of children sentenced to life imprisonment
* the extensive use of electro-shock devices which have caused several deaths
* the harsh regime imposed in ‘supermaximum’ security prisons, and prolonged isolation periods which may be used as a form of punishment
* reports of brutality and excessive force used by law enforcement officers and the numerous allegations of the ill-treatment of racial minorities, migrants and homosexuals which have not been properly investigated.
e. Description of the form of torture used and any injury suffered as a result;
* PFC Manning has been placed in a form of solitary confinement that is cruel and unusual. This is a term utilized within US Constitutional Law, and US citizens are supposed to enjoy protection against this form of treatment.
The US Supreme Court has had occasion to adjudicate on this issue. As long ago as 1890, the US Supreme Court wrote:
“A considerable number of prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semifatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community. (In re Medley, 1890)”
. . . . .
Dec 19 2010
Sex And Wikileaks: That Other Scandal
Crossposted from Fire on the Mountain.
Even though the official Obama administration review of Afghanistan shows just how shaky the occupation there is, Wikileaks continues to be the big news story two weeks on (thanks in no small part to the US decision to try and take down Julian Assange via a sex scandal–the media loves them some sex scandals, especially ones involving slender, pale blonds).
There’s one document in the first thousand released that I want to highlight here, in part in observance this weekend and Friday of the monthly War Moratorium. The story takes place at the corner of Afghanistan and Wikileaks. Though it also features non-consensual sex, it has received little play in the US media. (No blonds, perhaps?) And behind the sex lies an even more shocking story.
The cable (as they are called) from Kabul to Washington reports a desperate plea by Afghan Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar to US embassy officials. He needs help covering up a story he fears will break soon.
Dec 18 2010
I Have A Question
While Julian Assange sits in a mansion celebrated for his release of U.S. State Department Official Cables the person who may have provided them sits in solitary confinement in Virginia. So the person who published the cables and who has become there public face is more important than Bradly Manning? Why is it that no one is celebrating or defending Bradly Manning? Why is it there no celebrity’s like say Micheal Moore who contributed $20,000 to Julian Asange’s bail have done nothing to publicize the plight of Bradly Manning? I guess it’s because he’s in the army and an American so he just doesn’t count.
Bradley Manning spent yesterday, his birthday, alone in a tiny, bare prison cell, without a pillow or sheets on his bed, in weak health and wracked with anxiety at the prospect of a prison sentence of 52 years.The young American soldier has faded into the background as international ructions continue over the hundreds of thousands of pieces of classified material from the US government that he is supposed to have supplied to WikiLeaks.
Now the fate of the whistleblowing website’s founder, Julian Assange, who has very much held the centre-stage, lies in the hands of the 23-year-old former army intelligence analyst.
So remember Julian Assange celebrity! Private Bradly Manning a nobody. The invisible man.
Dec 17 2010
Julian Assange 1st Presser After Release On Bail
RT | 17 December 2010 | The founder of the whistleblowing website Wikileaks released on bail by a British court says he will continue his work. An appeal by prosecutors to keep Julian Assange behind bars was rejected. But he’ll have to stay in Britain under house arrest until a decision is made on whether he should be extradited to Sweden over sexual assault allegations. That case was dropped in August, but later reopened, in a move widely seen as politically motivated.
Dec 17 2010
1st Amendment, 5th Estate
There is no revolution without winning the hearts and minds of the very people who must fight it for you.
It not only matters that the information travels, but in how it travels. There are those whose job is in the painstaking research, often resulting in books, if only the footnotes in the same. There are those whose job is in straight, “unbiased” reporting for mainstream publications, local papers or scholastic journals. I think it is important to continue to support 4th estate. Without your subscriptions, how can entities like “The Nation” survive?
What is just as important to remember? Most of these very institutions have been pressed, in the name of “objectivity” to abdicate their duty to report without actual bias. Facts seem to have a penchant for a “liberal bias” by undermining the propaganda arm of the Right’s agenda.
Worse yet? Disgusted by the right-wing bloviating as “reporting” by dubious “news” channels like Fox, the Left has become unwilling to OPINE. Edward R Murrow would be spinning in his grave. There was a time, ladies and gentlemen, to do as he did and call McCarthyism what it was, and there is a time, and that time is now, to call Assangism what it is. Both things are an attempt to prevent the dissemination of ideas, cover up wrongs and demonize truth tellers to protect predatory capitalism. There are now constraints in place, constraints created by the very entities that benefit from the status quo that are put upon journalists who wish to make a living writing.
That is where we ground-level writers must do our duty, and fill the void. We have nothing to lose, and must speak the things the muzzled cannot…. speak them until it becomes impossible for the MSM to not address.
Dec 17 2010
Where Is The Great Writ For Brad Manning?
Julian Assange is the big media story, but the unsung hero is probably Brad Manning. Unfortunately, while Manning suffers in solitary confinement, as he has for the past 7 months, and we scour the leaked material for which he might be responsible, the subject of Manning’s torturous, stringent, long term confinement are noted with horror and contempt, but is anything being done to challenge them? Put another way, where is the Great Writ, the writ of habeas corpus, for Brad Manning?
Dec 16 2010
Pvt. Brad Manning: Seven Months of Solitary So Far
Private Manning has never been tried for a crime. He has never been convicted of a crime. Yet he has spent the past five months in solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, VA, and the preceding two months in prison in Kuwait.
There are no sheets or a pillow on his bed. He is not permitted to exercise in his cell, and closed circuit television monitors him to make sure he doesn’t sneak in a prohibited push-up or sit-up.
For one hour a day he is allowed out of his cell, perhaps to exercise or watch television, though whether or not he is allowed to watch the news is in dispute.
He is being given anti-depressants to offset the effects of solitary confinement. It must be that the folks manning the brig at Quantico are aware that the facts are in concerning the cruel torment that solitary confinement is, and the long-term mental health problems it induces: it drives people mad.