Big ol' Wikirecap: Assange, Manning, Legality, and Cableliciousness

Catchup time!

Wikileaks and Assange

-Because five media partners was not enough, rumours circulate that Assange and co. are looking for SIXTY for the release of the remaining 99% of the cablegate cable....gates. Which might be too much noise for me to keep up with, and sounds like a logistical nightmare, but whatevs. Assange is insisting on full name redaction, which wins points from me.
Also, he's got an extradition hearing on Feb 7th. Swedes, mark your calendars, and maybe rethink any internet transactions that day.

-NYT and other big news machines are considering setting up leaking infrastructure (which is funny to say), a la the Al Jazeera Transparency Unit. I temporarily overlook the hypocrisy of the New York Times in order to appreciate this little bit o' sense.

-CEO of google considered stopping the archiving of the cables, but kept on, because "it's legal". Another reason why I still like google, even though they're as close to Skynet as we're ever going to get.

-Those cheeky Anonymous guys are asking for help to take down the Egyptian government sites, presumably as punishment for being jerks and randomly beating people/press members.

-There's a new Wikileaks game app. You play a TSA agent. Ummm what.

-Apparently it's been impossible to find a direct, incriminating link between Assange and Manning that would get the former tossed into Quantico with the latter. Apparently, though, for many of the case's biggest adherents, that doesn't particularly matter.

Bradley Manning

-Yet more insanity surrounding Bradley Manning: approximately the same time that the FireDogLake folks showed up to drop off a petition in support of Manning, orders from on high barred any visitors from seeing him--even pre-approved guests, and his lawyer. Aforementioned guests and lawyer then got shaken up and threatened with arrest for showing up. Manning has been put on suicide watch, which is basically the only thing worse than what he's already been going through. Every time someone in the article mentions taking "appropriate action", a little part of me scoffs and a huge part of me dies inside.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International sends a letter to the chief of the Pentagon about the "breach of international standards" that their treament of Manning constitutes.


From the Cables:
-Cable naming names of corrupt Cuban officials on the take contains the amazing quote:

"Because most Cubans work for the state, the entire system -- from petty officials to Castro's closest advisors -- is rife with corrupt practices''

Which implies that work for the private sector is inherently less corrupt. Which caused me to spit tea through my nose remembering Enron.


Cuba (aka Raul Castro) claims to want "normal relations" with the States. In other news, there's still a standing committee of US politicians intent on meddling in Cubano affairs and "installing democracy" in the "outpost of tyranny" (two terms which still sound batshit to me).
No word on whether a similar Cubano group exists, intent on installing good cigars and cheap beach resorts to the US.


-Apparently there's a big ol' cache of nuclear waste just sitting around somewhere in Kazakhstan that the States is worried could be picked over by terrorists.
I feel like terrorists are a tertiary problem here, secondary to the problem of RANDOM NUCLEAR WASTE LYING AROUND. Jesus.

Clearly, this is a sub-optimal place
for a Walmart.

-Norway to Walmart et al: "Fuck you and your questionable ethics."

Walmart et al to no one in particular: "Uh oh."

-That British-trained Bangladeshi Extrajudicial Murder Brigade I covered in a previous wikirecap is at it again, and the Guardian is all over that shit.

-Mexico border issues and something to do with the US interviewing foreign aliens. I don't even know what's going on here, but here's the cable.

Wikileaks Roundup: catch-up edition

Non-internet life prevented me from getting at the things that are totally happening, but now I've got a sec, and boy, have I got news for you. Helpfully divided into a few of the many-armed-Vishnu-esque wikileaks-related fronts, for greater general benefit of internet topicality etc.

The Men
Let's get Assange out of the way: he's in Vaughan Smith's manor, and says that his life and the lives of his staffers are at risk. Some of his lawyers and supporters, meanwhile, are upset that the Guardian leaked the allegations against him, claiming that it was selectively released to discredit Assange.  No word on what Assange thinks about any of it, except that he still asserts his innocence. All's fair in transparency, guys--more information is better, and wikileaks does not equal its founder....

Bradley Manning's lawyer confirms some of the details of his absurd treatment in Quantico. He's been in there for seven months without trial or conviction. I boil in anger.

The Reaction

Joe Biden, American King of Foot in Mouth, likens Assange to a "high-tech terrorist" on ABC's Meet the Press. That's the strongest wording we've heard from anyone that hasn't called for his death, and the irritation might be coming from his claims that international leaders are now asking his staff to leave meetings. "It makes things more cumbersome, so it has done damage". Oh no, not mildly awkward inconvenience! My only fatal weakness!

 He also maintains the difference between what (he hopes) happened with Wikileaks and what happens when journalists scoop classified information. We'll see, sir Joe.

Meanwhile, the New York Times technology writers say that the greatest casualties in prosecuting Julian Assange would be American--technology firms, journalists, and the reputation of America being a champion of free speech. I think he's right. And late. 

Meanwhile-meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald calls out the ever-expanding wall of secrecy the US gov maintains about its activities. He also brings in the burgeoning surveillance state the US is developing, saying they're in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of running a democracy. I could write a whole other post on this, and a whole other post on the awesomeness of Glenn Greenwald.

Montreal marched in defence of Wikileaks on Saturday. I tip my hat to the whole city.

Someone in the Wikileaks forums has suggested a WikiTerms of Service, holding service providers to a standard of service for their customers that includes not throwing wrenches in free speech.

The Cables

Remember when Obama promised to secure the whole world's nuclear stocks in four years, so we could all stop worrying about nuclear terrorism?
Turns out nukes are still friggin everywhere. In wicker baskets in Burundi, in some guy's car in Georgia, and rumoured to be all over the place elsewhere. The DRC is pit-mining uranium (which totally wins at safety) and is implicated in smuggling of nuclear material--plus, their nuclear research centre in Kinshasa barely has a fence around it. And Russia is just as sketchy, with former military members trying to sell uranium in Portugal, and next to no security in the former Russian republics.

The US appears to have a half-decent response policy in place that they call their "Second line of defense". Every time radiation detectors go off at a border crossing or radioactive material is found on somebody,  the "First line of defense" has already been messed about--someone managed to get the material, in a world where sources are fairly (and rightfully) fanatically regulated. So every time the first line goes down, the "Second line"--namely the US diplomats--get called in. I have no idea what they do then, but at the very least, they report it--and apparently, over 500 reports of this "second line" activation have been called in during the last 15 years.

In good nuclear news (or, at least, better than "zomg we all might die"), Egypt was offered Soveit nukes off the black market, and turned them down.

Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson gives us a breakdown of failed states in the cables that goes beyond the usual "Somalia and Afghanistan, end of list". The article gives us background information in context, interesting stuff emerging from the cables, and interesting/unexpected things coming out as well. In the list is North Korea, Eritrea, Somalia, Burma, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Cote D'Ivoire, Kenya (really?), and Nigeria (whaa...)

The UK's BAE arms company is trying to bend Tanzania over on the sale of a radar system, and nobody wants to prosecute them. Sneaky and brutal.

Omar al-Bashir, genocidal general president of Sudan, has a pantsload of stolen Sudanese oil money in UK banks. Awesome.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan grasped at straws trying to help Zimbabwe, and tried to get Robert Mugabe out of the way by offering him cushy retirement overseas. Proving yet again that when a situation sucks more than is humanly conceivable, even the best options for fixing it will -also- suck.

Wining, dining, ladykilling Italian PM Berlusconi thought about doing more for the international development community in order to not look bad to Bono. On the one hand, this is a surprising piece of proof that someone actually listens to Bono's loudmouthing. On the other, the fact that Bono wields more influence than common sense, empathy, or decades of development research makes me want to put a gun in my mouth.

The super-important cable you've all been waiting for: a cursory mention of Tom Cruise and scientology. Also, I was recently amused/appalled to discover the book store I work for shelves Dianetics in the self-help section. Yes, the whole world is crazy.

For more cableiciousness, the often-rad Guardian has a browsable database by country in a handy little map!


Attendant Hilarity
Rap news 6 breaks it down to the right in a surprisingly eloquent bit of white Australian hip hawp.

Wikileaks Roundup: recovering from C-SPAN edition.

I had to stop the sound in my head of "blah blah Wikuhleaks blah". The things I do for you people.

I know this is disaster porn, but it really is a disaster.

The Guardian, despite lack of liveblog today, persists in awesomeness by calling out the US Occupation of Haiti, likening it to the systemic removal of governments the US didn't like in South America, legitimately (I think) playing the socioeconomic/race card in why no one notices, calling on South American governments to stop aiding and abetting the occupation, and saying that the US is at a 1998-level of prep for war in Iran. They open strong, and they just keep swinging:

"The polarisation of the debate around WikiLeaks is pretty simple, really. Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity. The Iraq war has claimed certainly hundreds of thousands, and, most likely, more than a million lives. It was completely unnecessary and unjustifiable, and based on lies. Now, Washington is moving toward a military confrontation with Iran."

Pow!


In the category of political fallout that DOESN'T ORIGINATE FROM WIKILEAKS, the CIA station chief undercover in Pakistan (when'd the war with Pakistan start?) flees the country because his name was released in a legal complaint against armed drone attacks against Al Qaeda targets that killed German and UK citizens. Who published the documents? Well, lawyers, of course.
 I have three points on this:
-this is the only action from the NYT anyone has seen in days. They're totally hedging their bets.
-how long until this is erroneously pointed out as an unacceptable consequence of Wikileaks? Tick tick tick.
-this gives me a lot of faith in the ability of lawyers to decide what information needs to be secret and what doesn't.
Also, I've unilaterally decided that "Waziristan" wins word of the year. It's almost as good to say as "Malawians".


Michael Moore logs not-a-total-asshat points with this open letter to the Swedish government:

"This tactic of using a rape charge to go after minorities or troublemakers, guilty or innocent -- while turning a blind eye to clear crimes of rape the rest of the time — is what I fear is happening here. I want to make sure that good people not remain silent and that you, Sweden, will not succeed if in fact you are in cahoots with corrupt governments such as ours...Unless you have the evidence (and it seems if you did you would have issued an arrest warrant by now), drop the extradition attempt and get to work doing the job you've so far refused to do: Protecting the women of Sweden."

This is a reaction to the incredible beating he and Keith Olbermann have taken from the left-wing feminists for coming out in support of Assange. A perusal of feminist blogs that I like are a little low on the innocent-until-proven-guilty-ometer, probably because rape is so goddamn serious and taken so goddamn lightly in the society I live in, and that makes people who care about it (myself included) understandably angry. They're also saying the case against Assange is more straightforward than I consider it to be, and the haze around it is due to shitty reporting. I'd just like to remind everyone of three things:

1) that there is a legal responsibility on the part of the Swedes that curiously hasn't been fulfilled yet, despite repeated requests: the presentation of evidence gathered against Assange. That's what I'm waiting on, because I don't think it's wise (or possible) to overlook the extenuating political and legal circumstances of this case.
2) that the current state of rape response by legal institutions all over the world is fucking dismal,
3) that the response by legal institutions to THIS alleged rape case is so clearly not about the alleged rape that it ruins everything.

That is all.

And I'm late to the party on this one, but only because I've been thinking about it so hard: Dan Ellsberg (aka Mr. Pentagon Papers) weighs in on the Afghan War Logs, and wikileaks in general. Some good brain-fodder on this Friday:

   Ellsberg's argument was that the oaths he had sworn as a Marine and a military analyst were to the Constitution, a document that Jefferson said in his first inaugural address is best defended by "the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason."

WikiLeaks says today that:  "We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”

“The secrecy that has enveloped the war in Afghanistan is very costly to us,” argues Ellsberg. Those who leak and publish the true facts about America's wars, he explains, can usually be said to have "showed better judgment in putting it out than the people who keep [the facts] secret from the American people."

Wikileaks Roundup: The Bad News

It doesn't look good, folks.

Turns out the Swedes didn't have much to do with Assange's bail being appealed--apparently that call was made by the British prosecutor on the case. Could mean any number of three things: the UK government is not as sympathetic to Assange's cause as previously believed and therefore Assange is in trouble with extradition, that particular prosecutor just really wanted to make the Swedes happy, or someone is lying.

Meanwhile, the cost of keeping these lawyers fighting for him is straining Assange's budget--Wikileaks donations are for the organization, not for Assange, and all the guy's personal assets and accounts are frozen. If the Swedes win their appeal tomorrow, he'll be stuck in lockup in "Dickensian conditions" until extradited to Sweden, which could take months.

Found out what the New York Times was doing: a mildly investigative piece on what the US Justice Department has been up to. It's sneaky.

Having long run out of things that they can charge him with, US federal prosecutors are trying to find evidence that he conspired with Private Bradley Manning in the Afghan War Logs leaks. (Note: the New York Times has a damnable paywall to this report. I'll try and quote as much as possible--emphases are mine).

"Justice Department officials have declined to discuss any grand jury activity. But in interviews, people familiar with the case said the department appeared to be attracted to the possibility of prosecuting Mr. Assange as a co-conspirator to the leaking because it is under intense pressure to make an example of him as a deterrent to further mass leaking of electronic documents over the Internet. By bringing a case against Mr. Assange as a conspirator to Private Manning’s leak, the government would not have to confront awkward questions about why it is not also prosecuting traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose information the government says should be kept secret — including The Times, which also published some documents originally obtained by WikiLeaks.

“I suspect there is a real desire on the part of the government to avoid pursuing the publication aspect if it can pursue the leak aspect,” said Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia law professor and former federal prosecutor. “It would be so much neater and raise fewer constitutional issues.”

... Mr. Lamo said Private Manning also sometimes uploaded information directly to Mr. Assange, whom he had initially sought out online. Still, prosecutors would most likely need more than a chat transcript laying out such claims to implicate Mr. Assange, Professor Richman said. Even if prosecutors could prove that it was Private Manning writing the messages to Mr. Lamo, a court might deem the whole discussion as inadmissible hearsay evidence. Prosecutors could overcome that hurdle if they obtain other evidence about any early contacts — especially if they could persuade Private Manning to testify against Mr. Assange. But two members of a support network set up to raise money for his legal defense, Jeff Paterson and David House, said Private Manning had declined to cooperate with investigators since his arrest in May. Meanwhile, WikiLeaks is taking steps to distance itself from the suggestion that it actively encourages people to send in classified material. It has changed how it describes itself on its submissions page. 'WikiLeaks accepts a range of material, but we do not solicit it,' its Web site now says."

Some of my thoughts:

1) "Lamo" is the guy that Bradley Manning confided in when he was understandably worried about leaking the Afghan War Logs. Lamo is also who turned in Bradley Manning for whistleblowing on the military because of hundreds of innocent dead Afghani civillians. In my opinion, he's very aptly named.

2) I can't imagine a jury being chosen from Assange's actual peers would convict him. I also can't imagine the US Deptartment of Justice actually assembling a jury of his peers. I CAN see them assembling a jury of the 70% of Americans who think he's a terrorist and should be put in Quantico with Manning.

3)This prosecution path is scary for free speech, because if it wins, it would effectively criminalize whistleblowing. Which effectively criminalizes disagreeing with power. Which, to put it bluntly, essentially clips the balls off of any democracy.

Snip snip.

Speaking of Private Bradley Manning, my favourite Glenn Greenwald (ladies and gentlemen!) has a scary, well-researched insight into the conditions of his "stay" at the Marine base at Quantico. The long and short of it: Manning's in "high-security" solitary confinement 23 hours a day for well over four months, which ruins you psychologically in the same neurological ways that repeated, severe concussions do. He's not allowed to exercise, have sheets or a pillow on his bed, or talk to anyone. He's not on suicide watch, but he HAS been put on antidepressants to keep him from going off the deep end. He doesn't know when, or if, he's getting out. AND HE HASN'T BEEN CONVICTED OF ANYTHING.
The article turned my stomach--but it really puts a face on what we're talking about when we talk about military law. It also has excerpts from Wired's edited chat logs between someone purported to be Manning, and Lamo himself, including this about why he chose to leak:

Lamo: what's your endgame plan, then?. . .

Manning: well, it was forwarded to [WikiLeaks] - and god knows what happens now - hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video… David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

if i knew then, what i knew now - kind of thing, or maybe im just young, naive, and stupid . . . im hoping for the former - it cant be the latter - because if it is… were fucking screwed (as a society) - and i dont want to believe that we’re screwed.

I feel like Bradley Manning is the biggest tragedy in this whole Cablegate story, and it completely breaks my heart.

Also, BP practically owns Azerbaijan, steals their oil to the tune of $10 billion, and clearly doesn't mind explosions like the Gulf Spill happening in the Caspian region. Which is nice of them.